EGYPT. EGYPT! how I have dwelt with you in dreams, As if you had borne me; though I could not know And in my gropings darkly underground The birthplace out of darkness into day; The shaping matrix of the human mind ; Each brimming with the blessing that it brought, There the vast hewers of the early time Built, as if that way they would surely climb Sole likeness of themselves-that heavenward They watched the Moon re-orb, the Stars go round, That night by night the stars for aye unroll. The nursing Nile is living Egypt still, And as her low-lands with its freshness fill, And heave with double-breasted bounteousness, So doth the old Hidden Source of mind yet bless The nations; secretly she brought to birth, And Egypt still enriches all the earth. A BOOK OF THE BEGINNINGS. SECTION I. EGYPT. TRAVELLERS who have climbed and stood upon the summit of the Great Pyramid of Ghizeh tell us how all that is most characteristic of Egypt is then and there in sight. To the south is the long Necropolis of the Desert, whose chief monuments are the Pyramids. of Abooseer, Dashoor, and Sakkarah. That way lies the granite mountain flood-gate of the waters, which come winding along from the home of the hippopotami to leap down into the Nile-valley at last with a roar and a rush for the Mediterranean Sea. To the north there is desert also, pointed out by the ruined pyramid of Abooroash. To the west are the Libyan Hills and a limitless stretch of yellow sand. Again, there is a grey desert beyond the white line of Cairo, under the Mokattam Hills. And through these sandy stony desert borders, Egypt runs alongside of its river in a double line of living green, the northward flowing waters and their meadowy margin broadening beneficently into the Delta. Underfoot is the Great Pyramid, still an inscrutable image of might and of mystery, strewn round with reliquary rubbish that every whirl of wind turns over as leaves in a book, revealing strange readings of the past; every chip and shard of the fragments not yet ground down to dusty nothing may possibly have their secret to tell.1 The Great Pyramid is built at the northern end of the valley where it relatively overtops the first cataract, nearly 600 miles away to the south, and, as the eye of the whole picture, loftily 1 Ancient History from the Monuments, by Dr. Samuel Birch. Egypt of the Pharaohs, Zincke. Mummies and Moslems. Warner. P. 92. Martyrdom of Man. Reade. Ch. i. Life and Work at the Great Pyramid. Smyth, Ch. i. p. 29. VOL. I. B looks down on every part of the whole cultivated land of Egypt. It is built where the land comes to an apex like the shape of the pyramid itself lying flat and pointing south, and the alluvial soil of the Delta spreads out fan-wise to the north. It is near to the centre of the land-surface of the globe. A Hermean fragment shows the earth figured as a woman in a recumbent position with arms uplifted towards heaven, and feet raised in the direction of the Great Bear. The geographical divisions are represented by her body, and Egypt is typified as the heart of all. They set the base of the Great Pyramid very near the heart of all, or about one mile 568 yards south of the thirtieth parallel of latitude.2 There, in the stainless air, under the rainless azure, all is so clear that distance cannot be measured, and the remotest past stands up close to you, distinct in its monumental forms and features as it was thousands of years ago; the colour yet unfaded from its face, for every influence of nature (save man) has conspired to preserve the works of art, and make dead Egypt as it were the embalmed body of an early time eternized. Once a year the deluge comes down from above, flowing from the lakes lying far away, large as inland seas, and transforms the dry land into a garden, making the sandy waste to blossom and bear the "double-breasted bounteousness" of two harvests a year, with this new tide of life from the heart of Africa. Not only does the wilderness flush with colour, for the waters, which had been running of a dull green hue, are suddenly troubled and turned crimson. The red oxide of iron mixes with the liquid and gives it a gory gleam in the sunlight, making it run like a river of blood. There is an antithesis to the inundation in another phenomenon almost as unique. This is found in the steady continuance of the north-wind that blows back the waters and spreads their wealth over a larger surface of soil, and enables the boatman to sail up the river right against the descending current. Everything Egyptian is typical, and when we see how the people figured the two truths of mythology as the two factors of being, and how they personified breath and water, we shall more or less perceive the initiatory import of this wonderful arrangement of wind and tide, and its combination of descending and ascending motive power. The Nile water is highly charged with ammonia and organic matter, which are deposited as manure. It is, for instance, three times as rich in fertilising matter, whether in suspension or in solution, as the Thames at Hampton Court. The Great Mendes Stele (17) says: "The entire wealth of the soil rests on the inundation of the Nile that brings its products." This bounty was spread out for all by 1 Stobaeus, Ecl. Eth., p. 992, Ed. Heeren. 2 Piazzi Smyth. |