Hermonthis lighted a torch and walked before me.
There were corridors hewn through the living rock; the walls, covered with hieroglyphic paintings and allegorical processions, might well have occupied thousands of arms for thousands of years; these corridors, of an interminable length, ended in square chambers, in the midst of which pits had been contrived, through which we descended by means of cramp-hooks or spiral stairways; these pits conducted us into other chambers, from which other corridors opened, equally decorated with painted sparrow-hawks, serpents coiled in circles, and those mystic symbols, the tau, the pedum, and the bari—prodigious works which no living eye would ever examine, endless legends in granite which only the dead have time to read throughout eternity.
At last we issued into a hall so vast, so enormous, so immeasurable, that the eye could not perceive its confines. Flooding the sight were files of monstrous columns between which twinkled livid stars of yellow flame, and these points of light revealed further incalculable depths.
The Princess Hermonthis always held me by the hand, and graciously saluted the mummies of her acquaintance.
My eyes accustomed themselves to the crepuscular light, and objects became discernible.
I beheld, seated upon their thrones, the kings of the subterranean races: they were magnificent, dry old men, withered, wrinkled, parchmented, blackened with naphtha and bitumen—all wearing golden headdresses, breast-plates, and gorgets starry with precious stones, eyes of a sphinx-like fixity, and long beards whitened by the snows of the centuries. Behind them, their embalmed people stood, in the rigid and constrained pose of Egyptian art, preserving eternally the attitude prescribed by the hieratic code. Behind these peoples, contemporary cats mewed, ibises flapped their wings, and crocodiles grinned, all rendered still more monstrous by their swathing bands.
All the Pharaohs were there—Cheops, Chephrenes, Psammetichus, Sesostris, Amenotaph—all the dark rulers of the pyramids and the nymphs. On the yet higher thrones sat King Chronos, Xixouthros, who was contemporary with the deluge, and Tubal Cain, who preceded it.
The beard of King Xixouthros had grown so full that it already wound seven times around the granite table upon which he leaned, lost in a somnolent revery.
Further back, through a dusty cloud across the dim centuries, I beheld vaguely the seventy-two preadamite Kings, with their seventy-two peoples, forever passed away.
After allowing me to gaze upon this astounding spectacle a few moments, the Princess Hermonthis presented me to Pharaoh, her father, who vouchsafed me a majestic nod.