I am told that the Copts do not trust their wives any too much. Each has but one, but he does not make her his confidante, never tells her his business secrets, and pays her much less respect than the native Protestant Christians show their wives. He seldom sees his wife until he is married and is forbidden by his religion to marry any one but a Copt. As among the Mohammedans, marriages are usually a matter of business, with a dowry bargained for beforehand. The favourite wedding time is Saturday night, and the marriage feasts last through the following week. When the marriage contract is made all the parties to it say the Lord’s Prayer three times. Before the ceremonies are completed the bride and the bridegroom go separately to church where the Eucharist is administered to them. Just before her marriage, the bride is given a steam bath, and her finger nails and toe nails are stained red with henna. Immediately before the ceremony she sends the groom a suit of clothing, and a woman from her house goes to him to see that it is delivered properly and that he is taken to the bath. This provision ensures that both start the married life comparatively clean. CHAPTER XV OLD THEBES AND THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS All day long I have been wandering about through the tombs of the kings who ruled Egypt three or four thousand years ago. I have gone into the subterranean chambers which the Pharaohs dug out of the solid rocks for their burial vaults, and I have visited the tombs of kings older than they. The last resting places of more than fifty of these monarchs of early Egypt have been discovered, and the work is still going on. Some of the best work of excavation all along the Nile valley is being done by Americans. While at Cairo I found the money of Harvard College and the Boston Museum uncovering the cemeteries of the nabobs and paupers who were buried at the time of King Cheops under the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. The Egyptian Exploration Fund, which is supported by Great Britain, Canada, and the United States, has a small army of workmen operating near Luxor, the University of Pennsylvania has made important discoveries, and a large part of the uncovering of the valley in which these royal tombs lie has been done by the Americans. The Egyptologists of the Metropolitan Museum in New York and Lord Carnarvon of England are responsible for some of the most remarkable finds of this generation. During my trip of to-day I met a young archæologist, in charge of the American operations, who showed me through the tombs of the kings and explained the symbols and pictures on the walls. I went to that part of the valley where the excavation is now going on and took pictures of a gang of one hundred and fifty Egyptian men and boys who are working there.