older still and more massive,
of which there was no suspicion, and whose age must exceed eight
thousand years.

[*] As is generally known, the maintenance of the ancient
monuments of Egypt and their restoration, so far as that may
be possible, has been entrusted to the French. M. Maspero
has delegated to Thebes an artist and a scholar, M. Legrain
by name, who is devoting his life passionately to the work.

In spite of the burning sun, and of the clouds of dust raised by
the blows of the pickaxes, one might linger for hours amongst the
dust-stained, meagre fellahs, watching the excavations in this unique
soil--where everything that is revealed is by way of being a surprise
and a lucky find, where the least carved stone had a past of glory,
formed part of the first architectural splendours, was _a stone of
Thebes_. Scarcely a moment passes but, at the bottom of the trenches, as
the digging proceeds, some new thing gleams. Perhaps it is the polished
flank of a colossus, fashioned out of granite from Syene, or a little
copper Osiris, the debris of a vase, a golden trinket beyond price,
or even a simple blue pearl that has fallen from the necklace of some
waiting-maid of a queen.

This activity of the excavators, which alone reanimates certain quarters
during the day, ends at sunset. Every evening the lean fellahs receive
the daily wage of their labour, and take themselves off to sleep in the
silent neighbourhood in their huts of mud; and the iron gates are shut
behind them. At night, except for the guards at the entrance, no one
inhabits the ruins.

*****

Crumbling and dust. . . . Far around, on every side of these palaces and
temples of the central artery--which are the best preserved and remain
proudly upright--stretch great mournful spaces, on which the sun from
morning till evening pours an implacable light. There, amongst the
lank desert plants, lie blocks scattered at hazard--the remains of
sanctuaries, of which neither the plan nor the form will ever be
discovered. But on these stones, fragments of the history of the world
are still to be read in clear-cut hieroglyphs.

To the west of the hypostyle hall there is a region strewn with discs,
all equal and all alike. It might be a draught-board for Titans with
draughts that would measure ten yards in circumference. They are the
scattered fragments, slices, as it were, of a colonnade of the Ramses.
Farther on the ground seems to have pas