Thebes had endured for so many centuries, the earth here is so penetrated with human past, that it is averred that, under the oldest of the known temples there are still others, older still and more massive, of which there was no suspicion, and whose age must exceed eight thousand years.
[*] As is generally known, the maintenance of the ancient monuments of Egypt and their restoration, so far as that may be possible, has been entrusted to the French.

M.Maspero has delegated to Thebes an artist and a scholar, M.Legrain by name, who is devoting his life passionately to the work.
In spite of the burning sun, and of the clouds of dust raised by the blows of the pickaxes, one might linger for hours amongst the dust-stained, meagre fellahs, watching the excavations in this unique soil--where everything that is revealed is by way of being a surprise and a lucky find, where the least carved stone had a past of glory, formed part of the first architectural splendours, was _a stone of Thebes_.

Scarcely a moment passes but, at the bottom of the trenches, as the digging proceeds, some new thing gleams.

Perhaps it is the polished flank of a colossus, fashioned out of granite from Syene, or a little copper Osiris, the debris of a vase, a golden trinket beyond price, or even a simple blue pearl that has fallen from the necklace of some waiting-maid of a queen.
This activity of the excavators, which alone reanimates certain quarters during the day, ends at sunset.

Every evening the lean fellahs receive the daily wage of their labour, and take themselves off to sleep in the silent neighbourhood in their huts of mud; and the iron gates are shut behind them.