one. They prove the
magnificence of the kings and the vast amount of human labor at
their disposal. The regal power at that time was very strong. The
reign of Khufu or Cheops is marked by the building of the great
pyramid. The pyramids were the tombs of kings, built in the
necropolis of Memphis, ten miles above the modern Cairo. Security
was the object as well as splendor.

As remarked by a great Egyptologist, the whole life of the Egyptian
was spent in the contemplation of death; thus the tomb became the
concrete thought. The belief of the ancient Egyptian was that so
long as his body remained intact so was his immortality; whence
arose the embalming of the great, and hence the immense structures
of stone to secure the inviolability of the entombed monarch.

The monuments have as yet yielded no account of the events which tended
to unite Egypt under the rule of one man; we can only surmise that the
feudal principalities had gradually been drawn together into two groups,
each of which formed a separate kingdom. Heliopolis became the chief
focus in the north, from which civilization radiated over the wet plain
and the marshes of the Delta.

Its colleges of priests had collected, condensed, and arranged the
principal myths of the local regions; the Ennead to which it gave
conception would never have obtained the popularity which we must
acknowledge it had, if its princes had not exercised, for at least some
period, an actual suzerainty over the neighboring plains. It was around
Heliopolis that the kingdom of Lower Egypt was organized; everything
there bore traces of Heliopolitan theories--the protocol of the kings,
their supposed descent from Ra, and the enthusiastic worship which they
offered to the sun.

The Delta, owing to its compact and restricted area, was aptly suited
for government from one centre; the Nile valley proper, narrow,
tortuous, and stretching like a thin strip on either bank of the river,
did not lend itself to so complete a unity. It, too, represented a
single kingdom, having the reed and the lotus for its emblems; but its
component parts were more loosely united, its religion was less
systematized, and it lacked a well-placed city to serve as a political
and sacerdotal centre. Hermopolis contained schools of theologians who
certainly played an important part in the development of myths and
dogmas; but the influence of its rulers was ne