. The sacred beetle: a popular treatise on Egyptian scarabs in art and history. , theirwritten characters were quite unknown to the Father of History tells us that the temples werecovered with pictures; this was all that the storiedwalls with their elaborate hieroglyphic inscriptions,which we can now read, conveyed to him. DECLINE IN THE USE OE SCARABS, GREEK PERIOD. Herodotos was the first European traveller, anaccount of whose visit to Egypt has come downto us. Egypt had been a closed land for thousandsof years, and, at the time of his visit, its greatnesswas on the wane, the
. The sacred beetle: a popular treatise on Egyptian scarabs in art and history. , theirwritten characters were quite unknown to the Father of History tells us that the temples werecovered with pictures; this was all that the storiedwalls with their elaborate hieroglyphic inscriptions,which we can now read, conveyed to him. DECLINE IN THE USE OE SCARABS, GREEK PERIOD. Herodotos was the first European traveller, anaccount of whose visit to Egypt has come downto us. Egypt had been a closed land for thousandsof years, and, at the time of his visit, its greatnesswas on the wane, the result of the disastrous in-vasion of Cambyses a hundred years before, fromwhich it had never recovered. The seclusive laws of the early Egyptian rulershad, at least in the rich provinces at the mouth of theNile, been allowed to become lax. The Greeks hadbeen permitted to settle there and build several Herodotos was thus enabled to make a tour in northern Egypt, and unveil some of its mysteries to * the outer world. But Herodotos, a tourist with note-book in hand,. PALM FOREST ON THE SITE OF MEMPHIS. IO THE SACRED BEETLE. penetrated only into the Delta and adjacent nomes,for the priests (who still controlled upper Egypt) wouldnot let him go up the Nile to Thebes, and so he had tocontent himself with visiting Memphis, the Pyramids,and the Fayum. Memphis was then in all its glory,the White Wall of its great fortress proudlyrising up out of the Nile, which surrounded site of Memphis had been artificially won fromthe Nile, the river having been diverted by Mena,its founder, about 4770 Some time after the visit of Herodotos, in a timeof war, the enemy may have cut the dykes that en-closed Memphis. However it happened, the Nile hasswept the whole city away, entombing the templesand palaces in its mud. Tall palms wave over itssite to-dav, and if any buildings still remain, theirruins are buried underneath what is now cultivatedground. Naught remains to be seen sa
Size: 2082px × 1201px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectegyptan, bookyear1902
