ous localities in Upper Egypt. The members of the race were
not acquainted with the use of metals, but they were expert artificers
in stone and clay. Stone was skilfully carved into vessels of different
forms, and vases of clay were fashioned, with brightly polished
surfaces. Sometimes the vases were simply coloured red and black, or
adorned with patterns and pictures in incised white lines; at other
times, and more especially in the later tombs, they were artistically
decorated with representations of men and animals, boats, and
geometrical patterns in red upon a pale drab ground.

The pre-historic race or races had already reached a fair level of
civilisation--neolithic in type though it may have been--when a new
people appeared upon the scene, bringing with them the elements of a
high culture and a knowledge of working in metals. These were the
Pharaonic Egyptians, who seem to have come from Babylonia and the coasts
of southern Arabia. Cities were built and kingdoms were founded on the
banks of the Nile, and the older population was forced to become the
serfs of the new-comers, to cultivate their fields, to confine the Nile
within artificial boundaries, and to carry out those engineering works
which have made the valley of the Nile what it is to-day.

The Pharaonic Egyptians are the Egyptians of history. They were
acquainted with the art of writing, they mummified their dead, and they
possessed to a high degree the faculty of organisation. The gods they
worshipped were beneficent deities, forms of the Sun-god from whom their
kings derived their descent. It was a religion which easily passed into
a sort of pantheistic monotheism in the more cultivated minds, and it
was associated with a morality which is almost Christian in its
character. A belief in a future world and a resurrection of the flesh
formed an integral part of it; hence came the practice of embalming the
body that it might be preserved to the day of resurrection; hence too
the doctrine of the dead man's justification, not only through his own
good works, but through the intercession of the Sun-god Horus as well.
Horus was addressed as "the Redeemer;" he had avenged the death of his
father Osiris upon his enemy Set, the lord of evil, and through faith in
him his followers were delivered from the powers of darkness. Horus,
however, and Osiris were but forms of the same deity. Horus was the
Sun-god when he rises in the morning; Osiris the Sun-god as he journ