Evolutionary Philosophy Reproved
EVOLUTIONARY philosophy has received a severe blow in some of the recently discovered Egyptian manuscripts. Those containing the histories of the fifth and sixth dynasties, taken from the pyramids at Sakkara last spring by M. Maspero, and about to be published in Paris, are said to establish the fact that the oldest religion of the Egyptians was the most nearly monotheistic, and that the grosser forms of idolatry came later in the history of the country. Fragments of the texts in the possession of M. Maspero, hitherto not supposed to have had any relation to each other, are found to have been used in many later temples and tombs. Commenting on this fact, a writer in the Nation says: "This adds force to the growing conviction among Egyptologists that the earliest Egyptian civilization we know of is the highest, and that all we know of it is its decadence. The oldest pyramid is the largest and best built; the oldest temple, that beside the Sphynx at Gizeh, shows masonry since unapproached; the oldest papyrus, though as yet hardly understood, is the wisest; and the tombs and the temples of the Theban period are filled with extracts from the ancient books not yet found complete. Three or four of these books furnish five-sixth of the texts of the tombs of the kings."—The Interior.