On the 7th of January, 1769, Bruce left Furshoot; and, sailing by How, he came to El Gourni, which he thinks might have been part of ancient Thebes. "About half a mile north of El Gourni," says Bruce, "are the magnificent, stupendous sepulchres of Thebes: a hundred of these, it is said, are excavated into sepulchral and a variety of other apartments. I went through seven of them with a great deal of fatigue. It is a solitary place; and my guides, either from a natural impatience and distaste that these people have at such employments, or their fears of the banditti that live in the caverns of the mountains were real, importuned me to return to the boat even before I had begun my search, or got into the mountain where are the many large apartments of which I was in quest."
In one of these sepulchres Bruce and Balugani found three harps painted in fresco upon the panels. "As the first harp," says Bruce, "seemed to be the most perfect and least spoiled, I immediately attached myself to this, and desired my clerk to take upon him the charge of the second. My first drawing was that of a man playing upon a harp."
We must here observe, that when Bruce, on his return to England, published his drawings of these sketches, his enemies declared very positively that he had come by them unfairly. By much sophistry they endeavoured to prove that Bruce had never been in the sepulchres at all; and even Brown, who visited Thebes, has insinuated that Bruce must have drawn them in England from memory. Now, in contradiction to this illiberal accusation, it must be stated, that pencilled sketches of the two harps are still preserved among Bruce's papers, and that one of them, at least, is evidently the work of Luigi Balugani, who did not live to return to Europe. Still Bruce was disbelieved; and it was positively maintained that he had never been at the sepulchre at all; but, sooner or later, truth always prevails. The following is an extract (page 148) from "Travels in Egypt and Nubia, &c., by the Hon. Charles Leonard Irby and James Mangles, Commanders in the Royal Navy; printed for private distribution. London, 1823."
"We (captains Irby and Mangles, attended by Belzoni) now explored the other tombs (at Thebes), but found nothing new to add to our former observations. In the small chamber where Bruce copied the harp he gave to Mr. Burney for his history of music, _we saw that traveller's name scratched over the very harp_, which we think strong presumptive evidence that he drew it himself, though he has been accused of drawing it afterward from memory. He is erroneous in the number of strings which he has given to it: the instrument itself is not unlike the original, though the musician is very indifferently copied."