Conscience, and to lovers of antiquity as one of the most instructive
and touching relics of a people and a power that once were great and
are now brought to nothing. By a happy chance the words of our sage
have been justified, in that he said, '_No word that hath here been set
down shall cease out of the land for ever_.' Would indeed that we had
more of such books as this, whereby we may a little lighten the
darkness that lies behind the risings of a million suns; and learn how
little the human heart, and the elements of human intercourse, alter
throughout the ages. And what of the other writers of that time, whose
works and whose very names are entirely swept away? To this there is
no better answer made than in the lamentation made by the harper close
upon five {40} thousand years ago, which was written up in the tomb of
King 'Entef:

_Those that built them tombs_, he sang, _have now no resting-place.
Lo! what of their deeds? I have heard the words of Yemhotep and of
Hardedef, whose sayings men repeat continually. Behold! where are
their abodes? Their walls are over-thrown, and their places are not,
even as though they had not been._'

The burden of Egypt.

BATTISCOMBE G. GUNN.

3, PARK HILL ROAD,
CROYDON.

[1] Much ingenuity has been expended to show that Egyptian manners and
customs, books, and other things, were "much the same" as our own, as
though the supposed similarity reflected any credit either on them or
on us. Except in customs which are common to all times and places, as
drinking beer, writing love-letters, making wills, going to school, and
other things antecedently probable, the Egyptian life can show very few
parallels to the life of to-day.

[2] The monuments leave no doubt of this. Pen and ink were used in the
First Dynasty, and speech had been reduced to visible signs before that.

[3] About B.C. 1770. In all Egyptian dates given in this book I follow
Professor Petrie's chronology.

[4] These are round figures, of course, and in the case of Solomon and
Moses traditional dates. Modern criticism places _Genesis_ and
_Proverbs_ much later than 1500 and 1000 B.C.

[5] See Appendix for the literature of this papyrus.

[6] These were kings of the Eleventh Dynasty, about 2986 B.C.

[7] In the translation these divisions are indicated, for purposes of
reference, by numbers and letters, which are not, of course, in the
original. So also in the Instruction of Amenemhe'et (Ap