CHAPTER XV OLD THEBES AND THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS A LL day long I have been wandering about through the tombs of the kings who ruled Egypt three or 1 four thousand years ago. I have gone into the * subterranean chambers which the Pharaohs dug out of the solid rocks for their burial vaults, and I have visited the tombs of kings older than they. The last resting places of more than fifty of these monarchs of early Egypt have been discovered, and the work is still going on.

Some of the best work of excavation all along the Nile valley is being done by Americans. While at Cairo I found the money of Harvard College and the Boston Mu¬ seum uncovering the cemeteries of the nabobs and paupers who were buried at the time of King Cheops under the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. The Egyptian Exploration Fund, which is supported by Great Britain, Canada, and the United States, has a small army of work¬ men operating near Luxor, the University of Pennsylvania has made important discoveries, and a large part of the uncovering of the valley in which these royal tombs lie has been done by the Americans.

The Egyptologists of the Metropolitan Museum in New York and Lord Carnarvon of England are responsible for some of the most remarkable finds of this generation.

During my trip of to-day I met a young archaeologist, in charge of the American operations, who showed me through 117