With the simple confidence of childhood, with the patient endurance of a man, and with iron perseverance, the Egyptians attempted to redeem the existence of man from destruction and decay, and rescue his life from oblivion. The power of the Egyptians exhausted itself in this toil after continuance of life. But however eager a man might be to preserve his own individuality, he loses it in the presence of his ruler, who gathers up in his own person the whole political life of the nation, and exhausts it. Like a god, or an incarnate Destiny, the Pharaoh stands in absolute supremacy over the land; "His countenance beams over Egypt as the sun;" before him all distinctions fade away, and all bow down in equal obedience. But even though the perishable was preserved, and made as lasting as the rocks of the land--though in the ceremonial, the ritual, and the rules of life the same unalterable constancy prevailed as in the laws of nature, there was still room beside fixed prescription and the will of the divine ruler for the vigorous pursuit of an industry which was not far behind that of modern Europe, for an enjoyment of life in the Oriental manner, which was not only social, but even luxurious and sensual. The efforts of the Egyptians to preserve themselves and their actions, and to cause their names to live in the mouths of the generations after them, have not been without a result. What the Greeks and Romans knew of their history were traditions attached to the great monuments. Before our researches the Egyptian nation has literally risen from the tomb; the pyramids tell us the history of the old monarchy, and the temples at Thebes the history of the new. Without these monuments the kings of Manetho would have remained an empty and unintelligible echo. These mountains of stone at the threshold of history, these chronicles of hieroglyphics, this nation of mummies proclaim, beyond contradiction, that nations do succeed in outliving themselves by their works, but also that their life reaches only so far as their development. FOOTNOTES: [252] Diod. 1, 90. [253] Thus, _e.g._ in the Rosetta inscription the order is given that in every temple an image is to be set up to the "god Epiphanes, the avenger of Egypt," to whom the principal deity of the temple presents the arms of victory. Three times in every day the image of Epiphanes is to be worshipped, and on the great festivals the same honours are to be paid to him as to the rest of the gods. In addition, a special festival is solemnized every year to the god Epiphanes, and a special order of priests established for him. This resolution of the collected priests was ordered to be engraved on hard stone and set up in all the temples of the first, second, and third class. The full title of Epiphanes is: "Son of Ptah, Beloved of Ammon and Ra, the Child of the Sun, the Eternal." [254] Diod. 1, 53; Plut. "De Isid." c. 6, 9; and below, p. 211 ff.