mple and
the mystery-play on the sacred lake, which did not begin till midnight.

Behind the God, in a vase of transparent crystal, and borne high on a
pole that all the multitude might see it, was the heart of the sacred
ram.

Our friends, after they had laid their wreaths on the magnificent altars
of their royal ancestors without being recognized, late in the afternoon
joined the throng who followed the procession. They mounted the eastern
cliff of the hills close by the tomb of Mena's forefathers, which a
prophet of Amon, named Neferhotep--Mena's great-grandfather--had
constructed. Its narrow doorway was besieged by a crowd, for within the
first of the rock-chambers of which it consisted, a harper was singing a
dirge for the long-since buried prophet, his wife and his sister. The
song had been composed by the poet attached to his house; it was graven
in the stone of the second rock-room of the tomb, and Neferhotep had left
a plot of ground in trust to the Necropolis, with the charge of
administering its revenues for the payment of a minstrel, who every-year
at the feast of the dead should sing the monody to the accompaniment of
his lute.

[The tomb of Neferhotep is well preserved, and in it the inscription
from which the monody is translated.]

The charioteer well knew this dirge for his ancestor, and had often sung
it to Nefert, who had accompanied him on her lute; for in their hours of
joy also--nay especially--the Egyptians were wont to remember their dead.

Now the three companions listened to the minstrel as he sang:

"Now the great man is at rest,
Gone to practise sweeter duties.
Those that die are the elect
Since the Gods have left the earth.
Old men pass and young men come;
Yea, a new Sun rises daily
When the old sun has found rest
In the bosom of the night.

"Hail, O Prophet! on this feast day
Odorous balsams, fragrant resins
Here we bring--and offer garlands,
Throwing flowers down before thee,
And before thy much-loved sister,
Who has found her rest beside thee.

"Songs we sing, and strike the lyre
To thy memory, and thine honor.
All our cares are now forgotten,
Joy and hope our breasts are filling;
For the day of our departure
Now draws near, and in the silence
Of the farther shore is rest."

When the song ceased, severa