CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



Beginning with Egypt, let us trace separately 

 the career of each of the Eastern nations till that 

 point of time at which we find them all embodied 

 in the great Persian empire : 



The Egyptians. 



Egypt, whose position on the map of Africa is 

 well known, is about 600 miles long from the 

 Mediterranean to the First Cataract. Through 

 its whole length flows the Nile, a fine large 

 stream, rising in the equatorial regions of Africa, 

 and, from certain periodic floods to which it is 

 subject, of great use in irrigating and fertilising 

 the country. A large portion of Egypt consists 

 of an alluvial plain, similar to our meadow- 

 grounds, formed by the deposits of the river, 

 and bounded by ranges of hills on both sides. 

 The upper part of the valley seldom exceeds ten 

 miles in width, and in some places is barely two ; 

 the lower part spreads out into a delta about 

 eighty miles at its greatest breadth. 



A country so favourably situated, and possessing 

 so many advantages, could not but be among the 

 earliest peopled ; and accordingly, as far back as 

 the human memory can reach, we find a dense 

 population of a very peculiar character inhabiting 

 the whole valley of the Nile. These ancient 

 Egyptians seem, as we have already said, to have 

 been a mixture of the Semitic with the Ethiopic 

 element, speaking a peculiar language, still sur- 

 viving in a modified form in the Coptic of modern 

 Egypt. In the ancient authors, however, the 

 Egyptians are always distinguished from the 

 Ethiopians, with whom they kept up so close an 

 intercourse, that it has been made a question 

 whether the Egyptian institutions came from the 

 Ethiopian Meroe, or whether, as is more prob- 

 able, civilisation was transmitted to Ethiopia from 

 Egypt. 



The whole country is naturally divided into 

 three parts Upper Egypt, bordering on what 

 was anciently Ethiopia; Middle Egypt; and 

 Lower Egypt, including the Delta of the Nile. 

 In each, there were numerous cities in which the 

 population was amassed : originally Thebes, a 

 city of Upper Egypt, of the size of which sur- 

 prising accounts are transmitted to us, and whose 

 ruins still astonish the traveller, was the capital of 

 the country; but latterly, as commerce increased, 

 Memphis in Middle Egypt became the seat of 

 power. After Thebes and Memphis, Ombi, 

 Edfou, Esneh, Elephantine, and Philce seem 

 to have been the most important of the Egyptian 

 cities. 



Our accounts of the Egyptian civilisation are 

 derived chiefly from the Greek historian Herod- 

 otus (408 B.C.), who visited Egypt and digested 

 the information which he received from the priests 

 as to its ancient history ; and Manetho, a native 

 Egyptian of later times, who wrote in Greek. 

 From their accounts, it is inferred that the 

 country was anciently divided into thirty-six sec- 

 tions or provinces, called names ten in Upper, 

 sixteen in Middle, and ten in Lower Egypt. Of 

 this kingdom, the population, according to a 

 rough estimate, may have been about seven 

 millions. The government was a monarchy 

 based on an all-powerful priesthood, similar to 

 the Brahminical system of India; and, as in 

 India, the most striking feature in the Egyptian 

 society was the division of the people into hered- 



70 



itary castes. ' The population of Egypt,' says- 

 Mr Grote, in his History of Greece, 'was classi- 

 fied into certain castes or hereditary professions,, 

 of which the number is represented differently 

 by different authors. The priests stand clearly 

 marked out as the order richest, most powerful,, 

 and most venerated, distributed all over the 

 country, and possessing exclusively the means of 

 reading and writing,* besides a vast amount of 

 narrative matter treasured up in the memory, the 

 whole stock of medical and physical knowledge 

 then attainable, and those rudiments of geometry 

 or rather land-measuring which were so often* 

 called into use in a country annually inundated. 

 To each god and to each temple throughout 

 Egypt, lands and other properties belonged,, 

 whereby the numerous band of priests attached 

 to him were maintained. Their ascendency, both 

 direct and indirect, over the minds of the people 

 was immense ; they prescribed that minute ritual 

 under which the life of every Egyptian, not ex- 

 cepting the king himself, was passed, and which 

 was for themselves more full of harassing par- 

 ticularities than for any one else. Every day in 

 the year belonged to some particular god, and the 

 priests alone knew to which. There were dif- 

 ferent gods in every nome, though I sis and Osiris 

 were common to all ; and the priests of each god 

 constituted a society apart, more or less im- 

 portant, according to the comparative celebrity of 

 the temple. The property of each temple in- 

 cluded troops of dependents and slaves, who were 

 stamped with " holy marks," and who must have 

 been numerous, in order to suffice for the service 

 of the large buildings and their constant visitors. 



'Next in importance to the sacerdotal caste were 

 the military caste or order, amounting, when the 

 population was at its maximum, to upwards of 

 400,000 men. To each man of this soldier-caste 

 was assigned a portion of land, equal to about 6| 

 English acres, free from any tax. The lands of 

 the priests and the soldiers were regarded as 

 privileged property, and exempt from all burdens ; 

 while the remaining soil was considered as the 

 property of the king, who, however, received from 

 it a fixed proportion one-fifth of the total pro- 

 duce leaving the rest in the hands of the culti- 

 vators. The soldiers were interdicted from every 

 description of art and trade.' 



The other castes are differently given in differ- 

 ent authors ; the most probable account, however,, 

 is that which assigns them as three the caste of 

 the husbandmen, that of the artificers, and that of 

 the herdsmen, which last caste included a variety 

 of occupations held in contempt, the lowest and 

 most degraded of all being that of swineherd. 

 The artificers, constituting the vast town popula- 

 tion of Egypt, were subdivided into a great 

 variety of occupations, weavers, masons, sculptors,. 

 &c. who were compelled to these professions by 

 hereditary obligation. It was by the labour of 

 this vast town population, assisted by that of herds 

 of slaves, that those huge works were accom- 

 plished, the remains of which still attest the great- 

 ness of ancient Egypt. These skilled artificers- 

 may be supposed to have acted as foremen and 

 overseers of the great numbers of labourers who 



* Mr Grote subjoins the following important note : 'The wor* 

 priest conveys to a modern reader an idea very different from that 

 of the _ Egyptian u;i/f, who were not a profession, but an orde- 

 comprising many occupations and professions' 



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