The further one penetrates into antiquity towards the origins of Egyptian art, the more perfect are the products of that art, as though the genius of the people, inversely to that of others, was formed suddenly.... Egyptian art we only know in its decadence. M. Jean Capart, the eminent Belgian Egyptologist, Keeper of the Egyptian Antiquities at the Royal Museum, Brussels, supports that opinion, saying, in his recent work on _Primitive Art in Egypt_, that M. L'Hôte's conclusion was and remains legitimate. Since L'Hôte's time fine works of art and astonishing beauty have been found in tombs of the _Third_ Dynasty of Egyptian Pharaohs, about whom nothing--or next to nothing--was known until lately; even the Fourth Dynasty, the so-called Pyramid Builders, being historically very obscure, no agreement as to their date having been come to yet. It is fairly decided that they lived more than four or five thousands years B. C. Maspero, speaking of some paintings of the extremely ancient Third Dynasty, says: The Egyptians were animal painters of the highest power, and they never gave better proof of it than in this picture. No modern painter could have seized with more spirit and humor the heavy gait of the goose, the curves of its neck, the pretentious carriage of its head, and the markings of its plumage. The human figure was also represented with great artistic skill at the same early period. Even then the characteristic full-faced eye in the profile face was a firmly established _convention_. We do not know the reasons for this, but it cannot have been accidental. According to Dr. Petrie, the great Egyptian explorer, the commencement of the Egyptian civilization that we call classical, the Egypt of the Pharaohs with its hieroglyphs, its established style of art, its complicated religion and philosophy, dates back to not less than B. C. 5000. This would be the time of the First Dynasty. Think what that means! A stretch of splendid civilization before the beginning of the Christian era about five times as long as the period that has elapsed since the time of King Alfred to this day, a period which has included almost or quite all that we look upon as worthy of consideration in _our_ history! And yet back of Dr. Petrie's First Dynastic age we now find ourselves face to face with a prehistoric Egyptian civilization or civilizations of absolutely unknown age, possibly of a hundred thousand years duration. The one that immediately preceded the Dynastic or Pharaonic is supposed to be of Libyan origin.