had no knowledge of the ancient Egyptians.

=Champollion.=--The French expedition to Egypt (1798-1801) opened the
country to scholars. They made a close examination of the Pyramids
and ruins of Thebes, and collected drawings and inscriptions. But no
one could decipher the hieroglyphs, the Egyptian writing. It was an
erroneous impression that every sign in this writing must each
represent a word. In 1821 a French scholar, Champollion, experimented
with another system. An official had reported that there was an
inscription at Rosetta in three forms of writing--parallel with the
hieroglyphs was a translation in Greek. The name of King Ptolemy, was
surrounded with a cartouche.[8] Champollion succeeded in finding in
this name the letters P, T, O, L, M, I, S. Comparing these with other
names of kings similarly enclosed, he found the whole alphabet. He
then read the hieroglyphs and found that they were written in a
language like the Coptic, the language spoken in Egypt at the time of
the Romans, and which was already known to scholars.

=Egyptologists.=--Since Champollion, many scholars have travelled over
Egypt and have ransacked it thoroughly. We call these students
Egyptologists, and they are to be found in every country of Europe. A
French Egyptologist, Mariette (1821-1881), made some excavations for
the Viceroy of Egypt and created the museum of Boulak. France has
established in Cairo a school of Egyptology, directed by Maspero.

=Discoveries.=--Not every country yields such rich discoveries as does
Egypt. The Egyptians constructed their tombs like houses, and laid in
them objects of every kind for the use of the dead--furniture,
garments, arms, and edibles. The whole country was filled with tombs
similarly furnished. Under this extraordinarily dry climate everything
has been preserved; objects come to light intact after a burial of
4,000 or 5,000 years. No people of antiquity have left so many traces
of themselves as the Egyptians; none is better known to us.

THE EGYPTIAN EMPIRE

=Antiquity of the Egyptian People.=--An Egyptian priest said to
Herodotus, "You Greeks are only children." The Egyptians considered
themselves the oldest people of the world. Down to the Persian
conquest (520[9] B.C.) there were twenty-six dynasties of kings. The
first ran back 4,000 years,[10] and during these forty centuries Egypt
had been an empire. The capital down to the tenth dynasty (the period
of the Old Empire) was at Memphis in