Volume II Part 35 (1/2)

The evidence which gradually accumulated in the hands of M Maspero, all pointed to two brothers Abd-er-Rasoul, as the possessors of the secret These men had established their homes in some deserted tombs in the western cliff, at the back of the Ra European travellers and providing them with donkeys, with the covert and more profitable profession of tomb-breakers and er of these brothers, Ahmed Abd-er-Rasoul, to be arrested and taken before the Mudir at Keneh Here every expedient known to Egyptian justice was employed to open his lips, but all in vain His reiterated examinations only served to prove, if proof had been needed, how thoroughly the Arabs of Thebes sympathized with the conduct of which he was accused Testimony to his complete honesty and many other virtues poured in fro-place was searched without result, and finally he was released on bail No sooner had Ahmed returned home, however, than quarrels and recriminations arose between him and his elder brother Mohammed These quarrels and the offer of a considerable reward by the Egyptian authorities at last induced Mohammed to betray the family secret, in this instance, a material skeleton in the cupboard He went quietly to Keneh and told how Ahmed and himself had found a tomb in one of the wildest bays of the western chain in which soolden asp of royalty upon their broere heaped one upon another amid the remains of their funerary equipments

This story was taken for what it seeht Herr Esch and another member of the Boulak staff to Thebes in hot haste They were conducted by Mohammed Abd-er-Rasoul up the narrow valley which lies between the Sheikh-abd-el-Gournah, on the south, and the spur for the southern boundary of the valley of Dayr-el-Bahari, on the north, to a point some seventy yards above the outer limits of the cultivated land

There, in a corner, bare and desolate even in that desolate region, they were led behind a heap of boulders to the edge of a square hole in the rocky soil, and told that down there was the treasure for which they sought Ropes were at hand, and Esch was lowered into the pit with his coreat, some thirty-six feet, and as soon as their eyes becaht of their tapers, they saw that a corridor led away from it to the west

This they followed, and after a few yards found it turn sharply to the right, or north The funeral canopy of Queen Isi-em-Kheb, which we shall presently describe, was found in the angle thusthis corridor forat every step over the _debris_ of ht and left, first up piled boxes of statuettes, bronze and terra-cotta jars, alabaster canopic vases, and other small articles, and then some twenty mummies, a few in nests of two or three outer cases, others in but a single coffin, and at least three without other covering than their bandages and shrouds

Finally they arrived at aand fourteen broad, in which soealmost to the roof The distance of this chamber from the outer air was rather more than 280 feet, and its walls, like those of the corridor which led to it, ithout decoration of any kind

[405] See Miss A B EDWARD'S account of these gentleazine_ for July, 1882 Her paper is illustrated oodcuts after so objects found, and a plan of the _locale_

The European explorers felt liketo find the coffins and lets of the Her-Hor fareat Sesostris hi Thothmes III, ”who drew his frontiers where he pleased,” and, like other great soldiers since his day, seeether with several reat Theban dynasties

The coffins of these faht, others lying dohile the chamber was occupied by the mummies of the twenty-first dynasty, such as those of Queen Notemit, Pinotem I, Pinotem II, Queens Makara and Isi-em-Kheb, and Princess Nasikhonsou Isi-em-Kheb seemed to have been the last comer to the tomb, as her s, toilet bottles and other things of the kind, besides the canopy already mentioned and a complete funerary repast in a hamper

Preparations were immediately commenced for the removal of the whole ”find” to Boulak Steamers were sent for fro the to its contents to Luxor for ey, they accomplished their task in five days, and in four days o on board, and had started for the capital And then apparently the native population became alive to the fact that these iven to their country the only glory it had ever enjoyed, and that they were being carried away from the tombs in which they had rested peacefully, while so rown froe For es turned out and paid the last honours to Thoth lines of uns upwards as the convoy passed, while dishevelled wo air with their cries Thus after more than three thousand years of repose in the bosoht into the light, to go through a third act in the draer than the first, as their new hoer of destruction; it is sure to be far shorter than the second, for long before another thirty centuries have passed over their mummied heads, time will have done its work both with theraded them into museum curiosities

The appearance of this burial place, or _cachette_ as Maspero calls it, the nature of the things found in it and of those which should have been found there but were not, prove that its existence had been known to the Arabs and fellaheen of the neighbourhood for many years

Miss Edwards believes that the mummy of Queen Aah-hotep, which was found in the sand behind the temple of Dayr-el-Bahari in 1859, canificence of that mummy, the beauty of its jewels, and the care which had evidently been expended upon it on the one hand, and the rough and ready hiding-place in which it was found, on the other,[406] was so great that it was difficult to believe that it had never had a more elaborate tomb; and now the discovery of the outer coffin of the saoes far to complete the proof that Aah-hotep was disposed of after death like other members of her race, and that the exquisite jehich were found upon her, were but a part of treasures which had been dispersed over the world by the modern spoilers[407] The tomb contained about six thousand objects in all, of which but a few have as yet been co those feever, there are one or thich add to our knowledge of Egyptian decoration

[406] See page 29, Vol I

[407] For a description of these jewels by Dr BIRCH, and reproductions of theyptian Relics Discovered in the Tomb of Queen Aah-hotep_