ANCIENT FUNERAL GARLANDS. 383 



While safely hidden in their unknown graves, 



In quiet sleep the meanest of thy slaves. 



"For Pharaoh lives for ever!" their taskmen cried: 

 "For ever Pharaoh lives!" thy slaves replied: 



And with the lie upon their lips they died."* 



And so this is the ultimate result of all his regal 

 splendour. He, whose word was once actually law 

 to millions of the human race. Well may we ask our- 

 selves : What would be the feelings of the dead King, 

 could he only come back again, to see himself as he 

 is now seen the occupant of a show-case in the 

 Hall of the Royal Mummies in the National Museum 

 of Egypt? 



A few more details illustrating the wonderfully pre- 

 servative effects of the dry climate of Egypt and we 

 have done. It was the custom, at the funerals of the 

 great, in those days, to decorate the mummy with 

 garlands of flowers, and when the coffins were opened, 

 they were found to be filled with these floral offerings, 

 and though the bodies had in some cases mouldered 

 into dust, the flowers with which they had been decorated 

 were so wonderfully preserved, that in many cases 

 their colours were still perfectly distinguishable, " and 

 looked as if they had only recently been dried; yet 

 a flower is the very type of ephemeral beauty that 

 passeth away, and is gone, almost as soon as born." f 

 Several varieties, however, were able to be recognised, 

 and the plants they were taken from named by Professor 

 Schweinfurth : among others were the blue lotus 



* In Sunshine and Shadow, MSS. poems by Miss Inez. K. Hyland, 

 publ. Melbourne 1893, P- 4- 



f Egypt After the War, by Villiers Stuart, M.P., 1883, p. 185. 

 Baedeker's Handbook for Upper Egypt, 1892, p. 229. 



