NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 155 



As regards medical science, we have the Berlin papyrus, which, 

 although of a later period, refers with careful specification to a 

 medical literature of the first dynasty. 



So, too, as regards archaeology : the earliest known inscrip- 

 tions point to still earlier events and buildings, indicating a long 

 sequence of previous events. * 



And, finally, as to all that pertains to the history of civiliza- 

 tion, no man of fair and open mind can go into the museums of 

 Boulak or the Louvre or the British Museum and look at the 

 monuments of those earlier dynasties without seeing in them the 

 results of a development in art, science, laws, customs, and lan- 

 guage, which must have required a vast period before the time of 

 Mena for their development. And this conclusion is forced upon 

 us all the more invincibly when we consider the slow growth of 

 ideas in the earlier stages of civilization as compared with the 

 later — a slowness of growth which has kept the natives in many 

 parts of the world in that earliest civilization to this hour. To 

 this we must add the fact that Egyptian civilization was espe- 

 cially immobile; its development into castes is but one among 

 many evidences that it was the very opposite of a civilization 

 developed rapidly. 



As to the length of the period before the time of Mena, there is, 

 of course, nothing exact. Manetho gives lists of great personages 

 before that first dynasty extending over twenty-four thousand 

 years. Bunsen, one of the most learned of Christian scholars, de- 

 clares that not less than ten thousand years were necessary for the 

 development of civilization up to the point where we find it in 

 Mena's time. No one can claim precision for either of these state- 

 ments, but they are valuable as showing the impression of vast 

 antiquity made upon the most competent judges by the careful 

 study of those remains. No unbiased judge can doubt that an 

 immensely long period of years must have been required for the 

 development of civilization up to the state in which we there 

 find it. 



The investigations in the bed of the Nile confirm these views. 

 That some unwarranted conclusions have at times been an- 

 nounced is true ; but the fact remains that again and again rude 

 pottery and other evidences of early stages of civilization have 

 been found in borings at places so distant from each other, and at 

 depths so great, that for such a range of concurring facts, consid- 

 ered in connection with the rate of earthy deposit by the Nile, 

 there is no adequate explanation save the existence of man in that 

 valley thousands on thousands of years before the longest time 

 admitted by our sacred chronologists. 



Nor have these investigations been of a careless character. Be- 

 tween the years 1851 and 1854, Mr. Horner, an extremely cautious 



