done and the
deep tomb sealed, the wealth of my father having been removed from the
hidden treasury and placed in safety, I fled, disguised, with the old
wife, Atoua, up the Nile till we came to Tape,[*] and here in this great
city I lay a while, till a place could be found where I should hide
myself.

[*] Thebes.--Editor.

And such a place I found. For to the north of the great city are brown
and rugged hills, and desert valley blasted of the sun, and in this
place of desolation the Divine Pharaohs, my forefathers, hollowed out
their tombs in the solid rock, the most part of which are lost to this
day, so cunningly have they been hidden. But some are open, for the
accursed Persians and other thieves broke into them in search
of treasure. And one night--for by night only did I leave my
hiding-place--just as the dawn was breaking on the mountain tops, I
wandered alone in this sad valley of death, like to which there is
no other, and presently came to the mouth of a tomb hidden amid great
rocks, which afterwards I knew for the place of the burying of the
Divine Rameses, the third of that name, now long gathered to Osiris. And
by the faint light of the dawn creeping through the entrance I saw that
it was spacious and that within were chambers.

On the following night, therefore, I returned, bearing lights, with
Atoua, my nurse, who ever ministered faithfully to me as when I was
little and without discretion. And we searched the mighty tomb and came
to the great Hall of the Sarcophagus of granite, in which the Divine
Rameses sleeps, and saw the mystic paintings on the walls: the symbol
of the Snake unending, the symbol of Ra resting upon the Scarabaeus, the
symbol of Ra resting upon Nout, the symbol of the Headless men, and many
others, whereof, being initiated, well I read the mysteries. And
opening from the long descending passage I found chambers in which were
paintings beautiful to behold, and of all manner of things. For beneath
each chamber is entombed the master of the craft of which the paintings
tell, he who was the chief of the servants of that craft in the house
of this Divine Rameses. And on the walls of the last chamber--on
the left-hand side, looking toward the Hall of the Sarcophagus--are
paintings exceedingly beautiful, and two blind harpers playing upon
their bent harps before the God Mou; and beneath the flooring these
harpers, who harp no more, are soft at sleep. Here, then, in this gloomy
place