I was much interested in the interior of the Great Pyramid. The mighty structure is supposed to be solid, with the exception of three chambers, connected with the outside by passageways and ventilated by air-shafts. These chambers undoubtedly once contained great treasures of gold and silver, but they were robbed in the first instance over three thousand years ago and it is known that the Persians, the Romans, and the Arabs all tried to dig into them to find the valuables they were supposed to hold. It was with three half-naked Bedouins that I climbed up to the entrance which leads into old Cheops. There is a hole about forty-five feet above the desert on the north side. Going in here, we came into a narrow stone passage so low that I had to crawl on my hands and knees. The passage first sloped downward and then up, and finally, pushed and pulled by my dark guides, I got into a great narrow hall. After passing through this, I entered again the room where old Cheops, the king, rested undisturbed for a thousand years or so before the looters came. [Illustration: The Alabaster Sphinx is one of the evidences of splendour of the ancient city of Memphis, seat of kings, with streets so long that to walk from end to end was said to be half a day’s journey.] [Illustration: Inside the great museum at Cairo are the mummies of Egyptian royalty, which, with countless relics and records and the new discoveries of the archæologists, reveal in intimate detail the life of these people of thousands of years ago.] By going back through the hall one reaches another passageway which slopes downward to the Queen’s Chamber. Below this, reached by another passage connecting with that I first entered, there is a subterranean chamber far under the base of the Pyramid itself. The whole structure is intensely interesting, and if it could be explored by diamond drills or in some other way, other chambers might possibly be found in the parts now looked upon as solid. CHAPTER XII FACE TO FACE WITH THE PHARAOHS How would you like to own an Egyptian mummy princess, perhaps two thousand years old? On my second visit to Egypt I was offered one at the museum. The price was just one hundred dollars in cash, and accompanying it was a certificate showing that it had not been made in Germany. The excavations going on in the valley of the Nile had unearthed so many relics that the museum at Cairo had mummies and other antiques to sell. Hundreds of the ancient dead were being shipped to all parts of the world, and the ghoul-like officials added to their revenues by disposing of the surplus bodies of nobles who lived and ruled ages ago. The lady who was offered to me, with the usual accompaniment of a certificate of age, lay in the clothes in which she was buried. She was wrapped around with linen as yellow as saffron and her black face appeared to smile as I looked at her. She had been put up in spices, and I could almost smell the perfumes with which she was embalmed.