The great square doorway of the tomb showed inky black on the face of the cliff, golden in the moonlight; the shaft plunged steeply downwards into the rock, with short, high steps roughly cut against one wall. Down these we slowly made our way, the utter darkness pricked here and there by the flame of a candle in some one’s hand. A flame shone for a moment on the little shelf cut back into the rock, where the string bed and wooden pillow of the guard still wait his return, just where he went out and left them so many thousand years ago. The steps stopped suddenly on the edge of a pit deep and broad; by the light of a candle held high we could dimly see the red and blue patterns painted on its plastered walls. A hole had been broken through them on the opposite side of the chasm, and crossing by a little plank bridge we crept through, still deeper into the heart of the cliff. On the other side of the wall the tunnel still went downwards, but the faint light showed a deep alcove to the right. On the rocky floor lay a man, bound upon a crumbling wooden boat; the painful bonds still held the brown and shrivelled limbs, his knees drawn up, his head pressed back.
Again down the steep stairway we climbed, feeling along the rough-cut wall, and again at the bottom a chamber opened to the right. A man, a woman, and a girl lie here, side by side in the middle of the floor. They have suffered the indignity of stripping; wounds are in their breasts; the thick black hair upon their heads makes the small faces and limbs seem the more withered and unhuman. It is a pitiful sight.
For the third time the rock-hewn ladder led us down to the square-cut doorway which opened to the presence-chamber of a king of Egypt. The great hall stretched back into the darkness, dimly lighted by hidden candles, heavy with the silence of three thousand years. The faint gleam fell upon the painted walls and pillars of the eternal dwelling-place, the work of such far-off hands clear and fresh with the freshness of yesterday. On the great square pillars Amenhetep still feels the fullness of his earthly life and draws strength from mysterious communing with the life-giving god. On the walls a huge papyrus seems unrolled where the spirit of the King, in the depth of the nether world, may learn to wrestle with and overthrow the serpent-monsters brought by each gloomy Hour. At the back of the hall two steps lead down to the high vaulted space where stands the great rose-granite sarcophagus. In the darkness and the silence the lid or the inner coffin was raised and we were in the presence of the King.
The dim-veiled figure lay before us, wrapt in an inexpressible mystery, the impress of his kingship still upon him, crowned with the greater dignity of death. Far from the loved Egyptian sunshine, from the sweet breath of the north wind, from the fleeting ways of men, the inhabitant of the rock holds his solemn court through the centuries which have no power upon him, with the records of his life and warfare around him and the mimosa wreaths upon his breast.
[Since the above was written plunderers penetrated into the tomb in the absence of the guard, and the body of Amenhetep II. no longer rests in his Eternal Habitation.]
THE GOLDEN DAHABEAH