baskets slung on the camels, soon gave the alarm, which led to the
destruction of the whole party; the chief alone, less hands, ears, and
nose, being left to take the tale back to Bagdad. And in fiction there
are the stories of a lady avenging her husband by introducing men hidden
in skins, and the best known version of all in the "Arabian Nights," of
Ali Baba and the thieves.

It appears from the tale that the conference of Tahutia with the rebel
took place between the town and the Egyptian army, but near the town.
Then Tahutia proposes to go into the town as a pledge of his sincerity,
while the men of the town were to supply his troops with fodder. But he
appears to have remained talking with the rebel in the tent, until the
lucky chance of the stick turned up. This cleared the way for a neater
management of his plan, by enabling him to quietly make away with the
chief, without exciting his suspicions beforehand.

The name of the cane of the king is partly illegible; but we know how
many actual sticks and personal objects have their own names inscribed
on them. Nothing had a real entity to the Egyptian mind without an
individual name belonging to it.

The message sent by the charioteer presupposes that he was in the
secret; and he must therefore have been an Egyptian who had not heartily
joined in the rebellion. From the conclusion we see that the captives
taken as slaves to Egypt were by no means only prisoners of war, but
were the ordinary civil inhabitants of the conquered cities, "them of
the city, both small and great."

The gold dish which the king gave to the tomb of Tahuti is so splendid
that it deserves some notice, especially as it has never been published