Why did many
observers focus on Egypt as the origin of a rich flow of knowledge that they
believed has been present throughout human history?
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus gave a simple
answer: geography. To the Greeks, Egypt was big, its land vast, and unlike
Greece, with its peninsulas and islands, easy to navigate and move upon. As
long as travelers stayed close to the Nile Valley, their trips were safe and
pleasant. This safety and quaintness did not inspire great mythological sagas,
but they did foster a strong, and over time unbreakable, bond between the land
and its people. Herodotus correctly interpreted this to mean social stability.
اضافة اعلان
Egypt was also rich. Herodotus is famous for
crediting the Nile with sustaining life in Egypt. This sustenance was a highly
valued quality in the ancient world, when wars were often fought for access to
water or pastures. Reading him closely, however, we see that Herodotus saw
beyond the wealth that the Nile had guaranteed. He recognized that ancient
Egypt’s political system was anchored on delivering to Egyptian peasants
sufficient flows of water safely and without their having to defend its sources
or fight for its distribution.
This fostered another form of stability: economic
and therefore political. Stability was crucial for preserving valuable
knowledge.
The ancient Greek philosopher Plato’s answer to the
question “why Egypt” was different. To him, Egypt was not the gift of the Nile.
In his view, the Nile was part of Egypt. What the Nile had allowed for, and the
ensuing stability, quaintness, and richness, were all constituents of Egypt. To
Plato, the Nile was not the cause, but along with the entirety of Egypt, its effects.
The cause was the essence of the civilization of
ancient Egypt. Plato, and other philosophers, saw this essence in two forms.
The first was as a reservoir. The ancient Egyptian
civilization was the only one in the old world that the Greeks could see its
grand architecture almost intact. And, as many Greeks had studied the thinking
of their towering figure Pythagoras, they recognized that Egyptian architecture
was laden with advanced mathematics, which, following in the footsteps of
Pythagoras, they concluded must carry meanings and be expressions of a deeper
knowledge.
The fact that these meanings were the only ones that
had survived from ancient history led many to believe in a divine choice that
this specific knowledge should survive and for it to survive in that specific
land. The idea that Egypt was designed to be a vessel of this knowledge gained
ground. As a result, Egypt transcended being seen as the land upon which that
knowledge had risen, and became instead the land created for this knowledge to
rise upon and be preserved in.
Plato’s view was that true knowledge derived from higher meanings. This is why understanding the essence of ancient Egypt’s knowledge necessitates understanding ancient Egypt’s conception of the divine.
In the second form, Egypt was a school. Not only was
Egypt’s civilization the only one that had survived ancient history with its
grand architecture almost intact, but that architecture was also the projection
of its civilization.
We, in the modern world, began to develop some
understanding of ancient Egyptian writing only 200 years ago when the Frenchman
Jean-François Champollion deciphered hieroglyphics. For the Greeks it was
different. They heard directly from the priests of the temples. Herodotus, a
historian, put it bluntly when he told his audiences that Egyptian priests had
read what it said on walls and columns to him as if they were pages from a
book.
Plato, a philosopher and educator, was more subtle.
He indeed regarded Egypt as an open book. But understanding that book
necessitated much more than listening to those who could decipher the drawings
on the walls and columns and ceilings, and even much more than knowing the
language of which these drawings were a part.
Plato saw that the designs behind the grand
architecture and the mathematical prowess inherent in them were, along with the
writings and carvings, parts of a whole. In this view, the entirety of Egypt
was the book. The meanings entailed in the stories, narratives, sayings, and
myths drawn and carved on the walls of buildings, and the way of life in Egypt,
orchestrated since time immemorial by the country’s geography and the people’s
way of interacting with that geography, were all the contents of that book,
elements of that inner knowledge held and preserved in Egypt. Arriving at that
form of knowing was the gate to entering the school of Egypt and the key to
accessing that knowledge.
For Plato, the knowledge of this school — and so,
the essence of Egypt — was a light illuminating for those in the cave of
ignorance the reality outside the darkness in which they lived.
In this view, Egypt was not the origin of this
knowledge — for it is neither Egyptian (despite the place of its birth and
preservation), nor Greek (despite its interpretation and later propagation).
Instead, this knowledge was always there, before ancient Egypt, and will always
be there, inherent in human existence, pervading the collective human
consciousness, even if the majority of humans do not recognize it.
This is the reason why Plato, in Raphael’s famous
rendering of the philosopher on the walls of the Vatican in Rome, points his
finger upward in clear contradiction to Aristotle and many of the most
influential Greek philosophers who came after him.
Plato’s view was that true knowledge derived from
higher meanings. This is why understanding the essence of ancient Egypt’s
knowledge necessitates understanding ancient Egypt’s conception of the divine.
Tarek Osman is an author, essayist, and broadcaster.
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