An unusually long reign, the last forty-six years of which would seem to have been spent in peace and outward prosperity, enabled Rameses II to indulge his ruling passion without interruption. To draw up anything like an exhaustive catalogue of his known architectural works would be equivalent to writing an itinerary of Egypt and Ethiopia under the nineteenth dynasty. His designs were as vast as his means appear to have been unlimited. From the delta to Gebel Barkal, he filled the land with monuments dedicated to his own glory and the worship of the gods. Upon Thebes, Abydos, and Tanis he lavished structures of surpassing magnificence. In Nubia, at the places now known as Gerf Hossayn, Wady Sabooyah, Derr, and Abou Simbel, he was the author of temples and the founder of cities. These cities, which would probably be better described as provincial towns, have disappeared; and but for the mention of them in various inscriptions we should not even know that they had existed. Who shall say how many more have vanished, leaving neither trace nor record? A dozen cities of Rameses[94] may yet lie buried under some of these nameless mounds which follow each other in such quick succession along the banks of the Nile in Middle and Lower Egypt. Only yesterday, as it were, the remains of what would seem to have been a magnificent structure decorated in a style absolutely unique, were accidentally discovered under the mounds of Tel-el-Yahoodeh,[95] about twelve miles to the northeast of Cairo. There are probably fifty such mounds, none of which have been opened, in the delta alone; and it is no exaggeration to say that there must be some hundreds between the Mediterranean and the first cataract. An inscription found of late years at Abydos shows that Rameses II reigned over his great kingdom for the space of sixty-seven years. “It is thou,” says Ramses IV, addressing himself to Osiris, “it is thou who wilt rejoice me with such length of reign as Ramses II, the great god, in his sixty-seven years. It is thou who wilt give me the long duration of this great reign.”[96] If only we knew at what age Ramses II succeeded to the throne, we should, by help of this inscription, know also the age at which he died. No such record has, however, transpired, but a careful comparison of the length of time occupied by the various events of his reign, and above all the evidence of ago afforded by the mummy of this great Pharaoh, discovered in 1886, show that he must have been very nearly, if not quite, a centenarian.