DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14563#0221
186
EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT.
three thousand years, bears witness to the fidelity of the
sacred historian.
Other sculptures here represent the wars of the Egyp-
tians with various Asiatic nations, and some of these
doubtless might be harmonized with the allusions to such
wars in the Old Testament, as, for example, in 2 Chronicles
xxxv. 20.
From the age of Shishak we mark the decline of Eg}'pt
until the Persian invasion: then followed the invasions
of the Greeks and the Romans, and after, those of the
Saracens and the Turks ; with other intermediate invasions
from Ethiopia and from the desert, till Egypt has become
" the basest of the kingdoms ;" — a mere dependency of a
distant sovereign, without a prince of her own. Nearly
every one of those invasions has left its distinct traces upon
the architecture of Thebes; so that the remark of Isaac
Taylor respecting the walls of Jerusalem may be applied
with equal truth to Thebes, that here are found strata in
architecture, the leisurely deposits of the successive military
inundations that have swept over the land.
It has been questioned whether there is any direct allu-
sion to Thebes in the Old Testament. Yet it would be
strange if this great capital, "which could furnish twenty
thousand armed chariots from its vicinity," which was for
centuries the emporium of the lucrative trade of Arabia
and of Ethiopia, which gathered to itself the wealth and the
luxury of the known world, and whose magnificence was
characterized by the epithet given to it by Homer nine
hundred years before the Christian era — " Thebes of the
Hundred Gates " — which, whether understood of the gates
of the city wall or of the gates of its numerous temples, is
equally indicative of wealth and power, — it would be
strange if such a city were omitted in the frequent refer-
ences of the writers of the Old Testament to the cities of
EGYPT, PAST AND PRESENT.
three thousand years, bears witness to the fidelity of the
sacred historian.
Other sculptures here represent the wars of the Egyp-
tians with various Asiatic nations, and some of these
doubtless might be harmonized with the allusions to such
wars in the Old Testament, as, for example, in 2 Chronicles
xxxv. 20.
From the age of Shishak we mark the decline of Eg}'pt
until the Persian invasion: then followed the invasions
of the Greeks and the Romans, and after, those of the
Saracens and the Turks ; with other intermediate invasions
from Ethiopia and from the desert, till Egypt has become
" the basest of the kingdoms ;" — a mere dependency of a
distant sovereign, without a prince of her own. Nearly
every one of those invasions has left its distinct traces upon
the architecture of Thebes; so that the remark of Isaac
Taylor respecting the walls of Jerusalem may be applied
with equal truth to Thebes, that here are found strata in
architecture, the leisurely deposits of the successive military
inundations that have swept over the land.
It has been questioned whether there is any direct allu-
sion to Thebes in the Old Testament. Yet it would be
strange if this great capital, "which could furnish twenty
thousand armed chariots from its vicinity," which was for
centuries the emporium of the lucrative trade of Arabia
and of Ethiopia, which gathered to itself the wealth and the
luxury of the known world, and whose magnificence was
characterized by the epithet given to it by Homer nine
hundred years before the Christian era — " Thebes of the
Hundred Gates " — which, whether understood of the gates
of the city wall or of the gates of its numerous temples, is
equally indicative of wealth and power, — it would be
strange if such a city were omitted in the frequent refer-
ences of the writers of the Old Testament to the cities of