ary of antiquity, from which other nations drew their supplies in times of famine. The naturally fertile soil and the spontaneous growth of the date-palm furnished the people with cheap and abundant food, and agriculture received much attention.

The rapid increase and density of the Egyptian population, which, as we have already said, was about seven millions, crowded in the narrow valley of the Nile, only seven miles in width, was due to the abundance and cheapness of food and the readiness with which it could be obtained.

trodden in by sheep, goats or pigs, and then simply awaited the harvest. Plows, of a simple construction, and hoes were used in preparing the ground in other portions of the country. The plows were drawn by two oxen or two cows, yoked to it by the shoulders or by the horns. Sometimes a single plowman guided the plow by holding one handle in his left hand, and carrying a whip in his right; but generally there were two plowmen, one holding the two handles, and the other driving the animals with the whip. In light and loose soils the hoe was used

This fact accounts for the ease with which great public works like the Pyramids, that were useless, could be built; as the monarchs were thus enabled to employ the labor of hundreds of thousands of men, who were not required by necessity to labor in any other way.

The non-interference of the government with agriculture was an advantage. The grain was sowed when the inundation had disappeared. In some parts of Egypt the husbandman only scattered the seed upon the rich Nile deposit and caused it to be

instead of the plow. The hoes and plows were of wood. The grain cultivated was wheat, barley, and what Herodotus called zea or olyra, probably the modern doora. The wheat and barley were used by the rich, and the doora by the poor. The wheat was cut with a toothed sickle, a little below the ear, and put in baskets or bound in sheaves. The filled baskets were carried in by men or donkeys to the threshing-floor, and there emptied on a heap. Sometimes the corn was conveyed from the harvest-field to the granary or storehouse, and kept there a month.

Threshing was done by means of cattle, which were driven round and round the threshing-floor, while a laborer, with a pitchfork, threw the unthreshed ears into their path. The threshed corn was at once winnowed, by being tossed into the air with shovels, in a place where the draught of air would blow off the chaff as the corn fell. After this operation the cleansed grain was carried in sacks to the granary, and there stored until used.

In a harvest song, discovered by Champollion at Eilethyias, the oxen are represented as mainly threshing for themselves.. The following is the song in hieroglyphics, with its translation into English:

Thresh for yourselves,

Thresh for yourselves,

Measures for yourselves,
Measures for your masters.

The cultivation of barley was similar to that of wheat, and barley bread was in great demand. Beer was also brewed from the grain. The doora was pulled up by the roots, and the earth was then shaken off by the hand. It was bound in sheaves and carried to a storehouse; and after it was dry it was unbound and drawn by the hand through an instrument, armed at one end with a set of metal spikes, which separated the heads from the straw. These were, perhaps, then also threshed and winnowed.

Beans, peas and lentils were also raised. Artificial grasses, such as clover, lupins and vetches, were grown to furnish provender for the cattle during the inundation. Flax was raised in great abundance for the linen out of which garments were made. Cotton, indigo, safflower, sesame, the castoroil plant, and various medicinal herbs were also cultivated. Esculent vegetables, such as garlic, onions, leeks, endive, radishes, melons, cucumbers, lettuces, etc., were likewise raised in considerable quantities, and formed a large element in the food of the people. The raising and harvesting of these different crops employed the agricultural class for the greater part of the year. In addition to the yearly overflow of the Nile, the country was fertilized by irrigation in the form of a system of canals, with embankments, sluices and flood-gates, by which the overflow was retained in vast reservoirs, and thus utilized. This system of irrigation was established at an early date, and was maintained with the greatest care by the government. In the district of the Faioom, a natural depression in the Libyan desert, eight or ten miles from the Nile valley, a canal was cut from the Nile, thus filling this depression with water, and forming an artificial lake, known as the "Lake Moris." From this immense reservoir, canals were cut in all directions to irrigate the surrounding desert. In this region, by this system of irrigation, the cultivation of the olive was rendered possible. In the edge of the Nile valley, toward the desert of Háger, where the soil was light and composed of sand mixed with gravel, the vine was cultivated all the way from Thebes to Memphis. It was also grown in the Faioom, and in the western part of the Delta. The fruit, after being gathered, was carried in baskets to the storehouse, where the juice was extracted by treading or squeezing in a bag. After fermentation, the wine was stored away in vases or amphoræ of an elegant shape, closed with a stopper and then hermetically sealed with moist clay, pitch, gypsum or other substance.

In the large estates of the rich land-own

ers the herdsmen were under the supervision of overseers. The peasant who cultivated the land on which the flocks and herds fed was responsible for their proper support and for the exact account of the amount of food which they consumed. Some persons were wholly employed in taking care of the sick animals, which were kept at home in the farm-yard. The overseer of the shepherds attended, at stated periods, to give a report to the scribes connected with the estate, by whom it was submitted to the steward, who was accountable to his employer for this and all his other possessions. The paintings represent the head shepherd rendering his account, and behind him we see the flocks assigned to his charge, consisting of the sheep, goats and wild animals belonging to the person in the tomb. In one painting the expressive attitude of this man, with his hand at his mouth, is imagined to convey the idea of his effort to remember the numbers which he is giving, from memory, to the scribes. In another painting the numbers are written over the animals. The oxen are numbered eight hundred and thirty-four, the cows two hundred and twenty, the goats three thousand two hundred and thirty-four, the asses seven hundred and sixty, and the sheep nine hundred and seventy-four. These are followed by a man carrying the young lambs in baskets slung upon a pole. The steward, in a leaning posture upon his staff, and accompanied by his dog, stands on one side; while the scribes, writing out their statement, occupy the other side. Another painting shows us men bringing baskets of eggs, flocks of geese, and baskets full of goslings. An Egyptian "Goose Gibbie" is represented as making obeisance to his master. In still another painting we see persons feeding sick oxen, goats and geese. The ancient Egyptians carried the art of curing diseases in all kinds of animals to great perfection; and the testimony of ancient writers and paintings is sustained by a discovery of Cuvier, who found the left shoulder of a mummied ibis fractured and reunited, thus showing that human art intervened in this case.

The ancient Egyptians of every class delighted in field-sports, and the peasants considered it a duty, no less than amusement, to hunt and kill the hyena and other wild animals which annoyed them. The paintings show us numerous hunting scenes and various devices for catching birds and beasts. The hyena is usually represented as caught in a trap. Wild oxen were caught by a noose or lasso, in very much the same manner as the South Americans catch horses and cattle, though the Egyptians are not represented as riding on horseback when they used it. The introduction of a bush in one painting, just behind the man throwing the lasso, would seem to imply that the huntsman was concealed. Other wild animals hunted were the hippopotamus, the jackal, the fox, the crocodile, the porcupine, the gazelle, the ibex, the hare, the antelope, and even the ostrich. Wild cattle were also hunted. Lions, upon the borders of Egypt, were hunted by a few of the kings, but there is only one representation of a royal lion hunt. Sometimes lions were tamed, and were used in the chase of other animals, according to a single painting. One king is represented as having "hunted a hundred and twenty elephants on account of their tusks." Fishing and fowling were also favorite sports among the Egyptians. Hounds. were likewise used in pursuing game.

All the departments of agriculture, farming, breeding cattle, etc., are illustrated in the paintings with wonderful accuracy and detail. We observe oxen lying on the ground, with legs pinioned, while herdsmen are branding marks upon them with hot irons, and other men are heating irons in the fire. The paintings give us full accounts of the king's kine, which are generally copied after the fattest specimens. One of these represents the Pharaoh as himself a tolerably extensive grazier, the king's ox being marked eighty-six. Another illustrates a regular cattle-show; another the actual operation of the veterinary art, cattle doctors being exhibited as performing operations upon sick oxen, bulls, deer, goats and geese. The hieroglyphic denoting a physician is

the fowl whose cry is "Quack! quack!"

Egyptian beasts of burden were asses, cows and oxen. Horses were used for riding, for drawing curricles and chariots, mainly by men of the upper classes, and for drawing the plow. Multitudes were required for the war-chariots and for the cavalry service.

A brisk trade in horses was carried on with Syria and Palestine, where they were in great demand and commanded high prices. The horses of ancient Egypt were kept constantly in stables, fed on straw and barley, and were not allowed to graze in the fields. The larger land-owners also possessed wild animals, such as wild goats, gazelles and oryxes; and also wild fowl, such as the stork, the vulpanser and others. Egyptian farmers also bred large numbers of sheep, goats and pigs.

Egypt has been an object of interest to mankind in every age, as the birth-place of civilization, art and science. In this narrow strip of country, "the Gift of the Nile," only seven miles wide and five hundred and twenty-six miles long, were seven million inhabitants. The Nile valley is studded with the ruins of ancient cities. Memphis, the chief city of Middle Egypt, or the Heptanomis, so called from its seven nomes, was situated about twelve miles south of the apex of the Delta, and as we have said, was founded by Menes, the first Egyptian king. In the vicinity of Memphis are the most splendid of the pyramids, which extend for seventy miles on the west bank of the Nile, and among which are the famous Pyramids of Ghizeh, already described. In this vicinity is also the Great Sphinx, or womanheaded lion, one hundred and forty-six feet long and thirty-six feet wide across the shoulders. Here are also the ruins of the famous Labyrinth, and miles on miles of rock-hewn temples. The magnificent and stately Thebes, the hundred-gated city of Upper Egypt, or the Thebaïs, is said to have extended over twenty-three miles. On its site are the villages of Karnak and Luxor, where the ruins of magnificent and spacious temples, splendid palaces, colossal statues, avenues of obelisks and lines of sphinxes,

tombs of kings hewn in the solid rock, subterranean catacombs and the gigantic statue of Memnon, still bear witness to the immense size and splendor of this great and celebrated city, whose ruins extend for seven miles along both banks of the Nile.

The ancient Egyptians had a wonderful building instinct, and architecture was the greatest of all their arts. The distinguishing features were massiveness and grandeur, in which they have never been surpassed. This great people delighted in pyramids, sphinxes, obelisks and stupendous palaces and temples, with massive columns and spacious halls of solemn and gloomy grandeur, in which our largest cathedrals could stand, adorned with elaborately-sculptured colossal statues, and connected with which were avenues of sphinxes and lines of obelisks. Their pyramids are the oldest, as well as the largest and most wonderful of human works yet remaining, and the beauty of their masonry, Wilkinson declares, has never been surpassed. An obelisk of a single stone now standing in Egypt weighs three hundred tons, and a colossus of Rameses the Great nearly nine hundred tons; and Herodotus describes a monolithic temple weighing five thousand tons, which was carried hundreds of miles on sledges, as were also the huge blocks of stone, sometimes weighing sixteen thousand tons each, with which the pyramids were built. In one instance two thousand men were employed three years in conveying a single stone from the quarry to the structure in which it was to be placed. There is a roof of a doorway at Karnak covered with sandstone blocks forty feet long. Sculpture and bas-reliefs thirtyfive or forty centuries old, in which the granite is cut with exquisite delicacy, are yet to be seen throughout this famous land. The pyramids were all built on strictly scientific and mathematical principles.

The obelisks, so called on account of their peculiar shape, were tall and slender monoliths erected at the gateways of temples, one standing on each side. From the quarries of Syene they were floated down the Nile on rafts during an annual overflow.