A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest Quotes

“Not all the gods who appear in these tales and fancies became more than mythological figures. Many of them continued merely in this role, without temple or form of worship; they had but a folklore or finally a theological existence. Others became the great gods of Egypt.”
― James Henry Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest

“The world was already growing old, and everywhere men were fondly dwelling on her faraway youth.”
― James Henry Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest

“Approaching it, the one from the south and the other from the north, two great river valleys traverse this desert; in Asia, the Tigro-Euphrates valley; in Africa that of the Nile. It is in these two valleys that the career of man may be traced from the rise of European civilization back to a remoter age than anywhere else on earth; and it is from these two cradles of the human race that the influences which emanated from their highly developed but differing cultures, can now be more and more clearly traced as we discern them converging upon the early civilization of Asia Minor and southern Europe.”
― James Henry Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest

“With the consolidation under Menes it was already an institution of great age, and over four centuries of development which then followed, had at the dawn of the Old Kingdom already brought to the office a prestige and an exalted power, demanding the deepest reverence of the subject whether high or low. Indeed the king was now officially a god, and one of the most frequent titles was the “Good God”; such was the respect due him that there was reluctance to refer to him by name.”
― James Henry Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest

“Keb and Nut were the father and mother of the four divinities, Osiris and Isis, Set and Nephthys; together they formed with their primeval father the sun-god, a circle of nine deities, the “ennead” of which each temple later possessed a local form. This correlation of the primitive divinities as father, mother and son, strongly influenced the theology of later times until each temple possessed an artificially created triad, of purely secondary origin, upon which an “ennead” was then built up.”
― James Henry Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest

“There is no force in the life of ancient man, the influence of which so pervades all his activities as does that of the religious faculty. Its fancies explain for him the world about him, its fears are his hourly master, its hopes his constant Mentor, its feasts are his calendar, and its outward usages are to a large extent the education and the motive toward the gradual evolution of art, literature and science.”
― James Henry Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest