Page:The Overland Monthly, volume 1, issue 1.djvu/84



shoulders. Above this was a large loose robe, made of the finest linen, with full sleeves, tied in front, below the breast. The gown was of richly colored stuff, presenting a variety of patterns. Her dainty feet were encased in sandals, prettily worked, and turning up at the toes. Occcasionally she indulged in the extravagance of shoes or béots. Her hair was worn long and plaited; the back part consisted of a number of strings of hair, reaching to the bottom of the shoulder blades, while on each side other strings descended over the breast. An ornamented fillet encircled the head, and the strings of hair at the sides were separated and secured with a comb. From her ears hung large round single hoops of gold; sometimes an asp, whose body was of gold, set with precious stones, was worn. She had all the passion for finger jewelry of her modern sister. Sometimes two or three

rings were worn on the same finger,

while occasionally she indulged in the superfluous feminine extravagance of a ring on the thumb! So you see the sex is much the same, past and present, the world over.

The tombs. upon which the "first families" of Thebes so much prided themselves are now occupied as cow and donkey stables, and huts, by the miserable Arabs with which the neighborhood is infested. As the traveler wanders about from sepulchre to sepulchre, he is dogged by a squad of vagabonds, with arms and hands and feet and heads of mummies, whom they have sacrilegiously "unearthed," imploring him to buy these grim relics. I purchased a head of a "prominent citizen " for three piastres, while the delicate hands of a Theban belle were offered me for an equal sum. Our cook bought a whole mummy, coffin and all, for six piastres, to be taken to Alexandria as a present to his children. The reader must do his own moralizing.

After spending three days among the

tombs of the great, I was desirous of looking in upon the "pits" of the more ignoble dead. My guide led me bya narrow path, thickly strewn with fragments of mummies—hands, feet, legs, arms, trunks, scattered about in charming confusion—to a small opening in the side of the mountain. Through this I was compelled to crawl, some fifteen or twenty feet, to a larger opening. Lighting a torch, we continued our way until we came toa chamber filled with human mummies, piled one upon the other, to a depth of, I know not how many feet. Walking remorselessly over this horrid pavement, we came to another chamber, similarly filled; then another and another, tenanted by the same ghastly denizens. Sometimes I would sink to my knees into this mass of withered human carrion; sometimes my cruel heel would unwittingly crush in a grining face, or "go through" a mass of blackened bowels. There they lay, pellmell, a dozen deep, some headless, some sitting half upright, leering at vacancy, some lying helplessly with face downward, some with feet uppermost. There was one huge fellow, looking as if he might have been an extinct prize-fighter, minus a head, who measured over six feet from neck to heel. We turned him over, laid open his poor chest, and left him to his fate. I did not take the census of this motley congregation, but there must have been several hundred in a single "pit." Sir Gardener Wilkinson estimates that there are nine millions of mummies in the mountains about Thebes.

"To this complexion hath it come at last."" This reeking mass was once warm with life. Each had its little world in which it hoped and wrestled. Each strutted its brief-hour upon the great stage, and thought that hour /he pivotpoint upon which the world's destiny would turn evermore. There were strifes and bickerings and heartaches; there were rivalries and cliques and cabals