The mention of the possibility of some of the articles found in the tomb being family heirlooms of the XVIIIth Dynasty brings up the last question with which it is necessary to deal in this short survey. How does it come about that a Pharaoh of no great standing in the long line of Egyptian monarchs--a mere stopgap king, a pigmy between giants--was buried with surroundings whose splendour exceeds anything known in all the story of royal magnificence? The discoveries of Tutankhamen’s wonderful funerary equipment make us wonder what we may have lost in the fact that his is the only royal tomb which has been found practically unrifled. Had we found, for instance, the tomb of a really great Pharaoh, such as Amenhotep III, as intact as that of his descendant, we should have been in a better position to form a judgment on the matter; but that unfortunately has been denied us. One suggestion may be made, with the proviso that it is no more than a suggestion, which may be confirmed or disproved by subsequent investigation. It has already been suggested that some of the most curious, if not the most beautiful, of the finds are relics, not of the time of Tutankhamen, but of Amenhotep III, dating therefore from forty years before the time when they were stored away in the Valley of the Kings; and it has also been suggested that another very interesting article, the footstool with figures of Asiatic captives inlaid upon it, dates from an even earlier period, that of Amenhotep II, and is therefore a century older than the time to which the burial belongs. Tutankhamen, we know, was the last king of the direct line of the XVIIIth Dynasty. His widow, Ankh. s. en. Amen, was left in a most insecure position from which she made, as we know, a desperate and unavailing effort to extricate herself. May it not be that, with the consciousness that all the glories of her house were in danger of passing to mere usurpers of undistinguished origin, such as the obscure priest Ay, who succeeded Tutankhamen, or the commonplace soldier Horemheb, who drove Ay from the throne, she secured at least some of the most treasured heirlooms of the royal house from desecration by hiding them in the tomb of her dead husband? It is, of course, only an idea, which must stand or fall by the results of future study; but it seems, at least in the meantime, to offer a reasonable explanation of a point on which no other explanation is for the present forthcoming. CHAPTER VIII LIFE, ARTS, AND CRAFTS IN THE LAND OF THE NILE