340 Dr. E. A. Wall is Budge. On the Orientation 



in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes. Now we know that several of 

 these tombs were built 1,300 years before the time of this historian, 

 and yet they were open to the inspection of visitors, even Greeks, at 

 that late date. What the broken wine jar shows us is that the pyra- 

 mids of Gebel Barkal were not built by late native rulers who nourished 

 under the rule of the Greeks and Bomans between B.C. 300 and 

 A.D. 350, but by native kings of the earlier dynasties who followed 

 ancient funeral customs and rites that were known and practised as far 

 back as the Xllth dynasty of Egypt, about B.C. 2500. 



But to return to the excavation. Having removed the sand from 

 the chambers, it became evident that neither the pillars nor the walls 

 thereof had ever been inscribed or sculptured. A diligent search 

 convinced me that the mummy chamber must be situated somewhere 

 under the pyramid, and, judging from the analogy of several tombs 

 which I excavated with General Sir Francis Grenfell, K.C.B., at 

 Aswan in 1886-87, it ought to be exactly under its apex, if such a 

 term may be applied to a truncated pyramid. Therefore, returning 

 to the end of the chamber which had been hewn out of the rock 

 immediately beneath the place where the shrine had stood, we 

 searched for an entrance which would lead us in under the pyramid. 

 At length we found that the wall of the chamber at this end con- 

 sisted of a slab of stone about 7 feet by 6 feet by 1 foot 2 inches, 

 embedded in lime, and when this was broken through we found a 

 sort of vault, but there was nothing in it. The only thing that 

 remained to do was to cut into the floor of the vault, and when we 

 had done this we found that we had arrived at the mouth of a 

 second pit or shaft, by which the mummy in its coffin must have 

 been lowered into the chamber wherein it was to rest finally. 

 We worked away at clearing out the pit by candle light under great 

 difficulties, and when we were about 100 feet below the base of the 

 pyramid, we began to come near to the short passage at right angles to 

 the pit, which should have led us into the mummy chamber. At this 

 point, however, the sides of the pit became very damp, and everything 

 which we dug out was thoroughly wet ; a foot or two lower down the 

 men found themselves in standing water, and at length we had to stop 

 work. We had reached a depth which had brought us down to the 

 level of the Nile, and found that its waters had forced their way by 

 infiltration into the shaft, and presumably into the miunmy chamber 

 also. This discovery was most disappointing, and one which I think 

 could hardly have been foreseen. We were, therefore, obliged to be 

 satisfied with having demonstrated the plan upon which the pyramid 

 tomb in the Sudan was built, and its analogy to the rock-hewn tombs 

 of Egypt of the firrt twelve dynasties. 



Now it is clear that, when the builders of the pyramids at Gebel 

 Barkal selected the site for their tombs on the edge of the sandstone 



