been highly pleased with this mark of his care for them.  The burial-place for the bulls is an arched gallery tunnelled into the hill behind Memphis for more than two thousand feet, with a row of cells on each side of it.  In every cell is a huge granite sarcophagus, within which were placed the remains of a bull that had once been the Apis of its day, which, after having for perhaps twenty years received the honours of a god, was there buried with more than kingly state.  The cell was then walled up, and ornamented on the outside with various tablets in honour of the deceased animal, which were placed in these dark passages by the piety of his worshippers.  The priests of Thebes were now at liberty to cut out from their monuments the names of usurping gods, and to restore those that had been before cut out.  They also rebuilt the inner room, or the holy of holies, in the great temple of Karnak.

It had been overthrown by the Persians in wantonness, or in hatred of the Egyptian religion; and the priests now put upon it the name of Philip Arridaeus, for whom Ptolemy was nominally governing Egypt.

[Illustration:  052.jpg tombs of the sacred bulls]

The Egyptians, who during the last two centuries had sometimes seen their temples plundered and their trade crushed by the grasping tyranny of the Persian satraps, and had at other times been almost as much hurt by their own vain struggles for freedom, now found themselves in the quiet enjoyment of good laws, with a prosperity which promised soon to equal that of the reigns of Necho or Amasis.  It is true that they had not regained their independence and political liberty; that, as compared with the Greeks, they felt themselves an inferior race, and that they only enjoyed their civil rights during the pleasure of a Greek autocrat; but then it is to be remembered that the native rulers with whom Ptolemy was compared were the kings of Lower Egypt, who, like himself, were surrounded by Greek mercenaries, and who never rested their power on the broad base of national pride and love of country; and that nobody could have hoped to see a Theban king arise to bring back the days of Thutmosis and Ramses.  Thebes was every day sinking in wealth and strength; and its race of hereditary soldiers, proud in the recollection of former glory, who had, after centuries of struggles, been forced to receive laws from Memphis, perhaps yielded obedience to a Greek conqueror with less pain than they did formerly to their own vassals of Lower Egypt.

Ptolemy’s government was in form nearly the same in Alexandria as in the rest of Egypt, but in reality it was wholly different.  His sway over the Egyptians was supported by Greek force, but over the Greeks it rested on the broad base of public opinion.  Every Greek had the privilege of bearing arms, and of meeting in the gymnasium in public assembly, to explain a grievance, and petition for its redress.