Then we followed her down a steep incline of many steps, till at length we found ourselves in a hot and enormous hall hewn from the living rock and filled with blackness.
"What is this place ?" said Bes, who looked frightened, and although he spoke in a low whisper, our guide overheard him and turning, answered, "This is the burial place of the Apis bulls.

See, here lies the last, not yet closed in," and holding up her lamp she revealed a mighty sarcophagus of black granite set in a niche of the mausoleum.
"So they make mummies of bulls as well as of men," groaned Bes.

"Oh! what a land.

But when I have seen the holy Tanofir it was in a brick cell beneath the sky." "Doubtless that was at night, O Bes," answered Karema, "for in such a house he sleeps, spending his days in the Apis tomb, because of all the evil that is worked beneath the sun." "Hump," said Bes, "I should have thought that more was worked beneath the moon, but doubtless the holy Tanofir knows better, or being asleep does not mind." Now in front of each of the walled-up niches was a little chapel, and at the fourth of these whence a light came, the maiden stopped, saying, "Enter.

Here dwells the holy Tanofir.