"Haggard, H Rider- Cleopatra" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haggard H. Rider)

INTRODUCTION

In the recesses of the desolate Libyan mountains that lie behind the
temple and city of Abydus, the supposed burying place of the holy
Osiris, a tomb was recently discovered, among the contents of which
were the papyrus rolls whereupon this history is written. The tomb
itself is spacious, but otherwise remarkable only for the depth of the
shaft which descends vertically from the rock-hewn cave, that once
served as the mortuary chapel for the friends and relatives of the
departed, to the coffin-chamber beneath. This shaft is no less than
eighty-nine feet in depth. The chamber at its foot was found to
contain three coffins only, though it is large enough for many more.
Two of these, which in all probability inclosed the bodies of the High
Priest, Amenemhat, and of his wife, father and mother of Harmachis,
the hero of this history, the shameless Arabs who discovered them
there and then broke up.

The Arabs broke the bodies up. With unhallowed hands they tore the
holy Amenemhat and the frame of her who had, as it is written, been
filled with the spirit of the Hathors--tore them limb from limb,
searching for treasure amidst their bones--perhaps, as is their
custom, selling the very bones for a few piastres to the last ignorant
tourist who came their way, seeking what he might destroy. For in
Egypt the unhappy, the living find their bread in the tombs of the
great men who were before them.

But as it chanced, some little while afterwards, one who is known to
this writer, and a doctor by profession, passed up the Nile to Abydus,
and became acquainted with the men who had done this thing. They
revealed to him the secret of the place, telling him that one coffin
yet remained entombed. It seemed to be the coffin of a poor person,
they said, and therefore, being pressed for time, they had left it
unviolated. Moved by curiosity to explore the recesses of a tomb as
yet unprofaned by tourists, my friend bribed the Arabs to show it to
him. What ensued I will give in his own words, exactly as he wrote it
to me:

"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