peoples--who dwelt in the valley of the Nile. According to one of the
most ancient of human traditions, the head of Osiris, the lord of the
_other world_, reposed in the depths of one of the temples which to-day
are buried in the sands. And men, as soon as their thought commenced to
issue from the primeval night, were haunted by the idea that there were
localities helpful, as if were, to the poor corpses that lay beneath the
earth, that there were certain holy places where it behoved them to
be buried if they wished to be ready when the signal of awakening was
given. And in old Egypt, therefore, each one, at the hour of death,
turned his thoughts to these stones and sands, in the ardent hope that
he might be able to sleep near the remains of his god. And when the
place was becoming crowded with sleepers, those who could obtain no
place there conceived the idea of having humble obelisks planted on the
holy ground, which at least should tell their names; or even recommended
that their mummies might be there for some weeks, even if they were
afterwards removed. And thus, funeral processions passed to and fro
without ceasing through the cornfields that separate the Nile from
the desert. Abydos! In the sad human dream dominated by the thought of
dissolution, Abydos preceded by many centuries the Valley of Jehosophat
of the Hebrews, the cemeteries around Mecca of the Moslems, and the holy
tombs beneath our oldest cathedrals! . . . Abydos! It behoves us to walk
here pensively and silently out of respect for all those thousands of
souls who formerly turned towards this place, with outstretched hands,
in the hour of death.

The first great temple--that which King Seti raised to the mysterious
Prince of the Other World, who in those days was called Osiris--is quite
close--a distance of little more than 200 yards in the glare of the
desert. We come upon it suddenly, so that it almost startles us, for
nothing warns us of its proximity. The sand from which it has been