Brugsch, Heinrich: Egypt under the pharaohs: a history derived entirely from the monuments (London, 1891)

otn. xix. INSCRIPTION AT ABYDOS 259

caused his portraits to be made, and fixed the revenues set apart
for his venerated person, and filled his house and richly decked out
his altars. The walls were rebuilt, which had become old in his
favourite house; the halls in his temple were rebuilt, its walls were
■covered, its gates were raised up ; whatever had fallen into decay in
the burial-place of his father in the necropolis was restored, and
[the works of art which] had been carried away were brought back
into the interior.

The king (now) returned from the capital of the land of the South.
[As soon as] the sun [had risen], the journey was commenced. As
the ships of the king sailed on, they threw their brightness on the
(river. The order was given for the journey down the stream to the
stronghold of the city of Ra-messu, the Conqueror.

Then the king, in order to behold his father, made the rowers
enter the canal of Nifur, with the intention of offering a sacrifice to
the beneficent god TJnnefer with his choicest libations, and of pray-
mg to [the divinity] of his brother Anhur, the son of Ra in ... as
which he abides there.

There he found the halls of the dead of the former kings, and
their graves, which are in Abydos, hastening to the beginning of
desolation. Their burial-places had become dilapidated from the
foundations. [The stones were torn away] out of the ground, their
walls lay scattered about on the road, no brick held to another, the
hall ' of the second birth' lay in ruins, nothing had been built up
[for the father by his son], who should have been busied in preserv-
ing it according to his expectations, since its possessor had flown up
to heaven. Not one son had renewed the memorial of his father,
who rested in the grave.

There was the temple of Seti. The front and back elevations
were in process of building when he entered the realm of heaven,
unfinished was his monument; the columns were not raised on
their bases, his statues lay upon the earth; they were not sculptured
according to the corresponding measure of ' the golden chamber.'
His revenues failed. The servants of the temple without distinction
had taken what was brought in from the fields, the boundary marks
of which were not staked out on the land.

The king speaks to the chamberlain at his side : ' Speak, that
there may be assembled the princes, the favourites of the king, the
commanders of the body-guards, as they are (i.e. all of them), the
architects, according to their number, and the superintendents of
the house of the rolls of the books.'

When they had come before the king, their noses touched the
ground, and their feet lay on the ground for joy ; they fell down to