ame site, and who had
placed them in the Boulaq Museum, mistook them for corroded
yellow or brown glass beads. The electric properties which
they still possess have established their identity.

** I may recall the fact that the analysis of some objects
discovered at Medum by Professor Petrie proved that they
were made of bronze, and contained 9.l per cent, of tin; the
Egyptians, therefore, used bronze from the IVth dynasty
downwards, side by side with pure copper.

The tribes of unknown race who then peopled the coasts of the AEgean Sea,
were amongst the latest to receive these metals, and they transmitted
them either directly to the Egyptians or Asiatic intermediaries, who
carried them to the Nile Valley. Asia Minor had, moreover, its treasures
of metal as well as those of wood--copper, lead, and iron, which
certain tribes of miners and smiths, had worked from the earliest times.
Caravans plied between Egypt and the lands of Chaldaean civilization,
crossing Syria and Mesopotamia, perhaps even by the shortest desert
route, as far as Ur and Babylon. The communications between nation and
nation were frequent from this time forward, and very productive, but
their existence and importance are matters of inference, as we have no
direct evidence of them. The relations with these nations continued to
be pacific, and, with the exception of Sinai, Pharaoh had no desire to
leave the Nile Valley and take long journeys to pillage or subjugate
countries from whence came so much treasure. The desert and the sea
which protected Egypt on the north and east from Asiatic cupidity,
protected Asia with equal security from the greed of Egypt.

On the other hand, towards the south, the Nile afforded an easy means
of access to those who wished to penetrate into the heart of Africa. The
Egyptians had, at the outset, possessed only the northern extremity of
the valley, from the sea to the narrow pass of Silsileh; they had then
advanced as far as the first cataract, and Syene for some time marked
the extreme limit of their empire. At what period did they cross this
second frontier and resume their march southwards, as if again to seek
the cradle of their race? They had approached nearer and nearer to the
great bend described by the river near the present village of Korosko,*
but the territory thus conquered had, under the Vth dynasty, not as yet
either name or separate organization: it was a dependency o