Although they hardly varied from the two or three types consecrated by custom, these little buildings could easily have been made to present slight differences one from another. When they existed in their entirety, they must have given a very different aspect to the cemetery from that which it presents with its rocky slopes burnt by the sun into one harsh and monotonous tint, varied only by the black and gaping mouths of the countless tombs. The sides which they turned to the city and the river were adorned with those brilliant colours of which the Egyptian architects were so fond, and, spaced irregularly but never very far apart, they were sprinkled over the ground from the edge of the plain to the topmost ridges of the hills. Nearly all of them ended in a pyramid, but the varying dimensions of their bases and their different levels above the plain, gave diversity to the prospect, while here and there the slender apex of an obelisk rose above the private tombs and signalized the sleeping-place of a king. It has been very justly remarked, that the best idea of an Egyptian cemetery in its best time is to be gained by a visit to one of those Italian _Campo-Santos_, that of Naples, for example, where the tombs of many generations lie closely together under a blazing sun.[270] There, too, many sepulchral façades rise one above another upon the abrupt slope of a hill into which the graves are sunk. A comparison with the cemetery of Père-Lachaise, or with that at Constantinople, would not be just because no trees could flourish in the Theban rocks, at least in the higher part of the necropolis. In those districts which border closely upon the irrigation channels, the tombs seem to have had their gardens and fountains. Palms and sycamores appear to have been planted about them, and here and there, perhaps, the care of survivors succeeded in rearing flowers which would shed their perfumes for the consolation of the dead.[271] [270] RHIND, _Thebes_, etc. p. 55. [271] MASPERO, _Recueil de Travaux_, vol. ii. p. 105. The formula which is generally found upon the funerary steles of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties hints at this: "That I may walk daily upon the border of my fountain; that my soul may rest upon the branches of the funerary garden which has been made for me, that each day I may be out under my sycamore!" These desires may be taken literally, as is proved by two steles in the museums of Turin and Boulak, which bear representations of tombs upon their lower portions. The latter, which we reproduce, comes from the Theban necropolis.