or centuries, a riddle of human religion, was bound to excite
the curiosity of strangers. In this divinisation of animals lay the
greatest contempt for human understanding, and it was a bitter satire
on the apotheosis of kings and emperors. For what was the divinity
of Sesostris, of Alexander, of Augustus, or Hadrian compared with
the heavenly majesty of the ox Apis, or the holy cats, dogs, kites,
crocodiles, and god-apes? Egypt was at this epoch already a museum of
the Pharaoh-time and its enbalamed culture. Strange buildings, rare
sculptures, hieroglyphics, and pictures still filled the ancient towns,
even though these had lost their splendour. Memphis and Heliopolis,
Bubastis, Abydos, Sais, Tanis, and the hundred-gated Thebes had long
fallen into ruin, although still inhabited.

The emperor's escort must have been an extraordinary sight as it steered
up the stream on a fleet of dahabiehs. The emperor was accompanied by
students of the museum, interpreters, priests, and astrologers. Amongst
his followers were Verus and the beautiful Antinous.

The Empress Sabina also accompanied him; she had the poetess Julia
Balbilla amongst her court ladies. They landed wherever there was
anything of interest to be seen, and there was more in those days than
there is now. They admired the great pyramids, the colossal sphinx, and
the sacred town of Memphis. This city, the ancient royal seat of the
Pharaohs, and even in Strabo's time the second town in Egypt, was not
yet buried under the sand of the desert; its disappearance had, however,
already begun. Under the Ptolemies it had given much of the material of
her temples and palaces for the building of Alexandria. The great palace
of the Pharaohs had long been destroyed, but there still remained
many notable monuments, such as the temple of Phtah, the pyramids, the
necropolis, and the Serapeum, and they retained their ancient cult.
The town was still the chief seat of the Egyptian hierarchy and the
residence of Apis; for this very reason the Roman government had
destined it to be one of her strong military stations, for here a legion
was quartered. The emperor could walk through the time-worn avenues of
sphinxes which led to the wonderful vaults where the long succession of
divine animals was buried, each like a Pharaoh, in a magnificent granite
sarcophagus. Hadrian could admire the beautifully sculptured tomb of Di,
an Egyptian officer of the fifth dynasty, with less trouble than we