Transcriber’s note:  Original text read “exhanging”.

Then into the dark depths of the shaft we descended, and ascertained that the robbers had not effected an entrance.  A long night watch followed, and the next day we had the satisfaction of arresting some of the criminals.  The tomb was found to penetrate several hundred feet into the cliff, and at the end of the long and beautifully worked passage the great royal sarcophagus was found—­empty!  So ended a very strenuous season’s work.

If the experiences of a digger in Professor Petrie’s camp are to be regarded as typical, they will probably serve to damp the ardour of eager young gentlemen in search of ancient Egyptian treasure.  One lives in a bare little hut constructed of mud, and roofed with cornstalks or corrugated iron; and if by chance there happened to be a rain storm, as there was when I was a member of the community, one may watch the frail building gently subside in a liquid stream on to one’s bed and books.  For seven days in the week one’s work continues, and it is only to the real enthusiast that that work is not monotonous and tiresome.

A few years later it fell to my lot to excavate for the Government the funeral temple of Thutmosis III. at Thebes, and a fairly large sum was spent upon the undertaking.  Although the site was most promising in appearances, a couple of months’ work brought to light hardly a single object of importance, whereas exactly similar sites in the same neighbourhood had produced inscriptions of the greatest value.  Two years ago I assisted at an excavation upon a site of my own selection, the net result of which, after six weeks’ work, was one mummified cat!  To sit over the work day after day, as did the unfortunate promoter of this particular enterprise, with the flies buzzing around his face and the sun blazing down upon him from a relentless sky, was hardly a pleasurable task; and to watch the clouds of dust go up from the tip-heap, where tons of unprofitable rubbish rolled down the hillside all day long, was an occupation for the damned.  Yet that is excavating as it is usually found to be.

Now let us consider the other side of the story.  In the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes excavations have been conducted for some years by Mr Theodore M. Davis, of Newport, Rhode Island, by special arrangement with the Department of Antiquities of the Egyptian Government; and as an official of that Department I have had the privilege of being present at all the recent discoveries.  The finding of the tomb of Yuaa and Tuau a few years ago was one of the most interesting archaeological events of recent times, and one which came somewhere near to the standard of romance set by the novelists.  Yuaa and Tuau were the parents of Queen Tiy, the discovery of whose tomb is recorded in the next chapter.  When the entrance of their tomb was cleared, a flight of steps was exposed, leading down to a passage blocked by