scriptions, the rows of little figures, little
owls, little jackals, that tell in a lost language the history of
ancient peoples. Here is the signature of King Amasis; beyond, that of
King Cambyses. . . . Who were the Titans who, century after century,
were able to hew these coffins (they are at least twelve feet long by
ten feet high), and, having hewn them, to carry them underground (they
weigh on an average between sixty and seventy tons), and finally to
range them in rows here in these strange chambers, where they stand as
if in ambuscade on either side of us as we pass? Each in its turn has
contained quite comfortably the mummy of a bull Apis, armoured in plates
of gold. But in spite of their weight, in spite of their solidity which
effectively defies destruction, they have been despoiled[*]--when is
not precisely known, probably by the soldiers of the King of Persia.
And this notwithstanding that merely to open them represents a labour
of astonishing strength and patience. In some cases the thieves have
succeeded, by the aid of levers, in moving a few inches the formidable
lid; in others, by persevering with blows of pickaxes, they have
pierced, in the thickness of the granite, a hole through which a man has
been enabled to crawl like a rat, or a worm, and then, groping his way,
to plunder the sacred mummy.

[*] One, however, remains intact in the walled cavern, and
thus preserves for us the only Apis which has come down to
our days. And one recalls the emotion of Mariette, when, on
entering it, he saw on the sandy ground the imprint of the
naked feet of the last Egyptian who left it thirty-seven
centuries before.

What strikes us most of all in the colossal hypogeum is the meeting
there, in the middle of the stairway by which we leave, with yet another
black coffin, which lies across our path as if to bar it. It is as
monstrous and as simple as the others, its seniors, which many centuries
before, as the deified bulls died, had commenced to line the great
straight thoroughfare. But this one has never reached its place and
never held its mummy. It was the last. Even while men were slowly
rolling it, with tense muscles and panting cries, towards what might
well have seemed its eternal chamber, others gods were born, and the
cult of the Apis had come to an end--suddenly, then and there! Such a
fate may happen indeed to each and all of the religions and institutions
of men, even to tho