The History of Man is the record of a hungry creature in search of food.

Wherever food was plentiful and easily gathered, thither man travelled to make his home.

The fame of the Nile valley must have spread at an early date. From far and wide, wild people flocked to the banks of the river. Surrounded on all sides by desert or sea, it was not easy to reach these fertile fields, and only the hardiest men and women survived.

We do not know who they were. Some came from the interior of Africa.

Others came from the desert of Arabia and the broad rivers of western Asia.

They fought each other for the possession of this wonderful land.

They built villages which their neighbors destroyed, and they rebuilt them with the bricks they had taken from other neighbors whom they in turn had vanquished.

Gradually a new race developed. They called themselves "remi," which means simply "the Men." There was a touch of pride in this name, and they used it in the same sense that we refer to America as "God's own country."

Part of the year, during the annual flood of the Nile, they lived on small islands within a country which itself was cut off from the rest of the world by the sea and the desert. No wonder that these people were what we call "insular," and had the habits of villagers who rarely come in contact with their neighbors.

They liked their own ways best. They thought their own habits and customs just a trifle better than those of anybody else. In the same way, their own gods were considered more powerful than the gods of other nations. They did not exactly despise foreigners, but they felt a mild pity for them, and if possible they kept them outside of the Egyptian domains, lest their own people be corrupted by "foreign notions."

They were kind-hearted and rarely did anything that was cruel. They were patient and in business dealings they were rather indifferent. Life came as an easy gift, and they never became stingy and mean like northern people who have to struggle for mere existence.

When the sun arose above the blood-red horizon of the distant desert, they went forth to till their fields. When the last rays of light had disappeared beyond the mountain ridges, they went to bed.

They worked hard, they plodded, and they bore whatever happened with stolid unconcern and profound patience.

They believed that this life was but a short preface to a new existence which began the moment Death had entered the house. Until at last, the life of the future came to be regarded as more important than the life of the present, and the people of Egypt turned their teeming land into one vast shrine for the worship of the dead.

And as most of the papyrus-rolls of the ancient valley tell stories of a religious nature, we know with great accuracy just what gods the Egyptians revered and how they tried to assure all possible happiness and comfort to those who had entered upon the eternal sleep. In the beginning, each little village had possessed a god of its own.

Often this god was supposed to reside in a queerly shaped stone or in the branch of a particularly large tree. It was well to be good friends with him, for he could do great harm and destroy the harvest and prolong the period of drought until the people and the cattle had all died of thirst. Therefore, the villages made him presents--offered him things to eat or a bunch of flowers.

When the Egyptians went forth to fight their enemies, the god must be taken along, until he became a sort of battle flag around which the people rallied in time of danger.

But when the country grew older, better roads had been built, and the Egyptians had begun to travel, the old "fetishes," as such chunks of stone and wood were called, lost their importance and were thrown away, were left in a neglected corner, or were used as doorsteps or chairs.

Their place was taken by new gods who were more powerful than the old ones had been and who represented those forces of nature which influenced the lives of the Egyptians of the entire valley.

First among these was the Sun, which makes all things grow.

Next came the river Nile, which tempered the heat of the day and brought rich deposits of clay to refresh the fields and make them fertile.

Then there was the kindly Moon, which at night rowed her little boat across the arch of heaven. There was Thunder, there was Lightning, and there were any number of things which could make life happy or miserable according to their pleasure and desire.

Ancient man, entirely at the mercy of these forces of nature, could not get rid of them as easily as we do when we plant lightning rods upon our houses or build reservoirs which keep us alive during the summer months when there is no rain.

On the contrary, they formed an intimate part of his daily life--they accompanied him from the moment he was put into his cradle until the day that his body was prepared for eternal rest.

Neither could he imagine that such vast and powerful phenomena as a bolt of lightning or the flood of a river were mere impersonal things. Someone, somewhere, must be their master and must direct them as the engineer directs his engine or a captain steers his ship.

A God-in-Chief was therefore created, like the commanding general of an army.

A number of lower officers were placed at his disposal.

Within their own territory, each one could act independently.

In grave matters, however, which affected the happiness of all the people, they must take orders from their master.

The Supreme Divine Ruler of the land of Egypt was called Osiris, and all the little Egyptian children knew the story of his wonderful life.

Once upon a time, in the valley of the Nile, there lived a king called Osiris.

He was a good man who taught his subjects how to till their fields and who gave his country just laws. But he had a bad brother whose name was Seth.

Now Seth envied Osiris because he was so virtuous, and one day he invited him to dinner and afterwards he said that he would like to show him something. Curious, Osiris asked what it was, and Seth said that it was a funnily shaped coffin which fitted one like a suit of clothes. Osiris said that he would like to try it. So he lay down in the coffin, but no sooner was he inside, when bang!--Seth shut the lid. Then he called for his servants and ordered them to throw the coffin into the Nile.

Soon the news of his terrible deed spread throughout the land. Isis, the wife of Osiris, who had loved her husband very dearly, went at once to the banks of the Nile, and after a short while the waves threw the coffin upon the shore. Then she went forth to tell her son Horus, who ruled in another land, but no sooner had she left than Seth, the wicked brother, broke into the palace and cut the body of Osiris into fourteen pieces.

When Isis returned, she discovered what Seth had done. She took the fourteen pieces of the dead body and sewed them together. Osiris came back to life and reigned forever and ever as king of the lower world to which the souls of men must travel after they have left the body.

As for Seth, the Evil One, he tried to escape, but Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, who had been warned by his mother, caught him and slew him.

This story of a faithful wife, a wicked brother, a dutiful son who avenges his father, and the final victory of virtue over wickedness formed the basis of the religious life of the people of Egypt.

Osiris was regarded as the god of all living things which seemingly die in the winter and yet return to renewed existence the next spring. As ruler of the Life Hereafter, he was the final judge of the acts of men, and woe unto him who had been cruel and unjust and had oppressed the weak.

As for the world of the departed souls, it was situated beyond the high mountains of the west (which was also the home of the young Nile). When an Egyptian wanted to say that someone had died, he said that he "had gone west."

Isis shared the honors and the duties of Osiris. Their son Horus, who was worshipped as the god of the Sun (hence the word "horizon," the place where the sun sets), became the first of a new line of Egyptian kings. All the Pharaohs of Egypt had Horus as their middle name.

Of course, each little city and every small village continued to worship a few divinities of their own. But generally speaking, all the people recognized the sublime power of Osiris and tried to gain his favor.

This was no easy task, and led to many strange customs. In the first place, the Egyptians came to believe that no soul could enter into the realm of Osiris without the possession of the body which had been its place of residence in this world.

Whatever happened, the body must be preserved after death, and it must be given a permanent and suitable home. Therefore, as soon as a man had died, his corpse was embalmed. This was a difficult and complicated operation which was performed by an official who was half doctor and half priest, with the help of an assistant whose duty it was to make the incision through which the chest could be filled with cedar-tree pitch and myrrh and cassia. This assistant belonged to a special class of people who were counted among the most despised of men. The Egyptians thought it a terrible thing to commit acts of violence upon a human being, whether dead or living, and only the lowest of the low could be hired to perform this unpopular task.

Afterwards the priest took the body again and for a period of ten weeks he allowed it to be soaked in a solution of natron which was brought for this purpose from the distant desert of Libya. Then the body had become a "mummy" because it was filled with "Mumiai" or pitch. It was wrapped in yards and yards of specially prepared linen and it was placed in a beautifully decorated wooden coffin, ready to be removed to its final home in the western desert.

The grave itself was a little stone room in the sand of the desert or a cave in a hillside.

After the coffin had been placed in the center, the little room was well supplied with cooking utensils and weapons and statues (of clay or wood) representing bakers and butchers who were expected to wait upon their dead master in case he needed anything. Flutes and fiddles were added to give the occupant of the grave a chance to while away the long hours which he must spend in this "house of eternity."

Then the roof was covered with sand and the dead Egyptian was left to the peaceful rest of eternal sleep.

But the desert is full of wild creatures, hyenas and wolves, and they dug their way through the wooden roof and the sand and ate up the mummy.

This was a terrible thing, for then the soul was doomed to wander forever and suffer agonies of a man without a home. To assure the corpse all possible safety a low wall of brick was built around the grave and the open space was filled with sand and gravel. In this way a low artificial hill was made which protected the mummy against wild animals and robbers.

Then one day, an Egyptian who had just buried his Mother, of whom he had been particularly fond, decided to give her a monument that should surpass anything that had ever been built in the valley of the Nile.

He gathered his serfs and made them build an artificial mountain that could be seen for miles around. The sides of this hill he covered with a layer of bricks that the sand might not be blown away.

People liked the novelty of the idea.

Soon they were trying to outdo each other, and the graves rose twenty and thirty and forty feet above the ground.

At last, a rich nobleman ordered a burial chamber made of solid stone.

On top of the actual grave where the mummy rested, he constructed a pile of bricks which rose several hundred feet into the air. A small passage-way gave entrance to the vault, and when this passage was closed with a heavy slab of granite, the mummy was safe from all intrusion.

The King, of course, could not allow one of his subjects to outdo him in such a matter. He was the most powerful man of all Egypt who lived in the biggest house, and therefore, he was entitled to the best grave.

What others had done in brick, he could do with the help of more costly materials.

Pharaoh sent his officers far and wide to gather workmen. He constructed roads. He built barracks in which the workmen could live and sleep (you may see those barracks this very day). Then he set to work and made himself a grave which was to endure for all time.

We call this great pile of masonry a "pyramid."

The origin of the word is a curious one.

When the Greeks visited Egypt, the Pyramids were already several thousand years old.

Of course, the Egyptians took their guests into the desert to see these wondrous sights just as we take foreigners to gaze at the Woolworth Tower and Brooklyn Bridge.

The Greek guest, lost in admiration, waved his hands and asked what the strange mountains might be.

His guide thought that he referred to the extraordinary height and said "Yes, they are very high indeed."

The Egyptian word for height was "pir-em-us."

The Greek must have thought that this was the name of the whole structure and giving it a Greek ending he called it a "pyramis."

We have changed the "s" into a "d," but we still use the same Egyptian word when we talk of the stone graves along the banks of the Nile.

The biggest of these many pyramids, which was built fifty centuries ago, was five hundred feet high.

At the base, it was seven hundred and fifty-five feet wide.

It covered more than thirteen acres of desert, which is three times as much space as that occupied by the church of Saint Peter, the largest edifice of the Christian world.

During twenty years, over a hundred thousand men were used to carry the stones from the distant peninsula of Sinai--to ferry them across the Nile (how they ever managed to do this we do not understand)--to drag them halfway across the desert, and finally hoist them into their correct position.

But so well did Pharaoh's architects and engineers perform their task, that the narrow passageway which leads to the royal tomb in the heart of the pyramid has never yet been pushed out of shape by the terrific weight of those thousands and thousands of tons of stone which press upon it from all sides.