Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/241

 their gigantic temples, and mined the earth with their vast sepulchres all up the valley of the Nile. Nekht has made his artists set forth scenes of his daily life, its business and its pleasures. Here we see his farm-servants gathering grapes, treading them in the wine-press, and drawing off the new wine into jars. Here, again, are men ploughing and reaping, women gleaning, labourers binding up the sheaves. Nekht looks on with a complacent air of proprietorship, with the inscription above his head, "Sitting in the chamber seeth his fields, the temple-servant of Ammon, Nekht triumphant before the great God."

Further on, we see the worthy citizen taking a holiday with his wife and children. They have, in fact, gone out for a day's sport, and are spearing fish from a boat, and bringing down birds with the boomerang in a papyrus swamp. Above is the inscription: "Passeth through wild-fowl marshes, traverseth wildfowl marshes with gladness, speareth fish, Nekht triumphant." On the bank stand two