Page:The Pharaohs and their people; scenes of old Egyptian life and history (IA pharaohstheirpeo00berkiala).pdf/268

 *dicular shaft, 25 feet deep, by 7 feet wide, a subterranean gallery of 200 feet in length was reached. Beyond was the vault, which measured about 25 feet by 14. There were either six or seven sovereigns of the twenty-first dynasty; and the last but one of them foreseeing, it is not unlikely, that a time of trouble and danger was at hand, gathered into the gloomy unadorned recesses of the gallery and vault of his family tomb the coffins of many illustrious predecessors. He then appears to have finally closed the tomb and suffered himself to be buried elsewhere. It was here that the remains of so many Egyptian sovereigns, both of the twenty-first and of earlier dynasties, were found in the great discovery of 1881. The little we know concerning even the names and succession of the priestly dynasty has been chiefly derived from this their family burial-place. We find that four of them married wives who were princesses in their own right. One of these queens, wife of Pinotem II., fourth king of the dynasty, is buried with her new-born babe by her side. The papyrus, containing portions of the ritual, which according to custom was laid