The robbers, after breaking open Sebekhotep’s coffin, had dispersed the bones of the king, and the tomb was empty. Something similar must certainly have occurred in the case of the Princess Meshent-themhu. The coffin was broken open, and the inscription which it bore, inlaid with blue enamel, partly disappeared; for it was necessary, as I have shown above, to restore it roughly in ink. As for the bones, they had disappeared: probably the thieves, fearing they might be disturbed in their sacrilegious work, made haste to carry off the mummy with them; then abandoned it, once it had been despoiled, in some place where no one thought of looking for it. On the other hand, religion did not allow that the disembodied soul could enjoy a full existence in the other world if the body it had owned during its earthly life should completely disappear. In default of the real body, the commissioners charged to inspect and restore the tombs adopted the plan of manufacturing the semblances of bodies for Seti and Meshent-themhu. A fragment of broken coffin simulated the bust of Meshent-themhu, a bundle of rags the head, another bundle of rags the feet, and the whole, duly encased in wrappings, was deposited in the coffin, which was more or less carefully restored. Was the soul satisfied at recognising the counterfeit body? For my part I am very glad to have discovered, thanks to that pious fraud, the principal, if not the only, reason for the collection of so many royal mummies in one place. It was to save the dead Pharaohs from thieves that it was decided to hide them away. It was hoped that a pit, thirty-eight yards deep, followed by a narrow corridor of two hundred and fifty feet, would protect them from profanation; and experience has proved that the reckoning was not so far out, since centuries rolled away from the day that they were deposited there, before that on which the Arabs of Sheikh Abd-el-Gurnah discovered the hiding-place. Some Egyptologists will, at first sight, be amazed at the rude character of this supposed tomb, and will object that it is a far cry from a chamber without ornament and roughly hollowed out of the rock, to the magnificent hypogees of Biban-el-Moluk. I answer that the difference between the tombs is not greater than the difference between the kings. Amenhotep III, Ramses II, even Ramses V and Her-Hor, reigned over all Egypt, over Ethiopia, over at least a part of Syria, and had command of the men and money needful to hew out and decorate immense syringes.[9]