fantastic romances, in which it was related of him how, in consequence of his having stolen from the mummy of an old wizard the books of Thot, he became the victim of possession by a sort of lascivious and sanguinary ghoul. Ramses relieved himself of the cares of state by handing over to Khamoisifc the government of the country, without, however, conferring upon him the titles and insignia of royalty. The chief concern of Khamoisit was to secure the scrupulous observance of the divine laws. He celebrated at Silsilis the festivals of the inundation; he presided at the commemoration of his father's apotheosis, and at the funeral rites of the Apis who died in the XXXth year of the king's reign. Before his time each sacred bull had its separate tomb in a quarter of the Memphite Necropolis known to the Greeks as the Serapeion. The tomb was a small cone-roofed building erected on a square base, and containing only one chamber. Khamoisit substituted for this a rock-tomb similar to those used by ordinary individuals. He had a tunnel cut in the solid rock to a depth of about a hundred yards, and on either side of this a chamber was prepared for each Apis on its death, the masons closing up the wall after the installation of the mummy. His regency had lasted for nearly a quarter of a century, when, the burden of government becoming too much for him, he was succeeded in the LVth year of Ramses by his younger brother Minephtah, who was like himself a son of Isitnofrit.* Minephtah acted, during the first twelve years of his rule, for his father, who, having now almost attained the age of a hundred, passed peacefully away at Thebes in the LXVIII year of his reign, full of days and sated with glory.** He became the subject of legend almost before he had closed his eyes upon the world. * Minephtah was in the order of birth the thirteenth son of Ramses II. ** A passage on a stele of Ramses IV. formally attributes to him a reign of sixty-seven years. I procured at Koptos a stele of his year LXVI. [Illustration: 245.jpg THE CHAPEL OF THE APIS OF AMEKOTHES III.] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Mariette. He had obtained brilliant successes during his life, and the scenes describing them were depicted in scores of places. Popular fancy believed everything which he had related of himself, and added to this all that it knew of other kings, thus making him the Pharaoh of Pharaohs--the embodiment of all preceding monarchs. Legend preferred to recall him by the name Sesusu, Sesusturi--a designation which had been applied to him by his contemporaries, and he thus became better known to moderns as Sesostris than by his proper name Ramses Miamun.*