After the departure of the Israelites, Egypt became a complete wilderness, and the Egyptians were so crushed and desolate that they seemed to have become almost extinct. They mourned and grieved so long that they appear to have quite forgotten even the names of their kings and the history of their nation. No wonder the Nile was termed the Lethe by classic writers. The present Egyptians, the real descendants of Mizraim, are the Copts and the Fellaheen,—poor wretched specimens of humanity—and if these represent their ancestors, it conclusively proves to every traveller, when he stands in mute admiration on the stupendous monuments of past grandeur, that they never were the founders of such works of art and magnificence; they never were the players on the harp and other musical instruments depicted on the walls of palaces, nor the refined occupants of those noble apartments, representing the highest culture and intelligence—apartments furnished with chairs, sofas, and tables, and embellished with pictures of battles and banquets, marriage-processions, funerals, and other subjects of the greatest interest. The real Egyptians were not the founders or builders of any of those monumental remains which make Egypt the land of wonders and the favourite resort of the learned. The descendants of Abraham the Hebrew were the guiding intellects that ruled Egypt for her Pharaohs, who possessed discernment enough to appoint them to rule their kingdom on account of their wisdom and activity. About the year 1900 B.C. Abraham went down to Egypt from Canaan because of the famine. And when he had seen and spoken to Pharaoh, that monarch “gave him leave to enter into conversation with the most learned among the Egyptians, from which conversation his virtue and his reputation became more conspicuous than they had been before. For whereas the Egyptians were formerly addicted to different customs, and despised one another’s sacred and accustomed rites, and were very angry one with another on that account, Abram conferred with each of them, and, confuting the reasonings they made use of every one for their own practices, demonstrated that such reasonings were vain and void of truth; whereupon he was admired by them in those conferences as a very wise man, and one of great sagacity, when he discoursed on any subject he undertook; and this not only in understanding it, but in persuading other men also to assent to him. He communicated to them arithmetic, and delivered to them the science of astronomy; for, before Abram came into Egypt, they were unacquainted with those parts of learning, for that science came from the Chaldeans into Egypt, and from thence into Greece and elsewhere.”[44]