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NATURAL-HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. 

 Baron Covier's Lectures on the History of the Natural Sciences. 



Lecture III Egypt. — Egjrpt presented numerous circumstances fa- 

 vourable to the developement of the sciences, of which it had received but a very 

 imperfect germ from India. Owing to the extreme fertility of the country, the 

 inhabitants had abundant leisure which they could apply to study ; and the inac- 

 tivity to which they were condemned, so long as the river kept them pent up in the 

 towns, could not fail to lead them to contemplation. 



The inundation itself, by rendering the Egyptians liable to wants unknown to 

 other nations, put the activity of their mind into play, and led them to a multi- 

 tude of useful discoveries. The necessity of retracing the boundaries of their 

 lands, after the river had retired within its limits, led them to invent surveying ; 

 and the necessity of facilitating the retreat of the waters taught them the art of 

 digging canals. They necessarily engaged, at an early period, in the study of 

 the celestial phenomena, which alone afforded them the means of foreseeing the 

 motions of the Nile ; and as the extreme purity of the air was favourable to this 

 study, they made greater advances in astronomy than any other people. 



The Eg)T)tians, further, made great progress in architecture ; for having, at an 

 early period, been induced by motives, of which we shall presently speak, to em- 

 ploy a great part of their riches in erecting edifices, they possessed abundance of 

 excellent materials, which the river enabled them to transport with ease. 



Religion did not in Egypt, as in India, form an obstacle to the progress of the 

 natural sciences ; on the contrary, it imposed a kind of obligation to cultivate 

 them. In fact, not only did it borrow a great number of its emblems from the 

 animal kingdom, but it also necessarily directed the observation to such animals 

 as it taught the people to hold in especial regard. 



This part of the Egyptian religion did not come from India, but originated in 

 Ethiopia. It is probable that the Ethiopians, previous to the arrival of the In- 

 dian colony, were addicted to fetisliism, as all the tribes of the negro race gene- 

 rally are, and that they did not adopt the new religion without mingling with it 

 some of their ancient superstitions. But however this may be, it is certain that 

 the priests attached at least one animal to each divinity. The hawk was conse- 

 crated to Osiris, the ibis or the cow to Isis, and the crocodile to Saturn. In each 

 of the temples where these divinities were worshipped, there were kept several of 

 the animals which were dedicated to them, and these animals themselves partici- 

 pated, in some measure, of the divine honours paid to their patrons. Opportu- 

 nity was, therefore, constantly afforded of observ ing their external forms and their 

 habits. There was even opportunity afforded of observing the details of their 

 internal organization, as it was a duty to embalm them after their death. 



In Egypt the same horror was not manifested towards dead bodies as in India. 

 Not only were the bodies of the sacred animals embalmed, but also those of men. 

 Now this practice could not fail to afford the persons who performed it some de- 

 gree of knowledge respecting the form and position of the organs. It was also 

 indisputably in Egypt tliat anatomy originated. To that country the Greeks 

 went to study it ; and Galen made a journey thither for the express purpose 

 of seeing the representation in bronze of a human skeleton. 



So much for the observation of animals. As to minerals, they, in some mea- 

 sure, presented themselves to scrutiny, since in Eg3T)t they are not, as in most other 

 countries, deeply buried in the ground. They were accordingly known not only 

 by their externjil characters, but also by those which are, at the present day, 

 named their chemical characters ; and it may here be remarked, that the word 

 chemistry itself is derived from Chimi, which was the ancient name of Egypt. 

 As to what was afterwards called the science of Egypt, the hermetic art, the art 

 of transmuting metals, it was merely a reverie of the middle ages, and was en- 



