[Illustration:  184.jpg ONE OF THE PILLARS OF THE TOMB OF SETI I.]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger, taken in
     1884.

It contained a wooden coffin, shaped to the human figure and painted white, the features picked out in black, and enamel eyes inserted in a mounting of bronze.  The mummy is that of a thin elderly man, well preserved; the face was covered by a mask made of linen smeared with pitch, but when this was raised by means of a chisel, the fine kingly head was exposed to view.  It was a masterpiece of the art of the embalmer, and the expression of the face was that of one who had only a few hours previously breathed his last.  Death had slightly drawn the nostrils and contracted the lips, the pressure of the bandages had flattened the nose a little, and the skin was darkened by the pitch; but a calm and gentle smile still played over the mouth, and the half-opened eyelids allowed a glimpse to be seen from under their lashes of an apparently moist and glistening line,—­the reflection from the white porcelain eyes let in to the orbit at the time of burial.

Seti had had several children by his wife Tuia, and the eldest had already reached manhood when his father ascended the throne, for he had accompanied him on his Syrian campaign.  The young prince died, however, soon after his return, and his right to the crown devolved on his younger brother, who, like his grandfather, bore the name of Ramses.  The prince was still very young,* but Seti did not on that account delay enthroning with great pomp this son who had a better right to the throne than himself.

* The history of the youth and the accession of Ramses II. is known to us from the narrative given by himself in the temple of Seti I. at Abydos.  The bulk of the narrative is confirmed by the evidence of the Kuban inscription, especially as to the extreme youth of Ramses at the time when he was first associated with the crown.

“From the time that I was in the egg,” Ramses writes later on, “the great ones sniffed the earth before me; when I attained to the rank of eldest son and heir upon the throne of Sibu, I dealt with affairs, I commanded as chief the foot-soldiers and the chariots.  My father having appeared before the people, when I was but a very little boy in his arms, said to me:  ’I shall have him crowned king, that I may see him in all his splendour while I am still on this earth!’ The nobles of the court having drawn near to place the pschent upon my head:  ’Place the diadem upon his forehead!’ said he.”  As Ramses increased in years, Seti delighted to confer upon him, one after the other, the principal attributes of power; “while he was still upon this earth, regulating everything in the land, defending its frontiers, and watching over the welfare of its inhabitants, he cried:  ‘Let him reign!’ because of the love he had for me.”  Seti also chose for him wives, beautiful “as are those of his palace,” and he gave him in