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thick and pliable bark of trees, sewed together with the sinews of animals, formed a light canoe. The structure and shape of these vessels were in imitation of the form of a fish. The head or prow

was sharp and conical; a movable plank in the stern imitated the action of a fish's tail, and the oars or paddles served the purpose of the fins in giving motion to the body; such canoes are used to this day among the North American Indians.

The President Goguet has, with much ingenuity and industry, collected a great mass of information relative to the origin of the arts among the nations of antiquity; and to his learned work I refer the reader who wishes further light on those topics.

The art of agriculture is not practised till society is considerably advanced, and individuals have obtained a determined share in the property of the lands which they inhabit. It had its origin therefore in those countries which are by nature most fertile, and which, producing abundance of food, made the inhabitants stationary, as they had no incitement to roam in quest of subsistence. The early historians attribute the origin of agriculture to kings; as to Menes or Osiris among the Egyptians, and Fohi among the Chinese: the meaning of which is no more than this:-that the first sovereigns, who, with their nation or tribe, occupied a fruitful country and became stationary in it, establishing such regulations regarding property in land as would secure individuals in their possessions, naturally gave rise to the experiments of such proprietors to fertilize their grounds, to till, to sow, reap and store up their fruits, which a wandering savage would never think of or attempt.

But while the useful arts are the offspring of necessity, and are therefore in some degree known and practised in the earliest periods of society, the sciences, on the other hand, are less the production of necessity than of ease and leisure. Before the origin of the sciences, society must have made great progress. They presupposed an extensive and populous community, where individuals have either acquired such opulence from the successful cultivation of the arts, or from commerce, as to allow them the indulgence of that ease and immunity from labor which invites to study and speculation; or they must have been maintained for special purposes by the sovereign or by the community in such a situation This last was the condition of the priests; and, accordingly, we find that, among the Egyptians, one of the most ancient and early civilized nations, the priests were the depositaries of all the sciences. Aristotle informs us that the Egyptian priests consumed the greatest part of their time in abstract studies; and when Herodotus, Diodorus, or Plato relate any fact with regard to the sciences in Egypt, they always inform us, that they received it from the mouths of the priests. Among the Babylonians too, the Chaldæans or Chaldees, who were their priests, and formed a body distinct from the rest of the people, were chiefly occupied in the study of the sciences. The name Chaldæan, occurring very fre

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quently in Scripture as synonymous with soothsayer, shows the nature of those sciences which they chiefly cultivated.* It is not at all improbable that the frivolous and absurd science of judicial astrology, which has its origin in the prevailing passion of the uninstructed mind to dive into futurity, was the first motive that led men to the attentive observation of the motions of the heavenly bodies; and consequently that superstition was the parent of that useful and sublime science of astronomy.† It is certain that to those Chaldæans or soothsayers the best informed authors of antiquity have joined in attributing the first astronomical discoveries. According to Diodorus, they had observed the motion of the planets; they had divided the zodiac into twelve signs, and each sign into thirty degrees; and they had ascertained the precise length of the year very near to the truth.

As an attention to their own preservation is the first care of mankind, we may naturally conjecture, that among those sciences to which in the early nations men would chiefly devote their attention, that of medicine would have a principal place. All savage nations have a pharmacy of their own, equal in general to their wants. Luxury creating new diseases requires a profounder knowledge of medicine and of the animal economy. Savages are often eminently skilful in the knowledge of the virtues of plants in the cure of diseases, and are very dexterous in the treatment of wounds. But without the knowledge of the internal structure of the body, medicine can hardly deserve the name of a science. And we are certain that anatomy could only have been practised in an advanced state of society, when arts had attained a considerable degree of perfection. The Jews, we know, in the days of Moses, used in some operations of surgery a sharp stone instead of a knife; a certain proof that they could not have dissected a human body. And although the Egyptians practised very early the evisceration and embalming of bodies, we hear nothing of any attempts at anatomy till the age of the Ptolemies, after the time of Alexander the Great, when, as we learn from Pliny, those monarchs established a medical school at Alexandria, and commanded dead bodies to be dissected, for the improvement of medicine and surgery; a circumstance which seems to indicate that it was at that time a new practice.-But of the arts and sciences of this remarkable people, the Egyptians, as well as of their government, laws, and manners, I propose to treat more particularly in the next chapter.

*

Although Chaldæa is the appropriate name of that region of Assyria in which Babylon was situated, the term Chaldæan was used, not only in Scripture but by the ancient profane authors, to denote an astrologer or soothsayer.

† Kepler remarks, that astrology is the foolish daughter of a wise mother; but it is more probable that the genealogy was just the reverse,-and that the wise daughter sprang from the foolish mother.

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CHAPTER IV.

OF THE EGYPTIANS-Early Civilization-Inundation of the Nile-Govern ment -Laws-Manners-Arts-Obelisks and Pyramids-Sciences-Philoso» phical Opinions-Character.

THE Egyptians are so remarkable a people, and boast of such extraordinary progress in civilization and in the arts, while the rest of the world was comparatively involved in darkness and ignorance, that their early history deservedly claims a preferable share of attention to any of the cotemporary nations of antiquity. It is highly probably too, that from this people, as from a focus of illumination, most of the European nations have, by the natural progress of knowledge, received a great part of their instruction both in the arts and in the sciences. The Egyptians instructed and enlightened the Greeks; the Greeks performed the same beneficial office to the Romans, who, in their turn, instructing the nations whom they conquered or colonized, have transmitted the rudiments of that knowledge which the industry and the genius of the moderns are continually extending and advancing to perfection.

It is probable that the Egyptians were among the most early civilized of the nations of the earth; and hence arises some excuse for that vanity, which they possessed in common with most nations, of attributing to themselves a most prodigious antiquity. In the chronicles recorded, or more probably fabricated by Manetho, the Egyptian monarchy had subsisted before his time (300) years A. c.) for more than 100,000 years. Laying little weight on such extravagant computations, we may conclude with some reason, that at least they were a very ancient and early civilized people. It is evident from the books of Moses, that in the time f Abraham, about 430 years after the flood, Egypt was a populous country, the seat of a very splendid and well-regulated mon· archy. In the days of Jacob, we see further proofs of its civili zation: the kingdom divided into departments or municipalities; ministers for state-affairs, with whom the sovereign held council; prisons for the confinement of criminals, which argues a system of penal laws properly enforced; a priesthood enjoying settled revenues; a trade in slaves-all these circumstances indicate a grea advancement in civilization, and a proportional antiquity.

M. Voltaire, who is frequently more fanciful, than judicious ic

nis conjectures, and gives too much scope to theory in his historical writings, is inclined to question the common opinion of the antiquity of the Egyptian nation; and imagines that the country of Egypt was not peopled till the neighboring African or Arabian tribes had made such advancement in agriculture and in the arts, as to regulate and turn to their advantage those periodical inundations of the Nile, which, says he, must have rendered that country uninhabitable for four months in the year. But here the theory is át variance with the facts. The periodical inundation of the Nile originally extended over a very narrow tract only of the country of Egypt, nor were its benefits at all considerable, till the art and industry of the people, by intersecting the adjacent lands with numberless canals, and making large reservoirs in the upper country to let down the water through these canals, contrived to spread the inundation over a much greater extent of ground than it would naturally have covered. There never were any efforts made to restrain those inundations, which the Egyptians justly considered as their greatest blessing, and the source of their country's fertility. All their endeavors, on the contrary, were, and are at this day, to extend their effects over as great a portion of the land as possible. So far, therefore, from any argument arising from the nature of this country against the antiquity of its population, a very strong argument thence arises in favor of that antiquity; for, where nature had done so much in fertilizing the banks of a fine river, and an easy method presented itself of extending that fertility over all the level country, it is probable that there men would first form stationary settlements, and the art of agriculture be first practised, where nature so kindly invited them to second her operations by art and industry.

And here it may be incidentally remarked, that the cause of the periodical inundation of the Nile has been satisfactorily explained by Pliny (Nat. Hist. 1. v. cap. 9), and nearly in similar terms by Dr. Pococke. The north winds, says this writer, which begin to blow about the end of May, drive the clouds formed by the vapors of the Mediterranean to the southward, as far as the mountains of Ethiopia, where, being stopped in their course, and condensed on the summits of those mountains, they fall down in violent rains, which continue for some months. The same winds likewise sensibly increase the inundation in the level country at the mouth of the river, by driving in the water from the Mediterranean. The increase of the river necessary to produce a season of fertility is from fourteen to sixteen cubits. If the waters do not rise to fourteen, according to the Nileometer, which is a stone pillar erected on the point of an island in the river between Geeza and Cairo, it is accounted a season of scarcity, and the inhabitants have a proportional abatement of their taxes; if they rise to six teen cubits, there is generally an abundant harvest. We have already observed that, without the aid of art, these inundations

would be confined to a narrow portion of the country, and in that case the height of the flood would be more prejudicial than serviceable. It is by the regulation and distribution of the waters by means of numberless canals, which extend to a considerable distance, that the benefit of the periodical floods is rendered general. When the inundation has attained its height, as marked by the Nileometer, a proclamation is made for the opening of these canals; and they are likewise shut by a similar order of government when the season of irrigation is over.

The earliest accounts of the Egyptians mention them as living under a monarchical government; and, as in most monarchies, the crown, probably at first elective, had soon become hereditary. The power of the sovereign, however, if we may credit the accounts of ancient authors, who, in the history of this people, have in many things palpably displayed both exaggeration and falsehood, was admirably limited by the laws, which even went so far as to regulate the stated employments of the prince during all the hours of the day. These notions, it must be owned, are not easily reconcileable with the ideas which the same authors give of the despotic authority of those princes; of the luxury and splendor in which they lived; the superstitious veneration that was paid to their persons; and the abject slavery in which the lower ranks of the people were kept, whom the sovereigns, for the gratification of their own vanity, employed in the severest labor in constructing those immense fabrics which seem to have been reared for no other end than to excite the wonder of posterity.

The cares both of civil government and of religion seem in Egypt to have been committed to the same hands. Besides the ordinary offices of government, a principal part of the duty of the monarch was the regulation of all that regarded religion. The priests, on the other hand, who formed a very numerous body, and had a third part of the lands allotted to them in property, were not confined to the exercise of religious duties, but filled the highest offices in the state. They had the custody of the. public records; it was their province to impose and levy the taxes; to regulate weights and measures; and out of their order were chosen all the magistrates and judges.

The supreme national tribunal in Egypt was composed of thirty judges; ten from each of the three principal cities of Heliopolis, Thebes, and Memphis; and to these judges a solemn oath was administered on their entry upon office, that even the commands of their sovereign should not sway them in the execution of their duty. The administration of justice was no burden on the subjects; the tribunals were open to all ranks of the people, without expense of any kind; as no professional advocates were employed for the pleading of causes, and the judges, whose business it was to investigate and do justice, were supported at the expense of

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