While the fine arts made great progress among the cultivated nations of antiquity, and with the Greeks reached a refinement that has never since been surpassed, the ancients were far behind modern nations in everything that has utility for its object. In implements of war, in agricultural instruments, in the variety of manufactures, in machinery, in chemical compounds, in domestic utensils, in grand engineering works, in the comfort of houses, in modes of land-travel and transportation, in navigation, in the multiplication of books, in triumphs over the forces of Nature, in those discoveries and inventions which abridge the labors of mankind and bring races into closer intercourse,--especially by such wonders as are wrought by steam, gas, electricity, gunpowder, the mariner's compass, and the art of printing,--the modern world feels its immense superiority to all the ages that have gone before. And yet, considering the infancy of science and the youth of nations, more was accomplished by the ancients for the comfort and convenience and luxury of man than we naturally might suppose. Egypt was the primeval seat of what may be called material civilization, and many arts and inventions were known there when the rest of the world was still in ignorance and barbarism. More than four thousand years ago the Egyptians had chariots of war and most of the military weapons known afterward to the Greeks,--especially the spear and bow, which were the most effective offensive weapons known to antiquity or the Middle Ages. Some of their warriors were clothed in coats of brass equal to the steel or iron cuirass worn by the Mediaeval knights of chivalry. They had the battle-axe, the shield, the sword, the javelin, the metal-headed arrow. One of the early Egyptian kings marched against his enemies with six hundred thousand infantry, twenty thousand cavalry, and twenty-three thousand chariots of war, each drawn by two horses. The saddles and bridles of their horses were nearly as perfect as ours are at the present time; the leather they used was dyed in various colors, and adorned with metal edges. The wheels of their chariots were bound with hoops of metal, and had six spokes. Umbrellas to protect from the rays of the sun were held over the heads of their women of rank when they rode in their highly-decorated chariots. Walls of solid masonry, thick and high, surrounded their principal cities, while an attacking or besieging army used movable towers. Their disciplined troops advanced to battle in true military precision, at the sound of the trumpet.