It Is Necessary To Look Closely To Distinguish On The Smooth
Walls The Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, The Rows Of Little Figures,
Little Owls, Little Jackals, That Tell In A Lost Language The History
Of Ancient Peoples.
Here is the signature of King Amasis; beyond, that
of King Cambyses.
. . . Who were the Titans who, century after
century, were able to hew these coffins (they are at least twelve feet
long by ten feet high), and, having hewn them, to carry them
underground (they weigh on an average between sixty and seventy tons),
and finally to range them in rows here in these strange chambers,
where they stand as if in ambuscade on either side of us as we pass?
Each in its turn has contained quite comfortably the mummy of a bull
Apis, armoured in plates of gold. But in spite of their weight, in
spite of their solidity which effectively defies destruction, they
have been despoiled[*] - when is not precisely known, probably by the
soldiers of the King of Persia. And this notwithstanding that merely
to open them represents a labour of astonishing strength and patience.
In some cases the thieves have succeeded, by the aid of levers, in
moving a few inches the formidable lid; in others, by persevering with
blows of pickaxes, they have pierced, in the thickness of the granite,
a hole through which a man has been enabled to crawl like a rat, or a
worm, and then, groping his way, to plunder the sacred mummy.
[*] One, however, remains intact in the walled cavern, and thus
preserves for us the only Apis which has come down to our days.
And one recalls the emotion of Mariette, when, on entering it, he
saw on the sandy ground the imprint of the naked feet of the last
Egyptian who left it thirty-seven centuries before.
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