Wilkinson, John Gardner: Topographie of Thebes, and general view of Egypt: being a short account of the principal objects worthy of notice in the valley of the Nile, to the second cataracte and Wadi Samneh, with the Fyoom, Oases and eastern desert, from Sooez to Bertenice (London, 1835)

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Chapter III.

TOMBS OF PRIESTS, AND PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS.

If I could fix on any part of this vast abode of
death, where the most ancient tombs are exclu-
sively met with, I should not hesitate in com-
mencing my notice of them in the order of their
relative antiquity; but as some of a remote epoch
are continually intermixed with those of more
recent date, it is impossible to fix with precision
the exact extent of the earliest cemeteries. It is
likewise difficult to determine the particular por-
tions set apart for the sepulture of the members of
the various castes into which the Egyptians were
divided, since those of the same class are found in
more than one part of its extensive circuit. Some
general notions may, however, be formed on this
head by looking over the survey itself; others must
be given in the following pages, where I shall also
notice those kings whose names appearing in the
sculptures fix in some degree the epoch at which
several portions of this burial-ground were conse-
crated to the reception of the dead. But in many
of these all clue to the determination of this fact
is entirely lost, by the decay of the sculptures or
the fall of the stucco on which they were painted;