EHODOPIS. 41 



" Fair Rhodope, as story tells, 

 The bright unearthly nymph who dwells 

 'Mid sunless gold and jewels hid, 

 The Lady of the Pyramid." 



This legend tells of a marvellously lovely woman, who 

 might be seen sitting naked on the summit of the pyramid ; 

 her excessive beauty was such that she drove the wanderers 

 in the desert mad when they beheld her. 



Another legend of this fair Rhodopis, as told in Strabo's 

 time, seems like the origin of the story of Cinderella. A 

 slave at the time, she went one morning to bathe in the Nile, 

 leaving her slippers on the bank, when either an eagle or the 

 wind, according to diiferent versions, carried them away and 

 dropped them at the feet of the king, who was at the moment 

 on his throne of justice in the market-place at Memphis. He 

 was so enchanted with the tiny slippers, that he would not rest 

 until he discovered their owner, who so well pleased him 

 that he made her his queen. 



Landing at Memphis, the ancient capital of this rich and 

 fertile country, but whose site is hardly to be traced at the 

 present day, we ride off to the desert to visit the Serapeum, 

 or tombs of the sacred Bulls. The massiveness of the sarco- 

 phagi in which these animals were interred with all pomp, 

 cut out of solid granite and brought many hundred miles 

 from the quarries of Assouan, cannot fail to impress the 

 traveller with the durability which was the great aim of all 

 the ancient Egyptian monuments. Near the Serapeum is a 

 small temple, where the sculpture is admirably cut ; it is 

 more beautifully executed than any that one sees higher up 

 the Nile, but is not so ancient as most of the temples. 

 Hence to Golosaneh the scenery presents very little variety, the 



