CHAPTER IX. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE EGYPTIANS 196 CHAPTER X. THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION 219 CHAPTER XI. EGYPTIAN CULTURE 240 CHAPTER XII. CONCLUDING SUMMARY OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY 263 APPENDIX A. CLASSICAL TRADITIONS 267 APPENDIX B. THE PROBLEM OF EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY 287 BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 293 A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY 295 [Illustration: ANCIENT AND MODERN EGYPT] EGYPT AS A WORLD INFLUENCE A CHARACTERISATION OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY WRITTEN SPECIALLY FOR THE PRESENT WORK BY DR. ADOLF ERMAN Professor of Egyptology in the University of Berlin; Director of the Berlin Egyptian Museum; Member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, Berlin, etc. The countries that laid the foundation of our civilisation are not of those through which traffic passes on its way from land to land. Neither Babylon nor Egypt lies on one of the natural highways of the world; they lie hidden, encircled by mountains or deserts, and the seas that wash their shores are such as the ordinary seafarer avoids rather than frequents. But this very seclusion, which to us, with our modern ideas, seems a thing prejudicial to culture, did its part toward furthering the development of mankind in these ancient lands; it assured to their inhabitants a less troublous life than otherwise falls to the lot of nations under primitive conditions. Egypt, more particularly, had no determined adversary, nor any that could meet her on equal terms close at hand. To west of her stretched a desert, leading by interminable wanderings to sparsely populated lands. On the east the desert was less wide indeed, but beyond it lay the Red Sea, and he who crossed it did but reach another desert, the Arabian waste. Southward for hundreds of miles stretched the barren land of Nubia, where even the waterway of the Nile withholds its wonted service, so that the races of the Sudan are likewise shut off from Egypt. And even the route from Palestine to the Nile, which we are apt to think of as so short and easy, involved a march of several days through waterless desert and marshy ground. These neighbour countries, barren as they are, were certainly inhabited, but the dwellers there were poor nomads; they might conquer Egypt now and again, but they could not permanently injure her civilisation.