ead wife, in
which he asks her why she persecutes him, since he was always kind to
her during her life, nursed her through illnesses, and never grieved her
heart.[1]

[Footnote 1: Maspero: 'Etudes egyptologiques,' i. 145.]

These instances might be multiplied, but those which I have quoted will
serve to show that the old gods are still alive, and that the famous
magic of the Egyptians is not yet a thing of the past. Let us now turn
to the affairs of everyday life.

An archaeological traveller in Egypt cannot fail to observe the
similarity between old and modern customs as he rides through the
villages and across the fields. The houses, when not built upon the
European plan, are surprisingly like those of ancient days. The old
cornice still survives, and the rows of dried palm stems, from which its
form was originally derived, are still to be seen on the walls of
gardens and courtyards. The huts or shelters of dried corn-stalks, so
often erected in the fields, are precisely the same as those used in
prehistoric days; and the archaic bunches of corn-stalks smeared with
mud, which gave their form to later stone columns, are set up to this
day, though their stone posterity are now in ruins. Looking through the
doorway of one of these ancient houses, the traveller, perhaps, sees a
woman grinding corn or kneading bread in exactly the same manner as her
ancestress did in the days of the Pharaohs. Only the other day a native
asked to be allowed to purchase from us some of the ancient millstones
lying in one of the Theban temples, in order to re-use them on his farm.
The traveller will notice, in some shady corner, the village barber
shaving the heads and faces of his patrons, just as he is seen in the
Theban tomb-paintings of thousands of years ago; and the small boys who
scamper across the road will have just the same tufts of hair left for
decoration on their shaven heads as had the boys of ancient Thebes and
Memphis. In another house, where a death has occurred, the mourning
women, waving the same blue cloth which was the token of mourning in
ancient days, will toss their arms about in gestures familiar to every
student of ancient scenes. Presently the funeral will issue forth, and
the men will sing that solemn yet cheery tune which never fails to call
to mind the far-famed _Maneros_--that song which Herodotus describes as
a plaintive funeral dirge, and which Plutarch asserts was suited at the
same time to festive occ