Even in matters which seem to be most strikingly borne out by the records of the monuments, it is easy to entertain a misconception if one presses too closely the idea that the traits thus discovered belong exclusively to a particular people. Thus in the matter of that conservatism which is commonly spoken of as the predominant trait of the national character of the Egyptians. Conservative they surely were. But so is every other living creature that remains long in a single unvarying habitat. The basis of civilisation is the conservatism which leads each generation to cling fast to the customs it had inherited. The history of customs, of language, of religions, in short of all culture, shows how tenaciously every people, after a certain stage, has held to the traditions of its past. It seems as if a people, like an individual species of animal, reaches sooner or later a state of equilibrium in regard to its environment, and will change no further, except as the environment changes. Now in Egypt the physical environment appears to have changed but little within historic times, and the geographical conditions were such that the people there were afforded a high degree of isolation from outside influences. Hence the observed slowness of change in the customs of this “strange” people. Yet, even admitting all this, one must not, as we have suggested, press the point of Egyptian conservatism too far. The most casual glance along the line of their history shows many notable changes in their radical customs from age to age, even in the relatively short period open to our inspection. There were times when great pyramids and temples were all the vogue; other times when they were quite ignored. Even the custom of embalming the dead, so striking a peculiarity, was more or less subject to fluctuating fashions.