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Also they were acquainted with empires of unknown antiquity, like

the Egyptian or Assyrian; but they had never seen them grow, and

could not imagine, any more than we can, the state of man which

preceded them. They were puzzled and awestricken by the Egyptian

monuments, of which the forms, as Plato says, not in a figure,

but literally, were ten thousand years old (Laws), and they

contrasted the antiquity of Egypt with their own short memories.