In Cairo, at the Boolak Museum, there is a vast collection of Egyptian antiquities, even more valuable than the collections to be seen at the British Museum, and at the Louvre, Paris. The precious treasures of the Boolak Museum were for the most part collected through the indefatigable labours of the late Mariette Bey. Since his death the charge of the Museum has been entrusted to the two well-known Egyptologists, Professor Maspero and Herr Emil Brugsch.
Professor Maspero lately remarked that for the last ten years he had noticed with considerable astonishment that many valuable Egyptian relics found their way in a mysterious manner to European museums as well as to the private collections of European noblemen. He therefore suspected that the Arabs in the neighbourhood of Thebes, in Upper Egypt, had discovered and were plundering some royal tombs. This suspicion was intensified by the fact that Colin Campbell, on returning to Cairo from a visit to Upper Egypt, showed to the Professor some pages of a superb royal ritual, purchased from some Arabs at Thebes. M. Maspero accordingly made a journey to Thebes, and on arriving at the place, conferred on the subject with Daoud Pasha, the governor of the district, and offered a handsome reward to any person who would give information of any recently discovered royal tombs.
Behind the ruins of the Ramesseum is a terrace of rock-hewn tombs, occupied by the families of four brothers named Abd-er-Rasoul. The brothers professed to be guides and donkey-masters, but in reality they made their livelihood by tomb-breaking and mummy-snatching. Suspicion at once fell upon them, and a mass of concurrent testimony pointed to the four brothers as the possessors of the secret. With the approval of the district governor, one of the brothers, Ahmed-Abd-er-Rasoul, was arrested and sent to prison at Keneh, the chief town of the district. Here he remained in confinement for two months, and preserved an obstinate silence. At length Mohammed, the eldest brother, fearing that Ahmed’s constancy might give way, and fearing lest the family might lose the reward offered by M. Maspero, came to the governor and volunteered to divulge the secret. Having made his depositions, the governor telegraphed to Cairo, whither the Professor had returned. It was felt that no time should be lost. Accordingly M. Maspero empowered Herr Emil Brugsch, keeper of the Boolak Museum, and Ahmed Effendi Kemal, also of the Museum service, to proceed without delay to Upper Egypt. In a few hours from the arrival of the telegram the Boolak officials were on their way to Thebes. The distance of the journey is about five hundred miles; and as a great part had to be undertaken by the Nile steamer, four days elapsed before they reached their destination, which they did on Wednesday, 6th July, 1881.
On the western side of the Theban plain rises a high mass of limestone rock, enclosing two desolate valleys. One runs up behind the ridge into the very heart of the hills, and being entirely shut in by the limestone cliffs, is a picture of wild desolation. The other valley runs up from the plain, and its mouth opens out towards the city of Thebes. “The former is the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings—the Westminster Abbey of Thebes; the latter, of the Tombs of the Priests and Princes—its Canterbury Cathedral.” High up among the limestone cliffs, and near the plateau overlooking the plain of Thebes, is the site of an old temple, known as “Deir-el-Bahari.”
At this last-named place, according to agreement, the Boolak officials met Mohammed Abd-er-Rasoul, a spare, sullen fellow, who simply from love of gold had agreed to divulge the grand secret. Pursuing his way among desecrated tombs, and under the shadow of precipitous cliffs, he led his anxious followers to a spot described as “unparalleled, even in the desert, for its gaunt solemnity.” Here, behind a huge fragment of fallen rock, perhaps dislodged for that purpose from the cliffs overhead, they were shown the entrance to a pit so ingeniously hidden that, to use their own words, “one might have passed it twenty times without observing it.” The shaft of the pit proved to be six and a-half feet square; and on being lowered by means of a rope, they touched the ground at a depth of about forty feet.
Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, and certainly nothing in romantic literature can surpass in dramatic interest the revelation which awaited the Boolak officials in the subterranean sepulchral chambers of Deir-el-Bahari. At the bottom of the shaft the explorers noticed a dark passage running westward; so, having lit their candles, they groped their way slowly along the passage, which ran in a straight line for twenty-three feet, and then turned abruptly to the right, stretching away northward into total darkness. At the corner where the passage turned northward, they found a royal funeral canopy, flung carelessly down in a tumbled heap. As they proceeded, they found the roof so low in some places that they were obliged to stoop, and in other parts the rocky floor was very uneven. At a distance of sixty feet from the corner, the explorers found themselves at the top of a flight of stairs, roughly hewn out of the rock. Having descended the steps, each with his flickering candle in hand, they pursued their way along a passage slightly descending, and penetrating deeper and further into the heart of the mountain. As they proceeded, the floor became more and more strewn with fragments of mummy cases and tattered pieces of mummy bandages.
Presently they noticed boxes piled on the top of each other against the wall, and these boxes proved to be filled with porcelain statuettes, libation jars, and canopic vases of precious alabaster. Then appeared several huge coffins of painted wood; and great was their joy when they gazed upon a crowd of mummy cases, some standing, some laid upon the ground, each fashioned in human form, with folded hands and solemn faces. On the breast of each was emblazoned the name and titles of the occupant. Words fail to describe the joyous excitement of the scholarly explorers, when among the group they read the names of Seti I., Thothmes II., Thothmes III., and Rameses II., surnamed the Great.
The Boolak officials had journeyed to Thebes, expecting at most to find a few mummies of petty princes; but on a sudden they were brought, as it were, face to face with the mightiest kings of ancient Egypt, and confronted the remains of heroes whose exploits and fame filled the ancient world with awe more than three thousand years ago.
The explorers stood bewildered, and could scarcely believe the testimony of their own eyes, and actually inquired of each other if they were not in a dream. At the end of a passage, one hundred and thirty feet from the bottom of the rock-cut passage, they stood at the entrance of a sepulchral chamber, twenty-three feet long, and thirteen feet wide, literally piled to the roof with mummy cases of enormous size. The coffins were brilliant with colour-gilding and varnish, and looked as fresh as if they had recently come out of the workshops of the Memnonium.
Among the mummies of this mortuary chapel were found two kings, four queens, a prince and a princess, besides royal and priestly personages of both sexes, all descendants of Her-Hor, the founder of the line of priest-kings known as the XXIst dynasty. The chamber was manifestly the family vault of the Her-Hor family; while the mummies of their more illustrious predecessors of the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties, found in the approaches to the chamber, had evidently been brought there for the sake of safety. Each member of the family was buried with the usual mortuary outfit. One queen, named Isi-em-Kheb (Isis of Lower Egypt), was also provided with a sumptuous funereal repast, as well as a rich sepulchral toilet, consisting of ointment bottles, alabaster cups, goblets of exquisite variegated glass, and a large assortment of full dress wigs, curled and frizzed. As the funereal repast was designed for refreshment, so the sepulchral toilet was designed for the queen’s use and adornment on the Resurrection morn, when the vivified dead, clothed, fed, anointed and perfumed, should leave the dark sepulchral chamber and go forth to the mansions of everlasting day.