บทที่ บทที่ 5 · The Beginning Of Civilisation In The Valley Of The Nile

The history of man is the record of a hungry creature in search of

food. Wherever food was plentiful, thither man has travelled to make

his home.

The fame of the Valley of the Nile must have spread at an early date.

From the interior of Africa and from the desert of Arabia and from the

western part of Asia people had flocked to Egypt to claim their share

of the rich farms. Together these invaders had formed a new race which

called itself “Remi” or “the Men” just as we sometimes call America

“God’s own country.” They had good reason to be grateful to a Fate

which had carried them to this narrow strip of land. In the summer of

each year the Nile turned the valley into a shallow lake and when the

waters receded all the grainfields and the pastures were covered with

several inches of the most fertile clay.

In Egypt a kindly river did the work of a million men and made it

possible to feed the teeming population of the first large cities of

which we have any record. It is true that all the arable land was not

in the valley. But a complicated system of small canals and well-sweeps

carried water from the river-level to the top of the highest banks

and an even more intricate system of irrigation trenches spread it

throughout the land.

[Illustration: THE VALLEY OF EGYPT]

While man of the prehistoric age had been obliged to spend sixteen

hours out of every twenty-four gathering food for himself and the

members of his tribe, the Egyptian peasant or the inhabitant of the

Egyptian city found himself possessed of a certain leisure. He used

this spare time to make himself many things that were merely ornamental

and not the least bit useful.

More than that. One day he discovered that his brain was capable

of thinking all kinds of thoughts which had nothing to do with the

problems of eating and sleeping and finding a home for the children.

The Egyptian began to speculate upon many strange problems that

confronted him. Where did the stars come from? Who made the noise of

the thunder which frightened him so terribly? Who made the River Nile

rise with such regularity that it was possible to base the calendar

upon the appearance and the disappearance of the annual floods? Who was

he, himself, a strange little creature surrounded on all sides by death

and sickness and yet happy and full of laughter?

He asked these many questions and certain people obligingly stepped

forward to answer these inquiries to the best of their ability. The

Egyptians called them “priests” and they became the guardians of

his thoughts and gained great respect in the community. They were

highly learned men who were entrusted with the sacred task of keeping

the written records. They understood that it is not good for man to

think only of his immediate advantage in this world and they drew his

attention to the days of the future when his soul would dwell beyond

the mountains of the west and must give an account of his deeds to

Osiris, the mighty God who was the Ruler of the Living and the Dead

and who judged the acts of men according to their merits. Indeed, the

priests made so much of that future day in the realm of Isis and Osiris

that the Egyptians began to regard life merely as a short preparation

for the Hereafter and turned the teeming valley of the Nile into a land

devoted to the Dead.

In a strange way, the Egyptians had come to believe that no soul could

enter the realm of Osiris without the possession of the body which had

been its place of residence in this world. Therefore as soon as a man

was dead his relatives took his corpse and had it embalmed. For weeks

it was soaked in a solution of natron and then it was filled with

pitch. The Persian word for pitch was “Mumiai” and the embalmed body

was called a “Mummy.” It was wrapped in yards and yards of specially

prepared linen and it was placed in a specially prepared coffin ready

to be removed to its final home. But an Egyptian grave was a real

home where the body was surrounded by pieces of furniture and musical

instruments (to while away the dreary hours of waiting) and by little

statues of cooks and bakers and barbers (that the occupant of this

dark home might be decently provided with food and need not go about

unshaven).

[Illustration: THE BUILDING OF THE PYRAMIDS]

Originally these graves had been dug into the rocks of the western

mountains but as the Egyptians moved northward they were obliged to

build their cemeteries in the desert. The desert however is full of

wild animals and equally wild robbers and they broke into the graves

and disturbed the mummy or stole the jewelry that had been buried with

the body. To prevent such unholy desecration the Egyptians used to

build small mounds of stones on top of the graves. These little mounds

gradually grew in size, because the rich people built higher mounds

than the poor and there was a good deal of competition to see who could

make the highest hill of stones. The record was made by King Khufu,

whom the Greeks called Cheops and who lived thirty centuries before our

era. His mound, which the Greeks called a pyramid (because the Egyptian

word for high was pir-em-us) was over five hundred feet high.

It covered more than thirteen acres of desert which is three times as

much space as that occupied by the church of St. Peter, the largest

edifice of the Christian world.

During twenty years, over a hundred thousand men were busy carrying the

necessary stones from the other side of the river—ferrying them across

the Nile (how they ever managed to do this, we do not understand),

dragging them in many instances a long distance across the desert and

finally hoisting them into their correct position. But so well did the

King’s architects and engineers perform their task that the narrow

passage-way which leads to the royal tomb in the heart of the stone

monster has never yet been pushed out of shape by the weight of those

thousands of tons of stone which press upon it from all sides.