Wilkinson, John Gardner: Topographie of Thebes, and general view of Egypt: being a short account of the principal objects worthy of notice in the valley of the Nile, to the second cataracte and Wadi Samneh, with the Fyoom, Oases and eastern desert, from Sooez to Bertenice (London, 1835)

Xll INTRODUCTION.

enjoyed, should have doubted this fact—the neces-
sary consequence of her superior condition, and her
advancement in civilization, which neither sacred nor
profane history will allow us to call in question.

For we are assured that in learning she far ex-
celled her cotemporaries. If a philosopher sought
knowledge, Egypt was the school,—if a prince re-
quired a physician, it was to Egypt he applied,—if
any material point perplexed the decision of kings
or councils, to Egypt it was referred,—and the arms
of a Pharaoh were the hope, and frequently the
protection, even at a late period, of a less power-
ful ally. But it is to an early era that I wish more
particularly to allude—before the aggrandizement
of Babylon and Persia—epochs comparatively
modern in the history of Egypt, and the imme-
diate forerunners of her decay.

That the smallness of a state is no great obstacle
to her power is a fact too well known to be de-
serving of notice, and if Voltaire had impassionately
considered the resources of that people, and the
state of the neighbouring nations, his notions on
the subject would have been more correct, and his
remarks less at variance with fact. For though we
admit the conquests of Sesostris to have been ex-
aggerated by fiction, it does not follow that either
the canals he cut, or the wall he is said to have