Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/416

 378 A History of Art in Cuald.ka and Assyria. stop here : it had another consequence in the rapid assimilation of heterogeneous and accidental elements, which adapted themselves in a very short time to the mould into which they were pushed and pressed by the never-sleeping action of an intense organic life, until, in time, they became fused and lost in the life they had meant to dominate. Thus we find that Egypt, from the time of Menés to the end of the Roman domination, appropriated, and, as it were, digested and absorbed all the emigrants who came to establish them- selves within her borders. Some of these came sword in hand, after having destroyed all opposition ; others crept in humbly, demanding nothing better than permission to live in peace. Some were barbarian mercenaries in the pay of Pharaoh, some shepherds or agricultural labourers attracted by the splendid fertility of the soil, others were artizans in search of wealthy patrons, or merchants who sought a profit in distributing the products of the Egyptian soil or industry over foreign lands. No matter to what race they belonged, all these strangers and foreign sojourners, from the Hyksos to the Phoenicians and the Greeks, came under the spell of Egypt and exercised but little influence over her constitution, her manners, and ideas. To dissolve a body that appeared indestructible required two great religious re- volutions — the rise of Christianity, and, but a few centuries later, that of Islamism. So it was with the civilization born in the double valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. Between the days of Ourkam and those of the Sassanids it had many different masters, but long before the apparent triumph of the Greek system, we find certain religious types maintained and repeated, which bear witness to the tenacity with which habits and beliefs, formed long before the first dawn of historic times, clung to life. Finally, China offers us a still more curious example of the intimate cohesion and the resisting force that defies the centuries. Egypt, Chaldœa, and Assyria are only memories ; but China, protected by its situation, and by the circle of mountains and deserts that nature has drawn about it, the China of Confucius, still lives upon its ancient sites. Its religion is still that of the two primitive peoples we have been studying, an elaborate form of fetishism, or animism as some would have us call it. The adoration of the sovereign and of his great officers is addressed chiefly to the celestial bodies, to the sky itself, to the