The question of the removal to a place of security of this astonishing mass of dead royalty presented its own difficulties. The removal had to be as speedy as possible, for now that the secret was out every hour would add to the danger of a violent attack on the shaft, and the dispersal for ever of its previous treasures. Yet the problem of removal was no easy one. The spot where the shaft lies is lonely and difficult of access; and the coffins of some of the kings and queens were of huge size and corresponding weight. That of Queen Aahmes Nefertari, for instance, is 10 feet long, and required sixteen men to lift it. “Early the next morning,” says Brugsch, “three hundred Arabs were employed under my direction--each one a thief. One by one the coffins were hoisted to the surface, were securely sewed up in sailcloth and matting, and then were carried across the plain of Thebes to the steamers awaiting them at Luxor.” It took six days of hard labour, under the blazing sun of an Egyptian July, before the tomb was cleared; and then three days more were spent in waiting for the Museum steamboat to arrive. Brugsch must have been an anxious man as he watched the efforts of the three hundred professional tomb-robbers from whose hands he was snatching what they regarded as their legitimate prey; and no doubt he heaved a sigh of genuine relief when, on July 20, he handed over his precious freight to the Museum at Boulak, and was delivered from the burden of royalty. Sir Gaston Maspero has told us how all along the Nile, from Luxor to Quft, both banks of the river were covered with frantic crowds of fellahs, the women tearing their hair and wailing, the men firing rifles, as they followed the downstream progress of the steamer bearing the mummies. So, no doubt, only without the rifles and the steam, their ancestors had followed the funeral barks which bore across the river the dead bodies of these mighty kings three thousand years before!