ardened into a compact mass, which
protected the vault and its master from desecration.

During the course of centuries, the ever-increasing number of tombs at
length formed an almost uninterrupted chain of burying-places on the
table-land. At Gizeh they follow a symmetrical plan, and line the sides
of regular roads; at Saqqara they are scattered about on the surface
of the ground, in some places sparsely, in others huddled confusedly
together. Everywhere the tombs are rich in inscriptions, statues, and
painted or sculptured scenes, each revealing some characteristic custom,
or some detail of contemporary civilization. From the womb, as it were,
of these cemeteries, the Egypt of the Memphite dynasties gradually takes
new life, and reappears in the full daylight of history. Nobles and
fellahs, soldiers and priests, scribes and craftsmen,--the whole nation
lives anew before us; each with his manners, his dress, his daily round
of occupation and pleasures. It is a perfect picture, and although in
places the drawing is defaced and the colour dimmed, yet these may be
restored with no great difficulty, and with almost absolute certainty.
The king stands out boldly in the foreground, and his tall figure towers
over all else. He so completely transcends his surroundings, that at
first sight one may well ask if he does not represent a god rather than
a man; and, as a matter of fact, he is a god to his subjects. They call
him "the good god," "the great god," and connect him with Ra through the
intervening kings, the successors of the gods who ruled the two worlds.
His father before him was "Son of Ra," as was also his grandfather, and
his great-grandfather, and so through all his ancestors, until from
"son of Ra" to "son of Ra" they at last reached Ra himself. Sometimes
an adventurer of unknown antecedents is abruptly inserted in the series,
and we might imagine that he would interrupt the succession of the solar
line; but on closer examination we always find that either the intruder
is connected with the god by a genealogy hitherto unsuspected, or that
he is even more closely related to him than his predecessors, inasmuch
as Ra, having secretly descended upon the earth, had begotten him by a
mortal mother in order to rejuvenate the race.*

* A legend, preserved for us in the Westcar Papyrus (Erman's
edition, pl. ix. 11. 5-11, pl. x. 1. 5, et seq.), maintains
that the first three kings of the Vth dynasty, Usirkaf,