ARCHEOLOGY. 



been opened by Arabs, and into some the wrong 

 mummy had been returned, as the names on 

 the bandages did not correspond to those upon 

 the cases. The mummies of people of the 

 eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties appear 

 to have been removed to this place of safety 

 from their graves in the Valley of the Tombs 

 during the reign of the first priest-king, Her- 

 llor. And afterward, perhaps on account of 

 its secrecy, the vault was used as a burial-place 

 for succeeding princes. 



The depredations committed among these 

 coffins have been considerable, and much of the 

 difficulty in identifying the bodies is owing to 

 the abstractions and displacements. The fu- 

 neral papyrus of Queen Not-era-maut was 

 purchased several years ago by the Prince of 

 Wales, who deposited it in the British Museum. 

 The funeral papyrus of Neb-seni, one of the 

 dignitaries whose coffins were found, has also 

 been for some time in the British Museum. 

 Many statuettes, inscribed tablets, scarabroi, 

 mummies, etc., have been sold to travelers of 

 late years, which were undoubtedly taken from 

 this place by the Arabs, who have known the 

 secret of the chamber for probably twenty-two 

 years. 



Of the twenty-nine mummies recovered, sev- 

 en are those of kings, nine of queens and prin- 

 cesses, and five of personages of distinction. 

 The hiding-place was situated behind an angle 

 of a cliff a little way from Deir-el-Bahari, near 

 Thebes, southwest of the village. The entrance 

 to the chamber in which they were concealed 

 was by a perpendicular shaft, 12 metres deep, 

 whose mouth was 60 metres above the plain. 

 From the bottom of the pit a gallery, 74 metres 

 in length, conducted to the chamber, whose 

 dimensions were 7 metres by 4. A hint of the 

 causes which led to the deposit of the bodies in 

 this secret place is probably given in hieratic 

 inscriptions on the mummy-cases of Leti I and 

 Barneses XII, which stated that their remains 

 had been placed for safety in the tomb of Queen 

 Ansera. The mummy of this queen was found 

 in the vault, though not in her own mummy 

 case, but that of Rai, the nurse of Queen 

 Ahmes- Nofertari. 



Among the mummies were identified those 

 of a Raskenen, one of the last kings of the 

 seventeenth dynasty ; of King Ahmes I, the 

 founder of the eighteenth dynasty, and of 

 Ahmes-ft'ofertari, his queen ; Queen Arhotep 

 and Princess Sat Ammon, his daughters, and 

 Prince Sa Ammon, his son ; of Amenhotep I, 

 the second king of this dynasty ; the mummy- 

 cases of Thothmes I and Thothines II, succeed- 

 ing monarchs ; the mummy-case, and perhaps 

 the mummy, of Thothmes III, or the Great; 

 mummies of Queens Hont-ta-me-hou, An, Set- 

 ka, and Princess Mes-sont-ta^me-hou, all of the 

 eighteenth dynasty; the mummy of Rameses 

 I, the founder of the nineteenth dynasty ; of 

 King Seti I, his successor; the supposed 

 mummy of Rameses II, or the Great, the third 

 king of this dynasty, and the Pharaoh of the 



Jewish captivity, but which Professor Maspero 

 afterward concluded to be that of Rameses 

 XII, of the twentieth dynasty ; of Queen 

 Not-em-maut, wife of Her-Hor, the first priest- 

 king ; of the high-priest Pinotem ; of Queen 

 Ramaka and her infant daughter Mout-em-hat, 

 of the twenty-first dynasty ; of King Pinotem 



II, the third of this dynasty, and of Queen 

 ilon-ta-taoni, his daughter, Queen Ast-ein-jeb 

 and Princess Nessi-kon-sou, other daughters, 

 Prince Jep-ta-a-ouf-anch, high-priest of Aninmii 

 Ra, his son, and the high-priest Mas-sa-ha-ta, 

 another son or near relative. 



The assemblage of mummies of different pe- 

 riods in this place was owing, according to the 

 conjectures of Maspero, originally to the tomb- 

 robberies of the reign of Rameses IX. The 

 tomb of Amenhotep I was one of those which 

 the robbers attempted to break into. It was 

 probably in the midst of the necropolis at 

 Koorneh. Several mummies were missing 

 probably at the time of the removal. The 

 tomb of Queen Mashont-ti-moo-hoo had been 

 pillaged, and apparently those of Thothmes 



III, Rameses I, Seti I, and others. Contem- 

 porary mummies of the family of the twentieth 

 dynasty were deposited in the same place for 

 safety on account of the unsettled state of the 

 country, owing to insurrections and the estab- 

 lishment of the rival dynasty at Tanis. This 

 twenty-first dynasty could not have succeeded 

 Her-Hor, but reigned contemporaneously with 

 the priest-kings whose names are preserved 

 in this cavern. These descendants of Uer-Hor 

 were as follows : High-Priest Piankhi ; High- 

 Priest Pinotem I ; Pinotem II ; his sons, King 

 Menkheperra and High-Priest Mahasirti ; and 

 King Pinotem, whose wife, Makeri, was 

 daughter of the contemporary King of Tanis. 

 The rival dynasties were both supplanted after 

 the death of Makeri by Sheshouk, the head of 

 a Semitic family in Lower Egypt, who founded 

 the Bubastite dynasty. 



Assyriologists have for some time expected 

 that in the ruined cities of Babylonia more 

 ancient versions of the Assyrian text than the 

 cuneiform inscriptions already recovered would 

 yet be brought to light. In 1880 Hormuzd 

 Rassam found a fragment of a tablet relating 

 to the Deluge in the ruins of one of the tem- 

 ple libraries of Babylon. Through the seasons 

 of 1880 and 1881 the same explorer has indus- 

 triously examined the sites of the Chaldean 

 cities of Babylon, Borsippa, Sippara, and 

 Cutha, and has unearthed a large number of 

 religious texts and records. 



Since the large discovery of inscribed tablets 

 made by Arabs in 1874, there have been in- 

 numerable relics and inscriptions exhumed in 

 Babylon. The same spot has been explored 

 by Rassam. It was the center of commercial 

 life in ancient Babylon, being the court of a 

 family named Beni Egibi, who seem to have 

 been financial agents of the government. The 

 tax-receipts found here reveal the fact that the 

 taxes for the maintenance of the irrigation 



