ly light literature, who published in 1858 a "General
History of Funeral Customs and Burials among the Ancients." This book
was reviewed by Gautier when it appeared, and it is most likely that he
had been previously made acquainted with its contents and had discussed
Egyptian funeral rites and modes of sepulture with the author, for it
was to Feydeau that he dedicated his novel when it was published in book
form by Hachette in 1858. An omnivorous reader, Gautier had no doubt
also perused the far more important works of Champollion, the decipherer
of the inscriptions on the Rosetta stone, who first gave the learned
world the key to the mysterious Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet.
Champollion's "Monuments of Egypt and Nubia" had appeared in four
volumes from 1835 to 1845, and a continuation by himself and the Vicomte
Emmanuel de Rouge was completed in 1872. Champollion-Figeac's "Ancient
Egypt" had been published in 1840, having been preceded by Lenormant's
"The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in the Louvre," in 1830, and
followed by Prisse d'Avennes' "Monuments of Egypt" in 1847. The
explorations and discoveries of Mariette, summed up in that writer's
"Selected Monuments and Drawings," issued in 1856, and the steady growth
of the Egyptian Museum in the Louvre, to which was added in 1852 the
magnificent Clot-Bey collection, must have attracted the attention of
Gautier, always keenly interested in art, literature, and erudition.

The account he gives, in his novel, of the ancient city of Thebes, of
the great necropolis in the valley of Biban el Moluk, of the
subterranean tombs, of the precautions taken by the designers to baffle
curiosity, of the form and ornamentation of the sarcophagi, of the
mummy-cases, of the mummy itself, of the manners, customs, dress, and
beliefs of the ancient Egyptians, are marvellously accurate. Nothing is
easier than to verify his descriptions by reference to the works of
Champollion, Mariette, Wilkinson, Rawlinson, Erman, Edwards, and
Maspero. Scarcely here and there will the reader find a possible error
in his statements. It is evident that he has not trusted alone to what
Feydeau told him, or to what he read in his book or in the works of
Egyptologists; he examined the antiquities in the Louvre for himself; he
noted carefully the scenes depicted on monuments and sarcophagi; he
traced the ornamentation in all its details; he studied the poses, the
attitudes, the expressions; he marked the costumes