Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 12 (Egyptian and Indo-Chinese).djvu/37

Rh boldly stated, the most highly developed people of the ancient Orient, a nation inferior only to the Greeks in its accomplishments, held in religion a place no higher than that which is occupied by some barbarous negro tribes? Yet the development of civilization rarely runs quite parallel to that of religious thought. The wonderful civilization of the Chinese, for example, is quite incongruous with the very primitive character of their indigenous religion; and, on the other hand, Israel, the source of the greatest religious progress, took a very modest place in art and science before it was dispersed among the Gentiles. Above all, religion is everywhere more or less controlled by the traditions of the past and seeks its basis in the beliefs and customs of early days. According to the usual reasoning of man, his forefathers appear as more and more happy and wise in direct proportion as history is traced further and further back, until at last they are portrayed as living with the gods, who still walked on earth. The ultra-conservative Egyptians were especially anxious to tread in the ways of the blessed forefathers, to adore the same gods to whom their ancestors had bowed down in time immemorial, and to worship them in exactly the same forms; so that the religion of the later, highly developed Egyptians after 3000 remained deplorably similar to that of their barbarous forefathers. Our present knowledge of the state of Egyptian civilization about and before 4000 is sufficient to show that some development had already been made, including the first steps toward the evolution of the hieroglyphic system of writing; but the crude artistic attempts of that age, its burials of the dead in miserable holes or in large jars, its buildings in straw and in mud bricks, and its temples of wicker-work and mats still form such a contrast to the period of the Second and Third Dynasties, when Egyptian architecture and art made the first strides toward the perfection of the Pyramid Age, that we do not hesitate to place the religious development of the Egyptians of the fifth millennium on the level of ordinary