The traveller will notice, in some shady corner, the village barber
shaving the heads and faces of his patrons, just as he is seen in the
Theban tomb-paintings of thousands of years ago; and the small boys who
scamper across the road will have just the same tufts of hair left for
decoration on their shaven heads as had the boys of ancient Thebes and
Memphis. In another house, where a death has occurred, the mourning
women, waving the same blue cloth which was the token of mourning in
ancient days, will toss their arms about in gestures familiar to every
student of ancient scenes. Presently the funeral will issue forth, and
the men will sing that solemn yet cheery tune which never fails to call
to mind the far-famed _Maneros_--that song which Herodotus describes as
a plaintive funeral dirge, and which Plutarch asserts was suited at the
same time to festive occasions. In some other house a marriage will be
taking place, and the singers and pipers will, in like manner, recall
the scenes upon the monuments. The former have a favourite gesture--the
placing of the hand behind the ear as they sing--which is frequently
shown in ancient representations of such festive scenes. The dancing
girls, too, are here to be seen, their eyes and cheeks heavily painted,
as were those of their ancestresses; and in their hands are the same
tambourines as are carried by their class in Pharaonic paintings and
reliefs. The same date-wine which intoxicated the worshippers of the
Egyptian Bacchus goes the round of this village company, and the same
food stuff, the same small, flat loaves of bread, are eaten.

Passing out into the fields the traveller observes the ground raked into
the small squares for irrigation which the prehistoric farmer made; and
the plough is shaped as it always was. The _shadoof_, or water-hoist,
is patiently worked as it has been for thousands of years; while the
cylindrical hoist employed in Lower Egypt was invented and introduced in
Ptolemaic times. Threshing and winnowing proceed in the manner