classed, like the cognate Carian, among the extinct or unknown languages of Asia Minor.

The Hamitic Section will represent the progress made in Egyptology since the first discovery of the mode of deciphering and reading this pictorial language of Ancient Egypt in 1817. It is not necessary here to enter into a detailed exposition of the mode of decipherment and interpretation of the hieroglyphs which was aided by the trilingual inscription of Rosetta, and did not require so great an effort of the mind to discover as the cuneiform. The only difficulty was to divest the mind of the idea that figures and representations of objects were not used as pictures, but as phonetic ciphers. That point reached, the difficulties rapidly disappeared, and the inductive method pursued with a mathematical rigour by the first inquirers and by later students has evolved alike from the grammar and the dictionary the relation of the Ancient Egyptian to the Coptic. So great has been the progress made that the purport of all texts and the entire translation of most is no longer an object of insurmountable difficulty. As in the case of Assyria, the history of Egypt has been revealed from the monuments, and a mist which hung over the learned labours of the past century has been dispelled, and although the chronology of Egypt presents unfortunately too many gaps to justify precise determination, yet sufficient evidence has been obtained to prove the immense duration of the Egyptian Empire. It is, however, one of the marvels of Egypt and its early civilization that it starts already full grown into life in the valley of the Nile as a nation highly advanced in language, painting, and sculpture, and offers the enigma as to whence it attained so high a point of development. There is no monumental nation which can compete with it for antiquity, except perhaps Babylonia, and evidence is yet required to determine which of the two empires is the older. As far as an opinion can be formed from archæological considerations, there is a greater weight of evidence in favour of gradual development in Babylonia. Some of the linguistic tablets in terra-cotta found in that country have recorded the transition in that region in characters gradually developing from the purely pictorial into the conventional cuneiform; but no Egyptian inscriptions, as yet discovered, are written exclusively, or even mainly, in hieroglyphs used as pictures only in contradistinction to sounds. All, even those of the most remote antiquity, are full of

phonetic hieroglyphs. The arts of Egypt exercised an all-powerful influence on the ancient world-the Phoenicians copied their types, and Greece adopted the early Oriental style of architecture, for the Doric style came from Egypt, the Ionic from Assyria, the later Corinthian again from Egypt. If Phoenicia conferred an alphabet on Greece, Egypt suggested the use of such characters to Phoenicia. Already, in the seventh century before Christ, the hieroglyphs represented a dead form of the Egyptian language, one which had ceased to be spoken, and Egyptians introduced a conventional mode of writing simpler than the older forms, and better adapted for the purposes of vernacular idiom. Egyptian philosophy-the transmigration doctrine of Pythagoras-that of the immortality of the soul of Plato-pervaded the Hellenic mind from the colleges of Thebes. The wisdom of the Egyptians was embodied in ethical works of proverbs and maxims as old as the Pyramids, and as venerable for their hoar antiquity as the days of the Exodus. The frail papyrus, the living rock, the temple, and the tomb, have all preserved an extent of literature found nowhere else. The motive was a religion which looked forward to an eternal duration or the return of the past to the future. The national poem of Pentaur is found on the walls of Thebes, and the papyrus of Sallier. The Book of the Dead was alike sculptured on the tombs and written on the roll-it embodied much of the symbolic though less of the esoteric doctrine. The Elysian fields, the streams of Styx, burning Phlegethon, the judges of the dead, are Egyptian conceptions; the Sun-worship is Egyptian; medicine and astronomy, geometry, truthful history, and romantic fictions, are found in an extensive literature. Many dogmas and practices of an Egyptian origin have descended to the present day, and exercise more influence than is generally supposed on modern religious thought.

Here it is not possible to do more than allude to the services rendered to Egyptian interpretation by Professors Lepsius, Brugsch, Lauth, Ebers, and Eisenlohr, in Germany; M. Chabas, the late Vicomte de Rougé, and M. Maspero, in France; and Mr. C. W. Goodwin and M. Le Page Renouf, in this country. But it is in Berlin alone that a journal specially devoted to Egyptology appeals to us as the recognized organ of students for the language and antiquities of the Valley of the Nile. From Brugsch Bey, who attends

this Congress as the representative of that enlightened ruler the Khedive of Egypt (who has done so much for the revival of the knowledge of the ancient condition of the country over which he rules by the excavations he has sanctioned or undertaken at the suggestion of M. Mariette, and by the valuable publications of Brugsch Bey and M. Mariette, the heavy cost of which His Highness has undertaken), the Hamitic Section will hear a lecture of great interest on the point of departure of the Exodus from the Land of Bondage.

The subject of Archæology, both local and general, has been the object of so many Congresses that only a small part of this vast subject can fall into the scope of the present Congress. Archæology treats of the ancient Oriental ethnology-of the earliest and the existing civilization of the East. Both enter extensively into the history of the human race, and without their aid no description of ancient life, however brilliant, is complete. The ancient monuments of India will come under the consideration of the Archæological Section, as also the always interesting subject of the Great Pyramid, about which many opinions have prevailed, although the only one received by Egyptologists is that it was the sepulchre of a monarch of the fourth dynasty. There is one subject connected with the archæology of the East to which your attention should be specially directed, and that is the extensive forgeries of Oriental inscriptions and other objects perpetrated in late years at Jerusalem and in Arabia. With the increased value placed on works of ancient art, the attention of forgers has been directed to the production of spurious monuments. Some of these are too gross to effect the deception they wish to effect; but others require a considerable practical knowledge of works of ancient art to detect. Now, the labours of the philologist are incomplete without the advice and assistance of the archæologist, without which erroneous ideas may be entertained as to the relative value, the truth or falsity of ancient monuments. Hence an archæological section which shall discuss such difficult points is essential; besides that, it serves also to connect the studies of art and literature. In some branches of archæology—such, for example, as the study of gems or engraved stones-the number of recent imitations is greater than that of the really ancient remains, and this, unfortunately, in proportion to their beauty and excellence, so that archeologists are accustomed to look with great scrutiny and suspicion at these works

of ancient art. Nor are there present in these objects those criteria which, as in the instance of coins, aid to determine the authenticity of the particular object under consideration. The philological inquirer often, on the hand, renders equal aid to the archæologist by determining the relative age of different objects of antiquity.

A Section of the Congress is devoted to Ethnology—that is, the consideration of the present actual condition of the different races of the East, just as archæology considers their past civilization. Ethnography is intimately connected with another branch of inquiry-viz. anthropology, which is limited to the relative physical conditions of the races of men. In the Ethnological Section those subjects will be considered which do not belong to the province of philology or archæology. They are all most intimately connected. In fact, a knowledge of ethnology is essential to the study of archæology, just as in the natural sciences the intimate acquaintance with living species, fauna, and flora is essential to the due comprehension of extinct races of animals. Many obscure points in archæology are cleared up by ethnological studies, which teach what is going on at the present day among peoples not more highly advanced in civilization than the predecessors of the most highly civilized races at the most distant period to which archæology can point as the most remote historical age. In the consideration of the diversities of race, ethnology also renders invaluable aid to the philological considerations which guide us in the determination of the relative periods of the oldest civilizations of the East. For language alone is not a sufficient criterion for deciding a point so remote from observation and so delicate, change of language not always implying diversity of race. It is to ethnology as well as to archæology and philology that we must look for the solutions of the problem, whence came the first inhabitants of the valley of the Nile, the alluvial plains of Mesopotamia, the valleys of the Himalayas, and the banks of the Yangtzekiang, the isles of Japan, the shores of Indo-China, with all their internal varieties, the Ainos, the Miautsze, the natives of the Andaman Islands-in short, the general state of the question of the early immigrations which were made before history was written, or tradition definitely handed down. Some of these questions will occupy the attention of the Ethnological Section, and will receive ample illustration from the contributions and memoirs offered to it. Under the head of ethnology

have been classed the sciences, and the products, natural and artificial, of the East. The glyphic and graphic arts have indeed been assigned to the Archæological Section; but the arms, implements, weapons, the manufactures, the products of human ingenuity in any shape, are portions of the study of ethnography, and as such will be considered under that department. The development of the so-called stone and bronze ages of the East, their contributions to the general knowledge of the conditions of the first inhabitants of the globe, are particularly interesting to all inquirers, when it is borne in mind that the cradle of mankind has, by universal consent and uniform tradition, supported by direct historic proofs, always been placed in the East, and that the early European races emerged subsequently from an originally uncivilized condition. These younger children of time derived the first elements of their civilization from contact with the East, then, relatively, far more advanced, placed under more favourable circumstances, and surrounded by those productions of nature which have ever contributed to the comfort, luxury, and refinement of mankind and to the development of the arts and sciences. These natural products it is impossible to do more than allude to, they are so numerous-valuable metals, precious woods, gums, spices, the teeth of animals, the ivory of the hippopotamus and the elephant, the nutritive fruits almost superseding the necessity of the cultivation of grain, the thousands of products of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms have at all times directed the attention of the West to the East, just as in the East itself they have called forth some of the greatest efforts of human ingenuity, and have given rise in past ages to discoveries relatively as great and important as those which, in modern Europe, cease to astonish us, simply because of their universal diffusion and daily use. All these can be made objects of inquiry, but it will be impossible in a single sitting to do more than allude to the subject, or to read' such papers on these points as may be submitted to the Section. In the present Congress, however, there are many present who can throw light upon whatever it may seem desirable to discuss under these several heads.

There only now remains to mention the assistance rendered to Oriental studies by the Universities and learned societies of Europe, who, in addition to the interest with which they have received memoirs on subjects connected with the East, have many of them