"The opening is a long one in which Sanehat, son of the sycamore-- probably from his having been born or living at some place where there was a celebrated sacred sycamore--describes the love between Cleopatra and Antony, and the great treasures of the wonderful palace of the Ptolemies, which stood about in the centre of the shore of the eastern bay of Alexandria. He relates how Antony and Octavian fought desperately for the possession of the world at the Battle of Actium, and how, after that wonderful royal banquet which Athenaeus has already described to us in his writings, Antony sank deeper and deeper in the flood of his wild passion for Cleopatra. We have the Queen's marvellous beauty, her fascinations--her limbs like gold and her hair like lapis lazuli, so precious in Egypt in those days--and her sins here described by the hand of one who was her most trusted general--and who, by the way, is mentioned in at least two other records of this period, one now preserved at St Petersburg, and the other at Berlin, published in facsimile in the _Denkmaler_ of Lepsius. It tells us of the gorgeous life led by this most brilliant Queen of Queens, of the wealth and favours she lavished upon Antony and his captains, and of how she built her tomb near the temple of Isis Lochais, at the eastern end of the harbour where Fort Silsileh stands to-day. All this is most intensely interesting, coming as it does from the hand of the Queen's trusted favourite, but there is something more--something which certainly arouses our curiosity and which must be investigated. Listen, and I will read just the most important extracts." Then again he paused for a few moments, and halfway down the crinkled papyri he read a disjointed decipher as follows:-- "_The Horus, life of births, lords of crowns, life of births, king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Kheper-ha-ra, son of the Sun, Amen-em-hat, ever rising into eternity. Order for those who read. Behold this order of the Queen is sent to thee to instruct thee of her will_... "_Cleopatra, whose ruling passion was to be a monarch of a greater Egypt and to enlarge the borders of the South, remained in the Palace of her fathers, but Antony was valiantly defending the fortress of Pelusium against Octavian. In dead of night I was called by the Lord Steward unto the pearl chamber of the Queen, and she, reclining upon her bed of pearl and gold with censers of sweet perfumes burning, commanded me to silence, and sent away her slaves. She had received Neb-ka-n-ra as messenger from Antony telling her of Octavian's strength... She therefore commanded me with my captains User-ref and Hordedef to repair unto the treasury of the while house and take possession of the greatest of her jewels and place them in a place of safety, lest the accursed Octavian conquering, the Palace be attacked_.