civilization, but in every way he was a great contrast to the Egyptian
who lived, let us say, in the time of Mena, the first historical king of
Egypt, the date of whom for convenience' sake is placed at B.C. 4400.
The interval between the time when the prehistoric Egyptians made the
graves described above and the reign of Mena must have been very
considerable, and we may justly believe it to represent some thousands
of years; but whatever its length, we find that the time was not
sufficient to wipe out the early views which had been handed on from
generation to generation, or even to modify some of the beliefs which we
now know to have existed in an almost unchanged state at the latest
period of Egyptian history. In the texts which were edited by the
priests of Heliopolis we find references to a state or condition of
things, as far as social matters are concerned, which could only exist
in a society of men who were half savages. And we see from later works,
when extracts are made from the earlier texts which contain such
references, that the passages in which objectionable allusions occur are
either omitted altogether or modified. We know of a certainty that the
educated men of the College of Heliopolis cannot have indulged in the
excesses which the deceased kings for whom they prepared the funeral
texts are assumed to enjoy, and the mention of the nameless abomination
which the savage Egyptian inflicted upon his vanquished foe can only
have been allowed to remain in them because of their own reverence for
the written word.

In passing it must be mentioned that the religious ideas of the men who
were buried without mutilation of limbs, or stripping of flesh from the
body, or burning, must have been different from those of the men who
practised such things on the dead. The former are buried in the
ante-natal position of a child, and we may perhaps be justified in
seeing in this custom the symbol of a hope that as the child is born