RECENT YEARS OF EGYPTIAN EXPLORATION. 629 



Turning now to some of the remains of these kings during their 

 life, we learn that they were occupied with frequent wars — the 

 gradual consolidation of the kingdom of Egypt. One king will 

 record the myriads of slain enemies, another gives a picture of a 

 captive king brought before him with over a million living captives, 

 the regular Egyptian notation for such large numbers being al- 

 ready complete. Another king shows his triumphal entry to the 

 temple, with the slain enemies laid out before him. On other 

 sculptures are shown the peaceful triumphs of canalization and 

 reclamation of land, which are alluded to in the traditions of the 

 early dynasties preserved by Greek historians. All these scenes 

 are given us on the slate carvings and great mace heads covered 

 with sculpture from Hierakonpolis. 



Thus in these great discoveries of the last few years we can 

 trace at least three successive peoples, and see the gradual rise of 

 the arts, from the man who ^vas buried in his goat skins, with one 

 plain cup by him, up to the king who built great monuments and 

 was surrounded by most sumptuous handiwork. We see the rise 

 of the art of exquisite flint flaking, and the decline of that as cop- 

 per came more commonly into use. We see at first the use of signs, 

 later on disused by a second race, and then superseded by the 

 elaborate hieroglyph system of the dynastic race. 



The mixture of various races was surmised long ago from the 

 varied portraiture of the early times. It is now shown more plainly 

 than ever on these early monuments. We see represented the 

 king of the dynastic type, a scribe with long, wavy hair, a chief of 

 the dynastic shaven-headed type, another with long, lank hair, and 

 another with a beard, while the enemies are shown with curly 

 hair and narrow beards like Bedouin. Four different peoples are 

 here in union against a fifth. And this diversity of peoples lasts 

 on long into the historic times. After several centuries of a united 

 Egypt, under the pyramid builders, we find that some people buried 

 in the old contracted position, others cut up the body and wrapped 

 every bone separately in cloth, while others embalmed the body 

 whole. Thus great diversity of belief and custom still prevailed 

 for perhaps a thousand years after the unification of Egypt. So 

 useless is it to think of " the ancient Egyptians " as an unmixed 

 race gradually rising into "a consciousness of nationality." 



The excavations at Deshasheh in 1897, which first showed me 

 the diversity of burials, also showed that the type of the race had 

 already become unified by intermixture, and that, strange to say, 

 four thousand years later, after untold crossings with many in- 

 vaders, the type was unchanged. Later work at Dendereh and 

 elsewhere has pointed to the conclusion that a mixture of a new 



