"From this place we went to some private tombs, and then to the tombs of the queens, but only visited one of each. Neither of these was particularly interesting after what we had seen, though they contained the usual profusion of mural paintings, which we had no time for inspecting. The best of the paintings and sculptures have been copied by Wilkinson and others, and we may study them at our leisure when we get home, and our friends who are interested in the subject can do the same thing. In one of the tombs we found the work of an artist who evidently had the spirit of fun in him, as there were several caricatures of no mean order. In one picture a boat has collided with another, and a whole lot of cakes and other eatables are overturned on the rowers. We find caricatures occasionally, but not often, and, on the whole, the Egyptians seem to have been a serious people.
"We got back all right to the bank of the river, where the boats were waiting to ferry us over to Luxor. So ends our sight-seeing at Thebes, as we leave to-morrow morning to continue our journey up the Nile. We have had no accident beyond a few slight tumbles and bruises, and have obtained a store of information that will severely tax our memories to retain. Let us hope that we can remember it, and be able to impart our knowledge to others; if we can, we shall be rewarded a thousand times over for the trouble we have taken, and for the fatigues of our visits to the temples and tombs of this famous city of thirty centuries ago."
Since the travels of our friends in Egypt an event has occurred of great interest to all who have any familiarity with the history of the land of the Pharaohs. It will be noted that Frank and Fred, during their visits to the tombs of the kings, and to the museum at Boulak, did not see the mummy of any royal personage, if we except that of Queen Amen-Hotep, which was found by Mariette Bey, together with the remarkable collection of jewellery described in Chapter VIII.
Remembering that no mummy of a king had been found down to the date of the journey of our friends in Egypt, and that all the royal tombs when opened were found to have been previously visited by vandals as free-handed as those of modern days, we can appreciate the importance of the announcement, toward the end of 1881, that a new tomb had been opened and found to contain the mummies of several kings, together with those of other royal personages. The following description is taken from a recent publication, the details having been derived from the reports of M. Maspero, the able successor of Mariette Pasha:
"For the last ten years or more it had been suspected that the Theban Arabs (whose main occupation is tomb-pillage and mummy-snatching) had found a royal sepulchre. Objects of great rarity and antiquity were being brought to Europe every season by travellers who had purchased them from native dealers living on the spot; and many of these objects were historically traceable to certain royal dynasties which made Thebes their capital city. At length suspicion became certainty. An English tourist, passing through Paris, presented Professor Maspero with some photographs from a superb papyrus which he had then lately bought at Thebes from an Arab named Abd-er-Ranoul. This papyrus proved to be the Ritual, or funereal sacred book, written for Pinotem I., third priest-king of the twenty-first dynasty. Evidently, then, the tomb of this sovereign had been discovered and pillaged. In January, 1881, the late lamented Mariette Pasha died at Cairo, and was succeeded by Professor Maspero, the present Conservator of Antiquities to H.H. the Khedive. Professor Maspero at once resolved to get to the bottom of the Theban mystery; and, with that object chiefly in view, proceeded last April to Upper Egypt upon his first official trip of inspection. Arriving at Luxor he straightway arrested the said Abd-er-Ranoul. Threats, bribery, persuasion were, however, tried in vain, and Abd-er-Ranoul was consigned to the district prison at Keneh, the chief town of the province. Here for two months he maintained an obstinate silence. In the mean while Professor Maspero offered a reward of £500 for the discovery of the secret, and returned to Europe. Scarcely had he embarked when the elder brother of Abd-er-Ranoul went privately before the Governor of Keneh, offered to betray the secret, and claimed the reward.
"The governor telegraphed immediately to Cairo; and Herr Emil Brugsch, Keeper of the Boulak Museum (whom Professor Maspero had deputed to act for him in any case of emergency), was forthwith despatched to Thebes. Here he was conducted to a lonely spot in the most desolate and unfrequented part of the great necropolis which extends for between three and four miles along the western bank of the Nile. Hidden behind an angle of limestone cliff, and masked by a huge fragment of fallen rock, he beheld the entrance to a perpendicular shaft descending to a depth of thirty-nine feet. At the bottom of this shaft opened a gallery two hundred and forty feet in length, leading to a sepulchral vault measuring twenty-three feet by thirteen. In this gallery and vault were found some thirty-six mummies, including more than twenty kings and queens, besides princes, princesses, and high-priests, to say nothing of an immense store of sacred vessels, funereal statuettes, alabaster vases, and precious objects in glass, bronze, acacia-wood, etc. The treasure thus brought to light consisted of some six thousand items, not the least valuable of which were four royal papyri. Professor Maspero, in his official report, warmly eulogizes the energy with which Herr Emil Brugsch, by the aid of five hundred native laborers, exhumed, packed, shipped, and brought to Cairo the whole contents of this now famous hiding-place.
COFFIN AND MUMMY OF A ROYAL PRINCESS.
"The following are the principal royal mummies found in this recently opened tomb:
"King Rasekenen-Taaken and Queen Ansera, of the seventeenth dynasty.
"King Ahmes Ra-neb-Pehti, Queen Ahmes Nofretari, Queen Aah-Hotep, Queen Merit-Amen, Queen Hontimoo-hoo, Prince Se Amen, Princess Set-Amen, King Amen-Hotep I., King Thothmes I.,* King Thothmes II., King Thothmes III., Queen Sitka, all of the eighteenth dynasty.
"King Rameses I.,* King Sethi I., King Rameses II., of the nineteenth dynasty.
[The asterisk indicates that the mummy is missing.]
"Queen Notem-Maut, King and High-priest Pinotem I., King Pinotem II., Prince and High-priest Masahirti, Queen Hathor Hout-Taui, Queen Makara, Queen Isi-em-Kheb, Princess Nasi-Khonsu, Prince Tat-f-Ankh, Nebseni, a priest, Noi-Shounap, a priest, of the twenty-first dynasty.
"In some instances the mummy reposes in its original mummy-case, and sometimes in two or three mummy-cases, the whole enclosed in an enormous outer sarcophagus. In others, only the mummy case is left, the mummy having been destroyed or abstracted. Farther, some mummies are found in mummy-cases not their own, or in mummy-cases which have been altered and usurped for their use in ancient times.
"There can be no doubt that the vault in which these various mummies and funereal treasures were found was the family sepulchre of the kings of the twenty-first dynasty. This dynasty was founded by Her-Hor, High-priest of Amen of the great Temple of Amen at Thebes, who, toward the close of the twentieth dynasty, at a time the throne of the last Ramessides was tottering to its foundations, either inherited the crown by right of descent or seized it by force.
"The close of the twentieth dynasty was an epoch of great internal trouble and disorder. During the reigns of the last four or five kings of that line there had been little security for life and property in Thebes; and organized bands of robbers committed constant depredations in the more retired quarters of the necropolis, attacking chiefly the tombs of great personages, and venturing even to break open the sepulchres of the royal dead. Hence it became the sacred duty of the reigning monarch to take every possible precaution to insure the mummies of his predecessors against profanation and pillage.
"We accordingly find that Her-Hor caused the sepulchres of his predecessors to be periodically visited by a service of regularly appointed Inspectors of Tombs, whose duty it was to report upon the condition of the royal mummies; to repair their wrappings and mummy-cases when requisite; and, if necessary, to remove them from their own sepulchres into any others which might be deemed more secure. All of them seem to have been moved several times: at one time the tomb of Queen Ansera, at another time the tomb of Sethi I., at another time the tomb of one of the Amen-Hoteps would seem to have been selected as the chosen hiding-place of several royal mummies, all of whom had been removed from their own original sepulchres by order of Her-Hor or his successors. The mummy of Rameses II. (to whose memory, as the supposed Pharaoh of the oppression of the Hebrews, so strong an interest attaches) appears to have been removed more frequently, and to have suffered more vicissitudes of fortune than any of the others. That his sepulchre in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings had been violated by robbers can scarcely be doubted, for his original mummy-cases were either destroyed or damaged beyond repair.
"All the mummies were eventually consigned to the tomb of the Her-Hor family near the end of the twenty-first dynasty. Professor Maspero believes this final measure to have been taken during the reign of King Menkheperra, the last sovereign but one of the Her-Hor line. Menkheperra himself is not among those found in the vault; neither is his son and successor, Pinotem III. Having piously deposited all these revered and deified Pharaohs and other royal personages in the last home of his own immediate ancestors, Menkheperra evidently closed the vault forever, and was himself content to be buried elsewhere.
"It is interesting to learn from the reports of Professor Maspero and Herr Brugsch the heights of some of the famous kings of Egypt. Raskenen, it seems, was among Egyptian kings like Saul in Israel. He measured six feet one inch, and very few of his descendants took after him in this particular. Ashmes, for instance (his grandson), measured only five feet six inches, and the great Thothmes III. five feet seven inches. Thothmes II. approached the stature of his ancestor, but Sethi I. was no more than five feet nine inches. It is satisfactory to learn that Rameses II. was taller than his father, and not, like Thothmes III., a little man, by any means, for his mummy wants but one inch of six feet.
"One of the most interesting objects in the collection is the coffin of Rameses II. The face of the king is represented on the lid, and the hands are in high relief, grasping the Osirian scourge and crook, but the face is not from the studio of the artists who carved the walls of Abydus, and designed the sitting figures of Aboo-Simbel. On the breast is a legend which includes two royal cartouches or ovals, with an inscription in that hieratic or cursive hieroglyphic writing which is so difficult to read. The names in the ovals are easily read, however—'Ra-messes-mer-Amen' in one, 'Ra-user-Ma Setep-en-Ra' in the other.
"Considerable interest attaches to the mummy of King Pinotem, as it was the latest of all the royal collection. Pinotem was the third king of the twenty-first dynasty, who reigned as nearly as possible a millennium b.c. In addition to the royal mummies, a multitude of objects bearing cartouches will throw great light upon the succession of these kings; and the tent of Pinotem, of leather, embroidered and colored, and covered with hieroglyphics, cannot fail to clear up some historical difficulties as to the priest-kings of Thebes. His face has an Ethiopian cast of features, and he is believed to have been descended from the princes of Egypt who came from the South. The lips are slightly parted, and the upper teeth are almost visible. The absence of the eyeball is indicated by the way in which the eyelids are sunken; and the nostrils are forcibly distended, in consequence of the method employed by the embalmers for the removal of the brain, which was effected by means of a hooked instrument passed up through the nose. The expression is, nevertheless, not unpleasing. The shrouds are of somewhat coarse texture; and a few withered flowers may be observed stuck through the bands which hold the wrappings together."
SECTION OF PAPYRUS. 
COFFIN OF QUEEN NOFRETARI. 
COFFIN OF RAMESES II.