I watched his gold-colored robe vanish into the gold of the sun through the copper color of the columns. And I was quite alone in the “thinking place” of Rameses. It was a brilliant day, the sky dark sapphire blue, without even the specter of a cloud, or any airy, vaporous veil; the heat already intense in the full sunshine, but delicious, if one slid into a shadow. I slid into a shadow, and sat down on a warm block of stone. And the silence flowed upon me--the silence of the Ramesseum. Was _Horbehutet_, the winged disk, with crowned _uraei_, ever set up above this temple’s principal door to keep it from destruction? I do not know. But, if he was, he failed perfectly to fulfil his mission. And I am glad he failed. I am glad of the ruin that is here, glad that walls have crumbled or been overthrown, that columns have been cast down, and ceilings torn off from the pillars that supported them, letting in the sky. I would have nothing different in the thinking place of Rameses. Like a cloud, a great golden cloud, a glory impending that will not, cannot, be dissolved into the ether, he loomed over the Egypt that is dead, he looms over the Egypt of to-day. Everywhere you meet his traces, everywhere you hear his name. You say to a tall young Egyptian: “How big you are growing, Hassan!” He answers, “Come back next year, my gentleman, and I shall be like Rameses the Great.” Or you ask of the boatman who rows you, “How can you pull all day against the current of the Nile?” And he smiles, and lifting his brown arm, he says to you: “Look! I am as strong as Rameses the Great.” This familiar fame comes down through some three thousand, two hundred, and twenty years. Carved upon limestone and granite, now it seems engraven also on every Egyptian heart that beats not only with the movement of shadoof, or is not buried in the black soil fertilized by Hapi. Thus can inordinate vanity prolong the true triumph of genius, and impress its own view of itself upon the minds of millions. This Rameses is believed to be the Pharaoh who oppressed the children of Israel. As I sat in the Ramesseum that morning, I recalled his face--the face of an artist and a dreamer rather [Illustration: From stereograph, copyright, 1908, by Underwood & Underwood, New York THE PLAIN OF THEBES FROM THE ROOF OF THE RAMESSEUM] than that of a warrior and oppressor; Asiatic, handsome, not insensitive, not cruel, but subtle, aristocratic, and refined. I could imagine it bending above the little serpents of the sistrum as they lifted their melodious voices to bid Typhon depart, or watching the dancing women’s rhythmic movements, or smiling half kindly, half with irony, upon the lovelorn maiden who made her plaint: “What is sweet to the mouth, to me is as the gall of birds; Thy breath alone can comfort my heart.”