168 THE DISCOVERY OF THE PHARAOHS. 
men come by their own. The second brother Mohammed, 
seeing treason imminent, stole a march on the other two, and 
posting off to Kench informed the mudir that he was ready 
and willing for a consideration (nothing is ever done in Egypt 
without a consideration) to disclose the secret which had been 
faithfully guarded for so many years. 
A special expedition was at once despatched from Cairo to 
Thebes, although it was in the middle of summer, and this 
resulted in the most remarkable find which has ever been 
made in Egypt. 
The pit, now known as the King’s Shaft, was found to be a 
depository of royal mummies of the XVIIIth and XIXth 
dynasties, which had been removed from the tombs of the 
kings in the year 966 B.c. at a time when the country was 
so disturbed that they were unsafe in their original place of 
burial, 
It was at once seen that that these Arabs had really dis- 
interred entire families of Pharaohs, the most illustrious 
perhaps which have reigned in Egypt. Here were the bodies 
of the very Pharaohs who had delivered their country from 
the alien Shepherd Kings. Soqmounri and Aahmes I.; the 
conquerors of Syria and Ethiopia. Thothmes III., Ramses I., 
Seti I., and his son Ramses II., the Sesostris of the Greeks, 
and our well known Pharaoh of the Israelitish oppression. 
So cunningly has the embalmer done his work that in the 
Ghizeh Museum you may now see the very features and ex- 
pressions of some of the greatest of the kings who 35 centuries 
ago erected those temples and monuments of the new Empire, 
some of which I have shewn you this evening. 
Many of these massive buildings, built by these kings I 
have shewn you which were intended to last for all time, 
have totally disappeared, those that remain are but shadows 
of their former magnificence, whilst strange to relate, the frail 
bodies of their builders have outlived the work of their hands, 
giving a new application to Byron’s line— 
‘‘Dust long outlives the storied stone.” 
