and; building anew temples whose
stones hardly remain one upon the other, consecrate to gods dead as
their multitudes of worshippers; holding converse with the sages who,
with all their lore, could not escape the ultimate oblivion: a
spectator of splendid pageants, a ministrant at strange rites, a
witness to vast tragedies, he also has admittance to the magical
kingdom, to which is added the freedom of the city of Remembrance. His
care will be to construct, patiently and with much labour, a picture
(which is often less than an outline) of the conditions of the humanity
that has been; and he neither rejects nor despises any relic, however
trivial or unlovely, that will help him, in its degree, to understand
better that humanity or to bridge the wide chasms of his ignorance.
Moreover, great age hallows all things, even the most mean, investing
them with a certain sanctity; and the little sandal of a nameless {15}
child, or the rude amulet placed long ago with weeping on the still
bosom of a friend, will move his heart as strongly by its appeal as the
proud and enduring monument of a great conqueror insatiable of praise.
At times, moving among the tokens of a period that the ravenous years
dare not wholly efface in passing, he hears, calling faintly as from
afar, innumerable voices--the voices of those who, stretching forth in
Sheol eager hands toward Life, greatly desire that some memorial of
them, be it but a name, may survive in the world of men....

Ancient Egypt fares perhaps better than other countries of antiquity at
the hands of the 'general reader,' and sometimes obtains a hearing when
they do not, by reason of its intimate contact at certain periods with
the nation that has brought us the _Old Testament_. Because of this
the report of it has been with us constantly, and it has nearly become
a symbol in religion. The stories of Moses and the magicians, and of
the dealings of Abraham and Joseph with Pharaoh, together with the rude
woodcuts of Egyptian taskmasters and cupbearers in family Bibles, have
invested the venerable land with a dreamy mystery; while every one has
heard of 'Rameses, the Pharaoh of the Oppression,' and 'Meneptah, the
Pharaoh of the Exodus.' And it is possible that for the sake of such
{16} association, if not for his own sake, Ptah-hotep will be
considered worthy of notice.

But in spite of the fact that the Ancient Egyptians enjoy rather more
popularity than their contemporaries, it is