I slept that night near the Temple of Seti,
and started before daybreak on the following morning.
With me were a cross-eyed rascal named Ali Ali Baba I named him
the man from whom I got the ring which I am sending you,
and a small but choice assortment of his fellow thieves.
Within an hour after sunrise we reached the valley where the tomb is.
It is a desolate place,
into which the sun pours his scorching heat all the long day through,
till the huge brown rocks which are strewn about become so hot
that one can scarcely bear to touch them,
and the sand scorches the feet.
It was already too hot to walk,
so we rode on donkeys, some way up the valley
where a vulture floating far in the blue overhead was the only other visitor
till we came to an enormous boulder polished by centuries of action of sun and sand.
Here Ali halted, saying that the tomb was under the stone.
Accordingly, we dismounted, and, leaving the donkeys in charge of a fellah boy,
went up to the rock.
Beneath it was a small hole, barely large enough for a man to creep through.
Indeed it had been dug by jackals,
for the doorway and some part of the cave were entirely silted up,
and it was by means of this jackal hole that the tomb had been discovered.
Ali crept in on his hands and knees, and I followed,
to find myself in a place cold after the hot outside air, and,
in contrast with the light, filled with a dazzling darkness.
We lit our candles, and, the select body of thieves having arrived,
I made an examination. We were in a cave the size of a large room,
and hollowed by hand, the further part of the cave being almost free from drift-dust.
On the walls are religious paintings of the usual Ptolemaic character,
and among them one of a majestic old man with a long white beard,
who is seated in a carved chair holding a wand in his hand.