|
Of the nations which have contributed to the direct stream of
civilization, Egypt and Mesopotamia are at present believed to be the
oldest. The chronological dispute as to the relative antiquity of the two
countries is of minor importance; for while in Babylonia the historical
material is almost entirely inscriptional, in Egypt we know the
handicrafts, the weapons, the arts, and, to a certain extent, the
religious beliefs of the race up to a period when it was just emerging
from the Stone Age. In a word, Egypt presents the most ancient race whose
manner of life is known to man. From the beginning of its history—that is,
from about 4500 B.C.—we can trace the development of a religion one of
whose most prominent elements was a promise of a life after death. It was
still a great religion when the Christian doctrine of immortality was
enunciated. In the early centuries of the Christian era, it seemed almost
possible that the worship of Osiris and Isis might become the religion of
the classical world; and the last stand made by civilized paganism against
Christianity was in the temple of Isis at Philae in the sixth century
after Christ.
It is clear that a religion of such duration must have offered some of
those consolations to man that have marked all great religions, chief of
which is the faith in a spirit, in something that preserves the
personality of the man and does not perish with the body. This faith was,
in fact, one of the chief elements in the Egyptian religion—the element
best known to us through the endless cemeteries which fill the desert from
one end of Egypt to the other, and through the funerary inscriptions.
It is necessary, however, to correct the prevailing impression that
religion played the greatest part in Egyptian life or even a greater part
than it does in Moslem Egypt. The mistaken belief that death and the
well-being of the dead overshadowed the existence of the living, is due to
the fact that the physical character of the country has preserved for us
the cemeteries and the funerary temples better than all the other
monuments. The narrow strip of fat black land along the Nile produces
generally its three crops a year. It is much too valuable to use as a
cemetery. But more than that, it is subject to periodic saturation with
water during the inundation, and is, therefore, unsuitable for the burials
of a nation which wished to preserve the contents of the graves. On the
other hand, the desert, which bounds this fertile strip so closely that a
dozen steps will usually carry one from the black land to the gray,—the
desert offers a dry preserving soil with absolutely no value to the
living. Thus all the funerary monuments were erected on the desert, and
except where intentionally destroyed they are preserved to the present
day. The palaces, the towns, the farms, and many of the great temples
which were erected on the black soil, have been pulled down for building
material or buried deep under the steadily rising deposits of the Nile.
The tombs of six thousand years of dead have accumulated on the desert
edge.
Moreover, our impression of these tombs has been formed from the
monuments erected by kings, princes, priests, and the great and wealthy
men of the kingdom. The multitude of plain unadorned burial-places which
the scientific excavator records by the thousands have escaped the
attention of scholars interested in Egypt from the point of view of a
comparison of religions. It has also been overlooked that the strikingly
colored mummies and the glaring burial apparatus of the late period cost
very little to prepare. The manufacture of mummies was a regular trade in
the Ptolemaic period at least. Mummy cases were prepared in advance with
blank spaces for the names. I do not think that any more expense was
incurred in Egyptian funerals in the dynastic period than is the case
among the modern Egyptians. The importance of the funerary rites to the
living must, therefore, not be exaggerated. |
