"He sent out for the best battering-ram that could be procured, and it soon came in the shape of a log cut from a palm-tree. With this log he knocked down the wall and opened a way into the actual tomb. The inscriptions on the walls were found quite unharmed, and so was the alabaster coffin, which is now in London, but contained nothing of consequence when discovered. The tomb appears to be one of those that was partially plundered within a few hundred years of its occupation by the royal mummy, and again closed up. "The total distance from the entrance to the farthest point in Belzoni's tomb is four hundred and seventy feet, and the perpendicular descent of the various stairways and inclines is one hundred and eighty feet. We had a fatiguing walk through it, in consequence of the unevenness of the way and the fragments of broken and fallen rock. The air was somewhat stifling, partly owing to its confined character, and partly from the effect of our torches and candles. We burnt a good deal of magnesium wire to light up the halls, and reveal the beautiful inscriptions that were around us in all directions except beneath our feet. Remember that there was hardly a foot of space without inscriptions. The walls of this tomb afford material for a year's study, and hard study at that. "Some of the inscriptions refer to the daily occupations of the Egyptians, others to the deeds of the kings of Egypt, and others to the funeral ceremonies attending the death of a king. These last are by far the most numerous, and there are long extracts from the 'Book of the Dead,' showing the progress of the soul after it leaves the body. "One inscription shows the soul passing to Amenthes, where, after a short halt, it was ordered to the Hall of Justice. On its way to this hall it was attacked by demons and wild beasts, but all these were driven away if the body had been properly provided with prayers written on the rolls of papyrus and the scarabæi that are always found with the mummies. "Another picture represents the soul in the Hall of Justice, where its heart is placed in one scale and the Goddess of Truth in the other. Two of the gods superintend the weighing, and a third makes a note of the result. The god Osiris (with forty-two councillors) pronounces sentence. The heart was found heavy, and therefore the spirit was ordered to the regions of the blessed, where it was to pass through centuries of happiness and then return to the mummy, which would be restored to life. Of course they always found that the heart of the king was of the proper weight; it would have been dangerous for the artist to discover it too light, and thereby condemn it to suffer long tortures as a punishment for its sins before it could pass to a state of rest, and get ready to return to the mummy that waited for it.