represent a density of peopling much in excess of any

other country.

Certain other consequences follow upon the conditions thus created by the Nile. Egypt always has been, and always will be, a country mainly dependent upon agriculture; and the character of its agriculture is such that, from the very earliest period, it must have demanded a certain amount of organization and mutual dependence among its people. For the inundation, though so beneficial, requires careful regulation if it is to produce its maximum effect, or even if it is to be prevented from causing widespread destruction; while as the river sinks again below the flood-level, an elaborate system of irrigation has to be resorted to in order to convey the fertilizing water to those fields which lie at a higher level. Thus, at a very early stage of his history, the Egyptian became familiar with all the large and complicated engineering problems connected with a national system of irrigation— a' manager of the inundation' appears as a government official as early as the second reign of the First Dynasty— and it is probably to this source that we may trace that mechanical ingenuity, and that tireless persistence in labour and skill in organizing it, which enabled the Pharaohs to rear those great works which are still the wonder of all beholders.

Further, the Nile has in all ages served as the natural and convenient means of communication between the widely separated portions of the straggling country through which it runs. During the greater part of the year the prevalent north-west wind is strong enough to carry a boat against the current of the river under sail alone; and if the sail be lowered, the current is sufficiently rapid to make the return voyage downstream easy. Thus transit was simplified-a matter of inestimable importance in such a land, and especially for the building operations of

the Pharaohs, in which huge masses of stone had often to be transported for great distances.

The Egyptian, moreover, enjoyed a climate which is probably the most equable in the world. The mean winter temperature of the Delta is 56° F., that of the valley 66° F. The summer temperature of the valley sometimes rises as high as 122°, but even then the heat is far from being so oppressive as might have been expected, for the air is so dry and pure that no great amount of discomfort is caused even by excessive heat. The nights are always cool, and altogether the climate is one of unsurpassed healthiness. It is to this dryness of the atmosphere that we owe the preservation of those innumerable relics of a great civilization which have made the ancient Egyptian so interesting a figure to the present age. Objects such as delicate papyri, which would have utterly perished in moister climates, have there been preserved for many centuries in the dry soil, while the mummified bodies of the kings and great men of the land have survived in such condition that it is easily possible to realize the actual living appearance of most of the notable figures of Egyptian history.

The land itself presents no very remarkable or attractive features. Its great defect is, and seemingly always has been at least, in historic times-the lack of timber. The scenery of the contracted valley is singularly monotonous. The level strip of green plain stretches on unbroken for mile upon mile, sharply bordered by bare and featureless hills, which roll off into the desert wastes to east and west. Sometimes the border between the desert and the fertile soil is drawn so clean that the wayfarer may stand with one foot in rich vegetation and the other in barren sand. Such an environment, so completely isolated, so monotonous, and so closely hemmed in by bare and lifeless wastes, produced its

The

inevitable influence upon the spirit of the race. stamp of their strange country is plainly to be seen upon the mental characteristics of the ancient Egyptians. Their great river was so much the dominant feature of their world that their terms for north and south were 'downstream and upstream.' The sharp distinction between the black soil of the Nile Valley and the red sand of the desert gave them the terms by which they distinguished between their own land and other countries. Egypt was 'the black land'; all other countries were 'the red lands.' The monotony of their dwelling-place and the sternness of its limits, the ever-present sense of 'the great and terrible wilderness' hemming in their life, inspired the nation with a peculiarly sober cast of thought. Egyptian literature displays little of the bright and cheerful fancy which has characterized the thought of the peoples of more varied lands. Especially in religion the influence of a stern environment betrays itself; and the picturesque and beautiful imaginings which clustered round the gods of the Greek Pantheon are strongly contrasted with the somewhat dull and prosaic legends which the Egyptian attached to his innumerable divinities.

The uninviting boundaries of the land served, however, a more useful purpose than that of straitening the mental horizon of its inhabitants. They were rich in the materials necessary for those enormous structures which Pharaoh after Pharaoh delighted to rear to the glory of the gods, or of his own name. Limestone of the finest and most durable quality, such as that which originally formed the casing of the Great Pyramid, was obtained in abundance from the quarries at Turah and elsewhere. Porphyries and breccias were also found plentifully in various localities, while the rocks of Aswan, at the first cataract, yielded an inexhaustible supply of beautiful granite. In the use of these stones, and particu

larly in the working of the harder among them, such as granite and diorite, the Egyptian early attained to a skill and mastery which has seldom been approached, and never surpassed. His ability in handling huge masses of stone, evidenced by the erection of single blocks weighing, as in the case of the obelisks, several hundred or, as in that of the colossal granite statue of Ramses II. at Thebes, even a thousand tons, excites the wonder of all engineers. Many of the statues of the kings, and particularly those of very early date, such as the diorite statue of Khafra (Fourth Dynasty), are hewn out of their iron-hard material with a cleanness and sureness, and a knowledge both of the advantages and the limitations of the stone employed, which are alike extraordinary. The lengthy hieroglyphic inscriptions which record the names and deeds of the Pharaohs are cut to a considerable depth with a sharpness and precision of outline which almost equals gem-cutting; and from the very earliest periods there have come down to us bowls and other vessels of the hardest stone, where the intractable material has been wrought to such a degree of fineness and thinness that the vessels are translucent.

Thus the climate, the characteristic rocks of his surrounding hills, and his own patient genius and skill, have conspired to enable the Egyptian to leave us records of his great past which exceed in abundance and importance those of any other race. Even in the Delta, where the conditions were somewhat less favourable than in the valley, where the storms of war burst more frequently, and where the relics of the past have been gradually entombed by the constant accumulation of fresh layers of Nile mud, much remains; and the gigantic temples, with their colonnades, colossi, and obelisks, and the magnificent rock-tombs of Upper Egypt, present to us the evidences of past grandeur and artistic power in an

So it has become

abundance elsewhere unexampled. possible to reconstruct, not from the somewhat fanciful accounts of the Greek tourists who visited the land in the time of its decadence, but from the actual contemporary records, that Story of the Pharaohs which it is the object of the following pages to unfold in brief outline.

The earliest inhabitants of Egypt belonged to a period so far removed from historic times that almost every memorial of them has absolutely perished. In their day the land must have been in a condition differing very much from its present state. The ravines which lead down from the hills to the Nile Valley bear evidence of a time when rain must have been frequent and heavy. The land, therefore, had then, in all probability, a much greater extent of fertile soil than in historic times. The area of the plateau behind the cliffs which enclose the valley was habitable and inhabited, instead of being, as it now is, a barren waste. But the men who occupied it in that remote period have no history for us. Their only record is to be traced in the numbers of chipped flint implements and weapons which they have left behind them, and of which specimens are occasionally found to-day strewing the surface of the desert. They were succeeded, in times which are still prehistoric, by a race of which we have more ample and varied relics. The forefathers of the ancient Egyptians had affinities, on the one hand, with the Libyan tribes of North Africa, who were white-skinned and possibly of European origin, and, on the other, with such African tribes as the Somalis and Gallas. This already mixed race received, in prehistoric times, the addition of a further important element by the incursion of a people of Semitic origin. The traces of this invasion are to be seen in the language, which presents unmistakable Semitic affinities. But the already existing civilization of the land proved more persistent