use it can
add to the stock of things which are likely to tickle the fancy. So
humorous a man is he, so fond of the good things of life, so stirred by
its adventures, so touched by its sorrows, that he must needs go to the
Past to replenish his supplies, as another might go to Paris or
Timbuctoo.

Here, then, is the place to give an example of the entertainment which
he is likely to find in this province of his; and if the reader can
detect any smell of dust or hear any creak of dead bones in the story
which follows, it will be a matter of surprise to me.

In the year 1891, at a small village in Upper Egypt named El Hibeh, some
natives unearthed a much damaged roll of papyrus which appeared to them
to be very ancient. Since they had heard that antiquities have a market
value they did not burn it along with whatever other scraps of
inflammable material they had collected for their evening fire, but
preserved it, and finally took it to a dealer, who gave them in exchange
for it a small sum of money. From the dealer's hands it passed into the
possession of Monsieur Golenischeff, a Russian Egyptologist, who
happened at the time to be travelling in Egypt; and by him it was
carried to St Petersburg, where it now rests. This _savant_ presently
published a translation of the document, which at once caused a
sensation in the Egyptological world; and during the next few years four
amended translations were made by different scholars. The interest shown
in this tattered roll was due to the fact that it had been found to
contain the actual report written by an official named Wenamon to his
chief, the High Priest of Amon-Ra, relating his adventures in the
Mediterranean while procuring cedar-wood from the forests of Lebanon.
The story which Wenamon tells is of the greatest value to Egyptology,
giving as it does a vivid account of the political conditions obtaining
in Syria and Egypt during the reign of the Pharaoh Rameses XII.; but it
also has a very human interest, and the misfortunes of the writer may
excite one's sympathy and amusement, after this lapse of three thousand
years, as though they had occurred at the present time.

In the time at which Wenamon wrote his report Egypt had fallen on evil
days. A long line of incapable descendants of the great Rameses II. and
Rameses III. had ruled the Nile valley; and now a wretched ghost of a
Pharaoh, Rameses XII., sat upon the throne, bereft of all power, a ruler
in name only. The go