Each nome or province of ancient Egypt had its sacred animals; and Siût was called Lycopolis by the Greeks[30] because the wolf (now almost extinct in the land) was there held in the same kind of reverence as the cat at Bubastis, the crocodile at Ombos, and the lion at Leontopolis. Mummy-wolves are, or used to be, found in the smaller tombs about the mountain, as well as mummy-jackals; Anubis, the jackal-headed god, being the presiding deity of the district. A mummied jackal from this place, curiously wrapped in striped bandages, is to be seen in the first Egyptian room at the British Museum. But the view from the mountain above Siût is finer than its tombs and more ancient than its mummies. Seen from within the great doorway of the second grotto, it looks like a framed picture. For the foreground, we have a dazzling slope of limestone débris; in the middle distance, a wide plain clothed with the delicious tender green of very young corn; farther away yet, the cupolas and minarets of Siût rising from the midst of a belt of palm-groves; beyond these again, the molten gold of the great river glittering away, coil after coil, into the far distance; and all along the horizon the everlasting boundary of the desert. Large pools of placid water left by the last inundation lie here and there, like lakes amid the green. A group of brown men are wading yonder with their nets. A funeral comes along the embanked road--the bier carried at a rapid pace on men’s shoulders and covered with a red shawl; the women taking up handfuls of dust and scattering it upon their heads as they walk. We can see the dust flying and hear their shrill wail borne upon the breathless air. The cemetery toward which they are going lies round to the left, at the foot of the mountain--a wilderness of little white cupolas, with here and there a tree. Broad spaces of shade sleep under the spreading sycamores by the road side; a hawk cries overhead; and Siût, bathed in the splendor of the morning sun, looks as fairy-like as ever. Lepsius is reported to have said that the view from this hillside was the finest in Egypt. But Egypt is a long country and questions of precedence are delicate matters to deal with. It is, however, a very beautiful view; though most travelers who know the scenery about Thebes and the approach to Assûan would hesitate, I should fancy, to give the preference to a landscape from which the nearer mountains are excluded by the position of the spectator.