The parting rays of the sun, which shines low down from between two clouds, enter through a window opening on to the surrounding desolation; and the light comes mournfully, yellowed by the sand and the evening.
The master of the house, while his Bedouin servants are gone to open and light up for us the underground habitations of the Apis, shows us his latest astonishing find, made this morning in a hypogeum of one of the most ancient dynasties.

It is there on a table, a group of little people of wood, of the size of the marionettes of our theatres.

And since it was the custom to put in a tomb only those figures or objects which were most pleasing to him who dwelt in it, the man-mummy to whom this toy was offered in times anterior to all precise chronology must have been extremely partial to dancing-girls.

In the middle of the group the man himself is represented, sitting in an armchair, and on his knee he holds his favourite dancing-girl.

Other girls posture before him in a dance of the period; and on the ground sit musicians touching tambourines and strangely fashioned harps.