The Alabaster Sphinx is one of the evidences of splendour of the ancient city of Memphis, seat of kings, with streets so long that to walk from end to end was said to be half a day’s journey.
Inside the great museum at Cairo are the mummies of Egyptian royalty, which, with countless relics and records and the new discoveries of the archæologists, reveal in intimate detail the life of these people of thousands of years ago.
By going back through the hall one reaches another passageway which slopes downward to the Queen’s Chamber. Below this, reached by another passage connecting with that I first entered, there is a subterranean chamber far under the base of the Pyramid itself. The whole structure is intensely interesting, and if it could be explored by diamond drills or in some other way, other chambers might possibly be found in the parts now looked upon as solid.
CHAPTER XII
FACE TO FACE WITH THE PHARAOHS
How would you like to own an Egyptian mummy princess, perhaps two thousand years old? On my second visit to Egypt I was offered one at the museum. The price was just one hundred dollars in cash, and accompanying it was a certificate showing that it had not been made in Germany. The excavations going on in the valley of the Nile had unearthed so many relics that the museum at Cairo had mummies and other antiques to sell. Hundreds of the ancient dead were being shipped to all parts of the world, and the ghoul-like officials added to their revenues by disposing of the surplus bodies of nobles who lived and ruled ages ago. The lady who was offered to me, with the usual accompaniment of a certificate of age, lay in the clothes in which she was buried. She was wrapped around with linen as yellow as saffron and her black face appeared to smile as I looked at her. She had been put up in spices, and I could almost smell the perfumes with which she was embalmed.
There is no place like this Museum of Cairo in which to study the Egypt of the past. Room after room is walled with the coffins of monarchs who reigned thousands of years ago, and in other caskets the bodies embalmed are exposed to view. I looked a long time upon the face of King Rameses who is supposed to have gone to school with Moses. The king who built Thebes, Karnak, and other great cities, was the man who oppressed the Israelites, although not the one whom the Lord afflicted with plagues thereby causing the Exodus. He was the Alexander of Egypt, the Napoleon of the Nile valley three thousand odd years ago. He conquered the countries about him and was rolling in wealth. “... now lies he there, And none so poor to do him reverence.”
Rameses is remarkably well preserved. His iron jaw is as firm as when he uttered commands in his capital, the hundred-gated city of Thebes. His enormous nose is still prominent. The face, though black, is wonderfully life-like and the teeth shine out as white as when he brushed them after his morning tub, something like four thousand years ago. I noted the silky, fuzzy hair over his black ears and longed for a lock of it for my collection of relics.