And all these coffins, so sombre and so alike, are square shaped too,
severely simple like so many boxes; but made out of a single block
of rare granite that gleams like marble. They are entirely without
ornament. It is necessary to look closely to distinguish on the smooth
walls the hieroglyphic inscriptions, the rows of little figures, little
owls, little jackals, that tell in a lost language the history of
ancient peoples. Here is the signature of King Amasis; beyond, that of
King Cambyses. . . . Who were the Titans who, century after century,
were able to hew these coffins (they are at least twelve feet long by
ten feet high), and, having hewn them, to carry them underground (they
weigh on an average between sixty and seventy tons), and finally to
range them in rows here in these strange chambers, where they stand as
if in ambuscade on either side of us as we pass? Each in its turn has
contained quite comfortably the mummy of a bull Apis, armoured in plates
of gold. But in spite of their weight, in spite of their solidity which
effectively defies destruction, they have been despoiled[*]--when is
not precisely known, probably by the soldiers of the King of Persia.
And this notwithstanding that merely to open them represents a labour
of astonishing strength and patience. In some cases the thieves have
succeeded, by the aid of levers, in moving a few inches the formidable
lid; in others, by persevering with blows of pickaxes, they have
pierced, in the thickness of the granite, a hole through which a man has
been enabled to crawl like a rat, or a worm, and then, groping his way,
to plunder the sacred mummy.

[*] One, however, remains intact in the walled cavern, and
thus preserves for us the only Apis which has come down to
our days. And one recalls the emotion of Mariette, when, on
entering it, he saw on the sandy ground the imprint of the
naked feet of the last Egyptian who left it thirty-seven