with as much facility as many medieval manuscripts, that
the reign of Mena must be placed more than five thousand years ago.

But the significance of this conclusion can not be fully understood
until we bring into connection with it some other facts revealed by the
Egyptian monuments.

The first of these is that which struck Sir Walter Raleigh, that,
even in the time of the first dynasties in the Nile Valley, a high
civilization had already been developed. Take, first, man himself:
we find sculptured upon the early monuments types of the various
races--Egyptians, Israelites, negroes, and Libyans--as clearly
distinguishable in these paintings and sculptures of from four to six
thousand years ago as the same types are at the present day. No one
can look at these sculptures upon the Egyptian monuments, or even the
drawings of them, as given by Lepsius or Prisse d' Avennes, without
being convinced that they indicate, even at that remote period, a
difference of races so marked that long previous ages must have been
required to produce it.

The social condition of Egypt revealed in these early monuments of art
forces us to the same conclusion. Those earliest monuments show that a
very complex society had even then been developed. We not only have a
separation between the priestly and military orders, but agriculturists,
manufacturers, and traders, with a whole series of subdivisions in
each of these classes. The early tombs show us sculptured and painted
representations of a daily life which even then had been developed into
a vast wealth and variety of grades, forms, and usages.

Take, next, the political and military condition. One fact out of many
reveals a policy which must have been the result of long experience.
Just as now, at the end of the nineteenth century, the British
Government, having found that they can not rely upon the native
Egyptians for the protection of the country, are drilling the negroes
from the interior of Africa as soldiers, so the celebrated inscription
of Prince Una, as far back as the sixth dynasty, speaks of the Maksi or
negroes levied and drilled by tens of thousands for the Egyptian army.

Take, next, engineering. Here we find very early operations in the way
of canals, dikes, and great public edifices, so bold in conception and
thorough in execution as to fill our greatest engineers of these days
with astonishment. The quarrying, conveyance, cutting, jointing, and
polishing of the enormo