The Instruction of Ptah-hotep and the Instruction of Kegemni

wilderness of neglect until now, or fallen on ears filled with the clamor of more immediate things.

I could show, if this were a fitting place, that archaeology is not at all divorced from life, nor even devoid of emotion as subtle and strange, as swift and moving, as that experienced by those who love and follow art. Archaeology is, for those who know her, full of such emotion; clad in an imperishable glamour, she is raised far above the turmoil of the present on the wings of imagination. Her eyes are somber with the memory of the wisdom driven from her scattered sanctuaries, and at her lips, wonderful things strive for utterance. In her are gathered together the longings and the laughter, the fears and failures, the sins and splendors and achievements of innumerable generations of men. By her, we are shown all the elemental and terrible passions of the unchanging soul of man—to which all cultures and philosophies are but garments to hide its nakedness—and thus in her, as in art, some of us may realize ourselves. Withal, she is heavy-hearted, making continual lamentation for a glory that has withered and old hopes without fulfillment; and all her habitations are laid waste.

As for the true lover of all old and forgotten things, it may justly be said of him, as of the poet, Nascitur, non fit Latin: "He is born, not made.". For the dreams and the wonder are with him from the beginning, and in early childhood, knowing as yet hardly