Inscriptions which in Egypt do not lie, even when treating of the Per 'ao,* the Pharaoh, officially assure us that the activity and the valour of these two kings had merited apotheosis. Consequently Rhetoric, once more put to flight by History, must part, perforce, with one of her favourite and venerable commonplaces, the "enormous cruel wonders" of "Cheops' Folly;" and the vain pomp and pride of these ancient despots. Building the piles was evidently the most religious of pious works, a lesson and a lasting example to the lieges of Tesher, the Red Land.

Cairo also has attempted a Sanitarium upon a small scale, and hardly likely to become a Ramleh. It is used chiefly by rheumatic patients, and by strangers in the cold season, especially as a sleeping place for those visiting Sakkárá. Helwán (les Bains), fifteen miles and a half south of Cairo, on the right bank of the Nile-Valley, and about two miles and a half from the river, is connected by its own railway, and offers peculiarly offensive sulphur-baths with a temperature of 86° (F.) Moreover, it lies 120 feet above the stream, about the height of the tallest minaret in the Citadel; and thus the air is considered a pleasant change. A few outlying bungalows lead

Literally the Great House, the Sublime Porte. I have elsewhere noticed the Krophi-Mophi of the Father of History, which, apparently the "chaff" of an Egyptian scribe, led indirectly to the death of Dr. Livingstone.

to the Établissement, a large hollow building, with a central court-yard which, unprovided with díwáns and sofas, suggests, when closed for the night, the idea of a pretty Queen's Bench. The table-d'hôte, however, is tolerable; the manager is civil, and there are such conveniences as a post-office and a telegraph.

The plain of Helwán shelving up from the modern bed of the Nile towards the eastern hillock

range which defines the ancient river-valley, has two centres of silex-production, suggesting, possibly, prehistoric manufacture, especially as worked flints are found three feet and more below the surface. One lies around the last well north of the Helwán Hotel and west of the Railway. Here Messrs. Brown

of the Geological and Hayns of the Numismatic Society, guided by Dr. Reil, picked up a flint-saw and many flakes. The other is about two miles south of the Hotel, upon the slopes of a basin which drains to a large and open Wady, and which after rain carries its waters to the Nile: the stiffly standing cliffs of a harder stone. Here fragments are again abundant, and the shapes at once distinguish them from the dark limestones scattered around. I was supplied by M. Lombard, Manager of the

Helwan Hotel, with fine specimens of saws and toothed flints; but-travellers beware!-they are now "knapped" by the Egyptians. On the western side of the Nile, at Záwiyet el-Uryán, Professor Lewis of the London University found a saw, and Mr. Hayns subsequently a scraper. The learned world is divided, as often happens, into two camps. The thorough-going Egyptologist, who holds, despite Herodotus, that "Art had no infancy

in Egypt," has a personal aversion to a prehistoric stone-age; and he readily accepts the theory of Dr. Schweinfurth, Herr G. Rohlfs, and Dr. Zittel; * namely, that sudden and excessive changes of temperature have produced what is attributed to early handicraft. On the other side the naturalist considers the question settled. Sir John Lubbock and others discovered palæolithic silex-types in several places, especially at Thebes and Abydos.

Dr. Gaillardst mentions also Assouan (Syene), Manga, and the crevices of Jebel-Silsileh; and this savant finds no reason why man should not have been co-eval with the powerful quarternary vegetation of the Nile-Valley. The highly distinguished M. Auguste Maríette-Bey is reserved upon the subject, because he will speak only of what he has seen when working the ground. M. Arcedin has published in the Correspondant of 1873, "La Question Préhistorique," and has replied to objections in "L'age de la pierre et la classification préhistorique d'après les sources Égyptiennes." The silex-knives of the Ancient Egyptians are well-known: they are divided by Wilkinson (vol. i. 7) into two kinds; one broad-flat, the other narrow-pointed; and he translates the "Ethiopic stone" by "flint" (obsidian ?). Moreover, the important march made by Messrs.

* See note at the end of this chapter, and the Bulletin of the Inst. Egyp., No. xiii., pp. 56-64.

C. F. Tyrwhitt-Drake and Palmer through the Desert of the Exodus and the Négeb, or South Country,* practically settled the question by finding (p. 197) numbers of flint-flakes near the monuments of Surábit el-Khádim, used, as M. Bauerman had suggested, to sculpture the hieroglyphic tablets. Shells and worked flints (p. 254) again occur, with the skeletons doubled up, in the quaint beehives called Nawámis (mosquito-huts); and lastly, flint arrow-heads (p. 312) were observed lying about a hill fort (?) near Erweis el-Ebeirig (Kibroth Hattaavah, the Tombs of Lust?).

The changes of Cairo, the Capital of the Khediv, have, I fear, affected my temper. But the city of the Fatimate Caliphs is not yet thoroughly Hausmannized; and it will be long before the modern improvements eat into her heart. Except in the great Boulevards they are skin-deep, not extending beyond the street fronts. Wander about the Bab elNasr, during the moonlit nights, and the back alleys and impasses will still show you the scenes which I described in the year of grace 1853 views so strange, so fantastic, so ghostly-weird that it seems preposterous to imagine how human beings like ourselves can be born in such places, and live through life, and carry out the primal command "increase and multiply."

* London: Bell & Daldy, 1871.