The glory of the Pharaohs

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

A short time ago a man applied for permission to perform a similar kind of excavation at a place called Nag Hamadi, and in my absence permission was given him. On my return the following report was submitted: “ ...Having reached up the spot indicated the man started to blow the stones by means of the Denamits. Also he slaught a lamb, thinking that there is a treasure, and that when the lamb being slaught he will discover it at once.” In plainer English, the man had blown up the rocks with dynamite, and had attempted to further his efforts by sacrificing a lamb to the djin who guarded the treasure. The djin, however, was not thus to be propitiated, and the gold of the Pharaohs was never found. More recently the watchmen of the famous temple of Der el Bahri found themselves in trouble owing to the discovery that part of the ancient pavement showed signs of having been raised, stone by stone, in order that the ground below might be searched for the treasure which a tradition, such as those in the Book of the Pearl, had reported as lying hid there.

Almost as romantic and entertaining as treasure hunting is robbery with violence. We all remember our boyhood’s fascination for piracy, smuggling, and the profession of Dick Turpin; and to the Theban peasant, who is essentially youthful in his ideas, this form of fortune hunting has irresistible attractions. When a new tomb is discovered by authorised archæologists, especially when it is situated in some remote spot such as the Valley of the Kings, there is always some fear of an armed raid; and the police guard the spot night and day until the antiquities have been removed to Cairo. The workmen who have been employed in the excavation return to their homes with wonderful tales of the wealth which the tomb contains, and in the evening the discovery is discussed by the women at the well where the water is drawn for the village, with the result that it very soon assumes prodigious proportions, inflaming the minds of all men with the greed of gold. Visitors often ask why it is that the mummies of the Pharaohs are not left to lie each in its own tomb; and it is argued that they look neither congruous nor dignified in the glass cases of the museum. The answer is obvious to all who know the country: put them back in their tombs, and, without continuous police protection, they will be broken into fragments by robbers, bolts and bars notwithstanding. The experiment of leaving the mummy and some of the antiquities in situ has only once been tried, and it has not been a complete success. It was done in the case of the tomb of Amenophis II at Thebes, the mummy being laid in its original sarcophagus; and a model boat, used in one of the funeral ceremonies, was also left in the tomb. One night the six watchmen who were in charge of the royal tombs stated that they had been attacked by an armed force; and the tomb in question was seen to have been entered, the iron doors having been forced. The mummy of the Pharaoh was found lying on the floor of the burial-hall, its chest smashed in; and the boat had disappeared, nor has it since been recovered. The watchmen showed signs of having put up something of a fight, their clothes being riddled with bullet-holes; but here and there the cloth looked much as though it had been singed, which suggested, as did other evidence, that they themselves had fired the guns and had acted the struggle. The truth of the matter will never be known, but its lesson is obvious. The mummy was put back into its sarcophagus, and there it has remained secure ever since; but one never knows how soon it will be dragged forth once more to be searched for the gold with which every native thinks it is stuffed.

Some years ago an armed gang walked off with a complete series of mortuary reliefs belonging to a tomb at Sakkârah. They came by night, overpowered the watchmen, loaded the blocks of stone on to camels, and disappeared into the darkness. Sometimes it is an entire cemetery that is attacked; and, if it happens to be situated some miles from the nearest police-station, a good deal of work can be done before the authorities get wind of the affair. One winter six hundred men set to work upon a patch of desert ground where a tomb had been accidently found, and ere I received the news, they had robbed a score of little graves, many of which must have contained objects purchasable by the dealers in antiquities for quite large sums of money. At Abydos a tomb which we had just discovered was raided by the villagers, and we only regained possession of it after a rapid exchange of shots, one of which came near ending my own gay career. But how amusing the adventure must have been for the raiders!

The appropriation of treasure-trove come upon by chance, or the digging out of graves accidentally discovered, is a very natural form of robbery for the natives to indulge in, and one which commends itself to the sympathies of all those not actively concerned in its suppression. There are very few persons even in western countries who would be willing to hand over to the Government a hoard of gold discovered in their own back garden. In Egypt the law used to be that the treasure-trove thus discovered belonged to the owner of the property; and thus there was always a certain amount of excavation going on behind the walls of the houses. It is still the law that the peasants may carry away the accumulated rubbish on the upper layers of ancient town sites, in order to use it as a fertiliser for their crops, since it contains valuable phosphates. The work is supervised by watchmen, but this does not prevent the stealing of almost all the antiquities which are found. As illegal excavators, these sebakhîn, or manure-diggers, are the worst offenders for they search for the phosphates in all manner of places, and are constantly coming upon tombs or ruins which they promptly clear of their contents. One sees them driving their donkeys along the roads, each laden with a sack of manure, and it is certain that some of these sacks contain antiquities.

In Thebes many of the natives live inside the tombs of the ancient nobles, these generally consisting of two or three rock-hewn halls from which a tunnel leads down to the burial chamber. Generally this tunnel is choked with débris, and the owner of the house will perhaps come upon it by chance, and will dig it out, in the vain hope that earlier plunderers have left some of the antiquities undisturbed. It recently happened that an entire family was asphyxiated while attempting to penetrate into a newly-discovered tunnel, each member entering to ascertain the fate of the previous explorer, and each being overcome by the gases. On one occasion I was asked by a native to accompany him down a tunnel, the entrance of which was in his stable, in order to view a sarcophagus which lay at the bottom. We each took a candle, and crouching down to avoid the low roof, we descended the narrow, winding rabbit-hole of a passage, the loose stones sliding beneath our feet. The air was very foul; and below us there was a thunderous roar of thousands of wings beating through the echoing passage—the wings of evil-smelling bats. Presently we reached this uncomfortable zone. So thickly did the bats hang from the ceiling that the rock itself seemed to be black; but as we advanced, and the creatures took to their wings, this black covering seemed to peel off the grey rock. During the entire descent this curious spectacle of regularly receding blackness and advancing grey was to be seen a yard or so in front of us. The roar of wings was now deafening, for the space into which we were driving the bats was very confined. My guide shouted to me that we must let them pass out of the tomb over our heads. We therefore crouched down, and a few stones were flung into the darkness ahead. Then, with a roar and a rush of air, they came, bumping into us, entangling themselves in our clothes, slapping our faces and hands with their unwholesome wings, and clinging to our fingers. At last the thunder died away in the passage behind us, and we were able to advance more easily, though the ground was alive with the bats maimed in the frantic flight which had taken place, floundering out of our way and squeaking shrilly. The sarcophagus proved to be of no interest, so the encounter with the bats was to no purpose.

The pilfering of antiquities found during the course of authorised excavations is one of the most common forms of robbery. The overseer cannot always watch the workmen sufficiently closely to prevent them pocketing the small objects which they find, and it is an easy matter to carry off the stolen goods even though the men are searched at the end of the day. A little girl minding her father’s sheep and goats in the neighbourhood of the excavations, and apparently occupying her hands with the spinning of flax, is perhaps the receiver of the objects. Thus it is more profitable to dig for antiquities even in authorised excavations than to work the water-hoist, which is one of the usual occupations of the peasant. Pulling the hoisting-pole down, and swinging it up again with its load of water many thousands of times in a day, is monotonous work; whereas digging in the ground, with the eyes keenly watching for the appearance of antiquities, is always interesting and exciting. And why should the digger refrain from appropriating the objects which his pick reveals? If he do not make use of his opportunities and carry off the antiquities, the western director of the works will take them to his own country and sell them for his own profit. All natives believe that the archæologists work for the purpose of making money. Speaking of Professor Flinders Petrie, a peasant said to me once: “He has worked five-and-twenty years now; he must be very rich.” He would never believe that the antiquities were given to museums without any payment being made to the finder.

The stealing of fragments broken out of the walls of “show” monuments is almost the only form of robbery which will receive general condemnation. That this vandalism is also distasteful to the natives themselves is shown by the fact that several better-class Egyptians living in the neighbourhood of Thebes subscribed, at my invitation, the sum of £50 for the protection of certain beautiful tombs. When they were shown the works undertaken with their money, they expressed themselves in a letter to me as being “pleased with the delicate inscriptions in the tombs, but very awfully angry at the damage which the devils of ignorant people had made.” A native of moderate intelligence can quite appreciate the argument that whereas the continuous warfare between the agents of the Department of Antiquities and the illegal excavators of small graves is what might be called an honourable game, the smashing of public monuments cannot be called fair-play from whatever point of view the matter is approached. Often revenge or spite is the cause of this damage. It is sometimes necessary to act with severity to the peasants who infringe the rules of the Department, but a serious danger lies in such action, for it is the nature of the Thebans to revenge themselves not on the official directly but on the monuments which he is known to love. Two years ago a native illegally built himself a house on Government ground, and I was obliged to go through the formality of pulling it down, which I did by obliging him to remove a few layers of brickwork around the walls. A short time afterwards a famous tomb was broken into and a part of the paintings destroyed; and there was enough evidence to show that the owner of this house was the culprit, though unfortunately he could not be convicted. One man actually had the audacity to warn me that any severity on my part would be met by destruction of monuments. Under these circumstances an official finds himself in a dilemma. If he maintains the dignity and prestige of his Department by punishing any offences against it, he endangers the very objects for the care of which he is responsible; and it is hard to say whether under a lax or a severe administration the more damage would be done.

The produce of these various forms of robbery is easily disposed of. When once the antiquities have passed into the hands of the dealers there is little chance of further trouble. The dealer can always say that he came into possession of an object years ago, before the antiquity laws were made, and it is almost impossible to prove that he did not. You may have the body of a statue and he the head: he can always damage the line of breakage, and say that the head does not belong to that statue, or, if the connection is too obvious, he can say that he found the head while excavating twenty years ago on the site where now you have found the body. Nor is it desirable to bring an action against the man in a case of this kind, for it might go against the official. Dealing in antiquities is regarded as a perfectly honourable business. The official, crawling about the desert on his stomach in the bitter cold of a winter’s night in order to hold up a convoy of stolen antiquities, may use hard language in regard to the trade, but he can see that in the eyes of the natives there is not much against it. One of the Theban dealers led so holy a life that he will assuredly be regarded as a saint by future generations.

The sale of small antiquities to tourists was prohibited by me on the public roads, except at certain places; but of course it could be done with impunity by the exercise of a little care. Men and boys and even little girls as they pass will stare at you with studying eyes, and if you seem to be a likely purchaser, they will draw from the folds of their garments some little object which they will offer for sale. Along the road in the glory of the setting sun there will come as fine a young man as you will see on a day’s march. Surely he is bent on some noble mission: what lofty thoughts are occupying his mind, you wonder. But, as you pass, out comes the scarab from his pocket, and he shouts, “Wanty scarab, mister?—two shillin’,” while you ride on your way a greater cynic than before.

Some years ago a large inscribed stone was stolen from a certain temple, and was promptly sold to a man who sometimes traded in such objects. This man carried the stone, hidden in a sack of grain, to the house of a friend, and having deposited it in a place of hiding, tramped home, with his stick across his shoulders, in an attitude of deep unconcern. An enemy of his, however, had watched him, and promptly gave information. Acting on this the police set out to search the house. When we reached the entrance we were met by the owner, and a warrant was shown to him. A heated argument followed, at the end of which the infuriated man waved us in with a magnificent and most dramatic gesture. There were some twenty rooms in the house, and the stifling heat of a July noon made the task none too enjoyable. The police inspector was extremely thorough in his work, and an hour had passed before three rooms had been searched. He looked into the cupboards, went down on his knees to peer into the ovens, stood on tiptoe to search the fragile wooden shelves (it was a heavy stone which we were looking for), hunted under the mats, and even peeped into a little tobacco-tin. In one of the rooms there were three or four beds arranged along the middle of the floor. The inspector pulled off the mattresses, and out from under each there leapt a dozen rats, which, if I may be believed, made for the walls and ran straight up them, disappearing in the rafter-holes at the top. The sight of countless rats hurrying up perpendicular walls may be familiar to some people, but, being abstemious, I venture to call it an amazing spectacle, worthy of record. Then came the opening of one or two travelling-trunks. The inspector ran his hand through the clothes which lay therein, and out jumped a few more rats, which likewise went up the walls. The searching of the remaining rooms carried us well through the afternoon; and at last, hot and weary, we decided to abandon the hunt. Two nights later a man was seen walking away from the house with a heavy sack on his back; and the stone is now, no doubt, in the Western hemisphere.