n enjoined to satisfy the requirements and views of
visitors of every race. The chief attraction, however, this night was
within; for the men whose duties were exercised on the dead had displayed
the finest and best of what they had to offer to their customers.

The ancient Greek practice of burning the dead had died out under the
Antonines. Of old, the objects used to deck the pyre had also been on
show here; now there was nothing to be seen but what related to interment
or entombment.

Side by side with the marble sarcophagus, or those of coarser stone, were
wooden coffins and mummy-cases, with a place at the head for the portrait
of the deceased. Vases and jars of every kind, amulets of various forms,
spices and balsams in vials and boxes, little images in burned clay of
the gods and of men, of which none but the Egyptians knew the allegorical
meaning, stood in long rows on low wooden shelves. On the higher shelves
were mummy bands and shrouds, some coarse, others of the very finest
texture, wigs for the bald heads of shaven corpses, or woolen fillets,
and simply or elaborately embroidered ribbons for the Greek dead.

Nothing was lacking of the various things in use for decking the corpse
of an Alexandrian, whatever his race or faith.

Some mummy-cases, too, were there, ready to be packed off to other towns.
The most costly were covered with fine red linen, wound about with
strings of beads and gold ornaments, and with the name of the dead
painted on the upper side. In a long, narrow room apart hung the
portraits, waiting to be attached to the upper end of the mummy-cases of
those lately deceased, and still in the hands of embalmers. Here, too,
most of the lamps were out, and the upper end of the room was already
dark. Only in the middle, where the best pictures were on show, the
lights had been renewed.

The portraits were painted on thin panels of sycamore or of cypress, and
in most of them the execution betrayed that their destiny was to be
hidden in the gloom of a tomb.

Alexander's portrait of Korinna was in the middle of the gallery, in a
good light, and stood out from the paintings on each side of it as a
genuine emerald amid green glass. It was constantly surrounded by a crowd
of the curious and connoisseurs. They pointed out the beautiful work to
each other; but, though most of them acknowledged the skill of the master
who had painted it, many ascribed its superiority to the magical charm of
the model.