eel aided in the construction of a great variety of earthen
vessels; weaving had become a fine art, and weapons of bronze, including
axes, spears, knives, and arrow-heads, were in constant use. Animals had
long been domesticated, in particular the dog, the cat, and the ox;
the horse was introduced later from the East. The practical arts of
agriculture were practised almost as they are at the present day in
Egypt, there being, of course, the same dependence then as now upon the
inundations of the Nile.

As to government, the Egyptian of the first dynasty regarded his king
as a demi-god to be actually deified after his death, and this point of
view was not changed throughout the stages of later Egyptian history. In
point of art, marvellous advances upon the skill of the prehistoric
man had been made, probably in part under Asiatic influences, and that
unique style of stilted yet expressive drawing had come into vogue,
which was to be remembered in after times as typically Egyptian. More
important than all else, our Egyptian of the earliest historical period
was in possession of the art of writing. He had begun to make those
specific records which were impossible to the man of the Stone Age, and
thus he had entered fully upon the way of historical progress which, as
already pointed out, has its very foundation in written records. From
now on the deeds of individual kings could find specific record. It
began to be possible to fix the chronology of remote events with some
accuracy; and with this same fixing of chronologies came the advent of
true history. The period which precedes what is usually spoken of as
the first dynasty in Egypt is one into which the present-day searcher
is still able to see but darkly. The evidence seems to suggest than an
invasion of relatively cultured people from the East overthrew, and in
time supplanted, the Neolithic civilization of the Nile Valley. It is
impossible to date this invasion accurately, but it cannot well have
been later than the year 5000 B.C., and it may have been a great many
centuries earlier than this. Be the exact dates what they may, we find
the Egyptian of the fifth millennium B.C. in full possession of a highly
organized civilization.

All subsequent ages have marvelled at the pyramids, some of which date
from about the year 4000 B.C., though we may note in passing that these
dates must not be taken too literally. The chronology of ancient Egypt
cannot as yet be fixed wit