922 38284 698823 COPYRIGHT 1906 BY All Rights Reserved Published February 1906 Composed and Printed By PREFACE In no particular have modern historical studies made greater progress than in the reproduction and publication of documentary sources from which our knowledge of the most varied peoples and periods is drawn. In American history whole libraries of such sources have appeared or are promised. These are chiefly in English, although the other languages of Europe are of course often largely represented. The employment of such sources from the early epochs of the world's history involves either a knowledge of ancient languages on the part of the user, or a complete rendition of the documents into English. No attempt has ever been made to collect and present all the sources of Egyptian history in a modern language. A most laudable beginning in this direction, and one that has done great service, was the Records of the Past; but that series never attempted to be complete, and no amount of editing could make consistent with themselves the uncorrelated translations of the large number of contributors to that series. The author is only too well aware of the difficulties involved in such a project. In mere bulk alone it has been a considerable enterprise, in view of the preliminary tasks made necessary by the state of the published texts. These I have indicated briefly in the chapter on the sources herein (Vol. I, §§ 27-32). Under these circumstances, the author's first obligation has been to go behind the publications to the original documents themselves, wherever necessary. The method pursued has also been indicated herein (Vol. I, §§ 33-37). The task has consumed years, and demanded protracted sojourn among the great col lections of Europe. In this work a related enterprise has been of the greatest assistance. A mission to the museums of Europe to collect and copy their Egyptian monuments for a commission of the four Royal Academies of Germany (Berlin, Leipzig, Göttingen, and Munich), in order to make these documents available for an exhaustive Egyptian Dictionary endowed by the German Emperor, enabled the author to copy from the originals practically all the historical monuments of Egypt in Europe. The other sources of material, and particularly the papers of the Dictionary just mentioned, have enabled the author to base the translations in these volumes directly, or practically so, upon the originals themselves in almost all cases. Unfortunately, the possession of these materials is but the beginning of the difficulties which beset such an enterprise. In the preface to the first edition of his English Dictionary, Noah Webster complains of the difficulties caused by the new meanings taken on by English words as they are modified by the new environment which envelops them in America. If such changes are involved in the voyage across the Atlantic, and the lapse of a few generations, how much wider and deeper is the gulf due to the total difference between the semitropical northern Nile valley of millenniums ago, and the English-speaking world of this twentieth century! The psychology of early man is something with which we have as yet scarcely begun to operate. His whole world and his whole manner of thinking are sharply differentiated from our own. His organization, socially, industrially, commercially, politically; his tools, his house, his conveniences, constantly involve institutions, adjustments, and appliances totally unknown to this modern age and this western world. In the translation of the New Testament for the tribes of Alaska, I am |