David Masters

“ Howard Carter held up his candle and peered into the tomb, uttering no word. All the time Lord Carnarvon was on tenterhooks, wondering what was behind the wall. A moment later he peered through, and saw one of the most wonderful sights that has ever greeted an excavator.
To come on such a wealth of treasure is actually a grave responsibility. Before now men have seen statues suddenly collapse into dust before their amazed eyes, have watched brilliantly decorated mummy cases crumble without warning into heaps of powder. ”

“ Mighty blocks weighing many tons must have often slipped and crushed the workers to death. Many of the labourers must have been maimed for life; legs were broken, arms smashed, heads and bodies crushed, as the blocks rolled and swerved in their progress.
From inferences from papyri, the great Pyramids were looked upon by the Egyptians as one of their plagues, as a scourge to the land. Men were pressed into the work, were compelled to go on with it. What mattered it to Khufu if his subjects and slaves died, so long as he built a home that would last his shadow-self for ever? ”

“ Countless earthworms are the servants of men.
The diggers toiling in the heat of the sun in Egypt and Mesopotamia and Crete and other places are blessed with this keen vision. Without it they would be useless. If the Rosetta Stone to them were just a broken piece of rock, the romance of the past would not appeal to them. They would not possess the imagination which drives them into the lonely places to find traces of many lost civilizations. ”

“ A square inch of broken pottery is not particularly noticeable in a mound of rock and sand, and even if the eye does light on it the hand is seldom prompted to pick it up. But there are men so skilled in their knowledge of the pottery of past ages that a fragment may serve to link places thousands of miles [Pg 19] apart, and thrust the history of mankind backward into the mists of time for several thousands of years.
A brilliant scientist like Professor Flinders Petrie is able to deduce the most amazing things from a piece of pottery, even if it be but a fragment. ”

“ From time to time others have removed the sand, but always the sand comes back and quickly steals over the body and covers it, leaving the head emerging like some monster of the desert.
In the past the Sphinx has been badly treated by the ignorant Arabs, who have smashed its face about and given it that strange expression which is a half-wry smile. Probably thousands of years hence, when our present civilization has disappeared and been forgotten, the Sphinx will still be regarding the Nile and the world with the same half-sad, half-mocking expression. ”

“ At Kouyunjik he found the palace of Sennacherib, buried 30 feet deep under an accumulation of debris and soil, so deep, in fact, that it was quite impossible to open trenches from the top, owing to the prodigious quantities of soil to be removed. Layard met this difficulty by driving tunnels, and the whole mound was in time honeycombed with his gloomy passages. Occasionally a shaft was opened to the top to let in light, and the faint glimmer that filtered down lit up the most astounding sculptures ever seen by human eyes. ”

“ So hard was the granite with which the passage leading to the King’s and Queen’s Chambers was closed, that in one case the thieves despaired of ever getting through it, so they laboriously cut a way through the roof of the passage and clambered over the top of the granite block. They must have reaped a very rich booty, of which every trace has long since vanished.
All that remains to-day is the red granite sarcophagus in the King’s Chamber. It is an enormous stone coffin, so big that its removal is an impossibility. ”

“ CHAPTER XII Since Layard dug up the vanished cities of Nineveh and Calah on the banks of the Tigris three-quarters of a century ago, many gifted men have followed in his footsteps, and wielded pick and shovel among the mounds dotting Mesopotamia. No one coming upon the utter desolation of Abu Shahrein could imagine that this great mound of sand, with the ruined brick tower peeping out at the top, was some six thousand years ago the flourishing port of Eridu. ”

“ One day Professor Flinders Petrie came across remains. The greatest care was exercised in digging, so that every shred of evidence could be collected, and as the sand and soil were drawn aside he saw it was a very ancient grave, older than anything ever dreamed of in connection with Egypt. No one had any idea that Egypt was inhabited so long ago, but here was proof that men lived in the Nile valley in the dark ages of Time. ”

“ For years Sir Arthur Evans has laboured in Crete, finding the money to move mountains of soil so that light may be thrown on the past. Discoveries of the highest importance have followed his excavations, for he has proved with pick and spade that here in this little island flourished a civilization almost undreamed of till the present century, a civilization maybe as old as that of Egypt and Mesopotamia, a civilization that flourished at least five thousand years ago, that endured for ages before the Phœnicians launched their galleys on the Mediterranean. ”

“ Birds avoid it, animals shun it, only the bats haunt the tombs. There at the base of the hills is the wonderful temple of Queen Hatshepsut, with its rows of pillars standing like sentinels before the blackness which is beyond. Years ago no trace of it could be seen, but a man with a spade came along and found it, and after prodigious labours it was dug out of the overlying rubble and rock in which it was buried.
Everywhere is the eternal rubble and sand. Huge piles of debris mark the sites where the diggers have been working ”

“ Muscular arms that had thrust the galleys through the Mediterranean, dropped the sweeps and caught up weapons as the keels grounded. The sea curled about the legs of the invaders as they dropped over the prow and swarmed ashore. Fighters, every one, asking no quarter, giving none, seeking plunder with the sword, valuing other lives not at all and their own but little.
See the women shrinking into the corners of the palaces, eyes full of fear, sensing approaching doom; men shouting and gasping, the invaders sweeping forward and cutting them down. ”

“ The centre of the slope was paved with polished stone, so that the blocks would slide easily along, but in spite of this attempt to ease the burden, the moving of the stones must have been a heart-breaking task. As the Pyramid rose, so the road grew higher.
The blocks would be heaved out of the barges by dozens of men. Great wooden levers would be inserted under the stones to prise them up to allow the rollers to be slipped under; then hundreds of men would take hold of the long ropes, harnessing themselves like beasts of burden, and drag the stones along. ”

“ The one-time capital of Egypt is a desert ruin. Near by are the villages of Karnak and Luxor, with a few natives living in their humble dwellings, and just a big hotel for the use of travellers, who come here to gaze on the ruins of the past.
It is strange that thousands of years ago, when these islands were inhabited by a few savages who painted their bodies, threw a skin about them for warmth, and lived in the rudest of huts for shelter, far away to the south on the Nile a mighty civilization was flourishing, that would compare very favourably with the civilization of to-day. ”

“ This rubbish had completely covered in the site of the tomb of Tutankhamen and buried it for centuries.
Few men would think of looking immediately under one tomb for the site of another. Such a place is so unexpected that Mr. Howard Carter deserved every credit for selecting so unlikely a spot in which to carry on his search.
Every man digging in Egypt has learned something from Professor Flinders Petrie. He has a keen, analytical brain, and for years before going to the Nile valley he brought his acute mind to the study of the prehistoric remains to be found in Great Britain. ”

“ The myths of the natives are as numerous as the broken monuments, but, whereas the broken stones are facts, the myths woven round them were often otherwise. Any fanciful story that served to win money from the traveller was repeated in a variety of ways, and any little truth there may have been originally was lost in continued repetition.
The ruins, however, could not lie. They said, as plainly as stones can speak: “We were fashioned by Man in the long ago, and the sun shone on us in our glory just as it shines on us in our decay.” ”

“ Throughout the ages that followed the reign of Menes, there grew up those religious beliefs and quaint burial customs which have done so much to unfold to us the life of the past. At first sight there seems to be no reason for all the statues, the tiny figures, and wonderful wall inscriptions to be found in the ancient tombs of Egypt. It seems incomprehensible that the dead should be buried with food and flowers beside them, that all this artistic talent should be wasted in this manner. ”

“ The call of Egypt to Mariette was irresistible, [Pg 88] as it had been to Champollion, as it was to Maspero. Fate linked these three Frenchmen together to add to our knowledge of the past. They loved France, but the deserts and the debris of Egypt became part of their lives.
Often they went in the burning sun to the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings—one of the most desolate places on earth. Not a tree to be seen, not a flower, not even a blade of grass. Vegetation cannot live there. It is a veritable valley of the dead, an inferno of desolation. ”

“ Not a single tomb in all Egypt has yet been found intact. Every tomb discovered has been rifled of its treasure. Even the tomb of Tutankhamen is no exception. The actual holes which the robbers made to enter the tomb were discovered, and, judging by the wealth of the furniture and other things remaining, the haul of gold and silver must have been enormous. ”

“ They have a natural aptitude for causing things to vanish, and when a discovery has been made the discoverer has seldom been able to preserve his find in its entirety. There have been cases where the greater part of a find has disappeared in a night, and once it is gone you might as well seek to find a particular grain of sand in the desert. Statues, vases, jewels, furniture—all have been carried off, and the finders have wakened to discover that their labour has been wasted, and that instead of enriching our knowledge of the world they have merely enriched a few native thieves. ”

“ The remarkable skill shown by the Persian king in selecting the site is proved by the fact that the figures still exist, in spite of the storms beating on them for two thousand four hundred years. Darius was not ignorant of human nature. He knew full well the tendency of man to destroy. To defeat this tendency he had the rock cut away sheer to the foot of the cliff, while to preserve his inscription from the ravages of time he caused it all to be brushed with a sort of yellow varnish, a varnish of such unique quality that some of it protects the stone to this very day. ”