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Gen_41:1
In both dreams the king stood by the river Nile. In the first dream, he saw come up out of the water seven thriving kine, which fed upon the reed-grass beside the river. Presently came up, also, seven starving kine, which stood near to the other on the river’s brink, and shortly devoured them up. In the second dream, seven full ears of corn, rank and good, came up upon one stalk; but soon seven parched and withered ears came up after them, and devoured, or absorbed, all the rich and exuberant ears.
There are some points in this that demand attention. The most prominent fact in both dreams is the river. The king is by the river; all takes place on the brink of the river; and both the fat and the lean kine come up from the stream. Every one knows that the existence of Egypt depends upon the river. There is little, or no rain. But for the river, which periodically overflows the lands, and renders them fit for culture, and fertilizes them by its deposits, the, whole country would be a barren, sandy, and uninhabitable desert A few feet more or less in the rise of the river at the appointed time, makes all the difference between “a good Nile” and “a bad Nile,”—between abundance and starvation. Hence the deep attention and profound anxiety with which everything connected with the river is regarded.
These facts have been so often recorded in prose, that we are glad to be able to report them here in the language of a recent poetical traveller— Note: R. Monckton Milnes, in his Palm Leaves.
“Scarce with more certain order waves the sun
His matin banners in the eastern sky,
Than at the reckoned period are begun
The operations of fertility;
Through the long swamp, thy bosom swelling high
Expands between the sandy mountain chains,
The walls of Libya and of Araby,
Till in the active virtue it contains,
The desert bases sink, and rise prolific plains.
See through the naked length no blade of grass,
No animate sign, relieves the dismal strand.
Such it might seem our orb’s first substance was,
Ere touched by God with generative hand;
Yet at one step we reach the teeming land
Lying fresh-green beneath the scorching sun,
As succulent, as if at his command;
It held all rains that fell, all brooks that run,
And this, O generous Nile! is thy vast benison.”
Seeing what the Egyptians owed to this stream, that their prosperity and very existence depended on it, the poet thinks is no wonder—
“That gratitude of old to worship grew,
That as a living god then wert addrest,
And to itself the immediate agent drew
To one creative power the feelings only due.”
To this he adds in a note—“In the oldest form of Egyptian Theology, of which we have cognizance, the Nile is a god…. The Egyptian theologians also imagined divisions in heaven similar to those on earth, and could conceive no paradise without a celestial Nile.”
To the lines—
“For in thy title, and in nature’s truth,
Thou art, and makest Egypt,”
a note is also appended, in which the writer truly remarks that “the ‘Egypt’ of Homer is the river, not the country; all the other Greek names of Egypt are derived from the Nile. Its Coptic name was Phairo—hence probably Pharaoh. In somewhat the same sense is India derived from the Indus.”
It is far from unlikely that the king supposed himself in his dream visiting the Nile in discharge of some of the duties connected with the idolatrous worship rendered to that stream. There were many such. The most important was the Niloa, an annual festival for invoking the blessings of the inundation. This was one of the principal of all the Egyptian festivals. It took place about the summer solstice, when the river began to rise; and the anxiety with which they looked forward to a plentiful inundation induced them to celebrate it with more than usual honor. It is stated that the rites of this solemnity were deemed of so much importance by the Egyptians, that unless they were performed at the proper season, and in a becoming manner, by the persons appointed to the duty, they felt persuaded that the Nile would refuse to rise and inundate the land. Their full belief in the efficacy of the ceremony secured its annual performance on a grand scale. Men and women assembled from all parts of the country in the towns of their respective homes, or shires, grand festivities were proclaimed, and all the enjoyments of the table were united with the solemnity of a holy festival. Music, dances and appropriate hymns, marked the respect they felt for the deity, and a wooden statue of the tutelary deity of the river was carried by the priest through the villages, in solemn procession, that all might appear to be honored by his presence and aid, while invoking the blessings he was about to confer. Note: See Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians, ii. 293. If the dreams of Pharaoh followed the day of such a solemnity as this—as seems to us highly probable—they could not fail to have been regarded as peculiarly significant and important.
The modern inhabitants of Egypt, being for the most part Mohammedans, do not now worship the Nile after this fashion; but, after their own manner, they do still look upon it with great respect and veneration; and whatever be the place of their sojourning, the natives of the Nile still speak of its waters with the most enthusiastic regard. The poet we have lately cited, finely touches on this:
“And now, in Egypt’s late degraded day,
A venerating love attends thee still,
And the poor Fellah, Note: Peasant. from thee torn away,
Feels a strange yearning his rude bosom fill;
Like the remembered show of lake and hill,
That wrings the Switzer’s soul, though fortune smile,
Thy image haunts him, uncontroll’d by will,
And wealth or war in vain the heart beguile,
That clings to its mud-hut and palms, beside the Nile.”
In fact, a peculiarly luscious, refreshing, and nutritive quality is ascribed by the natives to the waters of the Nile; and it is almost affecting to hear the expressions of intense longing, with which a native who has been any time away from Egypt speaks of the Nile water. One would think that it was at once meat, and drink, and medicine to them.
In one of the tales of the Thousand and One Nights, some merchants of Mosul, who bad seen much of the eastern world in their time, are represented as speaking of the wonders they had seen in their various travels. “Say what you will,” said one, “the man who has not seen Egypt has not seen the greatest rarity of the world.... If you speak of the Nile, where is there a more wonderful river? What water was ever lighter or more delicious? The very slime it carries along in its overflowing fattens the fields, which produce a thousand times more than other countries that are cultivated with the greatest labor. Observe what a poet said of the Nile, when he was obliged to depart from Egypt: ‘Your Nile loads you with blessings every day. It is for you only that it comes from distant lands. Alas! in departing from you, my tears will flow as abundantly as its waters. You are to continue in the enjoyment of its sweetneses, while I am constrained to forego them against my will!’” Note: The tale of the Jewish Physician. Lane’s translation has merely the skeleton of the passage, which is preserved more fully in the old translation.