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completion of this great work, on which more than one of our 
Egyptologists are now presenting us with the fruit of their 
highly interesting researches. The result will be to bring out 
m strong relief the accuracy ef the Biblical narrative, although 
it may not satisfy some of our preconceived notions. It is 
not at all to be supposed that any pictorial representation of 
the drowning of Pharaoh and all his hosts in the waves of the 
Red Sea will ever be discovered ; nor is it at all probable that 
the work of the Israelites in building the walls of Pithom and 
Ramses, should have been recorded in such a manner as to 
have withstood the specially destructive influences which have 
spared us so little, except the almost imperishable granite 
figures which once adorned the field of Zoan, or the Temple 
of the Setting Sun, the glory of Heliopolis, the On of the 
Bible. I shall therefore confine myself to such a dissertation 
as may be brought within the compass of an evening’s paper, 
and shall treat specially the early history and the antiquity of 
the Egyptian race, their religion and civilization, concluding 
with some remarks on the present state and the prospective 
future of this interesting country. 
What light does Egypt throw on man’s early history ? 
I would first remark that we have here the opportunity 
of observing Man in one of the earliest aspects under which 
he is presented to our notice. Whatever the date we may 
assign to the monuments of the Old Dominion of Egypt, that 
era must be admitted to be of so great antiquity, that if the 
speculations of our modern theorists were correct, we ought 
to find him slowly developing from some apelike condition, and 
scarcely yet master of human powers ; instead of which we 
behold him in full perfection of all his godlike faculties ; and 
looking back to an era of still greater brightness, even to 
the reign of the demigods, when Osiris taught the people 
the use of the plough, and Isis invented the cultivation of 
wheat and barley, which were carried about at her festival.* 
And beyond this, in the dim past there was no era of bar- 
barism, no “age of stone” ! I hold then that the more the 
early ages of the history of the country tve are considering 
are thrust back into the dim obscurity of the past, be it, for 
argument’s sake, 5,000, 10,000, or 100,000 years, the more 
does it contradict the theories of the disciples of evolution. 
* Smith’s Diet., sub voce Isis. 
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