"The tomb has a narrow entrance, from which there is a descending passage-way, and sometimes a staircase. There are long halls and lateral chambers, and now and then the real resting-place of the king is beneath the main hall, which contained a bogus mummy intended to mislead any unauthorized visitor. The Egyptians exhausted their brains in devices to conceal the royal mummies, and it is quite possible that in some cases they have succeeded. When Belzoni opened the tomb that bears his name he came upon a staircase at the end of the passage, which he descended; there he found a horizontal chamber terminating in another staircase, and at its foot was an oblong chamber, or pit, of considerable depth.
"This appeared to be the end of the tomb, and it was, as an Hibernian might say, full of emptiness.
"Belzoni was disappointed, as his search had been fruitless. While wondering what to do next, he struck his hammer against the wall at the top of the pit, and found that it gave forth a hollow sound. He reasoned that the sound indicated a chamber beyond, and that the apparently solid rock was only a wall of masonry, carefully covered with stucco and hieroglyphics.
"He sent out for the best battering-ram that could be procured, and it soon came in the shape of a log cut from a palm-tree. With this log he knocked down the wall and opened a way into the actual tomb. The inscriptions on the walls were found quite unharmed, and so was the alabaster coffin, which is now in London, but contained nothing of consequence when discovered. The tomb appears to be one of those that was partially plundered within a few hundred years of its occupation by the royal mummy, and again closed up.
"The total distance from the entrance to the farthest point in Belzoni's tomb is four hundred and seventy feet, and the perpendicular descent of the various stairways and inclines is one hundred and eighty feet. We had a fatiguing walk through it, in consequence of the unevenness of the way and the fragments of broken and fallen rock. The air was somewhat stifling, partly owing to its confined character, and partly from the effect of our torches and candles. We burnt a good deal of magnesium wire to light up the halls, and reveal the beautiful inscriptions that were around us in all directions except beneath our feet. Remember that there was hardly a foot of space without inscriptions. The walls of this tomb afford material for a year's study, and hard study at that.
"Some of the inscriptions refer to the daily occupations of the Egyptians, others to the deeds of the kings of Egypt, and others to the funeral ceremonies attending the death of a king. These last are by far the most numerous, and there are long extracts from the 'Book of the Dead,' showing the progress of the soul after it leaves the body.
"One inscription shows the soul passing to Amenthes, where, after a short halt, it was ordered to the Hall of Justice. On its way to this hall it was attacked by demons and wild beasts, but all these were driven away if the body had been properly provided with prayers written on the rolls of papyrus and the scarabæi that are always found with the mummies.
"Another picture represents the soul in the Hall of Justice, where its heart is placed in one scale and the Goddess of Truth in the other. Two of the gods superintend the weighing, and a third makes a note of the result. The god Osiris (with forty-two councillors) pronounces sentence. The heart was found heavy, and therefore the spirit was ordered to the regions of the blessed, where it was to pass through centuries of happiness and then return to the mummy, which would be restored to life. Of course they always found that the heart of the king was of the proper weight; it would have been dangerous for the artist to discover it too light, and thereby condemn it to suffer long tortures as a punishment for its sins before it could pass to a state of rest, and get ready to return to the mummy that waited for it.
"Belzoni's tomb was made for King Sethi I., whose temple we visited from Girgeh. Portions of it were left unfinished, and some of the drawings are incomplete. This condition of the wall is to be regretted for some reasons, but is very fortunate in other respects, as it shows how the Egyptian artists performed their work. The draughtsman made the outlines in red chalk, and they were then inspected by the chief artist, who corrected any errors or made alterations with a black crayon; the marks were then followed by the sculptor, and were afterward colored with the proper pigments. In some cases the wall was laid out in squares before the figures were drawn, but this does not seem to have been the universal rule, and there is abundant evidence that the Egyptian artists were accomplished in what we call 'free-hand' drawing.