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remains of ancient Egypt are the monuments of a religion and polity which prevailed at a period far earlier than any other of which similar memorials are now in existence. The ruins of Thebes illustrate an epoch which precedes by at least a thousand years that of the ruins of Athens. The manners, customs and modes of thought that prevailed in Egypt, and of which its temples and tombs have preserved the record, are therefore those of an age of the world which is removed from the classic era by so wide an interval, that the one cannot, of necessity, be of any material service for the illustration of the other. They must be applied, we repeat, to the events of far earlier periods, before their real illustrative value can be made apparent.

The ample materials furnished by these remains, afford certain traces or memorials of the great event recorded in Scripture to have occurred on the plains of Shinar in Mesopotamia (Gen. xi. 1–9), in which the whole human race participated, and which issued in