Travel
Diary of Mrs. R.P. Eaton:
Europe,
Egypt, and Palestine, ca. 1857
Mummies had all been removed. The apparent freshness of these
sculptures and paintings, yet so old, was very remarkable. I
noticed in one room that work was not complete when the
tomb was closed. One of the walls was only half covered with
sculptured hieroglyphics. It had all the appearance of a work
of present progress, so sharp and well defined was my touch of
the artists’ instrument. It seemed as if he had left his tomb for
the day to resume it to-morrow. And, these last touches were
made near three thousand years ago!
I was anxious to see some tombs containing mummies, and
expressed such a wish to the guide. “Follow me,” said he. A few
of us went with him up the slope of a sand-hill, where we
came to a small entrance, just long enough to admit us
singly, going backwards in a horizontal position. On getting
through this, we could almost stand upright, and with candles
to light the darkness, we found ourselves in a room perhaps
fifteen feet square, and full of mummies lying promis-
cuously about, to what depth I know not. We could not take
a stop without treading on them. We followed the guide
through a small aperture into another room, and so on, till
we had passed through six or seven. These apartments, all filled
with mummies, some of which were positively unrolled, and had
a ghastly appearance, their limbs cracking under our feet, as
we were obliged to trample on them in our way. We stopped
a moment to pull off pieces of mummy-cloth, but were glad
to get away from the strange spectacle, and creep through the
little orifice to purer air. These pits were doubtless the tombs
of the common people. The whole region is a vast necropolis,
honey-combed with tombs and cones.
Having bid farewell to Harnah, where the tourist lingers last and
longest, and cut our name on one of its grand old columns, we turned the
prow of our coal northward, and were soon floating down
it is emphatically river, and unlike any other, in that it has no
tributaries, but flows on as large in Nubia as in Egypt, as full in
the our region of Ethiopia as upon it empties itself into the Mediterranean.
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