e later days was a
matter of wonder and scoffing to their contemporaries; it is generally
agreed that certain features in the development of Christianity are to
be traced to Egypt as their birthplace and nidus.

For researches into the ethnography of Egypt and the neighbouring
countries, see W. Max Muller, _Asien und Europa nach den altag.
Inschriften_ (Leipzig, 1893), _Egyptological Researches_ (Washington,
1906); for measurements of Egyptian skulls, Miss Fawcett in
_Biometrika_ (1902); A. Thomson and D. Randall-MacIver, _The Ancient
Races of the Thebaid_ (Oxford, 1905) (cf. criticisms in _Man_, 1905;
and for comparisons with modern measurements, C. S. Myers, _Journ.
Anthropological Institute_, 1905, 80). W. Flinders Petrie has
collected and discussed a series of facial types shown in prehistoric
and early Egyptian sculpture, _Journal Anthropological Institute_,
1901, 248. For Elliott Smith's results see _The Cairo Scientific
Journal_, No. 30, vol. iii., March 1909.

_Divisions._--In ancient times Egypt was divided into two regions,
representing the kingdoms that existed before Menes. Lower Egypt,
comprising the Delta and its borders, formed the "North Land," _To-meh_,
and reached up the valley to include Memphis and its province or "nome,"
while the remainder of the Egyptian Nile valley was "the South," _Shema_
(SM'W [HRGs: sw-w-a]). The south, if only as the abode of the sun,
always had the precedence over the north in Egypt, and the west over the
east. Later the two regions were known respectively as P-to-res
(Pathros), "the south land," and P-to-meh, "the north land." In
practical administration this historic distinction was sometimes
observed, at others ignored, but in religious tradition it had a firm
hold. In Roman times a different system marked off a third region,
namely Middle Egypt, from the point of the Delta southward.
Theoretically, as its name Heptanomis implies, this division contained
seven nomes, actually from the Hermopolite on the south to the Memphite
on the north (excluding the Arsinoite according to the papyri). Some
tendency to this existed earlier. Egypt to the south of the Heptanomis
was the Thebais, called P-tesh-en-Ne, "the province of Thebes," as early
as the XXVIth Dynasty. The Thebais was much under the influence of the
Ethiopian kingdom, and was separated politically in the troubled times
of the XXIIIrd Dynasty, though the old division into Upper and Lower
Egypt