XXI

OF THE MONUMENTS OF THE EGYPTIANS

IT IS certain that after the ages in which the Egyptians fertilized the soil, by the draining of the flood; after those times, when villages began to be changed into opulent cities, then the necessary arts being arrived at perfection, the ostentatious arts began to be in esteem: sovereigns were then found who employed their subjects, and some Arabs, in the neighborhood of lake Sirbon, to build them palaces and pyramid-tombs, to cut enormous stones in the quarries of Upper Egypt, and bring them afloat upon rafts, as far as Memphis; to erect upon massive columns, great flat stones, without either taste or proportion. They were acquainted with the great, but not the beautiful. They taught the first Greeks; but the Greeks were afterwards their masters in every thing, when they had built Alexandria.

It is melancholy to think, that in Caesar’s wars, half of the famous library of the Ptolemies was burnt; and that the other half heated the baths of Mussulmen, when Omar subdued Egypt. We should have known at least the origin of the superstitions with which that people were infected, the chaos of their philosophy, and some of their antiquities and sciences.

They must certainly have been at peace for several ages, for their princes to have had time and leisure to raise all those prodigious buildings, the greatest part of which still subsist.

Their pyramids must have been the produce of many years and much expense; a great number of inhabitants, together with foreign slaves, must have been for a long time employed in these immense works. They were erected by despotism, vanity, servitude, and superstition; in fact, none but a despotic king could thus have constrained nature: England, for example, is more powerful than Egypt was. Could a king of England employ his people to raise such monuments?

Vanity, doubtless, had its share; it was the ambition of the ancient kings of Egypt, who should raise the finest pyramid to his father, or to himself. Servitude procured the laboring hand; and as to superstition, we know that these pyramids were tombs; we know that the Chocamatins, or Choens, of Egypt, that is to say the priests, had persuaded the people that the soul returned into its own body, at the expiration of a thousand years. They chose that the body should be a thousand years entirely free from all corruption: for which reason it was so very carefully embalmed; and to secure it from all accidents, it was inclosed in a large stone, that had no opening. The kings and great people erected tombs for themselves, in such forms as they judged would be the least exposed to the injuries of time. The preservation of their bodies surpasses all human hopes. There are now Egyptian mummies, which have been buried upwards of four thousand years. Carcasses have subsisted as long as pyramids.

This opinion of a resurrection, after ten centuries, was afterwards adopted by the Greeks, who were disciples of the Egyptians, and the Romans, who were disciples of the Greeks. We find it in the sixth book of the Eneid, which is only a description of the mysteries of Isis and Ceres of Eleusinia.

Has omnes ubi mille rotam volvêre per annos
Lethaeum ad fluvium Deus advocat agmine magno;
Scilicet ut memores supera & convexa revisant.

 

But when a thousand rolling years are past,
(So long their punishments and penance last,)
Whole droves of minds are, by the driving god,
Compelled to drink the deep Lethaean flood:
In large forgetful draughts to steep the cares
Of their past labors, and their irksome years.

It was afterwards introduced amongst the Christians, who established the reign of a thousand years; the sect of the Millenarians has handed it down to our time. Thus have many opinions passed all over the world. This is sufficient to point out the design of erecting those pyramids. We shall not repeat what has been said upon their architecture and dimensions; I examine only the history of the human understanding.