Prologue

"I have a presentiment that we shall find in the valley of Biban el

Moluk a tomb intact," said to a high-bred-looking young Englishman a

much more humble personage who was wiping, with a big, blue-checked

handkerchief, his bald head, on which stood drops of perspiration, just

as if it had been made of porous clay and filled with water like a

Theban water-jar.

"May Osiris hear you!" replied the English nobleman to the German

scholar. "One may be allowed such an invocation in the presence of the

ancient _Diospolis Magna_. But we have been so often deceived hitherto;

treasure-seekers have always forestalled us."

"A tomb which neither the Shepherd Kings nor the Medes of Cambyses nor

the Greeks nor the Romans nor the Arabs have explored, and which will

give up to us its riches intact," continued the perspiring scholar, with

an enthusiasm which made his eyes gleam behind the lenses of his blue

glasses.

"And on which you will print a most learned dissertation which will give

you a place by the side of Champollion, Rosellini, Wilkinson, Lepsius,

and Belzoni," said the young nobleman.

"I shall dedicate it to you, my lord, for had you not treated me with

regal munificence, I could not have backed up my system by an

examination of the monuments, and I should have died in my little town

in Germany without having beheld the marvels of this ancient land,"

replied the scholar, with emotion.

This conversation took place not far from the Nile, at the entrance to

the valley of Biban el Moluk, between Lord Evandale, who rode an Arab

horse, and Dr. Rumphius, more modestly perched upon an ass, the lean

hind-quarters of which a fellah was belabouring. The boat which had

brought the two travellers, and which was to be their dwelling during

their stay, was moored on the other side of the Nile in front of the

village of Luxor. Its sweeps were shipped, its great lateen sails furled

on the yards. After having devoted a few days to visiting and studying

the amazing ruins of Thebes, gigantic remains of a mighty world, they

had crossed the river on a sandal, a light native boat, and were

proceeding towards the barren region which contains within its depths,

far down mysterious hypogea, the former inhabitants of the palaces on

the other bank. A few men of the crew accompanied Lord Evandale and Dr.

Rumphius at a distance, while the others, stretched out on the deck in

the shadow of the cabin, were peacefully smoking their pipes and

watching the craft.

Lord Evandale was one of those thoroughly irreproachable young noblemen

whom the upper classes of Britain give to civilisation. He bore

everywhere with him the disdainful sense of security which comes from

great hereditary wealth, a historic name inscribed in the "Peerage and

Baronetage"--a book second only to the Bible in England--and a beauty

against which nothing could be urged, save that it was too great for a

man. His clear-cut and cold features seemed to be a wax copy of the head

of Meleager or Antinoues; his brilliant complexion seemed to be the

result of rouge and powder, and his somewhat reddish hair curled

naturally as accurately as an expert hairdresser or clever valet could

have made it curl. On the other hand, the firm glance of his steel-blue

eyes and the slightly sneering expression of his lower lip corrected

whatever there might be of effeminate in his general appearance.

As a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron, the young nobleman indulged

occasionally in a cruise on his swift yacht _Puck_, built of teak,

fitted like a boudoir, and manned by a small crew of picked seamen. In

the course of the preceding year he had visited Iceland; in the present

year he was visiting Egypt, and his yacht awaited him in the roads of

Alexandria. He had with him a scholar, a physician, a naturalist, an

artist, and a photographer, in order that his trip might not be

unfruitful. He was himself highly educated, and his society successes

had not made him forget his triumphs at Cambridge University. He was

dressed with that accuracy and careful neatness characteristic of the

English, who traverse the desert sands in the same costume which they

would wear when walking on the pier at Ramsgate or on the pavements of

the West End. A coat, vest, and trousers of white duck, intended to

repel the sun's rays, composed his costume, which was completed by a

narrow blue necktie with white spots, and an extremely fine Panama hat

with a veil.

Rumphius, the Egyptologist, preserved even in this hot climate the

traditional black coat of the scholar with its loose skirts, its curled

up collar, its worn buttons, some of which had freed themselves of their

silk covering. His black trousers shone in places and showed the warp.

Near the right knee an attentive observer might have remarked upon the

greyish ground of the stuff a systematic series of lines of richer tone

which proved that he was in the habit of wiping his pen upon this

portion of his clothes. His muslin cravat, rolled in the shape of a

cord, hung loosely around his neck, on which stood out strongly the

Adam's apple. Though he was dressed with scientific carelessness,

Rumphius was not any the handsomer on that account. A few reddish hairs,

streaked with gray, were brushed back behind his protruding ears, and

were puffed up by the high collar of his coat. His perfectly bald skull,

shining like a bone, overhung a prodigiously long nose, spongy and

bulbous at the end, so that with the blue discs of his glasses he looked

somewhat like an ibis,--a resemblance increased by his head sunk between

his shoulders. This appearance was of course entirely suitable and most

providential for one engaged in deciphering hieroglyphic inscriptions

and scrolls. He looked like a bird-headed god, such as are seen on

funeral frescoes, who had transmigrated into the body of a scholar.

The lord and the doctor were travelling towards the cliffs which

encircle the sombre valley of Biban el Moluk, the royal necropolis of

ancient Thebes, indulging in the conversation of which we have related a

part, when, rising like a Troglodyte from the black mouth of an empty

sepulchre--the ordinary habitation of the fellahs--another person,

dressed in somewhat theatrical fashion, abruptly entered on the scene,

stood before the travellers, and saluted them with the graceful salute

of the Orientals, which is at once humble, caressing, and noble.

This man was a Greek who undertook to direct excavations, who

manufactured and sold antiquities, selling new ones when the supply of

the old happened to fail. Nothing about him, however, smacked of the

vulgar exploiter of strangers. He wore a red felt fez from which hung a

long blue silk tassel; under the narrow edge of an inner linen cap

showed his temples, evidently recently shaved. His olive complexion, his

black eyebrows, his hooked nose, his eyes like those of a bird of prey,

his big moustaches, his chin almost divided into two parts by a mark

which looked very much like a sabre-cut, would have made his face that

of a brigand, had not the harshness of his features been tempered by the

assumed amenity and the servile smile of a speculator who has many

dealings with the public. He was dressed in very cleanly fashion in a

cinnamon-coloured jacket embroidered with silk of the same colour,

gaiters of the same stuff, a white vest adorned with buttons like

chamomile flowers, a broad red belt, and vast bulging trousers with

innumerable folds.

He had long since noted the boat at anchor before Luxor. Its size, the

number of the oarsmen, the luxury of the fittings, and especially the

English flag which floated from the stern, had led his mercantile

instinct to expect a rich traveller whose scientific curiosity might be

exploited, and who would not be satisfied with statuettes of blue or

green enamelled ware, engraved scarabaei, paper rubbings of hieroglyphic

panels, and other such trifles of Egyptian art.

He had followed the coming and going of the travellers among the ruins,

and knowing that they would not fail, after having sated their

curiosity, to cross the stream in order to visit the royal tombs, he

awaited them on his own ground, certain of fleecing them to some extent.

He looked upon the whole of this funereal realm as his own property,

and treated with scant courtesy the little subaltern jackals who

ventured to scratch in the tombs.

With the swift perception characteristic of the Greeks, no sooner had he

cast his eyes upon Lord Evandale than he quickly estimated the probable

income of his lordship and resolved not to deceive him, reasoning that

he would profit more by telling the truth than by lying. So he gave up

his intention of leading the noble Englishman through hypogea traversed

hundreds of times already, and disdained to allow him to begin

excavations in places where he knew nothing would be found; for he

himself had long since taken out and sold very dear the curiosities they

had contained.

Argyropoulos (such was the Greek's name), while exploring the portion of

the valley which had been less frequently sounded than others because

hitherto the search had never been rewarded by any find, had come to the

conclusion that in a certain spot, behind some rocks whose position

seemed to be due to chance, there certainly existed the entrance to a

passageway masked with peculiar care, which his great experience in this

kind of search had enabled him to recognise by a thousand signs

imperceptible to less clear-sighted eyes than his own, which were as

sharp and piercing as those of the vultures perched upon the entablature

of the temples. Since he had made that discovery, two years before, he

had bound himself never to walk or look in that direction lest he might

give a hint to the violators of tombs.

"Does your lordship intend to attempt excavations?" said he in a sort of

cosmopolitan dialect which those who have been in the ports of the

Levant and have had recourse to the services of the polyglot

dragomans--who end by not knowing any language--are well acquainted

with. Fortunately, both Lord Evandale and his learned companion knew the

various tongues from which Argyropoulos borrowed. "I can place at your

disposal," he went on, "some hundred energetic fellahs who, under the

spur of whip and bakshish, would dig with their finger-nails to the very

centre of the earth. We may try, if it pleases your lordship, to clear

away a buried sphinx or a shrine, or to open up a hypogeum."

On seeing that his lordship remained unmoved by this tempting

enumeration, and that a sceptical smile flitted across the doctor's

face, Argyropoulos understood that he had not to deal with easy dupes,

and he was confirmed in his intention to sell to the Englishman the

discovery on which he reckoned to complete his fortune and to give a

dowry to his daughter.

"I can see that you are scholars, not ordinary tourists, and that vulgar

curiosity does not bring you here," he went on, speaking in English less

mixed with Greek, Arabic, and Italian. "I will show you a tomb which has

hitherto escaped all searchers, which no one knows of but myself. It is

a treasure which I have carefully preserved for a person worthy of it."

"And for which you will have to be paid a high price," said his

lordship, smiling.

"I am too honest to contradict your lordship; I do hope to get a good

price for my discovery. Every one in this world lives by his trade. Mine

is to exhume Pharaohs and sell them to strangers. Pharaohs are becoming

scarce at the rate at which they are being dug up; there are not enough

left for everybody. They are very much in demand, and it is long since

any have been manufactured."

"Quite right," said the scholar; "it is some centuries since the

undertakers, dissectors, and embalmers have shut up shop, and the

Memnonia, peaceful dwellings of the dead, have been deserted by the

living."

The Greek, as he heard these words, cast a sidelong glance at the

German, but fancying from his wretched dress that he had no voice in the

matter, he continued to address himself exclusively to the young

nobleman.

"Are a thousand guineas too much, my lord, for a tomb of the greatest

antiquity, which no human hand has opened for more than three thousand

years, since the priests rolled rocks before its mouth? Indeed, it is

giving it away; for perhaps it contains quantities of gold, diamond, and

pearl necklaces, carbuncle earrings, sapphire seals, ancient idols in

precious metals, and coins which could be turned to account."

"You sly rascal!" said Rumphius, "you are praising up your wares, but

you know better than any one that nothing of the sort is found in

Egyptian tombs."

Argyropoulos, understanding that he had to do with clever men, ceased to

boast, and turning to Lord Evandale, he said to him, "Well, my lord,

does the price suit you?"

"I will give a thousand guineas," replied the young nobleman, "if the

tomb has not been opened; but I shall give nothing if a single stone has

been touched by the crow-bar of the diggers."

"With the additional proviso," added Rumphius the prudent, "that we

carry off everything we shall find in the tomb."

"Agreed!" said Argyropoulos, with a look of complete confidence. "Your

lordship may get ready your bank-notes and gold beforehand."

"Dr. Rumphius," said Lord Evandale to his acolyte, "it strikes me that

the wish you uttered just now is about to be realised. This man seems

sure of what he says."

"Heaven will it may be so!" replied the scholar, shaking his head

somewhat doubtfully; "but the Greeks are most barefaced liars, _Cretae

mendaces_, says the proverb."

"No doubt this one comes from the mainland," answered Lord Evandale,

"and I think that for once he has told the truth."

The Greek walked a few steps ahead of the nobleman and the scholar like

a well-bred man who knows what is proper. He walked lightly and firmly,

like a man who feels that he is on his own ground.

The narrow defile which forms the entrance to the valley of Biban el

Moluk was soon reached. It had more the appearance of the work of man

than of a natural opening in the mighty wall of the mountain, as if the

Genius of Solitude had desired to make this realm of death inaccessible.

On the perpendicular rocky walls were faintly discernible shapeless

vestiges of weather-worn sculptures which might have been mistaken for

the asperities of the stone imitating the worn figures of a half-effaced

_basso-relievo_. Beyond the opening, the valley, which here widened

somewhat, presented the most desolate sight. On either side rose steep

slopes formed of huge masses of calcareous rock, rough, leprous-looking,

worn, cracked, ground to sand, in a complete state of decomposition

under the pitiless sun. They resembled bones calcined in the fire, and

yawned with the weariness of eternity out of their deep crevices,

imploring by their thousand cracks the drop of water which never fell.

The walls rose almost vertically to a great height, and their dentelated

crests stood out grayish-white against the almost black indigo of the

sky, like the broken battlements of a giant ruined fortress. The rays of

the sun heated to white heat one of the sides of the funeral valley, the

other being bathed in that crude blue tint of torrid lands which strikes

the people of the North as untruthful when it is reproduced by

painters, and which stands out as sharply as the shadows on an

architectural drawing.

The valley sometimes made sudden turns, sometimes narrowed into defiles

as the boulders and cliffs drew closer or apart. The thoroughly dry

atmosphere in these climates being perfectly transparent, there was no

aerial perspective in this place of desolation. Every detail, sharp,

accurate, bare, stood out, even in the background, with pitiless

dryness, and the distance could only be guessed at by the smaller

dimensions of objects. It seemed as though cruel nature had resolved not

to conceal any wretchedness, any sadness of this bare land, deader even

than the dead it contained. Upon the sun-lighted cliff streamed like a

cascade of fire a blinding glare like that which is given out by molten

metal; every rock face, transformed into a burning-glass, returned it

more ardent still. These reflections, crossing and recrossing each

other, joined to the flaming rays which fell from heaven and which were

reflected by the ground, produced a heat equal to that of an oven, and

the poor German doctor had hard work to wipe his face with his

blue-checked handkerchief, which was as wet as if it had been dipped in

water.

There was not a particle of loam to be found in the whole valley,

consequently not a blade of grass, not a bramble, not a creeper, not

even a patch of moss to break the uniformly whitish tone of the

torrified landscape. The cracks and recesses of the rocks did not hold

coolness enough for the thin, hairy roots of the smallest rock plant.

The place looked as if it held the ashes of a chain of mountains,

consumed in some great planetary conflagration, and the accuracy of the

parallel was completed by great black strips looking like cauterised

cicatrices which rayed the chalky slopes.

Deep silence reigned over this waste; no sign of life was visible; no

flutter of wing, no hum of insect, no flash of lizard or reptile; even

the shrill song of the cricket, that lover of burning solitudes, was

unheard. The soil was formed of a micaceous, brilliant dust like ground

sandstone, and here and there rose hummocks formed of the fragments of

stone torn from the depths of the chain, which had been excavated by the

persevering workmen of vanished generations, and the chisel of the

Troglodyte labourers who had prepared in the shadow the eternal

dwelling-places of the dead. The broken entrails of the mountain had

produced other mountains, friable heaps of small rocks which might have

been mistaken for the natural range.

On the sides of the cliffs showed here and there small openings

surrounded with blocks of stone thrown in disorder: square holes flanked

by pillars covered with hieroglyphs, the lintels of which bore

mysterious cartouches on which could yet be made out in a great yellow

disc the sacred scarabaeus, the ram-headed sun, and the goddesses Isis

and Nephthys standing or kneeling.

These were the tombs of the ancient kings of Thebes. Argyropoulos did

not stop there, but led the travellers up a sort of steep slope, which

at first glance seemed nothing but a break on the side of the mountain,

choked in many places by fallen masses of rock, until they reached a

narrow platform, a sort of cornice projecting over the vertical cliff on

which the rocks, apparently thrown together by chance, nevertheless

exhibited on close examination some symmetrical arrangement.

When the nobleman, who was a practised athlete, and the doctor, who was

much less agile, had succeeded in climbing up to him, Argyropoulos

pointed with his stick to a huge stone and said with triumphant

satisfaction, "There is the spot!"

He clapped his hands in Oriental fashion, and straightway from the

fissures of the rocks, from the folds of the valley, hastened up pale,

ragged fellahs, who bore in their bronze-coloured arms crow-bars,

pick-axes, hammers, ladders, and all necessary tools. They escaladed the

steep slope like a legion of black ants; those who could not find room

on the narrow ledge on which already stood the Greek, Lord Evandale, and

Dr. Rumphius, hung by their hands and steadied themselves with their

feet against the projections in the rock. The Greek signed to three of

the most robust, who placed their crow-bars under the edges of the

boulder. Their muscles stood out upon their thin arms, and they pressed

with their whole weight on the end of the levers. At last the boulder

moved, tottered for a moment like a drunken man, and, urged by the

united efforts of Argyropoulos, Lord Evandale, Rumphius, and a few Arabs

who had succeeded in climbing the ledge, bounded down the slope. Two

other boulders of less size went the same way, one after another, and

then it was plain that the belief of the Greek was justified. The

entrance to a tomb, which had evidently escaped the investigations of

the treasure-seekers, appeared in all its integrity.

It was a sort of portico squarely cut in the living rock. On the two

side-walls a couple of pairs of pillars exhibited capitals formed of

bulls' heads, the horns of which were twisted like the crescent of Isis.

Below the low door, with its jambs flanked by long panels covered with

hieroglyphs, there was a broad, emblematic square. In the centre of a

yellow disc showed by the side of the scarabaeus, symbol of successive

new births, the ram-headed god, the symbol of the setting sun. Outside

the disc, Isis and Nephthys, incarnations of the Beginning and the End,

were kneeling, one leg bent under the thigh, the other raised to the

height of the elbow, in the Egyptian attitude, the arms stretched

forward with an air of mysterious amazement, and the body clothed in a

close fitting gown girdled by a belt with falling ends. Behind a wall of

stone and unbaked brick, that readily yielded to the pickaxes of the

workmen, was discovered the stone slab which formed the doorway of the

subterranean monument. On the clay seal which closed it, the German

doctor, thoroughly familiar with hieroglyphs, had no difficulty in

reading the motto of the guardian of the funeral dwellings, who had

closed forever this tomb, the situation of which he alone could have

found upon the map of burial-places preserved in the priests' college.

"I begin to believe," said the delighted scholar to the young nobleman,

"that we have actually found a prize, and I withdraw the unfavourable

opinion which I expressed about this worthy Greek."

"Perhaps we are rejoicing too soon," answered Lord Evandale, "and we may

experience the same disappointment as Belzoni, when he believed himself

to be the first to enter the tomb of Menephtha Seti, and found, after he

had traversed a labyrinth of passages, walls, and chambers, an empty

sarcophagus with a broken cover; for the treasure-seekers had reached

the royal tomb through one of their soundings driven in at another point

in the mountain."

"Oh, no," answered the doctor; "the range is too broad here and the

hypogeum too distant from the others for these wretched people to have

carried their mines as far as this, even if they scraped away the rock."

While this conversation was going on, the workmen, urged by

Argyropoulos, proceeded to lift the great stone slab which filled up the

orifice of the passage. As they cleared away the slab in order to pass

their crow-bars under it, for Lord Evandale had ordered that nothing

should be broken, they turned up in the sand innumerable small

statuettes a few inches in height, of blue and green enamelled ware, of

admirable workmanship,--tiny funeral statuettes deposited there as

offerings by parents and friends, just as we place flowers on the

thresholds of our funeral chapels; only, our flowers wither, while after

more than three thousand years these witnesses of long bygone griefs are

found intact, for Egypt worked for eternity only.

When the door was lifted away, giving for the first time in thirty-five

centuries entrance to the light of day, a puff of hot air escaped from

the sombre opening as from the mouth of a furnace. The light, striking

the entrance of the funeral passage, brought out brilliantly the

colouring of the hieroglyphs engraved upon the walls in perpendicular

lines upon a blue plinth. A reddish figure with a hawk's-head crowned

with the _pschent_, the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, bore a

disc containing a winged globe, and seemed to watch on the threshold of

the tomb. Some fellahs lighted torches and preceded the two travellers,

who were accompanied by Argyropoulos. The resinous flame burned with

difficulty in the dense, stifling air which had been concentrated for so

many thousands of years under the heated limestone of the mountain, in

the labyrinths, passages, and blind ways of the hypogeum. Rumphius

breathed hard and perspired in streams; the impassible Evandale turned

hot and felt a moisture on his temples. As for the Greek, the fiery wind

of the desert had long since dried him up, and he perspired no more than

would a mummy.

The passage led directly to the centre of the chain, following a vein of

limestone of remarkable fineness and purity. At the end of the

passageway a stone door, sealed as the other had been with a clay seal

and surmounted by a winged globe, proved that the tomb had not been

violated and pointed to the existence of another passageway sunk deeper

still into the mountain.

The heat was now so intense that the young nobleman threw off his white

coat, and the doctor his black one. These were soon followed by their

vests and shirts. Argyropoulos, seeing that they were breathing with

difficulty, whispered a few words to a fellah, who ran back to the

entrance and brought two large sponges filled with fresh water, which

the Greek advised the two travellers to place on their mouths so that

they might breathe a fresher air through the humid pores, as is done in

Russian baths when the steam heat is raised to excess.

The door was attacked and soon gave way. A steep staircase cut in the

living rock was then seen descending. Against a green background edged

with a blue line were ranged on either side of the passageway

processions of symbolical statues, the colours of which were as bright

and fresh as if the artist's brush had laid them on the day before. They

would show for a second in the light of the torches, then vanish in the

shadow like the phantoms of a dream. Below these narrow frescoes, lines

of hieroglyphs, written perpendicularly like Chinese writing and

separated by hollow lines, excited the erudite by the sacred mystery of

their outlines. Along that portion of the walls which was not covered

with hieratic signs, a jackal lying on its belly, with outstretched paws

and pointed ears, and a kneeling figure wearing a mitre, its hand

stretched upon a circle, seemed to stand as sentries on either side of

the door, the lintel of which was ornamented with two panels placed side

by side, in which were figured two women wearing close-fitting gowns

and extending their feathered arms like wings.

"Look here!" said the doctor, taking breath when he reached the foot of

the staircase, and when he saw that the excavation sank deeper and

deeper still. "Are we going down to the centre of the earth? The heat is

increasing to such a degree that we cannot be far from the sojourn of

the damned."

"No doubt," answered Lord Evandale, "they followed the vein of

limestone, which sinks in accordance with the law of geological

undulations."

Another very steep passage came after the steps. The walls were lower,

covered with paintings, in which could be made out a series of

allegorical scenes, explained, no doubt, by the hieroglyphs inscribed

below. This frieze ran all along the passage, and below it were small

figures worshipping sacred scarabaei and the azure-coloured symbolical

serpent.

As he reached the end of the passage, the fellah who carried the torch

threw himself back abruptly, for the path was suddenly interrupted by

the mouth of a square well yawning black at the surface of the ground.

"There is a well, master," said the fellah, addressing himself to

Argyropoulos; "what am I to do?"

The Greek took the torch, shook it to make it blaze up, and threw it

into the small mouth of the well, bending cautiously over the opening.

The torch fell, twisting and hissing. Soon a dull sound was heard,

followed by a burst of sparks and a cloud of smoke, then the flame

burned up bright and clear, and the opening of the well shone in the

shadow like the bloodshot eye of a Cyclops.

"Most ingenious!" said the young nobleman. "This labyrinth, interrupted

by oubliettes, must have cooled the zeal of robbers and scholars."

"Not at all," replied the doctor. "Those seek gold, these truth, which

are the two most precious things in the world."

"Bring the knotted rope!" cried Argyropoulos to his Arabs. "We shall

explore and sound the walls of the well, for the passage no doubt runs

far beyond it."

Eight or ten men hung on to the rope, the end of which was let fall into

the well. With the agility of a monkey or of an athlete, Argyropoulos

caught hold of the swinging rope and let himself down some fifteen feet,

holding on with his hands and striking with his heels the walls of the

well. Wherever he struck the rock it gave out a dead, dull sound. Then

Argyropoulos let himself fall to the bottom of the well and struck the

ground with the hilt of his kandjar, but the compact rock did not

resound. Lord Evandale and the doctor, burning with eager curiosity,

bent over the edge at the risk of falling in headlong, and watched with

intense interest the search undertaken by the Greek.

"Hold hard!" cried he at last, annoyed at finding nothing; and he seized

the rope with his two hands to ascend.

The shadow of Argyropoulos, lighted from below by the torch which was

still burning at the bottom of the well, was projected against the

ceiling and cast on it a silhouette like that of a monstrous bird. His

sunburned face expressed the liveliest disappointment, and under his

moustache he was biting his lips.

"There is not a trace of a passage!" he cried; "and yet the excavation

cannot stop here."

"Unless," said Rumphius, "the Egyptian who ordered this tomb died in

some distant nome, on a voyage, or in battle, the work being then

abandoned, as is known to have been the case occasionally."

"Let us hope that by dint of searching we shall find some secret issue,"

returned Lord Evandale; "otherwise we shall try to drive a transverse

shaft through the mountain."

"Those confounded Egyptians were clever indeed at concealing the

entrances to their tombs,--always trying to find out some way of putting

poor people off the track. One would think that they laughed in

anticipation at the disappointment of searchers," grumbled Argyropoulos.

Drawing to the edge of the well, the Greek cast a glance, as piercing as

that of a night-bird, upon the wall of the little chamber which formed

the upper portion of the well. He saw nothing but the ordinary

characters of psychostasia,--Osiris the judge seated on his throne in

the regulation attitude, holding the crook in the one hand, the whip in

the other, and the goddesses of Justice and Truth leading the spirit of

the dead to the tribunal of Amenti. Suddenly he seemed to be struck with

a new idea, and turned sharply around. His long experience as an

excavator recalled to him a somewhat analogous case. In addition, the

desire of earning the thousand guineas of his lordship spurred up his

faculties. He took a pick-axe from the hands of a fellah, and began,

walking backward, to strike sharply right and left on the surface of the

rock, often at the risk of damaging some of the hieroglyphs or of

breaking the beak or the wing-sheath of the sacred hawk or the

scarabaeus.

The wall, thus questioned, at last answered the hammer and sounded

hollow. An exclamation of triumph broke from the Greek and his eyes

flashed; the doctor and the nobleman clapped their hands.

"Dig here," said Argyropoulos, who had recovered his coolness, to his

men.

An opening large enough to allow a man to pass through was made. A

gallery running within the mountain around the obstacle which the well

offered to the profane, led to a square hall, the blue vault of which

rested upon four massive pillars ornamented by the red-skinned,

white-garmented figures which so often show, in Egyptian frescoes, the

full bust and the head in profile. This hall opened into another, the

vault of which was somewhat higher and supported by two pillars only.

Various scenes--the mystic bark, the bull Apis bearing the mummy towards

the regions of the West, the judgment of the soul and the weighing of

the deeds of the dead in the supreme scales, the offerings to the

funeral divinities--adorned the pillars and the hall. They were carved

in flat, low relief with sharp outline, but the painter's brush had not

completed the work of the chisel. By the care and delicacy of the work

might be judged the importance of the personage whose tomb it had been

sought to conceal from the knowledge of men.

After having spent a few moments in examining these carvings, which were

in the purest manner of the fine Egyptian style of the classical age,

the explorers perceived that there was no issue from the hall, and that

they had reached a sort of blind place. The air was becoming somewhat

rarified, the torches burned with difficulty and further augmented the

heat of the atmosphere, while the smoke formed a dense pall. The Greek

gave himself to the devil, but that did no good. Again the walls were

sounded without any result. The mountain, thick and compact, gave back

but a dead sound; there was no trace of a door, of a passage, or of any

sort of opening.

The young nobleman was plainly discouraged, and the doctor let fall his

arms by his side. Argyropoulos, who feared losing his thousand guineas,

exhibited the fiercest despair. However, the party was compelled to

retreat, for the heat had become absolutely suffocating.

They returned to the outer hall, and there the Greek, who could not make

up his mind to see his golden dream vanish in smoke, examined with the

most minute attention the shafts of the pillars to make certain that

they did not conceal some artifice, that they did not mask some trap

which might be discovered by displacing them; for in his despair he

mingled the realism of Egyptian architecture with the chimerical

constructions of the Arab tales. The pillars, cut out of the mountain

itself, in the centre of the hollowed mass, formed part of it, and it

would have been necessary to employ gunpowder to break them down. All

hope was gone.

"Nevertheless," said Rumphius, "this labyrinth was not dug for nothing.

Somewhere or another there must be a passage like the one which goes

around the well. No doubt the dead man was afraid of being disturbed by

importunate persons and he had himself carefully concealed; but with

patience and perseverance you can get anywhere. Perhaps a slab carefully

concealed, the joint of which cannot be seen, owing to the dust

scattered over the ground, covers some descent which leads, directly or

indirectly, to the funeral hall."

"You are right, doctor," said Evandale; "those accursed Egyptians

jointed stones as closely as the hinges of an English trap. Let us go on

looking."

The doctor's idea struck the Greek as sound, and he made his fellahs

walk about every part and corner of the hall, tapping the ground. At

last, not far from the third pillar a dull resonance struck on the

practised ear of the Greek. He threw himself on his knees to examine the

spot, brushing away with the ragged burnouse one of his Arabs had thrown

him the impalpable dust of thirty-five centuries. A black, narrow, sharp

line showed, and, carefully followed out, marked out on the ground an

oblong slab.

"Did I not tell you," cried the enthusiastic doctor, "that the passage

could not end in this way?"

"I am really troubled," said Lord Evandale, in his quaint, phlegmatic

British fashion, "at disturbing the last sleep of the poor unknown body

which did expect to rest in peace until the end of the world. The

dweller below would willingly dispense with our visit."

"The more so that a third party is lacking to make the presentation

formal," replied the doctor. "But do not be anxious, my lord, I have

lived long enough in the days of the Pharaohs to present you to the

illustrious personage who inhabits this subterranean passage."

Crow-bars were applied to the narrow fissure, and after a short time the

stone moved and was raised. A staircase with high, steep steps, sinking

into darkness, awaited the impatient travellers, who rushed down

pell-mell. A sloping gallery painted on both walls with figures and

hieroglyphs came next, then at the end of the gallery some more steps

leading to a short corridor, a sort of vestibule to a hall in the same

style as the first one, but larger and upborne by six pillars cut out of

the living rock. The ornamentation was richer, and the usual motives of

funeral paintings were multiplied on a yellow background. To the right

and to the left opened in the rock two small crypts or chambers filled

with funeral statuettes of enamelled ware, bronze, and sycamore wood.

"We are in the antechamber of the hall where the sarcophagus is bound to

be!" cried Rumphius, his clear gray eyes flashing with joy from below

his spectacles, which he had pushed back over his forehead.

"Up to the present," said Lord Evandale, "the Greek has kept his word.

We are the first living men who have penetrated so far since the dead,

whoever he may be, was left with eternity and the unknown in this tomb."

"Oh, he must be some great personage," replied the doctor; "a king or a

king's son, at the very least. I shall tell you later when I have

deciphered his cartouche. But first let us enter this hall, the finest,

the most important, which the Egyptians called the Golden Hall."

Lord Evandale walked ahead, a few steps before the less agile scholar,

though perhaps the latter deferentially wished to leave the pleasure of

the discovery to the young nobleman.

As he was about to step across the threshold, Lord Evandale bent forward

as if something unexpected had struck him. Though accustomed not to

manifest his emotions, he was unable to repress a prolonged and

thoroughly British "Oh!" On the fine gray powder which covered the

ground showed very distinctly, with the imprint of the toes and the

great bone of the heel, the shape of a human foot,--the foot of the last

priest or the last friend who had withdrawn, fifteen hundred years

before Christ, after having paid the last honours to the dead. The dust,

which in Egypt is as eternal as granite, had moulded the print and

preserved it for more than thirty centuries, just as the hardened

diluvian mud has preserved the tracks of the animals which last

traversed it.

"See," said Evandale to Rumphius, "that human footprint which is

directed towards the exit from the hypogeum! In what narrow passage of

the Libyan chain rests the mummified body that made it?"

"Who knows?" replied the scholar. "In any case, that light print, which

a breath would have blown away, has lasted longer than empires, than

religions and monuments believed eternal. The noble dust of Alexander

was used perhaps to stop a bung-hole, as Hamlet says, but the footprint

of this unknown Egyptian remains on the threshold of a tomb."

Urged by a curiosity which did not allow them much time for

recollection, the nobleman and the doctor entered the hall, taking care,

nevertheless, not to efface the wondrous footprint. On entering, the

impassible Evandale felt a strange emotion; it seemed to him, as

Shakespeare says, that the time was out of joint. The feeling of modern

life vanished, he forgot Great Britain and his name inscribed on the

rolls of the peerage, his seat in Lincolnshire, his mansion in the West

End, Hyde Park, Piccadilly, the Queen's Drawing-Room, the Yacht

Squadron, and all that constituted his English existence. An invisible

hand had turned upside down the sand-glass of eternity, and the

centuries which had fallen one by one, like the hours, in the solitude

of the night, were falling once more. History was as if it were not:

Moses was living, Pharaoh was reigning, and he, Lord Evandale, felt

embarrassed because he did not wear his beard in ringlets, and had not

an enamelled neck-plate and a narrow vestment wrinkling in folds upon

his hips,--the only suitable dress in which to be presented to a royal

mummy. A sort of religious horror filled him, although there was nothing

sinister about the place, as he violated this palace of death so

carefully protected against profanation. His attempt seemed to him

impious and sacrilegious, and he said to himself, "Suppose this Pharaoh

were to rise on his couch and strike me with his sceptre." For one

moment he thought of letting fall the shroud half lifted from the body

of this antique, dead civilisation, but the doctor, carried away by

scientific enthusiasm, and not a prey to such thoughts, shouted in a

loud voice, "My lord, my lord, the sarcophagus is intact!"

These words recalled Lord Evandale to reality. By swift projection of

his thought he traversed the thirty-five hundred years which he had gone

back in his reverie, and he answered, "Indeed, dear doctor, intact?"

"Oh, unexpected luck! oh, marvellous chance! oh, wondrous find!"

continued the doctor, in the excitement of a scholarly joy.

Argyropoulos, on beholding the doctor's enthusiasm, felt a pang of

remorse,--the only kind of remorse that he could feel,--at not having

asked more than twenty-five thousand francs. "I was a fool!" he said to

himself. "This shall not happen again. That nobleman has robbed me."

In order to enable the strangers to enjoy the beauty of the spectacle,

the fellahs had lighted all their torches. The sight was indeed strange

and magnificent. The galleries and halls which led to the sarcophagus

hall were flat-ceiled and not more than eight or ten feet high; but the

sanctuary, the one to which all these labyrinths led, was of much

greater proportions. Lord Evandale and Dr. Rumphius remained dumb with

admiration, although they were already familiar with the funereal

splendours of Egyptian art. Thus lighted up, the Golden Hall flamed, and

for the first time, perhaps, the colours of the paintings shone in all

their brilliancy. Red and blue, green and white, of virginal purity,

brilliantly fresh and amazingly clear, stood out from the golden

background of the figures and hieroglyphs, and attracted the eye before

the subjects which they formed could be discerned. At first glance it

looked like a vast tapestry of the richest stuffs. The vault, some

thirty feet high, formed a sort of azure velarium bordered with long

yellow palm-leaves. On the walls the symbolical globe spread its mighty

wings and the royal cartouches showed around. Farther on, Isis and

Nephthys waved their arms furnished with feathers like wings; the uraeus

swelled its blue throat, the scarabaeus unfolded its wings, the

animal-headed gods pricked up their jackal ears, sharpened their

hawk's-beaks, wrinkled their baboon faces, and drew into their shoulders

their vulture or serpent necks as if they were endowed with life.

Mystical consecrated boats (baris) passed by on their sledges drawn by

figures in attitudes of sadness, with angular gestures, or propelled by

half-naked oarsmen, they floated upon symbolical undulating waves.

Mourners kneeling, their hand placed on their blue hair in token of

grief, turned towards the catafalques, while shaven priests,

leopard-skin on shoulder, burned perfumes in a spatula terminating in a

hand bearing a cup under the nose of the godlike dead. Other personages

offered to the funeral genii lotus in bloom or in bud, bulbous plants,

birds, pieces of antelope, and vases of liquors. Acephalous figures of

Justice brought souls before Osiris, whose arms were set in inflexible

contour, and who was assisted by the forty-two judges of Amenti, seated

in two rows and bearing an ostrich-plume on their heads, the forms of

which were borrowed from every realm of zoology.

All these figures, drawn in hollowed lines in the limestone and painted

in the brightest colours, were endowed with that motionless life, that

frozen motion, that mysterious intensity of Egyptian art, which was

hemmed in by the priestly rule, and which resembles a gagged man trying

to utter his secret.

In the centre of the hall rose, massive and splendid, the sarcophagus,

cut out of a solid block of black basalt and closed by a cover of the

same material, carved in the shape of an arch. The four sides of the

funeral monolith were covered with figures and hieroglyphs as carefully

engraved as the intaglio of a gem, although the Egyptians did not know

the use of iron, and the grain of basalt is hard enough to blunt the

best-tempered steel. Imagination loses itself when it tries to discover

the process by which that marvellous people wrought on porphyry and

granite as with a style on wax tablets.

At the angles of the sarcophagus were set four vases of oriental

alabaster, of most elegant and perfect outline, the carved covers of

which represented the man's head of Amset, the monkey head of Hapi, the

jackal head of Tuamutef, and the hawk head of Kebhsnauf. The vases

contained the viscerae of the mummy enclosed in the sarcophagus. At the

head of the tomb an effigy of Osiris with plaited beard seemed to watch

over the dead. Two coloured statues of women stood right and left of the

tomb, supporting, with one hand a square box on their head, and holding

in the other a vase for ablutions which they rested on their hip. The

one was dressed in a simple white skirt clinging to the hips and held up

by crossed braces; the other, more richly costumed, was wrapped in a

sort of narrow shift, covered with scales alternately red and green. By

the side of the first there were three water-jars, originally filled

with Nile water, which, as it evaporated, had left its mud, and a plate

holding some alimentary paste, now dried up. By the side of the second,

two small ships, like the model ships made in seaports, which reproduced

accurately, the one the minutest details of the boats destined to bear

the bodies from Diospolis to Memnonia, the other the symbolical boat in

which the soul is carried to the regions of the West. Nothing was

forgotten,--neither the masts, nor the rudder formed of one long sweep,

nor the pilot, nor the oarsmen, nor the mummy surrounded by mourners and

lying under the shrine on a bed with feet formed of lion's claws, nor

the allegorical figures of the funeral divinities fulfilling their

sacred functions. Both the boats and the figures were painted in

brilliant colours, and on the two sides of the prow, beak-like as the

poop, showed the great Osiris' eye, made longer still by the use of

antimony. The bones and skull of an ox scattered here and there showed

that a victim had been offered up as a scapegoat to the Fate which might

have disturbed the repose of the dead. Coffers painted and bedizened

with hieroglyphs were placed on the tomb; reed tables yet bore the final

offerings. Nothing had been touched in this palace of death since the

day when the mummy in its cartonnage and its two coffins had been placed

upon its basalt couch. The worm of the sepulchre, which can find a way

through the closest biers, had itself retreated, driven back by the

bitter scent of the bitumen and the aromatic essences.

"Shall I open the sarcophagus?" said Argyropoulos, after Lord Evandale

and Doctor Rumphius had had time to admire the beauty of the Golden

Hall.

"Unquestionably," replied the nobleman; "but take care not to chip the

edges of the cover as you put in your crow-bars, for I propose to carry

off the tomb and present it to the British Museum."

The whole company bent their efforts to displacing the monolith. Wooden

wedges were carefully driven in, and presently the huge stone was moved

and slid down the props prepared to receive it. The sarcophagus having

been opened, showed the first bier hermetically sealed. It was a coffer

adorned with paintings and gilding, representing a sort of shrine with

symmetrical designs, lozenges, quadrilles, palm leaves, and lines of

hieroglyphs. The cover was opened, and Rumphius, who was bending over

the sarcophagus, uttered a cry of surprise when he discovered the

contents of the coffin, having recognised the sex of the mummy by the

absence of the Osiris beard and the shape of the cartonnage. The Greek

himself appeared amazed. His long experience in excavations enabled him

to understand the strangeness of such a find. The valley of Biban el

Moluk contains the tombs of kings only: the necropolis of the queens is

situated farther away, in another mountain gorge. The tombs of the

queens are very simple, and usually consist of two or three passage-ways

and one or two rooms. Women in the East have always been considered as

inferior to men, even in death. Most of these tombs, which were broken

into at a very distant period, were used as receptacles for shapeless

mummies carelessly embalmed, which still exhibit traces of leprosy and

elephantiasis. How did this woman's coffin come to occupy this royal

sarcophagus, in the centre of this cryptic palace worthy of the most

illustrious and most powerful of the Pharaohs?

"This," said the doctor to Lord Evandale, "upsets all my notions and all

my theories. It overthrows the system most carefully built upon the

Egyptian funeral rites, which nevertheless have been so carefully

followed out during thousands of years. No doubt we have come upon some

obscure point, some forgotten mystery of history. A woman did ascend the

throne of the Pharaohs and did govern Egypt. She was called Tahoser, as

we learn from the cartouches engraved upon older inscriptions hammered

away. She usurped the tomb as she usurped the throne. Or perhaps some

other ambitious woman, of whom history has preserved no trace, renewed

her attempt."

"No one is better able to solve this difficult problem than you," said

Lord Evandale. "We will carry this box full of secrets to our boat,

where you will, at your leisure, decipher this historic document and

read the riddle set by these hawks, scarabaei, kneeling figures, serrated

lines, winged uraeus, and spatula hands, which you read as readily as did

the great Champollion."

The fellahs, under the orders of Argyropoulos, carried off the huge

coffer on their shoulders, and the mummy, performing in an inverse

direction the funeral travel it had accomplished in the days of Moses,

in a painted and gilded bari preceded by a long procession, was embarked

upon the sandal which had brought the travellers, soon reached the

vessel moored on the Nile, and was placed in the cabin, which was not

unlike, so little do forms change in Egypt, the shrine of the funeral

boat.

Argyropoulos, having arranged about the box all the objects which had

been found near it, stood respectfully at the cabin door and appeared to

be waiting. Lord Evandale understood, and ordered his valet to pay him

the twenty-five thousand francs.

The open bier was placed upon rests in the centre of the cabin; it shone

as brilliantly as if the colours had been put on the day before, and

framed in the mummy, moulded within its cartonnage, the workmanship of

which was remarkably fine and rich. Never had ancient Egypt more

carefully wrapped up one of her children for the eternal sleep. Although

no shape was indicated by the funeral Hermes, ending in a sheath from

which stood out alone the shoulders and the head, one could guess there

was under that thick envelope a young and graceful form. The gilded

mask, with its long eyes outlined with black and brightened with enamel,

the nose with its delicate nostrils, the rounded cheek-bones, the

half-open lips smiling with an indescribable, sphinx-like smile, the

chin somewhat short in curve but of extreme beauty of contour, presented

the purest type of the Egyptian ideal, and testified by a thousand

small, characteristic details which art cannot invent, to the individual

character of the portrait. Numberless fine plaits of hair, tressed with

cords and separated by bandeaux, fell in opulent masses on either side

of the face. A lotus stem, springing from the back of the neck, bowed

over the head and opened its azure calyx over the dead, cold brow,

completing with a funeral cone this rich and elegant head-dress.

A broad necklace, composed of fine enamels cloisonnes with gold and

formed of several rows, lay upon the lower portion of the neck, and

allowed to be seen the clean, firm contour of two virgin breasts like

two golden cups.

The sacred ram-headed bird, bearing between its green horns the red disc

of the setting sun and supported by two serpents wearing the pschent and

swelling out their hoods, showed on the bosom of the figure its

monstrous form full of symbolic meaning. Lower down, in the spaces left

free by the crossed zones, and rayed with brilliant colours representing

bandages, the vulture of Phra, crowned with a globe, with outspread

wings, the body covered with symmetrically arranged feathers, and the

tail spread out fanwise, held in its talons the huge Tau, emblem of

immortality. The funeral gods, green-faced, with the mouths of monkeys

or jackals, held out with a gesture hieratic in its stiffness the whip,

the crook, and the sceptre. The eye of Osiris opened its red ball

outlined with antimony. Celestial snakes swelled their hoods around the

sacred discs; symbolical figures projected their feathered arms; and the

two goddesses of the Beginning and the End, their hair powdered with

blue dust, bare down to below the breasts and the rest of the body

wrapped in a close-fitting skirt, knelt in Egyptian fashion on green and

red cushions adorned with heavy tufts.

A longitudinal band of hieroglyphs, springing from the belt and running

down to the feet, contained no doubt some formal funeral ritual, or

rather, the names and titles of the deceased, a problem which Dr.

Rumphius promised himself to solve later.

The character of the drawing, the boldness of the lines, the brilliancy

of the colours in all these paintings denoted in the plainest manner to

a practised eye that they belonged to the finest period of Egyptian art.

When the English nobleman and his companion had sufficiently studied

this outer case, they drew the cartonnage from the box and set it up

against the side of the cabin, where the funeral form, with its gilded

mask, presented a strange spectacle, standing upright like a

materialised spectre and with a seeming attitude of life, after having

preserved so long the horizontal attitude of death on a basalt bed in

the heart of the mountain, opened up by impious curiosity. The soul of

the deceased, which had reckoned on eternal rest and which had taken

such care to preserve its remains from violation, must have been moved,

beyond the worlds, in the circuit of its travels and transmigrations.

Dr. Rumphius, armed with a chisel and a hammer, to separate the two

parts of the cartonnage of the mummy, looked like one of those funeral

genii which wear a bestial mask and which are seen in the paintings of

the hypogea crowding around the dead in the performance of some

frightful and mysterious rite; the clean profile of Lord Evandale, calm

and attentive, made him look like the divine Osiris awaiting the soul to

be judged.

The operation having been at length completed--for the doctor wished not

to scale off the gilding,--the box, resting on the ground, was separated

into two parts like the casing of a cast, and the mummy appeared in all

the brilliancy of its death toilet, coquettishly adorned as if it had

wished to charm the genii of the subterranean realms. On opening the

case, a faint, delightful, aromatic odour of cedar liquor, of sandal

powder, of myrrh and cinnamon spread through the cabin of the vessel;

for the body had not been gummed up and hardened with the black bitumen

used in embalming the bodies of ordinary persons, and all the skill of

the embalmers, the former inhabitants of Memnonia, seemed to have been

directed to the preservation of these precious remains.

The head was enveloped in a network of narrow bands of fine linen,

through which the face showed faintly. The essences in which they had

been steeped had dyed the tissue a beautiful tawny tint. Over the breast

a network of fine tubes of blue glass, very like the long jet beads

which are used to embroider Spanish bodices, with little golden drops

wherever the tubes crossed, fell down to the feet and formed a pearly

shroud worthy of a queen. The statuettes of the four gods of Amenti in

hammered gold shone brilliantly, and were symmetrically arranged along

the upper edge of the network, which ended below in a fringe of most

tasteful ornaments. Between the statuettes of the funeral gods was a

golden plate, above which a lapis-lazuli scarabaeus spread out its long

golden wings. Under the mummy's head was placed a rich mirror of

polished metal, as if it had been desired to give the dead soul an

opportunity of beholding the spectre of its beauty during the long night

of the tomb. By the mirror lay a coffer of enamelled ware, of most

precious workmanship, which contained a necklace composed of ivory

rings alternating with beads, gold, lapis-lazuli, and cornelian. By the

side of the beauty had been placed also a narrow, square sandal-wood

basin in which, during her lifetime, the dead woman had performed her

perfumed ablutions. Three vases of wavy alabaster fastened to the bier,

as was also the mummy, by a layer of natron, contained, the first two,

essences, the scent of which could still be noticed, and the third,

antimony powder and a small spatula for the purpose of colouring the

edge of the eyelids and extending the outer angle according to the

antique Egyptian usage, still practised at the present time by Eastern

women.

"What a touching custom!" said Dr. Rumphius, excited by the sight of

these treasures; "what a touching custom it was to bury with a young

woman all her pretty toilet articles! For it is a young woman

unquestionably that these linen bands, yellow with time and with

essences, envelop. Compared with the Egyptians, we are downright

barbarians; hurried on by our brutal way of living, we have lost the

delicate sense of death. How much tenderness, how much regard, how much

love do not these minute cares reveal, these infinite precautions,

these useless caresses bestowed upon a senseless body,--that struggle to

snatch from destruction an adored form and to restore it intact to the

soul on the day of the supreme reunion!"

"Perhaps," replied Lord Evandale, very thoughtful, "our civilisation,

which we think so highly developed, is, after all, but a great decadence

which has lost even the historical remembrance of the gigantic societies

which have disappeared. We are stupidly proud of a few ingenious pieces

of mechanism which we have recently invented, and we forget the colossal

splendours and the vast works impossible to any other nation, which are

found in the ancient land of the Pharaohs. We have steam, but steam is

less powerful than the force which built the Pyramids, dug out hypogea,

carved mountains into the shapes of sphinxes and obelisks, sealed halls

with one great stone which all our engines could not move, cut out

monolithic chapels, and saved frail human remains from annihilation,--so

deep a sense of eternity did it already possess."

"Oh, the Egyptians," said Dr. Rumphius, smiling, "were wonderful

architects, amazing artists, and great scholars. A priest of Memphis

and of Thebes could have taught even our German scholars; and as regards

symbolism, they were greater than any symbolists of our day. But we

shall succeed eventually in deciphering their hieroglyphs and

penetrating their mysteries. The great Champollion has made out their

alphabet; we shall easily read their granite books. Meanwhile, let us

strip, as delicately as possible, this young beauty who is more than

three thousand years of age."

"Poor woman!" murmured the young lord. "Profane eyes will now behold the

mysterious charms which love itself perhaps never saw. Truly, under the

empty pretext of scientific pursuit, we are as barbarous as the Persians

of Cambyses, and if I were not afraid of driving to despair this worthy

scholar, I should enclose you again, without having stripped off your

last veil, within the triple box of your bier."

Dr. Rumphius raised from the casing the mummy, which was no heavier than

a child's body, and began to unwrap it with motherly skill and lightness

of touch. He first of all undid the outer envelope of linen, sewed

together and impregnated with palm wine, and the broad bands which here

and there girdled the body. Then he took hold of the end of a thin,

narrow band, the infinite windings of which enclosed the limbs of the

young Egyptian. He rolled up the band on itself as cleverly as the most

skilful embalmer of the City of the Dead, following it up in all its

meanderings and circumvolutions. As he progressed in his work, the

mummy, freed from its envelope, like a statue which a sculptor blocks

out of the marble, appeared more slender and exquisite in form. The

bandage having been unrolled, another narrower one was seen, intended to

bind the body more closely. It was of such fine linen, and so finely

woven, that it was comparable to modern cambric and muslin. This bandage

followed accurately every outline, imprisoning the fingers and the toes,

moulding like a mask the features of the face, which was visible through

the thin tissue. The aromatic balm in which it had been steeped had

stiffened it, and as it came away under the fingers of the doctor, it

gave out a little dry sound like that of paper that is being crushed or

torn. There remained but one turn to be taken off, and familiar though

he was with such work, Dr. Rumphius stopped for a moment, either

through respect for the dead, or through that feeling which prevents a

man from breaking open a letter, from opening a door, from raising a

veil which hides a secret that he burns to learn. He ascribed his

momentary pause to fatigue, and as a matter of fact, the perspiration

was dripping from his forehead without his thinking of wiping it with

his great blue-checked handkerchief; but fatigue had nothing to do with

it. Meanwhile the dead form showed through the fine, gauze-like stuff,

and some gold work shone faintly through it as well.

The last wrapping taken off, the young woman showed in the chaste nudity

of her lovely form, preserving, in spite of so many centuries that had

passed away, the fulness of her contours, and the easy grace of her pure

lines. Her pose, an infrequent one in the case of mummies, was that of

the Venus of Medici, as if the embalmers had wished to save this

beautiful body from the set attitude of death and to soften the

inflexible rigidity of the cadaver.

A cry of admiration was uttered at the same time by Rumphius and

Evandale at the sight of the marvel. Never did a Greek or Roman statue

present a more beautiful appearance. The peculiar characteristics of

the Egyptian ideal gave indeed to this lovely body, so miraculously

preserved, a slenderness and a grace lacking in antique marbles,--the

long hands, the high-bred, narrow feet, the nails shining like agate,

the slender waist, the shape of the breasts, small and turned up like a

sandal beneath the veil which enveloped it, the slightly protruding

contour of the hip, the roundness of the thigh, the somewhat long leg

recalling the slender grace of the musicians and dancers represented on

the frescoes of funeral repasts in the Thebes hypogea. It was a shape

still childish in its gracefulness, yet possessing already all the

perfections of a woman which Egyptian art expresses with such tender

suavity, whether it paints the walls of the passages with a brush, or

whether it patiently carves the hard basalt.

As a general rule mummies which have been filled with bitumen and natron

resemble black simulacra carved in ebony; corruption cannot attack them,

but the appearance of life is wholly lacking; the bodies have not

returned to the dust whence they came, but they have been petrified in a

hideous shape, which one cannot contemplate without disgust and terror.

In this case, the body, carefully prepared by surer, longer, and more

costly processes, had preserved the elasticity of the flesh, the grain

of the skin, and almost its natural colour. The skin, of a light brown,

had the golden tint of a new Florentine bronze, and the amber, warm tone

which is admired in the paintings of Giorgione and Titian covered with a

smoky varnish, was not very different from what must have been the

complexion of the young Egyptian during her lifetime. She seemed to be

asleep rather than dead. The eyelids, still fringed with their long

lashes, allowed eyes lustrous with the humid gleam of life to shine

between their lines of antimony. One could have sworn they were about to

shake off, as a light dream, their sleep of thirty centuries. The nose,

delicate and fine, preserved its pure outline; no depression deformed

the cheeks, which were as round as the side of a vase; the mouth,

coloured with a faint blush, had preserved its imperceptible lines, and

on the lips, voluptuously moulded, fluttered a melancholy and mysterious

smile, full of gentleness, sadness, and charm,--that tender and resigned

smile which pouts so prettily the lips of the adorable heads which

surmount the Canopean vases in the Louvre.

Around the forehead, low and smooth in accordance with the laws of

antique beauty, was massed jet-black hair divided and plaited into a

multitude of fine tresses which fell on either shoulder. Twenty golden

pins stuck into the tresses, like flowers in a ball head-dress, studded

with brilliant points the thick dark hair which might have been thought

artificial, so abundant was it. Two great earrings, round discs

resembling small bucklers, shimmered with yellow light by the side of

the brown cheeks. A magnificent necklace, composed of three rows of

divinities and amulets in gold and precious stones, encircled the neck

of the coquettish mummy, and lower down upon her breast hung two other

collars, the pearl, gold, lapis-lazuli, and cornelian rosettes of which

alternated symmetrically with the most perfect taste. A girdle of nearly

the same design enclosed her waist with a belt of gold and gems. A

double bracelet of gold and cornelian beads adorned her left wrist, and

on the index of the left hand shone a very small scarabaeus of golden

cloisonne enamel, which formed a seal ring and was held by a gold thread

most marvellously plaited.

Strange were the sensations of the two men as they found themselves face

to face with a human being who had lived in the days when history was

yet young and was collecting the stories told by tradition; face to face

with a body contemporary with Moses, which yet preserved the exquisite

form of youth; as they touched the gentle little hand impregnated with

perfumes, which a Pharaoh perhaps had kissed; as they fingered the hair,

more durable than empire, more solid than granite monuments. At the

sight of the lovely dead girl, the young nobleman felt the retrospective

desire often inspired by the sight of a statue or a painting

representing a woman of past days famous for her beauty. It seemed to

him that he would have loved, had he lived three thousand years earlier,

that beauty which nothingness had refused to destroy; and the

sympathetic thought perhaps reached the restless soul that fluttered

above its profaned frame.

Far less poetic than the young nobleman, Dr. Rumphius was making the

inventory of the gems, without, however, taking them off; for Evandale

had ordered that the mummy should not be deprived of this last frail

consolation. To take away gems from a woman, even dead, is to kill her a

second time. Suddenly a papyrus roll concealed between the side and arm

of the mummy caught the doctor's eye.

"Oh!" said he, "this is no doubt a copy of the funeral ritual placed in

the inner coffin and written with more or less care according to the

wealth and rank of the person."

He unrolled the delicate band with infinite precautions. As soon as the

first lines showed, he exhibited surprise, for he did not recognise the

ordinary figures and signs of the ritual. In vain he sought in the usual

places for the vignettes representing the funeral, which serve as a

frontispiece to such papyri, nor did he find the Litany of the Hundred

Names of Osiris, nor the soul's passport, nor the petition to the gods

of Amenti. Drawings of a peculiar kind illustrated entirely different

scenes connected with human life, and not with the voyage of the shade

to the world beyond. Chapters and paragraphs seemed to be indicated by

characters written in red, evidently for the purpose of distinguishing

them from the remainder of the text, which was in black, and of calling

the attention of the reader to interesting points. An inscription placed

at the head appeared to contain the title of the work, and the name of

the grammat who had written or copied it,--so much, at least, did the

sagacious intuition of the doctor make out at the first glance.

"Undoubtedly, my lord, we have robbed Master Argyropoulos," said he to

Evandale, as he pointed out the differences between the papyrus and the

usual ritual. "This is the first time that an Egyptian manuscript has

been found to contain anything else than hieratic formulae. I am bound to

decipher it, even if it costs me my sight, even if my beard grows thrice

around my desk. Yes, I shall ferret out your secret, mysterious Egypt!

Yes, I shall learn your story, you lovely dead; for that papyrus pressed

close to your heart by your lovely arm surely contains it. And I shall

be covered with glory, become the equal of Champollion, and make Lepsius

die of jealousy."

The nobleman and the doctor returned to Europe. The mummy, wrapped up

again in all its bandages and replaced within its three cases, rests

within Lord Evandale's park in Lincolnshire, in the basalt sarcophagus

which he brought at great expense from Biban el Moluk and which he did

not give to the British Museum. Sometimes Lord Evandale leans upon the

sarcophagus, sinks into a deep reverie, and sighs.

After three years of unflagging application, Dr. Rumphius succeeded in

deciphering the mysterious papyrus, save in some damaged parts, and in

others which contained unknown signs. And it is his translation into

Latin--which we have turned into French--that you are about to read,

under the name, "The Romance of a Mummy."

_The Romance of a Mummy_

I

Oph (that is the name of the city which antiquity called Thebes of the

Hundred Gates, or Diospolis Magna), seemed asleep under the burning

beams of the blazing sun. It was noon. A white light fell from the pale

sky upon the baked earth; the sand, shimmering and scintillating, shone

like burnished metal; shadows there were none, save a narrow, bluish

line at the foot of buildings, like the inky line with which an

architect draws upon papyrus; the houses, whose walls sloped well

inwards, glowed like bricks in an oven; every door was closed, and no

one showed at the windows, which were closed with blinds of reeds.

At the end of the deserted streets and above the terraces stood out in

the hot, transparent air the tips of obelisks, the tops of pylons, the

entablatures of palaces and temples, whose capitals, formed of human

faces or lotus flowers, showed partially, breaking the horizontal lines

of the roofs and rising like reefs amid the mass of private buildings.

Here and there above a garden wall shot up the scaly trunk of a palm

tree ending in a plume of leaves, not one of which stirred, for never a

breath blew. Acacias, mimosas, and Pharaoh fig-trees formed a cascade of

foliage that cast a narrow blue shadow upon the dazzling brilliancy of

the ground. These green spots refreshed and enlivened the solemn aridity

of the picture, which but for them would have been that of a dead city.

A few slaves of the Nahasi race, black complexioned, monkey-faced, with

bestial gait, alone braving the heat of the day, were bearing to their

masters' homes the water drawn from the Nile in jars that were hung from

a stick placed on their shoulder. Although they wore nothing but striped

drawers wrinkling on their hips, their torsos, brilliant and polished

like basalt, streamed with perspiration as they quickened their pace

lest they should scorch the thick soles of their feet on the pavements,

which were as hot as the floor of a vapour bath. The boatmen were asleep

in the cabins of their boats moored to the brick wall of the river quay,

sure that no one would waken them to cross to the other bank, where lay

the Memnonia quarter. In the highest heaven wheeled vultures, whose

shrill call, that at any other time would have been lost in the rumour

of the city, could be plainly heard in the general silence. On the

cornices of the monuments two or three ibises, one leg drawn up under

their body, their long bill resting on their breast, seemed to be

meditating deeply, and stood out against the calcined, whitish blue

which formed the background.

And yet all did not sleep. From the walls of a great palace whose

entablature, adorned with palmettoes, made a long, straight line against

the flaming sky, there came a faint murmur of music. These bursts of

harmony spread now and then through the diaphanous shimmer of the

atmosphere, and the eye might almost have followed their sonorous

undulations. Deadened by the thickness of the walls, the music was

strangely sweet. It was a song voluptuously sad, wearily languorous,

expressing bodily fatigue and the discouragement of passion. It was full

of the eternal weariness of the luminous azure, of the indescribable

helplessness of hot countries. As the slave passed by the wall,

forgetting the master's lash he would suspend his walk and stop to

breathe in that song, impregnated with all the secret homesickness of

the soul, which made him think of his far distant country, of his lost

love, and of the insurmountable obstacles of fate. Whence came that

song, that sigh softly breathed in the silence of the city? What

restless soul was awake when all around was asleep?

The straight lines and the monumental appearance of the facade of the

palace, which looked upon the face of the square, were typical of the

civil and religious architecture of Egypt. The dwelling could belong to

a princely or a priestly family only. So much was readily seen from the

materials of which it was built, the careful construction, and the

richness of the ornamentation.

In the centre of the facade rose a great building flanked by two wings

surmounted by a roof in the form of a truncated triangle. A broad,

deeply cut moulding of striking profile ended the wall, in which was

visible no opening other than a door placed, not symmetrically in the

centre, but in the corner of the building, no doubt to allow ample space

for the staircase within. A cornice in the same style as the entablature

surmounted this single door. The building projected from a wall on which

rested like balconies two stories of galleries, resembling open

porticoes, composed of pillars singularly fantastic in style. The bases

of these pillars represented huge lotus-buds, from the capsule of which,

as it opened its dentelated rim, sprang the shaft like a giant pistil,

swelling below, more slender at the top, girdled under the capital by a

collar of mouldings, and ending in a half-blown flower. Between the

broad bays were small windows with their sashes in two parts filled with

stained glass. Above ran a terraced roof flagged with huge slabs of

stone.

On the outer galleries great clay vases, rubbed inside with bitter

almonds and closed with leaves, resting upon wooden pedestals, cooled

the Nile water in the draughts of air. Tables bore pyramids of fruits,

sheaves of flowers and drinking-cups of different shapes; for the

Egyptians love to eat in the open air, and take their meals, so to

speak, upon the public street. On either side of the main building

stretched others rising to the height of one story only, formed of a row

of pillars engaged half-way up in a wall divided into panels in such a

manner as to form around the house a shelter closed to the sun and the

gaze of the outer world. All these buildings, enlivened by ornamental

paintings,--for the capitals, the shafts, the cornices, and the panels

were coloured,--produced a delightful and superb effect.

The door opened into a vast court surrounded by a quadrilateral portico

supported by pillars, the capitals of which showed on each face a

woman's head, with the ears of a cow, long, narrow eyes, slightly

flattened noses, and a broad smile; each wore a thick red cushion and

supported a cap of hard sandstone. Under the portico opened the doors of

the apartments, into which the light came softened by the shade of the

galleries. In the centre of the court sparkled in the sunshine a pool of

water, edged with a margin of Syene granite. On the surface of the pond

spread the heart-shaped leaves of the lotus, the rose and blue flowers

of which were half closed as if overcome by the heat in spite of the

water in which they were plunged. In the flower-beds around the pool

were planted flowers arranged fanlike upon small hillocks, and along the

narrow walks laid out between the beds walked carefully two tame storks,

which from time to time snapped their bills and fluttered their wings as

if about to take flight. At the angles of the court the twisted trunks

of four huge persaeas exhibited a mass of metallic green foliage. At the

end a sort of pylon broke the portico, and its large bay, framing in

the blue air, showed at the end of a long avenue a summer kiosk of rich

and elegant design. In the compartments traced on the right and on the

left of the arbour by dwarf trees cut into the shape of cones, bloomed

pomegranates, sycamores, tamarinds, periplocas, mimosas, and acacias,

the flowers of which shone like coloured lights on the deep green of the

foliage which overhung the walls.

The faint, sweet music of which we have spoken proceeded from one of the

rooms which opened into the interior portico. Although the sun shone

full into the court, the ground of which blazed in the flood of light, a

blue, cool shadow, transparently intense, filled the apartment, in which

the eye, blinded by the dazzling reverberation, sought to distinguish

shapes and at last made them out when it had become accustomed to the

semi-light. A tender lilac tone overspread the walls of the room, around

which ran a cornice painted in brilliant tones and enriched with small

golden palm-branches. Architectural designs skilfully combined formed on

the plain spaces panels which framed in ornaments, sheaves of flowers,

birds, diapers of contrasted colours, and scenes of domestic life.

At the back, near the wall, stood a strangely shaped bed, representing

an ox wearing ostrich-feathers with a disc between its horns, broadening

its back to receive the sleeper upon a thin red mattress, and stiffening

by way of feet its black legs ending in green hoofs, while its curled-up

tail was divided into two tufts. This quadruped bed, this piece of

animal furniture, would have seemed strange in any other country than

Egypt, where lions and jackals are also turned into beds by the fancy of

the workmen.

In front of the couch was placed a stool with four steps, which gave

access to it: at the head, a pillow of Oriental alabaster, destined to

support the neck without deranging the head-dress, was hollowed out in

the shape of a half moon. In the centre a table of precious wood carved

with exceeding care, stood upon a richly carved pedestal. A number of

objects were placed upon it: a pot of lotus flowers, a mirror of

polished bronze on an ivory stand, a vase of moss agate filled with

antimony powder, a perfume spatula of sycamore wood in the shape of a

woman bare to the waist stretching out as if she were swimming, and

appearing to attempt to hold her box above the water.

Near the table, on an armchair of gilded wood picked out with red, with

blue feet, and with lions for arms, covered with a thick cushion of

purple stuff starred with gold and crossed with black, the end of which

fell over the back, was seated a young woman, or rather, a young girl of

marvellous beauty, in a graceful attitude of nonchalance and melancholy.

Her features, of ideal delicacy, were of the purest Egyptian type, and

sculptors must have often thought of her as they carved the images of

Isis and Hathor, even at the risk of breaking the rigorous hieratic

laws. Golden and rosy reflections coloured her warm pallor, in which

showed her long black eyes, made to appear larger by lines of antimony,

and full of a languorous, inexpressible sadness. Those great dark eyes,

with the eyebrows strongly marked and the eyelids coloured, gave a

strange expression to the dainty, almost childish face. The half-parted

lips, somewhat thick, of the colour of a pomegranate flower, showed a

gleam of polished white and preserved the involuntary and almost painful

smile which imparts so sympathetic a charm to the Egyptian face. The

nose, slightly depressed at the root, where the eyebrows melted one into

another in a velvety shadow, rose in such pure lines, such delicate

outlines, and with such well-cut nostrils that any woman or goddess

would have been satisfied with it in spite of its slightly African

profile. The chin was rounded with marvellous elegance and shone like

polished ivory. The cheeks, rather rounder than those of the beauties of

other nations, added to the face an expression of extreme sweetness and

gracefulness.

This lovely girl wore for head-dress a sort of helmet formed of a Guinea

fowl, the half-closed wings of which fell upon her temples, and the

pretty, small head of which came down to the centre of her brow, while

the tail, marked with white spots, spread out on the back of her neck. A

clever combination of enamel imitated to perfection the plumage of the

bird. Ostrich-feathers, planted in the helmet like an aigrette,

completed this head-dress, which was reserved for young virgins, as the

vulture, the symbol of maternity, is worn only by women. The hair of the

young girl, of a brilliant black, plaited into tresses, hung in masses

on either side of her smooth, round cheeks, and fell down to her

shoulders. In the shadowy masses of the hair shone, like suns in a

cloud, great discs of gold worn as earrings. From the head-dress hung

gracefully down the back two long bands of stuff with fringed ends. A

broad pectoral ornament, composed of several rows of enamels, gold and

cornelian beads, and fishes and lizards of stamped gold, covered her

breast from the lower part of the neck to the upper part of the bosom,

which showed pink and white through the thin warp of the calasiris. The

dress, of a large checkered pattern, was fastened under the bosom with a

girdle with long ends, and ended in a broader border of transverse

stripes edged with a fringe. Triple bracelets of lapis-lazuli beads,

divided here and there by golden balls, encircled her slender wrists,

delicate as those of a child; and her lovely, narrow feet with long,

supple toes, were shod with sandals of white kid stamped with designs in

gold, and rested on a cedar stool incrusted with red and green enamel.

Near Tahoser (for this was the name of the young Egyptian) knelt, one

leg drawn back under the thigh and the other forming an obtuse angle, in

the attitude which the painters love to reproduce on the walls of

hypogea, a female harpist placed upon a sort of low pedestal, destined

no doubt to increase the resonance of the instrument. A piece of stuff

striped with coloured bands, the ends of which, thrown back, hung in

fluted lappets, bound her hair and framed in her face, smiling

mysteriously like that of a sphinx. A narrow dress, or rather sheath, of

transparent gauze outlined closely the youthful contours of her elegant,

slender form. Her dress, cut below the breast, left her shoulders,

chest, and arms free in their chaste nudity. A support, fixed to the

pedestal on which was placed the player, and traversed by a bolt in the

shape of a key, formed a rest for the harp, the weight of which, but for

that, would have borne wholly upon the shoulders of the young woman. The

harp, which ended in a sort of keyboard, rounded like a shell and

covered with ornamental paintings, bore at its upper end a sculptured

head of Hathor surmounted by an ostrich-plume. The nine cords were

stretched diagonally and quivered under the long, slender hands of the

harpist, who often, in order to reach the lower notes, bent with a

sinuous motion as if she were about to float on the waves of music and

accompany the vanishing harmony.

Behind her stood another musician, who might have been thought nude but

for the faint white haze which toned the bronze colour of her body. She

played on a sort of guitar with an exceedingly long handle, the three

cords of which were coquettishly adorned at their extremity with

coloured tufts. One of her arms, slender yet round, grasped the top of

the handle with a sculptural pose, while the other upheld the instrument

and touched the strings.

A third young woman, whose enormous mass of hair made her look all the

more slender, beat time upon a tympanum formed of a wooden frame

slightly curved inward, on which was stretched an onager-skin.

The harpist sang a plaintive melody, accompanied in unison,

inexpressibly sad. The words breathed vague aspirations, vague regrets,

a hymn of love to the unknown, and timid plaints of the rigour of the

gods and the cruelty of fate. Tahoser, leaning upon one of the lions of

her armchair, her hand under her cheek and her finger curved against her

temple, listened with inattention more apparent than real, to the song

of the musician. At times a sigh made her breast heave and raised the

enamels of her necklace. Sometimes a moist light caused by a growing

tear shone in her eye between the lines of antimony, and her tiny teeth

bit her lower lip as if she were fighting her own emotion.

"Satou," she said, clapping her delicate hands together to silence the

musician, who at once deadened with her palm the vibrations of the harp,

"your song enervates me, makes me languid, and would make me giddy like

overpowerful perfumes. The strings of your harp seem to be twisted with

the vibrations of my heart and sound painfully within my breast. You

make me almost ashamed, for it is my soul that mourns in your music. Who

can have told you my secrets?"

"Mistress," replied the harpist, "the poet and the musician know

everything; the gods reveal hidden things to them; they express in their

rhythm what the thought scarcely conceives and what the tongue

confusedly stammers. But if my song saddens you, I can, by changing its

mode, bring brighter ideas to your mind." And Satou struck the cords of

her harp with joyous energy, and with a quick measure which the tympanum

marked with more rapid strokes.

After this prelude she began a song praising the charms of wine, the

intoxication of perfumes, and the delight of the dance. Some of the

women, who, seated upon folding-stools formed of the necks of blue

swans, whose yellow bills clasped the frame of the seat, or kneeling

upon scarlet cushions filled with the down of thistles, had assumed

under the influence of Satou's music poses of utter languor, shivered;

their nostrils swelled; they breathed in the magic rhythm; they rose to

their feet, and, moved by an irresistible impulse, began to dance. A

head-dress, in the shape of a helmet cut out around the ear, enclosed

their hair, some locks of which escaped and fell upon their brown

cheeks, which the ardour of the dance soon turned rosy. Broad golden

circles beat upon their necks, and through their long gauze shifts,

embroidered at the top with pearls, showed their golden bronze bodies

which moved with the ease of an adder. They twisted, turned, swayed

their hips, bound with a narrow black girdle, threw themselves back,

bowed down, inclined their heads to right and left as if they found a

secret voluptuousness in touching their polished chins with their cold,

bare shoulders, swelled out their breasts like doves, knelt and rose,

pressed their hands to their bosom or voluptuously outspread their arms,

which seemed to flutter as the wings of Iris or Nephthys, dragged their

limbs, bent the knee, displayed their swift feet with little staccato

movements, and followed every undulation of the music. The maids,

standing against the wall to leave free space for the evolutions of the

dancers, marked the rhythm by snapping their fingers or clapping their

hands together. Some of these maids, absolutely nude, had no other

raiment than a bracelet of enamelled ware; others wore a narrow cloth

held by straps, and a few sprays of flowers twisted in their hair. It

was a strange and graceful sight. The buds and the flowers, gently

moving, shed their perfume through the hall, and these young women, thus

wreathed, might have suggested fortunate comparisons to poets.

But Satou had overestimated the power of her art. The joyous rhythm

seemed to increase Tahoser's melancholy. A tear rolled down her fair

cheek like a drop of Nile water on a nymphoea, and hiding her face in

the breast of her favourite maid, who leaned upon the armchair of her

mistress, she uttered with a sob, dovelike in its sadness, "Oh, my dear

Nofre, I am very sad and very unhappy!"