TOMB OF TUTANKHAMEN

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 23 January 1926, Page 9

TOMB OF TUTANKHAMEN

RAWING to the limited number of weeks in the year in which the tomb can be shown, because of the great heat in the valley, and also the limit of one day a week formerly placed on admission of tourists, the number of persons who up to date have been admitted is relatively few, as compared with those who have wished to enter the tomb, in the course of a tour in Egypt. Good fortune attended the writer (one of a party of tourists) on the occasion of his visit to Egypt, for not only was he admitted to the tomb on special permit of the government department in charge of antiquities, but he had an opportunity for a private view, after the last of the tourists had departed, on the final day of the season on which the tomb was open. The trip of seven miles from the Luxor ferry landing at Thebes to the Valley of the Kings, prepares one for a weird experience that has for its climax a view of the golden casket of the youthful Pharaoh. At first the way lies across a level country, by a black dirt road bordering dry irrigation canals ootween CHl's,.- tivated fields. The road suddenly leaves i the cultivated strip between the river and the hills, and enters a rocky defile that reminds one of the barren canyons of North America. No more forbidding, menacing place could be imagined. The way winds between steep banks of great rocks and debris fallen from sheer cliffs on either hand. The bottom of the canyon is grayish white, from broken stone piled on either side of the chalk-like, dusty road. The grade upward is pronounced, and the min horses drawing your little carriage pant as they

ascend. With every step forward the heat 01 the valley increases. There is no wind, no errant air to refresh one; only breathless intense heat, like the heat of an oven. At last a bar across the road is reached, and you descend. Beyond the bar the road debouches into a little opening of the , valley, perhaps IUO yards across. Here is noticed a tone, with a few Egyptian soldiers seated n its scant shade. On both the right and the left is an opening in the rock —the entrance to tombs, for mere are many in the valley. Directly ahead ns a depression walled on three sides with dry stones, and open on the fourth, with a light fence and a gate across the opening. This is the tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen. Its entrance is not cut into the canyon’s walls, like those of the other tombs, but seems rather to be in the valley floor, which may account fo< the fact that for mere than a century the keenest searchers engaged in mod-tc-rn Egyptian research walked back and forth over it without suspecting its > presence under their feet. Passing the gate of the depression, you are directed by an Englishman, looking hot and uncomfortable in the scant shade of the hither wall, to enter the tomb. The entrance is at 1 rignt angles to the gate, and presents a steep passage, with a rough, stairless rock

IN THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS

boor, down which you creep cautiously toward a rough wood platform. Beaching this platform, you grasp a rail, and glance downward. If you can suppress an exclamation at want you see, then you have better selfcontrol than most people. There before you, and directly at your feet, under the glare of two great hooded electiic lights, lies the golden coffin of Tut-ankh-Amen, in its pink granite sarcophagus, under a sheet of plate glass. Coming from the intense, white hear of the ourning valley into the still, subterranean chamber; groping first an uncertain way down the dim declivity to the platform, and then suddenly looking down over the handrail upon this golden apparition you feel that some strange and awesome thing has befallen you.

Before you lies the body of a man buried 33 centuries before, which as vet no eye has seen since the day thrugolden coffin lid was fastened into place by the royal burial party. Ages, races, nations, languages, religions, have come and gone in the world since that body was placed under its golden cover. Oniv the great hills about you, and the sky above, are the same as they were when this golden casket was placed where you now see it. After the quick, choking sensation experienced on looking first upon the golden casket, you have time, if alone, to study it more critically. The gold is as fair and stainless, with the exception of a small part at the foot, as the finest watch case displayed by a modern .jeweller. Indeed, one may doubt if modern gold is as pure.

The effigy of the king, in tlie cover of the casket, is a conventional portrait. It displays a round-faced young man, with the thin, square-ended Egyptian beard. In his right hand is carried a shepherd’s crook, in his left a flail. On his forehead, in the centre of his headdress, are the head of the sacred cobra, for Upper Egypt, and of the vulture, for Lower. Around the sides of the small stone chamber, which the sarcophagus nearly fills, stand the sides and top of the golden caoinet which housed the kingly bier. These are covered with cotton cloth. To the right stand the two parts of the broken granite cover of the sarcophagus. These objects; the coloured figures and hieroglyphics on the walls, the low arched cemng of t n chamber, the entrance to the. inner room, now being explored, are details that the eye takes in at a sweep, for interest centres, while you are in the tomb, in the golden effulgence of that figure in the pink granite sarcophagus. You turn from ir with reluctance, at the same time turning your back on the centuries as you mount slowly into the blinding white glare of the Valley of the Kings. Of the many other tombs in the valley, nearly ail are larger and deeper than that, of Tut-ankh-Amen. Some, like that of Seti 1., which was discovered in 1817, :ire extensive, with long galleries and numerous chambers. They are interesting, but only mildly so, after oho has held audience with Tut-enkh-Amen. in the silence of his golden chamber beneath the burning whL» floor of the Valley of the Kings.