were a peaceful and comparatively moral people. All writers admit their
industry, their simplicity of life, their respect for law, their loyalty
to priests and rulers. Hence there was permanence to their institutions,
for rapine, violence, and revolution were rare. They were not warlike,
although often engaged in war by the command of ambitious kings.
Generally the policy of their government was conservative and pacific.
Military ambition and thirst for foreign conquest were not the peculiar
sins of Egyptian kings; they sought rather to develop national
industries and resources. The occupation of the people was in
agriculture and the useful arts, which last they carried to considerable
perfection, especially in the working of metals, textile fabrics, and
ornamental jewelry. Their grand monuments were not triumphal arches, but
temples and mausoleums. Even the pyramids may have been built to
preserve the bodies of kings until the soul should be acquitted or
condemned, and therefore more religious in their uses than as mere
emblems of pride and power; and when monuments were erected to
perpetuate the fame of princes, their supreme design was to receive the
engraven memorials of the virtuous deeds of kings as fathers of
the people.

The priests, whose business it was to perform religious rites and
ceremonies to the various gods of the Egyptians, were extremely
numerous. They held the highest social rank, and were exempt from taxes.
They were clothed in white linen, which was kept scrupulously clean.
They washed their whole bodies twice a day; they shaved the head, and
wore no beard. They practised circumcision, which rite was of extreme
antiquity, existing in Egypt two thousand four hundred years before
Christ, and at least four hundred years before Abraham, and has been
found among primitive peoples all over the world. They did not make a
show of sanctity, nor were they ascetic like the Brahmans. They were