Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/98

 of even the existing inhabitants still showing these marks of Asiatic origin.

Egypt under the Pharaohs was almost entirely an agricultural country; commerce and manufactures (excepting in the case of cloths of various descriptions) were neglected. With a soil of unexampled richness, annually renewed by the Nile floods, the Egyptians acted wisely in devoting their attention chiefly to the development of their own vast natural resources.

The paintings on the walls of their tombs, and other monuments, suffice to show the attention the early population paid to agricultural pursuits; for there was obviously no higher tribute to the memory of a deceased landowner than to represent him overlooking his labourers in the field, cultivating the soil, or reaping, and carrying, in nets and baskets, the produce to the thrashing floor. In fact, apart from the records of Herodotus, valuable as they undoubtedly are, the monuments furnish a great amount of information, with regard to the state and progress of the arts and sciences among this ancient people. To measure and to calculate the fitting seasons for their various religious ceremonies, they observed, with much accuracy, the courses of the heavenly bodies, especially those of the sun and stars; at the same time keeping a careful registry of their movements, little, if at all, inferior to that of the Chaldæans. But while a practical acquaintance with geometry was a necessity to the men who constructed the Pyramids and the great dams and dykes required for the complete utilizing of the periodical inundations of the Nile, the study of this exact science was still more stimulated by the mechanism necessary to enable