The Treasury of Ancient Egypt eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 276 pages of information about The Treasury of Ancient Egypt.

The Treasury of Ancient Egypt eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 276 pages of information about The Treasury of Ancient Egypt.

The party which made the entrance consisted of Mr Davis; his assistant, Mr Ayrton; Mr Harold Jones; Mr Max Dalison, formerly of the Egypt Exploration Fund; and myself.  Wriggling and crawling, we pushed and pulled ourselves down the sloping rubbish, until, with a rattling avalanche of small stones, we arrived at the bottom of the passage, where we scrambled to our feet at the brink of a large rectangular well, or shaft.  Holding the lamps aloft, the surrounding walls were seen to be covered with wonderfully preserved paintings executed on slightly raised plaster.  Here Horemheb was seen standing before Isis, Osiris, Horus, and other gods; and his cartouches stood out boldly from amidst the elaborate inscriptions.  The colours were extremely rich, and, though there was so much to be seen ahead, we stood there for some minutes, looking at them with a feeling much akin to awe.

The shaft was partly filled with rubbish, and not being very deep, we were able to climb down it by means of a ladder, and up the other side to an entrance which formed a kind of window in the sheer wall.  In entering a large tomb for the first time, there are one or two scenes which fix themselves upon the memory more forcefully than others, and one feels as though one might carry these impressions intact to the grave.  In this tomb there was nothing so impressive as this view across the well and through the entrance in the opposite wall.  At one’s feet lay the dark pit; around one the gaudy paintings gleamed; and through the window-like aperture before one, a dim suggestion could be obtained of a white-pillared hall.  The intense eagerness to know what was beyond, and, at the same time, the feeling that it was almost desecration to climb into those halls which had stood silent for thousands of years, cast a spell over the scene and made it unforgetable.

This aperture had once been blocked up with stones, and the paintings had passed across it, thus hiding it from view, so that a robber entering the tomb might think that it ended here.  But the trick was an old one, and the plunderers had easily detected the entrance, had pulled away the blocks, and had climbed through.  Following in their footsteps, we went up the ladder and passed through the entrance into the pillared hall.  Parts of the roof had fallen in, and other parts appeared to be likely to do so at any moment.  Clambering over the debris we descended another sloping corridor, which was entered through a cutting in the floor of the hall, originally blocked up and hidden.  This brought us into a chamber covered with paintings, like those around the well; and again we were brought to a standstill by the amazingly fresh colours which arrested and held the attention.

We then passed on into the large burial-hall, the roof of which was supported by crumbling pillars.  Slabs of limestone had broken off here and there and had crashed down on to the floor, bringing with them portions of the ceiling painted with a design of yellow stars on a black ground.  On the walls were unfinished paintings, and it was interesting to notice that the north, south, east, and west were clearly marked upon the four walls for ceremonial purposes.

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The Treasury of Ancient Egypt from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.