Free De Potter's Grand Tour by Joanna Scott Page A

terminated in a stairway. One after another, they descended the stairs. At the bottom, the youngest brother raised the torch he was carrying, casting enough light for the brothers to see that this forgotten mortuary chamber contained a dragon’s hoard of treasure, there for the taking.
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    Armand made no secret that he owned some of the jewels that had been looted by the Abd-er-Rasoul brothers from Deir-el-Bahari—including feldspar colonettes and faience mystic eyes, an alabaster ring, an amethyst amulet, and dozens of scarabaei in porcelain, lapis lazuli, jade, amethyst, silver, and gold. He also convinced the brothers to sell him the object that would prove the most important of his early acquisitions, though it was only in wood: a shabty, or “sepulchral statuette,” as Armand would describe it in his Old World Guide , that “shows the uraeus , emblem of royalty on the forehead; and it bears the cartouche of Ramses II.”
    To this day, this shabty is one of only three wooden examples known. The cartouche links it to Ramses II, whose tomb was plundered during the XX Dynasty. The contents of the tombs were then reconsecrated in the XXI Dynasty and sealed inside the chamber that the Abd-er-Rasoul brothers discovered. Until Ahmed Abd-er-Rasoul was arrested in 1881, the brothers were busily selling their goods to foreigners, and Armand, with thrilling ease, was eagerly adding to his collection, convinced that he was playing an important part in bringing the treasures to light.
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    Three years after he lost contact with the Abd-er-Rasoul brothers, Armand expanded the offerings of the American Bureau of Foreign Travel. The new itinerary included stops in Jerusalem, Samaria, Nazareth, Damascus, Constantinople, Athens, and Patras. But the bulk of the tour—the entire month of February—was dedicated to Egypt. While he made sure to give the impression that his main concern was the comfort of the members of his party, he also let it be known that he was looking to establish himself as one of the world’s premier collectors of antiquities. He always offered the local traders a higher price for their goods than what the government would have paid and avoided asking the kinds of questions that would have caused them to put away their wares and make a hasty retreat. The trips proved so fruitful that he repeated them on a dozen separate occasions, either on regional tours or as part of De Potter’s Grand Tour Around the World.
    Following an itinerary that never varied, the party left Marseille on a Messageries steamer bound for Alexandria. They stayed at the Grand New-Hotel in Cairo and spent the first four days visiting museums and mosques and bazaars. On the fifth day they set out early for Ghizeh, traveling by carriage through the Ismaileeyah quarter of Cairo, over the Kobri el Gezira Bridge, along an avenue bordered by acacias and palms, and across a broad embankment to the edge of the desert, where they would mount camels and trek the last half mile to the base of the First Pyramid.
    After Armand paid the entrance fee, the party would march in a file into the pyramid, stumbling through the dark tunnels and expressing disappointment at finding the burial chambers empty except for a single unlidded granite coffer. Back outside again, they fed their apples to the camels and assumed that every Arab peddler spoke English. They each paid twenty piastres to the Sheikh of the Pyramids for permission to ascend the First Pyramid. Groups of Arabs were usually milling about, and for a few piastres they could be called upon to pull and push the visitors up the side. Some young boy would always try to impress the tourists by running up one side of the pyramid and down the other, as quick as a lizard. And a photographer was sure to be on hand to provide them with a record of their adventures.
    Satisfied that they’d “done the Pyramids,” as they