But the burnt houses were the real prize of the season, as the owners had fled and left most of their goods; and the reddened patches of earth attracted us usually to a profitable site. In one house there was a beautiful marble term, of Italian work; and the fragments of a very curious zodiac, painted on a sheet of clear glass over a foot square, each sign or month having an emblematic head to represent it; unhappily, it was broken in a hundred and fifty pieces, and as I uncovered them it was cruel to see the gold foil work which was on them peel off on to the earth, leaving the glass bare in many parts. A yet more heartrending sight was the pile of papyrus rolls, so rotted that they fell to pieces with a touch, showing here and there a letter of the finest Greek writing. The next house, also burnt, was the best of all. Here we found the limestone statuette of the owner, Bakakhuiu, inscribed in demotic on the base; a sensible, sturdy-looking, active man, who seems to have been a lawyer or notary, to judge by his documents. Many household objects of pottery and stone were found, jars, mortars, &c., and a beautiful blue-glazed jar, perhaps the largest such known, and quite perfect. The rich result, however, was in his waste; for in a recess under the cellar stairs had been five baskets of [Illustration: 20. BAKAKHUIU.] old papyri. Though many had utterly perished by being burnt to white ash, yet one basketful was only carbonized; and tenderly undermining the precious black mass, I shifted it out and carried it up to my house with fear and reverent joy. It took ten hours’ work to separate safely all the documents, twisted, crushed, and squeezed together, and all as brittle as only burnt papyrus is; a bend, or a jerk, and the piece was ruined. At last, I had over a hundred and fifty documents separated; and, each wrapped apart, and put in tin boxes, they travelled safely. They have now all been opened, and glazed; and two of them already prove to be of the greatest interest. One is a book of hieroglyphic signs in columns, followed by their hieratic equivalents, and the school-name by which they were learned: the greater part of this is preserved, and shows us, for the first time, the system on which the hieroglyphics were arranged and taught. [Illustration: 21. HIEROGLYPHICS, WITH HIERATIC FORM AND EXPLANATION.]