Excerpt from The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, With Historical Surveys of the Chief Writings of Each Nation, Vol. 2: Egypt The history of Egypt before the days of Rome is divided into four clearly marked periods. The chronology of the first of these is still a puzzle to our scholars, though very recent criticism is establishing an outline of dates which may prove fairly accurate. According to this, our oldest definite Egyptian date sets Khufu, or Cheops, as building the greatest of the pyramids about 3000 bc.1 Khufu ruled in what is called the Fourth Dynasty of kings; so King Menes, who is regarded as the founder of the First Dynasty; that is, as the first ruler to gather all Egypt into a Single Empire, must have lived about 3400 bc. Back of Menes there is an older, uncountable age of lesser kingdoms and slowly developing civilization. Forward from his day extends the period of the first or what we now call the Ancient Egyptian Em pire, which he founded. This was ruled by the six earliest dynasties of kings, and lasted for almost a thousand years; far longer, that is, than the later and better known world-empire of Rome was able to maintain itself. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.