d soldiers stood on guard.

The walls and pillars, the galleries and colonnades, even the roofs,
blazed in many colored paints, and at every gate stood tall masts, from
which red and blue flags fluttered when the king was residing there.
Now they stood up with only their brass spikes, which were intended
to intercept and conduct the lightning.--[ According to an inscription
first interpreted by Dumichen.]

To the right of the principal building, and entirely surrounded with
thick plantations of trees, stood the houses of the royal ladies,
some mirrored in the lake which they surrounded at a greater or less
distance. In this part of the grounds were the king's storehouses in
endless rows, while behind the centre building, in which the Pharaoh
resided, stood the barracks for his body guard and the treasuries. The
left wing was occupied by the officers of the household, the innumerable
servants and the horses and chariots of the sovereign.

In spite of the absence of the king himself, brisk activity reigned in
the palace of Rameses, for a hundred gardeners watered the turf, the
flower-borders, the shrubs and trees; companies of guards passed hither
and thither; horses were being trained and broken; and the princess's
wing was as full as a beehive of servants and maids, officers and
priests.

Nefert was well known in this part of the palace. The gate-keepers let
her litter pass unchallenged, with low bows; once in the garden, a lord
in waiting received her, and conducted her to the chamberlain, who,
after a short delay, introduced her into the sitting-room of the king's
favorite daughter.

Bent-Anat's apartment was on the first floor of the pavilion, next
to the king's residence. Her dead mother had inhabited these pleasant
rooms, and when the princess was grown up it made the king happy to feel
that she was near him; so the beautiful house of the wife who had too
early departed, was given up to her, and at the same time, as she
was his eldest daughter, many privileges were conceded to her, which
hitherto none but queens had enjoyed.

The large room, in which Nefert found the princess, commanded the river.
A doorway, closed with light curtains, opened on to a long balcony with
a finely-worked balustrade of copper-gilt, to which clung a climbing
rose with pink flowers.

When Nefert entered the room, Bent-Anat was just having the rustling
curtain drawn aside by her waiting-women; for the sun was setting, and
at that