74 
passage that led to it. Here the mummies of the earlier 
dynasties, the xviii. and xix., Seti and Rameses were 
found. And this alone is evidence that the bodies of the great 
dead had been removed hither for safety or to save expense at 
some later date from their original tombs. The principal 
personages found among the forty were a king and queen perhaps 
of the xvii. dynasty, the Hyksos time, 2243 to 1733 3.0; five 
kings and four queens of the xvili. dynasty of Thebes, 1700 to 
1480 ; the three successive kings of the xix. dynasty, B.c 1400 to 
1233, namely, the great Rameses of the Bondage, Rameses IL., 
his father Seti I., and his grandfather Rameses 1. No bodies of 
kings of the xx. dynasty were found in the passage. As Brugsch 
Bey stood in that dark sepulchral cavern chamber and passage, 
he stood with the illustrious dead of seven centuries, no one of 
whom was living on this earth at a later date than 1000 Bc., 
some of whom had fallen asleep and been embalmed as much as 
1,700 years before Christ. 
It was evident from the flowers and wreaths that strewed the 
passage that M. Maspero’s backsheesh had only been just in 
time. Close to his brother, Thothmes II., in the passage lay the 
sarcophagus and coffin of the great Napoleon of old Egypt, the 
warrior Thothmes III. of the xviii. dynasty ; great in name and 
deeds of arms, but little in stature, for his mummy only 
measured five feet two inches. There in his coffin lay the 
conqueror of Syria, Cyprus, and Ethiopia, and probably had lain 
since 1600 s.c.; but Abder Rasoul had been at work, the 
mummy was exposed to view, the bandages had been torn. 
The next question was—How were these great dead to be 
removed to their final resting place, the Bulak Museum ? 
Steamers had been sent for, to come up to Luxor; the bodies 
and coffin cases must be lifted up the shaft and transported 
down the difficult cliff side to the Theban plain; they must be 
ferried across the Nile, and then again borne on the shoulders of 
men to the Luxor river side. All this Brugsch Bey saw in a 
moment; off to Luxor he and Kemal went and hired 300 Arabs, 
and by earliest dawn was busy in the removal and carefully 
packing of the mummy cases in matting and sail-cloth. Set a 
thief to catch a thief was Brugsch Bey’s idea, and as he stood on 
guard at the pit mouth, he told off squads of Arabs to convey 
each mummy, with another squad to keep guard upon the robber 
carriers. Night and day the work went on. In forty-eight hours 
the coffins had been hoisted to the pit’s mouth, and after six days 
hard labour under a July sun, the whole freight of sailcloth-sewn 
cases was at the Nile bank, and for three days and three nights 
brave Brugsch Bey and Effendi Kemal and a few trustworthy 
Arabs—one of whom may be seen any day in the Balak Museum 
