The valley leads nowhere, except into the desert. There was nothing to call the natives in that direction. It was like a lonely valley in another world, and this loneliness no doubt was one of the factors which decided the Pharaohs to seek their last resting-places here. Another factor was that the limestone of the hills was an excellent stone in which to cut the chambers which were to be the eternal homes of the kings.
All their thought, all their secrecy to keep their tombs inviolate, was in vain. The most trusted men were chosen to carve out these underground chambers, but where many men are engaged on a secret mission, the secret is bound to leak out.
Some of the workers may have told their wives, who in turn may have dropped a remark in all innocence which led the robbers to the exact spot. The workers themselves, despite the faith of their masters, were not always to be trusted, and there is little doubt that some of them led the thieves to the tombs and told them exactly where and how to break in, that in some cases the very men who had built the tombs came back afterwards by night and plundered them.
It may easily have been the builders who robbed the tomb of Tutankhamen, for Mr. Carter discovered that the thieves entered within a few years of the King’s burial, and that the tomb was then resealed by the keepers of the royal burial-places.
CHAPTER VIII
The romance of ancient Egypt is not nearly told. Hundreds of volumes have been written about it; hundreds more are still to write. Day by day something is being turned up under the spade to increase our knowledge of those far-off times, and though we know more than the people of a century ago, our present knowledge will probably prove trifling compared with the knowledge of a century hence.
For years the French, favoured by important digging concessions, made many fine discoveries, among them those of Mariette who, going up to Thebes, saw a few columns sticking out of the sand at Karnak and began to excavate the site. Most men would have quailed before the gigantic task, but Mariette set his diggers to work, and slowly but surely rescued from the clutches of the desert all that remained of one of the most remarkable temples in the world. Mountains of sand and broken rock were shifted, not by mammoth machines that dug out a truck-load of sand at once, but by natives who shovelled it into baskets and ran off with it, seven pounds at a time!
When Mariette returned to Egypt with Louis Napoleon some years later, the Egyptologist was as keen on the work as ever. He again began to excavate, and among other things found a statue representing the god Ammon, in whose honour the temple at Karnak was originally built. Standing by the knee of the god was a headless figure, said to be that of Tutankhamen in his boyhood.
Mariette, well knowing the value of the group, showed his regard for Prince Napoleon by making him a present of the statue, and the Prince, fired by what he saw in Egypt, and no doubt by Mariette’s enthusiasm, started to collect things Egyptian.
The time came when Prince Napoleon made up his mind to sell his Egyptian treasures. He sold many things, but no one would look at the statue, so it was bought in at the sale for £20. For long it remained in the Prince’s château, until a dealer eventually acquired it for a trifling sum. Quickly assuring himself of the antiquity of the statue, the dealer went to the Louvre to offer the piece to the nation.