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Egyptian history and its fantastic legends of gods and demi- 

 gods, Mr. Wallis mentioned the first king of whom we had any 

 ■definite knowledge as Menes, the founder of Memphis, whose 

 date was about 4,800 B.C. Khufu, the builder of the great 

 Pyramid, came in the fourtb dynasty, a thousand years later. It 

 was in this dynasty, so far removed from the present day, that 

 the arts of Egypt reached their highest point. Subsequently 

 they were never surpassed in grandeur, simplicity, and power. 

 In the fifth dynasty was found a singularly high level of under- 

 standing, as evinced by the precepts of Ptah-hotep, which 

 revealed a high perception in abstract thinking and morality. 

 Fifteen hundred years passed, and the rule in Egypt was usurped 

 by the Hyksos invaders, or "shepherd kings," of whom very little 

 was known, and who were probably the kini^s visited by the 

 Hebrew patriarchs. Egypt reached its summit of glory as 

 a power in the world in the reigns of Thothmes I. and Thothmes 

 III., who carried their armies victoriously to the Euphrates, 

 and far into Asia, who built the mighty temples that even now 

 are the wonder of the world, and under whom the country 

 attained its greatest wealth and prosperity. Later on came 

 the stirring periods of Rameses I., Seti I., and Rameses II. Mr. 

 Wallis spoke of the famous campaign of Rameses II. against the 

 Hittites, of which a particularly graphic account was written by 

 the Poet Laureate of the day, I'entaur. According to this, the 

 oldest epic poem in the world, Rameses rallied his disheartened 

 armies, dashed single-handed into the hosts of the Hittites, — 

 evidently no mean adversaries, — and aided by his gfd Amen, 

 slew them in thousands. The result of the battle was a treaty, 

 still preserved, which was the first diplomatic document known 

 to history. 



Turning to the religion of the Egyptians, Mr. Wallis 

 described it as difficult to form any definite idea upon it, owing 

 to the vast mass of material. Whilst there were certain great 

 leading features that remained unchanged from the earliest times, 

 the religion as a whole was an accretion, the component parts of 

 which were derived from many sources and during long periods 

 of time. These additions often bore no relation to each other, and, 

 therefore, involved the most extraordinary contradictions and dis- 

 crepancies. Deities which were universally worshipped held 

 positions widely different in importance in different localities, and 

 in fact, frequently were varied essentially in their attributes. In, 

 lat^r times, particularly in the Ptolemaic period, attempts were 

 made to systematise the confused combinations by sorting them 

 into trinities, a process that subsequently led up to the idea of 



