n part gilt, and
often three in number, one enclosing the other. The stone mummy-cases
were yet more valuable, as they were either of white alabaster or
hard black basalt, beautifully polished, in either case carved with
hieroglyphics, and modelled to the shape of the body like the inner
wooden cases.

It is interesting to note here that the pigment known to modern art
by the name of mummy is, in many cases, actually prepared from the
bituminous substances preserved within the wrappings of the ancient
mummies. The grinding up of mummies imported from Thebes or Memphis
for the purpose of enabling the twentieth century painter to paint the
golden tresses of contemporary belles is of course not very extensively
carried on, for one mummy will make several thousand tubes of paint,
but the practice exists, and of late has been protested against both in
England and France.

Though the old laws of Egypt must very much have fallen into disuse
during the reigns of the latter Ptolemies, they had at least been left
unchanged; and they teach us that the shadow of freedom may be seen, as
in Rome under the Caesars, and in Florence under the Medici, long after
the substance has been lost. In quarrels between man and man, the thirty
judges, from the cities of Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis, were still
guided by the eight books of the law. The king, the priests, and the
soldiers were the only landholders in the country, while the herdsmen,
husbandmen, and handicraftsmen were thought of lower caste. Though the
armies of Egypt were for the most part filled with Greek mercenaries,
and the landholders of the order of soldiers could then have had as
little to do with arms as knights and esquires have in our days, yet
they still boasted of the wisdom of their laws, by which arms were only
to be trusted to men who had a stake in the country worth fighting for.
The old manners had long since passed away. The priests alone obeyed the
old marriage law, that a man should have only one wife. Other men, when
rich enough, married several. All children were held equally legitimate,
whatever woman was the mother.

[Illustration: 295.jpg DEVELOPMENT OF EGYPTIAN CARICATURE]

It is to these latter reigns of the Ptolemies, when high feeling was
sadly wanting in all classes of society, when literature and art were
alike in a very low state, that we may place the rise of caricature in
Egypt. We find drawings made on papyrus to scoff at what the nation us