banipal. He lost Egypt to Esarhaddon, won it back and lost it again to Ashurbanipal. His successor, Tanutamon, restored the Ethiopian domination over Egypt, but he was apparently the last of the great kings of Ethiopia.

After a gallant struggle against an empire with myriads of soldiers and the wealth of Western Asia at its disposal, the little Ethiopian theocracy was driven back to its narrow home, a strip of black land stretching a few hundred miles along the Nile. Its greatest asset was the command of the three great caravan roads trod by those who carried the trade with Central Africa and Abyssinia. Its population was less than half a million. It is doubtful whether, in its resources of men and natural wealth, Ethiopia was much better off than Judah or Israel.

After the retirement of Tanutamon to Napata, the Ethiopian monarchy still held to its theocratic notions and to the fiction of its world power, and the kings chosen by the great god still carried on successful wars (probably to the south) in the name of Amon, and filled the temples of Napata with loot. They made their statutes after the Egyptian manner and held to the traditions of Egyptian arts and crafts as well as those of religion.

All our information about Ethiopia after the loss of Egypt came from five Egyptian inscriptions from the great temple at Gebel Barkal. These inscriptions describe the selection by Amon of Espalut as king of Ethiopia, the reign of a king, Harsiotef, and the accession of a king, Nastesen. From other short or fragmentary inscriptions the names of five or six other kings of this period were known, but there our knowledge ended. A few centuries later the capital of Ethiopia was shifted southwards to Meroë, sixty miles above the mouth of the Atbara. The Meroitic kingdom persisted to the days of the Greeks and Romans, but its history must be sought at Meroë, not at Napata.

Thanks to the exploring expedition fitted out by the Harvard University Museum of Fine Arts, under the direction of Dr. Reisner, in January, 1917, much light has been thrown on the history of Nepata, the old capital of the theocratic monarchy of Ethiopia. The burial chambers of the neighboring pyramids have been penetrated and a number of valuable relics secured, despite the fact that the tombs were violated by thieves centuries ago. In the great temple, on the river side of the Holy Mountain, portrait statues of many kings have been unearthed. "This temple," says Reisner, "was no doubt the very temple of Amon in which the divine decrees had been

given which sent the older kings to conquer Egypt and fight with Assyria. In the midst of it, from the days of the first European visitors, a black granite pedestal and a gray granite altar have been visible. The pedestal bore the name of Piankhy, the first Ethiopian conquerer of Egypt, and the gray altar the name of Tirhaka, who fought with Sennacherib. It is a vast place, equal to any of the great Egyptian temples except Karnak, and the work of disposing of the debris caused us difficulties."

Standing amid the debris of this temple is a massive altar which very much resembles the altar of a Masonic lodge. Excavations were made in the ruins of the so-called temple of Senkaamon-seken, but really the temple of a predecessor named Atlanersa. "The cliff," says Reisner, "had fallen on the back part of the temple, and no modern excavator had ventured to undertake the labor involved in removing the huge blocks of red sandstone. Several of them were well over twenty tons in weight, and the soft but obstinate stone was very little given to splitting. Our men fairly had to pound them to pieces. Once they were out of the way, the temple was found to be filled with detritus washed down from the cliff. ing this away the inmost sanctuary was exposed as it had been on the day the cliff fell. A small sandstone statue and a black granite statuette of Amon took up the greater part of the limited space in the sanctuary, and many small votive offerings of the same period as the pyramids were lying just as they To give had been cast into the room. buried since about the beginning of a probable date, the building had lain

On clear

the Christian era. In the middle of the room next to the sanctuary was a large black granite altar inscribed on all four sides with traditional Egyptian scenes and religious texts. The altar had been dedicated to Amon by Atlanersa and records a speech of the god 'to his beloved son Atlanersa,' saying, 'I have given thee the South and the North as a reward for this monu

ment.' But Senka-amon-seken had inscribed his name on the front beside the name of Atlanersa. The columns in this room also bore the name of Atlanersa, although the pylon was inscribed by Senka-amon-seken. Under the back wall we found the foundation deposits which showed that the original builder of the temple was Atlanersa. An examination of the masonry, the inscriptions and the other evidence proved that Atlanersa had built the temple, but on a very unfortunate site. The cliff fell and smashed his work. Senka amon seken then rebuilt the temple, setting his name on the new walls. Again the cliff fell, this time wrecking only the back of the temple, and again some king restored it, rebuilding the sanctuary and the room of the granite altar. But he has left no inscription. Yet a curious incident

13

gives a hint that the third restoration took place in the days of the Meroitic king whose official name was Nebmaat-re; for we found in the sanctuary along with the Meroitic statuettes, a statuette of Amenophis III of Egypt (1411-1375 B.C.) on which the name of Amon and therefore the name of Amenophis had been scratched out during the well known attempt of Amenophis IV to destroy the power of the Amon priesthood. These erasures left only the official name of Amenophis, which was 'Neb-maat-re.' This suggests that the statuette, having been found in the ruins of one of the older temples, was placed in the sanctuary in the days of the Meroitic 'Neb-maat-re, or soon thereafter, under the impression that the statuette was a portrait of him. The finding of the statuette may even have been magnified into a portent."

T

HE term "Ideals," like the glittering general statements of the after-dinner speaker, is so elastic that it might contain volumes, or only sentences.

The adjective Ideal means, existing as a patterning or archetypal idea, or to perfection of kind; existing as a perfect exemplar; as, ideal beauty, an ideal character. It may exist as a mere mental image; it may exist in fancy or imagination only; it may be either real or unreal. It may safely be stated, however, that there will always be a wide interval between practical and ideal existence.

The noun Ideal is defined to be, a standard of perfection, beauty, or moral or physical excellence; a perfect type, whether a reality or only a conception; as, a perfect circle is an ideal, impossible to construct. We are told that fect circle or a perfect square has never been constructed since the days of the building of King Solomon's Temple. We also know that at one time Grecian architecture and sculpture were recog

per

nized as the highest achievements toward perfection, and that the Phidian Zeus at Olympia was a Greek "Ideal of Divinity;" although the perfect ideal in this sculpture was and is an acknowledged failure-the true, absolute and perfect ideal being beyond human conception.

From an analysis of the word and its various applications, we conclude that, briefly stated, an ideal is a conception of perfection; and to give the full, true and real meaning of the term, we conceive it to be something so perfect as never actually to be attained, but always leaving something to be striven for. It is established as a pacemaker for man or woman, always just a little in advance, always urging on and on to greater heights, to greater efforts, and to greater achievements.

There is an old, trite saying, "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." This, it seems, is more or less in contrast with the idea of "hitching your wagon to a star." Ambition? pouf! What will man not do in his ambition?

And yet, in ambition's wake are suicide, crime, nervous breakdown, myth and shadow chasing; while the real is left unnoticed. Give one an ideal to be attained and you open a door through which one sees a more or less delectable land in which he would walk, but which, alas, he may never really enter. This, then, is an example of the abuse of "the ideal," and an illustration of the "ignorance is bliss" idea.

It is not safe to say that the man has never lived, no matter how energetic and ambitious, no matter how high his aims, who has not, at some time, paused in his frantic flight and sighed for the time when, in his innocent childhood, he lived close to nature, and followed the humble paths of pastoral life where he lived, loved and dreamed in a peaceful and godly home, near to the cool and tranquil earth, the running and glistening waters of the valley, the green foliage of the forest, and under the bright, calm stars of an azure heaven.

We charge you not by any means to think our views are cynical, for, in the presence of the great and limitless subject that rises before us, we feel all at sea and like unto a man in a frail boat drifting round and round in circles in turbulent waters.

Ideals! The ideal woman; the ideal man; the ideal home; the ideal life; the ideal anything! And yet, while we think of the term as always meaning something high and lofty, we still hear of perfect ideals.

To our mind a high ideal, or a per

fect ideal, is a misnomer; for, if it were low, presto! it would at once cease to be an ideal.

Perhaps some will not agree with us when we couple the term, or rather the idea of an ideal, together with the term ambition; and yet, the further we analyze the two terms, the more they seem to approach each other, with the exception that the term ideal seems to contain an idea of fineness connected with the term ambition. and loftiness not necessarily or always

We have the ideal literature, the ideal statesman, ideal rulers, ideal governments, ideal men and women whose examples are well worthy of imitation, and so on, innumerably, throughout an endless chain. The ideal life is left very much to one's own judgment of what it should be, for there are many, many things to emulate.

To enumerate and particularize would be a task far beyond ordinary human conception. The life that is fraught with good works, with justice to our fellow men and an adherence to all the virtues, softened with tenderness, caressed by the love of God, with strict adherence to His commands and adorned with compliance to the Golden Rule, will aid us to contemplate, and strive to achieve, the ideal life.

Whitter says:

"Our lives are albums written through With good or ill, with false or true; And as the blessed angels turn

The pages of our years,

God grant they read the good with smiles, And blot out the ill with tears."