evident that the books
which they wrote are closed books to those who have not the glamour of
vanished peoples, and the fascination of mighty cities now made
desolate, strong upon them.

Yet in the heterogeneous and pitiful flotsam that reluctant seas have
washed to us piecemeal from a remote past, there are, as will be shown
later, many things which, although proceeding from a culture and modes
of thought as far removed from our own as they may well be,[1] are
worth the reading, which do not require any special knowledge for their
understanding; and of these are the translations in this book.

The following pages, which, although addressed to the 'general reader,'
may yet be of some assistance to those especially interested in Egypt,
give, among other matters, the place of the Instructions of Ptah-hotep
and Ke'gemni in the 'literature' of Egypt; their place--their {17}
unique place--in the literature of the world; their value historically;
a description of the document in which they were found; what is known
of their authors; a discussion of their contents.

The land of which the Father of History declared that no other country
held so many wonders, has bequeathed us, by various channels, the
rumour and remnant of a strange knowledge. She has devised us enigmas
insoluble, and rendered up to us signs and messages whose meaning is
dark for all time. And she has left a religion, 'veiled in allegory
and illustrated by symbol,' as fascinating as impenetrable for those
who approach it. For into our hands the keys of these things have not
been delivered; wherefore much study of them is a weariness to the
flesh, and of the hazarding of interpretations there is no end.

But apart from the mazes of mythology, the broken ways of history and
the empty letter of a dead faith, there are, as is known to some, and
as this little book professes to show, many documents which are
antique, but not antiquated, possessing interest above the purely
archaeological--the interest called human. Of these are the tales
which recall, in incident as in style, those of the immortal
collection, full of the whole glamour of the East, the _Thousand Nights
and a Night_. {18} Such are the love-songs, full of the burning
utterance of desire; the pathetic and even bitter dirges, whose singers
have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and found all to
be vanity and vexation of spirit. And such also are the didactic poems
for the instr