Natuurlijk is Edwards een dame van haar tijd. Bij de armoede van de bevolking of de bemanning staat ze niet erg stil. Wel lijkt de positie van de iets beter gesitueerde vrouwen haar afschuwelijk, die zitten alleen maar binnen en vervelen zich dood, terwijl Edwards zelf al die schatten ziet, en onverschrokken stikdonkere graftombes betreedt, of de piramides beklimt (dat mocht toen nog gewoon). It was a real thrill for me to read this book. It's a must-read if you have any interest in Egyptian history. If you don't, this isn't the book for you. If you have a passing interest, this is a good book to skim, and maybe skip over the parts where the author gets pretty detailed. No royal tomb has been found absolutely intact in the valley of Bab-el-Molûk. Even that of Seti the First had been secretly entered ages before ever Belzoni discovered it. He found in it statues of wood and porcelain, and the mummy of a bull; but nothing of value save the sarcophagus, which was empty. There can be no doubt that the priesthood were largely implicated in these contemporary sacrileges. Of thirty-nine persons accused by name in the papyrus just quoted, seven are priests, and eight are sacred scribes.

distinguishing a single figure of that celebrated tableau, 8 on the south wall of the Great Hall, in journey. He is welcomed by the Gods, ushered into the presence of Osiris, and received into the Abode of the Blest. 29 A creaking sakkieh is at work yonder, turned by a couple of red cows with mild Hathor-like faces. The old man who drives them sits in the middle cog of the wheel, and slowly goes around as if he was being roasted." willingly have added a double pipe or a cocoa-nut fiddle 1 to the strength of the band, but none of ourIt may not have been a palace. It may have been only a fortified gate; but though the chambers are small, they are well lighted, and the plan of the whole is certainly domestic in character. It consists, as we now see it, of two lodges connected by zigzag wings with a central tower. The lodges and tower stand to each other as the three points of an acute angle. These structures enclose an oblong courtyard leading by a passage under the central tower to the sacred enclosure beyond. So far as its present condition enables us to judge, this building contained only eight rooms; namely three, one above the other, in each of the lodges, and two over the gateway. 12 These three This book is in a sense a seminal work, known to have influenced the modern writings of Elizabeth Peters in her Amelia Peabody Emerson murder-mystery series. (Summary by Sibella Denton) To go down into one of these great sepulchres is to descend one's-self into the Lower World, and to tread the path of the shades. Crossing the threshold, we look up — half-expecting to read those terrible words in which all who enter are warned to leave hope behind them. The passage slopes before our feet; the daylight fades behind us. At the end of the passage comes a flight of steps, and from the bottom of that flight of steps we see another corridor slanting down into depths of utter darkness. The walls on both sides are covered with close-cut columns of hieroglyphic text, interspersed with ominous shapes, half-deity, half-demon. Huge serpents writhe beside us along the walls. Guardian spirits of threatening aspect advance, brandishing swords of flame. A strange heaven opens overhead — a heaven where the stars travel in boats across the seas of space; and the Sun, escorted by the hours, the months,

And there, writing those charming letters that delight the world Lady Duff Gordon lingered through the last few winters of her life. The rooms in which she lived first, and the balcony in which she took such pleasure, were no longer accessible, owing to the ruinous state of one of the staircases; but we saw the rooms she last inhabited. Her couch, her rug, her folding chair were there still. The walls were furnished with a few cheap prints and a pair of tin sconces. All was very bare and comfortless. The Writer pitched her tent in the doorway of the first propylon, and thence sketched the north-west corner of the courtyard, including the tower with the inscription and the of dark granite, overturned and but little injured; the second, shattered by early treasure-seekers.By and by came the Governor, the Kadî of Luxor, the Prussian Consul and his son, and some three or four grave-looking merchants in rich silk robes and ample turbans. Meanwhile the band — two fiddles, a tambourine, and a darabukkeh — played at intervals at the lower end of the hall; pipes,

means of a lever spooned out for the thumb to rest in, just like the lid of a German beer-mug of the present day. coffee, and lemonade went continually round; and the entertainment wound up, as native entertainments always do wind up at Luxor, with a performance of Ghawâzi. and Rosellini lived and worked together, during part of their long sojourn at Thebes. Rosellini tells how they used to sit up at night, dividing the fruits of the day's labour;

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some loftier. In some the descent is gradual; in others it is steep and sudden. Certain leading features are common to all. The great serpent, in a religious sense; for the myths of Horus 11 and Hathor 12 are interdependent; the one being the Lastly, there are the minor inconveniences of sun, sand, wind, and flies. The whole place radiates heat, and seems almost to radiate light. The glare from above and the glare from below are alike intolerable. Dazzled, blinded, unable to even look at his subject without the aid of smoke-coloured glasses, the sketcher whose tent is pitched upon the sand slope over against the great temple enjoys a foretaste of cremation. Life at Thebes is made up of incongruities. A morning among temples is followed by an afternoon of antiquity-hunting; and a day of meditation among tombs winds up with a dinner-party on board some friend's dahabeeyah, or a fantasia at the British Consulate. L. and the Writer did their fair share of antiquity-hunting both at Luxor and elsewhere; but chiefly at Luxor. I may say, indeed, that our life here was one long pursuit of the pleasures of the chase. The game, it is true, was prohibited; but we enjoyed it none that royal race were massacred just sixty-four years ago. 1 This mosque, built within the precincts of