The civilization and religious ideas of the Egyptians so vitally
influenced the people of whose drama we are about to speak that a
reference to them cannot be altogether omitted. The influence of
Egyptian upon Greek civilization has probably been overestimated by
Herodotus; but while it will never be clearly known how much the Greeks
owed to the Egyptians in divers branches of knowledge, it is certain
that the former confessed themselves the scholars of Egypt in the
cardinal doctrine of its natural theology. The doctrine of the
immortality of the soul there found its most solemn expression in
mysterious recitations connected with the rites of sepulture, and
treating of the migration of the soul from its earthly to its eternal
abode. These solemnities, whose transition into the Hellenic mysteries
has usually been attributed to the agency of the Thracian worship of
Dionysus, undoubtedly contained a dramatic element, upon the extent of
which it is, however, useless to speculate. The ideas to which they
sought to give utterance centred in that of Osiris, the vivifying power
or universal soul of nature, whom Herodotus simply identifies with the
Dionysus of the Greeks. The same deity was likewise honoured by
processions among the rural Egyptian population, which, according to the
same authority, in nearly all respects except the absence of choruses
resembled the Greek phallic processions in honour of the wine-god.
That the Egyptians looked upon music as an important science seems fully
established; it was diligently studied by their priests, though not, as
among the Greeks, forming a part of general education, and in the sacred
rites of their gods they as a rule permitted the use of flute and harp,
as well as of vocal music. Dancing was as an art confined to
professional persons; but though the higher orders abstained from its
practice, the lower indulged in it on festive occasions, when a
tendency to pantomime naturally asserted itself, and licence and wanton
buffoonery prevailed, as in the early rustic festivals of the Greek and
Italian peoples. Of a dance of armed men, on the other hand, there seems
no satisfactory trace in the representations of the Egyptian monuments.