found tunnel after him. That was the end of her also. In turn, three
other members of the family went down into the darkness; and that was
the end of them. A native official was then called, and, lighting his
way with a candle, penetrated down the winding passage. The air was so
foul that he was soon obliged to retreat, but he stated that he was just
able to see in the distance ahead the bodies of the unfortunate
peasants, all of whom had been overcome by what he quaintly described as
"the evil lighting and bad climate." Various attempts at the rescue of
the bodies having failed, we gave orders that this tomb should be
regarded as their sepulchre, and that its mouth should be sealed up.
According to the natives, there was evidently a vast hoard of wealth
stored at the bottom of this tomb, and the would-be robbers had met
their death at the hands of the demon in charge of it, who had seized
each man by the throat as he came down the tunnel and had strangled him.

The Egyptian peasants have a very strong belief in the power of such
creatures of the spirit world. A native who was attempting recently to
discover hidden treasure in a certain part of the desert, sacrificed a
lamb each night above the spot where he believed the treasure to lie, in
order to propitiate the _djin_ who guarded it. On the other hand,
however, they have no superstition as regards the sanctity of the
ancient dead, and they do not hesitate on that ground to rifle the
tombs. Thousands of graves have been desecrated by these seekers after
treasure, and it is very largely the result of this that scientific
excavation is often so fruitless nowadays. When an excavator states that
he has discovered a tomb, one takes it for granted that he means a
_plundered_ tomb, unless he definitely says that it was intact, in which
case one calls him a lucky fellow and regards him with green envy.

And thus we come back to my remarks at the beginning of this chapter,
that there is a painful disillusionment awaiting the man who comes to
dig in Egypt in the hope of finding the golden cities of the Pharaohs or
the bejewelled bodies of their dead. Of the latter there are but a few
left to be found. The discovery of one of them forms the subject of the
next chapter.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE TOMB OF TIY AND AKHNATON.[1]

[Footnote 1: A few paragraphs in this chapter also appear in my
'Life and Times o