ons, and when one hut crumbled away another was put up on
the top of it, and thus the level of the accumulated earth grew higher
and higher. Then some learned Frenchmen saw the wonder of the buried
temple and bought the people out, persuading them to go elsewhere, and
they gradually cleared away the rubbish until the original beauty of the
temple was visible again. Even now, high up on all sides, you can see
the depth of the earth surrounding it like cliffs, and on the top are
squalid huts with dirty children and fluffy impudent goats and
shrill-voiced, black-clad women, living their daily lives and looking
down into the temple.

The ancient Egyptian writing was by signs--a bird meant one thing, a
flower another, and a serpent another, and so on, but for a long time
the meaning of it had been forgotten, and it was impossible for anyone
to read these wonderful signs. But at the very end of the eighteenth
century a great stone was found which had upon it an inscription written
in Greek and in hieroglyphics, as the sign-writing was called, and also
in another writing which used to be employed by the priests, and from
this, before many years had passed, clever men were able to understand
the language of signs and read the inscriptions on the temples, which
told who had built them and much else. This stone was called the Rosetta
Stone, after the place where it was found. It is now in the British
Museum.

This was long before Luxor was unearthed, and the inscriptions were
deciphered as they came to light; by their help it was found that the
temple had been built chiefly by two kings, Amenhetep III. and Rameses
II. who came after him, though not immediately. Rameses added to the
existing work and carried it on. So far as we know all this was between
three and four thousand years ago. In a village in England people are
proud if they can point to any part of their parish church and say,
"This is Norman work," and yet the Normans only came over to England
less than nine hundred years ago! Go back more than three times that,
and try to realise the age of this temple. And even this, as we know, is
not old compared with the Pyramids! Doesn't it make us feel that, as a
nation, we are rather young after all?

Long before we were a nation these mighty kings flourished in Egypt and
lived in pomp and splendour. They each had a different name, of course,
and more than one, but yet they were all Pharaohs, just as at one time
in the Roma