The former chose for his last home a most kingly site.
Ancient kings had raised great pyramids of artificial stone over their
graves. Amenhetep, perhaps the greatest and most powerful Pharaoh of
them all, chose to have a natural pyramid for his grave, a mountain for
his tumulus. The illustration shows us the tomb of this monarch, opening
out of the side of one of the most imposing hills in the Western Valley.
No other king but Amenhetep rested beneath this hill, which thus marks
his grave and his only.
It is in the Eastern Valley, the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings
properly speaking, that the tombs of Thothmes I and Hatshepsu lie, and
here the most recent discoveries have been made. It is a desolate spot.
As we come over the hill from Der el-Bahari we see below us in the
glaring sunshine a rocky canon, with sides sometimes sheer cliff,
sometimes sloped by great falls of rock in past ages. At the bottom
of these slopes the square openings of the many royal tombs can be
descried. [See illustration.] Far below we see the forms of tourists
and the tomb-guards accompanying them, moving in and out of the openings
like ants going in and out of an ants' nest. Nothing is heard but the
occasional cry of a kite and the ceaseless rhythmical throbbing of the
exhaust-pipe of the electric light engine in the unfinished tomb of
Ramses XI.
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