THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DISCOVERY
When the eyes of all the world are focussed on the tomb of Tutankhamen
and the fresh revelation it affords of the superb achievements of
the ancient Egyptians in the arts and crafts, it is worth while to
consider how this new discovery is likely to affect our attitude to
the history of civilization and to promote a fuller recognition of the
human motives that found expression in its creation and development.
Apart from the demonstration it affords of the fabulous wealth that was
hidden away more than thirty centuries ago in the Valley of the Tombs
of the Kings, the new discovery appeals as an æsthetic revelation of
dazzling brilliance rather than as an addition to our knowledge. So far
its effect has been to force the scholar and the man in the street to
take an interest in the civilization that was capable of producing such
perfect works of art, and to ask themselves whether this precocious
culture was really so exotic as it is commonly supposed to have been,
or whether, on the contrary, such achievements on the very threshold of
a yet unenlightened Europe did not exert a far greater influence than
it is usual to accord them.
But at present we are concerned simply in considering what is the
significance of the discoveries so far made; the furniture, which has
never been surpassed in the perfection of its workmanship and exquisite
decoration; linen of a fineness and a beauty of texture that have never
been excelled; carved alabaster vases such as the world has never seen
before; and statues that afford some justification for the ancient
belief that they were, in truth, “living images.” What is the meaning
of all this lavish display of skill and beauty? Why was so much wealth
poured into the hidden recesses of this desolate ravine, and the most
exquisite products of the world’s achievement in the arts and crafts
buried out of sight in this strange necropolis? The true answers
to these questions reveal the motive force that brought about the
development of civilization and made Egypt the pioneer in its creation.
_Embalming and Immortality_
All these elaborate preparations, the laborious and costly process of
hewing the tomb out of the solid rock and furnishing it with such
magnificence, were made because the ancient Egyptians believed that
the king’s body to be housed in it had been made imperishable. They
imagined that when the body was embalmed the continuation of the
king’s existence had been assured. Hence they provided him with food
and raiment, the furniture and amulets, the jewels and the unguents,
and other luxuries which he had been accustomed to enjoy, before he
was taken to his “eternal house” in the desolate Valley of the Tombs.
There can be no doubt that in the early days of Egyptian history this
naïve belief was regarded in all seriousness as the simple truth. In
fact, the thoroughness with which at first the Egyptians gave concrete
expression to their faith in making material provision for every want
that the deceased might experience could only have been inspired by
the confidence that all these preparations were indeed effective.
This conviction was deeply rooted in the practice of mummifying the
dead, preserving the body so that it should become incorruptible and
everlasting; and this was supposed also to involve the feasibility of
the prolongation of the dead man’s existence.
The hope of survival was thus based upon the efficacy of the
embalmer’s art; and the extraordinary constancy with which for more
than thirty centuries—for a span of years four times the length of
time that separates us from the arrival of William the Conqueror in
Britain—they persisted in their efforts to improve their methods and
render more perfect this gruesome practice is a striking tribute to the
fundamental importance of mummification to the Egyptians. The craft
of the carpenter was first invented for the manufacture of coffins to
protect the corpse; the stonemason’s first experiments had for their
aim the preparation of rock-cut chambers still further to ensure its
safety; the first buildings worthy of being called architecture were
intended to promote the welfare of the dead, to provide places to which
relatives could bring food necessary for the dead man’s sustenance, and
a room to house his portrait statue—another art that was the outcome
of the practice of mummification—which took his place at the temple of
offerings and preserved his likeness for all time.
These elements of civilization, the arts of architecture and sculpture,
and the crafts of the carpenter and the stonemason, were thus direct
results of the custom of embalming. But its influence in moulding
ritual and belief was no less profound and far-reaching.
_Early Beliefs_
The belief in the possibility of the continuation of existence after
death may have been (and probably was) much older than the Egyptians;
but the evidence now available seems fairly decisive that the belief
in immortality was not definitely formulated by mankind until the
means had been devised of making the corpse everlasting, when “the
corruptible body put on incorruption.” Moreover, the ritual of the most
primitive religions was based upon the practices of the early Egyptians
for revivifying the mummy, or its surrogate, the mortuary statue, by
burning incense, pouring out libations, opening its mouth to give it
the breath of life, and performing a series of dramatic acts to animate
it. By means of these ritual procedures it was supposed that the
officiating priest was able to restore consciousness to the dead body
and so make it possible for it not only to take an intelligent share in
the life around it, but also to hear appeals for help and guidance and
to answer such requests.
Egypt alone of the countries of antiquity provides the explanation
of these strange beliefs and practices. They were devised by the
concrete-minded people of the Nile Valley as part of a comprehensive
philosophy of life and death which was formulated as a sort of life
insurance, in accordance with the principles of which the deceased
himself was supposed to be the beneficiary, and his reward an
indefinite prolongation of existence.
This remarkable system of beliefs originated even before the
beginning of civilization, sixty centuries ago; but the latter event
was responsible for intensifying the conviction of its reality and
increasing men’s hope in its potency.
_The Dawn of Civilization_
Civilization began when the Egyptians first devised the methods of
agriculture and invented a system of irrigation. The irrigation
engineer was the first man in the history of the world to control
and organize the co-operative work of his fellow-men, and become the
ruler of a whole community. If there is one lesson more than another
that history has demonstrated in Egypt, equally in ancient and in
modern times, it is the absolute necessity of a strong and autocratic
Government, because the conditions in the Nile Valley are such that
the prosperity of the country and the welfare of the whole community
is entirely dependent upon the just and equitable distribution of the
waters of irrigation throughout the land. It is not to be wondered
at that the engineer who successfully achieved this task, and in a
very special and real sense controlled the lives and destinies of his
people, became the king, whose beneficence was apotheosized after his
death, so that he became the god Osiris, who was identified with the
river, whose life-giving powers he controlled. For to a people who
had never experienced anything of the kind before it must have seemed
an altogether miraculous and superhuman act for one man to have in
his absolute control the prosperity of a whole community and every
individual unit of it.
The connection between this story and the tomb of Tutankhamen may not
be apparent. But when it is realized that the original invention of
the social system was so closely identified with the god Osiris, it
will be understood that the ritual of mummification and burial aimed at
identifying the deceased with Osiris, and by imitating the incidents
of his story to secure for the deceased a fate like that of the god,
whose life-giving powers were sought to grant the continuation of
existence.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.—Part of a mace-head found by Mr J. E. Quibell
at Hierakonpolis in 1897-8, showing one of the earliest kings of Egypt
engaged in the task of cutting an irrigation canal.]
The early kings of Egypt, rich in their newly acquired control of the
labour and wealth of their dominion, did not hesitate to squander both
in the preparation of their tombs, in the vain belief that thereby they
were making certain their own survival. Twenty centuries later, in the
times of Tutankhamen, they were still obsessed with the same idea, and
spent fabulous sums in preparing their tombs in the Biban el Moluk.
The peculiar importance of the study of these strange customs and
beliefs in Egypt depends upon the fact that, not only were they
invented by the Egyptians, and preserved in their entirety, so that
the whole story of its development can be read in all their childish
directness and simplicity, but also because other peoples of antiquity,
to whose civilization Europe owes her own heritage, adopted some of the
results of these Egyptian devices, and, after eliminating some of their
cruder details, transformed them into the essentials of the world’s
civilization. Hence, in recovering the history of Egyptian cultural
development, we are really probing into the sources of the customs
and beliefs of our own everyday life and experience. Thus we must
regard mummification as something more than an eccentric practice that
excites our curiosity. For it played a fundamental part in shaping the
development of civilization, both its arts and crafts, as well as its
most vital customs and beliefs.
_Giving Life to the Dead_
If we turn to consider the process of mummification, and the aims of
its practitioners, it will be found that throughout the long ages in
which it was in vogue the Egyptian embalmer kept constantly striving to
attain two aims. His first object was to preserve the actual tissues
of the body as thoroughly as he could. But he was also attempting the
much more difficult task of preserving the natural form of the body,
and especially of the features. He was prompted to make this effort,
not merely that the deceased should retain his distinctive traits in
a recognizable form, but rather that the simulacrum should be the
“living” image of himself. In other words, the aim was to make the
representation of the dead man so life-like that he should, in fact,
remain alive, and be certain of maintaining his existence. The early
Egyptians seem to have entertained in all its childlike _naïveté_ the
belief that they were actually conferring vitality upon the image
when they made it life-like. The Egyptian verb for describing the
work of the sculptor who carved the portrait statue meant literally,
according to Dr Alan Gardiner, “to give birth,” in the sense of “giving
life”; and there is no doubt they meant this idea of life-giving to be
accepted as the simple expression of a fact, and not merely as a symbol
or analogy.
It must not be forgotten that when these beliefs were first formulated,
more than fifty centuries ago, there was no knowledge or understanding
of the principles of physics and biology to hinder the adoption of such
naïve fancies as the simple and obvious truth. There is no reason to
doubt that the philosophers of those days did honestly believe in the
possibility of prolonging existence by fulfilling all the conditions
that seemed to them essential and adequate to the maintenance of
vitality.
When mummification was first devised, probably at the time of the
earliest dynasty (about 3400 B.C.) it was realized that if, in the
climate of Egypt, the preservation of the tissues of the body was
not very difficult to effect, the task of retaining the distinctive
features was practically unattainable. All kinds of devices were
tried, during the second, third, and fourth dynasties, by wrapping
the mummy so as to simulate the human form, painting it, applying
clay or resinous paste, and modelling it into a portrait statue upon
the enshrouded mummy itself. When these devices failed to achieve the
desired aim of making life-like portraits, the art of modelling statues
of the deceased in stone or wood was invented, and paint and artificial
eyes were used to make them as life-like as possible. The skill
with which the Egyptians of the Pyramid Age overcame the technical
difficulties of the sculptors’ art and made life-size portraits which,
as I have said before, could not untruthfully be called “living
images,” is one of the most amazing achievements in the history of art.
But it was more than the triumph of a craftsman: it was the realization
of a deeper desire to preserve the image, and so prolong the existence
of the sculptor’s model, the deceased, who was thus supposed to have
been saved from annihilation.
In the first chapter of my book _The Evolution of the Dragon_, I have
discussed this problem more fully.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.—Portrait of Hesi, _circa_ 3000 B.C., to show the
skill displayed even at the beginning of Egyptian history in carving
portraits in wood. As a rule they were made in the round and life-size.
This funerary portrait cut in low relief in wood is exceptional.]
_Success after Twenty Centuries_
Although these early sculptors had achieved so signal a triumph, the
embalmers never abandoned the hope of bringing their art to such a
state of perfection as to make of the mummy itself the simulacrum of
the deceased. With infinite patience and persistence they experimented
through one millennium after another to attain this object. But
it was not until the time of the twenty-first dynasty, more than
twenty centuries after they first attempted to do it, that they were
able to transform the mummy itself into a portrait statue. From the
artistic point this represents to us a debasement of æsthetic motive
and practice; but to the embalmer it was the culmination of his
achievement. But it was also the prelude to the degradation of his art.
For the technique became so complex and difficult of execution that
failure became a common incident, and to disguise the evidence of such
incompetence the practice grew up of paying chief attention to the
external appearance of the wrappings rather than to the corpse.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.—The “packed” mummy of a Queen of the
Twenty-first Dynasty.]
But to us the complicated technique of the embalmers during the
twenty-first dynasty appeals rather as ingenious trickery, a tampering
with the natural body to give it a spurious and trumpery resemblance to
a living being. Judged by our artistic standards there can be no doubt
that the ancient Egyptian practice of mummification was seen at its
best at the end of the eighteenth dynasty, that is about the time of
Tutankhamen. The most successful results are revealed in the mummies of
Yuaa and Tuaa and of Seti I (Fig. 3, p. 33), which means that at the
time when Tutankhamen was embalmed the craftsmen had the skill and the
material resources to make as perfect a mummy as Egyptian ingenuity in
the whole of its experience was capable of doing.
But the Egyptian tomb-robbers brought to the attention of the official
world many mummies of the earlier part of the eighteenth dynasty,
as well as some of those of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties
respectively before and after the culmination of the technical success
in or about Tutankhamen’s time which revealed only too clearly certain
faults that it seemed desirable to remedy.
The wholesale plundering of the Royal mummies in the twentieth
dynasty, and the knowledge acquired by the priests when remedying
the damage so inflicted, seem to have been responsible for the rapid
transformation of the methods in the twenty-first dynasty. For this
experience afforded them a unique opportunity of studying the results
and appreciating the defects of their predecessors’ work.
That they profited by this experience is evident from the changes
they effected in their technique after they had realized wherein the
methods employed during the twentieth dynasty failed to attain the
desired aim. For their innovations were directed towards remedying
the most obtrusive distortions found in the mummies of the nineteenth
and twentieth dynasties. The sunken cheeks were filled out by means
of packing them with linen or mud, artificial eyes were inserted, the
nose, lips, and ears were protected from distortion by wax plates, and
the cheeks were painted. Many other devices were introduced to convert
the mummy from a shrunken caricature into a more life-like portrait.
Mummification reached its fullest and most successful development
during the six centuries from 1500 B.C. to 940 B.C., which represents
the period of the collection of royal mummies in the Cairo Museum.
They reveal the ancient Egyptian practice of embalming in its highest
perfection, and have provided most of the information we possess of the
history of mummification.
I have called attention to the aims which the ancient Egyptians kept so
persistently in view in constructing and furnishing the tombs of their
kings. The pharaoh’s body was embalmed to make sure of the continuation
of his existence beyond the grave. The conviction that this object was
really attained when the mummy was made and housed in an imperishable
building induced them to furnish the tomb lavishly and to provide an
ample store of food to sustain him and give him all the comforts and
luxuries to which he was accustomed when he was living upon earth. But,
to make doubly sure, they inscribed upon the walls of his tomb, upon
his sarcophagus and coffins, and on papyri placed in the tombs, certain
texts to make clear his identification with Osiris, with the practical
object of ensuring that he should share the fate of the god and attain
the immortality which the god had secured. Moreover, other devices were
adopted to make the issue more certain.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.—Drawing from Book of the Dead to illustrate the
Germinating Osiris, from Rosellini.]
Of the objects found in association with the mummies of Egyptian kings
of the eighteenth dynasty to which definite cultural importance was
attached, none is more remarkable than the so-called “germinating
Osiris.” Several examples of this singular symbol were found in the
tombs of Tutankhamen’s predecessors, as far back as Amenhotep II. (1420
B.C.), and as it was observed in its fullest development in the tomb
of his successor, Horemheb (1315 B.C.), it is more probable than not
that Tutankhamen’s will also be similarly equipped. It consists of a
shallow box about 5 ft. long, shaped so as to represent the god Osiris,
wearing a crown and holding the crook and whip in his hands. By means
of wooden partitions the features of the head, the necklace, the arms
are represented. This shallow box was filled with earth in which barley
was planted; when it germinated and the sprouts had attained two or
three inches in height a closely-fitting lid was fastened on to the
box by wooden pegs. The lid is slightly sculptured en ronde bosse, and
painted yellow. The details of the body and the ornaments are indicated
in relief, the effect of which is heightened by lines of black and red.
_The King and Osiris_
The symbolism expressed in this remarkable procedure was in keeping
with the motives which were explained earlier in this chapter, the
identification of the dead king with Osiris (who was himself a dead
king), whose magical powers as the bestower of renewed life and a
continuation of existence after death was symbolized by the germinating
barley.
But the procedure was richly charged with the deepest religious
significance. I have already explained that the whole of the burial
customs of the early Egyptians and the dramatic ritual which formed
part of the tomb ceremonies were inspired by the desire to ensure the
prolongation of existence. The body was made imperishable and protected
by every means the relatives could devise: it was supplied with
abundance of food and all the necessaries of life; and, above all, the
“germinating Osiris” was there to complete the process and perpetually
to animate and prolong the existence of the corpse. If its potency
was derived from the reproduction of the form of Osiris, an equally
vital part of its supposed magical power was due to the fact that it
consisted of barley in the act of producing new life.
As the earliest cereal that was cultivated and the staple diet of
the earliest civilized people—and the chief factor in creating their
civilization—barley came to occupy a peculiarly distinctive rôle
in early belief. It was the staff of life and the material from
which beer was made, the drink which was regarded as “divine,” in
the sense that life-giving qualities were attributed to it, and to
the ancient Egyptian the essence of divinity was the attainment of
unlimited existence. But the form assumed by a grain of barley (_i.e._
its similarity to the organ of birth, the giver of life) led to the
assimilation of its life-sustaining with definitely life-giving
functions. It was identified with the Great Mother as a life-giver
(in her forms as Hathor or Isis); and the “corn mother” acquired the
reputation of being able to prolong existence in other ways than
providing food and drink. The coffin texts of the Middle Kingdom
(_circa_ 2000 B.C.) translated by M. Lacau refer to the identification
of the deceased with Osiris and barley, and in the Pyramid texts many
centuries earlier the dead king is represented, as making the following
claim: “I am Osiris. I live as the gods; I live as ‘Grain’; I grow as
‘Grain.’ I am barley.” (Professor Breasted’s translation.) Just as the
Nile (which was personified as Osiris) conveyed new life to the grains
of barley by irrigating them, so the god was supposed to be able to
grant a new lease of existence to the dead.