The Instruction of Ptah-hotep and the Instruction of Kegemni

unique place—in the literature of the world; their value historically; a description of the document in which they were found; what is known of their authors; and a discussion of their contents.

The land of which the Father of History Referring to Herodotus. declared that no other country held so many wonders, has bequeathed to us, by various channels, the rumor and remnant of a strange knowledge. She has devised for us insoluble enigmas and rendered up to us signs and messages whose meaning is dark for all time. She has left a religion, "veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbol," as fascinating as it is impenetrable for those who approach it. For the keys to these things have not been delivered into our hands; wherefore much study of them is a weariness to the flesh, and there is no end to the hazarding of interpretations.

But apart from the mazes of mythology, the broken ways of history, and the empty letter of a dead faith, there are—as is known to some, and as this little book professes to show—many documents which are antique, but not antiquated. They possess an interest above the purely archaeological—the interest called human. Of these are the tales which recall, in incident as in style, those of the immortal collection, full of the whole glamour of the East, the Thousand Nights and a Night.