898 ANNUAL OP SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



another proof of the reckless disregard with which the older occu- 

 pants of the toinb had been treated; for they were the sides of 

 broken mummy-cases, covered with hieroglyphic groups in the style 

 which I have met with on coffins of the period of the eighteenth, 

 nineteenth, and other dynasties of the revived empire. 



Likewise at the door of this vault, but in the shaft rather than 

 within it, lay a tall, cylindrical jar, inscribed near the neck with a 

 short line of hieratic, and nearly filled with the fruit of the Doni 

 palm. Several more nuts of this tree were also strewed about, and 

 they were very frequent accompaniments of the Egyptian dead. 



At the head of the sarcophagus four curious objects were carefully 

 disposed : a figure about sixteen inches long, internally formed of 

 reeds and linen, and swathed in imitation of a bull, like those from 

 Memphis ; a mummied ibis ; a spirited copy of a small hawk on a 

 pedestal, rather decayed, but apparently constructed of folds of 

 linen cloth gummed together, and an oblate ball of bitumen from 

 tliree to four inches in diameter. The first was evidently designed 

 to represent, or had reference to, Apis, or perhaps rather to Mnevis, 

 whose worship was celebrated at the neighboring Herrnouthes (Er- 

 ment). The ibis was the emblem of Thoth, the hawk of Horus 

 both of them deities whose attributes were of striking import to the 

 departed spirit. And in the ball of bitumen w.as imbedded a coiled 

 snake, likewise a symbol of marked significance in connection with the 

 future. 



The inner end of chamber No. 4 communicated with another, No. 

 5, which contained one more pillared mummy case, with a festoon of 

 crumbling evergreens resting upon it. At the farthest corner of this 

 vault was the entrance to yet another, on a slightly lower level, and 

 nearly filled with stone chips and rubbish, ainong which were no 

 traces of sepulchral remains. This was the limit of the subterra- 

 nean gallery, whose extreme length from the end of this chamber, 

 through Nos. 5 and 4, across the shaft, and on to the end of No. 2, 

 was fifty-six feet. The height of the vaults was within two or three 

 inches of five feet, and their roofs were encrusted with dependent 

 crystals of salt. 



Such were the deep recesses of the tomb, such the method in which 

 the dead had been left to their rest, as every object probably re- 

 mained in precisely the position it had occupied when the funeral 

 rites were performed over the last who had "gone down into this pit." 

 For had its gloomy silence been ever broken by explorers during any 

 of the subsequent centuries through whose long course treasure-seek- 

 ing has more or less vigorously flourished, it would not be conceiva- 

 ble that the mummy-cases should stand intact, and particularly that 

 an imposing receptacle like the sarcophagus, so well calculated to 

 excite the hopes of cupidity, should be permitted to retain, unat- 

 ternpted, the mystery of its interior. But the time had come when 

 those who had reposed so long were to be disturbed in turn, although 

 there were no successors to be established, as they had been, in the 

 places of which the occupants were to be dispossessed. The tunnel 

 above and the vaults beneath were fully lighted up, the grim corri- 

 dors resounded with the song of a selected band of brawny fellaheen 

 as they pulled at the hoisting ropes, and the old beams, erected over 



