The inscription of Ramses I is much mutilated; but what has been preserved permits us to restore a formula at the commencement, which is intermediary between the formula of Seti I and that of Ramses II. “(The year XVI, of the 4th month of Pirt, the VII, under) King Se-Amen, (day of) the exhuming of (the King Men-pehtet-Ra L. H. S.) from the (tomb of King Men-maat-Ra) Seti Miptah (to bring it into this tomb) of the lady An … of the (great) dwelling (where the King Amen) hotep (rests) in peace, etc.” The three bodies, carried at different periods to Seti’s hypogee, were taken thence all three in one day. This identity in time explains why, in the second part of each inscription, the scribe has always made use of the plural number to express the condition of the mummy: he placed on each of the coffins the formula which applied to all three. The other coffins of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties bear no inscriptions, but I have no doubt that at about the same time they were the object of frequent visits. One certain fact seems to me to result from the reports: by the close of the XXth Dynasty the bodies of Seti I, Ramses I, Ramses II, and Tehutimes I were no longer in their own tombs, and not yet in the hidden chamber where they were discovered: they were carried from place to place and their funerary appointments restored at fairly short intervals. What was the motive for so often taking the trouble to verify this condition? The documents which have come down to us from the last kings of the XXth Dynasty give us some idea of an epoch of decadence. Egypt, exhausted by six centuries of conquest, no longer possessed the strength necessary to retain her dominion over the provinces in Syria, and was losing with them the best part of her revenue. The great towns of the Delta--Memphis, Tanis, Saïs--standing on the natural highway of Asiatic commerce, did not suffer greatly from this political diminution of the country; but Thebes, which was situated in the interior, at a distance from the great commercial routes, and had owed the prosperity she enjoyed to conquest alone, grew poorer and rapidly declined. Constructive works were for the most part suspended for want of supplies; and the labouring population, ill-paid from the royal treasure, began to feel the pangs of hunger. Hence proceeded strikes and daily disorders, which the overseers of the workshops recorded in their note-books; and then pillage and theft. [Illustration: QUEEN NUBKHAS] Bands were organised, in which civil employees, officers, workmen, even women, figure indiscriminately, and these set to work to exploit the necropolis. They forced the doors of the tombs, that they might carry off the objects of value, the jewels, furniture, and gorgeous arms which the piety of relatives had deposited with the corpses.