It was only during an occasional revolt that anyone from Athens could set foot in Egypt: for the great war between the Greeks and Persians was now going on. Anaxagoras was born 500 B.C., and he was therefore ten years old at the time of the battle of Marathon; and nineteen when that of Salamis was fought. But when he was forty years of age, Egypt became accessible for four years, by means of a revolt. During this time, though the Persians were never dislodged from Memphis, both Lower and Upper Egypt appeared to have become independent; and many Greeks, bent on the advancement of learning, and Anaxagoras among them, hastened to the Egyptian schools. Anaxagoras's work on the Nile has perished with his other writings: and there is no saying how much of his philosophy he derived from the teachings of the Egyptian priests: but there is a striking accordance between the opinions which he is variously reported to have held, and for which he is believed to have suffered banishment, and those which constituted part of the philosophy of Egypt. Wherever we turn, in tracing the course of ancient philosophy, we meet the priests of Egypt: and it really appears as if the great men of Greece and other countries had little to say on the highest and deepest subjects of human inquiry till they had studied at Memphis, or Sais, or Thebes, or Heliopolis. Here was the master of Socrates,26 the originator of some of his most important opinions, and the great mover of his mind, studying in Egypt; and we shall hereafter find the great pupil of Socrates, and the interpreter of his mind, Plato, dwelling in the same school, for so long a time, it is thought, as to show in what reverence he held it.
Soon after Anaxagoras came Herodotus. We may be thankful that, among the Greeks who visited Egypt, there was one whose taste was more for matter-of-fact than for those high abstract inquiries which are not popularly included under that name: for the scientific and philosophical writings of his countrymen are, for the most part, lost, while the travels of Herodotus remain, as lively and fresh in their interest as ever. We may mourn that the others are gone; but we must rejoice that these are preserved. Here, at least, we obtain what we have longed for in the whole course of our study of the early Egyptian periods: records of the sayings and doings of the priests, and of the destinies of the people; pictures of the appearance of the great Valley and of its inhabitants; and details of their lives, customs, manners, history, and opinions. The temptation is strong to present again here, to fill up and illuminate this sketch of the history of old Egypt, some of the material of Herodotus: but his books lie within reach of every hand: and I will use them no further than is necessary to the illustration of what I myself observed in my study of the Monuments.
Within a hundred years of Herodotus came Plato. It may be questioned whether this visit of Plato to Egypt be not one of the most important events which have occurred in the history of the human mind. – The first thing that strikes us is how much there must have been to be learned in Egypt at this time, since Plato, his friend Eudoxus the astronomer, and Chrysippus the physician, all came – (such men, and from such a distance!) – to study in the schools of Heliopolis. It is related, and was believed in his own age, that Plato lived thirteen years at Heliopolis: and when Strabo was there, 350 years afterwards, he was shown the house where Plato and Eudoxus lived and studied. – Plato had met Socrates, it is believed, at the age of nineteen. After having learned what he could of him, and sustained his death, and been compelled for political reasons to leave Athens, he had gone to Megara, and joined the school of Euclid,27 – also a pupil of Socrates, and one well qualified to cherish what Socrates had sown in the mind of Plato. Though this school was considered one of doubt and denial, its ultimate doctrine was that the Supreme Good is always the same and unchangeable. Thus trained and set thinking, Plato came to Egypt, and sat where Moses had sat, at the feet of the priests, gaining, as Moses had gained, an immortal wisdom from their lips. The methods of learning of these two men, and their acquisitions, differed according to the differing characteristics of their minds. Each took from his teachers what he could best appropriate. Moses was spiritualised to a wonderful degree, considering his position and race; but his surpassing eminence was as a redeeming legislator. Plato had deeply-considered views on political matters; but his surpassing eminence was as a spiritual philosopher. Moses redeemed a race of slaves, made men of them, organized them into a society, and constituted them a nation; while Plato did only theoretical work of that kind – enough to testify to the political philosophy of Egypt, but not to affect the condition of Greece. But Plato taught the Egyptian doctrine (illustrated on the tombs ages before, and, as Proclus declares, derived by Plato from Egypt) of the Immortality of the Soul, and rewards and punishments in an after-life. This was what Plato taught that Moses did not. The great old Egyptian doctrine, extending back, as the Book of Genesis shows us, as far as the Egyptian traditions reached – the great doctrine of a Divine Moral Government, was the soul alike of the practical legislation of Moses and the speculative philosophy of Plato; and this is, as it seems to us now, their great common qualification for bearing such a part as each does in the constitution of the prevalent Christianity. – We shall have to return to this hereafter, when we have seen more of the Egyptian priesthood. Meantime, I may observe that unless there is other evidence that Plato visited the Jews than the amount of Judaism in his writings, it does not seem necessary to suppose such a visit. If he passed thirteen years beside that fountain of wisdom where Moses dwelt till his manhood, it is not extraordinary that they should have great Ideas in common. The wonder would be if they had not. The intellectual might of Moses seems to show that the lapse of intervening ages had not much changed the character of the schools: and the result on the respective minds of the two students may have been much the same as if they had sat side by side in bodily presence, as they ever will do in the reason of all who faithfully contemplate the operation of the Christian religion on the minds of men, from the beginning till now. – That Plato derived and adopted much from his predecessors among Greek philosophers is very evident: and from Pythagoras above all. But many of these Greek philosophers had been trained in Egypt; and especially, as we have seen, Pythagoras, whose abstract ideas would appear to be displayed in a course of illustration on the walls of the Theban tombs, if we did not know that these tombs, with all their pictured mysteries, had been closed many centuries before the philosopher was born.
During all our review of the old Egyptians, we have not yet considered who they were. Of this there is little to say. It is useless to call them Copts; because all we can say of the Copts is that we must suppose them to be of the same race originally as the old Egyptians: and this throws no light on the derivation of either. Speaking of the origin of the Colchians, Herodotus says that the Egyptians believed them to be descended from followers of Sesostris: and that he thought this probable from (among other reasons) their being black, and having curly hair.28 This blackness was probably only a relative term; for not only do we find the Nubians at this day, with their strong resemblance to the portraits in the tombs, of a dark bronze, but in the tombs there is a clear distinction between the absolute black of negro captives and other dark complexions. On these walls, the colour given to figures generally is a dark red. Where there is a bluish black, or neutral tint on the faces, it is distinctive merely of the priestly caste. The women are sometimes painted yellow; and so are certain strangers, supposed to be Asiatic or European. It is a curious circumstance, related by Sir W. Gell, that in the Tarquinian tombs in Etruria, all the men have the dark red complexion found in the Egyptian tombs. This rather tends to confirm the impression that the red colour may be symbolical, like the blue for the priests, and the yellow for the women. On the whole, it is thought probable that the old Egyptian complexion was of the dark bronze of the Nubians of the present day. –