How pleasant it was, after being suffocated in the Serapeum and broiled in the tomb of Ti, to return to Mariette’s deserted house and eat our luncheon on the cool stone terrace that looks northward over the desert! Some wooden tables and benches are hospitably left here for the accommodation of travelers, and fresh water in ice-cold kullehs is provided by the old Arab guardian. The yards and offices at the back are full of broken statues and fragments of inscriptions in red and black granite. Two sphinxes from the famous avenue adorn the terrace and look down upon their half-buried companions in the sand-hollow below. The yellow desert, barren and undulating, with a line of purple peaks on the horizon, reaches away into the far distance. To the right, under a jutting ridge of rocky plateau not two hundred yards from the house, yawns an opened-mouthed black-looking cavern shored up with heavy beams and approached by a slope of débris. This is the forced entrance to the earlier vaults of the Serapeum, in one of which was found a mummy described by Mariette as that of an Apis, but pronounced by Brugsch to be the body of Prince Kha-em-nas, governor of Memphis and the favorite son of Rameses the Great. This remarkable mummy, which looked as much like a bull as a man, was found covered with jewels and gold chains and precious amulets engraved with the name of Kha-em-nas, and had on its face a golden mask; all which treasures are now to be seen in the Louvre. If it was the mummy of an Apis, then the jewels with which it was adorned were probably the offering of the prince at that time ruling in Memphis. If, on the contrary, it was the mummy of a man, then, in order to be buried in a place of peculiar sanctity, he probably usurped one of the vaults prepared for the god. The question is a curious one and remains unsolved to this day; but it could no doubt be settled at a glance by Professor Owen.[16] Far more startling, however, than the discovery of either Apis or jewels was the sight beheld by Mariette on first entering that long-closed sepulchral chamber. The mine being sprung and the opening cleared he went in alone; and there, on the thin layer of sand that covered the floor he found the footprints of the workmen who, three thousand seven hundred years[17] before, had laid that shapeless mummy in its tomb and closed the doors upon it, as they believed, forever. And now--for the afternoon is already waning fast--the donkeys are brought round and we are told that it is time to move on. We have the sight of Memphis and the famous prostrate colossus yet to see and the long road lies all before us. So back we ride across the desolate sands; and with a last, long, wistful glance at the pyramid in platforms, go down from the territory of the dead into the land of the living.