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 Narâm-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, naïve 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