t beats no longer, will not
hear thy petitions.

"The mourning of a world will not restore happiness to a man who is
lying in the tomb; use, then, thy days of happiness and in delight be
no laggard. There is no man, indeed, who can take his goods to the
other world with him; there is none who can go to that world and come
back to this one." [Authentic]

The feast ended; the worthy assembly incensed the statue of the
deceased once again and made ready to return to Thebes. In the mortuary
temple only priests remained to make regular offerings to the deceased
and a guard watching the tomb against sacrilegious attempts of robbers.

Thenceforth Ramses XII was alone in that mysterious chamber. Through a
small secret opening in the rock a gloomy light barely broke in to him;
instead of the rustle of ostrich plumes was the rustle of enormous bat
wings; instead of music was heard, during night hours, complaining
howls of hyenas, and at times the mighty voice of a lion, which greeted
from the desert the pharaoh in his resting-place.

CHAPTER LIX

After the funeral of the pharaoh, Egypt returned to its usual life, and
Ramses XIII to affairs of state. The new ruler in the month Epifi
visited the cities of the Nile above Thebes. Hence he went to Sni, a
city greatly devoted to trade and commerce. In Sni was the temple of
Keph, or the "Soul of the World." He visited Edfu, whose temple had
pylons a hundred and fifty feet high, and which possessed an immense
library of papyruses, and on the walls of which were written and
depicted, as it were, an encyclopedia of the geography, astronomy, and
theology of that period. He visited the quarries in Chennu, in Nubia,
or Kom-Ombo; he made offerings to Horus, the god of light, and to
Sebek, the spirit of darkness. He was on the island Ab, which among
dark cliffs seemed an emerald, produced the best dates, and was called
the Capital of Elephants, Elephantina, for on that island the ivory
trade was concentrated. He visited finally the city of Sunnu, situated
at the first cataract of the Nile, and visited the immense quarries,
granite and sienite, where rocks were split off with wooden wedges on
which the quarrymen poured water which swelled them, and thus obelisks
one hundred and thirty feet high were detached from the face of the
quarry.

Wherever the new lord of Egypt appeared his subjects greeted him
wildly. Even criminals, toiling in the quarries men whose bodies were
covered with