THE UNIVEKSITY OF EGYPT. 75 



were to be found. Troops of mounted police patrolled 

 the roads. In desert tracts thousands of earthen jars, 

 filled with water and planted up to their necks in sand, 

 supplied the want of wells. The old system of national 

 isolation and closed ports was battered down. The 

 Greeks were no longer forbidden to enter the Phoenician 

 ports, or compelled to trade exclusively at one Egyp- 

 tian town. Greek merchants were able to join in the 

 caravan trade of Central Asia, and to traffic on the 

 shores of the Indian Ocean. Philosophers taking with 

 them a venture of oil to pay expenses, could now visit the 

 learned countries of the East with more profit than had 

 previously been the case. Since that country was deprived 

 of its independence, the priests were inclined to en- 

 courage the cultivated curiosity of their new scholars. 



Egypt from the earliest times had been the Univer- 

 sity of Greece. It had been visited, according to 

 tradition, by Orpheus and Homer : there Solon had 

 studied law-making : there the rules and principles of 

 the Pythagorean order had been obtained : there Thales 

 had taken lessons in geometry : there Democritus had 

 laughed and Xenophanes had sneered. And now every 

 intellectual Greek made the voyage to that country : 

 it was regarded as a part of education, as a pilgrimage 

 to the cradle-land of their mythology. To us Egypt is 

 a land of surpassing interest ; but to us it is merely a 

 charnel-house, a museum, a valley of ruins and dry 

 bones. The Greeks saw it alive. They saw with their 

 own eyes the solemn and absurd rites of the temple — ■ 

 the cat solemnly enthroned, the tame crocodiles being 

 fed, Ibis mummies being packed up in red jars, 

 scribes carving the animal language upon the granite. 

 They wandered in the mazes of the Labyrinth : they 

 gazed on the mighty Sphinx couched on the yellow 



