Its
civilization has no infancy, and its art no archaic period. The
civilization of the Old Monarchy did not begin with infancy. It was
already mature."
We shall attempt to show that it matured in Atlantis, and that the
Egyptian people were unable to maintain it at the high standard at which
they had received it, as depicted in the pages of Plato. What king of
Assyria, or Greece, or Rome, or even of these modern nations, has ever
devoted himself to the study of medicine and the writing of medical
books for the benefit of mankind? Their mission has been to kill, not to
heal the people; yet here, at the very dawn of Mediterranean history, we
find the son of the first king of Egypt recorded "as a physician, and as
having left anatomical books."
I hold it to be incontestable that, in some region of the earth,
primitive mankind must have existed during vast spaces of time, and
under most favorable circumstances, to create, invent, and discover
those arts and things which constitute civilization. When we have it
before our eyes that for six thousand years mankind in Europe, Asia, and
Africa, even when led by great nations, and illuminated by marvellous
minds, did not advance one inch beyond the arts of Egypt, we may
conceive what lapses, what aeons, of time it must have required to bring
savage man to that condition of refinement and civilization possessed by
Egypt when it first comes within the purview of history.
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