(2) Certain elements of the early dynastic civilization, which do not appear in that of the earlier pre-dynastic period, resemble well-known elements of the civilization of Babylonia.  We may instance the use of the cylinder-seal, which died out in Egypt in the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty, but was always used in Babylonia from the earliest to the latest times.  The early Egyptian mace-head is of exactly the same type as the early Babylonian one.  In the British Museum is an Egyptian mace-head of red breccia, which is identical in shape and size with one from Babylonia (also in the museum) bearing the name of Shargani-shar-ali (i.e.  Sargon, King of Agade), one of the earliest Chaldaean monarchs, who must have lived about the same time as the Egyptian kings of the IId-IIId Dynasties, to which period the Egyptian mace-head may also be approximately assigned.  The Egyptian art of the earliest dynasties bears again a remarkable resemblance to that of early Babylonia.  It is not till the time of the IId Dynasty that Egyptian art begins to take upon itself the regular form which we know so well, and not till that of the IVth that this form was finally crystallized.  Under the 1st Dynasty we find the figure of man or, to take other instances, that of a lion, or a hawk, or a snake, often treated in a style very different from that in which we are accustomed to see a man, a lion, a hawk, or a snake depicted in works of the later period.  And the striking thing is that these early representations, which differ so much from what we find in later Egyptian art, curiously resemble the works of early Babylonian art, of the time of the patesis of Shirpurla or the Kings Shargani-shar-ali and Naram-Sin.  One of the best known relics of the early art of Babylonia is the famous “Stele of Vultures” now in Paris.  On this we see the enemies of Eannadu, one of the early rulers of Shirpurla, cast out to be devoured by the vultures.  On an Egyptian relief of slate, evidently originally dedicated in a temple record of some historical event, and dating from the beginning of the Ist Dynasty (practically contemporary, according to our latest knowledge, with Eannadu), we have an almost exactly similar scene of captives being cast out into the desert, and devoured by lions and vultures.  The two reliefs are curiously alike in their clumsy, naive style of art.  A further point is that the official represented on the stele, who appears to be thrusting one of the bound captives out to die, wears a long fringed garment of Babylonish cut, quite different from the clothes of the later Egyptians.

(3) There are evidently two distinct and different main strata in the fabric of Egyptian religion.  On the one hand we find a mass of myth and religious belief of very primitive, almost savage, cast, combining a worship of the actual dead in their tombs—­which were supposed to communicate and thus form a veritable “underworld,” or, rather, “under-Egypt”—­with veneration of magic animals, such as jackals, cats,