granite was the coffin of Hapimen, it has been known to the Turks as the “Lover’s Fountain,” and used by them as a cistern.  The Syenite sarcophagus of a standard-bearer, is marked 18.  The chest of a royal sarcophagus that was taken from the mosque of St. Athanasius at Alexandria, and which contained the mummy of a king of the twenty-eighth dynasty, is marked number 10.  On the exterior, the Sun is represented, attended by appropriate deities travelling through the hours of the day; and on the interior the visitor will recognise the quaint symbolic forms of the usual sepulchral gods and goddesses.  The two remaining sarcophagi are those of a scribe and priest of the acropolis of Memphis, and a bard.  That of the former, marked 3, is covered with the figures of Egyptian divinities and inscriptions to the deceased; that of the latter, in arragonite, is in the form of a mummy, like those first examined by the visitor.  This coffin has five distinct lines of hieroglyphics engraved down the front, expressing a chapter of the funeral ritual:  and the face bears evidence of having been gilt.

Having sufficiently examined these massive coffins, upon which the proudest undertaker of modern times must look humbly, and deplore the decline of his business as an art, the visitor should at once turn to other specimens of the sepulchral art of the ancient Egyptians.  Of these, the most interesting are the sepulchral tablets, which are literally

Ancient Egyptian tombstones.

Our modern tombstones record only the virtues of the dead.  If future generations have to rely upon the revelations of our churchyards for facts connected with the people of modern times, they will write that we were all of us faultless as fathers, irreproachable as husbands, and devoted and self-sacrificial as children.  Every tombstone is engraved with a catalogue of human virtues; and idlers wandering round about our country churches, find themselves surrounded by the ashes of fond husbands, innocent angels, and adored wives.  These prattlings of sorrow have their happy significance, since they show the universal forgiveness that follows even the worst and basest of mankind to the grave.  But viewed as historical records, tombstones are sadly erring guides.  They tell histories of men, written by their mistresses or their children.  The sculpture which adorns the graves of modern races in this country, generally represents urns, or weeping cherubims, broken flowers, or fractured columns, or grieving angels.  These symbols of death and grief contrast often oddly with the hopeful scriptural sentences which they surmount.  In some instances the occupation or calling of the deceased is typified on his tomb—­the unstrung lyre telling the whereabouts of a dead musician; and a palette indicating the resting-place of a defunct painter.  Little that is great in sculpture has of late marked burial-places.