All this development of a science which has grown almost within the lifetime of some of its exponents from a comparatively simple thing to one of the most complex and exacting of human studies, has, of course, been the work of many minds and hands. But if the name of any one man must be associated with modern excavation as that of the chief begetter of its principles and methods, it must be the name of Professor Sir W. M. Flinders Petrie. It was he, as one of the most brilliant of the exponents of his methods has recently stated, who first called the attention of modern excavators to the importance of “unconsidered trifles,” as means for the reconstruction of the past. Above all, it was he who first taught us that for purposes of certainty in the establishment of the succession of different periods, the “broken earthenware” of a people may be of far greater value than its most gigantic monuments. And it has been men trained in the principles which he established who have during the last generation been doing the work which has made the past of the Classic East a living thing to the world of to-day. It remains now to trace the outline of their accomplishment in Egypt. CHAPTER IV THE PYRAMIDS AND THEIR EXPLORERS Of all the works of man there is none which has attained such lasting and universal fame as the group of buildings known as the Pyramids of Gizeh. For the best part of five thousand years this group of mighty structures has been one of the wonders of the world, and the theories which have been framed to account for their existence have been more numerous than the Pyramids themselves. Egypt has many buildings far more beautiful, and perhaps as wonderful; but the Pyramids are, to the great majority of people, the characteristic buildings of the land, and whenever Egypt is named there rises before the mind at once a vision of three vast bulks of masonry squatting defiantly on the rising ground above the Libyan desert, as though challenging Time himself to make any impression on their stupendous mass. “All things dread Time,” it has been said, “but Time itself dreads the Pyramids”; and the very exaggeration testifies to the profound impression which their bulk and strength have made upon the mind of man. The mere lapse of forty-five centuries would seemingly of itself have made next to no impression on them; the vandalism of man has done a little more; but even the efforts of those who for many centuries have used the vast masses as a convenient quarry have done little more than show more convincingly the power and skill of the builders who reared in the beginning these huge mausoleums around whose bases the workers of succeeding generations have pottered and scratched like children playing with toy spades in the sand.