And thus we come back to my remarks at the beginning of this chapter, that there is a painful disillusionment awaiting the man who comes to dig in Egypt in the hope of finding the golden cities of the Pharaohs or the bejewelled bodies of their dead.
CHAPTER VIII
THE TOMB OF TIY AND AKHNATON[4]
In January, 1907, the excavations in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes, which were being conducted each year under my supervision at the expense of Mr. Davis, brought to light the entrance of a tomb which, by its style, appeared to be that of a royal personage of the XVIIIth Dynasty. The Valley lies behind the cliffs which form the western boundary of Thebes, and is approached by a long winding road running between the rocks and rugged hills of the Lybian desert. Here the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth to the XXth Dynasties were buried in large sepulchres cut into the sides of the hills; and the excavations had for their object the removal of the débris which had collected at the foot of these hills, in order that the tombs hidden beneath might be revealed. About sixty tombs are now open, some of which were already known to Greek and Roman travellers; and there are palpably not more than two or three still to be discovered.
When this new tomb-entrance was uncovered I was at once notified, and proceeded with all despatch to the Valley. It was not long before we were able to enter the tomb. A rough stairway led down into the hillside, bringing us to the mouth of a passage which was entirely blocked by a wall of built stones. On removing this wall we found ourselves in a small passage, descending at a sharp incline to a chamber which could be seen a few yards further on. Instead of this passage being free from débris, however, as we had expected on finding the entrance-wall intact, it was partly filled with fallen stones which seemed to be the ruins of an earlier entrance-wall. On top of this heap of stones lay one of the sides of a large funeral shrine, almost entirely blocking the passage. This shrine, as we later saw, was in the form of a great box-like sarcophagus, made of cedar-wood covered with gold, and it had been intended as an outer covering for the coffin of the deceased person. It was, however, not put together: three sides of it were leaning against the walls of the burial-chamber, and the fourth was here in the passage. Either it was never built up, or else it was in process of being taken out of the tomb again when the work was abandoned.
To pass this portion of the shrine which lay in the passage without doing it damage was no easy matter. We could not venture to move it, as the wood was rotten; and indeed, for over a year it remained in its original position. We therefore made a bridge of planks within a few inches of the low roof, and on this we wriggled ourselves across into the unencumbered passage beyond. In the funeral-chamber, besides the other portions of the shrine, we found at one corner a splendid coffin, in the usual form of a recumbent figure, inlaid in a dazzling manner with rare stones and coloured glass. The coffin had originally lain upon a wooden bier, in the form of a lion-legged couch; but this had collapsed and the mummy had fallen to the ground, the lid of the coffin being partly
The entrance of the Tomb of Queen Tiy, with a native policeman guarding it. The large Tomb of Rameses X. is to the left
thrown off by the fall, thus exposing the head and feet of the body, from which the bandages had decayed and fallen off. In the powerful glare of the electric light which we carried, the bare skull, with a golden vulture upon it, could be seen protruding from the remains of the linen bandages and from the sheets of flexible gold-foil in which, as we afterwards found, the whole body was wrapped. The inscription on the coffin, the letters of which were made of rare stones, gave the titles of Akhnaton, “the beautiful child of the Sun”; but turning to the shrine we found other inscriptions stating that King Akhnaton had made it for his mother, Queen Tiy, and thus no immediate reply could be given to those at the mouth of the tomb who called to us to know which of the Pharaohs of Egypt had been found.
In a recess in the wall above the body there stood four alabaster “canopy” jars, each with a lid exquisitely sculptured in the form of a human head. In another corner there was a box containing many little toilet vases and utensils of porcelain. A few alabaster vases and other objects were lying in various parts of the chamber arranged in some sort of rough order.