Siout owes its present importance to the caravan trade with Darfur and Nubia. Passing on toward Thebes, the river banks get more and more bluffy. You soon come to Dendera on the west bank. Its ruins are magnificent, and by many regarded as the finest in Egypt. The portico of its ancient temple is inconceivably grand. Its length is 265 feet and height 60 feet. It is entirely covered with mystic, varied and fantastic sculptures, hieroglyphics, groups, figures of deities, sacred animals, processions of soldiers——in short the manners and mythology of all Egypt. The workmanship is elaborate and finished. The interior is no less beautiful. The roof contained a sculptured representation of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. It has been taken down and is now in the museum at Paris. A few miles further on in this bewildering region of solid rock bluffs, immense quarries, deep sculptured caverns, you come to Thebes itself, “City of the hundred gates,” lying on both sides of the Nile, the reports of whose power and splendor we would regard as fabulous, were its majestic ruins not there still to corroborate every glowing account. Whatever of Egyptian art is older than that of the Theban era lacked the beauty which moves to admiration. Beginning with the Theban kings of the twelfth dynasty, the harmonious form of beauty united with truth and nobleness meets the eye of the beholder as well in buildings as in statues. The great labyrinth and the excavation for the artificial lake Mœris, at Alexandria, were made during this period. In Tanis, at the mouth of the Nile, was erected a temple whose inscriptions show not only the manners of the country with great historic accuracy, but tell the tale of frequent trade with the people from Arabia and Canaan.