over the doorways of certain houses in the south is a relic of the religious custom of placing a bucranium there to avert evil.  Certain temple-watchmen still call upon the spirits resident in the sanctuaries to depart before they will enter the building.  At Karnak a statue of the goddess Sekhmet is regarded with holy awe; and the goddess who once was said to have massacred mankind is even now thought to delight in slaughter.  The golden barque of Amon-Ra, which once floated upon the sacred lake of Karnak, is said to be seen sometimes by the natives at the present time, who have not yet forgotten its former existence.  In the processional festival of Abu’l Haggag, the patron saint of Luxor, whose mosque and tomb stand upon the ruins of the Temple of Amon, a boat is dragged over the ground in unwitting remembrance of the dragging of the boat of Amon in the processions of that god.  Similarly in the Mouled el Nebi procession at Luxor, boats placed upon carts are drawn through the streets, just as one may see them in the ancient paintings and reliefs.  The patron gods of Kom Ombo, Horur and Sebek, yet remain in the memories of the peasants of the neighbourhood as the two brothers who lived in the temple in the days of old.  A robber entering a tomb will smash the eyes of the figures of the gods and deceased persons represented therein, that they may not observe his actions, just as did his ancestors four thousand years ago.  At Gurneh a farmer recently broke the arms of an ancient statue, which lay half-buried near his fields, because he believed that they had damaged his crops.  In the south of Egypt a pot of water is placed upon the graves of the dead, that their ghost, or ka, as it would have been called in old times, may not suffer from thirst; and the living will sometimes call upon the name of the dead, standing at night in the cemeteries.

The ancient magic of Egypt is still widely practised, and many of the formulae used in modern times are familiar to the Egyptologist.  The Egyptian, indeed, lives in a world much influenced by magic and thickly populated by spirits, demons, and djins.  Educated men holding Government appointments, and dressing in the smartest European manner, will describe their miraculous adventures and their meetings with djins.  An Egyptian gentleman holding an important administrative post, told me the other day how his cousin was wont to change himself into a cat at night time, and to prowl about the town.  When a boy, his father noticed this peculiarity, and on one occasion chased and beat the cat, with the result that the boy’s body next morning was found to be covered with stripes and bruises.  The uncle of my informant once read such strong language (magically) in a certain book that it began to tremble violently, and finally made a dash for it out of the window.  This same personage was once sitting beneath a palm-tree with a certain magician (who, I fear, was also a conjurer), when, happening to remark on the clusters of dates twenty feet or so above his head, his friend stretched his arms upwards and his hands were immediately filled with the fruit.  At another time this magician left his overcoat by mistake in a railway carriage, and only remembered it when the train was a mere speck upon the horizon; but, on the utterance of certain words, the coat immediately flew through the air back to him.