Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/479

 also, according to the legend, the body of Osiris, since transported to Philæ, had been buried hundreds of thousands of years before that event. In other words, to this hallowed spot tradition pointed as the cradle of the autochthonous people, from whose independently developed civilisation is mainly derived our modern culture, through the intermediate channel of the Hellenes.

All traces have vanished of the temple whither pilgrims were attracted from all parts, just as those of the Christian world still direct their footsteps towards the

Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. But the nitrous sands of the district have revealed a large number of tombs here built by Egyptian devotees anxious to repose by the side of their national deity. According to Maspero far more than half of all the sepulchral stones preserved in the European museums come from Abydos. <A group of tombs large enough to have assumed the appearance of a volcanic mound is known by the name of Kôm-es-Sultan, or "King's Mount." The explorations here being made continually reveal tombs of older and older date, the farther the