Come, songs and music are before thee.  Set behind thee all cares; think only upon gladness, until that day cometh whereon thou shalt go down to the land which loveth silence.”

Horemheb must often have heard this song sung in his palace at Thebes by its composer; but did he think, one wonders, that it would be the walls of his own tomb which would fall down, and his own bones which would be almost as though they had never existed?

PART IV.

THE PRESERVATION OF THE TREASURY.

“Laugh and mock if you will at the worship of stone idols, but mark ye this, ye breakers of images, that in one regard the stone idol bears awful semblance of Deity—­the unchangefulness in the midst of change—­the same seeming will, and intent for ever and ever inexorable!...  And we, we shall die, and Islam will wither away, and the Englishman straining far over to hold his loved India, will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile and sit in the seats of the Faithful, and still that sleepless rock will lie watching and watching the works of the new busy race, with those same sad earnest eyes, and the same tranquil mien everlastingly.” 
                            —­KINGLAKE:  Eothen (1844).

CHAPTER X.

THEBAN THIEVES.

Thebes was the ancient capital of Egypt, and its ruins are the most extensive in the Nile Valley.  On the east bank of the river, at the modern towns of Luxor and Karnak, there are the remains of mighty temples; and on the west bank, in the neighbourhood of the village of Gurneh, tombs, mortuary chapels, and temples, literally cover the ground.  The inhabitants of these three places have for generations augmented their incomes by a traffic in antiquities, and the peasants of Gurneh have, more especially, become famous as the most hardy pilferers of the tombs of their ancestors in all Egypt.  In conducting this lucrative business they have lately had the misfortune to be recognised as thieves and robbers by the Government, and it is one of my duties to point this out to them.  As a matter of fact they are no more thieves than you or I. It is as natural for them to scratch in the sand for antiquities as it is for us to pick flowers by the roadside:  antiquities, like flowers, are the product of the soil, and it is largely because the one is more rare than the other that its promiscuous appropriation has been constituted an offence.  The native who is sometimes child enough to put his eyes out rather than serve in the army, who will often suffer all manner of wrongs rather than carry his case to the local courts, and who will hide his money under his bed rather than trust it to the safest bank, is not likely to be intelligent enough to realise that, on scientific grounds, he is committing a crime in digging for scarabs.  He is beginning to understand that in the eyes of the law he is a criminal, but