PREFACE

A s this volume deals with our work of the second, third and fourth seasons upon the tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen, I shall not trouble the reader with any repetition of the dramatic incidents that rendered the first part of the discovery memorable, further than is needed for a general idea. It will, no doubt, be remembered from the first volume and the accounts published all over the world, describing how, after many years of toil, we at last reached our goal in the discovery of a step cut in the bed-rock beneath the entrance of the tomb of Rameses VI, which proved to be the beginning of a stairway that led down to the tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen. Great was our feeling of awe when we made the discovery, cleared the stairway and steep descending passage, and entered the Antechamber, when we beheld in that hypogeum for the first time the splendour of the Imperial Age in Egypt, fourteen centuries before Christ. The gorgeousness of the sight, its sumptuous splendour, made it appear more like the confused magnificence of those counterfeit splendours which are heaped together in the property-room of some modern theatre, than any possible reality surviving from antiquity. The effect was bewildering, almost overwhelming. Moreover, the extent of the discovery had taken us by surprise. It is true that we had expected to find the tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen in the Theban Valley, for reasons already pointed out in the first volume, but our supreme surprise was to find it, for all intents and purposes, intact.