r-day Thebans sighed for
the good old times of the XVIIIth Dynasty, when their city ruled a
considerable part of Africa and Western Asia and garnered their riches
into her coffers. But the days of the XIIth Dynasty had really been
better still. Then there was not so much wealth, but what there was (and
there was as much gold then, too) was used sparingly, tastefully, and
simply. The XIIth Dynasty, not the XVIIIth, was the real Golden Age of
Egypt.

From the funeral panoply of a tomb like that of Iuaa and Tuaa we can
obtain some idea of the pomp and state of Amenhetep III. But the remains
of his Theban palace, which have been discovered and excavated by Mr. C.
Tytus and Mr. P. E. Newberry, do not bear out this idea of magnificence.
It is quite possible that the palace was merely a pleasure house,
erected very hastily and destined to fall to pieces when its owner tired
of it or died, like the many palaces of the late Khedive Ismail. It
stood on the border of an artificial lake, whereon the Pharaoh and his
consort Tii sailed to take their pleasure in golden barks. This is now
the cultivated rectangular space of land known as the Birket Habu, which
is still surrounded by the remains of the embankment built to retain its
waters, and becomes a lake during the inundation. On the western shore
of this lake Amenhetep erected the "stately pleasure dome," the
remains of which still cover the sandy tract known as el-Malkata, "the
Salt-pans," south of the great temple of Medinet Habu. These remains
consist merely of the foundations and lowest wall-courses of a
complicated and rambling building of many chambers, constructed of
common unburnt brick and plastered with white stucco on walls and
floors, on which were painted beautiful frescoes of fighting bulls,
birds of the air, water-fowl, fish-ponds, etc., in much the same style
as the frescoes of Tell el-Amarna executed in the next reign. There
were small pillared halls, the columns of which were of wood, mounted
on bases of white limestone. The majority still remain in position. In
several chambers there are small daises, and in one the remains of a
throne, built of brick and mud covered with plaster and stucco, upon
which the Pharaoh Amenhetep sat. This is the palace of him whom the
Greeks called Memnon, who ruled Egypt when Israel was in bondage and
when the dynasty of Minos reigned in Crete. Here by the side of his
pleasure-lake the most powerful of Egyptian Pharaohs whiled away