The Boulak authorities keep a small gang of trained excavators always at work in the Necropolis of Thebes. These men are superintended by the governor and every mummy-case discovered is forwarded to Boulak unopened. Thanks to the courtesy of the governor, we had the good fortune to be present one morning at the opening of a tomb. He sent to summon us, just as we were going to breakfast. With what alacrity we manned the felucca and how we ate our bread and butter half in the boat and half on donkey-back, may easily be imagined. How well I remember that early-morning ride across the western plain of Thebes--the young barley rippling for miles in the sun; the little water-channel running beside the path; the white butterflies circling in couples; the wayside grave with its tiny dome and prayer-mat, its well and broken kulleh, inviting the passer-by to drink and pray; the wild vine that trailed along the wall; the vivid violet of the vetches that blossomed unbidden in the barley. We had the mounds and pylons of Medinet Habu to the left--the ruins of the Ramesseum to the right--the colossi of the plain and the rosy western mountains before us all the way. How the great statues glistened in the morning light! How they towered up against the soft blue sky! Battered and featureless, they sat in the old patient attitude, looking as if they mourned the vanished springs. We found the new tomb a few hundred yards in the rear of the Ramesseum. The diggers were in the pit; the governor and a few Arabs were looking on. The vault was lined with brick-work above and cut square in the living rock below. We were just in time; for already, through the sand and rubble with which the grave had been filled in, there appeared an outline of something buried. The men, throwing spades and picks aside, now began scraping up the dust with their hands, and a mummy-case came gradually to light. It was shaped to represent a body lying at length with the hands crossed upon the breast. Both hands and face were carved in high relief. The ground-color of the sarcophagus was white;[191] the surface covered with hieroglyphed legends and somewhat coarsely painted figures of four lesser gods of the dead. The face, like the hands, was colored a brownish-yellow and highly varnished. But for a little dimness of the gaudy hues, and a little flaking off of the surface here and there, the thing was as perfect as when it was placed in the ground. A small wooden box roughly put together lay at the feet of the mummy. This was taken out first, and handed to the governor, who put it aside without opening it. The mummy-case was then raised upright, hoisted to the brink of the pit, and laid upon the ground.