wishes for thee!’ He added gifts to these obliging words.  I placed all these on board the vessel which had come, and prostrating myself, I adored him.  He said to me:  ’After two months thou shalt reach thy country, thou wilt press thy children to thy bosom, and thou shalt rest in thy sepulchre.’  After that I descended the shore to the vessel, and I hailed the sailors who were in it.  I gave thanks on the shore to the master of the island, as well as to those who dwelt in it.”  This might almost be an episode in the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor; except that the monsters which Sindbad met with in the course of his travels were not of such a kindly disposition as the Egyptian serpent:  it did not occur to them to console the shipwrecked with the charm of a lengthy gossip, but they swallowed them with a healthy appetite.  Putting aside entirely the marvellous element in the story, what strikes us is the frequency of the relations which it points to between Egypt and Puanit.  The appearance of an Egyptian vessel excites no astonishment on its coasts:  the inhabitants have already seen many such, and at such regular intervals, that they are able to predict the exact date of their arrival.  The distance between the two countries, it is true, was not considerable, and a voyage of two months was sufficient to accomplish it.  While the new Egypt was expanding outwards in all directions, the old country did not cease to add to its riches.  The two centuries during which the XIIth dynasty continued to rule were a period of profound peace; the monuments show us the country in full possession of all its resources and its arts, and its inhabitants both cheerful and contented.  More than ever do the great lords and royal officers expatiate in their epitaphs upon the strict justice which they have rendered to their vassals and subordinates, upon the kindness which they have shown to the fellahin, on the paternal solicitude with which, in the years of insufficient inundations or of bad harvests, they have striven to come forward and assist them, and upon the unheard-of disinterestedness which kept them from raising the taxes during the times of average Niles, or of unusual plenty.  Gifts to the gods poured in from one end of the country to the other, and the great building works, which had been at a standstill since the end of the VIth dynasty, were recommenced simultaneously on all sides.  There was much to be done in the way of repairing the ruins, of which the number had accumulated during the two preceding centuries.  Not that the most audacious kings had ventured to lay their hands on the sanctuaries:  they emptied the sacred treasuries, and partially confiscated their revenues, but when once their cupidity was satisfied, they respected the fabrics, and even went so far as to restore a few inscriptions, or, when needed, to replace a few stones.  These magnificent buildings required careful supervision:  in spite of their being constructed of the most durable materials—­sand-stone,