A FALL DOWN THIRTY CENTURIES
The research work conducted by Professor Ranney, as chief of the Yale
expedition to Egypt, had lain in and about the site of the Mortuary
Temple of King Amenhotep the Third, well-named “Magnificent.” The low
depression which to-day marks the site of this once gorgeous edifice lies
well down upon the broad Theban Plain, and immediately fronts that long
line of rocky mounds, refuse heaps and ruined tombs which rises, tier
upon tier, along the lower slopes of the towering Libyan Hills.
It had been a site of rare possibilities from an Egyptologist’s point of
view. On this account excavation privileges hereabouts had been sought by
representatives of every great museum or seat-of-learning both in the Old
World and the New.
When, finally, the news was telegraphed from Cairo that this most coveted
concession had fallen to the Yale Expedition, and that together with a
substantial area of the unexplored mounds to the north and south of the
temple site, great had been Professor Ranney’s joy.
The recent unearthing of the body and rich treasure of Pharaoh
Akhten-aton, son to that Pharaoh by whom the temple was built, and the
discovery of the rich and comprehensive tomb-equipment of Akhten-aton’s
father and mother-in-law, together with the marvelously preserved
mummies of those ancient worthies, had fired the dampened ardor both of
the workers in the field, and, more important still, perhaps, of those
holders of the purse-strings, the sponsors for the expedition at home.
As I have said above, the site of King Amenhotep’s Mortuary Temple had
been freely acknowledged to be a very promising one, and so far these
hopes had been entirely justified.
Many and rare had been the finds during the season’s work now drawing to
a close. And it was not improbable that some other find of the first
importance might still fall to the spades of the excavators during the
next few weeks of work upon the site.
Think what the nearby Temple of Medinet might at this very moment hold
for Professor Ranney! The tomb of Amenhotep, son of Hap; the Magic Book
of the Sorcerers of Pharaoh, the Luminous Book of Thoth!
Had they had the least suspicion of Professor Ranney’s secret it is safe
to say that many of his brother scientists would gladly have bartered
five years of their lives for a chance at the site. And yet, could any
one of those enthusiasts have foreseen the disaster that would here
befall him, not a man among them would have approached it.
But let us take up the tale, as long as we may, in Professor Ranney’s own
words.
I had recently completed my work in and about the site of the Mortuary
Temple of the illustrious Pharoah Amenhotep the Third and had already
promised myself a trial excavation at the nearby tomb of Pharaoh’s
famous architect and namesake, Amenhotep, when something unexpected
occurred to effectually put an end to all my plans. What that something
was you shall now hear!
As near as I can piece together the amazing threads of my story, this is
what happened to me that last eventful evening in Thebes. My diary, in
part, supplies the clue.
Under date of April 28, 1913, and immediately following the rough
translation of a great memorial tablet which had been found the previous
day, I note this entry: “_Sandstorm just blown over. Headache, feverish.
Finished making plan of palace to scale_.”
Now, in spite of the temperature and headache to which I here refer, and
which, had I not been so keen on my work, I should most certainly have
recognized as a symptom of trouble to come, I had evidently sought to
catch up with a somewhat neglected report of the season’s work.
This occupation had apparently kept me at my desk well on towards dawn.
I deduce this from the fact that immediately following the above short
entry, I find a number of fragmentary hieroglyphic inscriptions having to
do with the history of the foundation and erection of Pharaoh’s Mortuary
Temple, upon which I had been so long at work.
One of these entries is of special interest in this connection, since,
after a lapse of some three thousand years, the two colossal statues of
King Amenhotep III, to whom it refers, may still be seen gazing stolidly
and immutably eastward across the broad reaches of the Theban Plain.
The following graphic description of the now vanished building itself, a
literal translation from the original hieroglyphic, is the last entry in
my diary, the last for many a long day, I may add. Further, and for an
excellent reason, this last entry was never completed. The translation
runs in the following somewhat grandiloquent and semi-poetic vein: “It
hath been given me to set up in a holy place two great statues of the
Son of Ra, Amenhotep, Conqueror of Asia. These are they which stand
before the entrance portal of the Mortuary Temple of His Majesty (Life,
Stability and Health to him). Carved from solid blocks of the hard
grit-stone of On, they tower seventy feet into the air. Their golden
headdresses touch the very dome of heaven. On either side, gold-capped
obelisks of red granite reach high above the temple pylons. Four cedar
flag-staffs tipped with gold rise from grooves cut in the sculptured
sandstone of the temple front. The walls of the temple are carved
and richly painted with scenes representing the Asiatic conquests of
Pharaoh, Lord of Might. Its great bronze doors are inlaid in gold with
the figure of the God Min of Coptos. Through this jeweled outline of
his ‘double’ twice daily doth the Great God enter the Holy Sanctuary,
there to partake of the offerings spread upon its jeweled altars. In
his honor are the ceilings covered with true lazuli of Babylon, its
floors enriched with silver and sprinkled with powdered turquoise.
Its gleaming walls are engraved with designs representing the New
Year’s procession of the Sun Barque, from the Northern to the Southern
Apt. Beside the High Altar stands a tablet thirty feet in height,
covered with gold and inlaid with sard and emerald. Thus is marked
‘The-Place-Where-His-Majesty-Stands-at-the-Sacrificing.’ Beq, son of Beq,
carved the statues and erected the obelisks. Renny, the Syrian, overlaid
and enriched the tablet.”
Inserted here was a drawing of the above mentioned tablet, and, upon it,
the following additional fragment: “Memorial-tablet found face downwards.
I enclose drawings and translations. Evidently _mine_ is a very ancient
_name_? All traces of——.”
Here the diary abruptly stops!
Now, I directly trace the mishap which thereafter befell me to the
discovery of this same tablet.
A hot day spent in transcribing to paper its mud-filled inscriptions, and
a night devoted to their decipherment, might well have driven me forth
in search of the cool breezes to be found along the higher slopes of the
nearby Libyan Hills.
Yet, in this connection, I must not forget to mention the contents of a
newspaper-clipping sent me by Gardiner just before he left Alexandria, a
clipping which seems to have a peculiar meaning, especially in the light
of the curious experiences which I shall presently relate.
This clipping was found folded carefully in the page of my Diary opposite
that last incomplete entry to which I have referred.
Beneath a date and the words “Sphinx, Cairo,” the latter added in
Gardiner’s spidery script, there appear the following extraordinary
paragraphs: “In the Museum of the Louvre there is a mummy, Catalogue No.
49. It is the mummy of a woman, and is said to have been found in one
of the Tombs of the Queens, south-west of the Theban acropolis. The man
who found it was crushed to death within twenty-four hours after he had
touched it, and his assistants who hauled it up from the tomb-shaft died
within a few weeks. Three of the carriers who handled it on the Nile boat
died within a short space of time, and one of the men who unpacked it at
Paris died in great agony within less than a week after he had played
his part in the work of getting it to its destination. All these were
seemingly natural deaths, but it is odd that all the men whose fingers
touched the mummy should have died so soon after the handling. The body
of the unknown appears to have been interred with all the elaboration
prescribed for _Queens of the Royal-Blood_! The work of the casemaker
was careful in the extreme. Both granite coffin and gold-covered casing
were of unusual quality and richness. The many gem-incrustations, with
which the gold cases were inlaid, were similarly of the richest and
rarest materials. Yet, the name of Meryt, that of a minor priestess of
the Temple, found beneath the pitch which had been smeared upon the outer
casings, seemed to prove conclusively that the body was that of one of
the chantresses of the Temple of Sekhmet at Karnak.
“But, following the unwinding of the aromatic wrappings which swathed the
body, the curator in charge was surprised to find a second inscription.
This indicated that the mummy was that of Queen Hanit, the first wife of
Amenhotep the Third, whom the King put aside in favor of Thi, a beautiful
Syrian. You may recall how Queen Thi, following Hanit’s incarceration in
the great Temple of Sekhmet, is supposed to have instigated the death
of Hanit’s son, the true heir to the throne, at the hands of Menna, a
favorite of hers. Of the further history of Lady Hanit I personally know
nothing.”
Along the margin Gardiner had added: “I send this to you, Ranney, knowing
your interest in the period which the name of Hanit suggests. Can you
unravel the mystery surrounding the mummy of this Queen who is not a
Queen?
“In regard to the sudden taking off of the seven workmen, and, by the
way, the curator is now dead, I can hear you expatiate at length upon
the fearful ‘_hekau-spells_’ and ‘_magic incantations_’ of the ancients!
“Once more I ask you to prove to me that your ancients ever possessed
such powers, or if they did, that they could by any possible chance have
survived the wear and tear of three thousand years! And, meanwhile, allow
me to submit myself, your unbelieving friend!”
I smile even now, as I shake my head at Gardiner’s careless words.
What can I but think? Childish, you say! A series of remarkable
coincidences! Wait!
It was from Burton that I first heard an account of what he and the other
members of the expedition supposed, and rightly, had happened to me.
It seemed that I left my tent about dawn and started for one of my
favorite walks westward, taking the general direction of a certain
lofty spur of the deep red Libyan Hills. This jutting ledge immediately
overhung the ruins of King Mentuhotep’s temple. So close a part of
the towering cliff is this sadly mutilated structure that one might
easily slip from the shelf above and fall directly upon the great stone
passage-way which conducts to the inner chamber.
To this somewhat dangerous vantage-point, I had sometimes taken
distinguished visitors to our camp, people who had come with letters from
friends at home, or those who I felt sure would be willing to put up with
the discomforts of a night spent beyond the walls of the luxurious Winter
Palace Hotel.
I think I may say truthfully, that not one of my visitors failed of being
more than repaid for any trifling discomfort which was theirs, since
few scenes can equal, certainly none surpass, the view presented by the
extended vista north, south and eastward across the winding Nile Valley
towards Karnak, Luxor, and the deep blue Eastern Hills.
But to return to my story. That memorable morning the fever must
assuredly have had me well within its clutches. Since, of that early
morning walk, I remember but a single incident—Heaven knows, I am never
likely to forget it—a great black void into which I suddenly pitched, a
horrible tingling in all my veins, a shock and a myriad of little flames
that seemed to burst from my very eyeballs!
Was I conscious, I asked myself! I must be, for I seemed to realize at
once what a dreadful thing had happened to me.
Of course, I knew I had pitched headlong into the open mouth of one of
those rock-hewn tombs with which the tumbled slopes below the Libyan
Hills are perforated. Well might those crumbling hills been named a
honey-comb of death!
I could not move; my whole body seemed numb. By gazing upward I found
that I could see the stars! Yes, I recognized the star of Hathor, in all
her radiant beauty.
How my head ached! How my ears roared! Worse than all was the agony of a
ceaseless throb-throb, beat-beat, at the back of my head.
It was as though someone were hitting me with a hammer, rhythmically,
relentlessly.
Perhaps after all I _was_ dead!
No, there were the sharp outlines of the tomb-shaft and the stars above!
I wonder whose tomb it is? Is it charted? Oh, will that throbbing never
stop? Won’t someone come? Help! Help!
As if in answer to my cry, high above me I saw a queer, yet strikingly
familiar figure, a figure silhouetted black against the sky.
The figure leaned over and gazed downwards into the shaft. I noticed its
long and thickly curled wig.
“Ha, ha! A wig of the New Empire,” said I to myself.
Its owner’s face I could not see, but he—or she—yes, it was a woman,
peered long and earnestly into the gloomy depths of the shaft where I lay.
Suddenly, and as though through the medium of some unnatural light, her
face was revealed.
“I was right,” thought I. “It _is_ a woman, and by her robes, a woman of
the New Empire!”
But what features, what an expression! Never shall I forget it. A face of
the most exotic beauty; of a type I knew instantly. It could only have
belonged to one of the ladies of the house of Amenhotep the Magnificent!
Such a face the Royal Sculptor Beq might carve, or Amenhotep,
Superintendent of the Royal Craftsmen.
The beautiful apparition addressed me in the soft tones of the educated
Egyptian.
I found that I could rise without difficulty at her bidding. Struggling
to my feet I pushed a stone at the side of the tomb chamber and passed
through a narrow false door which opened as my hand pressed the secret
block. I found myself once more out under the sunset glow.
All this seemed perfectly natural to me. But, I remember thinking
how strange it was that I should find the pyramids of the Antefs and
Mentuhoteps, the sphinx-lined Causeways, and the many Mortuary Temples
hereabouts, standing clearly defined against the hills, and seemingly
in all their original beauty. Nay, the very cypresses, palms, karobs
and myrrh trees which flanked the ivory-toned Causeway leading to Queen
Hatshepsut’s Temple, were to be seen nodding gracefully in the evening
breeze.
My gaze fell questionably upon the smiling face of my adorable savior.
She must have remarked my bewilderment. Yet, without a word she turned
and started swiftly toward a small white house half-concealed in a dense
grove of feathery acacias.
In response to a quick gesture on the part of my guide, I pulled back the
wooden bolt and opened the door. A tall and strikingly handsome Egyptian
arose from an ivory-inlaid stool as I entered. Carefully rolling up a
manuscript which he had been reading by the light of an oil lamp, and
without otherwise appearing to notice me, he took from the table nearby a
blue glazed goblet, handed it to my rescuer, and re-seated himself.
Once again he picked up the discarded manuscript and continued his
reading as though nothing had happened to interrupt his train of thought.
Perhaps, after all, I had been expected! I heard my charming guide utter
the one softly sibilant Egyptian word: _Drink!_
I lifted the bright blue goblet to my lips and drank deeply,
thirstily....