In 1856 were completed the twelve volumes of the great work on monuments which Lepsius had been commissioned by his king to prepare. At the time that he left Egypt he had thought that it would exceed his powers. It was published in sixty-two numbers, and the eight hundred and ninety-four plates which compose them are in folio form, and exceed in size all previous works of the kind. The size interferes with the convenience of the book for handling, and is the sole point to be found fault with in what is otherwise a model production. The late Mariette once said to us in jest: “One needs a corporal and four soldiers to use your Lepsius’ ‘Monuments,’” and it is true that these twelve gigantic volumes demand too much physical strength, and too much space on the study-table, when one is obliged to consult them one after another. Yet the labor is substantially lessened by the incomparable order in which the author has arranged them. “The Monuments of Egypt and Ethiopia”[62] embrace all the archaeological, palaeographic and historical acquisitions of the expedition. They contain the prodigious wealth of hieroglyphic, Greek and other written records which the travellers collected on the way, in addition to maps, sketches, landscapes and architectural pictures, many of which are finely executed in colors. The thousands of sheets of paper containing the impressions taken in Egypt, from which the majority of the inscriptions were copied and transferred to the lithographic stone, are preserved in the Egyptian museum as valuable documents. Let it be noted here that Lepsius was the first to apply successfully and efficiently this excellent method of copying by means of paper impressions. It is now, however, only on rare occasions of minor importance that the investigator finds it necessary to refer to the original impressions of the expedition, so wonderfully accurate are the reproductions of them. In the great publications of Champollion and Rosellini, (page 78) we frequently find alterations and inaccuracies on comparing them with the monuments, but in the “Monuments” of Lepsius such defects are almost unknown. Yet still greater commendation is due to the classification of the immense material comprised in this inexhaustible mine. There is scarcely the least change to be made in the historical sequence of these hundreds of closely filled plates, although later researches and excavations have furnished much that is new, and many details have been elucidated by the monographic works of Egyptologists since 1850. Before his departure for the Orient Lepsius had already examined the succession of the Egyptian dynasties. Amidst the monuments of the Nile he succeeded in finding answers to all that had appeared questionable to him while in Europe, and in thus bringing light into darkness. While carrying forward his work on the “Monuments” he also established a scientific groundwork for all the knowledge which he had previously accumulated, and was thus able