tians.

The advance guard of musicians halted for several instants; colleges
of priests, deputations of the principal inhabitants of Thebes,
crossed the manoeuvring-ground to meet the Pharaoh, and arranged
themselves in a row in postures of the most profound respect, in such
manner as to give free passage to the procession.

The band, which alone was a small army, consisted of drums, tabors,
trumpets, and sistras.

The first squad passed, blowing a deafening blast upon their short
clarions of polished brass, which shone like gold. Each of these
trumpeters carried a second horn under his arm, as if the instrument
might grow weary sooner than the man. The costume of these men
consisted of a short tunic, fastened by a sash with ends falling in
front; a small band, in which were stuck two ostrich feathers hanging
over on either side, bound their thick hair. These plumes, so worn,
recalled to mind the antennae of scarabaei, and gave the wearers an odd
look of being insects.

The drummers, clothed in a simple gathered skirt, and naked to the
waist, beat the onagra-skin heads of their rounded drums with
sycamore-wood drumsticks, their instruments suspended by leathern
shoulder-belts, and observed the time which a drum-major marked for
them by repeatedly turning towards them and clapping his hands.

After the drummers came the sistra-players, who shook their
instruments by a quick, abrupt motion, and made at measured intervals
the metal links ring on the four bronze bars.

The tabor-players carried their oblong instruments crosswise, held up
by a scarf passed around the neck, and struck the lightly stretched
parchment with both hands.

Each company of musicians numbered at least two hundred men; but the
hurricane of noise produced by trumpets, drums, tabors, and sistras,
and which would have drawn blood from the ears inside a palace, was
none too loud or too unbearable beneath the vast cupola of heaven, in
the midst of this immense open space, amongst this buzzing crowd, at
the head of this army which would baffle nomenclators, and which was
now advancing with a roar as of great waters.

And was it too much to have eight hundred musicians preceding a
Pharaoh who was the best loved of Ammon-Ra, represented by colossal
statues of basalt and granite sixty cubits high, whose name was
written in cartouches on imperishable monuments, and his history
painted and sculptured and painted on the walls of the hypostyle
chambers,