The ridgy, rocky, sandy desert, startlingly yellow against the near-blue dome of sky. A group of donkeys, donkey-boys, violently clad dragomen, one or two black-robed, white-turbaned official guides, Europeans as exotic to the scene as Esquimaux in Hyde Park. An excavated descent to a hole surmounted by a signboard as though it were the entrance to some underground boozing-ken, an Egyptian soldier in khaki and red tarbush. An inclined plane, then flight after flight of wooden steps through painted chamber after painted chamber, and at last, deep down in the earth, lit by electric light, the heart of the tomb’s poor mystery: the mummified body of a great King, Amen-Hetep II, in an uncovered sandstone sarcophagus. It is the world’s greatest monument to the awful and futile vanity of man.
“T
