A century later, the Egyptians, looking back on the past with a melancholy retrospection, confessed that “never had the valley been more flourishing or happier than under Amasis; never had the river shown itself more beneficent to the soil, nor the soil more fertile for mankind, and the inhabitated towns might be reckoned at 20,000 in number.”  The widespread activity exhibited under Psammetichus II., and Apries, was redoubled under the usurper, and the quarries of Turah,* Silsileh,** Assuan, and even those of Hammamat, were worked as in the palmy days of the Theban dynasties.  The island of Philae, whose position just below the cataract attracted to it the attention of the military engineers, was carefully fortified and a temple built upon it, the materials of which were used later on in the masonry of the sanctuary of Ptolemaic times.  Thebes exhibited a certain outburst of vitality under the impulse given by Ankhnasnofiribri and by Shashonqu, the governor of her palace;*** two small chapels, built in the centre of the town, still witness to the queen’s devotion to Amon, of whom she was the priestess.  Wealthy private individuals did their best to emulate their sovereign’s example, and made for themselves at Shekh Abd-el-Gurnah and at Assassif those rock-hewn tombs which rival those of the best periods in their extent and the beauty of their bas-reliefs.****

     * A stele of his forty-fourth year still exists in the
     quarries of the Mokattam.

     ** According to Herodotus, it was from the quarries of
     Elephantine that Amasis caused to be brought the largest
     blocks which he used in the building of Sais.

     *** Her tomb still exists at Deir el-Medineh, and the
     sarcophagus, taken from the tomb in 1833, is now in the
     British Museum.

     **** The most important of these tombs is that of Petenit,
     the father of Shashonqu, who was associated with
     Ankhnasnofiribri in the government of Thebes.

Most of the cities of the Said were in such a state of decadence that it was no longer possible to restore to them their former prosperity, but Abydos occupied too important a place in the beliefs connected with the future world, and attracted too many pilgrims, to permit of its being neglected.  The whole of its ancient necropolis had been rifled by thieves during the preceding centuries, and the monuments were nearly as much buried by sand as in our own times.

[Illustration:  111.jpg AN OSIRIS STRETCHED FULL LENGTH ON THE GROUND]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Mariette.  The monument is a statuette measuring only 15 centimetres in length; it has been reproduced to give an idea of the probable form of the statue seen by Herodotus.

The dismantled fortress now known as the Shunet ez-Zebib served as the cemetery for the ibises of Thoth, and for the stillborn children of the sacred singing-women, while the two Memnonia of Seti and Ramses, now abandoned by their priests, had become mere objects of respectful curiosity, on which devout Egyptians or passing travellers—­Phoenicians, Aramaeans, Cypriots, Carians, and Greeks from Ionia and the isles—­came to carve their names.*