His ready genius explored and elucidated the Hieroglypics (sic) and other antiquities of this country. His faithful and rapid pencil and the nervous originality of his untutored senses conveyed to the world vivid ideas of the scenes that had delighted himself. Some of the tombs are hidden among plants and ferns. The Cemetery was once much larger; the road has cut through it. At the end of the Rue Abou el Dardaa, where the tram turns, is the _Mosque of Amr_. Here probably stood the Mosque of Mercy which the conqueror Amr ordered to be built where he had sheathed his sword after the recapture of the city in 643 (_see_ p. 57). We turn right for a few yards, along a road that follows the line of the vanished Arab Walls (p. 81). Then to the left by the big Italian schools. The tram has now entered the ancient district of Rhakotis. “POMPEY’S PILLAR” and the TEMPLE OF SERAPIS. [Illustration: Pompey’s Pillar etc.] As often happens in Alexandria, history and archaeology fail to support one another. Ancient writers do not mention “Pompey’s Pillar,” but they tell us a great deal about the buildings that stood in its neighbourhood and have now disappeared. This shapeless hill was from early times covered with temples and houses. Long before Alexander came it was the citadel of Rhakotis (p. 7). Osiris was worshipped here. Then with Ptolemy Soter it leaps into fame. Osiris is modified into Serapis (p. 18), and the hill, encased in great bastions of masonry was built up into an acropolis on whose summit rose the God’s temple. Under Cleopatra it gained additional splendour. The great library of Alexandria had been burnt in the Caesarian war, and the queen began a new collection which she attached to the Serapeum. Here for four hundred years was the most learned spot on the earth. The Christians wiped it out. In 391 the Patriarch Theophilus (p. 50) led a mob against the temple, sacked it, and broke the statue of the God. It is impossible that the books should not have perished at the same time: they were arranged in the cloisters that surrounded the temple (_see_ below) so that the mob had to pass them to reach its central prey. The monks now swarmed over the hill and built a church to St. John the Baptist in the gutted shrine. Here were the head quarters of Theophilus’ nephew, Cyril (p. 51) and hence his supporters issued to murder Hypatia at the other end of the town (415). With the invasion of the Arabs the darkness increases. The library had already disappeared (the legend accusing them of burning it has the flimsiest foundations), but they did plenty of harm in other ways: one of the Arab governors threw a quantity of columns into the sea in the hope of obstructing a hostile fleet. When the Crusaders visited Egypt (15th cent.) the