ast, where we
have no importance and represent nothing, that an enumeration of
centuries overpowers us--a little. But in any case, after visiting
Egypt, we all learn to hate the art of the embalmer; those who have been
up the Nile, and beheld the poor relics of mortality offered for sale on
the shores, become, as it were by force, advocates of cremation.

[Illustration: STATUE OF PRINCE RAHOTEP'S WIFE

Gizeh Museum.--Discovered in 1870 in a tomb near Meydoom.--According to
the chronological table of Mariette, it is 5800 years old.--From a
photograph by Sebah, Cairo.

]

The Gizeh Museum is vast; days are required to see all its treasures.
Among the best of these are two colored statues, the size of life,
representing Prince Rahotep and his wife; these were discovered in 1870
in a tomb near Meydoom. Their rock-crystal eyes are so bright that the
Arabs employed in the excavation fled in terror when they came upon the
long-hidden chamber. They said that two afreets were sitting there,
ready to spring out and devour all intruders. Railed in from his
admirers is the intelligent, well-fed, highly popular wooden man, whose
life-like expression raises a smile upon the faces of all who approach
him. This figure is not in the least like the Egyptian statues of
conventional type, with unnaturally placed eyes. As regards the head, it
might be the likeness of a Berlin merchant of to-day, or it might be a
successful American bank president after a series of dinners at
Delmonico's. Yet, strange to say, this, and the wonderful diorite statue
of Chafra, are the oldest sculptured figures in the world.

One is tempted to describe some of the other treasures of this precious
and unrivalled collection, as well as to note in detail the odd
contrasts between Ismail's gayly flowered walls and the solemn
antiquities ranged below them. "But here is no space," as Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu would have expressed it. And one of the curious facts
concerning description is that those who have with their own eyes seen
the statue, for instance, which is the subject of a writer's pen (and it
is the same with regard to a landscape, or a country, or whatever you
please)--such persons sometimes like to read an account of it, though
the words are not needed to bring up the true image of the thing
delineated, whereas those who have never seen the statue--that is, the
vast majority--are, as a general rule, not in the least interested in
any description of