e to Athens.

[Sidenote: Antiquity of civilization and art in Egypt.]

At the dawn of European civilization, Egypt was, therefore, in process
of decadence, gradually becoming less and less able to resist its own
interior causes of destruction, or the attempts of its Asiatic rivals,
who eventually brought it to ruin. At the first historical appearance of
the country of the Nile it is hoary and venerable with age. The
beautiful Scripture pictures of the journey of Abram and Sarai, in the
famine, the going down of Joseph, the exodus of the Israelites, all
point to a long-settled system, a tranquil and prosperous state. Do we
ask any proof of the condition of art to which the Egyptians had
attained at the time of their earliest monuments? The masonry of the
Great Pyramid, built thirty-four hundred years before Christ, has never
yet been surpassed. So accurately was that wonder of the world planned
and constructed, that at this day the variation of the compass may
actually be determined by the position of its sides; yet, when Jacob
went into Egypt, that pyramid had been built as many centuries as have
intervened from the birth of Christ to the present day. If we turn from
the monuments to their inscriptions, there are renewed evidences of
antiquity. The hieroglyphic writing had passed through all its stages of
formation; its principles had become ascertained and settled long before
we gain the first glimpse of it; the decimal and duodecimal systems of
arithmetic were in use; the arts necessary in hydraulic engineering,
massive architecture, and the ascertainment of the boundaries of land,
had reached no insignificant degree of perfection. Indeed, there would
be but very little exaggeration in affirming that we are practically as
near the early Egyptian ages as was Herodotus himself. Well might the
Egyptian priests say to the earliest Greek philosophers, "You Greeks are
mere children, talkative and vain; you know nothing at all of the past."

[Sidenote: Prehistoric life of Egypt.]

Traces of the prehistoric, premonumental life of Egypt are still
preserved in the relics of its language, and the well-known principles
of its religion. Of the former, many of the words are referable to
Indo-Germanic roots, an indication that the country at an early period
must have been conquered from its indigenous African possessors by
intrusive expeditions from Asia; and this is supported by the remarkable
principles of Egyptian religion. Th