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Rh  ethnologist will instantly recognize the four distinct types, three of which are markedly different from the Egyptian. Is the Egyptian a distinct race, or can it be directly traced to a fusion of two or more of the other three types? The modern Egyptian helps us towards a solution of this problem. If we knew nothing of his descent we should say that he was an Arab with a tincture of another race, so markedly has the westward flow of Arab immigration made the Arab type to predominate among the people. But this is a superficial view. Looking more carefully, we see usually in the Copts, who have intermarried among themselves for the last twelve centuries, and occasionally in the Muslim Egyptians, a type which, however modified since antiquity, forcibly recalls the old pictures. Here the Shemite traits are slighter, and we come to the conclusion that their race merely contributed an element, and perhaps not the most important, to the old Egyptian type. Another element, perhaps the only other, seems to be Nigritian. The weak calf of the leg and the flat foot are markedly indicative of Nigritian influence, and so is the thickness of the nose, and the fulness of the lips. Other circumstances seem to indicate the presence of Shemite and Nigritian elements in the ancient Egyptians. It will be seen that their language and their religion may be traced to two sources which exist together, mixed but not fused, like oil and water. One of these elements in language probably, in religion certainly, is Nigritian, the other in language is certainly Shemite, and in religion probably the same. Of any other element there seems to be as yet no proof.

Ancient Egyptian history does not help us to discover the origin of the race. It dawns with the reign of Menes the first mortal king. Nothing is said of any previous movement of population. The prehistoric age, the time before Menes, called the reign of the gods, was evidently mythical, as it was reckoned by astronomical cycles, and the gods were arranged in it according to their importance, the rule of the great gods coming first, and very inferior mythological personages reigning towards the close. Between Menes and the earliest dated monuments, was an interval of probably not above seven or eight centuries, which may be called traditional, and of which legends were related. Yet at the head of this age stands the undoubtedly historical figure of Menes ruling at an Egyptian town over all Egypt.

The vestiges of a prehistoric period are thought to remain in the stone implements found in Egypt. Here, it is argued, as elsewhere, there was a prehistoric stone age. This may well have been, but two things must be borne in mind: that the paintings show the use of stone arrowheads far down in the historic age, and also that the stone implements discovered may have been in some cases the work of a neighboring savage race. For the present we want evidence of a true prehistoric stone age in Egypt. This subject has been neglected by explorers, who are probably diverted from it by the wealth of historical documents that reward them in all parts of the country.

History, then, but not pure history, begins with Menes, the first king of the first of those thirty dynasties under which the Egyptian historian Manetho arranged the kings of Egypt. The first historical event is the founding of the oldest capital, Memphis, "the good station," to which the seat of government was probably removed by Menes. He came from the still older town of Thinis or This, in Upper Egypt, close to the more famous sacred city of Abydos. Memphis is a little to the south of Cairo, and not far south of the point of the Delta. The site was therefore well chosen as a central point from which the whole country could be governed, while the valley of Upper Egypt was protected by it, and afforded a safe retreat in case of disaster. Here at Memphis, great and powerful seven or eight centuries later, the history of its foundation surely must have been well known, and this, combined with the consistent character of all which is told by the agreement of historians as to Menes, leaves no doubt of his historical character.

Passing at once from a time as to which we have no certain contemporary records, we are arrested by the earliest known monuments, the pyramids of El-Geezeh and the lesser tombs around, and suddenly find ourselves face to face with the Egyptian life of more than four thousand years ago, recorded by architecture, sculpture, and hieroglyphic inscriptions.

It is not any longer necessary to prove that hieroglyphics can be read, but it may be well here to mention the method by which this is done. The ancient language is essentially the same as the modern or Coptic, which was written with the Greek alphabet and some additional letters to express sounds wanting to Greek. The ancient characters are either phonetic (syllabic or alphabetic) or ideographic. Any word may be written phonetically or by ideograph (symbol), or in both ways 