On
Either Side Open Other Chambers Into Which The Electricity Permits Us
To See Quite Clearly, And Opposite, At The End Of The Hall, A Large
Crypt Is Revealed, Which One Divines Instinctively Must Be The
Resting-Place Of The Pharaoh.
What a prodigious labour must have been
entailed by this perforation of the living rock!
And this hypogeum is
not unique. All along the "Valley of the Kings" little insignificant
doors - which to the initiated reveal the "Sign of the Shadow,"
inscribed on their lintels - lead to other subterranean places, just as
sumptuous and perfidiously profound, with their snares, their hidden
wells, their oubliettes and the bewildering multiplicity of their
mural figures. And all these tombs this morning were full of people,
and, if we had not had the good fortune to arrive after the usual
hour, we should have met here, even in this dwelling of Amenophis, a
battalion equipped by Messrs. Cook.
In this hall, with its blue ceiling, the frescoes multiply their
riddles: scenes from the book of Hades, all the funeral ritual
translated into pictures. On the pillars and walls crowd the different
demons that an Egyptian soul was likely to meet in its passage through
the country of shadows, and underneath the passwords which were to be
given to each of them are recapitulated so as not to be forgotten.
For the soul used to depart simultaneously under the two forms of a
flame[*] and a falcon[+] respectively. And this country of shadows,
called also the west, to which it had to render itself, was that where
the moon sinks and where each evening the sun goes down; a country to
which the living were never able to attain, because it fled before
them, however fast they might travel across the sands or over the
waters.
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