must experience now; for now the palaces, the pictures of the gods,
and almost all the pyramids are swallowed up in sand. Miserable Arab
villages, such as Saqqara, have fixed themselves in the ruins of
Memphis, and from a thick palm grove one can look with astonishment
upon the torso of the powerful Ramses II. lying solitary there, the last
witness to the glory of the temple of Phtah, before which this colossus
once had its stand. In the neighbourhood of Memphis lay Heliopolis, the
town of the sun-god, with its ancient temple, and a school of Egyptian
wisdom, in which Plato is supposed to have studied.

In Heliopolis the worship of the god Ra was preserved, the centre of
which was the holy animal Mnevis, a rival or comrade of Apis. Cambyses
had partly destroyed the temple and even the obelisks which the Pharaohs
had in the course of centuries erected to the sun-god; nowhere in Egypt
existed so many of these monuments as here and in Thebes. Hadrian saw
many of them lying half-burnt on the ground just as Strabo had done.
On the site of Heliopolis, now green with wheat-fields, only a single
obelisk has remained upright, which is considered as the oldest of all,
and was erected in the twelfth dynasty by Usirtasen I.

The royal assemblage had arrived in the course of their journey at Besa,
a place on the right bank of the river, opposite Hermopolis, when a
strange event occurred. This was the death of Hadrian's favourite,
Antinous, a young Greek from Claudiopolis, who had been degraded to the
position of Ganymede to the emperor on account of his beauty. It is not
known where the emperor first came across the youth; possibly in his
native land, Bithynia. Not till he came to Egypt did he become his
inseparable companion, and this must have been a deep offence to
his wife. The unfortunate queen was delivered in Besa from his hated
presence, for Antinous was drowned there in the Nile.

His death was surrounded by mystery. Was it accident? Was he a victim?
Hadrian's humanity protects him from the suspicion that he sacrificed
his victim in cold blood, as Tiberius had once sacrificed the beautiful
Hypatus in Capri. Had the fantastic youth sacrificed himself of his own
free will to the death divinities in order to save the emperor's life?
Had the Egyptian priests foreseen in the stars some danger threatening
Hadrian, only to be averted by the death of his favourite? Such an idea
commended itself to the superstition of the time, es