THE MOTHER OF CHEOPS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 25, 31 January 1928, Page 6

THE MOTHER OF CHEOPS.

The many tourists who have been jolted by camels around the Pyramids, which are across the Nile from Cairo, and have been photographed in their travelling civilian majesty alongside the Sphinx, have for the last two or three years ridden with curious eyes around the wire fence inside which they were told Reisner, of Harvard, was excavating. What ho found has turned out to be a discovery of unique importance. An intact tomb belonging to the early period has for the first time given an opportunity to study the burial of a great personage. The tomb is that of Hetepheres, the mother of Cheops, the Pharoah of the Great Pvramid.

When Julius Caesar and Marc Antony sucsively and successfully courted the lovely Cleopatra, this regal queen mother of Cheops had been lying 100 ft below the shifting surface of Sahara sand 1000 years longer before their time than the 2000 years that have since elapsed. Hetepheres would have been nearly as much an archaeological find for Tut-ankh-amen or for Moses as she is for us, for she had been buried so long before their time that she had been entirely forgotten.

Under the avenue which led to the Pyramids of the queens of Cheops two openings were found. The one first discovered had over it a layer of plaster, beneath which were found limestone blocks closely packed in. When these were removed twelve steps were found, which led into the main shaft, which on down for nearly 100 ft had been also packed with limestone 'blocks. Finally the entrance to a chamber was reached. It was some 10ft x ISft and about 6ft high, and from the fact that five of the masons' tools, as well as stone chips and rubbish boxes, were found on the floor, it is clear that the tomb was not quite finished when the burial was made.

Jteisner believed from the first that'he had discovered not a burial but a reburial, and the final excavations bear out his belief. Pharoah Sneferu had made a tomb for his queen, Hetepheres, near his own pyramid at Dahshur. Sneferu died and was entombed. When Hetepheres died some time later, her son Cheops placed her mummy in the prepared tomb, as is proved by inscriptions, like those of the funerary storehouse of C'heops, with which several 'boxes of objects found were sealed. Thieves broke into Queen Hetepheres' tomb, but were discovered, and, of course, killed, before much treasure, if any, had been carried away. Cheops, seeminglv. was having a secret tomb prepared near his own pyramid, but did not wait for its completion, but removed his mother to it at once.

Inside the tomb chamber was a marble sarcophagus. Over it lay the poles and supports, encased in gold, of the canopy which had covered it in its earlier tomb, but which, owing to the low ceiling in the' new tomb, could not be set tip again. A number of faience-inlaid sheets of gold lay over part of the sarcophagus. On the floors were several chairs overlaid with gold, and a set of eight marvellous toilet jars of alabaster. On what was left of a palanquin and bed were four identical inscriptions which, when translated, say: "The mother of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, the Follower of Horus, the guide and ruler, the favourite one, whose every word is done for her, the daughter of the ~o*d of his body, Hetepheres." "

To the dismay of the excavators, when the lid of the sarcophagus was raised, no mummy was inside. It must have been hidden behind one of the Avails of the tomb, but it is both hoped and expected that it will be found before long.