Part 4

Egyptian ladies seem to have been given to the little tricks and arts of the toilet as well as more modern beauties. Of the various articles of the toilet found among the ancient remains, the principal are bottles, or vases, for holding ointment, and the _kohl_, or paint for the eyes; also mirrors, combs, and small boxes, spoons, and saucers. The custom of anointing the body is usual in hot climates, and contributes greatly to comfort. Their chief care was bestowed upon the anointing of the hair. The Egyptian combs were usually of wood, and double, and frequently carved and ornamented. The custom of staining the eyelids and brows with a moistened powder of a black color was of the most ancient date. It was thought to increase the beauty of the appearance of the eye, by making it seem larger by this external black ring around it. Many of these _kohl_-bottles have been found in the tombs, together with the bodkin employed in applying the black cosmetic.

Some of these bottles are ornamented with the figure of an ape, or monster, supposed to assist in holding the bottle between his arms while the fair beauty dipped her dainty bodkin into the much-prized beautifier. Pins and needles have also been found among the articles of the toilet. Some of these pins are of gold, and similar in size to those now employed by ladies as hat-pins and fancy hair-pins. Metal mirrors are also found richly ornamented and highly polished. It will be remembered that the brazen laver made by Moses for the tabernacle was formed of the “looking-glasses of the women,” who doubtless brought them from Egypt at the time of the exodus of the Israelites. The Egyptian dandies were also not without the highly prized canes. Many of these have been found at Thebes; some having a carved lotus-blossom for the head. It was customary, on entering a house, to leave their canes or sticks in the hall or at the door; and poor men were often employed to hold the canes of guests during a party, by the master of the house, who rewarded them with money or food. We have little knowledge of the nature of their baths; but as they were forbidden in deep mourning to indulge in them, they were probably considered a luxury as well as a necessity. The priests were remarkable for their love of cleanliness, shaving the whole body every three days, and bathing twice every day and twice during the night. So great an abhorrence did an Egyptian feel for an unshaven person, that Herodotus says, “No Egyptian of either sex would on any account kiss the lips of a Greek, make use of his knife, his spit and cauldron, or taste the meat of an animal which had been slaughtered by his hand.”

This shaving of the head among the Egyptians is given as a reason by Herodotus for the remarkable hardness of the Egyptian sculls, as compared with those of other people. The most singular custom of the Egyptians was that of tying a false beard upon the chin, which was plaited and shaped according to the rank of the person. The beards on the figures of the gods were distinguished by the turning up of the ends. No man ventured to assume the beard of a deity. But after death, kings were accorded the honor of having their statues thus distinguished.

The art of painting common boards to imitate costly varieties, now so often employed, was practised by the ancient Egyptians. Boxes, chairs, tables, sofas, and other pieces of furniture were frequently made of ebony inlaid with ivory, and articles of sycamore and acacia were ornamented with rare woods.

The Egyptians displayed much taste in their gold, silver, porcelain, and glass vases. Glass was known from the earliest times, and glass-blowing was employed by them twenty-five hundred years ago. It is also stated that their dead were sometimes enclosed in glass coffins, or a crystal sarcophagus was made by covering the granite with a coating of vitrified matter, usually of a deep green color, which by its transparency allowed the hieroglyphics engraved upon the stone beneath to be plainly visible.

Emeralds, rubies, amethysts, and other expensive gems were most successfully imitated by the jewellers of Thebes. Pliny states that glass-cutting was known to the ancients, and that the diamond was employed for that purpose, as at present, even if they were ignorant of the art of cutting the diamond itself with its own dust. “Diamonds,” says Pliny, “are eagerly sought by lapidaries who set them in iron handles, for they have the power of penetrating anything, however hard it may be.”

The art of embroidery was commonly practised in Egypt, and gold and silver threads were used for this purpose. The loom was also employed by them, both in weaving linen, cotton, and wool, and also for the production of very rich stuffs, in which various colors were worked in innumerable patterns by the loom.

The Egyptians were also famed for their manufacture of paper, which was in the form of parchments made from the plant papyrus, which grew in the marshy regions of the Nile in great profusion. Leather was also prepared by them with great skill for various purposes, and the knife employed by them in the process, between three and four thousand years ago, is precisely similar to that used by modern curriers. Fullers, potters, carpenters, and cabinet-makers formed a large class of Egyptian workmen. The Egyptians were skilled in the working of metals; and gold, silver, brass, tin, iron, and lead were known in those days.

The art of embalming the dead was practised by the Egyptians with a perfection never since equalled.

Egyptian paintings were very primitive, and their sculptures were more remarkable for huge grotesqueness than any perfection of art, as their artists were limited to such a conventional mode of drawing. After the accession of the Ptolemies, Greek art became well known in Egypt, but their artists still continued to adhere to the Egyptian models prescribed.

The Egyptians appear to have possessed some secret for hardening or tempering bronze, with which we are totally ignorant; for the wonderful skill with which they engraved their granite obelisks with hieroglyphics, for which purpose they used implements of bronze, cannot be equalled by any process in modern times.

The walls and ceilings of the houses of the Egyptians of high rank were richly painted, as well as their tombs. The ceilings were laid out in compartments, each having peculiar pattern and border. The favorite forms were the lotus, the square, the diamond, and the succession of scrolls.

The mode of laying out the house and grounds varied according to the means of the owner. Some villas were of considerable extent, with large gardens surrounding them. Some of the large mansions were ornamented with obelisks, like the temples. About the centre of the outer wall was the main entrance leading to an open walk shaded by rows of trees. Here were large tanks of water, and between them a wide avenue led to the centre of the mansion. Their gardens were well tended, particularly their vineyards.

Monkeys were trained to assist in gathering the fruit of the sycamore and other trees.

Many animals were tamed in Egypt for various purposes, as the lion, leopard, gazelle, baboon, crocodile, and others.

Among the fruit-trees cultivated by the Egyptians were the palm, date, dôm-nut tree, sycamore, fig, pomegranate, olive, peach, almond, persea, locust tree, and others. The Egyptians were exceedingly fond of flowers, and they were profusely employed on all festive occasions. The lotus was the favorite flower, and was more often preferred for house decoration and personal adornment. Among other flowers cultivated by them were the chrysanthemum, acinon, acacia, anemone, convolvulus, olive, amaricus, and others.

The deity whom they believed presided over the garden, was Khem, corresponding to the Grecian Pan. Ranno, a goddess sometimes represented in the form of an asp, or with a human body and the head of a serpent, was considered the protecting genius of a vineyard, and also of a young prince.

This goddess Ranno, or the sacred asp, appears in many remarkable connections with royalty, and the name Uræus, which was applied to that snake, has been derived by Champollion, from _ouro_, the Coptic word signifying “king,” as its appellation of basilisk originated in the _basiliscos_ of the Greeks.

Ancient Egypt was a religious community in which the palace was a temple, the people worshippers at the gate, and the monarch the chief priest. “The equal treatment which the women received in Egypt was shown in other circumstances beside their being allowed to sit on the throne. In their mythology, the goddess Isis held rank above her husband. We see also on the mummy-cases that the priestly and noble families traced their pedigree as often through the female line as through the male, and records were sometimes dated by the names of priestesses.”

The Egyptians worshipped many gods. Among them were _Ra_, the “sun-god,” sailing in a golden boat across the heavens; _Shu_, meaning “air”; _Tafnut_, the “dew”; _Seb_, the “earth”; and _Nut_, the “heaven.” _Osiris_ was the “sun,” and _Isis_, his wife and sister, the “dawn”; _Horus_, the “rising sun”; _Set_, the destroyer of Osiris, was the “darkness”; and the resurrection of Osiris was the rising of the sun after the darkness of the night had been overcome and dispelled. _Nepthys_ was the “sunset”; _Anubis_, the “twilight” or “dusk.” _Neith_ corresponded to the Greek Athêné, and was supposed to be a personification of the wisdom or intellect of God,—which is a significant thought, Neith being a _goddess_, not a god. She was the Egyptian goddess of Saïs. Originally the worship of Ammon was distinct from that of Ra, god of the sun; but after the eighteenth dynasty a union took place, and he was worshipped as Ammon-Ra. Thoth, the god of letters, had various characters, according to the functions he was supposed to fulfil. In one of his characters he corresponded to the moon; in the other, to Mercury. “In the former, he was the beneficent property of that luminary, the regulator and dispenser of time, who presided over the fate of man and the events of his life; in the latter, the god of letters and the patron of learning and the means of communication between the gods and mankind.”

The Egyptians related many allegories concerning their various deities, but we have space only to narrate the story regarding Osiris and Isis, god of the sun and the goddess of dawn. As their gods were supposed to assume many different characters and attributes, this story represents Osiris as the river Nile, Isis as the land of Egypt, and Typho as the sea.

The allegory is thus given:—

“Osiris, having become king of Egypt, applied himself towards civilizing his countrymen by turning them from their former barbarous course of life, teaching them, moreover, to cultivate and improve the fruits of the earth. With the same good disposition he afterwards travelled over the rest of the world, inducing the people everywhere to submit to his discipline, by the mildest persuasion. During his absence from his kingdom, Typho had no opportunity of making any innovations in the state, Isis being extremely vigilant in the government and always on her guard. After the return of Osiris, however, Typho, having persuaded seventy-two other persons to join him in the conspiracy, together with a certain queen of Æthiopia, named Aso, who chanced to be in Egypt at the time, contrived a proper stratagem to execute his base designs. For, having privately taken a measure of Osiris’s body, he caused a chest to be made exactly of that size, as beautiful as possible, and set off with all the ornaments of art. This chest he brought into the banqueting-room, where, after it had been much admired by all present, Typho, as if in jest, promised to give it to any one of them whose body upon trial it might be found to fit. Upon this the whole company, one after the other, got into it; but as it did not fit any of them, last of all Osiris laid himself down in it, upon which the conspirators immediately ran together, clapped on the cover, and then, fastening it on the outside with nails, poured melted lead over it.

“After this, having carried it away to the riverside, they conveyed it to the sea by the Tanaïtic mouth of the Nile, which for this reason is still held in the utmost abhorrence by the Egyptians, and never named by them but with proper marks of detestation.

“These things happened on the 17th day of the month Athor, when the sun was in Scorpio, in the 28th year of Osiris’s reign, though others say he was no more than twenty-eight years old at the time.

“The first who knew the accident that had befallen their king were the Pans and Satyrs, who lived about Chemmis; and they, immediately acquainting the people with the news, gave the first occasion to the name of _Panic terrors_.... Isis, as soon as the report reached her, cut off one of the locks of her hair and put on mourning.

“At length she received more particular news of the chest. It had been carried by the waves of the sea to the coast of Byblos, and there gently lodged in the branches of a tamarisk bush, which in a short time had shot up into a large tree, growing round the chest and enclosing it on every side, so that it could not be seen; and the king of the country, having cut down the tree, had made the part of the trunk wherein the chest was concealed a pillar to support the roof of his house. Isis, having gone to Byblos, obtained possession of this pillar, and then set sail with the chest for Egypt. But intending a visit to her son Horus, who was brought up at Butus, she deposited the chest in the meantime in a remote and unfrequented place. Typho, however, as he was one night hunting by the light of the moon, accidentally met with it; and knowing the body enclosed in it, tore it into fourteen pieces, disposing them up and down in different parts of the country.

“Being acquainted with this event, Isis set out once more in search of the scattered members of her husband’s body, using a boat made of the papyrus rush in order the more easily to pass through the lower and fenny parts of the country. And one reason assigned for the many different sepulchres of Osiris shown in Egypt is, that wherever any one of his scattered limbs was discovered, she buried it in that spot; though others suppose that it was owing to an artifice of the queen, who presented each of those cities with an image of her husband, in order that, if Typho should overcome Horus in the approaching conquest, he might be unable to find the real sepulchre. Isis succeeded in recovering all the different members, with the exception of one, which had been devoured by the lepidotus, the phagrus, and the oxyrhinchus; for which reason these fish are held in abhorrence by the Egyptians. To make amends, therefore, for this loss, she consecrated the phallus, and instituted a solemn festival to its memory.

“A battle at length took place between Horus and Typho, in which the latter was taken prisoner. Isis, however, to whose custody he was committed, so far from putting him to death, set him at liberty; which so incensed Horus that he tore off the royal diadem she wore; but Hermes substituted in its stead a helmet made in the shape of an ox’s head. At length two other battles were fought, in which Typho was defeated.”

This allegory is thus explained:—

“Osiris means the inundation of the Nile.

“Isis, the irrigated portion of the land of Egypt.

“Horus, their offspring, the vapors and exhalations reproducing rain.

“Butus, the marshy lands of Lower Egypt, where those vapors were nourished.

“Typho, the sea which swallowed up the Nile water.

“The conspirators, the drought overcoming the moisture, from which the increase of the Nile proceeds.

“The chest in which Osiris’s body was confined, the banks of the river, within which it retired after the inundation.

“The Tanaïtic mouth, the lake and barren lands about it, which were held in abhorrence from their being overflowed by the river without producing any benefit to the country.

“The twenty-eight years of his life, the twenty-eight cubits to which the Nile rises at Elephantina, its greatest height.

“The 17th of Athor, the period when the river retires within its banks.

“The queen of Æthiopia, the southern winds preventing the clouds being carried southward.

“The different members of Osiris’s body, the main channels and canals by which the inundation passed into the interior of the country, where each was said to be afterwards buried. That one which could not be recovered was the generative power of the Nile, which still continued in the stream itself.

“The victory of Horus, the power possessed by the clouds in causing the successive inundations of the Nile.”

Many animals, insects, and plants were considered sacred by the Egyptians: among them were the cynocephalus ape, sacred to Thoth; shrew-mouse, sacred to Mant; dog, sacred to Anubis; cat, sacred to Pashtor Bubastis; lion, sacred to Gom, or Hercules; hippopotamus, sacred to Mars; pig and ass, emblems of Typho; goat, sacred to Mendes; cow, sacred to Athor.

The sacred oxen were Apis, Mnevis, and Basis, sacred to Osiris, Apollo, and Onuphis.

The sacred birds of Egypt were the vulture, eagle, hawk, white and saffron-colored cocks, little egret, sacred to Osiris; ibis, sacred to Thoth; goose, emblem of Seb. Fabulous and unknown sacred birds were the phœnix, sacred to Osiris; the “pure soul” of the king (a bird with man’s head and arms), emblem of the soul; vulture with a snake’s head; hawk with man’s and ram’s head.

The sacred reptiles were the tortoise, crocodile, asp, and frog. The fabulous serpents were snakes with human heads, with hawk’s head, and with lion’s head.

The sacred fishes of Egypt were the oxyrhinchus, the eel, the lepidotus, satus, and mæotes. The scorpion was the emblem of the goddess Selk. Different species of beetles were held sacred to the sun, and adopted as an emblem of the world.

Foremost amongst the sacred plants of the East, being not merely a symbol, but frequently the object of worship in itself, was the undying lotus, which, from the throne of Osiris, Isis, and Nepthys, rises in the midst of the waters, bearing on the margin of its blossom the four genii.

“The Persians represent the sun as ‘rob’d with light, with lotus crown’d.’ Among the Chinese it symbolized Buddha, and is the emblem of female beauty. The Japanese deem it the emblem of purity, since it is not sullied by the muddy waters in which it often grows. With the flowers of the motherwort, it is borne before the body in their funeral processions. The Hindoo deities are often represented seated upon a lotus flower. Kamadeva, or Cupid, is depicted as floating down the blue Ganges—

‘Upon a rosy lotus wreath, Catching new lustre from the tide That with his image shone beneath.’”

The consort of Vishnu, Laksmi, was also called the “Lotus-born,” because she was said to have ascended from the ocean on its blossom.

Brahma was believed to have sprung from Narayana,—that is, “the Spirit of God moving on the waters,”—and he is thus described in a Hindoo poem:—

“A form cerulean fluttered o’er the deep; Brightest of beings, greatest of the great, Who, not as mortals steep Their eyes in dewy sleep, But heavenly pensive on the lotus lay, That blossom’d at his touch, and shed a golden ray.”

An ancient prayer, common to the inhabitants of Tibet and the slopes of the Himalayas, consists of unceasing repetitions of the words, _Om mane padne haun_, meaning, “Oh, the jewel in the lotus! Amen.”

“The Grecian god of silence, Harpocrates, who was the Egyptian Aurora, or Dayspring, and was the son of Isis, was often represented on the lotus. The god Nofre Atmoo also bore the lotus on his head.”

The lotus is regarded in Egyptian delineations as signifying the creation of the world. In the gallery of Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum there are several statues bearing sceptres formed of the lotus; and also a mummy holding in each hand of his crossed arms a lotus flower. There was also brought to England, some years ago, a bust of Isis emerging from a lotus flower, which has frequently been mistaken for one of Clytie changing into a sunflower.

Three species of nymphæceæ, called lotus, were cultivated in Egypt. One of these still grows in immense quantities in Lower Egypt. This lotus has fragrant white blossoms, and fruit the size of that of the poppy, filled with small seeds, used as an article of food. It closely resembles our white water-lily. “It was the ‘rose of ancient Egypt,’ the favorite flower of the country, and was made into wreaths and garlands. With the blue lotus of the Nile (_Nymphæa cœrulea_), it formed models for many works of art. But the sacred lotus is the Nelumbo. This is the sacred bean of Egypt, the ‘rose lily of the Nile’ of Herodotus, the lotus _par excellence_. Its blossoms are larger than those of the white or blue lotus; they are of a brilliant red color sometimes, but rarely white, and hang over broad peltated leaves, resembling, in their magnificent beauty, those—

‘Eastern flowers large, Some dropping low their crimson bells Half closed; others studded wide With disks and tears, that fed the time With odor, in the prime of good Haroun Alraschid.’

“The Nelumbo was cultivated as much for its usefulness as an article of food, as for its beauty. Its roots, seeds, and leaf-stalks are all edible. The fruit is formed of many valves, each containing a nut about the size of a filbert, with a taste more delicate than that of almonds. The use of the seeds in making bread, and the mode of sowing them,—by enclosing each seed in a ball of clay, and throwing it into the water,—may probably be alluded to in the text, ‘Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days.’ The Nelumbo is a native of the north of Africa, of India, China, Japan, Persia, and Asiatic Russia, and in all these countries maintains its sacred character. The fable of the nymph Lotis, who was transformed into a tree bearing her name, is supposed to be of Eastern origin. It was under the lote-tree, beyond which there is no passing, that Mohammed was said to have met the angel Gabriel. This lotis or lotus tree must not be confounded with the sacred bean, or lotus flower, which is a totally distinct plant. The lotus-tree is a moderate-sized thorny tree, with broad leaves, fruit as large as an olive, of a reddish color, containing the nut, the taste of which is sweetish, resembling that of a fig or date. It was this lotus-tree which Homer refers to, when he describes the charm of certain fruit which Ulysses dreaded would lure his companions to give up home and friends forever, as the fable was, that whosoever ate of its fruit would never leave the enchanted land.”

On account of these numerous stories connected with the far-famed lotus of the East, it has become one of the most illustrious flowers of romance and poetry. Its praises have been sung in all the languages of Eastern climes, until its very name has become the synonyme for oriental splendor and goddess-like attractions.

The asp appeared to be one of the favorite emblems of deity, and also of royalty, and many strange stories are told of different species of asps. The following is related to show the extreme veneration paid to sacred animals.