e temple of Seti; Ameni had met it with his chorus of
singers, and had received the God on the shore of the Nile; the prophets
of the Necropolis had with their own hands placed him in the sacred
Sam-bark of the House of Seti, which was artistically constructed of
cedar wood and electrum set with jewels; thirty pastophori took the
precious burden on their shoulders, and bore it up the avenue of
Sphinxes--which led from the river to the temple--into the sanctuary
of Seti, where Amon remained while the emissaries from the different
provinces deposited their offerings in the forecourt. On his road from
the shore kolchytes had run before him, in accordance with ancient
custom, strewing sand in his path.

In the course of an hour the procession once more emerged into the open
air, and turning to the south, rested first in the enormous temple
of Anienophis III., in front of which the two giant statues stood as
sentinels--they still remain, the colossi of the Nile valley. Farther
to the south it reached the temple of Thotmes the Great, then, turning
round, it clung to the eastern face of the Libyan hills--pierced with
tombs and catacombs; it mounted the terraces of the temple of Hatasu,
and paused by the tombs of the oldest kings which are in the immediate
neighborhood; thus by sunset it had reached the scene of the festival
itself, at the entrance of the valley in which the tomb of Setitt had
been made, and in whose westernmost recesses were some of the graves of
the Pharaohs of the deposed race.

This part of the Necropolis was usually visited by lamp-light, and under
the flare of torches, before the return of the God to his own temple and
the mystery-play on the sacred lake, which did not begin till midnight.

Behind the God, in a vase of transparent crystal, and borne high on a
pole that all the multitude might see it, was the heart of the sacred
ram.

Our friends, after they had laid their wreaths on the magnificent altars
of their royal ancestors without being recognized, late in the afternoon
joined the throng who followed the procession. They mounted the eastern
cliff of the hills close by the tomb of Mena's forefathers, which
a prophet of Amon, named Neferhotep--Mena's great-grandfather--had
constructed. Its narrow doorway was besieged by a crowd, for within the
first of the rock-chambers of which it consisted, a harper was singing
a dirge for the long-since buried prophet, his wife and his sister. The
song had bee