The time came in the sequence of our work to direct our energies towards the Store-room beyond the Burial Chamber (see Vol. I, p. 223), perhaps in this case better named “The Innermost Treasury.”

This room is not more than 15 feet 8 inches, by 12 feet 6 inches square, and 7 feet 8 inches in height. Ingress is by means of a low open doorway cut in the northern end of the west wall of the Burial Chamber. It is of extreme simplicity, there being no attempt at decoration. The four walls and ceiling are unsmoothed, the marks of the final chiselling being still visible upon the rock surfaces. In fact, it is just as those ancient Egyptian masons left it–even the last few flakes of limestone from their chisels lay on the floor.

Small and simple, as it is, the impressive memories of the past haunt it none the less. When, for the first time, one enters a room such as this, the sanctity of which has been inviolate for more than thirty centuries, a sense of reverence, if not of fear is felt on the part of the intruder. It seems almost desecration to trouble that long peace and to break that eternal silence. Even the most insensitive person, passing this inviolate threshold, must surely feel awe and wonder distilled from the secrets and shadows of that Tremendous Past.