Vol. XXIV, No. 9 



WASHINGTON 



SEPTEMBER, 1913 



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THE RESURRECTION OF ANCIENT EGYPT 



By James Baikie 



Author of "Se:a Kings op^ Cr^te," in the Nationai^ Geographic Magazine, 



January, 19 12 



IF THE Elizabethan age was the 

 period of the discovery of new 

 worlds, a period bright with all the 

 romance and fascination of man's ad- 

 venture into the unknown, our own age 

 may be defined as the period of the res- 

 urrection of ancient worlds, and the ro- 

 mance of the explorations which have 

 given back to us the buried civilizations 

 of Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Crete, 

 and Asia Minor has in its own way been 

 almost as thrilling as that which marked 

 the discoveries of Columbus, Cortez, and 

 Pizarro. Ancient and mighty empires, 

 which lived for us only in the dim tradi- 

 tions and distorted pictures of classical 

 historians, have risen out of the dust of 

 the past. 



They have begun to take shape and 

 solidity before our eyes; their palaces, 

 their temples, and their tombs have 

 yielded us unquestionable and vivid illus- 

 tration of the height of culture which 

 they had reached in almost incredibly 

 ancient days. It is scarcely an exagger- 

 ation to say that we know as much of 

 the life and the customs of the leading 

 peoples of four millenniums ago as we 

 do of those of the European nations of 

 the Middle Ages. 



In the wonderful record of explora- 

 tion which has restored to us the civili- 

 zation of the great pre-classical nations, 

 there is no more remarkable chapter than 

 that which tells of the resurrection of 



ancient Egypt. It contains perhaps no 

 incident so thrilling as Layard's discov- 

 ery of the buried palaces of Assyria, or 

 Evans's unearthing the legendary Laby- 

 rinth of Minos in Crete, for the might- 

 iest relics of the power of ancient 

 Egypt — the Pyramids, the Colossi, the 

 temples of Karnak and Luxor — have 

 never ceased through all the centuries to 

 bear their evidence to the greatness of 

 the men who reared them. But it is only 

 within the lifetime of the present gener- 

 ation that exploration of the wonders of 

 which these were the surface indications 

 has become systematic, and that we have 

 begun to pass from the stage of mere 

 wonder to that of scientific research and 

 coordination of the facts disclosed by 

 excavation. 



The science of Egyptology, which is 

 slowly and patiently reconstructing for 

 us the ordered history of the 3,000 years 

 before Christ, and enabling us to see the 

 types of men, the manner of life, the 

 forms of government, the religious cus- 

 toms and beliefs of period after period, 

 from the very dawn of Egyptian nation- 

 ality, is specifically a growth of our own 

 time. 



ROUGH and ready METHODS OE EAREY 

 EXPLORERS 



The older period of Egyptian explo- 

 ration may be said to have closed with 

 Mariette. Despite his abundant energy. 



