THE FRESH LIGHT ON THE PAST.
It might seem as if the researches described in these chapters were,
though interesting in themselves, yet not of particular account in the
wider view of human history and civilization. It is to focus together
this new information, to show the results which flow from it, and to
give a connected idea of our fresh light on the past, that this chapter
is placed here. The application of scientific principles to archaeology,
the opening of fresh methods of enquiry, and the rigorous notice of the
period of everything found, have been as fruitful in the East as it has
proved to be in the West.
In Egypt, the oldest condition of the present country that is known--the
beginning of history as distinct from geology--is an age of great
rainfall and denudation; succeeding to the geological age, in which the
existing masses of surface gravels were laid down. This rain promoted
vegetation, as in a previous age of which remains are seen in the
various silicified forests, which occur where circumstances favoured
their preservation. The amount of water falling on the country swelled
the volume of the Nile to far beyond its greatest modern extent.
Between the cliffs on either hand it ran certainly hundreds of feet
higher than at present, probably in part as an estuary. The cliffs all
along the Nile are worn by water running at a great height; and the
_débris_ brought down from the side valleys is piled up in hills at the
mouths of the valleys, in a way that could only occur where they
discharged into deep water. That the rain sufficed to fill up such a
vast volume, we can believe, when we see the gorges cut back in the
sides of the Nile cliffs by the lateral drainage. These often run back
for some miles, ploughed out by receding waterfalls--small
Niagaras--which have each left at the valley head their precipitous fall
of polished rock, with a great basin below it hollowed by the force of
the torrent. Such was the source of the power which has scoured out the
whole Nile valley for a depth of over two hundred feet. High up on the
hills between the Nile and the Fayum, the very crest of the hill is
entirely of gravels and boulders, which can only have been deposited
when there was a dead level at that height across the Nile valley. All
the depths of the Nile below those hills have been scoured out by the
rainfall and the torrent of the stream, some miles in width, and
probably one to two hundred feet in depth. And the age of this is not
merely geological and beyond human interests. Man was there at this
time, as his rude flint implement, river-worn and rolled, high upon the
hills, now shows us. (See Chap. VI. Fig. 58.)
We come down an age later. The Nile had fallen to near its present
level, but still filled its whole bed to perhaps fifty feet deep.
Vegetation still grew on the hills; for we find traces of man at this
time, and he must have lived on something. Where he lived we can guess
by the flints which he fashioned, and which the heavy rains swept away
down the valleys, and bedded in the shoals of _débris_ in the reduced
and shallow river. These flints are now to be picked out from the sides
of later cuttings which the rain has made through its old river
deposits, now high and dry in air; and it is at the mouth of the valley
of the tombs of the kings at Thebes that these flints have been
collected.
After that, we know nothing more of man until we find that the country
was in its present state,--without any rainfall for practical purposes,
the hills all barren desert, the Nile only filling the bottom of its old
bed for a few months of the year, and meandering the rest of the time in
a channel cut in its own mud, and man cultivating the old bed of the
river when it is not overflowed. The civilization that we find before us
in the earliest known history appears elaborate and perfect. After that,
only slow changes of fashion and taste influenced it, and but few
discoveries of importance were made during thousands of years which
ensued. That this civilization was imported by an incoming race seems
most probable; and the dynastic Egyptians found already in the country
an aboriginal population, whose features, whose beliefs, and whose
customs, differed much from their own. The two races had not yet
amalgamated when we first come into their presence at Medum; but soon
after that all signs of difference cease.
This earliest civilization was completely master of the arts of combined
labour, of masonry, of sculpture, of metal-working, of turning, of
carpentry, of pottery, of weaving, of dyeing, and other elements of a
highly organized social life; and in some respects their work is quite
the equal of any that has been done by mankind in later ages. Though
simple, it is of extreme ability; and it is only in resources, and not
in skill, that it has ever been surpassed. Certain products were then
scarcely if at all known, and it is in the application of these that the
civilization of later times shows a difference. No metal was used except
copper, and hence flint was largely needed. And glass was probably
unknown, although glazes were in use. But in most other respects the
changes of later times are rather due to economy of production, and an
increased demand for cheap imitations.
The work of the great period of the twelfth dynasty differs mainly in
the freer use of writing, the greater quantity and poorer quality of the
sculptures or paintings, and the introduction of glass and of glassy
frits for colouring.
The next great period, the eighteenth to the nineteenth dynasty, is
marked by the use of bronze, and the disappearance of flint tools. The
art of glazing was much developed, and attained a brilliancy and variety
of colouring, and a boldness of design, which was never again reached,
unless perhaps by the mediaeval Orientals. But artistically the finest
work of this age scarcely reaches the perfection of the sculpture and
drawing which had already passed away.
The next serious change was the introduction of iron, of which there is
no satisfactory evidence until about 800 B.C. Iron may have been known
perhaps as a curiosity, just as one example of bronze occurs two
thousand years before it came into actual use; but it had no effect on
the arts. And shortly after came the Egyptian renascence, when the cycle
of invention was run through, and the Egyptians were reduced to copying
slavishly, and without the original spirit, the works of their
ancestors. The Western influence became predominant, and importations
instead of development govern the succeeding changes.
But it is rather in Europe than in Egypt that our interest centres. As
no European literature remains to us older than the sixth or seventh
century B.C. (except the oral poems), it has been too readily assumed
that no civilization worthy of the name could have dwelt here, and that
we are indebted to the East for all our skill. So far from this being
the case it now seems that we must almost reverse the view. We have in
the Egyptian records the accounts of a great European confederacy, which
smote Egypt again and again,--Greece, Asia Minor, Italy, and Libya, all
leagued together. We now know, from the objects found in Egypt, that
these peoples were dwelling there as settlers so far back as 1400 B.C.,
if not indeed before 2000 B.C. From the chronology of the arts now
ascertained, we can date the great civilization of Mykenae to about 1600
to 1000 B.C. (as I have stated in ‘Notes on Mykenae,’ _Journal of
Hellenic Studies_, 1891); and we begin to see a great past rising before
us, dumb, but full of meaning. Some of the metals were known in Europe
before they appear in use in Egypt: the use of bronze is quite as old
in the north as on the south of the Mediterranean; and the tin of Egypt
probably came from the mines of Hungary and Saxony, which most likely
supplied Europe at that time. Iron appears in use in Europe as soon as
in Egypt. The best forms of tools are known in Italy two or three
centuries before Egypt possessed them.
What then may be concluded as to Europe, from our present point of view?
That Europe had an indigenous civilization, as independent of Egypt and
Babylonia as was the indigenous Aryan civilization of India. That this
civilization has acquired arts independently, just as much as India has,
and that Europe has given to the East as much as it has borrowed from
there. As early as 1600 B.C., it appears that a considerable
civilization existed in Greece, which flourished in the succeeding
centuries, especially in alliance with Libya. Probably it was already
beginning in the period of the thirteenth dynasty, before 2000 B.C. By
about 1400 B.C. a great proficiency in the arts is seen; elaborate
metal-work and inlaying was made, influenced by Egyptian design, but
neither made in Egypt, nor by Egyptians. Glazed pottery painted with
designs was successfully made, and the arts of glazing and firing were
mastered. And by 1100 B.C. this civilization was already decadent.
Moreover this was not only in a corner of Europe; it had contact with
the North as well as with Italy and Africa, and is at one with the
culture of the bronze age, of which it is the crown and flower. Across
Europe, from the Greek peninsula to the Baltic, this civilization
stretches; and though in Greece it ripened to an early fall, and was
destroyed by the barbaric Dorian invasion, it retained its hardy power
in the North and in Italy. When we come down to about 800 B.C., we find
that the arts stood high in Northern Italy. The requirements of the
carpenters and joiners of that age had led them to invent the most
perfect forms of chisels; and our mortising chisel and flat chisel with
a tang have not received any improvement in the details of their form
for 2700 years. The bronze age is the source of the objects we now use.
Thence these types were carried into Egypt a couple of centuries later
by the Greeks. When we descend further we see this independent culture
of Europe prominent. The Saxons and Northmen did not borrow their
weapons, their laws, or their thoughts from Greece or Italy. The Celts
swamped the south of Europe at their pleasure; and, against the fullest
development of Greek military science, they were yet able to penetrate
far south and plunder Delphi. They were powerful enough to raid Italy
right across the Etrurian territory. When we look further east, we see
the Dacians with weapons and ornaments and dresses which belong to their
own civilization, and were not borrowed from Greece. In short, Greece
and Italy did not civilize Europe; they only headed the civilization for
a brief period. And the Italian influence, which was much the more
powerful, only lasted for a couple of centuries. From Caesar’s campaigns
to the end of the Antonines is the whole time of Italian supremacy.
After that there never was a Roman emperor, excepting a few ephemeral
reigns. The centre of power and authority in Europe was in the Balkan
peninsula. The emperors were mainly natives of that region; and the
northern Holy Roman Empire of Germany has its roots practically in the
third century. Civilization in Europe is, then, an independent growth,
borrowing from, and lending to, the East. In the van of this group of
races have come in turn Mykenaean Greece, then Etruria, Hellas, Rome,
Dacia and Pannonia, the Lombards, and the Northmen; and each in turn
have impressed their character on those peoples who were less advanced.
Our common belief in the overshadowing importance of Rome in all our
history is probably largely influenced by our literary history being
derived from Roman sources, and this Italian view being fed for
ecclesiastical purposes in the Middle Ages. In the broader view of the
history of civilization in Europe, the spread of law and Latin in
Southern Europe is perhaps Rome’s main result. But we must not forget
that the Italian supremacy was quite as brief, if more potent, than that
of other races who have led the way before and since.
We can now see somewhat of the wide results which have come to a great
extent from the study of Egyptian civilization recorded in these pages,
and the comparison of it with other countries. That vastly more remains
to be worked out is painfully seen. We are only yet on the threshold of
understanding the sources of the knowledge, the arts, and the culture,
which we have inherited from a hundred generations.