THE SECRET CHAMBER.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 October 1921, Page 11

THE SECRET CHAMBER.

PHARAOH’S CHANCELLOR. HOW THEY FOUND IT. The Wonderful Things Found After 40 Centuries in the Tombs of Egypt— A Romance of Discovery. “The flash of an electric lamp the other day shone through a chink in a rock on the .banks of the Nile, and shone into a little chamber that had not been seen by human eyes for nearly forty centuries. It is a new chapter in the astounding story of the tombs of the kings of Egypt. Deep down inside a mass of rock they lay, unknown to men. Pharaoh was buried, by his people, and no man knew where. Thousands of years passed by. Travellers came from everywhere to see the wondrous ruins by the Nile. They gazed enthralled upon these mighty hills that rose across the Nile from Karnak, the bills with the silence of ages upon them, but never did they dream of the wonder that these hills contained.” A LUCKY CHANCE. “It was left to two Arabs to find, one day, a moving panel in the rock, and behind it marvel upon marvel, veritable palaces of art cut deep into the mountains, witli Pharaoh sleeping there,” says My Magazine for September. "There fell away in the lock the other day—some time in the spring of 1920 —a loose stone, which revealed a narrow ohink of space. It had clearly been cut. out, but it was evening when

the stone fell down, and the passage whs dark. The excavators were just linishing their day’s work, but a matchlight through the chink in the rock was enough to create a stir of great excitement, and soon an electric torch was brought,, its flash shone through the hole in the rock,' and there, in the beam of light, was as wonderful a scene as has ever surprised the eyes of men. PHARAOH AND HIS NEMESIS. “Hundreds of miles above the old capital of Egypt was Thebes, a wide, fertile ecrnland at the foot of the great limestone cliffs. Here King Mentuhotep reigned secure over a prosperous people. He made a road to the Red Sea, built oCean-going fleets, and opened up trade with Central Africa. He sailed down the Nile, and iii battle after battle broke the power of the from the desert and brought back to Egypt peace and order and prosperity before he entered his House of Eternity, about two thousand j’ears before Christ was born. - "That is almost all we know about Pharabh Mentuhotep, but we know be did not carry on the work of his great ieign alone. He had at his court a noble prince called Mehenkwetre, whose name seems to mean Prince Sun-Gift. A gift indeed he has given to us. for it was he who built up this scene on which the flash of an electric light ■'shone the other day; through the chink in the rock was the chamber in which Prince Sun-Gift’s treasures lay, the little world in models that tell us of the .life he lived, the friends he loved, and the faith he had. HIS HOBBY. “He was one of the great Chancellors 01 Egypt two thousand years before Christianity came, and he spent many years of his life on earth in preparing for the future life beyond. He did what the Pharaohs did —he ciit out a chamber in the solid rock as his last house on earth; but he did what no man on earth ever before or since is known to have done 30 well, for he set men wonting—slaves, no doubt—for years and years to cut out little wooden images ot the world in which he lived and loved and had his being, so that he could take them with him to hrs tomb, and sleep among them, and have them ready when the great day for his waking came. Is it not strange and beautiful, this faith of long ago, as far back before the life .of Christ as we are after it?

“They made a sloping causeway up to a point in the cliff where a platform was cut out, and there a beautiful pillared portico was built of fine stone, all delicately carved and painted by some unknown master, for the fragments display a delicate skill that is rare in the art of Egypt. Through the entrance they cut out corridors leading to Prince Sun-Gift’s burial-chamber, and anuthir room he made to contain his model world. “In the course of time, when the Chancellor died, his people brought him here and left him. His tomb was closed, and the Chancellor slept in peace. THE SECRET CHAMBER,. “Then how many ages since we know not, «thieves found his sleeping place, rifled his tomb, and carried off his gilded coffin. But those old thieves missed what they would have loved to find — Sun-Gift’s secret chamber through the chink in the wall which the loose stone hid. It was in clearing away the ruin the thieves had left so many ages ago that the workmen accidentally moved the stone, and this is what they saw when the electric light shone through the chink into that strange world of long ago. One of the excavators thus describes this wondrous scene;

“ ‘The beam of light shot into a little world of four thousand years ago. I was gazing down into the midst of a myriad of brightly paired little men, going this way and that. “ ‘A tall, -slender girl gazed across at me, perfectly composed. A gang of little men, with sticks in their upraised hands, drove spotted oxen,, rowers tugged at their oars on a fleet o-f boats, while otte ship seemed foundering right in front of me, with its bow balanced precariously in the air.’ “ ‘And all this h us y g«>ng and coming was in uncanny silence.’ • TIME WAKES UP.

“Dy an achievement which we must call heroic this wonder-scene was photographed, and all these figures and objects were removed outside the walls of the secret chamber just as the inrush of fresh air crumbled the mouldered ceiling. Down came a shower of powdered rock, but one of the finest and most spoetaculai’ of all pageants of life m Old Egypt was safe in the hands of the amazed discoverers. They had something that acres of hieroglyphics could not equal, one of the rarest lifelike . scenes e.ver rescued from the dark abyss of Time.

“At first, it seems, this Prince Chancellor of Pharaoh, serious though his face is, was fond of Noah’s Ark toys; perhaps he played with them with his little grandchildren.”