RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Eg-llnua Egypt
making Egypt the " granary " of the ancient world. The storage of grain products is mentioned in Gen. xli. 35, and is familiar from the remains of the " store city" Pithom (Ex. i. 11) discovered by Naville, and from the representations upon tomb walls. The latter depict structures like a haycock with an aperture at the top through which the grain was thrown. The usual Oriental method of threshing was by the feet of cattle (Deut. xxv. 4), and winnowing was done with shovel and fan (Isa. xxx. 24). Various articles of vegetable food used in Egypt are mentioned in Num. xi. 5. The papyrus which furnished the writing material of antiquity also flourished, but wood was scarce. Objects as large as a sarcophagus had to be made by joining pieces with wooden dowels, a process in which the Egyptian acquired great skill. Minerals known to the Egyptians were gold and iron, from the region of Syene and the south, copper or bronze from Sinai and Cyprus, and silver in smaller quantities by foreign import. Silver was scarcer and more highly valued than gold. Building stone was abundant and varied — limestone in the north, granite in the south, and sandstone between.
2. The People: No theory of the origin of the people has found general acceptance, except that the ruling class came from Asia, but whether by way of Nubia, the Red Sea and Koptos, or Suez, is disputed. It has been contended that the language points to an original Semitic stock, that the mythology indicates a Babylonian parentage, and that the racial features point southward. It is 1. Ethnol- worthy of note that the inscriptions ogy and do not point to or hint at any con- Language, sciousness of foreign extraction or any aboriginal immigration. The language has many characteristics of the Semitic group, mainly in its grammatical features; the vocabulary shows variations which indicate an entirely diverse origin. If it was originally Semitic the relation was collateral rather than by way of descent. The earliest connected texts now extant are the socalled " pyramid-texts " beginning in the end of the fifth dynasty (say 2650 B.C.) and strangely enough these texts are written in a more strictly phonetic form than those of later times. Herein consists the difficulty and uncertainty of their interpretation. The artistic ability also of this period and the degree of development of religious belief and practise are well worthy of remark. The classic period of the language was in the twelfth dynasty, and later periods attempted to imitate the earlier model. The Coptic was the daughter of the Egyptian, and continued to be spoken till the seventeenth century a.d. The original system of writing was strictly hieroglyphic, variations being due to abbreviations for the sake of speed and of adaptation to the writing material employed, papyrus. The characters used for stone sculpture, the hieroglyphic, consisted of pictures of objects in nature and domestic life executed in greater or less detail and with a remarkable degree of accuracy; the " hieratic " was not a " priestly " script, but merely an abbreviated form, the characters being applied to the papyrus with a brush; and the " demotic " was a further and later abbreviation of the hieratic, not
a " popular " chirography. The first two were used coincidently and some mistakes in hieroglyphic texts can be corrected and understood only upon the assumption that the stonecutter misread a character in his hieratic copy. It is evident also in some of the recensions of the " Book of the Dead" that the scribes of the New Kingdom were unable to understand some of the characters and words found in early copies of the work in the chirography of the Middle Kingdom, and that their perplexity was as great as that of modern scholars. The characters used possess varied powers, some being purely alphabetic, others syllabic, and others ideographic or determinative.
Polygamy was practised as in the East generally, and concubinage was also a recognized institution, both depending upon the ability of the man to support a harem. The marriage practises of Egypt are set forth in great detail in Lev. xviii. and what is now known bears out the accuracy of the account. In the royal house, concerning which special opportunities for knowledge exist, several of the Pharaohs married their own sisters, following 2. Customs, a divine example supposed to have been set notably in the case of Osiris and Isis. Political alliances were cemented by intermarriage. The taking of Sarah (Gen. xii. 14, 15) for the royal harem was an example of a general custom, and the story of Potiphar's wife finds an almost exact parallel in the " Tale of Two Brothers ' ' in the D'Orbiney papyrus now in the British Museum. The statement that the son of Hadad was brought up with the sons of Pharaoh (I Kings xi. 20) is identical with the cases of many Egyptian officials who claimed it as a mark of honor that they were educated among the children of the court. The case of Moses (Ex. ii. 10) was similar in part only. The practise of shaving the head, changing the raiment, washing the feet, bowing in obeisance (Gen. xli. 14, xliii. 24, 28) were all part of Egyptian practise. Unfortunately little is known of the court ceremonial of Egypt, but what is known bears out the Biblical record. In the Ancient Kingdom the practise of " kissing the ground " before the king was so much the practise, that a high priest of Memphis mentions it as a mark of special favor that the king did not insist upon the performance of this act of submission, but required him to kiss his foot. But the rigor of this ceremony was relaxed in the period of the New Kingdom. Slavery was imposed upon conquered peoples in accordance with universal Oriental practise. The abhorrence of the Egyptian for foreigners (Gen. xliii. 32, xlvi. 34) is to be explained upon the ground of the fundamental difference between the two, as emphasized in the Egyptian conception of their origin. The great gods had appeared in Egypt only; there the great sun-god Ra had warred and ruled, and his posterity still sat upon the throne with the title " son of the sun," ruling over those who alone were entitled to the name of men, while foreigners were never men but only negroes, Libyans, or " miserable " Asiatics, who had once rebelled against the great god Ra, and for their insubordination had been driven north, south, and west. The special " abomination " in which shepherds were held
Egypt