accurately, but it cannot well have been later than the year 5000
B.C., and it may have been a great many centuries earlier than
this. Be the exact dates what they may, we find the Egyptian of
the fifth millennium B.C. in full possession of a highly
organized civilization.

All subsequent ages have marvelled at the pyramids, some of which
date from about the year 4000 B.C., though we may note in passing
that these dates must not be taken too literally. The chronology
of ancient Egypt cannot as yet be fixed with exact accuracy, but
the disagreements between the various students of the subject
need give us little concern. For our present purpose it does not
in the least matter whether the pyramids were built three
thousand or four thousand years before the beginning of our era.
It suffices that they date back to a period long antecedent to
the beginnings of civilization in Western Europe. They prove that
the Egyptian of that early day had attained a knowledge of
practical mechanics which, even from the twentieth-century point
of view, is not to be spoken of lightly. It has sometimes been
suggested that these mighty pyramids, built as they are of great
blocks of stone, speak for an almost miraculous knowledge on the
part of their builders; but a saner view of the conditions gives
no warrant for this thought. Diodoras, the Sicilian, in his
famous World's History, written about the beginning of our era,
explains the building of the pyramids by suggesting that great
quantities of earth were piled against the side of the rising
structure to form an inclined plane up which the blocks of stone
were dragged. He gives us certain figures, based, doubtless, on
reports made to him by Egyptian priests, who in turn drew upon
the traditions of their country, perhaps even upon written