Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/237

 in the Epic of Pentaur, but a poem about the domestic life of the Egyptian monarchs would be very welcome after many perusals of the famous battle-piece of that very early Laureate.

In fact, the further one gets from "official poetry," and from official tomb inscriptions in general, the nearer you get to Nature, and even in the sepulchre of Chnemu-Hetep you are conscious of a smack of officialism in the otherwise simple recital of the Governor's public services and private virtues in general. In the case of Nekht, however, we really get, as Mr. Wallis Budge has said, a typical example of the tomb of a "Theban gentleman of the Middle Empire," or, in other words, of a gentleman who lived, moved, and had his being, who loved and hated, and hoped and feared, and worked and played on the site of these ruins, say a thousand and odd years before the Greek Father of History was born, and nearly two thousand years before history begins for our own islands with