This is the best of a short life, with the sad hope that after you have been many times a lower form of life, you may return to your old body if, perchance, it may be found. Far better off the unclean fish, which, when the flood recedes, gasp themselves to death in shallow pools, choked by the sand. I rose from my couch and walked out where a better view might be had of the river and the valley. Near a small eminence more than sixty feet above the flood tide was a great fleet of barges and rafts of logs, which had borne heavy blocks of cut stone from far to the southward down on the tide to construct our tombs and temples. Upon the rafts and barges low caste humanity, driven by the lash to tortured effort, swarmed and sweated and groaned that some high priest or royal personage might in mummied grandeur await his soul's return to its foul, flinty, wrinkled and desolate home. Near, floating northward with the tide, was a great obelisk of granite weighing more than forty tons, held upon the surface by parallel rafts of buoyant logs and inflated skins. I was head embalmer, one of the priesthood and, therefore, considered one of the fortunate ones. The city of Meidoom was called the City of the Dead, because at that time, 3750 B. C., it was the place of burial of the royalty and priesthood of Men-nefu, which name means secure and beautiful, and which centuries later was changed to Memphis. Meidoom's population, near forty thousand, consisted of more than two thousand priests with their families and retainers and twenty thousand laborers and overseers. The majority are engaged in the construction of temples and sarcophagi. The people are firm believers in a future state and therefore very religious. The priests act as intercessors between the people and their many gods, look after the sacred animals of the temples, are professional embalmers, architects and custodians of the tombs. The priesthood hold high social rank, are exempt from taxes, but do not practice celibacy or asceticism. Their ranks are recruited by heredity or from the nobility; and it is not uncommon for a prince to surrender his claim of succession to assume the office of high priest. Had there been occasion for a test of power between the government and the priesthood, the priestly orders would have been found the real rulers. Amun is the chief or spiritual god of the Egyptians. The name means The Hidden One; and he controls the conscience and the soul. Rahotep is chief priest of Amun and the keeper of the Book of Death. He and all the priesthood of Amun wear a costume of white linen decorated with the blue figure of a man having the head of a ram and carrying in his hand a sharsh, the symbols of Amun. The chief priest in addition wears the royal symbol with two long feathers as a head dress.