| It took us three days to reach Thebes, when we moored our bark at Luxor, and
I recommenced my operations with what fellahs I could obtain. . . . Could it
but be accurately known, with what a wretched set of people in these tribes
travellers have to deal, their mean and rapacious dispositions, and the various
occurrences that render the collection of antiquities difficult, whatever came
from thence would be the more prized, from the consideration of these circumstances.
Gournou is a tract of rocks, about two miles in length, at the foot of the Libyan mountains, on the west of Thebes, and was the burial-place of the great
city of a hundred gates. Every part of these rocks is cut out by art, in the form of large and small chambers, each of which has its separate entrance; and, though they are very close to each other, it is seldom that there is any interior communication from one to another. I can truly say, it is impossible to give any description sufficient to convey the smallest idea of these subterranean abodes, and their inhabitants. There are no sepulchres in any part of the world like them; there are no excavations, or mines, that can be compared to these truly astonishing places; and no exact description can be given of their interior, owing to the difficulty of visiting these recesses. The inconveniency of entering into them is such that it is not everyone who can support the exertion....
Of some of these tombs many persons could not withstand the suffocating
air, which often causes fainting. A vast quantity of dust rises, so fine that it
enters into the throat and nostrils, and chokes the nose and mouth to such a
degree that it requires great power of lungs to resist it and the strong effluvia
of the mummies. . . . In some places there is not more than a vacancy of a foot
left, which you must contrive to pass through in a creeping posture like a snail,
on pointed and keen stones that cut like glass. After getting through these passages, some of them two or three hundred yards long, you generally find a
more commodious place, perhaps high enough to sit. But what a place of rest!
surrounded by bodies, by heaps of mummies in all directions; which, previous
to my being accustomed to the sight, impressed me with horror. The blackness
of the wall, the faint light given by the candles or torches for want of air, the
different objects that surrounded me, seeming to converse with each other, and
the Arabs with the candles or torches in their hands, naked and covered with
dust, themselves resembling living mummies, absolutely formed a scene that
cannot be described. In such a situation I found myself several times, and often
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