They left the necropolis, with their wives and children, and though the two overseers tried to entice them back to work “with great oaths,” the workmen were not to be caught with chaff, and stayed outside the necropolis walls. Finally the affair assumed so threatening an aspect that two chiefs of police and a number of priests tried to make them return to duty; but in vain. Their answer was, “We have been driven here by hunger and thirst, we have no clothes, we have no oil, we have no food. Write to our lord the Pharaoh on the subject, and write to the governor who is over us that they may give us something for our sustenance.” This unheard-of request had its effect--“on that day they received the provision for the month Tybi.” In another month, however, they were back again, as supplies had failed once more. This time the governor of the town met them, and though he asked them how he was to pay their wages when the storehouses were empty, he at least ordered that they should receive half of the overdue rations. Altogether the evidence goes to show that life was not all pleasure in ancient Egypt, any more than in other lands; but it is only fair to say that the other side of the matter has been grossly exaggerated, and that life in the Land of the Pharaohs was not the gloomy, morbid, perpetually death-contemplating thing which it has been represented as being. This idea, of course, we owe, partly to the amiable Herodotus and his picture of the model coffin and mummy being carried round at all their banquets, with the words, “Look on this, then drink and enjoy yourself; for when dead you will be like this,” and partly to the fact that practically all the knowledge we have of the Egyptians comes from their tombs.