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The preservers, however, were at work as well as the robbers; the priests of the Egyptian Church appear to have shielded the remains of many of the great kings, by hiding them so effectually that they were never found again until the third quarter of the present century.

“It was an extraordinary discovery, not only for Egyptian archæology, but likewise for Egyptian history, and the fortunate discoverer was Professor Maspero, chief conservator of the Egyptian Museum at Boulak. The discovery came about in the following manner. For some years past, so far back as the time of Mariette, it had been observed that objects of value and interest, tablets, papyri, &c., had found their way into the museums of Europe, and some into private hands. There exists a law in Egypt, that tombs and cemeteries are not to be explored except by direct permission of the Khedive, and all traffic in objects of archaic interest is strictly forbidden. Nevertheless a kind of contraband was in existence, the actual source of which was unknown. Another observation had also been made, namely, that the large majority of the objects were of about the same period, and seemed to have a common origin. When His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, was in Egypt, he was presented by a certain Mustapha Aga of Thebes, with a valuable papyrus, which the Prince has very generously deposited in the British Museum. It was subsequently ascertained that the document in question is only half a papyrus (this curious discovery is due to the acute research of Miss Amelia B. Edwards, one of the Honorary Secretaries of the Egypt Exploration Fund), the other, the hinder half, being in the possession of the Museum of the Louvre at Paris. The Prince of Wales’ papyrus was written for a queen, Notem Maut, related to the great priest-king of the twenty-first dynasty, Her-Hor—possibly his wife, but more probably his mother. Another, and a remarkably fine papyrus, was bought by Colonel Campbell in 1876, for the large sum of £400. The latter had evidently been obtained from the mummy of the High Priest Pinotem, descendant of Her-Hor. The coincidence was striking, and led Professor Maspero to the conclusion that a tomb of the priest-kings was in the possession of the Arabs of the district of Thebes, a class of persons who live in the tombs, and gain a living out of the produce of their search. Suspicion quickly pointed to the parties implicated. The chief, Ahmed Ab-der-Rassoul, one of five brothers engaged in the traffic of antikas (antiques), was arrested, and shortly afterwards another of the brothers made a confession and conducted the authorities to the hiding-place in which all these treasures were concealed.