When Smith found himself outside the sacred door, and had presented its
venerable guardian with a baksheesh of five piastres, he walked a few
paces to the right and paused a while to watch some native labourers
who were dragging a huge sarcophagus upon an improvised tramway. As they
dragged they sang an echoing rhythmic song, whereof each line ended with
an invocation to Allah.

Just so, reflected Smith, had their forefathers sung when, millenniums
ago, they dragged that very sarcophagus from the quarries to the Nile,
and from the Nile to the tomb whence it reappeared to-day, or when they
slid the casing blocks of the pyramids up the great causeway and smooth
slope of sand, and laid them in their dizzy resting-places. Only then
each line of the immemorial chant of toil ended with an invocation to
Amen, now transformed to Allah. The East may change its masters and
its gods, but its customs never change, and if to-day Allah wore the
feathers of Amen one wonders whether the worshippers would find the
difference so very great.

Thus thought Smith as he hurried away from the sarcophagus and those
blue-robed, dark-skinned fellaheen, down the long gallery that is filled
with a thousand sculptures. For a moment he paused before the wonderful
white statue of Queen Amenartas, then, remembering that his time was
short, hastened on to a certain room, one of those which opened out of
the gallery.

In a corner of this room, upon the wall, amongst many other beautiful
objects, stood that head which Mariette had found, whereof in past years
the cast had fascinated him in London. Now he knew whose head it was;
to him it had been given to find the tomb of her who had sat for that