At about 5000 B. C. there poured into Egypt a very different people, probably from the Red Sea. Having far more artistic taste, a commoner use of metals, a system of writing already begun, and a more organized government, these fresh people started a new civilization in Egypt; adopting readily the art and skill of the earlier race, they formed by their union the peculiar culture known as Egyptian, a type which lasted for four thousand years. The same foundation of a type is seen in the bodily structure; the early historical people had wider heads and more slender noses than the prehistoric, but from 4000 B. C. down to Roman times the form shows no change. From this union of two able races came one of the finest peoples ever seen, the Egyptians of the old kingdom, 4500—3500 B. C. Full of grand conceptions, active, able, highly mechanical, and yet splendid artists, they have left behind them the greatest masses of building, the most accurate workmanship and exquisite sculptures in the grand pyramids and tombs of their cemeteries. They perfected the art of organizing combined labor on the immense public works. In all these respects no later age or country has advanced beyond this early ability. The moral character and ideas are preserved to us in the writings of these people; and we there read of the ability, reserve, steadfastness, and kindliness which we see reflected in the lifelike portraiture of that age. After a partial decay about 3000 B. C. this civilization blossomed out again nobly in the twelfth dynasty about 2600 B. C.; though the works of this age hardly reach the high level of the earlier times, yet they are finer than anything that followed them. At this period more contact with other countries is seen; both Syria and the Mediterranean were known, though imperfectly.