Page:Ancient Egypt Her Testimony to the Truth.pdf/38

Rh in the text, which dates from the very commencement of the history of Egypt, will be accounted for, if we assume that its authors were the first settlers in that country who had emigrated thither from the plains of Shinar. Looking westward from Heliopolis, they would nightly see the sun sink in the vast expanse of marsh which then bounded the horizon in that direction. Their notions of general geography would necessarily be very imperfect. The Nile was the only considerable river of which they could have known anything, except the Euphrates; and the plains of Shinar are so far distant from the embouchure of the latter, that there is no improbability in the supposition that those who were driven forth from thence by the confusion of tongues, would be ignorant of the fact that it flowed into the sea, and much more so, of the universal law by which all rivers terminate there. Under these circumstances, that which appeared in the visible heavens would at once be assumed as that which actually occurred. Having come to Egypt from the east, the extent of their knowledge to the westward would be the valley of the Natron lakes. They observed that the sun sank below the horizon nightly, near the place where their view was bounded by this portion of the river. They knew not what became either of the one or the other; and therefore they concluded that they both sank together into an imaginary abyss. In the construction of their legend respecting this abyss, they embodied the two primitive traditions;—that the separate spirit goes under the earth, and that the soul will be judged hereafter for the deeds done in the body. Their acquaintance with the valley of the Nile upwards, extended only