nd their
bodies thrown to the vultures and the jackals. So, while we stand in
amazement before these relics of the enormous activity of a people who
have passed away, we cannot fail to note that these huge stones were
cemented with the blood and tears of the bond slave, and that if they
could find a voice they would tell of unthinkable atrocities which they
witnessed in those old days, before brotherly love came into the world.

TOMBS OF THE KINGS AT ANCIENT THEBES

The Greeks and Romans who went up the Nile as far as the "hundred-gated"
city of Thebes declared that the Tombs of the Kings, cut in the
limestone sides of the Libyan range of mountains, were among the wonders
of the world. The tourist of to-day will confirm this early impression,
for in Egypt nothing gives one a more vivid idea of the enormous pains
taken by the Pharaohs to preserve their dead from desecration than do
these tombs. Here for several miles in the flanks of these
mountains--sterile, desolate beyond any region that I have ever
seen--are scattered the rock-hewn tombs of the monarchs who carried the
arms of Egypt to all parts of the known world of their day. Like their
temples, the Egyptians built their tombs after a uniform plan--the only
variation was in the arrangement of the minor chambers and in the
inscriptions which told of the history of the king whose mummy reposed
in the vault.

Seven miles across the river the Pharaohs chose the site of their tombs.
Imagination could not conceive a greater abomination of desolation than
the rocky mountainside in which these tombs are carved; but fortunes
were lavished on the construction of these resting places of the dead.
Historians and travelers have told of the great city which grew up about
the tombs of the Egyptian kings--the temples, the homes of priests and
the huge settlements of thousands of workmen who spent years in the
laborious carving and decoration of these burial places. But to-day
nothing remains of these cities, and of the temples only a few columns,
pillars and broken statues bear witness to their former grandeur. Yet
the tombs have resisted the destroying hand of the centuries, and the
walls of several of them actually retain the brilliant colors laid on by
the painters over four thousand years ago. When you go down the
roughly-hewn steps into the mortuary chambers, carved out of the solid
rock, it is borne in upon you that here time has stood still; that
during all the ages th