The question has often been asked—Why the rock tombs of the kings, and of others, were excavated to such a surprising extent? Their extent presents so much difficulty to some minds, that one of our best known engineers, who is also quite familiar with them, tells me that he cannot believe but that they were originally merely stone quarries; and that the kings, and sometimes wealthy subjects, finding them ready made, converted them into tombs. We may, however, be quite sure that the Egyptians never would have gone up into the mountains to the valley of the kings, to quarry limestone in descending galleries, two or three hundred feet long, when every step that they had taken for the previous two or three miles had been over limestone equally good. Nor would they have made such multitudes of quarries subterranean, and of precisely the dimensions and character that fitted them for tombs. What, indeed, was the fashion in which they worked their quarries, we see at Silsiléh, and elsewhere. The true answer is that they made these sepulchral excavations of such enormous extent for just the same reason that they constructed their temples and palaces of such vast dimensions. They would not have answered the purpose for which they were wanted had they been less. Wall-space was required for recording all that an active prince in a long and eventful, or prosperous, reign had done; and all that he wished to be known about himself, his pursuits, his amusements, and his relations to the gods. And just as, if it had been possible to put it all in print, a great deal of paper would have been needed, so, when put in hieroglyphics and sculptures, there was required a proportionate amount of wall-space. So also with private individuals. If Petamenap could have written memoirs of himself, and had a thousand copies struck off, and sent one to be deposited in each of several great public libraries, he would have been content with less than three-quarters of a mile of wall-space in his tomb. Under the circumstances, then, what we find is just what we might have expected. There is nothing wonderful, considering the motive, in the extent of these excavations. The excavated tombs of Jews, Edomites, Greeks, Etruscans, and many other people were not larger than was necessary for the becoming interment of the corpse. If the Egyptians had had only the same object, and no other, their excavations would have been of the same size.