ust left him room to push himself along between it and
the roof. A little farther on the passage was almost filled with mud.

Mahomet had been right when, from his knowledge of the bed-rock, he said
that any tomb made in this place must be flooded. It _had_ been flooded
by some ancient rain-storm, and Smith began to fear that he would find
it quite filled with soil caked as hard as iron. So, indeed, it was to
a certain depth, a result that apparently had been anticipated by those
who hollowed it, for this entrance shaft was left quite undecorated.
Indeed, as Smith found afterwards, a hole had been dug beneath the
doorway to allow the mud to enter after the burial was completed. Only a
miscalculation had been made. The natural level of the mud did not quite
reach the roof of the tomb, and therefore still left it open.

After crawling for forty feet or so over this caked mud, Smith suddenly
found himself on a rising stair. Then he understood the plan; the tomb
itself was on a higher level.

Here began the paintings. Here the Queen Ma-Mee, wearing her crowns and
dressed in diaphanous garments, was presented to god after god. Between
her figure and those of the divinities the wall was covered with
hieroglyphs as fresh to-day as on that when the artist had limned them.
A glance told him that they were extracts from the Book of the Dead.
When the thief of bygone ages had broken into the tomb, probably not
very long after the interment, the mud over which Smith had just crawled
was still wet. This he could tell, since the clay from the rascal's
feet remained upon the stairs, and that upon his fingers had stained the
paintings on the wall against which he had supported himself; indeed,
in one place was an exact impression of his hand, showing its shape and
even the lines of the skin.

At the top of the flight of steps ran another passage at a higher
level, which the water had never reached, and to right and left were the
beginnings of unfinished chambers. It was clear to him that this queen
had died young. Her tomb, as she or the king had designed it, was never
finished. A few more paces, and the passage enlarged itself into a hall
about thirty feet square. The ceiling was decorated with vultures, their
wings outspread, the looped Cross of Life hanging from their talons.
On one wall her Majesty Ma-Mee stood expectant while Anubis weighed her
heart against the feather of truth, and Thoth, the Recorder, wrote down
the verdict