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Show Marvelous, Mysterious Egypt. H When going to or coming from his recent con- H sulshlp, Judge Bodkin spent five days in and H about Cairo, Egypt. The story of his impressions H Of that land Is most graphic. Of course there is H no end of books on Egypt, no end of vivid de- H scriptions by travelers and scholars, but Judge I Bodkin's story was not like any other that we H have read or heard. There are cedar caskets in which the dead were laid, as proved by the hlero- H glyphlcs upon them, and upon tho walls of tho I tombs in wheh they were placed 4,000 years be- I fore the coming of tho Messiah. And the cedar H has no touch of decay, and while a fow bronzo H implements have been found there Is no sign or H mention of anything like an axe, or saw, or other H implements such as moderns use, and yet those H cedar logs about six inches square and nine feet H long,' were made Into boxes, holes woro made through them, and they were tied together with I wirs or ribbons of coppr run through thom and I then the holes were plugged by cedar pegs. And tho logs show tho marks of tho broad axe or its H equivalent, just as when In the old days men wont II into the woods and got out timbers for houses or I barns. And then the corners are all oxaot right I angles and are all mitred as perfectly as the mod- I era cabinet-makor leaves his work. I Now, how wero the logs felled and hewod? I How wero the holes through them made? How were the wires made und drawn through them? Again, there is wood carving that is absolutely oxoulslto and some samples of gems set in gold, found in one of these tombs, and now in the British Museum, are the "wonder and admiration of every worker in gold that sees them. But fj-om the crest of the Cheops Pyramids, the eye takes In pyramid after pyramid, sometimes single and sometimes in groups, as they stretch away In that great valley. Of course they are all of stone, but there is not a stono quarry In Egypt. It Is supposed they came from tho Upper Nile, but how were they brought down, and, if floated, how were thoy moved and set up? Tho Judge says every early ruler of Egypt was a braggart. Everything any one of them ever did he had recorded in hieroglyphics which are now easily read by experts. It has been made clear that old liamoses II., who for six thousand years has posed in history ns the very Captain of the ancient world, was the worst four-liusher of whom there Is any record. He had his name inscribed on every big thing, and there wore evidently no dally papers to expose him, and so he has flourished on a stolon reputation while one hundred and eighty generations of men have lived and died. If he has over been reincarnated ho must have been running a daily newspaper in Ogden. But the wonder of all Is the Sphynx. The body of a Hon, 90 feet long and 30 feet through, with the head of a man, that head 33 feet from crown to chin and 14 feet across the face from cheekbone to cheekbone. And there Is no record of when It was set there or by whom. The only referenco to it Is a record left by a King who reigned 3700 years before the coming of the Christian era, and his record is that he caused the sands that had drifted around it to be removed. How long must it have stood before them, to have been nearly buried by drifting sands? But there Is a greater wonder connected with it. Tho quarries of the Upper Nile are syenite. The Sphynx was carved out of coarse gray granite. From when did it come? By what power was It moved? How was it set up and carved? Then, it faces exactly to the east The accuracy of its position could not have been established more perfectly by any modern engineer. Then there is an eager look upon the stony face, strained toward the rising sun, as though watching for the coming of the eternal day. And that watch has been kept up since a time beyond wh' a neither history nor legend sheds any light. Nearly six thousand years ago a King caused the sands that had drifted around It to be removed. re-moved. How long before that it was 1 upreared cannot even be estimated. And what was the state of the cillvilizatlon that produced it? And as we speculate, tho thought comes that, after all, we, with our boasted age, are but sorry parvenus, that could some divine Pygmalion touch and bring to life tho monster in stone, his first greeting to the world would be a boisterous and scornful laugh at a dull modern world's preposterous pretentions. Tho ages keep their secrets and there is no key to unlock them. One would think that the Hood swept away all the race and all the enlightenment, except that one can now on the streets of Cairo see men who are exact reproductions of the statures that were sculptured and the pictures that were painted quite two thousand years before Moses lived. Then we recall, too, that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. They must .have had time to gather that wisdom before Moses lived, and it is three thousand years since Mosps died on Pisgah. All that time the Sphynx has been watching ano the Nile has been flowing. If they commune together and like garrulous old cronies talk over tho immemorial past, no echo of it comes to mortal mor-tal ears. The desert, tho ages and the stars keep their secrets; no voice sounds down the centuries to enlighten us. Even the wing of imagination flutters and falls when it attempts Its flight into that profound past, for like the dove from the ark It finds no resting place. Years are but as hours, centurlos are but as days, ages are but a"s years, in times chronology. The men In Egypt Who lived six thousand years ago, wore but so many Rip Van Winkles that were awakened with memories confused over half forgotten events which took pluce so long before that the dates could not be fixed. Then, what are we to boast of our railroads and telegraphs and books and dally papers. If the souls of these old-timers ever revisit the earth, what hilarity must come to them as they listen to our boasting and how thoy must be saying, "Let the braggarts uprear a Sphynx and then we will begin to sit up and notice them." |
