‘We descended by a steep path into this tomb, through a doorway covered with hieroglyphics, and entered a corridor that ran some hundred yards into the mountain. It was about twenty feet square, and painted throughout most elaborately in the manner of Raphael’s Loggia at the Vatican, with little inferiority of skill or colouring. The doorways were richly ornamented with figures of a larger size, and over each was the winged globe or a huge scarabæus. In allusion, probably, to the wanderings of the freed spirit, almost all the larger emblems on these walls wore wings, however incompatible with their usual vocations; boats, globes, fishes, and suns, all were winged. On one of the corridors there is an allegory of the progress of the sun through the hours, painted with great detail; the god of day sits in a boat (in compliment to the Nile he lays aside his chariot here), and steers through the hours of the day and night, each of the latter being distinguished by a star. The Nile in this, as in all other circumstances of Egyptian life, figures as the most important element; even the blessed souls for its sake assume the form of fishes, and swim about with angelic fins in this River of Life. One gorgeous passage makes way into another more gorgeous still, until you arrive at a steep descent. At the base of this, perhaps 400 feet from daylight, a doorway opens into a vaulted hall of noble proportions, whose gloom considerably increases its apparent size. Here the body of Osirei, father of Rameses the Second, was laid about 3,200 years ago, in the beautiful alabaster sarcophagus which Belzoni drew from hence, the reward of his enterprise. Its poor occupant, who had taken such pains to hide himself, was “undone” for the amusement of a London conversazione. ‘There are numerous other tombs, all full of interest; but as the reader who is interested in such things will consult higher authorities than mine, I shall only add that the whole circumstance of ancient Egyptian life, with all its vicissitudes, may be read in pictures out of these extraordinary tombs, from the birth, through all the joys and sorrows of life, to the death, the lamentations over the corpse, the embalmer’s operations, and finally the judgment and the immortality of the soul. In one instance the Judge is measuring all men’s good actions in a balance against a feather from an angel’s wing; in another, a great serpent is being bound head and foot, and cast into a pit; and there are many other proofs, equally convincing, of the knowledge that this mysterious people possessed of a future life and judgment.’