ght from Abydos.

** M. Grebaut bought at the Great Pyramids, in 1887, a
series of these ivory sculptures of the Ancient Empire. They
are now at the Gizeh Museum. Others belonging to the same
find are dispersed among private collections: one of them is
reproduced on p. 249 of this History.

[Illustration: 252.jpg STELE OF THE DAUGHTER OF KHEOPS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Bochard.

One would like to possess some of those copper and golden statues which
the Pharaoh Kheops consecrated to Isis in honour of his daughter: only
the representation of them upon a stele has come down to us; and the
fragments of sceptres or other objects which too rarely have reached us,
have unfortunately no artistic value.

A taste for pretty things was common, at least among the upper classes,
including not only those about the court, but also those in the most
distant nomes of Egypt. The provincial lords, like the courtiers of
the palace, took a pride in collecting around them in the other world
everything of the finest that the art of the architect, sculptor, and
painter could conceive and execute. Their mansions as well as their
temples have disappeared, but we find, here and there on the sides of
the hills, the sepulchres which they had prepared for themselves in
rivalry with those of the courtiers or the members of the reigning
family. They turned the valley into a vast series of catacombs, so that
wherever we look the horizon is bounded by a row of historic tombs.
Thanks to their rock-cut sepulchres, we are beginning to know the
Nomarchs of the Gazelle and the Hare, those of the Serpent-Mountain, of
Akhmim, Thinis, Qasr-es-Sayad, and Aswan,--all the scions, in fact, of
that feudal government which preceded the royal sovereignty on the
banks of the Nile, and of which royalty was never able to entirely
disembarrass itself. The Pharaohs of the IVth dynasty had kept them in
such check that we can hardly find any indications during their reigns
of the existence of these great barons; the heads of the Pharaonic
administration were not recruited from among the latter, but from the
family and domestic circle of the sovereign. It was in the time of the
kings of the Vth dynasty, it would appear, that the barons again
entered into favour and gradually gained the upper hand; we find them
in increasing numbers about Anu, Menkauhoru, and Assi. Did Unas, who was
the last ruler of the dynasty of Elephanti