These crude and elementary products of undeveloped civilizations have no place, however, in any list of genuine architectural works. They belong rather to the domain of archæology and ethnology, and have received this brief mention only as revealing the beginnings of the builder’s art, and the wide gap that separates them from that genuine architecture which forms the subject of the following chapters. +MONUMENTS+: The most celebrated in England are at Avebury, an avenue, large and small circles, barrows, and the great tumuli of Bartlow and Silbury “Hills;” at Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, great megalithic circles and many barrows; “Sarsen stones” at Ashdown; tumuli, dolmens, chambers, and circles in Derbyshire. In Ireland, many cairns and circles. In Scotland, circles and barrows in the Orkney Islands. In France, Carnac and Lokmariaker in Brittany are especially rich in dolmens, circles, and avenues. In Scandinavia, Germany, and Italy, in India and in Africa, are many similar remains. CHAPTER II. EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Champollion, _Monuments de l’Egypte et de la Nubie_. Choisy, _L’art de bâtir chez les Egyptiens_. Flinders-Petrie, _History of Egypt; Ten Years Digging in Egypt, 1881-91_. Jomard, _Description de l’Egypte, Antiquités_. Lepsius, _Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien_. Mariette, _Monuments of Upper Egypt_. Maspero, _Egyptian Archæology_. Perrot and Chipiez, _History of Art in Ancient Egypt_. Prisse d’Avennes, _Histoire de l’art égyptien_. Reber, _History of Ancient Art_. Rossellini, _Monumenti del Egitto_. Wilkinson, _Manners and Customs of Ancient Egyptians_. +LAND AND PEOPLE.+ As long ago as 5000 B.C., the Egyptians were a people already highly civilized, and skilled in the arts of peace and war. The narrow valley of the Nile, fertilized by the periodic overflow of the river, was flanked by rocky heights, nearly vertical in many places, which afforded abundance of excellent building stone, while they both isolated the Egyptians and protected them from foreign aggression. At the Delta, however, the valley widened out, with the falling away of these heights, into broad lowlands, from which there was access to the outer world. The art history of Egypt may be divided into five periods as follows: I. THE ANCIENT EMPIRE (cir. 4500?-3000 B.C.), comprising the first ten dynasties, with Memphis as the capital. II. THE FIRST THEBAN MONARCHY or MIDDLE EMPIRE (3000-2100 B.C.) comprising the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth dynasties reigning at Thebes. The Hyksos invasion, or incursion of the Shepherd Kings, interrupted the current of Egyptian art history for a period of unknown length, probably not less than four or five centuries. III. THE SECOND THEBAN MONARCHY (1700?-1000 B.C.), comprising the eighteenth to twentieth dynasties inclusive, was the great period of Egyptian history; the age of conquests and of vast edifices.