_momia_, or the Coptic _mum_, signifying bitumen or gum-resin. Although the Egyptians carried on from early times a caravan-commerce with the adjacent countries of Phœnicia, Palestine, and Arabia, importing such articles as wine, oil, and spices for embalming, yet exclusiveness and self-sufficiency were characteristics of their civilization. There, on the banks of the Nile, these millions lived, changeless in their methods through centuries, each individual mechanically pursuing the occupation to which he was born――millions cultivating the soil, and producing wheat, etc., for the subsistence of the whole: others tending the cattle necessary for food or sacrifice; millions, again, crowded into the numerous towns, occupied in the various handicrafts necessary to provide articles of clothing, luxury, etc.――a large proportion of this class being available for stupendous architectural works; and lastly, diffused through these country and town populations, two other proprietor-castes――the one a militia, occupied in gymnastic exercises alone; the other a sacerdotal or intellectual order, within whose body was accumulated all the speculative or scientific wisdom of the country. Relations existed between Egypt and the adjacent countries; and rumours of the nature of its peculiar civilization may have spread through the nations of the Mediterranean; but for a long while it was shut, like the present China, against foreign intrusion; and it was not till about the year 650 B. C. that it was thrown open to general inspection. In the sixth and fifth centuries B. C., the philosophers of other countries, and especially of Greece, used to visit Egypt in order to acquire, by intercourse with the Egyptian intellectual caste, some of that precious knowledge of which they were believed to be the depositaries.