4UO ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



the figure disclosed is of a character, I fear, to indicate that the docu- 

 ment is simply of the usual class, a copy of some portion of the ritual. 



The bearer of the scroll was a man of mature years, with features 

 strongly marked as far as the cerements permitted their characteris- 

 tics to be discerned. The skin of the upper part of the body had 

 been gilt with thick gold leaf; and the arms, which were rolled sep- 

 arately, but only by a single bandage, were brought down by the 

 sides, with the hands resting under the thighs. 



All the other mummies in the pillared cases were laid in the same 

 attitude, and the upper portions of several of them were likewise gilt. 

 With one, also, there was another hieratic papyrus, but of inferior 

 material, execution, and size. Another was decorated with a gilt 

 mask ; and another, being a handsome specimen of the style of orna- 

 menting externally with small objects, in the manner which to some 

 extent prevailed on all, I propose to remove untouched. In this 

 instance the compact bituminized cloth began to occur beneath not 

 more than two outer layers of the ordinary linen, and here, on the 

 black ground, the figures were inlaid. First there was a blue-winged 

 scarabaeus on the throat ; then a small winged globe of thin gold ; 

 lower still, on the breast, another larger agathodaemon, with more 

 distended wings, also in gold ; and beneath, another thin plate of the 

 same metal, representing Anubis bending over the deceased. Over 

 the spot of the ventral incision, on the left side, were the four genii 

 of Amenti, composed of what might be termed a mosaic of variegated 

 pieces of vitreous composition; and two crowned hawks of Ilorus, 

 of the same material, were imbedded one on each shoulder. 



The history of the sepulchre whose details I have thus attempted 

 to describe, may, with no great difficulty, be surmised. Most of the 

 painted tombs in its vicinity, in the same hill, date from the older 

 dynasties of the revived empire, and there is every reason to believe 

 that it also had been excavated and used at a period quite as early. 

 Indeed, the tomb immediately adjoining, whose door I discovered 

 first in the same area, which must, to all appearance, have been cut 

 with equal reference to both, was sealed with the cartouch of Amu- 

 noph III., of the eighteenth dynasty, and, in all reasonable probabil- 

 ity, this indicator of age may be fairly held as of common application 

 to the two. Nor would this conclusion be otherwise than counte- 

 nanced by the style of mummification and decoration of the rifled 

 bodies and coffins found in the built-up chambers above, and in vault 

 No. 1 below. 



Whether the original occupants were allowed to sleep on in peace 

 until the time of the last appropriation, or whether their right of 

 property had been occasionally infringed in the interval, or them- 

 selves, and others also, in turn, displaced, according to a not unusual 

 practice for adding to the priestly revenues, can only be conjectured. 

 But twelve or perhaps thirteen hundred years must have elapsed 

 before possession was so rudely taken, and the forcible and final inno- 

 vation accomplished which left the place in the condition in which I 

 found it. Then, probably a century or so before our era, a complete 

 and radical change was effected. The older mummies were, as we 

 have seen, spoiled and ejected, and their home usurped amid circum- 

 stances which cannot but excite surprise. 



