ABSTRACT
AL the buildings of Luxor are on the east bank of theriver. There the turbanned boatmen wait at thelanding stages to take one across the Nile as, no doubt, did their predecessors in Pharaonic times. Westward from the opposite shore a broad plain extends for about a mile, until it meets a range of limestone cliffs, worn, fissured and cracked into gullies by sun and wind (page 129). Their colour varies throughout the day. In the dawn light they are a ruddy gold. At noon they are a dull, whitish brown, blurred by the heat haze. In the evening they are a purple silhouette deepening to black. They are not very high, between 800 and 1,000 feet, but to us the Theban hills have an impressiveness which is unparalleled anywhere in the world. For within them is a vast mausoleum. For two thousand years they received the embalmed bodies of seventy generations of Egyptians. Kings and queens, princes and nobles and citizens lay within their shadow, and their painted and sculptured tombs reveal a detailed picture of the daily life of this most ancient of civilisations.
