PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 



Chufu. The inscriptions of Hamamat on the Cosseir road, 

 which connected the Valley of the Nile with the western 

 coast of the Red Sea, reach back as far as the sixth dynasty. 

 The canal from Suez was attempted under Ramses the 

 Great, ( 162 ) the immediate motive being probably the inter- 

 course with the Arabian copper district." Greater maritime 

 enterprises, such even as the often-contested, but I think, 

 not improbable, circumnavigation of Africa( 163 ) under Nechos 

 II. (611 595 B.C.), were entrusted to Phoenician vessels. 

 Nearly at the same period, but rather earlier, under Nechos's 

 father, Psammetichus (Psemetek), and also somewhat later, 

 after the close of the civil war under Amasis (Aahmes), 

 hired Greek troops, by their settlement at Naucratis, laid 

 the foundationsof t permanent foreign commerce, of the in- 

 troduction of foreign ideas, and of the gradual penetra- 

 tion of Hellenism into Lower Egypt. Thus was deposited 

 a germ of mental freedom, of a greater independence of 

 local influences, which developed itself with rapidity and 

 vigour in the new order of things which followed the Mace- 

 donian conquest. The opening of the Egyptian ports under 

 Psammetichus marks an epoch so much the more important 

 since until that period, Egypt, or at least her northern coast, 

 had been as completely closed against all foreigners as Japan 

 now is. ( 164 ) 



Amongst the cultivated nations, not Hellenic, who dwelt 

 around the Mediterranean in the ancient seats where our 

 modern knowledge originated, we must place the Phoe- 

 nicians next after the Egyptians. They must be re- 

 garded as the most active intermediaries and agents in the 

 connection of nations from the Indian ocean to the west 

 and north of Europe. Limited in many spheres of intellec- 



