Note 26 — Chapter IX · MARTYRS.

This assertion requires to be proved. It cannot be denied that from the time that history succeeded to fiction, the Egyptians have constantly appeared to be a people as dastardly as they were superstitious. Cambyses made the conquest of their country in a single battle; Alexander gave them laws without striking a stroke, or without one of their cities daring to wait a siege. The Ptolemies subdued them with as little trouble, nor did Octavius and Augustus Cæsar find more difficulty in bringing them under their obedience. Omar overran all Egypt in one single campaign; the Mamelukes, who inhabited Colchis and the regions of Mount Caucasus, became their masters afterwards; and it was these people, and not the Egyptians, who defeated the army of St. Louis, and took that king prisoner. At length the Mamelukes having, in process of time, become Egyptians, that is to say, effeminate, cowardly, lazy, and dissipated, like the original natives of the climate, they were in three months’ time brought under the yoke of Selim I., who caused their Soldan to be hanged, and made their kingdom a province of the Turkish Empire, and such it will remain till other barbarians may hereafter make themselves masters of it. Herodotus relates that in the fabulous ages a king of Egypt called Sesostris left his country in order to go and make the conquest of the world; it is evident that such a design could only be worthy of a Don Quixote; and not to mention that the name Sesostris is not Egyptian, we may rank this event, like many others of the same date, among the romances and fairy tales. Nothing is more common among a conquered people than to tell strange stories of their former grandeur, just as, in some countries, certain wretched families, in want of the common necessaries of life, pride themselves upon being descended from ancient sovereigns. The Egyptian priests told Herodotus that this king, whom he called Sesostris, went on an expedition to conquer Colchis, which is much the same as if we were to say that a king of France set out from Touraine to conquer Norway. It avails not that these stories are found repeated in a thousand different writers; it makes them not a whit more probable; it is much more natural to suppose that the fierce and athletic inhabitants of Mount Caucasus, of Colchis, and the other parts of Scythia, who so often made incursions upon and ravaged Asia, might have penetrated as far as Egypt; and although the priests of Colchis might afterwards have carried back with them the form of circumcision, yet that is no kind of proof that they were ever conquered by the Egyptians. Diodorus Siculus tells us that all the kings who were conquered by Sesostris came every year from their own kingdoms to bring him their respective tributes, when Sesostris made them draw the chariot in which he went in triumph to the temples of his gods. These old women’s stories we see every day gravely copied by other writers; it must be confessed that these kings were very complaisant, to come every year so far to be made hackney horses of. As to their pyramids, and other monuments of antiquity, they prove nothing but the pride and bad taste of the Egyptian princes, and the wretched slavery of a weak people, who employed their strength, which was their only support, in pleasing the barbarous ostentation of their masters. The polity of these people, even in those times which are so much cried up, appears to have been both absurd and tyrannical; they pretended that the whole universe belonged to their monarchy. It well became such an abject race to set up for conquerors of the world! The profound learning which we find attributed to the Egyptian priests is also one of the most ridiculous absurdities in ancient history, that is to say, in fable. People who pretended that in a revolution of eleven thousand years the sun had risen twice in the west and set twice in the east in beginning his course anew were doubtless curious astronomers. The religion of these priests, who governed the state, was inferior even to that of the most savage people of America; every one knows that crocodiles, monkeys, cats, and onions were the objects of their adoration; and there is not perhaps in the world so absurd a worship, excepting that of the Great Lama. Their arts were as mean as their religion; there is not one ancient Egyptian statue fit to be seen; and whatever they had amongst them of any merit came from Alexandria in the times of the Ptolemies and Cæsars and was the work of Grecian artists; nay, they were even obliged to send to Greece for masters to teach them geometry. The illustrious Bossuet, in his discourse upon universal history, dedicated to the son of Louis the Fourteenth, runs wild in his encomiums upon the merits of the Egyptians; this may dazzle the understanding of a young prince, but will never satisfy men of learning. This production is a very fine piece of eloquence, but a historian should be more of the philosopher than the orator. The reflections here offered concerning the Egyptians are merely conjectural; for by what other name can we call anything that is said concerning antiquity?