"'They are the names of seventy-six kings,' said the Doctor, 'to whom Sethi I., the founder and builder of the temple, and father of Rameses II., is offering homage. The list begins with Menes, the founder of the first dynasty, and ends with the name of Sethi. Rameses II. is offering homage with his father, and for this reason it has been supposed that the list was made by Rameses after Sethi's death. The list is called "The Tablet of Abydus," and is of great value to the writers on Egyptian history; a similar list, but badly mutilated, was found in a temple near here, and carried to the British Museum. There is some dispute as to whether it is a full or only partial list of the kings of Egypt, but in either case it is of great historical interest.'
"Abydus was second only to Thebes in importance, and was for a long time the capital of Egypt. Several temples, or rather their ruins, have been discovered here, and it is thought that others are still buried in the sand. A great many tombs have been opened, and where their contents were of any consequence they were carried to the museum at Cairo, or sent to the large collections in Europe.
"One of the temples that we visited was in a very ruined state; it must have been a magnificent structure in the days of its perfection, as the walls were lined with alabaster and covered with beautiful sculptures, all painted in colors that still remain. Some of the smaller rooms in the great temple were roofed with large stones placed on their edges, an arch was made in the stones, and then the whole of the cut surface was covered with hieroglyphics, which are as perfect as the day they were made. The sand that buried these temples for so many centuries was in one way their preserver.
A LUNCH-PARTY OF OTHER DAYS.
"We took our lunch in the great hall of the temple, and it was an odd sight to see a group of Americans, English, and other modern people seated among the columns of this ancient edifice, engaged in picking the flesh from the bones of chickens, or devouring sandwiches, or slices of cold beef. Doctor Bronson leaned against one of the columns, and his hunger made him quite forget that his shoulders pressed upon the feet of a sculptured king, who had been patient and chickenless for many hundred years, and was totally unmoved by the incidents of modern days. Wonder if they had sandwiches and kindred things in the time of Sethi I., and is it possible that they used silver-plated knives and forks, or drank cold tea from glass tumblers?
"Of the great city that once stood here nothing remains but heaps of rubbish, ruined temples and tombs, and a miserable village with a few dozen inhabitants, who live by what they can extort from visitors.
"We returned to the steamer at Bellianeh by a road only half as long as that from Girgeh. The route was pretty much the same, as it lay through richly-tilled fields, and passed near several small villages of mud huts and muddy inhabitants. At Bellianeh there was the usual crowd of beggars, and we varied the monotony by throwing copper coins into heaps of dust, where the children scrambled for them.
"Just by the stern of the boat there was a dust-heap about forty feet high, and very steep on the sides; one of the passengers threw a coin so that it struck about midway from top to bottom of the heap, and what a scramble there was for it! Those at the top rolled down, and those below climbed up. During the struggle they raised a perfect cloud, and several of them tumbled into the river.