was the abundance of my treasure and the number of my cattle increased.”  In later times, in Arab romances such as that of Antar or that of Abu-Zeit, we find the incidents and customs described in this Egyptian tale; there we have the exile arriving at the court of a great sheikh whose daughter he ultimately marries, the challenge, the fight, and the raids of one people against another.  Even in our own day things go on in much the same way.  Seen from afar, these adventures have an air of poetry and of grandeur which fascinates the reader, and in imagination transports him into a world more heroic and more noble than our own.  He who cares to preserve this impression would do well not to look too closely at the men and manners of the desert.  Certainly the hero is brave, but he is still more brutal and treacherous; fighting is one object of his existence, but pillage is a far more important one.  How, indeed, should it be otherwise? the soil is poor, life hard and precarious, and from remotest antiquity the conditions of that life have remained unchanged; apart from firearms and Islam, the Bedouin of to-day are the same as the Bedouin of the days of Sinuhit.

There are no known documents from which we can derive any certain information as to what became of the mining colonies in Sinai after the reign of Papi II.  Unless entirely abandoned, they must have lingered on in comparative idleness; for the last of the Memphites, the Heracleopohtans, and the early Thebans were compelled to neglect them, nor was their active life resumed until the accession of the XIIth dynasty.  The veins in the Wady Maghara were much exhausted, but a series of fortunate explorations revealed the existence of untouched deposits in the Sarbut-el-Khadim, north of the original workings.  From the time of Amenemhait II. these new veins were worked, and absorbed attention during several generations.  Expeditions to the mines were sent out every three or four years, sometimes annually, under the command of such high functionaries as “Acquaintances of the King,” “Chief Lectors,” and Captains of the Archers.  As each mine was rapidly worked out, the delegates of the Pharaohs were obliged to find new veins in order to meet industrial demands.  The task was often arduous, and the commissioners generally took care to inform posterity very fully as to the anxieties which they had felt, the pains which they had taken, and the quantities of turquoise or of oxide of copper which they had brought into Egypt.  Thus the Captain Haroeris tells us that, on arriving at Sarbut in the month Pha-menoth of an unknown year of Amenemhait III., he made a bad beginning in his work of exploration.  Wearied of fruitless efforts, the workmen were quite ready to desert him if he had not put a good face on the business and stoutly promised them the support of the local Hathor.

[Illustration:  334.jpg PLAN OF THE TEMPLE OF SARBUT EL KHADIM]