A thousand miles up the Nile

by Amelia B. Edwards

A model letter this; brief and to the point.

Our urbane and gentlemanly sheik was, however, not quite so charming when it came to settling time. We had sent at first for fifty men, and the price agreed upon was five piasters, or about a shilling English, for each man per day. In answer to this call, there first came forty men for half a day; then a hundred men for a whole day, or what was called a whole day; so making a total of six pounds due for wages. But the descendants of the Kashefs would hear of nothing so commonplace as the simple fulfillment of a straightforward contract. he demanded full pay for a hundred men for two whole days, a gun for himself, and a liberal backshîsh in cash. Finding he had asked more than he had any chance of getting, he conceded the question of wages, but stood out for a game-bag and a pair of pistols. Finally, he was obliged to be content with the six pounds for his men, and for himself two pots of jam, two boxes of sardines, a bottle of eau-de-cologne, a box of pills, and half a sovereign.

By four o’clock he and his followers were gone, and we once more had the place to ourselves. So long as they were there it was impossible to do anything, but now, for the first time, we fairly entered into possession of our newly found treasure.

All the rest of that day, and all the next day, we spent at work in and about the speos. L—— and the little lady took their books and knitting there, and made a little drawing-room of it. The writer copied paintings and inscriptions. The idle man and the painter took measurements and surveyed the ground round about, especially endeavoring to make out the plan of certain fragments of wall, the foundations of which were yet traceable.

A careful examination of these ruins, and a little clearing of the sand here and there, led to further discoveries. They found that the speos had been approached by a large outer hall built of sun-dried brick, with one principal entrance facing the Nile, and two side entrances facing northward. The floor was buried deep in sand and débris, but enough of the walls remained above the surface to show that the ceiling had been vaulted and the side entrances arched.

The southern boundary wall of this hall, when the surface sand was removed, appeared to be no less than twenty feet in thickness. This was not in itself so wonderful, there being instances of ancient Egyptian crude-brick walls which measure eighty feet in thickness;[127] but it was astounding as compared with the north, east, and west walls, which measured only three feet. Deeming it impossible that this mass could be solid throughout, the idle man set to work with a couple of sailors to probe the center part of it, and it soon became evident that there was a hollow space about three feet in width running due east and west down not quite exactly the middle of the structure.

All at once the idle man thrust his fingers into a skull!

This was such an amazing and unexpected incident that for the moment he said nothing, but went on quietly displacing the sand and feeling his way under the surface. The next instant his hand came in contact with the edge of a clay bowl, which he carefully withdrew. It measured about four inches in diameter, was hand-molded, and full of caked sand. He now proclaimed his discoveries and all ran to help in the work. Soon a second and smaller skull was turned up, then another bowl, and then, just under the place from which the bowls were taken, the bones of two skeletons, all detached, perfectly desiccated, and apparently complete. The remains were those of a child and a small grown person—probably a woman. The teeth were sound; the bones wonderfully delicate and brittle. As for the little skull (which had fallen apart at the sutures), it was pure and fragile in texture as the cup of a water-lily.

We laid the bones aside as we found them, examining every handful of sand, in the hope of discovering something that might throw light upon the burial. But in vain. We found not a shred of clothing, not a bead, not a coin, not the smallest vestige of anything that might help one to judge whether the interment had taken place a hundred years ago or a thousand.

We now called up all the crew, and went on excavating downward into what seemed to be a long and narrow vault measuring some fifteen feet by three.