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stone. The upper passage seemed to have been roofed in on a level with the surface of the soil, and below this again there was a second one, which, however, was so choked with sand that it was impossible to follow it. As I was examining it I put up a jackal, which darted away across the desert, startled at the sudden intrusion upon his solitude. There were some mummied bones about, and I wondered whether flesh which had undergone the drying process of ages could afford satisfactory gnawing material for these scavengers of the wilds. I suppose a human leg three thousand years old, if it does not contain much nourishment, must have a taste of some sort.

There can be no doubt that we owe the modern word "labyrinth" to the strange accumulation of chambers and tortuous passages which once existed on the shores of Lake Moris. According to Manethon, the Labyrinth derived its name from King Labarys, its founder, also known as Amenemhat III.; but another derivation has been suggested, which possesses the combined merit of extreme antiquity and originality. It seems that the old Egyptian word for the mouth of a reservoir, which Lake Maris undoubtedly was, is ra-hunt or lahunt. Hence one of the names of the lake was "Hunt." The temple of the mouth of the reservoir would be ra-pe-ro-hunt, or la-pe-lo-hunt. From laperohunt we get to laperint, and then, by easy stages, to "labyrinth." It is more likely, however, to have been the combination from which Illahoon is derived the terminations lo-hunt and la-hunt not being very dissimilar, the addition of the Arabic particle el forming the word. In allusion to Lake Mæris, over which we were now looking, Herodotus says: "Wonderful as is the Labyrinth, the work

called the Lake of Maris, which is close by the Labyrinth, is still more astonishing."

Strabo says of it,

"Owing to its size and depth, it is capable of receiving the superabundance of water during the inundation without overflowing the habitations and crops; but later, when the water subsides, and after the lake has given up its excess through one of its two mouths, both it and the canal retain water enough for purposes of irrigation. This is accomplished by natural means, but at both ends of the canal there are also lock-gates by means of which the engineers can regulate the influx and efflux of the water." These lock-gates-which, according to Diodorus, cost £11,250 every time they were opened-are, no doubt, the great stone dikes and sluices mentioned later by Aboolfeda at Illahoon, which regulated the quantity admitted into the Fayoum; and it seems not improbable that the modern Illahoon, with its pyramid, was the site of the ancient town of Ptolemais.

The Greeks believed that Lake Moris was constructed by a king of the same name; but it is proved that no such king existed, and that they invented the king from the Egyptian word "mere," which exactly corresponds to our word "mere." Until within a comparatively recent period, the Birket el Kurûn was popularly supposed to have been the ancient Lake Moris; but as we know that the great object of Lake Moris was to act as a reservoir for the waters which fertilised the Fayoum, and that it was constructed as a triumph of engineering skill by Amenemhat III., it becomes absolutely impossible to identify it with the Lake of the Horn, which is two hundred feet below the level of Lake Moris and the country it was intended to irrigate, and is evidently a natural sheet of water fed

by springs: but even if it were not, it is at all events a natural depression, which it would require no genius to fill with water. More over, Herodotus, speaking of the Labyrinth, says: "It was a little above Lake Moris, opposite Crocodilopolis." Now the site of Crocodilopolis is fifteen miles from the Lake of the Horn, but the dikes which testify to the existence of some vast ancient reservoir are in its immediate vicinity. According to the estimate of Linant Bey, to whom is due the discovery of the site of the Labyrinth and the position of Lake Maris, the latter must have been a sheet of water about sixty miles in circumference, and with an average depth of twenty feet. Pomponius Mela says that it was navigated by large vessels which conveyed the produce of the Fayoum to other parts of Egypt. The Pyramid and Labyrinth were situated at the point where the river entered it, and the vast expanse of green over which the eye wanders between the Pyramid and Medinet was formerly covered by its waters. Wherever the natural formation of the country did not restrain them, immense dikes were built, which must have been in some places thirty feet high, and which, to judge by the traces which exist on the north and west sides, must have been about thirty miles long, with an average breadth of one hundred and fifty feet-a work on a scale which would have appalled engineers not accustomed to build pyramids. Linant Bey calculates that this reservoir must have irrigated a superficies of 600,000 acres, as, besides feeding the Fayoum, he believes that its waters were carried down into the province of Gizeh, and so ultimately into the old Canopic branch of the Nile at Mariout. Nor can one wonder that an artificial lake of

such great extent should have seemed a prodigy of engineering skill to the ancients. In addition to its great utility as a fertilising agent, it was invested with a character of sanctity which gave it a wide celebrity. The sacred crocodile, which was carefully tended and petted in its waters, was an object of the deepest veneration to the inhabitants of the Arsinoite Nome, who treated it with the most marked respect, and kept it at considerable expense, while a most elaborate cuisine provided it with dainties. "Geese, fish, and various fresh meats," says Sir Gardner Wilkinson, 66 were dressed purposely for it; they ornamented its head with ear-rings, its feet with bracelets, and its neck with necklaces of gold and artificial stones; it was rendered perfectly tame by kind treatment, and after death its body was embalmed in sumptuous manner."

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It was rather unfortunate for the crocodile and his worshippers that the inhabitants of the adjoining Heracleopolitan Nome worshipped the ichneumon, the bitter enemy of the crocodile, which, it is reported, waged war upon him by the original device of crawling down his throat when he was asleep, and feeding upon his intestines. The antipathy between the crocodile and the ichneumon, in consequence of this unfair mode of proceeding, seems to have extended to the worshippers of the two animals, which led, during the reign of the Romans, to disputes that terminated in bloodshed, and made the contending parties forget the respect due to the sacred monuments of their adversaries to such an extent that the destruction of the Labyrinth by the Heracleopolitans was the final result. It is difficult to reconcile psychologically a worship so full of trivialities with a religion

so replete with lofty moral conceptions, and with the high intellectual capacity which created a Lake Maris, reared huge pyramids, constructed the stupendous work of art which was celebrated throughout the then civilised world as the Labyrinth, and called into existence, out of a tract of desert, the fertile province which for many centuries derived its name as the Crocodilopolitan Nome, from the animal thus venerated.

When we had exhausted our examination of the left bank of the Bahr es Sherki, we announced our intention to the crowd of attendant Arabs who had accompanied us from the village, of crossing over to see the network of chambers on the other side. To our dismay they pronounced the stream unfordable, and told us we should have to make a circuit of two miles by a bridge. This I resolutely declined, and some of the Arabs accordingly stripped to try and find a ford. The channel was so narrow that it might easily have been jumped with the aid of a leaping-pole; but the men had some difficulty in finding a spot where the water only came up to their armpits. This was the depth even close to the bank; but by performing a sort of circus feat, and each of us sitting astride the heads of two men, we got carried across, while our donkeys were sent round. It was not a very graceful performance for a lady; but in the absence of any other spectators than the sons of the desert, it did not so much matter. The chambers were a disappointing collection of tiny apartments, with thick walls of crude brick-possibly over a hundred in number-their floors strewn with pottery, rags, and bones. We picked up a bead, some good specimens of blue and green glazed terra cotta, and fragments of glass. In one room alone I observed five human

skulls, and there were numerous bones to which the dried flesh still adhered under the wrappings of mummycloth. Altogether, the vestiges of these ruins conveyed as much the idea of a necropolis as of an assemblage of council-chambers, and it is not unlikely that its primitive design was simply to serve as a vast sepulchre like that at Sakkara. There can be little doubt that pyramids invariably form the centres of such burial-places-indeed Herodotus tells us that he was informed by his guides that the lower chambers were used for funeral purposes; and Amenemhat may have selected this spot on the shores of the lake he had created, as his own restingplace and that of the chief men of his reign. From the records upon the inscriptions where his name has been found, it is almost beyond a doubt that he is buried here, although not within the Pyramid; and the mode of sepulture among the ancient Egyptians renders it, in the opinion of some Egyptologists, extremely likely that this vast congeries of apartments, which at a later period were converted into council-halls, were originally mortuary chambers, but upon a scale of such magnificence and vastness that the subsequent dynasties considered them available for other purposes. Indeed we have no record of the Labyrinth being used for great imperial assemblies until the period. immediately preceding the Psamtikides of the twenty-sixth dynasty, or about 1900 years after the time of Amenemhat, its construc

At the same time, it is not impossible that the Labyrinth was used for other purposes as well as those of sepulture, even from the earliest period; for the assemblage of twelve palaces or aulæ, as described by Herodotus, must have had some reference to the twelve nomes into which Egypt was di

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vided before the number was increased by Rameses II. to thirtysix. And we may be safe in saying that if we carry our imaginations back 3500 years, or even more, the spot upon which we were now standing presented an aspect of scenic beauty, of architectural magnificence, and was invested with a character of political and religious importance, unrivalled in the world, which it retained for nearly 2000 years. It was evidently selected, from its central position on the boundary line which divided Upper from Lower Egypt, for the great regal, political, and sacerdotal rites which were celebrated here. Standing on the shores of a beautiful lake, the waters of which reflected the magnificent city of Crocodilopolis Arsinoë immediately opposite, and which was navigated by numberless craft, and surrounded by palmgroves and those gardens of fruits and flowers for which the province was celebrated, the Labyrinth occupied a position of great scenic beauty, and of political significance. It was the great council-hall of Egypt. Hither flocked the representatives of the different nomes to the great assembly of the nation; here congregated the high priests to celebrate those great religious ceremonies which demanded the united homage of the people. Here probably kings were crowned, laws were made, great public works decided upon, questions of war or peace settled, in a word, in this congeries of palaces, under the shadow of the Pyramid, on the banks of this vast artificial lake, which had been adorned and beautified by the taste and resources of successive centuries, all the highest interests of the nation were discussed in assemblies composed of the great powers of the State-the king, the priesthood, and the army. It is im

possible to associate in one's mind the crude brick rooms which are still standing, or even the discoveries of Lepsius, now covered with sand, with all this splendour and magnificence, vestiges of which must still remain to reward the labours of the explorer.

We returned to the village of Howara by another road, approaching the bluff upon the edge of which it is built like a fortress, through a grove of date-trees, and reembarked at a spot where an Arab was working a most primitive ferryboat. It presented the appearance of a straw raft with sides, and was constructed entirely of bundles of reeds; one bundle being placed upright in the bows, round which the rope was passed by means of which it was worked, and which stretched across from one bank to the other. We floated back over the placid waters of the Bahr Youssef in the glow of the brilliant sunset, the men keeping time to the lazy plash of their oars with boat-songs,their choruses now measured and dreamy, as though unable to resist the somnolent influences which pervaded all nature now wild and fitful, as they put on a spurt, probably under the still more potent inspiration of empty stomachs and a pot of lentils in prospect.

The railway, which has its terminus at Medinet el Fayoum for regular traffic, is continued to the Government sugar-factory at Aboukser as an agricultural line; and twice a-week during the cane-cutting season, a waggon-it can scarcely be called a carriage-is attached for the conveyance of passengers. was glad to join a party consisting of the Governor and two or three native officials on a trip to the factory, which is situated in the vicinity of the Birket el Kurûn, or "Lake of the Horn." It is not much more than ten miles, as the

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crow flies, to Aboukser; but as the difference of level between the plateau on which Medinet is situated and the lake is about 170 feet, and the descent becomes more abrupt towards the end of the plateau, the line takes a long curve, partly for the sake of an easier gradient, and partly because it thus traverses a wider extent of canefield-its whole length being thus over fifteen miles. The train at starting consisted only of the engine and waggon, which might have been a baggage van with four windows cut in it, and a divan placed all round; but before we had gone very far, we came upon a couple of trucks filled with cane standing on the line in the middle of a cane-field. They were mere iron cradles, their walls consisting of long stalks of sugar-cane woven into the iron so as to hold the cane, which was cut into lengths from two to three feet long. They were attached in front of the engine, which then moved slowly along till we came to another batch. These were almost empty; but the cane was piled on each side of the line, and gangs of Arabs rapidly loaded them, while we took advantage of the delay to water the engine. This was performed in the most primitive fashion by a couple of sakkas, or water-carriers, who, having placed a notched section of a date-tree between the engine and the ground to serve as a ladder, laboriously filled the goatskins, which are swung on their backs, at a ditch by the side of the track, climbed up the tree-ladder on to the engine, and emptied their goatskins into the boiler: by the time it was full the trucks were loaded, and we went on again, pushing about a dozen of them before us. This operation was performed several times, until at last there were at least thirty loaded trucks ahead of the engine. As may be imagined

under these circumstances we never attained a very high rate of speed; but we were not in a hurry, and I was not sorry to traverse an entirely new tract of country thus leisurely, as it enabled me the better to appreciate its rich luxuriance and still undeveloped capabilities. The Fayoum contains, at a rough estimate, about 250,000 acres of land, of which half belongs to the Government, and the remainder to the peasants and native proprietors. Among these latter some are very rich; and one of my fellowpassengers on this occasion had an estate of about a thousand acres, on which he had built a handsome country-house. He pointed it out to me as we passed it about a mile from the track, and invited me to pay him a visit, an invitation which I regretted I was unable to accept. From all that I could learn, a wellmanaged farm in the Fayoum may be made a most profitable undertaking. If the cultivation of the sugar, cotton, and indigo, for which it is eminently adapted, have not proved so successful as they might be, the causes are not far to seek.

There are no regular stations on this line, but we stop 66 apropos accordingly," as my coachman used to say, wherever sugar-cane happens to be lying about. We passed, nevertheless, many thriving villages, most of them picturesquely situated on mounds, or on the edge of one of the precipitous wadies which intersect the country, and which form in places pretty wooded glens through which brawl running streams, while heavy palm-groves throw their shade over all. After leaving Sineru, which is a large village, with gardens of prickly pear, and a little grove of opuntia trees, the country begins to slope more rapidly towards the lake, and the railway takes a wide curve past the villages of Agamieh, Nazlet, and Bisheh, all lying to the left

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