and of the race to which he belonged, has been vindicated by examinations of the skulls of Egyptian mummies.

If the pure ancient Egyptian, as found in mummies and represented in paintings upon the tombs, be compared with the negro, we shall find that they are absolutely unlike in every important particular. The negro is prognathous, but the Egyptian is orthognathous; the bony structure of the negro is heavier and stronger than that of the Egyptian; the hair of the negro is crisp and woolly, while that of the Egyptian is smooth and fine.

It was

It must be pointed out clearly that the Egyptians took trouble to preserve the bodies of the dead because they believed that after a series of terrible combats in the underworld, the soul, triumphant and pure, would once more return to the clay in which it had formerly lived. necessary, then, to preserve the body that it might be ready for the return of the soul. It was also necessary to build large and beautiful tombs, in order that the triumphant soul, having revivified its ancient house of clay, might have a fit and proper abode in which to dwell. The pyramid tombs built by the kings of the earlier dynasties, and the vast many-chambered sepulchres hewn in the sides of the Theban hills during the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties, were not, in my opinion, built to gratify the pride of their owners. They are the outcome of the belief that the soul would revivify the body, and they are the result of a firm assurance in the mind of the ancient Egyptians of the truth of the doctrine of immortality, which is the foundation of the Egyptian religion, and which was as deeply rooted in them as the hills are in the earth.

HELIOPOLIS.*

About five miles to the north-east of Cairo stands the little village of Maṭariyyeh †, built upon part of the site of Heliopolis, where may be seen the sycamore tree, usually called the "Virgin's Tree," under which tradition says that the Virgin Mary sat and rested during her flight to Egypt; it was planted some time towards the end of the XVIIth century, and was given to the Empress Eugénie by Isma'îl on the occasion of the opening of the Suez Canal. Beyond the "Virgin's Tree" is the fine Aswân granite obelisk which marks the site of the ancient town of Heliopolis, called "On" in Gen. xli. 45, "House of the Sun" in Jeremiah

* Called in Egyptian

North," to distinguish it from ப்

of the South," i.e., Hermonthis.

Annu meḥt, "Annu of the

, Juynboll, op. cit., t. iii., p. 110.

✪, Ảnnu Qemāu, “Annu

At this place the balsam

trees, about which so many traditions are extant, were said to grow. The balsam tree was about a cubit high, and had two barks; the outer red and fine, and the inner green and thick. When the latter was macerated in the mouth, it left an oily taste and an aromatic odour. Incisions were made in the barks, and the liquid which flowed from them was carefully collected and treated; the amount of balsam oil obtained formed a tenth part of all the liquid collected. The last balsam tree cultivated in Egypt died in 1615, but two were seen alive in 1612; it is said that they would grow nowhere out of Egypt. They were watered with the water from the well at Mațariyyeh in which the Virgin Mary washed the clothes of our Lord when she was in Egypt. The oil was much sought after by the Christians of Abyssinia and other places, who thought it absolutely necessary that one drop of this oil should be poured into the water in which they were baptized. See Wansleben, L'Histoire de l'Église d'Alexandrie, pp. 88-93; Abd-al-Laṭîf (ed. de Sacy), p. 88.

xliii. 13, and “Eye or Fountain of the Sun" by the Arabs. Heliopolis was about twelve miles from the fortress of Babylon, and stood on the eastern side of the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, near the right bank of the great canal which passed through the Bitter Lakes and connected the Nile with the sea. Its ruins cover an area three miles square. The greatest and oldest Egyptian College or University for the education of the priesthood and the laity stood here, and it was here that Ptolemy II. Philadelphus, sent for Egyptian manuscripts when he wished to augment the library which his father had founded.

O

The obelisk is sixty-six feet high, and was set up by Usertsen I. U about B.C. 2433 ; a companion obelisk remained standing in its place until the seventh century of our era, and both were covered with caps of smu (probably copper) metal. During the XXth dynasty the temple of Heliopolis was one of the largest and wealthiest in all Egypt, and its staff was numbered by thousands. When Cambyses visited Egypt the glory of Heliopolis was well on the wane, and after the removal of the priesthood and sages of the temple to Alexandria by Ptolemy II. its downfall was well assured. When Strabo visited it (B.C. 24), the greater part of it was in ruins; but we know from Arab writers that many of the statues remained in situ at the end of the twelfth century. Heliopolis had a large population of Jews, and it will be remembered that Joseph married the daughter of Pa-ṭā-pa-Rā (Potiphar) a priest of On (Ånnu), or Heliopolis. It lay either in or very near the Goshen of the Bible. The Mnevis bull, sacred to Rā, was worshipped at Heliopolis, and it was here that the phoenix or palm-bird brought its ashes after having raised itself to life at the end of each period of five hundred years. Alexander the Great halted here on his way from Pelusium to Memphis. Macrobius says that the Heliopolis of Syria, or Baalbek, was founded by a body of priests who left the ancient city of Heliopolis of Egypt.

THE PYRAMIDS OF GÎZEH.

On the western bank of the Nile, from Abu Roâsh on the north to Mêdûm on the south, is a slightly elevated tract of land, about twenty-five miles long, on the edge of the Libyan desert, on which stand the pyramids of Abu Roâsh, Gizeh, Zâwyet el-'Aryân, Abuşîr, Sakkârah, and Dahshûr. Other places in Egypt where pyramids are found are El-lâhûn* in the Fayyûm, and Kullah near Esneh. The pyramids built by the Ethiopians at Meroë and Gebel Barkal are of a very late date (B.C. 600-100), and are mere copies, in respect of form only, of the pyramids in Egypt. It is well to state at once that the pyramids were tombs and nothing else. There is no evidence whatever to show that they were built for purposes of astronomical observations, and the theory that the Great Pyramid was built to serve as a standard of measurement is ingenious but worthless. The significant fact, so ably pointed out by Mariette, that pyramids are only found in cemeteries, is an answer to all such theories. Tomb-pyramids were built by kings and others until the XIIth dynasty. The ancient writers who have described and treated of the pyramids are given by Pliny (Nat. Hist., xxxvi. 12, 17). If we may believe some of the writers on them during the Middle Ages, their outsides must have been covered with inscriptions; these were probably of a religious nature.† modern times they have been examined by Shaw (1721),

In

www Lehen, "mouth of the canal," Coptic

wwwwww

their surfaces exhibit all kinds of inscriptions written in the characters of ancient nations which no longer exist. No one knows what this writing is or what it signifies." Mas'ûdi (ed. Barbier de Meynard), t. ii., p. 404.

Pococke (1743), Niebuhr (1761), Davison (1763), Bruce (1768), Denon and Jomard (1799), Hamilton (1801), Caviglia (1817), Belzoni (1817), Wilkinson (1831), Howard Vyse and Perring (1837-38), Lepsius (1842-45), and Petrie (1881).

It appears that before the actual building of a pyramid was begun a suitable rocky site was chosen and cleared, a mass of rock if possible being left in the middle of the area to form the core of the building. The chambers and the galleries leading to them were next planned and excavated. Around the core a truncated pyramid building was made, the angles of which were filled up with blocks of stone. Layer after layer of stone was then built around the work, which grew larger and larger until it was finished. Dr. Lepsius thought that when a king ascended the throne, he built for himself a small but complete tomb-pyramid, and that a fresh coating of stone was built around it every year that he reigned; and that when he died the sides of the pyramids were like long flights of steps, which his successor filled up with right-angled triangular blocks of stone. The door of the pyramid was walled up after the body of its builder had been laid in it, and thus remained a finished tomb. The explanation of Dr. Lepsius may not be correct, but at least it answers satisfactorily more objections than do the views of other theorists on this matter. It has been pointed out that near the core of the pyramid the work is more carefully executed than near the exterior, that is to say, as the time for the king's death approached the work was more hurriedly performed.

During the investigations made by Lepsius in and about the pyramid area, he found the remains of about seventyfive pyramids, and noticed that they were always built in groups.

The pyramids of Gizeh were opened by the Persians during the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ; it is