for a few inscriptions, scribbled over them after an interval of twenty centuries by the monks who turned the temple chambers into a convent.  This new wing was connected with the second hypostyle hall of the original building by a passage, on one of the walls of which is a list of seventy-five royal names, representing the ancestors of the sovereign traced back to Mini.  The whole temple must be regarded as a vast funerary chapel, and no one who has studied the religion of Egypt can entertain a doubt as to its purpose.  Abydos was the place where the dead assembled before passing into the other world.  It was here, at the mouth of the “Cleft,” that they received the provisions and offerings of their relatives and friends who remained on this earth.  As the dead flocked hither from all quarters of the world, they collected round the tomb of Osiris, and there waited till the moment came to embark on the Boat of the Sun.  Seti did not wish his soul to associate with those of the common crowd of his vassals, and prepared this temple for himself, as a separate resting-place, close to the mouth of Hades.  After having dwelt within it for a short time subsequent to his funeral, his soul could repair thither whenever it desired, certain of always finding within it the incense and the nourishment of which it stood in need.

Thebes possessed this king’s actual tomb.  The chapel was at Qurnah, a little to the north of the group of pyramids in which the Pharaohs of the XIth dynasty lay side by side with those of the XIIIth and XVIIth.  Ramses had begun to build it, and Seti continued the work, dedicating it to the cult of his father and of himself.  Its pylon has altogether disappeared, but the facade with lotus-bud columns is nearly perfect, together with several of the chambers in front of the sanctuary.  The decoration is as carefully carried out and the execution as delicate as that in the work at Abydos; we are tempted to believe from one or two examples of it that the same hands have worked at both buildings.

[Illustration:  181.jpg THE TEMPLE OF QURNAH]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.

The rock-cut tomb is some distance away up in the mountain, but not in the same ravine as that in which Amenothes III., Ai, and probably Tutankhamon and Harmhabi, are buried.*

* There are, in fact, close to those of Ai and Amenothes III., three other tombs, two at least of which have been decorated with paintings, now completely obliterated, and which may have served as the burying-places of Tutankhamon and Harmhabi:  the earlier Egyptologists believed them to have been dug by the first kings of the XVIIIth dynasty.

There then existed, behind the rock amphitheatre of Deir el-Bahari, a kind of enclosed basin, which could be reached from the plain only by dangerous paths above the temple of Hatshopsitu.  This basin is divided into two parts, one of which runs in a south-easterly