Making up now for lost time, we rode on as far as the house built in 1850 for Mariette’s accommodation during the excavation of the Serapeum--a labor which extended over a period of more than four years. The Serapeum, it need hardly be said, is the famous and long-lost sepulchral temple of the sacred bulls. These bulls (honored by the Egyptians as successive incarnations of Osiris) inhabited the temple of Apis at Memphis while they lived; and, being mummied after death, were buried in catacombs prepared for them in the desert. In 1850, Mariette, traveling in the interests of the French government, discovered both the temple and the catacombs, being, according to his own narrative, indebted for the clew to a certain passage in Strabo, which describes the Temple of Serapis as being situate in a district where the sand was so drifted by the wind that the approach to it was in danger of being overwhelmed; while the sphinxes on either side of the great avenue were already more or less buried, some having only their heads above the surface. “If Strabo had not written this passage,” says Mariette, “it is probable that the Serapeum would still be lost under the sands of the necropolis of Sakkârah. One day, however (in 1850), being attracted to Sakkârah by my Egyptological studies, I perceived the head of a sphinx showing above the surface. It evidently occupied its original position. Close by lay a libation-table on which was engraved a hieroglyphic inscription to Apis-Osiris. Then that passage in Strabo came to my memory, and I knew that beneath my feet lay the avenue leading to the long and vainly sought Serapeum. Without saying a word to any one I got some workmen together and we began excavating. The beginning was difficult; but soon the lions, the peacocks, the Greek statues of the Dromos, the inscribed tablets of the Temple of Nectanebo[11] rose up from the sands. Thus was the Serapeum discovered.”