QUOTES: Story of Civilization, Will Durant, Vol.1, 1935, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 4

                                https://archive.org/stream/TheStoryOfCivilizationcomplete/Durant_Will_-_The_story_of_civilization_1#page/n101/mode/2up/search/one+life

"[...] When he [Pepi II, after a reign of 94 years, the longest in history] died anarchy and dissolution ensued, the Pharaohs lost control, and feudal barons ruled the nomes independently: this alternation between centralized and decentralized power is one of the cyclical rhythms of history, as if men tired alternately of immoderate liberty and excessive order. [...]"

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 4, 1935 (italics and formatting added)

""Hearken to that which I say to thee,

That thou mayest be king of the earth, . . .

That thou mayest increase good:

Harden thyself against all subordinates—

The people give heed to him who terrorizes them;

Approach them not alone.

Fill not thy heart with a brother,

Know not a friend; . . .

When thou sleepest, guard for thyself thine own heart;

For a man hath no friend in the day of evil.” (Amenemhet I, first ruler of the Twelfth Dynsasty, to his son)

   This stem ruler, who seems to us so human across four thousand years, established a system of administration that held for half a millennium. [...]"

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 4, 1935 (italics and formatting added)

"[...] Amenemhet III, a great administrator, builder of canals and irrigation, put an end (perhaps too effectively) to the power of the barons, and replaced them with appointees of the king. Thirteen years after his death Egypt was plunged into disorder by a dispute among rival claimants to the throne, and the Middle Kingdom ended in two centuries of turmoil and disruption. Then the Hyksos, nomads from Asia, invaded disunited Egypt, set fire to the cities, razed the temples, squandered the accumulated wealth, destroyed much of the accumulated art, and for two hundred years subjected the Nile valley to the rule of the “Shepherd Kings.” Ancient civilizations were little isles in a sea of barbarism, prosperous settlements surrounded by hungry, envious and warlike hunters and herders; at any moment the wall of defense might be broken down. So the Kassites raided Babylonia, the Gauls attacked Greece and Rome, the Huns overran Italy, the Mongols came down upon Peking.

   Soon, however, the conquerors in their turn grew fat and prosperous, and lost control; the Egyptians rose in a war of liberation, expelled the Hyksos, and established that Eighteenth Dynasty which was to lift Egypt to greater wealth, power and glory than ever before."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 4, 1935 (italics and formatting added)

QUOTES: Story of Civilization, Will Durant, Vol.1, 1935, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 3

                               https://archive.org/stream/TheStoryOfCivilizationcomplete/Durant_Will_-_The_story_of_civilization_1#page/n101/mode/2up/search/one+life

“[...] The population along the river was divided into “nomes,”* in each of which the inhabitants were essentially of one stock, acknowledged the same totem, obeyed the same chief, and worshiped the same gods by the same rites.[...]"

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 3, 1935 

"[...] As all developing structures tend toward an increasing interdependence of the parts, so in this case the growth of trade and the rising costliness of war forced the nomes to organize themselves into two king- doms— one in the south, one in the north; a division probably reflecting the conflict between African natives and Asiatic immigrants. This dangerous accentuation of geographic and ethnic differences was resolved for a time when Menes, a half-legendary figure, brought the “Two Lands” under his united power, promulgated a body of laws given him by the god Thoth, established the first historic dynasty, built a new capital at Memphis, “taught the people” (in the words of an ancient Greek historian) “to use tables and couches, and...introduced luxury and an extravagant manner of life.”"

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 3, 1935 (italics and formatting added)

"[...] Herodotus has passed on to us the traditions of the Egyp tian priests concerning this builder of the first of Gizeh’s pyramids:

   Now they tell me that to the reign of Rhampsinitus there was a perfect distribution of justice and that all Egypt was in a high state of prosperity; 

   but that after him Cheops, coming to reign over them, plunged into every kind of wickedness, for that, having shut up all the temples, ... he ordered all the Egyptians to work for himself. Some, accordingly, were appointed to draw stones from the quarries in the Arabian mountains down to the Nile, others he ordered to receive the stones when transported in vessels across the river. . . . And they worked to the number of a hundred thousand men at a time, each party during three months. The time during which the people were thus harassed by toil lasted ten years on the road which they constructed, and along which they drew the stones; a work, in my opinion, not much less than the Pyramid."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 3, 1935 (italics and formatting added)

"Why did these men build pyramids? Their purpose was not architectural but religious; the pyramids were tombs, lineally descended from the most primitive of burial mounds. Apparently the Pharaoh believed, like any commoner among his people, that every living body was inhabited by a double, or 'ka,' which need not die with the breath; and that the ka would survive all the more completely if the flesh were preserved against hunger, violence and decay. The pyramid, by its height,! its form and its position, sought stability as a means to deathlessness; and except for its square corners it took the natural form that any homogeneous group of solids would take if allowed to fall unimpeded to the earth.[...]"

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 3, 1935 (italics and formatting added)

"Since the ka was conceived as the minute image of the body, it had to be fed, clothed and served after the death of the frame. Lavatories were provided in some royal tombs for the convenience of the departed soul; and a funerary text expresses some anxiety lest the ka, for want of food, should feed upon its own excreta .“ One suspects that Egyptian burial customs, if traced to their source, would lead to the primitive interment of a warrior’s weapons with his corpse, or to some institution like the Hindu suttee — the burial of a man’s wives and slaves with him that they may attend to his needs. This having proved irksome to the wives and slaves, painters and sculptors were engaged to draw pictures, carve bas- reliefs, and make statuettes resembling these aides; by a magic formula, usually inscribed upon them, the carved or painted objects would be quite as effective as the real ones. [...]"

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 3, 1935 (italics and formatting added)

"Finally the ka was assured long life not only by burying the cadaver in a sarcophagus of the hardest stone, but by treating it to the most pains- taking mummification. So well was this done that to this day bits of hair and flesh cling to the royal skeletons.[...]"

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 3, 1935 (italics and formatting added)

"[...] Civilization, like life, destroys what it has perfected. Already, it may be, the growth of comforts and luxuries, the progress of manners and morals, had made men lovers of peace and haters of war. Suddenly a new figure appeared, usurped Menkaure’s throne, and put an end to the pyramid-builders’ dynasty." 

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 3, 1935 (italics and formatting added)

QUOTES: Story of Civilization, Will Durant, Vol.1, 1935, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 2, Segment 2

                              https://archive.org/stream/TheStoryOfCivilizationcomplete/Durant_Will_-_The_story_of_civilization_1#page/n101/mode/2up/search/one+life

“Since the radicals of one age are the reactionaries of the next, it was not to be expected that the men who created Egyptology should be the first to accept as authentic the remains of Egypt’s Old Stone Age; after forty 'les savants ne sont pas curieux' ('scientists are not curious,' quoting Anatole France). [...]"

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 2, Segment 2, 1935 (italics and formatting added)

QUOTES: Story of Civilization, Will Durant, Vol.1, 1935, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 2, Segment 1

                             https://archive.org/stream/TheStoryOfCivilizationcomplete/Durant_Will_-_The_story_of_civilization_1#page/n101/mode/2up/search/one+life

“The recovery of Egypt is one of the most brilliant chapters in archeology. The Middle Ages knew of Egypt as a Roman colony and a Christian settlement; the Renaissance presumed that civilization had begun with Greece; even the Enlightenment, though it concerned itself intelligently with China and India, knew nothing of Egypt beyond the Pyramids. Egyptology was a by-product of Napoleonic imperialism. When the great Cor sican led a French expedition to Egypt in 1798 he took with him a number of draughtsmen and engineers to explore and map the terrain, and made place also for certain scholars absurdly interested in Egypt for the sake of a better understanding of history. It was this corps of men who first re- vealed the temples of Luxor and Kamak to the modern world; and the elaborate Description de L'Egypte (1809-13) which they prepared for the French Academy was the first milestone in the scientific study of this for- gotten civilization."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 2, Segment 1, 1935 (italics and formatting added)

"[Speaking of Champollion deciphering the Rosetta stone] It was one of the peaks in the history of history."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 2, Segment 1, 1935 

QUOTES: Story of Civilization, Will Durant, Vol.1, 1935, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 1, Segment 2

                            https://archive.org/stream/TheStoryOfCivilizationcomplete/Durant_Will_-_The_story_of_civilization_1#page/n101/mode/2up/search/one+life

“[...] until the masterpiece of the great Queen rises [that is, the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut] still and white in the trembling heat. Here the artist decided to transform nature and her hills into a beauty greater than her own: into the very face of the granite cliff he built these columns, as stately as those that Ictinus made for Pericles; it is impossible, seeing these, to doubt that Greece took her architecture, perhaps through Crete, from this initiative race [that is, from the Eqyptian race]. And on the walls vast bas-reliefs, alive with motion and thought, tell the story of the first great woman in history, and not the least of queens."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 1, Segment 2, 1935 (italics and formatting added)

"But the best remains adorn the eastern side of the river. Here at Luxor the lordly Amenhotep III, with the spoils of Thutmose Ill’s victories, began to build his most pretentious edifice; death came upon him as he built; then, after the work had been neglected for a century, Rameses II finished it in regal style. At once the quality of Egyptian architecture floods the spirit: here are scope and power, not beauty merely, but a masculine sublimity. A wide court, now waste with sand, paved of old with marble; on three sides majestic colonnades matched by Karnak alone; on every hand carved stone in bas-relief, and royal statues proud even in desolation. Imagine eight long stems of the papyrus plant— nurse of letters and here the form of art; at the base of the fresh unopened flowers bind the stems with five firm bands that will give beauty strength; then picture the whole stately stalk in stone: this is the papyriform column of Luxor. Fancy a court of such columns, upholding massive entablatures and shade- giving porticoes; see the whole as the ravages of thirty centuries have left it; then estimate the men who, in what we once thought the childhood of civilization, could conceive and execute such monuments."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 1, Segment 2, 1935 (italics and formatting added)

QUOTES: Story of Civilization, Will Durant, Vol.1, 1935, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 1, Segment 1

                           https://archive.org/stream/TheStoryOfCivilizationcomplete/Durant_Will_-_The_story_of_civilization_1#page/n101/mode/2up/search/one+life

“[...] Only historians make divisions; time does not."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 1, Segment 1, 1935 

"Nevertheless, what wealth these old Egyptians must have had, what power and skill, even in the infancy of history, to bring these vast stones six hundred miles, to raise some of them, weighing many tons, to a height of half a thousand feet, and to pay, or even to feed, the hundred thousand slaves who toiled for twenty years on these Pyramids! Herodotus has preserved for us an inscription that he found on one pyramid, recording the quantity of radishes, garlic and onions consumed by the workmen who built it; these things, too, had to have their immortality. (Diodorus Siculus, who must always be read sceptically, writes: “An inscription on the larger pyramid . . . sets forth that on vegetables and purgatives for the workmen there were paid out over 1600 talents”— i.e M $i6,ooo,ooo.) Despite these familiar friends [that is, the Pyramids] we go away disappointed; there is something barbarically primitive— or barbarically modern— in this brute hunger for size. It is the memory and imagination of the beholder that, swollen with history, make these monuments great; in themselves they are a little ridiculous— vainglorious tombs in which the dead sought eternal life. Perhaps pictures have too much ennobled them: photography can catch everything but dirt, and enhances man-made objects with noble vistas of land and sky. The sunset at Gizeh is greater than the Pyramids."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.8, Part 1, Segment 1, 1935 (italics added)

QUOTES: Story of Civilization, Will Durant, Vol.1, 1935, Book 1, Ch.7, Part 3

                          https://archive.org/stream/TheStoryOfCivilizationcomplete/Durant_Will_-_The_story_of_civilization_1#page/n101/mode/2up/search/one+life

“[...] The oldest written records known to us are Sumerian; this, which may be a whim of circumstance, a sport of mortality, does not prove that the first civilization was Sumerian. Statuettes and other remains akin to those of Sumeria have been found at Ashur and Samarra, in what became Assyria; we do not know whether this early culture came from Sumeria or passed to it along the Tigris. The code of Hammurabi resembles that of Ur-engur and Dungi, but we cannot be sure that it was evolved from it rather than from some predecessor ancestral to them both. It is only probable, not certain, that the civilizations of Babylonia and Assyria were derived from or fertilized by that of Sumer and Akkad . The gods and myths of Babylon and Nineveh are in many cases modifications or developments of Sumerian theology; and the languages of these later cultures bear the same relationship to Sumeria that French and Italian bear to Latin."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.7, Part 3, 1935 (italics and formatting added)

"Egypt could well afford to concede the priority of Sumeria. For whatever the Nile may have borrowed from the Tigris and the Euphrates, it soon flowered into a civilization specifically and uniquely its own; one of the richest and greatest, one of the most powerful and yet one of the most graceful, cultures in history. By its side Sumeria was but a crude beginning; and not even Greece or Rome would surpass it."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.7, Part 3, 1935 (italics and formatting added)