In many tombs, the empty sarcophagus yet occupies its ancient place. 37 We saw one in No. 2 (Rameses IV), and another in No. 9 (Rameses VI); the first, a grand monolith Edwards wrote a successful, self-illustrated description of her Nile voyage entitled A Thousand Miles up the Nile (1877). [19] [20] Her travels in Egypt made her aware of increasing threats to ancient monuments from tourism and modern development. She set out to hinder these through public awareness and scientific endeavour, becoming an advocate for research and preservation of them. In 1882, she co-founded the Egypt Exploration Fund with Reginald Stuart Poole, Curator of the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum. Edwards became joint Honorary Secretary of the Fund until her death. [ citation needed] Great Temple at Abu Simbel (from A Thousand Miles up the Nile) the deceased upon earth, and in others of the adventures of his soul after death. Here at stated seasons the survivors repaired with offerings. No priest, it would seem, of necessity officiated at these little services. A whole family would come, bringing the first fruits of their garden, the best of their poultry, cakes of home-made bread, bouquets of lotus blossoms. With their own hands they piled the altar; and the eldest son, as representative of the rest, burned the incense and poured the libations. It is a scene constantly reproduced upon monuments 24 of every epoch. These votive oratories, however, are wholly absent in the valley of Bab-el-Molûk. The royal tombs consist of only tunnelled passages and sepulchral vaults; the entrances to which were closed for ever as soon as the sarcophagus was occupied; hence it may be concluded that each memorial temple played to the tomb of its tutelary saint and sovereign that part which is played by the external oratory attached to the tomb of a private individual. Nor must it be forgotten that as early as the time of the Pyramid Kings, there was a votive chapel attached to every pyramid, the remains of which are traceable in almost every instance, on the east side. There were also priests of the pyramids, as we learn from innumerable funerary inscriptions.

a b c d e f g Rees, Joan (1998). Amelia Edwards Traveller, Novelist & Egyptologist. London: The Rubicon Press. pp.25–31.Champollion copying whatever might be useful for his Egyptian grammar, and Rosellini, the new words that furnished materials for his dictionary. There, too, lodged the the confederate princes of Asia Minor then lying in ambush near Kadesh; 15 and it was hither that he returned in

Striking off by and by towards the left, we make for a point where the mountains recede and run low, and a wedge-like "spit" of sandy desert encroaches upon the plain. On the verge of this spit stands a clump of sycamores and palms. A row of old yellow columns supporting a sculptured architrave gleams through the boughs; a little village nestles close by; and on the desert slope beyond, in the midst of a desolate Arab burial-ground, we see a tiny mosque with one small cupola dazzling white in the sunshine. This is Gournah. There is a spring here, and some girls are drawing water from the well near the Temple. Our donkeys slake their thirst from the cattle-trough — a broken sarcophagus that may once have held the mummy of a king. A creaking sakkieh is at work yonder, turned by a couple of red cows with mild Hathor-like faces. Lastly, there are the minor inconveniences of sun, sand, wind, and flies. The whole place radiates heat, and seems almost to radiate light. The glare from above and the glare from below are alike intolerable. Dazzled, blinded, unable to even look at his subject without the aid of smoke-coloured glasses, the sketcher whose tent is pitched upon the sand slope over against the great temple enjoys a foretaste of cremation. Amelia Edwards formed emotional attachments almost exclusively with women. From the early 1860s onwards, she lived with Ellen Drew Braysher (1804–1892, see below), a widow 27 years her senior who had lost her husband and daughter not long after Edwards' parents had died and was to become her companion until both women died in early 1892. Another significant person in Edwards' life was Ellen Byrne, the wife of a pastor and school inspector, with whom Edwards apparently entered a love relationship during the second half of the 1860s. The relationship ended when the husband, John Rice Byrne, was assigned a different school district and the couple moved away, which left Edwards deeply distraught.palaces magnificently equipped for the life to come. 40 When, indeed, one thinks of the jewels, furniture, vases, ointments, clothing, arms, and precious documents which were as certainly buried in those tombs as the royal mummies for whom they were excavated, it seems far more wonderful that the parure of one queen should have escaped, rather than that all the rest of these dead and gone royalties should have fallen among thieves. Now, Rameses the Great, if he was as much like his portraits as his portraits are like each other, must have been one of the handsomest men, not only of his day, but of all history. Wheresoever we meet with him, whether in the fallen colossus at Memphis, or in the syenite torso of the British Museum, or among the innumerable bas-reliefs of Thebes, Abydos, Gournah, and Bayt-el-Welly, his features (though bearing in some instances the impress of youth and in others of maturity) are always the same. The face is oval; the eyes are long, prominent, and heavy-lidded; the nose is slightly aquiline and characteristically depressed at the tip; the nostrils are open and sensitive; the under lip projects; the chin is short and square. Egypt is the land of strange mountains; and here is one which reproduces on a giant scale every feature of the pyramid of Ouenephes at Sakkarah. It is square; it rises stage above stage in ranges of columnar cliffs with slopes of débris between; and it terminates in a blunt four-sided peak nearly 1800 feet above the level of the plain. Thirdly, Edwards took up composing and performing music for some years, until she suffered a bout of typhus in 1849 that was followed by a frequently sore throat. This made it hard for her to sing, causing her to lose interest in music and even regret the time she had spent on opera. [7] Other interests she pursued included pistol shooting, riding and mathematics. [8] Fiction [ edit ] The king, it seems, under the name of Rhampsinitus, is the hero of a very ancient legend related by Herodotus. While he yet lived, runs the story, he descended into Hades, and there played a game at draughts with the Goddess Demeter, from whom he won a golden napkin; in memory of which adventure, and of his return to earth, "the Egyptians," says Herodotus, "instituted a festival which they certainly celebrated in my day." 14 In another version as told by Plutarch, Isis is substituted for Demeter. Viewing these tales by the light of a certain passage of the Ritual, in which the happy dead is promised "power to transform himself at will, to play at draughts, to repose in a pavilion," Dr. Birch has suggested that the whole of this scene may be of a memorial character, and represent an incident in the Land of Shades. 15

Manual of Egyptian Archaeology and Guide to the Study of Antiquities in Egypt: for the use of students and travellers by Sir G. Maspero, translated by Amelia B. EdwardsMost travellers moor for a day or two at Karnak, and thence make their excursion to Bab-el-Molûk. By so doing they lose one of the most interesting rides in the neighbourhood of Thebes. L. and the Writer started from Luxor one morning about an hour after daybreak, crossing the river at the usual From the moment when it first came into sight, I had made certain that in that pyramidal mountain we should find the Tombs of the Kings — so certain, that I can scarcely believe our guide when he assures us that these cellars are the places we have come to see, and that the mountain contains not a single tomb. We alight, however; climb a steep slope; and find ourselves on the threshold of No. 17. A Poetry-book of Elder Poets, consisting of songs & sonnets, odes & lyrics, selected and arranged, with notes, from the works of the elder English poets, dating from the beginning of the fourteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth century. 1878