Social life in ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie.

  • Flinders Petrie
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Social life in ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    viduality ; it illustrates what we can also see elsewhere, how each country has its own type of culture and of humanity, and preserves that con¬ tinuously however it may be buffeted in the con¬ flict of races, or swayed by the thoughts and aims of the successive ages of the world. Every land has grown its own civilisation, and has shown a surprising resistance to change. Egypt resisted, for thousands of years, obvious improvements used in other lands. Crete might import a few things by trade, but was entirely unchanged by Egyptian design or ideas. Syria was an Egyptian parade ground for centuries, yet adopted nothing from Egypt. Further afield, a few Egyptian products passed as rarities by trade, but not a shadow of Egyptian influence appears. Even in the greatest examples of influence, those of the Greek and Roman conquests of the world, there is scarcely any country that did not lose the effects of those dominations in as few centuries as it had taken to acquire them. We may see in the Russians of to-day how rapidly the civilisation imposed on them two centuries ago has vanished. Nothing beyond what is self-developed in the brain of a race is permanently gained, or will survive the changes of time. The Egyptians of the present age are not to be accepted as the race of the past. The fatal over¬ laying by an Arab majority has spoiled the finest
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