VII. And others, which have upon them only ornamental designs, as to which we cannot, up to this time, ascertain the meaning. The Historical scarabs are of great value in ascertaining or displaying, in chronological series, the cartouches or shield names, if I may be permitted thus to term them, of the monarchs of Egypt; going from the most remote antiquity of the Egyptian kingdom, to A.D. 200. "The Ancient Egyptians," remarks the Rev. Mr. Loftie, in his admirable little book; Of Scarabs, p. 30 _et seq._, "happy people, had no money on which to stamp the image and superscription of their Pharaohs. A collection of scarabs, inscribed with the names of kings, stands therefore to Egyptian history as a collection of coins stands to the history of the younger nations of the earth. The day must come when our Universities and other bodies of learned folk, will study the beginnings of things as they are presented in Egyptian history, and some knowledge of these curious little objects will become indispensable to an educated man * * * * The collection now arranged in the British Museum is second to none." I would also say, those in the Louvre at Paris, are now arranged chronologically. A good collection is also in the Egyptian Museum at Gizeh, collected by M. Mariette; formerly it was very fine. Mr. W.M. Flinders Petrie asserts[50] that most have been stolen, and further says: "I hear that they were mainly sold to General Cesnola for New York." If these are in the possession of the Metropolitan Museum of New York City, it possesses a genuine and rare collection of scarabs. A large number of scarabs bear the names of the pharaonic kings; this is not strange when we remember that the pharaoh was Horus, Khepera, and also a son of Ra and of Osiris. These cartouches are those of kings of orthodox Egyptian descent, we do not find the names of the Greek Ptolemies upon them, the Roman Emperors, as conquerors, sometimes used them but that does not prove their abstract right to do so. The latest, in the collection belonging to France, is of Nectanebo the last native pharaoh, (_circa_ 300 B.C.) Some of them, as did those of Thotmes IIIrd, bear the inscription, Ra-men-kheper, i.e., Ra, the sun-god establishes the future resurrection. This is found on fully one-half of the specimens from the XVIIIth Dynasty down. The art of making the scarabs as I have said before, varies with the epochs. The most elegantly finished are those of the time of the IVth Dynasty (3733-3600 B.C.,) that of the Great Pyramids; in the XIIth Dynasty (2466-2266 B.C.,) fine work again appears, then comes inartistic work. Again with the XVIIIth Dynasty (1700-1433 B.C.,) arises another period of splendor, and the art after again deteriorating revived under the XXVIth, the Saïtic Dynasty, (666-528 B.C.)