Crossing the Nile to the western bank, one came into radically different surroundings. Here lay the City of the Dead. This was quite unlike any cemetery of modern times. Here were temples, tombs of kings and queens, tombs of the wealthy and the prosperous citizens, and the symbolic lake of the dead. Here were the unpretentious tombs of the masses. Nor was this all. We have seen that the Egyptian felt it necessary to supply his dead with all the necessities of life, such as food, furniture, and ornaments. Here, then, were the shops where such things might be obtained. Here were the embalmers, the makers of linen used by them; here lived the priests who said prayers over each finger and toe of the deceased and made the body ready for its everlasting home. On the west bank of the river lay a city in itself very different from the living one across the water. Funeral processions constantly wended their way to this City of the Dead; wails and lamentations often mingled in the air with songs of the priests at their devotions. At sunset the gates admitting to this portion of Thebes were locked and guarded against bands of robbers who laid in wait for the riches enclosed in the tombs. The tombs reached out to the rocky range of hills on the west and were with difficulty protected. Ancient Thebes extended some miles in each direction and covered considerable territory. Little today remains to mark its early splendor. The ruins at Karnak, the ancient mounds of Luxor, topped by a squalid Arab village, some tombs opened, some still hidden by the sands, are left. Much excavating has been done in this so-called "Valley of the Kings." Strabo and other early writers left some description of the original city, but aside from such records, little is left today to indicate the glories of that Thebes which was for hundreds of years the pride of Egyptian kings. RAMSES. Seti I. was followed by his son, the famous Ramses II., or Ramses the Great. Recent historians claim that this king has been given undue prominence, and that he was outranked by several Egyptian monarchs, including his own father. While this is probably true, it would seem that this pharaoh was as popular as any king who ruled in Egypt. He was young and handsome when he ascended the throne, and possessed a power of winning people to himself. That he was filled with self-pride, no one can deny. He attached his name, as we have seen, to every temple and monument where it was possible, and scattered statues of himself broadcast. Yet the only poem that suggests the epic in all Egyptian literature is the one known as "Pentuar's Poem," in which his bravery at the battle of Kadesh was sung.