s as that of the old
archaeologist Keating, it would be possible to count upon the fingers
those who have died in peace; and the archaeologist, thus, knows better
than to expect the descendants of these kings to live in harmony one
with the other. National characteristics do not change unless, as in the
case of the Greeks, the stock also changes.

In the Jews we have another example of the persistence of those national
characteristics which history has made known to us. The Jews first
appear in the dimness of the remote past as a group of nomad tribes,
wandering over southern Palestine, Egypt, and the intervening deserts;
and at the present day we see them still homeless, scattered over the
face of the globe, the "tribe of the wandering foot and weary breast."

In no country has the archaeologist been more active than in Egypt during
the last half century, and the contributions which his spade and pick
have offered to history are of first-rate importance to that study as a
whole. The eye may now travel down the history of the Nile Valley from
prehistoric days to the present time almost without interruption; and
now that the anthropologist has shown that the modern Egyptians,
Mussulman and Copt, peasant and townsman, belong to one and the same
race of ancient Egyptians, one may surely judge to-day's inhabitants of
the country in the light of yesterday's records. In his report for the
year 1906, Lord Cromer, questioning whether the modern inhabitants of
the country were capable of governing their own land, tells us that we
must go back to the precedent of Pharaonic days to discover if the
Egyptians ever ruled themselves successfully.

In this pregnant remark Lord Cromer was using information which the
archaeologist and historian had made accessible to him. Looking back over
the history of the country, he was enabled, by the study of this
information, to range before him the succession of foreign occupations
of the Nile Valley and to assess their significance. It may be worth
while to repeat the process, in order to give an example of the bearing
of history upon modern polemics, though I propose to discuss this matter
more fully in another chapter.

Previous to the British occupation the country was ruled, as it is now,
by a noble dynasty of Albanian princes, whose founder was set upon the
throne by the aid of Turkish and Albanian troops. From the beginning of
the sixteenth century until that time Egypt had been ruled b