We have details from Mr. Rhind of his own
recent excavation at Thebes of the unrifled
tomb of an Egyptian dignitary. He found it
by help of the forty men who dug under
his order. In seven weeks a doorway into the
rock was uncovered. This door had been opened;
the tomb within, and another within that, had
been rifled; there were broken mummy-boxes;
and mummies themselves lay where they had
been tossed out, with their wrappings ripped up
along throat and breast. But further along, at
the foot of the same piece of rock, other men
had been set to dig, and two months of work
cleared the way to a tomb yet with its seal
apparently unbroken. The first entrance was
into a gallery within the rock, about eight
feet square and fifty-five feet long, its walls
smoothly plastered with clay. Half way down
this gallery Mr. Rhind came to a funeral
canopy of brightly-painted pillars, supporting a
painted roof, with a sort of temple front in
miniature, all very gay with red and blue and
yellow. This corresponded to our hearse and
feathers over the dead, and had been delivered
up as well as charged for, by the ancient
undertaker. Further inward there sat, carved in
stone, a pair of monumental figures, two feet
high, male and female, side by side. Their
superscription showed that the deceased gentleman
had been a chief of the military police of
the Temple of Ammon Ra, at Thebes. He was
decidedly plump, and on his dress was inscribed,
"All food off the tables of Ammon Ra and Mut
is given to the deceased." The lady by the
gentleman's side was inscribed, "His sister
beloved from the depth of his heart." The statues
were flanked by tall jars.

After this couple had been buried, further
use had been made of their tomb. Two
entrances were found, still built up, leading to
passages, one midway in this gallery, the other
at the end of it. There was also at the end of
the gallery, a massive wooden door, barred,
locked, and protected by a barricade of large
stones built in front of it to half its height.
Great was the excitement of the whole body of
resurrectionists. The sealed entrances were
guarded through the night by sailors from the
boat; for there was no trusting the fellaheen of
Gourneh, demoralised by a successful traffic in
antiquities. Early next morning the entrance
to the side-passage was opened. It led to a
couple of small cells, both in confusion, with
their plain black wooden mummy cases broken,
and the bodies turned out, many of them
unwrapped. There were a few sepulchral images,
and in the innermost cell yet lay the plain
Roman lamp of terra-cotta, with black nozzle and
half-burnt wick, that had lighted the plunderers
two thousand years ago. There remained the
massive door, of such substantial timber that in
ill-timbered Egypt it was a prize worthy to be
competed for by a bishop, a deacon, a consular
agent, and two sheikhs. The door opened on a
sloping tunnel, in which a man could walk
upright. It was a tunnel seventy feet long,
leading to a shaft or well, ten feet by six.
Half way down this gallery also there were
cells which had been rifled. Hope now lay,
like truth, at the bottom of the well. The
well, twenty feet deep, was crossed by strong
beams, over which still hung the rope of twisted
palm fibres, by which the dead and those who
carried them, descended centuries ago. At the
bottom there were again chambers. Of these,
three contained mummies of persons who had
been buried in ordinary cases; but a fourth
death-chamber contained a massive dark granite
sarcophagus, with the rollers and planks by
which it had been moved into position still
lying about it. The want of veneration for
antiquity shown by these people, now themselves
so ancient, appeared in the use, as planks, of
broken mummy cases covered with hieroglyphics.
At the doorway of this principal vault
was a tall jar nearly full of palm-nuts; there
were nuts also scattered about the floor. At
the head of the sarcophagus was the preserved
body of a dog, like a small Italian greyhound,
swathed in osiers; also a mummied ibis, a doll
of a hawk, and a ball of bitumen. The dog
was an emblem of Anubis, genius of tombs.
Whenever a house-dog died in the course of
nature, all the inmates of the house shaved
their whole persons. The ibis was emblematical
of the recording angel. The hawk was the
symbol of Horus, who ushered the souls that
were saved into the presence of Osiris; and
within the ball of bitumen was a coiled snake,
probably the horned snake sacred to Ammon Ra,
the god especially honoured at Thebes.

The solid cover of the sarcophagus, freed
from the cement which fastened it, was raised,
and the sarcophagus itself was then found to
have been filled with bitumen poured in hot over
the mummy. The clearing away of this was a
long work, and early in the course of it the
glitter of a golden chaplet excited the Arab
workmen, who dream wildly of treasures to be
found in the unopened tombs. The face of the
mummy was cased by a gilt mask, and the
temples were wreathed with a chaplet of copper
thickly gilt, having eleven bay-leaves of thin
gold attached to it by pliant stalks. The outer
cloth covering of the rest of the body was
painted in a diagonal pattern, answering to that
on the top of the wooden funeral canopy at the
first entrance. Under the painted shroud, were
folds steeped in fine bitumen and pungent gums,
with small thin plates of gold, some of them
beetle-shaped, and glassy pieces interspersed.
From the left side of the dead was taken a large
ritual papyrus. When the body itself was reached
—that of a man of mature years, with strongly
marked features—the skin of the upper part of
his body was found to have been covered with
thick gold leaf. In another case was the wife of
this dignitary, also with the upper part of her
skin gilt, and a papyrus by her side. Others were
differently adorned, and one had a gilt mask.
The dignitary in the sarcophagus was named
Leban; he had had charge of the royal horses,
and died nine years before our era, at the age of
sixty. His wife's name was Tabai, daughter of