Already one of his legs was over the edge of that solemn coffer, and he
was squeezing his body beneath the massive lid that was propped above
it on blocks of wood, when he remembered a little, naked, withered
thing with long hair that he had seen in a side chamber of the tomb
of Amenhotep II. in the Valley of Kings at Thebes. This caricature of
humanity many thought, and he agreed with them, to be the actual body of
the mighty Hatshepu as it appeared after the robbers had done with it.
Supposing now, that when he was lying at the bottom of that sarcophagus,
sleeping the sleep of the just, this little personage should peep over
its edge and ask him what he was doing there! Of course the idea was
absurd; he was tired, and his nerves were a little shaken. Still, the
fact remained that for centuries the hallowed dust of Queen Hatshepu had
slept where he, a modern man, was proposing to sleep.
He scrambled down from the sarcophagus and looked round him in despair.
Opposite to the main entrance was the huge central hall of the Museum.
Now the cement roof of this hall had, he knew, gone wrong, with the
result that very extensive repairs had become necessary. So extensive
were they, indeed, that the Director-General had informed him that they
would take several years to complete.
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