Hello everyone –
Since the ancient Egyptian New Year takes place tomorrow (Saturday, August 29), what better time could there be to reflect on the rich legacy of science, history, and culture that Egypt has bequeathed to us?
Gerald Massey (1828-1907), a Victorian Egyptologist, penned this tribute to the ancient Egyptians and their colossal achievements.
“Egypt” by Gerald Massey (1882)
Egypt! How I have dwelt with you in dreams,
So long, so intimately, that it seems
As if you had borne me; though I could not know
It was so many thousand years ago!
And in my gropings darkly underground
The long-lost memory at last is found
Of motherhood – you mother of us all!
And to my fellowmen I must recall
The memory too; that common motherhood
May help to make the common brotherhood.
Egypt! It lies there in the far-off past,
Opening with depths profound and growths as vast
As the great valley of Yosemite;
The birthplace out of darkness into day;
The shaping matrix of the human mind;
The cradle and the nursery of our kind.
This was the land created from the flood,
The land of Atum, made of the red mud,
Where Num sat in his Teba throned on high,
And saw the deluge once a year go by,
Each brimming with the blessing that it brought,
And by that waterway, in Egypt’s thought,
The gods descended; but they never hurled
The deluge that should desolate the world.
There the vast hewers of the early time
Built, as if that way they would surely climb
The heavens, and left their labors without name –
Colossal as their carelessness of fame –
Sole likeness of themselves – that heavenward
Forever look with statuesque regard,
As if some vision of the eternal grown
Petrific, was forever fixed in stone!
They watched the moon re-orb, the stars go round,
And drew the circle; thought’s primordial bound.
The heavens looked into them with living eyes
To kindle starry thoughts in other skies,
For us reflected in the image-scroll,
That night by night the stars for aye unroll.
The royal heads of language bow them down
To lay in Egypt’s lap each borrowed crown.
The glory of Greece was but the afterglow
Of her forgotten greatness lying low;
Her hieroglyphics buried dark as night,
Or coal deposits filled with future light,
Are mines of meaning; by their light we see
Through many an overshadowing mystery.
The nursing Nile is living Egypt still,
And as her lowlands with its freshness fill,
And heave with double-breasted bounteousness,
So doth the old hidden source of mind yet bless
The nations; secretly she brought to birth,
And Egypt still enriches all the earth.
And here’s a poem about my favorite legendary sage from ancient Egypt – Hermes Trismegistus!
“Hermes Trismegistus”
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
Still through Egypt's desert places
Flows the lordly Nile,
From its banks the great stone faces
Gaze with patient smile.
Still the pyramids imperious
Pierce the cloudless skies,
And the Sphinx stares with mysterious,
Solemn, stony eyes.
But where are the old Egyptian
Demi-gods and kings?
Nothing left but an inscription
Graven on stones and rings.
Where are Helios and Hephaestus,
Gods of eldest eld?
Where is Hermes Trismegistus,
Who their secrets held?
Where are now the many hundred
Thousand books he wrote?
By the Thaumaturgists plundered,
Lost in lands remote;
In oblivion sunk forever,
As when o'er the land
Blows a storm-wind, in the river
Sinks the scattered sand.
Something unsubstantial, ghostly,
Seems this Theurgist,
In deep meditation mostly
Wrapped, as in a mist.
Vague, phantasmal, and unreal
To our thought he seems,
Walking in a world ideal,
In a land of dreams.
Was he one, or many, merging
Name and fame in one,
Like a stream, to which, converging
Many streamlets run?
Till, with gathered power proceeding,
Ampler sweep it takes,
Downward the sweet waters leading
From unnumbered lakes.
By the Nile I see him wandering,
Pausing now and then,
On the mystic union pondering
Between gods and men;
Half believing, wholly feeling,
With supreme delight,
How the gods, themselves concealing,
Lift men to their height.
Or in Thebes, the hundred-gated,
In the thoroughfare
Breathing, as if consecrated,
A diviner air;
And amid discordant noises,
In the jostling throng,
Hearing far, celestial voices
Of Olympian song.
Who shall call his dreams fallacious?
Who has searched or sought
All the unexplored and spacious
Universe of thought?
Who, in his own skill confiding,
Shall with rule and line
Mark the border-land dividing
Human and divine?
Trismegistus! three times greatest!
How thy name sublime
Has descended to this latest
Progeny of time!
Happy they whose written pages
Perish with their lives,
If amid the crumbling ages
Still their name survives!
Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately
Found I in the vast,
Weed-encumbered somber, stately,
Grave-yard of the Past;
And a presence moved before me
On that gloomy shore,
As a waft of wind, that o'er me
Breathed, and was no more.
Happy Egyptian New Year tomorrow! J
Rob
