and every mosque has its public lavatory adjoining. The town is divided into quarters, each entered by a narrow arched gateway, with the name on a tablet above. Girgeh, as its name imports, the town of St. George, is a head centre of the Copts, and is full of dyers and goldsmiths. The bazaars are spacious and good, though we could not find a corkscrew anywhere for sale. The beggars, too, were very troublesome and importunate, perhaps all the more on account of the famine, but we remembered them much the same in former years.

When we had ridden through a kind of marketplace just within the walls, we passed for a few yards through a narrow lane, and suddenly emerged on the river's bank, close to which the houses were built, room for a single donkey being all that intervened. Stones have been thrown down the slope, as a measure to prevent the strong current which here sweeps past, from undermining the town any further. I do not know that this expedient is of much use. Below, so that we could look down perpendicularly on the decks, were numberless boats and a dahabeeah or two. Opposite was the splendid mountain which makes Girgeh such a favourite place with the artist. We rode south along the top of the bank until we had gone past all the houses, and descended into a field. where the river bends away to the east, and there, among growing plants of tobacco, we found a bare place in which to pitch our tents.

The beggars did not molest us, and we rested on our beds till sunset, enjoying the changing tints of the mountain and river, deepening first into orange and then into purple, as the evening grew first red, and then dark.

As soon as the candles were lighted on our table there came to us divers Copts, affecting great secrecy as to the anteekas they had to sell. Their ideas of value were very different from what we had found further inland, and we were glad to let them go in peace without any purchase more considerable than a scarab or two and a glass bead.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ANCIENT THIS.

An excited Antiquary-Egyptian Chronology-Arabat-el-Madfooneh -The Temples--The Sacred Windhover-Edfoo-The Table of Abydos-Casabianca-A Hill of Tombs-An Old Brick Fort.

BEFORE daylight we were astir. The sun had not yet risen over the table mountain towards which our tent door was turned, but in a short time the grey turned purple, then pink, reversing the order of the night before, and by the time we were dressed the sun came peeping round the southern headland, and before breakfast was served his rays were dazzling our eyes. This was to be a short day, so far as riding was concerned, though a long one in other respects, for to-day we expected to reach Abydos, the Coptic Abood, the sepulchre of Osiris, the oldest city of Egyptian history, the ancient This.

The Antiquary was strangely excited. He had been up and down the Nile, but never to Abydos. Health had failed him, and he looked forward and deferred his visit to a more convenient season. That season had now come, and his spirits rose in proportion. He had been reading all the previous afternoon, and as we passed through a glorious bean-field in full flower, ten miles wide at least, he gave vent to his feelings in a preliminary lecture to his companions. First he spoke of Chronology. "When historians,” he said, "have to measure time not by reigns, but by dynasties, the modern student's mind faints. We may reckon, perhaps, ten dynasties in England since the days of Egbert, a thousand years ago; but it is eleven hundred years since Egypt, conquered by the Arabs, ceased to count the Empire as her thirtyfourth dynasty. Fully fourteen hundred years have to be reckoned back beyond Cæsar and Cleopatra, according to M. Mariette, to reach the reign of Rameses II., the great Sesostris of the Greeks. But Rameses was the third king of the nineteenth dynasty. That is to say, roughly speaking, there were about twice as many dynasties between Rameses and the founder of the Egyptian monarchy as there have been between Queen Victoria and Egbert. All recent investigations go to prove the substantial truth of the lists of Manetho. M. Mariette virtually adopts them, for want of better, and all his diggings help to confirm him in trusting them. According to Manetho,

there were eight kings of the first dynasty, nine of the second, nine of the third, and so on, nothing in their average of years differing from our own. So that our English antiquaries have been very moderate in placing the foundation of the Egyptian monarchy back at a period so remote as 2700 B.C., and even Bunsen, with his estimate of 3,000, and M. Mariette, who does not hesitate to adopt Manetho with 5,000 at once, have something of proof on their side. To attain therefore any adequate notions on the subject of Egyptian chronology is by no means an easy task. The mind accustomed to measure time by our short English standards refuses to digest the nuts offered by Manetho. There are evident faults in the copies which are extant. They are themselves only quotations made by ancient authors, and are manifestly corrupt. One turns with almost a gleam of hope to Manetho's assertion that King Apappus, of the sixth dynasty was a giant, and reigned for a century. But Papi means a giant in the ancient language of the Nile valley, now represented by Coptic, and, in an inscription now at Boolak which is undoubtedly of the sixth dynasty, mention is actually made of the hundred years of his reign. What are we to do? Among other frantic efforts lately made to resist evidence of this kind, some one has supposed that one year into three or make of King Papi's

these old Egyptians cut up four. But what can they nine cubits?"