were taken up, and some unoccupied site in which to establish a new royal cemetery had to be sought.  At first they went to a considerable distance, namely, to the end of the valley (known as the Western Valley), which opens from near Drah Abu’l Neggeh.  Amenhotep III., Ai, and perhaps others, were there buried.  Somewhat later, they preferred to draw nearer to the city of the living.  Behind the cliff which forms the northern boundary of the plain of Thebes, there lay a kind of rocky hollow closed in on every side, and accessible from the outer world by only a few perilous paths.  It divides into two branches, which cross almost at right angles.  One branch turns to the south-east, while the other, which again divides into secondary branches, turns to the south-west.  Westward rises a mountain which recalls upon a gigantic scale the outline of the great step-pyramid of Sakkarah (fig. 137).  The Egyptian engineers of the time observed that this hollow was separated from the ravine of Amenhotep III. by a mere barrier some 500 cubits in thickness.  In this there was nothing to dismay such practised miners.  They therefore cut a trench some fifty or sixty cubits deep through the solid rock, at the end of which a narrow passage opens like a gateway into the hidden valley beyond.  Was it in the time of Horemheb, or during the reign of Rameses I., that this gigantic work was accomplished?  Rameses I. is, at all events, the earliest king whose tomb has as yet been found in this spot.  His son, Seti I., then his grandson, Rameses II., came hither to rest beside him.  The Ramesside Pharaohs followed one after the other.  Herhor may perhaps have been the last of the series.  These crowded catacombs caused the place to be called “The Valley of the Tombs of the Kings,”—­a name which it retains to this day.

These tombs are not complete.  Each had its chapel; but those chapels stood far away in the plain, at Gurneh, at the Ramesseum, at Medinet Habu; and they have already been described.  The Theban rock, like the Memphite pyramid, contained only the passages and the sepulchral chamber.  During the daytime, the pure Soul was in no serious danger; but in the evening, when the eternal waters which flow along the vaulted heavens fall in vast cascades adown the west and are engulfed in the bowels of the earth, the Soul follows the bark of the Sun and its escort of luminary gods into a lower world bristling with ambuscades and perils.  For twelve hours, the divine squadron defiles through long and gloomy corridors, where numerous genii, some hostile, some friendly, now struggle to bar the way, and now aid it in surmounting the difficulties of the journey.  Great doors, each guarded by a gigantic serpent, were stationed at intervals, and led to an immense hall full of flame and fire, peopled by hideous monsters and executioners whose office it was to torture the damned.  Then came more dark and narrow passages, more blind gropings in the gloom, more strife with malevolent genii, and again the joyful