CHAP. XIX. COMPARED WITH THOSE OF STONE PERIODS. 383 



caprice and magnificence, we cannot contemplate the avei'age 

 size and number of the pyramids now extant (upwards of 

 forty large and small), to say nothing of the monuments and 

 inscriptions, without supposing them to have been the work 

 of a long succession of generations. Long before the time of 

 Homer, when Thebes had already attained such wealth and 

 consequence, an indigenous civilization must have been 

 slowly matured, with its jjeculiar forms of worshij), splendid 

 religious ceremonial, the practice of embalming the dead, a 

 peculiar style of sculpture and architecture, hieroglyphics, 

 and the custom of embanking the great river to prevent the 

 sites of towns and cities from being overflowed by the annual 

 inundation. 



In the temples are found pictorial representations of 

 battles and sieges, processions in which trophies are carried 

 and prisoners led captive; and if it be true, as Sir Gr. C. 

 Lewis contends, that throughout the historical period the 

 Egyptians were a peaceful and never a conquering people,* 

 the wars to which these monuments would then refer must 

 be so ancient as to confer on the Egyptians far higher claims 

 to antiquity than those advanced by Bansen and Lejjsius. 



Nevertheless, geologically speaking, and in reference to 

 the date of the first age of stone, these records of the valley 

 of the Nile may be called extremely modern. Wherever 

 excavations have been made into the Nile mud underlying 

 the foundations of Egyptian cities, as, for example, sixty 

 feet below the peristyle of the obelisk of Heliopolis, and 

 generally in the alluvial plains of the Nile, the bones met 

 with belong to living species of quadrupeds, such as the 

 camel, dromedary, dog, ox, and pig, Avithout, as yet, the 

 association in any single instance of the teeth or bone of a 

 lost species. 



In like manner in all the countries bordering the Medi- 



* Lewis, Historical Survey, &c., p. 351. 



