And all these colors are mingled in complete
sterility. And all are fused into a fierce brotherhood by the sun. and
like a flood, they seem flowing to the red and the yellow mountains,
like a flood that is flowing to its sea. You are taken by them toward
the mountains, on and on, till the world is closing in, and you know the
way must come to an end. And it comes to an end--in a tomb.
You go to a door in the rock, and a guardian lets you in, and wants to
follow you in. Prevent him if you can. Pay him. Go in alone. For this
is the tomb of Amenhotep II.; and he himself is here, far down, at rest
under the mountain, this king who lived and reigned more than fourteen
hundred years before the birth of Christ. The ravine-valley leads to
him, and you should go to him alone. He lies in the heart of the living
rock, in the dull heat of the earth's bowels, which is like no other
heat. You descend by stairs and corridors, you pass over a well by a
bridge, you pass through a naked chamber; and the king is not there. And
you go on down another staircase, and along another corridor, and you
come into a pillared chamber, with paintings on its walls, and on
its pillars, paintings of the king in the presence of the gods of the
underworld, under stars in a soft blue sky. And below you, shut in on
the farther side by the solid mountain in whose breast you have all this
time been walking, there is a crypt. And you turn away from the bright
paintings, and down there you see the king.
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