[[1]] Much ingenuity has been expended to show that Egyptian manners and customs, books, and other things, were "much the same" as our own, as though the supposed similarity reflected any credit either on them or on us. Except in customs which are common to all times and places, as drinking beer, writing love-letters, making wills, going to school, and other things antecedently probable, the Egyptian life can show very few parallels to the life of to-day.
[[2]] The monuments leave no doubt of this. Pen and ink were used in the First Dynasty, and speech had been reduced to visible signs before that.
[[3]] About B.C. 1770. In all Egyptian dates given in this book I follow Professor Petrie's chronology.
[[4]] These are round figures, of course, and in the case of Solomon and Moses traditional dates. Modern criticism places Genesis and Proverbs much later than 1500 and 1000 B.C.
[[5]] See Appendix for the literature of this papyrus.
[[6]] These were kings of the Eleventh Dynasty, about 2986 B.C.