tombs of the old kingdom, and is really the most natural facade ornamentation for brick buildings, as it may be made by simply setting every alternate column of bricks forward or backward. The walls were, in addition, plastered. Back of the thick outside wall on each side lay a row of narrow rectangular rooms, formed by dividing a corridor by means of cross walls. Inside this surrounding row of rooms was the real tomb, a building with thick walls and five rooms in a row. The middle one of these rooms, noticeably larger than the others, is the real burial chamber. These five rooms were originally connected by doors which were afterward walled up. As to the roof, we can only make surmises, as the excavator has furnished us with no material on this point. The walls as they now stand are at the highest point about four meters high, and thus may form only the lower part of the building. Whether the roof was an arch of stone or simply of wood, is uncertain; but it seems to me probable that it was of wood. For the tomb contained a layer of ashes in which all the objects put in the grave with the dead man were found; and, assuming that the roof was of wood, it is possible that the roof was set on fire at the time when the tomb was robbed and that the ashes came from this fire. The explanation which the excavator gives of these ashes, that the body and the offerings were burned in the closed grave, hardly deserves consideration. In any case, the grave has been robbed and destroyed. That is shown by the fact that many pieces of funeral furniture, which originally could only have been put in the central rooms, were found partly broken in the outside rooms, or on the side toward the fields, the side most exposed to the attack of grave robbers.

The assumption that the grave has been robbed and intentionally destroyed agrees entirely with the fact that all the more valuable objects found in the grave were in fragments. But, fragmentary as they are, they are sufficient to give us a good idea of the art of the first period of the Egyptian kingdom, a period which is now most generally estimated to be five and a half millenniums before the present day (3600 B.C.) The skill with which ivory carving was done in that early time is indeed amazing. Reclining lions, hunting dogs and fish are so skillfully reproduced that one asks how many centuries of development must have preceded before the art of carving reached this perfection. A number of feet taken from the legs of small chairs and other similar furniture, and made in imitation of bulls' legs, show such a fixity of style and at the same time such a freedom of execution, that no archæologist, without the report of the excavator, would dare to proclaim them the oldest dated works of Egyptian art. But it was not only in carving ivory, which is easy to work, that the Egyptian artists showed their skill. They also make bowls and vases of diorite and porphyry with the same success; and the forms presented by the smaller ivory vases are also to be found in vases made of those refractory stones. Further, the vases made of stone present not merely such forms as might be made by turning or boring, but there are also bowls with ribs which are as finely polished as the turned bowls. The hardest material used in the objects already found is rock crystal, of which several small flasks and bowls and a little lion are composed. But the lion, it must be confessed, is rather rudely worked. A few small vases of obsidian also occur—remarkable in view of the fact that we do not know of any place in or near Egypt where this stone may be found. Besides these vessels of hard stone, there are, of course, a large number made of softer stone. Alabaster vases occur in every conceivable form. Cylindrical pots, with wavy handles or simple cordlike ornamentation, appear to have been especially favored. The great beer jars, closed with enormous stoppers of unbaked clay, were made of ordinary baked clay. Of course the different stone and clay vessels, which, undoubtedly, originally contained offerings for the dead, form the bulk of the contents of the grave. The slate tablets for rubbing cosmetics for painting the body, and the flint weapons and knives of all sorts, follow in point of numbers. Remarkably enough, metal objects occur in this oldest historical period alongside the stone implements, though, of course, in less numbers. Several objects made of copper and a slender bead of gold have been found. Such, in short, is all that remains of the things put in the tomb with the king. But little as there is, it gives us an idea of the richness and splendor with which these old royal tombs were furnished.

It might certainly be productive of unusual emotions to know that the few human bones found in the tomb, and now preserved in the Gizeh Museum, once belonged to the oldest Egyptian king. But as we know almost nothing of him, except some unfounded traditions, this sort of relic worship deserves very little respect. The scientific value of the proof that Menes was the king buried in the royal tomb of Neggadeh lies rather in the fact that we have now settled the question of the age of that culture which was presented to us by the excavations of Ballas, Neggadeh and Abydos. The products of a whole period of Egyptian civilization which had been misunderstood, and had been used to support false historical conclusions, fall into their true place; and our knowledge of the history of Egyptian culture is carried back not merely a few centuries, but to a period presenting characteristics different from the oldest previously known period, but containing the germs of the later development.

Cairo, Egypt.

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