It is with the coming of Belzoni on his second journey in 1817 that the modern search for buried Pharaohs may be said to begin, and since his discovery of the tomb of Sety I, the work of finding Pharaohs has gone on for more than a century with more or less success, until at the present time something like sixty tombs have been found, including a few which are not royal, and some which are merely pits. The probability is that few tombs remain to be discovered in the Valley, for most of the great royalties of the Empire have now been accounted for in one way or another. One chance of some importance, however, remains. The last king whom we know to have been buried in the Valley of the Kings is Ramses XII of the XXth Dynasty. In the great _cache_ at Der el-Bahri, which will fall to be spoken of shortly, several of the mummies of kings of the XXIst Dynasty were found, along with those of the earlier and more famous lines; but the actual tombs of the XXIst Dynasty have never yet come to light, and it is possible that some fortunate explorer may yet fall, in one of the desolate valleys among the Libyan hills, on the necropolis of a line of kings who, if they do not fill so great a place in the history of Egypt as their predecessors of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties, were yet sufficiently important to make the discovery of their resting-place a matter of great moment. [Illustration: 21. TOMB OF RAMSES IX, VALLEY OF THE KINGS.] It was on October 6 that Belzoni began those excavations in the Valley which resulted in the discovery of what is still the finest example of a royal tomb of the Empire. On the 9th he was fortunate enough to discover two tombs of considerable importance, one of them beautifully painted, the other undecorated, but containing some funerary furniture and two female mummies. “Their hair,” says Belzoni, whose summary method of dealing with mummies we have already noticed, “was pretty long, and well-preserved, though it was easily separated from the head by pulling it a little”! On the 11th, this amazingly fortunate man, who knew so little the greatness of his good fortune, entered another tomb, evidently one of still greater importance, which, with its contents, is dismissed in half a page of his story. “We found a sarcophagus of granite, with two mummies in it, and in a corner a statue standing erect, 6 feet 6 inches high, and beautifully cut out of sycamore wood; it is nearly perfect except the nose. We found also a number of little images of wood, well carved, representing symbolical figures. Some had a lion’s head, others a fox’s, others a monkey’s.... In the chamber on our right hand we found another statue like the first, but not perfect.” Thus summarily Belzoni dismisses a discovery which would make most present-day explorers green with envy. What became of the two mummies, the two funerary statues, and the ushabtis, we are not told, but can easily imagine.