CHAPTER IX.GUROB.1889-90.

88.Flint Tools.1: 6.

89.Plasterers’ Floats, and Brick-mould.

90.Agricultural Tools of Wood.1: 20.

91.Fire Apparatus.1: 10.

92.Set of Tools, Vases, and Mirror.1: 8

Not only do we in this town drop into the midst of the daily life and productions of this early age, but the documents of the time also remain. In various chambers papyri were found; some carefully sealed up and put by, such as the wills of Uah, and Antefmeri, but mostly thrown aside as waste paper. One of the largest is a hymn of praise to Usertesen III: some pages of a medical work, some of a veterinary papyrus, and innumerable parts of letters, accounts, and memoranda make up the collection. As only five papyri of this early date were known before now, this is a wide addition to our resources.

Another subject has quite unexpectedly come to light. Marks of various kinds are found on pieces of pottery-vessels here, some put on by the maker before the baking, but mostly scratched by the owner. These marks are many of them derived from the Egyptian workmen’s signs, corruptions of hieroglyphics. But, as we shall see in the next chapter, the discoveries at Gurob point to these having some kinship with the Western alphabets. They are therefore the venerable first step in adopting marks to represent sounds, irrespective of their primitive form and significance.

93.Clay Toys, Twelfth Dynasty.

That these marks were known not only to Egyptians, but to foreigners here as well, is probable from the discoveries of Aegean pottery in this place. Intermixed with, and even beneath, the rubbish mounds of the twelfth dynasty are pieces of pottery which appear to be the forerunners of what we know as Greek pottery in later ages. The ware, the motives of the decoration, belong to the Aegean, and not to Egypt; either Greece or Asia Minor was their home, but longcenturies before any specimens that we yet know of from those countries. The weights found here also testify to foreign influences, the greater part of them being on the Phoenician, Aeginetan, and Hittite standards.

Some later times have left their traces in this place, although the bulk of it is purely of the twelfth dynasty. A wooden stamp of Apepi was found, probably of the Hyksos king; and if so, the only small article yet known of that dynasty. A small papyrus of Amenhotep III was found, rolled up, and placed in a pottery cylinder: also a splendid ‘hunting scarab’ of that king, recording his slaying 102 lions, which is of brilliant and perfect blue-green glaze. A broken papyrus of Amenhotep IV was also left here. But the main prize was a family tomb, probably of the end of the nineteenth, or early twentieth, dynasty. A cellar cut in the rock, belonging to one of the houses of the twelfth dynasty, had been found at this later date, and used as a sepulchre. More than a dozen coffins were piled in it, each containing several bodies, all the wrappings of which were reduced to black sooty dust. I stripped for the work, and for hours was occupied in opening coffin after coffin, carefully searching the dust inside each, cataloguing everything as I found it, overhauling the pottery and stone vases heaped in the chambers, and handing everything out to the one native lad whom I took down to help me. At last I finished the place, and came out much like a coal-heaver or a sweep, so that I had to go to the nearest pond to wash all over. Though none of the interments were rich, yet there were interesting

94.Objects from Maket Tomb.1: 10.

objects, and some foreign; and above all we had the whole find completely recorded, and the positions of things noted exactly as they had been left by the interrers. A curious point is that though the pottery, and the decoration of one of the coffins, precludes our dating this earlier than the end of the nineteenth dynasty, yet all the scarabs on the bodies are of the early part of the eighteenth dynasty, down to Tahutmes III; excepting a few of the twelfth dynasty, doubtless found, as we found so many, in this town. That all the decorations should be heirlooms is a strange fact. In the richest coffin, the only one containinga name, that of the lady Maket, were two musical reeds, carefully slipped inside a larger reed for protection; the scale shown by their holes is the major scale. The pottery here was remarkable; not only are there none of the styles characteristic of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, so well known at Tel el Amarna and Gurob, but the greater part is Phoenician, and not Egyptian, in its paste and its forms; while among it is an Aegean vase, with an ivy leaf and stalk on each side, the earliest style of natural decoration after the period of geometrical. Some vases of green paste here are curious, one in the form of a horn stopped at the wide end.

Of later date still was a large wooden door, which had been probably brought from some other place in Roman times, and used here for a house. It had been made by Usarkon I; and when the bronze head and foot-bands were incised with his name, the wood beneath had received the impression, which it retained after all the bronze had been removed. On the middle of the door there had been a scene of Usarkon offering to Neit and Horus, but this had been almost all chiselled away anciently. This door is now in the Gizeh Museum.

The next period of importance at Illahun is from the twenty-second to the twenty-fifth dynasties. The hills near the pyramid had been much used for rock tombs and mastabas of the pyramid period; but these had been plundered and destroyed in early times, and the excavations were re-used during the later Bubastite and Ethiopian dynasties. These interments are generally rude, the coffins seldom having anyintelligible inscription; but mostly sham copies of the usual formula, put on by a decorator who could not read. The only fine tomb I found here was that of a priestess, Amenardus; her sarcophagus has carved inscriptions along the edges and down the corner-posts, and the coffin and that of her father are finely painted: these are now at Gizeh. Many of the mummies have bead net-works and patterns upon them, with figures of winged scarabs, the four genii, thebabird, and other emblems, all executed in coloured beads. As the threading is completely rotted, the beads all fall apart with the slightest shake, and such work is therefore never preserved when excavations are left to the native overseers. When we entered a tomb, I opened the coffins in the gentlest way, drawing or cutting out the pegs which fastened them; and then a glance inside showed if any bead-work existed. If there were bead patterns, the next step was to fetch a petroleum stove down into the chamber, melt a batch of beeswax, and then when it was on the point of chilling, ladle it out, and dash it over the bead-work. If the wax is too hot it sinks in, and soaks all the mummy wrappings into a solid mass; if poured on, it runs off the body in a narrow stream. When all the beads were covered, and the wax set, I then lifted up the sheet of wax with the bead-work sticking to it, flattened it out on a board, and it was ready for fixing in a tray permanently, with the lower side turned outward.

The amulets found in these tombs are all of the figures of deities, specially Bast, and are of potterycovered with light olivey-green glazes, quite different from those of the nineteenth or twentieth dynasties. A revival of glazed work took place under the twenty-second dynasty, of very delicate character, and fine glazing. But the amulet system went into a very different stage in the twenty-sixth dynasty; then in place of two or three, generally varying in size, we find dozens all uniform in style, either of pottery or of polished stone, arranged in rows on the mummy according to a system. Such was the plan of the amulets at Hawara and at Nebesheh.

Yet a later period had left its remains at Illahun. In Coptic times, about the sixth and seventh centuryA.D., the ground all about the temple, and on a hill near the canal, was used for a cemetery. Though I could not spend time on clearing such remains myself, the people of the place readily grubbed up their forefathers, and disposed of their garments to any one who would buy them. I thus obtained a large quantity of embroideries and woven stuffs, the best of which are now at South Kensington.

Illahun has then proved of great value to our knowledge of Egyptian civilization; it has shown us a completely arranged town of the middle kingdom; it has surrounded us with all the products and manufactures of that age; it reveals the simultaneous use of finely wrought flint tools with those of copper, when bronze was yet unknown; it provides us with the writings of the period, including a will two thousand years older than any known before; the pyramid proves to be of a design new to us, and contains one of the finest examples of mechanical skill; while oflater ages we learn the date of Phoenician pottery, and of the earliest figured Greek vases, and can trace the history of the use of amulets. Of the blanks in the history of civilization, one more has been filled up.

95.Flint Hippopotamus, Twelfth Dynasty.

96.Bronze Pans, Nineteenth Dynasty.

Atthe mouth of the Fayum, on the opposite side to Illahun, stood in later times another town, founded by Tahutmes III, and ruined under Merenptah; thus its history falls within about two-and-a-half centuries. While I was working at Hawara some beads and ornaments were brought to me from this place; I soon went to see it, and found that it was an early site unmixed with any later remains. In the beginning of 1889 I worked out part of the town, and the rest of it was cleared by Mr. Hughes-Hughes in the end of that year, while I worked at Illahun. The general arrangement of it was a large walled enclosure, within which were two other enclosures side by side, one containing the temple, the other a small town. The temple had been founded by Tahutmes III, and had lasted through Khuenaten’s changes only to be destroyed soon after, probably by Ramessu II, when he carried away thetemples of Illahun. That the town was ruined early in the reign of Merenptah is indicated by the sudden end of the previous abundance of scarabs and rings with the kings’ names at this point; of later times only one or two objects of Ramessu III have been found.

97.Bronze Interlocking Hinges.

98.Bronze Tools.1: 6.

Of purely Egyptian objects many were discovered, but the main interest of the place is in the remains of foreigners from the Mediterranean who lived here. Of Egyptian workwe may mention two funeral tablets (one now at Gizeh); a lion’s head, probably the terminal to the side of a staircase; two splendid bronze pans (Group 96), still bright and fresh and elastic, most skilfully wrought (now at Gizeh); a beautiful wooden statuette of a lady named Res, clad in the ribbed drapery of the Ramesside age (also at Gizeh); a statuette of a priestess, and a figure of a girl swimming holding a duck, carved in wood (at Gizeh); a wooden box for papyri, inscribed (at Gizeh); and some necklaces found in the town. Some bronze hinges, hatchets, chisels, and knives were also found, one by one, in different rooms.

99.Coffin Head of Anen the Tursha Official.1: 16.

The foreign inhabitants, although conforming to Egyptian ways in some respects, have left many

100.Wooden Statuettes of a Priestess, and the Lady Res.

101.Hittite Harper.

102.Phoenician Venus Mirror.

traces here. Foremost is the coffin of a high official who was of the Tursha race, the Turseni, probably, of the northern Aegean. The ushabti figure of a Hittite, Sadi-amia, was found in an adjoining grave. A wooden figure of a Hittite harper, wearing the great pigtail of his race, was picked up in the town. A bronze mirror, with a Phoenician Venus holding a dove as the handle of it, was found in a tomb. While constantly Aegean vases, such as those of the first period of Mykenae, are found in both the town and in tombs. The Greek custom of a funereal pyre remained here in a modified form; although the body appears to have been buried in Egyptian fashion (as I found light hair on some of the mummies here), yet the personal articles were all burnt. Apparently on the death of the owner a hole was dug in the floor of the room; into this were placed the chair, the clothing, the mirror, combs, necklaces and toilet articles, theglass bottles, the blue-glazed bowls and vases, the alabaster dishes, the knife and other implements, and the best pottery of the deceased.

103.Aegean Vases.1: 2.

104.Blue and Yellow Glass Bottle.

All these were burnt; the fire was smothered with potsherds laid over it; earth was then filled in, and the brick floor of the room was relaid. No such custom is ever known among Egyptians, and this shows again the foreign occupation of the place. We know from inscriptions how the Mediterranean races, Libyans,Akhaians, Turseni, and others had pushed into Egypt from the west, and that they had settled in the Nile valley to even somewhat south of the Fayum. This place was evidently then one of their settlements, and its sudden fall under Merenptah just agrees to his expulsion of all these foreigners in the fifth year of his reign. We have here then before our eyes the remains of that great invasion which has always hitherto been a literary shadow without material substance.

105.Blue-glazed Vases. 1: 6.

As before mentioned, the marks on pottery so often found in the town of the twelfth dynasty at Illahun, are also found at Gurob. The list of signs used is somewhat different, but the greater part may be identified; and it is impossible to deny that they are the same as a whole, though naturally modified by alteration, addition, and omission, in the course of a thousand years. Having now, therefore, this body of signs in use in 1200B.C.in a town occupied by people of the Aegean and Asia Minor, Turseni, Akhaians, Hittites, and others, it will require a very certain proof of thesupposed Arabian source of the Phoenician alphabet, before we can venture to deny that we have here the origin of the Mediterranean alphabets.

106.Blue-glazed Bowls.

Besides these remains, Gurob proved to be a treasury of a later age. In the Ptolemaic period some townhad existed in this neighbourhood, the inhabitants of which were buried here in the edge of the desert, apart from the earlier town. Their mummies are destitute of amulets or ornaments, and have all gone to black dust, their cartonnage coverings are without names, and of the most conventional and uninteresting kind, and their coffins are of prodigious rudeness, worthy of a savage of the Pacific; while their tombs are rude holes scooped in the sandy soil. In no respect would these burials seem worth notice, had not the cartonnage makers used up old papyri as the cheapest material for their trade. But what was worthless in the days of Philadelphos is a treasure now; the soldiers’ wills appointing as executors the sovereigns, Philadelphos and Arsinoe, the private letters, the leaves of Plato and unknown Greek plays, the accounts,—all these can be unfolded from what looks like hopeless rubbish. The cartonnage in the earlier examples was glued together, and this has not only injured the writing, but almost always served as a bait to worms, who have destroyed it; but later on the makers found that simple wetting and moulding would suffice, and we can now often peel apart sheet after sheet of writing as fresh as in the days when Cleopatra was yet unborn.

Some remains of even later times are found here; and I obtained from native diggers many Coptic embroideries, and a beautiful set of Roman glass vessels.

The essential value of Gurob is in giving us a thoroughly fixed date for the earlier stages of the civilization of Greece; in showing the races of theMediterranean at home in Egypt; and in explaining how far they had imbibed Egyptian culture during their first sojourn on the Nile; and what they may be expected to have borrowed from thence at this early period.

107.Ivory Duck Box. 1: 2.

108.Pyramid of Medum.

Afterhaving sampled the civilization of each of the great periods of Egyptian history, back to the twelfth dynasty, as described in preceding chapters, I longed more than ever to discover the beginning of things. For this Medum offered the best chance for reaching back. The presumption was that it belonged to the beginning of the fourth dynasty; and here we might perhaps find something still undeveloped, and be able to gauge our way in the unknown. Could we there see the incipient stages, or at least their traces? Could we learn how conventional forms and ideas had arisen? Could we find Egypt not yet full grown, still in its childhood?

I called together a selected lot of my old workersfrom Illahun, and we went over and made a camp at the cemetery of Medum; there we lived over four months, and I unravelled what could be traced on the questions that await us. Broadly, it may be said, that we learned more of our ignorance than our knowledge: the beginning seems as remote as ever, for nearly all the conventions are already perfected there; but many new questions have been opened, and we at least see more of the road, though the goal is still out of view.

The first question to settle was that of the age of the pyramid and cemetery. All the indications pointed to as early an age as we knew, but not before Seneferu, the first king of the fourth dynasty, and predecessor of Khufu. Yet the theory that the pyramids were built in chronological order, from north to south, had led some to suppose that this was of the twelfth dynasty.

The most promising means of ascertaining the age, was to search for any remains of the pyramid temple; on the chance of inscriptions, such as I had found of Khafra at Gizeh, and of Usertesen II at Illahun. But where was the temple? No sign of such a building could be seen anywhere to the east of the pyramid, and some holes I sunk in the space within the pyramid enclosure showed nothing. I hesitated for some days, while other work was going on, looking at the great bank of rubbish against the side of the pyramid, rubbish accumulated by the destruction of its upper part. At last I determined on the large excavation needful, for I felt that we must solve the matter if possible. So, marking out a space which would have held two or three good-sized London houses, and knowing thatwe must go as deep as a tall house before we could get any result, I began a work of several weeks, with as many men as could be efficiently put into the area. At first it was easy enough, but soon we found large blocks, which we could scarcely move; and these slipped away and rolled down all the stages of our work, upsetting all our regular cutting. But they all had to be got out of the way, by lifting, rolling or breaking up. At last we had a hole that could be seen for miles off across the valley, and so deep that the sides looked perilously high on either hand when one stood in the bottom. The pavement was reached, and we found at one end of our great excavation a wall, and one side of a large stele just showing.

We needed then to lengthen the pit, and the falls from our fresh work soon buried all that we had found. A fresh trouble came with a strong gale, which blew away the sand, and let the loose stones come rattling down from the rubbish which formed the sides of our hole. One great fall came near burying us in the bottom of the work: and it was three weeks before I again saw the building. At last we uncovered the court-yard, and found two steles; and moreover instead of a mere court there appeared a doorway on the east side, and crawling in I found a chamber and passage still roofed over and quite perfect. We had, in fact, found an absolutely complete, though small, temple; not a stone was missing, nor a piece knocked off; the steles and the altar between them stood just as when they were set up; and the oldest dated building in the land has stood unimpaired amidst all the building and the destruction that has gone on in Egypt throughout history.

The question about the age was settled indirectly. The original construction had no ornament or inscriptions. But numerous mentions of Seneferu, both during the ages near his own, and of the eighteenth dynasty, showed plainly what the Egyptians knew about the builder.

109.Court of Temple.

The pyramid of Medum differs from nearly all the others. It is really the primitive tomb-building or mastaba, such as often is found with successive coats added around it in the cemetery here; but this was enlarged by seven coats of masonry, widening and heightening it, until a final coat over all covered the slope from top to bottom at one angle. It is thus the final stage of complication of the mastaba tomb, and the first type of the pyramid. Later kings saved the intermediate stages, and built pyramids all at onedesign, without any additions. This architectural feature is another proof of the early age of this pyramid. And it is remarkably akin to the pyramid of Khufu which follows it. Both have the same angle; and therefore the ratio of height to circuit, being that of a radius to its circle, holds good. The approximate ratio adopted was 7 to 44; the dimensions of the pyramid of Seneferu are 7 and 44 times a length of 25 cubits; those of Khufu are 7 and 44 times a length of 40 cubits. Hence the design of the size of the great pyramid of Gizeh was made by Khufu on the lines of the pyramid of Medum, which was built by his predecessor. Fragments of Seneferu’s wooden coffin were found inside the pyramid; but the place had long since been plundered.

110.Section of Pyramid.1: 2000.

The tombs at Medum proved of great interest.

111.Columns of Third Dynasty.

One of the largest was built on a very irregular foundation; and below the ground level I found the walls by which the builders had guided their work. Outside of each corner a wall was built up to the ground level; the sloping profile of the side was drawn on it; and then the wall was founded and built in line between the profiles. But the most attractive matter was the study of the inscriptions on the tombs, which show us the earliest forms of the hieroglyphs yet known. To preserve and examine their record I made a full-sized copy of the whole, and then published that reduced by photo-lithography. The evidence is the most valuable that we can yet obtain, on the earliest traceable civilization of the Egyptians. We have no remains certainly dated older than these; and the objects used as hieroglyphs here must have been already long familiar for them to have been used forsigns. They therefore lead us back to the third dynasty, or even earlier times; and they show us various objects which are as yet quite unknown to us till much later ages.

We can thus estimate the architecture of the pre-pyramid period. There were columns with spreading capitals and abaci, set up in rows to support the roof. There were papyrus columns, with a curious bell-top on the flower, the source of the heavier conventional form of later times; these were probably carved in wood, and originated from a wooden tent pole. There were octagonal fluted columns tapering to the top, and painted with a black dado, a white ornamental band, and red above. There was the cornice of uraeus serpents, which is so familiar in later times. And the granaries were already built with sloping sides, as seen on later tombs. In short, all the essentials of an advanced architecture seem to have been quite familiar to the Egyptians; and we must cease to argue from the simplicity of the religious buildings which we know—such as the granite temples of Gizeh, or the limestone temple of Medum—for deciding on the architecture of the fourth and third dynasties. We seem to be as far from a real beginning as ever.

The animals drawn here show that the domestication of various species was no uncommon thing; apes, monkeys, many kinds of horned cattle, ibexes, &c., and various birds, all appear familiarly in this age. And of the wild birds the eagle, owl, and wag-tail, are admirably figured, far better than in later times. The Libyan race was already a civilized allyof Egypt, using bows and arrows much as we see them subsequently. The tools employed were of the established types; the adze and the chisel of bronze; the sickle of flint teeth set in wood; the axe of stone; the head of the bow drill—all these are shown us. And the exactitude of the standards of measure was a matter of careful concern; the cubit here does not differ from the standard of later times more than the thickness of a bit of stout card. The draught-board was exactly the same as that which is found down to Greek times.

Some matters, however, point to a stage which passed away soon after. The sign for a seal is not a scarab, or a ring, but a cylinder of jasper, set in gold ends, and turning on a pin attached to a necklace of stone beads. Cylinders are often met with in early times, but died out of use almost entirely by the eighteenth dynasty. This points to a connection with Babylonia in early times. The numerals are all derived from various lengths of rope; pointing to an original reckoning on knotted ropes, as in many other countries. And some suggestion of the original home of Egyptian culture near the sea, is made by the signs for water being all black or dark blue-green. This is a colour that no one living on the muddy Nile would ever associate with water; rather should we suppose it to have originated from the clear waters of the Red Sea.

Another glimpse of the prehistoric age in Egypt is afforded by the burials at Medum. The later people always buried at full length, and with some provision for the body, such as food, head-rests, &c. Suchburials are found among the nobles at Medum. But most of the people there buried in a contracted form, nose and knees, or at least with the thigh bent square with the body and heels drawn up. And moreover, no food-vessels or other objects are put in. Yet there was no mere indifference shown; the bodies are in deep well tombs, often placed in large wooden boxes, which must have been valuable in Egypt, and always lying with the head to the north, facing the east. Here is clearly a total difference in beliefs, and probably also in race. We know that two races, the aquiline-nosed and the snouty, can be distinguished in early times; and it seems that the aborigines used the contracted burial, and the dynastic race the extended burial, which—with its customs—soon became the national mode.

Is it likely that the bulk of the people should have resisted this change for some 800 years, and then have suddenly adopted it in two or three generations? Does not this rapid adoption of the upper-class custom, between the beginning of the fourth dynasty and the immediately succeeding times, suggest that the dynastic race did not enter Egypt till shortly before we find their monuments? At least, the notion that the stages preceding the known monuments should be sought outside of Egypt, and that this is the explanation of the dearth of objects before the fourth dynasty, is strengthened by the change of custom and belief which we then find.

The mutilations and diseases that come to light are remarkable. One man had lost his left leg below the knee; another had his hand cut off and put in thetomb; others seem to have had bones excised, and placed separately with the body. In one case acute and chronic inflammation and rheumatism of the back had united most of the vertebrae into a solid mass down the inner side. In another case there had been a rickety curvature of the spine. To find so many peculiarities in only about fifteen skeletons which I collected, is strange. These are all in the Royal College of Surgeons now, for study.

Medum has, then, led us some way further back than we had reached before in the history of Egyptian civilization; but it has shown how vastly our information must be increased before the problems are solved.

Itmight seem as if the researches described in these chapters were, though interesting in themselves, yet not of particular account in the wider view of human history and civilization. It is to focus together this new information, to show the results which flow from it, and to give a connected idea of our fresh light on the past, that this chapter is placed here. The application of scientific principles to archaeology, the opening of fresh methods of enquiry, and the rigorous notice of the period of everything found, have been as fruitful in the East as it has proved to be in the West.

In Egypt, the oldest condition of the present country that is known—the beginning of history as distinct from geology—is an age of great rainfall and denudation; succeeding to the geological age, in which the existing masses of surface gravels were laid down. This rain promoted vegetation, as in a previous age of which remains are seen in the various silicified forests, which occur where circumstances favoured their preservation. The amount of water falling on the country swelled the volume ofthe Nile to far beyond its greatest modern extent. Between the cliffs on either hand it ran certainly hundreds of feet higher than at present, probably in part as an estuary. The cliffs all along the Nile are worn by water running at a great height; and thedébrisbrought down from the side valleys is piled up in hills at the mouths of the valleys, in a way that could only occur where they discharged into deep water. That the rain sufficed to fill up such a vast volume, we can believe, when we see the gorges cut back in the sides of the Nile cliffs by the lateral drainage. These often run back for some miles, ploughed out by receding waterfalls—small Niagaras—which have each left at the valley head their precipitous fall of polished rock, with a great basin below it hollowed by the force of the torrent. Such was the source of the power which has scoured out the whole Nile valley for a depth of over two hundred feet. High up on the hills between the Nile and the Fayum, the very crest of the hill is entirely of gravels and boulders, which can only have been deposited when there was a dead level at that height across the Nile valley. All the depths of the Nile below those hills have been scoured out by the rainfall and the torrent of the stream, some miles in width, and probably one to two hundred feet in depth. And the age of this is not merely geological and beyond human interests. Man was there at this time, as his rude flint implement, river-worn and rolled, high upon the hills, now shows us. (SeeChap. VI.Fig. 58.)

We come down an age later. The Nile had fallen to near its present level, but still filled its whole bedto perhaps fifty feet deep. Vegetation still grew on the hills; for we find traces of man at this time, and he must have lived on something. Where he lived we can guess by the flints which he fashioned, and which the heavy rains swept away down the valleys, and bedded in the shoals ofdébrisin the reduced and shallow river. These flints are now to be picked out from the sides of later cuttings which the rain has made through its old river deposits, now high and dry in air; and it is at the mouth of the valley of the tombs of the kings at Thebes that these flints have been collected.

After that, we know nothing more of man until we find that the country was in its present state,—without any rainfall for practical purposes, the hills all barren desert, the Nile only filling the bottom of its old bed for a few months of the year, and meandering the rest of the time in a channel cut in its own mud, and man cultivating the old bed of the river when it is not overflowed. The civilization that we find before us in the earliest known history appears elaborate and perfect. After that, only slow changes of fashion and taste influenced it, and but few discoveries of importance were made during thousands of years which ensued. That this civilization was imported by an incoming race seems most probable; and the dynastic Egyptians found already in the country an aboriginal population, whose features, whose beliefs, and whose customs, differed much from their own. The two races had not yet amalgamated when we first come into their presence at Medum; but soon after that all signs of difference cease.

This earliest civilization was completely master of the arts of combined labour, of masonry, of sculpture, of metal-working, of turning, of carpentry, of pottery, of weaving, of dyeing, and other elements of a highly organized social life; and in some respects their work is quite the equal of any that has been done by mankind in later ages. Though simple, it is of extreme ability; and it is only in resources, and not in skill, that it has ever been surpassed. Certain products were then scarcely if at all known, and it is in the application of these that the civilization of later times shows a difference. No metal was used except copper, and hence flint was largely needed. And glass was probably unknown, although glazes were in use. But in most other respects the changes of later times are rather due to economy of production, and an increased demand for cheap imitations.

The work of the great period of the twelfth dynasty differs mainly in the freer use of writing, the greater quantity and poorer quality of the sculptures or paintings, and the introduction of glass and of glassy frits for colouring.

The next great period, the eighteenth to the nineteenth dynasty, is marked by the use of bronze, and the disappearance of flint tools. The art of glazing was much developed, and attained a brilliancy and variety of colouring, and a boldness of design, which was never again reached, unless perhaps by the mediaeval Orientals. But artistically the finest work of this age scarcely reaches the perfection of the sculpture and drawing which had already passed away.

The next serious change was the introduction ofiron, of which there is no satisfactory evidence until about 800B.C.Iron may have been known perhaps as a curiosity, just as one example of bronze occurs two thousand years before it came into actual use; but it had no effect on the arts. And shortly after came the Egyptian renascence, when the cycle of invention was run through, and the Egyptians were reduced to copying slavishly, and without the original spirit, the works of their ancestors. The Western influence became predominant, and importations instead of development govern the succeeding changes.

But it is rather in Europe than in Egypt that our interest centres. As no European literature remains to us older than the sixth or seventh centuryB.C.(except the oral poems), it has been too readily assumed that no civilization worthy of the name could have dwelt here, and that we are indebted to the East for all our skill. So far from this being the case it now seems that we must almost reverse the view. We have in the Egyptian records the accounts of a great European confederacy, which smote Egypt again and again,—Greece, Asia Minor, Italy, and Libya, all leagued together. We now know, from the objects found in Egypt, that these peoples were dwelling there as settlers so far back as 1400B.C., if not indeed before 2000B.C.From the chronology of the arts now ascertained, we can date the great civilization of Mykenae to about 1600 to 1000B.C.(as I have stated in ‘Notes on Mykenae,’Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1891); and we begin to see a great past rising before us, dumb, but full of meaning. Some of the metals were known in Europe before they appear inuse in Egypt: the use of bronze is quite as old in the north as on the south of the Mediterranean; and the tin of Egypt probably came from the mines of Hungary and Saxony, which most likely supplied Europe at that time. Iron appears in use in Europe as soon as in Egypt. The best forms of tools are known in Italy two or three centuries before Egypt possessed them.

What then may be concluded as to Europe, from our present point of view? That Europe had an indigenous civilization, as independent of Egypt and Babylonia as was the indigenous Aryan civilization of India. That this civilization has acquired arts independently, just as much as India has, and that Europe has given to the East as much as it has borrowed from there. As early as 1600B.C., it appears that a considerable civilization existed in Greece, which flourished in the succeeding centuries, especially in alliance with Libya. Probably it was already beginning in the period of the thirteenth dynasty, before 2000B.C.By about 1400B.C.a great proficiency in the arts is seen; elaborate metal-work and inlaying was made, influenced by Egyptian design, but neither made in Egypt, nor by Egyptians. Glazed pottery painted with designs was successfully made, and the arts of glazing and firing were mastered. And by 1100B.C.this civilization was already decadent. Moreover this was not only in a corner of Europe; it had contact with the North as well as with Italy and Africa, and is at one with the culture of the bronze age, of which it is the crown and flower. Across Europe, from the Greek peninsula to the Baltic, this civilization stretches;and though in Greece it ripened to an early fall, and was destroyed by the barbaric Dorian invasion, it retained its hardy power in the North and in Italy. When we come down to about 800B.C., we find that the arts stood high in Northern Italy. The requirements of the carpenters and joiners of that age had led them to invent the most perfect forms of chisels; and our mortising chisel and flat chisel with a tang have not received any improvement in the details of their form for 2700 years. The bronze age is the source of the objects we now use. Thence these types were carried into Egypt a couple of centuries later by the Greeks. When we descend further we see this independent culture of Europe prominent. The Saxons and Northmen did not borrow their weapons, their laws, or their thoughts from Greece or Italy. The Celts swamped the south of Europe at their pleasure; and, against the fullest development of Greek military science, they were yet able to penetrate far south and plunder Delphi. They were powerful enough to raid Italy right across the Etrurian territory. When we look further east, we see the Dacians with weapons and ornaments and dresses which belong to their own civilization, and were not borrowed from Greece. In short, Greece and Italy did not civilize Europe; they only headed the civilization for a brief period. And the Italian influence, which was much the more powerful, only lasted for a couple of centuries. From Caesar’s campaigns to the end of the Antonines is the whole time of Italian supremacy. After that there never was a Roman emperor, excepting a few ephemeral reigns. The centre of power and authority in Europe was inthe Balkan peninsula. The emperors were mainly natives of that region; and the northern Holy Roman Empire of Germany has its roots practically in the third century. Civilization in Europe is, then, an independent growth, borrowing from, and lending to, the East. In the van of this group of races have come in turn Mykenaean Greece, then Etruria, Hellas, Rome, Dacia and Pannonia, the Lombards, and the Northmen; and each in turn have impressed their character on those peoples who were less advanced. Our common belief in the overshadowing importance of Rome in all our history is probably largely influenced by our literary history being derived from Roman sources, and this Italian view being fed for ecclesiastical purposes in the Middle Ages. In the broader view of the history of civilization in Europe, the spread of law and Latin in Southern Europe is perhaps Rome’s main result. But we must not forget that the Italian supremacy was quite as brief, if more potent, than that of other races who have led the way before and since.

We can now see somewhat of the wide results which have come to a great extent from the study of Egyptian civilization recorded in these pages, and the comparison of it with other countries. That vastly more remains to be worked out is painfully seen. We are only yet on the threshold of understanding the sources of the knowledge, the arts, and the culture, which we have inherited from a hundred generations.

Probablymost people have somewhat the ideas of a worthy lady, who asked me how to begin to excavate a ruined town—should she begin to dig at the top or at the side? A cake or a raised pie was apparently in her mind, and the only question was where to best reach the inside of it. Now there are ruins and ruins: they may differ greatly in original nature, in the way they have been destroyed, and in the history of their degradation. The only rule that may be called general, is that digging must be systematic; chance trenches or holes seldom produce anything in themselves, they are but feelers. The main acquirement always needed is plenty of imagination. Imagination is the fire of discovery; the best of servants, though the worst of masters. A habit of reasoning out the most likely cause, and all other possible causes, for the condition of things as seen, is essential. If there is a slope of the ground, a ridge, a hollow—Why is it there? What can have produced it? and Which cause is the most probable for it? The mere form of the ground will often show plainly what is beneath it. Is there a smooth uniform mound of large size? Then a mass of house ruins of a town may be expected. Isthere a steep edge to it around? Then there was a wall, either of the town or of some one large building which forms the whole ruin. Is there a ring of mounds with a central depression? Then there was a temple or large permanent building, with house ruins around it. Is there a gentle slope up one side, and a sharp fall on the other? Then it is a rubbish mound. Is the mass high above the general soil? Then several successive layers of habitation may be expected. So, even from afar, some ideas may be gleaned before setting foot on a ruined site.

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