ABSTRACT
Nowhere have the results of the modem passion for investigation been more abundant or striking than in the Land of the Pharaohs, and a book which deals with that land would be fulfilling its object very imperfectly unless it dealt with the discoveries which have added to our knowledge, and discussed their bearing on our conception of the culture of the Egyptian state. The Egypt which Dr. Manning describes with such vivacity in these pages is the Egypt of a time when scientific excavation, as it is now understood, was a thing unknown,
and when our material for the study of the genius and accomplishment of the most wonderful race of antiquity was not one tenth of what it is now. When the journey was made whose record is so pleasantly unrolled before us here, Mariette was still at the head of the Egyptian Service of Antiquities-a despotic, even if a benevolent monarch, who would allow no questioning of his royal prerogative, and who granted permission to excavate to no one, not even to his dearest friends, or to men of science of world-wide reputation.
