The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-04-04
THE ROYAL TOME AT THEBEs.

THE ROYAL TOMB AT THEBES. The great event of the Egyptian sea-
 son from an archaeological point of view has been the discovery of the tomb of one of the Pharaohs of the
 eighteenth dynasty, Thotfimes ". For
 the last two years Mir. Theodore M Da-
 vies, an American gentleman who is well known in Egypt has been excava- | ting steadily and systematically in the | Valley of the Tombs of the Kings at l Thebes, clearing the rubbish away inch | by inch, and so laying bare the bed | rock. He has been rewarded this spring l by the discovery of a previously un-
 known royal tomb. The mummy of | Thothmes W. is in the Cairo Museum, | having been found in the tomb of | Amen -ilotep IT., to which 1t had been conveyed by the Egyptian priests for | the purposes of concealment, probably | in the age of the twenty-fi dynasty, but the sepulchre of the Pharoah had | never been discovered, though it was
 pretty certain that it was hidden some | where under the debris in the Valley | of the Tombs of the Kings.
 The actual discovery was made by MT. Howard Carter, the inspector of | the Monuments of Upper Egypt, who has been conducting the excavations 1 for MT. Davis, and it is to his care and practised skill that we owe not only | the preservation of all the objects found | in the tomb, but also a scientific record of the conditions under which they were discovered. The tomb itself, like | the other royal tombs in the same val | ley, consists of a gallery cut into the | heart of the mountain. After sloping | downward for a considerable distance,
 it is interrupted by a deep square we'll, on one of the walls of which is a band of paintings. On the further side of | the well the passage turns back upon itself, and finally opens into large chamber, at the extreme end of which | is a magnificent sarcophagus of granite covered with texts from the Book of the Dead. On either side are smaller chambers, the floor of one of which was covered with mummified Joins of beef, | legs of mutton, and trussed ducks and geese, offerings made to the dead king | between three and four thousand years l ago. Clay seals with the name of the
 king had been attached to the doors of | the chambers, and it is interesting to
 observe that the Egyptians of the eigh- teenth dynasty had already to some ex- | tent anticipated the invention of print ing, the raised portions of the seals having been smeared with blue ink be- fore being impressed upon the clay. The walls of chamber which served | as a vestibule to that in which the sar- cophagus was laid are adorned with ! few paintings, and on one of them is ! hieratic inscription dated in the eighth year of Hor-em-heb, and stating that | the tomb had been plundered by rob- | bers but restored as far as possible by that Pharaoh. It was doubtless at that time that the jeweify and other pre- I cious objects buried kiar the king were I stolen More than enough was left, | however to satisfy the archaeologistof
 to-day. The floor was literally covered | with vases, dishes, boomerangs, sym | bols of life, and other objects of blue ! faience. Unfortunately, nearly all of | them have been wafitoh1y broken; in some cases the damage must have been | done by the original decorators of the | tomb, as the breakage has been re- paired in the time of Hor- -em-heb. In- | termixed with the faience were graz ments of exquisitely shaped cups and vases of rich blue or variegated glass.
 There are also fragments Of an opaque | white glass as well as what would have been pronounced ta be the bot toms of modern beer bottles had they l been met with on the surface of the ground. Equally interesting is a piece | of textile fabric into which hieroglyph- | ic characters of different colors have | been woven with such wonderful skill as to present the appearance of paint l ing on linen.
 | The great and unique find, however, | has been that of the actual chariot which was made for the Pharaoh, and ! in which he rode at Thebes. The body l of 1t alone is preserved, but in a perfect condition. The wooden frame was first | covered with papier mache made from papyrus, and this again with stucco, which has been carved, both inside and out. into scenes from the battles fought by the Pharaoh in Syria. The art is of
 very high order, every detail being | exquisitely finished and the faces of the Syrians being clearly portraits talk
 en from captives at Thebes. The char
 tot is, in fact,one of the finest speci-
 mems of art that have come down to us
 from antiquity, and that it should have
 been made for the grandfather of "the
 heretic king" whose foreign correspon- dence has thrown such a light on the history of the ancient east, lends to 1t ;y,ta "a l chariot was found the leather gauntlet with which the king protected his hand and wrist when using the bow or reins. London Times.