DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4640#0010
8 EGYPT.—AN INTRODUCTION.
much and how easily such arts can advance without the aid of science—for the experience of three
thousand years, and the science of the last three centuries, have added little to the skill and taste
to be seen in the relics now shewn at the British Museum. Of the pure sciences they had some
knowledge, the parent source of those which have been transmitted to us by the philosophers of
Greece. Some of the names of the most wise and learned of those who visited Egypt even
before her first occupation by the Persians, are recorded, and among them Thales, Solon,
Cleobulus, and Hecatseus. The jealousy of the Persians forbade the Greeks to travel in Egypt
during their occupation of the country, but as soon as they could venture, we find that
Hellanicus, Anaxagoras, Herodotus, Eudoxius, Chrysippus, and Plato, were among the most eminent,
who some time before the conquest of Egypt by Alexander, travelled there to acquire the arts
and study the learning of the Egyptians, but chiefly their abstract and scholastic philosophy. Their
arts were useful and elegant, but useful and practical science appears to have been almost
unknown to them; for few traces exist of their acquaintance with natural philosophy. The
shadoof for raising water from the Nile, in use in the present day, is represented in their pictures
three thousand years ago, and shews their ignorance of hydraulics. Electricity and magnetism,
mechanics, as we apply our knowledge of its principles; the power of steam, and the great
productions and changes effected by chemical agency, are now so necessary to us, that we are led
to ask, how a state of society, so far advanced as that of the ancient Egyptians, could have existed
without them. Yet in the earliest history of this interesting people we find them in a high state of
civilisation—what the condition of the contemporary nations was, is almost unknown to us. Moses
wrote fifteen centuries B.C., and his narration of the first visit of Abraham to Egypt, four centuries
earlier, shews the high condition of her people. That hieroglyphics were used by the Nomade tribes
we may fairly infer from the custom of setting up stones to commemorate events, so often mentioned
in the Bible, and we cannot doubt that such events were inscribed upon them; but the social state
of these tribes is strikingly contrasted with that of the Egyptians, whose greatness, recorded by the
sacred historian, is confirmed by the remains which still exist, of that period. From the time of
Herodotus the written history of Egypt is connected, down to her ignorant and degraded condition in
the present day, when the nations of Europe, in constant communication with her, are in the highest
state of enlightenment yet attained by any community of the human family. Let us hope that a
country so favoured by nature and its position may yet emerge from such barbarism, and that the
changes already effected by Mehemet Ali may lead to the occupation of Egypt by a race and a
condition of society worthy of her important position and local advantages.
much and how easily such arts can advance without the aid of science—for the experience of three
thousand years, and the science of the last three centuries, have added little to the skill and taste
to be seen in the relics now shewn at the British Museum. Of the pure sciences they had some
knowledge, the parent source of those which have been transmitted to us by the philosophers of
Greece. Some of the names of the most wise and learned of those who visited Egypt even
before her first occupation by the Persians, are recorded, and among them Thales, Solon,
Cleobulus, and Hecatseus. The jealousy of the Persians forbade the Greeks to travel in Egypt
during their occupation of the country, but as soon as they could venture, we find that
Hellanicus, Anaxagoras, Herodotus, Eudoxius, Chrysippus, and Plato, were among the most eminent,
who some time before the conquest of Egypt by Alexander, travelled there to acquire the arts
and study the learning of the Egyptians, but chiefly their abstract and scholastic philosophy. Their
arts were useful and elegant, but useful and practical science appears to have been almost
unknown to them; for few traces exist of their acquaintance with natural philosophy. The
shadoof for raising water from the Nile, in use in the present day, is represented in their pictures
three thousand years ago, and shews their ignorance of hydraulics. Electricity and magnetism,
mechanics, as we apply our knowledge of its principles; the power of steam, and the great
productions and changes effected by chemical agency, are now so necessary to us, that we are led
to ask, how a state of society, so far advanced as that of the ancient Egyptians, could have existed
without them. Yet in the earliest history of this interesting people we find them in a high state of
civilisation—what the condition of the contemporary nations was, is almost unknown to us. Moses
wrote fifteen centuries B.C., and his narration of the first visit of Abraham to Egypt, four centuries
earlier, shews the high condition of her people. That hieroglyphics were used by the Nomade tribes
we may fairly infer from the custom of setting up stones to commemorate events, so often mentioned
in the Bible, and we cannot doubt that such events were inscribed upon them; but the social state
of these tribes is strikingly contrasted with that of the Egyptians, whose greatness, recorded by the
sacred historian, is confirmed by the remains which still exist, of that period. From the time of
Herodotus the written history of Egypt is connected, down to her ignorant and degraded condition in
the present day, when the nations of Europe, in constant communication with her, are in the highest
state of enlightenment yet attained by any community of the human family. Let us hope that a
country so favoured by nature and its position may yet emerge from such barbarism, and that the
changes already effected by Mehemet Ali may lead to the occupation of Egypt by a race and a
condition of society worthy of her important position and local advantages.