174 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



of living for about seven thousand years. Indeed, we know 

 more about the life of ancient Egypt than of the lives of our 

 British ancestors five hundred years ago, or than we know 

 of the common affairs in Plymouth Colony in the first 

 century of its settlement. We know about their govern- 

 ment, religion, domestic and political economy; how they 

 lived, loved, sported, worshipped and died. We not only 

 have the monumental effigies of their kings, but we have 

 many of their actual bodies in our museums ; and the 

 traveler, or " Cook's tourist," who visits the Boulac Museum 

 at Cairo, may look in the face of the great Sesostris himself, 

 who ruled the civilized world before Moses was born. We 

 know how these mighty men went to war, the weapons with 

 which they fought, the chariots in which they rode ; the 

 people they conquered, and how those people looked and 

 dressed. We know how the ruler of the land received em- 

 bassies, and how the embassadors looked and acted ; what 

 tributaries came with them from their wars, gracing with 

 captive bands their triumphs ; we see the gifts they brought, 

 and the spoils of war. We know that the gay and rich gave 

 great entertainments, and that even ladies at times drank 

 wine until the lotus flowers drooped in their hot hands. 

 But the history of Egypt, unlike the conventional history of 

 other people, is not confined to the doings of the great. 

 We see how the common people lived ; how they ploughed, 

 sowed, reaped, fished, fowled; how they gathered fruits, 

 made wine or strung onions. In the tombs at Thebes there 

 is scarcely an occupation of human life that is not delineated 

 on the walls ; and all indicates a busy, thrifty life and a 

 superior morality, the reign of law and the equality of 

 woman. 



At Beni Hassan, in the mountains, but a few days by boat 

 from Cairo, there is a wonderful delineation of the life of 

 Egypt, in spirited colored drawings, on the walls of beauti- 

 ful tombs cut in the rock. These scenes delineate the lives 

 of some distinguished people who were the hereditary gov- 

 ernors of the province more than twenty-five hundred years 

 before Christ. These pictures are fully described in Dr. 

 Brugsch's works, and are largely copied in the illustrations 

 of the works of Sir Gardner Wilkinson. They describe 



