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A wide doorway leads to the open court built on the side of the pyramid. In the centre of the court stands the altar of offerings, where there is also an inscribed obelisk thirteen feet high. The walls of the temple are all marked with graffiti of visitors who belonged to the twelfth and eighteenth dynasties. A statuette was found dedicated to the gods of the town by a woman.

"They would not have managed the kingdom so long," said he, "they would not have buried eighteen dynasties if they had not known how to use events like the present." When Ramses had thanked the troops for good bearing in presence of the strange phenomenon, he returned to his villa. He continued thoughtful, he spoke calmly, even mildly, but on his shapely face doubt was evident.

Her tutelary Minerva is our deity; and her founder, Cecrops, was the fugitive of Egyptian Sais. This have I already taught to her; and in my blood she venerates the eldest dynasties of earth. But yet I will own that of late some uneasy suspicions have crossed my mind. She is more silent than she used to be; she loves melancholy and subduing music; she sighs without an outward cause.

In the first two dynasties, which had their seats at the cities of Kish and Erech, we see gods mingling with men upon the earth. Tammuz, the god of vegetation, for whose annual death Ezekiel saw women weeping beside the Temple at Jerusalem, is here an earthly monarch. He appears to be described as "a hunter", a phrase which recalls the death of Adonis in Greek mythology.

In the life after death, spirit food and drink, once used, ceased to be, just as in life on earth, and had to be renewed from day to day, lest the spirit of the dead suffer from hunger and thirst. One of the great developments of the first six dynasties looked to the provision of these daily necessities. The invention of writing was immediately utilized.

The name of Hari-Kula gives to some Orientalists ground to suppose that a member of this family emigrated to Egypt in the remote epoch of the first Pharaonic dynasties, and that the ancient Greeks, borrowing the name as well as the traditions, thus formed their legends about the mythological Hercules.

Naturally enough, Bairam assumed complete control of the State. His rule was able, but harsh and arrogant. After three years the boy king of a sudden coup d'état assumed the reins of Government. Perhaps it was fortunate for both that the fallen minister was assassinated by a personal enemy. Of all the dynasties that had ruled in India that of Baber was the most insecure in its foundations.

Says Wickes: "Never in the history of Christendom were ancient dynasties overthrown, and new ones created, kings made and unmade, within so short a period, as during the unparallelled career of this great conqueror. He had the crowns and kingdoms of all Europe in his gift, to settle as he pleased, or bestow as presents upon his relatives and friends.

At last, after passing Verneuil, and exchanging oaths enough to satisfy three dynasties never to reproach him for his folly, and never to treat him coldly, etc., etc., he related to me his love for Madame de Rochefide. "I do not wish," he said, in conclusion, "to have any secrets between us."

But in the steadfast, unforgetful eyes of that Church which has already outlived a thousand dynasties, and beside whom every Government in the world is but a thing of yesterday, the Abbot of S. Maria is abbot still, and no parish priest at all.