Petrie has suggested that it is this limitation of the power of the Pharaoh which is accountable for the unusual stability of the Egyptian throne. “The absence of republican interludes, so frequent in other parts of the Mediterranean, was apparently due to the monarchy being strictly limited by law. However bad an Egyptian might be personally, he could not earn the hatred of his subjects like the irresponsible Greek tyrants or Roman emperors.” [Illustration: 27. PORTRAIT-STATUE OF MENTUEMHAT, CAIRO MUSEUM.] Indeed Pharaoh according to fact is a very different figure from Pharaoh according to imagination. We must try to substitute for the gorgeous tiger of our fancies the figure, gorgeous enough indeed, so far as concerns his apparel, of a laborious servant of the State whose life, instead of being spent in wild orgies of licence and wild explosions of ferocity, was mainly occupied, from the time when he rose in the morning to the time when he crawled to bed at night, in a manner quite familiar to royalty in our own country, in signing dull reports, and reading dull dispatches, presiding over long and wearisome temple services, and travelling about the country to see that everything was working smoothly. The new picture is by no means so picturesque as the old one; but it is the real Pharaoh, and no doubt it was for the good, both of his subjects and himself, that “Pharaoh had to act every hour according to fixed routine, without room for the licence of a Dionysius or a Caligula.” The brilliant tiger looks romantic in a story, but when his despotism becomes unbearable it has generally to be tempered by assassination, as with Sargon, Sennacherib, and many another; but as a matter of fact the Egyptian Pharaoh generally managed to die quietly in his own bed when his time came.