CHAPTER IX
AHMED, THE TOMB-ROBBER
On the wall of the passage leading to the interior of the Great Pyramid you will find scrawled with some rude pigment in the Arabic script the words "Ahmed the Carpenter." Tradition has it that this is the sign-manual of the enterprising explorer who was the first, at least under the Arab domination of Egypt, to force his way into the mighty sepulchre. Not, of course, the absolute first to violate King Khufu's "house of eternity." The Persians had broken into it more than a thousand years before, when already it was over thirty centuries old, and no doubt the Romans also at the beginning of the Christian era. But to Ahmed, the
