fourth or fifth century after Christ, and, unless like the rolls of Herculaneum they can plead special reasons, are justly liable to suspicion if they lay claim to higher antiquity. There is probably not a Hebrew manuscript of the Old Testament which is a thousand years old. The oldest existing Sanskrit manuscripts were written only a few centuries ago. Some of our Egyptian papyri are not less than four thousand years old. You must bear in mind the difference of the conditions under which the oldest manuscripts of each country have been preserved. The climate and the insects of India are absolutely destructive of all organic substances. The Hebrew Biblical manuscripts of olden times have been intentionally destroyed, either out of reverence for a roll which was no longer in a condition suitable for use, or because the text of it, as being at variance with the Masoretic recension, was considered to be erroneous. The causes which have led to the destruction of Greek and Latin manuscripts, especially of the classical literature, are so obvious, that we can only wonder and be thankful that so much has been preserved. But the Egyptian manuscripts which we now possess very few, alas! in comparison with the myriads which have perished-have been preserved by being kept from the air and damp in a perfectly dry climate, hermetically sealed in earthen or wooden vessels or under mummy coverings, sometimes at the depth of ninety feet within the living rock, and still further protected by a thick covering of the pure, dry sands of the desert. The literature which has thus been preserved and recovered is naturally for the most part of a religious character. It is perhaps necessary that I should apologize for using the term literature in speaking of compositions written in the hieroglyphic character. It is, I know, hard to make strangers to the writing understand that signs representing birds or beasts may be and are as purely alphabetic letters as our A, B, C. Such, however, is the fact, and every simple sound in the language, whether vowel or consonant, had its corresponding letter.1 The language had no medial sounds, so that if a g or a d had to be transcribed from a foreign language, a k or a t had to be substituted. But it was from the alphabetic signs of the Egyptians that the Phoenicians derived their own, and from the Phoenician alphabet all those of Europe and Asia were derived: Greek, Etruscan, Roman, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Sanskrit and Zend. The Egyptian writing, it is true, was not confined to alphabetic characters. Some signs are syllabic, but these might at will be exchanged for 1 This is the case with the most ancient hieroglyphic writing known to us. If some scholars, like Dr. Hincks, have maintained that all the alphabetic signs were formerly syllabic, this is pure speculation, and may be true or false without interfering with the fact stated in the text. the equivalent combination of alphabetic ones, just as the Greek abbreviations which are so puzzling to some persons, either in the manuscripts or in the Aldine and other old editions of the classics, give place at the present day to the simple letters. And just as some persons saw considerable advantage in the use of Greek abbreviations, every Egyptologist will tell you that, each syllabic character being necessarily confined to a limited number of words, he is able to detect at a glance over a page the presence of a word he is looking for. But syllabic signs were not used, any more than Greek abbreviations, in consequence of a want of signs to express purely alphabetic values. In this matter Egyptian orthography differs essentially from Chinese or Assyrian. It may, however, be objected that Egyptian writing admits a certain number of ideographic signs commonly called determinatives, which are not pronounced; a sign, for instance, representing two legs is placed after words signifying motion. But if we compare our own writing either with Sanskrit or with ancient Greek or Latin manuscripts, we shall find plenty of ideographic signs in it. What else are notes of exclamation or of interrogation? What are inverted commas and vacant spaces between the words? Capital letters are to this day determinatives of proper names. in English and French, and of substantives in German orthography. Our ideography is undoubtedly much simpler than the Egyptian, but it is quite as real. An English or French sentence written without it would be simply unintelligible to the ordinary English or French reader. I cannot therefore see what there is in the system of Egyptian writing which is to prevent the Maxims of Ptahhotep, written in the age of the Pyramids, or the tales in the Berlin papyri, written more than two thousand years before Christ, from being considered literature as truly as they would be if they were now written in English, French or Italian. The Book of the Dead. The majority of the manuscripts which have been recovered from the tombs contain chapters of the collection generally known under the title of the Book of the Dead. These chapters, though apparently handed down at first by tradition, were committed to writing at a very early period. The vignettes which are found on so many copies, and which represent the burial procession, suggested to Champollion the name of the "Funeral Ritual." Lepsius, however, pointed out the fact that the chapters are supposed to be recited by the deceased person himself in the nether world. M. de Rougé, though not objecting to the title "Book of the Dead," proposed by Lepsius as more appropriate, nevertheless defended the use of the term "Ritual" on the ground that many chapters contain prescriptions for parts of the funeral, and certain prayers are formally mentioned as intended to be recited during the burial. Although the prayers are as a rule put into the mouth of the departed, they were certainly recited for him by those present. On the first vignette of the book, a priest is seen reading the formulary out of a book which he holds in his hands. And rubrics at the end of several chapters attach important advantages in the next world to the accomplishment of what has been prescribed in the foregoing text. It is not only in papyrus rolls that the Book of the Dead has been preserved. Many of the chapters are inscribed upon coffins, mummies, sepulchral wrappings, statues and the walls of tombs. Tombs of the time of the twenty-sixth dynasty, like those of Bekenrenef or Petamonemapt, may be said to contain entire recensions of the book. The chambers of the latter of these tombs occupy together nearly an acre and a quarter of ground excavated in the rock, and every square inch of their high walls is covered with beautifully sculptured inscriptions from the Book of the Dead and other religious texts. The Egyptian title of the work is, "Book of the peri em hru," three very simple words, perfectly unambiguous when taken singly, but by no means easy of explanation when taken together without a context. Peri signifies "coming forth," hru is day, and em is the preposition signifying "from," but susceptible, like the same preposition in many other languages, of |