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less as the craters of the moon, while all that could by any 

 means be brought under its wonderful spell was fabulously 

 productive. Need we wonder at the ancient Egyptians, whose 

 religion was nature worship, personifying this regularly recurring 

 source, not only of comfort but of life, and propitiating by every 

 means in their power the — to them — unexplainable beneficence 

 which made a desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose ? Quite 

 five thousand seven hundred years ago — we take as our chrono- 

 logical guide a most conservative body, the authorities of the 

 British Museum — the art of sketching and colouring, as instanced 

 by tombs of kings and court officials, had wonderfully developed ; 

 and from their walls we gather much of the Ufe history of this 

 interesting people. The idea of life beyond the grave and of a 

 bodily resurrection was held with unquestionable firmness, and 

 their chief cares were bestowed upon temples and burial places. 

 The perfect preservation of the body after death received more 

 attention than its ailments during visible existence, as several 

 humorous drawings testify. Even then the dentist and the 

 surgeon made occasional havoc on the human frame. During 

 the earlier dynasties, before the time of the conquering shepherd 

 kings, life was distinctly pastoral, and the landowner is invariably 

 pictured as dwelling amongst his own people. He caused, with 

 childish pride, a pictorial record to be sketched of his wealth and 

 possessions ; his men servants, maid servants, he asses and she 

 asses, cattle, poultry, orchards and granaries, not forgetting to 

 remark in a somewhat loud aside that he stood highly in favour 

 at court. Vanity allowed him to be pictured as of five times the 

 ordinary height, his wife, children, and dependents appearing as 

 so many minnows by the side of a sturdy trout. The common 

 weal had as yet over three thousand years to wait for an advocate 

 in Plato, whose quick ear caught the " still sad music of 

 humanity," and women's wrongs nearly six thousand years ere 

 Miss Lydia Becker should transform them into women's rights. 

 In which part of Egypt civilisation first took root it is impossible 

 to say with certainty. The temple of Dendera, situated some 

 four hundred miles above Cairo, contains traces of government 

 by princes of the God Horus — the Son of the Egyptian Trinity 

 — seven thousand years ago, when there was, as yet, no king in 

 Egypt. But soon after the time of Menes — who, like Egbert of 

 England, brought into subjection previously independent local 

 rulers — the court was established near where the Pyramids stand, 

 within twenty miles of the present city of Cairo. On the 

 extinction of the shepherd kings, some three thousand years 

 after Menes, the court migrated to Thebes, about four hundred 

 and fifty miles above Cairo, and here remained during the most 

 dazzling period of Egyptian history. In later years, when 

 Greece, and afterwards Eome, dominated Egypt, interest centred 



