Page:Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians Volume 1.djvu/16

viii been able to penetrate, civilised communities already existed, and society possessed all the features of later ages. We have been enabled, with a sufficient degree of precision, to fix the bondage of the Israelites and the arrival of Joseph; and though these events took place at an age when nations are generally supposed to have been in their infancy, and in a state of barbarism, yet we perceive that the Egyptians had then arrived at as perfect a degree of civilisation as at any subsequent period of their history. They had the same arts, the same manners and customs, the same style of architecture, and were in the same advanced state of refinement, as in the reign of Remeses II.; and no very remarkable changes took place, even in ever varying taste, between the accession of the first Osirtasen and the death of that conqueror, who was the last monarch of the 18th dynasty. What high antiquity does this assign to civilisation! The most remote point, to which we can see, opens with a nation possessing all the arts of civilised life already matured; and though penetrating so far into the early history of the world, we find that the infancy of the Egyptian state is placed considerably beyond our reach. And, if Egypt presents no other attractions, the certainty of its being the oldest state, of which we have any positive and tangible records, must awaken feelings of interest, to which no contemplative mind can remain indifferent.