Nature takes countless thousands of years to form and build up her limestone hills, but buried deep in these we find evidences of a stone age wherein man devised and made himself edged tools and weapons of rudely chipped stone.  These shaped, edged implements, we have learned, were made by white-heating a suitable flint or stone and tracing thereon with cold water the pattern desired, just as practised by the Indians of the American continent, and in our day by the manufacturers of ancient (sic) arrow-, spear-, and axe-heads.  This shows a civilization that has learned the method of artificially producing fire, and its uses.

Egypt is the monumental land of the earth, as the Egyptians are the monumental people of history.  The first human monarch to reign over all Egypt was Menes, the founder of Memphis.  As the gate of Africa, Egypt has always held an important position in world-politics.  Its ancient wealth and power were enormous.  Inclusive of the Soudan, its population is now more than eight millions.  Its present importance is indicated by its relations to England.  Historians vary in their compilations of Egyptian chronology.  The epoch of Menes is fixed by Bunsen at B.C. 3643, by Lepsius at B.C. 3892, and by Poole at B.C. 2717.  Before Menes Egypt was divided into independent kingdoms.  It has always been a country of mysteries, with the mighty Nile, and its inundations, so little understood by the ancients; its trackless desert; its camels and caravans; its tombs and temples; its obelisks and pyramids, its groups of gods:  Ra, Osiris, Isis, Apis, Horus, Hathor—­the very names breathe suggestions of mystery, cruelty, pomp, and power.  In the sciences and in the industrial arts the ancient Egyptians were highly cultivated.  Much Egyptian literature has come down to us, but it is unsystematic and entirely devoid of style, being without lofty ideas or charms.  In art, however, Egypt may be placed next to Greece, particularly in architecture.

The age of the Pyramid-builders was a brilliant one.  They prove the magnificence of the kings and the vast amount of human labor at their disposal.  The regal power at that time was very strong.  The reign of Khufu or Cheops is marked by the building of the great pyramid.  The pyramids were the tombs of kings, built in the necropolis of Memphis, ten miles above the modern Cairo.  Security was the object as well as splendor.

As remarked by a great Egyptologist, the whole life of the Egyptian was spent in the contemplation of death; thus the tomb became the concrete thought.  The belief of the ancient Egyptian was that so long as his body remained intact so was his immortality; whence arose the embalming of the great, and hence the immense structures of stone to secure the inviolability of the entombed monarch.

The monuments have as yet yielded no account of the events which tended to unite Egypt under the rule of one man; we can only surmise that the feudal principalities had gradually been drawn together into two groups, each of which formed a separate kingdom.  Heliopolis became the chief focus in the north, from which civilization radiated over the wet plain and the marshes of the Delta.