IT WAS ABDULLAH WHO took us to the Valley of the Kings.
We had risen early, to precede the crowds and the dust, and in a small felucca we crossed the Nile. But early as it was already a crowd of donkey boys waited on the other side. Remembering my previous experience, we had wisely sent a car ahead by ferry, and in it we jolted and banged the seven miles back among the desert hills to the Valley.
The road twisted and turned. No particle of green, no living thing, relieved its white glare as the sun beat down upon it. Here and there a small exploratory excavation had been made and then abandoned, but outside of an occasional water boy, leading his donkey laden with cans to water, there was no sign of life.
True, behind us a procession was slowly forming. Tourists in cars and surreys, on donkey-back and afoot, were moving along. They represented all races, all nations. Not since the funerary processions of thousands of years ago has this valley known such numbers. I felt out of place, somehow ignoble and akin to the spoilers who so long since had crept up this very path to violate the tombs. For solemnity and the beating of breasts we could offer only avid curiosity; even our clothes, our rattling car, seemed absurd and somehow irreverent.
And as we stood outside the tomb the feeling grew. Women in sun veils with green-lined parasols, German hikers in topees, full white shirts, short trousers and bare knees, English women with the inevitable British wrist watch, an American woman in knickerbockers and flat shoes, and another American woman who was describing her home in Santa Barbara—what right had we to go down into that tomb and stare at what was meant to be hidden from the world forever?
We went, of course.
The poor lad lay in his great sarcophagus, still covered by his gold and carved mummy case. Its painted, impassive face, in the full glare of an electric spot-light, looked singularly life-like; the gold leaf on the case gleamed. It was magnificent, and infinitely touching.
And then the man who was holding a stop watch on us said that our two minutes were up, and we went away.
“Have you seen Tut’s tomb yet?” somebody asked a woman sitting exhausted on a rock. She wrinkled her brows.
“Tut?” she said. “I really don’t know. I’ve seen a lot of tombs, but our dragoman’s no earthly good!”
Doctor Breasted, the great Egyptologist, told me not long ago of an amusing experience of his during the early days of the opening of the tomb.
They had opened the ante-chamber, and beyond a closed and cemented doorway they knew lay the unrifled body of the king. But before the doorway was opened, it was necessary to make careful copies of the seals impressed in the cement which covered it.
As all the world knows, this doorway was guarded, to right and left, by the two now familiar sentinel figures, life size, which have been so often photographed.
It was frightfully hot in this underground tomb, and very still. Doctor Breasted sat on a box, working at the doorway and perspiring freely. Suddenly he was conscious of a million small and whispering sounds, and of a sense of rustling and movement. He looked around. All was still, and he fell to work again.
But the sounds persisting, he looked up at one of the figures beside him, and it winked at him! He turned a little cold, but he pretended to go on working, and then suddenly looked up once more. It winked again.
It was too much! He leaped to his feet and confronted the creature. Then he saw what it was. A bit of paint had loosened and was hanging on the edge of the carved eye-lid, and in the current of air this flake was moving up and down. The air, newly admitted to the tomb, was also responsible for the rustling and the creaking. Rapid deterioration was going on in the priceless jumble all around him. But there was no ghost.
Naturally, superstition has been rife among the natives, however, since the opening of the tomb. So far as I remember the story, these fears began to be evident with the first discovery of the steps leading into the crypt. On or about that very day came the first casualty, a small one but to the natives significant.
Howard Carter had imported a canary, for there were no singing birds about, and this hung in the house near the Nile where the investigators were living. On this day, then, the canary was heard in distress, and when help reached it a cobra was found coiled in the cage and the bird was dead.
As the cobra was the royal serpent, the natives began to whisper among themselves.
The excavation went on, and soon the antechambers were opened. But here trouble which was to cost a valuable life developed. Lord Carnarvon was bitten by a mosquito. He paid no attention to the bite, and a day or so later shaved over it, leaving an abraded surface. A fly stung him on this open surface, and the poisoning set in which was later to result in his death.
Now indeed the natives talked, and whispered of a curse. First the cobra and then the fly, and the fly too in the long ago had been an emblem of the king. Absurd? Perhaps, but this is not the end.
As the ante-chambers to the tomb were to be emptied, it was necessary to treat the various objects before their removal with preservatives. Paraffine and other substances were used, and doing this work was a specialist in that line, an expert in his particular field. But his health began rapidly to fail; tuberculosis set in, and the last I knew of him he was in the Riviera, in very bad condition indeed.
However, in spite of mishaps and tragedy, the work at the tomb must go on. The inner door was finally torn down, and the giant sarcophagus was revealed. Although it gave no indication of having been rifled, no one could be certain, and the task of removing the outer sheath would require several months. In order to be certain, then, Mr. Carter and the men associated with him sent to London for an X-ray expert, on the theory that an X-ray photograph would show the presence of the mummy if it still lay within. And that man died in Paris, on his way to Egypt!
Coincidences? Probably, but no native will so believe.