model in wood of an ancient boat, about three feet long, in excellent preservation, and the painting is as fresh as if it had been just laid on : it differs little in construction from the modern germ of the Arabs; the same spars for attaching the lateen sail, but the tiller is of another form, and its movements are connected with a wheel in the centre there is a representation of a mummy, surrounded by mourners, and the workmanship altogether is surprising. The Libyan mountain, on the north west side of Thebes, contains the tombs; they perforate the mountain from top to bottom; the lowest are the most highly finished; these are inhabited by the Arabs, about three hundred of whom miserably exist in these sepulchres of pride. The staple commodity of Gourna consists in mummies: the Arabs find it easier to live by selling dead men, than by the toil of husbandry. In the sale of mummies, I discovered such frauds, that I have no hesitation in saying, in all the cabinets of Europe, there are not probably twenty mummies in the same coffins in which they were originally deposited.

I attended an old inhabitant of a tomb for several days; he had a bad fever, of which his son

THE LYBIAN MOUNTAIN.

79

had died a few days before my arrival. I had the good fortune to cure this old troglodyte, and his gratitude was unbounded. I was in the habit of sitting with him daily, on my return from my researches in the tombs. His dwelling was in the most spacious chamber of a superb sepulchre*, the walls were covered with ancient paintings, the roof was supported by four magnificent pillars, his divan was formed of an inverted coffin, and the lamp, which feebly illumined this gloomy chamber, was made of the cover of an alabaster vase. Various antique utensils furnished his cupboard, and the screen which separated the women's alcove from the common chamber, was formed principally of the linen cloth torn from the mummies. It was with great difficulty I could prevail on him to let me visit the interior of the tomb; I did so, however, on the condition of not telling any thing of what I saw to the

* In the paintings of this chamber, I observed five different sorts of musical instruments; jugglers were depicted in the act of swallowing fire, dancing on ropes, standing on their heads; asses were rearing on their hind legs, the cross accurately painted on their backs; women were dancing precisely like the modern Arab alme; and only six primitive colours were employed in the representations of all these objects.

80

MANUFACTURE OF MUMMIES.

Franks at Gourna, and, to my utter surprise, the first thing I observed, at the extremity of the gallery was a manufacture of mummies. Three beautiful mummy cases were laid open, an ordinary mummy was placed in the last, the original one having been previously pillaged; and, what convinced me of the fraud was several new wooden pegs lying on the cover of the large case, undoubtedly intended as substitutes to the old ones, which had been broken in bursting open the external case. There are generally three cases, and the nails which join them are made of hard wood. I asked no questions, I knew it would be useless, but my eye was inquisitive for the few moments I remained, and some red paint in a coffee-cup beside the coffins, left me no doubt of the justice of my first suspicion.

I proceeded through a narrow passage into another cave, which was literally crammed with mummies, placed in horizontal layers, as they had been, in all probability, deposited some thou

sands of years ago. Not one was upright, as

Herodotus describes them to have been; and, indeed, in all the sepulchres I have been, I never found a mummy in a standing posture; the great

ARAB TROGLODYTES.

81

proof of this fallacy is that, in the tombs of the kings, each sarcophagus is placed on its bottom, and not on end. But what astonished me in the tomb of my old friend, the troglodyte, far more than the folly of the Egyptians or the skill of the embalmers, was the indifference of the little children of the old man's son to the horrors of the place: four of them, the eldest not exceeding

eight years of age, had crawled after me through

every gloomy passage; and now, in the chamber where the dreariness of the scene and the sickening sight of these cadaverous mummies made me shudder, they sat on the broken coffins, pulling about the rigid arms of the dead bodies, and playing with the gilded fingers of one mummy which had evidently been dragged from a coffin. Not a particle of fear had these little troglodytes; and why, indeed, should they? they were born in a sepulchre, they were accustomed to death, their little eyes saw less of living men than of livid corpses if their mother wished to frighten them, she spoke not of graves and hobgoblins, she talked to them of Christians; she could not terrify their souls with objects which were always within their sight, and she could hardly shut them up in a much

82

ARAB TROGLODYTES.

darker room than that in which they first saw the lamp which "made darkness visible" around them.

Had they been punished with a few minutes confinement, in the deepest gallery of the tomb, the apparition of a living Frank would have haunted their imaginations, but the ghost of a dead man would never have caused an apprehension. When my Nubian servant saw the little knaves jowl the head (perhaps of some Egyptian philosopher) as they carried it out for me, he looked on them with disgust, and called them Caffres. I could not get him to lay his finger on a mummy.

These urchins at first fled at my approach, as all the children of Thebes do when they see a Frank, but by degrees they got accustomed to me. I found that their avarice, young as they were, was stronger than their fears; and one piastre after another made them prefer me at last to the Shitan, whose satanic image, they had been taught, was impressed on every Christian form.

If there were any proof wanting, that fear is the result of infantile education, I think this fact would be sufficient to make it manifest. "Fear," says Locke, "is an uneasiness of the mind upon the thought of future evil likely to befall us:"