ments, unless he has
studied the modern customs and has made himself acquainted with the
permanent conditions of the country. The modern Egyptians, as has been
pointed out in chapter ii. (page 28), are the same people as those who
bowed the knee to Pharaoh, and many of their customs still survive. A
student can no more hope to understand the story of Pharaonic times
without an acquaintance with Egypt as she now is than a modern statesman
can hope to understand his own times solely from a study of the past.

Nothing is more paralysing to a student of archaeology than continuous
book-work. A collection of hard facts is an extremely beneficial mental
exercise, but the deductions drawn from such a collection should be
regarded as an integral part of the work. The road-maker must also walk
upon his road to the land whither it leads him; the shipbuilder must
ride the seas in his vessel, though they be uncharted and unfathomed.
Too often the professor will set his students to a compilation which
leads them no farther than the final fair copy. They will be asked to
make for him, with infinite labour, a list of the High Priests of Amon;
but unless he has encouraged them to put such life into those figures
that each one seems to step from the page to confront his recorder,
unless the name of each calls to mind the very scenes amidst which he
worshipped, then is the work uninspired and as deadening to the student
as it is useful to the professor. A catalogue of ancient scarabs is
required, let us suppose, and students are set to work upon it. They
examine hundreds of specimens, they record the variations in design,
they note the differences in the glaze or material. But can they picture
the man who wore the scarab?--can they reconstruct in their minds the
scene in the workshop wherein the scarab was made?--can they hear the
song of the workmen or their laughter when the overseer was not nigh? In
a word, does the scarab mean history to them, the history of a period,
of a dynasty, of a craft? Assuredly not, unless the students know Egypt
and the Egyptians, have heard their songs and their laughter, have
watched their modern arts and crafts. Only then are they in a position
to reconstruct the picture.

Theodore Roosevelt, in his Romanes lecture at Oxford, gave it as his
opinion that the industrious collector of facts occupied an honourable
but not an exalted position; and he added that the merely scientific
historian must rest conte