DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7416#0128
118
fragments at Home, they are far more elaborately wrought than
those of Trajan's pillar.1
149- The age of Rameses is as uncertain as all other very ancient
dates: but he has been generally supposed by modern chronologers
to be the same person as Sesostris, and to have reigned at Thebes
about fifteen hundred years before the Christian aara, or about
three hundred before the siege of Troy. They are, however, too apt
to confound personages for the purpose of contracting dates ; which
being merely conjectural in events of this remote antiquity, every new
system-builder endeavours to adapt them to his own prejudices ; and,
as it has been the fashion, in modern times, to reduce as much as
possible the limits of ancient history, whole reigns and even dy-
nasties have been annihilated with the dash of a pen, notwithstand-
ing the obstinate evidence of those stupendous monuments of art
and labor, which still stand up in their defence.1
150. From the state in which the inhabitants have been found
in most newly-discovered countries, we know how slow and diffi-
cult the invention of even the commonest implements of art is ; and
how reluctantly men are dragged into those habits of industry, which
even the first stages of culture require. iEgypt, too, being
periodically overflowed, much more art and industry were required
even to render it constantly habitable and capable of cultivation,
than would be employed in cultivating a country not liable to inun-
dations. Repositories must have been formed, and places of safety
built, both for men and cattle; the adjoining deserts of Libya
affording neither food nor shelter for either. Before this could
have been done, not only the arts and implements necessary to do
it must have been invented, but the rights of property in some
degree defined and ascertained; which they could only be in a
1 Figures in relief, finished in the same style, are upon the granite sarco-
phagus in the British Museum : it is equal to that of the finest gems,
and must have been done with similar instruments.
* Warburton has humorously introduced one of these chronologers prov-
ing that"William the Conqueror and William the Hid. were one and the
same person. Div. Leg.
fragments at Home, they are far more elaborately wrought than
those of Trajan's pillar.1
149- The age of Rameses is as uncertain as all other very ancient
dates: but he has been generally supposed by modern chronologers
to be the same person as Sesostris, and to have reigned at Thebes
about fifteen hundred years before the Christian aara, or about
three hundred before the siege of Troy. They are, however, too apt
to confound personages for the purpose of contracting dates ; which
being merely conjectural in events of this remote antiquity, every new
system-builder endeavours to adapt them to his own prejudices ; and,
as it has been the fashion, in modern times, to reduce as much as
possible the limits of ancient history, whole reigns and even dy-
nasties have been annihilated with the dash of a pen, notwithstand-
ing the obstinate evidence of those stupendous monuments of art
and labor, which still stand up in their defence.1
150. From the state in which the inhabitants have been found
in most newly-discovered countries, we know how slow and diffi-
cult the invention of even the commonest implements of art is ; and
how reluctantly men are dragged into those habits of industry, which
even the first stages of culture require. iEgypt, too, being
periodically overflowed, much more art and industry were required
even to render it constantly habitable and capable of cultivation,
than would be employed in cultivating a country not liable to inun-
dations. Repositories must have been formed, and places of safety
built, both for men and cattle; the adjoining deserts of Libya
affording neither food nor shelter for either. Before this could
have been done, not only the arts and implements necessary to do
it must have been invented, but the rights of property in some
degree defined and ascertained; which they could only be in a
1 Figures in relief, finished in the same style, are upon the granite sarco-
phagus in the British Museum : it is equal to that of the finest gems,
and must have been done with similar instruments.
* Warburton has humorously introduced one of these chronologers prov-
ing that"William the Conqueror and William the Hid. were one and the
same person. Div. Leg.