* Cedar-wood must have been continually imported into Egypt.  It is mentioned in the Pyramid texts; in the tomb of Ti, and in the other tombs of Saqqara or Gizeh, workmen are represented making furniture of it.  Chips of wood from the coffins of the VIth dynasty, detached in ancient times and found in several mastabas at Saqqara, have been pronounced to be, some cedar of Lebanon, others a species of pine which still grows in Cilicia and in the north of Syria.

[Illustration:  219.jpg PASSENGER VESSEL UNDER SAIL]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch- Bey; the picture is taken from one of the walls of the tomb of Api, discovered at Saqqara, and now preserved in the Gizeh Museum (VIth dynasty).  The man standing at the bow is the fore-pilot, whose duty it is to take soundings of the channel, and to indicate the direction of the vessel to the pilot aft, who works the rudder-oars.

Beads of amber are still found near Abydos in the tombs of the oldest necropolis, and we may well ask how many hands they had passed through before reaching the banks of the Nile from the shores of the Baltic.* The tin used to alloy copper for making bronze,** and perhaps bronze itself, entered doubtless by the same route as the amber.

* I have picked up in the tombs of the VIth dynasty at Kom- es-Sultan, and in the part of the necropolis of Abydos containing the tombs of the XIth and XIIth dynasties, a number of amber beads, most of which were very small.  Mariette, who had found some on the same site, and who had placed them in the Boulaq Museum, mistook them for corroded yellow or brown glass beads.  The electric properties which they still possess have established their identity.

** I may recall the fact that the analysis of some objects discovered at Medum by Professor Petrie proved that they were made of bronze, and contained 9.l per cent, of tin; the Egyptians, therefore, used bronze from the IVth dynasty downwards, side by side with pure copper.

The tribes of unknown race who then peopled the coasts of the AEgean Sea, were amongst the latest to receive these metals, and they transmitted them either directly to the Egyptians or Asiatic intermediaries, who carried them to the Nile Valley.  Asia Minor had, moreover, its treasures of metal as well as those of wood—­copper, lead, and iron, which certain tribes of miners and smiths, had worked from the earliest times.  Caravans plied between Egypt and the lands of Chaldaean civilization, crossing Syria and Mesopotamia, perhaps even by the shortest desert route, as far as Ur and Babylon.  The communications between nation and nation were frequent from this time forward, and very productive, but their existence and importance are matters of inference, as we have no direct evidence of them.  The relations with these nations continued to be pacific, and, with the exception of Sinai, Pharaoh had no desire to leave the Nile Valley and take long journeys to pillage or subjugate countries from whence came so much treasure.  The desert and the sea which protected Egypt on the north and east from Asiatic cupidity, protected Asia with equal security from the greed of Egypt.