xvni. THE BUFFET-GAME. 



319 



the time when the idea of the classification of numbers 

 into the odd and even series first dawned upon the bar- 

 baric minds of pre-historic men. 



A most remarkable example of the indefinite duration 

 of children's sports is to be found in the game whose 

 title is prefixed to this chapter. The buffet-game meets 

 us for the first time in the extensive and beautifully de- 

 corated tombs of Beni-Hassan, a town in Middle Egypt 

 formerly called Specs Artemidos. On the walls of these 

 tombs, where many of the great officers of the earlier 

 Egyptian dynasties were buried, are represented some of 

 the most graphic details of archaic Egyptian life ; among 

 others, the famous scene of the arrival of the thirty-seven 

 members of a tribe of Syrian people called the Aahmu, 

 who visited Egypt during a famine in the time of 

 Khnumhotep, Governor of Upper Egypt, and were 

 long supposed to have been the Israelites under Jacob. 

 Many of the ancient Egyptian games are depicted 

 among these most interesting illuminations of the tomb. 

 One particularly is sketched with life-like vividness. It 

 represents a group of men standing with their clenched 

 fists around a central figure, whose head is bent down so 

 that he cannot see what the others are doing. They 

 -are evidently playing the buffet-game. One of them has 

 just struck the blindfolded player in the middle, and 

 they are asking him to tell which of them inflicted 

 the blow. It is most interesting to see in this old 

 world picture how thoroughly human nature is the same 

 in all ages ; and the association of the light amusement 

 of an idle hour with the awful mysteries of the tomb 



