Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/78

 so Outlines of European History Tombs of the great men of the Empire men of the Empire. Here were buried the able generals who marched with the Pharaoh on his campaigns in Asia and in Nubia. Here lay the gifted artists and architects who furnished a new chapter in the history of art — the men who were in charge of erecting the vast buildings and sculptured monuments (Fig. 30) of Thebes — the men whose genius made it the first great monumental city of the ancient world, so that its ruins are, as we have seen, the marvel of a host of modern visitors. We can enter these chapels and read the names of these men on their walls — and not only their names but long accounts of their lives and the great deeds which they wrought. Here is the story of the general who saved Thutmose IH's life in a great elephant hunt in Asia, by rushing in and cut- ting off the trunk of an enraged elephant which was pursuing the king. Here is the tomb of the general who captured the city of Joppa in Palestine by concealing his men in panniers loaded on the backs of donkeys, thus bringing them into the city as mer- chandise — an adventure which afterward furnished part of the story of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," Fig. 32. IN HIS Body of Seti I as he lies Coffin in the National. Museum at Cairo This king lived in the Empire in the four- teenth century B.C. He was buried in the valley shown in Fig. 31. His successors being unable to protect his body and those of other emperors from tomb robbers, hid them all in a large secret chamber exca- vated near the valley in the eleventh cen- tury B.C. Here the bodies lay unmolested for about three thousand years, until they were discovered and brought forth in 1S81