ands
occasionally crossed over the breast; they also threw it up to a
height and caught it, like our "sky-ball;" and the game described by
Homer to have been played by Halius and Laodamus, in the presence of
Alcinous, was known to them; in which one party threw the ball as high
as he could, and the other, leaping up, caught it on its fall, before
his feet again touched the ground.

When mounted on the backs of the losing party, the Egyptian women sat
sidewise. Their dress consisted merely of a short petticoat, without a
body, the loose upper robe being laid aside on these occasions; it was
bound at the waist with a girdle, supported by a strap over the
shoulder, and was nearly the same as the undress garb of mourners,
worn during the funeral lamentation on the death of a friend.

The balls were made of leather or skin, sewed with string, crosswise,
in the same manner as our own, and stuffed with bran, or husks of
corn; and those which have been found at Thebes are about three inches
in diameter. Others were made of string, or of the stalks of rushes,
platted together so as to form a circular mass, and covered, like the
former, with leather. They appear also to have had a smaller kind of
ball probably of the same materials, and covered, like many of our
own, with slips of leather of a rhomboidal shape, sewed together
longitudinally, and meeting in a common point at both ends, each
alternate slip being of a different color; but these have only been
met with in pottery.

In one of their performances of strength and dexterity, two men stood
together side by side, and, placing one arm forward and the other
behind them, held the hands of two women, who reclined backwards, in
opposite directions, with their whole weight pressed against each
other's feet, and in this position were whirled round; the hands of
the men who held them being occasionally crossed, in order more
effectually to guarantee the steadiness of the centre, on which they
turned.

Sometimes two men, seated back to back on the ground, at a given
signal tried who should rise first from that position, without
touching the ground with the hand. And in this, too, there was
probably the trial who should first make good his seat upon the
ground, from a standing position.

Another game consisted in throwing a knife, or pointed weapon, into a
block of wood, in which each player was required to strike his
adversary's, or more probably to fix his own in the centre,