Thus we see that as long ago as the stone age, before man had yet discovered any metal except, maybe, gold, he had advanced so far as to have discovered the most necessary arts of life, hunting, fishing, navigation (in some form), the domestication of animals, agriculture, planting, weaving, the making of garments--not of skin only, but also of linen or cloth--and the making of pottery. And now let us note one other thing--the point where the stone age seems to approach most nearly to the borders of actual history. History begins in Egypt. For no continuous Biblical history exists for the days prior to Abraham. But in Egypt, for many centuries before Abraham, we have a continuous history, or at least continuous chronicles and dynastic lists, whose authenticity is admitted, and the remains of no mean civilization in the buildings contemporary with these earliest chronicles. Egyptian history may be said to begin with the builders of the pyramids. But the pyramids themselves are nothing else than the children of the tumuli of the second stone age. We may call them a sort of crystallized tumuli--barrows of stone instead of earth. But, in truth, the earliest pyramids were probably not built of stone. It is generally believed that the stone pyramids which we see to-day at Gîza and Sakkara were preceded by pyramids of unbaked brick. And what are such buildings of unbaked brick save carefully raised mounds of earth? Here, then, we get the nearest meeting-point between the stone age and the age of history. Again, the principle upon which were constructed the Egyptian tombs--of which the pyramids were only the most conspicuous forms--were precisely the same as the principles which governed the construction of the more elaborate barrows. These last had not only a chamber for the dead. This chamber was in many cases approached by a passage also made of stones covered with earth; and there can be no question that the mouth of the tomb was used as a sort of ante-room in which the relatives of the dead might hold their wake, or funeral feast. Here have been found the traces of fires, the remains of animals, fragments of vessels of pottery, etc., used or consumed in the feasts. We may believe that the ceremony was repeated at stated intervals. The very same principle governed the construction of the Egyptian tombs. These likewise (in their earliest known forms) consisted of an inner tomb and of an outer chamber; generally between the one and the other there was a passage. The outer chamber is that to which archæologists have given the name of _mastaba_. In it the relatives of the dead continued year after year to keep a funeral feast in his memory. Or we may say more than in memory of the dead--_with_ the dead, we may say. For the essence of the feast, the fumes of the baked meats, was thought to penetrate along the passage and reach the mummy himself in his dark chamber. * * * * * [Sidenote: Ages of bronze and iron.]