ORIGIN

In proceeding to take a general view of the religious and political state of the Ancient Egyptian nation, our attention is first directed to the origin of their civilization, which we must ascribe to the aboriginal natives of Egypt alone. Thus again, we find obliged to opposed a commonly received opinion, which is that of the Ethiopian descent of the religion and arts of Egypt. This opinion has received the sanction of several learned men, in consequences of their not possessing that sufficient acquaintance with the monuments of Egypt, which can only be acquired by a visit to that country, and by the aid of the important lights derivable from the late discovery of the phonetic system of hieroglyphics.

The most ancient of all the monuments along the whole tract of country watered by the Nile from the furthers parts of Ethiopia to the Mediterranean are in northern Egypt. We elude all the pyramids of Memphis. The small pyramids of Ethiopia have been regarded as the types of those stupendous edifices of Egypt but they are proved by their hieroglyphics to be comparatively modern; which even their structure might lead one to imagine. The monuments of the next class in point of antiquity are found in the same part and there only. These are the edifices destitute of sculptures and of painting adjacent to the first and second pyramid. The monuments of the third class in the order of antiquity are in the same and other parts of Egypt and no monuments of the same age is found in Lower Ethiopia. These are the period of the last Memphis Dynasty and of the impoliteness kings of the 17th Dynasty. The most remarkable of them are the sculptured and painted tombs near the principal pyramids, the obelisk of Heliopolis in Middle Egypt.

Egypt began its march to civilization rather late compared with some regions of the Near East. Yet once it had taken root, the great civilization of the Nile proved to be the most durable of all, spanning more than three thousand years from the appearance of the first unified kingdom to the final eclipse of Ancient Egyptian culture in the early Christian era. For most of its ancient history, pharaoh ruled Egypt. Egyptology now tend to count the Macedonian and Ptolemaic dynasties as numbers 32 and 33 and they have added a 34th.