It was the divine purpose that the story of Israel in Egypt should never be forgotten. The Jews were commanded to tell it to their children; and the necessity for understanding it, is forced upon ourselves by many a New Testament reference. Whatever, therefore, brings those old times nearer will help us to gather the lessons which God has stored up for us in this long-preserved history. By the aid of the monuments, we go back to the Egypt of Moses, and we look upon the scenes depicted upon the sacred page; and by the writings of the Egyptians we gain access to their innermost thoughts.
The reader will not object to our commencing the task before us by a very simple mode of procedure. We will suppose ourselves traveling over part of the sands under which so much of ancient Egypt lies. We stumble upon a broken piece of pottery, and our interest being aroused, we take note of a mound which is before us. We begin to dig into the mound. After some days, we find the walls of a building, and presently we discover a crock, almost entire. The sand has done its work of burial faithfully, for, as we proceed, the painted wall of a house presents itself to view, and the picture reproduced upon the previous page appears before our eyes, fresh and lifelike, as if painted but yesterday.
What a tale it unfolds! Once there lived within this house persons, who, in many respects, were like ourselves. They knew not only the art of construction, but they also had pleasure in adorning their walls with paintings. Their artists were capable of telling a tale through the eye, and they possessed a skill in the use of permanent colors now unknown. The picture itself is a veritable book of history. Holding in our hand the broken piece of pottery first chanced upon, and also the unbroken crock found within the building, the key to the painting is before our eyes.
The art of the potter flourished in the days when that ruined house stood erect. Men then found the clay, mixed it, and fashioned it into pleasing and useful shapes. They controlled heat, retained it within walls, and made fire serve man’s hand.
They were also familiar with the strength of organization; some of the workers formed the clay into shapes of use and beauty, sitting or kneeling at their work; some blew the bellows, others tended the fire, and others again placed the vases upon the oven, or carried them away when complete.
The picture proclaims the existence of life and energy, and the wisdom of working together in sectional order, unitedly, to produce an end!
Now, though such a picture tells a tale of past life with great clearness, it is, at the best, an indifferent method of conveying thoughts precisely to the mind. But, to help us, the very words accompanying these pictures have been brought to light. The gateway upon the opposite page is an illustrated volume expressing the outer and the inner life of Egypt in her greatness. It is a stone book. The details of daily life, the great incidents of religion and of war, the character of the gods, the hopes and fears of man in view of his hereafter, tell the story of those old days to the end of time.
Babylonia also yields to our generation the wisdom of its paintings and its libraries. Its cylinders are most beautifully inscribed, and the letters, punched deep and sharp into the surface, are legible as if indented but a few years ago.
The papyrus plant afforded the Egyptians a lasting and elegant paper, which has endured for thousands of years, and many of the old papyri are as venerable as rock-cut temples and tombs. The mind of the historian, and also that of the poet, live in these old writings, and not only their thoughts, but those thoughts expressed in words just suited to the subject, and with the skill and learning of the accomplished scholar.
From the skill and learning of those old days attributed to Thoth, the god of letters and intelligence, we turn to the discovery of the system of reading the long since dead language of the ancient Egyptians, the very signs of the letters of which were, till recently, entirely unknown. It is one of the marvels of our day; “many erudite scholars tried to solve the mystery, and Young, among others, very nearly brought his researches to a satisfactory issue,” when the Rosetta stone afforded the key to the riddle. The masterly wit of Champollion seized upon it, and opened up by it the priceless treasuries of the past. This celebrated stone is inscribed in Greek demotic writing and hieroglyphics, and it had often been observed that in the hieroglyphics, two ovals frequently occurred. Champollion made the magnificent surmise that these ovals contained the names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, which often occur in the Greek inscription. There are four letters common to each of these names – p. o. e. l. – and within each of the ovals, four signs similar to each other occur. Here was the beginning of the track, which has widened out into the broad, grand road of the knowledge of the language of the ancient world. These four letters led to acquaintance with the alphabet. The Coptic, the lineal descendant of the ancient Egyptian speech, led to acquaintance with the words; the grammar was gradually mastered, and by degrees the mystery was completely solved.
“Thoth, the god of letters.... is usually represented as a human figure with the head of an ibis, holding a tablet and a pen.... sometimes” with “a man’s face with the crescent of the moon upon his head.” He “communicated all intellectual gifts from the deity to man.” He “was reported to have invented letters” (Wilkinson, The Ancient Egyptians, Vol. 3, pp. 166-168). “He commonly bears in his hand a tablet and a reed pen” (Rawlinson, History of Ancient Egypt, Vol. I, p. 371). “In a legend concerning Thoth, he is thus addressed: “Letters.... causing the memory to be neglected, will produce oblivion to the mind of the learner, because men, trusting to the external marks of writing, will not exercise the internal powers of recollection.”