[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Greek Rhyton. (Trumbull-Prime Coll., N. Y. Metropolitan Museum.)] We approach Egypt, in this connection, with a certain amount of awe. We examine its early pottery with a sensation similar to that with which we view a mummy. It comprises relics of a civilization of so hoary an antiquity, that to study them is like peering into the secrets of the grave. It is, in fact, from the tombs that the treasures have been exhumed which enable us to trace Egyptian ceramic art. They tell of customs followed long before the Persian Cambyses “O’erthrew Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis, And shook the Pyramids with fear and wonder When the gigantic Memnon fell asunder.” Some of the specimens date from the Third Dynasty, about four thousand years ago. There is now in existence a porcelain box bearing one of the names of Amasis II., the king whom Cambyses overthrew six hundred years before our era began. The earliest relics may be said to have been coeval with the invention of a written language. [Illustration: Fig. 7.--Kylix, with Gorgon and Eyes.] A very curious custom may be allowed to arrest our attention for a moment. In the tombs previous to the sixth century B.C., have been found cones (Fig. 8), having inscriptions on their base. From these we learn the occupants’ names and office, whether scribes, priests, or nobles. They served, in short, all the purposes of the inscriptions on the tombs of our day, or of labels for establishing the identity of the dead. Terra-cotta figures have also been found in some graves, bearing, like the cones, the name and title of the deceased. In the same connection may be mentioned the peculiar, and to us revolting, usage of devoting vases to holding the viscera of the embalmed body. [Illustration: Fig. 8.--Red Earthen-ware Cone. (Trumbull-Prime Coll., N. Y. Metropolitan Museum.)]