ABSTRACT
It may be said of some very old places, as of some very old books, that they are destined to be forever new. The nearer we approach them, the more remote they seem; the more we study them, the more we have yet to learn. Time augments rather than diminishes their everlasting novelty; and to our descendants of a thousand years hence it may safely be predicted that they will be even more fascinating than to ourselves. This is true of many ancient lands, but of no place is it so true as of Egypt. Our knowledge of how men lived and thought in the Valley of the Nile five or six thousand years before the Christian era is ever on the increase. It keeps pace with the march of discovery, and that march extends every year over a wider area. Each season beholds the exploration of new sites, and each explorer has some new thing to tell. What Mariette began thirty years ago, Maspero carried on and developed; and it was to Maspero’s wise liberality that the Egypt Exploration Fund was indebted, in 1883, for liberty to pursue its work in the Delta. In that year the society despatched its first agent—M. Navjlle—upon its first expedition; and since 1883 the French in Upper Egypt, the English in Lower Egypt, have labored simultaneously to bring to light the buried wealth of the most ancient of nations. Thus the work of discovery goes on apace. Old truths receive unexpected corroboration; old histories are judged by the light of new readings; fresh wonders are disclosed wherever the spade of the digger strikes new ground. The interest never flags—the subject never palls upon us—the mine is never exhausted.
