MIGHTY PAST SPEAKS

21

Minor, Greece, Rome, etc., together with the testimony from the literature, lands, and usages of the peoples of the East who were in touch with the people of Israel. These discoveries have exploded many of the most confidently assumed critical theories, and shown the baselessness of the bold assumptions upon which the critics build their imposing structures of cavil, and have disproved many of their finespun philological theories. Since this recent knowledge has removed many once formidable objections, it establishes the principle of vanishing difficulties, and makes possible, if not probable, the complete removal of all such difficulties with greater research and completer knowledge.

EARLE ALBERT ROWELL (A Converted Infidel), The Bible in the Critics' Den, pp. 99-101.

The book has yet to be written which will record in detail the struggle by which the assailants of the Bible have been driven out of one position after another by the discoveries of archaeology; but the present volume marks out the lines on which that magnum opus will be framed.

SIR ROBERT ANDERSON, K.C.B., LL.D., Preface to The Bible and the British
Museum, by Ada R. Habershon.

The mighty Past is speaking. God is bringing forth its testimony. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, have broken the silence of the ages. The mouldering monuments, the buried cities, the sandy deserts, the sculptured rocks, have found a voice. Sinai and Petra, Horeb and Hermon, echo the sacred oracles. Memphis and Tyre, Tadmor and Nineveh, have risen from their graves. The painted papyrus, the pictures walls, the stony tablets, the rusted medals and coins, bring forth their testimony. The ruins, the rivers, the mountains, and the seas cry out, "Thy word is truth."

H. GRATTAN GUINNESS, D.D., F.R.A.S., F.R.G.S.

9. What was the fate of Old Babylonia?

SECULAR EVIDENCE.

The Old Babylonian Empire eclipsed by the Rising Assyrian Empire. For more than fifteen hundred years after Hammurabi, Babylon continued to be the political and commercial center of an empire of changing dynasties and shifting frontiers. Meanwhile a Semitic power had been slowly developing in the North. This was the Assyrian Empire, the later heart and center of which was the great city of Nineveh. For a long time Assyria was practically a province of the lower kingdom; but in 728 B. C. Babylonia was conquered by an Assyrian king and passed under Assyrian control.

Myers, General History, p. 33.

ROSETTA STONE

CHAPTER III.

EGYPT.

10. Did Egypt of the Bible ever exist?

BIBLE EVIDENCE.

Exodus 1:1, 8-Now these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob. Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.

SECULAR EVIDENCE.

In 1818 Jean Francois Champollion, a French scholar, who before this had busied himself with the study of Coptic and Egyptian geography, began the study of the Rosetta Stone. He assumed that the language of the upper registers must be an older form of the Coptic tongue. By most painstaking comparsion of the characters in the upper registers with the Coptic equivalents of the words in the lower or Greek register, he succeeded in deciphering the long-forgotten writing of ancient Egypt. He published his discovery in 1822. Thus the door to the historical and literary treasures of ancient Egypt was unlocked, and from that time to this the study of Egyptian inscriptions and documents has gone steadily forward.

GEORGE A. BARTON, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Biblical Literature and
Semitic Languages in Bryn Mawr College; Sometime Director of the
American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, Archaeology and
the Bible, p. 21.

Down in the beautiful land of the Nile stand some of the most majestic of all ruins, pyramids, sphinxes, temples, and crumbling walls of dead cities, all coming down from unknown times....

This "child of the Nile," Egypt, is fertilized by the alluvia of Central Africa, carried on the bosom of this noble stream and deposited on the fields and gardens of the Nile-dwellers. This entire valley on either side is to-day almost one series of museum specimens.... The great pyramids, and sphinxes, and obelisks all arouse an intense interest in whatever people may have erected these stupendous miracles of engineering skill and construction.... Egypt, wherever mentioned, is no longer simply a name, but the home of a highly civilized and vigorous people,... a people, too, whose fortunes for centuries run parallel to the Hebrews of the Old Testament. . . .

...

The Egypt Exploration Fund alone has published more than a dozen volumes descriptive of the finds of its excavators since the organization of the society in 1882.... In this mass of material we are finding not only new evidences of the greatness of the old civilization

FIRST HOMES OF CIVILIZATION

23

of the Nile valley, but also testimony to the accuracy of the records and hints of the Old Testament regarding the character of the ancient Egyptians. In addition to this we are learning that the early records of the Old Testament are replete with traces of an Egyptian coloring, of an Egyptian influence upon the annalist.

IRA M. PRICE, Ph.D., The Monuments and the Old Testament, pp. 36, 38, 39, 43.

I can only say now that in some things the Egyptians were never surpassed. Their architecture, as seen in the pyramids and the ruins of temples, was marvellous; while their industrial arts would not be disdained in the 19th century.

JOHN LORD, LL.D., Beacon Lights of History, Vol. II, p. 76. Color, is, we say, an ornament. We dye our dresses, and ornament our furniture. It is an ornament to gratify the eye. But the Egyptians impressed it into a new service. For them, it was a method of recording history. Some parts of their history were written; but when they wanted to elaborate history they painted it. Their colors are immortal, else we could not know of it. We find upon the stucco of their walls their kings holding court, their armies marching out, their craftsmen in the ship-yard, with the ships floating in the dock; and, in fact, we trace all their rites and customs painted in undying colors. The French who went to Egypt with Napoleon said that all the colors were perfect except the greenish-white which is the hardest for us.

WENDELL PHILLIPS, "The Lost Arts," Speeches and Lectures of Phillips,
Vol. II, p. 376, 377.

The first homes of civilization were Egypt and Chaldea,-the lower valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates...

The Irrigation System.-Before the year 2000 B. C., the Egyptians had learned to supplement the yearly overflow of the Nie by an elaborate irrigation system.... But between 2400 and 2000 B. C. the pharaohs created a wonderful reservoir system. On the one hand, tens of thousands of acres of marsh were drained and made fit for rich cultivation: on the other hand, artificial lakes were built at various places, to collect and hold the surplus water of the yearly inundation. Then, by an intricate network of ditches and "gates'' (much like the irrigation ditches of some of our western States to-day), the water was distributed during the dry months as it was needed....

The Industrial Arts.-The skilled artisans included brickworkers, weavers, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, coppersmiths, upholsterers, glass blowers, potters, shoemakers, tailors, armorers, and almost as many other trades as are to be found among us to-day. In many of these occupations, the workers possessed a marvelous dexterity, and were masters of processes that are now unknown....

The most famous Egyptian buildings are the pyramids. They were the tombs of kings.... The skill shown in the construction of the pyramids implies a remarkable knowledge of mathematics and of physics for such early times; and their impressive massiveness has always placed them among the wonders of the world.... The largest,