72 
Just beyond the Rameseum, in some of the lines of tombs, 
four Arabs dwelt whose family name was Abd er Rasoul. From 
about the year 1871, these men were known to bring and offer to 
travellers and tourists at Thebes, the hands, the feet, the 
ornaments of mummies; they dared not dispose of the bodies 
whole for fear of the bastinado; but in their ignorance of 
hieratics they did dispose of some very interesting fragments of 
the ritual of the dead, and some royal scarabs of the xix. 
dynasty. A Mr. Colin Campbell brought to Cairo a beautiful 
royal ritual from Thebes, and the Bilak authorities heard of it. 
There was evidently a good deal of body-snatching going on up 
at Thebes, and M. Maspero went there. A conference with 
Daoud Pasha, the then governor, ended in Maspero’s offer of a 
good large reward for any information that would lead to the 
apprehension of the mummy finders and mummy sellers. Abd 
el Rasoul and his brothers were getting desperate. They would 
have sold Pharaoh for a song, and, indeed, in 1880 he was offered 
for sale, body and case, to an American, but refused, Yankee 
fashion, as not being the genuine article. 
In 1881 suspicion fell upon the elder brother, Achmed, as being 
in the secret. M. Maspero, with consent of Governor Daoud, 
had him arrested, and he was marched off to Keneh, and lay in 
prison for two months. The bastinado, and the bribe Maspero 
had suggested, were offered him alternately. He was threatened 
with death, but he was obstinately silent. Meanwhile the 
younger brother, Mohammed, thought half a loaf better than 
no bread, and determined for the sake of M. Maspero’s certain 
backsheesh to get rid of the uncomfortable family secret, and 
the uncertain chances of more loot from Pharaoh’s tomb. 
He made a clean breast of the fact of the mummy find, and gave 
his depositions to the governor. A telegram reached Cairo 
somewhere about July Ist, 1881, and within a few hours my 
kind friend, Brugsch Bey, sub-curator of the Bilak Museum. 
and his trusty assistant, Achmed Kemal, were on their journey 
500 miles up Nile to interview the now interesting Rasoul 
family, and to visit the newest find of Theban mummies. 
Arrangements were made to meet Mohammed Abd er Rasoul at 
a remote place in the limestone plateau. On July 5, 1881, 
Brugsch Bey and his attendant climbed up the scorching difficult 
cliff, and found behind a huge mass of isolated rock, that looked as 
a giant had flung it down from the cliff above, a lot of blocks 
apparently a heap of haphazard, really, a very cleverly contrived 
bit of human device. The spot was drear and unlikely beyond 
imagining. ‘‘ That is the place,”’ said the sullen savage-featured 
Achmed, and in less time than it takes to write it, Brugsch Bey 
and his men were at work removing the blocks of stone that 
filled the pit’s mouth. The well, 63 feet square, was found to 
