I again ask attention to this land of fame and mystery, and it may be well to say in one word why I do so. In order to leave no room for the suspicion that the predictions were written after the event, we have agreed not to press for a verdict from any fulfillment which took place before the beginning of the Christian era. But, if we are to succeed in banishing every suspicion, we must do something more. I can understand someone saying—not from any desire to oppose, but from a hesitancy which is in the circumstances perfectly natural— “Yes, the fulfillment you speak of is indeed marvelous. But quite as marvelous things have sometimes been brought about by chance, and it is perhaps no more than we might expect that, out of so many hundreds of predictions, some should come true.” But the Scriptures enable us to meet this difficulty as easily as the other. They contain what I may call prophetic pictures. They do not merely indicate one feature among the many after-characteristics of peoples and of countries: they describe one feature after another till their condition is fully portrayed. With the fulfillment of one, or perhaps two, of these it might be imagined that chance had had to do, but, as one after another is added, the suspicion becomes more and more unreasonable, till, before the accumulating evidence, it is swept away completely and forever.
Such a picture we have in the prophecies concerning Egypt. We have already marked the fulfillment of
FIVE PREDICTIONS.
Let me now ask the reader to look with me at the fulfillment of
TEN OTHERS.
1. We began the previous chapter with a prediction concerning Thebes, the most ancient capital city of Egypt. Another famous city, which, as capital, took in time the place of Thebes, is mentioned in Ezek. 30:13: “Thus saith the Lord God: I will also destroy the idols, and I will cause the images to cease from Noph.” This name preserves the designation Pa-Nouf by which the Egyptians named the ancient city known to us as
MEMPHIS.
It is said to have been founded by Menes, and that there the first regulations were made for the worship of the gods and the service of the temples. It is certain that it was regarded with the deepest veneration. The monuments enumerate its gods and its temples, and Brugsch Bey speaks of it in his book, Egypt Under the Pharaohs, as “the great temple-city of Egypt.”
It was not unfitting, therefore, that He who was to judge Egypt for its idolatry, as well as for its sin, should say of Memphis that He would destroy its idols and cause the images to cease from it. But, though it might prove a fitting judgment, it was a most unlikely fate. The idols have not been destroyed elsewhere nor have the images ceased. Both are found today in Thebes, which was in ruins when Memphis still retained its splendor. They are found elsewhere, and, from what we know of the general condition of Egypt, we should say it was highly probable they would be found here also.
To those who looked upon Memphis at the beginning of the Christian era this fate must have seemed more improbable still. Strabo found the city “large and populous, next to Alexandria in size,” and speaks of its gods and temples and statues. In the beginning of the seventh century it was the residence of the Governor of Egypt, who made terms there with the Arab invaders. The city of Cairo having been founded in the neighborhood, the population drifted away from the old city, and its materials were taken to build and extend the new. The vast mass of Memphis, however, seemed to defy all attempts at destruction. Abdul-Latif, an Arab traveler, who visited it in the 13th century, says: “its ruins still offer to the eyes of the spectator a collection of wonderful works which confound the intellect, and to describe which the most eloquent man would labor in vain. The longer we look upon the scene, the higher rises the admiration it inspires; and every new glance that we cast upon the ruins reveals a new charm. Scarcely have they awakened a distinct idea in the soul of the spectator, than a still more admirable idea suggests itself; and just as you believe you have gained complete knowledge of them, at that very moment the conviction forces itself on the mind, that what you think you know is still very far from the truth.”
And now what of today? So completely has the doom been accomplished that a century ago the very site of Memphis was a matter of dispute. Later investigations have settled that question, but they have also verified the truth of the prediction. With the exception of one colossal statue (the property of the English nation, but which has never been removed, and which Wilkinson says, will someday be burned by the Arabs for lime), and a small figure of red granite, both of extraordinary beauty, but broken and laid on the ground—with the exception of these, the idols and the images and the temples—the city and all it contained have passed away. Wilkinson writes: “there is very little else worthy of remark amidst the mounds of Memphis.” “We are surprised to find so few remains of this vast city.” Brugsch Bey says: “All that remains of this celebrated city at the present time consists of heaps of fragments of columns and altars, and carvings which once belonged to the temples of Memphis—a far-stretching mass of mounds, out of which shine in the clear sunlight the remains of the half-destroyed chambers and halls of ancient houses. Those travelers who visit the remains of Memphis in the hope of recognizing some vestiges worthy of its fame, will be little satisfied with the sad prospect which meets the eye.” Miss Amelia B. Edwards thus describes a visit to Memphis: “We are all gathered round the brink of a muddy pool in the midst of which lies a shapeless block of blackened and corroded limestone. This, it seems, is the famous prostrate colossus of Rameses the Great ... So here it lies, face downwards and drowned once a year by the Nile; visible only when the pools left by the inundation have evaporated and all the muddy hollows are dried up ...
“Where, however, is the companion colossus? Where is the Temple itself? Where are the pylons of the obelisks, of the avenues of sphinxes? Where, in short, is Memphis?
“The dragoman shrugs his shoulders and points to the barren mounds among the palms.... And is this all? No—not quite all. There are some mud huts yonder, in among the trees; and in front of one of these we find a number of sculptured fragments—battered sphinxes, torsos without legs, sitting figures without heads—in green, black, and red granite. Ranged in an irregular semicircle on the sward, they seem to sit in forlorn conclave, half solemn, half ludicrous, with the goats browsing round, and the little Arab children hiding behind them.
“Near this, in another pool, lies another colossus—not the fellow to that which we saw first; but a smaller one—also face downwards, of red granite.
“And this is all that remains of Memphis, eldest of cities; a few large rubbish-heaps, a dozen or so of broken statues, and a name!... Where are those stately ruins that even in the Middle Ages extended over a space estimated at ‘half a day’s journey in every direction?’ One can hardly believe that a great city ever flourished on this spot, or understand how it should have been effaced so utterly.”
2. We turn once more to the general aspect and fortunes of the entire country. The hand of decay was also to be placed upon
THE RIVERS AND THE CANALS.
We read: “I will make the rivers dry” (Ezek. 30:12); and again, “The waters shall fail from the sea and the river shall be wasted and become dry. And the rivers shall stink: the streams (or canals) of Egypt shall be minished and dried up” (Isa. 19:5, 6). By “the sea” is in all probability meant the Nile. It was named oceanos by Homer, and has been called the sea, or the sea of the Nile, by both ancient and modern Egyptians. “The rivers” which were to “become dry” and to “stink” were the arms of the Nile which, passing through the plain of the Delta, poured the waters of this gigantic stream into the Mediterranean. Part of this prediction is as yet unfulfilled. The waters have not as yet failed from the sea, but nevertheless we trace even here fulfillments as wonderful as those which startle us in other parts of the prophetic description. The hand of decay has made a deepening impress on the rivers and the canals of Egypt. In his article on the Nile in Smith’s Bible Dictionary, Mr. Reginald Stuart Poole says: “The great difference between the Nile of Egypt in the present day and in ancient times is caused by the failure of some of its branches.... The river was famous for its seven branches, and under the Roman dominion eleven were counted, of which, however, there were but seven principal ones. Herodotus notices that there were seven, of which he says that two, the present Damietta and Rosetta branches, were originally artificial, and he therefore speaks of ‘the five mouths.’ Now, as for a long period past, there are no navigable and unobstructed branches but these two that Herodotus distinguishes as the work of man.” Even these are accessible only to small vessels. “The five other ancient mouths of the river have long ago silted up, and their course can now be hardly traced over the great alluvial plain and through the network of canals and lakes which interpose between the sea and this point.”
The rivers then have been made dry, and instead of flowing in their ancient course have become stinking pools and marshes. What had formerly ministered to health and pleasure was changed into a danger and an offense. For there can be no doubt that what is shown here in the vivid picture of prophecy was a condition through which they actually passed. Referring to one of the canals of Cairo, Wilkinson says that to close it, and turn its bed into a street would have the “advantage of freeing the houses on its banks from the noxious vapors that rise when the water has retired and left a bed of liquid mud.” What now of the canals? Amrou, the Mahommedan conqueror of Egypt, wrote to the caliph that it was necessary that one-third of the entire revenues of the country should be devoted to the maintenance of the canals. This has never been done, and the result has been that the canals also have been “minished and dried up.” The predecessors of the present dynasty seem to have specially sinned in this respect. “The Mameluke Beys,” says Make Brun, “applied to their own private use the funds destined to the support of these public works, on which the fertility of Egypt depends. Many canals were even abandoned by these barbarians, who thus destroyed the sources of their own revenues.” Mehemet Ali and Ismail Pasha have undoubtedly tried to atone for the neglect of the past. The resources of the country and the lives of her children have been lavished in the attempt to undo the mischief which has resulted from former negligence. But their efforts have been only partially successful. The Menoufieh Canal, for example, used formerly to communicate with the Rosetta branch of the Nile, but is now dammed up. Mr. Villiers Stuart, who was deputed to examine and report upon the state of Egypt in 1882 says: “One complaint often made to me on the subject of irrigation in the Delta, is that the canals run dry at the critical season of the year, and when the quantity and quality of the cotton crop are most seriously affected by any deficiency in the water supply.”
Of the Said, or Upper Egypt, he writes: If “there were a canal system as perfect as in the Delta, it would far exceed it in richness of vegetation and in wealth-producing power.” As it is at present it depends for its one crop on the annual overflow of the Nile. Were a system of canal-irrigation introduced “it could grow three crops where it now grows but one.” But is this a modern discovery? Did the wise Egyptians live for centuries in the country without suspecting that there was so easy a method of multiplying its fertility? No, this part of the country now condemned to comparative barrenness and poverty for the lack of irrigation, was once covered with canals. The following extracts explain how the change has come about: “Canals exist, but many have been allowed to silt up. They all want deepening, and they ought to be connected together on a scientific system.” “The shallowness of the canals is partly due to the fact that the late Khedive diverted to his sugar estates and to other purposes the forced labor that ought to have been applied to keep them clean.” “There seems no doubt that the ancient Egyptians kept the canals in Upper Egypt full; this accounts for the much larger population in the time of the Pharaohs.” “We could irrigate our land much better,” the peasants said to him, “and more of it, if the canals had water in them, but they are dry; if they were deepened, there would be water in them always.” The canals, as the Scripture predicted, have been minished and dried up.
3. Another feature is
THE RIVER SCENERY
of Egypt as presented in the prophetic picture indicated a further remarkable change. Mr. Reginald Stuart Poole, formerly of the British Museum, writes: “The monuments and the narratives of ancient writers show us in the Nile of Egypt in old times, a stream bordered by flags and reeds, the covert of abundant wild-fowl, and bearing on its waters the fragrant flowers of the various-colored lotus. Now in Egypt scarcely any reeds or water-plants—the famous papyrus being nearly if not quite extinct, and the lotus almost unknown—are to be seen except in the marshes near the Mediterranean. This also was prophesied by Isaiah: ‘The papyrus reeds in the river and everything growing (lit ‘sown’) in the river shall be dried up, driven away (by the wind) and (shall) not be’ (19:7). When it is recollected that the water plants of Egypt were so abundant as to be a great source of revenue in the prophet’s time and much later, the exact fulfillment of his predictions is a valuable evidence of the truth of the old opinion as to ‘the sure word of prophecy.’”
This was indeed no small part of the burden of loss and decay which was to lay the pride of Egypt in the dust. An inscription speaks of an Egyptian Queen as having reigned over the land of the papyrus and the lotus. These plants formed so striking a feature of Upper and Lower Egypt respectively that they became the symbols of the districts. They were also a boon to the people and a source of considerable revenue to the crown. “The lotus, the papyrus, and other similar productions of the land, during and after the inundation, were, for the poor, one of the greatest blessings nature ever provided for any people.” They were largely used as food. The lotus flowers were in constant demand for the bouquets and garlands which the Egyptian host presented to and with which he adorned his guests. The seeds were pounded and made into bread. The papyrus was put to many uses. “They employ the roots,” Pliny writes, “as firewood, and for making various utensils. They even construct small boats of the plant; and out of the rind sails, mats, clothes, bedding, and ropes.” But that which made it famous, and which has preserved the name to our own time, was the use made of it as a writing material. Pliny, who wrote in the latter half of the first century of our era, describes the appearance and the growth of the plant and the various kinds of paper which were formed from it. We know that papyrus was in use till the seventh century, and until that time the plant was still found in its ancient home. But then as now it stood written: “The reeds and the flags shall wither away. The meadow (“here used,” says Gesenius, “of the grassy places on the banks of the Nile”) by the Nile, by the brink of the Nile, and all that is sown by the Nile shall become dry, be driven away, and be no more” (Isa. 19:6,7). And today all is fulfilled. “The plant is now unknown in Egypt.” The pink and the blue lotus, which appear so frequently in the paintings, have also passed away. The traveler is struck by the absence of verdure on the Nile banks. “It is a curious fact that no water plants or weeds grow on the banks of the Nile; a sedgy margin is never to be met with in this country.”
4. A similar prediction is made regarding
THE FISHERIES.
“Herodotus says that a certain number of the poorer Egyptians ‘lived almost entirely on fish.’ It was so abundant that it was necessarily cheap. The Nile produced several kinds which were easily caught; and in Lake Moeris the abundance of fish was such that the Pharaohs are said to have derived from the sale a revenue of above ₤.94,000 a year.... The fishermen of Egypt formed a numerous class, and the salting and drying of fish furnished occupation to a large number of persons.” Diodorous refers to the fisheries of Egypt in similar terms, showing that the industry within fifty years of the beginning of the Christian era had suffered no diminution. Fish constituted even then a large portion of the daily food of the people, and dried fish formed a large item in Egyptian exports. But it stood written: “The fishers also shall lament, and all they that cast angle into the Nile shall mourn, and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish” (Isa. 19:8). And this too has been accomplished. In the decline of Egypt the fish pools and their conduits were neglected and ruined, and the fishers lamented, mourned, and languished. “Having once been very productive, and a main source of revenue as well as of sustenance, the fisheries are now scarcely of any moment, excepting about Lake Menzaleh, and in some few places elsewhere, chiefly in the North of Egypt.”
But
5. THE REMAINING INDUSTRIES
of Egypt were also to suffer. The prophet continues: “Moreover they that work in combed flax, and they that weave white cloth shall be ashamed. And her pillars shall be broken in pieces, and all they that work for hire shall be grieved in soul.... Neither shall there be for Egypt any work which head or tail, palm branch or rush, may do” (19:9, 10, 15). “The pillars” are the support of the social fabric, the rich and noble by whose patronage the industries of the country were encouraged. “Head” and “tail” are expressive figures of those who lead and those who follow, as are the lofty palm branch and the humble rush of high and low, the aristocracy and the masses of the people. It is implied that these are bound together in a fellowship of labor, and we are told that a day was to come when their occupation should be gone and the fellowship should cease.
That the hand is laid here upon what formed a special feature of Egyptian life we shall immediately see. But to understand how heavy this doom was, and the improbability of its fulfillment, we have to recall the fact that the greatness of Egypt lay not so much in her military power, as in her civilization. Her arts and her industries were her chief glories. Before showing that their luster is undimmed by modern achievements I may say that they were well and long sustained by “the pillars.” “Considerable sums were expended in furnishing houses, and in many artificial caprices. Rich jewels and costly works of art were in great request, as well among the inhabitants of the provincial capitals, as at Thebes and Memphis: they delighted in splendid equipages, elegant and commodious boats, numerous attendants, horses, dogs, and other requisites for the chase; and besides, their houses, their villas, and their gardens were laid out with no ordinary expense.” “The rich frequently had ornamental works, statues, and furniture of solid gold.” Expense was lavished upon them even to the tomb. The embalming of a corpse sometimes cost, according to Diodorous, £250 sterling.
That the Palm branch and the Rush, the higher and the lower classes, alike shared in the vast and continuous labors which were characteristic of Egyptian civilization has been abundantly proved by the monuments. The priests, who were bound by an exacting ritual, held the first position in the state; they were also charged with the administration of the law. The chief architects were princes, and were permitted to intermarry with the royal family. The military force consisted of 410,000 men, exclusive of the large force of mercenaries, and the commands were held by the nobility. These last occupied posts also in the royal household, in the government of the country, in the management of the royal estates, and, notwithstanding that a shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians, even the office of superintendent of the herds was filled by men of rank.
This union of classes is an indication of the place which art and industry held in the public estimation. Excellence was their constant aim, we may say their passion; and the utmost care was taken to secure the highest efficiency in every department. “No tradesman,” says Diodorous, “was permitted to meddle in political affairs, or to hold any civil office in the state, lest his thoughts should be distracted by the inconsistency of his pursuits.... They feared that without such a law... their proper occupations would be neglected.... They also considered that to follow more than one occupation would be detrimental to their own interests and to those of the community; and that, when men, from a motive of avarice, are induced to engage in numerous branches of art, the result generally is that they are unable to excel in any.”
The results of this care have secured for Egypt its undying fame. The byssus, woven in the looms of those who worked “in combed flax,” was sold for its weight in gold; and Pliny, accounting for the large quantity of flax cultivated in Egypt explains that the Egyptians exported linen to Arabia and India, and adds that the quality of that produced by Egyptian looms was far superior to any other. “Nor was the praise bestowed upon that manufacture unmerited; and the quality of one piece of linen found near Memphis fully justifies it, and excites equal admiration at the present day, being to the touch comparable to silk, and not inferior in texture to our finest cambric... Some idea may be given of its texture from the number of threads in the inch, which is 540 (270 double threads) in the warp,” and 110 in the woof. “It is covered with small figures and hieroglyphics, so finely drawn that here and there the lines are with difficulty followed by the eye.... The perfection of its threads is equally surprising; the knots and breaks, seen in our best cambric, are not found in holding it to the light.”
Their superiority was as marked in spinning as in weaving. The threads employed, for example, in the manufacture of nets astonished the ancients by their fineness and strength. Some of the nets, Pliny says, “were so delicate that they would pass through a man’s ring, and a single person could carry a sufficient number of them to surround a whole wood. Julius Lupus, who died while Governor of Egypt, had some of these nets, each string of which consisted of 150 threads; a fact perfectly surprising to those who are not aware that the Rhodians preserve to this day in the temple of Minerva a linen corslet presented to them by Amasis, King of Egypt, whose threads are composed each of 365 fibers.” Herodotus mentions another presented by the same king to the Lacedæmonians. “It was of linen,” he says, “ornamented with numerous figures of animals worked in gold and cotton. Each thread of the corslet was worthy of admiration. For, though very fine, every one was composed of 360 other threads, all distinct.”
The “combing” of the flax was a marked feature in the manufacture. The cloth was subjected to a process of smoothing, or calendaring. They also anticipated the moderns in the use of dyes. “Another very remarkable discovery of the Egyptians was the use of mordants. They were acquainted with the effect of acids on color, and submitted the cloth they dyed to one of the same processes adopted in our modern manufactories; and while, from his account, we perceive how little Pliny understood the process he was describing, he at the same time gives us the strongest evidence of its truth. ‘In Egypt,’ he says, ‘they stain clothes in a wonderful manner. They take them in their original state, quite white, and imbue them, not with a dye, but with certain drugs which have the power of absorbing and taking color. When this is done there is still no appearance of change in the cloths; but so soon as they are dipped into a bath of the pigment, which has been prepared for the purpose, they are taken out properly colored. The singular thing is, that though the bath contains only one color, several hues are imparted to the piece... nor can the color be afterward washed off.”
This is not the only indication presented by their manufactures that they were acquainted with the secrets of modern science. “That the Egyptians possessed considerable knowledge of chemistry and the use of metallic oxides, is evident from the nature of the colors applied to their glass and porcelain.” Glass cutting was supposed to have been first invented in the 17th century by Lehmann at Prague. “But the specimens of ancient glass, cut, engraved, and ground, discovered in Egypt suffice to prove it was practiced there of old.... Emery powder and the lapidary’s wheel were also used in Egypt.”
The manufacture of glass itself has also been regarded as an invention of modern times. “They were well acquainted,” says Wilkinson, to whose great work I mainly confine myself for testimony as to the character of Egyptian industries, “not only with the manufacture of common glass for beads and bottles of ordinary quality, but with the art of staining it of divers colors.... And so skillful were they in this complicated process, that they imitated the most fanciful devices, and succeeded in counterfeiting the rich hues and brilliancy of precious stones. The green emerald, the purple amethyst, and other expensive gems were successfully imitated.... Some mock pearls (found by me at Thebes) have been so well counterfeited that even now it is difficult with a strong lens to detect the imposition.” Winckelmann speaks of two pieces of glass mosaic which show the perfection attained by the workers in glass. One of the pieces, “though not quite an inch in length, and a third of an inch in breadth exhibits, on a dark and variegated ground, a bird resembling a duck in very bright and varied colors.... The outlines are bold and decided, the colors beautiful and pure, and the effect very pleasing; in consequence of the artist having alternately introduced an opaque and a transparent glass. The most delicate pencil of a miniature painter could not have traced with greater sharpness the circle of the eyeball, or the plumage of the neck and wings, at which part this specimen has been broken. But the most surprising thing is that the reverse exhibits the same bird, in which it is impossible to discover any difference in the smallest details; whence it may be concluded that the figure of the bird continues through its thickness.”
Nor was glass merely used for ornamental purposes. Vases and bottles were manufactured, the latter being sometimes protected by wickerwork or encased in leather. They also manufactured porcelain. “Many of the porcelain cups discovered at Thebes present a tasteful arrangement of varied hues, and show the skill of the Egyptians and the great experience they possessed in this branch of art.” They were famed also for their tanning and their work in leather. In cutting the leather they made use of the semi-circular knife, and “what we term ‘the circular cut’ was known to the ancient Egyptians 3,300 years ago.... The fine quality of the straps placed across the bodies of mummies, discovered at Thebes, and the beauty of the figures stamped upon them satisfactorily prove the skill of ‘the leather cutters’ as well as the antiquity of embossing Many of the occupations of their trade are portrayed on the painted walls of the tombs of Thebes. They made shoes, sandals, the coverings of seats of chairs or sofas, bow cases, and most of the ornamental furniture of the chariot.” So great was the consumption of leather that skins were largely imported from foreign countries.
It is impossible to present in a cursory notice like the present any adequate picture of the manifold industries of this land. “Many arts and inventions were in common use in Egypt for centuries before they are generally supposed to have been known; and we are now and then as much surprised to find that certain things were old 3,000 years ago, as the Egyptians would be if they could hear us talk of them as late discoveries.” They were acquainted with mining, with the crushing of auriferous quartz to obtain the gold, with gold-refining, with gold-beating in which they manufactured leaf of great fineness, and with the making of gold and silver wire which they used in weaving patterns in which the details were sometimes so minute as to be scarcely visible to the naked eye. From this it appears that they were acquainted with the use of the magnifying glass. “Among the remarkable inventions of a remote era among the Egyptians may be mentioned bellows and siphons.” They also used the syringe. They seem to have excelled the moderns in their knowledge of metallurgy. “The labor experienced by the French engineers, who removed the obelisk of Luxor from Thebes, in cutting a space less than two feet deep along the face of its partially-decomposed pedestal, suffices to show that even with our excellent modern implements we find considerable difficulty in doing what to the Egyptians would have been one of the least arduous tasks.” There is good ground for supposing that “the Egyptians must have possessed certain secrets in hardening or tempering copper with which we are totally unacquainted They had even the secret of giving to bronze, or brass blades a certain degree of elasticity.... Another remarkable feature in their bronze is the resistance it offers to the effect of the atmosphere, some continuing smooth and bright though buried for ages and since exposed to the damp of European climates. They had also the secret of covering the surface with a rich patina of dark or light green, or other color, by applying acids to it; as was done by the Greeks and Romans, and as we do to the iron guns on board our men-of-war.”
The moving of immense masses of stone hundreds of miles “shows that the Egyptians were well acquainted with mechanical powers, and the mode of applying a locomotive force with the most wonderful success.” But their skill “was not confined to the mere moving of immense weights; their wonderful knowledge of mechanism is shown in the erection of obelisks, and in the position of large stones, raised to a considerable height, and adjusted with the utmost precision; sometimes, too, in situations where the space will not admit the introduction of the inclined plane.”
In referring to Egyptian carpentry, Wilkinson speaks of “the perfection to which they had arrived in the construction of the chairs and ottomans of their rooms.” With the elegant designs of these, which have been reproduced in the furniture of modern drawing rooms, all are familiar. Of their architecture, sculpture, and painting I need not speak, nor of the embalming which has preserved the human body, and kept intact every feature, and the very expression of the face for thousands of years. It is enough to say that the superiority we have already remarked distinguished every industry from the highest to the lowest. “So wisely,” says Herodotus, “was medicine managed by them that no doctor was permitted to practice any but his own peculiar branch. Some were oculists, who only studied diseases of the eye; others attended solely to complaints of the head; others to those of the teeth.... And it is a singular fact, that their dentists adopted a method, not very long practiced in Europe, of stopping teeth with gold, proofs of which have been obtained from some mummies of Thebes.” Even in the meanest employments the same excellence was shown. The skill of the shepherds in rearing animals of different kinds was the result, says Diodorous, of the experience they had inherited from their parents, and subsequently increased by their own observation; and the spirit of emulation, which is natural to all men, constantly adding to their stock of knowledge, they introduced many improvements unknown to other people. Their sheep were twice shorn, and twice brought forth lambs in the course of one year; and though climate was the chief cause of these phenomena, the skill and attention of the shepherd were also necessary; nor, if the animals were neglected, would unaided nature alone suffice for their continence.”
Now, in the face of this stupendous and varied activity, in the face of the arts and industries into which the strength of the entire population was put and in which they had attained unrivaled excellence, it was declared that all should pass away. The pillars of the state, it was said, should be broken, and the workers for hire should be grieved in soul. There should be no work which either high or low should do. If the people were to continue and the kingdom to remain it seemed most unlikely that any such fate could ever befall them. And long after the prophecy was uttered there seemed to be no sign of its fulfillment. When Alexander conquered Egypt new markets were opened up for her products, and the destruction of Tyre and Sidon gave new life to her commerce. Diodorous, who has been so often quoted in the above description, completed his history within a few years of the birth of our Lord, and he speaks not of what had been, but of what was still a feature of his own time. Pliny wrote 100 years later and his testimony is the same.
Till Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire the priests ministered in the temples, though with diminished luster. But with this change that work for head and palm branch passed away. In the decline which followed and which deepened so rapidly under the Arab and Turkish dominions, the glory and the wealth of Egypt perished. “In the three centuries of mixed Turkish and Mamlouk misrule which followed the Ottoman conquest, Arab art of every kind lost its cunning, and when Bonaparte’s savants entered Cairo they found its handicrafts, as its learning, at the lowest ebb of decadence. Twenty years later Mehemet Ali began a series of efforts to revive the old mechanical skill for which Egyptian workmen had once been famous, but the special aim and the methods of his reforms in this direction were alike unsound, and costly failure was the result.” “Regardless of expense, he imported large quantities of costly machinery with skilled operatives at high wages, erecting vast mills all over the Delta.” The ruins of these and of others erected by his successors in their attempt to succeed where he had failed have proved how irreversible is this doom pronounced from of old. The attempt has resulted “only in a great waste of time, money, machinery, and labor.” Relics of former skill which remained even till comparatively recent times have also passed away. Speaking of Damietta M’Coan says: “It was formerly famous for its manufacture of leather, and for the striped linen cloths called Dimity (from Dimyat the Arab name of the town) but both these have long ceased to be specialties of the place.” Her agriculture still remains the one employment and stay of her people, but it is not the agriculture of the past. Its unskillfulness and poverty awaken alike the scorn and the pity of the nations who admired and envied the agriculture which once bore the stamp of Egyptian greatness.
6. We have now to notice another remarkable feature in the prophetic picture.
THE CONDITION OF ALL THE SURROUNDING
COUNTRIES
is vividly portrayed. In describing the effects of the Babylonian inroad, God, speaking by Ezekiel, says: “I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years” (29:12). But the ruin of that time was in itself a prophecy; for in the description of her after and permanent condition the same words recur: “They shall be desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities shall be in the midst of the cities that are wasted” (30:7). The first judgment was but the type of the desolation which was yet to fall. It was the blighting touch of the early frost which told of the setting in of a dark and bitter winter.
The prediction, it will be noticed, takes a wide range. It foretells disaster not for Egypt only, but also for all the surrounding countries. It is to be a desolation in the midst of desolations. A hurried glance at the countries bordering on Egypt will show that the words have been made good, and that even at the beginning of our era it was utterly impossible that their fulfillment could have been foreseen. On the north Egypt is bounded by the waters of the Mediterranean; but on the west, south, and partly on the east, she looked out upon other countries which, long after the beginning of the Christian era, were great and populous. On the northwest lies the province of Barca, the eastern division of Tripoli. It includes the ancient Cyrenaica, sometimes called Pentapolis from the five great Cities of Cyrene, Apollonia, Ptolemais, Arsinoë, and Berenice. Readers of the New Testament are familiar with its mention of Cyrene, and the “parts of Libya about Cyrene.” Over the whole country were scattered wealthy and splendid cities, which retained their prosperity at the time of our Lord. In the year 115 A. D. the Jews, great numbers of whom dwelt in Cyrenaica, broke out into rebellion. During the insurrection and its suppression the country suffered greatly; but it was colonized afresh by the Emperor Hadrian. Under the fostering care of the Romans it revived, and, though it afterward suffered much from the oppression of its Greek governors, it continued to prosper. In the fourth century it was overrun by barbarous hordes from the south, and the city of Cyrene was destroyed. Three centuries afterward a heavier blow fell. The Persians under Khosroo Purveez invaded Egypt, and then poured into Cyrenaica, committing such dreadful havoc that the country was almost depopulated. Under the Saracens the work of devastation was completed. Cyrenaica was so oppressed that the inhabitants of Barca, for example, emigrated in a body, and that city has since wholly disappeared. The entire country gradually succumbed, and its cities have remained in ruins ever since. There are now only two places which deserve the name of towns; and the rest of the country is inhabited solely by wandering Arabs. Cyrenaica still deserves the name “Jebel Akhbar” (the green mountain), but the luxurious and pleasure-loving Cyrenians have long since passed away. Their cities, once filled with the noise of busy, joyous, life, are silent as the grave, save when the Arabs chance to rest for a while within their ruined walls. On that side of Egypt there is certainly desolation.
To the southwest of Barca is Fezzan, the ancient Phazania, the great oasis of the Sahara which bounds Egypt on the west. In 19 B. C. Cornelius Balba obtained a triumph for the conquest of the country, and representations of its cities formed part of the processional display. This country also has been desolated, Its great cities have long since crumbled into ruin; and the entire population for a territory of three hundred miles in length and two hundred in breadth, does not exceed twenty-six thousand, or the number of inhabitants in one of our minor towns. Within the past century its trade has almost wholly disappeared. “The inhabitants formerly depended to a great extent on the caravans which passed through the country; but this trade has been almost wholly lost, and Fezzan has in consequence become greatly impoverished and depopulated. The oases are capable of yielding an ample supply of the necessaries of life, but cultivation is neglected, and several oases have been altogether abandoned.”
We turn to the south. The southern boundary of Egypt was drawn at Philæ, above the first cataract. Beyond this Stretched the great kingdom of Ethopia, sharing with Egypt itself the blessing of the same mighty stream which rolls onward its sea-like waters from the Equator to the Mediterranean. For about fifteen miles below the junction of the Blue and the White Nile, the river flows through a gloomy pass between the mountains, and then sweeps out into broad plains covered with vegetation as far as the eye can reach. In this fertile district lay Meroe, the ancient capital of Ethiopia. It has been supposed by some that Egypt itself was colonized from Ethiopia; and it is certain that the latter was at a very early period characterized by order, civilization, and strength. Herodotus tells us that Ethiopia was never conquered by a foreign power, and yet we know that as early as the twelfth dynasty, at least two thousand years before our era, the Ethiopians were reckoned among the most formidable enemies of Egypt. Their power must have remained unbroken, therefore, for many centuries. About 711 B.C. they became masters of Egypt under their king Sabacon, the So of Scripture, by whom and his successors it was held for more than fifty years. Cambyses, incited by the ambition to extend his conquests farther than had been done by any who had gone before him, resolved upon the subjugation of Ethiopia. He sent ambassadors into the country with presents, whose real mission was to act as spies. The king, reading the purpose which lay beneath the show of respect and friendship, bade the ambassadors carry back his bow, with the message that when their master could bend it as easily as he himself could he might begin the war. Cambyses was filled with rage. He invaded the country, but, in attempting to lead his army by a shorter route across the desert, he was compelled, after his troops had endured the most terrible sufferings, to make an ignominious retreat.
To such inroads Ethiopia was frequently subjected, but it was never annexed to Egypt. It was never conquered even by the Romans, and it was still formidable in the time of Diocletian, at the close of the third century. He persuaded the Noubas to remove from the deserts of Libya, and to occupy a district on the frontier of Egypt, extending seven days march towards Ethiopia. They held this territory on the condition of their protecting the empire from the inroads of the Blemmyes and the Ethiopians. “The treaty,” says Gibbon, “long subsisted; and till the establishment of Christianity introduced stricter notions of religious worship, it was annually ratified by a solemn sacrifice in the isle of Elephantine, in which the Romans, as well as the barbarians, adored the same visible or invisible powers of the universe.” This kingdom was afterward greatly extended and its capital was fixed as far south as Dongola. When the Arabs entered Egypt in 638, they found the Noubas a strong Christian kingdom. It retained its independence till the thirteenth century. But the repeated inroads of the Mohammedans sapped the foundations of its strength. The formerly strong government was overthrown, and the country was broken up into various small states. The Mohammedans poured in, and Christianity was gradually extinguished from the south of Egypt to the borders of Abyssinia. This country also is a desolation. Its empire and its strength are gone. The sites of its ancient cities are matter of conjecture. The conquest of the country by the Egyptian government was as fruitless in wealth as it was in glory. The eye seeks in vain for any present token of greatness or prosperity. That it once was great its ruins and the page of history alone declare. But it was simply impossible that its desolation could have been foreseen by man even seven centuries after the beginning of the Christian era.
Of the countries to the east of Egypt we need say nothing now. These prophecy has singled out by name, and their condition and story will come before us again. It is enough to say that desolation has fallen upon them all; a desolation which, though predicted from of old, yet lingered long before it fell, and which, even at the beginning of our era, could not have been regarded as even probable.
7. EGYPT HERSELF WAS TO SHARE IN THE GENERAL DECAY.
Her kingdom was to continue, but her fullness and might were to pass away. “They shall be desolate among the countries that are desolate.” Contrast the Egypt of today with the Egypt of the Roman conquest; compare the luxury and magnificence of the one with the meanness and wretchedness of the other, and no further proof will be required that she has shared the fate of her sister countries. The doom has fallen upon her fertile fields, as well as upon her civilization and her cities. The total area of Egypt was ascertained, by the French survey in 1798, to be 115,200 square miles. Only 9,582, “including the Nile bed and the islands within it,” were watered by the river, and fit, therefore, for cultivation. Under recent improvements the land capable of being tilled amounts to 11,351 square miles, less than a tenth of the entire surface of the country. But all is not told when this is said. More than a third of this, though irrigated, is not tilled, and the land at present under cultivation is only about one-sixteenth of the whole area of the country.
The desolation is not proved by statistics alone. It is painfully obvious. Sir Gardner Wilkinson says: “The plain of San” (the ancient Zoan) “is very extensive, but thinly inhabited; no village exists in the immediate vicinity of ancient Tanis; and when looking from the mounds of this once splendid city towards the distant palms of indistinct villages, we cannot fail to be struck by the desolation spread around it. The ‘field of Zoan’ is now a barren waste: a canal passes through it without being able to fertilize the soil.” Speaking of the Fyoóm, a district above Cairo, on the other side of the Nile, he says the mounds of towns “occur in many parts of the Fyoóm; and though we cannot credit the tradition of the people that it formerly contained 366 towns and villages, it is evident that it was a populous nome of Ancient Egypt, and that many once existed both in the center and on the now barren skirts of the Fyoóm. Indeed, the cultivated land extended far beyond its present limits: a great portion of the desert plain was then taken into cultivation, and I have seen several places where canals and the traces of cultivated fields are still discernible to a considerable distance east and west of the modern irrigated lands.”
But the special feature in the desolation of Egypt, and that which was to make her continuance consistent with her decay, was this: “Her cities shall be in the midst of the cities that are wasted.” No words can more graphically set before us Egypt as it is. She is indeed “the land of ruins;” she is one vast burial-place of the art and magnificence of the past, and her present homes are, as it were, dwellings among the tombs. She cannot be said to have preserved one ancient city. “The present town of Assouan has been built a little to the north of the former town of Saracenic origin, the ruins of which are seen above it, and which was itself built upon the ruins of the Roman city. The whole town is encompassed with vestiges of buildings.” Alexandria cannot be reckoned among the ancient cities of Egypt. It was unknown to the Pharaohs. But the city of Alexander, of the Ptolemies, of the Romans, of the lower empire, even of the Arab conquest, will now be sought in vain. “The site of the ancient city, which is to the south of the present town, presents an immense field of confused ruins; over a space of from six to seven miles in circuit is spread an assemblage of broken columns, obelisks, and shapeless masses of architecture, rising frequently to a greater height than the surrounding houses. Here, amid the heaps of rubbish, are seen some churches, mosques, and monasteries, and three small clusters of dwellings, formerly three towns. Traces are discernible of ancient streets in straight lines, and some ruins of colonnades mark the sites of palaces.” These ruins have been still further “wasted.” “Little now remains,” says Wilkinson, “of the splendid edifices of Alexandria; and the few columns and traces of walls which a few years ago rose above the mounds, are now no longer seen.”
Even the Damietta of the crusades, the ancient Tamiathis, has passed away. In 1249 it was taken by the Christians, and surrendered soon after. In 1250 it was destroyed by the Mohammedans themselves, because of its exposed position, and a new Damietta was built five and a half miles farther south. Nor is it only in the wasting of its ancient cities that the fulfillment of the prediction is seen. Geezeh was a favorite summer resort of the Memlooks and the inhabitants of Cairo. “It is now a mere village, with a few cafes, ruined bazaars, and the wrecks of houses.... Leo Africanus” (writing about the beginning of the sixteenth century) “calls it a city, beautified by the palaces of the Memlooks, who there sought retirement from the bustle of Cairo, and frequented by numerous merchants and artisans.... The mosks and beautiful buildings at the river side are no longer to be seen at Geezeh; and the traveler, as he leaves his boat, wanders amidst uneven heaps of rubbish, and the ill-defined limits of potters’ yards, till he issues from a breach in the crumbling Memlock walls into the open plain.” One more instance may suffice. “Rosetta has always been considered the most agreeable and the prettiest town of Egypt, celebrated for its gardens, and looked upon by the Cairenes, as well as Alexandrians, as a most delightful retreat during summer. It has still its gardens, which surround it on three sides, and the advantages of situation; but it has lost much of its importance as a town, and has ceased to be the resort of strangers. The population, too, is so much diminished that a great proportion of its houses are completely deserted and falling, if not already fallen, into ruins.”
There is no sign, therefore, that, though the ancient ruins were wholly swept away, the cities of Egypt should not still be among the cities that are wasted. This burden of decay Egypt has never thrown aside.
It cannot remove it now, and beneath it its cities are crumbling still. And no words can give us a truer and more vivid picture of its desolation than is given in this brief but clear utterance of prophecy: “Her cities shall be in the midst of the cities that are wasted.”
The traveler cannot turn in any direction without encountering mounds of ruins which mark the sites of ancient cities, more or less “wasted.” Like sheaves on the harvest field they lie thickly strewn over the whole country; and its attraction and wonder are not the Egypt of the present, but what is still found in these heaps of the Egypt of the past.
8. Let us now glance at what is said of the possessors of Egypt.
THE CHARACTER OF ITS MASTERS
is first of all described in one clear, emphatic word: “I will sell the land into the hand of THE WICKED” (Ezek. 30:12). It may be noticed in passing that the phrase, “I will sell the land,” denotes, in the language of Scripture, its unresisting surrender into the hand of an enemy. As slaves are sold into the hand of a master, so will they be sold into the hand of “the wicked.” The dominion foreshadowed is one of irresponsible unscrupulousness and ferocity. The slave has no rights, and the wicked has no mercy. It is strange to find that almost the very words of the prophecy have been unconsciously repeated by those who have weighed the condition of this unhappy country. Volney, for example, calls it “the country of slavery and tyranny;” and Malte Brun speaks of “the arbitrary sway of THE RUFFIAN MASTERS of Egypt.” Of Ali Bey (who reigned from 1766 to 1772) it has been said: “Like his predecessors, he considered Egypt as his private property or life estate, and the natives as the live-stock disposable at his pleasure.” De Leon says of Abbas Pasha that he “was arbitrary, rapacious, and cruel to the last degree.” To show fully how strikingly these words, “I will sell the land into the hand of the wicked” have been fulfilled, we should have to write the history of Egypt. The sum of its story in every period throughout all its changes, from the prophet’s time to the present, is rightly told in those words alone—the land has been sold into the hand of the wicked. We name a few facts. The first governor of Egypt under the Roman Empire, Cornelius Gallus, was guilty of such extortion and oppression that he was disgraced, and died by his own hand. A revolt was crushed by Diocletian in 286 with remorseless severity. Alexandria surrendered at discretion, but was shown no mercy. “Many thousands of the citizens perished in a promiscuous slaughter; and there were few obnoxious persons in Egypt who escaped a sentence of death, or at least of exile. The fate of Busiris and Coptos was still more melancholy than that of Alexandria. Those proud cities, the former distinguished by its antiquity, the latter enriched by the passage of the Indian trade, were utterly destroyed by the arms and by the severe order of Diocletian.” The oppression of the Greek Empire became so intolerable to the Egyptians that the Arabs, burning though they were with the first fervor of their fierce and intolerant fanaticism, were everywhere hailed by them as deliverers. For a short time it seemed as if a change had been made for the better. But it was impossible that the Christianity of Egypt and the Mohammedanism of its new lords could long share the same land in peace. The Egyptians, persecuted and oppressed, rose in insurrection, and were subdued with immense bloodshed. The persecution was continued with circumstances of grosser outrage. A special tax was imposed upon the monks, and as each one paid the tax he was branded upon the hand. Any monk, who was afterward unable to show this barbarous tax receipt, had his hand cut off. Subsequently, every Copt had his hand similarly branded; and the whole community was so oppressed that another rebellion was the result, which, like the former, was crushed and followed by another terrible persecution. The Copts were compelled to wear a distinguishing dress, and their proud spirits were borne down under other marks of shame. About the end of the tenth century they were made to wear, suspended from their necks, a wooden cross of five pounds weight, and to go clothed in deep black, a color peculiarly odious to the Egyptian Mohammedans. In the beginning of the fourteenth century they were so overwhelmed by Moslem hatred that multitudes of them, wearied of a hopeless struggle, embraced Mohammedanism. The small remnant who still clung to Christianity, though now less oppressed, pay a heavier tribute than is imposed upon their Mohammedan countrymen.
But those who apostatized did not escape from their evil destiny by the simple expedient of changing their religion. They form by far the largest portion of the fellaheen, the cultivators of the soil, and these “the hand of the wicked” has long held in its savage grip. “How is agriculture to improve,” Miss Martineau asks, “under such arrangements as the following?—The cultivator undertakes to till a certain quantity of land, all the land, it is understood, being the Pasha’s property, except such as he pensions or gratifies certain parties with. The cultivator engages, in return for being furnished with all that is needed for its cultivation, to hand over a certain amount (in proportion to the produce) after harvest. He receives, among other requisites, an order for a good and sufficient quantity of seed corn from the government granary. When he presents the order, the great official gentleman at the granary directs a subordinate officer to supply the applicant with three-quarters of the specified quantity, he retaining the other quarter for his own fee. The second officer subtracts a second quarter; and the cultivator sows his field with half the proper seed!”
Wilkinson found, as the result of a careful calculation, that, in the most favorable circumstances. The peasant had only two and two-fifths farthings a day on which to support himself and his family. The consequence is that, to keep themselves from actual starvation, the peasants have to convey grain secretly from the fields to their houses, and have thus, while laboring with their hands most diligently, to secure their bread by theft. It is impossible to extort the enormous taxes which the poor fellaheen have to pay without the torture of the bastinado, or what an apologist for the government of Ismail Pasha gaily calls “stick logic.” But it is not government oppression alone which shows how terribly true are the words, “the hand of the wicked,” as a description of the power which holds this unhappy country. The land groans under the ravages of a whole army of plunderers. “Every Verres is enriched by the spoliation of the peasant, from the Mahmour to the Mukuddem, or beadle, of the lowest governor.” Lane says, “It would be scarcely possible for them” (the peasants) “to suffer more and live.”
We know how unenviable is the condition of the Christian peasant under Turkish rule. But, comparing him with the fellah of Egypt, Sir George Campbell says: “If the Bulgarian were content to be a political slave and to submit to occasional outrage, he might have been in many respects tolerably well to do. Far otherwise is the lot of the Egyptian fellah.... The taxation is enormously higher; the methods of squeezing more severe; the personal treatment more uniformly degrading; the bastinado and the corvée are in full force. If a man has anything he dare not show it, and the very beginnings of material improvement are thus cut off to the fellah.” The Right Honorable S. Cave, who was, sent out by our Government to inquire into the Egyptian finances, endeavors in his report, presented in 1876, to account for the corruption which pervades the whole administration. “From the pashas downwards,” he says, “every office is a tenancy at will; and experience shows that, while dishonesty goes wholly or partially unpunished, independence of thought and action, resolution to do one’s duty and to resist the peculation and neglect which pervade every department, give rise to intrigues which, sooner or later, bring about the downfall of honest officials.”
Volumes might be written on the text, “I will sell the land into the hand of the wicked.” The terrible impress of that hand is visible everywhere. The horrors of the conscription, to escape which parents systematically mutilate their children, and of the corvées, or forced labor levies (in which the peasants are driven in herds from their fields, no matter though the harvest is wasted on which their own and their families’ bread depends, and guarded by the military like convicts till their enforced task is done), are well known. The following words may give us some conception of what these things mean for the people. “This afternoon,” writes Lord Haddo, “we witnessed a distressing scene. Some men had been forcibly impressed at a village, and were lying bound in the boats which were to convey them to Cairo, and which, the wind being contrary, were slowly hauled along the shore, while the wives and mothers of the men from whom they were thus separated for life, followed howling and shrieking for many miles.” Attentions were paid to him as the eldest son of the Premier of England (Lord Aberdeen), and he says: “The worst of it is, that the sheikh of each village is ordered to come down to the water with fifty men to haul the boat in case the wind should fail; and the violence, and even cruelty, with which the unfortunate fellahs are driven from their fields with the sticks and whips of the cavasses, interferes with my enjoyment.”
Mehemet Ali, in one of his instructions to the provincial governors, said of his conscripts: “Some draw their teeth, some put out their eyes, and others break their arms, or otherwise maim themselves.” And in order to put a stop to the practice, largely indulged in by Egyptian mothers, of putting out one of the eyes of their male children to save them from the conscription, he formed a one-eyed regiment for garrison duty. Were any consideration or care shown for the soldiers, military service could not possibly be the terror it is to the fellaheen. But the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. The spirit in which the people are treated may be understood from the following extracts from the work of Mr. Villiers Stuart, which is in substance a government report, and which we may therefore accept as written calmly and after due investigation. He found 40,000 men making a canal in Upper Egypt to irrigate the lands of some rich Pashas. No food was supplied to them, nor was sleeping or other accommodation provided, nor tools with which to do the work of excavation. They worked from sunrise to sunset, with no intermission save the few moments during which they rushed down to the river to soak the hard bread, their only food, which their friends had sent from their distant homes. The great majority of them had to tear up the soil and stones and to fill their baskets with their hands. He adds: “Ophthalmia is one evil that results; I cannot imagine a better receipt for the wholesale manufacture of this malady than to work men to exhaustion in fiery heat, glare, and dust all day, and then to expose them at night to the heavy dew and frosty temperature, with the bare ground for their couch, and their calico rags for their only covering.”
“Forced labor in the factories has been abolished on paper, but in Upper Egypt it is still in full swing.”
There the fellahs are subjected to the hardest slavery. Guards are placed at the doors who prevent all egress and the laborers are kept in the building day and night, being compelled to sleep on the stone floor and amid the noise of the machinery. “In 1879 we were witnesses of the following incident at one of the sugar factories. While we were there, there was a sudden commotion, and we found that one of the men had fallen from a gallery and was mortally injured; he was carried out in a dying state. On emerging we inquired for him, and were shocked to find him lying in the sun and covered with flies—left there to die like a dog. No man had had the charity to moisten his lips or to carry him into the shade, or to fan the flies away, or to alleviate his sufferings in any way.”
On some of the corvées, not only are able-bodied men compelled to toil, but even “small children, boys and girls as young as seven or eight years,” who are kept “walking all day up and down the banks with their baskets of earth.” As showing further the character of those into whose hands Egypt has been sold we may note that under the present dynasty, which has been lauded as having done so much for the country, the wretched fellaheen have been subjected to repeated acts of spoliation. At Thebes the Government took part of the land arbitrarily at £7 an acre, and relet it at more than a third of that sum annually. The consequence has been that the people there have been plunged into poverty. Some of them have rented portions from the Government, but “it too often happens that after digging and sowing the land they in the end get no reward but a beating.” We have heard much in connection with the debt of the Daïra lands—the property of the state, and the private property of the late Khedive. They are simply the fruit of the most unblushing and unscrupulous robbery. “Both of them,” says Mr. Villiers Stuart, “represent an enormous amount of injustice, tyranny, and oppression.”
“Like master, like man.” The example of those in high places has been only too closely followed by their subordinates. “During this portion of my tour,” says Mr. Stuart, “I happened to be witness of an incident which is highly instructive, and serves as a typical instance of the behavior of the subordinate officials towards the rank and file of the people. As I passed, a gang of men in chains, probably for non-payment of taxes, were drawn up in front of the Post Office. One of these presented a docket to the postmaster. He answered roughly, ‘You have had your letter.’ At the same time he tore up the docket and threw it out of the window. I took up the torn pieces and found that they were a warrant for the delivery of a registered letter. I asked the postmaster how it came that if the man had received his letter he had been allowed to retain the voucher. The postmaster, seeing that I was disposed not to let the matter drop, now changed his tone and said to the claimant, ‘If you will get two respectable townspeople to certify your identity, you shall have your letter.’ It appeared, therefore, that his first assertion that the man had received his letter was a positive falsehood. This incident furnishes one more illustration of how corrupt and dishonest the official classes are, from the highest to the lowest.”
Even the courts of justice, where the oppressed might plead their cause, are simply additional instruments of extortion and wrong. “It is bad enough in any country to be occupied in lawsuits; but nowhere does a poor man find so much difficulty in obtaining justice as in Egypt. He is not only put off from day to day, but obliged to run from one person to another, to no purpose, for days, weeks, or months; and unless he can manage to collect sufficient to bribe the bashkateb and other employés of the court, he may hope in vain to obtain justice, or even attention to his complaints.” The spirit of high-handed and cruel mastery marks the procedure of all the tribunals. “Criminal cases are dealt with by the Mahmours and Mudirs in despotic and arbitrary fashion; the use of the ‘courbash’ (hippopotamus-hide whip) and of the stick has increased since the rebellion, as also imprisonment in heavy chains. These punishments often fall upon the innocent; for instance, if a fellah, selected for military service, runs away to the desert, his relatives are chained and thrown into prison, although in no way accessory to the offense.”
“How is justice,” Mr. Villiers Stuart asks an intelligent farmer, “administered in your district? It is all by bribery; a poor man has no chance. If he is wronged, if it is a small debt, or if he has been maltreated, or beaten, or robbed, there is a small local tribunal; the constable of the village reports the case to the Mahmour, who if he deems it sufficiently important reports it to the Mudir. If it is a land dispute, e. g., about boundaries or successions, it goes to Tantah; three or four years, or five years may elapse before it is settled. If he has a buffalo or a cow, he must sell it to make presents for chief clerks and their subordinates and even high officials. He is soon ruined. In other cases which are reported to the Mahmour, and by the Mahmour to the Mudir, the man who can afford to bribe the highest gets the most favorable reports.”
This corruption taints the entire official body. The Mudirs and Mahmours are removed with every change of ministry. And hence “they only try,” says Mr. Stuart, “to make the most of their opportunity and to enrich themselves as fast as they can during their precarious term of office. I have known Egypt for many years, and I fear I must come to the conclusion that venality and corruption are so universal, so ingrained in the social fabric, from the highest to the lowest” that he believes the only hope of Egypt lies in having an entirely new set of officials, and Englishmen if possible. Nor is this all. “Egyptian prisons are Bastilles in which men in power immure arbitrarily those who have offended them, or whom they have any motive in getting out of the way. They are sent there without trial or inquiry under letters de cachet; and there they may remain for years, forgotten perhaps by the tyrant who sent them thither, and without means or opportunity of bringing their case to the notice of those who might obtain tardy justice and release for them.”
The masters of Egypt have been increased within our own times. We know what the bondholders are, and whether the terms on which the loans were advanced, or the demands which are today insisted upon, deserve the epithet which the Scripture has applied to the other lords of this unhappy people. But the land has been of late years covered with a flood of usurers, and between them and the bondholders the very heart’s blood of the people is being wrung out. The debt of the fellahs is estimated to amount to two-thirds of the national debt, “and upon this vast sum interest, varying from 3 to 5, 8 and even to per cent. per month is either paid or is accumulating, and increasing the indebtedness at an alarming rate.” The fellahs, unable to meet their debts, are being deprived of their land. “A rapid process of transfer is taking place of the property, i.e., the land, of the native Egyptians to Greeks, and Syrians, and other Christian(!) usurers.” These usurers are as unscrupulous as the rest into whose hands this people have been sold, and we, as a nation, have unfortunately and unwittingly played into the usurers’ hands. It was the custom of Egypt that no land could be seized for debt, and this was one excuse for the exorbitant interest, sometimes amounting to 130 per cent, per annum. But we have been accessory to the change which removed this last barrier which stood between the fellahs and spoliation. “We have converted these ill-secured debts into first class land mortgages. Arabi drove out these pauperizers of the people, but we have brought them back by force of arms.”
Mr. Stuart thus describes the palaces of these Egyptian Shylocks. “Just outside many of the Delta villages may be observed a superior house built in European style: the walls stained cream color, or pale blue, or rose pink, with bright green venetian blinds; a great improvement on the raw mud-brick structures which form the staple of native dwellings. These edifices will always be found on inquiry to belong to the local money-lender—Greek, Syrian, Armenian, or Jewish. He is sure to plant himself wherever the soil is extra fertile, and the neighborhood extra advantageous.” He visited one, and found it “fitted up with European furniture and French mirrors.” “Everything around betokened prosperity and abundance.... There could scarcely be a more striking contrast than the condition presented by the neighboring village.” The villagers informed him that all the usurer’s lands had belonged to them. He adds, “It had now come to this that while the foreign usurer had become a wealthy landed proprietor, not one of the natives had more than a dozen acres left.... I took a sad and sympathetic leave of the poor fellows: decidedly that was not, a flourishing community. That Christian establishment close by was sucking out their very lifeblood, like a tumor or a wen, which draws to itself the juices of the whole body until all is exhausted. The time could not be far off when every peasant proprietor there will be reduced to the position of a laborer on the Greek’s all-devouring estate. The process of adding house to house and field to field... has been brought into vigorous life in Egypt of late years by the operation of the International Tribunals. No feature of the social condition of the Delta forced itself more prominently on my notice throughout my tour of inquiry in its provinces, than this question of the indebtedness of the fellahs in connection with the new tribunals; and I may as well take this opportunity of summing up the conclusions it forced upon me.
“All the witnesses agreed that the usurers—Greek, Syrian, and Jewish—have been the main cause of the hatred with which the Christians were regarded during the rebellion of Arabi; that they have dealt most mercilessly with the fellahs, entangling them in a hopeless net of indebtedness, and using their power to possess themselves of their lands.... They have woven round them a tangled network of debt which no Colenso could unravel—the moderate sum originally advanced, compound interest at exorbitant rates, sums advanced successively since, with their interests, the reckoning further complicated by sums paid on account, no receipts being given. The fellahs have long ago abandoned in despair the task of comprehending their financial position, with its hopeless intricacies, and only feel that they have nothing which they can call their own.”
Everywhere there is the same unscrupulous rapacity, the same disregard of right and justice, which show how marvelous are these words, “I will sell the land into the hands of the wicked.” Take them simply as a description. Are there any, other words that can so clearly mirror the condition of this unhappy land, and that will state it with such brevity yet fullness, with such deep insight and pathos? As a description it is marvelous; but what shall we say of it as a prophecy?
But not only is the character of the masters of Egypt foretold;
9. THEIR NATIONALITY
is also strictly defined; “I will make the land waste and all that is therein, by the hand of
STRANGERS.”
(Ezek. 30:12). It might be supposed that this is merely a re-statement of the prediction which declared that there should no more be a native prince upon the throne of Egypt. But it really carries us farther. The latter prophecy would have been fulfilled had one race—the Persians, or the Greeks, for example— continued age after age to lord it over Egypt. It is intimated now, however, that the Egyptians will know the mastery of more than one people. The inheritance will pass from race to race who, all of them, will stand in this relationship of strangers to the people over whom they exercise their cruel mastery. We have only to call to mind the well-known antipathy of the Egyptians to foreigners, the contempt in which they held them, and their treatment of their captives in compelling them to toil under the lash of the taskmaster upon their public works, to see the fitness of the doom. They boasted that upon their mighty monuments no Egyptian had labored; and now it is foretold that by the hand of races, such as they had loathed and despised and enslaved, they themselves will be judged for their cruelty and pride.
When we turn from the prophecy which says who Egypt’s masters will be, and ask of history who they have been, we are answered in the very words of Scripture. They have been strangers. The Persians were succeeded by the Macedonians, these by the Romans, and latterly by the Greeks of the Eastern Empire. The Empire fell, in Egypt and the East, before the Arabian Caliphs. “About the year 887, the power of the caliphs was succeeded by the reign of the Turcomans, their own janizaries, whom they had called to their aid. The dynasties of the Tolonides, the Fatimites, and the Aïoobites, ruled over Egypt till the year 1250. The Mamelukes, or military slaves of the Turcoman sultans of Egypt, then massacred their masters and took possession of the sovereignty. The Turkish dynasty, or that of the Bassarite Mamelukes, reigned till 1382. The Circassian race, or that of the Bordjite Mamelukes, ruled here till within these very few years.... In 1798 the French abolished the Mameluke aristocracy, and made themselves masters of the whole of Egypt.” After two short years the French retired, when the Mamelukes strove for the sovereignty with the Turks of Constantinople by intrigue and assassination. Mehemet Ali foiled both with their own weapons and founded the present dynasty. An Albanian Turk and a soldier of fortune, he entered Egypt in command of 300 men, sent from his native town to assist in expelling the French from Egypt, and, step by step, through wiles and blood, he fought his way to the throne. And not only is it true that foreigners have filled the throne, they have held almost every office of emolument and trust. Mehemet Ali among his many reforms attempted to change this practice. He appointed native governors “with the very liberal intention of allowing the peasants to be ruled by their compatriots, instead of the more humiliating custom of subjecting them to foreigners.” The change had continued for only five years, when it was “found necessary to return to the old system;” and today it is as true as ever that the country is in the hands of “strangers.”
The last point we name is
10. THE WORK OF EGYPT’S MASTERS.
“I will make the land waste and all that is therein by the hands of strangers” (Ezek. 30:12). The desolation, which we have already seen was to fall, might have come in many ways. It might have sprung from causes over which man had no control, and it might have fallen in spite of the best efforts of the foreign successors of the Pharaohs. But here the story of the desolation is fully told. It will be the result of long and increasing oppression. It will not happen in spite of the efforts of these strangers: it is the work for which they are to come, and, when they have passed away, this will remain as the token that they have been. Egypt’s native rulers were remembered by the advancement of their country’s weal, and by public works and monuments which filled the breast of posterity with a noble pride and emulation: but the memorial of these masters will be waste and deepening desolation.
Has the work been done? Is the desolation of Egypt distinctly traceable to the strangers? From every side witnesses arise which testify to the truth of the prediction. The strangers have wasted the land. I have already referred to the neglect of the canals. The revenues which ought to have been, and which would have been but for the most unprincipled voracity, applied to their maintenance have been withheld, and what might have been fruitful fields have become a desert. What has been already said of the steadily deepening desolation of Egypt has been shown to be the work of its foreign masters. And other strangers than its masters have aided in the work of destruction. In 1801 the English, in order to protect their camp from an attack by the French, cut through the embankment between the Bay of Aboukir and the basin of the former Lake Mareotis, and the salt waters now roll over forty villages and the cultivated lands which surrounded them.
The people have been wasted. Clot Bey, writing in 1840, calculates that one-half the population has perished since the time of the Persian conquest. There is no reason whatever, save the continued oppression of the people, why the population should not even now spread out to its ancient dimensions. Were all the land cultivated, which can still be sown, the produce would be sufficient to maintain a population of 8,000,000—about twice the number of the present inhabitants. The people do not perish, therefore, for lack of room; their decrease is not simply the consequence of the lands being wasted. It is wrought by the hand of the strangers. The villages are depopulated first of all by the conscription. Lane calculated that, under Mehemet Ali, every second man out of the whole number fit for military service was taken for the army and navy; and M’Coan admits that the conscription is still out of all proportion to the military necessities of the country, and a serious hindrance to the progress of agriculture. Another cause of the decrease is the corvée—compulsory labor upon public works, and on the estates of the Khedive and others whose demands the poor fellaheen can neither resist nor gainsay. Some notion of what this means for the peasant may be gained from the story of the Mahmoudieh canal, as told by Mr. Stuart. “The important waterway between the Nile and Egypt’s greatest seaport has a sad history, and furnishes a terrible illustration of the abuses to which the corvée is liable. It was constructed entirely by forced labor, and the sacrifice of life was frightful; those who perished were buried in the embankment as the work progressed. Mehemet Ali had commanded all the sheiks in the Delta to bring the flower of the population from their villages for the work of excavating a waterway from the Nile to Alexandria. In obedience to this call 313,000 persons were assembled along its future course, i. e., at the rate of 7,825 per mile. But the Government had, as usual with forced labor, provided neither food nor tools; the poor wretches had to dig out the canal with their fingers, and to remove the soil in baskets provided by themselves. As the work progressed, and they got below the level of Lake Mareotis the water oozed in, and they toiled in fetid mud. They were kept at the work by soldiers who lined the banks with bayonets fixed; they had no respite from sunrise to sunset, and they lay in their cotton rags on the banks from sunset to sunrise, half-starved, maltreated, with festering fingers, and fever-stricken frames. The tyrant’s commands were urgent; in ten months his wishes were accomplished, and a canal, 40 miles long and 200 feet wide, was excavated with men’s hands, but 23,000 of the poor wretches perished in that time from exhaustion and the cruelty of their taskmasters, and were covered up in the mud of the embankments. If placed lengthways along its course there would be throughout the route but an interval of 2 yards between the feet of one corpse and the skull of the next—a grim line of sentinels.
“I once traveled by boat through the Mahmoudieh canal from Alexandria to Atfeh, a distance of forty miles, but during the entire trip I could not divest myself of the feeling that I was between walls into which the bodies of 23,000 human beings had been built. As I sailed along, the banks seemed to my mind to grow transparent, and I saw nothing but those miles of skeletons, awful trophies of tyranny and cruelty on the one hand, and of human suffering and misery on the other.”
The resources of the country have been wasted. We have seen that its skilled industries have gone. All attempts to revive them have failed. The wealth of the country has disappeared, and in its stead there stands a liability which it is utterly unable to discharge. Ismail Pasha found the finances burdened with a small debt of about three millions and a quarter. It soon swelled to the enormous amount of more than 91 millions. The history of the loans reveals the terrible recklessness of the “strangers.” None of them were negotiated for less than 12 per cent., and the railway loan with its sinking fund cost more than 29. As much as 36 per cent per annum has been paid for the renewal of bills. Out of five loans, amounting in nominal value to nearly 56 millions, only 35 millions reached the Egyptian Treasury. Mr. Cave reports that on this amount the Egyptian Government had paid, by the end of 1875, in interest and sinking funds, nearly 30 millions, and that notwithstanding these huge payments nearly 47 millions—that is, 12 millions more than the Government originally received—remained to be redeemed.
If we ask how the money has been expended, we merely open another chapter in the story of the “waste.” Of “the barrage,” a scheme for damning up the Nile, which cost three millions, and which has been in process from the days of Mehemet Ali to our time, Mr. Stuart says: “Instead of traversing the stream higher tick where it is confined within a single channel, the (French) engineers had chosen a site below the point at which the mighty flood divides, thus augmenting the expense of construction and ensuring heavier commissions and percentages.... The costly structure is more picturesque than useful; the foundations are not deep enough to withstand the enormous pressure of the waters when the sluices are closed, and consequently it has served to irrigate the contractors’ pockets more than anything else.”
And that which is more precious than land, or skin, or wealth—the patriotism, the national sentiment of the people, has also been wasted. I place two statements together. Of the Egyptians as they entered upon their long ordeal of suffering Wilkinson says— “Though far better pleased with the rule of the Macedonian kings than of the Persians, the Egyptians were never thoroughly satisfied to be subject to foreigners.... To the Romans they were equally troublesome.... Proud of the former greatness of their nation they could never get over the disgrace of their fallen condition; and, so strong was their bias towards their own institutions and ancient form of government, that no foreign king, whose habits differed from their own, could reconcile them to his rule. For no people were more attached to their own country, to their own peculiar institutions, and to their own reputation as a nation.” Such was the Egyptian of the Persian the Macedonian and even of the Roman occupation. With that picture compare the following of the Egypt of today. “I have not been able to discover any trace whatever of Nationalism. Arabi did not attempt to appeal to any such sentiment; it would not have been understood.... I came out to Egypt sanguine as to the possibility of establishing representative institutions upon a popular basis, but a careful and anxious inquiry into the actual state of feeling, into the political elements, into the fitness of the great bulk of the people, and as to any wish that may exist among them to possess them, has satisfied me that an interval of reformed administration must elapse before such a change could be either prudently or successfully carried out.”
There is light beyond the darkness for Egypt. The Lord is smiting that He may heal. He has brought them low; He may yet bring them lower: for it stands written “They shall cry unto the Lord because of the oppressors.” But He humbles that He may in due time exalt them. “He shall send them a Saviour and a defender, and he shall deliver them. And the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day.... In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth: for that the Lord of hosts hath blessed them saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance” (Isa. 19:20-25).
But the point before us now is this. We have viewed in its length and breadth this prophetic picture of the Egypt of the present. We have tested it in its minute details. We have taken them one after another, five in the preceding chapter, ten in this. We have laid down each with the same feeling of astonishment. The fate of Egypt’s two ancient capitals is described and discriminated. Thebes is to be “broken,” to be “rent asunder.” The idols of Memphis are to be destroyed, its images are to cease. And for nineteen centuries Thebes has continued in fragments, while Memphis has perished. The temples and images of Thebes remain; those of Memphis have disappeared. The earlier capital still attracts the traveler, and still affords a shelter to the children of the soil: the later capital has neither inhabitant nor memorial. And as it is with the capitals so it is with the country and the people. It was declared that from the time of the Babylonian conquest Egypt’s story should be a story of decay; and from that time to the present hour the career of loss and degradation has continued. Notwithstanding all our own efforts as a nation it is not arrested even now. Egypt was still, however, to be preserved, to continue as a kingdom though the basest of the kingdoms of the earth. Her degradation was to be marked in another way: she was never again to have a native ruler. A blight was also to settle upon the land. The rivers and the canals were to be dried up. The papyrus reeds and the verdure of the riverbanks were to be swept away. The fisheries, one of the chief sources of the people’s food, were to fail; the industries, which were Egypt’s glory and the fountain of her wealth, were to perish. She herself was to be a desolation in the midst of desolations, and her cities were to be in the midst of cities that are wasted. The instruments of her degradation and her misery were described. She was to be the prey of a rapacious, cruel, and foreign mastery. She was to be sold into the hand of the wicked: the land and all that is therein was to be made waste by strangers. Whose eye saw these things? Whose word declared them? One prediction might have been fulfilled by some happy chance, and, perhaps, a second; but what of all these? Can the thought that their fulfillment is due to accident be entertained for a moment? And if not, whose is the Book on which this seal is set? Is it man’s Book? Or is it His “in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways”?