"And the very air which keeps us alive will destroy these," said Meg. "It's odd, the way which things that have existed intact for three thousand years without air will be killed by it!"
"Have you any definite ideas about that figure?" Mike referred to the mummy. "Whose is it?"
"The whole thing is very bewildering. The tomb obviously hasn't been plundered, for nothing of any value is missing, and yet, as you can see, some of the gold wrappings have been torn from the mummy, certain things have been defaced on the walls—the tomb is not as it was when the body was first laid here."
"No," Mike said. "Obviously not. The entrance has been tampered with and those outer walls built; and look at all that debris in the shaft. Yet, as you say, the obvious things of intrinsic value have not been removed."
Meg pointed to a recess in the wall; it still held the canopic jars. Their lids were splendidly formed out of head-portraits of the queen. Meg knew their meaning, their use; they held the intestines of the dead. The Biblical expression, "bowels of compassion," always came to her mind when she looked at canopic jars. These jars had their significance.
A very good significance, too, she thought, for certainly our bowels are highly sensitive organs, responding and acting in complete sympathy with our mental condition. And who can say for certain where our compassions are seated, our sensibilities and sympathies? Why not, as the Egyptians thought, in our bowels rather than in our brains? "Joseph's bowels did yearn upon his brother Benjamin."
"Then you have no idea who the queen was?" Meg said.
"Not yet," Freddy said. "But we shall know. No Egyptian could enter into his future abode without his name. It was always plainly and repeatedly written on the embalmed mummy. His identification was absolutely essential."
"What a help to Egyptologists!" Meg said.
"Probably her name will be written on these golden wrappings and on the scarabs, if we find any. Nothing has been done yet. This precaution of the ancients, in the matter of names, has, as you say, saved us endless work. If plunderers haven't obliterated the name and stolen the scarabs and other marks of identification, we generally discover who it is."