3 20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to be crammed with interesting fictions ; and the pretension of the 

 Egyptians to such prodigious antiquity of their state was regarded as 

 one of the most patent examples of such figments. Yet it is probable 

 that, in respect of this and other pieces of information of like charac- 

 ter, the learned Egyptians said no more, not only than they fully be- 

 lieved, but than they might fairly enough think they had good reason 

 for believing ; and modern investigations have shown that they were 

 certainly much nearer the truth than sundry of their critics. 



Among the achievements of scientific method in this century, none 

 is, to my mind, more wonderful than the disinterment of so much of 

 a past, to all appearance hopelessly dead, by the interpretation of the 

 hieroglyphic and cuneiform inscriptions in which the ancient inhabitants 

 of the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates chronicled the events of 

 their history. Thanks to the sagacity and the untiring toil of such 

 men as Lepsius just about to receive the congratulations of all the 

 world on the completion of half a century of fruitful labor of Birch, 

 of JMariette, of Brugsch, the student of Egyptology, guided by the 

 sj^irit of scientific criticism, is probably far more accurately informed 

 about the ancient history of Egypt than was the whole College of 

 Heliopolis in Herodotus's time. 



An exact chronology of Egyptian history is yet to be constructed ; 

 but those best qualified to judge agree that contemporary monuments 

 tell us of the state of Egypt more than five thousand years ago ; and 

 since they prove, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the people who 

 erected them possessed a complex social orgaiiization, as replete with 

 all the necessaries and conveniences of life as that of any nation in Eu- 

 rope in the middle ages, and not inferior in literature or in skill in the 

 arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, it is but rational to con- 

 clude that, even at this farthest point of time to which written records 

 take us, the Egyptian people had, for long ages, left barbarism behind, 

 and constituted a settled and a civilized polity. So that, whether 

 Menes was followed by three hundred and thirty kings or not, the 

 general impression of the vast antiquity of the Egyptian state wdiich 

 Herodotus received, and has transmitted to us, has full justification. 



But that which is so characteristically modern about Herodotus is 

 that he was not satisfied to stop where written records halt, or to ac- 

 cept traditional accounts of an earlier time without discussion. His 

 informants told him that, when Menes began to reign, Lower Egypt 

 was covered with water, a dismal and pestilent swamp, and that the 

 first Pharaoh drained and rendered habitable that alluvial soil which 

 they called "the gift of the Nile." 



Herodotus was evidently very much interested in this statement. 

 Perhaps he asked his Heliopolitan friends how they knew this. Per- 

 haps they answered him as they did a countryman of his, " You Greeks 

 always were and always will be children," asking the why of the 

 wherefore. A true saying, which, however it may have been intended, 



