them, the Ionians, carried on their trade with the Egyptians. On land the only entrance was by Pelusium; and here as also at Pharos, an entrance-tax had apparently to be paid. From the Homeric poems we may conclude that there was then a trade with Egypt, and not only piratical descents upon the coasts; but when the Ionians, about the middle of the eighth century, began to enter into dangerous competition with the Phenicians, the latter seem to have succeeded in getting the Greeks excluded from Egypt, and obtaining for themselves the monopoly of the sea--a privilege which, however, they did not maintain for more than a century.[305] Such was ancient Egypt, the land of marvel, whose richly developed civilization lies on the threshold of historical life. Excellently furnished by nature, and placed in a peculiarly favoured land, the Copts have transferred to their own lives and civilization the grave and solemn character of their sky and their country. Their conservative feeling is directed towards fixed and unalterable order; the sons repeat the lives of their fathers, and the nation is divided into various classes and corporations, which carry on the same occupations from generation to generation. The beneficent powers of nature, the mystery of life, the life returning out of death--these are the forces and laws which the Egyptians worshipped as their good gods, whose creation is the fruitful world, who manifest themselves in good creatures, whose unchangeable nature they seemed to recognise as embodied in the instinctive and unalterable life of certain animals. The life of the nation adapts itself also to priestly rules, which operate without alteration, like the laws of nature. As the heart of this people was set upon the continuance of the race and occupation, on rule and law, so also was it their desire to prolong the existence of the individual. This impulse towards the preservation of self operated so strongly that the Egyptians busied themselves with the future quite as much as with the past. It was this trait in their character which caused the Egyptians to rescue their dead from corruption, and occupied the living with the construction of "eternal dwellings for the dead." This it was which made them a nation of scribes, builders, painters and sculptors. These efforts culminate in the buildings of the kings, who could command the whole powers of the land in preserving their names. The Egyptians were loath to end with death. It was the true vocation of every man worthily to build and "adorn his tomb;" and the essential object of life is--not to lose the everlasting life after death by unclean and unlawful conversation--to win a return to the divine origin of life.