CHAP. XIIL] THE EGYPTIANS AND THEIR INFLUENCE. 447 



was in the Bronze age while another was in the Neolithic 

 age, and that iron gradually penetrated northwards, 

 until it arrived in Denmark at the beginning of the 

 Christian era ; and it has been impossible for us to shut 

 our eyes to the traces of civilisation coming in from the 

 Mediterranean area. Egypt, Assyria, 1 Etruria, Greece, 

 and Phoenicia were the seats of a high civilisation for 

 many centuries before Christ, and when the written 

 record began were not in the Bronze but in the Iron age. 

 It is a question equally interesting to the historian and 

 to the archaeologist, to ascertain the extent to which the 

 light of their culture penetrated the darkness of central, 

 western, and northern Europe, and to see whether it be 

 possible to picture to ourselves the condition of Europe 

 as a whole at one time ; to see whether we can bring 

 the Historic period in the Mediterranean region into 

 relation with the Prehistoric period north of the Alps 

 which has hitherto engaged our attention. This over- 

 lap, as it may be termed, of history with Prehistoric 

 archaeology may best be studied by treating each of 

 these influences separately. 



The Egyptians and their Influence. 



In the earliest records which we possess we find a 

 civilisation put prominently before us of a high and 

 complicated kind, 2 not much inferior to any that have 

 succeeded it, and which dates so far back that the 

 history of all the European peoples is in comparison 



1 In the early Chaldsean Empire (Sayce, Contemporary Review, Dec. 

 1878, p. 71) bronze was more commonly used than iron. 



2 Chabas, Etudes sur I'Antiquite Historique d'apres les Sources Egyp- 

 tiennes, 2d ed. 8vo, 1873. Stuart Poole, "Ancient Egypt," Contemporary 

 Review, Jan. to May 1879. 



