=Memphis and the Pyramids.=--Memphis, built by the first king of
Egypt, was protected by an enormous dike. The village has existed for
more than five thousand years; but since the thirteenth century the
inhabitants have taken the stones of its ruins to build the houses of
Cairo; what these people left the Nile recaptured. The Pyramids, not
far from Memphis, are contemporaneous with the old empire; they are
the tombs of three kings of the fourth dynasty. The greatest of the
pyramids, 480 feet high, required the labor of 100,000 men for thirty
years.[11] To raise the stones for it they built gradually ascending
platforms which were removed when the structure was completed.

=Egyptian Civilization.=--The statues, paintings, and instruments
which are taken from the tombs of this epoch give evidence of an
already civilized people. When all the other eminent nations of
antiquity--the Hindoos, Persians, Jews, Greeks, Romans--were still in
a savage state, 3,500 years before our era, the Egyptians had known
for a long time how to cultivate the soil, to weave cloths, to work
metals, to paint, sculpture, and to write; they had an organized
religion, a king, and an administration.

=Thebes.=--At the eleventh dynasty Thebes succeeds Memphis as capital.
The ruins of Thebes are still standing. They are marvellous, extending
as they do on both banks of the Nile, with a circuit of about seven
miles. On the left bank there is a series of palaces and temples which
lead to vast cemeteries. On the right bank two villages, Luxor and
Karnak, distant a half-hour one from the other, are built in the midst
of the ruins. They are united by a double row of sphinxes, which must
have once included more than 1,000 of these monuments. Among these
temples in ruins the greatest was the temple of Ammon at Karnak. It
was surrounded by a wall of over one and one-third miles in length;