To these the entrance lies on the other side of the promontory of Qurna. Wild and desolate, the rock walls, which round themselves off to bald peaks, rise on both sides, and have their golden tops covered with coal-black stones, burnt, as it were, by the sun. The peculiarly solemn and dull character of this region always struck me the most when I rode after sunset over the unmeasureable rock rubbish which covers the earth to a great height, and is only interrupted by broad water-streams, which have formed themselves in the course of thousands of years, by the unfrequent, though not unknown storms, as experience has shown. All around, everything is dumb and dead; only now and then the hollow bark of the jackal, or the ominous cries of the night owl, varies the sound of the active hoof of my little donkey. After many windings, which lead by great circuits almost immediately behind the high mountain wall of the already described valley of Asasif, the dale parts into two arms, of which the right one leads up to the oldest of the tombs. Two only of these are opened, both of the eighteenth dynasty, the one belonging to the time of Amenophis IV. the Memnon of the Greeks, the other to king Ai, a contemporaneous monarch soon succeeding him, who is not included in the monumental lists of the legitimate kings.[97] The latter lies at the outer end of the slowly rising rock ravine; the granite sarcophagus of the king has been shattered in the little tomb-chamber, and his name is everywhere carefully erased, to the least line, on the walls as well as on the sarcophagus. The other lies far forward in the vale, is of great extent, and with handsome, but unfortunately much mutilated sculptures, through the hands of time and mankind. Besides these two graves, there are several others incomplete without sculpture; others, without doubt, are hidden under the high mounds of rubbish, the removal of which would take more time and means than we thought proper to give to it after severe trials. On one place, where I had excavations made after tolerably certain proofs, a door and chamber were certainly discovered about ten feet below the rubbish, but without sculptures. Yet some remains of bases were brought to light, containing a yet unknown royal title. The left branch of the principal valley, which was originally closed by an elevation of the soil, and was first opened artificially by a prepared pathway, at this place contains the graves of almost all the kings of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties.