52 
Probably no country in the world produced such opportunities 
for research as Egypt, owing to its remarkable climate. It 
seemed as if it were arranged by nature that the places which the 
ancient inhabitants chose for their greatest monuments should 
be the best preserved. ‘The whole of the sands were practically 
filled with the burial remains of the people of the past. The 
method of archeological enquiry must be inductive—we must 
induce our results; but the premises of the old school of enquiry 
were, in the main, the hypothesis of such premises, and such 
premises could not be accepted to-day. When we look back at 
the methods adopted by the archeologists of old we are thankful 
that Egypt escaped their attentions. 
The Lecturer then brought the lantern into requisition, show- 
ing a piece of the Delta, illustrating an ancient form of burial of 
mummified remains in an inverted pot or vase, a burial custom 
which was of a period later than the Fourth Dynasty, and the 
builders of the neighbouring structures could not have known of 
these burials, which must have been earlier than the Sixth Dynasty. 
The two limits of this class of burial had been attained—later 
than the Fourth and earlier than the Sixth Dynasty. There 
was a sign on one of the tablets familiar with the period 
of the Sixth Dynasty. There is no distinct relation or co-rela- 
tion between the Dynasties, nor a relation with a distinct 
number of years. The Fourth Dynasty is the age of the 
period for artistic monuments ; in the Eleventh and Twelfth the 
artistic sense of the people strives after effect, and that was the 
period most representative of the true art of Egypt. In the 
Highteenth Dynasty the introduction of new forms brings Egypt 
to the golden age. The Biblical dates in the margin of the Bible 
were placed there but a few hundred years ago, by Archbishop 
Ussher, and if he made a mistake it was not much to be wondered 
at. Incontestable proof has been found that the dates he 
assigned to certain events are wrong. If we put the be- 
ginning of the First Dynasty 700 years before Ussher’s figure, 
we should not be doing anything wrong. 
The Nile is at no point so wide that you cannot see across it. 
On either side the land is under cultivation. It wasin the desert 
where the ancient Egyptians sought some secure place for their 
monuments and tombs. If they had built their monuments in 
the cultivated area they would have perished. It is a singular 
fact that hardly any trace of their actual civilized life can be 
found in the abodes in which they lived. The greatest monu- 
ments of their lives were the abodes they erected for themselves 
after death. 
Coming to the series of views of the tomb of King Neter-Khet, 
the first pyramid builder, the Lecturer explained the methods 
