Menes, the first king, changes the
course of the Nile, makes a great reservoir, and builds the temple of
Phthah at Memphis. . . . We see no barbarous customs, not even the
habit, so slowly abandoned by all people, of wearing arms when not on
military service."
Tylor says (" Anthropology," p. 192):
"Among the ancient cultured nations of Egypt and Assyria handicrafts had
already come to a stage which could only have been reached by thousands
of years of progress. In museums still may be examined the work of their
joiners, stone-cutters, goldsmiths, wonderful in skill and finish, and
in putting to shame the modern artificer. . . . To see gold jewellery of
the highest order, the student should examine that of the ancients, such
as the Egyptian, Greek, and Etruscan."
The carpenters' and masons' tools of the ancient Egyptians were almost
identical with those used among us to-day.
There is a plate showing an Aztec priestess in Delafield's "Antiquities
of America," p. 61, which presents a head-dress strikingly Egyptian. In
the celebrated "tablet of the cross," at Palenque, we see a cross with a
bird perched upon it, to which (or to the cross) two priests are
offering sacrifice.
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