ventured upon no enterprises without consulting them. They stated their difficulties, and the god replied to each question by a movement of the head. According to the Stela of Bakhtan,[24] a statue of Khonsû places its hands four times on the nape of the neck of another statue, so transmitting the power of expelling demons. It was after a conversation with the statue of Amen in the dusk of the sanctuary, that Queen Hatshepsût despatched her squadron to the shores of the Land of Incense.[25] Theoretically, the divine soul of the image was understood to be the only miracle worker; practically, its speech and motion were the results of a pious fraud. Interminable avenues of sphinxes, gigantic obelisks, massive pylons, halls of a hundred columns, mysterious chambers of perpetual night--in a word, the whole Egyptian temple and its dependencies--were built by way of a hiding-place for a performing puppet, of which the wires were worked by a priest. [21] That is, the spirits of the North, represented by On (Heliopolis), and of the South (Khonû).--A.B.E. [22] At Tanis there seems to have been a close succession of obelisks and statues along the main avenue leading to the Temple, without the usual corresponding pylons. These were ranged in pairs; _i.e._, a pair of obelisks, a pair of statues; a pair of obelisks, a pair of shrines; and then a third pair of obelisks. See _Tanis_, Part I., by W.M.F. Petrie, published by the Egypt Exploration Fund, 1884.--A.B.E. [23] This fact is recorded in the hieroglyphic inscription upon the obelisks.--A.B.E. [24] This celebrated tablet, preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, has been frequently translated, and is the subject of a valuable treatise by the late Vicomte de Rougé. It was considered authentic till Dr. Erman, in an admirable paper contributed to the _Zeitschrift,_ 1883, showed it to have been a forgery concocted by the priests of Khonsû during the period of the Persian rule in Egypt, or in early Ptolemaic times. (See Maspero's _Hist. Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient_, chap, vi., pp. 287, 288. Fourth Edition.)--A.B.E. [25] The Land of Incense, called also in the inscriptions "The Land of Pûnt," was the country from which the Egyptians imported spices, precious woods, gums, etc. It is supposed to represent the southern coasts of the Red Sea, on either side the Bab el Mandeb. Queen Hatshepsût's famous expedition is represented in a series of coloured bas-relief sculptures on the walls of her great temple at Deir el Baharî, reproduced in Dr. Dümichen's work, _The Fleet of an Egyptian Queen_, and in Mariette's _Deîr el Baharî_. For a full account of this temple, its decoration, and the expedition of Hatshepsût, see the _Deir el Baharî_ publications of the Egypt Exploration Fund. CHAPTER III. _TOMBS_.