A good deal has been said about the need of recasting our ideas of Egyptian history in the light of the new information which has been gained from the tomb of Tutankhamen, and some writers have hinted that our whole conception of the close of the XVIIIth Dynasty is wrong, and must be recast to square with the new facts. We are asked to discard the idea of an Egypt beginning to decline from the lofty position which she had held under Thothmes III and Amenhotep III, and to substitute for this the picture of an Egypt waking with renewed strength from the uneasy religious dreams of the reign of Akhenaten, and asserting once more, and with greater vigour than ever, her dominion in the realms of both politics and art. All this is merely a vain imagination. Historically, no new facts have emerged from the tomb of Tutankhamen. It is scarcely true to say, with Budge, that “we know no more now about the reign of this king than we did before Lord Carnarvon made his phenomenal discovery.” That would only be the case on the narrow reading of the meaning of history which would confine it to the mere recording of dates, conquests, and legislation. The art of any period constitutes no small part of its history, and for the history of far-past times it is one of our most valuable sources of information; and we may surely look for a large extension of our knowledge of the art of ancient Egypt in the reign of Tutankhamen from the treasures of his tomb. But so far as concerns the facts of what the king, and Egypt under his leadership, accomplished in the matter of raising again the declining prestige and power of the Empire, we know no more than we did before the tomb was opened; nor is it likely that when the work is completed we shall have gained much more information, if any, on this point. For the likelihood is that if there are any papyri beneath the great golden canopy, they will be of a purely religious type, versions of one or other of the different forms of spiritual guide-book which the devout Egyptian carried with him on his long journey through the dark Underworld.