The romance of excavation

by David Masters

The tombs indicate that for thousands of years a continual battle of wits was being fought between the kings, who wished to preserve their tombs from desecration, and the thieves who wished to plunder them. The kings built temples for themselves, and had a strong burial chamber placed at one end. The thieves broke in easily and abstracted the treasure. Then the kings made secret burial chambers in their temples for the safeguarding of their mummies, but the thieves located them, and robbed them just the same.

At last a queen hit on the idea of building a fine temple for herself at Thebes, with a special sanctuary for her mummy. But not for a moment did she intend her mummy to rest within the shade of the temple. She sent her priests and tried servants into the desolate valley, to seek a secret hiding-place for her mummy high up in the cliff. They cut a chamber in the rock, and made the tomb in that valley known to-day as the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings.

Other kings came to the valley. They erected temples, and their engineers cut into the heart of the mountains, to make chambers in which to hide their bodies. They built up the places as strongly as they could. They devised obstructions to stop any one from entering. They hid the entrances to the tombs so carefully, that it was impossible to tell whether the places had ever been disturbed.

All their labour, all their secrecy, was in vain. Not a single tomb in all Egypt has yet been found intact. Every tomb discovered has been rifled of its treasure. Even the tomb of Tutankhamen is no exception. The actual holes which the robbers made to enter the tomb were discovered, and, judging by the wealth of the furniture and other things remaining, the haul of gold and silver must have been enormous.

The high priests, horrified at the desecration of the tombs, feared so much for the royal mummies in their charge, that they went out stealthily into the deserted hills and sought a secret hiding-place. Then they brought many royal mummies to it, one by one, probably under cover of darkness, and hid them away from thievish eyes and hands.

For centuries, for thousands of years, the robbers were defeated; the ancient kings and queens of Egypt slept on undisturbed in their secret sepulchre. Yet in the end the tomb robbers triumphed. Somehow, sometime, they managed to find the tomb. They did not blazon their discovery to the world. The booty was too rich for that, so they began systematically robbing the tomb and disposing of the relics to travellers who passed that way.

The ultimate discovery of the tomb by Sir Gaston Maspero is one of the greatest romances of Egyptology. One day in 1881, a visitor showed Maspero some wonderfully illuminated pages of a royal ritual. Maspero, gazing on them in amazement, inquired whence they came, and learned that they had been bought at Thebes.

Instantly all Maspero’s suspicions crystallized into action. He had long suspected that the Arabs had found a royal tomb, and here was definite evidence. Without delay he journeyed to Thebes, and discussed the matter with the authorities. Secret inquiries pointed to four brothers, who lived in some deserted tombs, as having knowledge of the find. A decision to arrest one of them, in the hopes that he would speak, was at once carried into effect. The Arab was thrown into prison, but he said nothing, denied all knowledge of the matter for seven or eight weeks. Maspero could not wait. Offering a big reward for information of the discovery, he returned down the Nile, and ultimately his reward tempted one of the brothers to come forward and agree to lead the authorities to the tomb.

Maspero, back in Cairo, sent an Egyptologist with an assistant hot-foot to Thebes. A rendezvous was fixed at Deir-el-Bahari. Picking their way over the rocks, the Arabs led the two strangers along the foot of the escarpment which frowned bare and sinister above their heads. In a short while they came to a boulder which had fallen from the cliffs above. Screened in the most remarkable manner by this mighty rock, the entrance had escaped human eyes for three thousand years. Arabs and strangers lit their candles, a rope was uncoiled and shaken down the black shaft, and one after another they slid down 40 feet to the bottom.

The strangers groped their way along a tunnel, following the flickering candles just ahead, stooping to escape the rocky ceiling, at times almost having to go down on their hands and knees. They turned a corner, still groping and climbing along the rocky passage, down a flight of rock-cut stairs, deeper and deeper into the recesses of the mountain, kicking against bits of mummy cases, fragments of bandages. On they went, their excitement rising with every step.