and luxury, surrounded by a vicious and intriguing Court, haunted by
magicians, hags, and mystery-mongers. Dealers in magic may still
be found on the other side of the river, in happy Luxor. I made the
acquaintance of two when I was there, one of whom offered for a couple
of pounds to provide me with a preservative against all such dangers as
beset the traveller in wild places. In order to prove its efficacy he
asked me to come to his house by night, bringing a dog and my revolver
with me. He would hang the charm about the dog's neck, and I was then to
put six shots into the animal's body. He positively assured me that the
dog would be uninjured. I half-promised to come and, when night began to
fall, looked vaguely about for a dog. At last I found one, but it howled
so dismally when I asked Ibrahim Ayyad to take possession of it for
experimental purposes, that I weakly gave up the project, and left the
magician clamoring for his hundred and ninety-five piastres.

Its warlike aspect gives a special personality to Medinet-Abu. The
shield-shaped battlements; the courtyards, with their brutal columns,
narrowing as they recede towards the mountains; the heavy gateways,
with superimposed chambers; the towers; quadrangular bastion to protect,
inclined basement to resist the attacks of sappers and cause projectiles
to rebound--all these things contribute to this very definite effect.

I have heard travelers on the Nile speak piteously of the confusion
wakened in their minds by a hurried survey of many temples, statues,
monuments, and tombs. But if one stays long enough this confusion fades
happily away, and one differentiates between the antique personalities
of Ancient Egypt almost as easily as one differentiates between the
personalities of one's familiar friends. Among these personalities
Medinet-Abu is the warrior, standing like Mentu, with the solar disk,
and the two plumes erect above his head of a hawk, firmly planted at the