and Egypt.

The Theban necropoles of the New Empire are by no means exhausted by a
description of the Tombs of the Kings and Shekh 'Abd el-Kurna; but few
new discoveries have been made anywhere except in the picturesque valley
of the Tombs of the Queens, south of Shekh 'Abd el-Kurna. Here the
Italian Egyptologist, Prof. Schiaparelli, has lately discovered and
excavated some very fine tombs of the XIXth and XXth Dynasties. The best
is that of Queen Nefertari, one of the wives of Ramses II. The colouring
of the reliefs upon these walls is extraordinarily bright, and the
portraits of the queen, who has a very beautiful face, with aquiline
nose, are wonderfully preserved. She was of the dark type, while another
queen, Titi by name, who was buried close by, was fair, and had a
retrousse nose. Prof. Schiaparelli also discovered here the tombs of
some princes of the XXth Dynasty, who died young. All the tombs are
much alike, with a single short gallery, on the walls of which are
mythological scenes, figures of the prince and of his father, the king,
etc., painted in a crude style, which shows a great degeneration from
that of the XVIIIth Dynasty tombs.

We now leave the great necropolis and turn to the later temples of the
Western Bank at Thebes. These were of a funerary character, like those
of Der el-Bahari, already described. The most imposing of all in some
respects is the Ramesseum, where lies the huge granite colossus of
Ramses II, prostrate and broken, which Diodorus knew as the statue of
Osymandyas. This name is a late corruption of Ramses II's throne-name,
User-maat-Ra, pronounced Usimare. The temple has been cleared by
Mr. Howard Carter for the Egyptian government, and the small town of
priests' houses, magazines, and cellars, to the west of it, has been
excavated by him. This is quite a little Pompeii, with its small
streets, its houses with the stucco still clinging to the walls, its
public altar, its market colonnade, and its gallery of statues. The
statues are only of brick like the walls, and roughly shaped and
plastered, but they were portraits, undoubtedly, of celebrities of
the time, though we do not know of whom. On either side are the long
magazines in which were kept the possessions of the priests of the
Ramesseum, the grain from the lands with which they were endowed, and
everything meet to be offered to the ghost of the king whom they served.
The plan of the place had evidently been altered after the t