After this peaceful victory, which won for Egypt so fair a province, and adorned it with such marvels of art, there is not much left to record concerning the twelfth dynasty. Its annals are quiet and prosperous throughout, and its art was progressive and beautiful. No man in the kingdom was more honoured than the artist, the man ‘of enlightened spirit and skilfully working hand.’ The office of ‘architect to Pharaoh’[25] was sometimes held by sons and grandsons of the sovereign. There is a remarkable account of a great noble, Mentuhotep, who was a judge and learned in the law, a priest and a warrior. It is recorded of him that, as chief architect of the king, he promoted the worship of the gods, and instructed the inhabitants of the country according to the best of his knowledge, as God had commanded to be done. He protected the unfortunate, and freed him that was in need of freedom. ‘Peace was in the utterances of his mouth, and the learning of the wise Thoth[26] was on his tongue. Very skilful in artistic work, with his own hand he carried out his designs as they ought to be done.’ The beautiful rock-hewn caves of Beni-Hassan bear witness to the rare excellence attained by architecture and sculpture. These tombs and memorial chambers were excavated in a limestone cliff on the east bank of the Nile, 160 miles south of Cairo. They were for generations the burial-place of the illustrious family of the Khnumhoteps, descendants of Ameni (p. 66), and hereditary governors of the district. The roofs of these rock tombs are vaulted; at the entrance to the northernmost, where Ameni, head of the family lay, are columns of great beauty, so closely resembling those called Doric 2000 years later that it is difficult not to believe that they served as prototypes. At the entrance to another tomb are columns still more graceful in design; these are purely Egyptian in style, and are formed of slender reeds bound together, and expanding into capitals like papyrus or lotus buds or flowers. Here was buried Khnumhotep, grandson of Ameni, a man of high character and great renown. The walls of the interior are covered with pictorial representations, invaluable for the insight they afford into the daily life of those long past times. Amongst the scenes depicted on the walls of Khnumhotep’s funeral chamber is one of much significance. A family group, consisting of 37 persons, is ushered into the presence of the great Egyptian lord, who receives them standing and surrounded by his dogs. They are Amu—foreigners of the East—and their errand is to bring from the land of Pitshu (Midian) a certain mineral substance from which was prepared a paint for the eyes much used in Egypt. Their faces are wholly unlike the Egyptians; they have aquiline noses and long black beards. They are evidently immigrants come to settle in the land. The men are armed, the women gaily dressed. They bring with them presents—the ibis and gazelle, and the splendid wild