The progress of the clearing away revealed the existence of a series of intact tombs at the south of the pyramid. The last of those that had been opened belonged to a very high personage named Zannehibou, in his lifetime commandant of the king’s boats. The mummy, a block of shining bitumen, was at once recognised as a very rich one. At the height of the face it had a large gold mask which fitted on the front part of the head like the _cartonnage_ case usual with mummies of the second Saïte Period. It had a broad necklace round its neck of beads of gold and of green felspar or of lapis lazuli mounted with gold thread, and fastened to it were numerous amulets, also of gold. Below the necklace, on the chest, an image of the goddess Nouît, in gold, spread its wings. A network of gold and felspar hung down to the hip, and from the image of the Nouît to the ankles might be read, on a long band of gold-leaf, the usual inscriptions in relief: the name of the dead man, his filiation, with short formulas of prayer. Two gold figures of Isis and Nephthys were sewn on the chest, two leaves of gold cut as sandals were fitted to the soles of the feet; a silver plaque with a line engraving of a mystic eye for the incision whence the entrails had been extracted, gold cases for the twenty fingers and toes, completed this magnificent decoration. Everything that with the lower classes of the same period would have been in cardboard, or gilded paste, or enamelled clay, was pure gold and fine stones with Zannehibou. The find, estimated by weight alone, would be valuable, but what gave it inestimable worth was the delicate and artistic workmanship of the greater number of the objects. A few of them, like the sandals and the finger-cases, are only worth the raw metal; the rest are the work of veritable artists. The inscriptions of the legs, the winged Nouît, the Isis and the Nephthys, the mask, are stamped, and although the mask and the two goddesses were miserably crushed by the lid when the sarcophagus was closed, the mould of hard stone which was used to fix them was so delicately cut that the best-preserved pieces, the winged Nouît, for instance, may be quoted as the highest degree of perfection that could be attained by that process. The amulet in shape of a necklace is only a leaf cut with the chisel, on which a chapter of the “Book of the Dead” is engraved with the graving needle. The vulture amulet is a small, thin plaque, on one side of which the stamped figure of a vulture with spread wings has been stuck, while on the other the chapter of the “Book of the Dead” has been engraved, as with the necklace. It is all of good workmanship, but in the amulets hanging on the real necklace of the mummy the goldsmith has surpassed himself. [Illustration: NECKLACE AMULET. VULTURE AMULET.] [Illustration: GOLD PALM-TREE. BOAT OF SOKARIS.] [Illustration: RAM’S HEAD. GOLD HAWK. HAWK WITH HUMAN HEAD. HAWK WITH RAM’S HEAD.]