51 
THE THIRD EGYPTIAN DYNASTY. 
(Wirn Lantern VIEws.) 
By JOHN GARSTANG, B.A, 4th November, 1902. 
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The Lecturer said that relics had been found in Egypt — 
preserved in the sand by the dryness of the climate—from a 
period which dated back more than fifty centuries before the 
birth of Christ. But up to two years ago the earlier period, 
comprised in his subject, was a total blank in the pages 
of Egyptian history. Archeologically nothing was known 
of it; chronologically there were dates of some of its kings, 
and their sequence could be guessed at by some of the 
traditions recorded in Greek history. The gap was all the 
more conspicuous because it lay between the two prominent 
periods of Egyptian history. The great monuments of the 
pyramid age attracted, naturally, the chief interest of the 
traveller, and that interest had stimulated the enquiry of the 
early school of explorers in Egypt; but the researches of 
Professor Flinders Petrie, at Abydos, had carried the work of 
investigation to the earlier period of the history, that is to say, 
the earlier two Dynasties which immediately preceded the period 
with which the lecturer proposed to deal. 
Much importance attended the finding, identification and 
examination of that Third Dynastic site (4212—3998 s.c.) So 
great was the difference between the archeological types in the 
monuments, the methods of burial, and other characteristics 
between the first and second Dynasties and the age that we 
know asthe pyramid age, that it was widely believed there 
must have been some great change, and an introduction of new 
forms, and even a new people, between these two periods. It 
seemed almost obvious that some new custom of burial had been 
introduced during the interval; and it was entirely due to the 
method of scientific research introduced by Professor Flinders 
Petrie, that it had been at all possible to make the necessary 
investigations. His work was the product of a school of thought 
which must remain the basis for all future work of the kind, and 
this new school of thought differed immensely from the old, 
