We took donkeys next day to the edge of the desert and went up to the sepulchers on foot. The mountain, which looked a delicate salmon-pink when seen from afar, now showed bleached and arid and streaked with ocherous yellow. Layer above layer, in beds of strongly marked stratification, it towered overhead; tier above tier, the tombs yawned, open-mouthed, along the face of the precipice. I picked up a fragment of the rock, and found it light, porous and full of little cells, like pumice. The slopes were strewn with stones, as well as with fragments of mummy, shreds of mummy-cloth and human bones, all whitening and withering in the sun. The first tomb we came to was the so-called Stabl Antar--a magnificent but cruelly mutilated excavation, consisting of a grand entrance, a vaulted corridor, a great hall, two side chambers and a sanctuary. The ceiling of the corridor, now smoke-blackened and defaced, has been richly decorated with intricate patterns in light green, white and buff, upon a ground of dark bluish-green stucco. The wall to the right on entering is covered with a long hieroglyphic inscription. In the sanctuary vague traces of seated figures, male and female, with lotus blossoms in their hands, are dimly visible. Two colossal warriors incised in outline upon the leveled rock--the one very perfect, the other hacked almost out of recognition--stand on each side of the huge portal. A circular hole in the threshold marks the spot where the great door once worked upon its pivot; and a deep pit, now partially filled in with rubbish, leads from the center of the hall to some long-rifled vault deep down in the heart of the mountain. Wilful destruction has been at work on every side. The wall-sculptures have been defaced--the massive pillars that once supported the superincumbent rock have been quarried away--the interior is heaped high with débris. Enough is left, however, to attest the antique stateliness of the tomb; and the hieroglyphic inscription remains almost intact to tell its age and history. This inscription (erroneously entered in Murray’s Guide as uncopied, but interpreted by Brugsch, who published extracts from it as far back as 1862) shows the excavation to have been made for one Hepoukefa or Haptefa, monarch of the Lycopolite nome and the chief priest of the jackal god of Siût.[26] It is also famous among scientific students for certain passages which contain important information regarding the intercalary days of the Egyptian calendar.[27] We observed that the full-length figures on the jambs of the doorway appeared to have been incised, filled in with stucco and then colored. The stucco had for the most part fallen out, though enough remained to show the style of the work.[28]