ft. [Proc. B.N.F.C, 



thousands of years anterior to the dawn of civilisation in ancient 

 Greece and Rome, and that determined him to make a trip to the 

 land of monuments and see for himself the evidences of the degree 

 of civilisation attained by the dwellers on the banks of the Nile at 

 that remote period. On the way from Port Said to Cairo he passed 

 through the Isthmus of Suez, crossed the way taken by the Philis- 

 tines, journeyed through the Land of Goshen, where the children of 

 Israel settled and built the treasure cities of Pithom and Rameses, 

 mentioned in Exodus. Northward is the land of Zoan, where 

 Moses worked wonders and where Rameses II., the Pharaoh of 

 the Oppression, held his courts. Heleopolis was next described, 

 the once famous city which at one time contained the best library 

 and the wealthiest university in the world. Here it is believed that 

 Moses was educated and Joseph the Hebrew lived, highly honoured 

 by the King, who gave him in marriage the daughter of the chief 

 priest. The only surviving relic of this once great city is a 

 solitary obelisk, erected by King Userteson I. 2,433 b.c. — 700 

 years before Joseph and his brethren came into Egypt. Heleopolis 

 is called On in Genesis and House of the Sun in Jeremiah. A picture 

 of the famous Rosetta stone, containing hieroglyphic, demotic, and 

 Greek inscriptions, was then thrown on the screen, and the lecturer 

 said the deciphering of the hieroglyphics was one of the greatest 

 discoveries of the last century. Dr. Young, of England, lifted a 

 corner of the veil that enshrined the then mysterious language, but 

 the ingenious French scholar Champollian was the intellectual 

 picklock who opened the door to the immense historical treasures 

 hidden within it. The ponderous pile of the Great Pyramid, 

 burnished by the setting suns of sixty centuries, was 1,800 years 

 old when Abraham went down to sojourn in Egypt, and the 

 Sphinx, with its strange eastward gaze, was old when the pyramids 

 were being erected. Memphis, one of the ancient far-famed cities 

 of Egypt, with its splendid Temple of Ptah, was built, according 

 to Sir Norman Lockyer, 7,200 years ago. It was here the first 

 historic king, Mena, held his court, and here, too, was the seat of 



