A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

RELICS. 293
me out of those sepulchral halls, in some of which,
however, whole families of Arabs have taken up
their abode, and eke out a livelihood by selling
to travellers the relic they have rifled from the
mummy pits. We were beset through the whole
district by men and boys all loaded with their
ghastly merchandize, some carrying a swathed
leg and foot over one arm, others ofl'ering a
basket full of hands, black and dried up, but the
nails perfect and deeply tinted with red. Others
again offered for sale less revolting spoils, such
as scarabaei, small porcelain images, necklaces
of beads found upon the mummies, and various
little articles placed with them in the tomb,
many of which I purchased. The ground is
strewed everywhere with skulls, backbones, limbs
torn from their cerements in the search for papyri,
scaraba3i, &c. ^^c. ; and the poor Arabs use the
mummy cases and clothes for fuel. Fancy one
of those half-naked wretches stirring up the
embers in his miserable oven with the shank of
a Pharaoh !
In
one of the huts of these poor
people our guide pointed out to us a hole in the
ceiling through which we distinguished two un-
touched mummies, (not in cases but merely rolled
up in cerecloths in the manner employed for
embalming the lower orders), lying side by side