prise and horror of all the performers, the boy promptly walked on the stage close up to Mrs. Siddons, and with a total unconsciousness of the impropriety he was committing, presented the porter! Her distress may be imagined; she waved the boy away in her grand manner several times, without effect; at last the people behind the scenes, by dint of beckoning, stamping, and calling in half-audible whispers, succeeded in getting him. off with the beer, part of which in his exit he spilled on the stage; while the audience were in a uproar of laughter, which the dignity of the actress was unable to quell for several minutes."

ART. IX.-The History of Egypt under the Ptolemies. By SAMUEL SHARPE. London: Moxon.

1838.

WHY is it that ancient Egypt does not interest modern readers in the same manner, or to the same degree, that ancient Greece and Rome do? It cannot be that its greatness is much further removed from our times; for, in regard to antiquity, the sympathies of the mind do not particularly note the difference of a thousand years more than of a hundred. It cannot be, that in point of splendour of events, of mightiness of actions, of magnificence of works, that the imagination discovers any inferiority. On the contrary, Egypt was the cradle of science and of the arts; and to that country was Greece and thence Rome, and through them modern Europe, indebted for the most useful and enduring principles that regulate business and embellish life. Nay, at this day no country that was famous in ancient times can present so many relics, or such monuments to interest and to instruct, as does the land we speak of. The banks of the Nile, without a figure of speech, form one continuous museum of grandest architecture,-and the most imperishable records that the earth ever or can produce. What is your paper and your parchment to the inscribed granite? In one respect, we admit, and under one branch of associations, that the country of the Pharaohs obtains a paramount degree of contemplation, an unequalled amount of solemn thought. When we meditate on the history of Abraham, of Jacob, of Joseph, of Moses, of the Israelites; when the mind turns to reflect on the miracles which attest the truth of that book in which the words of eternal life are to be found, how readily and freshly does Egypt present itself,-at a period of its annals too, when Greece and Rome take no hold on our imaginations, have no claim to our sympathies! Still, disjoined from those sacred records which so closely concern our religious faith, the fact is, when compared with Greece and Rome, that this third and most venerable, most massive branch of classic antiquity, as it has a right. to be called, stands in the predicament, as respects our sympathies, which has been just now noticed. Why is it so ?

To the question now asked, we believe, Mr. Sharpe has suggested

the true, or at least, the principal answer, in using the following words :-"When," says he, "letters first rose in Greece and Rome, the writers found a rich harvest of fable and tradition, out of which they wove those beautiful tales, that we now read as the beginning of Greek and Roman history. The Egyptians were not favoured with historians who could thus fix and hand down to us their traditions; but, on the other hand, they had from far earlier times carved the names and deeds of their kings on the granite temples, and thus, instead of a rich poetic fable, they have left us a bald reality." We may add, that even this bald reality has been, till comparatively late years, allowed to remain buried or undeciphered, so as to be of no use to the world; while even those, who have in these late times made the discoveries of such ancient riches, have, for the most part, confined themselves to the simple interpretation or description of what they have seen; thus, though contributing the most valuable materials to antiquarian knowledge, letting them continue amid all the dryness of antiquarian facts.

One ought not hastily to find fault with an abstinence which may plead in its behalf the demands and laws of severe truth. Still the facts, the records, and the keys to precise interpretation have of late been fast multiplying through the industry of European investigators. It is most gratifying also to have it to say, that in the hands of Wilkinson and others these discoveries have begun to be turned to such interesting and valuable account as ought to rescue ancient Egypt from being treated with apathy by the historical reader, or the student of ancient civilized states and matured institutions, whose effects pointedly and potently reach us at the present day; while there are good grounds for hoping that the discoveries already so numerous will not only be greatly added to, but that similar talent and industry to what have latterly been bestowed in the work of elucidation, will largely enrich the results, and strengthen the claims upon popular as well as antiquarian attention.

Among the labourers who have assiduously and with success devoted themselves to the development of ancient Egyptian annals and relics, Mr. Sharpe occupies no mean rank. His former publi cations, all of which we have perused, though certainly without competent knowledge of the subjects,-viz., his "Early History of Egypt, from the Old Testament, Herodotus, Manetho, and the Hieroglyphical Inscriptions,"-his "Egyptian Inscriptions, from the British Museum and other sources: sixty plates in folio,"—and his "Rudiments of a Vocabulary of Egyptian Hieroglyphics,"--sufficiently testify the talent and skill as well as the industry he has brought to bear on some of the most obscure and difficult questions of literary investigation. The present volume, however, will prove to be by far the most interesting and valuable of the series to the general reader. It is, we believe, the most satisfactory history of Egypt under the Ptolemies that exists in our language. It is comVOL. 1. (1839.) no. 1.

prehensive yet concise,-full yet clear; and especially remarkable on account of the skill and ease with which the author has fixed upon the prominent and characteristic points of a great nation's history; not merely the history of kings and of battles; of court intrigues and treacherous treaties; but of a people's condition-of the vicissitudes of their commerce,-of their characteristic institutions. Above all, we have been pleased and benefited by his masterly sketch of the great lineaments and of the chief ornaments of the famous Alexandrian School. Vast reading and elaborate study, -the fruits of the reading and study, in fact, of all extant that has been written in ancient or modern times that can throw any light upon the various branches of his subject, together with a knowledge of all the antiquarian discoveries that have been made of inscriptions, relics, and monuments, are here compressed and perspicuously arranged. We need hardly add, that to all this scholarship, and to all the evidences of a sound and liberal judgment, there is the embellishment which literary taste and elegant composition can so richly furnish. Mr. Sharpe, in truth, exhibits not only the ease of a master in disposing of his multifarious, curious, and far-sought-for materials, but he revels amongst them with the heartiness of a lover,

In an Introductory Chapter we have a rapid sketch of all that is known of Egyptian history down to the reign of Ptolemy Soter, which commenced three hundred and twenty-two years before the birth of our Saviour. Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt had been easily accomplished, the people having long groaned under the Persian yoke. Nor was their hearty reception of the invader unwisely bestowed; for the Macedonian was politic as well as warlike. Of course, and as he was obliged, with the view of preserving rule over the nation, he filled the garrisons with troops under the command of his own generals, and appointed governors in whom he could rely; yet he alineated not the minds of the people by needless restraints, nor by any innovations upon their institutions. author's remarks upon this species of policy we shall extract :

Our

"This is perhaps the earliest instance that history has recorded, of a conqueror governing a province according to its own laws, and upholding the religion of the conquered as the established religion of the state; and the length of time that the Græco-Egyptian monarchy lasted, and the splendour with which it shone, prove the wisdom and humanity of the founder. This example has been copied, with equal success, in our own colonial and Indian governments; but we do not know whether Alexander had any such example to guide his views, or whether his own good sense pointed out to him the folly of those who wished to make a people not only open their gates to the garrisons, but their minds to the civil and religious opinions of the conquerors. At any rate, the highest meed of praise is due to the statesman, whoever he may have been, who first taught the world this lesson of statesmanlike wisdom and religious humanity."

It is by remarks such as these that an author can render ancient or foreign history useful to a country, and chiefly interesting to the reflecting reader. Mr. Sharpe, as we have before said, does not concern himself chiefly with details about king's battles and party strifes; nor shall we seek to select any but such passages in the way of extracts as seem to belong to themes most accordant to his as well as to our own partialities. First of all then, we call attention to the establishment of an institution of great celebrity in the history of the world, and which produced mighty influences on past and present times,-the Alexandrian Museum, which was founded by the first Ptolemy :

"But among the public buildings of Alexandria which were planned in the enlarged mind of Ptolemy, the one which chiefly calls for our notice, the one indeed to which the city owes its fairest fame, is the Museum or college of philosophy. Its chief room was a great hall, which was used as a lecture-room and common dining-room; it had a covered walk or portico all around the outside, and there was an exhedra or seat on which the philosophers sometimes sat in the open air. The professors or fellows of the college were supported by a public income. Ptolemy was himself an author; his history of the wars of Alexander was highly praised by Arrian, in whose pages we now read much of it; his love of art was shown in the buildings of Alexandria; and those agreeable manners and that habit of rewarding skill and knowledge wherever he could find them, which had already brought to his army many of the bravest of Alexander's soldiers, were now equally successful in bringing to his court such painters and sculptors, such poets, historians, and mathematicians, as soon made the Museum of Alexandria one of the brightest spots in the known world. The arts and letters, which he then planted, did not perhaps bear their richest fruit till the reign of his son, but they took such good root that they continued to flourish under the last of his successors, unchoked by the vices and follis by which they were then surrounded.

"In return for the literature which Greece then gave to Egypt, she gained the knowledge of papyrus. Before that time books had been written on linen, wax, bark, or the leaves of trees: and public records on stone, brass, or lead; but the knowledge of papyrus was felt by all men of letters like the invention of printing in modern Europe; books were then known by many for the first time, and very little else was afterwards used in Greece or Rome; for when parchment was made about two centuries later, it was too costly to be used as long as papyrus was within reach."

This Ptolemy, the most sagacious of the Egyptian race of monarchs of that name, was a relative, probably a brother, to Alexander the Great. He was one of his most esteemed generals,—a somatophylax, in fact, of the conqueror, the definition of which term is well given in the following paragraph :—

"A somatophylax, in the Macedonian army, was no doubt at first, as

the word means, one of the officers who had to answer for the safety of the king's person-perhaps, in modern language, a colonel in the body-guards or household troops: but as, in unmixed monarchies, the faithful officer who was nearest the king's person, to whose watchfulness he trusted in the hour of danger, often found himself the king's adviser in matters of state, so, in the time of Alexander, the title of somatophylax was given to those generals on whose wisdom the king chiefly leant, and by whose advice he was usually guided."

Our next extract has a reference to warlike matters; but these regard principles rather than details or the description of blows and bloodshed. The author is referring to the small force of Greeks who served Ptolemy, which he took with him to face a much larger army consisting chiefly of barbarians :—

"There are in all ages some nations who are so much before others in warlike skill and courage, that no inequality of numbers can make up for it. Not that one Greek could overcome ten barbarians, but that a body of Greeks, if large enough to make an army, with a centre, wings, heavyarmed, light-armed, and cavalry, would never think it worth while to count the crowd of barbarians that might be led against them. The number wanted to make an army has changed with the art of war; in modern Europe it must be much larger, perhaps ten times what was needed before gunpowder was used; but we may quote the retreat of the ten thousand under Xenophon to prove that that number was enough with the Greeks. When Greeks met Greeks it is probable that the larger army would conquer, but ten thousand Greeks would beat any number of barbarians. This will help us to understand the low state of discipline among the native Egyptians under Ptolemy; when measuring his strength against Demetrius, he took no account of their number, he had twentytwo thousand Greeks and a crowd of Egyptians."

Mr. Sharpe points out to us that it was in the time of Ptolemy the First, that is, Ptolemy Soter, that the wonders of Upper Egypt were first seen by any Greeks who had a love of knowledge and enough of literature to examine carefully and to describe accurately what they saw. Loose and highly-coloured accounts of the wealth of Thebes had reached Greece even before the time of Homer, and again through Herodotus and other travellers; but nothing was certainly known of it till it was visited by Hecatæus of Abdera, who had been one of Alexander's officers, but who is best known as an author, part of his writings having been preserved in the pages of Diodorus Siculus. To this the information we now quote may be added.

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Many of the Theban tombs, which are sets of rooms tunnelled into the hills on the Libyan side of the Nile, had even then been opened to gratify the curiosity of the learned or the greediness of the conqueror. Forty-seven royal tombs were mentioned in the records of the priests, of which the entrances had been covered up with earth and hidden in the