194 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
Many cobras, I was told, were kept in the upper rooms of houses in the 
native quarters of the city. The funeral customs of the people through- 
out the country are much the same as those which prevailed in ancient 
times. It is not only among the merchant and agricultural classes that 
we find the Old in the New. Mrs. Poole, the sister of the Arabic 
scholar Edward Lane, writing from Cairo in 1846, describes the scenes 
in one of Mohammed Ali’s palaces on the death of a princess of the 
Royal Family. Immediately the royal lady breathed her last, her 
relations and slaves broke up all the beautiful china and glass which 
had been her property. ‘ The destruction after a death,’ Mrs. Poole 
remarks, ‘is generally proportioned to the possessions of the deceased ; 
therefore, in this case, it was very extensive.” Many, perhaps most, 
of the festivals of the country are of ancient origin. In the Delta towns 
and villages there are several which are similar to those that were held 
there in ancient days. It is the same in Upper Egypt. Thebes still 
possesses its sacred boat, and on the festival commemorating the birth- 
day of Luxor’s patron saint, Abu’l Haggag, this lineal descendant of the 
sacred bark of Amon decorated with flags and gaily coloured bits of 
cloth, is drawn around the town in procession, amid the acclamations 
of the people. Modern Egypt has hardly been touched by the anthro- 
pologist. The Government official usually holds himself far too aloof to 
ever really get into intimate contact with the native. Edward Lane did 
much to record the manners and customs of the Cairene Egyptian, but 
he never lived among the fellahin, and his book contains little about the 
modern dweller on the banks of the Nile outside Cairo. A rich harvest 
awaits any student who, knowing the language, will settle and live 
throughout the year among the peasants in any village or town in the 
Lower Nile Valley or Delta. It is only in this way that a real know- 
ledge of the people can be obtained. Far less is known about them 
than about many a tribe in Central Africa. 
Thucydides, in the preface to his ‘ History,’ proposed to record past 
facts as a basis of rational provision in regard to the future, but he was 
not the first to whom this great thought had occurred. A thousand 
years before the Greek historian was born an old Vizier of Egypt said 
of himself that he was ‘ skilled in the ways of the Past,’ and that ‘ the 
things of Yesterday ’ caused him ‘ to know To-morrow.’ Anthropology, 
the Science of Man and Civilisation, aims at discovering the general laws 
which have governed human history in the past and may be expected 
to regulate it in the future. The Egyptian Vizier had, at most, a couple 
of thousand years of recorded history before him. Since his time the 
area of history has been ever widening, and we ourselves can look back 
over nearly six thousand years of human endeavour. We know con- 
siderably more of the past than did our forefathers, and though those 
who hold the reins of government do not usually learn by experience, 
the anthropologist ought to be able to predict a little better than the 
politician about the future. For thousands of years Egypt has been 
under foreign rule. It has been under the yoke of Ethiopian and 
Persian kings, under the Greek and Roman, Arab and Ottoman con- 
querors. Its people suffered three thousand years of oppression. For 
the last forty years it has had English justice. Egypt has this year 
