that not even the native Egyptian remembered the elusive secrets of
his own written language. Egyptian, as a spoken tongue, remained, in
a modified form, as Koptic, but at about the beginning of our era the
classical Egyptian had become a dead language. No one any longer wrote
in the hieroglyphic, hieratic, or demotic scripts; in a word, the
hieroglyphic writing was forgotten. The reader of Professor Maspero's
pages has had opportunity to learn how this secret was discovered in the
nineteenth century. This information is further amplified in the present
volumes, and we see how in our own time the native Egyptian has regained
something of his former grandeur through the careful and scientific
study of monuments, inscriptions, and works of art. Thus it will appear
in the curious rounding out of the enigmatic story that the most ancient
history of civilisation becomes also the newest and most modern human
history.




PUBLISHER'S NOTE

It should be explained that Doctor Rappoport, in preparing these
volumes, has drawn very largely upon the authorities who have previously
laboured in the same field, and in particular upon the works of Creasy,
Duruy, Ebers, Lavisse, Marcel, Michaud, Neibuhr, Paton, Ram-baud, Sharp,
and Weil. The results of investigations by Professor W. M. Flinders
Petrie and other prominent Egyptologists have been fully set forth and
profusely illustrated.

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