so-called histories of Egypt present to us, is a certain Sneferu, or
Seneferu, whom the Egyptians seem to have regarded as the first monarch
of their fourth dynasty. Sneferu--called by Manetho, we know not why,
Soris--has left us a representation of himself, and an inscription. On
the rocks of Wady Magharah, in the Sinaitic peninsula, may be seen to
this day an incised tablet representing the monarch in the act of
smiting an enemy, whom he holds by the hair of his head, with a mace.
The action is apparently emblematic, for at the side we see the words
_Ta satu_, "Smiter of the nations;" and it is a fair explanation of the
tablet, that its intention was to signify that the Pharaoh in question
had reduced to subjection the tribes which in his time inhabited the
Sinaitic regions. The motive of the attack was not mere lust of
conquest, but rather the desire of gain. The Wady Magharah contained
mines of copper and of turquoise, which the Egyptians desired to work;
and for this purpose it was necessary to hold the country by a set of
military posts, in order that the miners might pursue their labours
without molestation. Some ruins of the fortifications are still to be
seen; and the mines themselves, now exhausted, pierce the sides of the
rocks, and bear in many places traces of hieroglyphical inscriptions The
remains of temples show that the expatriated colonists were not left
without the consolations of religion, while a deep well indicates the
care that was taken to supply their temporal needs. Thousands of stone
arrow-heads give evidence of the presence of a strong garrison, and make
us acquainted with the weapon which they found most effectual against
their enemies.
[Illustration: TABLET AT SNEFERU AT WADY-MAGHARAH.]
Sneferu calls himself _Neter aa_, "the Great God," and _Neb mat_, "the
Lord of Justice." He is also "the Golden Horus," or "the Conqueror."
_Neb mat_ is not a usual title with Egyptian monarchs; and its
assumption by Sneferu would seem to mark, at any rate, his appreciation
of the excellence of justice, and his desire to have the reputation of a
just ruler. Later ages give him the title of "the beneficent king," so
that he would seem to have been a really unselfish and kindly sovereign.
His form, however, only just emerges from the mists of the period to be
again concealed from our view, and we vainly ask ourselves what exactly
were the benefits that he conferred on Egypt, so as to attain his high
reputation.
Still, the monuments of his time are sufficient to tell us something of
the Egypt of his day, and of the amount and character of the
civilization so early attained by the Egyptian people. Besides his own
tablet in the Wady Magharah, there are in the neighbourhood of the
pyramids of Ghizeh a number of tombs which belong to the officials of
his court and the members of his family. These tombs contain both
sculptures and inscriptions, and throw considerable light on the
condition of the country.
In the first place, it is apparent that the style of writing has been
invented which is called hieroglyphical, and which has the appearance of
a picture writing, though it is almost as absolutely phonetic as any
other. Setting apart a certain small number of "determinatives," each
sign stands for a sound--the greater part for those elementary sounds
which we express by letters. An eagle is _a_, a leg and foot _b_, a
horned serpent _f_, a hand _t_, an owl _m_, a chicken _u_, and the like.
It is true that there are signs which express a compound sound, a whole
word, even a word of two syllables. A bowl or basin represents the sound
of _neb_, a hatchet that of _neter_, a guitar that of _nefer_, a
crescent that of _aah_, and so on. Secondly, it is clear that artistic
power is considerable. The animal forms used in the hieroglyphics--the
bee, the vulture, the uræus, the hawk, the chicken, the eagle--are well
drawn. In the human forms there is less merit, but still they are fairly
well proportioned and have spirit. No rudeness or want of finish
attaches either to the writing or to the drawing of Sneferu's time; the
artists do not attempt much, but what they attempt they accomplish.
Next, we may notice the character of the tombs. Already the tomb was
more important than the house; and while every habitation constructed
for the living men of the time has utterly perished, scores of the
dwellings assigned to the departed still exist, many in an excellent
condition. They are stone buildings resembling small houses, each with
its door of entrance, but with no windows, and forming internally a
small chamber generally decorated with sculptures. The walls slope at an
angle of seventy-five or eighty degrees externally, but in the interior
are perpendicular. The roof is composed of large flat stones. Strictly
speaking, the chambers are not actual tombs, but mortuary chapels. The
embalmed body of the deceased, encased in its wooden coffin (Gen. 1.
26), was not deposited in the chamber, but in an excavation under one of
the walls, which was carefully closed up after the coffin had been
placed inside it. The chamber was used by the relations for sacred
rites, sacrificial feasts, and the like, held in honour of the deceased,
especially on the anniversary of his death and entrance into Amenti. The
early Egyptians indulged, like the Chinese, in a worship of ancestors.
The members of a family met from time to time in the sepulchral chamber
of their father, or their grandfather, and went through various
ceremonies, sang hymns, poured libations, and made offerings, which were
regarded as pleasing to the departed, and which secured their protection
and help to such of their descendants as took part in the pious
practices.
Sometimes a tomb was more pretentious than those above described. There
is an edifice at Meydoum, improperly termed a pyramid, which is thought
to be older than Sneferu, and was probably erected by one of the
"shadowy kings" who preceded him on the throne. Situated on a natural
rocky knoll of some considerable height, it rises in three stages at an
angle of 74° 10' to an elevation of a hundred and twenty-five feet. It
is built of a compact limestone, which must have been brought from some
distance. The first stage has a height a little short of seventy feet;
the next exceeds thirty-two feet; the third is a little over twenty-two
feet. It is possible that originally there were more stages, and
probable that the present highest stage has in part crumbled away; so
that we may fairly reckon the original height to have been between a
hundred and forty and a hundred and fifty feet The monument is generally
regarded as a tomb, from its situation in the Memphian necropolis and
its remote resemblance to the pyramids; but as yet it has not been
penetrated, and consequently has not been proved to have been
sepulchral.
[Illustration: PYRAMID OF MEYDOUM.]
A construction, which has even a greater appearance of antiquity than
the Meydoum tower, exists at Saccarah. Here the architect carried up a
monument to the height of two hundred feet, by constructing it in six or
seven sloping stages, having an angle of 73° 30'. The core of his
building was composed of rubble, but this was protected on every side by
a thick casing of limestone roughly hewn, and apparently quarried on the
spot. The sepulchral intention of the construction is unquestionable. It
covered a spacious chamber excavated in the rock, whereon the monument
was built, which, when first discovered, contained a sarcophagus and
was lined with slabs of granite. Carefully concealed passages connected
the chamber with the outer world, and allowed of its being entered by
those in possession of the "secrets of the prison-house." In this
structure we have, no doubt, the tomb of a king more ancient than
Sneferu--though for our own part we should hesitate to assign the
monument to one king rather than another.
If we pass from the architecture of the period to its social condition,
we remark that grades of society already existed, and were as pronounced
as in later times. The kings were already deities, and treated with
superstitious regard. The state-officials were a highly privileged
class, generally more or less connected with the royal family. The land
was partly owned by the king (Gen. xlvii. 6), who employed his own
labourers and herdsmen upon it; partly, mainly perhaps, it was in the
hands of great landed proprietors--nobles, who lived in country houses
upon their estates, maintaining large households, and giving employment
to scores of peasants, herdsmen, artizans, huntsmen, and fishermen. The
"lower orders" were of very little account. They were at the beck and
call of the landed aristocracy in the country districts, of the
state-officials in the towns. Above all, the monarch had the right of
impressing them into his service whenever he pleased, and employing them
in the "great works" by which he strove to perpetuate his name.
[Illustration: GREAT PYRAMID OF SACCARAH (_Present appearance_).]
[Illustration: SECTION OF THE SAME, SHOWING ORIGINAL CONSTRUCTION.]
There prevailed, however, a great simplicity of manners. The dress of
the upper classes was wonderfully plain and unpretending, presenting
little variety and scarcely any ornament. The grandee wore, indeed, an
elaborate wig, it being imperative on all men to shave the head for the
sake of cleanliness. But otherwise, his costume was of the simplest and
the scantiest. Ordinarily, when he was employed in the common duties of
life, a short tunic, probably of white linen, reaching from the waist
to a little above the knee, was his sole garment. His arms, chest, legs,
even his feet, were naked; for sandals, not to speak of stockings or
shoes, were unknown. The only decoration which he wore was a chain or
riband round the neck, to which was suspended an ornament like a
locket--probably an amulet. In his right hand he carried a long staff or
wand, either for the purpose of belabouring his inferiors, or else to
use it as a walking-stick. On special occasions he made, however, a more
elaborate toilet. Doffing his linen tunic, he clothed himself in a
single, somewhat scanty, robe, which reached from the neck to the
ankles; and having exchanged his chain and locket for a broad collar,
and adorned his wrists with bracelets, he was ready to pay visits or to
receive company. He had no carriage, so far as appears, not even a
palanquin; no horse to ride, nor even a mule or a donkey. The great men
of the East rode, in later times, on "white asses" (Judges v. 10); the
Egyptian of Sneferu's age had to trudge to court, or to make calls upon
his friends, by the sole aid of those means of locomotion which nature
had given him.
Women, who in most civilized countries claim to themselves far more
elaboration in dress and variety of ornament than men, were content, in
the Egypt of which we are here speaking, with a costume, and a personal
decoration, scarcely less simple than that of their husbands. The
Egyptian _materfamilias_ of the time wore her hair long, and gathered
into three masses, one behind the head, and the other two in front of
either shoulder. Like her spouse, she had but a single garment--a short
gown or petticoat reaching from just below the breasts to half way down
the calf of the leg, and supported by two broad straps passed over the
two shoulders. She exposed her arms and bosom to sight, and her feet
were bare, like her husband's. Her only ornaments were bracelets.
[Illustration: GROUP OF STATUARY, CONSISTING OF A HUSBAND AND WIFE.]
There was no seclusion of women at any time among the ancient Egyptians.
The figure of the wife on the early monuments constantly accompanies
that of her husband. She is his associate in all his occupations. Her
subordination is indicated by her representation being on an unduly
smaller scale, and by her ordinary position, which is behind the figure
of her "lord and master." In statuary, however, she appears seated with
him on the same seat or chair. There is no appearance of her having been
either a drudge or a plaything. She was regarded as man's true
"helpmate," shared his thoughts, ruled his family, and during their
early years had the charge of his children. Polygamy was unknown in
Egypt during the primitive period; even the kings had then but one wife.
Sneferu's wife was a certain Mertitefs, who bore him a son, Nefer-mat,
and after his death became the wife of his successor. Women were
entombed with as much care, and almost with as much pomp, as men. Their
right to ascend the throne is said to have been asserted by one of the
kings who preceded Sneferu; and from time to time women actually
exercised in Egypt the royal authority.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] R. Stuart Poole, "Cities of Egypt," pp. 24, 25.
IV.
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS.
It is difficult for a European, or an American, who has not visited
Egypt, to realize the conception of a Great Pyramid. The pyramidal form
has gone entirely out of use as an architectural type of monumental
perfection; nay, even as an architectural embellishment. It maintained
an honourable position in architecture from its first discovery to the
time of the Maccabee kings (1 Mac. xiii. 28); but, never having been
adopted by either the Greeks or the Romans, it passed into desuetude in
the Old World with the conquest of the East by the West. In the New
World it was found existent by the early discoverers, and then held a
high place in the regards of the native race which had reached the
furthest towards civilization; but Spanish bigotry looked with horror on
everything that stood connected with an idolatrous religion, and the
pyramids of Mexico were first wantonly injured, and then allowed to fall
into such a state of decay, that their original form is by some
questioned. A visit to the plains of Teotihuacan will not convey to the
mind which is a blank on the subject the true conception of a great
pyramid. It requires a pilgrimage to Ghizeh or Saccarah, or a lively
and _well-instructed_ imagination, to enable a man to call up before his
mind's eye the true form and appearance and impressiveness of such a
structure.
Lord Houghton endeavoured to give expression to the feelings of one who
sees for the first time these wondrous, these incomprehensible creations
in the following lines:
After the fantasies of many a night,
After the deep desires of many a day,
Rejoicing as an ancient Eremite
Upon the desert's edge at last I lay:
Before me rose, in wonderful array,
Those works where man has rivalled Nature most,
Those Pyramids, that fear no more decay
Than waves inflict upon the rockiest coast,
Or winds on mountain-steeps, and like endurance boast.
Fragments the deluge of old Time has left
Behind in its subsidence--long long walls
Of cities of their very names bereft,--
Lone columns, remnants of majestic halls,
Rich traceried chambers, where the night-dew falls,--
All have I seen with feelings due, I trow,
Yet not with such as these memorials
Of the great unremembered, that can show
The mass and shape they wore four thousand years ago.
The Egyptian idea of a pyramid was that of a structure on a square base,
with four inclining sides, each one of which should be an equilateral
triangle, all meeting in a point at the top. The structure might be
solid, and in that case might be either of hewn stone throughout, or
consist of a mass of rubble merely held together by an external casing
of stone; or it might contain chambers and passages, in which case the
employment of rubble was scarcely possible. It has been demonstrated by
actual excavation, that all the _great_ pyramids of Egypt were of the
latter character that they were built for the express purpose of
containing chambers and passages, and of preserving those chambers and
passages intact. They required, therefore, to be, and in most cases are,
of a good construction throughout.
There are from sixty to seventy pyramids in Egypt, chiefly in the
neighbourhood of Memphis. Some of them are nearly perfect, some more or
less in ruins, but most of them still preserving their ancient shape,
when seen from afar. Two of them greatly exceed all the others in their
dimensions, and are appropriately designated as "the Great Pyramid" and
"the Second Pyramid." A third in their immediate vicinity is of very
inferior size, and scarcely deserves the pre-eminence which has been
conceded to it by the designation of "the Third Pyramid."
Still, the three seem, all of them, to deserve description, and to
challenge a place in "the story of Egypt," which has never yet been told
without some account of the marvels of each of them. The smallest of the
three was a square of three hundred and fifty-four feet each way, and
had a height of two hundred and eighteen feet. It covered an area of two
acres, three roods, and twenty-one poles, or about that of an ordinary
London square. The cubic contents amounted to above nine million feet of
solid masonry, and are calculated to have weighed 702,460 tons. The
height was not very impressive. Two hundred and twenty feet is an
altitude attained by the towers of many churches, and the "Pyramid of
the Sun" at Teotihuacan did not fall much short of it; but the mass was
immense, the masonry was excellent, and the ingenuity shown in the
construction was great. Sunk in the rock from which the pyramid rose,
was a series of sepulchral chambers. One, the largest, almost directly
under the apex of the pyramid, was empty. In another, which had an
arched roof, constructed in the most careful and elaborate way, was
found the sarcophagus of the king, Men-kau-ra, to whom tradition
assigned the building, formed of a single mass of blue-black basalt,
exquisitely polished and beautifully carved, externally eight feet long,
three feet high, and three feet broad, internally six feet by two. In
the sarcophagus was the wooden coffin of the monarch, and on the lid of
the coffin was his name. The chambers were connected by two long
passages with the open air; and another passage had, apparently, been
used for the same purpose before the pyramid attained its ultimate size.
The tomb-chamber, though carved in the rock, had been paved and lined
with slabs of solid stone, which were fastened to the native rock by
iron cramps. The weight of the sarcophagus which it contained, now
unhappily lost, was three tons.
[Illustration: SECTION OF THE THIRD PYRAMID, SHOWING PASSAGES.]
[Illustration: TOMB-CHAMBER OF THE THIRD PYRAMID.]
The "Second Pyramid," which stands to the north-east of the Third, at
the distance of about two hundred and seventy yards, was a square of
seven hundred and seven feet each way, and thus covered an area of
almost eleven acres and a half, or nearly double that of the greatest
building which Rome ever produced--the Coliseum. The sides rose at an
angle of 52° 10'; and the perpendicular height was four hundred and
fifty-four feet, or fifty feet more than that of the spire of
Salisbury Cathedral. The cubic contents are estimated at 71,670,000
feet; and their weight is calculated at 5,309,000 tons. Numbers of this
vast amount convey but little idea of the reality to an ordinary reader,
and require to be made intelligible by comparisons. Suppose, then, a
solidly built stone house, with walls a foot thick, twenty feet of
frontage, and thirty feet of depth from front to back; let the walls be
twenty-four feet high and have a foundation of six feet; throw in
party-walls to one-third the extent of the main walls--and the result
will be a building containing four thousand cubic feet of masonry. Let
there be a town of eighteen thousand such houses, suited to be the abode
of a hundred thousand inhabitants--then pull these houses to pieces, and
pile them up into a heap to a height exceeding that of the spire of the
Cathedral of Vienna, and you will have a rough representation of the
"Second Pyramid of Ghizeh." Or lay down the contents of the structure in
a line a foot in breadth and depth--the line would be above 13,500 miles
long, and would reach more than half-way round the earth at the equator.
Again, suppose that a single man can quarry a ton of stone in a week,
then it would have required above twenty thousand to be employed
constantly for five years in order to obtain the material for the
pyramid; and if the blocks were required to be large, the number
employed and the time occupied would have had to be greater.
The internal construction of the "Second Pyramid" is less elaborate than
that of the Third, but not very different. Two passages lead from the
outer air to a sepulchral chamber almost exactly under the apex of the
pyramid, and exactly at its base, one of them commencing about fifty
feet from the base midway in the north side, and the other commencing a
little outside the base, in the pavement at the foot of the pyramid. The
first passage was carried through the substance of the pyramid for a
distance of a hundred and ten feet at a descending angle of 25° 55',
after which it became horizontal, and was tunnelled through the native
rock on which the pyramid was built. The second passage was wholly in
the rock. It began with a descent at an angle of 21° 40', which
continued for a hundred feet; it was then horizontal for fifty feet;
after which it ascended gently for ninety-six feet, and joined the first
passage about midway between the sepulchral chamber and the outer air.
The sepulchral chamber was carved mainly out of the solid rock below the
pyramid, but was roofed in by some of the basement stones, which were
sloped at an angle. The chamber measured forty-six feet in length and
sixteen feet in breadth; its height in the centre was twenty-two feet.
It contained a plain granite sarcophagus, without inscription of any
kind, eight feet and a half in length, three feet and a half in breadth,
and in depth three feet. There was no coffin in the sarcophagus at the
time of its discovery, and no inscription on any part of the pyramid or
of its contents. The tradition, however, which ascribed it to the
immediate predecessor of Men-kau-ra, may be accepted as sufficient
evidence of its author.
[Illustration: SARCOPHAGUS OF MYCERINUS.]
[Illustration: SECTION OF THE SECOND PYRAMID.]
Come we now to the "Great Pyramid," "which is still," says Lenormant,
"at least in respect of its mass, _the most prodigious of all human
constructions_," The "Great Pyramid," or "First Pyramid of Ghizeh," as
it is indifferently termed, is situated almost due north-east of the
"Second Pyramid," at the distance of about two hundred yards. The length
of each side at the base was originally seven hundred and sixty-four
feet, or fifty-seven feet more than that of the sides of the "Second
Pyramid." Its original perpendicular height was something over four
hundred and eighty feet, its cubic contents exceeded eighty-nine million
feet, and the weight of its mass 6,840,000 tons. In height it thus
exceeded Strasburg Cathedral by above six feet, St. Peter's at Rome by
above thirty feet, St. Stephen's at Vienna by fifty feet St. Paul's,
London, by a hundred and twenty feet, and the Capitol at Washington by
nearly two hundred feet. Its area was thirteen acres, one rood, and
twenty-two poles, or nearly two acres more than the area of the "Second
Pyramid." which was fourfold that of the "Third Pyramid," which, as we
have seen, was that of an ordinary London square. Its cubic contents
would build a city of twenty-two thousand such houses as were above
described, and laid in a line of cubic squares would reach a distance of
nearly seventeen thousand miles, or girdle two-thirds of the earth's
circumference at the equator. Herodotus says that its construction
required the continuous labour of a hundred thousand men for the space
of twenty years, and moderns do not regard the estimate as exaggerated.
The "Great Pyramid" presents, moreover, many other marvels besides its
size. First, there is the massiveness of the blocks of which it is
composed. The basement stones are in many cases thirty feet long by
five feet high, and four or five wide: they must contain from six
hundred to seven hundred and fifty cubic feet each, and weigh from
forty-six to fifty-seven tons. The granite blocks which roof over the
upper sepulchral chamber are nearly nineteen feet long, by two broad and
from three to four deep. The relieving stones above the same chamber,
and those of the entrance passage, are almost equally massive. Generally
the external blocks are of a size with which modern builders scarcely
ever venture to deal, though the massiveness diminishes as the pyramid
is ascended. The bulk of the interior is, however, of comparatively
small stones; but even these are carefully hewn and squared, so as to
fit together compactly.
[Illustration: SECTION OF THE GREAT PYRAMID.]
[Illustration: KING'S CHAMBER AND CHAMBERS OF CONSTRUCTION, GREAT
PYRAMID.]