CHAPTER VI. THE FINDING OF THE ROYAL MUMMIES
Nothing in modern discovery has more vividly and suddenly brought the ancient world home to the world of to-day than the finding of the actual bodies, the very flesh and blood of the Pharaohs marvellously preserved to us by the embalmer’s venerable art. The discovery has bridged the chasm between the Ancient and the New as a midnight flash of lightning from the clouds to the earth.
As so often happens, what had foiled the eager search of the patient scholar, had not eluded the cupidity of the thief. The appearance of royal mummies and priceless manuscripts on the open market filled the explorers with both chagrin and zeal. M. Maspero tells of the various wiles by which influential politicians of the Orient concealed their rich treasure-sources, and of the almost endless difficulties overcome by the European explorers before the thieves could be first deprived of their influence with the authorities, and then of their discoveries. These latter the scholars wished to examine and study where found, and then distribute them among museums for the benefit of other scholars and for public enlightenment. The real discoverers, the Arabs, were after loot alone, and mingled ruthlessness, lies, misrepresentations, and all manner of duplicity with their thrift. It is not here fitting to tell the story of the fight between scholarship and commerce; but the account of the revelation of the treasure-chamber itself is as appropriate as it is thrilling.[a]
Mummy and Inner Case
On Wednesday, the 6th of July, 1879, Messrs. Emil Brugsch and Ahmad Effendi Kamal were conducted by Muhammed Ahmed Abd-er-Rassul to the entrance of the funeral vault itself.
The Egyptian engineer who long ago hollowed out the secret chamber had made his arrangements in the most ingenious fashion. Never was secret chamber better disguised. The chain of hills which at the spot divides the Biban-el-Moluk from the Theban plain, forms, between the Assassif and the Valley of the Queens, a series of natural amphitheatres, of which the best known was, up to the present, that on which stands the monument of Deir-el-Bahari. In the wall of rocks which separates Deir-el-Bahari from the succeeding amphitheatres, just behind the knoll of Sheikh Abd-el-Gurnah, about two hundred feet above the level of the cultivated lands, a pit was dug forty feet in depth by six in breadth. At the bottom of the pit, in the western side, was cut the entrance of a corridor four and a half feet wide by nearly three in height. After running a length of about twenty-five feet, it turns abruptly to the north, and extends to a distance of two hundred feet, not always keeping to the same dimensions; in certain parts it is about six and a half feet wide, in others little more than four. Near the centre five or six roughly hewn steps indicate a sensible change in the level, and on the right hand a sort of unfinished niche shows that there had been an idea of once more changing the direction of the gallery. The latter at last emerges into a kind of irregular, oblong chamber, about twenty-five feet in length.
The first object which struck the eye of Herr Brugsch, when he reached the bottom of the pit, was a white and yellow coffin, with the name of Nesi-Khonsu. It was in the corridor, about two feet from the entrance; a little further was a coffin whose form recalled the style of the XVIIth Dynasty; then Queen TiuHathor Hont-tui, then Seti I. Alongside the coffins and strewing the ground, were boxes of funeral statuettes, canopic vases,[7] bronze libation vases, and right at the back, in the angle formed by the corridor as it turns north, the funeral canopy of Queen Isiem-kheb, folded and crumpled like a worthless object which some priest in a hurry to get away had thrown carelessly in a corner. All along the great corridor was the same confusion and disorder; it was necessary to crawl along without knowing where hands and knees were being placed.
