DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55201#0042
SEASON OF I9I9-I92O 29
brought inside the stern and made fast. They took all of the strain off
of the rudder posts when under way. Tillers through the oars, de-
scending vertically, rotated the oars on their axes. To steer, you
threw the tiller, like a modern one, in the direction opposite to the
one you wanted to go. The oars were turned over and, their under
sides making a drag in the water, the bow turned smartly, if the boat
had even moderate way on. Every rope was found to have its purpose
and even the size of the oar and its distance aft of the turning point
of the boat were seen to have been carefully thought out.
The supposedly exhausted corridors of the tomb of Meket-Ref
had yielded a veritable treasure which justified our clearing its cause-
way and courtyard more thoroughly than we had at first intended.
During the week that we were moving the models we brought the
gang up from the palace and, thus reinforced, the workmen were
turned into the parts of the courtyard which had every appearance
of having been dug before. But again our luck was with us for, right
on the edge of our predecessor’s excavations at the top of the cause-
way, we found on the following Wednesday the little untouched tomb
of a servitor of the great man, named Wah. In a place where the
rock begins to descend sharply, Wah had had a little slope cut leading
into a tunnel about twenty-six feet long, and five and a half feet high
and wide. The entrance, when we discovered it, was still securely
blocked with mud bricks and when we had photographed them and
taken them down we could see his coffin standing at the back un-
disturbed.
Everything was exactly as the priests had left it four thousand
years ago. Just inside the doorway lay a few wisps of burnt straw-
ashes as impalpable as those of a cigarette—which had dropped from
a torch burnt at the time of the funeral. Carelessly thrown to one side
was a pall of white linen with which the coffin had been covered when
it was brought up the hill, and passing under the coffin itself lay the
three strips of linen with which the pall had been tied, unknotted
and dropped to either side. Just as it had fallen at the foot of the
coffin lay the knob of wood with which the lid had been lowered and
which the undertakers sawed off, once the lid was pegged in place.
On the side of the coffin near the head were painted the eyes through
which the dead man could look out on to the world, and in front of
this “window” had been deposited twelve conical loaves of bread,
the right fore-leg of a beef, cut off as the dead man’s share of the
funeral banquet, and a jug of beer. The beer jug was of exactly the
same shape as those in the model brewery of Meket-Re< and had been
brought inside the stern and made fast. They took all of the strain off
of the rudder posts when under way. Tillers through the oars, de-
scending vertically, rotated the oars on their axes. To steer, you
threw the tiller, like a modern one, in the direction opposite to the
one you wanted to go. The oars were turned over and, their under
sides making a drag in the water, the bow turned smartly, if the boat
had even moderate way on. Every rope was found to have its purpose
and even the size of the oar and its distance aft of the turning point
of the boat were seen to have been carefully thought out.
The supposedly exhausted corridors of the tomb of Meket-Ref
had yielded a veritable treasure which justified our clearing its cause-
way and courtyard more thoroughly than we had at first intended.
During the week that we were moving the models we brought the
gang up from the palace and, thus reinforced, the workmen were
turned into the parts of the courtyard which had every appearance
of having been dug before. But again our luck was with us for, right
on the edge of our predecessor’s excavations at the top of the cause-
way, we found on the following Wednesday the little untouched tomb
of a servitor of the great man, named Wah. In a place where the
rock begins to descend sharply, Wah had had a little slope cut leading
into a tunnel about twenty-six feet long, and five and a half feet high
and wide. The entrance, when we discovered it, was still securely
blocked with mud bricks and when we had photographed them and
taken them down we could see his coffin standing at the back un-
disturbed.
Everything was exactly as the priests had left it four thousand
years ago. Just inside the doorway lay a few wisps of burnt straw-
ashes as impalpable as those of a cigarette—which had dropped from
a torch burnt at the time of the funeral. Carelessly thrown to one side
was a pall of white linen with which the coffin had been covered when
it was brought up the hill, and passing under the coffin itself lay the
three strips of linen with which the pall had been tied, unknotted
and dropped to either side. Just as it had fallen at the foot of the
coffin lay the knob of wood with which the lid had been lowered and
which the undertakers sawed off, once the lid was pegged in place.
On the side of the coffin near the head were painted the eyes through
which the dead man could look out on to the world, and in front of
this “window” had been deposited twelve conical loaves of bread,
the right fore-leg of a beef, cut off as the dead man’s share of the
funeral banquet, and a jug of beer. The beer jug was of exactly the
same shape as those in the model brewery of Meket-Re< and had been