CAIRO TO KISUMU in the opening up of tomb after tomb, until we now have what might almost be called a subterranean city of the dead in the heart of the desert.

The tombs are nothing like our burial vaults. They are large rooms cut out of the solid rock, with walls straight and smooth. They are reached by many steps, going down inclined planes until they bring one far below the surface of the valley and deep under the mountains. Each king had his own tomb, which he decorated with sketches and paintings representing the life of his time and the achievements of his reign. The ceilings are beautiful. From some of them the figures of gods and goddesses look down upon us. Others are decorated with geometric designs in beautiful colours. In some, men and women are carved in bas-relief out of the solid rock and then coloured. Many of the scenes are religious, so that from them the Egyptologist is able to learn what the people of that day believed. The carvings show, too, how they lived when our remotest ancestors were savages in the wilds of Europe and Asia.

The Americans have had remarkably good luck in their finds. One of them was the tomb of the parents of Queen Tiy in which all the objects were in as good condition as if they had been in a house just closed for the summer. There were armchairs beautifully carved and decorated with gold. The cushion on one of them was stuffed with down and covered with linen perfectly preserved. In another part of the chamber were two beds decorated with gold, while a light chariot stood in a corner. But most wonderful of all was the discovery in this tomb of a jar of honey, still liquid and still fragrant after thirty-three hundred years.

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