Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/110

92 world within a fixed period and being "on time" at the finish—these make up the remainder of our company. A harmless, nay, an eminently respectable, if for the most part an, Egyptologically speaking, unlearned party. Yet what irony in the thought that these mighty stones around us were piled by groaning millions under the scourges of their square-browed tyrants to make a holiday sight for us! Shelley's well-known sonnet on the empty boast of "Osymandias, King of Kings" did that potentate injustice. Osymandias, it is agreed, was Rameses the Great, and certainly the mightiest monarchs "looking on his works" might well "despair." But though the Ramesseum and the Temple of Karnak have survived to render his name eternal, he, like every Pharaoh of them all, has missed the far more vital eternity that he sought.

With infinite care and pains did the great king labour to protect his mortal remains from displacement, so that after the lapse of long