The Egyptians appear as a civilized nation, having a scientific, artistic, and political knowledge of no mean order, at a time when the greater part of the world’s inhabitants were but a step removed from the level of ignorant savages, and when, according to a generally accepted chronology, the world itself had existed but a few hundred years. The construction of the Pyramids reveals a building capacity which has rarely been rivalled, requiring not only immense mechanical power, but an accuracy of judgment and calculation in the adjustment of blocks of granite weighing many tons, not simply piled one above the other, but perfectly jointed and polished, and so disposed that passages and chambers were roofed over and their ceilings relieved from superincumbent weight by ingeniously contrived compartments, one above the other, and closed by sliding doors of monolithic stones, the handling of which could only have been successful by people well versed in the theories of equilibrium and support; and yet all this was done at a date which the best authorities agree in saying could not have been later than three thousand years before Christ. Their temples show an equally advanced erudition, and the paintings and hieroglyphics with which the walls of these buildings are adorned give a faithful representation of the customs of a people acquainted with the minor arts and sciences and the appliances requisite for agriculture. The admiration with which we may regard the excellence of so ancient an art is tempered when we find that it contained no element of progress. The monuments of the eighteenth dynasty, though numerous and imposing, scarcely differ from those of the preceding period, and even in the days of the Ptolemys, who encouraged the native art, there was nothing attempted but a repetition of the old methods. From beginning to end the arts were so fettered by conventionality and dogmatic laws, opposed to originality or change, that the only improvements made were in mere mechanical execution. A great prevailing thought seems to have actuated this people,—that of death and eternity. Their aim in erecting their buildings was to render them quasi-eternal, and by embalming the bodies of the dead they even sought to perpetuate the semblance of life. Their kings at the beginning of their reigns commenced the construction of their own sepulchres, employing hundreds of workmen and immense expenditure of the national funds for the purpose, and countless thousands passed their lives in hollowing temples in the mountain rock and in carrying huge blocks from great distances for the building of the pylons and hypostylic halls of the Nile, in which durability and massiveness were considered all-important.