Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, and certainly nothing in romantic literature can surpass in dramatic interest the revelation which awaited the Boolak officials in the subterranean sepulchral chambers of Deir-el-Bahari. At the bottom of the shaft the explorers noticed a dark passage running westward; so, having lit their candles, they groped their way slowly along the passage, which ran in a straight line for twenty-three feet, and then turned abruptly to the right, stretching away northward into total darkness. At the corner where the passage turned northward, they found a royal funeral canopy, flung carelessly down in a tumbled heap. As they proceeded, they found the roof so low in some places that they were obliged to stoop, and in other parts the rocky floor was very uneven. At a distance of sixty feet from the corner, the explorers found themselves at the top of a flight of stairs, roughly hewn out of the rock. Having descended the steps, each with his flickering candle in hand, they pursued their way along a passage slightly descending, and penetrating deeper and further into the heart of the mountain. As they proceeded, the floor became more and more strewn with fragments of mummy cases and tattered pieces of mummy bandages. Presently they noticed boxes piled on the top of each other against the wall, and these boxes proved to be filled with porcelain statuettes, libation jars, and canopic vases of precious alabaster. Then appeared several huge coffins of painted wood; and great was their joy when they gazed upon a crowd of mummy cases, some standing, some laid upon the ground, each fashioned in human form, with folded hands and solemn faces. On the breast of each was emblazoned the name and titles of the occupant. Words fail to describe the joyous excitement of the scholarly explorers, when among the group they read the names of Seti I., Thothmes II., Thothmes III., and Rameses II., surnamed the Great. The Boolak officials had journeyed to Thebes, expecting at most to find a few mummies of petty princes; but on a sudden they were brought, as it were, face to face with the mightiest kings of ancient Egypt, and confronted the remains of heroes whose exploits and fame filled the ancient world with awe more than three thousand years ago. The explorers stood bewildered, and could scarcely believe the testimony of their own eyes, and actually inquired of each other if they were not in a dream. At the end of a passage, one hundred and thirty feet from the bottom of the rock-cut passage, they stood at the entrance of a sepulchral chamber, twenty-three feet long, and thirteen feet wide, literally piled to the roof with mummy cases of enormous size. The coffins were brilliant with colour-gilding and varnish, and looked as fresh as if they had recently come out of the workshops of the Memnonium.