Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/111

ages the soul might find them ready for reunion with it under the decree of the gods of the dead. It was for this purpose that the highest and costliest skill of the embalmer was secured for the preparation of the mummy; for this that the Royal Tombs of Der-el-Bahari were scooped deep in the living rock, and the ponderous sarcophagi disposed far down in its lowest and inmost recesses. Nay, it might almost have seemed as if Nature, co-operating with the designs of the Pharaohs, had assisted to secure the everlasting sanctity of these sepulchres by covering them for ages under the desert sands. But in vain. Rameses the Great proposed (about 1300 b.c.), but in 1871 Abd-er-Rasul Ahmed, native of the Arab village of Kurnah, virtually disposed. For in that year Abd-er-Rasûl, "prospecting around" among these sand-strewn rocks, chanced upon a large buried tomb filled with coffins heaped one upon another. On the greater number of them the cartouche and other signs indicated that their tenants