The Indian's character and music throw light upon the course of evolution during the first era, inasmuch as they, contrasted with those of the cannibal races, tend to substantiate my claim that sound expression takes its cue from attendant culture, advancing in pace with it. PROFANE HISTORY OF ANCIENT EGYPT At that remotest period upon which the historian can throw light (about 3000 B.C. ) the Valley of the Nile was the scene of undertakings the fruits of which have ever since excited the wonder of the world. The Pyramids, the somewhat later-built Palace of Karnak, and Temples of Luxor and Ipsambul stand first among the phenomenal conceptions of human architects; and the mechanical skill required in handling the massive blocks and pillars of which they are composed would severely test the appliances of our practical and inventive age. These monumental buildings, their consistent environments, and the deciphered records of scientific and literary accomplishments in those earliest historic times, bespeak broad culture. As we possess no record of a race from whom the Egyptians could have drawn either stimulus or knowledge itself, their culture was presumably indigenous, and therefore of slow growth. The Palace of Karnak, for instance, marks the climax of accomplishment in a line of architectural endeavor which may have begun soon after the Nile commenced making her alluvial deposits. The persistent and audacious ambition which this long course of development attests, and the art feeling expressed in their works, endows Egyptian interest in music, as evinced through the scientific treatises mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, with especial significance. They were more learned and less pedantic than the Chinese, and were, besides, emotional and imaginative, although sadly superstitious. Had that high enlightenment permeated all classes of the people, Egypt would have been an Elysium for our art, but it was, unfortunately, confined to the upper social grades, which embraced the priests, and to a certain extent the warriors.