“The wild duck scatter far, and now
               Again they light upon the bough
                         And cry unto their kind;
               Anon they gather on the mere—­
               But yet unharmed I leave them there,
                         For love hath filled my mind.”

Another song must be given here in prose form.  The girl who sings it is supposed to be making a wreath of flowers, and as she works she cries—­

“I am thy first sister, and to me thou art as a garden which I have planted with flowers and all sweet-smelling herbs.  And I have directed a canal into it, that thou mightest dip thy hand into it when the north wind blows cool.  The place is beautiful where we walk, because we walk together, thy hand resting within mine, our mind thoughtful and our heart joyful.  It is intoxicating to me to hear thy voice, yet my life depends upon hearing it.  Whenever I see thee it is better to me than food and drink.”

One more song must be quoted, for it is so artless and so full of human tenderness that I may risk the accusation of straying from the main argument in repeating it.  It runs:—­

“The breath of thy nostrils alone
Is that which maketh my heart to live. 
I found thee: 
God grant thee to me
For ever and ever.”

It is really painful to think of these words as having fallen from the lips of what is now a resin-smelling lump of bones and hardened flesh, perhaps still unearthed, perhaps lying in some museum show-case, or perhaps kicked about in fragments over the hot sand of some tourist-crowded necropolis.  Mummies are the most lifeless objects one could well imagine.  It is impossible even for those whose imaginations are most powerful, to infuse life into a thing so utterly dead as an embalmed body; and this fact is partly responsible for that atmosphere of stark, melancholy, sobriety and aloofness which surrounds the affairs of ancient Egypt.  In reading these verses, it is imperative for their right understanding that the mummies and their resting-places should be banished from the thoughts.  It is not always a simple matter for the student to rid himself of the atmosphere of the museum, where the beads which should be jangling on a brown neck are lying numbered and labelled on red velvet; where the bird-trap, once the centre of such feathered commotion, is propped up in a glass case as “D, 18,432”; and where even the document in which the verses are written is the lawful booty of the grammarian and philologist in the library.  But it is the first duty of an archaeologist to do away with that atmosphere.