166 THE DISCOVERY OF THE PHARAOHS. 
the inclined heap of talus, Ahmed in one of his prowling 
expeditions after antiquities happened to strike an iron rod, 
which he always carried with him, into a hollow space in the 
rocks. His experience at once told him that he had chanced 
on the opening on one of those pits which are so numerous in 
certain parts of the country. On further investigation he 
found the mouth of the shaft, which had been carefully filled in 
with rubble. Taking two of his brothers into his confidence, 
these three, with the aid of their wives, commenced under the 
cover of the darkness, and with the greatest secrecy, to clear 
out the excavation. After each night’s work the mouth of the 
pit had to be covered in, and all traces of their operations care- 
fully concealed. After many nights of hard and weary toil, 
during which one of the women succumbed to fatigue, they 
reached the bottom of the well-like opening which is about 40 
feet in depth. Here they discovered a chamber which is 
about 26 feet square, piled up to its very roof with wooden 
mummy cases and funerary objects of all kinds. A few of 
the mummies whre unswathed and taken away on this occa- 
sion, and the spoilers also loaded themselves with two or three 
coffers of funerary figures, scaraboei, and papyri, all objects 
easy to remove and hide. 
For thirteen years did these Arabs carefully guard their 
secret, and during that time they opened the pit three or 
four times, of course in the night, and for a few hours only, 
taking such extreme precautions that not one of their neigh- 
bours suspected the importance of their discevery. 
Each winter they used to sell to travellers some of their 
booty, waiting to dispose of the principal stores, until some 
scientific man, sent on a mission by his government, should 
come to Thebes, or a traveller rich enough to buy up the 
contents of the pit en bloc and get them passed through the 
Egyptian customs. Of course these men had no real idea of 
the enormous value and interest of their discovery, although 
they obtained very high prices for some of their booty, and 
