Читать книгу The dawn of astronomy. A study of the temple-worship and mythology of the ancient Egyptians онлайн

27 страница из 97

ssss1

It will be abundantly clear from the statements made in the foregoing chapter that, as I have said, the main source of information touching things Egyptian consists no longer in writings like the Vedas, but in the inscriptions on the monuments, and the monuments themselves. It is true that, in addition to the monuments, we have the Book of the Dead, and certain records found in tombs; but, in the main, the source of information which has been most largely drawn upon consists in the monuments themselves—the zodiacs being included in that term.

It has been impossible, up to the present time, to fix with great accuracy the exact date of the earliest monuments. This should not surprise us. We must all feel that it is not a question of knowing so little—it is a question of knowing anything at all. When one considers that at the beginning of this century not a sign on any of these monuments was understood, and that now the wonderful genius of a small number of students has enabled Egyptologists to read the inscriptions with almost as much ease and certainty as we read our morning papers: this is what is surprising, and not the fact that we as yet know so little, and in many cases lack certainty.