Egypt was the primeval seat of what may be called material civilization, and many arts and inventions were known there when the rest of the world was still in ignorance and barbarism.  More than four thousand years ago the Egyptians had chariots of war and most of the military weapons known afterward to the Greeks,—­especially the spear and bow, which were the most effective offensive weapons known to antiquity or the Middle Ages.  Some of their warriors were clothed in coats of brass equal to the steel or iron cuirass worn by the Mediaeval knights of chivalry.  They had the battle-axe, the shield, the sword, the javelin, the metal-headed arrow.  One of the early Egyptian kings marched against his enemies with six hundred thousand infantry, twenty thousand cavalry, and twenty-three thousand chariots of war, each drawn by two horses.  The saddles and bridles of their horses were nearly as perfect as ours are at the present time; the leather they used was dyed in various colors, and adorned with metal edges.  The wheels of their chariots were bound with hoops of metal, and had six spokes.  Umbrellas to protect from the rays of the sun were held over the heads of their women of rank when they rode in their highly-decorated chariots.  Walls of solid masonry, thick and high, surrounded their principal cities, while an attacking or besieging army used movable towers.  Their disciplined troops advanced to battle in true military precision, at the sound of the trumpet.

The public works of Egyptian kings were on a grand scale.  They united rivers with seas by canals which employed hundreds of thousands of workmen.  They transported heavy blocks of stone, of immense weight and magnitude, for their temples, palaces, and tombs.  They erected obelisks in single shafts nearly one hundred feet in height, and they engraved the sides of these obelisks from top to bottom with representations of warriors, priests, and captives.  They ornamented their vast temples with sculptures which required the hardest metals.  Rameses the Great, the Sesostris of the Greeks, had a fleet of four hundred vessels in the Arabian Gulf, and the rowers wore quilted helmets.  His vessels had sails, which implies the weaving of flax and the twisting of heavy ropes; some of his war-galleys were propelled by forty-four oars, and were one hundred and twenty feet in length.

Among their domestic utensils the Egyptians used the same kind of buckets for wells that we find to-day among the farmhouses of New England.  Skilful gardeners were employed in ornamenting grounds and in raising fruits and vegetables.  The leather cutters and dressers were famous for their skill, as well as workers in linen.  Most products of the land, as well as domestic animals, were sold by weight in carefully adjusted scales.  Instead of coins, money was in rings of gold, silver, and copper.  The skill used by the Egyptians in rearing fowls, geese, and domestic animals greatly surpassed that known to modern farmers.  According to Wilkinson,