nophis! Out of so many kings who tried so hard to hide for ever
their mummies in the depths of impenetrable caverns he is the only one
who has been left in his tomb. And he "makes the most of it" every time
he opens his funeral salons.

*****

It is important to arrive before midday at the dwelling of this Pharaoh,
and at eight o'clock sharp, therefore, on a clear February morning,
I set out from Luxor, where for many days my dahabiya had slumbered
against the bank of the Nile. It is necessary first of all to cross the
river, for the Theban kings of the Middle Empire all established their
eternal habitations on the opposite bank--far beyond the plains of the
river shore, right away in those mountains which bound the horizon
as with a wall of adorable rose-colour. Other canoes, which are
also crossing, glide by the side of mine on the tranquil water. The
passengers seem to belong to that variety of Anglo-Saxons which is
equipped by Thomas Cook & Sons (Egypt Ltd.), and like me, no doubt, they
are bound for the royal presence.

We land on the sand of the opposite bank, which to-day is almost
deserted. Formerly there stretched here a regular suburb of
Thebes--that, namely, of the preparers of mummies, with thousands of
ovens wherein to heat the natron and the oils, which preserved the
bodies from corruption. In this Thebes, where for some fifty centuries,
everything that died, whether man or beast, was minutely prepared and
swathed in bandages, it will readily be understood what importance this
quarter of the embalmers came to assume. And it was to the neighbouring
mountains that the products of so many careful wrappings were borne for
burial, while the Nile carried away the blood from the bodies and the
filth of their entrails. That chain of living rocks that rises before
us, coloured each morning with the same rose, as of a tender flower, is
literally stuffed with dead bodies.

We have to cross a wide plain before reaching the mountains, and on
our way cornfields alternate with stretches of sand already desertlike.
Behind us extends the old Nile and the opposite bank which we have
lately quitted--the bank of Luxor, whose gigantic Pharaonic colonnades
are as it were lengthened below by their own reflection in the mirror of
the river. And in this radiant morning, in this pure light, it would be
admirable, this eternal temple, with its image reversed in the depth of
the blue water, were it not that at its sides, and to t