One must himself have lived and worked in the Orient, far from the bustle of cities, to appreciate what it is to pass on from days to weeks and from weeks to months as on a monotonous road without stopping-places. In such a place and at such times one feels the blessing of our Sunday holiday, and Lepsius’ fellow-travellers would certainly have fallen a prey to fatigue and disgust during their long period of traveling and working together, if their chief had not observed the feasts and holidays peculiar to their own country, and had not kindly and judiciously taken account of their spiritual needs. One of the most beautiful memories of our own life is that of the moment when, after many months of wandering through Moslem lands, we unexpectedly heard a church bell ring on Christmas day. It was long, long since we had listened to the sound, and for the first time we fully appreciated its elevating loveliness, when standing in front of the little Protestant church in Upper Egypt from whose modest tower it resounded. Like a thirsty man after a cool drink, we returned to our labors with fresh pleasure and fresh enthusiasm. The Sunday holiday of the Prussian expedition not only recompensed and blessed them with the necessary rest, but kept them in communion with the life of their dear ones at home. It would exceed the limits prescribed for this biography if we should follow from spot to spot the travels, excavations, researches and collections of the party led by Lepsius. He has himself relieved us of this very tempting task, for his “Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia and the Peninsula of Sinai,”[48] is a book which can and should be read with pleasure and profit even by the general reader. It is by no means confined to the results of his scientific investigations, but makes the reader familiar also with the personal experiences of the author, and is distinguished by a clear, concise, vivid and often charming style. It is in many respects a book of importance for his fellow laborers in the same department, since it places them in living contact with the sources whence sprang many of the most important discoveries and works of the author. During his long stay at the necropolis of Memphis he succeeded in elucidating the details of the history of the “Old Empire.” The intuition by which he separated the twelfth dynasty from the eighteenth,[49] assigned its correct place to the incursion of the Hyksos, and even anticipated all that afterwards received documentary corroboration by Dümichen’s discovery of the great Tablet of the Kings at Abydos, will ever remain an intellectual feat worthy of admiration.