San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1897-10-17
AN EGYPTIAN ELIXIR
By FRANK M. EASTMAN.

copyright, 1897, by the Author.l
Thou couldst tell us, IL that leathern tongue
Could tell what those dim. sightless eyes
have seen,
How the world looked when it was fresh and
young
And the great deluge still had left It green.
Horace Smith.
1 had been exploring large rock
tomb in the vicinity of Karnak for a
number of weeks in the summer of 49,.
1t was a comparatively old discovery,
but owing to the remarkable character
of the tomb had thought it well worth
my while to CLEAN for such details as
might have escaped the notice of earlier
visitors
The opening to the sepulcher, acct
dentally discovered, consisted of a
straight passage, barely permitting of
the entrance of single individual at a
time upon his hands and knees. Its sides
were Of red granite, beautifully pol
ished, which glittered dazzlingly in the
light of the explorers torch. This en-
trance ran straight back into the hill
for distance of some 200 feet, when it
suddenly opened upon large vaulted
room of circular form, from which there
branched numerous galleries of good
proportions, leading to other chambers,
in which had been found many sar
eophagi, mummies and mummy cases,
one of the sarcophagi being supposed to
be that of Thothmes III, the most glori-
GUS monarch of Egyptian history, who
erected the obelisk now in Central park,
though no mummy had been found
within it.
The walls of the passages and cham
bers were, like those of all of the grand
er Egyptian tombs, decorated with nu-
merous spirited paintings, the bright
colors of which still shone as fresh and
lustrous as if they had been laid ON but
yesterday. 1t was an this mysterious
abode of death that had been long en-
gagged, copying inscriptions and paint
ings, searching for new passages and
re-examining the old ones, with an en-
thusiasm which only an ardent Egyp-
tologist can experience.
had at length nearly finished my
investigations, and. in fact, the day of
which am about to speak was to have
been my last in the tomb, there re-
manning but one picture to copy, and
that upon the wall of remote gallery.
Accordingly, at about noon l found
myself before the picture in question,
palette in hand, surrounded by group
of fellahs in my employ, the Pickering
light of whose torches gave their SOM
Der faces sufficiently Dantesque ex-
preston.
The picture l was copying was of q
very common type, representing train
of long haired captives defiling before a
king whom supposed to be Thothmes.
but as the hieroglyphics connected with
the picture were very obscure this
would take some time to determine.
While painting away industriously, and
sometimes reduced almost to despair in
my attempts to mix colors as bright as
those before me, 1 noticed that the
paint had blistered or peeled off a
little just at the point of the kings
nose. AS / had never noticed paint
scaling from other pictures, / got up to
examine the place. Taking hold of a
projecting scale, 1 gave it slight pull,
when, to my surprise, perhaps square
foot of the pains came away, revealing
the granite wall behind, and in that
wall seam or joint.
With cry of pleasure tore, pried
and dug the paint away for distance
of some feet and disclosed the outline
of a door or passagewaY which had been