28 THE PATH OF SCIENCE 



ture and sculpture o£ the Fourth Dynasty is considered by 

 many students to be equal to any that has been reached by 

 man, and the engineering work of the men who built the 

 pyramids shows an enormous development in technical skill 

 which was not exceeded for thousands of years. After the 

 great flowering of the Old Kingdom, as it is called, the level 

 of culture in Egypt slowly decayed. There was a period of 

 decadence, of bad and weak government, with the introduc- 

 tion of a feudal period, in which the land was governed, and 

 too often misgoverned, by local barons. It was the first re- 

 corded period of depression, and it was recognized as such by 

 the writers of that time. Then, about 2100 B.C., the Middle 

 Kingdom of Egypt rose in all its glory, producing not only a 

 great renaissance of art but also the building, as Herodotus 

 tells us, of the most prodigious palace ever erected by man- 

 that great building which Herodotus says was greater than 

 all the temples of Greece put together. Then again came 

 darkness, this time from the invasion of the Hyksos, who 

 seized the throne of Egypt. Again a king from the south 

 restored the power of the Egyptians and founded the great 

 Eighteenth Dynasty, which ended in a blaze of glory in 

 1350 B.C. Part of its treasure was buried in the grave of 

 Tutankhamen. Then the long degeneration of Egypt started 

 and continued until, with the invasions of the Assyrians and 

 of the Persians, Egypt fell, never to rise again. Thus, within 

 the recorded history of Egypt, there are three great cycles, 

 their maxima corresponding approximately to 3000 B.C., 

 2000 B.C., and 1500 b.c; and following each of these maxima 

 there was a period of depression and decay. 



In 1911, Sir Flinders Petrie wrote a little book that he 

 entitled The Revolutions of Civilization.* In this book he 

 uses his great knowledge of ancient history and, especially, 

 of the history of Egypt to develop a general interpretation of 

 history. He says: 



* W. M. Flinders Petrie, The Revolutions of Civilization, Harper's, 

 1911, reprinted by Peter Smith, New York, 1941. 



