The Cachet of  El Deir al-Bahari
The family of Abdul Rasoul and the royal cache
The work of the Abd al-Rasoul family in the antiquities trade, especially the two brothers Ahmed and Muhammad Abd al-Rasoul, played an important role in the discovery. By pure chance, they found a cache containing mummies and funerary furniture in a deep rocky bottom. Since then, the brothers have gradually taken the existing treasure in limited quantities, and they have continued in this state for ten consecutive years, and their intelligence has guided them. It is instinctive to adopt this method for fear that flooding the market with antiquities will lead to a sharp drop in their selling prices.
The English and American tourists, in particular, were flocking to the precious small monuments, especially those bearing royal emblems
_ Maspero, the famous Egyptologist, learned about this dubious trade and realized it was based on a great secret discovery in the Valley of the Kings. Maspero built his suspicions on the basis that some of the pieces traded from them were unique; not only that, but some of them carried royal emblems, and some royal mummies that were were for sale; they were real pharaohs’ mummies
_ Maspero acted with caution because the Luxor revenge search was not in order yet, so he rushed to send a telegram to the Luxor police asking them to tighten control over antiquities dealers from its people. Then he sent a special envoy there pretending to be a wealthy tourist ready to spend lavishly. To gain the merchants’ confidence, the merchants began to view him as an extraordinary client, and they began to offer him what they had. On one occasion, he was presented with a small funerary statue from the era of the twenty-first dynasty. The delegate realized that it must have been stolen from a royal tomb. The man bought the statue after stubborn bargaining, during which he was able to identify the Ahmed Abdel-Rasoul. The suspicions of the envoy and the city police turned to the family of Abdul-Rasoul. It was confirmed that the family was influencing a specific person in Turkey over other clients.
Agha Ayat was above legal accountability, but the two brothers, Abdel-Rasoul, were under the law. Hence, the police arrested them in 1881 and sent them in handcuffs to the director of the Qena Directorate for interrogation. The two brothers eloquently defended themselves and denied the accusation. They keep the evidence of the conviction. In addition, they gathered a crowd of people who testified to them about the cleanliness of the hand and the distance from suspicion, and neither intimidation nor enticement worked for them. Hence, the director Daoud Pasha released them for lack of evidence, and there is no doubt that Daoud Pasha himself was related to them.
The two men returned, victorious and happy, each to his home, and the situation calmed down for some time. A sharp family dispute broke out within the Abdul Rasoul family itself due to the division of the spoils of the archaeological cache, where Ahmed demanded a greater share for being subjected to torture and arrest. Another, and after tightening the noose, Muhammad did not find a way to confess in detail to everything until he escaped by himself. After three months, he was returned to Qena and appeared in front of Daoud Pasha, the director, and he officially confessed and asked to be considered a king’s witness. After a few days, he guided them to the place of the hideout. Meanwhile, Maspero was abroad, so the government entrusted Emile Brugesch to represent her in this matter, and then he was at the head of the force that accompanied Abd al-Rasoul to the hideout.
Bruges was nervous while ascending the steep rocky hill and then descending into the deep tomb where the archaeological treasure was located. He was afraid of the betrayal of the people, so he was heavily armed before they led him into the well with a solid rope and with enough wax to light the cellar. Minutes did not pass until he was surprised by sight. It did not occur to him, and the description of this scene, the archaeologist Maspero, was later separated dramatically from the reality of the Bruges report.
But what the Arabs revealed was a complete basement of the pharaohs, and any pharaohs, the greatest pharaohs in the history of Egypt, Tuthmosis III, Seti I, Ahmose the liberator, Ramses II the Conqueror. We think we will know about them except their names. In the cellar were also jars of sacrificial wine and canopic vessels, then the coffins of the majestic queens of Egypt piled in rows.
When Bargash woke up from his astonishment, he began arranging the matters of transporting the assets. He immediately hired three hundred workers to carry out the work of cleaning the vault and transporting the contents under the supervision of the Antiquities Authority employees. One of the forty pharaohs and many valuable antiquities was carried over the rams, which he took to Cairo. Maspero tells us that the women of the people followed the rams, and their wails rose while the men fired shots in honour of their ancient kings. After untied the ligaments of the mummies so that archaeologists could study the features of the most famous pharaohs of Egypt, the head of Seti I was the best at the moment, the head of a real king, wonderful, and on his lips was a gentle smile that the eye could not mistake. His eyes were half-closed, radiating from under the eyelids, and transparent lips fixed in their sockets as they had been since the mummification of the corpse. After receiving the corpses of the pharaohs, Maspero was forced to double the precautions, so he strengthened the guard over the museum and put controls to prevent smuggling and trafficking in antiquities. The history of this royal cache goes back to In the era of the twenty-first dynasty when the priests drew up an elaborate plan that was meticulously executed, they penetrated every royal tomb and secretly took out all the royal mummies, so they transferred 13 of them to the tomb of Amenhotep the Second Secret. The rest of the thirty-seven were carried to this deep well in the northwest of the monastery.

Bahri leads to a long corridor that ends with a room occupied by a half-forgotten queen called An Khabi. The priests made this cache after they felt they could not protect and ensure guarding their ancestors against thieves. This cache remained in its lair for three thousand years until Muhammad Abd al-Rasoul found it in February 1857. Had it not been for the dispute that flared up between him and Ahmed’s sister, the cache would have had a path other than the Egyptian Museum.