Book C B 
 
 Cop>Tigtit}l^ 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 ' The Wings of the Morning." 
 
 ' Out of Egypt have I called my Son. 
 
A NUBIAN VKNUOk t)F TRINKETS 
 
OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 M. ELIZABETH GROUSE 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY PHOTOGRAPHS 
 
 Boston: Richard G. Badger 
 
 the 60rham press 
 
 The Copp Clark Co., limited 
 
 TORONTO 
 
Copyright 191^, hy Richard G. Badger 
 All rights reserved 
 
 ^4 
 
 MAR 2J i3i4 
 
 The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 
 
 ■ ©CIA362087 
 1^t 
 
TO 
 MY FRIEND 
 
INTRGDUGTION 
 
 NE morning in Cairo the author was 
 :alking with a young American coUec- 
 'tor. "When you know Egypt,'* he 
 said, proudly handling a beautiful little 
 figure of Osiris, "you cease to believe anything. 
 You find that thousands of years ago, the Egyp- 
 tians had in their religion all the things which you 
 believed!" 
 
 Others, who know Egypt more superficially, 
 frequently make similar remarks. But, as the 
 collector spoke, a strong feeling came to the author 
 that the discovery of these religious ideas in Egypt, 
 should not give a denial j but rather a confirmation 
 to our own belief. 
 
 So she set herself seriously to study what the 
 explorers and the historians have to tell. That 
 she has expressed in this volume what she found 
 is due to the need of which she became conscious 
 in her studies, the need for something to express 
 Egypt as a whole. 
 
 Therefore: This book is neither a guide book nor 
 a history, but a series of essays combining the 
 descriptions incident to the Nile journey, with 
 historical sequence and religious significance, in an 
 endeavor to progressively reveal the development 
 of Egypt and its place in the development of the 
 
8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 world. The excellent guide-books, while giving 
 many details, are necessarily fragmentary, and 
 assume a background of connected knowledge 
 which they require for full intelligibility. On the 
 other hand, of large and technical books there is 
 no end. Whole histories and studies of special 
 periods or phases, these are the great store-houses 
 of the knowledge of the Past, the gift to the Present 
 of men, who, through prodigious and untiring 
 labor and life-long devotion have opened up the 
 earth and unsealed the inscriptions, permitting us 
 to enter the mystic world that was before us. A 
 sight of the "treasures of darkness" awakens the 
 wonder of that labor, and makes the writer, whom 
 these wise men have admitted to that Past, but 
 who has not held a spade or a cipher, very humble 
 in offering her guidance to others. Yet few read- 
 ers or travellers have time to learn for themselves 
 all that the savants have produced — the interpre- 
 tation of which changes so rapidly, that the knowl- 
 edge of twenty-five years ago is completely revised, 
 and in some cases, reversed. A book based upon 
 the recent findings, which should combine descrip- 
 tion with history and religious interpretation, 
 might, by revealing Egypt, as an articulate whole, 
 give a coherent answer to many a question. 
 Therefore, the author has taken the tourist's 
 route, and by aid of the lamps most recently pro- 
 vided, has tried to show jthe ancient buildings in 
 this illumination. In describing ithem with suffi- 
 cient detail, as she hopes, to make the book useful 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 in each place, she has told the stories of these 
 ruins, endeavoring to put the life into each, and to 
 show the special idea each stands for in the history 
 of Egypt and in the development of the theological 
 thought of the world. 
 
 At the same time, though it is not a guide-book, 
 the author trusts this little volume may be found 
 a very thorough guide to Karnak, the centre of 
 Egypt, both in historical and religious importance. 
 
 "Before the Temple" is a survey of the religious 
 organization of Egypt, which story suggests the 
 true significance of the Temple; in "The House of 
 Amon" will be found the separate stories of the 
 Empire kings; and in the "Message" from Abydos, 
 Edfu, and Philae, — the sacred places of the Osirian 
 worship, — the inner message of Egypt to the 
 world. 
 
 The author's thought is based especially upon 
 the historical facts given to the English-speaking 
 world by the translations and history of Prof. J. 
 H. Breasted, who has worked with the German 
 Egyptologists, and by the explorations and pro- 
 found researches of Prof. Wm. Flinders Petrie, to 
 both of whom the present writer acknowledges 
 her deep indebtedness : — to Breasted for historical 
 facts and sequences, and to Petrie for the charac- 
 ters and history of the gods. She is also indebted 
 for the story of the finding of the Pharaohs to 
 Ganon Rawnsley's account. Others also, among 
 them Budge, Brugsch-Bey and Ebers, have helped 
 to reveal Egypt to her. 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 |In spelling the proper names, Breasted's simple 
 renderings have been generally adhered to. The 
 Egyptians spelled only with consonants, thus al- 
 lowing some latitude to the imagination of our age 
 in filling in the vowel sounds. Ikhnaton, Khuena- 
 ten and Akhetaten are the same; Thutmose, 
 Thothmes, and Tahutimi. Those who have read 
 much of Egypt will find their friends under one set 
 of these forms. The arrangement itself of the 
 Egyptian syllables is not always certain, and some 
 well-known names are recognizable by their tef- 
 minations as Greek translations, such as Amen- 
 ophis for the more accruately Egyptian Amenho- 
 tep. In this connection it may be interesting to 
 note that a discovery of cuneiform tablets on the 
 site of the capital city of the Hittites, has thrown 
 new light upon this matter of pronunciation, as 
 also do the earlier found Tell-el-Amarna letters 
 which contain the names of Egyptian kings. 
 Among the Hittite tablets is the treaty with Ram- 
 ese II, of which we have long known the Egyptian 
 copy on the Karnak wall. Its rendering, accord- 
 ing to "Egypt and Western Asia in the Light of 
 Recent Researches," comes near to our old pro- 
 nunciation of Rameses' long name, and seems to 
 indicate that Prof. Maspero's and also the German 
 system of restored pronunciation are neither of 
 them quite right. We shall probably never be 
 absolutely sure. But fortunately, some method 
 of shortening is used by all modern writers, from 
 Greece onward, for the names of these kings; just 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 as the kings of the present day are called but by 
 one of their many appellations. The full name of 
 the great Rameses as we popularly know him, was 
 User Maat - Ra - setep - en - Ra - Ra - meri - su - meri - A- 
 men, or as others give the first part, Setepnere, Re 
 or Ra signifying the same god. 
 
 With earnest appreciation of a meaning in 
 Egypt, the author presents this review of her Nile 
 journey, for which she has chosen from the most 
 important, those things which are typical, or which 
 were necessary to the working out of her thought. 
 When all the details possible have been seen, and 
 when the quiet time comes after, much drops away 
 and is lost in the sweep of the great desert, while 
 from the distance those things of great significance 
 stand out. When we come to think it over, from 
 our individual standpoints, we ask ourselves two 
 questions: What has made the greatest impression .^^ 
 And what did it all mean.^^ For we must all be 
 able to give an answer in order to satisfy ourselves, 
 and to have some expression, some outlet, for the 
 wonder which oppresses our souls. This little 
 volume is the answer one traveller has made to 
 these questions. If it help to grace another's 
 journey, to make Egypt more clear or coherent for 
 another, it will have served its purpose. 
 
 M. E. C. 
 
 PariSy December, 1913, 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter page 
 
 I. The Desert 19 
 
 II. On the Threshold 24 
 
 ni. Egypt, the Dawn 33 
 
 IV. The River 45 
 
 V. From the Love Story of Egypt. 64 
 
 VI. Before the Temple 88 
 
 VII. The House of Amon 102 
 
 Vin. The Valley of the Shadow 134 
 
 IX. The City of the King 142 
 
 X. Israel in Egypt 155 
 
 XI. The Evening and the Morning 183 
 
 XII. A Message from the Holy Places .... 193 
 
 XIII. The Haunt of Horus 204 
 
 XIV. The Gift of Egypt 214 
 
 XV. Light 231 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 A Nubian Vender of Trinkets. ..... .Frontispiece ^ 
 
 TO FACE PAGE 
 
 The Day's Last Load 20^- 
 
 The Carriage of the Khedive 26 ^ 
 
 The Most Important University of Moham- 
 medanism 30 t^ 
 
 The Modern City 40 «- 
 
 The Boats by the Edge of the River 50 ^ 
 
 A Shadouf 58 t. 
 
 The River at Thebes 66 i 
 
 Out of the Past Come Figures. 80 ^^ 
 
 The Family in Egypt 96 t 
 
 A Nile Village 120^ 
 
 Our Rowers in the Lock 136 "^ 
 
 Egyptian Sugar Cane and Humble Egyptian 
 Homes. 156 
 
 Down by the River 180 
 
 Our Villa 200^ 
 
 Water Jars 220 
 
OUT OF EGYPT 
 
OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Desert 
 
 IT is the desert — one cannot say the centre of 
 the desert, or its heart, for there seem no 
 boundaries. At first all is without form and 
 void, it is that which lies back of the Begin- 
 ning. We may speak of the desert expression of 
 Egypt, though the desert has many expressions; 
 for, while sometimes interrupted by the whirlwind, 
 they all seem the expressions of one reverie; which 
 reaches its height at noon when life is fullest and 
 stillest, and we wait breathless for what is to come. 
 Then do we feel how God thought, and the world 
 is. 
 
 From this mood we lift up our eyes to the hills 
 which give us one background, and we realize they 
 are not of the shifting sand, but their foundations 
 are sure. They are, in truth, the oldest hills, first 
 to be raised above the waters, and though they are 
 all barren, among them are cool purple shades, 
 "the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land." 
 
 Under the spell it casts upon us, we journey in 
 the desert. Motion incarnate is the camel, step- 
 
 19 
 
20 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 ping so softly that as we ride, it is the earth which 
 seems to reel, yet in the throes of creation. At 
 last before us rise liie first and greatest monuments 
 of Man, announcing the beginning of Time where 
 they first marked Space; and deep in a hollow, 
 lifting itself from the drifting sands, we find Form 
 emerging, clothing Majesty — a human head. 
 
 Still, after the brief span of human history, it 
 represents the mystery, which we have called by 
 name. For that Time and Space and Form might 
 be, one more thing is essential* the Word — the 
 name of each. Without this word, in the days of 
 dawn men felt that nothing could exist, and further 
 believed that the knowledge of a name gave power 
 over its owner; since the name is the word for the 
 idea of the thing, and thus represents its soul. 
 
 But this word is not the Sphinx's secret. We 
 had recognized its name ourselves, ere we learned 
 that the god for whom it stood, is thus addressed 
 in a hymn of the Egyptians: 
 
 "O Form, one, creator of all things, O one, only, 
 maker of existences." 
 
 Uncovered from the sands, as its inscriptions 
 tell us, by an early ruler in obedience to a dream; 
 and gazing into the morning with wide, unseeing 
 eyes through the centuries, what mystery of primi- 
 tive religion, what revelation of Truth, does the 
 Sphinx embody.? 
 
 Below its feet, in the shadow of the Pyramids, 
 where the river brings life to the desert, the women 
 of Egypt draw water. 
 
THE DESERT U 
 
 The melancholy note of a large bird calls from 
 the valley; small wagtailis flit by us; and a Semitic 
 Bedouin boy in white comes flying from Nowhere 
 on a gaunt camel, waving his arms in sheer exuber- 
 ance of life. Near us, a company of graceful 
 chfldren, clad each in one loose garment, are busily 
 carrying away the earth to uncover some further 
 marvel of the morning of Time. 
 
 We stand beside the Sphinx, with the sun behind 
 us now, and follow its gaze across the tender green 
 of the Nile plain; over the shimmer of the river; 
 over the modern city, to the hills rose-colored in 
 the evening light. Those are the hills from which 
 these first great monuments were wrested — the 
 hills of our first delight. We know that tonight 
 trains of camels are carrying down the day's last 
 load of stone from the edge of the ancient quarries 
 to the boats by the river bank. It is over there, 
 in that continuation of the desert, that One Other 
 and I have taken up our abode, there where the 
 yellow sands sweep round us, and the heavens 
 open above these distant Pyramids for the golden 
 afterglow. 
 
 Back in our village Helouan, from dawn until 
 "the purple earthshadow climbs the mellow-east- 
 ern sky, "* we watch the changes in the Mokattam 
 Hills. After dark itself has fallen, comes a lifting 
 
 *R. Talbot Kelly. 
 
22 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 of the curtain, and the second glow shines out fine 
 and strange, like the light from a golden lamp; 
 while the rock seems to glow from within. Here, 
 shut from all the world, yet with all space about 
 us, we are daily learning the meanings of what we 
 have seen and heard. 
 
 Our villa, the salemhk of an Eastern palace, lies 
 in a garden. The garden is an artificial oasis, but 
 in it the desert blossoms, and nowhere else is the 
 rose so precious. The few houses are the color of 
 the sand, from which they seem hardly separated, 
 reflecting the sunsets in the same way. Some of 
 these buildings are harems, bound round with this 
 monotony of sand. By degrees it is the details 
 which we notice — every rider, every black-robed 
 figure, stands out strongly, till in isolated bits we 
 spell the Present, the ephemeral, eternal life of 
 today, in which we are to have our part. Curious 
 topsy-turvydom, strange anomaly of ancient and 
 modern. East and West. There is much in the 
 situation to amuse us, much which seems irrecon- 
 cilable. 
 
 [It is modern life, our Western civilization, which 
 intrudes itself from the hotel to our villa and flut- 
 ters over the great expanse of desert. "My first 
 horse-back ride was on an elephant,*' said the very 
 large American woman; "my second, on a camel; 
 my third, on a donkey." For us, the saddles are 
 now often on the donkeys, two little brothers, 
 named Black Diamond and Little Joe respectively. 
 
 Little Joe is long and lean, and shows in particu- 
 
THE DESERT 23 
 
 lar the trait supposed to be most characteristic. 
 His obstinacy will allow no other donkey to get 
 ahead of him. When Black Diamond steps up. 
 Little Joe steps out, and gaining with his long 
 stride, heads my donkey off. Neither persuasion 
 nor force can turn his head. Black Diamond, with 
 good nature, but a like obstinacy, tries again; and 
 so we zigzag fom side to side of the road, a process 
 which rather accelerates our arrival, since we make 
 up by the impetus of the racing impulse, for the 
 extra ground covered. 
 
 On the broad desert, however. Black Diamond 
 has a chance. From our saddles the Other and I 
 feel the freedom and charm of the free, golden 
 desert, where even lowly Egyptians walk with the 
 sweep of Victory. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 On the Threshold 
 
 IT was at Cairo, three full moons ago, that we 
 began our journey into the far land of Egypt 
 — Cairo, the new life of Memphis, the city of 
 Saladin's Citadel, and Aladdin's wonderful 
 lamp, the portal to the passage which leads to the 
 Beginning. 
 
 Here we were initiated to the spirit of the land, 
 to the poetry and symbolism of the East, by the 
 Mahmal celebration attending the starting of the 
 Mecca caravan. Once every year pilgrims from 
 Cairo, with others gathered from many lands, go 
 on their long journey to bring refreshment from 
 the fountain of the most wide-spread religion in the 
 world, Mohammedanism; and in the open square 
 of the city, where the ceremonies took place, we 
 saw the Orient rise to life as by some magic of the 
 Arabian Nights. 
 
 The setting was historic. Before us towered the 
 Citadel of Saladin. Whoever may be the Moham- 
 medans' greatest romantic hero and representative 
 to themselves, — perhaps it is Haroun-ar-Rashid, — 
 Saladin is the most romantic figure and the finest 
 representative of El-Islam to Christendom. For 
 it was Christendom with which, as concentrated 
 
 u 
 
ON THE THRESHOLD 25 
 
 in its Crusades, he contended |for the jHttle King- 
 dom of Jerusalem. At that time he proved his 
 knightly qualities by his kindness to his enemy, 
 Richard, the Lionhearted, to whom, as the old 
 story is told, he sent snow from the mountains when 
 Richard lay ill of a fever. The story at least 
 typifies the spirit of the East. Such courtesies, as 
 well as many other things in the Oriental civiliza- 
 tion, were then beyond the comprehension of 
 youthful Europe; and the Crusaders took back 
 many ideas more valuable to them than the pathe- 
 tic little kingdom, surrounded by the desert of an 
 unknown religion, which they abandoned to those 
 sweeping sands hundreds of years ago. 
 
 In the story of the Citadel of Cairo is compassed 
 much of the story of Mohammedanism. 
 
 The height is now crowned by the Mosque of 
 Mohammed Ali, founder of the reigning dynasty. 
 It was built early in the last century and is copied 
 from the great mosque of Constantinople, the 
 present capital of the Mohammedan world. 
 
 At the foot of the Citadel, on the occasion of this 
 Mahmal celebration, was placed the throne of the 
 Khedive. And close beside us stood the sacred 
 camel, waiting to receive the Mahmal, which is 
 the gold-embroidered canopy that symbolizes 
 royalty. How still he stood, the proudest of all 
 camels, never used but for these holy journeys; 
 with what strange silence he received his burden ; 
 while a cordon of soldiers closed around him to 
 protect him from too many touches of the throng- 
 
26 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 ing crowd of faithful, and thus incidentally, to pre- 
 vent the faithful from obtaining too many bless- 
 ings ! One old man fought desperately and persis- 
 tently to reach him. Again and again the soldiers 
 thrust the seeker back, and the master of ceremonies 
 rode up threateningly on his white horse. At last 
 all was ready — battalions of soldiers stood waiting, 
 the attendant camels in gorgeous trappings were 
 mounted, and all were motionless — except that 
 two of the animals turned their heads slowly and 
 observantly, and chewed reminiscently. Even 
 the dervish water and lemonade-carriers and 
 the cake-boys who had moved among the throng, 
 became transfixed with expectancy. Everything 
 awaited the arrival of the Khedive. 
 
 Suddenly the band struck up, four white-robed 
 runners dashed into view on the further side of the 
 square, a four-horse carriage drew up before the 
 throne, — and the Khedive had come. The lines 
 of soldiers widened to form an avenue for the 
 camels; and to monotonous, rhythmic, Arab music 
 the procession started, the long rhythmic stride 
 of the Mahmal-bearer scarcely swaying the canopy. 
 Around in a circle some four times they passed, 
 then crossed to the Khedive that he might kiss the 
 rope of the sacred camel, and went out at the 
 farther side. 
 
 There followed an imposing review of the Egyp- 
 tian army, some of whom were to escort the cara- 
 van. Then the carriages drove away; and, when 
 the guards were released, the crowd surged over 
 
ON THE THRESHOLD rt 
 
 the square, as a mighty rush of water when a dam 
 is broken. Not a foot of ground in that great 
 open space, so ample for the review, was now 
 visible. It was the annual religious flood-tide in 
 the people's lives. 
 
 This is Egypt, this is Mohammedanism. 
 
 Strains and fragments of its poetry recur through 
 the modern life of Cairo. The beautiful white- 
 robed runners, the short-lived Sais, precede the 
 carriages; veiled and black-robed women move 
 about, carrying their naked babies astride their 
 shoulders, as did Egyptian women of old. And 
 water-carriers are everywhere: — some with the 
 skins of unfiltered Nile water; others w4th jars of 
 filtered water on their backs, from wliich by bend- 
 ing, they may pour the liquid over their shoulders 
 into little cups; and still others with large glass 
 bottles slung before them containing lemonade. 
 
 These water-carriers are all dervishes, but we 
 see nothing here or in their ceremonies of this 
 religious aspect of their lives. The ceremonies of 
 the howling and dancing dervishes to which for- 
 eigners are admitted are but a travesty upon their 
 genuine religion. 
 
 As we followed the crowd back into the town, 
 we realized how two architectural beauties mark 
 the background of this Eastern life — everywhere 
 the lacy, heaven-aspiring minarets and the fast 
 vanishing " mashrabiyeh " windows. The name 
 given to these beaded woodwork windows signifies 
 "place of water" and was originally applied only 
 
28 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 to that projecting portion where the water was set 
 to keep cool. They have their romance too, these 
 windows, since they form the screened balconies 
 through which the women peer down upon the 
 world. Unfortunately, much of the woodwork 
 has now been stripped from the houses and carried 
 away bodily to make screens in Western homes.* 
 This denudes Cairo of one of its chief graces — and 
 under the present law the balconies may not be 
 replaced for fear of fire. 
 
 One still sees in the bazaars the fascinating 
 equipment of Eastern life; alluring because that 
 life is so hidden from us, and the possession of its 
 externals seems to give an entrance to it, at least, 
 suggests its mysteries. But it is to be regretted 
 that most of the contact of Europeans with natives 
 is through bargaining — a most superficial contact 
 and often entirely without understanding on the 
 part of the Westerners, who condemn what they 
 consider Oriental dishonesty. Yet they them- 
 selves do not seriously object to getting a bargain; 
 why should they be disturbed at the Oriental 
 attempt to make one? To the credit of the native 
 be it said that it is a game which he enjoys most 
 when his adversary comprehends it. Europeans 
 and Americans are prone to treat other peoples 
 with a superior contempt which does not facilitate 
 understanding. The Oriental has a different 
 standard of right and wrong, but he has his own 
 
 *The hotels in Egypt possess beautiful examples. Mena House 
 has the finest collection. 
 
ON THE THRESHOLD ^ 
 
 deep sense of honor. His simple and childlike 
 intensity of feeling is accompanied and safe-guard- 
 ed by a profound reserve. It often leads him to 
 display the opposite of his true seK, — as Lane 
 makes clear, — and few indeed, among the students 
 of the Orient, has he trusted suflBciently to admit 
 them to the secrets of his inner life. 
 
 The bazaars of Cairo do not compare with those 
 of Tunis, which is a far more Oriental city. Yet 
 they suggest the Arabian Nights; and the building 
 in which we found the chief of them, charmed us 
 with a spell far different and deeper. For the 
 narrow street runs through the Khan-el-Khahl, a 
 house of the same idea as the khan or inn at Bethle- 
 hem — the first kind of hotel, a building into which 
 the caravans of olden time came and were unload- 
 ed. The goods were placed on the ground floor 
 and sold there, while the merchants lodged above 
 them. In Mediaeval days commerce meant travel 
 and adventure. Venice, the gateway from the 
 East to the West, possesses such a building erected 
 for the merchants, with sculptured camels to indi- 
 cate its use. Cairo was once full of khans. 
 
 It was the Mohammedan Arabs of the Middle 
 Ages who, as a Semitic people, living an Old Testa- 
 ment life, cast upon Egypt and the Egyptians the 
 glamour of the East, and became to Christian 
 Europe which strove with them, a living illustra- 
 tion of the West-adopted Bible story. 
 
 In Cairo one finds today the most important 
 university of Mohammedanism in the Mosque of 
 
80 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 El-Azhar, with its seven thousand scholars from 
 different parts of the Mohammedan world "all 
 seated on the ground." The students from each 
 country have a room to themselves. 
 
 Geography has been introduced into the curri- 
 culum only within the last few years. Wonderful 
 is the delight of the teachers in their new appli- 
 ances; but we were told that students, beholding 
 Cairo as a pin-head on the map of Africa, refuse 
 to beheve. Is not Cairo the great centre of the 
 world? — the rest but a small fringe or margin? 
 
 It is the study of Koran Arabic and the memor- 
 izing of that holy book by writing it, which occupy 
 most of the school life of these youths. The class- 
 es, if such they can be called, are innumerable 
 Kttle groups, each about a teacher, the members 
 of each being near of an age. Many a little circle 
 we find of Kindergarten years. Quiet, industrious 
 and subdued under the stern watchfulness of their 
 teachers, the gleam of their eyes reveals their 
 native merriment and life. Is it this quality that 
 keeps them cheery under conditions which our 
 spoiled babies could not survive? They are writ- 
 ing with clumsy little fingers passages of the Koran, 
 or perhaps the ninety-and-nine beautiful names of 
 God, which are for them the beginning of knowl- 
 edge. This method reminds us of the scholastic 
 period of education in Europe — with this difference, 
 that the motive beneath and through the Moham- 
 medan learning is faith. 
 
 It is within the mosques that we see Moham- 
 medanism in its most ideal and poetic aspect. 
 
ON THE THRESHOLD 31 
 
 Five times a day at hours prescribed and in the 
 eight positions of prayer must the devout Mo- 
 hammedan praise God. If he is in his Httle shop 
 in the bazaars and cannot get away to the mosque, 
 he must, at the nearest possible moment to that 
 which is ordained, drop down upon his prayer- 
 rug facing Mecca, and withdrawing his eyes from 
 the world about him, repeat those worshipful ex- 
 pressions which constitute his contemplation of 
 the Universal. It is a curious and suggestive 
 picture. The small open shop is raised somewhat 
 above the ground, so that we commonly sit on the 
 edge of the floor as on a bench, to bargain. At 
 prayer time, the walls form a frame, enclosing the 
 rich background of rugs and Eastern ornaments, 
 and the one white figure, with its look of inner 
 absorption. 
 
 But somehow this picture reminds us of that 
 Eastern praying on street corners, once so simply 
 and so strongly condemned. 
 
 In the mosque, it is different, when the wor- 
 shippers, having bathed hands and feet like the 
 Hebrew priests of old, at the holy fountain of ab- 
 lutions in the court, walk barefoot on to the holy 
 ground and seem to enter into the silence. 
 
 The Mosque of Sultan Hassan, in the shadow of 
 the Citadel, is the finest in Cairo. Its magnificent 
 door is perhaps the most exquisite example of 
 Arabic stalactite work in Egypt. But it is the 
 cracked old walls which have for us a peculiar 
 fascination, for this mosque was built from the 
 
82 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 Great Pyramid. We know that those old stones 
 were quarried thousands of years ago, near our 
 present abiding-place; were taken across to the 
 western side of the river, and over the hard road 
 of the pyramid builder to be an inner coating of 
 the mighty tomb of Cheops. Memphis faded 
 when the glory of Alexandria arose; and later, the 
 ancient city was destroyed that the stones of 
 Memphis might become Cairo on the eastern 
 river-bank. Then these blocks were retransported 
 to receive new life — I had almost said, to enclose 
 the latest chapter in the story of the ancient build- 
 ing; but the mosque is already tottering, and the 
 Pyramid will continue to be when the beautiful 
 Mohammedan temple has perished. 
 
 In our imagination the crumbling walls already 
 fall apart and we pass through the portal of the 
 East, back toward the Beginning of the West. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Egypt, the Dawn. 
 
 AS in the sunset skies and the desert sands 
 the color of barren Egypt is marvellous, 
 so is it with the life of the people. The 
 color is the revelation of Egypt: yellow 
 houses, whose chief beauty is their woodwork; 
 mixed costumes of all colors; dark faces. It is 
 true that the white Semitic Orient of other coun- 
 tries seems to mean a finer development, while it 
 yet speaks of that early stage wliich possesses 
 spiritual revelation and which belongs to the East. 
 But the color of Egypt is the color of dawn, present 
 now in the sunset, — yea, it is the color out of 
 which the white light of eternal day is made. 
 
 It was the Past which drew us in the stones of 
 Cairo, yet the way back seemed long at first. We 
 felt that we possessed a clue for ourselves when we 
 could decipher a few hieroglyphic signs. So each 
 individual may have the feeling of a discoverer. 
 Gradually the Past absorbed us, until Egypt be- 
 longed to the ancient Egyptians — all that has hap- 
 pened since seemed accident and impertinence. 
 The magnitude of the Past overcame us, and a 
 magic drew us into the spirit of those far-off times. 
 
 33 
 
34 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 Egypt, from Cairo to Philae, the Gem of the 
 Nile, — Egypt is the museum of the world, with a 
 poetry of symboHsm in a romance of stories which 
 clings to it all. Those stories form part of the 
 foundation of our own. The museum in Cairo is 
 Egypt's heart, where are now gathered together 
 and protected the mystic treasures which are 
 found: jewelry of queens and princesses; scarabs 
 with the names of kings; papyri; gods and god- 
 desses; and the ushabtis, "little answerers," figures 
 of servants buried with the dead, so that when the 
 spirit is called to work in the Afterworld, they may 
 answer for him, "Here am I!" 
 
 What poetry we find in the Egyptian titles: 
 "The Book of Portals" and the "Book of that 
 which is in the Underworld!" The Egyptian idea 
 of the Ka or double, with its sign of the upHfted 
 arms was as the Hindoos' "Astral body;" and 
 their thought of the after-life, like that of the Mo- 
 hammedans today, was the thought of a long 
 journey. 
 
 Wonderful old Egyptians, who divided Time in- 
 to our calendar, long before history began; who 
 measured the hours of the day and night and saw a 
 symbol for each; who first wrote of the seven ages 
 of Man! Back through Rome and Greece, with- 
 out a break, we can trace in Egypt the beginnings 
 of our science, of our material civilization. And 
 beyond all this there is something, formal still, but 
 more profound than all. 
 
 There came a moment when, in the royal room 
 
EGYPT THE DAWN 35 
 
 of the museum we gazed face to face upon the 
 Pharaohs. That is where the spell was laid upon 
 our own lives, through our deepest feeling. Here, 
 with his strong, still, old face uncovered, is the 
 second Rameses, Rameses, the Great, father of 
 Pharaoh's daughter. Merneptah, his son, the 
 Pharaoh of the Exodus, is also here, but his body 
 has never been unwrapped. Because of the He- 
 brew story, there are those who refuse to believe 
 that it is he, and we know that his own tomb ap- 
 pears as if unused. But the Israelites made their 
 record after looking from the other side of the 
 waters in a moment of intense excitement and re- 
 lief. There is every reason to suppose that Egyp- 
 tian troops may have been overwhelmed in the 
 sand at the head of the Red Sea, but Merneptah 
 was not with them and escaped. 
 
 These, then, are the Pharaohs, whose story was 
 told us when, in our own form of religion, incul- 
 cated in childhood, we were taught reverence. 
 And the deeper we advance into this mysterious 
 land, the more in its broadest sense do we realize 
 that religion is the secret of Egypt, the secret of 
 the Beginning. 
 
 Under the spell which conquered the interest of 
 the Present, we visited again and yet again the 
 Pyramids. 
 
 Bronze lions guard the entrance to the bridge, 
 over which, while it was closed against the river 
 traffic, we passed in the midst of carriages, laden 
 camels, wide-panniered, jostling donkeys, and 
 
36 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 pedestrians. From a garden at the other end, a 
 tram carried us along the beautiful road. This 
 road was constructed for the pilgrimage of the 
 Empress Eugenie to these wonders of ancient 
 Egypt at the time when the Kliedive Ismail built 
 Ghezireh Palace for her reception, and when he 
 entertained her with such splendid f^tes as the 
 world has scarcely seen and only an Oriental 
 imagination could conceive. But a Western world 
 was obliged to take charge of the financial side of 
 Ismail's affairs, and Ismail died, broken-hearted, 
 in exile in Constantinople. The Empress Eugenie, 
 bereaved in a different way of her empire, — of her 
 husband and her son, wanders sometimes in her 
 dahabieh up the Nile and through the land of 
 Egypt. Ghezireh Palace is an hotel, and this 
 road of proud remembrance is the highway of the 
 camel of the Bedouin and the carriage of the 
 European. Occasionally a horse appears in gor- 
 geous Oriental trappings. The tramway runs 
 along one side of the way under a row of magnifi- 
 cent trees; and thus we approached the first to be 
 built and the last to survive of the Seven Wonders 
 of the World. We dropped the Present when we 
 stood beneath it — the Great Pyramid — over- 
 whelmed by its size and the fineness of its masonry. 
 Such piles of stone, royal Mountains of Man, 
 rise, breaking the desert for twenty miles on the 
 western side of the river, but this Ghizeh group 
 alone are "The Pyramids" to us all. They are an 
 ennead standing for a dynasty, though only the 
 three largest are generally known. 
 
EGYPT THE DAWN 37 
 
 The position, the proportions, and the relations 
 to one another of these three pyramids, reveal 
 remarkable knowledge of direction, geometry, and 
 principles of construction; they fill us now with 
 amazement at the methods by which in that non- 
 mechanical age, such prodigious weights were 
 handled. As the outcome of their revelations, the 
 Pyramids have furnished material for whole chap- 
 ters, and even volumes, upon their secret signi- 
 ficance. With what amount of conscious knowl- 
 edge of occult meanings, these buildings were con- 
 structed, we can hardly know, but that which is 
 true must prove mathematically true in all the 
 larger knowledge of relations by which it may be 
 tested. Therefore the Great Pyramid is considered 
 by some a key to the whole philosophy of sacred 
 numeration. 
 
 We stand where centuries of golden sand have 
 beat about its base, slowly or swiftly have drifted 
 or swept on it, and after all surged softly past. 
 And it rests firm, a universal symbol, for us to read 
 and comprehend at last. 
 
 The Egyptians, the first historic nation, and the 
 first nation of the West, with whom lay our earliest 
 beginnings of objective knowledge, here expressed 
 their own strong sense of the material realm, the 
 world of Form. Here they raised at the Begin- 
 ning, "the most stupendous mass of masonry ever 
 put together by human hands;" for it must cast 
 the longest shadow over Time. It marks for us 
 our entrance to the Past. 
 
38 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 However, the Pyramid not only expresses this 
 particular idea, but the Old Kingdom itself at its 
 height. As Breasted suggests, it is the early state, 
 here wrought into a tomb, beneath the apex of a 
 single block. For the nation belonged to the 
 king, whose control was absolute, with his sons and 
 the members of his family next beneath him, their 
 lives all given to making a material "eternal house" 
 for the body of the great king who was to them a 
 god. Thus the Old Kingdom has perpetuated 
 itself. 
 
 Through all the changing hours of the long day 
 the Pyramids stand the same, yet different. We 
 loved them best in the evening light, when, free 
 from the distractions of donkeys and guides, we 
 slipped around the corner of the greatest, and 
 went south, along the path between it and its 
 family of three. Beyond these, looking along the 
 valley and the desert plateau, we saw, as it were, 
 a vast amphitheatre of sand, smooth as a circular 
 sweep of snowdrift. In a hollow below us, per- 
 petually arising through the earth was that ma- 
 jestic human head. We went down before the 
 Sphinx, seeking its mystery which is never fully 
 revealed. 
 
 Strange stories cluster round this head. It is 
 not the Woman of the Greeks, but once represented 
 a finite human king and then a god. Its inscrip- 
 tions tell how Thutmose IV of the eighteenth 
 dynasty dreamed of, discovered, and uncovered 
 it from the sands. And it is still surreptitiously 
 appealed to. 
 
EGYPT THE DAWN 39 
 
 Just beyond it is a temple, sometime known as 
 the Temple of the Sphinx, but now discovered to 
 be only the giant gateway to the Second Pyramid. 
 We look down into it, as it lies excavated, and 
 realize what a Past is buried here. This gate was 
 on the edge of the desert plateau, so that in flood- 
 time boats came to its steps. From it, as from the 
 others, belonging to the other Pyramids, the white- 
 robed priests entered an inclined and covered 
 causeway, leading up to the Pyramid enclosure. 
 And all was white — gate and causeway and royal 
 tomb, — save when lighted golden by the Sun. 
 The king, whom the people wrought for, but rarely 
 caught a glimpse of, was to them a god. Authori- 
 ty was from the first supposed to be divine. 
 
 The people dwelt in Memphis, the "White 
 Wall," below. Upon a day we visited its site. 
 That capital of the Ancient Empire and largest 
 city of the New — Memphis of ^Ye thousand years 
 and millions of inhabitants — is gone like the grass 
 of the field — gone, to be endowed with new life in 
 the city across the river. 
 
 In a lonely palm grove, where once stood the 
 magnificent temple of Ptah, is the only representa- 
 tive of Memphis in her living glory — Rameses II, 
 in two great prostrate statues. They unlock for us 
 the story of Egypt; their loneliness is full of signi- 
 ficance. It is Rameses, who, more than any other, 
 represents the whole of Egypt, not only in the 
 greatness of his reign and achievements, but in his 
 connection with the Hebrews. He stands for one 
 
40 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 stage in the development of Man, Moses stands 
 for the next. 
 
 Perhaps in no country of the world is history so 
 personal, so completely included in the lives of the 
 rulers. We are personally interested because much 
 that belongs to our own lives had its source in 
 Egypt; and the stories of the kings are spread out 
 before us as an open book along the Nile, — in 
 statues, in inscriptions, in paintings, in the very 
 bodies themselves. The life of Rameses, the 
 Rameses of Hebrew story, is revealed to us in de- 
 tail almost from the day of his birth. 
 
 Time in Egypt is reckoned by the lives of kings ; 
 and in those early ages the mass of the people, 
 being practically slaves, did only the will of the 
 ruler and were truly included in his life. In 
 Rameses, more than any other, is summed up the 
 whole genius of Egypt at its height. He stands 
 for his country, not only in his own period, but 
 through all periods after, and for all time. It is 
 the "Land of Rameses." 
 
 Memphis is gone, save for the great king, who, 
 prostrate, merely rests, serene and unconquerable 
 in his green grove, bearing the image of his favorite 
 daughter, Bent-Anat, on his side. Time enough 
 has passed for everything to drop away from him 
 here, yet he remains alone, and all the greater for 
 that loneliness. 
 
 Ptah, the pylons of whose huge temple, behind 
 the figures Petrie unearthed in 1909-1910, was 
 Rameses' favorite deity and was one of the oldest 
 
EGYPT THE DAWN 41 
 
 and most venerated of the Egyptian gods. It was 
 "he who not only made the germ of life, but its 
 conditions and laws, he who was beginner and 
 beginning." In him they saw the father of men 
 and of their gods. His high -priesthood was a 
 high honor in Egypt, often held by the kings' sons. 
 One of Rameses' own older sons bore it; and a 
 younger one, Merneptah, who reigned after him, 
 was named for Ptah. 
 
 Though the Egyptian priests became initiated 
 to some conception of a universal god, they taught 
 the people to see his attributes under various 
 tangible forms, and each priesthood claimed su- 
 premacy for the particular form it served. To the 
 Egyptian people the idea of divinity personified by 
 Ptah, dwelt in the Sacred Bull, which bore certain 
 curious and definite markings. When one of these 
 bulls died, his successor, to be recognized by the 
 markings, was searched for and was sure to be 
 found. 
 
 Ptah was always represented by the figure of 
 the bull. No wonder the Israelites, living as they 
 had in the Delta country to which Memphis was 
 the key, could not feel at home when they went 
 out into the wilderness without a golden calf! 
 
 Rameses himself had been in the north as a 
 youth. When he was a king, and his campaigns 
 called him into the northeast, he lived almost en- 
 tirely in the Delta country, to be nearer the field 
 of action. This explains the story of the finding 
 of Moses by Rameses' young daughter near the 
 
42 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 university city of On or Heliopolis, which Rameses 
 sometimes used as a residence instead of Memphis. 
 Finally, he placed his capital at Tanis, near the 
 north-eastern border, that he might in person 
 guard the gate to his dominion. Of the two re- 
 cently discovered treasure cities* in the Delta, 
 built of bricks of Nile mud, and believed, accord- 
 ing to the Hebrew traditions, to have been con- 
 structed by them for Rameses, one city bears his 
 name; and a brick, now in the Berlin Museum, is 
 inscribed with the same cartouche, "User-Maat- 
 Ra-setep-en-Ra, " the prenomen which we learn 
 to know so well. The making of bricks was the 
 Israelites' task, and the order to "make bricks 
 without straw," or, more accurately, to find the 
 straw which was no longer provided and still to 
 produce the same number of bricks, was the op- 
 pression which caused the Hebrews finally to rise 
 and move out. Thus they became a nation. Is 
 not that brick as the cornerstone of a new order? 
 
 To the south of the Temple of Ptah, Petrie ex- 
 cavated in 1909-1910, the huge palace of Apries, 
 the Pharaoh Hophra of the Bible, one of the latest 
 kings of Egypt. But the palace was built upon 
 others, a veritable store-house, going down to the 
 earliest times. 
 
 Beyond Memphis is the village of Sakkara, near 
 which is the re-opened tomb of the Sacred Bulls 
 of Ptah, where the footprints of workmen who 
 closed a vault thousands of years ago were found 
 
 *Ilaameses and Pithom. Exodus 1:2. 
 
EGYPT THE DAWN 43 
 
 in the sand inside— a thing so intimate, so fleeting 
 as to be almost spiritual, preserved through cen- 
 turies, to vanish, liberated, at a breath. One of 
 the names of Ptah, was Ptah Sakkar-Osiris, the 
 God of the Dead, literally the Opener; "who be- 
 stows on the departed sun its power of rising again, 
 and on departed souls a resurrection to eternal 
 life on the other side of the grave. "* Today the 
 little Arab village of Sakkara existing on a part of 
 the ancient cemetery, unwittingly bears his name; 
 and many tombs have been opened near by. Back 
 of the Empire, back of the Middle Kingdom, it 
 was the Ancient Kingdom which was buried here 
 many centuries before Rameses, and was treasured 
 up for us in this great Necropolis, which includes 
 the Pyramids and extends for twenty miles on the 
 western edge of the desert. Here is the first great 
 effort in stone, the Step-Pyramid, a lasting memor- 
 ial to that early architect who built it for King 
 Zoser, "the great wise man Imhotep, " who could 
 interpret the king's dream in reference to a seven 
 years' famine and who was remembered as a god 
 twenty-five hundred years afterward; here, too, 
 is the tomb of Ptahhotep, the man who wrote the 
 oldest known book, a book of precepts; here, the 
 "eternal house" of Ti, the first record of a self- 
 made man. Ti rose from the ranks and attained 
 to the hand of a princess, and his children bore 
 the rank of princes. His statue is in the museum 
 of Cairo. 
 
 The sands have drifted over these tombs of the 
 
 *Ebers 
 
44 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 Ancient Kingdom, whose guest chambers were 
 originally small houses built above the ground. 
 The mummy-chambers underneath were bare, as 
 were the shafts which led to them, and the latter 
 were filled with rock to insure the safety of the 
 body. We went down into the guest-chambers, 
 whose walls are decorated with fine reliefs. It is 
 the earth-life that is imaged here, the whole life of 
 the period: hunting, ship -building, agriculture, 
 the bringing of the produce of his fields to the 
 master of the house. We find that then, as now, 
 girls carried the burdens on their heads. 
 
 One may linger long in this life of the Ancient 
 Kingdom, to which one finds entrance only through 
 a tomb. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The River 
 
 STILL under the power of the Past we re- 
 turned to Cairo, and set sail up the river 
 which leads into the Realm of the Ages, 
 the way that kings and princesses once 
 went. On that night of our departure the modern 
 city, with its palaces and palms, slipped from our 
 sight. And then at last Egypt was another dream 
 fulfilled — at sunset, when dreams come true. We 
 have seen how this river, the life of Egypt, is the 
 color of the heaven from which it comes ; while the 
 barren, yellow cliffs that edge the desert on both 
 sides of the valley take on soft shades of rose and 
 are reflected in the water; and the ravines are 
 shadows of purple and blue which give depth and 
 expression to the constant face of Nature. 
 
 It is the setting we think we should imagine if 
 we did not know of it, for that brilliant civiliza- 
 tion, crude in some respects but full of color, which 
 developed here. 
 
 On the second day we came to Beni-Hassan. 
 Donkeys carried us through palm groves and green 
 fields and along the line where the Nile soil meets 
 the sand. At the foot of steep cliffs we dismounted 
 
 45 
 
46 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 to climb, far up and back, to the shelf where the 
 precious dead had been laid away more than four 
 thousand years ago; laid away with the greatest 
 care at the bottom of pits sunk fifty feet deep which 
 were closed and filled with stones. We under- 
 stand what the Hebrews meant when they talked 
 of "going down into the pit ! " The rock chambers 
 above, which we entered, were the places where 
 friends would meet to keep the memories. 
 
 Before one of these tombs, that of Khnumhotep, 
 are two pre-Doric columns, interesting architect- 
 ural milestones of human progress. As the tombs 
 admitted us to the Old Kingdom at Memphis, so 
 here we gain entrance between these pillars to the 
 Middle Kingdom. The strange frescoes on the 
 walls of the guest chambers are a priceless record, 
 opened to be read and learned, and now fading 
 fast away. Each tomb is a book containing a life 
 or the story of a campaign — one chapter in the 
 history of Egypt. The scenes from the life of the 
 deceased, — ^generally a prince or governor — and 
 the inscriptions, supply many facts and details of 
 existence and of historical events in Egypt, in the 
 days of those kings under whom these princes 
 ruled. Among the records are contracts for the 
 keeping up of the tombs and the bringing of 
 flowers on certain days. The most sacred place, 
 the niche walled up at the end of the guest cham- 
 ber, contained that which was cherished most, 
 next to the body of the beloved one — his portrait 
 statue. Might not his very spirit, as they beUeved, 
 
THE RIVER 47 
 
 take possession of it? What can we, in these days 
 of psychical research, deny? We feel a sacrilege 
 in looking on those mutilated statues, whose pro- 
 tecting wall is broken down, only less than one 
 must feel in looking upon the actual Pharaohs. 
 
 These tombs have also their connected family 
 story. Khnumhotep was a partisan of Amenem- 
 het I, the general who gained possession of the 
 throne, and ushered in the Twelfth Dynasty, the 
 classic dynasty of the Middle Kingdom. Khnum- 
 hotep was count of the city of Menet-Kliufu, from 
 whence had come Pharaoh Khufu, dynasties be- 
 fore. This count succeeded also to the Oryx- 
 /Uome, — a nome being one of the principal divisions 
 of Egypt, and he, its ruler, a nomarch. He was 
 the father of Ameni and of Nakht, who were by 
 special favor of the son of Amenemhet, Sesostris I, 
 appointed to inherit their father's "fiefs," Ameni 
 as governor of the Oryx-nome, Nakht as count of 
 Menet-Khufu. Beket, the sister of these two, 
 married the vizier, who was also governor of the 
 residence city. The son of Beket and the vizier, 
 later Khnumhotep II, was appointed by the king 
 to succeed his uncle Nakht as count of Menet- 
 Khufu. He, realizing that his succession came 
 through his mother, whose position as the daugh- 
 ter of a nomarch was regarded as of much im- 
 portance by the Pharaoh, himself sought in marri- 
 age the heiress of the Jackal-nome. 
 
 As we go down through the history of Egypt 
 we shall find the importance of the mother and the 
 
48 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 daughter in the Pharaonic succession itself and 
 even in the temple orders. 
 
 One picture in the tomb of Khnumhotep lingers 
 in our memories. It is a group of foreigners, 
 evidently a Semitic people, bringing gifts, — and 
 was at first popularly supposed to represent the 
 entry of Joseph's brethren into Egypt. But it is 
 now known to belong to a time before Abraham was. 
 Nevertheless it signifies for us the entrance of that 
 Semitic element which so strongly influenced the 
 development of Egypt. This race was in power 
 during the Hyksos period, when Israel's children 
 are supposed to have come in. That wbuld ac- 
 count for their welcome. In a deeper sense than 
 appears on the surface, a later dynasty "knew not 
 Joseph. " 
 
 We were yet more impressed by an inscription 
 within another tomb. Wonderful it was in Cairo 
 to gaze upon the face of Pharaoh Rameses, asleep 
 more than three thousand years. But more won- 
 derful to hear the voice which speaks to us from 
 the walls of Ameni's tomb, a voice silent more 
 than four thousand years, but telling us now of a 
 standard, not merely of right, but of goodness, in 
 that far off time, which we today feel more im- 
 portant to know than anything in that early civili- 
 zation. 
 
 "I have never made the daughter of a poor man 
 to grieve; I have never defrauded the widow;" 
 Ameni, the governor tells us, "I have never op- 
 pressed the laborer, . , - there was never a 
 
THE RIVER 49 
 
 person in want in my time, and no one went hungry 
 during my rule, for if years of leanness came, I 
 made them to plough up all the arable land in the 
 nome — up to its very frontiers on the north and 
 south. Thus I kept its people alive and obtained 
 for them provisions. To the widow I gave the 
 same amount as I gave to her who had a husband, 
 and I made no distinction between the great and 
 the little in all that I gave. And afterwards, when 
 the Nile floods were high, and wheat and barley 
 and all things were abundant, I made no addition 
 to the amounts due from them. "* 
 
 Because of this inscription, the dark portal of 
 that dim tomb chamber on the desert clifi^ is the 
 doorway for us to a knowledge of the spirit of 
 Ameni's time. 
 
 A straight, steep path from the terrace dropped 
 us again to the plain and the present day. We 
 rode back in the sunshine, trailing clouds of golden 
 dust, until we reached the grateful cool of the 
 palm grove, and the little white steamer awaiting 
 us. 
 
 Further up the Nile, our going through the lock 
 of the great dam at Assiut, proved an interesting 
 procedure. Thousands of years ago, the Egyp- 
 tians regulated the flow of the river. That regu- 
 lation was lost, and it is only recently, after many 
 ages, that such a work has been accomphshed 
 again. The lock is at the side of the great barrage 
 which helps to control the water. Our steamer 
 ♦Budge 
 
50 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 slid over close to the bank where lay a line of sail- 
 boats, filled with human freight. So near we came 
 it seemed as if our projecting paddle-wheels must 
 knock these people off. They got up good-natur- 
 edly and shoved; and if our boat had moved off 
 far, a dozen of them would have dropped in the 
 Nile. Presently the water gates before us opened, 
 and out poured a flood of boats, one grain-craft 
 with its idle oar completely covered with birds. 
 Then we moved, with many stops and much shout- 
 ing from our native pilots — for the lock was barely 
 wide enough to admit our paddle wheels, and the 
 current against us was strong. No sooner were we 
 at rest in the box than in followed the line of boats 
 which had been waiting along the shore for an 
 opening of the gates. Two little fishing-boats 
 somehow slipped under our side, and lay close 
 beneath our bow. Madly our pilot shouted, **Im- 
 shi!" ("Go away!") to those behind, unmindful 
 of the push they had given him. They too, un- 
 mindful, crowded in, but the foremost moored to 
 rings so far back in the lock, that the last boat, 
 which was towed, could not be drawn inside the 
 limit. The big spar tangled with another, the 
 lower end was thrust over our lower deck, the 
 smaller spar behind caught in the closing gates, 
 Then there was excitement, for these people are 
 like children. At last, by much moving through 
 them all, the little spar was brought in, and the 
 gates closed. The drawbridge swung over above 
 them, and a crowd passed over it. Slowly the 
 
THE RIVER 51 
 
 lock filled from beneath, the gates before us began 
 to unclose, and the two little fishing-boats scudded 
 out of danger, while we came lumbering after. 
 
 It was such incidents as these which enlivened 
 our trip; for a Nile journey is not only very beauti- 
 ful — a poetic reverie full of the Past, — it is also 
 very picturesque and full of humor in the Present; 
 and these apparently conflicting elements cause a 
 constant confusion in the mind. Our navigators 
 were natives and clever ones, though we frequently 
 ran aground. But what of that! — it was the will 
 of Allah — and as we did not run at night, there 
 was no danger. As for the captain or manager, 
 he was a dapper little European, who used per- 
 fumery, and had nothing to do with the running 
 of the ship. He was there to control the natives 
 and to look after the passengers ; and right well he 
 did it, as our excursions have proved. He always 
 rode out to meet us and counted us like sheep, 
 that not one might be missing when the ship 
 sailed. 
 
 The second stop in our journey was at Assiut on 
 the western bank. The coming of our boat to 
 these towns and villages seemed to cause as much 
 excitement as must the passing of the boats of 
 former governors or princesses. The people rush- 
 ed along the bank to be at the landing-stage — 
 swarms of black cloaks against the dusty brown of 
 hill and houses. We were as interested as they, 
 while we watched from our upper deck the loading 
 and unloading going on below, and the transactions 
 
52 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 between native vendors of bread and fruit and our 
 native passengers. 
 
 It is here at Assiut, among the rock-tombs 
 similar to those of Beni-Hassan, that records have 
 been sought of the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties. 
 These rulers followed the Two Lost Dynasties, of 
 which we have no records, since they began in an 
 Age of Terror, that broke up the Old Kingdom. 
 The feudal nobles of this place were prominent 
 adherents of the Ninth and Tenth Pharaonic 
 Houses. Here too, is a family story : the daughter 
 of the nomarch widowed, her little son educated 
 at the Pharaoh's court while she, succeeding her 
 father, ruled for the boy till he came of age. 
 
 The old Assiut is now the capital and largest 
 town of Upper Egypt, and was for long the end of 
 an important caravan route. We took a carriage 
 instead of donkeys for the long drive to the town 
 and through the bazaars. Part of the place is like 
 any Southern city, with a long avenue of lebbek 
 trees; part is built, like all the native villages, of 
 bricks of Nile mud. Before the door of one of the 
 huts sat a woman churning something in a skin, 
 her naked brown baby beside her. Some of these 
 dark children are quite beautiful, and full of mis- 
 chief. They did not trouble us if treated kindly — 
 a smile was worth as much as bakshish. Little 
 girls ran after us, crying a peculiar call, a number 
 of syllables in quick succession. Some of the 
 children carried kids to show us, the youngest 
 gleefully turning the animals' heads, which all 
 
THE RIVER 53 
 
 baaed as they came around to position, exactly 
 like the toys in our shops at home. 
 
 Of course the people are dirty and their clothes 
 are dirty — all of a piece. But somehow one does 
 not mind — at a distance. They seem like well- 
 worn dolls, whose clothes are not meant to come 
 off. It was explained to us how the women skill- 
 fully change their dresses over their heads while 
 bathing in the river. The very religion of the 
 Egyptians necessitates much washing of hands 
 and feet, while the earth dirt is kind and itself dis- 
 infects. They are lightly clothed and hve in the 
 pure open air. The question of the flies and the 
 babies' eyes is the most serious one. 
 
 This condition is being slowly met by the medi- 
 cal mission work. There is a large American mis- 
 sion school and hospital at Assiut. The American 
 and English mission work seems admirably organ- 
 ized in Egypt, with the intention not to interfere, 
 but to educate and heal, to train for cleanliness 
 and morality. No vain attempt is made to dis- 
 affect the women in their inferior position; but, 
 among the higher class of men, English university 
 graduates strive to create the desire for a better 
 position for the native women. These college men 
 prepare the way for the women missionaries' work 
 
 Our ride through the bazaars was chiefly occu- 
 pied in bargaining for an Assiut scarf. These 
 charming shimmering pieces, known all over the 
 West as Egyptian scarves, are made by the women 
 here — supposedly for bridals, — and, with the red 
 
54 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 pottery, are the specialties of the town. Our car- 
 riage, accompanied by a smiHng native policeman, 
 was surrounded by merchants, and the bargaining 
 began as we entered the narrow streets and ended 
 with the flinging of the graceful thing into our 
 laps, as we drove out. When we arrived at the 
 side of the steamer, we found brisk bargaining 
 going on there also, prices sinking rapidly as the 
 moment of departure drew near; and purchases 
 were made as long as money and goods could be 
 thrown across the widening strip of water between 
 the Egyptians and their amused and eager cus- 
 tomers. In fact, the eagerness of the latter to get 
 a bargain quite equalled that of the sellers them- 
 selves. Turkish customers, negotiating with na- 
 tives, assume an air of supreme indifference. 
 
 As we advanced up the river our first temple 
 took us again into the Past. It was the Temple of 
 Dendera. We had read how the building was be- 
 gun some hundreds of years before the Roman 
 days in Egypt, was finished about the time of 
 Cleopatra, and used through the Roman period; 
 how it and its accompanying outside chapels had 
 become, during the centuries since, gradually 
 buried, until it was merely a hill upon the top of 
 which modern Egyptians had built their houses; 
 and how the authorities in charge of antiquities 
 have cleared away the modern incumbents, and 
 have dug out the temple, casting up the sand in a 
 circle around it, a little distance from its walls and 
 quite as high. 
 
THE RIVER 55 
 
 Through fields of Egyptian clover we rode to the 
 spot on donkeys, which strung themselves along 
 the path, as if going to some old festival. 
 
 Before us in the desert, beyond the living green 
 plains, appeared a huge, uneven mound of earth. 
 As we approached, it opened; and like something 
 taking shape out of chaos, there rose in the centre, 
 with the earth still clinging to its sides, the perfect 
 temple — a building of wonderfully beautiful pro- 
 portions, its sculptures seeming not broken, but 
 scarcely finished yet. That was the impression — 
 we had come to witness a resurrection ! 
 
 Down into the solemn hall we passed, among 
 the giant Hathor pillars, which marked this temple 
 as belonging to a goddess, the personification of 
 Nature; on into the dark ante-chambers and the 
 corridors, marvelling at the massiveness of the 
 building, marvelling equally how every inch of its 
 many walls, inside and out, is covered with reliefs 
 — among them the famous Cleopatra; on into 
 the little court and temple in the side, where from 
 the ceiling, the sun shining upon Hathor's head 
 symbohzes the blessing of the temple; and into the 
 holy of holies in the heart of the great building: — 
 feeling more and more deeply the majesty and 
 mystery of the Egyptian priesthood, and the sub- 
 tlety of the Romans who could recognize the 
 attributes of their own gods under Egyptian 
 names. Into the secrets of the priests we entered, 
 passing down to their subterranean treasure cham- 
 ber in the thickness of the wall. It still contains 
 
56 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 the treasure of the temple, reHefs of finest work- 
 manship. We found this place as difficult of 
 access as it well could be. At the back of the 
 farthest chamber of the temple a flight of stairs 
 leads down to a wall in which, some distance 
 above the level of the lowest step is an opening 
 like an oven door. On the other side is a landing, 
 from which, lighted by the candles of the guide, 
 we made our way down more stairs at right angles 
 to the first, leading to a long, narrow, airless pas- 
 sage. It is a passage full of wonders, which flash- 
 ed upon us and receded into darkness. Every 
 hair of the sculptured heads, every feather of the 
 birds, is perfect. But a sudden alarm seized us. 
 A stout helmeted African-Englishman of our 
 ship's company, had attempted to come down, 
 and though divested of the helmet, which he had 
 left in the charge of some young Turks, he stuck 
 fast in the oven door. Still he would not miss the 
 treasure and somehow dragged himself through, 
 finally liberating us, whom he had penned below. 
 We were glad to come up after that and to seek 
 the light of day, so we went to the roof, a roof of 
 temples and terraces, upon which, before the 
 resurrection, had stood the Egyptian village. 
 From its highest level we looked over the Nile 
 valley and saw at our feet the small but exquisite 
 birth chapel just emerging from the ground. We 
 descended by the long East stair, dark almost all 
 its length; yet as we held our candles to the wall, 
 we could see that there was with us a great proces- 
 
THE RIVER 57 
 
 sion; and beautiful were the forms and exquisitely 
 moulded the faces of those silent companions. It 
 was the procession for Dendera's festival — the 
 festival of the New Year — which perpetually 
 through all the ages, passes up the East stair and 
 down the West. In modern buildings one may 
 sometimes feel a presence, where one may not see. 
 In these cold halls, one sees. 
 
 We passed out of the gate of Dendera and rode 
 away; and we looked back, trying to see it all 
 again — only to find that the temple had vanished, 
 apparently had returned into the earth. But we 
 hold it in our minds, the perfect model, by which 
 to understand and re-construct all the temples of 
 that old religion. 
 
 On we passed up the flowing river, so changing 
 yet constant, so full of reflections — the same Nile 
 which was the life of the ancient Egyptians. How 
 beautiful it is, how mysterious! As we gazed 
 upon its surface there was explained to us anew 
 one of Egypt's secrets: — How the Egyptians, un- 
 able to look upon the sun, which symbolized God 
 for them under the name of Amon-Re, beheld him 
 in his reflection in the water with his light spread 
 into wings. Is not this the meaning of that Wing- 
 ed Sun found above the first portal to all Egyptian 
 temples? Were they not the Wings of the Morn- 
 ing.? 
 
 Over the river, across the reflection of this Wing- 
 ed Sun of all time, float the cross-winged sail-boats 
 of today. On shore, are friendly groups of leb- 
 
58 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 bek trees, and every here and there a terraced cut 
 in the bank where groups of men raise the water in 
 buckets from one level to the next. As we pro- 
 ceed further south, this Shadouf, as it is called, is 
 replaced by the Sakieh, or wheel. A wall of 
 masonry closes the cut beneath the trees. The 
 string of buckets depends from the wheel, and a 
 patient ox is turning it, a cluster of villagers is 
 always about it. 
 
 The melancholy creak of the wheel sounds far, 
 till it is thin and musical as an Aeolian harp. It 
 is said that once a wheel was so perfectly put to- 
 gether that it could not creak; but the owner was 
 wroth with the maker and declared that the Sakieh 
 was not perfect for him, since he could not tell 
 whether the boy who kept the ox going was asleep 
 or not. 
 
 All this reveals the cause of Egypt's prosperity. 
 The watering of the land is at the root of all her 
 present agriculture, all her ancient civilization, 
 and must still be laboriously done, in spite of 
 canals and dams. 
 
 From Cairo to Assouan we could see the modern 
 life of the modern Egyptians forever drawn to the 
 river like its own upper tributaries and carried on 
 its bosom. The stream, cutting through and 
 opening up the land, today causes green fields and 
 forms a highroad for the natives; and at the same 
 time a way for us to see and understand it all. 
 Modern practical industries have been guided and 
 stimulated by the English. Sometimes the real 
 
THE RIVER 59 
 
 and active life of the Present threatens the destruc- 
 tion of the ideal in the Past, as this ideal exists 
 today in the form of monumental temples; threat- 
 ens perhaps also the romantic ideal of Egypt in 
 our own minds. It is true that in this Eastern- 
 appearing country was the beginning of our West- 
 ern civilization; yet it is somehow startling to us 
 now to find the end with the beginning, and to see 
 Occidental industry and bustle in this Orient- 
 colored land. 
 
 Truly, Man has travelled far in Egypt. 
 
 However, this modern life of Egypt, which itself 
 contains opposite elements, and also conflicts 
 with the old, still receives a double beauty from 
 the Orient and the Past. Near Helouan, we saw 
 how stone is cut beside the mouths of the ancient 
 quarries; and how it is carried on camels to boats 
 beside the Nile. On our journey our studies were 
 occasionally punctuated by the smoke-stacks of a 
 sugar factory, which we took at first for an obe- 
 lisk. Perhaps the reality jarred upon our sensibi- 
 lities. Yet the sugar-cane is still carried under 
 picturesque Egyptian sails, and thatches humble 
 Egyptian homes. Egyptian cotton, also, has not 
 only all the superior fineness of a product of the 
 East, but is still associated with the romance of 
 the camel and the caravan. 
 
 The products of purely native industries like 
 pottery-making, especially the Egyptian water- 
 jars for Egyptian use — these float down the cur- 
 rent and pass us. 
 
6o OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 The river bears a living Present through the 
 whole of history. The history is evident in the 
 varied human types which throng about us at 
 different stages of our journey. At Cairo there 
 were numerous Turks, a few of whom may be 
 found in official capacities up the Nile. There are 
 not many Arabs. Some we saw as merchants in 
 Cairo, others live their Bedouin life in the desert. 
 Their name is erroneously and popularly applied 
 to the true Egyptians by tourists, perhaps because 
 of the Arabic language and the religion last im- 
 posed upon these natives by their erstwhile con- 
 querors, perhaps also because the name seems to 
 cast over them the fascination which the East has 
 always had for the West. After all, religion is 
 before race. But the mass of the inhabitants of 
 Egypt are Egyptians, descendants of that most 
 ancient people. One may often see, in guide or 
 rower, a startling resemblance to the bronze fea- 
 tures of Seti I in the museum. While the Arabs 
 always retain their graceful native costume, the 
 better class of Egyptians, like all the Turks in 
 Egypt, wear the European costume, and at the 
 same time the fez, which is a protest, never lifted, 
 of Oriental independence. Egyptian women, 
 
 whom we visited in their harems in Helouan, 
 imitate European dress with unfortunately poor 
 success. With this change Egyptians seem to put 
 off the finer aspects of their Eastern culture to 
 make rather bad copies of the West. The lower 
 class retain their Eastern costume; Syrian silk 
 
THE RIVER 61 
 
 tunics and black cloaks for the men; black robes 
 and veils and brass nose-ornaments for the women. 
 On the desert, black robes over white tunics are 
 frequently seen, floating out almost like wings, 
 which add to that appearance of freedom with 
 which their owners sweep along. But the poorest 
 peasants, who form the mass of the population, 
 wear a straight dark-blue garment. They seem 
 to live, as do the beasts of the field, on the lentils 
 or Egyptian clover, the plants which make the 
 ribbon on each side of the Nile brighter than any 
 green we know. Often we have observed these 
 peasants in some barren village, sitting down be- 
 side their cattle or the animals of burden which 
 have carried the food, eating the same plant, leaf 
 and stalk. Camels, laden with the clover look 
 like hay- wagons or moving tree-tops. 
 
 Of the other non-European inhabitants of Egypt, 
 the "Copts," whose name was the old Greek word 
 for Egyptians, are those natives, few in number, 
 who have kept that form of the Christian religion 
 which belonged to Egypt before the Mohammedan 
 invasion. They are chiefly clerks or artisans. 
 Theirs is the oldest Christian Church still in ex- 
 istence, and is said to have been founded by St. 
 Mark in Alexandria. Their desert monasteries, 
 built some sixteen hundred years ago have but 
 once in their history been entered by women, — 
 two English scholars who, through a letter to the 
 Patriarch, were recently permitted to search for 
 valuable manuscripts, the pages of which they were 
 
62 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 allowed to photograph. These ladies found the 
 books decaying, inches deep in dust, and the 
 minds of the monks seemed to be in a similar con- 
 dition. It is among the followers of this religion 
 that the Western missionaries appear to accom- 
 plish most. 
 
 The Sais or runners whoni we saw chiefly in 
 Cairo are furnished from a distinct tribe of South- 
 ern Egyptians. 
 
 Hindoos wander through the land as merchants 
 and, true to the psychic quahty of their race, as 
 fortune-tellers. Here and there are bronze-faced 
 Nubian servants or vendors of trinkets and shells; 
 but the Nubians are chiefly to be found, as are the 
 proud Bicharines, beyond Luxor, at Assouan, the 
 end of the journey at the First Cataract on the 
 Nubian frontier. 
 
 In the midst of the varied types, we ascend day 
 by day toward the source of the river. 
 
 Close by the water is always a border of palms; 
 close by the shore is often a line of tall slanting 
 spars. A foot path runs along the edge of the 
 bank some distance above the ebbing river; and 
 along it, out of the Past, come dark-robed flgures 
 riding by on camels or on donkeys, or perhaps 
 walking in companies of two or three, absorbed 
 in conversation. Here and there one, solitary, is 
 outlined against the sky. 
 
 In the black costumes we saw Egypt in mourn- 
 ing for her desecrated tombs. We came almost to 
 fear some subtle vengeance of contagion, which a 
 
THE RIVER 6S 
 
 romantic writer has suggested; and the keenest 
 impression Kngering in our minds is that of the 
 cry which accompanied us along the shore, whether 
 for weal or woe — a shrill, thin, high-pitched, not 
 unmusical cry, coming from a long distance, but 
 filling the atmosphere. Sometimes it was for joy, 
 as on the day of a festival, when we heard it most; 
 sometimes for grief at funerals which crossed the 
 river as of old. 
 
 And still the black-robed women are drawing 
 water — Egypt lives again — nay, Egypt has always 
 lived. 
 
 Going up the river means sailing deeper and 
 deeper into the heart of a great revelation — where 
 the mountains widen to hold Thebes; — it is going 
 back more than three thousand years to the time 
 of Moses and before, when the greatest temples 
 the world has ever seen, were perfect. One may 
 still read the writing on the walls. It is hearing 
 the other side of a story we have known all our 
 lives, — a side only recently revealed after all these 
 thousands of years. 
 
 We have journeyed up this stream to that day 
 when the Euphrates was the river of the East, the 
 Nile, the river of the West, and Israel rose between. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 From the Love-Story of Egypt 
 
 NOW come we to Luxor, the beautiful, 
 the greenest place in the valley, — Luxor, 
 whose tall palms are her living memor- 
 ies of the glory of her great temple- 
 garden. From the days of the Middle Kingdom 
 down to now, the strangers of the world outside 
 have journeyed here to Thebes. She was the 
 "first monumental city of antiquity," where the 
 largest temple of the world still lies upon the sand. 
 Here was its garden, and here the scene of the first 
 historic story of love. 
 
 We passed up the stream between what had 
 been the city of the living on the east bank, and 
 the no less splendid city of the dead upon the west. 
 The shore is strewn with the broken shells of the 
 life which has gone, the fragments left here on the 
 sands of time. Finest of all, most beautiful colon- 
 nade remaining in Egypt, is the exquisite court of 
 the Temple of Amenhotep III. It is not so large 
 as the great Temple, but fairer and less ruined. 
 
 The graceful columns, clusters of papyrus buds, 
 were enclosed by their builders, but today shine 
 down upon the river, and reflected in the water, 
 bring back the spirit of the noble city to us. For 
 
 64 
 
FROM LOVE-STORY OF EGYPT 65 
 
 the sunset glow itself lends them its color, while the 
 boats are passing over from the west, as they did 
 in sunsets of old, and the beautiful pillars reveal to 
 us the ancient glory of Thebes. 
 
 There is no more Thebes, but ruins; and where 
 the southern suburb lay is the modern Egyptian 
 town of Luxor. There we landed. On the river 
 are a row of curio and picture shops, while the 
 rambling hotels are set far back in fascinating 
 gardens. The air is softer, mellower at Luxor than 
 anywhere in the valley. In the morning, shaking 
 off the dragomen, and with no need for donkey- 
 boys, since the temple is close at hand, we went 
 down among those huge papyrus stems and buds, 
 bathed in light, to dream through a golden day. 
 The silent sunshine gilded the temple floor, the air 
 was fragrant with incense of far-off flowers, birds 
 sang among the columns. We entered into the 
 shadows of the hypostyle hall and rested on the 
 base of a pillar. And we remembered Queen Tia, 
 and thought how the life of Amenhotep III, had 
 expressed itself in beauty — as perhaps no other 
 individual life in the history of the world, has ever 
 been able to do. 
 
 For Amenhotep III was king at the height of 
 the golden age of the Empire, the Eighteenth 
 Dynasty. x\hmose of Thebes, the first of his line, 
 had gathered all Egypt to expel her Asiatic usur- 
 pers, and with the army behind him and the 
 government in his hand, had re-organized the 
 state. It was a military state,* which, not con- 
 
 *Breasted. 
 
66 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 tent with securing and developing itself at home, 
 as it had been hitherto, reached out from victory 
 over the alien rulers within itself, to the pursuit 
 of conquest in alien lands. The line began as 
 generals. Amenhotep I followed his father Ah- 
 mose. Then came Thutmose I, and the historic 
 family feud of the Thutmosids, with their in- 
 tense passions raging about Hatshepsut, the Ehza- 
 beth of Egyptian history. When she finally rose 
 supreme, and during her long reign of peace and 
 prosperity, her half-brother and husband, Thut- 
 mose in, was bound to the priesthood of Amon; 
 but after her death, his long restraint culminated 
 in a series of campaigns so vigorous that he has 
 been called the Napoleon of Egypt, the first world - 
 conqueror. He extended the limits of the Empire 
 as far as they ever were placed ; and laid tributary 
 practically the whole of the known world. His 
 son, Amenhotep H, and his grandson, Thutmose 
 IV, — he who uncovered the Sphinx — were each 
 compelled on their accession, to repeat some con- 
 quests in Asia, but by the time of Amenhotep III, 
 this was no longer necessary. Not only had the 
 civil power been established by the military within 
 the state, but to the utmost confines of the subject 
 nations, whose rulers as vassals of the Egj^tian 
 Pharaoh, were educated at the Egyptian court. 
 In the comfort of Egypt's protection, all individual 
 ambition had been lost. 
 
 Safe roads made a fabulous commerce possible, 
 in those fresh days of unexhausted resources. We 
 
FROM LOVE-STORY OF EGYPT 67 
 
 read of trade like that of the Arabian Nights. 
 The customs brought enormous revenues; capital 
 and labor came from the captive nations. All 
 things flowed to the Pharaoh and lifted him to the 
 highest pinnacle. Was ever such wealth, such 
 pride of power? — a pride secure enough to be 
 calm and far above all harshness. He was mon- 
 arch, not only of Egypt, but from Egypt, of the 
 world. It was not organized society, but organ- 
 ized control, that which the Pyramid expressed, 
 lived out to its largest in the Empire. 
 
 As Egypt had been the first nation, so now that 
 other nations had come into being, was she the 
 first world-power. Names that we know begin 
 to appear — though it is not time for Moses for 
 nearly two hundred years. The Court of Babylon 
 acknowledged the authority of Amenhotep over 
 Canaan. The world-conquests of Thutmose, the 
 Napoleon, were followed by the world-politics of 
 his great-grandson Amenhotep. The growth of 
 the world had blossomed into peace. 
 
 Egypt's kings had been brother-in-law, nephew, 
 son-in-law or cousin to all the crowned heads of 
 Asia. And not only were the Semitic nations 
 subdued, but they, the conquered, as is always the 
 case, had their effect upon the conquerors. The 
 Semitic influence, strong since prehistoric days, 
 was now moulded into Egypt, producing a new 
 era. 
 
 Amenhotep III, after the manner of all early 
 rulers, is supposed to have contracted several alii- 
 
68 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 ances with the daughters of other kings; but he 
 showed his supreme power as a Pharaoh, by his 
 abihty to assert, in that position, his independence 
 as a man. In his early manhood, perhaps while 
 still crown prince, he made a morganatic marriage 
 purely for love. He proved his greatness above 
 all in that he could raise a lowly-born woman to the 
 highest place in the world. This is the first love- 
 story of history, and now, for the first time in 
 history, is beauty fully revealed. 
 
 But the story itself retains the charm of mys- 
 tery. Despite all search and research, the details 
 are still largely left to our imagination. 
 
 Amenhotep issued scarabs to celebrate his mar- 
 riage, as a ruler might issue medals today. Tia's 
 name and his were carried even unto Greece. Her 
 name is written with his upon all state documents 
 and she now appears with Amenhotep on all public 
 occasions, and is shown to the people beside him 
 on the rich balcony of the palace. This exaltation 
 of the queen was but the summit, at the height of 
 Egypt's glory, of Egypt's reverence for woman- 
 hood. 
 
 Chateaux and temples had sprung up from end 
 to end of Egypt. In Thebes the magnificent, 
 risen for the second time as capital, and in unpre- 
 cedented glory, the inhabitants walked in richest 
 costumes of "purple and fine linen. " 
 
 Amenhotep now became the great patron, fos- 
 tering the germ of art for the future of the world. 
 
 Alone among the temples upon the western 
 
FROM LOVE-STORY OF EGYPT 69 
 
 bank of the river, he caused to be built the Palace 
 of Queen Tia, a graceful structure of bricks and 
 wood. It was adorned with brilliant colors. 
 Egypt has always loved her white light broken 
 and defined in the colors of dawn. Color belongs 
 to the objective beginning, it belongs to the "Wings 
 of the Morning;" but the color Egypt loved best 
 was blue, — the highest color, the color of culture, 
 heaven's own color, blue. 
 
 Blue were the inner walls of the palace of Tia, 
 blue-tiled with figures in gold-leaf upon them. 
 Had ever a modern queen a more gorgeous or cost- 
 ly abode? The painters put their best work in the 
 palace; and there was not only color but sound, 
 for the soft-toned harp had grown to large dimen- 
 sions and was combined in an orchestra of four 
 difl*erent kinds of instruments, including the Asia- 
 tic lyre.* 
 
 What the furniture of the palace must have 
 been we can only glean in glimpses of such things 
 which the Egyptians kept safely for the future in 
 the tombs. Many have disappeared. Robbers 
 long ago in Egyptian days, stole them away to 
 perish. But it is only a short time since Mr. Davis, 
 a man from the newest and farthest west of na- 
 tions, working here at this ancient capital, came 
 upon the tomb of Queen Tia's unknown parents. 
 No Egyptologist can enter the opening to such a 
 
 *Breasted. 
 
 I believe the palace of Amenhotep III has been one of the three 
 sites in Egypt excavated for the Metropolitan Musuem in New 
 York, which now contains one of its beautiful ceilings. 
 
70 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 place without a feeling of awe, and at the same time 
 of expectant exultation, since it is for him the way 
 back into the ancient Empire. The robbers had 
 been there before, but something had frightened 
 them away, and they had dropped their booty in 
 the tomb passage, where Mr. Davis found it: — a 
 chariot of fine workmanship with an historic battle- 
 relief ; a chair which, the Empress Eugenie declare- 
 ed, was like those of the Empire in France; and 
 back in the tomb-chamber a canopied bier, upon 
 which lay Tia's parents side by side. 
 
 In Cairo, and in the museums of the world where 
 the spoils which the nations have taken from 
 Egypt are hoarded, are fragments of tapestries 
 equal to the best work of Europe, which once 
 adorned the walls of such a palace; chairs and 
 ottomans such as we use today; tables, draught- 
 boards of ebony and ivory, with fine inlaying ;ves- 
 sels of gold and silver, in heaviest and yet most 
 chaste and exquisite workmanship; crystal, and 
 glass, so beautifully colored that the world has 
 never yet re-learned the art of making it. 
 
 Before the palace of Tia, Amenhotep caused a 
 lake to be excavated for her, the supposed em- 
 bankments of which may still be seen. From the 
 dawn of history this people had known how to 
 conserve and manipulate the water-supply upon 
 which their life as a people depended. Just as all 
 public works, especially breaking ground for a 
 canal, were always inaugurated by the king with 
 great ceremony, so, when this excavation was 
 
FROM LOVE-STORY OF EGYPT 71 
 
 ready, Amenhotep himself opened the gates to let 
 in the water, on the day which celebrated for the 
 twelfth time his coronation. He and the 
 queen sailed out over the lake, and a gorgeous 
 festival was made of the occasion.* 
 
 So, near to its lake, is conjured up before our 
 imagination the palace of Amenhotep's Queen Tia, 
 a veritable fairy-palace, because existing only in 
 our dream. But even a fragment of its floor- 
 painting, may give a suggestion of all that must 
 have been — a fragment the feet of this beloved, 
 vanished queen have pressed. It represents three 
 ducks among the lotus, which, with the papyrus, 
 were the first national flowers. And it unfolds the 
 fact that the artists who adorned this palace were 
 skilled in catching the most fleeting, transitory 
 moment which marks motion, and therefore re- 
 veals life. 
 
 The palace of Queen Tia is gone, it belonged to 
 the fleeting, earth-life phase of the individual, — 
 brilliant, beautiful and frail. The temples were 
 permanent, for the everlasting god and the memor- 
 ial of the king, such as men seek to make their 
 temples today. 
 
 It was the temple which concentrated and ex- 
 pressed all the beauty of the age at Amenhotep's 
 will. The work of Egypt was building — we can- 
 not wonder at the development of the task-master. 
 The wise men of Egypt were her architects — it is 
 they who above all were the counsellors of her 
 
 *Brea8ted 
 
72 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 kings, they, whose writings were preserved as 
 proverbs; they, of whom several, after a niillenium 
 had passed since they slept, were worshipped as 
 gods in their country. So did it happen a thous- 
 and years later to the chief architect of Amenho- 
 tep III, who bore the king's own name and wrought 
 the king's wish in stone. 
 
 A great era of building had set in and it seems 
 as if Amenhotep, out of the fullness of joy in his 
 own heart, had said to his architects and artists: 
 
 "You are given men, material, and the conven- 
 tional forms, what new life will you create?" 
 
 And they did create two new things for the 
 future of the world.* One was that small but 
 exquisite cella temple, in which the holy of holies 
 is set within a colonnade, the columns guarding it 
 on all sides. Do we not discover in this a pre- 
 natal influence upon Greece.^ 
 
 The other development grew out of the old 
 arrangement, the tabernacle form, and took shape 
 in this Temple of Luxor, where we have been all 
 the morning. It is found not only in the temples 
 which followed this in Egypt — but many a time 
 when we have looked upon a cathedral of Europe 
 we have unknowingly beheld something made 
 possible by that which originated here. 
 
 Temples were rising at the bidding of Amenhotep 
 in Egypt, Nubia and Sinai. The state temple of 
 Amon, now Karnak, in Thebes, which had been 
 
 *The following description of the temples is based upon the account 
 of the temple development in Breasted's "History of Egypt. 
 
FROM LOVE-STORY OF EGYPT tS 
 
 added to successively by Amenhotep's ancestors, 
 was enlarged and fabulously enriched by him; a 
 new pylon added, stelae made of lapis lazuli, floors 
 and walls encrusted with silver and gold and pre- 
 cious stones — the whole a gorgeous mass of color, 
 its shining obelisks pointing to the sky. That 
 temple, lifeless today, with its dark mysteries, 
 must then have been a reservoir of light, its glit- 
 tering walls and towers giving forth the radiance 
 of the Sun -god. And before it, in the radiance, 
 stood the calm colossal figure of the king, looking 
 across the river, where lay the palace of his Heart's 
 Desire. 
 
 At Karnak too, Amenhotep built the temple 
 to Mut, the mother-goddess, his sacred ideal of 
 motherhood, in whose character the queen ap- 
 pears; and there he dug her sacred lake, as he had 
 the pleasure lake for Tia. As the temple of Anion 
 at Karnak was built to a glorified idea of manhood, 
 which Amenhotep represented in himself; so the 
 Temple of Mut was built to the idea of woman- 
 hood, whose crown queen Tia wore. Having con- 
 nected the sanctuaries of Amon and Mut, Amen- 
 hotep made a wondrous avenue of sphinxes, which 
 extends for a mile and a half to Luxor, uniting the 
 temple he was building there in one harmonious 
 scheme with Karnak. Between the two he laid 
 out a vast garden. 
 
 For at Luxor, the Theban suburb, Amenhotep 
 had found a small temple to the state-god Amon. 
 He pulled it down. The Egyptians themselves 
 
74 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 often pulled down to rebuild. Then his architects 
 constructed this great temple, not, like the Kar- 
 nak building, added to and enlarged about a small 
 central beginning, but on one simple, perfect plan. 
 Behind this hypostyle where we have rested is the 
 holy of holies. Its carvings have since been plas- 
 tered over, for it has been used as a Coptic Church. 
 An altar, perhaps Roman, stands before it in the 
 hypostyle itself. The chambers around the sanc- 
 tuary have become so ruined as to lose their clois- 
 tered look, while their mystery is strangely en- 
 hanced by their appearance as a maze. One ob- 
 tains some idea of the intricate ground-plan. A 
 small side-chamber, which opens toward the outer 
 corridor, and faces the eastern girdle-wall still 
 standing, is the birth chapel on the walls of which 
 is the birth-story of Amenhotep, the son of Amon, 
 whose name means "Amon rests." 
 
 Before the hypostyle hall, the majestic court grew 
 into being, with its double colonnade of papyrus- 
 bud columns. It completed the temple except for 
 a pylon before it. Then Amenhotep or his archi- 
 tect dreamed a dream, which men still embody in 
 the architecture of today. Before the court it was 
 planned to erect a second hypostyle hall, on an 
 altogether grander scale than had ever been at- 
 tempted before. It was probably intended to 
 place before this hall another court, where the 
 somewhat rude forecourt of Rameses II stands 
 today. The hall was to have a central aisle or 
 nave between two rows of seven giant columns 
 
FROM LOVE-STORY OF EGYPT 75 
 
 with flower capitals. The rows of columns on 
 each side of these would be much lower, and the 
 hall would be lighted by openings in the story of 
 wall which joined the lower and higher roof. Thus 
 did the basilica and the cathedral form originate! 
 
 Amenhotep passed away before more than the 
 twice seven great columns were standing. His 
 son, for reasons we shall come to understand, was 
 obliged to abandon the grand hall just taking 
 shape. The drums of the other columns were later 
 used to enclose the lonely nave. Rameses II 
 patched it out with his huge forecourt and pylon, 
 his obelisks and colossal statues. 
 
 A detail, small but significant, lingers in our 
 minds. In the Temple of Luxor, through the 
 pylon of Rameses II, where a corner of his fore- 
 court is unexcavated, a little white mosque chngs 
 like a bird's nest among the capitals of the giant 
 pillars. In the earth beneath it, rests the body of 
 a Mohammedan saint, and to excavate would be 
 to disinter. Hence the columns are hidden and — 
 preserved. 
 
 In another corner of this court, behind the figure 
 of Rameses, is a treasure picture, a relief which is 
 for us a restoration of the temple. A festival pro- 
 cession of the priests with Rameses' sons approach- 
 es the great pylon, before which are the coUossi 
 of the king, with the two obehsks — one of which 
 is now in the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Flags 
 are flying from the tall poles before the pylon, and 
 reminded us somehow of the king's birthday be- 
 fore St. Mark's. 
 
76 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 But the court of Amenhotep III remains alone 
 to us for beauty and the giant nave beyond, alone 
 for a great thought. The idea was carried out to 
 its perfection by Seti I, and Rameses II, in the hy- 
 postyle at Karnak, the largest hall in the world. 
 But the unfinished hall of Luxor, eloquent of many 
 things in its broken incompleteness, gave the sug- 
 gestion for the later sacred architecture. 
 
 Amenhotep reared one more glorious building, 
 his mortuary temple, which, like those of his 
 fathers, rose on the western plain. In it was ex- 
 pressed the summit of his prosperity; and from all 
 that we can learn of it, it was probably the most 
 exquisite work of art that Egypt ever saw. We 
 can dream of the sculptures which adorned it, of 
 the avenue of jackals which led up to the two 
 collosi before it. The thirty foot high stela which 
 marked the "Station of the King, " where he stood 
 to perform the ritual, was incased in precious metal 
 and studded with jewels. Another, of lapis lazuli, 
 recorded all that Amenhotep, the king, had done 
 for his father Amon. How could the king fear 
 dying, to enter into such immortal glory, and be 
 worshipped as a god ! 
 
 But this temple was too perfect to escape de- 
 struction, that its material might be used by a later 
 ruler, who was the Pharaoh of the Exodus, — too 
 perfect to have lasted, lest it discourage the future. 
 Only a trace remains; Luxor is still the best we 
 know in Egypt. 
 
 The great stela of the mortuary temple lies 
 
FROM LOVESTORY OF EGYPT 77 
 
 broken and denuded on the western plain. Out of 
 nature, back to nature, have passed the beautiful 
 forms. The avenue of jackals, which led up to the 
 temple, is a winding path through the fields to the 
 colossi. They alone, after repeated damages from 
 which they have been recovered, still hold them- 
 selves above the encroachments of Time. Strange- 
 ly enough, one of these inarticulate stone statues 
 found a voice to speak itself in music. Whether 
 a crack filled with dew, vibrated when the sun's 
 rays touched it, can only be surmised; but for 
 centuries the broken figure, turned as it is toward 
 the East, greeted the dawn with music. Distin- 
 guished visitors travelled from Greece to hear it 
 and left their names upon the base. The voice 
 ceased with the statue's restoration. 
 
 The faces of these figures have smoothed them- 
 selves out to an inscrutable expression, while the 
 wisdom of the centuries was being gathered. But 
 there exist rare portraits of this king. The work 
 of the sculptors in the temples has lived longer 
 than that of the painters in the palaces. Even 
 that color, with which the statues and reliefs were 
 clothed has dropped away from them. But we 
 can see how the masters of the plastic art succeeded 
 not only in catching a representative moment in a 
 general type of life, but in seizing and holding as 
 never before, the idea in an individual, the mood 
 of a man. 
 
 In the British Museum, far away in London, is 
 a face of this first lover in history, the royal Amen- 
 
78 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 hotep, which shows the power of the sculptors of 
 his day to catch the soul of the man. DeQuincy 
 said of it that it unites "the expressions of ineffable 
 benignity with infinite endurance. " 
 
 The king was gathered to his fathers in the rough 
 mountain valley. Later Queen Tia, the Beloved, 
 died and was buried. 
 
 During a recent winter, Prof. Petrie, excavating 
 in the remote desert of Sinai, found there in a 
 temple a portrait head of Tia. Hitherto her face 
 had only been imagined from a few unsatisfactory 
 rehefs, which were necessarily profiles; and the 
 identity of which was not certain. This little 
 head belonged to a statuette, the whole of which 
 had been no more than one foot high. The head 
 was all that remained. Yet Prof. Petrie consider- 
 ed this one treasure, alone worth the whole year's 
 work. It seems to prove that another face, carved 
 in marble, which he calls "the supreme queen's 
 head " was also a portrait of this queen who inspired 
 such devotion in the heart of the most glorious 
 king of Egypt. The small head lately found is, 
 Petrie tells us, evidently taken from life with 
 great freedom and great dehcacy, especially about 
 and under the eyes. Describing it he speaks of 
 the "haughty dignity" of the face, blended with 
 "fascinating directness and personal appeal;" of 
 the lips drawn down with disdain yet free from 
 malice, lips full yet delicate. 
 
 The queen's crown rests upon the haughty little 
 head. At the time of the discover}^ it furnished 
 
FROM LOVE-STORY OF EGYPT 79 
 
 the best description we had of such a head-dress, 
 which had been known only from drawings of its 
 folded vulture wings.* The real gold crown was 
 still hidden away with the queen. This sculptured 
 one appeared to represent gold open-work, with 
 the queen's name above the brow between the two 
 serpents signifying power, and the two wings of 
 protection. 
 
 But a greater discovery has since been made. 
 Mr. Theo. M. Davis has found the tomb of the 
 queen herself. It had been unmolested except by 
 a visit from the priestly enemies of her noble son. 
 They erased his name wherever found, without 
 carrying away the gold or harming the queen's 
 body, except to turn it over. The tomb is re- 
 markable for several things, including this priestly 
 visit; for its immunity from robbery, and for its 
 treasures, consequently intact. Among these is 
 the little figure of a water-girl, done with such 
 freedom, that if discovered anywhere else it would 
 be imputed to Greece rather than to conventional 
 Egypt. But the time of Tia's son, during which 
 she was interred, was the one reign when Egyptian 
 art broke all the bonds of tradition. The queen's 
 gold crown was found with her, the first crown of 
 a queen to be discovered. It is the sacred head- 
 dress, indicating that the god protects the royal 
 person as the vulture protects her young. The 
 vulture is the emblem of motherhood and is sacred 
 to Mut, the Great Mother. Hence the mother- 
 
 *Such Its Cleopatra's at Dendera. 
 
80 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 queens, protected and protecting, wore vulture 
 head-dresses. 
 
 The queen's body seemed perfect and yet es- 
 caped from her discoverers. There is that in 
 Egypt which is not tangible, which cannot be 
 transported. It was there in the steps of the work- 
 men at Sakkara — the actual footprints of a vanish- 
 ed life — just as it passed. There are many things 
 one sees, many things one does not see — things 
 which are glimpsed or guessed. Through this 
 dark rock chamber, a tiny stream of water had 
 found its way while the queen had slept for thirty- 
 five hundred years; and when the light was let in 
 and they touched her, she vanished — there was 
 only a handful of dust. So she eluded them, so 
 she escaped the gaze of irreverent tourists. 
 
 Amenhotep III and Queen Tia are gone, but 
 the importance of their love marriage was not fully 
 revealed until after the old king's death, in their 
 son. 
 
 In the last days of Amenhotep's reign, a subtle 
 change had taken place in the condition of the 
 Empire, scarcely seen and not understood by him. 
 Luxury had overbalanced itself in the lives of the 
 people, with their elaborate homes and costumes, 
 — their wigs, their pointed sandals, all their affecta- 
 tions — the extreme of their civilization. 
 
 On the other hand while the kings of Egypt had 
 represented divinity to the nation, the people knew 
 Amenhotep as a man. He was a mighty hunter. 
 With no more enemies to conquer, there was no 
 
FROM LOVE-STORY OF EGYPT 81 
 
 conquest left but of the wild bulls in the marshes, 
 the lions in the hills. Amenhotep several times 
 celebrated his accomplishments in this direction 
 by an issue of scarabs. But no king before him 
 had become thus familiar to his people. He made 
 himself less than a god in his anxiety to record his 
 human achievements. His divinity is expressed 
 on the human side — especially in his marriage and 
 in his relation with foreign powers. He is no more 
 a god, ruling over a valley which is the world and 
 holding it for the god whom he succeeds; but a 
 king who, ruling over other rulers, is a human 
 brother to them. Yet his extended authority 
 also suggests the larger idea of a universal god.. 
 Church and state are one. The state is the expres- 
 sion of its god's authority. 
 
 In the days of Amenhotep, the priesthoods were 
 seeking, each in its own local worship, the god 
 who was to be worthy the Empire and to rule the 
 world. Imperialism was about to express itself in 
 thought — and dissolve. This was the dawn of 
 philosophy. In the meantime the Empire was 
 already breaking on its edges. And Amenhotep 
 was lulled to sleep in his dream of beauty. 
 
 Amenhotep IV, the son of the first historic love- 
 marriage, the marriage of Amenhotep III and 
 Queen Tia, is the first ideahst, the first to stand 
 out alone in matters of the deepest consciousness, 
 the first to claim a religious revelation — Breasted 
 calls him the first individual in history. 
 
 Though he gained his conception through Re, 
 
82 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 Amenhotep IV saw that none of the old gods 
 would satisfy it. They were limited by defining 
 personalities. His idea was even more abstract 
 than the monotheisms which followed it. *' Before 
 science was, he had thought out an entirely scienti- 
 fic system."* The sun's disk or "aton" repre- 
 sented the heat in all life. Thus Amenhotep IV 
 obtained the idea of one source and one power, as 
 it is manifested through the sun. 
 
 The Aton was never figured with any form of 
 man or beast — ^from the sun's disk proceeded in- 
 numerable rays ending in hands which brought life 
 and power to all things on the earth. As opposed 
 to the figures of the gods, it was a symbol which 
 spoke a universal word, not to be misunderstood, 
 even by alien peoples. The gods had needed 
 interpreters. Dauntless in his convictions against 
 the world upon which he stood, the young king 
 was always deeply influenced by his mother, and 
 by his probably Semitic wife who is always por- 
 trayed with him. He built a temple to his god in 
 the garden between Karnak and Luxor. But his 
 new worship quickly came into conflict with the 
 established priesthoods, especially with the priest- 
 hood of Amon-Re, the former state-god, whom he 
 had deposed. So bitter and violent was this con- 
 flict that when it was over, neither priesthood nor 
 king was left in Thebes. The halls of Karnak and 
 Luxor were deserted, the priests scattered, the very 
 name of Amon was chiseled out wherever it occur- 
 
 ♦Petrie 
 
FROM LOVE-STORY OF EGYPT 83 
 
 red, though that place were in the name of the 
 king's father, on his father's sculptured form. 
 And the king's own name was changed. He is no 
 longer Amenhotep IV, but emerges from the 
 tempest, as Ikhnaton, the individual who is the 
 "Glory of the Aton." 
 
 Life must always be expressing itself in form, 
 but where the form crystallizes to prevent growth, 
 life must always break through or transform it. 
 This son of Amenhotep III, worthily developing on 
 a higher plane, the ideal nature which in his father 
 found expression in the beauty of these Theban 
 halls, was obliged by that very nature to overthrow 
 and desert these scarce finished halls of his father 
 and even his father's name. His spirit had leaped 
 into being, destroying the forms which held it. 
 But overcome by the bitterness of the struggle, he 
 left Thebes for his new capital Akhetaton, where 
 is now the Egyptian Tell-el-Amarna, which we 
 passed further down the river. 
 
 Here he held his court and established the wor- 
 ship of the Aton. Thus the marriage of Amenho- 
 tep III, and Tia, proved portentous; for their son 
 Ikhnaton, dwelling in the ideal as more real and 
 lasting than the material, became the heretic king 
 of Egyptian history, the reformer, worshipping 
 the "one God of Light in the form of the Sun- 
 disk." 
 
 There were no figures of gods in the temples of 
 Ikhnaton's new capital at Akhetaton — nothing but 
 the Sun. In Egypt the figures of Amon were 
 
84 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 destroyed; and Egyptian art, though only for a 
 reign, was set free from the conventional symbols. 
 
 But the people were not developed to this high 
 conception, the heart of the country was torn, the 
 Empire fell apart, and a few reigns later the 
 dynasty itself passed out. 
 
 It was the natural course of events. 
 
 While Ikhnaton was establishing the new religion 
 and working out the thought of the one source of 
 life, there came to him letters from his vassals in 
 Asia begging him for aid. There were disaffec- 
 tions, invasions. A new generation had forgotten 
 the army of Egypt and the might of Egypt's king. 
 But either the king did not understand, or he 
 understood too well; for the Hittite power had 
 arisen in the north and waxed treacherous and 
 strong. 
 
 An army was needed to preserve the Empire 
 form; but Ikhnaton did not lead his army into 
 Asia. Perhaps it was not so much that the pro- 
 vinces were of less value to him in their essential 
 life, than was his ideal, in which all life was one; 
 but that the holding of them by Egjqjt was less 
 vital to him. Ikhnaton's course of inaction must 
 have seemed utterly impractical from any con- 
 temporary material point of view, as it does to 
 some historians today; impractical for the good of 
 Egypt and the arbitrary organization of the Em- 
 pire. 
 
 The height and breadth of an abstract concep- 
 tion had been reached by Ikhnaton alone. The 
 
FROM LOVE-STORY OF EGYPT 85 
 
 national feeling and the national god still meant 
 to Egypt the uniting of a certain number of men 
 against others. It was true of them as of other 
 nations that the form of god they worshipped 
 expressed their genius; were they not symbolically 
 right in believing that it was their god who tri- 
 umphed or was conquered? 
 
 When the Empire had become a world power, 
 suggesting and revealing a universal god, Ikhna- 
 ton had seen that this god must be in all — therefore 
 he, the king, could no longer fight to hold the 
 Empire. His god was not, like the idea of Amon, 
 a "God of battles," but the god whose life was in 
 all. The bravery of his race turned not in him to 
 conquest of a foreign people, but to facing his own 
 with his ideal. 
 
 Ikhnaton and his immediate successors lost the 
 Empire in Asia, which was never entirely regained; 
 but in reading history we must perceive each fact, 
 not with regard to an individual or a nation, but 
 with regard to its place in the whole development 
 of mankind. Something greater than the individ- 
 ual, greater than the good of any one country, was 
 moving through Egypt. 
 
 Life was probably not destroyed in the provinces, 
 any more than the Egyptian army would have 
 destroyed it. They had to learn to struggle for 
 themselves and some developed a growth of their 
 own. The form of a state religion had for once 
 been broken through, the form of a state now fell 
 apart and permitted other lands to rise. 
 
86 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 In Ikhnaton was the consummation, the flaming 
 up of the rehgious Hfe of Egypt. 
 
 When the state reKgion of Amon was restored 
 with the new dynasty, it was only as a form, from 
 which the spiritual life was gone, the religious form, 
 which instead of being expressed in the state, had 
 begun to absorb the state, until the state came to 
 assume the form. 
 
 Neither was the city of Thebes ever the same 
 after Ikhnaton, not even in the days of that great 
 builder, Rameses II. 
 
 Akhetaton has vanished. Tell-el-Amarna is 
 today the desert place of the Abstraction. The 
 city which once expressed this thought and lay 
 there upon the desert, has passed, a flower as 
 spiritual as the dew-flower, whose life is drawn up 
 in the glare of day. There only remain the collec- 
 tion of letters, the most remarkable, because the 
 earliest collection of letters in the world. They 
 tell the story from without. 
 
 Not in any weakness of Amenhotep, as Breasted 
 thinks it was — , or of his son, but in the evanescent 
 growing quality of conditions, was the change that 
 came after Amenhotep 's reign. His was the per- 
 fect flowering, that was all. Out of it arose the 
 idealism of Iklmaton, and the breaking of the 
 bonds of the old form, even to the limits of the 
 Empire organization — a consequence neither father 
 nor son could themselves have fully foreseen. 
 
 Yet thus was the way prepared for Israel. 
 
 More imposing than the colossal statues of 
 
FROM LOVE-STORY OF EGYPT 87 
 
 Amenhotep III, or Rameses II, is the spiritual 
 figure of the son of Amenhotep III and the Queen 
 Tia, Ikhnaton, the ideahst, the "Glory of the 
 Light." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Before the Temple 
 
 KARNAK, Temple of Temples, "Nation- 
 al Sanctuary," "Throne of the World," 
 lying so vast, so broken, so open to the 
 sunlight, where thou hast yielded up 
 the secret of Egypt and her history, — how may 
 one tell of thee! 
 
 When the evening and the morning were the 
 second day, we went by the old way to Karnak. 
 It is Amenhotep's avenue of sphinxes that leads 
 thence from the Luxor temple. At first the small 
 bazaars of the native Egyptian village cling about 
 the road, but it leads off into the palms where was 
 the ancient garden and where, here and there, 
 hamlets of mud huts seek to hide themselves. All 
 the way, the broken sphinxes, one by one take up 
 and carry on the story of the grand processions 
 that passed between the temples — especially at 
 Amon's Feast of Opet, which for importance was 
 as the Hebrew Passover at Jerusalem, or the 
 Christian Easter of today at Rome. More than 
 once, and once on this very road, great changes of 
 government were accomplished at this festival. 
 
 For a mile and a half we rode northward until 
 we drew near to the home of the state religion of 
 
 88 
 
BEFORE THE TEMPLE 89 
 
 Egypt. Passing a ruined group of buildings to the 
 east — the Temple of Mut, which Amenhotep 
 reared to the goddess of the Theban triad, — we 
 reach a meeting of the ways. An avenue of 
 sphinxes leads at right angles eastward to the 
 northern entrance of the Mother-goddess' temple, 
 from whence another avenue, parallel with our 
 own, stretches to the first of many gateways ap- 
 proaching the side of the Temple of Amon. We 
 keep on our way, and just ahead, there stands one 
 of the most beautiful doors in all Egypt, a late 
 portal to the Temple of Khonsu, the son of Amon 
 and Mut. We dismount and enter, that we may 
 climb the pylon for our first survey of Karnak, the 
 Great. 
 
 Beyond the court at our feet we catch a glimpse 
 of dark and empty halls, where now the sun lies 
 flecked upon the floor. This little Temple of 
 Khonsu has its own interest, its contribution to the 
 dramatic story of the state, but we are not ready 
 for that now. From the solemn and mysterious 
 chambers below us we lift our eyes to look across 
 the billowy sands. What mighty wreck, like a 
 great ship, lies there.? More than a thousand feet 
 in length we trace its shape. The pylons at the 
 front are high, the great hall with its broken 
 windows, rises in the midst, but the low sides at 
 either end of the whole structure are all but washed 
 over by the sand. In the submergence the height 
 of the hall itself is not realized from without. The 
 waves are up to the top of Rameses Ill's chapel. 
 
90 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 and in places surge over the walls. In the first 
 space, a single rounded column holds itself erect, 
 and near the middle of the length are several shafts 
 still standing — the others have gone over. 
 
 It was in Karnak that the ship of state went 
 down. 
 
 For in Karnak the whole state was gathered up. 
 
 Since the first historic day, when Menes, the 
 first king of a united Egypt, appears upon earth's 
 stage as *'Horus," the successor of the god who 
 ruled the land — from that day even unto this, the 
 unity of church and state has been an accomphshed 
 fact. It has sprung from a fundamental percep- 
 tion, over which has developed a great division. 
 For men felt truly in the beginning that power was 
 divine, and that the laws of Man should express 
 the Sacred Will. But they limited God by forms, 
 each man after his kind; and with that sense of 
 unity which also came by intuition, each has at- 
 tempted to extend his finite idea of God and God's 
 Will over the rest of mankind. Hence have arisen 
 the bitterest struggles of history, and the separa- 
 tions of church and state. Yet, fundamentally, they 
 cannot be separated. The latest and freest of 
 nations had its beginnings partly for worship — a 
 free worship. 
 
 In early Egyptian days, among many others, 
 there was Ptah, the Builder in Memphis; Re in 
 Heliopolis; Amon in Thebes. When the land was 
 united all these forms existed together. The 
 Egyptians built them temples of stone, and made 
 
BEFORE THE TEMPLE 91 
 
 them rituals of worship. Through those centuries 
 of the longest history any people have ever known, 
 beginning with the beginning, they added to the 
 temples and elaborated the rituals — ^till every figure 
 on the temple walls was prescribed in all its pro- 
 portions, which had their mystical significance. 
 
 The chief business of Egypt was building. The 
 first genius was wrought into stone. For men 
 dreamed how long their work would have to last. 
 They must make the form to contain the god 
 that it might also suggest him. Egypt became 
 the land of temples. Strangely like and yet un- 
 like, the building of the national temple at Thebes, 
 is the building of the national temple at Jerusalem. 
 Strangely like the same story also, reads the record 
 of the offerings to the Christian Church of St. 
 Mark. Greece also had her Parthenon. It is 
 only in our own day that the making of great 
 public buildings has superseded to some extent 
 the building of the temple which has been the 
 chief business of all ages. 
 
 In time, in Egypt, the form became all. The 
 glory of the gods destroyed the land. The wealth, 
 constantly drawn in large endowments from the 
 state, overtopped the economic balance, the priest- 
 ly power dethroned the king. 
 
 We descend to the darkened mysteries of this 
 little temple of Khonsu to think over the story, 
 before going on to Karnak. 
 
 In the Egyptian Middle Ages the rise of a The- 
 ban family to power had made Thebes the capital. 
 
92 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 With the development of the Empire, Amon, the 
 god of Thebes, became the state god — combined 
 with Re of HeHopoHs as Amon-Re. The Egyptian 
 official worship was always Sun-worship, whether 
 of Amon, Re, or Aton. The temples were the 
 shadows of the Sun. 
 
 The Temple of Amon at Karnak became the 
 national temple of the state religion, added to by 
 king after king of the Empire. These kings wrote 
 their conquests on its outer walls, their offerings 
 within. It is the book of their history. Karnak, 
 more than anything else, represents what Egypt 
 stood for — the building of the temple. 
 
 From the time of Thutmose III, it became the 
 chief glory of each king to outdo his predecessors 
 in gifts to the state god. As their wealth increas- 
 ed, the power of the priests by which they could 
 control the king increased, and the more they 
 could command. It was all out of proportion, out 
 of harmony, we can see now that the break was 
 sure to come. But how many individuals in any 
 age can understand the tendencies which are work- 
 ing through themselves.'^ An economic evil once 
 set going, interacts with conditions and grows 
 constantly greater until it destroys itself. Each 
 king for his own glory and later for the preserva- 
 tion of his position, added to the power of the 
 priests. And the priesthood of Amon received 
 many times more than all the rest. It therefore 
 gained control of the others. 
 
 Only once while the temple was building and 
 
BEFORE THE TEMPLE 93 
 
 while the priests were fettering the kings, — only 
 once, as we have seen, was the form broken through 
 by the life within. That was the first religious 
 revolution in history. And after that there was no 
 more life in the form. The story of the state 
 temple is a study in organization. 
 
 In the Eighteenth Dynasty the priesthoods of 
 Egypt, each with its orders of rank, had become 
 united, with the High Priest of Amon as their 
 head. He was chief ecclesiastic, head of an hier- 
 archy whose control reached every corner of the 
 land. Thebes, the state capital, became the 
 religious capital. In the Theban Temple the 
 records of all the priesthoods were kept. 
 
 In the Nineteenth Dynasty the High Priest of 
 Amon had succeeded in making his office hereditary. 
 The Pharaoh was still, as always in theory, the 
 head of the worship of Egypt for all the people. 
 When the days of conquest were over, the chief 
 use of the Pharaoh in the hands of the priests, was 
 to minister to the Temple. The Temple had laid 
 hold of the temporal power. 
 
 The gold country of Nubia was given to the 
 state god in the Nineteenth Dynasty. At first 
 the Viceroy of Nubia was Governor of the Gold 
 Country of Amon. By the latter part of the 
 Twentieth Dynasty the High Priest of Anion was 
 Viceroy of Nubia. 
 
 It is in the days after the glory of the Empire 
 that we trace the history, not of religious feeling, 
 but of the binding and destroying influence of con- 
 ventional forms. 
 
94 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 Feast days were added to the already elaborate 
 religious calendar, and while these days called for 
 more revenue, as holidays they depleted labor, 
 the source of revenue. 
 
 The people wrought in heaviness to support the 
 burden; Rameses III, of the Twentieth Dynasty, 
 was forced to depend upon mercenary troops and 
 his treasury went bare. It was a state, bankrupted 
 by its religious order. The poor man's god un- 
 fortunately lived in a palace. 
 
 Yet the priests did a good work. Theirs were 
 the only schools and universities. They were 
 the conservers of learning, the preservers of the 
 old language. 
 
 The hereditary head of the priesthood of Egypt, 
 entrenched in the eternal palace of the god, with 
 boundless wealth at his command, watched the 
 last struggle of the kingship. The princely priest, 
 Amenhotep, married Isis, the daughter of Rameses 
 VI. A Httle older than the last three brothers of 
 that king, this Amenhotep became their tutor. 
 
 One more concession he compelled from Rameses 
 IX, the last of all. The Temple under the heredi- 
 tary priesthood might collect its own revenues. It 
 thus became a separate state. 
 
 The time was ready. Amenhotep, the High 
 Priest, had a son, Hrihor, who was also the son of 
 the daughter of Rameses VI, and who became 
 High Priest. And then, the change was effected 
 — quite naturally, it seems, — when one puts to- 
 gether the findings of several Egyptologists. The 
 
BEFORE THE TEMPLE 95 
 
 last of the family of Rameses slips somehow into 
 desuetude, and the priest, with all proper forms 
 and ceremonies, stands in his place. The carvings 
 in this temple of Khonsu tell the story without 
 words. And the records of the time reveal, with 
 the ascent of Hrihor, the absolute sway of magical 
 forms. It was a state established on and ruled by 
 the constant violation of law, in perversion of the 
 truth. 
 
 But Hrihor was unable to extend his temporal 
 control over all Egypt. The increasing power of 
 his father and himself, had long meant the increas- 
 ing weakness and the final dissolution of the state. 
 A new kingship had arisen in the north out of that 
 weakness, to block his way; and to cut off Thebes, 
 the religious capital, from the circulation of the 
 world. 
 
 As High Priest of Anion, Hrihor had still a 
 measure of power over all Egypt. Nesubenebded, 
 the Delta King, passed the High Priest's envoy 
 on to Syria for cedar of Lebanon for Amon's sacred 
 barge, when he would not have done the same at 
 the behest of the Pharaoh Rameses.* 
 
 Hrihor, as king, was unable to control Nesu- 
 benebded. From this time on the kingdom was 
 broken, Thebes remaining an ecclesiastical state 
 independent and untaxed. Seldom able to control 
 the country, refusing to be controlled, it usually 
 succeeded in breaking the country. By an old 
 method, the difficulty was solved for the moment. 
 
 *See the story of the diplomatic messenger in Breasted's History 
 of Egypt. 
 
96 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 A grandson of Hrihor, Paynozim at Thebes, mar- 
 ried a grand-daughter of Nesubenebded. It is 
 recorded how she came south for her marriage. 
 Poor, sweet Maat-ka-ra, of the beautiful portrait 
 and the elaborate coffin — one of the finest dis- 
 covered in Thebes, — proving the love and regret 
 that went with her down into the tomb. She died, 
 still young and fair, in childbirth, — and lies now 
 with the little one in the museum at Cairo, a 
 tragedy of long ago. 
 
 With the accession of the High Priest to the 
 throne, the high priesthood ceased to be a separate- 
 ly hereditary office. King after king, of the 
 Twenty -first and Twenty-second Dynasties, in 
 trying to control the Temple as well as the state, 
 added to the priestly revenue, but placed a son of 
 his own, usually not the crown prince, in the High 
 Priest's position. Then it was brother against 
 brother, the strong house divided against itself, 
 while the High Priests, one after another, again 
 sought to found a separate line. 
 
 The long story was drawing to a close. 
 
 The Egypt of the Twenty-second Dynasty was a 
 feudal state. 
 
 Under the next, the nation went utterly to 
 pieces, back to the small component parts which 
 preceded the two kingdoms in pre-historic days. 
 
 Outside, the possessions in Asia were long gone. 
 In spite of reminiscences of Egypt's power, which 
 always caused an Egyptian party in Israel, Egypt 
 had in reality become the derision of the petty 
 
BEFORE THE TEMPLE 97 
 
 states she once so freely chastised. And even 
 while the city kings of the Delta struggled with one 
 another within Egypt, they looked fearfully over 
 the border and beheld the new Empire of Assyria 
 arising in the East — gaining power as Egypt de- 
 clined, consolidating as Egypt disintegrated. Al- 
 ready those border states which had once con- 
 stituted Egypt's Empire, now made the Empire 
 of Assyria. All that the Delta rulers, each with 
 his individual instinct of self-preservation, could 
 do, backed by the former greatness of Egypt, was 
 to stir up revolt against the new authority in those 
 states that lay between. 
 
 But while the petty princes of Egypt wrestled 
 with one another and watched the East, a dark- 
 ness came up from the south. Their first con- 
 queror was of their own making, though possibly 
 they knew it not. The foundations were laid in 
 the struggles of the previous dynasty with the 
 priesthood of Thebes. In the gradual destruction 
 of the state, the priesthood had pulled down the 
 house about its own head. 
 
 But Nubia, long Egyptianized by Egyptian 
 colonists and customs, long held by Amon and 
 never lost as the Asiatic provinces had been, — 
 Nubia, the farthest, the last to be disturbed by 
 internal disaster, was the last refuge of the god. 
 Thebes was between it and the power which was 
 in the north. At some time in the Twenty-second 
 Dynasty there had been a flight into Nubia of the 
 priests. In the Twenty -third Dynasty Egypt 
 
98 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 became aware of a new state, with its capital 
 Napata, far up at the 4th Cataract. Amon was 
 its god and it was elaborately organized as a sacer- 
 dotal state, possessing all which Egypt had ever 
 known. So mysterious its origin and remote its 
 position, that the later Greeks, fascinated by the 
 romance of its existence and its culture, looked 
 back upon it as the source of civiUzation in Egypt, 
 and therefore in the world. Nevertheless, we 
 known now the true story of Ethiopia. 
 
 About 720 B. C. Piankhi, a king of this kingdom 
 of Ethiopia, marched forth to the temporary con- 
 quest of Egypt. He used the Delta kings against 
 one another as later, in Europe, Phihp Augustus 
 used Richard and John. The Twenty-fifth Dy- 
 nasty were Ethiopians: Shabaka, who established 
 Pianklii's line in Egypt, and Taharka, whose name 
 we know in Hebrew story. The petty principali- 
 ties into which Egypt had been broken, became 
 vassal states of Nubia. The political power of 
 the Theban High Priest of Amon was gone. But 
 the new kings kept the Pharaonic titles and revered 
 the gods of Egypt. They built on the Karnak 
 temple at Thebes and they moved to the north and 
 even dreamed of recovering the lost Empire. 
 
 As a beginning and in order to at least protect 
 their country from that threatening danger which 
 was lowering in the East, they attempted another 
 stirring up of the kingdoms in Palestine and Syria. 
 Assyria appeared on their horizon and dealt deadly 
 punishment. Several times was Egypt saved, 
 
BEFORE THE TEMPLE 99 
 
 once by the pestilence which destroyed a host of 
 the Assyrian army and deHvered Jerusalem, as 
 Isaiah had promised Hezekiah; again by a revived 
 strength in Egypt. The third time, Memphis fell, 
 and Taharka fled southward — only to be reinsta- 
 ted by princes and priests as soon as the Assyrian 
 had departed. On the commemorative stela of 
 Esarhaddon the tables are reversed: Assyria looms 
 large — and Egypt is a captive dwarf. 
 
 Seven times in all did an Assyrian knock at the 
 gate of Egypt. Three times he crossed the thres- 
 hold. The last time the Assyrian army, under 
 Ashurbanipal, marched up the long valley and 
 sacked Thebes, carrying away, as they had in 
 Jerusalem, the gold and silver of the temple, the 
 wealth, long held safely in the inviolate temple 
 fortresses, after Egypt, swept with the winds of 
 conflict, had become a desert. 
 
 Thebes, the religious city, whose glory had been 
 as the morning, a material glory such as no city 
 of the earth had ever displayed, was now darkened 
 and desolated, her very memories desecrated. 
 
 In early conquests, it was always the temple 
 which was destroyed, as it was a people's god who 
 had fallen — ^the form which their genius gave to 
 that which was within them. Nothing could so 
 well represent the conquest of their spirit. We 
 recall the probably necessary destruction of the 
 Mahdi's tomb in the Soudan within our own days. 
 
 At the close of Egyptian history there was a 
 brief revival imposed by a Libyan with the aid of 
 
100 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 Greek mercenaries. To this time belongs the 
 Pharaoh Hophra of Hebrew Scripture. In Egypt 
 the sunset went back to the dawn which had been, 
 before ever Amon rose supreme. Then came the 
 night of ecHpse, with the long and unbroken series 
 of conquests by Persians, Greeks, Romans, Mo- 
 hammedans, French and English. Conqueror 
 after conqueror has swept over the land, foreigner 
 after foreigner holding it until today. 
 
 This then, is the story of Egypt's national reli- 
 gious organization — the end with the beginning — 
 a study typical of organization for all time. It is 
 form, not in the material world, but in the realm 
 of mind. We realize that the image may exist 
 even as an idea. 
 
 It will be necessary when we come to enter the 
 Temple of Egypt, to begin with the outmost and 
 latest building, and work back to the time of 
 Egypt's glory. We shall know these kings and the 
 part each took in the building of the Temple, shall 
 know them in the House of Amon, with their work 
 and their records there. From one to another 
 they will pass us back to the centre of the golden 
 age. So we would know beforehand from the end 
 of the story, the true inner significance of the 
 Temple, and then forgetting the later details, 
 dwell on its perfection, realizing what it represent- 
 ed and gave us, — in contrast with something else 
 which arose in and came out of Egypt. 
 
 All this as one would overlook Karnak — still 
 only partly excavated. Thou Temple of Temples, 
 
BEFORE THE TEMPLE 101 
 
 not only of Egypt, but of the world, standing for 
 the outer form which clothes religion, but empty 
 of religion now, thou hast thy message too. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 The House of Am on 
 
 HAVING thus been initiated in the little 
 temple of Khonsu, having, as it were, 
 prepared ourselves in the ante-cham- 
 ber, we passed out of the gate and 
 turned once more toward the fallen form which 
 above all things in Egypt, represents the fallen 
 state. Not even the remounting of resisting don- 
 keys and the roughness of our pilgrimage could 
 make us forget that we were now to enter The 
 Temple of Egypt itself. 
 
 Our way leads over the billowy sands by the 
 south side of the structure. Presently, descend- 
 ing a hill, we come round to the front of the great 
 pylon, where broken bits of sculpture, recently 
 excavated, can no more than indicate a once 
 splendid avenue. Since Amenhotep's time, it has 
 led from the portal of Karnak, ever advancing to 
 encroach upon it, westward to the Nile. This 
 pylon, the largest in Egypt, belongs to the Ptole- 
 maic period. Though Karnak is in ruins, it is not 
 yet complete. The old scaffolding of the workmen 
 clings to the giant towers, and marks above all 
 else, the desertion and desolation of the temple. 
 This gateway was the final seal to the work of 
 102 
 
THE HOUSE OF AMON 103 
 
 Rameses II, by those appreciative foreign rulers 
 who did so much to emphasize Egypt and who 
 were impartial to all her gods, in whom they found 
 their own. Rameses' great hypostyle hall proper- 
 ly presupposed a court and a final pylon before it. 
 The temple plan, as we have seen, was always 
 practically the same: first and outmost the pylon, 
 then the outer court with the altar, then the hy- 
 postyle hall and vestibules beyond, and lastly, the 
 holy of holies, surrounded by a corridor and cham- 
 bers. But if, in an attempt to outdo former efforts, 
 a larger hypostyle hall was added before the pylon, 
 it would again be preceded by a court, and an outer 
 pylon in proportion. This series, ever increasing 
 in size, was twice added to Karnak, not to mention 
 the addition of Thutmose III at the other end. 
 
 As we stand between the modern iron railings in 
 the huge open portal, from which the ancient gates 
 are long gone, across the court and far beyond, 
 door after door shows in diminishing perspective. 
 It should be so in a straight line to the inner sanc- 
 tuary. Karnak itself is a "Book of the Portals," 
 each once the outmost, and all inscribed. On the 
 south side a similar line, almost at right angles, 
 leads up to the central court. They suggest the 
 stages of the mystery. It is a temple behind a 
 temple. What must it have been when all the 
 doors were closed! 
 
 When we crossed the threshold, we were fortu- 
 nate enough to be alone, and we found within the 
 court, the largest temple-court in the world, a 
 
104 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 vast sunny silence. The pylon before us was a 
 double mountain of stone, except in the centre, 
 where the masonry was propped with cross sup- 
 ports which interfered with our vista. Heaps of 
 debris tell the chapters not written otherwise. Out 
 of it all, near the centre, blooms one great flower, 
 a single rounded shaft, liftmg a lotus capital. 
 Taharka of Ethiopia, who fought Sennacherib on 
 the side of Israel, at the time that Hezekiah spread 
 the Assyrian's letter in the Temple at Jerusalem — 
 he it was who reared the lonely lily. It was not 
 lonely then. For some reason which has perished 
 with the structure, Taharka raised in this foremost 
 court, a building of twelve such lotus-pillars, each 
 as large as Trajan's column. This one remains to 
 tell what the others were. 
 
 The court was placed in front of Rameses' giant 
 hypostyle hall by the so-called Bubastide Pharaohs 
 of the Twenty-second Dynasty. The origin of 
 Sheshonk, founder of the line, who married the 
 last daughter of the Theban-Tanite house, de- 
 scended from Paynozim and Maatkara, is a matter 
 of dispute. He would seem not to have been a 
 Libyan, as some scholars suppose, for his name, 
 and that of his successors indicates an Eastern 
 origin. Was he, the first Sheshonk, "the man of 
 Susa, " as Petrie suggests, a Babylonian or Persian 
 adventurer at the court and in the service of the 
 king? If so, his marriage with the princess Kara- 
 mat, of the priestly Twenty-first Dynasty, must 
 be one of the lost romances of early days. 
 
THE HOUSE OF AMON 105 
 
 Thus again the royal line was carried through the 
 crown princess, whose name, as it appears, handed 
 down in all its variations through this Dynasty, is 
 a corruption of Maat-ka-ra, the name of the Tanite 
 princess, her ancestress, who came to Thebes, 
 and the prenomen of the great Hatshepsut. Like 
 those queens, she has the double cartouche of the 
 royal ruler in her own right. 
 
 We have seen how each founder of a new dynasty 
 brought fresh strength to the contest with the 
 internal conditions of Egypt, and for a moment 
 rallied her and held back her decline, till the 
 strength of the line had diminished, when the 
 same thing might occur again. Such a founder of 
 a dynasty was this Sheshonk I, the Shishak of the 
 Bible, who caught up Egypt from her weakened 
 Priest-Pharaohs when they had lost their hold, 
 and proved his strength by gaining control, con- 
 solidating the country, and inaugurating a new 
 dynasty with a powerful reign. He was the friend 
 and probable ally of Solomon, and his daughter 
 was one of the wives of that king. Having con- 
 quered the always obstinate Canaanite city of 
 Gezer or Gaza, Sheshonk gave it to this daughter 
 that she might appear well in the sight of her 
 husband. We are back of the time of Assyrian 
 greatness. Egypt was still re-asserting her claims 
 in Syria. But Solomon's son Rehoboam did not 
 find favor in Sheshonk's eyes. The Pharaoh har- 
 bored his rival Jeroboam for some years before 
 that Hebrew came to be ruler of the Ten Tribes of 
 
106 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 Israel, and Sheshonk finally marched against the 
 Judean king, capturing a long list of Palestinian 
 cities. The Hebrew prophets tell the story rue- 
 fully, yet with a kind of exultation, not neglecting 
 to point the moral strongly, since it was difficult to 
 keep Israel to the high and abstract conception of 
 her spiritual leaders. 
 
 With the life and enterprise of Egypt, temporar- 
 ily revived by the fresh stream of tribute flowing 
 in from S;^Tia, a building period came again. 
 Sheshonk and his successors constructed this great 
 Karnak court. We recall how his sons and de- 
 scendants, as Pharoahs of the land and High 
 Priests of the Temple, strove with one another, 
 until the divided house fell. 
 
 To the right, past the small temple of Rameses 
 III, which is in the side of the court, we find a door 
 in the wall, close to the second pylon. We pass 
 through it, for on the wall outside is Sheshonk' s 
 record of his conquest of the unfortunate Reho- 
 boam, and the list of the cities which he took and 
 gave to Amon. If we cannot read them ourselves, 
 we know that they are there, and we may find 
 them in our Hebrew Scriptures — the Egyptologists 
 tell us that many of the names are the same. 
 There is in particular that town Yenoam, in south- 
 ern Lebanon. We know Thutmose III, 600 years 
 before the inscription and long previous to the 
 Exodus, had made it one of three captured towns 
 which he gave as an endowment to Amon, — and 
 with which the colossal fortune of the god, which 
 wrecked the state, had begun. 
 
THE HOUSE OF AMON 107 
 
 There is another name on this wall which has an 
 interest for us. Among all the others, Sheshonk 
 took the ** Field of Abram. " This is the first time 
 in secular history that we find the patriarchal 
 name. 
 
 But we leave this wonder on the outer wall, to 
 go back into the court and examine the small and 
 very perfect temple of one earlier than Sheshonk, 
 Rameses III, — set across the side. He was the 
 last great Pharaoh of the real Egypt, the Egypt of 
 the Empire, and appeared a worthy namesake of 
 his great ancestor. But his day, early though it 
 appears, came too late. Disintegration had al- 
 ready set in, in the state. After all, Egypt had 
 reached the limit of her power, she had expressed 
 herself in temple building, the last word had been 
 said. Though the strong arm of Rameses III held 
 back the already weakened Empire, and established 
 the line which his father had founded, there were 
 no new words in which to tell his story. The 
 superlatives had all been used. His records were 
 but lifeless imitations, and these he endeavored 
 to have made as complete as possible. Emulating 
 that other Rameses as a great builder, he raised 
 that splendid mortuary temple, which unmarred 
 by any further Emperors, remains to us as **Medi- 
 net Habu" on the western plain. But for some 
 reason, Rameses HI did not attempt to add the 
 court to the great hypostyle of his famous ancestor 
 at Karnak. That came two dynasties later. 
 Whether he wished to leave the stupendous majes- 
 
108 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 ty of the hall supreme, or to prevent the final 
 crowning of it, who shall say? He built this small, 
 but beautiful temple at right angles to the front of 
 the larger one, as if to forbid the carrying on of 
 that forever. Sheshonk and his successors in- 
 cluded this small temple in the wall of their court, 
 like a jewel mounted in a ring. 
 
 It is difficult because of the imitations and repeti- 
 tion to know the truth about Rameses III. He 
 stands here as an Osiris before all the pillars of his 
 own small court. Behind are three sanctuaries, 
 one for each of the Theban triad. Rameses III 
 belonged to the priests. 
 
 Nevertheless, while Rameses lived, Egypt, the 
 Empire, still appeared to prosper. But a palace 
 conspiracy against his life, brought down his grey 
 hairs in sorrow to the grave. 
 
 Is it with a sigh of pity, not only for this sad 
 passing of one of the most magnificent of Egypt's 
 Pharaohs, but for the transitoriness of all things, 
 that we turn away? Yet the temple of Rameses 
 III stands firm and strong in spite of 3,000 years. 
 
 We leave the old king in his temple and return 
 to our contemplation of the larger building, where 
 we shall pass, step by step, through the additions 
 of Pharaoh after Pharaoh, reaching front after 
 front of the temple, as it was in ever earlier and 
 earlier days. 
 
 This second pylon at the back of the great court 
 was badly ruined, so badly ruined that only the 
 masonry on each side of the door remained in 
 
THE HOUSE OF AMON 109 
 
 shape, propped up by a series of iron brackets which 
 interfered with our perspective view through the 
 temple. The pylon was built by Rameses I more 
 than a hundred years before the time of the third 
 Rameses; and for nearly a thousand years it formed 
 the facade of the great state temple. That we 
 can, at a glance, thus take in a period of a thousand 
 years, thrills us. Poor old Rameses I! He had 
 only time to be great in that which his successors 
 carried out. He reigned only two years. And 
 in the glories of his son and grandson who finished 
 his work, it might easily be forgotten that it was 
 he who planned this greatest hall in the world, 
 using for the back of it, the grand pylon which 
 Amenhotep III had made for the front of the 
 temple some sixty or seventy years before, and 
 setting up his own in front of it. So he planned 
 out the area, though it seems that but one of the 
 columns inside bears his name. This is surely 
 the Hall of Records of the Nineteenth Dynasty; 
 the columns and the walls inside and out are 
 covered with the inscriptions of the three descend- 
 ants of Rameses I. 
 
 The hall in its desolation is not deserted by the 
 Sun-god, but all the more is filled with light. It 
 lies open to the whole day now, the sunshine 
 floods the place. Through the one window which 
 retains its shape intact in the broken clear-story, 
 the light pours as if it found no other inlet. As 
 the sun itself gilds the old, gray stones, we sud- 
 denly question, "What's become of all the gold.^" 
 
110 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 Then we remember Ashurbanipal and the con- 
 querors after him. But there is still color left 
 among the capitals. We look up where they seem 
 like huge flowers in the sky. The sun's rays point 
 out the carvings with startling distinctness; and 
 here and there on the columns we catch, chiseled 
 indelibly deep, the name of Rameses II, that name 
 we know so well. But we shall return to this hall, 
 for the sake of which, now that its other glories are 
 in ruins, the temple is still famous. 
 
 It is best at first to gain just the general impres- 
 sion of its greatness, passing through between the 
 columns of the nave and out of Amenhotep's 
 portal into the central court, which was the fore- 
 court of Amenhotep's temple, — where the glorious 
 color is gone; the form alone remains. From here 
 we can go out on the north side where, on the 
 outer north wall of the hypostyle hall is the story 
 of Seti I. 
 
 Seti reigned one year with his father, Rameses 
 I, the second and last year of the old king's admin- 
 istration. After Ikhnaton and his successors at 
 the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty had lost the 
 Empire in Asia, and their throne in Egypt, Harm- 
 hab, usurper and reorganizer had restored order 
 in the kingdom. Then came Rameses I. It was 
 the dream of Seti, probably inculcated by his 
 father, to recover the Empire. For all that last 
 year of Rameses I's life, Seti was preparing the 
 army. We can imagine it all — how the eager and 
 enthusiastic younger man must have planned it 
 
THE HOUSE OF AMON 111 
 
 out with his old father, who knew the actual ac- 
 complishment would not be vouchsafed to himself. 
 When Seti came to the throne, all was ready. 
 There had been one year of preparation, there were 
 three of battle: — a campaign against the Libyans 
 on the Western Delta, and two campaigns in Asia, 
 which restored the southern part of the Syrian 
 countries. Then for some reason — perhaps a trea- 
 ty — ^he ceased his victorious war, never crossing 
 the threshold again. 
 
 The first tribute which he had exacted, were logs 
 of Lebanon, felled under his supervision, for the 
 barge of Amon and the flagstones of the temple at 
 Thebes. There was little wood in Egypt. Seti's 
 cedar souvenirs were safely floated from the Syrian 
 harbors and up the Nile. 
 
 Harmhab had before this, begun the restoration 
 of the temples which Ikhnaton had broken. We 
 find Seti still restoring, as well as planning colossal 
 new works, such as Egypt had not yet beheld. It 
 was then that the Empire spoke itseK again, and 
 again took shape in the temple forms. 
 
 On this wall is the first record of Rameses II, 
 the small person with the minor's lock of hair, close 
 behind his father's chariot when Seti smites the 
 Libyans. It is that Kttle figure which has so ap- 
 pealed to early Egyptologists and lovers of Egyp- 
 tian history, who once in the wonder of translating, 
 believed all Rameses' stories of his childhood. 
 Now come scholars, with a brighter lamp of learn- 
 ing, and inform us that the cherished little figure 
 
112 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 is — Rameses indeed, and yet a forgerjd It was 
 inserted by Rameses himself — not only upon an 
 original inscription, but upon another little form 
 which had first been inserted over the inscription. 
 The color which covered the changes has disap- 
 peared, leaving bare the hard fact. We confess a 
 disappointment. We do not like to lose an illusion 
 concerning our old hero and to accept this story 
 instead. But the light of learning is sometimes 
 hard. And who was the little figure under his, 
 whose form and name are here obliterated.'^ Un- 
 doubtedly an elder brother, who had reigned for a 
 day, or perhaps without reigning, had persuaded 
 his father to place him here for his own future 
 reference, but who likewise had not accompanied 
 his father to the war. He is gone — without leaving 
 us his name — nothing but these faint lines, this 
 shadowy wraith. If others were not so positive, 
 we could almost be persuaded that the first small 
 shape which is turned the opposite way, is also a 
 drawing of Rameses himself, which he did not like, 
 and had changed. But here and there in the 
 length and breadth of Egypt, the savants have 
 caught names, perhaps but a portion at a time, 
 which seem to prove that there were not only one, 
 but two princes older than Rameses! Perhaps 
 this first-born died. But if so, and Rameses suc- 
 ceeded naturally, his elaborate statements as to 
 his own appointment as crown prince, which in 
 view of that figure must have been false, would 
 have been unnecessary to establish his claim. 
 
THE HOUSE OF AMON 113 
 
 Those faint lines will insist, not only upon the 
 other boy, but upon some great upheaval. 
 
 Ah ! many an intrigue was carried through by the 
 aid of the priests of Karnak. Court fictions and 
 priestly tales have often effectually hidden the 
 historic truth from us even today. Of the kings 
 whose usurpation was aided and abetted by priest- 
 ly intervention, three were among the greatest 
 rulers of Egypt's history: Thutmose HI, the Con- 
 queror; Harmhab, the Re-organizer and Lawgiver; 
 Rameses II, the great Builder. Perhaps it was 
 appropriate that his reign should have been 
 brought about and inaugurated by this priestly 
 service. 
 
 We return through the ruins of Amenhotep's 
 court, and out at the southern entrance. Around 
 on the south wall of the hypostyle are Rameses 
 II's memoirs. Here is a picture of his famous 
 battle of Kadesh, the first battle in the world 
 whose records enable us to follow the strategic 
 positions of the armies. It is repeated, with the 
 epic song to which it gave rise, on Rameses' pylon 
 to the Luxor temple, and later and best on his 
 Ramesseum, over on the western shore. 
 
 A small wall projecting here is an interesting 
 document. On it is carved a copy of the first 
 international treaty, to be preserved for us. It 
 was concluded by Rameses II with the Hittite 
 power, the earliest first-class power with whom 
 Egypt had to deal. With this people, the thrilHng 
 Kadesh battle had been fought. 
 
114 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 Beyond Rameses' records, is the place, not far 
 from Sheshonk's victories over Rehoboam, where 
 Rameses' son Merneptah, the Pharaoh of the Exo- 
 dus, cut his own hymn of victory — over Israel and 
 others! It has an interesting explanation. As it 
 belongs to a time in Palestine probably before the 
 Exodus from Egypt, Petrie believes that it refers 
 to those relatives of the Hebrews in Egypt, who 
 had remained behind in Syria, and kept up the 
 associations of the old traditions. So the song is 
 important to us, for it contains the first reference 
 to Israel known in history, the Bible records all 
 having been written after that. 
 
 While we stood on this side of the Karnak temple, 
 excavating was going on — aided by groups of 
 children carrying baskets on their heads. One 
 group was always here with the baskets to be filled ; 
 another was emptying the earth at a distance; an- 
 other was on the way. They sang as they passed 
 along — a simple procession, when we remembered 
 the priests. There was an unsightly hole at our 
 feet; but it has yielded up many a treasure in the 
 sifting of the earth; small figures which have buried 
 themselves all through the sacred soil and escaped 
 confiscation for two thousand years. They pass 
 now to a museum glory. 
 
 Eastward, back of and slightly above our eleva- 
 tion is the sacred lake of the temple, once weirdly 
 surrounded by colossal statues which darkened 
 over and were reflected in it. Away to the south 
 are the several southern pylons, badly broken; 
 
THE HOUSE OF AMON 115 
 
 among the palm trees, the gate of the Temple of 
 Mut in the distance. The further two of the 
 ruined pylons were the work of Harmhab, the 
 Restorer, who opened up the way for the Nine- 
 teenth Dynasty, the line of Rameses. In his day, 
 the pylon of Amenhotep III, now the back of the 
 hypostyle hall, was the front of the temple, and 
 these new pylons led from the side to an entrance 
 in the forecourt now about midway of the temple 
 length. 
 
 It was the priests who declared Harmhab king 
 by an oracle of Amon, on the road between Karnak 
 and Luxor at the great procession of the Feast of 
 Opet, after the state of anarchy and chaos in which 
 the Eighteenth Dynasty had gone out. Gradually 
 the priests of Amon had regained the control of 
 which Ikhnaton had deprived them. Tutenkha- 
 ton, one of the weak successors of the idealist, was 
 forced in order to maintain himself, to restore and 
 re-instate the priesthood of Amon, and was in 
 turn compelled by them to change his name to 
 Tutenkhamon. 
 
 When several of these weak rulers had followed 
 one another, the general, Harmhab, conspired 
 with the priesthood, who announced him before 
 the people as divinely appointed to reign. Im- 
 mediately after this declaration, Harmhab went 
 into his palace which was beside the road, and 
 there married a wife of the royal line. This estab- 
 lished his claim. As the priestly procession passed 
 before the palace bearing the image of the god, it 
 
116 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 stopped again to convey the divine sanction and 
 confirmation of Harmhab's sovereignty. 
 
 The priests were now ready to \\Teak their re- 
 venge. The pylons of Harmhab are especially 
 interesting to us because they contain the Temple 
 of Aton, which Ikhnaton had caused to be built 
 in the garden between Karnak and Luxor, and in 
 which service once went on when the great temples 
 of Amon were closed. Not one stone of the ideal- 
 ist's temple was left standing upon another. These 
 solid pylons to the House of Amon were made out 
 of the blocks. Today the pylons are almost as 
 thoroughly ruined; and the name of Aton on the 
 stones, turned inward in building, has now fallen 
 outward toward the light. 
 
 Harmhab's task, as that of every restorer after 
 every period of disintegration, was the reforming 
 and re-organizing of the state, the construction of 
 a system of government in which the people, even 
 in the smallest and remotest corner, should have 
 their lives arranged and made secure. It was the 
 temple of the state the sovereign reared. The 
 organization, the form to make safe the people's 
 life, is always the gift of those who are high in rank 
 or intelligence. Not Harmhab alone, though he 
 renovated it by a fresh body of laws, but almost 
 all the Pharaohs of the Empire had helped to per- 
 fect it. To them belonged, not only the conquest 
 of the Empire, but this internal construction of the 
 state. 
 
 Ikhnaton, following the light, had broken through 
 
THE HOUSE OF AMON 117 
 
 the conventions of religion and loosed his hold of 
 the laws of the land. Harmhab was not following 
 an ideal, but was looking to his own power and the 
 material welfare of the people. He considered 
 that the conventions of religion and law, a careful 
 controlling organization, were a necessary safe- 
 guard, lest the people, lacking themselves in in- 
 spiration, and failing to follow the leader who had 
 released them from the bondage of conventions, 
 should fall into hopeless confusion. 
 
 It seems necessary to begin every reform through 
 the old forms ere the spirit forms the new. When 
 Israel first went out of Egypt to develop a purer 
 religion, she retained, not only the form of the 
 temple, but the order of the priesthood, with the 
 High Priest as its head. Harmhab, however, was 
 not leading toward any purer religious conception. 
 He was not looking up, but rather down at the 
 organization of which he was the head. In spite of 
 the severity of his penalties, he was a humane man, 
 though — as in our judgments of contemporary 
 statesmen — there are varying opinions among 
 Egyptologists concerning the characters of these 
 old heroes. It was for the sake of the people that 
 Harmhab made his penalties against bribery and 
 corruption extreme. His code was engraved upon 
 a huge stela set up in one of these pylons of the 
 Aton stones. 
 
 During the best periods of the Empire, all men 
 for their own dignity, upheld the king, not strug- 
 gling against one another for position, but chosen 
 by the king for merit. 
 
118 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 At the same time with the re-organization of the 
 state, the conventions of reKgion were again fitted 
 to the people, but they no longer sprang from new 
 life; they were never again more than mere form, 
 though the most elaborate ritual and the largest 
 temple buildings came after. The priesthoods 
 were already revealing their power of influence. 
 Even at this time, there was one organization over 
 the whole land of Egypt, with the High Priest of 
 Amon, of the state temple at Thebes, rising to its 
 head. 
 
 Under Harmhab and the earlier Pharaohs of the 
 Empire, the state was managed as a vast estate. 
 The government existed for the sake of an econo- 
 mic prosperity and productivity; and Egypt was 
 handled as crown lands might be today. Yet the 
 Temple, which represented the ideal of the state, 
 was really a counter-organization, already absorb- 
 ing land from gifts, and, being untaxed in its lands 
 and its wealth, was already disturbing the economic 
 proportions. 
 
 Leaving Harmhab and Iklmaton, we turn back 
 from the southern pylons, and before this southern 
 entrance, we see where a great obelisk once stood. 
 It must have pointed the way toward what is now 
 the kernel of the temple, and toward that line of 
 kings, the mightiest of whom was Thutmose III — 
 toward the secret place, and toward the origin of 
 all the priestly power. Alas, the temple behind it, 
 only too well simulates, in the utter confusion of 
 its wreckage, the great feud of the Thutmosid 
 
THE HOUSE OF AMON 119 
 
 family. They were a house of powerful loves and 
 hates. Yet from them, after Thutmose HI, the 
 great warrior, sprang Amenhotep III, the lover of 
 beauty, and Ikhnaton, the idealist. 
 
 Thutmose IV, he who uncovered the Sphinx 
 and who was the father of Amenhotep III, found 
 this obelisk of his grandfather, Thutmose III, still 
 lying here unraised beside the entrance to the 
 temple; and acting less as builder than restorer, he 
 caused it to be lifted to the old conqueror's memory 
 and his own. It is not here now, for it belongs to 
 the spoils of the nations. Egypt is scattered 
 through all the kingdoms of the earth. To find 
 this obelisk we must journey to the Lateran in 
 Rome. 
 
 When Thutmose IV first raised it, there was not 
 even this court before us, the forecourt of Amen- 
 hotep III, with his big pylon and sphinx avenues. 
 This way led across the then front of the temple, 
 the true temple of the Thutmosids, in which 
 they wrote not only such records as they con- 
 sciously caused to be inscribed upon their memorial 
 walls, but in their very building revealed the stress 
 and strain of their characters. Here the obelisk of 
 Hatshepsut towers insistent over all. 
 
 Returning into the court of Amenhotep III, the 
 ancient way across the front of the Thutmosid 
 temple, but now the middle court of Karnak — we 
 find Thutmose I, the father, third king of the 
 Eighteenth Dynasty. We must begin with the 
 first kings of this line and come down, for its later 
 
120 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 monarchs restored what its earlier Pharaohs built. 
 The pylon, which formed the front of Thutmose 
 I's temple and the back of Amenhotep's later court 
 where we stand, is now a confused and confusing 
 heap of stones. Beyond this, the ordinary tourist 
 can distinguish little in the general wreckage, but 
 the scholars know every wall. Thutmose I began 
 to make the temple sumptuous, though it was with 
 the founder of this Dynasty, Ahmose of Thebes, 
 that the rehgion of Amon became the state religion, 
 and that what had been a small Middle Kingdom 
 temple, back there where the sanctuaries are, be- 
 came the temple of the state. 
 
 Nearly 2,000 years of history and periods of 
 advanced civilization, lay behind the Empire. 
 Ahmose, having expelled the Hyksos usurpers, and 
 reorganized the state after the fall of the Middle 
 Kingdom, began the restoration of the old temples, 
 using the stone from our familiar quarries near 
 Helouan, which had once supplied the Pyramids. 
 
 For the Temple of Amon at Thebes, Ahmose 
 built a cedar barge and furnished an elaborate 
 temple service. But his building energy was 
 scattered throughout the land, and the House of 
 Amon had as yet scarcely perceived its own im- 
 portance. Amenhotep I, the son of Ahmose, 
 added a beautiful gate to the little temple, but a 
 change in the level of the Nile made it necessary 
 in a later reign to destroy this portal. Then came 
 Thutmose I, and with him began the building of 
 the temple. The small state sanctuary was not 
 
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THE HOUSE OF AMON 1^1 
 
 worthy the widening importance of the Empire. 
 This Emperor planned to construct a larger build- 
 ing, which should include the ancient chambers. 
 
 The width of the temple he made practically 
 what it has been ever since; and all across it — 
 between this broad outer pylon of his and the old 
 sanctuary, he placed his hypostyle hall. The 
 whole was an imposing Structure for his day; and 
 he set up his obelisks before the entrance, one of 
 which is that tall shaft now in front of us. The 
 nearest southern pylon, which we have left be- 
 hind us, at right angles to this front, is also his. 
 The columns which bore the ceiling of Thutmose's 
 hall on either side of the nave, were originally 
 cedar of Lebanon. So that some six hundred 
 years before the building of the temple at Jerusa- 
 lem, we find the cedar of Lebanon used in the 
 building of the national temple at Thebes, for the 
 columns in the hall before the holy of hoKes. 
 
 In this place originated the power of the priests 
 of Amon; and this ground whereon we stand was 
 the scene of one of the most dramatic episodes in 
 Egyptian history — ^for within this hall was its 
 builder, Thutmose I, deprived of his throne. 
 
 As Breasted gives us the story, in the royal fami- 
 ly was a prince Thutmose, who possessed no right 
 to succeed to the sovereignty of Egypt. There- 
 fore was he destined for the priesthood. Such an 
 arrangement, even back in the Eighteenth Dy- 
 nasty, had the effect, not of giving the royal family 
 control of the priesthood, but of introducing a 
 
122 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 force from without to tear asunder the family. 
 
 In those days there was a royaHst party in 
 Egypt, against which the party of the priesthood 
 made its first trial of strength. Of the children of 
 Thutmose I, the only one who grew up with a full 
 title to the throne was his daughter Hatshepsut, 
 the royal daughter of a royal wife. The party 
 who stood for the direct descent overcame all 
 difficulties, and compelled her father to name her 
 as his successor. However, the priestly prince 
 Thutmose was quietly gaining the support of the 
 priesthood. Finally, as was done more than once 
 in the history of Egypt, the coveted position was 
 won by a marriage with the heiress to the title . 
 This was the claim of his own father to the throne 
 of Egypt. In the case of Prince Thutmose and 
 Hatshepsut, it would appear, from a surface view 
 of its effects, to have been purely a manage de con- 
 venance of 3,500 years ago. 
 
 We cannot tell how this prince and princess may 
 have planned together — or whether, indeed, Hat- 
 shepsut desired to wed Thutmose. Considering 
 the insistent qualities, which that youth as a war- 
 rior subsequently displayed, we can imagine it 
 quite possible that the old king yielded to strong 
 and subtle influences, and weary of importunities, 
 gave Hatshepsut to the prince. Perhaps also, the 
 king arranged it, to make sure of the descent 
 through his line, since some Egyptians might ob- 
 ject to a queen alone. On the other hand, con- 
 sidering also that Hatshepsut herself dominated 
 
THE HOUSE OF AMON 123 
 
 her husband, keeping him absolutely in the back- 
 ground while she lived, and thus proving herself 
 the most royal descendant of her house, we can- 
 not believe that she was married against her own 
 consent. 
 
 Neither do we understand whether the father 
 himself was aware of the deepest plots of the prince. 
 But when Hatshepsut's mother died, the claim of 
 Thutmose I, which he had held through his wife, 
 passed by the same law to the prince, Thutmose, 
 whose wife was the daughter of that queen. The 
 moment had arrived. It seems like a fairy tale 
 to us, though to them it was doubtless real enough. 
 The old king in his temple hall, offering to the god 
 upon a feast day before the assembled people; his 
 son with the priests among the cedar columns on 
 the northern side. The procession, as was cus- 
 tomary, bore the image of the god from the sanc- 
 tuary, but it appeared to be seeking among the 
 pillars, until it came to the young prince, who fell 
 upon his face. By the oracle of the god he was 
 led to the spot where his father had stood, and 
 where only the king might be. Thus did the 
 spokesmen of Divine sanction already make and 
 unmake Emperors. 
 
 Both the royalist and priestly parties were 
 satisfied. Thutmose III, as he is known to his- 
 tory, forthwith began to reign, while Thutmose I 
 retired to a more or less restful seclusion. At 
 first the new king attempted to rule without con- 
 sidering his royal wife. In the political struggle 
 
124 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 which immediately ensued, he lost his carefully 
 planned-for power and became no more in reality 
 than the Prince Consort. Hatshepsut, his strong 
 and beautiful queen, was the true sovereign of 
 Egypt. She now began her memorial, that most 
 exquisite, terraced temple on the western shore. 
 
 But at this point the reign of the two was broken 
 briefly by that of another brother, Thutmose II, 
 in alliance with the father. Bitterly they turned 
 against Hatshepsut, erasing her name from her 
 own temple and placing theirs upon it. Thutmose 
 I died during the reign of this son; and Thutmose 
 II, perceiving that the real power against him was 
 the party of Hatshepsut, and understanding the 
 situation between herself and her husband, allied 
 himself with Thutmose III. Together they held 
 the government for a short period. On the death 
 of Thutmose II, Thutmose III was again unable 
 to keep the authority in his hands, and was forced 
 to a reconciliation with his royal wife. Again 
 they reigned together, and again Thutmose III 
 disappeared from sight. 
 
 Hatshepsut's sun had now risen clear. Her 
 partisans, who would rise or fall with her, took 
 heed to steadfastly uphold her rule. In the reliefs 
 of her new temple, which she now had carried to 
 perfection, it was shown that she had been divinely 
 intended to be Queen, as the child of the Sun-god ; 
 lier birth, in accordance with court convention and 
 folk tradition, attended by miracles. She is also 
 pictured as nurtured by Hathor, crowned by the 
 
THE HOUSE OF AMON 125 
 
 gods, and appointed to rule by Thutmose I. He 
 was recorded as saying, "Who shall speak evil of 
 her majesty shall die. "* 
 
 The country under Hatshepsut, now entered 
 upon a period of peaceful prosperity, of commerce, 
 of exploration, of building and of art — while Thut- 
 mose in did the duties of a priest. Hatshepsut 
 was the first great woman whose name and deeds 
 belong to history. It was at this time that the 
 Priesthood of Egypt had just been organized into 
 a whole, with the High Priest of Amon at its head, 
 and the present High Priest was also vizier of 
 Egypt, and Hatshepsut's devoted partisan — so 
 that the priests also were now with her. It would 
 make an interesting story could we know the real 
 wishes of the old adherents of the family through 
 all these troublous times, and especially the 
 thoughts of the family themselves: — if there were 
 beneath ambitious struggles, contrary personal 
 feelings. We cannot trust the official words of 
 praise or blame. Hatshepsut's favorite was the 
 teacher of Thutmose Ill's childhood, to whom she 
 gave in trust the education and the fortune of her 
 little girl. Thutmose I's old general had super- 
 intended the care of this little one when she was 
 an infant. Also the architect of Thutmose I, 
 who had built the Karnak hall, now constructed 
 Hatshepsut's temple. Whether her father him- 
 self, who had carved a path of conquest across 
 Asia to the Euphrates and had established firmly 
 the Egyptian Empire, had been later in the posi- 
 
 *Breasted 
 
126 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 tion of King Lear, listening to first one and then 
 another of his children, who shall ever say? 
 Though he chiseled out her name in her temple, 
 Hatshepsut erected her Karnak obelisks to him, 
 and made one tomb for him and for herself. But 
 the standard of filial expression in Egypt was high. 
 
 That tallest obelisk rising over the wreckage is 
 hers — the top of the other lies here. On that 
 ninety-foot page is inscribed, as a charming Ameri- 
 can woman expressed it, the first "woman's post- 
 script. " For writ large down the shaft is the story 
 of how Hatshepsut raises it to the honor and glory 
 of her father, the great Thutmose I; and at the 
 bottom is the naive addition, "And to my honor 
 and glory too. " 
 
 The huge blocks had been brought on a barge 
 from Assouan and there were well-nigh a thousand 
 rowers in the boats which drew them to Thebes. 
 The tops were covered with electrum,' whose shin- 
 ing, lighted by the rays of the Sun-god, could be 
 seen from afar. One was supposed to flood the 
 North, or Lower Egypt, and the other, the South, 
 with light. 
 
 No wonder the traders who now filled the 
 country spread the glories of Hatshepsut over 
 Syria. Well might she have sung: 
 
 "The thousand rowers bring my obelisks; 
 The wandering Bedoui carry my fame. " 
 
 Strangely enough the Queen set up these shafts 
 in this hall ; wrecking it in the process, for the roof 
 
THE HOUSE OF AMON 127 
 
 had to be broken and many of the cohimns de- 
 stroyed. Though in her father's name, their shin- 
 ing overthrew her father's hall, the hall in which 
 he himself had been overthrown by Thutmose III ; 
 and they cast the place into utter confusion. 
 
 The tomb which Hatshepsut made beside her 
 temple on the other side of the river, was not used 
 by Thutmose I. Probably he had made other 
 arrangements — and we know that, not trusting 
 his memorials to posterity, he had, as was usual, 
 provided for his own mortuary service in the 
 temple of Abydos. 
 
 When, after a reign of some fifteen years, Hat- 
 shepsut died, Thutmose Ill's resentment toward 
 her was revealed. It was so deep that he not only 
 mutilated the reliefs of her beautiful temple, cut- 
 ting out for a second time her name wherever it 
 occurred, but he also destroyed or disfigured the 
 tombs and statues of all those who had stood 
 nearest her, including his old tutor and the High 
 Priest of Amon. 
 
 The fallen masonry which adds to the debris 
 about us here in Karnak was the sheath he built to 
 hide Hatshepsut's name upon her obelisks. But 
 their clear shining overhead must have constantly 
 annoyed his sight. 
 
 When we thought how Hatshepsut's body had 
 not yet been found, we could not but wonder why. 
 Could Thutmose III, Napoleon of Egypt though he 
 became, so violate Egyptian beHefs as to destroy 
 it? That seemed so impossible that we scarcely 
 
128 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 liked to utter the thought aloud. We preferred to 
 believe that faithful friends, not risking the temp- 
 tation to this crime far worse than murder, con- 
 cealed her more securely than even the other royal 
 ones were hid. 
 
 Once freed, Thutmose showed himself a con- 
 summate general, who carried the advance of 
 Egypt beyond his father's borders, beyond the 
 Euphrates, beyond what was ever accomplished 
 before or since in Asia. Returning from a magni- 
 ficent campaign for a triumph in Thebes, he was 
 faced with an odd situation. Naturally his tri- 
 umph took the form of temple festivals, and his 
 glory was made visible by the magnitude of his 
 offerings to the state god. In the hall where he 
 had been summoned to reign and where he cele- 
 brated his first Victory Feast, he made the first 
 great endowment to Amon. For it was then that 
 he gave, not only silver and gold and precious 
 stones, but Yenoam and the two other towns of 
 the Lebanon to the state temple — beside much 
 land in Egypt to be worked by his captives. It 
 was not in those days, '*He that hath pity on the 
 poor lendeth to the Lord. " Giving to Amon was 
 presenting to the temple cities, land, serfs and 
 income. In this way Thutmose III began the 
 estabhshment of the wealth of this temple and 
 this priesthood far above all others. 
 
 But the state had now grown beyond even the 
 new temple of his father, the only fine hall of which 
 was marred and broken by those persistent obelisks 
 
THE HOUSE OF AMON 129 
 
 of his dead queen. He had himself added to its 
 destruction by walling up the shafts. Doubtless 
 he would have liked to destroy the temple entirely 
 and begin again. But building takes long, and a 
 king's glory is as much in his inheritance as in his 
 own achievement. He magnifies himself in mag- 
 nifying his ancestors. Thutmose III had his own 
 special temple on the western shore. This temple 
 of Karnak was already the state temple of his 
 fathers, and the place where he himself had been 
 called to the kingship. What could he do with it? 
 It was spoiled for him, yet he could not desert it. 
 He attempted some restoration of the hall, setting 
 up stone pillars in place of the cedar ones, on the 
 northern side where he had stood on that memor- 
 able occasion. Then he seems to have given up 
 the hall; and all that portion of the temple. Re- 
 turning from a second campaign, he turns his back 
 upon all that part which since the beginning has 
 been the front of the building; and plans his great 
 hall of triumph clear across the other end. At the 
 feast of the New Moon, a feast we find also kept 
 in Israel, were held the foundation ceremonies. 
 About the hall and the body of the temple were a 
 large number of other chambers in which Thut- 
 mose now wrote his own records, and remembered 
 the kings who preceded him. His list of them is 
 in the National Library in Paris. So, in the temple 
 was also preserved his work as an historian. In 
 addition to this, on the walls has been discovered 
 the first account of a botanical and zoological 
 
130 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 garden, the garden of the temple where he placed 
 his specimens from Asia. Plants and animals are 
 pictured here, which were hitherto unknown to 
 Egypt. We must not forget that at this time, 
 Luxor was yet an unimportant little Middle King- 
 dom sanctuary. The avenues of sphinxes and 
 the great garden between the two temples were 
 probably undreamed of. It was for this king's 
 great-grandson to plan those. In his day, Thut- 
 mose's festival hall was supreme, and even today 
 it is beautiful, as we discover for ourselves when 
 we have climbed over the hills of difficulty made 
 by the ruined walls of all the inner chambers, and 
 have entered it. The glorious color shines out 
 festive still. 
 
 Here ends the first chapter of the building of the 
 temple. We have been through all the divisions, 
 for in passing through the temple itself, we were 
 obliged to begin with the latest. Slowly we wan- 
 der back and thread the maze around the small 
 Middle Kingdom sanctuary, the kernel of the 
 whole, the centre where all began, which in spite 
 of changes and additions, was the sanctuary until 
 the end. The lily columns of Thutmose III, from 
 the little forecourt of this holy place, are standing 
 yet. The southern one bears the papyrus of the 
 South; the other, the lotus of the North. The 
 priest passed in between them. This division of 
 Egypt persisted from pre-historic days, and the 
 fact that the state temple at Thebes faced west, 
 made it possible symbolically to divide its pairs of 
 
THE HOUSE OF AMON 131 
 
 obelisks and columns. As we look at the sculp- 
 tured flowers we realize how, before the beginning, 
 the pre-historic kingdoms had their national 
 flowers, their national colors, their kings, their 
 priests, their temples, and their belief in immortal 
 life. 
 
 After Thutmose III, from time to time, the 
 temple was restored and added to. His son, Amen- 
 hotep II, put right the hall of Thutmose I, and re- 
 ported it on the stonework around Hatshepsut's 
 obelisks, and henceforth, despite Thutmose's festal 
 hall, this end was the front of the temple. 
 
 We have read the book of the records of the 
 kings, unsealed for us within a hundred years. 
 In the temple we are back in the Empire again. 
 We forget the loss, remembering only the gains. 
 Here we have found the details of a story which 
 lives again. The kings have explained themselves 
 to us. It was not enough that they should build, 
 but in their buildings they should leave their 
 names. 
 
 Here, then, was the little structure of Ahmose I, 
 who laid the foundation of the Empire; there, was 
 once the gate of his son Amenhotep I. We return 
 toward the front, in the order of the kings; through 
 the hall of Thutmose I, with the towering memo- 
 rial of his daughter, the masonry of Thutmose III, 
 and the restorations of the latter's son, Amenhotep 
 II. Outside the southern entrance was the obe- 
 lisk raised by Thutmose IV. Crossing the court 
 of Amenhotep III, we can look through that south- 
 
132 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 ern portal where the pylons of Harmhab contain 
 the temple of Ikhnaton. We enter again the 
 great hall, planned by Rameses I, and partly 
 built on the northern half by Seti. 
 
 These are they who preceded Rameses II, and 
 who prepared the Temple. Even Ikhnaton, 
 against what he willed, cut stones for it. And as 
 Karnak, more than anything else, represents what 
 Egypt stood for, so also does Rameses more than 
 any king. 
 
 Here in the great hall of columns we rest. 
 Above is that one window in the room, where day- 
 light floods the place. We may wander among 
 the giant pillars, yet the size of the hall defies our 
 comprehension. The largest ever built, it is, 
 because of its time, more wonderful than any 
 ancient or modern building; and, strengthened by 
 the modern world, it will stand when the modern 
 world has passed, — still proudly bearing on its 
 walls the first strategic battle record, the first 
 masterpiece of composition in art, and the first 
 attempt at an epic — and after Rameses' records, 
 on the further wall, with no hint of its significance, 
 the first historic mention of Israel. 
 
 From end to end of Egypt, Rameses built, telling 
 over and over his story, and setting up his figure 
 in the most titanic monolithic statues ever pro- 
 duced. It was the result of that re-organization 
 of the state and re-conquest of the Empire which 
 came just before him, and in the beginning of his 
 reign. With Rameses the Empire exhausted it- 
 
THE HOUSE OF AMON 133 
 
 self, as it did in the days of the Pyramid builders. 
 Once it had spent itseK on the tombs of its god-like 
 kings; now it gave all it had to the kingly temples 
 of the gods. 
 
 Excess of power, like that of Rameses, marks a 
 culmination. The very imitation which follows 
 it, stifles the life that remains. 
 
 Egypt had once for all expressed herself in form. 
 Her decadence was necessary, in order that other 
 nations might arise with their contributions to the 
 future of the world. A control for the sake of 
 tribute, only maintained by constant warfare, 
 could not last. In such holding of a state, the 
 peace which follows conquest, must ever be giving 
 way to fresh conquest. 
 
 That Egypt as Egypt was to endure forever — 
 that would not have been progress. The history 
 of the world is not a continuous evolution — one 
 thing develops in Egypt, another in Syria. But 
 in the enduring Temple which she built, we shall 
 realize that what Egypt gave us was something 
 apart. 
 
 Still in thought, we traverse the ancient avenue 
 of sphinxes to Karnak, Temple of Temples, — at 
 once so ruined and so vast that it defies remem- 
 brance, save as an unspeakable greatness. Only 
 in the full moonlight may it be seen in all its splen- 
 dor, when Hathor's shining conceals the ruin and 
 restores the building by her magic to a more than 
 earthly beauty. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The Valley of the Shadow 
 
 AMON-RE, the Sun, was shining as he 
 shone three thousand years ago. Re- 
 flected in the water, the only way that 
 we might gaze upon him, he spread his 
 wings of morning when we crossed the river at 
 Thebes. There were only we two and Aboudi, 
 and the donkey -boys and the donkeys; but the 
 plain was peopled for us. We had come to that 
 shore, the land of the setting Sun, where in the 
 barren cliffs which border the Theban plain, the 
 inhabitants themselves of the vanished city of 
 Thebes, lie deep in the rocks, asleep ! 
 
 We drew up to pay homage at the feet of the 
 two Colossi who guard the path to the whole of 
 this Western realm, the figures of Amenhotep III. 
 The temple which stood behind them is gone, the 
 yearly waste of waters had subsided, and they 
 gazed serenely on fresh green fields surging to their 
 thrones. We felt overawed again in approaching 
 this king — too mighty to take note of us — he who 
 had thus magnified for the ages, and made lasting, 
 his material form to receive us. He is questioning 
 the centuries, to give his message to that which 
 shall understand. Yet some of the treasures which 
 
 184 
 
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 135 
 
 he guards and which have so long been held in 
 Hathor's keeping — Moon-goddess, who is Nature 
 or Love — may not last another hundred years. 
 
 As we left the statues we could picture the 
 cavalcade of Bent-Anat, sister of her who found 
 Moses, rise out of the dust before us, coming round 
 from the Valley of the Kings to Seti's University;* 
 and we rode a galloping race remembering how 
 she tried her chariot horses against Paaker's 
 Syrian-bred. So we entered the tortuous way 
 that leads for miles to the heart of the mountains, 
 while the barren heights closed round us, and no 
 blade of grass, no living thing, in all that desert 
 waste, was visible. 
 
 Strangest of all strange places is that far-hidden 
 Valley behind the bare mountains back of the 
 Theban plain, mountains which have yielded 
 treasure far more valuable than gold. For here 
 the Pharaohs made themselves fastnesses to be 
 secure to the present day. Their hiding-places 
 have been opened now. The three milleniums 
 during which, inscriptions tell us, these kings be- 
 lieved they were to he in darkness, have passed 
 over the mountain crests above them; and the 
 graves have yielded up their secrets. Within a 
 hundred years Egypt, with the pictures of her life' 
 sealed away quite perfect for us, has been unlocked 
 to the modern world, the buildings opened, the 
 key found to the writing on the walls. The for- 
 gotten language is read once more, the ocean of 
 Time is crossed; and the unknown life with all its 
 
 ♦Uarda. 
 
136 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 daily customs, its beliefs and its ideals, is seen in 
 paintings, fresh as of yesterday. Herodotus might 
 be deceived by the Egyptians themselves; but 
 through this hidden portrayal of the secrets of 
 their lives, we know. 
 
 Black holes in the spurs of the hills are the re- 
 opened entrances. There were robbers in Egyp- 
 tian days whose rolling away of the stone from the 
 mouth of the pit was to be feared. 
 
 The iron gates of the Committee of Antiquities 
 unclosed before our passes. Electric light illum- 
 ines the tombs during certain hours of the morning. 
 By what light were accomplished the wonderful 
 paintings and inscriptions, which cover the walls 
 of the passages and the tomb chambers .^^ Doubt- 
 less the same strong steady glow by which were 
 done in other parts of Egypt and in earlier times, 
 the work, so perfect in every minute detail, on 
 inner walls of living rock. This, the Egyptians 
 have not explained for us yet. 
 
 We entered an opening in the cliff which ends 
 the Valley; and three hundred feet down into the 
 foundation of the mountain our little company 
 penetrated, over a bridge across a once impassable 
 pit to a chamber fresh from the painter's hand. 
 In a deeper place at one end lay the king Amen- 
 hotep II, as he had lain since near four thousand 
 years, some centuries before the days of Moses. 
 The lid of the sarcophagus has been removed and 
 we looked upon his face. . . . Suddenly, how- 
 ever, a crowd of tourists surged in upon us with a 
 
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 137 
 
 strident-voiced conductor, who shattered the spell 
 and the silence. Yet the king's majesty of repose 
 could not be disturbed — as with Bahram, the great 
 hunter, ''the wild ass stamps o'er his head but can- 
 not break his sleep." 
 
 We came out into the light of heaven only to go 
 down into another tomb, that of Merneptah, the 
 Pharaoh of the Exodus. His finely carved sarcop- 
 hagus in an upper chamber has never been used; 
 but upon the lid in the lower vault lies a colossal 
 white figure of the king, in an eternal sleep. 
 
 From this barren resting-place we went to that 
 of his grandfather Seti, the most beautiful of the 
 tombs and one discovered long ago, but empty of 
 the king when found. 
 
 Through the underground passage of Seti's 
 tomb we descended into the realm of the shades. 
 Upon its walls and chambers before Moses was 
 born, was written with human figures the Egyp- 
 tian Bible of that time : the story of the passage of 
 the soul after death; and the judgment of God, 
 represented by the Sun, placing at his right hand 
 the blessed, at his left, the damned. 
 
 How strange these days of travelling are ! Early 
 in the morning we had said: "Today we shall go to 
 the Valley of the Kings, " with a vague idea, as is 
 gained from books, of what was in store for us. 
 Afterward, the Valley was an experience, a part of 
 our identity because a memory infused into and 
 transforming our being. 
 
 We stood upon a mountain crest with that weird 
 
138 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 Valley of the Dead behind us; and there stretched 
 before, the fertile river valley, even to Karnak, 
 "the National Sanctuary," "the Throne of the 
 World," on the other side. The funeral temples 
 of the West lay in a line on the desert's edge below 
 us; and at the foot of the precipice on which we 
 stood was the ravine of Der-el-Bahri with its ter- 
 raced temple opposite to Karnak, and once con- 
 nected with it by an avenue of sphinxes, only 
 broken by the silver stream. 
 
 Aboudi, standing in his black robes on the edge 
 of the precipice, stretched out his arm, and we 
 listened again to the story of the return of the 
 Pharaoh. 
 
 We knew with what care the Pharaohs were laid 
 away, and hidden again from time to time as anci- 
 ent robbers discovered their hiding-place. Was it 
 not with the intention that those very bodies might 
 again see the light after three thousand years? 
 
 But although at the end of this time a key to 
 the Egyptian language had been found, and the 
 records read for a hundred years, the search for the 
 great of Egypt had been in vain. 
 
 Those tombs back in the Valley were so many of 
 them empty; and Rameses, the great king, had 
 not been discovered. And then — ^traces, tokens, 
 began to float down from Thebes to Cairo on the 
 stream of tourists : scraps of papyrus, jewels, some- 
 times what had been a human hand or foot. Mod- 
 ern Egyptian robbers had made a find and were 
 selling as much as they could, unconscious that 
 
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 139 
 
 they were thus forwarding a mute appeal for help 
 against themselves. 
 
 Authorities came to Luxor, but nothing could 
 wring from the people the secret which meant for 
 them wealth. At last was found the native family 
 from whom the treasures emanated, but neither 
 bribes nor imprisonment could move them — until 
 one, realizing that they could dispose of no more 
 booty, told for the sake of the reward. And im- 
 mediately, in the burning July weather, three men, 
 Emile Brugsch and his two assistants, came to 
 Thebes. 
 
 They met the surly ruffian. Led by him among 
 the lonely scorching mountains, with a waiting 
 crowd of cut-throats whose secret was to be sold, 
 behind them, Mr. Brugsch and his two assistants 
 clambered around the rocks until, beyond a bould- 
 er, was discovered a heap of stones. "That is it," 
 said the robber. 
 
 With a hastily constructed tackle the English- 
 man was lowered unto a pit some fifty feet in 
 depth. What he found in the horizontal passage 
 opening from the pit and in the great tomb chamber 
 at the end, made even this strong man faint. He 
 hurried back lest he lose consciousness in this vast 
 grave and his secret die with him. After what 
 he had beheld he desired to live but one more day 
 at least till his message could be given to the world. 
 
 Revived by the air, he recalled the forty royal 
 ones imprisoned in that tomb, and how from their 
 torn wrappings the faces of the mighty had looked 
 
140 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 upon him. Later, it was seen that so perfect was 
 everything, even a wasp fallen on the flowers on 
 the breast of Thutmose III had been preserved. 
 
 And in the corridor lay the second Rameses, 
 Rameses the Great ! 
 
 That night three hundred Arabs were engaged, 
 squads to work and other squads to watch them; 
 and for four days, night and dsiy, a marvellous 
 procession passed. It bore King Rameses in his 
 royal company, kings and queens and priests, along 
 the crest from which the temples they had reared 
 might still be seen. So they wound down from 
 the heights, to the plain and the boats at the river 
 side. The news of their coming had preceded 
 them down the Nile; and once more, as over three 
 thousand years ago, an exceeding great cry went 
 up from Egypt; all Egypt was in mourning, weep- 
 ing and wailing for Pharaoh along the river banks. 
 
 So the great ones came to Cairo, where they 
 keep perpetual state, saved and brought to the 
 light by alien northerners more than three thousand 
 years after they were interred. Yet, — would they 
 could be shielded from the gaze of the irreverent, 
 even as Seti prayed, in an inscription on his white 
 sarcophagus : 
 
 "May the impious not take possession of me!"* 
 
 Was it Death of which the Egyptians were chiefly 
 conscious — with their figure of a mummy at every 
 feast, — Death which carved the memorials, pre- 
 served the very bodies, lasting till today? 
 
 *Rawn8ley. 
 
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 141 
 
 The Rosetta Stone has given the clue to the lost 
 language; so that men understand those pictures 
 without background or perspective, yet with 
 meaning in every proportion; know the very 
 sounds of the words; read the inscriptions and 
 maxims. The family relations, even the nurses, 
 poets, architects are known to us; those things 
 which in the great of all ages typify our own rela- 
 tions and make the rulers living to us. More than 
 all, Hght is thrown upon those Hebrew scriptures, 
 which have become the Bible of our race. 
 
 Yet in spite of all our knowledge those closed 
 silent lips of the Pharaohs keep back many a 
 secret, and the more we know, the more we feel 
 the unsolvable mystery of how they thought. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 The City of the King 
 
 IT is still to the temples that we must go to 
 dream of the Pharaohs awake. 
 Upon another day we visited Der-el-Bahri, 
 the memorial of Hatshepsut, sometimes called 
 Hatasu, royal daughter of Thutmose I. 
 
 The name of her temple is thus explained. 
 Many of these buildings were used as convents in 
 the Christian period, and the Arabic word for con- 
 vent is "Der." Der-el-Bahri, Convent of the 
 North, ancient temple of Hatshepsut, has not been 
 long uncovered. 
 
 Terraced to the mountain wall, in the living 
 rock of which its holy of holies is hidden, the temple 
 is a departure in Egyptian architecture and re- 
 veals a wonderful sense of proportion, and skill 
 in the outdoor use of the colonnade. 
 
 Behind one of these colonnades is the story of 
 the birth of the queen and her nourishing by the 
 goddess Hathor. Behind another is the famous 
 "Expedition to Punt, " one of those pictures whose 
 impression is clear and indelible in our minds, not 
 a composite impression, like the "Victories" and 
 "Gods"; because this picture, like the Semitic 
 people in the tomb at Beni-Hassan, like the festival 
 
 142 
 
THE CITY OF THE KING 143 
 
 in Luxor, fills in a distinct and separate chapter in 
 Egyptian history. The marvellous skill with 
 which the Egyptian boat is drawn, holds our atten- 
 tion; the cargo, the very fish, the land of Punt with 
 its houses in the tree-tops and its cattle resting 
 beneath — all the story of this voyage of discovery 
 to a treasure country of old is graphically told. 
 The military escort for this temple expedition re- 
 calls, despite its different equipment and 3,500 
 years, the military escort for the Mecca caravan 
 which we saw a month or so ago. 
 
 However, the wonderful terraced temple is the 
 evidence that hate as well as love, may be undying 
 through many centuries; for here Thutmose III 
 has left a record of himself in the mutilated places 
 where the queen's figure was portrayed. 
 
 Medinet-Habu, that teniple of Rameses III, 
 is also to be visited. In its still lovely colors life 
 gleams among the ruins. "Look at the King!" 
 cried Aboudi, before the great symbol of Victory, 
 which we are learning to recognize. " He showing 
 his God all those people he conquered; and he 
 telhng his God how much trouble he have in con- 
 quering those people." Aboudi, descendant of 
 the ancient Egyptians, has a gentle, melancholy 
 voice which seems to come softly down from a far 
 distance. But it is at the Ramesseum that we 
 hear him best, it is the Place of Rameses that will 
 live the longest in our memories. 
 
 All ruined — ^that Ramesseum. The Committee 
 of Antiquities can place no gates where there are 
 
144 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 no enclosing walls. Weeds grow among the shat- 
 tered fragments of the colossal pink statue in the 
 open court. Here and there we find a hand or a 
 foot, which seems as if belonging to some more 
 than human figure. " How are the mighty fallen ! ' ' 
 comes involuntarily to our lips — but the power of 
 the mighty remains. The pillars of the temple 
 stand up beautiful in their unprotected desolation. 
 Ruin, the "charm beyond perfection," suggesting 
 always the freeing of spirit, enfolds them in an 
 atmosphere of poetic tragedy. 
 
 The first great tower-gate is a fallen heap of 
 stone upon its outside, threatening to let down the 
 whole — yet we trace the carving on the side 
 towards the court. The second gate stands firm 
 and strong, braced by modern masonry; for, more 
 perfect than in Karnak or in Luxor, on its inner 
 wall, close behind the guardian columns of Osiris, 
 facing the inner court, is the greatest picture of 
 Egypt. The first real composition, forerunner of 
 Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, this epic in 
 sculpture and painting illustrates the first epic of 
 literature. 
 
 The heroic figure of Rameses, today towers 
 supreme over all his enemies, — not only of that 
 time but of all succeeding ages, and of Time him- 
 self. "Ramsie the Great!" said Aboudi. He 
 would not for the world have consciously used a 
 diminutive, for his voice was full of a touching 
 reverence and pride ; but the French pronunciation 
 has a caressing, endearing sound, which somehow 
 
THE CITY OF THE KING 145 
 
 makes the king human and living for us. In his 
 simple English, Aboudi told of the battle; and we 
 who knew the poem, found fresh pleasure in his 
 telling. He pointed out where the princes and 
 generals were all going the wrong way, leaving 
 Ramsie their king, "alone and no man with him." 
 "He pray to his God," said Aboudi reverently; 
 "maybe his God help him, else how he conquer 
 all those people.^" He showed us the conquered 
 warriors fleeing before the single-handed might 
 and vengeance of the king; and a fire and enthusi- 
 asm touched him — till we realized that Ramsie was 
 king of his land, and still belongs to him. 
 
 Then and there was solved our problem of dis- 
 tracted interest between the Present and the Past. 
 Before that picture in the temple we felt how the 
 Egyptian life goes on much as it did of old; and we 
 found the Past in the Present. 
 
 We were no longer even aware of the veneer of 
 Orientalism which has been cast upon Egypt by 
 the Mohammedan religion, for we knew that land 
 as the first country of our Western civilization, 
 its people as the first people of the West. The 
 depths of religion underly us all. 
 
 Aboudi revealed to us the realistic humor in the 
 picture; where the hosts fall into the river, and 
 friends on the opposite bank pull them out and 
 hold the Aleppo chieftain upside down to empty 
 the water from his mouth. Those old Egyptians 
 understood that ridicule is the last and deadliest 
 weapon, which leaves nothing of the foe. 
 
146 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 There is color in the picture; the river flows blue, 
 surrounding the city of Kadesh with a moat, — one 
 can see the bridge over which the helpers have 
 come to the rescue of the demoralized host. As we 
 looked, the great picture, with its crowd of human 
 figures, absorbed us. We were no longer conscious 
 of ruin, no longer conscious of the weeds in the 
 outer courtyard, of the overthrown statue; we do 
 not know, even to this day, if the picture had 
 suffered any marring, any loss of color; through 
 some magic it was for us as in the days it was ac- 
 complished. As we stood and looked upon it so 
 Moses must have looked in the days when the 
 events it protrayed were fresh in the people's 
 mind. 
 
 Across the ruined outer court on the outer gate 
 we found the rest of the story : Ramsie again in the 
 battle; all the cities taken; the Egyptian camp and 
 the camp life, where the artist, freed from con- 
 ventional forms and symbolisms, has given his 
 fancy play among the beasts released from their 
 burdens. And last, by the entrance, sits Ramsie 
 enthroned — ^the tracing slight yet beautiful. Those 
 princes whom we beheld going the wrong way on 
 the first gate, are approaching to congratulate 
 their king. His face is proud and sad, his hand 
 uplifted as he tells them: "It was indeed the more 
 to my credit, but to your discredit, for you left me 
 all alone ! " How human that reproach ! 
 
 King Rameses! — we have gazed upon his very 
 face in Cairo, not in painting, but "in the flesh," 
 
THE CITY OF THE KING 147 
 
 and this father of Pharaoh's daughter is very real 
 and hving to us — even as his pictures and inscrip- 
 tions all reveal him, from the time when he vowed : 
 "Men shall estimate the strength of the father in 
 me his child;" to this single-handed battle in his 
 own chariot, which fills us with living enthusiasm. 
 Thebes is the city of Rameses. 
 
 In the courts of his temple we are enlightened to 
 further secrets of Egyptian art. Those figures of 
 Osiris, in which the king personifies the god, lean 
 against supporting pillars — they do not support the 
 roof. Egyptians, though they had developed the 
 column far beyond those early pillars at Beni- 
 Hassan, never used the Caryatides. It is on the 
 same principle that in modern Egyptian mosques 
 the Saracens have not concealed the masonry of 
 arches by ornamental designs, and could not have 
 been guilty of making a wreath of flowers appear 
 to support a heavy weight. 
 
 Stirring and beautiful arc the whole series of 
 decorations in Rameses' temple. There are other 
 battles in which he is assisted by his sons; and in 
 the library, the room inscribed "the sanctum of 
 the soul, " is the tree of knowledge upon which that 
 prenomen, User-maat-Ra-setep-en Ra, is being 
 written. In this room are also the names of sons 
 and daughters, and Bent-Anat receives queenly 
 honors. It all makes clear to us another matter. 
 We remember that in the tombs of the Old King- 
 dom the guest chambers are decorated entirely 
 with images of the earth-life. At Thebes we think 
 
148 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 at first that it is ideas alone which live in the tombs 
 of the New Empire. But the tombs in the Valley 
 of the Kings with their dreams of death, are only 
 as the undecorated shaft and mummy-chamber 
 of the tombs at Beni-Hassan and Sakkara. The 
 temples on the western plain before the mountains, 
 — on the other side of which the kings were buried 
 — these temples are the royal guest chambers in 
 which the earth-life is depicted, and the exploits 
 of the kings commemorated in proportionately 
 kingly fashion. That the arrangement is but the 
 old plan magnified is evident from the fact that 
 tombs of the nobility at Thebes are similar to those 
 of ancient Memphis. It was the tombs of the 
 nobility which we entered there — ^the kings had 
 their Pyramids. 
 
 So, in his ruined Ramesseum, Rameses' life, and 
 the forces running through the life of Egypt, are 
 revealed. 
 
 Perhaps it is not generally realized that the great 
 picture of Rameses' triumph in his Ramesseum 
 had a hidden romanitc significance. In the result 
 also of the battle of Kadesh, Rameses was the re- 
 presentative of all Egypt, for he sealed the treaty 
 with the Hittite Kheta by marrying the daughter 
 of the Kheta King. Her father brought her to 
 him and she was called in Egypt Ur-maat-neferu- 
 Ra, the whole name signifying "Dawn.''* 
 
 Womanhood in Egypt from the beginning re- 
 ceived higher honor than in other countries of 
 antiquity. Far back in the Ancient Kingdom a 
 
 ♦Petrie. 
 
THE CITY OF THE KING 149 
 
 law was passed which was an advance upon the 
 SaHc Law in Europe today; for it admitted women 
 to reign in their own right. Women went about 
 freely as the equals of men. The queen consort 
 was sculptured beside the king. Descent was 
 traced through the mother as well as through the 
 father; and it is the mother who is pictured with 
 her son in his tomb. Family life in Egypt presents 
 many beautiful features. Woman had her place 
 in mythology also. The Sun-myths which per- 
 sonify the Sun and the Moon, or the Sun and the 
 Earth, as a man and a woman, thus expressing the 
 highest rhythm of the Universe, are evident in 
 the Egyptian worship of the Moon-bride of the 
 God-of-the-Sun. Temples were raised to her — 
 Isis or Hathor — Goddess of Nature or Love, with 
 the horns and the Moon for a crown. 
 
 This marriage of Rameses, himself the "image 
 of the Sun-god," stands for great things. 
 
 A tablet in Abu-Simbel, containing what pur- 
 ports to be a dialogue between Rameses and his 
 favorite god, Ptah, thus rehearses the matter: 
 
 Says Ptah:* "The people of Kheta are subjects 
 of thy palace. I have placed it in their hearts to 
 serve thee. . . . All their property is brought 
 to thee. His eldest daughter stands forward at 
 their head, to soften the heart of King Rameses 
 II, — a great inconceivable wonder. She herself 
 knew not the impression which her beauty made 
 on thy heart. . . . Thou art the most com- 
 plete example of strength and power. He is in- 
 Brugich-Bey. 
 
150 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 conceivably great, who orders and does not obey. 
 Since the times of the traditions of the gods, which 
 are hidden in the house of the rolls of writing, from 
 the times of the sun-god Ra (Re) down to thee, 
 history had nothing to report about the Klieta 
 people, but that they had one heart and one soul 
 with Egypt." 
 
 Rameses replies: "Thou has committed to me 
 what thou hast created. I do and I will do again 
 all good for thee, so long as I shall be sole king 
 just as thou hast been. I have cared for the land, 
 in order to create for thee a New Egypt, just as it 
 existed in the old time. I have set up images of 
 the gods according to thy likeness, yea, according 
 to their color and form, which hold possession of 
 Egypt." 
 
 Of the daughters of Rameses we know the names 
 of several, including Bent Anat, ("daughter of 
 Anaitis"*) Meri-Amen, and Nebtaui. "A much 
 younger sister named Meri, (Beloved) deserves to 
 be mentioned, since her name reminds us of the 
 princess Merris, the daughter of Maat-neferu Ra, 
 the Kheta princess, who, according to Jewish tradi- 
 tion, found Moses when she went to bathe, "f 
 
 Strange if it were the little daughter of the 
 Asiatic queen, who found Moses near the universi- 
 ty city of On, the present Heliopolis, when the 
 court was in the north, and who in the yearning of 
 her woman's nature persuaded her father to let 
 her keep the baby. Moses was probably educated 
 
 *Anaitis is the name of a Syrian goddess. 
 jBrugsch-Bey. 
 
THE CITY OF THE KING 151 
 
 at Heliopolis in all the priestly lore of that peculi- 
 arly religious city with its Eastern influence, but 
 we may also imagine him brought with the king's 
 sons to Thebes and trained in the University of 
 Seti just beyond us. So possibly it is the school 
 of Moses which we passed on our way to the 
 Valley of the Kings and which we are still privileg- 
 ed to walk through today. 
 
 But the half Asiatic daughter of Rameses little 
 knew that she was raising up a great leader of an 
 Asiatic race, who should contend with her brother 
 Merneptah — with whom he may have been educat- 
 ed — and should break forever the bonds of that 
 race in Egypt — nay, who should be the herald 
 both of the Semitic supremacy in the world, which 
 followed the Hamitic and preceded the Aryan; 
 and of the second great development in human 
 thought, the casting away of images and symbols. 
 
 No man knows where Moses is buried. But, 
 sitting on the base of a column in Rameses' great 
 hall, we recall the empty tomb of Rameses' son 
 Merneptah, and the close-wrapped body of that 
 king, lying now in Cairo, so still, so eloquent of the 
 passing of the Hamitic power. 
 
 With this deeper significance in our minds, we 
 returned to look once more at the picture of the 
 great king, in his lonely triumph. His figure has 
 become to us a symbol of something greater, un- 
 locking for us the meaning of a world of other 
 symbols. 
 
 We who have seen the pictures cannot but re- 
 
152 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 joice this day that Rameses was left all alone; 
 that in his victory, the most dramatic episode in 
 Egyptian history, he might feel himself the in- 
 carnation of all Egypt, — nay, in that fundamental 
 virtue; supreme courage, the incarnation of divin- 
 ity. That picture in the inner court of the temple 
 is full of symbolism, some of which has become 
 conscious and conventional, but in all of which, if 
 we could but read, is the clue to Egyptian thought. 
 
 The size of the king, like those heroes, half -God, 
 haK-men, in the legends of all nations, is significant, 
 a symbol of his might; still more significant, the 
 evident belief of the king that he was divine. 
 
 Symbolism is before language — it is the language 
 of the Beginning and of that which is to be ful- 
 filled. Egypt is the great example, the great 
 country of it. It belongs to childhood and to the 
 first stage of human development, and is nowhere 
 seen as here. Always there is more in it than 
 those who gave it utterance understood. 
 
 But — as often since — ^the images or symbols 
 which clothed God for the common people became 
 so numerous that God, the Truth, was hidden by 
 them — and then did Moses lead the Israelites 
 from Egypt, and give that second commandment 
 to the childhood of the human race, which we 
 learn in our own childhood today. After Rameses, 
 comes Moses; out of the form, the Truth. At Kar- 
 nak, greatest temple of the world, they are digging 
 up the images against which that commandment 
 was made. 
 
THE CITY OF THE KING 15S 
 
 Egypt, earnest and religious, with all the sym- 
 bolism of the Beginning, held a conscious belief 
 in one God in her priesthood. "O thou mighty 
 One, of myriad forms and aspects, " says an Egyp- 
 tian hymn. Abraham also had brought from 
 Chaldea the idea of one God, and his descendants 
 had dwelt in Egypt under Asiatic kings. When 
 later, Moses, the baby of Egypt, the Hebrew found 
 by Rameses' daughter among the reeds of the 
 river, and still revered as a prophet on its banks, 
 was brought up in the highest ranks of the Egyp- 
 tians and educated in their priestly colleges, he 
 added to his hereditary belief in one God, the 
 knowledge, the expression, and the means of ex- 
 pression, of the priesthood of Egypt. The He- 
 brews were in a primitive and patriarchal stage 
 compared with their civilized masters. 
 
 It was at the height of Egypt's civilization that 
 the Semitic Moses led his people out of Egypt; an 
 event which seemed of no unusual import to the 
 Egyptians. But is was not only a political move- 
 ment, it was a rebellion against the forms of the 
 old religion, a protest against the symbolic images 
 with which the Egyptians clothed God for the 
 people. 
 
 The Semitic Hebrews, white-faced, white-robed, 
 a chaste people, carried their pure white religion, 
 the greatest blessing of the world, through all the 
 vicissitudes of their little kingdoms of Israel and 
 Judah; while Greece and Rome, with their great 
 civilizations, but with mythologies lighter than 
 
154 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 that of Egypt, rose and declined. And again, 
 just as Rome reached her golden age, the zenith 
 of her glory, a Hebrew, Jesus, brought another 
 reformation, of no moment to the world apparent- 
 ly, scarce a thorn in the side of Rome at first, yet 
 it heralded her end and the birth of Christianity. 
 Christianity, grown out of Judaism, became the 
 religion of fading Rome, and especially of her suc- 
 cessor, the young Gothic civilization of Europe. 
 
 Today we stand before the secrets of the earliest 
 stage. Today the world reads the other side of 
 the ancient storj^ 
 
 Egypt speaks for the ancient Egyptians. Did 
 the inhabitants have a premonition that the glory 
 of the Hamitic race would fall when it clashed with 
 the full sweep of the later-developed Semitic 
 people .f^ We can understand the hopeless misun- 
 derstanding between these alien races. But much 
 that Israel brought from Mizraim has only been 
 learned after three thousand years. The Hebrew 
 writings told us that Moses was educated as a 
 priest. Not until the last hundred years did 
 scholars know that the name, "I am that I am," 
 given him from the burning bush as authority for 
 his message, was the Egyptian name for God. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Israel in Egypt 
 
 WHAT is the story of Moses from 
 Egyptian records? The relation of 
 Palestine and Mizraim? 
 Until a century or so ago Chris- 
 tendom has seen the peoples of this age, — ^these 
 Egyptians, Hittites, Balylonians, Chaldeans, Nin- 
 evites — only from within the Hebrew position and 
 point of view. Thus faintly reflected in our parti- 
 san minds, they have seemed the monsters of an 
 evil dream. 
 
 Now we begin to know them from without the 
 Hebrew consciousness — objectively — nay, more, 
 we begin to find their centres and points of view. 
 For the first time from the ancient world of West- 
 ern Asia and Eastern Africa; from the dwellers and 
 the travellers over lands and waters, mountains, 
 valley routes and cities, the mists have rolled away. 
 The romances of Thebes, Jerusalem, Nineveh and 
 Babylon are real. 
 
 Names have become words with meanings, in 
 which, as we ponder maps of the ancient seats of 
 the mighty, we read the story of the Past, the 
 drama of the world. The peoples live again, the 
 cities take on personalities, as do the gods who 
 
 155 
 
156 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 represent the geniuses of the nations. In the plans 
 at the back of our Bibles, which illustrate the 
 Hebrew story, we may trace the campaigns of 
 Egypt, reading Egypt under Palestine. 
 
 By breaking up and combining the different 
 histories, — Egypt's and Assyria's — with Israel's 
 commentaries and political prophecies, what a 
 vivid living history of those times we have! 
 
 To begin with, Egypt was not aware of Israel. 
 The first historic mention of that people occurs 
 in the hymn of victory of Merneptih, Pharaoh of 
 the Exodus, probably shortly before the tribe in 
 Egypt went out. Petrie conjectures that this 
 conquered tribe in Palestine were a branch of the 
 family who had never gone down into Egypt, but 
 remaining had kept up their earliest associations 
 with localities. 
 
 Back of the time of their leaving Egypt, the 
 Hebrews in that country were to the Egyptians 
 no more than one of many Semitic tribes, who for 
 trade or as captives had for centuries filled Egypt. 
 The Hebrew story stands clear cut, alone, without 
 historical or geographical perspective, and with 
 no need for such, since it is a psychic drama of 
 human development to which the externals are 
 mere accessories. But in Egypt it is only within 
 the records of larger migrations that we trace the 
 Hebrew story, finding it confirmed and illumined 
 by the movements and conditions revealed. 
 
 Of Abraham, the first Hebrew visitor, we have 
 that late and elusory trace in the name, "Field of 
 
EGYPTIAN SUGAR CANE AND HUMBLE EGYPTIAN HOMES 
 
ISRAEL IN EGYPT 157 
 
 Abram, " among the places captured by Sheshonk 
 from Rehoboam, and listed on the Karnak wall. 
 Palestinian tradition in those days had evidently 
 marked the spot. In the tomb of Khnumhotep at 
 Beni-Hassan we saw that picture of a band of 
 Semitic people, bringing gifts, which was hailed 
 by its discoverers with enthusiasm, as probably 
 depicting the entry of Joseph's brethren into 
 Egypt. Known now to belong to a period long 
 before Abraham, it portrays the entry of one of 
 those patriarchal Bedouin "Princes of the Des- 
 ert," as they were called, who drifted westward 
 in a singular and apparently intuitive migration 
 from Semitic Chaldea, and of whom Abraham — 
 since his story tallies perfectly with their descrip- 
 tion — was probably a late representative. 
 
 The Hebrew story is typical. 
 
 From the opening of history and before, the 
 Semitic element, as we have seen, was always 
 sifting into Egypt from the East, and through 
 their blood as well as through their ideas, influenced 
 more than we can measure the development of 
 Egyptian thought. We are told that words of the 
 Hebrew dialect are found in Egyptian records 
 500 years before the Hebrew Scriptures could have 
 been written. The Semitic language, as the langu- 
 age in which intercourse with the other earliest 
 nations had to be carried on, as also, a foreign 
 language whose acquirement implied culture, be- 
 came at the court of the Pharaohs of the Empire 
 something like French at the courts of Western 
 Europe. 
 
158 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 When we come to Joseph, his environment is 
 clearer and explains him better. In reference to 
 the Ishmaelites who sold him into Egypt, it may 
 be recalled that the Arab race today consider 
 themselves the descendants of Ishmael, and as- 
 sert, though with bitterness, their relation to the 
 Hebrews. 
 
 In the long familiar Hebrew records of Egypt, 
 we find the closest harmony with the details, now 
 uncovered, of Egyptian life, at that period when 
 the Hebrews were most closely connected with 
 Egypt. There was that oflBce of vizier, the office 
 of Prime Minister, who held Egypt in his hand for 
 the Pharaoh, who regulated the economic affairs 
 of the country to the smallest detail and the re- 
 motest corner, fixing taxes and administering 
 justice. The Hebrews out of Egypt, with time 
 at last to look back, developed to a retrospective 
 consciousness of their own story, saw Joseph in 
 this office. The story conforms perfectly to Egyp- 
 tian arrangements, for the Prime Minister stood 
 next to the king, and was vested with the real 
 power of the ruler. With a view to the future he 
 was kept informed of conditions as well as of 
 actual revenues. A day in the life of the Egyp- 
 tian vizier would be an interesting chapter in the 
 story of the state, and would fill in the Hebrew 
 tale. 
 
 We are told that each morning he appeared at 
 the palace for an interview with the king. Coming 
 out, he always met the treasurer at the entrance, 
 
ISRAEL IN EGYPT 159 
 
 and they exchanged reports. The taxes were not 
 paid in money, but in produce and the granaries 
 formed one of the chief departments of the treas- 
 ury. After the conference the great man went on 
 to open the court for the day, personally hearing 
 cases and being informed of all business brought 
 to his office. Here he received the reports of all 
 the local administrators. 
 
 There is a rank of birth and a rank of office, not 
 necessarily coincident. An official who did well 
 in his little local administration might hear the 
 command to come up higher. At last, in the early 
 days of the Empire, it had come to pass that what 
 counted was not rank of birth but rank of office. 
 
 In the story of Joseph's vicissitudes and rise to 
 this position and power, we may see a similar 
 development of Israelitish and Egyptian ideas — 
 and an intimate knowledge of Egypt on the part 
 of Israel. Joseph's adventure in the House of 
 Potiphar was already written in slightly different 
 guise in the Egyptian tale of the "Two Brothers." 
 The story of the Chief Butler and the Chief Baker 
 is illuminated by the Egyptian reports of a palace 
 conspiracy at the end of the reign of Rameses III, 
 after the Exodus, showing that royal butlers who 
 participated in the affair, both as culprits and as 
 judges, were important officers of the king's official 
 household. 
 
 Even the story of the seven years' famine and 
 the king's dream, has a strange counterpart in 
 Egypt. On a rock near the First Cataract is a 
 
160 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 story of a seven years' famine and a Pharaoh's 
 dream, interpreted by his "great wise man," Im- 
 hotep, a man whose name was never forgotten in 
 Egypt. It is a late record, but purports to be 
 carrying down the tradition of a period long cen- 
 turies before Abraham. Seven year famines in 
 Egypt have not been unknown, even in modern 
 history. So, while we do not find in Egyptian 
 records the name of the Hebrew hero, Joseph, 
 these records throw light upon his surroundings, 
 and show the Israelitish picture of conditions to 
 be a true and faithful portraiture. 
 
 For ages, but especially during the friendly 
 Asiatic Hyksos dynasties just before the Empire, 
 tribes of Semitic Bedoui, like Joseph's brethren, 
 seeking pasture for their flocks, filtered into the 
 rich Delta country, which the Hebrews, writing of 
 it after the time of Rameses H, called the *'Land 
 of Rameses. " He had left the strongest and most 
 recent impress upon it for them, and they igno- 
 rantly used this appellation, even when their 
 stories went back to a time that knew no Rameses. 
 They also, confirming the distance between the 
 people and the king, seem scarcely conscious of 
 the transition from this "Pharaoh of the Oppres- 
 sion" to the "Pharaoh of the Exodus," since the 
 Egyptian policy was continuous. The very er- 
 rors of the Hebrew record, like flaws in a precious 
 stone, reveal its genuineness. 
 
 Having reached the time of Moses, we have 
 arrived at the culmination of Egyptian glory. In 
 
ISRAEL IN EGYPT 161 
 
 the Jjebanon valley and about Galilee, near Caper- 
 naum and Tabor — the "Dapur" of the Egyptians 
 — over the sites of the later Hebrew occupation, 
 Rameses II fought with the Hittites. After the 
 conclusion of a treaty of peace between the two 
 powers, there was no more fighting through the 
 whole of his long reign. But the labor, as well as 
 much of the wealth of Egypt had been brought in 
 by continuous conquest. 
 
 While native Egyptians filled the army, captive 
 aliens did the hard, coarse work. Rameses II, the 
 greatest builder of the Temple was hard put to it, 
 not only for building funds and additional sources 
 of temple revenue, but for the actual labor. It 
 is believed that he impressed the Semitic aliens 
 living in the land, and thus became the Pharaoh 
 of the Oppression. The two treasure cities of 
 Rameses and Pithom, which the Hebrew stories 
 tell of as constructed by them, have within a few 
 years been discovered, built of bricks of Nile mud, 
 some of which bear Rameses' name. 
 
 There was nothing yet to differentiate these 
 people to history, nothing to show the mission for 
 which history has since proved them chosen. 
 
 From this time on, the history of Egypt, though 
 past its power, has been most interesting to us. 
 There cannot be a story until there are relations. 
 At first it was Egypt alone, then merely conquest 
 of the Idngdoms about her; at the last it was 
 international politics. 
 
 As to the actuality of the type character, Moses, 
 
162 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 we only know from Egyptian evidence that be- 
 yond dispute, one at least of the tribes who com- 
 bined to form the Israelitish nation, had gone 
 down into Egypt and come out from thence, and 
 that they niust have had a leader. Also, since they 
 had been in Egypt, the land of writing, and with 
 advanced civilization about them, it is inconceiv- 
 able that their leader and probably others, had no 
 knowledge of the art of writing. From this time 
 on they appear to have kept their yearly records, 
 as was the custom of the Egyptians — colored in 
 the same way by the personal point of view, but, 
 like those of their former masters, containing a 
 stratum of historical fact. At least, Petrie sees 
 no reason to doubt the gist of these historical 
 documents any more than those of the Egyptians 
 themselves. 
 
 In taking up the details of Moses' life, we know 
 from Egypt that the court of Rameses, contrary to 
 that of his predecessors, was in the north, the 
 Delta country, sometimes at that city of Helio- 
 polis or On, where Hebrew tradition places the 
 finding of Moses by Pharaoh's daughter. 
 
 The place of Heliopolis was unique, as the seat 
 of the worship of Re, the original god of the Sun- 
 god worship in Egypt, the traditional originator 
 of the Fifth Dynasty, and thereafter father of all 
 the kings, either under his own name or that of 
 Amon-Re. That the king might safely enter the 
 Sanctuary at Heliopolis was, even as late as the 
 time of Piankhi, the proof of divine origin, and 
 
ISRAEL IN EGYPT 16S 
 
 therefore right to rule.' J Thejpriesthood, often in 
 rivahy with the state-priesthood of Amon at 
 Thebes, were an older and more venerated sect, 
 and their university also claimed superiority to all 
 others in Egypt. The scholarship of Heliopolis 
 was different from that of the rest of Egypt. It is 
 more like the Asiatic Semitic culture, and seems, 
 in some respects to prove a predynastic Semitic 
 influence at this place. It was a theological 
 centre, a holy city. Here Hebrew tradition finds 
 Moses, and here also, a Christian tradition brings 
 Mary and Joseph with the infant Jesus. The tree 
 under which the story says they rested, — a syca- 
 more, sacred in Egypt, — is still shown. 
 
 The Hebrew statement that " Moses was learned 
 in all the wisdom of the Egyptians" fits in especi- 
 ally well, as we realize now, with their story of 
 his adoption by the royal family; and is borne out 
 by the similarity of Israelitish conceptions, temple 
 forms and priestly orders, to those which Egypt 
 now reveals. 
 
 A commentary upon the necessity of Moses' 
 flight from Egypt after killing the Egyptian, is the 
 Egyptian horror of the murder of one of their 
 number, in view of the importance they gave the 
 after-fife. Therefore the strictness of their laws 
 concerning this crime. 
 
 Of the plagues we know nothing from Egypt, 
 nothing from Merneptah's records. "His tomb 
 was empty because he was drowned in crossing the 
 Red Sea, " had said our good Mohammedan guide. 
 
164 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 But Merneptah was not drowned. This son of 
 Rameses, named for his favorite god, was a dream- 
 er, a lover of hterature, for whom the story of the 
 "Two Brothers" was probably written when he 
 was crown prince. His delicate face, as we know 
 it in sculpture, is almost like a woman's. Rameses' 
 first-born son and those who followed, including 
 IQiamuas, him who was High-Priest of Ptah and 
 the pride of his father's heart, died ere Rameses, 
 almost a centenarian, went to his rest. Mernep- 
 tah's reign, after the long strong reign of his 
 father, was a troubled dream. From the north- 
 west came an invasion, unprecedented from that 
 quarter, which had previously been kept in whole- 
 some fear by occasional advances from Egypt. 
 This invasion is remarkable because of the identity 
 of the allies who joined it, who were undoubtedly 
 southern Europeans. 
 
 These, therefore, step into history in the same 
 reign as the Israelites. From which direction 
 they came appears to open up the whole question 
 of the origin of our Aryan race. Were they part 
 of a great southward movement, which included 
 the prehistoric Libyans themselves? This would 
 agree with the theory of our Baltic origin, and with 
 the southward changes of historic times, which 
 certainly mixed Aryan blood with the Libyan 
 stock. Or, did they come from Northern Africa, 
 west of Egypt, and later migrate northward to 
 Europe? This would give us the African origin. 
 Either explanation followed to its extreme makes 
 
ISRAEL IN EGYPT 165 
 
 us more closely related with the Libyan Kabyles 
 who are brothers to the Egyptians, past and 
 present, — ^than has generally been supposed; since 
 these have long been classified as Hamitic peoples. 
 Though we have elsewhere spoken of the Egyp- 
 tians as "Oriental" it was only in their present 
 religion and mode of life. According to the earliest 
 theories, all the white migrations came from Asia; 
 and as for the religious instinct, we find it funda- 
 mental in all humanity. The great distinction 
 between East and West has always lain in the 
 psychic interests and development of the one; and 
 the scientific and material development of the 
 other. To the West, the form has always been 
 the first necessity, — there must be a body, even 
 for the resurrection. Egypt conforms perfectly 
 to this Western distinction. And not only is the 
 development of Western civilization continuous 
 from Egypt to present Europe and America, in 
 science and material symbols; but the race which, 
 in Egypt, reached and passed its culminating cul- 
 ture, before the development of any other people, 
 appears to be that same Iberian or Berber race, 
 which has left its monuments and obelisks in 
 Europe, and which, — whatever its migrations, 
 underlies all Europe and Northern Africa. Be- 
 cause it thus seems to be the foundation of Europe 
 in every way, we can hardly speak of it as "Orien- 
 tal," but we may call it "Hamitic" — though the 
 strong lines drawn by earlier scholars upon the 
 Hebrew Genesis, seem to grow faint as research 
 
166 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 progresses. The savants are not yet agreed among 
 themselves, and we must wait.* 
 
 In Merneptahs time the Delta was overrun and 
 devastated. Merneptah's defence must have been 
 strong, for he was splendidly victorious. But he 
 was an old man, and this makes it easy to under- 
 stand his dealings with Moses — on the one hand 
 his fear, on the other, his eagerness to hold the 
 valuable bondsmen. 
 
 The route of the Israehtes out of the country, 
 and the parting of the waters is now understand- 
 able. There was a hne of forts running north and 
 south across the eastern approach to the Delta. 
 In the reports of frontier officials we read of a 
 Semitic tribe passed into the country only a few 
 years prior to the Exodus; and in the reign which 
 probably followed the event, is the record of the 
 pursuit of some fugitive slaves over the frontier. 
 The Israelites were afraid of being stopped at the 
 forts and accordingly turned far south. 
 
 In those days were lakes, north of the Red Sea, 
 which at flood tide and under certain winds, were 
 connected with it. Was the tide more than ordi- 
 narily low and the wind favorable, when the 
 
 *Everywhere in Europe and among the Kabyles, the Berber is 
 mixed with the Aryan stock today. But the pure stock of the first 
 white race, which in Europe is supposed to have followed the yellow 
 — from which it might seem to have retained its ancestor-worship — 
 is brown-complexioned or even dark in color. A dark skin does not 
 necessarily make a black man, as we admit in the relation between 
 the Hindoo and the European Aryan. Structural affinities permit 
 more scientific classifications. Nevertheless, these historic dis- 
 coveries reveal to us not only the continuity, but the unity of 
 human life. 
 
ISRAEL IN EGYPT 167 
 
 Israelites, light of burdens, light of heart in their 
 belief, passed over "between two walls of water?" 
 And when Pharaoh's heavy chariots tried to fol- 
 low and sank in the loose sand, the flood tide 
 which caught them, following an ebb so low, 
 would naturally have been unusually high. Some 
 troops may have been lost. The Egyptians do 
 not record their failures. 
 
 In the desert beyond the Mokattam hills, is a 
 split in the stone stratum, which forms an ancient 
 well, now popularly associated with this story as 
 the place where Moses' rod brought water from 
 the rock. At least the story is typical of the great 
 need of Egypt and the East through all the ages, 
 the need for water, which these long-time inhabi- 
 tants of the Delta, now faced for the first time. 
 Was there anything unusual about the finding of 
 the water? Who can deny? To be able to find a 
 place where men might dig a well for a caravan 
 route, was one of the most fundamental gifts in 
 ancient Egyptain days, and seems to have per- 
 tained especially to royalty. It is today asserted 
 in the East that a sixth sense exists in some per- 
 sons, whereby through the feeling of a twig in the 
 hand, they can divine where water may be found — 
 and Moses must have been in a condition of in- 
 tense exaltation. Science, by which we have 
 denied as fairy tales the simple stories of child- 
 like peoples, may in time lead us to understand and 
 be ashamed. We have not reached the end. 
 
 The difficulties the Hebrew leader found are 
 
168 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 now shown to be only too evidently the natural 
 outcome of the age and situation. In the Delta 
 country Ptah had been worshipped in the form of 
 a bull. The masses of the people could not be 
 held to the height of their leader's conception of 
 God, and the mission he evidently foresaw for 
 them. They, like the masses always and every- 
 where, sought for a tangible and definite form; 
 and when Moses left them to commune with the 
 Most High, they hurriedly made for themselves a 
 calf of gold! There were many times of discon- 
 tent, of lack of faith, of longing for the security of 
 their work, of which they promptly forgot the pain. 
 
 In the plan of the tabernacle and the later 
 temple, we see clearly a form belonging to Egypt — 
 and also to Assyria — perhaps in all these cases the 
 result of a combination of the outer influences of 
 these nations upon one another, and the inner 
 intuitive development of all. 
 
 The first ten laws of the Hebrew people, the 
 basis of all that followed, were engraved on tables 
 of stone which would correspond to the Egyp- 
 tian stelse — such as that of the great lawgiver, 
 Harmhab, of some hundred and fifty years before. 
 We see how the first two commandments, em- 
 bodying the idea of the exclusiveness of God, 
 and doing away with images, w^ere necessary for 
 the development and preservation of the great 
 idea of Spirit, which was the Hebrew's mission; 
 and for which their own leading out of Egypt, and 
 their seclusion were also a necessity, if they were 
 to give light to the world. 
 
ISRAEL IN EGYPT 169 
 
 After that long wandering in the desert, in 
 which they were purified, gradually losing the 
 most limiting influences of Egypt, the new genera- 
 tion came to their own and to national union. In 
 the effort to establish themselves we find them in 
 collision with those peoples whom we have learned 
 to know: the old and mysterious power of the 
 Hittites, already waning; the buffer state of the 
 Amorites, between Palestine and Syria, long the 
 boundary between the Hittite and Egyptian 
 powers; and lastly, the new Phihstines. The Phil- 
 istines appear to be late comers in Asia, also mov- 
 ing south. Their own pottery and the Egyptian 
 description of them as a "people of the sea," 
 harmonize with the Hebrew tradition that they 
 came from Crete, — the true meaning of the He- 
 brew name "Caphtor." Were they, as has been 
 suggested, Europeans, part of a southward move- 
 ment, overlapping and submerging the preceding 
 wave of the Hittites.? 
 
 Just previous to the entrance of Israel into 
 Palestine, the Philistines appear to have pushed 
 south, smiting and breaking up the Hittite con- 
 federation, whose strength had already departed, 
 and crowding a fragment of these, with the Amor- 
 ites, whom they also defeated and displaced, down 
 into Palestine, where they all together barred the 
 Hebrews' way. But the Hebrews were a young 
 generation, and nationally also in the youthful 
 period of conquest which precedes secure estab- 
 lishment. Gradually they made their way into 
 
170 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 the country and settled there. But straight 
 across the aheady historic plain of Megiddo, from 
 the Jordan to the sea, the PhiHstines built a line 
 of cities cutting the Hebrew tribes in two. It 
 almost prevented the Hebrews from acquiring the 
 strength of union and a national existence, and 
 nearly made a Philistinian conquest of them. 
 
 However, we know that the Philistines did not 
 crush the Hebrews. The latter achieved their 
 union and their kingship under Saul and David, 
 and smote their powerful neighbors. In Israel, 
 as in Egypt in the glorious days of Empire, the 
 citizens were soldiers; the stranger within the 
 gate was called upon to work. Then, as always 
 after conquest, came the period of prosperity and 
 glory, and the building of the Temple. The 
 "House of Yahveh" or Jehovah, the Israelites 
 called it, as the Egyptians called it the "House 
 of Amon," or "Ptah." "The Palace is not for 
 man, but for the Lord God, " says David the King. 
 And we remember how the Egyptians built of 
 stone their temples to the Everlasting, while their 
 own ephemeral palaces were often of brick and 
 wood. 
 
 The temple was the visible form to contain 
 their ideal, the sign to suggest it. But the Hebrew 
 conception had come out from the others and was 
 high. 
 
 Solomon, from the fulness of his heart, exclaims, 
 "Great is our God above all Gods! Who is able 
 to build him an house, seeing the heaven, and the 
 
ISRAEL IN EGYPT 171 
 
 heaven of heavens, cannot contain him? Who am 
 I then, that I should build him an house, save 
 only to burn sacrifice before him?" 
 
 However, to the intuitional mind of Samuel, 
 Jehovah had said of David: 
 
 "He shall build me an house, and I will estab- 
 lish his throne," and the heart of David in the 
 silence, had responded. The establishment of the 
 national government and of the national ideal 
 were almost coincident. 
 
 In the same way, we find each king in Egypt 
 building on the "National Sanctuary." 
 
 But David, as a man of conquest, was not per- 
 mitted to actually build the Temple of Jehovah in 
 Jerusalem, though he might plan for it. During 
 his reign, he appointed with impressive ceremonies, 
 the crown prince, Solomon, as the crown princes 
 were appointed in Egypt; but this inauguration 
 announced a special mission, the building of the 
 Temple. David the King, said to the people: 
 
 "He (Jehovah) hath chosen Solomon, my son, 
 to sit upon the throne of the kingdom of the Lord 
 over Israel." 
 
 Israel's kingdom, too, was the domain of Israel's 
 God; but Israel's God alone, did not fall with 
 Israel. 
 
 To David and Samuel, so simple, so childlike, 
 might well have come Divine intuitions. The 
 king feels that the Lord gave him the plan of the 
 Temple — whether as a forgotten recollection out 
 of Egypt, or by a similar subjective development. 
 
1112 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 can we say? David, like the Pharaohs, headed 
 the gifts to his God. Gold and silver, brass and 
 iron and precious stones — ^the wealth dedicated 
 to the Temple was his offering to the Lord. Not 
 yet had come the realization to the human con- 
 sciousness; "He that giveth to the poor, lendeth 
 to the Lord." Nevertheless, as Jesus showed in 
 reference to the box of precious ointment, our own 
 development demands that we look up and do 
 homage to that which is greater than ourselves. 
 
 The satisfaction of building churches, even 
 today, supphes a need which cannot be ignored, 
 which opens our hearts to something higher than 
 food and drink and even man. It has been the 
 keynote of history, this need of the spirit to ex- 
 press the emotion of reverence, to turn to a known 
 or "unknown God," a Creative Spirit which up- 
 holds it. So may we sometime realize that exalted 
 conception of humanity, "Ye are the Temple." 
 
 When the acts of David were finished, and 
 written, "with all his reign and his might, and 
 the times that went over him, and over Israel, 
 and over all the kingdoms of the countries," 
 Soloman sat upon the throne of his father. 
 
 And now we find a great spirit of brotherliness 
 between Solomon of Jerusalem, and Hiram of 
 Tyre; and Hiram sends for the Temple of Solomon's 
 God, skilled workmen, and the cedar of Lebanon, 
 which for so many centuries had gone as a gift 
 to the Temple of Amon at Thebes. 
 
 The national Temple at Jerusalem was built 
 
ISRAEL IN EGYPT 173 
 
 with the great outer court, beyond which was the 
 "holy place for the people," corresponding to the 
 hypostyle hall, and behind this, the "holy of 
 holies." The walls were overlaid with silver and 
 gold. There were two pillars before the building, 
 in place of the two obelisks of Egypt. There was 
 no holy lake, but there was the font in the court. 
 The symbol of purification is a world symbol. 
 There was the altar for sacrifice in the outer 
 court, and there were gold and silver vessels for 
 the service of incense. On a table in the holy 
 place, was the shew bread, left in the Temple, 
 much as Egyptian offerings were left, but with 
 more consciousness of a symbolic significance. 
 Today we have the Table of the Lord, in that most 
 spiritual conception of the Last Supper in the 
 Christian Church. 
 
 But the one all important difference between 
 Egypt's temples and Jerusalem's, was the fact 
 that here in the sanctuary was no image of God. 
 The Hebrews reahzed that God, as Spirit, is not 
 a material form. 
 
 In the midst of all the forms about them, we 
 realize as never before, how great was Israel's 
 formless Idea. The highest conception of truth 
 in Egypt had been Ikhnaton's literal representa- 
 tion of the objective world, which after all, is but 
 relative truth; Israel saw inner righteousness, pro- 
 gress toward Spirit. How amazing the smallness 
 of Israel, the greatness of her mission! "Thy 
 people, whom thou hast redeemed out of Egypt. " 
 
174 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 Little Palestine — ^redeemed out of, but protected 
 by Egypt ! Thus only, could she rise secure among 
 the powers warring for conquest around her. 
 
 For in the days of Israel's national flowering, 
 when the national character and the national ideal 
 became estabHshed in the state and in the temple, 
 Sheshonk, reviving Egypt, which no longer con- 
 trolled the Syrian countries, was Solomon's friend 
 and apparently his suzerain in a protective alli- 
 ance. Sheshonk's daughter became Solomon's 
 wife, whom, as the Hebrews quaintly remark, 
 Solomon felt it necessary to remove from the Holy 
 City of Jerusalem when the Temple was built, 
 and whom he accordingly lodged in a fair palace 
 at a distance. 
 
 Alas, Israel, having perfected her Idea, quickly 
 passed into a period of decadence. She lost her 
 pure conception — ^following after the strange gods 
 of the races mingling with her own. "Because 
 thou hast barkened unto these" — ^threatened the 
 despairing prophets. From this time was the 
 nation divided — and Sheshonk sided against Solo- 
 mon's son. Egypt still compelled for a time the 
 allegiance of Palestine, asserting her authority and 
 securing the tribute by occasionally making kings 
 — seating a younger brother in an elder's place. 
 But the greatness of Egypt was now itself forever 
 past — and had become among the nations a dan- 
 gerous memory. It was but the deluding sem- 
 blance of itself, the trust in which meant sure 
 disaster. 
 
ISRAEL IN EGYPT 175 
 
 Assyria and Babylon were to gather the flower 
 of Israel — but not at once. As Assyria's power 
 grew large in the East, and she gradually included 
 those marginal nations, the possession of which 
 meant Empire, the Hebrew kingdoms, with the 
 others, submitted. But again and again, in her 
 own struggle to escape destruction, Egypt, through 
 envoys, stirred the Syrian states to revolt. 
 
 Israel and Judah, through all their existence, 
 had always a hankering for the fleshpots of Egypt. 
 Remembrance of Egypt's greatness was bred into 
 them as into no other of the nations — ^the others 
 had merely felt Egypt's chastisements. The He- 
 brews, after their own emulation of greatness, for- 
 getting their former hardships, due to Egypt's 
 power, and eager for friendship with the nation to 
 which they had once appeared contemptible, look- 
 ed back with longing admiration. Israel, listen- 
 ing to the voice of Pharaoh, revolted with the 
 other Syrian kingdoms and met deadly punish- 
 ment. For the Pharaoh's auxiharies sent in aid 
 of the alliance were swept away by the Assyrians, 
 and the Ten Tribes carried into a captivity from 
 which they never returned. (722 B. C.) After 
 that, Judah held steady for a time. The new 
 Ethiopian Pharaoh again attempted to stir up 
 trouble, the Egyptian party in Judah waxed 
 strong. It was then that the prophet Isaiah 
 uttered his immortal protests and held Hezekiah 
 faithful to Assyria. 
 
 "Woe to the rebellious children," cried Isaiah in 
 
176 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 the time of Hezekiah, "that walk to go down into 
 Egypt ... to strengthen themselves in the 
 strength of the Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow 
 of Egypt! 
 
 "Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be 
 your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt 
 your confusion. "* 
 
 Shortly after, Babylon arose within the Assyr- 
 ian domain, and again made trouble among the 
 small states. Judah and Egypt joined the alli- 
 ance against Assyria. This was the occasion of 
 that vengeful visit of Sennacherib, when Phoenicia 
 and Syria fell, when under Taharka the full Egyp- 
 tian army, meeting for the first time the Assyrian, 
 was completely defeated, and Jerusalem was scorn- 
 fully invested, — the ambassadors of Sennacherib 
 uttering those taunts concerning dependence on 
 Egypt, that "reed, upon which, if a man lean, it 
 will pierce his hand." But Hezekiah was not 
 leaning on the reed, he had long turned his heart 
 to the God of the prophet; and when Sennacherib, 
 having conquered Egypt, brought up his army 
 and renewed his taunts by letter, Hezekiah spread 
 the letter in the Temple. Sennacherib's great 
 army was smitten by malarial winds from the 
 Delta, to which they were unaccustomed. And 
 this dire disaster, together with news from Baby- 
 lon, caused Sennacherib unceremoniously to de- 
 part. The deliverance of this one little city was 
 remarkable, even from an outside point of view. 
 *IsaiahXXX. 1:3. 
 
ISRAEL IN EGYPT 177 
 
 Such were the world poHtics of 700 B. C, 
 roughly divided between the nations who took 
 sides with the one or the other of the two first 
 class powers, the one already broken, the other, 
 just coming to its strength. Babylon, in alliance 
 with what became the later kingdom of the Medes 
 and Persians, was just rising. 
 
 By three generations, Judah, in spite of the des- 
 pairing efforts of the prophets, had fallen com- 
 pletely from her pure conception and had lost all 
 her strength. 
 
 In Egypt the last Restoration had begun with 
 the last strong dynasty. Pharaoh Necho re-as- 
 serted Egyptian authority over the Syro-Palestin- 
 ian nations, and for a time all went well. Then 
 appeared Nebuchadnezzer, King of Babylon, and 
 wrested away the Empire. Presently Judah re- 
 belled against him. "But the King of Egypt 
 came not again out of his land; for the King of 
 Babylon had taken from the river of Egypt unto 
 the river Euphrates all that pertained to the King 
 of Egypt."* Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusa- 
 lem, carried away a portion of the people with the 
 king, and placed the king's uncle, whom he called 
 Zedekiah, on the throne. But Zedekiah, nothing 
 heeding of the lesson, nor of the sovereign under 
 whom he held his throne, also "rebelled against 
 the King of Babylon." Then came Nebuchad- 
 nezzar the third time. In vain did the prophet 
 Jeremiah protest and plead that the king and the 
 
 *2 King, 24: 7. 
 
178 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 princes would go out to the Babylonian ruler, and 
 all would be well. For a time the king shut him 
 up in prison to keep him from weakening their 
 army. Finally, unable to stifle his voice, the 
 princes threw him, as a bird of ill omen, into a 
 mud dungeon in the prison. The king, with fear 
 in his heart, secretly rescued him, secretly listen- 
 ed again to his prophecies; but, unable to oppose 
 the leaders of his people, pursued their policy, 
 to the utter destruction of Jerusalem and of the 
 temple which had stood 400 years. The gold 
 and silver and brass were carried away for the 
 Temple in Babylon. Of the people, a small 
 remnant, chiefly of the poor, were left to till the 
 ground and dress the vines; and a governor was 
 placed over them. Jeremiah also was left behind, 
 and poured out his "Lamentations" over the 
 ruined city. Then again, that Egyptian party, 
 failing to realize that it was their own political 
 error, which was at least the secondary cause of 
 their disasters at the hands of the Eastern Em- 
 pires, insisted upon leaving Jerusalem altogether, 
 and going down into Egypt to find safety in that 
 country. They carried with them Jeremiah, still 
 violently protesting, and he perished there. 
 
 Today, in surveying the whole story, we have 
 understood the violence of despair of Isaiah and 
 Jeremiah at the strength of the Egyptian party 
 whose rebellion wrecked Israel; we have measured 
 to some extent the danger against which Hezekiah 
 prayed when he spread Sennacherib's letter be- 
 fore the Lord in the Temple. 
 
ISRAEL IN EGYPT 179 
 
 With the story connected and illuminated, we 
 can feel a human interest in the action or the wait- 
 ing suspense of these human beings through each 
 incident. And following the international politics 
 of those days, we understand Israel in the hght 
 of Egypt's records, Israel's God in the light of 
 Egypt's gods. 
 
 We can see so well how it was in those days of 
 intense subjective feeling, and of distorted outer 
 knowledge — ^how necessary for the prophets to, 
 use such language to hold Israel from Egypt; how, 
 in order to preserve and to develop their majestic 
 conception of God, the God of Israel, it was neces- 
 sary that they should not recognize that God in 
 any images or forms. 
 
 What partisans we who read only the Bible, 
 have been — and with reason! For those who 
 today read the words of the inspiration of the 
 prophets only from within the prophet's point 
 of view, perhaps come nearest, after all, to the 
 true feeling, and therefore to the true appreciation 
 of them. 
 
 One of Prof. Petrie's recent discoveries in Egypt 
 was a very perfect Jewish temple, perhaps of the 
 time of Jeremiah. On the Island of Elephantine 
 there was found about four years ago, by the Berlin 
 Papyrus Commission and edited by Prof. Sachau, 
 a great quantity of papyri in Aramaic, the dialect 
 in which Nehemiah, Ezra and Daniel were written, 
 the popular tongue which Jesus spoke, Hebrew 
 being only employed as a ritual language by 
 
180 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 learned men. These Jewish documents belong to 
 the Persian era, but as two of the Jewish military 
 divisions which they describe bore Babylonian 
 standards, that fact, together with other strong 
 evidence, proves that here was an earlier Jewish 
 colony, added to by those who came down into 
 Egypt at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. 
 Though they retained the name of Jehovah (Yah- 
 veh) as their national God, they did not see him 
 as universal, and mingled his name with that of 
 other deities. But their temple was to Jehovah. 
 
 We recall how Isaiah's prophecy of Egypt's 
 decadence had been fulfilled in detail: "I will set 
 the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they 
 shall fight everyone against his brother, and every- 
 one against his neighbor; city against city, and 
 kingdom against kingdom." We know now how 
 truly this had come to pass. 
 
 And Isaiah had said also: *'In that day shall 
 there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the 
 land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof 
 to the Lord." 
 
 (Here at the Island of Elephantine was the 
 "border" of Egypt for many centuries.) 
 
 "And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto 
 the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt," had con- 
 tinued Isaiah — "he shall send them a saviour and 
 a great one, and he shall deliver them. 
 
 "And the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and 
 the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day." 
 
 When the Babylonian Empire succumbed to 
 
ISRAEL IN EGYPT 181 
 
 the Persian, the Jews were released from the 
 Babylonian captivity. It is interesting to notice 
 the Hebrew story of Daniel's interpreting the 
 king's dream in Babylon, as Joseph, perhaps a 
 millenium earlier, had done in Egypt. Hebrews 
 would seem several times to have been trained at 
 court, at the two great centres of the ancient 
 world. 
 
 The new Persian Power was very favorable to 
 the Jews. Cyrus sent back a portion of those who 
 had endured the Babylonian captivity, to Jeru- 
 salem to rebuild the city and the Temple. There 
 in chastened spirit they renewed their ideal; there 
 they made ready to give their supreme message 
 to the world. The Persian Empire was wisely 
 welded. Egypt herself became no more than a 
 portion of it, conquered by Cambyses. 
 
 As the Persians had encouraged the rebuilding 
 of the Temple in Jerusalem, so they spared the 
 Jewish temple in Egypt, and allowed the Egypti- 
 an Jews to keep their Passover in the month of 
 Nisan — the first month of the civil year, as adopted 
 from Babylon. 
 
 This, then, is the story of the Old Testament 
 relations of Israel to Egypt. 
 
 We know that the subjective revelation which 
 has come down to us dawned first in the East, in 
 Asia, from whence came Abraham, the land which 
 the Egyptians, perhaps unconscious of the reason 
 why, called the "God-land. " But Egypt had her 
 own early vision and drew upon the East, giving 
 her ideas form. 
 
182 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 And Israel for the pure idea of Spirit broke 
 through the form. 
 
 Our broader stories, while they explain Israel, 
 make her more wonderful and living. Lebanon 
 has a new meaning for us, and the deeper meaning 
 of little Palestine in the Jordan Valley is revealed. 
 
 It was a chosen country for the religion of the 
 future to come out of, the key to the world, with 
 Egypt on one side and Assyria-Babylon on the 
 other; drawing upon both at first, and then the 
 battle-ground of both; fed by the two great rivers 
 of civilization, the Nile and the Tigro-Euphrates, 
 until it became the meeting-place of the waters, 
 and was submerged. 
 
 But its message was carried. In our objective, 
 self-conscious, scientific knowledge of today we 
 can see how the Spirit, subjectively known, was 
 being revealed through it all. The East prepared 
 the message for the West, even as the West pre- 
 pared the form for the East. 
 
 As Isaiah triumphantly concluded: 
 
 "In that day shall Israel be the third with 
 Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the 
 midst of the land: 
 
 "Whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying. 
 Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work 
 of mv hands, and Israel, mine inheritance." 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Evening and the Morning 
 
 AN English scholar, versed in sacred 
 nomenclature, has stated that the very 
 name of Israel is made up of three 
 principles : Re, the masculine and mate- 
 rial, signifying Egypt, as personified in Egypt's 
 chief god; Is, the feminine psychic element, stand- 
 ing for the goddess, who was the chief deity of 
 Assyria; and El, the general principle. 
 
 To the Greeks, whose poetry was so sublime 
 that it took form in gods and goddrsses, the Soul 
 was feminine, was Psyche. 
 
 The West, from Egypt to the present day, has 
 developed material science, has been conscious of 
 the form, as expressed in that olf Egyptian hymn, 
 "O Form, One." But the East has given religion 
 to the world. And even as the masculine is at- 
 tracted by the feminine, the West has always felt 
 the fascination of the East, since the time of Abra- 
 ham, when the Egyptians saw that Sara was 
 "very fair." 
 
 We have observed how, in the mythology of 
 Egypt, the Moonbride of the God of the Sun, ex- 
 pressed with him the supreme rhythm of the Uni- 
 
 183 
 
184 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 verse, in the figures of a man and a woman. She 
 was Isis, or Hathor or Unit-Goddess of Nature or 
 Love. 
 
 Rameses II, Son of Re, and image of the Sun-god, 
 representative of all Egypt, married a princess 
 who, as the seal of her father's treaty, stood for 
 her people; and this marriage symbolized the 
 union of the first two great nations. She was the 
 princess whom the Egyptians called "Dawn." 
 
 We are inclined to think that because of its very 
 masculinity, the West has ever since enthroned 
 womanhood. 
 
 It was the daughter of this princess who is tradi- 
 tionally supposed to have found Moses, the spirit 
 which broke through the form of Egypt, and 
 heralded the fall of the Hamitic and the rise of the 
 Semitic power. 
 
 But to understand all that the form has meant, 
 we must look to the end as well as to the beginning 
 of the Egyptian story. 
 
 Just before the Persian era there had come to 
 Egypt, as we have mentioned, a curious Restora- 
 tion. The Assyrians had not been able to hold 
 the land. They were strugghng against Baby- 
 lonia, rising again to supremacy within their own 
 borders, and against the new Persia or Elam, still 
 further East. Then Egypt quietly dropped away 
 and was gathered into the hand of Psamtik, the 
 Libyan, Prince of Sais. He had dreamed of a 
 reunited Egypt, and the dream belonged to his 
 line. Internal change had always been working 
 
EVENING AND THE MORNING 185 
 
 and Libyan generals of Libyan troops, hired in 
 the time of Rameses III, when the temple was 
 absorbing the state, had risen to strength and 
 importance. The city of Sais, often re-inforced, 
 appears to have been the centre of Libyan in- 
 fluence and possibly the seat of a Libyan king, in 
 pre-dynastic days. 
 
 By the aid of Greek mercenaries who frequented 
 the Delta ports, Psamtik overcame the prejudices 
 of his rivals; and before all his purpose was fully 
 evident to the world outside, Egypt revived again 
 in the strength of union. 
 
 Egypt revived, but her strength was no longer 
 from within. She was held together and main- 
 tained against the world by aliens. The state 
 was a more or less artificial organization; for a 
 large body of the army were Greeks, naturally 
 much favored by the Pharaoh, since they brought 
 him his throne and maintained it for him. To a 
 certain extent, the state will be what its army is. 
 
 This Restoration was not a new dawn, but an 
 after-glow; the sunset went back to the dawn which 
 had been. With the element of force drawn from 
 without, the purely Egyptian influence was alto- 
 gether priestly. While Psamtik and the power of 
 the state reach out toward the modern world which 
 is now above the northern horizon, entering into 
 friendly contests of inter-comnmnication in com- 
 merce, with its international policies and protec- 
 tions, the Egyptian retires to the remotest begin- 
 ning, when Egypt knew no world outside of the 
 
186 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 Nile Valley. Still Egypt was made by and divided 
 between the army and the religious orders. 
 
 The Egyptian went his own way — ^in the temples. 
 From his Hmited position, he could not see the 
 economic and political use of the Greeks, who had 
 become necessary to the state and indirectly to his 
 welfare. For the government of Egypt had never 
 grown from out the people; they were lost in 
 miserable chaos and mutual destruction, as the 
 undeveloped classes of all ages must be, unless 
 held by a strong ruler, or a government of able re- 
 presentatives ruling in accord with law, when they 
 live and work in peace. The necessary fighting 
 was now done for the native inhabitants by these 
 foreigners. Yet, so far as Egypt's individual 
 existence was concerned, the priests and the 
 Egyptian party of those days were right. They 
 had lost hold of their birthright. When the power 
 which held Egypt together was alien, Egypt not 
 only ceased to be Egypt for the Egyptians — it 
 ceased to be a true and independent state. That 
 Egypt had perished long ago — with Amon — in 
 the feudal conditions of vassalage, which preceded 
 the Restoration. 
 
 Yet the Restoration accomplished, unconscious- 
 ly to itself, as all greatest things are done, an 
 invaluable purpose. The real Egypt had worked 
 out the beginnings of objective knowledge and 
 seK-consciousness, and had wrought them into 
 stone. But this earliest of all nations was the 
 most conservative. The Egypt of the Restora- 
 
EVENING AND THE MORNING 187 
 
 tion was the mediator between the old and the 
 new; the interpreter of Egypt to the world, as 
 Breasted's History makes clear to us. In this way 
 the ancient conservative Egypt became the teach- 
 er of the infant states of Europe. 
 
 Before the day of Psamtik, Egypt had been 
 like Europe in the Middle Ages, a system of vas- 
 salage. And now, with more stable government, 
 the scholastic period set in. After all, though the 
 force was imported from without, it was still the 
 priests who gave the form to the state. They 
 alone, in their temple fastnesses, had conserved an 
 ideal which had blossomed into the Restoration. 
 It was not a vision of the Empire. That was too 
 near, — they thought they knew the faults which 
 wrought its downfall. But they dreamed that 
 the state, as it emerged in the beginning, had been 
 perfect. If the forms could be brought back, the 
 same inner-world which once gave hfe to them 
 would exist again. (How should they know that 
 the classic age is always that preceding the settling 
 of the state!) 
 
 But the first great difficulty lay in the fact that 
 the language of Egypt, during three thousand 
 years, had naturally developed. Old Egyptian 
 must have been more difficult to the man of Psam- 
 tik's time than Old English is to us. Much of the 
 symbolic character of the early picture-writing 
 had become obscured. It was this obscurity 
 which increased the fascination of Egypt's mystery 
 to the Greeks. Yet the old hieroglyphics con- 
 
188 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 tained all that the Egyptians must know to reform 
 Egypt. 
 
 Accordingly the ancient language became sacred, 
 and the first instruction the youth received in the 
 schools, which of course belonged to the priest- 
 hoods, was to read and write the ancient script. 
 Culture became the study of what had been long 
 left lifeless. The old religious texts were copied 
 for us. Some the scribes did not then understand, 
 but the scholars of today who read the copies, 
 know and correct the mis-reading of twenty-five 
 hundred years nearer the date of the originals. 
 
 Though the officials, who proudly bore all the 
 most ancient titles of Egypt, often could not un- 
 derstand the ancient language, yet whatever the 
 affair of the present, the deciding word came by 
 way of the priests from a past at least two millen- 
 iums old.* 
 
 More conventional than conventions established 
 in the beginning were the forms and the organiza- 
 tion of the Egypt of Psamtik's day, because they 
 did not spring directly from new life. In the 
 religious phase of the Restoration we find formal- 
 ism carried to that excess which tends to its own 
 destruction. Animal worship now became fanati- 
 cal. And the exact observance of the form of 
 ceremonial purity goes back to the standard of 
 the Old Kingdom before the ethics connected with 
 the Osiris myth had developed. It is the same 
 sort of ceremonial observance which Jesus later 
 
 * Breasted. 
 
EVENING AND THE MORNING 189 
 
 found in the Hebrew Restoration and which he so 
 strongly condemned. 
 
 But the presence of hfe in Egypt was still re- 
 vealed. The Egyptians were always artists, for 
 was it not they who first expressed their thought 
 in form? Out of the very ordered condition of 
 things, Egyptian art alone now sprang with new 
 freedom to one supreme last flowering. 
 
 Altogether, with its impressive organization, its 
 old customs and its new art, this was a most 
 favorable period for the Greek to grow in Egypt. 
 The time approached the classic age in Europe. 
 And Greece had decayed before Egypt passed 
 away — nay, Egypt, the beginning, has not yet 
 passed away. 
 
 Apries, Pharaoh of Psamtik's line, the "Hophra" 
 of the Hebrew records, whose great palace at 
 Memphis Petrie has just been unearthed, stirred up 
 revolt among that unfortunate little group of 
 states, which was usually the margin of one Empire 
 or the other. 
 
 But his own native Egyptian soldiers rebelled 
 against him, because of his dependence on the 
 Greeks. And when his general, Ahmose, the 
 "Amasis" of the Greeks, the last usurper and 
 law-giver, — ^for the two go together in Egypt, — 
 gained the throne by the aid of the native troops, 
 he restricted the Greeks to Naucratis, where, 
 though no longer permitted quarters in other 
 cities, they now had their own. Naucratis became 
 the place of the unity of Greece — such unity as 
 
190 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 the Greeks never knew in their own country. Here 
 men from Athens, Sparta and the Islands beyond 
 the Seas, erected a common temple.* 
 
 The Greeks now take up the story of Egypt, 
 and from this point on, as if the Providence work- 
 ing through the human race had planned it so, 
 the monuments of this period, less needed than 
 those of a former time, have perished utterly. 
 
 The Greek's reverence for the impenetrable 
 mystery of Egypt was profound. Light-hearted 
 and volatile as he was, he scarcely knew what to 
 make of the solemn and mystic Egyptian, and 
 stood in awe of him; though he might ridicule at 
 home the peculiarities of degenerate Egyptian 
 forms of worship. He was in living contact with 
 the things of a civilization, older then than any 
 with which we may come into intimate touch 
 today. It was a life, further in age from his own, 
 than any we can know. If the wonder of the 
 great buildings impresses our civilization, so 
 developed in mechanics, how must these buildings, 
 in their perfection, have impressed the imagina- 
 tion of the early Greek! It was back of his be- 
 ginning. Altho' it is further from us, we under- 
 stand it better. 
 
 The Greek never read the Egyptian's heart, nor 
 even perfectly his written records, and accepted 
 his story second-hand. f Our age has gone back 
 to read the earliest writings. Neither did the 
 
 ♦This is the period dealt with in Ebers' "Egyptian Prmcess." 
 fAs we know by comparisons. 
 
EVENING AND THE MORNING 191 
 
 Greek know the mysterious significance of the 
 temple construction, yet he dreamed a truth be- 
 hind the veil. 
 
 The Greeks found in the buildings, not only 
 forms, but ideas, and added their own particular 
 life genius to the interpretation. 
 
 As for the Egyptian religion, it not only influenc- 
 ed the other nations, but itself spread over the 
 classic world. And out of Egypt came our most 
 cherished belief, the belief in the life hereafter. 
 
 Backward past the Empire with its great capital 
 of the god Amon; past the temple developments 
 during the rich feudal conditions of the Middle 
 Kingdom, the evening looked to the golden morn- 
 ing. The state god Amon had now declined in the 
 far highlands of the Upper Nile. For when the 
 new state of Egypt had become organized and was 
 reaching out and making connections with the 
 world in the North, the conservative, priestly 
 state of Amon loosed its hold and drew together, 
 withdrawing itself further up the Nile, and moving 
 its capital beyond the Cataracts. Its written 
 language ceased to be Egyptian and has never yet 
 been deciphered by the world. There, far away, 
 for a time, it continued to exist, gradually perish- 
 ing of its isolation; while because it was mysterious 
 and out of reach, the Greeks looked upon it as the 
 source of all which they knew, perhaps considering 
 truly that even as we must advance from the 
 known to the unknown, so from the unknown 
 must once have proceeded the known. In this 
 
192 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 last stronghold perished Amon. Thus ended the 
 romance of the Ethiopian Kingdom. 
 
 Neither did Re survive; though the worship of 
 this possibly Eastern god of Heliopolis had been 
 so predominant, since the Fifth Dynasty were 
 established as his sons, that all the kings were sup- 
 posed to be his incarnation, and he was therefore 
 combined with Amon at Thebes. 
 
 But the first gods of three thousand years before 
 — Osiris, Isis and Horus — had lived always in the 
 hearts of the people. As the Restoration went 
 back to the beginning, it was Osiris, Isis and Horus, 
 who alone were resurrected. Just as Egypt had 
 summarized her whole past, and was ready to 
 hand on her influence, they gave the form which 
 she bestowed on the world's religious thought. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 A Message from the Holy Places 
 
 TO understand the deepest significance of 
 Mizraim, to know all that is meant by 
 that occult saying, "Out of Egypt have I 
 called my son," to realize what is sym- 
 bolized by Jesus going down into Egypt and com- 
 ing out from thence, we must visit the most holy 
 place in the land. It is Abydos, the first sacred 
 city, the Egyptian city of the holy sepulchre, the 
 place of pilgrimage for more than three thousand 
 years of human history. A fitting preparation is 
 our own pilgrimage thither, the longest and most 
 difficult of all our journeys in this most ancient 
 land. Abydos is farther from the highway of the 
 river than any other spot which we attempt to see. 
 From Thebes we must go back a short way down 
 the Nile. We leave by train at dawn to reach the 
 nearest railway station and the donkeys. We re- 
 turn by train at midnight. One day! — one day 
 in the Beginning, the First Day! 
 
 The temple at Abydos is the great Temple of 
 Osiris, and is built upon the site of several earlier 
 ones. Osiris is now supposed to be the earliest 
 god of prehistoric Egypt, a god in human form, 
 who with his story, had a mysterious apparent 
 
 193 
 
194 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 connection with a possibly earlier god, of a port 
 on the Persian Sea. Osiris was the first and the 
 last in the hearts of the people. His worship was 
 the triumph of a popular belief, and, as we shall 
 see, the Truth behind this earliest known religion, 
 still persists. 
 
 This is the myth concerning him. 
 
 Osiris was an early and civilizing king- of Egypt, 
 who was treacherously slain by his brother Set. 
 Isis, the wife of Osiris, found the body, which was 
 then torn to pieces by Set; but Isis buried the 
 pieces in fourteen places, which we know in history 
 as the centres of the ancient nomes. The head 
 was buried in Abydos, which thus became the most 
 sacred spot. But afterwards Isis, by divine power, 
 restored and revivified Osiris. He could no longer 
 reign as an earthly king, but went to be the judge 
 and ruler of the kingdom of the blessed. As that 
 kingdom was in the West, he was called, "The 
 first of those in the West," **the King of the 
 glorified." And they said of every man, "As 
 Osiris lives, so shall he also live." "They depart 
 not as those who are dead but they depart as those 
 who are living."* 
 
 Isis, remaining upon earth, gave birth to a son, 
 Horus, whom she reared as the destroyer of Set 
 and of the false slurs which Set cast upon Osiris. 
 Thus the special mission of Horus in Egyptian 
 mythology, is to take captive the power of dark- 
 ness. 
 
 ""Breasted's translation. 
 
MESSAGE FROM HOLY PLACES 195 
 
 This story was probably shaped by actual 
 events. 
 
 We have seen how, in historic days in Egypt, 
 when a locality triumphs over the rest of the 
 country and becomes its capital, and also when 
 conquest is carried into other countries, the victory 
 is always supposed to be the triumph of the god of 
 the capital, who becomes for the time the supreme 
 state god. Thus is history told in mythology. 
 In view of such historic explanations of later 
 stories, we may assume from the myth of Osiris and 
 from statements made on temple walls, — as well 
 as from recent revelations of prehistoric customs, 
 especially with reference to the sacrifice of the 
 king — ^that the prehistoric course of events was 
 somewhat in the following order: 
 
 Osiris was the first god of Egypt, worshipped in 
 the Delta and in Upper Egypt. He was probably 
 that king whose civilizing mission was to introduce 
 cultivation into the Nile Valley some 8,000 B. C. 
 In the story of his sacrifice he sums up the fate of 
 all the kings who had a reign of thirty years. Be- 
 coming a god in tradition, his worship was the 
 monotheism of a tribe. This type of religion is 
 always found preceding polytheism, which results 
 when tribes unite and neither will give up its god. 
 Fourteen centres of Osiris worship are known to 
 have existed in prehistoric times, corresponding 
 to the centres of the fourteen nomes into which 
 Egypt was divided in the earliest dynastic days. 
 
 But there are traces of a very early Asiatic, and 
 
196 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 probably Semitic, invasion of the Delta. It is 
 even indicated that in days near to the most re- 
 mote there was a Semitic principate in HeUopolis. 
 These were the worshippers of Set, and it was they 
 who killed Osiris in the story. Then a Delta tribe 
 of Libyans, akin to the Osirians, and worshipping 
 as their tribal goddess, the Virgin Isis, joined with 
 the kindred race to conquer Set and reinstate Osiris. 
 So, for a time all went well. However, a general 
 swift decadence, found in the art of those darkest 
 days just before history dawns, indicates a cata- 
 clysm. The Asiatics had probably returned in 
 force and this was the scattering of Osiris' body. 
 This time a tribe came from the south, another 
 Libyan tribe, the worshippers of Horus. 
 
 Assuming leadership, they drove the followers 
 of Set northward until they had forced them down 
 the Red Sea. 
 
 Out of this shadowy development was personified 
 the beautiful story, expressing all deepest human 
 feelings, telling not only history, but the truths 
 which underly all history. 
 
 The three great gods are blended in one story, a 
 religion of the people, to touch the hearts of the 
 self-conscious world for all time; for at this moment 
 history dawns, the dark curtain rolls up, and the 
 first historic King steps into the light — Menes, 
 coming from near Abydos, and uniting with a 
 strong hand Upper and Lower Egypt. He is the 
 first King of all Egypt, and the first personage of 
 whom records have been kept. 
 
MESSAGE FROM HOLY PLACES 197 
 
 From this day forth, Abydos is holy ground, in 
 which it was the desire of all the great of Egypt 
 to be buried. The first stone structure known is 
 a tomb at Abydos. As time went on and dynasties 
 changed, the kings buried elsewhere,— at Memphis 
 in the Old Kingdom, or Thebes in the Empire, — 
 and their nobles were with them in the Old King- 
 dom. But the bodies were sent to lie on the holy 
 ground for a time at least, or tablets were set up 
 commending the dead to Osiris. Those whose 
 missions north or south took them through this 
 city, were able to use the occasion to satisfy their 
 own most important personal desire by setting up 
 a tablet for themselves, on which they generally 
 recorded the chief events of their lives, and the 
 mission which brought them to Abydos. Thus 
 Abydos became a hoard of historical records and 
 details, such as has been opened nowhere else in 
 Egypt. Its burials, too, indicate the changes in 
 the state; for, in the Sixth Dynasty, the nobles, 
 instead of being buried around their ruler, are 
 interred away from him, in Abydos. This indi- 
 cates that the Old Kingdom was going to its decay. 
 In the Middle Kingdom, in the case of a governor 
 of a nome, he was buried in his nome, after being 
 carried to Abydos. 
 
 In the tribal monotheism of the beginning, a god 
 was not thought of as universal, nor was there 
 any idea of objection to his affiliation with other 
 tribal patrons. When, in the Middle Kingdom, 
 out of the confusion of many gods, headed by the 
 
198 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 state god Re of Heliopolis, — a confusion which had 
 gradually come upon Egypt through the jealousies 
 of local priesthoods, — there developed the intuitive 
 recognition of one power, to which the priests of 
 each locality ascribed the attributes of their god, 
 also ascribing to him universal attributes, — then 
 Osiris, emerged supreme and it was the first move- 
 ment in history toward a monotheism which should 
 include the known world. 
 
 This was a prosperous age for Egypt. A new 
 temple was built at Abydos. The priests put into 
 dramatic form the story of Osiris; and annually, 
 at a great festival, enacted it for the people, allow- 
 ing them to take some share. Here then, at 
 Abydos, some 2,000 B. C, was given the first 
 drama of history, similar in intention to the mystic 
 plays of the modern Middle Ages, and the Oberam- 
 mergau play of today. 
 
 But the most remarkable phase of the religion 
 of the triad, Osiris, Isis and Horus, was the inner 
 development, the ethical standard which grew up 
 in connection with it. The Egyptians, the first 
 nation of history, made greater preparation for the 
 future life than any other people has ever done. 
 And in the very dawn of their history, they per- 
 ceived that the future life must depend upon the 
 purity of this. At first, as in the case of the He- 
 brews later, this was merely a ceremonial symbolic 
 purity; but, by the Middle Kingdom and the 
 triumph of Osiris, the heart of the people had 
 spoken in a conscious and exalted ethical standard. 
 
MESSAGE FROM HOLY PLACES 199 
 
 It was the ethical character of the life here which 
 made the life hereafter. The justification of 
 Osiris by Horus was the expression of their intui- 
 tive perception of the justification of the righteous. 
 The heart was weighed in the balance with Truth 
 and was light as the Feather of Truth if it knew no 
 sin. This was probably a thousand years before 
 such an ethical idea arose in Babylon or Israel. 
 
 Out of the supremacy of this one god, out of 
 this ethical standard, developed an advanced con- 
 ception of benevolence, which, — since it is the 
 high impulse of the Universal working toward 
 unity — we perceive as the most advanced and 
 impersonal form of love. The inscriptions in the 
 tombs of this time, such as that of Ameni at Beni- 
 Hassan, while they may be exaggerated in their 
 particular application, express the ideal of the 
 period. 
 
 Such words as these we find: 
 
 "I gave bread to the hungry, water to the 
 thirsty, clothing to the naked, and a boat to him 
 who had none." "I was father to the orphan, 
 husband to the widow, and a shelter to the shelter- 
 less."* 
 
 But the test was hard. With this high develop- 
 ment went a danger. The priesthood, for worldly 
 power and gain, developed a corresponding evil. 
 The answers for the soul, which should carry it 
 through the judgment were written out, leaving 
 only the name to be inserted, and were sold, thus 
 
 ♦Breasted. 
 
200 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 insuring the hereafter beforehand. It is this which 
 has given us the Book of the Dead; and it is this 
 which, in its denial of sins, has provided us with a 
 full statement of the standard of the age. Heart 
 scarabs were also sold, to lie upon a man's heart 
 and prevent it from rising up to testify against 
 him. 
 
 After the dark days of the disintegration of the 
 Middle Kingdom and of the Hyksos invasion, 
 when Thebes had again conquered Egypt, and the 
 Empire was born, the worship of Amon-Re, and 
 of the other members of the Anion triad, became 
 the state religion; courage and conquest, rather 
 than benevolence, became the ideal. Yet Thut- 
 mose I, conqueror and Emperor, while making 
 glorious the Temple of Amon at Thebes, also re- 
 stored the Temple of Osiris at Abydos, with great 
 splendor and a special endowment for the offering 
 of oblations. In his old age he turned toward 
 Osiris in the sacred place of Abydos and there 
 desired the perpetuation of his name and memory. 
 
 We have seen how, after Ikhnaton's break with 
 the conventions, and the near approach of the 
 state to an abstract conception in the worship of 
 the Aton, Seti I, of the Nineteenth Dynasty, 
 carried on the reorganization of the Empire, which 
 restored the state gods. He built on the state 
 temple to Amon. Yet he also turned his attention 
 to Abydos, and erected there a temple to Osiris, 
 and to the Osirian triad, as well as to the other 
 great gods of Egypt. This seven-shrined temple, 
 
MESSAGE FROM HOLY PLACES 201 
 
 though much ruined, is in its carvings the finest 
 example of the art of Egypt. Some influence of 
 the freedom of the revolutionary school remains, 
 with the spirit of the Nineteenth Dynasty. In 
 Abydos, the strong, free drawing, similar to that 
 of Seti's Karnak reliefs, is veiled in the most deli- 
 cate modelling, such as we find in the Eighteenth 
 Dynasty art; thus combining strength with feeling 
 and refinement in a monument of rare charm and 
 power. 
 
 Seti also built chapels for the services of the 
 kings, dead two thousand years and buried here; 
 and a list of the past Pharaohs which he placed on 
 a wall, outlines Egyptian history for us today. 
 
 In order to endow this temple, Seti was obliged 
 to open an unused route to certain mines back of 
 Edfu, and journeyed himself two days into the 
 desert to find water that the caravans might live. 
 
 Seti, however, did not finish this beautiful temple 
 of Abydos. He died before he could complete it, 
 or the great hall in Karnak, or his mortuary temple 
 and university, now called "Kurna" at Thebes. 
 He was buried in that tomb we entered, the reliefs 
 of which are only second to those on the walls of 
 this Temple of Abydos. It was left for the son, 
 Rameses the Great, the herculean builder of Egypt, 
 in whom her glory culminated, to finish not only 
 the great hall of Karnak, the mortuary temple of 
 Kurna, and the cliff temple at Abu Simbel, but the 
 finest of all these, at Abydos, the most holy place, 
 the place from near which came the first king of 
 
202 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 Egypt, and where that first king is buried. Ra- 
 meses undertook this work early in his reign, but 
 left in Abydos the longest record of himseK, with 
 those poetic, filial statements in reference to Seti: 
 
 "It was his son who made his name live." 
 "Thou shalt be as if thou livest while I reign."* 
 
 But, as we now understand, the great formist, 
 the vastness of whose building projects has never 
 been equalled, the great maker of stone temples to 
 the gods, of whom he felt himself to be one, became 
 of necessity the Oppressor. Therefore, this rare 
 temple of Abydos bespeaks also the outgoing of 
 the Hebrews to receive their message and to give 
 it to the world. 
 
 But there is a deeper, more mysterious building 
 here, a secret, subterranean temple, with its hid- 
 den entrance in the temple of Seti I. It is in 
 process of excavation today, because with the final 
 raising of the great barrage at Assouan, its founda- 
 tions will be flooded. We call it the Osireion, and 
 it is unique in Egypt, for it is the secret place 
 where was hoarded by the Pharaoh of the Exodus 
 the hidden wisdom of Egypt. It tells of the life 
 and death and resurrection of Osiris, it symbolizes 
 the passage of the soul after death, and it is dedi- 
 cated to the "Judge of the Dead." 
 
 From the beginning until the end of Egypt, 
 Abydos was sacred. Who can visit it today and 
 
 ♦Breast's "Records of Ancient Egypt." 
 
MESSAGE FROM HOLY PLACES 203 
 
 stand before the broken, beautiful temple — like 
 that of the Ramesesum, most spiritual in its de- 
 struction, — who can see those tombs of all the 
 ages, who can think over the story of Osiris, and 
 not be stirred to the depths by the suggestion of 
 things which have ever been, things which will 
 ever be! 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The Haunt of Horns 
 
 BUT the story is not complete, though we 
 have found in Abydos, suggestions of 
 religious and ritualistic forms which are 
 strangely like a prophecy, and there has 
 dawned upon us a knowledge that here are things 
 which we recognize, so that we have looked with 
 awe upon this once sacred city of the world. 
 
 Yet we must journey still further up the river, 
 above Thebes; where the sandstone foundation 
 of the Nubian desert gives way to the softer 
 limestone of the desert of Egypt, and the river 
 comes forth, unhindered on its way. Here, about 
 seventy miles below the First Cataract, is the town 
 of Edfu; and here, for much of the time until the 
 great Twelfth Dynasty in the Middle Kingdom, 
 was the boundary between Egypt and Nubia. 
 Here, also, though there were several other 
 centres, is the ancient stronghold of the worship 
 of Horus, whence his religion spread to the north, 
 when the worshippers of Horus conquered Set, 
 and by uniting with the Osirians "justified 
 Osiris. " 
 
 There is a fragment of a list of kings, written 
 in the Fifth Dynasty, just after the Pyramids 
 
 204 
 
THE HAUNT OF HORUS m 
 
 were built, when men were already beginning to 
 talk of the good days of old, and when they made 
 the earliest attempt we know to put together a 
 chronological record*. On the broken stone are 
 a few prehistoric names, then already nearly a 
 millenium old. They form the middle of a line, 
 cut off in beginning and end, and without any 
 facts in connection with them. These prehis- 
 toric kings are known to historic ages, only as the 
 ''Worshippers of Horus, " and they slowly take 
 on in the minds of the people a semi-divinity; 
 becoming in tradition the half -gods. 
 
 They had followed the gods, who at first ruled 
 Egypt, — Egypt, which was the world. Because 
 the people of the first dynasties still remembered 
 them as dead kings, they became the Divine 
 Dead, or "the Dead," as they are spoken of in the 
 history of Manetho, the Greek priest in the latter 
 days of Egypt; and they are worshipped in their 
 former capitals. 
 
 This association of divinity with kings was also 
 a fact of all Egyptian history; due both to a 
 story of incarnation, which became established as 
 a conventional theory for every king of Egypt; 
 and to the belief that the king's soul after death, 
 partakes of the nature of Osiris, becomes Osiris. 
 By the Eighteenth Dynasty this was said of every 
 justified soul. The kings, therefore, provided 
 temples for the worship of themselves. 
 
 When Menes, — in Egyptian tradition, as in the 
 
 *The so-called Palenno stone. 
 
206 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 records, the first human king, — comes forward 
 uniting the land, which had already become 
 organized about the two centres of the North and 
 the South, it is with the title of "Horus," for was 
 he not the successor of the great god, who had also 
 once ruled the whole of Egypt? Horus had come 
 from the South to drive Set from the land, to vin- 
 dicate and establish the goodness of Osiris, whose 
 kingdom was now of the future world, and to 
 reign on earth in his stead. Wherefore "Horus" 
 is the symbol of royalty of this hne who came from 
 the South. The sign was the Horus hawk above 
 the official name. Later, the Horus hawk 
 trampling upon the sign of Set, was also shown. 
 Psamtik, the Libyan, with the title of "Horus", 
 for the last time drove Set from the land. 
 
 Horus, the beginning of whose wqrship may even 
 be contemporaneous with the beginning of that of 
 Osiris, went through probably a more confused 
 history, with more varied aspects, more combina- 
 tions, and thus more modifications than any god 
 of Egypt. This is even developed to two Horuses, 
 like the two Isoldes of the European legend. The 
 sign-word "Horus", indicates "sky", and it is 
 possible that two separate sky-gods have become 
 confused by the similarity of name. The elder, 
 as combined in the story, belonged to Letopolis, 
 and was supposed to be a brother to Osiris. At 
 Edfu, the younger becomes the elder Horus' son. 
 The present temple of Edfu is dedicated to these 
 two, and to the wife and mother, Hathor, who was 
 
THE HAUNT OF HORUS 207 
 
 combined with Isis. But the original Horus of 
 Edfu and of Hieraconpolis, his other important 
 centre, was an independent sky-god, symbolized 
 by the hawk, which was ever the most sacred bird 
 of Egypt. The souls of the kings were supposed to 
 fly away as hawks, another possible connection of 
 the kingship with this hawk-worshipping country 
 where it originated. On the boat of Seker, god of 
 the dead, who is represented by a mummified 
 hawk, are many small hawks which represent the 
 souls of the kings. 
 
 It is the hawk-god of Edfu whose place, as the 
 conqueror of Set in the Osiris myth, though he was 
 originally self-existent, is so strongly established 
 that it proves the southern people to have been the 
 conquerors of the Set worshippers or tribe. As 
 connected with this triumph he is represented with 
 a human body, and a hawk head. Upon the walls 
 of his temple at Edfu, that victory is actually 
 stated to have been a tribal conquest, which is 
 an interesting point in connection with this 
 building, thfe tradition of the priests confirming 
 our belief that the old myth tells a prehistoric 
 story. 
 
 Horus, the hawk, the sky-god, is the sun-god 
 also. That Winged Sun we know so well above the 
 temple gates is the symbol of Horus of Edfu. 
 Throughout milleniums of Egyptian history, the 
 sun, as the dominant influence on Egyptian 
 physical life, was the dominant influence in 
 Egyptian religion, especially in the practical and 
 
208 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 political affairs of this world. The worship of 
 the sun-god in some form was always the state 
 religion, and the history of Egypt was a religious 
 history. While the first two strong dynasties 
 from Thinis, near Abydos, held their sway, it was 
 as the "Worshippers of Horus. " With the rise to 
 power of a Memphite family tbis worship waned, 
 and by the close of the great Fourth Dynasty and 
 the coming in of the Fifth, Re of Heliopolis had 
 succeeded Horus, as the state god. 
 
 If there were, as seems probable, a predynastic 
 Semitic principate at Heliopolis, the rise of Re in 
 the Fifth Dynasty would mean that even this god, 
 so characteristic of Egypt, came from the East, 
 and that his coming was a return of Eastern in- 
 fluence. 
 
 It is impossible perfectly to extricate the gods, 
 but at the time of Rameses, Re, as Amon-Re, was 
 chief, and the theory of the after-life connected 
 with him included all others. It was the idea of a 
 long journey. At first Re might be the boatman 
 to take the soul across to Osiris' Island of the 
 Blessed, for that God of the Dead and the members 
 of his triad, as well as all the other gods, were 
 existing contemporaneously. But in Rameses' 
 time the field of Osiris had become but one stage 
 in the journey, when the soul accompanied Re 
 through the watches of the night. 
 
 One of the symbols of Re was the Winged Sun, 
 and the connection of Horus with Re is shown by 
 the solar disk placed upon the head of the hawk, or 
 
THE HAUNT OF HORUS 209 
 
 upon the hawk-headed man, one of the most 
 frequent combinations in Egypt. 
 
 The character of Horus as the sun-god coincides 
 with his mission in the Osirian myth, to conquer 
 darkness. His connection with Re is naively 
 explained in a special story. The importance of 
 the name to Egyptian minds has been mentioned. 
 It was to the Egyptians the idea of the thing, 
 without which it could not exist; and the knowl- 
 edge of which, therefore, gave power over him who 
 answered to it. Isis, by a clever stratagem, dis- 
 covered the name of Re and thus obtained his 
 two eyes, the sun and the moon, for her child. 
 He becomes Hor-merti, "Horus of the two eyes," 
 and the sacred eye of Horus becomes the principal 
 amulet of Egypt. 
 
 By the dynasty of Rameses, Horus begins to 
 assume an entirely human form. It is especially as 
 the son of Isis, the holy child, that he appears from 
 this time on. In an early and favorite representa- 
 tion, common down to Greek days, the boy is 
 shown standing upon crocodiles,* holding poison- 
 ous reptiles harmless in his clasp. In Ptolemaic 
 times he appears on an open lotus flower. But 
 the baby, the loved, holy infant, alone or in his 
 mother's lap, was the form which gradually took 
 precedence of all others. 
 
 The splendor of Re had faded into night. In 
 the latter days of Egypt, when the world was 
 old, and the priests, those conservers of learning, 
 
 *There is a beautiful example in the Louvre. 
 
210 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 were delving into ancient lore for a pure religion, 
 hoping a renaissance, they tried to revive the 
 worship of Amon-Re. But the only worship 
 which had life in it was that earliest worship 
 of the Osirian triad, and this now became the sole 
 important cult in Egypt and spread out from there. 
 Horus had again triumphed. For, not Amon-Re, 
 but the holy infant, or the boy, became the most 
 frequent figure on the temple walls and in the peo- 
 ple's homes. 
 
 This, then is the story of him whose dwelling 
 we are to see to-day. As the steamer makes its 
 devious way up river, we descry above the palm- 
 trees on the west, the great pylons, first as two 
 huge, gray rocks, then as the towers of a fortress. 
 The temple faces due south, and rises dominant 
 over the little town of Edfy, as a mediaeval cathe- 
 dral above a mediaeval city. It has been exca- 
 vated from the mud of sun-dried brick habitations, 
 clinging over and around it, and it stands revealed 
 as the most perfect temple remaining in Egypt — 
 quite perfect, though a little mosque in the town 
 below is falling to decay. A thousand years 
 younger than that seven-shrined temple at Abydos, 
 this temple of Edfu was onlj^ one hundred and 
 fifty years in building. But the priests of the 
 Ptolemies' time, who superintended its construc- 
 tion, claim that it is built on the same plan as an 
 old one on this site, which was erected by that 
 Imhotep, of whom we hear so much, the great wise 
 man and architect of King Zoser, who also built 
 the Step-Pyramid. 
 
THE HAUNT OF HORUS 211 
 
 With slight variations it is the same old temple 
 plan,, the temple plan, which we found first in 
 Dendera. Here the forecourt and pylons are 
 complete. A girdle wall, built last outside of 
 all, runs back from the court, securely enclosing 
 the temple proper. It was always planned so — 
 the whole temple facing and centered upon the 
 within, and wall after wall outside, making the 
 inner ever more inmost. Upon the walls of Edfu 
 the Victories have passed away, for the Ptolemies 
 did not record their conquests as the Pharaohs 
 did. There is only an endless succession of gods 
 and offerings. Except for some ancient geogra- 
 phy, and the statement that the war between 
 Horus and Set was a tribal war, little of interest 
 is found written here. We enter between the 
 pylons, to the great open court where the people 
 thronged about the altar. In the eastern tower 
 is a door which leads to a stairway, lighted by 
 windows high in the walls, and there we mount 
 to the height of 120 feet to overlook the temple. 
 There are but two breaks in the roof beyond the 
 court; one where a stone or two has fallen into 
 the hypostyle hall; the other, a square opening 
 above the sanctuary. Behind the hall, the roof 
 is considerably lower and surrounded by a parapet. 
 Over it, now so bare in the sunshine, once stretch- 
 ed a bright awning, making a cool and airy 
 place above the heavy building. Like all the 
 temples, this once rose aglow with gorgeous 
 colors, in the midst of its green palms. 
 
212 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 The people offered as best they knew, the best 
 to the most holy, — as some men do to-day, — 
 gold and silver and precious stones. The temple 
 conserved their wealth. 
 
 It is all gone now. The walls are gray and 
 empty. Outside, where the gardens bloomed, 
 are the bare mounds of mud. And all lies silent 
 forever, save when a horde of tourists swarms 
 upon it. The temple is indeed a tomb, but with 
 still a tomb's suggestion of the Life. 
 
 We go down from the tower to cross the sunny 
 court, and pass through the hall of columns and 
 through the vestibules. From each side of one 
 of these, the corridor goes round the sanctuary, 
 but we cross it to stand upon the threshold of 
 that holy of holies, where only the holiest in the 
 land, the king and the high-priest, might enter 
 once a year. How the priests guarded it, even 
 from the contamination of their own feet ! Strange- 
 ly enough, this inner place of mystery is now 
 the lightest spot within the temple. That square 
 hole in the roof above it appears almost as by 
 intention; and the sun's rays stream into the 
 farthest corner upon the shorn and empty shrine. 
 
 We are a small party, lingering for the quiet 
 to think, and we realize how the Hebrews, — 
 chosen, as they undoubtedly were, — were called to 
 come out from the forms with which Egypt 
 began and into which she had crystallized, and 
 to take the next step, conserving the true Life. 
 They kept the temple, leaving out the image 
 from its sacred heart. 
 
THE HAUNT OF HORUS 213 
 
 But here there is only the shell of something 
 that once was brilliant. Walls upon walls of 
 gray, empty and imageless now. Is no holiness 
 in the ancient place that our feet stand here in 
 the heart of silence? Yea, for here as elsewhere, 
 it is in our own hearts we may find the holy still- 
 ness. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The Gift of Egypt. 
 
 WE have not yet reached the final 
 destination of our pilgrimage. We 
 shall find it at the First Cataract. 
 So we return once more to the 
 modern life on the steamer, and proceed as far 
 as our boat can navigate, arriving at the Port of 
 Assouan, a mud flat beside the town. We have 
 passed from end to end of the land of Egypt. 
 This is the farthest place in the earhest country. 
 It is true that when Egyptian Civilization rose to 
 the high tide of Empire and even at periods 
 before, it overflowed the high lands of Nubia. 
 But here was the natural and the established 
 political boundary between the southern part of 
 Egypt, and the sometime unorganized world 
 beyond. Here, at the foot of the Cataract, was 
 the ancient "Suan, " or trade-market for the 
 whole of the southland. 
 
 In this narrow valley that we have traversed 
 for 750 miles from the coast, the Nile has cut its 
 canon, nearly a thousand feet below the general 
 level of the vast desert plateau, that most ancient 
 highland to be raised above the water, stretch- 
 ing across Northern Africa and Central Asia; 
 
 214 
 
THE GIFT OF EGYPT 215 
 
 has spread rich soil for the green crops on the 
 floor of the canon; and provided, not only life, 
 but a means of communication to bind together 
 the people on its banks. In this cradle was the 
 Beginning, with the breath of the pure desert in 
 it; secured by the desert's walls and a further 
 line of the desert mountains on the east, which 
 guard it against invasion, even by clouds; protec- 
 ted on the northern end by the smooth coast of 
 the seven-mouthed Delta, having no harbors; and 
 on the south by this rocky barrier to navigation. 
 Standing out alone in the desert, protected by 
 it until they were strong enough to come forth 
 and to wage combat — thus arose and looked about 
 them the men of the first nation, with their early 
 government, — a nation apparently alone in the 
 desert of the world. 
 
 It is this protection in the narrow valley, with 
 the gates at the north and the south, which, 
 forbidding any sudden great invasion, has pre- 
 served the Egyptian type. 
 
 The geography of Egyptian children must have 
 been simple. In this unique country, to "go up" 
 was to leave the snug valley, "to descend" was to 
 come home. The first idea of north was "down- 
 stream, " and when the Egyptians had crossed the 
 desert, and discovered the Euphrates, they called 
 it the "inverted water," for they were accustomed 
 to going upstream to the south. Here at this First 
 Cataract, the large palm-covered island of Ele- 
 phantine, which leads the van of granite elevations 
 
216 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 that trouble the waters and seem tumbling down 
 the river — was known as the "Door of the South. ' ' 
 
 It was the seat of adventurous nobles, who 
 often fared forth with their troops into darkest 
 Africa. Their tombs are in the cliffs on the west- 
 ern shore of the river. On the eastern bank is 
 Assouan, the ancient "Suan, " now for Europeans, 
 the health-resort par excellence in Egypt. The 
 winds which blow over it still pass over hundreds 
 of miles of clean, pure desert, unpolluted by 
 organic life. On the island of Elephantine is a lux- 
 urious modern European hotel with its gardens; 
 on the shore opposite, a line of modern houses, 
 shutting out of sight the cramped village of the 
 modern natives. A little further upstream, in a 
 small bay of the river, is another luxurious hotel 
 establishment. 
 
 In our search for the things of the Past, we are 
 still interested by the way. Assouan bears the 
 mark of a border town, a trading-market between 
 different regions. Today the river street of the 
 place gives us a greater variety of living interest 
 than almost any street in Egypt. Between the 
 trees which border it, we look down upon a mud 
 flat or beach below, while the little boats, the 
 bright colored feluccas of the natives, under sail 
 and oars, ply back and forth between the shore and 
 Elephantine. On the street itself we are over- 
 whelmed by donkeys and camels with importunate 
 drivers. The donkeys and the boys seem quite fa- 
 miliar ; but the camels are taller than those we know, 
 
THE GIFT OF EGYPT 217 
 
 and are white except where decorated with henna. 
 They appear more than ordinarily ill-natured; 
 and after watching one askance, as he performed 
 a sort of spinning dance, in the middle of the 
 road, endeavoring to rid himself of a rider, we 
 decided to hold our ambitions in check. The 
 owners of these animals are the Bicharines, whose 
 camp outside of Assouan is one of the sights of 
 the locality. It is a large group of huts, made of 
 mats; and in front of each primitive dwelling are 
 children playing and one of these white camels, — 
 with a leg tied up to prevent his running away. 
 The Bicharines are totally unlike the Egyptians, 
 blacker, and always dressed in white; their distin- 
 guishing characteristics are their mops of hair 
 and their pride. Sometimes the hair of girls is 
 done in a hundred braids, standing out like flame. 
 They are all tall and straight as American Indians, 
 and perhaps would bear civilization as ill. Yet 
 there seems a native nobility, something fine 
 about such natures, something freer than could be 
 found in any civilization. 
 
 We, ourselves, experience a small instance of 
 their pride. Tourists have been requested in 
 notices posted everywhere by the government, 
 not to give bakshish, since it spoils industry and 
 pauperizes the natives. Before going up the Nile, 
 we made enquiries of photographers as to the pro- 
 per amount to give for posing; and from a grocery- 
 shop supplied ourselves with the small coins in 
 use among the natives. One day, as we are 
 
218 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 passsing through the streets of Assouan, three 
 Bicharine boys, catching sight of the camera, as 
 children always do, instantly fling themselves into 
 position for a picture. It is over in a second, and 
 several coins given to each boy. But they have 
 been accustomed to fees, which equal the price of 
 a day's "work in excavating; and the leader, like a 
 little lord, marches up magnificently and lays his 
 coins in my friend's hand. The others, not to be 
 outdone, follow suit. "Very well, " says my friend, 
 " Thank you for the picture." If they are taken 
 aback, they make no sign, but proudly walk away. 
 
 Back of the river street of Assouan, in the native 
 town, are fascinating native bazaars, small, open 
 shops, indicating greater poverty and simplicity 
 than those of Cairo. Their wares are largely 
 Nubian and Sudanese, of less value, and yet for 
 that very reason more rare, than the Egyptian 
 scarves and jewelry, imported over Europe. We 
 remember the old trade-routes into Nubia for 
 ivory and treasure, and how once the control of 
 them all was put with great ceremony into the 
 hands of one man, who was called the "Keeper of 
 the Door of the South"* 
 
 There is much of very ancient interest about 
 Assouan. Here ancient astronomers observed in 
 a well that the sun at this point cast no shadow at 
 noon; and used the knowledge as a basis for cor- 
 rect earth -measurements. Over on Elephantine 
 is an old Nilometer, which still marks the rise and 
 
 ♦Breasted. 
 
THE GIFT OF EGYPT 219 
 
 fall of the river. Near to Assouan are the granite 
 quarries, which fill us with awe as the place whence 
 so many wondrous forms came forth, associated 
 with all the jubilees of the Pharaohs of Egypt. 
 Particularly was the granite cut for the thirty year 
 jubilee, so imposingly celebrated in the Eighteenth 
 Dynasty, but apparently a development of the 
 thirty year jubilee and sacrifice of the king in pre- 
 historic times, out of which came the details of the 
 burial of Osiris. 
 
 In the time of the Empire, every jubilee was 
 the occasion for an expedition under a competent 
 officer to secure granite obelisks from these 
 quarries. One such block, whose story is unknown, 
 still lies by the old road. 
 
 Such an expedition to the border was an affair 
 of peace, as was the trade with the Southland, 
 but the portal whence this trade came in was the 
 "Door" through which all the expeditions of 
 conquest in the south went out, re-entering victor- 
 ious. And the records of all these various kinds 
 of missions, from the earliest days until the end, 
 were written by king and commander, a lasting 
 memorial, on the rocks in the midst of the river. 
 
 Yet the interest of all these things grows pale in 
 the significance of on^. Here is not only the an- 
 ciently supposed source of the inundation and a 
 present source of health, but a shrine of something 
 deeper. Five miles from Assouan, at the upper 
 end of the islands which made the Cataract, is 
 an island gem which holds the secret, — ^Philae, the 
 
220 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 pearl of Egypt, "the most beautiful and the most 
 historic little island in the world." 
 
 The great dam is between us and Philae — and 
 already this island is vanishing. We may plan 
 our journey to it in various ways. The most 
 interesting method, if it be desired to crowd all 
 into one day's travelling, is to go by donkeys past 
 the old quarries to "Shellal," — ^the Arab name 
 for Cataract — an Arab town, which is opposite to 
 Philae; and taking a felucca there and back, to 
 return on the donkeys by way of the great barrage. 
 But the donkey-boys of Assouan appear quarrel- 
 some and disorderly to us; there is no Aboudi, and 
 we left our friends at Luxor when we came on this 
 pilgrimage. So we set out by train for Shellal, on 
 the small branch road, which carries goods past 
 the Cataract and dam. Having dispensed with 
 the troublesome offices of a dragoman, we nearly 
 fall into the hands of the vociferous felucca rowers 
 at Shellal. We do not go to the Holy Isle in the 
 barque of the sun-god Re. Most fortunately for 
 us, we come upon a little company of old friends 
 from America, who take us in with them. 
 
 But, — where is Philae, the remote little island, 
 famous to the ends of the earth? Here and there 
 above the river wave the heads of slender palm 
 trees. They are up to their necks in water, and 
 we wend our picturesque way among them. Then 
 we come upon a graceful little building, like and 
 yet unlike the pictures with which we have been 
 familiar since childhood — the small kiosk, called 
 
THE GIFT OF EGYPT 221 
 
 by the natives, "Pharaoh's Bed." It was unfin- 
 ished. Was it perhaps intended for a temple after 
 that very perfect style, the cella temple, brought in 
 under Amenhotep III? Even if so, today it is 
 empty of a sanctuary and looks up to the open 
 sky. There are only, upon a small rectangular 
 wall, the graceful columns, each capital different 
 from all the rest. Terraced walls have held the 
 earth in a firm base below it, groups of palm trees 
 cluster lovingly about it. But there is no island 
 visible today, nothing but tufted bits of unusual 
 heights, and the waving crests of the palms. Our 
 felucca glides on and we find ourselves within the 
 enchanted enclosure, the empty rectangle of 
 pillars set against the blue of water and sky. Be- 
 fore we have more than caught the vision, we have 
 passed through it, out upon the expanse of waters 
 over the site of the sacred isle. 
 
 Going southward, we appear before the entrance 
 to the temple of the island. Since earliest times 
 this place is supposed to have been sacred to Isis. 
 It is the Temple of Isis that we have come to see. 
 Not so large not yet so perfect as the Temple of 
 Horus at Edfu, and built at as late a day, this 
 temple is still unfinished, but its exquisite surroun- 
 dings and the fresh coloring within its chambers 
 have long given modern travellers the most 
 comprehensive impression of a temple in its 
 living beauty — when Egypt was Egyptian. The 
 life seems not wholly gone. And now the waters 
 have crept up softly, almost stealthily, and have 
 flowed into it. 
 
222 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 The temple plan was slightly modified to suit 
 the contour of the island. The forecourt before 
 the first pylon, is almost a triangle. Our little 
 boat, a bright note of color, enters at the narrower 
 end, and we float between the colonnades, almost 
 beside the capitals. Behind the long Hne to our 
 left is the river wall. We pass through the first 
 pylon, where the rowers pause on their oars, that 
 we may see in the gateway the tablet which 
 commemorates Napoleon's visit to the island. A 
 small door in the face of the left pylon tower leads 
 into the birth chapel, which forms one side of the 
 inner court. Across this second court, we reach 
 the second pylon, set at a slightly different angle 
 to the first. The doorway leads into the hypostyle 
 hall, and thus to the holy of holies, with its 
 chambers beyond. Even here the water has 
 slipped over the floor and now forbids us; the 
 rich, soft, beautiful colors of the flower capitals 
 are reflected by it, as we look within from our 
 boat. This reflective water, like a self-conscious - 
 ness is significant, and perfects while it destroys 
 the temple. 
 
 In the pylon tower at our left is a narrow 
 passage, where a loose board-walk permits our 
 stepping over to the stair, and so we ascend to the 
 roof, or, climbing further, to the top of the pylon. 
 We two slip away to visit the little chapel of 
 Osiris, tucked in a corner of the roof, and open to 
 the sky. We descend a few steps to examine the 
 exquisite reliefs which tell the story, probably 
 
THE GIFT OF EGYPT 22S 
 
 the oldest story known. Afterward, from the 
 pylon, we look over the waters: — southward into 
 Nubia; east to Shellal, beyond the little kiosk; 
 close on our west to Bigeh, an island once also 
 consecrated; and far to the north, where we descry 
 a long, cold line of masonry. There is the evi- 
 dence that it is modern mechanics which has laid 
 a cold hand on the sacred little island, to destroy 
 it. 
 
 But the secret of Philae is already possessed. 
 
 Leaving the soft light from the firmaments 
 above and below us, and descending the narrow, 
 dark stairway in the temple, we re-embark in 
 our gay little boat, with its swarthy Egyptian 
 rowers, and again float out upon the waters, 
 looking backward all the way. And first the 
 reflections, the colors, and the shadows of the dim 
 hypostyle hall with the chambers behind and be- 
 yond it, are lost to view, leaving the doorway dark 
 — ^for it is open. The dark doorways, one behind 
 another, always suggest a mystery. We are alone 
 with the temple, and the ripples from our oars 
 seem to caress the walls and columns. Across 
 the court, past the birth chapel, we move, and 
 through the outer doorway, gain the outer court, 
 whose colonnades seem all but to meet before us. 
 But we glide between the long lines and out at the 
 entrance. The temple is behind us. 
 
 The felucca turns north along the temple wall, 
 passing between Bigeh and Philae. Palm-trees, 
 rocks, desert cliffs and water make a picture of 
 
2^4 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 unconquered and forbidding Nature. But as 
 Philae is lost to us, we come into view of the great 
 barrage. It is the stone wall against which the 
 waters of the Past have beat in vain, for it hoards, 
 the material water by means of which the life of 
 the Present takes form. 
 
 It is a vast lake which the great dam keeps 
 back. When we reach the line of masonry, we 
 can go no further, and leaving our boat, climb by 
 steps up the wall. Here small hand trolleys await 
 us, the seats like those in a trap, back to back. We 
 are trundled merrily along the top of the wall for 
 over a mile ; near us on one side, the sight of the 
 water; below us on the other, the sound of a 
 hundred falls. Now and then we are permitted 
 to alight and look over the parapet, where the 
 water gushes out through the openings which are 
 all arranged at different heights to break the strain, 
 and are regulated by gates. 
 
 At the further end, are the house of the engineer 
 and a smaller building, where, once more, the 
 ubiquitous Cook provides for the wayfaring man. 
 But we have our lunch with us; and another 
 felucca waits below to take us through the lock. 
 Again we sail forth. Our twelve happy-natured 
 rowers, one a child with a child's enthusiasm over 
 helping, chant weirdly with the rhythm of the 
 oars. As their clear-cut faces swing back, we are 
 grotesquely reminded of their forefathers in the 
 Cairo Museum. When the boat is at rest in the 
 dock, they give up to their singing, beating upon 
 
THE GIFT OF EGYPT 225 
 
 small drums made of gourds. To their religious 
 chant, we lightly pass the place where a few years 
 ago natives risked their lives to earn a living by 
 the sport of shooting the Cataract on logs. They 
 are at home in the water, these people. A small 
 black boy swims out to us on a log, claiming 
 piastres for doing it. Childhood is merry in 
 Egypt. Child voices sing like birds over the 
 hard labor of excavating. We wind our way 
 among the rocks, which so unmoved, create such 
 tumult. These are the rocks of records so full, 
 that were all Egypt washed away, they might 
 still tell a continuous story. They are strangely 
 black above the water. We turn into a channel 
 between two islands, and draw up to a small 
 beach, which lies serenely basking towards the 
 southern sun. This is the island of Sehel, and 
 upon it is an inscription viewed with wonder and 
 awe by students of Hebrew story. 
 
 The line of a crack drawn clear across the rock 
 does not cancel its weather-beaten record of a 
 seven year's famine in Egypt. The story relates 
 how the river failed to rise for seven years and 
 how the king summoned his wise man who advised 
 a sacrifice to the Potter-god of the Cataract. The 
 sacrifice was answered by the inundations, and 
 the land of the Cataract was consecrated to 
 Khnum. This was, perhaps, a thousand years be- 
 fore the time of Joseph, in the reign of that king 
 Zoser, whose tomb is the Step-Pyramid, and who 
 is reported to have built the first temple of Horus 
 
226 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 at Edfu. The record of the tradition was 
 written much later by the priests of Khnum, in 
 support of their claim to the region. But it 
 shows that such famines were not unthinkable, 
 indeed had occurred in Egyptian experience. 
 
 From the beach of Sehel we climb the venerable 
 and broken rocks, above which waves the grass — 
 and last year's seeds. They are blown with the 
 sand. In a windswept corner of the shelf we 
 spread our lunch. Chancing to look below, we 
 see on the beach, beyond the empty boat, a line 
 of mats on which twelve rowers kneel in prayer. 
 It is their first moment of rest since the noon 
 hour. Here away in the sight of the God of 
 nature, such prayer seems not to resemble the 
 self-conscious praying of the street corners. 
 Religion is still the secret of Egypt. 
 
 As the sun moves westward we start once more, 
 "If this were anywhere but Egypt, I should say it 
 was going to rain, " exclaims one of our party; and 
 almost before the words are spoken — the rain comes. 
 The rowers spring to the curtains; but sharply as it 
 began, just so suddenly it is over, the one shower 
 of three years, which will ever after serve to date 
 our pilgrimage to Philae. 
 
 One more stop we make, this time at the old 
 Nilometer on Elephantine, by the steps of which 
 we climb to the green surface of the island. Here 
 at the "border" of Egypt, in the time of Jeremiah 
 and after,' lived the Jewish colony, whose houses 
 have just been excavated by French and German 
 
THE GIFT OF EGYPT ft7 
 
 expeditions. From Elephantine, we return, tired 
 out, to modern tea at Assouan. 
 
 But our thoughts turn back to the temple, and 
 what it signifies. They watch the creeping destruc- 
 tion of the water. Long before Moses was forced 
 to look for water in the wilderness that was the 
 task of the Egyptians, and has been, as we have 
 seen, ever since. Their river furnishes an initial 
 supply, but they must learn how to conserve it 
 ere they can use it. This was their first practical 
 problem and out of it practical mechanics was 
 born in the dawn of human history. Working 
 upon that same problem today, the engineers of 
 one of the most advanced of modern nations, have 
 constructed here, at the farthest place in the land 
 of Egypt, the greatest barrage in the world. 
 
 It pays the interest on Egyptian bonds; it does 
 a greater and more vital thing, it brings life to the 
 people of the land of Egypt today. But the 
 government and the engineers — do they know 
 what they do in placing it here? Do they know 
 what this beautiful temple, soon to be merely a 
 mound of earth and stones, really is? The shrine 
 of the idea of holy motherhood in the world ! 
 
 Just before the Christian era dawned, this old- 
 est story of all had gained its strongest hold upon 
 the people, and that phase of it, the motherhood of 
 Isis, was the phase most loved, most often repre- 
 sented, most dwelt upon, — ^the thought which was 
 worshipped here. Isis and Horus, divine mother 
 and child, lived in the hearts of the people, and 
 
««8 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 so strong was this worship that it spread to Rome, 
 and with Rome to all the conquests of the Roman 
 Empire, — preparing a way. Then arose Christian- 
 ity in Asia. 
 
 The supreme message of the Jews was brought to 
 consciousness and fulfilled to the. world. The 
 trust for which they were developed and cherished 
 and chastened for centuries, was not for themselves 
 alone, but in the fulness of time for the uplifting 
 of humanity. When the Jews had given birth 
 to this consciousness, their own protecting husks 
 of formalism were destroyed by it. But it was 
 back in Alexandria, that Christianity took strong 
 root, and swept from end to end of Egypt, and 
 out into the world. No teacher has ever presented 
 such an ethical standard as Jesus. Yet it was in 
 Egypt, not in the old state religion of Re or Amon- 
 Re, but in the earliest religion of the people, — the 
 story of Isis, Horus and Osiris, — that the form 
 was established. Eg>^t, always crystallizing 
 forms, did so, above all, in the realm of ideas. Her 
 gods had become concentrated, they were now 
 transformed, as a dream changes to the reality 
 which it still overshadows. Christianity came 
 forth with all the elements of the Egyptian story, 
 and developed similar accompanying ideas of 
 monasticism, and of organized priesthoods and 
 ritual. 
 
 The priesthoods of Egypt, especially those of 
 Isis, had undoubtedly low forms of attracting the 
 people; they had developed an unworthy side of 
 
THE GIFT OF EGYPT 229 
 
 secret mysteries, and that great evil of perverting 
 truth by forms of psychic magic. In Europe the 
 worship of Isis, as Isis, came into strong combat 
 with early Christianity. 
 
 But gradually the ideas of Christianity in 
 Europe underwent a transformation. 
 
 In the religion of Egypt we find not only 
 heaven and hell, but the monasticism, mysticism 
 and dreamy abstractions of later Christianity, 
 which undoubtedly came from this source and for 
 the development of which we cannot credit the 
 pure and simple precepts of Jesus. The life of 
 Christendom as a whole has not rested in these 
 forms — on the other hand, it has never yet reached 
 the full depth of those simple, vital teachings, 
 which reveal the inmost source of active life. 
 
 The Coptic Church, the Church of Egypt, and 
 the oldest Christian Church still in existence, 
 destroyed in Egypt the old temples, though the 
 worship of Isis, enthroned in this remote island, 
 continued as her worship until the Fifth century 
 of the Christian era. 
 
 As in other nations, before there was thought of 
 woman's inferiority, so in Egypt, "the classic 
 home of woman's power," woman's counsel and 
 decisions in affairs of state were supposed to be 
 divine. Just as Egypt was about to pass on her 
 message to the world, not only did the royal 
 descent through mother and daughter, assume if 
 possible, greater importance than ever, but the 
 High Priesthood of Amon belonged to a woman 
 
^0 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 and descended in the royal female line; while at 
 the same time the worship of motherhood in Isis 
 had become almost alone in its supremacy. Then 
 Isis, earliest form of the eternally true ideal of a 
 mystic Motherhood, purified from the evils at- 
 tending her worship, rose into the Christian 
 Madonna. 
 
 Breasted sees in the revival of Egypt and in 
 the Osirian story, the preparation for doctrinal 
 Christianity; Petrie says, "The Hebrews might give 
 us the pure Virgin Mary, they could never have 
 given us the glorified Madonna." 
 
 But let us understand the reason. Is it not 
 because Egypt, the first nation of history, the 
 beginning of the continuously developing material 
 civilization of the West, stands therefore above 
 all for Form, and so gives form to all that is to 
 follow? 
 
 It was the idea enshrined here, of holy Mother- 
 hood, which, like a symbolic prophecy, prepared 
 Egypt to receive Christianity, and which, trans- 
 formed by Christianity, continues to influence 
 the world. "Out of Egypt have I called my son, " 
 is an Eastern saying of deep, occult wisdom. As 
 Egypt represents the material and objective reason- 
 ing which has been most strongly developed in 
 the West and in the masculine nature, is not this 
 idea of sonship the symbol subconsciously given, 
 which represents the objective or Form, recogniz- 
 ing its source in the subjective or Life? 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 Light 
 
 THE Sphinx of Egypt represents the king- 
 dom of the material world. At the feet 
 of the Sphinx we looked upon Form, the 
 objective idea of God, as his outer mater- 
 ial realm. 
 
 It sends us dreaming, back before the Past. 
 When the world was formed, and when the uni- 
 verse achieved, had risen to consciousness, Man 
 stood there at the gate, beginning his long pilgrim- 
 age to God upon the outside. By objective knowl- 
 edge, which for a time seems partly to separate 
 him from the Creator, he goes back through God's 
 whole expressed creation, the realm of symbols, 
 the world of Form, in order that he may consciously 
 know when at last, in that holy of holies, farthest 
 within himself, he finds the God whom he has felt 
 behind the veil. 
 
 With the first written word was thought given 
 a limiting, conventional form. This earliest na- 
 tion, while still full of subjective feeling, had to 
 make the beginning of objective knowledge from 
 the most outward plane; and to give the thought 
 its outer form or symbol, that it might be conveyed 
 from soul to soul by way of sense to sense. In the 
 
 231 
 
OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 early myths of Egypt we find the importance of 
 the Name, the word standing for the idea of the 
 thing and thus representing its soul. In the days 
 of the Empire there developed the belief in the 
 Word, the expression of a definite thought, as the 
 means of creation. It is similar to the later Greek 
 doctrine of the "Logos," to the ''God said" of 
 the Hebrew Genesis, and the "Word" of the Greek- 
 influenced addition to the Hebrew Scripture. 
 
 In the beginning was simple, graphic language 
 with the heart in it; true poetry, dealing with the 
 universal individual. But a written word is a 
 reflection, making men conscious of their thought. 
 Therefore was the beginning of writing the awak- 
 ening of the soul's self -consciousness. Then was 
 the Truth enshrined in a garden of symbols, even 
 as the Spirit is enshrined in the temple of Man's 
 body. 
 
 Every word is itself a symbol, as we can see in 
 Egypt, where the process of creating signs for 
 writing, is revealed in the records of centuries. 
 
 The nation could not have come into being until 
 the creation of a system of writing was first 
 achieved. The government could not otherwise 
 have carried on any wide-spread administration. 
 Egypt had developed not only syllables, but an 
 alphabet of twenty -four letters, 2,500 years before 
 any other people.* The office of the scribe 
 became the most exalted in Egypt. Not yet over- 
 whelmed with the making of many books, nor 
 
 *Breasted. 
 
LIGHT 23S 
 
 with the multipHcity and vanity of words, they 
 cherished each written treasure, their wonder at 
 its existence not yet passed away. Thus began 
 objective history — one continuous growth, with 
 a long period of preparation behind it. The flow- 
 ering of our civihzation has been, after all, so brief, 
 from Egypt until now, — ^the shining of the con- 
 sciousness of the race into self-consciousness. 
 
 Egypt, still subjective, was beginning with the 
 outermost. Therefore her strange perversions, her 
 strange combination of extremes, of intense reli- 
 gious feeling with the most conventional forms, 
 wrought into stone temples such as the world has 
 never seen — they are today most valuable for the 
 writing on the walls. Translated into modern 
 languages, Egypt's records now can never be lost. 
 This early nation was the most conservative, hold- 
 ing fast to things both good and bad. The Truth 
 was enshrined in symbols, and the symbols were 
 cherished as the Truth. 
 
 We have read the story of the state religion, and 
 how there went with it all the forms of a religious 
 calendar, with its feast days, and an elaborate 
 ritual; and how the state was under the control 
 of the form of its religion, until the religious form 
 absorbed the state . There were the soldiers, or con- 
 quering class ; the priests, or conserving class ; and the 
 Third Estate, the workers, the body of the people. 
 The priesthoods not only possessed enormous 
 revenues, but endowments of land exempt from 
 taxation, as did the bishoprics of the modern 
 
2S4 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 Middle Ages. As the English king today is the 
 head of the English Church, so was the Pharaoh 
 the nominal head of the rehgion of Egypt. 
 
 But it is not only in the outer observances, 
 nor in the word alone that we see the forms we 
 know. We find such forms in the ideas them- 
 selves. Such symbols as the Potter, for God 
 the Creator, which we may use, were actually 
 pictured in Egypt; such an aspect of God was 
 separately personified. We find also the deluge, 
 the serpent of evil and the flames of hell, against 
 which a ritual prayer was uttered by the priests of 
 Karnak every morning. The idea of a divine 
 Fatherhood, glimpsed in a distorted fashion and 
 scarcely grasped as universal; the resurrection of 
 Osiris; the Madonna idea in Egypt — were they 
 not symbols arising from and predicting everlast- 
 ing Truth .f^ Is not Form the symbolic expression 
 of Truth? 
 
 Does a knowledge of these matters disturb us 
 by a change of thought which tempts us, not 
 only to cast all these things away, since we find 
 them what Moses himself once cast off, but with 
 them what, in our own religion, they now suggest .^^ 
 Shall we, in our pride of knowledge, throw away the 
 spiritual kernel because we think we know the 
 intellectual husks? Shall we not rather see in 
 these early symbols, at once a confirmation, 
 and a suggestion that the Truth lies deeper than 
 we have yet known? Not only are observances 
 symbolic, but ideas themselves express the inner 
 Truth. 
 
LIGHT 235 
 
 In the light of our Christian era the form of 
 our rehgion does appear to go back behind the 
 Jews to that story which grew out of the earhest 
 consciousness of mankind and which prepared 
 the way, the story which was itself transformed 
 by Christianity. The Christian religion of the 
 Western world had its beginning, not in the East, 
 from whence came its life, but in the earliest 
 nation of history, the first nation of the West, 
 the first of the material, masculine part of the 
 world which has held the ideal of conquest and 
 has worshipped womanhood. The exaltation of 
 woman, which culminated in the idea of the 
 glorified Madonna, was not, as some historians 
 think, the weakness of Egypt. It was due to 
 the fact that Egypt was West, was material, was 
 masculine; and its purpose was deep as the founda- 
 tion of humanity. The idea of the Madonna 
 made Christianity acceptable and understand- 
 able to the young masculine civilization of Europe. 
 The Egyptians looked ever to the West, as the 
 land toward which they were to pass. They 
 spoke of Osiris as "the first of those in the West". 
 That they saw the West as the land of Death 
 was itself symbolic, since it is the land of Form, 
 while the East is the land of Spirit or Life. 
 
 But for us the wonder has grown with the 
 realization that back in the time of Moses there 
 was hidden away in the dark secret places on 
 the westward side of Egypt, dreams which, though 
 distorted, seem like prophecy; that these dreams 
 
^36 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 waxed strangely strong above all others in the 
 hearts of the people just before the light dawned 
 in the East, and so Egypt, the earliest of nations, 
 was prepared to welcome and establish Chris- 
 tianity and to pass it on with all her great influence 
 to the Western world. 
 
 So we think of Egypt as the builder of the 
 Temple, symbolized by the actual temple form 
 which that nation gave to the world, the temple 
 form which Israel later had. So also, Egypt 
 stands for the image of each attribute of God, 
 and for the preservation of the material body as 
 the essential to immortality. All religion is the 
 outer expression of man's inner consciousness of 
 God. But the Egyptians, as we have seen, began 
 their search for God upon the outside, piling up 
 the stones in temples, — ^in which they imprisoned 
 and corrupted their faith. 
 
 Moses took the next great step toward inner 
 Truth when he led his Semitic people out of the 
 land of Rameses, cast off the images, and gave 
 them the Divine Law instead. 
 
 It remained for Jesus, the perfect culmination 
 of his race, to reveal the Spirit behind the Law. 
 
 We can only know Truth as it is individualized 
 in some personal experience, yet the Truth itself 
 is not in those outer historical facts of experience 
 or personality which may be disputed, it is within 
 and universal. 
 
 The Story of Jesus, heralded milleniums before, 
 and repeated in many religions, is a universal 
 
LIGHT 287 
 
 story, more deeply true than any facts of history, 
 truer than any of the relative facts known in 
 our octave of scientific perception. 
 
 Science, which belongs to the West, explains 
 from the outside; as religion, from the inside. 
 Science should be symbolic of religion, even as 
 the material form is expressive of the inmost. 
 And now science itself is literally unearthing these 
 dreams which belong to the earHest records of 
 Time; this prehistoric story which curtains a great 
 Truth. 
 
 Has not the world at last reached that stage in 
 the great rhythm of human consciousness, when 
 it can go back to the images Moses cast off, and, 
 separating them from perverted observances, 
 read their real significance.^ 
 
 The West, the objective consciousness, is now 
 the self -consciousness of the world. And one of 
 the great interests of our age has been the explor- 
 ation of this oldest, buried civilization, which, 
 sealed away for thousands of years, shall achieve 
 immortality through the lessons it gives to us. 
 
 Wonderful indeed that the first civilization 
 should have grown up in this valley, that the earli- 
 est records might be given to this most perfect 
 climate in the world for preservation; wonderful, 
 that its people should have built more largely 
 and strongly than any others, that they should 
 have spent their existence to preserve the bodies 
 of their dead and their "houses of eternity!" 
 The speed of history is accelerated now, and we are 
 
«S8 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 hurrying Time with steam and electricity to 
 catch each moment. And what will happen — now 
 that we have unearthed the Past, and exposed it 
 to destruction? 
 
 Is it not that all our return to the first stage of 
 development from which we have become separated 
 through change of material forms, must be a 
 return to the spirit? 
 
 The treasures may not last another hundred 
 years; and our age, which has learned to read, 
 has, in unearthing, destroyed. But is it not 
 because our age is ripe for spiritual understanding 
 that Egypt, covered and preserved for centuries, 
 has been revealed to us, — even though the revela- 
 tion mean the destruction of Egypt? 
 
 We two think it over, on the pathless desert, 
 while the Sands of Time sweep round us and the 
 heavens open above the distant pyramids, for the 
 golden afterglow. 
 
 Egypt is an atmosphere of translucent color in 
 which we find the ruins of the Past — a partial 
 material resurrection out of which develops 
 the perfect resurrection of its significance. 
 
 Down by the river the women of Egypt, black- 
 draped against the sunset, are drawing water. 
 Beautifully developed figures, lithe and strong; 
 brilliant eyes, and faces which have become 
 strangely familiar, faces which are of the same 
 form as those of thousands of years ago. 
 
 As we watch the simple picture of a girl carry- 
 
LIGHT 289 
 
 ing water, the mystery which runs through all 
 of Egypt is explained. 
 
 It is Life which the girl herself carries down 
 through centuries of change and serfdom; Life, 
 — even through Death, — of which the ancient 
 Egyptians were so intensely conscious; which they 
 worshipped in animals; worshipped more in their 
 own conscious intelligence; for it was Life, in the 
 first strong impetus of the Beginning; Life which 
 they felt, with the early wisdom of revelation, 
 must carry: — as it will, though through centuries 
 of oblivion, of servitude and of degradation, until 
 an enlightened West shall come to read deeper 
 than words, the message of the Past, the message 
 of Spiritual Immortality. 
 
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