MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
Mummification, also, developed as a result of this same 
interest in the welfare of the dead, thought to be linked 
very vitally with that of the living. The dry sands of the 
desert, without other preservative agencies, have kept 
for us the bodies of many of the old predynastic Egyptians 
of Neolithic times. Later on, corpses were intentionally 
embalmed, but not until long ‘after Egypt had passed her 
zenith as a great power do we find the highest develop- 
ment of mummifying—in the Twenty-First Dynasty, 
about 1100 B. Cc. 
The use of true bronze and of the horse and chariot 
seems to have been introduced into Egypt from Syria 
about 1500 B. c., probably by the conquering Hyksos, or 
“Shepherd Kings.’ In fact it seems likely that the ability 
of the latter to subdue the Egyptians and dominate them 
for a century or more sprang from their possession of these 
more effective means of waging war. The Egyptians very 
early knew iron, perhaps of meteoric origin like that used by 
certain of the Eskimo, but they did not make much use of 
it until later times, when Egypt, after falling a prey to the 
Ethiopians, Assyrians, Persians, and others, came to be 
ruled by the Macedonians, after Alexander the Great. 
Thus we see that, for all her mighty achievements in 
architecture, art, and in certain other fields of human en- 
deavor, Egypt lagged behind western Asia in many 1m- 
portant respects. She had hardly yet begun to emerge 
from the New Stone Age when the two crowns, of Upper 
and Lower Egypt, were united. She had but just reached 
the Copper Age when the pyramids were built. She owed 
to western Asiatics the introduction of bronze and horses 
and chariots, about the sixteenth century B. c. The 
camel, now so widely employed in Egypt, appears to have 
been brought into general use there by the Assyrians or the 
Persians. Iron, too, was a late adoption in Egypt, paral- 
leling its history in China, where, as already noted, the 
Bronze Age lasted almost down to the Christian Era. 
This, however, is no reflection on the ancient Egyptians. 
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