At last they came to a chamber in the rock. It was like an Aladdin’s cave. Mummy cases were everywhere, standing up against the wall, lying down and piled on top of each other. Great piles of boxes, alabaster vases, statuettes—it was incredible, absolutely amazing.
Without giving the newcomers time to take in the wonderful sight, the Arabs led the way through this chamber down and down through another passage. After traversing 60 yards they came to a chamber that was even more amazing, more wonderful than the last. The strangers could hardly believe their eyes. All around the burial chamber were royal mummies, the glitter of gold and colour showing up under the flickering candles. The cases were exquisitely carved and decorated, so well preserved that it was as though they were made but yesterday.
So intensely excited was the Egyptologist, that it required an effort of will to make him realize this was not a dream, but reality, that he was the first white man in the history of the world to gaze on such a glorious sight; to see the ancient kings and queens as they had slumbered through the centuries.
He looked around him, examined the royal names and titles. Here were Seti I, Thothmes II, Thothmes III, Rameses II. Wherever he looked the mummy of a king or queen greeted his astonished gaze. He was literally astounded, hardly able to take it all in. The magnitude of the find overwhelmed him. He counted the mummies one by one—eleven kings, nine queens, a prince and a princess! It was unbelievable.
In a little while, when the first excitement had passed away, he became the man of action once more. Realizing to the full that only the promptest measures could save the tomb from being looted, he quickly collected three hundred Arabs, and he and his assistant began to remove the treasures. They never halted, never rested, labouring on all through that day and the next without a moment’s sleep, removing the kings and queens from their resting-place, sewing them up in sailcloth, and getting them into the open. In forty-eight hours they cleared the tomb of everything it contained, and in another three days they had conveyed the mummies over the plain of Thebes to the Nile.
The natives were ugly, threatening, angry that their kings should be disturbed—still more angry that there was no chance for them to plunder the tomb any more. Not for a moment dared the Egyptologist and his assistant leave their precious charge, not until the steamer arrived that was to take the royal mummies down to Cairo.
The news of the discovery spread like wildfire through the villages, and as the steamer passed slowly down the Nile, the Egyptian women hailed the passing with the death wail, running along the banks, tearing their hair and uttering their awful cries. Men wailed and fired their guns. It was one of the most remarkable sights ever witnessed, the natives of our own time mourning the Pharaohs who reigned thousands of years ago.
It was the triumph of a man whose whole life was wrapped up in the past life of Egypt, whose own life was as romantic as that of any man who was destined to throw a little light upon the dead civilizations of the Pharaohs. Maspero was but a boy of fourteen when he was attracted by some of the ancient picture-writing of the Egyptians. The queer little figures exercised a strange spell over him. He was quite fascinated by them, so much so, that he made up his boyish mind to learn to read them.
Probably hundreds of thousands of boys have seen pictures of the hieroglyphics and thought them very funny, but who has heard of another boy who was so anxious to read them that he studied them at any and every opportunity, as Gaston Maspero did? He who seeks knowledge will always find some way of acquiring it. Gaston Maspero studied the picture-writing to such good purpose that he learned to read it quite easily and translate it with considerable skill. He used to read the pictures to his school friends, and they were considerably impressed by this ability.
One night in 1867, some of Maspero’s fellow-students were having dinner with their tutor, and Mariette, the famous Egyptologist, was present. Naturally the talk turned on Egypt, and the students tried to impress Mariette by mentioning that Maspero could read hieroglyphics, and that he had taught himself.