form a double row of vaults, extending from the foot of the hills to
the border of the cultivated lands. Stone recesses on the roof furnished
shelter for the watchmen.* The outermost of the village huts stood among
the nearest tombs. The population which had been gathered together there
was of a peculiar character, and we can gather but a feeble idea of its
nature from the surroundings of the cemeteries in our own great cities.
Death required, in fact, far more attendants among the ancient Egyptians
than with us. The first service was that of mummification, which
necessitated numbers of workers for its accomplishment. Some of the
workshops of the embalmers have been discovered from time to time at
Sheikh Abd el-Qurneh and Deîr el-Baharî, but we are still in ignorance
as to their arrangements, and as to the exact nature of the materials
which they employed. A considerable superficial space was required, for
the manipulations of the embalmers occupied usually from sixty to eighty
days, and if we suppose that the average deaths at Thebes amounted to
fifteen or twenty in the twenty-four hours, they would have to provide
at the same time for the various degrees of saturation of some twelve to
fifteen hundred bodies at the least.**

* The discovery of quantities of ostraca in the ruins of
these chambers shows that they served partly for cellars.

** I have formed my estimate of fifteen to twenty deaths per
day from the mortality of Cairo during the French
occupation. This is given by R. Desgenettes, in the
_Description de l'Egypte_, but only approximately, as many
deaths, especially of females, must have been concealed from
the authorities; I have, however, made an average from the
totals, and applied the rate of mortality thus obtained to
ancient Thebes. The same result follows from calculations