A faint fragrance from perfume jars came to our nostrils: a strange, subtle fragrance still, though most of its sweetness had gone, leaving more marked the smell of fat which had held the perfume all these years, while civilizations grew up and perished. The man who had lit the incense and locked the door seemed to have hurried back from—who knew where?—to stand behind us, saying "I forbid you entrance, in the name of the ancient gods!" We could not see him, nor hear his voice; but we could feel that he was there, and something in us revolted against the ruthlessness of disobeying, of forcing our way into the room in spite of him, to crush his footprints with ours.
"Why does the sand glitter so?" Monny asked. "Everything glitters! Everything looks as if it were made of gold."
"The Mountain of the Golden Pyramid," Biddy murmured.
"Go in first, you two, and bless the place," I said, my heart wildly beating.
They obeyed for once, moving delicately as if to music which ears of men were not fine enough to hear. They went hand in hand: and as Monny in her straight, pale-tinted dress, held up the lantern, I thought of the Wise Virgin. When this room had last been lighted, the parable of the Virgins of the Lamps was yet unspoken.
"It is not sand," said Monny, gasping a little in the heavy air. "It is sprinkled gold dust. Now it is on the soles of our feet. It shines—it shines!"
Anthony and I followed, still with that curious sense of hesitation, as if we ought to apologize to some one. The room of the dead was very close, and we drew our breath with difficulty for a moment. But the discomfort passed. Mechanically we avoided the footmarks printed in gold—avoided them as if they had been covered by invisible feet.
Monny was right. Everything was gold—and it shone—it shone. Dust from the terrible mines of Nub, whence the convict-miners never returned, lay thickly scattered over the rock-floor. The walls of rock were plastered with gold leaf, as high as the low ceiling: and upon the ceiling itself, on a background of deep blue colour, was traced in gold the form of Nut, goddess of Night, her long arms outspread across an azure sky of golden stars.
The table of offerings was decorated with gold in barbaric patterns, and the saucer which held the burnt pastille of incense was of gold, crudely designed, but beautiful. Cloth of gold, soft as old linen, draped a coffin in the centre of the room, and hid the conical object on the coffin's lid. On a sudden half savage impulse I lifted the covering, with a pang of fear lest the fabric should drop to pieces. But it did not. Its limp, yet heavy folds fell across my feet, as I stood looking at the wonderful thing it had concealed.
There was no sarcophagus of stone. The doors leading to the rock-tomb were not large enough to have admitted one. Instead, there was an extraordinarily high, narrow coffin or mummy-case, richly gilded, and decorated with intricate designs different from any I had seen in the museum at Cairo. The top of the case represented the figure of a woman, with a smiling golden face, painted lips and hair. But the strangeness and wonder were under the long eyelids, and in the woman's hands. The slanting eyes had each an immense cabuchon emerald for its iris, set round with brilliant stones like diamonds, curiously cut. And the carved, gilded hands of wood, with realistic fingers wearing rings, were clasped round a pyramid of gold. This it was which had betrayed its conical shape through the drapery of gold cloth.