When one of these animals died in the neighbourhood they buried it, leaving one horn above the earth in order to mark the spot, and once every year the boats of Atarbekhis made a tour round the island to collect the skeletons or decaying bodies, in order that they might be interred in a common burying-place.

[Illustration:  349.jpg PART OF THE INUNDATION IN A PALM GROVE]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Gautier.

The people of Busiris patronised a savage type of religion.  During the festival of Isis they gave themselves up to fierce conflicts, their fanatical fury even infecting strangers who chanced to be present.  The Carians also had hit upon a means of outdoing the extravagance of the natives themselves:  like the Shiite Mohammedans of the present day at the festival of the Hassanen, they slashed their faces with knives amidst shrieks and yells.  At Papremis a pitched battle formed part of the religious observances:  it took place, however, under certain special conditions.  On the evening of the festival of Anhurit, as the sun went down, a number of priests performed a hasty sacrifice in the temple, while the remainder of the local priesthood stationed themselves at the gate armed with heavy cudgels.  When the ceremony was over, the celebrants placed the statue of the god on a four-wheeled car as though about to take it away to some other locality, but their colleagues at the gate opposed its departure and barred the way.  It was at this juncture that the faithful intervened; they burst in the door and set upon the priests with staves, the latter offering a stout resistance.  The cudgels were heavy, the arms that wielded them lusty, and the fight lasted a long time, yet no one was ever killed in the fray—­at least, so the priests averred—­and I am at a loss to understand why Herodotus, who was not a native of Papremis, should have been so unkind as to doubt their testimony.*

* The god whom the Greeks identified with their Ares was Anhurit, as is proved by one of the Leyden Papyri.  So, too, in modern times at Cairo, it used to be affirmed that no Mohammedan who submitted to the doseh was ever seriously injured by the hoofs of the horse which trampled over the bodies extended on the ground.

[Illustration:  350.jpg EPHEMERAL HOVELS OF CLAY OR DRIED BRICKS]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Haussoullier.

It is nearly always in connection with some temple or religious festival that he refers to the towns of the Delta, and, indeed, in most of the minor cities of Egypt, just as in those of modern Italy there is little to interest visitors except the religious monuments or ceremonies.  Herodotus went to Tanis or Mendes as we go to Orvieto or Loretto, to admire the buildings or pay our devotions at a famous shrine.  More often than not the place was nothing in itself, consisting