Ten years' digging in Egypt, 1881-1891Petrie, W. M. Flinders (William Matthew Flinders)
History
Ten years' digging in Egypt, 1881-1891
Petrie, W. M. Flinders (William Matthew Flinders)
Egypt -- Antiquities
through them, and I had to leave the work till the next season. Then,
after a further search on all the four sides for the entrance, the
masons attacked the sloping stone roof, and in two or three weeks’ time
a hole beneath them was reported; anxiously I watched them enlarge it
until I could squeeze through, and then I entered the chamber above the
sepulchre; at one side I saw a lower hole, and going down I found a
broken way into the sandstone sepulchre, but too narrow for my
shoulders. After sounding the water inside it, a boy was put down with a
rope-ladder; and at last, on looking through the hole, I could see by
the light of his candle the two sarcophagi, standing rifled and empty.
In a day or two we cleared away the rubbish from the original entrance
passage to the chamber, and so went out into the passages, which turned
and wandered up and down. These were so nearly choked with mud, that in
many parts the only way along them was by lying flat, and sliding along
the mud, pushed by fingers and toes. In this way, sliding, crawling, and
wading, I reached as near to the outer mouth of the passage as possible;
and then by measuring back to the chamber, the position of the mouth on
the outside of the pyramid was pretty nearly found. But so deep was it
under the rubbish, and so much encumbered with large blocks of stone,
that it took about a fortnight to reach it from the outside.
The pyramid had been elaborately arranged so as to deceive and weary the
spoiler, and it had apparently occupied a great amount of labour to
force an entrance. The mouth was on the ground level, on the south
side,
[Illustration: 69. PLAN OF PYRAMID.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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