MOST ANCIENT NATION WAS KIND TO CHILDREN—ECONOMIC
PRESSURE BROUGHT NO SPECIAL CRUELTY—PICTURE OF THE
PROLETARIAT—ABJURATIONS OF THE OLDEST BOOK IN THE
WORLD—EGYPTIANS AS SEEN BY DIODORUS SICULUS—DEGENERATING
EFFECT OF GREEK SUPREMACY.
Pleistocene man wandered from the Indo-Malaysia region into the
northern part of Africa, and there, in the Nile valley, the Egyptian
Hamites, as a truly autochthonous race, were evolved.
In a climate particularly favourable, great progress was made by
these aboriginal people, especially in the New Stone Age, which was
of unusually long duration, as can be seen from the beautiful flint
knives plated with gold on which are carved animal figures.[145] That
the actual beginnings of Egyptian culture are twice as long as the
historic period is the statement of Keane, and Oppert claims that
there are indications of a thoroughly established social and political
organization as far back as 11,500 years B. C.
[Illustration: ISIS IN THE PAPYRUS SWAMPS, SUCKLING HORUS
(REPRODUCED FROM “THE GODS OF THE EGYPTIANS, OR STUDIES IN EGYPTIAN
MYTHOLOGY”)]
It is therefore not surprising that we find among the Egyptians,
just as we find among the Sumerians and the Akkadians, who were
contemporaneous in civilization about four and five thousand years
before Christ, that the attitude toward children is settled, and
apparently in the child’s favour; for aside from occasional sacrificial
offerings in which the child is on a par at least with the slave or the
servant about to be sacrificed, there is no evidence of the endeavour
to do away with the children on the scale that we find in ancient
Greece and Rome and later in India and China.
Had there been, however, less positive division of castes in Egypt,
the infants of the higher class would not have been as well treated.
The lives of the military and priestly castes were almost sacred[146];
it was on them that the king relied for support, and the rest of the
population, whether nominally free or slave, were foreordained to a
life of incessant toil. Maspero quotes from the Sellier Papyrus, a
satiric poem, which goes to show the conditions in the earliest time
among these workmen whose lives of hardship were only varied by the
irregular visits of the tax-gatherers. These visits, though dreaded,
were never prepared for and were always the occasions of several days
of protestations, threats, beating, cries of pain from the tax-payers,
lamentations from the women and children, the gathering up of the
tax, the departure of the tax-collectors and then the calm with the
resumption of labour until the next visit of the collectors.
“I have never seen a blacksmith on an embassy,” so runs the complaint
of the proletariat 3000 years before Christ,—“nor a smelter sent on
a mission—but what I have seen is the metal worker at his toil,—at
the mouth of the furnace of his forge,—his fingers as rugged as the
crocodile, and stinking more than fish-spawn. The artisan of any kind
who handles the chisel, does not employ so much movement as he who
handles the hoe; but for him his fields are the timber, his business is
the metal, and at night when the other is free,—he, he works with his
hands over and above what he has already done, for at night, he works
at home by the lamp. The stone-cutter who seeks his living by working
in all kinds of durable stone, when at last he has earned something,
and his two arms are worn out, he stops; but if at sunrise he remain
sitting, his legs are tied to his back. The barber who shaves until the
evening, when he falls to and eats, it is without sitting down—while
running from street to street to seek custom; if he is constant (at
work) his two arms fill his belly, as the bee eats in proportion to its
toil. Shall I tell thee of the mason—how he endures misery? Exposed
to all the winds—while he builds without any garment but a belt—and
while the bunch of lotus-flowers (which is fixed) on the (completed)
houses—is still far out of his reach—his two arms are worn out with
work; his provisions are placed higgledy piggledy amongst his refuse,
he consumes himself, for he has no other bread than his fingers, and
he becomes wearied all at once. He is much and dreadfully exhausted—for
there is (always) a block (to be dragged) in this or that building,
a block of ten cubits by six,—there is (always) a block (to be
dragged) in this or that month (as far as the) scaffolding poles (to
which is fixed) the bunch of lotus-flowers on the (completed) houses.
When the work is quite finished, if he has bread, he returns home, and
his children have been beaten unmercifully (during his absence). The
weaver within doors is worse off there than a woman; squatting, his
knees against his chest,—he does not breathe. If during the day he
slackens weaving, he is bound fast to the lotuses of the lake; and it
is by giving bread to the doorkeeper, that the latter permits him to
see the light. The dyer, his fingers reeking—and their smell is that of
fish-spawn;—his two eyes are oppressed with fatigue, his hand does not
stop,—and, as he spends his time in cutting out rags—he has a hatred of
garments. The shoemaker is very unfortunate; he moans ceaselessly, his
health is the health of the spawning fish, and he gnaws the leather.
The baker makes dough, subjects the loaves to the fire; while his head
is inside the oven, his son holds him by the legs; if he slips from the
hands of his son, he falls there into the flames.”[147]
The matriarchal tendencies of the Egyptian Government also account
for the fact that children, as a rule, were not only allowed to live
but were better treated than they were among other peoples. Even the
first Egyptians, although semi-savages like those inhabiting Africa
and America, were different in their attitude toward women to such an
extent that the Greeks were led into believing that in Egypt the woman
was supreme. The husband entered the house of the wife instead of the
wife entering his[148] and this led to the children recognizing the
parental relation through the mother alone.
To this matriarchal tendency may also be attributed the activity of
Maskonit, the god who appeared at the child’s cradle at the very
moment of its birth, and Raninit, who gave him his name and saw that
he was properly nursed. With two such deities in the list of gods,
obviously the creations of women and hardly those of semi-savage men,
it was evident that the women were using their best supernatural means
to protect childhood. Significant, too, may be the fact that these
protecting deities were goddesses, for, as may be seen from the story
of the ill-fated prince,[149]—there was always a chance that either
the crocodile, the serpent, or the dog, might get the infant. In the
possibility of death by either of the three, there was the memory of
days when mothers were either less careful or had not much authority.
[Illustration: GROUP OF M’AYPTAH, THE PRIEST OF PTAH, WITH HIS FAMILY
(REPRODUCED FROM “LIFE IN ANCIENT EGYPT”)]
Such knowledge as we have of the kings of the Fifth Dynasty indicates
that they were builders, but it was during this dynasty, in the reign
of Tetka-Ra (about 3366 B. C.), that what has been described as the
oldest book in the world, the _Precepts of Ptah-Hotep_, was written. In
this remarkable document the first care of the author after a stirring
picture of old age, for it is evident that Ptah-Hotep wrote in his old
age, is to enjoin those who read, that by following in the ways of the
fathers, the children will prosper. All through there are, as M. Chabas
pointed out, evidences that it furnished the basis for many of the
later injunctions of the Hebrews in regard to filial obedience:
“Bring up your son in obedience.”
“The son who receives the word of his father will live to be old
because of it.”
“Beloved of God is obedience; disobedience is hated by God.”
The later injunction of Ecclesiastes, ix., 9, is found in the 18th
rubric:
“If you are wise take good care of your house; love your wife and
cherish her.”[150]
The husband and wife are frequently represented together at this time,
and their attitude toward one another is most affectionate. In the
group of M’Ayptah we see the Priest of Ptah in what to our modern
understanding is a real family group, not unlike those the photographer
of the congested districts in large cities is frequently called on to
perpetuate. On the left of the Priest is his wife, Ha’tshepest, while
on his right is his grown-up daughter. Two smaller figures represent a
second daughter and the grandson of M’Ayptah.[151] The prominence of
women here in relations so affectionate is unlike anything that we find
in other ancient nations, and argues the presence of a spirit different
from that of most nations at the same stage of culture.
In the time of the Old Kingdom (from the Third to the Sixth Dynasty),
a man had but one wife, who was the mother of his heirs, was in
every respect his equal, and shared authority with the father over
the children. The natural line of inheritance was through the eldest
daughter, and the closest ties were through the mother.[152]
In the _Adventures of Sanehat_, a story written apparently at the
time of Amenemhat I., the founder of the Twelfth Dynasty, Sanehat’s
description of his reception in the court of the king, when the royal
children were brought forth to join in the general celebration, would
also indicate that there was no desire to show any preference to either
sex.[153]
That human sacrifice lasted up to the Eleventh Dynasty[154]
is the belief of Messrs. King and Hall, who point to the
excavations at Thebes, in the precinct of the funerary temple of
Nebhapet-Ra-Mentuhetep and about the central pyramid which commemorated
his memory. There were buried a number of ladies of his _harim_, who
were without doubt killed and buried at the same time, in order that
they might accompany their royal master to his new abiding place.
With each of these ladies there was buried a little waxen human
figure placed in a little coffin, the image being intended to take
the place of the slave of the lady of the _harim_. As the ladies were
not royal, real slaves were not killed for them, which shows that the
idea of sacrifice even then had contracted until it was restricted to
personages of the highest rank.
According to Porphyry, who quotes a work of Manetheo on _Antiquity
and Piety_,[155] the law permitting or ordering the sacrifice of men
was repealed by Amosis. Amosis, it is said, ordered that waxen images
be substituted. The excavators have found not only the wax images but
those of later days, when wood and glazed _faience_ as well as stone
were used, the growing humanity of the age seeking in this way to
progress from the primitive indifference to the death of others.[156]
Nowhere is there any evidence that among the Egyptians of the Old,
and Middle or New period (that is from the Fourth Dynasty up to the
Twentieth, or from about 2800 to 110 B. C.), children were ill-treated
or suffered from any of the usual methods of getting rid of surplus
progeny. It is true that the monuments are more given to warlike
exploits than to revelations of social manners, but the conditions in
early Egypt all seem to point to the fact that, living in a land of
plenty, they had early passed beyond the stage when the life of the
child was the first sacrifice to the god of necessity.
In this connection it must be said that the only direct evidence we
have from the ancients is that of Diodorus Siculus, a contemporary of
Cæsar, who visited Egypt in the course of his thirty years’ preparation
for his historical work. In what he says of the punishment of those who
killed their children, he is citing the ancient Egyptians before they
came under the influence of the Greeks and Romans:
“Parents that killed their children, were not to die, but were forced
for three days and nights together to hug them continually in their
arms, and had a guard all the while over them, to see they did it; for
they thought it not fit that they should die, who gave life to their
children; but rather that men should be deterred from such attempts by
a punishment that seemed attended with sorrow and repentance.”[157]
In another section of his work, Diodorus is evidently speaking of the
Egyptians of his own day:
“The Egyptian priests only marry one wife, but all others may have
as many wives as they please; and all are bound to bring up as many
children as they can, for the further increase of the inhabitants,
which tends much to the well-being either of a city or country. None
of the sons are ever reputed bastards, though they be begotten of a
bond maid, for they conceive that the father only begets the child,
and that the mother contributes nothing but place and nourishment.
And they call trees that bear fruit, males, and those that bear none,
females; contrary to what the Grecians name them. They bring up their
children with very little cost and are sparing, upon that account, to
admiration: for they provide them broth, made of any mean and poor
stuff that may be easily had; and feed those that are of strength able
to eat it, with the pith of bulrushes, roasted in the embers, and
with roots and herbs got in the fens; sometimes raw, and sometimes
boiled; and at other times fried and boiled. Most of their children
go barefooted and naked, the climate is so warm and temperate. It
costs not the parent to bring up a child to man’s estate, above twenty
drachmas; which is the chief reason why Egypt is so populous, and
excels all other places in magnificent structures. The priests instruct
the youth in two sorts of learning; that which they call sacred, and
other, which is more common and ordinary. In arithmetic and geometry,
they keep them a long time: for in this regard, as the river every year
changes the face of the soil, the neighbouring inhabitants are at great
difference among themselves concerning the boundaries of their land,
which cannot be easily known but by the help of geometry.”[158]
Strabo also speaks of the Egyptians as exceptions, when he refers to
the parents’ power of life and death over children: and others assert
that while they were cruel toward the new-born of the Hebrews, they
were kind toward their own.[159]
The early development of the belief in a hereafter, as it showed itself
in the unusual care of the body of the deceased, also affected, without
doubt, the attitude of the Egyptians toward their own progeny, if it
did not affect it toward that of others; in dealing with the primitive
and early peoples we must always realize that we can understand them
only by the way in which they dealt with their own. Their kindness to
their own, argued an advanced civilization—to test their degree of
civilization by the attitude they took to the children of slaves or the
children of servants, is to ask more of them than we can ask of our
contemporaries.
In the desire to look after the future life, the Egyptians were
exceptional, as their embalming showed. They lived in a salubrious
country, they boasted that they were “the healthiest of mortals,”[160]
and so great was their horror that any one should mutilate the human
form, that the _paraschistes_ παρασχιστἡς who made the necessary
incisions in the dead when a body was to be embalmed, became an object
of execration as soon as his job was over. According to Diodorus
Siculus, he was always assaulted by his own assistants, stones being
thrown at him with such violence that he had to take to his heels in
order to escape with his life.[161]
Perhaps it is a far cry, but it seems as though a people who made such
preparations as the Egyptians did for the dead, would have been chary
of causing the death of those who had sprung from their own loins. For
the care of the dead was not confined to the noble and the wealthy
alone—the lower classes were also affected by the desire for a proper
kind of funeral, to the extent that enterprising people procured an old
empty tomb, enlarged it, and let places out in it. Hither then, came
the fisherman, the peasant, and the dancing girl—in death they were the
equal of the king, for they were buried with ceremony, their bodies
were placed where the tomb equipment might be by them—and thus with
the king, the noble, and the wealthy, they waited the time that was to
be.[162]
Among such a people it is hard to think that the death of even a child
was treated lightly.[163]
Of the Egyptians after the conquest of Alexander we must write as of
the Greeks; and in the matter of children it is important to note that
a recently discovered papyrus, written in Greek in the year 1 B. C.,
shows how completely the foreign point of view had been absorbed in a
land in which four thousand years yielded up not a single evidence of
the assassination of children.
The papyrus is a letter from Illarion, whose home is at Oxyrhynchus,
and who evidently has gone to Alexandria with other workmen. He has
apparently not sent his wife many messages of affection despite the
fact that she is about to have a child. When the other workmen are
going to return home, he plans to stay in Alexandria, but he promises
to send home some of his wages. The part of the letter that is
most interesting to us is his injunction that if the child that is
expected should turn out to be a female, it should be cast out. In
the salutation, Illarion refers to his wife as his sister, marriages
between brother and sister having been common in Egypt, and the term
being one of endearment. The letter follows:
“Illarion to Alis his sister, many Greetings, and to mother Berous and
Apollonarion. Know that I am still even now at Alexandria. I urge and
entreat you to be careful of the child, and if I receive wages soon I
will send it to you. When you bear offspring, if it is a male let it
be, if a female expose it.
[Illustration: LETTER OF ILLARION, AN EGYPTIAN LABOURER, TO ALIS, HIS
WIFE. PAPYRUS WRITTEN AT ALEXANDRIA, 17 JUNE, 1 B. C.
(REPRODUCED FROM “LIGHT FROM THE ANCIENT EAST”)]
“You told Aphrodisisa, ‘Do not forget me.’
How can I forget you? I urge you therefore not to worry.
“Twenty-ninth year of Cæsar, Paune 23 (addressed). ‘Deliver from
Illarion to Alis.’”[164]