at its very best, if not indeed at the commencement of
its decadence; for some of the statuary of the age of the Pyramids was
never surpassed in artistic effect by the work of a later era. It is
impossible for us to conceive of such scientific skill as is evidenced
in the construction of the great pyramids, or such artistic power as
is displayed on the walls of tombs of the same date, or in the statues
found in them, as other than the outcome of a vast accumulation of
experience, the attainment of which must imply the lapse of very long
periods of time since the nation which produced such works emerged
from barbarism. It is natural, where so remote an antiquity is in
question, that we should feel a great difficulty, if not an
impossibility, in fixing exact dates, but the whole tendency of modern
exploration and research is rather to push back than to advance the
dates of Egyptian chronology, and it is by no means impossible that
the dynasties of Manetho, after being derided as apocryphal for
centuries, may in the end be accepted as substantially correct.
Manetho was an Egyptian priest living in the third century B.C., who
wrote a history of his country, which he compiled from the archives of
the temples. His work itself is lost, but Josephus quotes extracts
from it, and Eusebius and Julius Africanus reproduced his lists, in
which the monarchs of Egypt are grouped into thirty-four dynasties.
These, however, do not agree with one another, and in many cases it is
difficult to reconcile them with the records displayed in the
monuments themselves.

The remains with which we are acquainted indicate four distinct
periods of great architectural activity in Egyptian history, viz.: (1)
the period of the fourth dynasty, when the Great Pyramids were erected
(probably 3500 to 3000 B.C.); (2) the period of the twelfth dynasty,
to which belong the remains at Beni-Hassan; (3) the period of the
eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, when Thebes was in its glory,
which is attested by the ruins of Luxor and Karnak; and (4) the
Ptolemaic period, of which there are the remains at Denderah, Edfou,
and Philae. The monuments that remain are almost exclusively tombs and
temples. The tombs are, generally speaking, all met with on the east
or right bank of the Nile: among them must be classed those grandest
and oldest monuments of Egyptian skill, the Pyramids, which appear to
have been all designed as royal burying-places. A large number of
pyrami