Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/116

98 and arrow from a chariot, and, possibly, one might find pictured examples of the employment of such vehicles for ceremonial purposes; but neither in battle, nor pageant, nor pastime, nor religious rite does one ever meet with any king of the first twenty dynasties or so, or any of his subjects, "outside a horse." There was no Theban race meeting while Thebes was. No enterprising citizen of the hundred-gated city ever started a hundred-and-first gate at which money might be taken for the privilege of witnessing from a favourable position a trial of speed between Egyptian horses. No Seti or Rameses ever gave a cup to be run for, or founded a "stakes" fund to be for ever named after him, and to constitute a surer passport than mummification to immortality. Never, therefore, under any of those monarchs can such an occasion have arisen as that which to-day seems to have brought the whole population of Luxor, permanent and temporary, thronging forth on foot, on donkey or camel back,