The Nile valley was reclaimed for the use of man, and swamp and jungle, the home of wild beasts and venomous serpents, were turned by his labours into a fruitful paradise.
By the side of the long-headed Egyptian of the ruling classes we find in the age of the earlier dynasties a wholly different type, of which the famous wooden statue now in the Cairo Museum, and commonly known as the "Shekh el-Beled," may be taken as an illustration.

Here the skull is round instead of long, the lips and nostrils are thick and fleshy, the expression good-humoured rather than intellectual.

The type is that of a portion of the lower classes, and disappears from the monuments after the fall of the Sixth dynasty.

After that epoch the races which inhabited Egypt were more completely fused together, and the rounded skull became rare.
Egyptian history begins with Menes, the founder of the united monarchy, and of the First historical dynasty.

Our glimpses of the age that preceded him--the age of the followers of Horus, as the Egyptians termed it--are few and scanty.