PHAROAH AND HIS GRAVE.

Hokitika Guardian, 15 March 1924, Page 4

PHAROAH AND HIS GRAVE.

THE VALLEY OF THE TOMBS. (By S. Elliott Napier). We have heard so much recently of the wonders laid bare by the spado of -Mr Howard Carter and his associates; of the glories of the various chambers that go to make up the burial place of Tiit-ankh-amen, culminating in the nest of golden shrines wherein there lies the great sarcophagus itself, that we are in danger almost of becoming surfeited with admiration. The sudden closing up of the tomb by .Mr Carter as an act of protest against the interference of the Egyptian Government has, perhaps almost fortunately, put a period to the constant feast of sweets with which we ran the risk of being cloyed; and, although the cables arc not clear as to whether Mr Carter lias abandoned bis work altogether, or merely postponed it until next season—for the moment at least Hie stream of amazing chronicle is stayed, and we can afford a little time to consider some other and less direct aspects of the matter. And one of these, and one of the most interesting of them, is the locale ol the great “find” and its peculiar history. Much has been written about ibis spot, and many person; have had the good fortune to visit it; but it is doubtful, however familiar its appearance may be to those who have risked it either in reality or by the imaginative medium of the printed page, whether its curious story, or its many extraordinary associations, are as well known as they should be. Tn one particular sense, at least, its history is uuif|UC —lor tour thousand rears without a break, ii has held the mystery of the great Pharaohs of Ivrypt ill its stern and silent keeping. THE VALLEY. The verv name ol the spot—“ The Valley of Tombs of the Kings”—is instinct with romance and lias throughout the centuries never failed to e.tIrael the attention of the iiKpiiring traveller. The valley lies amid the grim desolation of the r l Indian Hills, end at its head there stands a peak which, from its pyramid-like conformation, and its attitude, is known as “The Horn.” Beneath its .sentinel watch no less than thirty I haia- • dis were buried from the days of the Eighteenth Dynasty onward. Of these but two are whose mummies still remain within their royal resting-places—Amen-hotep 11., who lies in her -arcophagus behind an iron door, placed there to keep the robber and the sacrilegious visitor at bay : and Tut-aukh-ainen himself whose mummy ease has just been discovered beneath its golden shrines. “There,” as Mill,ward Carter says, “M’lien the claims of science have been satisfied, we hope to leave him lying.” Among these thirty kings were some of the mightiest that Egypt ever knew. Thotlimes 111. “who established the Egyptian Empire in Asia, and could command the tribute of the then civilised world;" Anienotep HI., under whom “Hie sovereign power of Egypt attained its culmination, and luxury and ostentation their (idlest expression;” Seti 1. and Re.meais 11., who recovered for a time the Egpiian domination in Asia, which Akhenal.o,ll, the “heretic,” the “idealist” lather-in-law of Tut-ankh-anien, had l(ost. Reading the accounts ol the wealth and wonders that have been found within the tomb of TuL-ankb-aniett, a Pharaoh who was, compared to those great kings, a person almost insignificant, a youth who reigned but Driftly and failed to make the slightest mark on the annals ol bis great country, one may well appreciate the comment ot our great .Australian Egyptologist, l)r Grafton Elliott SmiHi, upon the matter. “A thousand years before Christ,” he says, “l-lie desolate Valiev of the Tombs of the Kings must have had buried in its recesses the vastest, collection of gold

and precious furniture that perhaps was over collected in one spot 111 the history ol the world. In tins connection. and in support of Dr Gialtoii Elliott Smith’s assertion, it may be mentioned that Lord Carnarvon,

shortly before his death, assessed the value ol the objects m Tul-ankh-amcii’s tomb at: over two million pounds sterling! And r very large addition to its known splendours has been made since his lamented death. Truly to the Valley of the Tombs Sinhad’s wondrous Valley ol Diamonds itself must take a second seat. UOHBKIIS AND OTIIEB VISITOIPL One of the leas! known, least obvious. and yet most important of tin l tombs is one that lies "tucked aua\ in :i curlier,” as .Mr Carter aptly puis it, at the extreme end of the valley. Its interest lies not in the tact that. it. was built fur and occupied by the mummy of Thothmes !.. but in the lad that it was the first to he built there, and was so built there as the solution of a great difficulty. Ihe Egyptian ritual demanded that the dead should lie surrounded with the objects that lie had required and enjoyed in his lifetime; naturally the value of tlio.se objects, in the case ot a King, was very great. It became, indeed, almost a point ot honour, as well ns a matter ol religion, in crowd the antechambers of the sepulchre with objects oi gold, with jewels, and with funerary furniture of all kinds, and of the last degree of luxury and value. Hence tile amazing resemblance 1o Ali Baba’s cave that many of these burial plages own. lienee, too, the vast attraction they had tor the tomb-rob-ber. Every conceivable precaution was taken to prevent his activities: the entrance passages were “plugged with granite ‘monoliths weighing many tons,” false passages were constructed, secret doors were contrived, “everything that ingenuity could suggest or wealth could purchase wns employed.” But- all in vain—the robbers in almost every ease overcame the difficulties that were put in their path. Efforts to guard the monuments by actual force proved equally unavailing. Either the guards wore corrupted or a later Pharaoh would discontinue them on the ground oi expense and in his turn arrange for the guarding of his own tomb. "Ar the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty,” savs -Mr Carter in hi- new and most extraordinarily interesting bom; upon the tomb of I ut-ankh-nmen. from which 1 have already quoted, “there was hardly a king's tomb in the whole of Egypt that had not: been rilled." This knowledge naturally worried Thothmes 1 and he arrived at what he thought was the solution ot i

difficulty hv deciding to torego the usual elaborate exterior ostentation on his resting-place, and to be liuried in a rock-hewn chamber in a secret place, wherefrom all visible outward signs of his sepulture could he removed. This was the origin of that lonely tomb at the end of the valley: and, hi> example being followed by his successors in turn, the little fold of the Theban hills beneath the Horn became, in the course of the centuries which followed. filled with the Ttnyal dust of Egypt’s ni on a rchs. A VAIN ENDEAVOUR.

But even these precautions proved as vain as all the others. The prize was too great for its quest to 1)0 abandoned—and. in Egypt as elsewhere, men told tales and men took bribes. It is probable that the architect of Thothmes T.. who constructed that first tomb in the valley, as the inscriptions upon it tell, took the

precaution of silencing the. workers , upon it by tho only effective method known. “Dead men tell no tales” was a proverb very well appreciated in those early days, and although he does not say so in his record of his activities Ineni, the architect referred to, is garrulous enough about everything else, and is especially “keen” on his desire for secrecy. Wherefore his silence on this particular point is somewhat significant. At any rate, , when the tomb was discovered in 1599 j little remained in it but the sarcoplia- j gus and the body of the king bad van- j ished with the rest. As a matter of fact, his mummy had, in a frantic effort of the later Pharaohs to preserve it from sacrilege, been removed —not once, but at least twice—to ( other hiding places. Finally it "'as | deposited in a rock cleft at a spot called Peir-el-Buhari, outside the vnl- t lev altogether atul there for nearly i three thousand years it rested nnil it was found, together with a number of others, in Is”, by an Egyptian family of tho name of Aba-01-Rnsul. Ibe clan had been tomb robbers for generations. hut never had they made such a haul as this. They kept the find secret for six years, drawing upon it as from a hank when required. Hut eventuallv their display of riches led io suspicion ami discovery, and the bodies of some of th ■ most powerful monarchs of the ancient world, now huddled together in an ill-cut grave, were removed to the .Museum at ( airo. How strongly ibis passion for tombrobbing still burns m the breast of modern Egyptians is proved by the fact that, although the mummy of Anion-liolep. found in Ins tomb, with thirteen others, in 180’T _ was lelt there, as I have said, to rest in pence behind an iron grille, within a lew years the tomb was broken into and the mummy removed Imm the sarcophagus and searched lor treasure. The record of the subsequent trial of the alleged thieves reads almost ludicrously like that of the Ramesside tomb robbers of the twentieth dynasty. The episode certainly gives Mr Parlor the opportunity to

point a moral—an opportunity which be seizes with effect. He commends I lie story of the recent looting of Anien-lietep’s tomb to those “critics who call us vandal-” for disturbing the resting-places of the dead and taking objects herclroni, and then lie.says: “Uv removing antiquities to museums we are rcntlv assuring their safety; left in sit 11 they would inevitably sooner or later become the prey of thieves, and that lor all practical purposes would lie the end of them.” ft must lie confessed that history appears to make his argument conclusive.