The Story Teller of the Desert—"Backsheesh!" / or, Life and Adventures in the Orient

by Thomas Wallace Knox

We hired an Arab to climb up and strike the stone, and we had the performance not only once but half a dozen times, all for half a franc for the entire party, or less than a third of a cent each. Some things are dearer now than in the olden time, but the Memnon business is cheaper. Two thousand years ago you had to be there at sunrise and sometimes you had to go two or three days in succession, before you heard the sound, as the priest who struck the stone would happen to be off on a drunk or neglecting his business. But now a little “backsheesh” will settle the matter at any hour of the day and it would keep on a week if you were willing to pay for the fun.

We spent a day among the tombs of the Kings, which are in a valley four or five miles back from the river; there are lots of tombs there, fifty or more, some of them being the burial places of the kings, and others those of queens, of priests, of common people, and even of cats, dogs, ibises, crocodiles, and other beasts, birds, and reptiles.

I have said fifty, I might better have said there are four times that number as nobody seems to know how many tombs there are in the hills back of Thebes, and every one admits they are very extensive.

The most interesting are the tombs of the Kings, and also those of the priests; we entered half a dozen of the first and one of the latter and made as thorough an investigation as was possible. Some were discovered by Bruce and some by Belzoni, and some by more modern explorers. Every few years a fresh tomb is opened and important revelations are made. Any person who wishes to dig among these tombs can obtain the permission of the proper authorities and an officer will be sent to superintend his work and see that he gives a proper account of the treasures he finds. Most of the tombs that have been opened have been stripped of their contents and nothing remains except the mural sculptures and paintings. Some of these are of a most exquisite character and show that the Egyptians were well advanced in the art of drawing. The tombs consist of long passages cut into the rock, some of them horizontal; some descending and some with one, two, or it may be half a dozen lateral chambers and apartments. Passages, halls, and chambers are all decorated with the same profusion as are the temples, and in some of them the colors are laid on with great care. Egyptian life and its manners and customs, the arms and implements in use, the employments of the people, their religious belief, the ceremonies of burial, and many other things can be learned by a study of these tombs, and they have probably been more useful in this respect than have the temples, which are generally devoted to religious subjects and incidents in the life of the King whom they commemorate.

We lighted them up with candles and magnesium wire; we wandered through the halls and chambers, and we took lunch one day in the entrance of a tomb which was once the post-mortem house of Rameses III. Did the old fellow ever suspect that a party of travellers would in the present century devour cold chicken and ham sandwiches, and smoke cigars and pipes and cigarettes at his door?

Most of the tombs that have been opened have been found rifled of their valuables, and the modern explorer has to be contented with the granite coffins, and is very fortunate if he can find a royal mummy. M. Mariette discovered and opened in 1859 the coffin of Queen Aah Hotep, which contained a remarkable collection of jewelry.

She is thought to have been one of the Queens of the XVIIIth Dynasty, and to have lived about thirty-five hundred years ago. There were bracelets and other ornaments of lapis lazuli, carnelian, feldspar, and turquoise set in gold, and there was a gold chain nearly a yard long and framed of fine wire intricately woven. The collection was in the Paris exhibition of ‘67, where it took the prize. The French jewellers said it would be difficult for them with all their skill to mend this chain if it were broken, and they admitted that the goldsmith’s art in the days of Queen Aah Hotep was little inferior to that of to-day.

The body of an Egyptian was prepared for burial by the removal of the brains, intestines, and viscera generally; it was then soaked in nitre for seventy days, and afterwards filled with salt and aromatic herbs. It was then carefully bandaged, every finger and toe being separately wrapped, and there is not a bandage known to modern surgery with which the Egyptians were not familiar. The bandages were soaked in preservative gums and the body thus carefully prepared was placed in a wooden coffin, shaped to the body, and covered with hieroglyphics, which were generally passages from the Book of the Dead. Then this was placed in a stone coffin, this again in a larger one, and sometimes the whole was enclosed in another. The number of the coffins and the care of preparations depended upon the rank and wealth of the deceased very much as do the funeral ceremonies of today. The jewels of the deceased were enclosed with him, and this practice has led to the opening of so many tombs since the decline of the ancient Empire.

You can buy whole mummies, or parts of them, of the Arabs, around Thebes, but they are all the remains of common people. The supply of Kings was limited from the outset and has long been exhausted. The demand is far greater than the supply. I asked repeatedly for a king or for a live mummy, but in every instance was told that I could not be gratified I would give a good deal for a genuine monarch, and was in the market for one all the time I was at Luxor, but in vain.

All the way back to the river the Arabs kept near us trying to sell antiquities, but we were not inclined to purchase. One fellow had a mummy head that had a remarkably fresh look, and I was told by the dragoman that when the supply of mummies runs short, the natives dig up the skulls and arms from their own cemeteries and offer them for sale. I accused this merchant of endeavoring to dispose of the head of his grandfather, but he denied the imputation, and said it was a real mummy. I promised him a piastre if he would walk by the side of the “Doubter” and continue to offer the head to him all the way back to the river, and to assist the offer by holding the skull in front of the old fellow’s face.