on payment of a certain per cent. of
the value of the object stolen, received his property again. The
original burglar and the chief of robbers divided the profits. This
traffic was countenanced in Egypt until the country passed into British
hands.

[2] The ape was sacred to and an emblem of Toth, the male deity of
Wisdom and Law.

CHAPTER IV

THE PROCESSION OF AMEN

Thebes Diospolis, the hundred-gated, was in holiday attire. The great
suburb to the west of the Nile had emptied her multitudes into the
solemn community of the gods. Besides her own inhabitants there were
thousands from the entire extent of the Thebaid and visitors even from
far-away Syene and Philae. It was an occasion for more than ordinary
pomp. The great god Amen was to be taken for an outing in his ark.

Every possible manifestation of festivity had been sought after and
displayed. The air was a-flutter with party-colored streamers.
Garlands rioted over colossus, peristyle, obelisk and sphinx without
conserving pattern or moderation. The dromos, or avenue of sphinxes,
was carpeted with palm and nelumbo leaves, and copper censers as large
as caldrons had been set at equidistance from one another, and an
unceasing reek of aromatics drifted up from them throughout the day.

For once the magnificence of the wondrous city of the gods was set down
from its usual preeminence in the eyes of the wondering spectator, and
the vastness of the multitude usurped its place. The bari of Kenkenes
seeking to round the island of sand lying near the eastern shore
opposite the village of Karnak, met a solid pack of boats. The young
sculptor took in the situation at once, and, putting about, found a
landing farther to the north. There he made a portage across the flat
bar of sand to the arm of quiet water that separated the island from
the eastern shore. Crossing, he dismissed his eager and excited
boatmen and struck across the noon-heated valley toward the temple.
The route of the pageant could be seen from afar, cleanly outlined by
humanity. It extended from Karnak to Luxor and, turning in a vast loop
at the Nile front, countermarched over the dromos and ended at the
tremendous white-walled temple of Amen. Between the double ranks of
sightseers there was but chariot room. The side Kenkenes approached
sloped sharply from the dromos toward the river, and the rearmost
spectators had small opportunity to behold the pageant. The multitude
here wa