It is always surprising in studying the literature of a past time, to note the facility with which the details of everyday life are omitted. Such a writer as Herodotus tells many interesting things about the manners and customs of Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Scythians even, but he scarcely tells us a word except inferentially, or by way of pointing a contrast, of the everyday life of his own people, the Greeks themselves. Similarly the Egyptian writers, had they visited Greece, would doubtless have had much to say of the strange customs of that “barbaric people”; but it never occurs to them to enter into any details as to the everyday life of their own race. The reason for this is sufficiently obvious. One writes chiefly for a contemporary audience, and it would be tedious and absurd to fill one’s pages with details regarding things that constitute part of the most elementary knowledge of every reader. What Greek would have cared to listen to Herodotus, had he chosen to fill his pages with prosy dissertations upon the way in which his hearers and readers built their houses, attired themselves, ate their meals, and pursued their everyday vocations? Every line of such a disquisition would have been filled with fascinating interest for posterity, but posterity was but little in the mind of the writer himself. It is precisely the same with the writings of to-day. If one will consider in this light the first novel that comes to hand, he will be astonished to note how much is taken for granted, and how little even the most realistic story would tell to a person utterly ignorant of our manners and customs about the precise details of our everyday life. Even the newspapers, which seem to thresh out the veriest chaff of life, are mostly guiltless of specific reference to any of those everyday commonplaces, the lack of which in ancient writings fills us with such regret. It is not surprising then, though none the less to be deplored, that the relatively abundant stores of Egyptian literature give after all only an incomplete and imperfect picture of the manners and customs of the people.