Like Homer, too, the artist of the battle-piece is careful to point out the distinguishing traits of the various combatants. The Khetas go three in a chariot; the Egyptians only two. The Khetas wear a mustache and scalp-lock; the Egyptians pride themselves on “a clean shave,” and cover their bare heads with ponderous wigs. The Sardinian contingent cultivate their own thick hair, whiskers and mustachios; and their features are distinctly European. They also wear the curious helmet surmounted by a ball and two spikes, by which they may always be recognized in the sculptures. These Sardinians appear only in the border-frieze, next the floor. The sand had drifted up just at that spot and only the top of one fantastic helmet was visible above the surface. Not knowing in the least to what this might belong, we set the men to scrape away the sand; and so, quite by accident, uncovered the most curious and interesting group in the whole picture. The Sardinians[119] (in Egyptian Shardana), seem to have been naturalized prisoners of war drafted into the ranks of the Egyptian army; and are the first European people whose names appear on the monuments. There is but one hour in the twenty-four at which it is possible to form any idea of the general effect of this vast subject; and that is at sunrise. Then only does the pure day stream in through the doorway and temper the gloom of the side-aisles with light reflected from the sunlit floor. The broad divisions of the picture and the distribution of the masses may then be dimly seen. The details, however, require candle-light and can only be studied a few inches at a time. Even so, it is difficult to make out the upper groups without the help of a ladder. Salame, mounted on a chair and provided with two long sticks lashed together, could barely hold his little torch high enough to enable the writer to copy the inscription on the middle tower of the fortress of Kadesh. It is fine to see the sunrise on the front of the great temple; but something still finer takes place on certain mornings of the year, in the very heart of the mountain. As the sun comes up above the eastern hill-tops, one long, level, beam strikes through the doorway, pierces the inner darkness like an arrow, penetrates to the sanctuary and falls like fire from heaven upon the altar at the feet of the gods. No one who has watched for the coming of that shaft of sunlight can doubt that it was a calculated effect and that the excavation was directed at one especial angle in order to produce it. In this way Ra, to whom the temple was dedicated, may be said to have entered in daily and by a direct manifestation of his presence to have approved the sacrifices of his worshipers.