Egypt and Crete

What kind of people lived in these cities and villages of early times? We can find something about them from the great buildings and structures that they made. Also from the writing on stone tablets which they left. Then we have a few very old books which tell us a great deal of those times.

In Egypt we still have the great pyramids and the Sphinx and ruins of enormous temples at Luxor and other places. You have not seen these although we were not far from them when we passed through the Suez Canal. But you have seen pictures of them and probably you have got picture postcards of them. The Sphinx is a lion with a woman's head. It is an enormous thing. Nobody knows why it was made and what it represents. The woman's head has got a strange faint smile and people wond~r what this smile is about. To say that a person is like the Sphinx means that you do not understand him.

In Egypt also, in those days, they made fine canals and lakes to take the water for irrigation and agriculture. There was especially the famous Lake Meridu. This shows how clever and advanced the ancient Egyptians were. They must have had fine engineers to build these canals and lakes and the great pyramids.

The little island of Crete or Candia is in the Mediterranean Sea. We passed near it when going from Port Said to Venice. On this little island, there was a fine civilization in the olden days. At Knossos in. Crete, there was an enormous palace and we have the remains of this palace still. In this palace there were bathrooms and water pipes, which some ignorant people think are modern inventions. There were also beautiful pottery and sculpture and paintings, and fine metal and ivory work. In this little island of Crete, the people lived peacefully and made great progress.

You must have read of King Midas who got into great difficulties because every thing he touched became gold! He could not eat because his food became gold, and what is the use of gold as food? He was punished for his greed in this way. This is, of course, a fanciful story. It is meant to show us that gold is not such a fine oruseful thing as people imagine.

There is another story of Crete which you may have heard. It is about the Minotaur, which is supposed to have been a monster, half man and half bull. It is said that young men and young girls were given to this monster as his food! I have told you before that the idea of religion first came through the fear of the unknown. And because of this fear, not understanding nature and much that happens around us, people used to do many foolish things. It is quite possible that boys and girls were sacrificed in this way not to a. real monster, because I do not think such a monster ever existed, but to an imaginary monster!

All over the world, in those ancient days, there was what is called human sacrifice, that is, men and women were sacrificed to imaginary beings whom people worshipped. In Egypt, girls used to be thrown into the river Nile be- cause it was thought that this would please Father Nile. Fortunately, human sacrifices do not take placenow, except perhaps very seldom in some far corner of the world. But even now some people kill animals and sacrifice them to please God! It is a curious way of worshipping anybody.

Source: http://indiragandhi.in/en/philosophy/letters/3