lliant colors. They could cut glass, at the most remote
periods. Chinese bottles have also been found in previously unopened tombs
of the eighteenth dynasty, indicating commercial intercourse reaching as
far back as that epoch. They were able to spin and weave, and color cloth;
and were acquainted with the use of mordants, the wonder in modern
calico-printing. Pliny describes this process as used in Egypt, but
evidently without understanding its nature. Writing-paper made of the
papyrus is as old as the Pyramids. The Egyptians tanned leather and made
shoes; and the shoemakers on their benches are represented working exactly
like ours. Their carpenters used axes, saws, chisels, drills, planes,
rulers, plummets, squares, hammers, nails, and hones for sharpening. They
also understood the use of glue in cabinet-making, and there are paintings
of veneering, in which a piece of thin dark wood is fastened by glue to a
coarser piece of light wood. Their boats were propelled by sails on yards
and masts, as well as by oars. They used the blow-pipe in the manufacture
of gold chains and other ornaments. They had rings of gold and silver for
money, and weighed it in scales of a careful construction. Their
hieroglyphics are carved on the hardest granite with a delicacy and
accuracy which indicates the use of some metallic cutting instrument,
probably harder than our best steel. The siphon was known in the fifteenth
century before Christ. The most singular part of their costume was the
wig, worn by all the higher classes, who constantly shaved their heads, as
well as their chins,--which shaving of the head is supposed by Herodotus
to be the reason of the thickness of the Egyptian skull. They frequently
wore false beards. Sandals, shoes, and low boots, some very elegant, are
found in the tombs. Women wore loose robes, ear-rings, finger-rings,
bracelets, armlets, anklets, gold necklaces. In the tombs are found vases
for ointment, mirrors, combs, needles. Doctors and drugs were not unknown
to them; and the passport system is no modern invention, for their deeds
contain careful descriptions of the person, exactly in the style with
which European travellers are familiar. We have only mentioned a small
part of the customs and arts with which the tombs of the Egyptians show
them to have been familiar. These instances are mostly taken from
Wilkinson, whose works contain numerous engravings from the monuments
which more than verify all we have sa