Slavery was permitted, but the slaves were treated with the greatest humanity.  In the confessions, buried with the dead, the soul is made to declare that “I have not incriminated the slave to his master,” There was also a clause in the commandments “which protected the laboring man against the exaction of more than his day’s labor.”  They were merciful to the captives made in war; no picture represents torture inflicted upon them; while the representation of a sea-fight shows them saving their drowning enemies.  Reginald Stuart Poole says (Contemporary Review, August, 1881, p. 43): 

“When we consider the high ideal of the Egyptians, as proved by their portrayals of a just life, the principles they laid down as the basis of ethics, the elevation of women among them, their humanity in war, we must admit that their moral place ranks very high among the nations of antiquity.

“The true comparison of Egyptian life is with that of modern nations.  This is far too difficult a task to be here undertaken.  Enough has been said, however, to show that we need not think that in all respects they were far behind us.”

Then look at the proficiency in art of this ancient people.

They were the first mathematicians of the Old World.  Those Greeks whom we regard as the fathers of mathematics were simply pupils of Egypt.  They were the first land-surveyors.  They were the first astronomers, calculating eclipses, and watching the periods of planets and constellations.  They knew the rotundity of the earth, which it was supposed Columbus had discovered!

“The signs of the zodiac were certainly in use among the Egyptians 1722 years before Christ.  One of the learned men of our day, who for fifty years labored to decipher the hieroglyphics of the ancients, found upon a mummy-case in the British Museum a delineation of the signs of the zodiac, and the position of the planets; the date to which they pointed was the autumnal equinox of the year 1722 B.C.  Professor Mitchell, to whom the fact was communicated, employed his assistants to ascertain the exact position of the heavenly bodies belonging to our solar system on the equinox of that year.  This was done, and a diagram furnished by parties ignorant of his object, which showed that on the 7th of October, 1722 B.C. the moon and planets occupied the exact point in the heavens marked upon the coffin in the British Museum.” (Goodrich’s “Columbus,” p. 22.)

They had clocks and dials for measuring time.  They possessed gold and silver money.  They were the first agriculturists of the Old World, raising all the cereals, cattle, horses, sheep, etc.  They manufactured linen of so fine a quality that in the days of King Amasis (600 years B.C.) a single thread of a garment was composed of three hundred and sixty-five minor threads.  They worked in gold, silver, copper, bronze, and iron; they tempered iron to the hardness of steel.  They were the first