I mention these particular instances because they were told to me by educated persons; but amongst the peasants even more incredible stories are gravely accepted.  The Omdeh, or headman, of the village of Chaghb, not far from Luxor, submitted an official complaint to the police a short time ago against an afrit or devil which was doing much mischief to him and his neighbours, snatching up oil-lamps and pouring the oil over the terrified villagers, throwing stones at passers-by, and so forth.  Spirits of the dead in like manner haunt the living, and often do them mischief.  At Luxor, lately, the ghost of a well-known robber persecuted his widow to such an extent that she finally went mad.  A remarkable parallel to this case, dating from Pharaonic days, may be mentioned.  It is the letter of a haunted widower to his dead wife, in which he asks her why she persecutes him, since he was always kind to her during her life, nursed her through illnesses, and never grieved her heart.[1]

    [Footnote 1:  Maspero:  ‘Etudes egyptologiques,’ i. 145.]

These instances might be multiplied, but those which I have quoted will serve to show that the old gods are still alive, and that the famous magic of the Egyptians is not yet a thing of the past.  Let us now turn to the affairs of everyday life.

An archaeological traveller in Egypt cannot fail to observe the similarity between old and modern customs as he rides through the villages and across the fields.  The houses, when not built upon the European plan, are surprisingly like those of ancient days.  The old cornice still survives, and the rows of dried palm stems, from which its form was originally derived, are still to be seen on the walls of gardens and courtyards.  The huts or shelters of dried corn-stalks, so often erected in the fields, are precisely the same as those used in prehistoric days; and the archaic bunches of corn-stalks smeared with mud, which gave their form to later stone columns, are set up to this day, though their stone posterity are now in ruins.  Looking through the doorway of one of these ancient houses, the traveller, perhaps, sees a woman grinding corn or kneading bread in exactly the same manner as her ancestress did in the days of the Pharaohs.  Only the other day a native asked to be allowed to purchase from us some of the ancient millstones lying in one of the Theban temples, in order to re-use them on his farm.  The traveller will notice, in some shady corner, the village barber shaving the heads and faces of his patrons, just as he is seen in the Theban tomb-paintings of thousands of years ago; and the small boys who scamper across the road will have just the same tufts of hair left for decoration on their shaven heads as had the boys of ancient Thebes and Memphis.  In another house, where a death has occurred, the mourning women, waving the same blue cloth which was the token of mourning in ancient days, will toss their arms about in gestures familiar