the Romans, and which was already known to scholars.

=Egyptologists.=--Since Champollion, many scholars have travelled over
Egypt and have ransacked it thoroughly. We call these students
Egyptologists, and they are to be found in every country of Europe. A
French Egyptologist, Mariette (1821-1881), made some excavations for
the Viceroy of Egypt and created the museum of Boulak. France has
established in Cairo a school of Egyptology, directed by Maspero.

=Discoveries.=--Not every country yields such rich discoveries as does
Egypt. The Egyptians constructed their tombs like houses, and laid in
them objects of every kind for the use of the dead--furniture,
garments, arms, and edibles. The whole country was filled with tombs
similarly furnished. Under this extraordinarily dry climate everything
has been preserved; objects come to light intact after a burial of
4,000 or 5,000 years. No people of antiquity have left so many traces
of themselves as the Egyptians; none is better known to us.


THE EGYPTIAN EMPIRE

=Antiquity of the Egyptian People.=--An Egyptian priest said to
Herodotus, "You Greeks are only children." The Egyptians considered
themselves the oldest people of the world. Down to the Persian
conquest (520[9] B.C.) there were twenty-six dynasties of kings. The
first ran back 4,000 years,[10] and during these forty centuries Egypt
had been an empire. The capital down to the tenth dynasty (the period
of the Old Empire) was at Memphis in Lower Egypt, later, in the New
Empire, at Thebes in Upper Egypt.