ANCIENT EGYPT. 1 3 



some of our own students, as well as by those of the College 

 of Science, with which institution our Society is so intimately 

 connected. 



History. 



The history of Ancient Egypt is written on its rocks and 

 reeds with a fulness that we lack concerning times immensely 

 nearer our own. The dry climate has tended to preserve the 

 monuments with their inscriptions, and the character of the 

 tombs, in which so many records have been preserved for 

 thousands of years, has saved much that would otherwise 

 have been lost. 



What we have learnt of the ancient history of the narrow 

 strip of alluvial soil we call Egypt — extending more especially 

 from Wady Haifa to the Mediterranean, with its marvellous 

 fertility perennially renewed by its tutelary genius the Nile, 

 making a garden of what would otherwise have been mere 

 rocks and sand — presents a somewhat confused picture of 

 periods of rise, progress, culmination and decline, interspersed 

 with dark ages and brilliant times of renaissance, following 

 each other repeatedly; and with but one important break, 

 occurring in the reign of a king of the xviiith dynasty, an 

 almost unchanging system of religion. The rich land of 

 Egypt was repeatedly invaded and subjugated ; sometimes 

 the invaders were driven out, and at others they became 

 absorbed in the native population : for a few generations 

 sufficed to impose the Egyptian language, customs, and 

 invincible modes of thought on the ruder intruders. 



To realize, in some measure, the great antiquity of this 

 civiHzation, which stood already high when history begins, 

 carry your minds back to the span of over eight centuries 

 since the Norman Conquest, or to the interval of time, say, 

 between the supposed days of the traditional Romulus, B.C. 

 750, and the reign of the Emperor Marcian, 453 a.d., when an 

 inscription in the temple of Philae shows that the worship af 

 Isis was still being practised, in spite of the edict of Theodosius 

 promulgated some seventy years before; and then compare 



