It is one of the standing surprises for the student of antiquity that the most massive structures ever built by man should be found in Egypt, dating from a period so remote as to be almost prehistoric. One finds it hard to avoid the feeling that there was a race sprung suddenly to a very high plane of civilisation, as if by a sheer leap from barbarism; but, of course, no modern student of the subject considers the matter in this light. It is uniformly accepted that a vast period of time lies back of the Pyramids, in which the Egyptians were slowly working their way upward. Professor Maspero estimates that for at least eight or ten thousand years the people had inhabited this land, all along developing their peculiar civilisation. Of course such an estimate makes no claim to historical accuracy; it is only a general conclusion based upon what seems a reasonable rate of progress. The recent explorations in Egypt have endeavoured to penetrate the mysteries of what has hitherto been the prehistoric period, and these efforts have met with a certain measure of success. In the Fayum, Professor Petrie has made excavations that revealed the remains of a much earlier period than that of the first dynasties hitherto recognised. Among other interesting relics, sarcophagi were found containing mummified bodies in a marvellous state of preservation. One of these now exhibited at the British Museum in London shows the body of a man of full proportions lying on his side with knees folded up against his body. Unlike the mummies of the later Egyptian period, this ancient effigy has no wrappings of any kind, but so remarkable are the results of the processes of embalming to which it has been subjected, that the form of the various members, and the features even, have been preserved with marvellously little shrinkage or distortion. The skin is indeed dry and dark, yet its resemblance to the skin of a living person of a dark-hued race is so striking that one can hardly realise, in looking at it, that the corpse before him is the body of a person who lived perhaps eight or ten thousand years ago. As to other remains found by the later explorations, among the most interesting and suggestive are flint implements chipped in the manner characteristic of the Palæolithic or rough stone age. We are guarded, however, against drawing too sweeping inferences from these antiquities by Professor Petrie’s assurance that the Egyptians continued to use such chipped flint implements throughout the period from the IVth to the Xth Dynasty. It has been doubted whether any of these stone implements can be regarded as of strictly prehistoric origin, or whether, indeed, any of the antiquities discovered in Egypt evidence an uncivilised stage of racial history. The latest opinion, however, is that the makers of the pottery and flint implements were the aborigines of the country, who were displaced by the invasion of the Egyptians of history.