Works

on religion, history, medicine, with travels, fiction, and poetry, belong to the 19th and 20th dynasties (1400 to 1200 B.c.). The oldest known book in the world is that of Prince Ptah-hotep, belonging to the reign of A as in the 5th dynasty. A text in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford belongs to the 2nd dynasty, and Dr Isaac Taylor (Alphabet, i) says of the script that “it was even then an extremely ancient graphic system, with long ages of previous development stretching out, behind it, into a distant past of almost inconceivable remotene , and far older than the pyramids”—or some 7000 to 8000 years ago (pp. 57 to 64). When Plato visited the schools and libraries of Helio polis they were perhaps at least 2000 years old. Egyptian civilisation, about 3000 B.c. or earlier, is considered to have been equal to that of many European countries during the 18th century of our era. Go back as far as we may there is not, says Renouf, a “vestige of a state of barbarism, or even of patriarchal life, anterior to the monumental period, The earliest monuments present the same fully developed civilisation, and the same religion, as the later. The systems of notation, the decimals, the calendar, the political divisions into nomes—each with its principal deity—most of the gods still known to us, certainly all the great ones; the nature and offices of the priesthood, all are as old as the pyramids. Much of the above belonged to the Ist and 2nd dynasties yet descended to Christian times.” [Deductions of recent years from the supposed discovery of the tomb of Menes—which is not generally accepted as proven—and of certain Libyan remains, which—however rude—may yet be contemporary with higher art, cannot be held to modify this statement.—Ep. ] Dr Birch (Introduction to Anct. Hist. of Egypt) says of Egyptian law; “Crimes were punished according to their enormity,... 42