ken by me in 1899, while I was
traveling in Egypt.

The title of this volume has been changed from "The Pharaoh" to "The
Pharaoh and the Priest," at the wish of the author.

JEREMIAH CURTIN.

BRISTOL, VERMONT, U. S. A.,
July 28, 1902.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Alexander Glovatski Frontispiece

Jeremiah Curtin at the Statue of Ramses the Great in the Temple of
Luxor

Step Pyramid

Village of Bedreshen on the site of Memphis

Pyramid of Cheops

The Great Sphinx

Statue of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen

General View of the Ruins of Karnak

Tomb of a Pharaoh in the Libyan Hills

Avenue of Sphinxes from the Temple of Karnak to the Nile

THE PHARAOH AND THE PRIEST

INTRODUCTION

In the northeastern corner of Africa lies Egypt, that land of most
ancient civilization. Three, four, and even five thousand years ago,
when the savages of Central Europe wore untanned skins for clothing and
were cave-dwellers, Egypt had a high social organization, agriculture,
crafts, and literature. Above all, it carried out engineering works and
reared immense buildings, the remnants of which rouse admiration in
specialists of our day.

Egypt is that rich ravine between the Libyan sands and the Arabian
desert. Its depth is several hundred meters, its length six hundred and
fifty miles, its average width barely five. On the west the gently
sloping but naked Libyan hills, on the east the steep and broken cliffs
of Arabia form the sides of a corridor on the bottom of which flows the
river Nile.

With the course of the river northward the walls of the corridor
decrease in height, while a hundred and twenty-five miles from the sea
they expand on a sudden, and the river, instead of flowing through a
narrow passage, spreads in various arms over a broad level plain which
is shaped like a triangle. This triangle, called the Delta of the Nile,
has for its base the shore of the Mediterranean; at its apex, where the
river issues from the corridor, stands the city of Cairo, and near by
are the ruins of Memphis, the ancient capital.

Could a man rise one hundred miles in the air and gaze thence upon
Egypt, he would see the strange outlines of that country and the
peculiar changes in its color. From that elevation, on the background
of white and orange colored sands, Egypt would look like a serpent
pushing with energetic twists through a desert to the sea, iii which it
has dipped already its triangular head, which has two eyes,