Standing near the end of the long dark passage running northward, and not far from the threshold of the family vault of the priest-kings, lay the sarcophagus of Thothmes III., close to that of his brother Thothmes II. The mummy case was in a lamentable condition, and had evidently been broken into and subjected to rough usage. On the lid, however, were recognized the well-known cartouches of this illustrious monarch. On opening the coffin, the mummy itself was exposed to view, completely enshrouded with bandages; but a rent near the left breast showed that it had been exposed to the violence of tomb-breakers. Placed inside the coffin and surrounding the body were found wreaths of flowers: larkspurs, acacias and lotuses. They looked as if but recently dried, and even their colours could be discerned. Long hieroglyphic texts found written on the bandages contained the seventeenth chapter of the "Ritual of the Dead," and the "Litanies of the Sun." The body measured only five feet two inches; so that, making due allowance for shrinking and compression in the process of embalming, still it is manifest that Thothmes III. was not a man of commanding stature; but in shortness of stature as in brilliancy of conquests, finds his counterpart in the person of Napoleon the Great. It was desirable in the interests of science to ascertain whether the mummy bearing the monogram of Thothmes III. was really the remains of that monarch. It was therefore unrolled. The inscriptions on the bandages established beyond all doubt the fact that it was indeed the most distinguished of the kings of the brilliant XVIIIth dynasty; and once more, after an interval of thirty-six centuries, human eyes gazed on the features of the man who had conquered Syria, and Cyprus, and Ethiopia, and had raised Egypt to the highest pinnacle of her power; so that it was said that in his reign she placed her frontiers where she pleased. The spectacle was of brief duration; the remains proved to be in so fragile a state that there was only time to take a hasty photograph, and then the features crumbled to pieces and vanished like an apparition, and so passed away from human view for ever. The director felt such remorse at the result that he refused to allow the unrolling of Rameses the Great, for fear of a similar catastrophe.