REMOVAL OF ROYAL MUMMIES an end to lawlessness and sacrilege, and with a view of doing this he determined to remove the royal mummies, with their coffins and all their funeral furniture, to a more secure hidingplace.

The spot chosen by him was the tomb of Ast-em-khebit, a princess, at Der al-Bahari. The pit by which the tomb is reached is about one hundred and thirty feet deep, and from the bottom of this there runs a corridor about two hundred feet long which ends in a mummy chamber. To this chamber were brought all the mummies from the tomb of Amen-hetep I., and such coffins, &c., as had been left by the thieves were placed along the corridor. This done, the entrance to the corridor in the pit was carefully closed with mason's work, and then the deep pit was filled up with stones, sand, &c. For more than twenty-seven centuries the royal mummies remained undisturbed, so well was their hiding-place concealed by Auapeth, but a means of getting into the princess's tomb was discovered in 1871 by some natives, and ten years later the Egyptian Government took possession of its contents and removed them to the old Museum at Bul&.k.'

This work of Auapeth was productive of far-reaching results, and it is difficult not to think that in carrying it out he was actuated by more than one motive. We know that the priests of Amen performed memorial services in the chapels of the royal tombs at stated intervals throughout the year, and also that the first priest-king caused periodic examinations of the mummies to be made, in the course of which such mummies as required it were re-swathed, and new coffins were provided for them. "When Auapeth removed the royal mummies to the hiding-place described above, he not only placed them beyond the reach of the robbers of tombs, but he made it impossible for the priests of Amen to continue their memorial services near the mummies, and so practically took away one of their chief occupations, and the principal reason of their existence at Thebes. These facts they realized at once, and seeing that it was hopeless to expect ' See Maspero, Les Monties royales de Deir el-Bahari (Mmoires de la Mission du Caire, torn, i,, p. 511 sqq.)

- Thus in the sixth year of his rule he had the mummies of Seti I. and his son Rameses II. re-swathed.

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