symbols that are eternally the same. The gods
and demons, the representatives of Anubis, with his black jackal's head
and his long erect ears, seem to make signs to us with their long
arms and long fingers: "No noise! Look, there are mummies here!" The
wonderful preservation of all this, the vivid colours, the clearness of
the outlines, begin to cause a kind of stupor and bewilderment. Verily
you would think that the painter of these figures of the shades had only
just quitted the hypogeum. All this past seems to draw you to itself
like an abyss to which you have approached too closely. It surrounds
you, and little by little masters you. It is so much at home here that
it has _remained the present_. Over and above the mere descent into the
secret bowels of the rock there has been a kind of seizure with vertigo,
which we had not anticipated and which has whirled us far away into the
depths of the ages.

These interminable, oppressive passages, by which we have crawled to the
innermost depths of the mountain, lead at length to something vast, the
walls divide, the vault expands and we are in the great funeral hall,
of which the blue ceiling, all bestrewn with stars like the sky, is
supported by six pillars hewn in the rock itself. 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 shad