THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 3 1 



EGYPT, AND SOME ACCOUNT OF THE BOOK 

 OF THE DEAD. 



Read before the Hamilton Association, January 8th., i8gi. 



BY H. B. WITTON, ESQ. 



For ages the land of Egypt has commanded the attention of 

 antiquarians, historians, warriors, statesmen and travellers. To this 

 day, thoughtful men of many countries turn towards Egypt a 

 longing lingering look, for since the dawn of civilization shed a 

 glimmering light upon the earth, in the far background of the picture 

 of man's doings, where all is hazy, indistinct, and almost lost in the 

 aerial perspective of the past, Egypt shows a distinct if faint outline. 

 Who but has felt some interest in that land ? In youth we eagerly 

 read of Joseph, and his brethren who sold him as a slave into Egypt ; 

 of his eventful life; his interpretation of Pharaoh's* dreams; his 

 exaltation ; his provision 'against famine, and relief of his family who 

 for fear of hunger had gone down into Egypt to seek food. And 

 with what zest we read on how Joseph made himself known to his 

 brethren ; and how the Israelites settled in Egypt and increased in 

 numbers, so that they threatened to overrun the land ; and how 

 Pharaoh, having recourse to sterner measures than modern Malthu- 

 sians have ventured to suggest, commanded that the male children 

 of the Israelites should be put to death ; and further on we read 

 how the mother of Moses, to screen her child from that cruel edict, 

 hid him in an ark of bulrushes, which she floated on the Nile, where 

 he was found by the King's daughter, who adopted him as her son ; 

 of his sympathy for the wretched, his gifts as a leadqj; and lawgiver, 

 and of the Israelitish oppression and exodus. These narratives are 

 indelibly impressed on the memory. We never forget them, and 

 they whet the desire to learn something of the researches of 

 ChampoUion, Lepsius, Petrie and the other Egyptologists of the 

 nineteenth century. 



Hardly less interesting than Egypt itself is the river by which it 

 has been formed ; for the saying of Herodotiis, more than two 

 thousand years ago, that Egypt is the gift of the Nile, is literally 



