And indeed how tenderly human is their appeal across the centuries, for they bear even now evidences of the touch of the fingers of the dear lady who played her chosen flute music upon them so long and lovingly, and cherished them as companions in her life, and destined them also to befriend her in her dark tomb. Yes, you can plainly see, her fingers have worn away the rich orange stain from the beautifully shaped oval holes. For these flutes were finely finished and designed for true musical service and durability. Originally they had been orange-stained and wax polished, and when first found held that appearance, but exposure to the air darkened the wax to a deep brown colour, yet the holes reveal in lighter tint how they have been worn by the fingers. Perhaps the lady musician had several other pairs of flutes, apt for the expression of joy and mirthfulness, and left them to her friends, taking with her only the one pair with which her _Ka_ would mourn the loss of friends and the light of the sun. A remembrance comes fittingly in this place, of another lady of this long vanished race. In a royal tomb they found her, at El Amrah, wrapped round with the mystic robes of a ceremonial, that were to be her passport to the underworld during an unknown eternity; she was the daughter of Mena the founder of Memphis, and on her breast was written in the old hieroglyph letters, this simple message to the unseen power, who would judge her,— “_She was Sweet of Heart._” —it was the last testimony of those who loved her. Sweet of heart, how near it brings her to our own loves. A touching epitaph to endure over six thousand years,—no woman could desire a more beautiful farewell. The flutes that my thoughts so long lingered over are gone. They are deposited, after their strange travel, in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford—a long way indeed from that land where the Lady Maket played them under a cloudless sky. [Illustration] CHAPTER IV. In the Land of Egypt. MORE EGYPTIAN FLUTES: THE EVIDENCES OF THE SCALE.