These objects were found on the site of ancient Bubastis, and the presence of the cats of the goddess Bastît on several of them, as well as the name of Tamaî, the Cat, that is on the chief vase, seem to point that they were made in the place that has restored them to us. It is true that Tamaî was a singing-girl of Neîth, living in the enclosed space before the temple of Neîth, and that might be a counter-indication, at least so far as these objects are concerned. Setting aside the question of origin, which is too uncertain, we may ask if they are really Egyptian by inspiration, or if there is not a risk in examining them more closely of the discovery of proofs of some foreign influence. For about a quarter of a century, now, Assyria, Chaldæa, Asia Minor, Crete and the Egyptian islands have become better known to us, and the scholars who have studied those places have not been slow to despoil Egypt in their favour: it is too often sufficient for an object or an artistic design frequently occurring on Egyptian monuments to be found in those places at once to attribute to them the original invention or ownership. I cannot help thinking that many of these claims are not legitimate, and that in a more general way it is exceedingly rash in the case of a civilization so complex and distant in its beginnings as that of Egypt at the time of the second Theban Empire, to claim the ability to discern all the elements it borrowed from outside. We know how rapidly the peoples of the Nile assimilate the foreigner: in ancient times, it was with the arts as with men, and forms of architecture, of drawing, of industrial production, transplanted among them, either quickly disappeared and left no trace, or yielded to the conditions of the country, and became so completely fused with the taste of its environment that it is now scarcely possible to distinguish the foreign from the native. I believe that Egypt certainly accepted exotic types; but the lands with which she had relations did not abstain from imitating her, and from the most distant ages. She gave to others at least as much as she received from them, and in many cases where the question of filiation has recently been determined against her, it would be well to suspend that judgment, if not to upset it.