The research work conducted by Professor Ranney, as chief of the Yale expedition to Egypt, had lain in and about the site of the Mortuary Temple of King Amenhotep the Third, well-named “Magnificent.” The low depression which to-day marks the site of this once gorgeous edifice lies well down upon the broad Theban Plain, and immediately fronts that long line of rocky mounds, refuse heaps and ruined tombs which rises, tier upon tier, along the lower slopes of the towering Libyan Hills.

It had been a site of rare possibilities from an Egyptologist’s point of view. On this account excavation privileges hereabouts had been sought by representatives of every great museum or seat-of-learning both in the Old World and the New.

When, finally, the news was telegraphed from Cairo that this most coveted concession had fallen to the Yale Expedition, and that together with a substantial area of the unexplored mounds to the north and south of the temple site, great had been Professor Ranney’s joy.

The recent unearthing of the body and rich treasure of Pharaoh Akhten-aton, son to that Pharaoh by whom the temple was built, and the discovery of the rich and comprehensive tomb-equipment of Akhten-aton’s father and mother-in-law, together with the marvelously preserved mummies of those ancient worthies, had fired the dampened ardor both of the workers in the field, and, more important still, perhaps, of those holders of the purse-strings, the sponsors for the expedition at home.

As I have said above, the site of King Amenhotep’s Mortuary Temple had been freely acknowledged to be a very promising one, and so far these hopes had been entirely justified.

Many and rare had been the finds during the season’s work now drawing to a close. And it was not improbable that some other find of the first importance might still fall to the spades of the excavators during the next few weeks of work upon the site.

Think what the nearby Temple of Medinet might at this very moment hold for Professor Ranney! The tomb of Amenhotep, son of Hap; the Magic Book of the Sorcerers of Pharaoh, the Luminous Book of Thoth!

Had they had the least suspicion of Professor Ranney’s secret it is safe to say that many of his brother scientists would gladly have bartered five years of their lives for a chance at the site. And yet, could any one of those enthusiasts have foreseen the disaster that would here befall him, not a man among them would have approached it.

But let us take up the tale, as long as we may, in Professor Ranney’s own words.

I had recently completed my work in and about the site of the Mortuary Temple of the illustrious Pharoah Amenhotep the Third and had already promised myself a trial excavation at the nearby tomb of Pharaoh’s famous architect and namesake, Amenhotep, when something unexpected occurred to effectually put an end to all my plans. What that something was you shall now hear!

As near as I can piece together the amazing threads of my story, this is what happened to me that last eventful evening in Thebes. My diary, in part, supplies the clue.

Under date of April 28, 1913, and immediately following the rough translation of a great memorial tablet which had been found the previous day, I note this entry: “Sandstorm just blown over. Headache, feverish. Finished making plan of palace to scale.”

Now, in spite of the temperature and headache to which I here refer, and which, had I not been so keen on my work, I should most certainly have recognized as a symptom of trouble to come, I had evidently sought to catch up with a somewhat neglected report of the season’s work.

This occupation had apparently kept me at my desk well on towards dawn. I deduce this from the fact that immediately following the above short entry, I find a number of fragmentary hieroglyphic inscriptions having to do with the history of the foundation and erection of Pharaoh’s Mortuary Temple, upon which I had been so long at work.

One of these entries is of special interest in this connection, since, after a lapse of some three thousand years, the two colossal statues of King Amenhotep III, to whom it refers, may still be seen gazing stolidly and immutably eastward across the broad reaches of the Theban Plain.

The following graphic description of the now vanished building itself, a literal translation from the original hieroglyphic, is the last entry in my diary, the last for many a long day, I may add. Further, and for an excellent reason, this last entry was never completed. The translation runs in the following somewhat grandiloquent and semi-poetic vein: “It hath been given me to set up in a holy place two great statues of the Son of Ra, Amenhotep, Conqueror of Asia. These are they which stand before the entrance portal of the Mortuary Temple of His Majesty (Life, Stability and Health to him). Carved from solid blocks of the hard grit-stone of On, they tower seventy feet into the air. Their golden headdresses touch the very dome of heaven. On either side, gold-capped obelisks of red granite reach high above the temple pylons. Four cedar flag-staffs tipped with gold rise from grooves cut in the sculptured sandstone of the temple front. The walls of the temple are carved and richly painted with scenes representing the Asiatic conquests of Pharaoh, Lord of Might. Its great bronze doors are inlaid in gold with the figure of the God Min of Coptos. Through this jeweled outline of his ‘double’ twice daily doth the Great God enter the Holy Sanctuary, there to partake of the offerings spread upon its jeweled altars. In his honor are the ceilings covered with true lazuli of Babylon, its floors enriched with silver and sprinkled with powdered turquoise. Its gleaming walls are engraved with designs representing the New Year’s procession of the Sun Barque, from the Northern to the Southern Apt. Beside the High Altar stands a tablet thirty feet in height, covered with gold and inlaid with sard and emerald. Thus is marked ‘The-Place-Where-His-Majesty-Stands-at-the-Sacrificing.’ Beq, son of Beq, carved the statues and erected the obelisks. Renny, the Syrian, overlaid and enriched the tablet.”

Inserted here was a drawing of the above mentioned tablet, and, upon it, the following additional fragment: “Memorial-tablet found face downwards. I enclose drawings and translations. Evidently mine is a very ancient name? All traces of——.”

Here the diary abruptly stops!

Now, I directly trace the mishap which thereafter befell me to the discovery of this same tablet.

A hot day spent in transcribing to paper its mud-filled inscriptions, and a night devoted to their decipherment, might well have driven me forth in search of the cool breezes to be found along the higher slopes of the nearby Libyan Hills.

Yet, in this connection, I must not forget to mention the contents of a newspaper-clipping sent me by Gardiner just before he left Alexandria, a clipping which seems to have a peculiar meaning, especially in the light of the curious experiences which I shall presently relate.

This clipping was found folded carefully in the page of my Diary opposite that last incomplete entry to which I have referred.

Beneath a date and the words “Sphinx, Cairo,” the latter added in Gardiner’s spidery script, there appear the following extraordinary paragraphs: “In the Museum of the Louvre there is a mummy, Catalogue No. 49. It is the mummy of a woman, and is said to have been found in one of the Tombs of the Queens, south-west of the Theban acropolis. The man who found it was crushed to death within twenty-four hours after he had touched it, and his assistants who hauled it up from the tomb-shaft died within a few weeks. Three of the carriers who handled it on the Nile boat died within a short space of time, and one of the men who unpacked it at Paris died in great agony within less than a week after he had played his part in the work of getting it to its destination. All these were seemingly natural deaths, but it is odd that all the men whose fingers touched the mummy should have died so soon after the handling. The body of the unknown appears to have been interred with all the elaboration prescribed for Queens of the Royal-Blood! The work of the casemaker was careful in the extreme. Both granite coffin and gold-covered casing were of unusual quality and richness. The many gem-incrustations, with which the gold cases were inlaid, were similarly of the richest and rarest materials. Yet, the name of Meryt, that of a minor priestess of the Temple, found beneath the pitch which had been smeared upon the outer casings, seemed to prove conclusively that the body was that of one of the chantresses of the Temple of Sekhmet at Karnak.

“But, following the unwinding of the aromatic wrappings which swathed the body, the curator in charge was surprised to find a second inscription. This indicated that the mummy was that of Queen Hanit, the first wife of Amenhotep the Third, whom the King put aside in favor of Thi, a beautiful Syrian. You may recall how Queen Thi, following Hanit’s incarceration in the great Temple of Sekhmet, is supposed to have instigated the death of Hanit’s son, the true heir to the throne, at the hands of Menna, a favorite of hers. Of the further history of Lady Hanit I personally know nothing.”

Along the margin Gardiner had added: “I send this to you, Ranney, knowing your interest in the period which the name of Hanit suggests. Can you unravel the mystery surrounding the mummy of this Queen who is not a Queen?

“In regard to the sudden taking off of the seven workmen, and, by the way, the curator is now dead, I can hear you expatiate at length upon the fearful ‘hekau-spells’ and ‘magic incantations’ of the ancients!

“Once more I ask you to prove to me that your ancients ever possessed such powers, or if they did, that they could by any possible chance have survived the wear and tear of three thousand years! And, meanwhile, allow me to submit myself, your unbelieving friend!”

I smile even now, as I shake my head at Gardiner’s careless words.

What can I but think? Childish, you say! A series of remarkable coincidences! Wait!

It was from Burton that I first heard an account of what he and the other members of the expedition supposed, and rightly, had happened to me.

It seemed that I left my tent about dawn and started for one of my favorite walks westward, taking the general direction of a certain lofty spur of the deep red Libyan Hills. This jutting ledge immediately overhung the ruins of King Mentuhotep’s temple. So close a part of the towering cliff is this sadly mutilated structure that one might easily slip from the shelf above and fall directly upon the great stone passage-way which conducts to the inner chamber.

To this somewhat dangerous vantage-point, I had sometimes taken distinguished visitors to our camp, people who had come with letters from friends at home, or those who I felt sure would be willing to put up with the discomforts of a night spent beyond the walls of the luxurious Winter Palace Hotel.

I think I may say truthfully, that not one of my visitors failed of being more than repaid for any trifling discomfort which was theirs, since few scenes can equal, certainly none surpass, the view presented by the extended vista north, south and eastward across the winding Nile Valley towards Karnak, Luxor, and the deep blue Eastern Hills.

But to return to my story. That memorable morning the fever must assuredly have had me well within its clutches. Since, of that early morning walk, I remember but a single incident—Heaven knows, I am never likely to forget it—a great black void into which I suddenly pitched, a horrible tingling in all my veins, a shock and a myriad of little flames that seemed to burst from my very eyeballs!

Was I conscious, I asked myself! I must be, for I seemed to realize at once what a dreadful thing had happened to me.

Of course, I knew I had pitched headlong into the open mouth of one of those rock-hewn tombs with which the tumbled slopes below the Libyan Hills are perforated. Well might those crumbling hills been named a honey-comb of death!

I could not move; my whole body seemed numb. By gazing upward I found that I could see the stars! Yes, I recognized the star of Hathor, in all her radiant beauty.

How my head ached! How my ears roared! Worse than all was the agony of a ceaseless throb-throb, beat-beat, at the back of my head.

It was as though someone were hitting me with a hammer, rhythmically, relentlessly.

Perhaps after all I was dead!

No, there were the sharp outlines of the tomb-shaft and the stars above!

I wonder whose tomb it is? Is it charted? Oh, will that throbbing never stop? Won’t someone come? Help! Help!

As if in answer to my cry, high above me I saw a queer, yet strikingly familiar figure, a figure silhouetted black against the sky.

The figure leaned over and gazed downwards into the shaft. I noticed its long and thickly curled wig.

“Ha, ha! A wig of the New Empire,” said I to myself.

Its owner’s face I could not see, but he—or she—yes, it was a woman, peered long and earnestly into the gloomy depths of the shaft where I lay.

Suddenly, and as though through the medium of some unnatural light, her face was revealed.

“I was right,” thought I. “It is a woman, and by her robes, a woman of the New Empire!”

But what features, what an expression! Never shall I forget it. A face of the most exotic beauty; of a type I knew instantly. It could only have belonged to one of the ladies of the house of Amenhotep the Magnificent! Such a face the Royal Sculptor Beq might carve, or Amenhotep, Superintendent of the Royal Craftsmen.

The beautiful apparition addressed me in the soft tones of the educated Egyptian.

I found that I could rise without difficulty at her bidding. Struggling to my feet I pushed a stone at the side of the tomb chamber and passed through a narrow false door which opened as my hand pressed the secret block. I found myself once more out under the sunset glow.

All this seemed perfectly natural to me. But, I remember thinking how strange it was that I should find the pyramids of the Antefs and Mentuhoteps, the sphinx-lined Causeways, and the many Mortuary Temples hereabouts, standing clearly defined against the hills, and seemingly in all their original beauty. Nay, the very cypresses, palms, karobs and myrrh trees which flanked the ivory-toned Causeway leading to Queen Hatshepsut’s Temple, were to be seen nodding gracefully in the evening breeze.

My gaze fell questionably upon the smiling face of my adorable savior.

She must have remarked my bewilderment. Yet, without a word she turned and started swiftly toward a small white house half-concealed in a dense grove of feathery acacias.

In response to a quick gesture on the part of my guide, I pulled back the wooden bolt and opened the door. A tall and strikingly handsome Egyptian arose from an ivory-inlaid stool as I entered. Carefully rolling up a manuscript which he had been reading by the light of an oil lamp, and without otherwise appearing to notice me, he took from the table nearby a blue glazed goblet, handed it to my rescuer, and re-seated himself.

Once again he picked up the discarded manuscript and continued his reading as though nothing had happened to interrupt his train of thought.

Perhaps, after all, I had been expected! I heard my charming guide utter the one softly sibilant Egyptian word: Drink!

I lifted the bright blue goblet to my lips and drank deeply, thirstily....