*The early portion of this chapter is selected, by kind
permission of Dr. Henry Smith Williams, from his History
of the Art of Writing, Copyright, 1902 and 1903.
_The Rosetta Stone: The Discoveries of Dr. Thomas Young: The
Classification of the Egyptian Alphabet by Champollion: Egyptian
Love-songs and the Book of the Dead_
Conspicuously placed in the great hall of Egyptian antiquities, in the
British Museum, is a wonderful piece of sculpture known as the Rosetta
Stone. A glance at its graven surface suffices to show that three sets
of inscriptions are recorded there. The upper one, occupying about
one-fourth of the surface, is a pictured scroll, made up of chains of
those strange outlines of serpents, hawks, lions, and so on, which are
recognised, even by the least initiated, as hieroglyphics. The middle
inscription, made up of lines, angles, and half-pictures, one might
suppose to be a sort of abbreviated or shorthand hieroglyphic. The
third, or lower, inscription, is manifestly Greek, obviously a thing of
words. If the screeds above be also made of words, only the elect have
any way of proving the fact.
Fortunately, however, even the least scholarly observer is left in
no doubt as to the real import of the thing he sees, for an obliging
English label tells us that these three inscriptions are renderings of
the same message, and that this message is a decree of the Priests
of Memphis conferring divine honours on Ptolemy V., Epiphanes, King
of Egypt, B.C. 195. The label goes on to state that the upper
transcription (of which, unfortunately, only parts of the last dozen
lines or so remain, the slab being broken) is in the Egyptian language,
in hieroglyphics, or writing of the priests; the second inscription in
the same language, in demotic, or the writing of the people; and the
third in the Greek language and character.
Then comes a brief biography of the Rosetta Stone itself, as follows:
This stone was found by the French in 1798 among the ruins of Fort St.
Julian, near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. It passed into the hands
of the British by the treaty of Alexandria, and was deposited in the
British Museum in the year 1801. There is a whole volume of history
in that brief inscription, and a bitter sting thrown in, if the reader
chance to be a Frenchman. Yet the facts involved could scarcely be
suggested more modestly. They are recorded much more bluntly in a graven
inscription on the side of the stone, which runs: Captured in Egypt by
the British Army, 1801. No Frenchman could read those words without a
sinking of the heart.
The value of the Rosetta Stone depended on the fact that it gave
promise, even when originally inspected, of furnishing a key to the
centuries-old mystery of the hieroglyphics. For two thousand years the
secret of these strange markings had been forgotten. Nowhere in the
world--quite as little in Egypt as elsewhere--had any man the slightest
clue to their meaning; there were even those who doubted whether these
droll picturings really had any specific meaning, questioning whether
they were not merely vague symbols of esoteric religious import and
nothing more. And it was the Rosetta Stone that gave the answer to these
doubters, and restored to the world a lost language and a forgotten
literature.
The trustees of the British Museum recognised that the problem of the
Rosetta Stone was one on which the scientists of the world might
well exhaust their ingenuity, and they promptly published a carefully
lithographed copy of the entire inscription, so that foreign scholarship
had equal opportunity with British to try to solve the riddle. How
difficult a riddle it was, even with this key in hand, is illustrated by
the fact that, though scholars of all nations brought their ingenuity
to bear upon it, nothing more was accomplished for a dozen years than
to give authority to three or four guesses regarding the nature of the
upper inscriptions, which, as it afterwards proved, were quite incorrect
and altogether misleading. This in itself is sufficient to show that
ordinary scholarship might have studied the Rosetta Stone till the end
of time without getting far on the track of its secrets. The key was
there, but to apply it required the inspired insight--that is to say,
the shrewd guessing power--of genius.
The man who undertook the task had perhaps the keenest scientific
imagination and the most versatile profundity of knowledge of his
generation--one is tempted to say, of any generation. For he was none
other than the extraordinary Dr. Thomas Young, the demonstrator of the
vibratory nature of light.
Young had his attention called to the Rosetta Stone by accident, and
his usual rapacity for knowledge at once led him to speculate as to the
possible aid this tri-lingual inscription might give in the solution of
Egyptian problems. Resolving at once to attempt the solution himself, he
set to work to learn Koptic, which was rightly believed to represent the
nearest existing approach to the ancient Egyptian language. His amazing
facility in the acquisition of languages stood him in such good stead
that within a year of his first efforts he had mastered Koptic and
assured himself that the ancient Egyptian language was really similar
to it, and had even made a tentative attempt at the translation of the
Egyptian scroll. His results were only tentative, to be sure, yet they
constituted the very beginnings of our knowledge regarding the meaning
of hieroglyphics. Just how far they carried has been a subject of ardent
controversy ever since. Not that there is any doubt about the specific
facts; what is questioned is the exact importance of these facts. For
it is undeniable that Young did not complete and perfect the discovery,
and, as always in such matters, there is opportunity for difference of
opinion as to the share of credit due to each of the workers who entered
into the discovery.
Youngs specific discoveries were these: (1) that many of the pictures
of the hieroglyphics stand for the names of the objects actually
delineated; (2) that other pictures are sometimes only symbolic; (3)
that plural numbers are represented by repetition; (4) that numerals are
represented by dashes; (5) that hieroglyphics may read either from
the right or from the left, but always from the direction in which the
animals and human figures face; (6) that proper names are surrounded
by a graven oval ring, making what he called a cartouche; (7) that the
cartouches of the preserved portion of the Rosetta Stone stand for the
name of Ptolemy alone; (8) that the presence of a female figure after
such cartouches, in other inscriptions, always denotes the female
sex; (9) that within the cartouches the hieroglyphic symbols have a
positively phonetic value, either alphabetic or syllabic; and (10) that
several different characters may have the same phonetic value.
Just what these phonetic values are, Doctor Young pointed out in the
case of fourteen characters, representing nine sounds, six of which
are accepted to-day as correctly representing the letters to which he
ascribed them, and the three others as being correct regarding their
essential or consonantal element. It is clear, therefore, that he was on
the right track thus far, and on the very verge of complete discovery.
But, unfortunately, he failed to take the next step, which would have
been to realise that the same phonetic values given the alphabetic
characters within the cartouches were often ascribed to them also when
used in the general text of an inscription; in other words, that the
use of an alphabet was not confined to proper names. This was the great
secret which Young missed, but which his French successor, Jean François
Champollion, working on the foundation that Young had laid, was enabled
to ferret out.
[Illustration: 296.jpg JEAN FRANCOIS CHAMPOLLION]
Youngs initial studies of the Rosetta Stone were made in 1814; his
later publications bore date of 1819. Champollions first announcement
of results came in 1822; his second and more important one in 1824. By
this time, through study of the cartouches of other inscriptions, he had
made out almost the complete alphabet, and the Riddle of the Sphinx
was practically solved. He proved that the Egyptians had developed a
relatively complete alphabet (mostly neglecting the vowels, as early
Semitic alphabets did also) centuries before the Phoenicians were heard
of in history.
Even this statement, however, must in a measure be modified. These
pictures are letters and something more. Some of them are purely
alphabetical in character, and some are symbolic in another way.
Some characters represent syllables. Others stand sometimes as mere
representatives of sounds, and again, in a more extended sense, as
representatives of things, such as all hieroglyphics doubtless were
in the beginning. In a word, this is an alphabet, but not a perfected
alphabet such as modern nations generally use.
The word hieroglyphic is applied, as we have seen, to various forms of
picture writing; but the original interpretation which the Greeks, who
invented it, put upon the word was the holy writing of the Egyptians.
The earliest Greek travellers who went to Egypt, when that country was
finally opened up to the outside world, must have noticed the strange
picture scrolls everywhere to be seen there on the temple walls, on
obelisks, on statues, and mummy-cases, as well as on papyrus rolls,
which were obviously intended to serve the purpose of handing down
records of events to future generations.
It is now known that this writing of the Egyptians was of a most
extraordinary compound character. Part of its pictures are used as
direct representations of the objects presented. Here are some examples:
[Illustration: 298.jpg PAGE IMAGE]
Again the picture of an object becomes an ideograph, as in the following
instances:
Here the sacred ibis or the sacred bull symbolises the soul. The bee
stands for honey, the eyes for the verb to see. Yet again these
pictures may stand neither as pictures of things nor as ideographs, but
as having the phonetic value of a syllable. Such syllabic signs may be
used either singly, as above, or in combination, as illustrated below.
But one other stage of evolution is possible, namely, the use of signs
with a purely alphabetical significance. The Egyptians made this
step also, and their strangely conglomerate writing makes use of the
following alphabet:
[Illustration: 299.jpg PAGE IMAGE]
In a word, then, the Egyptian writing has passed through all the stages
of development, from the purely pictorial to the alphabetical, but with
this strange qualification,--that while advancing to the later stages it
retains the use of crude earlier forms. As Canon Taylor has graphically
phrased it, the Egyptian writing is a completed structure, but one from
which the scaffolding has not been removed.
The next step would have been to remove the now useless scaffolding,
leaving a purely alphabetical writing as the completed structure.
Looking at the matter from the modern standpoint, it seems almost
incredible that so intelligent a people as the Egyptians should have
failed to make this advance. Yet the facts stand, that as early as
the time of the Pyramid Builders, say four thousand years B.C.,* the
Egyptians had made the wonderful analysis of sounds, without which the
invention of an alphabet would be impossible.
* The latest word on the subject of the origin of the
alphabet takes back some of the primitive phonetic signs to
prehistoric times. Among these prehistoric signs are the
letters A, E, I, O, U, (V), F and M.
They had set aside certain of their hieroglyphic symbols and given them
alphabetical significance. They had learned to write their words with
the use of this alphabet; and it would seem as if, in the course of a
few generations, they must come to see how unnecessary was the cruder
form of picture-writing which this alphabet would naturally supplant;
but, in point of fact, they never did come to a realisation of this
seemingly simple proposition. Generation after generation and century
after century, they continued to use their same cumbersome, complex
writing, and it remained for an outside nation to prove that an alphabet
pure and simple was capable of fulfilling all the conditions of a
written language.
Thus in practice there are found in the hieroglyphics the strangest
combinations of ideographs, syllabic signs, and alphabetical signs or
true letters used together indiscriminately.
It was, for example, not at all unusual, after spelling a word
syllabically or alphabetically, to introduce a figure giving the idea
of the thing intended, and then even to supplement this with a so-called
determinative sign or figure:
[Illustration: 301.jpg DETERMINATIVE SIGNS]
Here Queften, monkey, is spelled out in full, but the picture of a
monkey is added as a determinative; second, Qenu, cavalry, after being
spelled, is made unequivocal by the introduction of a picture of a
horse; third, Temati, wings, though spelled elaborately, has pictures
of wings added; and fourth, Tatu, quadrupeds, after being spelled, has
a picture of a quadruped, and then the picture of a hide, which is the
usual determinative of a quadruped, followed by three dashes to indicate
the plural number.*
* Another illustration of the plural number is seen in the
sign Pau, on page 298, where the plural is indicated in the
same manner.
These determinatives are in themselves so interesting, as illustrations
of the association of ideas, that it is worth while to add a few more
examples. The word Pet, which signifies heaven, and which has also the
meaning up or even, is represented primarily by what may be supposed
to be a conventionalised picture of the covering to the earth. But
this picture, used as a determinative, is curiously modified in the
expression of other ideas, as it symbolises evening when a closed flower
is added, and night when a star hangs in the sky, and rain or tempest
when a series of zigzag lines, which by themselves represent water, are
appended.
[Illustration: 302a.jpg HIEROGLYPHICS]
As aids to memory such pictures are obviously of advantage, but this
advantage in the modern view is outweighed by the cumbrousness of the
system of writing as a whole.
Why was such a complex system retained? Chiefly, no doubt, because the
Egyptians, like all other highly developed peoples, were conservatives.
They held to their old method after a better one had been invented. But
this inherent conservatism was enormously aided, no doubt, by the fact
that the Egyptian language, like the Chinese, has many words that have
a varied significance, making it seem necessary, or at least highly
desirable, either to spell such words with different signs, or, having
spelled them in the same way, to introduce the varied determinatives.
Here are some examples of discrimination between words of the same sound
by the use of different signs:
[Illustration: 302b.jpg HIEROGLYPHICS]
Here, it will be observed, exactly the same expedient is adopted which
we still retain when we discriminate between words of the same sound by
different spelling, as to, two, too; whole, hole; through, threw, etc.
But the more usual Egyptian method was to resort to the determinatives;
the result seems to us most extraordinary. After what has been said, the
following examples will explain themselves:
[Illustration: 303.jpg HIEROGLYPHICS]
It goes without saying that the great mass of people in Egypt were never
able to write at all. Had they been accustomed to do so, the Egyptians
would have been a nation of artists. Even as the case stands, a
remarkable number of men must have had their artistic sense well
developed, for the birds, animals, and human figures constantly
presented on their hieroglyphic scrolls are drawn with a fidelity which
the average European of to-day would certainly find far beyond his
skill.
Until Professor Petrie* published his Medum, and Professor Erman
his Grammar, no important work on Egyptian hieroglyphic writing had
appeared in recent years.
* The information as to the modern investigation in
hieroglyphics has been obtained from F. L. Griffiths paper
in the 6th Memoir of the Archaeological Survey on
Hieroglyphics from the collections of the Egypt Exploration
Fund, London, 1894-95.
Professor Petries Medum is the mainstay of the student in regard to
examples of form for the old kingdom; but for all periods detailed and
trustworthy drawings and photographs are found among the enormous mass
of published texts.*
*To these may now be added the 105 coloured signs in Beni
Hasan, Part III., and still more numerous examples in the
Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund (Archaeological
Survey), for the season 1895-96.
There is an important collection of facsimiles at University College,
London, made for Professor Petrie by Miss Paget. A large proportion of
these are copied from the collections from Beni Hasan and El Bersheh;
others are from coffins of later periods, and have only paleographical
interest; and others are from earlier coffins in the British Museum.
But the flower of the collection consists in exquisite drawings of
sculptured hieroglyphics, sometimes with traces of colour, from the tomb
of Phtahhotep at Saqqâra, supplemented by a few from other tombs in
the same neighbourhood, and from the pyramid of Papi I. These were all
copied on the spot in 1895--96.
The only critical list of hieroglyphics with their powers published
recently is that of Erman, printed in his Grammar. The system by
which he classifies the values--obscured in the English edition by
the substitution of the term of ideograph for _Wortzeichen_
(word-sign)--displays the authors keen insight into the nature of
hieroglyphic writing, and the list itself is highly suggestive.
In the case of an altogether different system of ancient writing
that has come down to us,--the old cuneiform syllabary of the
Assyrians,--dictionaries, glossaries, and other works of a grammatical
character have been preserved to the present day. Documents such as
these are, of course, of material aid in regard to obscure texts, but in
the case of the Egyptian writing the only surviving native word-list
is the Sign Papyrus of Tanis,* which is, unfortunately, of the Roman
Period, when the original meanings of the signs had been well-nigh
forgotten.
* Egypt Exploration Fund, Ninth Memoir, 1889-1890. This is
an extra volume, now out of print.
It has its own peculiar interest, but seldom furnishes the smallest hint
to the seeker after origins. The famous Hieroglyphics of Horapollo
occasionally contains a reminiscence of true hieroglyphics, but may
well be a composition of the Middle Ages, embodying a tiny modicum of
half-genuine tradition that had survived until then.
Scattered throughout Egyptological literature there are, as may
be imagined, many attempts at explaining individual signs. But any
endeavour to treat Egyptian hieroglyphics critically, to ascertain
their origins, the history of their use, the original distinction or the
relationship of signs that resemble each other, reveals how little is
really known about them. For study, good examples showing detail and
colouring at different periods are needed, and the evidence furnished
by form and colour must be checked by examination of their powers in
writing.
In investigating the powers of the uses of the signs, dictionaries give
most important aid to the student. The key-words of the meanings, viz.,
the names of the objects or actions depicted, are often exceedingly rare
in the texts. Doctor Brugschs great Dictionary (1867-82) frequently
settles with close accuracy the meanings of the words considered in it,
supplying by quotations the proof of his conclusions.*
* There has been in preparation since 1897 an exhaustive
dictionary, to be published under the auspices of the German
government. The academies of Berlin, Gottingen, Leipsig and
Munich have charge of the work, and they have nominated as
their respective commissioners Professors Erman, Pietsch-
mann, Steindorff, and Ebers (since deceased). This colossal
undertaking is the fitting culmination of the labours of a
century in the Egyptian language and writing. The collection
and arrangement of material are estimated to occupy eleven
years; printing may thus be begun about 1908.
Despite its uncritical method of compilation, Levys bulky
Vocabulary (1887-1804), with its two supplements and long
tables of signs, is indispensable in this branch of
research, since it gives a multitude of references to rare
words and forms of words that occur in notable publications
of recent date, such as Masperos excellent edition of the
Pyramid Texts. There are also some important special
indices, such as Sterns excellent Glossary of the Papyrus
Ebers, Piehls Vocabulary of the Harris Papyrus, Ermans
Glossary of the Westcar Papyrus, and Doctor Pudges
Vocabulary of the XVIIIth Dynasty Book of the Dead.
Schacks Index to the Pyramid Texts will prove to be an
important work, and the synoptic index of parallel chapters
prefixed to the work is of the greatest value in the search
for variant spellings.
In 1872, Brugsch, in his Grammaire Hiéroglyphique, published a useful
list of signs with their phonetic and ideographic values, accompanying
them with references to his Dictionary, and distinguishing some of the
specially early and late forms. We may also note the careful list in
Lepsius Ægyptische Lesestucke, 1883.
Champollion in his Grammaire Egyptienne, issued after the authors
death in 1836, gave descriptive names to large numbers of the signs.
In 1848, to the first volume of Bunsens Egypts Place in Universal
History, Birch contributed a long list of hieroglyphics, with
descriptions and statements of their separate phonetic and ideographic
values. De Rougé, in his Catalogue des signes hiéroglyphiques de
limprimerie nationale, 1851, attached to each of many hundreds of
signs and varieties of signs a short description, often very correct.
He again dealt with the subject in 1867, and published a Catalogue
Raisonné of the more usual signs in the first _livraison_ of his
Chrestomathie Egyptienne. Useful to the student as these first lists
were, in the early stages of decipherment, they are now of little
value. For, at the time they were made, the fine early forms were mostly
unstudied, and the signs were taken without discrimination from texts
of all periods; moreover, the outlines of the signs were inaccurately
rendered, their colours unnoted, and their phonetic and ideographic
powers very imperfectly determined. Thus, whenever doubt was possible
as to the object represented by a sign, little external help was
forthcoming for correct identification. To a present-day student of the
subject, the scholarly understanding of De Rougé and the ingenuity of
Birch are apparent, but the aid which they afford him is small.
As a result of recent discoveries, some very interesting researches have
been made in Egyptian paleography in what is known as the _signary_.*
We reach signs which seem to be disconnected from the known hieroglyphs,
and we are probably touching on the system of geometrical signs used
from prehistoric to Roman times in Egypt, and also in other countries
around the Mediterranean.
* The information regarding the alphabet here given is
derived from the Eighteenth Memoir of the Egypt Exploration
Fund, 1899-1890.
How far these signs are originally due to geometrical invention, or how
far due to corruption of some picture, we cannot say. But in any case
they stood so detached from the hieroglyphic writing and its hieratic
and demotic derivations, that they must be treated as a separate system.
For the present the best course is to show here the similarity of forms
between these marks and those known in Egypt in earlier and later times,
adding the similar forms in the Karian and Spanish alphabets. The usage
of such forms in the same country from about 6000 B.C. down to 1200
B.C., or later, shows that we have to deal with a definite system. And
it seems impossible to separate that used in 1200 B.C. in Egypt from the
similar forms found in other lands connected with Egypt from 800 B.C.
down to later times: we may find many of these also in the Kretan
inscriptions long before 800 B.C. The only conclusion then seems to
be that a great body of signs--or a _signary_--was in use around the
Mediterranean for several thousand years. Whether these signs were
ideographic or syllabic or alphabetic in the early stages we do not
know; certainly they were alphabetic in the later stage. And the
identity of most of the signs in Asia Minor and Spain shows them to
belong to a system with commonly received values in the later times.
What then becomes of the Phoenician legend of the alphabet? Certainly
the so-called Phoenician letters were familiar long before the rise of
Phoenician influence. What is really due to the Phoenicians seems to
have been the selection of a short series (only half the amount of the
surviving alphabets) for numerical purposes, as A = 1, E = 5, I = 10, N
= 50, P = 100.
[Illustration: 309.jpg TABLE OF COMPARATIVE SYMBOLS]
This usage would soon render these signs as invariable in order as our
own numbers, and force the use of them on all countries with which the
Phoenicians traded. Hence, before long these signs drove out of use
all others, except in the less changed civilisations of Asia Minor and
Spain. According to our modern authorities this exactly explains the
phenomena of the early Greek alphabets; many in variety, and so diverse
that each has to be learned separately, and yet entirely uniform in
order. Each tribe had its own signs for certain sounds, varying a good
deal; yet all had to follow a fixed numerical system. Certainly all did
not learn their forms from an independent Phoenician alphabet, unknown
to them before it was selected.
The work of Young and Champollion, says Doctor Williams,* gives a new
interest to the mass of records, in the form of graven inscriptions, and
papyrus rolls, and cases and wrappings, which abound in Egypt, but which
hitherto had served no better purpose for centuries than to excite,
without satisfying, the curiosity of the traveller.
* History of the Art of Writing, Portfolio I., plate 8.
Now these strange records, so long enigmatic, could be read, and within
the past fifty years a vast literature of translations of these Egyptian
records has been given to the world. It was early discovered that the
hieroglyphic character was not reserved solely for sacred inscriptions,
as the Greeks had supposed in naming it; indeed, the inscription of the
Rosetta Stone sufficiently dispelled that illusion. But no one, perhaps,
was prepared for the revelations that were soon made as to the extent of
range of these various inscriptions, and the strictly literary character
of some of them.
A large proportion of these inscriptions are, to be sure, religious in
character, but there are other extensive inscriptions, such as those on
the walls of the temple of Karnak, that are strictly historical; telling
of the warlike deeds of such mighty kings as Thûtmosis III. and
Ramses II. Again, there are documents which belong to the domain of
belles-lettres pure and simple. Of these the best known example is the
now famous Tale of Two Brothers--the prototype of the modern short
story.
Up to the middle of the nineteenth century, no Egyptologist had
discovered that the grave-faced personages who lie in their mummy-cases
in our great museums ever read or composed romance. Their literature,
as far as recovered, was of an eminently serious nature,--hymns to the
divinities, epic poems, writings on magic and science, business letters,
etc., but no stories. In 1852, however, an Englishwoman, Mrs. Elizabeth
dOrbiney, sent M. de Rougé, at Paris, a papyrus she had purchased in
Italy, and whose contents she was anxious to know. Thus was the tale of
the Two Brothers brought to light, and for twelve years it remained
our sole specimen of a species of literature which is now constantly
being added to.
This remarkable papyrus dates from the thirteenth century B.C., and was
the work of Anna, one of the most distinguished temple-scribes of his
age. Indeed, it is to him that we are indebted for a large portion of
the Egyptian literature that has been preserved to us. This particular
work was executed for Seti II., son of Meneptah, and grandson of Ramses
II. of the nineteenth dynasty, while he was yet crown prince.
The tale itself is clearly formed of two parts. The first, up to the
Batas self-exile to the Valley of the Cedar, gives a really excellent
picture of the life and habits of the peasant dwelling on the banks
of the Nile. The civilisation and moral conditions it describes are
distinctly Egyptian. Were it not for such details as the words spoken by
the cows, and the miraculous appearance of the body of water between the
two brothers, we might say the ancient Egyptians were strict realists
in their theory of fiction. But the second part leads us through marvels
enough to satisfy the most vivid of imaginations. It is possible,
therefore, that the tale as we have it was originally two separate
stories.
The main theme of the story has occupied a great deal of attention. Its
analogy to the Biblical narrative of Joseph and Potiphars wife comes at
once into the readers mind. But there is just as close a similarity
in the Greek tales, where the hero is killed or his life endangered
for having scorned the guilty love of a woman, as in the stories of
Hippolytus, Peleus, Bellerophon, and the son of Glaucus, not to
mention the extraordinary adventure of Amgiad and Assad, sons of Prince
Kamaralzaman, in the _Thousand and One Nights_.
The religions of Greece and Western Asia likewise contain myths that can
be compared almost point for point with the tale of the two brothers.
In Phrygia, for example, Atyo scorns the love of the goddess Cybele,
as does Bata the love of Anpus wife. Like Bata, again, he mutilates
himself, and is transformed into a pine instead of a persea tree.
Are we, therefore, to seek for the common origin of all the myths and
romance in the tragedy of Anpu and Bata that was current, we know not
how long, before the days of King Seti?
Of one thing we may be sure: of this particular type the Egyptian tale
is by far the oldest that we possess, and, if we may not look to the
valley of the Nile as the original home of the popular tale, we may
justly regard it as the locality where it was earliest naturalised and
assumed a true literary form.
Analogies to the second part of the tale are even more numerous and
curious. They are to be found everywhere, in France, Italy, Germany,
Hungary, in Russia and all Slavonic countries, Roumania, Peloponnesia,
in Asia Minor, Abyssinia, and even India.
Of late years an ever-increasing accumulation of the literature of every
age of Egyptian history has either been brought to light or for
the first time studied from a wider point of view than was formerly
possible. In making a few typical selections from the mass of this
new material, none perhaps are more worthy of note than some of the
love-songs which have been translated into German from Egyptian in
Die Liebespoesie der Alten Ægypten, by W. Max Muller. This is a very
careful edition of the love-songs on the recto (or upper surface) of the
Harris Papyrus 500, and of similar lyrics from Turin, Gizeh, and Paris.
The introduction contains an account of Egyptian notions of love and
marriage, gathered from hieroglyphic and demotic sources, and a chapter
is devoted to the forms of Egyptian verse, its rhythm and accent. The
interesting Song of the Harper, which is found on the same Harris
Papyrus, is also fully edited and collated with the parallel texts from
the Theban tombs, and compared with other writings dealing with death
from the agnostic point of view. The following extracts are translated
from the German:
LOVE-SICKNESS
I will lie down within doors
For I am sick with wrongs. T
hen my neighbours come in to visit me.
With them cometh my sister,
She will make fun of the physicians;
She knoweth mine illness.
THE LUCKY DOORKEEPER
The villa of my sister!--
Her gates (are) in the midst of the domain--
(So oft as) its portals open,
(So oft as) the bolt is withdrawn,
Then is my sister angry:
O were I but set as the gatekeeper!
I should cause her to chide me;
(Then) I should hear her voice in anger,
A child in fear before her!
THE UNSUCCESSFUL BIRD-CATCHER
The voice of the wild goose crieth,
(For) she hath taken her bait;
(But) thy love restraineth me,
I cannot free her (from the snare);
(So) must I take (home) my net.
What (shall I say) to my mother,
To whom (I am wont) to come daily
Laden with wild fowl?
I lay not my snare to-day
(For) thy love hath taken hold upon me.
The most ardent interest that has been manifested in the Egyptian
records had its origin in the desire to find evidence corroborative of
the Hebrew accounts of the Egyptian captivity of the Jewish people.* The
Egyptian word-treasury being at last unlocked, it was hoped that
much new light would be thrown on Hebrew history. But the hope proved
illusive. After ardent researches of hosts of fervid seekers for half
a century, scarcely a word of reference to the Hebrews has been found
among the Egyptian records.
* The only inscription relating directly to the Israelites
will be found described in Chapter VII.
If depicted at all, the Hebrew captives are simply grouped with other
subordinate peoples, not even considered worthy of the dignity of names.
Nor is this strange when one reflects on the subordinate position which
the Hebrews held in the ancient world. In historical as in other matter,
much depends upon the point of view, and a series of events that seemed
all-important from the Hebrew standpoint might very well be thought too
insignificant for record from the point of view of a great nation like
the Egyptians. But the all-powerful pen wrought a conquest for the
Hebrews in succeeding generations that their swords never achieved, and,
thanks to their literature, succeeding generations have cast historical
perspective to the winds in viewing them. Indeed, such are the strange
mutations of time that, had any scribe of ancient Egypt seen fit to
scrawl a dozen words about the despised Israelite captives, and had
this monument been preserved, it would have outweighed in value, in
the opinion of nineteenth-century Europe, all the historical records
of Thûtmosis, Ramses, and their kin that have come down to us. But
seemingly no scribe ever thought it worth his while to make such an
effort.
It has just been noted that the hieroglyphic inscriptions are by no
means restricted to sacred subjects. Nevertheless, the most widely known
book of the Egyptians was, as might be expected, one associated with
the funeral rites that played so large a part in the thoughts of the
dwellers by the Nile. This is the document known as The Chapters of the
Coming-Forth by Day, or, as it is more commonly interpreted, The Book
of the Dead. It is a veritable book in scope, inasmuch as the closely
written papyrus roll on which it is enscrolled measures sometimes
seventy feet in length. It is virtually the Bible of the Egyptians, and,
as in the case of the sacred books of other nations, its exact origin is
obscure. The earliest known copy is to be found, not on a papyrus roll,
but upon the walls of the chamber of the pyramid at Saqqâra near Cairo.
The discovery of this particular recension of The Book of the Dead was
made by Lepsius. Its date is 3333 B.C. No one supposes, however, that
this date marks the time of the origin of The Book of the Dead. On the
contrary, it is held by competent authority that the earliest chapters,
essentially unmodified, had been in existence at least a thousand years
before this, and quite possibly for a much longer time. Numerous copies
of this work in whole or in part have been preserved either on the walls
of temples, on papyrus rolls, or upon the cases of mummies. These
copies are of various epochs, from the fourth millennium B.C., as just
mentioned, to the late Roman period, about the fourth century A.D.
Throughout this period of about four thousand years the essential
character of the book remained unchanged. It is true that no two copies
that have been preserved are exactly identical in all their parts. There
are various omissions and repetitions that seem to indicate that the
book was not written by any one person or in any one epoch, but that it
was originally a set of traditions quite possibly handed down for a long
period by word of mouth before being put into writing. In this regard,
as in many others, this sacred book of the Egyptians is closely
comparable to the sacred books of other nations. It differs, however,
in one important regard from these others in that it was never
authoritatively pronounced upon and crystallised into a fixed,
unalterable shape. From first to last, apparently, the individual scribe
was at liberty to omit such portions as he chose, and even to modify
somewhat the exact form of expression in making a copy of the sacred
book. Even in this regard, however, the anomaly is not so great as might
at first sight appear, for it must be recalled that even the sacred
books of the Hebrews were not given final and authoritative shape until
a period almost exactly coeval with that in which the Egyptian Book of
the Dead ceased to be used at all.
A peculiar feature of The Book of the Dead, and one that gives it
still greater interest, is the fact that from an early day it was the
custom to illustrate it with graphic pictures in colour. In fact, taken
as a whole, The Book of the Dead gives a very fair delineation of the
progress of Egyptian art from the fourth millennium B.C. to its climax
in the eighteenth dynasty, and throughout the period of its decline; and
this applies not merely to the pictures proper, but to the forms of the
hieroglyphic letters themselves, for it requires but the most cursory
inspection to show that these give opportunity for no small artistic
skill.
As to the ideas preserved in The Book of the Dead, it is sufficient
here to note that they deal largely with the condition of the human
being after death, implying in the most explicit way a firm and
unwavering belief in the immortality of the soul. The Egyptian believed
most fully that by his works a man would be known and judged after
death. His religion was essentially a religion of deeds, and the code of
morals, according to which these deeds were adjudged, has been said by
Doctor Budge, the famous translator of The Book of the Dead, to be
the grandest and most comprehensive of those now known to have existed
among the nations of antiquity.
[Illustration: 318.jpg TAILPIECE]
[Illustration: 318b.jpg PHOENICIAN JEWLERY]
[Illustration: 321.jpg PAGE IMAGE]