Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 29:116 (Oct 1872)
Article: Notes On Egyptology
Author: Joseph P. Thompson

BSac 29:116 (Oct 1872) p. 771

Notes On Egyptology

Rev. Joseph P. Thompson

The war between Germany and France has left an ineffaceable mark even upon the literature of archaeology. In September 1870 the Revue Archéologique came to a sudden pause, and the Number for that month was not distributed to subscribers until the close of 1871. When finally delivered it brought with it the announcement that the two years, 1870–1871, would be merged into one, and the Numbers for October, November, and December 1871 would fill out the subscription lists for the year preceding. Happily the leading contributors to the Revue have survived the calamities of the seige of Paris, and Mons. F. Lenormant continues his Memoir upon the Ethiopian Epoch in Egyptian History, and Mons. Jacques de Rougé completes his analysis of the Geographical Inscriptions of the Temple of Edfou. Lenormant’s essay has relations to Biblical history and chronology, the definitive results of which will in due time be laid before the readers of the Bibliotheca Sacra.

Among the tablets brought by Mariette from Djebel Barkal in Ethiopia, and now deposited in the Museum at Boulak, is one containing a decree of excommunication from the king against certain evil and heretical priests who had profaned the temple and corrupted the sacrifices, the language of which reminds one of the imprecations of David and the denunciations of Jeremiah against the false prophets. Not content with forbidding these prophets and priests of evil deeds to enter the temple, and denouncing against them the severest penalties, his majesty prays that God may utterly destroy them; that he may not suffer their feet to walk the earth, nor permit them to have a posterity still to pollute the temple with their errors and their crimes.1 How like all this is to David’s outbursts of holy indignation in Psalm 69: “Let their table become a snare before them, and their welfare a trap. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living. Let their habitation be desolate; and let none dwell in their tents.” The Ethiopian decree belongs probably to the sixth or seventh century before our era, and well illustrates the style in which religion was vindicated by eastern monarchs. It is reproduced in the decree of Germany against the Jesuits.

The development of the arts in ancient Egypt and the influence of Egyptian art upon later nations are discussed by Dr. Lepsius in two essays read before the Berlin Academy of Science, and now published as inde-

BSac 29:116 (Oct 1872) p. 772

pendent monographs: “Ueber einige aegyptische Kunstformen und ihre Entwickelung”; and “Die Metalle in den aegyptischen Inschr...