To the remaining source of information--the papyri inscribed with letters and business documents--the investigator is able to turn with greater confidence. Here we see the people no longer posing consciously for inspection, but acting their real life and expressing their true sentiments. Just as the modern biographer feels that he is giving the most intimate insight into the character of his subject when he quotes from his personal letters, so these letters and allied documents of the old Egyptians give us perhaps the clearest insight obtainable into the true character of the people, and it is those who have studied these documents most closely who have been most strongly impressed with the similarity between the true characteristics of ancient and modern peoples. What, for example, could seem more modern than the account of the police investigation into the alleged robbery of the tombs of the kings at Memphis, which was held in the time of Ramses IX, of the XXth Dynasty, about the year 1100 B.C.? Professor Erman’s account, transcribed from the papyri, telling of this investigation, reads for all the world like the police columns of a modern newspaper. It appears that bands of thieves, tempted by the rich spoils always buried with ancient kings, had attempted to force their way into various pyramids where the bodies of these monarchs reposed, and that in some cases they had been successful. Rumours of this sacrilege coming to the attention of the governor of the city, the investigation in question was set on foot, and the divergent opinions expressed by the various authorities, the bickerings and jealousies that are evidenced, and the net result in a verdict which leaves us somewhat in doubt as to the real facts of the case,--all these features have an aspect of modernity that is positively startling. As an interesting sequel to this investigation it may be added that the police were finally obliged to admit themselves no match for the thieves, and that the authorities, despairing of being able to protect the tombs of their ancestors, resorted finally to the strange expedient of removing the royal effigies to a secret cave in the distant mountain of Deir-el-Bahari. In this cave were placed the mummies of a distinguished line of monarchs, including Amenhotep I, Tehutimes II, Tehutimes III, and Seti I, and lastly the great Ramses II himself.