CHAPTER VI.

THE STORY OF THE SHIPWRECKED SAILOR.

When the early Spanish explorers led their expeditions to Florida, it

was their intention to find the Fountain of Perpetual Youth, tales of

its potent waters having reached Peter Martyr as early as 1511. This

desire to discover the things pertaining to Fairyland has been,

throughout history, one of the most fertile sources of adventure. From

the days when the archaic Egyptians penetrated into the regions south of

the Cataracts, where they believed that the inhabitants were other than

human, and into Pount, the "Land of the Ghosts," the hope of Fairyland

has led men to search the face of the earth and to penetrate into its

unknown places. It has been the theme of countless stories: it has

supplied material for innumerable songs.

And in spite of the circumambulations of science about us, in spite of

the hardening of all the tissues of our imagination, in spite of the

phenomenal development of the commonplace, this desire for a glimpse of

the miraculous is still set deeply in our hearts. The old quest of

Fairyland is as active now as ever it was. We still presume, in our

unworthiness, to pass the barriers, and to walk upon those paths which

lead to the enchanted forests and through them to the city of the Moon.

At any moment we are ready to set forth, like Arthur's knights, in

search of the Holy Grail.

The explorer who penetrates into Central Africa in quest of King

Solomon's mines is impelled by a hope closely akin to that of the

Spaniards. The excavator who digs for the buried treasures of the Incas

or of the Egyptians is often led by a desire for the fabulous. Search is

now being made in the western desert of Egypt for a lost city of

burnished copper; and the Anglo-Egyptian official is constantly urged by

credulous natives to take camels across the wilderness in quest of a

town whose houses and temples are of pure gold. What archæologist has

not at some time given ear to the whispers that tell of long-lost

treasures, of forgotten cities, of Atlantis swallowed by the sea? It is*

not only children who love the tales of Fairyland. How happily we have

read Kipling's 'Puck of Pook's Hill,' De la Motte Fouqué's 'Undine,'

Kenneth Grahame's 'Wind in the Willows,' or F.W. Bain's Indian stories.

The recent fairy plays--Barry's "Peter Pan," Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird,"

and the like--have been enormously successful. Say what we will, fairy

tales still hold their old power over us, and still we turn to them as a

relief from the commonplace.

*Transcriber's note: In the original text the word "is" is omitted.

Some of us, failing to find Fairyland upon earth, have transferred it

to the kingdom of Death; and it has become the hope for the future. Each

Sunday in church the congregation of business men and hard-worked women

set aside the things of their monotonous life, and sing the songs of the

endless search. To the rolling notes of the organ they tell the tale of

the Elysian Fields: they take their unfilled desire for Fairyland and

adjust it to their deathless hope of Heaven. They sing of crystal

fountains, of streets paved with gold, of meadows dressed with living

green where they shall dwell as children who now as exiles mourn. There

everlasting spring abides and never-withering flowers; there ten

thousand times ten thousand clad in sparkling raiment throng up the

steeps of light. Here in the church the most unimaginative people cry

aloud upon their God for Fairyland.

"The roseate hues of early dawn,

The brightness of the day,

The crimson of the sunset sky,

How fast they fade away!

Oh, for the pearly gates of Heaven,

Oh, for the golden floor...."

They know no way of picturing the incomprehensible state of the future,

and they interpret it, therefore, in terms of the fairy tale.

I am inclined to think that this sovereignty of the fairies is

beneficial. Fairy tales fill the minds of the young with knowledge of

the kindly people who will reward with many gifts those that are

charitable to the old; they teach a code of chivalry that brings as its

reward the love of the beautiful princess in the tower; they tell of

dangers overcome by courage and perseverance; they suggest a contact

with nature which otherwise might never be developed. Where angels and

archangels overawe by their omnipotence, the microscopic fairies who can

sit singing upon a mushroom and dangle from the swaying stem of a

bluebell, carry the thoughts down the scale of life to the little and

really important things. A sleepy child will rather believe that the

Queen of the Fairies is acting sentry upon the knob of the bedpost than

that an angel stands at the head of the cot with great wings spread in

protection--wings which suggest the probability of claws and a beak to

match.

The dragons which can only be slain by the noble knight, the

enchantments which can only be broken by the outwitting of the evil

witch, the lady who can only be won by perils bravely endured, form the

material of moral lessons which no other method of teaching could so

impress upon the youthful mind.

And when mature years are attained the atmosphere of Fairyland remains

with us. The lost songs of the little people drift through the brain,

recalling the infinite possibilities of beauty and goodness which are so

slightly out of reach; the forgotten wonder of elfs and brownies

suggests itself to us from the heart of flowers and amidst the leaves of

trees. The clear depths of the sea take half their charm from the

memory of the mermaid's palace; the silence of forests is rich with the

expectancy of the Knight of the Golden Plume; the large spaces of

kitchens and corridors are hushed for the concealment of Robin

Goodfellow.

It is the elusiveness, the enchantment, of Fairyland which, for the

mature mind, constitutes its greatest value and charm; it is a man's

desire for the realms of Midsummer-night that makes the building of

those realms in our childhood so valuable. We are constantly

endeavouring to recapture the grace of that intangible kingdom, and the

hope of ultimate success retains the elasticity of the mind. Held fast

by the stiffened joints of reason and closeted with the gout of science,

we are fettered prisoners in the world unless there be the knowledge

that something eludes us to lead us on. We know quite well that the

fairies do not exist, but at the same time we cannot deny that the

elusive atmosphere of Fairyland is one with that of our fondest dreams.

Who has not, upon a grey morning, awakened from sleep with the knowledge

that he has passed out from a kingdom of dream more dear than all the

realms of real life? Vainly we endeavour to recall the lost details, but

only the impression remains. That impression, however, warms the tone of

our whole day, and frames our thoughts as it were with precious stones.

Thus also it is with the memory of our childhood's idea of Fairyland:

the impression is recalled, the brain peers forward, the thoughts go on

tiptoe, and we feel that we have caught a glimpse of Beauty. Indeed, the

recollection of the atmosphere created in our youthful minds by means of

fairy tales is perhaps the most abundant of the sources of our knowledge

of Beauty in mature years.

I do not suppose that I am alone in declaring that some of the most

tender feelings of childhood are inspired by the misfortunes of the

Beast in the story of "Beauty and the Beast"; and the Sleeping Beauty is

the first love of many a small boy. Man, from his youth up, craves

enchantment; and though the business of life gives him no opportunity

for the indulging in day-dreams, there are few of us indeed who have not

at some time sought the phantom isles, and sought in vain. There is no

stormy night, when the wind moans through the trees, and the moon-rack

flies overhead, but takes something of its mystery from the recollection

of the enchantments of the dark ages. The sun does not sink into the sea

amidst the low-lying clouds but some vague thought is brought to mind of

the uncharted island whereon that maiden lies sleeping whose hair is

dark as heaven's wrath, and whose breast is white like alabaster in the

pathway of the moon. There she lies in the charmed circle under the

trees, where none may enter until that hour when some pale, lost mariner

shall surprise the secret of the pathway, and, coming suddenly upon her,

shall kiss her shadowed lips. Vague, elusive, undefined, as such

fancies must be, they yet tinge the thoughts of almost every man at

certain moments of his life, and set him searching for the enchantment

of bygone days. Eagerly he looks for those

"...Magic casements opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn";

and it is the fact of their unreality that gives them their haunting

value.

The following story, preserved in a papyrus now at St Petersburg,

describes a mysterious island whereon there dwelt a monster most lovable

and most forlorn: a creature so tenderly drawn, indeed, that the reader

will not fail to enthrone him in the little company of the nobility of

the kingdom of the fairy tale. Translations of the story by two or three

savants have appeared; but the present version, which I give in its

literal form, has been prepared especially for this volume by Mr Alan

Gardiner; and, coming from him, it may be said to be the last word of

the science upon the subject of this difficult text.

The scene with which the story opens is clearly indicated by the

introductory sentences, though actually it is not described. A large

war-galley had come swinging down the Nile from the land of Wawat in the

south, the oars flashing in the Nubian sunlight. On the left the granite

rocks of the island of Bigeh towered above the vessel; on the right the

island of Philæ, as yet devoid of buildings, rested placidly on the

blue waters. Ahead were the docks of Shallal, where the clustered boats

lay darkly against the yellow of the desert, and busy groups of figures,

loading and unloading cargoes, moved to and fro over the sand. Away to

the left, behind Bigeh, the distant roar of the First Cataract could be

heard as the waters went rushing down from Nubia across the frontier

into Egypt.

[Illustration: PL. XIV. A sailor of Lower Nubia and his son.]

[_Photo by E. Bird._

The great vessel had just returned from the little-known country of

Ethiopia, which bordered the Land of the Ghosts, having its frontiers

upon the shores of the sea that encircled the world; and the sailors

were all straining their eyes towards these docks which formed the

southernmost outpost of Egypt, their home. The greatest excitement

prevailed on deck; but in the cabin, erected of vari-coloured cloth in

the stern of the vessel, the noble leader of the expedition which was

now at its conclusion lay in a troubled sleep, tossing nervously upon

his bed. His dreams were all of the terrible ordeal which was before

him. He could take no pleasure in his home-coming, for he was driven

nigh crazy by the thought of entering the presence of the great Pharaoh

himself in order to make his report.

It is almost impossible to realise nowadays the agonies of mind that a

man had to suffer who was obliged to approach the incarnation of the sun

upon earth, and to crave the indulgence of this god in regard to any

shortcomings in the conduct of the affairs intrusted to him. Of all the

kings of the earth the Pharaoh was the most terrible, the most

thoroughly frightening. Not only did he hold the lives of his subjects

in his hand to do with them as he chose, but he also controlled the

welfare of their immortal souls; for, being a god, he had dominion over

the realms of the dead. To be censured by the Pharaoh was to be

excommunicated from the pleasures of this earth and outlawed from the

fair estate of heaven. A well-known Egyptian noble named Sinuhe, the

hero of a fine tale of adventure, describes himself as petrified with

terror when he entered the audience-chamber. "I stretched myself on my

stomach," he writes, "and became unconscious before him (the Pharaoh).

This god addressed me kindly, but I was as a man overtaken by the

twilight: my soul departed, my flesh trembled; my heart was no more in

my body that I should know life from death."[1] Similarly another

personage writes: "Remember the day of bringing the tribute, when thou

passest into the Presence under the window, the nobles on each side

before his Majesty, the nobles and ambassadors (?) of all countries.

They stand and gaze at the tribute, while thou fearest and shrinkest

back, and thy hand is weak, and thou knowest not whether it is death or

life that is before thee; and thou art brave (only) in praying to thy

gods: 'Save me, prosper me this one time.'"[2]

[Footnote 1: Sinuhe, 254-256.]

[Footnote 2: Papyrus Koller, 5, 1-4.]

Of the Pharaoh it is written--

"Thine eye is clearer than the stars of heaven;

Thou seest farther than the sun.

If I speak afar off, thine ear hears;

If I do a hidden deed, thine eye sees it."[1]

[Footnote 1: Anastasi Papyri, 4, 5, 6 ff.]

Or again--

"The god of taste is in thy mouth,

The god of knowledge is in thy heart;

Thy tongue is enthroned in the temple of truth;

God is seated upon thy lips."[2]

[Footnote 2: Kubban stela.]

To meet face to face this all-knowing, all-seeing, celestial creature,

from whom there could be no secrets hid nor any guilt concealed, was an

ordeal to which a man might well look forward with utter horror. It was

this terrible dread that, in the tale with which we are now concerned,

held the captain of this Nubian vessel in agony upon his couch.

As he lay there, biting his finger-nails, one of the ship's officers,

himself a former leader of expeditions, entered the cabin to announce

their arrival at the Shallal docks.

"Good news, prince," said he cheerfully to his writhing master. "Look,

we have reached home. They have taken the mallet and driven in the

mooring-post; the ship's cable has been put on land. There is

merrymaking and thanksgiving, and every man is embracing his fellow. Our

crew has returned unscathed, without loss to our soldiers. We have

reached the end of Wawat, we have passed Bigeh. Yes, indeed, we have

returned safely; we have reached our own land."

At this the prince seems to have groaned anew, much to the distress of

his friend, who could but urge him to pull himself together and to play

the man.

"Listen to me, prince," he begged, "for I am one void of exaggeration.

Wash yourself, pour water on your fingers."

The wretched, man replied, it would seem, with a repetition of his

fears; whereupon the old sailor seems to have sat down by his side and

to have given him a word of advice as to how he should behave in the

king's presence. "Make answer when you are addressed," he said; "speak

to the king with a heart in you; answer without restraint. For it is a

man's mouth that saves him.... But do as you will: to talk to you is

wearisome (to you)."

Presently the old sailor was seized with an idea. He would tell a story,

no matter whether it were strictly true or not, in which his own

adventures should be set forth. He would describe how he was wrecked

upon an unknown island, how he was saved from death, and how, on his

return, he conducted into the Pharaoh's presence. A narration of his own

experiences before his sovereign might give heart to his captain, and

might effectually lift the intolerable burden of dread from the princely

shoulders.

"I will relate to you," he began, "a similar thing which befell me my

very self. I was making a journey to the mines of the sovereign ..."

The prince may here be supposed to have sat up and given gloomy

attention to his friend's words, for Egyptians of all ages have loved a

good story, and tales of adventures in the south were, in early times,

most acceptable. The royal gold mines referred to were probably situated

at the southern-most end of the eastern Egyptian desert. To reach them

one would take ship from Kossair or some other Red Sea port, sail down

the coast to the frontiers of Pount, the modern Somaliland, and then

travel inland by caravan. It was a perilous undertaking, and, at the

time when this story was written, the journey must have furnished

material for amazing yarns.

"I went down on the Great Green Sea," continued the speaker, "in a ship

one hundred and fifty cubits[1] in length and forty cubits in breadth,

and in it were a hundred and fifty sailors, picked men of Egypt. They

scanned the heavens and they scanned the earth, and their hearts were

stouter than lions. They foretold the storm or ever it came, and the

tempest when as yet it was not."

[Footnote 1: The average cubit was about 20-1/2 inches.]

A storm arose while they were out of sight of land, and rapidly

increased in violence, until the waves, according to the very restrained

estimate of the narrator, were eight cubits high--that is to say, about

thirteen or fourteen feet. To one who was accustomed to the waves of the

Nile this would be a great height; and the passage thus suggests that

the scribe was an untravelled man. A vessel of 150 cubits, or about 250

feet, in length might have been expected to ride out a storm of this

magnitude; but, according to the story, she went to pieces, and the

whole ship's company, with the single exception of the teller of the

tale, were drowned. The survivor managed to cling to a plank of wood,

which was driven by the wind towards the shores of an uncharted island,

and here at length he was cast up by the waves.

Not far from the beach there was a small thicket, and to this the

castaway hastened, sheltering therein from the fury of the storm. For

three days in deep despair he lay hidden, "without a companion," as he

said, "save my heart;" but at last the tempest subsided, the sun shone

in the heavens once again, and the famished mariner was able to go in

search of food, which, to his delight, he found in abundance.

The scene upon which he gazed as he plucked the fruit of the laden trees

was most mysterious, and all that he saw around him must have had an

appearance not altogether consistent with reality, for, indeed, the

island was not real. It had been called into existence, perhaps, at the

bidding of some god to relieve the tedium of an eternal afternoon, and

suddenly it had appeared, floating upon the blue waters of the ocean.

How long it had remained there, how long it would still remain, none

could tell, for at any moment the mind of the god might be diverted, and

instantly it would dissolve and vanish as would a dream. Beneath the

isle the seas moved, and there in the darkness the fishes of the deep,

with luminous, round eyes, passed to and fro, nibbling the roots of the

trees above them. Overhead the heavens stretched, and around about

spread the expanse of the sea upon which no living thing might be seen,

save only the dolphins as they leapt into the sunshine and sank again

amidst the gleaming spray.

There was abundant vegetation upon the island, but it does not appear to

have looked quite real. The fig-trees were heavy with fruit, the vines

were festooned from bough to bough, hung with clusters of grapes, and

pomegranates were ripe for the plucking. But there seems to have been an

unearthliness about them, as though a deep enchantment were upon them.

In the tangled undergrowth through which the bewildered sailor walked

there lay great melons and pumpkins. The breeze wafted to his nostrils

the smell of the incense-trees; and the scent of the flowers, after the

storm, must have made every breath he breathed a pleasure of Paradise to

him. Moving over the luxuriant ground, he put up flights of wonderful

birds which sped towards the interior, red, green, and golden, against

the sky. Monkeys chattered at him from the trees, and sprang from

branch to branch amidst the dancing flowers. In shadowed pools of clear

water fishes were to be seen, gliding amidst the reeds; and amongst the

rocks beside the sea the castaway could look down upon the creatures of

the deep imprisoned between the tides.

Food in all forms was to hand, and he had but to fill his arms with the

good things which Fate had provided. "I found there," he said, "figs,

grapes, and all manner of goodly onions; melons and pomegranates were

there, and pumpkins of every kind. Fishes were there and fowls: there

was nought that was lacking in it. I satisfied myself, and set upon the

ground the abundance of that with which my arms were filled. I took the

fire-borer and kindled a fire, and made a burnt-offering to the gods."

Seated in the warm sunshine amidst the trees, eating a roast fowl

seasoned with onions or some equally palatable concoction, he seems to

have found the life of a shipwrecked mariner by no means as distressing

as he had anticipated; and the wording of the narrative appears to be so

arranged that an impression of comfortable ease and security may

surround his sunlit figure. Suddenly, however, all was changed. "I

heard," said he, "a sound as of thunder, and I thought it was the waves

of the sea." Then "the trees creaked and the earth trembled"; and, like

the Egyptian that he was, he went down on his shaking hands and knees,

and buried his face in the ground.

At length "I uncovered my face," he declared, "and I found it was a

serpent that came, of the length of thirty cubits"--about fifty

feet--"and his tail was more than two cubits" in diameter. "His skin was

overlaid with gold, and his eyebrows were of real lapis lazuli, and he

was exceeding perfect."

"He opened his mouth to me," he continued, "as I lay on my stomach

before him, and said to me: 'Who brought thee, who brought thee, little

one?--who brought thee? If thou delayest to tell me who brought thee to

this island I will cause thee to know thyself (again only) when thou art

ashes, and art become that which is not seen'"--that is to say, a ghost.

"Thus you spoke to me," whispered the old sailor, as though again

addressing the serpent, who, in the narration of these adventures, had

become once more a very present reality to him, "but I heard it not. I

lay before thee, and was unconscious."

Continuing his story, he told how the great serpent lifted him tenderly

in his golden mouth, and carried him to his dwelling-place, setting him

down there without hurt, amongst the fruit-trees and the flowers. The

Egyptian at once flung himself upon his stomach before him, and lay

there in a stupor of terror. The serpent, however, meant him no harm,

and indeed looked down on him with tender pity as he questioned him

once more.

"Who brought thee, who brought thee, little one?" he asked again, "Who

brought thee to this island of the Great Green Sea, whereof the (under)

half is waves?"

On his hands and knees before the kindly monster the shipwrecked

Egyptian managed to regain possession of his faculties sufficiently to

give an account of himself.

"I was going down to the mines," he faltered, "on a mission of the

sovereign, in a ship one hundred and fifty cubits in length and forty in

breadth, and in it were one hundred and fifty sailors, picked men of

Egypt. They scanned the heavens and they scanned the earth, and their

hearts were stouter than lions. They foretold the storm or ever it came,

and the tempest when as yet it was not. Every one of them, his heart was

stout and his arm strong beyond his fellow. There was none unproven

amongst them. The storm arose while that we were on the Great Green Sea,

before we touched land; and as we sailed it redoubled (its strength),

and the waves thereof were eight cubits. There was a plank of wood to

which I clung. The ship perished, and of them that were in her not one

was left saving me alone, who now am at your side. And I was brought to

this island by the waves of the Great Green Sea."

At this point the man seems to have been overcome once more with

terror, and the serpent, therefore, hastened to reassure him.

"Fear not, little one," he said in his gentle voice; "fear not. Let not

thy face be dismayed. If thou hast come to me it is God who has let thee

live, who has brought thee to this phantom isle in which there is naught

that is lacking, but it is full of all good things. Behold, thou shalt

pass month for month until thou accomplish four months upon this island.

And a ship shall come from home, and sailors in it whom thou knowest,

and thou shalt go home with them, and shalt die in thine own city."

"How glad is he," exclaimed the old mariner as he related his adventures

to the prince, "how glad is he that recounts what he has experienced

when the calamity is passed!" The prince, no doubt, replied with a

melancholy grunt, and the thread of the story was once more taken up.

There was a particular reason why the serpent should be touched and

interested to hear how Providence had saved the Egyptian from death, for

he himself had survived a great calamity, and had been saved from an

equally terrible fate, as he now proceeded to relate.

"I will tell to thee the like thereof," he said, "which happened in this

island. I dwelt herein with my brothers, and my children were among

them. Seventy-two serpents we were, all told, with my offspring and my

brothers; nor have I yet mentioned to thee a little girl brought to me

by fortune. A star came down, and all these went up in the flames. And

it happened so that I was not together with them when they were

consumed; I was not in their midst. I could have died (of grief) for

them when I found them as a single pile of corpses."

It is clear from the story that this great serpent was intended to be

pictured as a sad and lonely, but most lovable, character. All alone

upon this ghostly isle, the last of his race, one is to imagine him

dreaming of the little girl who was taken from him, together with all

his family. Although fabulous himself, and half divine, he was yet the

victim of the gods, and was made to suffer real sorrows in his unreal

existence. Day by day he wandered over his limited domain, twisting his

golden body amidst the pumpkins, and rearing himself above the

fig-trees; thundering down to the beach to salute the passing dolphins,

or sunning himself, a golden blaze, upon the rocks. There remained

naught for him to do but to await the cessation of the phantasy of his

life; and yet, though his lot was hard, he was ready at once to

subordinate his sorrows to those of the shipwrecked sailor before him.

No more is said of his distress, but with his next words he seems to

have dismissed his own misfortunes, and to have attempted to comfort the

Egyptian.

"If thou art brave," he said, "and restrainest thy longing, thou shalt

press thy children to thy bosom and kiss thy wife, and behold thy

house--that is the best of all things. Thou shalt reach home, and shalt

dwell there amongst thy brothers."

"Thereat," said the mariner, "I cast me upon my stomach and touched the

ground before him, and I said to him: 'I will tell of thy might to the

Sovereign, I will cause him to be acquainted with thy greatness. I will

let bring to thee perfume and spices, myrrh and sweet-scented woods, and

incense of the sanctuaries wherewithal every god is propitiated. I will

recount all that has befallen me, and that which I have seen by his

might; and they shall praise thee in that city before the magistrates of

the entire land. I will slaughter to thee oxen as a burnt-offering,

geese will I pluck for thee, and I will let bring to thee vessels laden

with all the goodly things of Egypt, as may be (fitly) done to a god who

loves men in a distant land, a land unknown to men.'"

At these words the serpent opened his golden mouth and fell to laughing.

The thought that this little mortal, grovelling before him, could

believe himself able to repay the kindnesses received tickled him

immensely.

"Hast thou not much incense (here, then)?" he laughed. "Art not become a

lord of frankincense? And I, behold I am prince of Pount," the land of

perfumes, "and the incense, _that_ is my very own. As for the spices

which thou sayest shall be brought, they are the wealth of this island.

But it shall happen when thou hast left this place, never shalt thou see

this island more, for it shall be changed to waves."

The teller of the story does not relate in what manner he received this

well-merited reproof. The gentle monster, no doubt, was tolerant of his

presumptuousness, and soon put him at his ease again. During the whole

period of the Egyptian's residence on the island, in fact, the golden

serpent seems to have been invariably kind to him. The days passed by

like a happy dream, and the spell of the island's enchantment possessed

him so that, in after times, the details of the events of every day were

lost in the single illusion of the whole adventure.

At last the ship arrived, as it had been foretold, and the sailor

watched her passing over the hazy sea towards the mysterious shore. "I

went and got me up into a tall tree," he said, "and I recognised those

that were in it. And I went to report the matter (to the serpent), and I

found that he knew it."

Very tenderly the great monster addressed him. "Fare thee well, little

one," he said "Fare thee well to thy house. Mayest thou see thy children

and raise up a good name in thy city. Behold, such are my wishes for

thee."

"Then," continued the sailor, "I laid me on my stomach, my arms were

bended before him. And he gave me a freight of frankincense, perfume and

myrrh, sweet-scented woods and antimony, giraffes' tails, great heaps

of incense, elephant tusks, dogs, apes and baboons, and all manner of

valuable things. And I loaded them in that ship, and I laid myself on my

stomach to make thanksgiving to him. Then he said to me: 'Behold, thou

shalt come home in two months, and shalt press thy children to thy

bosom, and shalt flourish in their midst; and there thou shalt be

buried.'"

[Illustration: PL. XV. A Nile boat passing the hills of Thebes.]

[_Photo by E. Bird._]

To appreciate the significance of these last words it is necessary to

remember what an important matter it was to an Egyptian that he should

be buried in his native city. In our own case the position upon the map

of the place where we lay down our discarded bones is generally not of

first-rate importance, and the thought of being buried in foreign lands

does not frighten us. Whether our body is to be packed away in the

necropolis of our city, or shovelled into a hole on the outskirts of

Timbuctoo, is not a matter of vital interest. There is a certain

sentiment that leads us to desire interment amidst familiar scenes, but

it is subordinated with ease to other considerations. To the Egyptian,

however, it was a matter of paramount importance. "What is a greater

thing," says Sinuhe in the tale of his adventures in Asia, "than that I

should be buried in the land in which I was born?" "Thou shalt not die

in a foreign land; Asiatics shall not conduct thee to the tomb," says

the Pharaoh to him; and again, "It is no little thing that thou shalt

be buried without Asiatics conducting thee."[1] There is a stela now

preserved in Stuttgart, in which the deceased man asks those who pass

his tomb to say a prayer for his soul; and he adjures them in these

words: "So truly as ye wish that your native gods should praise you, and

that ye should be established in your seats, and that ye should hand

down your offices to your children: that ye should reach your homes in

safety, and recount your travels to your wives;--then say a prayer,"

&c.[2]

[Footnote 1: Sinuhe, B. 159, 197, 258.]

[Footnote 2: Zeit. Aeg. Spr., 39 (1901), p. 118.]

The serpent was thus giving the castaway a promise which meant more to

him than all the other blessings, and it was with a light heart indeed

that he ran down to the beach to greet his countrymen. "I went down to

the shore where the ship was," he continued, "and I called to the

soldiers which were in that ship, and I gave praises upon the shore to

the lord of this island, and likewise did they which were in the ship."

Then he stepped on board, the gangway was drawn up, and, with a great

sweep of the oars, the ship passed out on to the open sea. Standing on

deck amongst the new cargo, the officers and their rescued friend bowed

low to the great serpent who towered above the trees at the water's

edge, gleaming in the sunshine. "Fare thee well, little one," his deep

voice rolled across the water; and again they bowed in obeisance to him.

The main-sail was unfurled to the wind, and the vessel scudded bravely

across the Great Green Sea; but for some time yet they must have kept

their eyes upon the fair shape of the phantom island, as the trees

blended into the hills and the hills at last into the haze; and their

vision must have been focussed upon that one gleaming point where the

golden serpent, alone once more with his memories, watched the ship

moving over the fairy seas.

"So sailed we northwards," said the sailor, "to the place of the

Sovereign, and we reached home in two months, in accordance with all

that he had said. And I entered in before the Sovereign, and I brought

to him this tribute which I had taken away from within this island. Then

gave he thanksgivings for me before the magistrates of the entire land.

And I was made a 'Follower,' and was rewarded with the serfs of such an

one."

The old sailor turned to the gloomy prince as he brought his story to an

end. "Look at me," he exclaimed, "now that I have reached land, now that

I have seen (again in memory) what I have experienced. Hearken thou to

me, for behold, to hearken is good for men."

But the prince only sighed the more deeply, and, with a despairing

gesture, replied: "Be not (so) superior, my friend! Doth one give water

to a bird on the eve, when it is to be slain on the morrow?" With these

words the manuscript abruptly ends, and we are supposed to leave the

prince still disconsolate in his cabin, while his friend, unable to

cheer him, returns to his duties on deck.

PART III.

RESEARCHES IN THE TREASURY.

"...And he, shall be,

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,

Such splendid purpose in his eyes,

Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,

Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who loved, who suffered countless ills,

Who battled for the True, the Just,

Be blown about the desert dust,

Or seal'd within the iron hills?"

--TENNYSON.

CHAPTER VII.

RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN EGYPT.

There came to the camp of a certain professor, who was engaged in

excavating the ruins of an ancient Egyptian city, a young and

faultlessly-attired Englishman, whose thirst for dramatic adventure had

led him to offer his services as an unpaid assistant digger. This

immaculate personage had read in novels and tales many an account of the

wonders which the spade of the excavator could reveal, and he firmly

believed that it was only necessary to set a "nigger" to dig a little

hole in the ground to open the way to the treasuries of the Pharaohs.

Gold, silver, and precious stones gleamed before him, in his

imagination, as he hurried along subterranean passages to the vaults of

long-dead kings. He expected to slide upon the seat of his very

well-made breeches down the staircase of the ruined palace which he had

entered by way of the skylight, and to find himself, at the bottom, in

the presence of the bejewelled dead. In the intervals between such

experiences he was of opinion that a little quiet gazelle shooting would

agreeably fill in the swiftly passing hours; and at the end of the

season's work he pictured himself returning to the bosom of his family

with such a tale to tell that every ear would be opened to him.

On his arrival at the camp he was conducted to the site of his future

labours; and his horrified gaze was directed over a large area of

mud-pie, knee-deep in which a few bedraggled natives slushed their way

downwards. After three weeks' work on this distressing site, the

professor announced that he had managed to trace through the mud the

outline of the palace walls, once the feature of the city, and that the

work here might now be regarded as finished. He was then conducted to a

desolate spot in the desert, and until the day on which he fled back to

England he was kept to the monotonous task of superintending a gang of

natives whose sole business it was to dig a very large hole in the sand,

day after day and week after week.

It is, however, sometimes the fortune of the excavator to make a

discovery which almost rivals in dramatic interest the tales of his

youth. Such as experience fell to the lot of Emil Brugsch Pasha when he

was lowered into an ancient tomb and found himself face to face with a

score of the Pharaohs of Egypt, each lying in his coffin; or again, when

Monsieur de Morgan discovered the great mass of royal jewels in one of

the pyramids at Dachour. But such "finds" can be counted on the fingers,

and more often an excavation is a fruitless drudgery. Moreover, the

life of the digger is not often a pleasant one.

[Illustration: PL. XVI. The excavations on the site of the city

of Abydos.]

[_Photo by the Author._

It will perhaps be of interest to the reader of romances to illustrate

the above remarks by the narration of some of my own experiences; but

there are only a few interesting and unusual episodes in which I have

had the peculiarly good fortune to be an actor. There will probably be

some drama to be felt in the account of the more important discoveries

(for there certainly is to the antiquarian himself); but it should be

pointed out that the interest of these rare finds pales before the

description, which many of us have heard, of how the archæologists of a

past century discovered the body of Charlemagne clad in his royal robes

and seated upon his throne,--which, by the way, is quite untrue. In

spite of all that is said to the contrary, truth is seldom stranger than

fiction; and the reader who desires to be told of the discovery of

buried cities whose streets are paved with gold should take warning in

time and return at once to his novels.

If the dawning interest of the reader has now been thoroughly cooled by

these words, it may be presumed that it will be utterly annihilated by

the following narration of my first fruitless excavation; and thus one

will be able to continue the story with the relieved consciousness that

nobody is attending.

In the capacity of assistant to Professor Flinders Petrie, I was set,

many years ago, to the task of excavating a supposed royal cemetery in

the desert behind the ancient city of Abydos, in Upper Egypt. Two mounds

were first attacked; and after many weeks of work in digging through the

sand, the superstructure of two great tombs was bared. In the case of

the first of these several fine passages of good masonry were cleared,

and at last the burial-chamber was reached. In the huge sarcophagus

which was there found great hopes were entertained that the body and

funeral-offerings of the dead prince would be discovered; but when at

last the interior was laid bare the solitary article found was a copy of

a French newspaper left behind by the last, and equally disgusted,

excavator. The second tomb defied the most ardent exploration, and

failed to show any traces of a burial. The mystery was at last solved by

Professor Petrie, who, with his usual keen perception, soon came to the

conclusion that the whole tomb was a dummy, built solely to hide an

enormous mass of rock chippings the presence of which had been a puzzle

for some time. These masons' chippings were evidently the output from

some large cutting in the rock, and it became apparent that there must

be a great rock tomb in the neighbourhood. Trial trenches in the

vicinity presently revealed the existence of a long wall, which, being

followed in either direction, proved to be the boundary of a vast court

or enclosure built upon the desert at the foot of a conspicuous cliff. A

ramp led up to the entrance; but as it was slightly askew and pointed

to the southern end of the enclosure, it was supposed that the rock

tomb, which presumably ran into the cliff from somewhere inside this

area, was situated at that end. The next few weeks were occupied in the

tedious task of probing the sand hereabouts, and at length in clearing

it away altogether down to the surface of the underlying rock. Nothing

was found, however; and sadly we turned to the exact middle of the

court, and began to work slowly to the foot of the cliff. Here, in the

very middle of the back wall, a pillared chamber was found, and it

seemed certain that the entrance to the tomb would now be discovered.

The best men were placed to dig out this chamber, and the excavator--it

was many years ago--went about his work with the weight of fame upon his

shoulders and an expression of intense mystery upon his sorely

sun-scorched face. How clearly memory recalls the letter home that week,

"We are on the eve of a great discovery"; and how vividly rises the

picture of the baking desert sand into which the sweating workmen were

slowly digging their way! But our hopes were short-lived, for it very

soon became apparent that there was no tomb entrance in this part of the

enclosure. There remained the north end of the area, and on to this all

the available men were turned. Deeper and deeper they dug their way,

until the mounds of sand thrown out formed, as it were, the lip of a

great crater. At last, some forty or fifty feet down, the underlying

rock was struck, and presently the mouth of a great shaft was exposed

leading down into the bowels of the earth. The royal tomb had at last

been discovered, and it only remained to effect an entrance. The days

were now filled with excitement, and, the thoughts being concentrated on

the question of the identity of the royal occupant of the tomb, it was

soon fixed in our minds that we were about to enter the burial-place of

no less a personage than the great Pharaoh Senusert III. (Sesostris),

the same king whose jewels were found at Dachour.

One evening, just after I had left the work, the men came down to the

distant camp to say that the last barrier was now reached and that an

entrance could be effected at once. In the pale light of the moon,

therefore, I hastened back to the desert with a few trusted men. As we

walked along, one of these natives very cheerfully remarked that we

should all probably get our throats cut, as the brigands of the

neighbourhood got wind of the discovery, and were sure to attempt to

enter the tomb that night. With this pleasing prospect before us we

walked with caution over the silent desert. Reaching the mound of sand

which surrounded our excavation, we crept to the top and peeped over

into the crater. At once we observed a dim light below us, and almost

immediately an agitated but polite voice from the opposite mound called

out in Arabic, "Go away, mister. We have all got guns." This remark was

followed by a shot which whistled past me; and therewith I slid down the

hill once more, and heartily wished myself safe in my bed. Our party

then spread round the crater, and at a given word we proposed to rush

the place. But the enemy was too quick for us, and after the briefest

scrimmage, and the exchanging* of a harmless shot or two, we found

ourselves in possession of the tomb, and were able to pretend that we

were not a bit frightened.

*Transcriber's note: Original text read "exhanging".

Then into the dark depths of the shaft we descended, and ascertained

that the robbers had not effected an entrance. A long night watch

followed, and the next day we had the satisfaction of arresting some of

the criminals. The tomb was found to penetrate several hundred feet into

the cliff, and at the end of the long and beautifully worked passage the

great royal sarcophagus was found--empty! So ended a very strenuous

season's work.

If the experiences of a digger in Professor Petrie's camp are to be

regarded as typical, they will probably serve to damp the ardour of

eager young gentlemen in search of ancient Egyptian treasure. One lives

in a bare little hut constructed of mud, and roofed with cornstalks or

corrugated iron; and if by chance there happened to be a rain storm, as

there was when I was a member of the community, one may watch the frail

building gently subside in a liquid stream on to one's bed and books.

For seven days in the week one's work continues, and it is only to the

real enthusiast that that work is not monotonous and tiresome.

A few years later it fell to my lot to excavate for the Government the

funeral temple of Thutmosis III. at Thebes, and a fairly large sum was

spent upon the undertaking. Although the site was most promising in

appearances, a couple of months' work brought to light hardly a single

object of importance, whereas exactly similar sites in the same

neighbourhood had produced inscriptions of the greatest value. Two years

ago I assisted at an excavation upon a site of my own selection, the net

result of which, after six weeks' work, was one mummified cat! To sit

over the work day after day, as did the unfortunate promoter of this

particular enterprise, with the flies buzzing around his face and the

sun blazing down upon him from a relentless sky, was hardly a

pleasurable task; and to watch the clouds of dust go up from the

tip-heap, where tons of unprofitable rubbish rolled down the hillside

all day long, was an occupation for the damned. Yet that is excavating

as it is usually found to be.

Now let us consider the other side of the story. In the Valley of the

Tombs of the Kings at Thebes excavations have been conducted for some

years by Mr Theodore M. Davis, of Newport, Rhode Island, by special

arrangement with the Department of Antiquities of the Egyptian

Government; and as an official of that Department I have had the

privilege of being present at all the recent discoveries. The finding of

the tomb of Yuaa and Tuau a few years ago was one of the most

interesting archæological events of recent times, and one which came

somewhere near to the standard of romance set by the novelists. Yuaa and

Tuau were the parents of Queen Tiy, the discovery of whose tomb is

recorded in the next chapter. When the entrance of their tomb was

cleared, a flight of steps was exposed, leading down to a passage

blocked by a wall of loose stones. In the top right-hand corner a small

hole, large enough to admit a man, had been made in ancient times, and

through this we could look down into a dark passage. As it was too late

in the day to enter at once, we postponed that exciting experience until

the morrow, and some police were sent for to guard the entrance during

the night. I had slept the previous night over the mouth, and there was

now no possibility of leaving the place for several more nights, so a

rough camp was formed on the spot.

Here I settled myself down for the long watch, and speculated on the

events of the next morning, when Mr Davis and one or two well-known

Egyptologists were to come to the valley to open the sepulchre.

Presently, in the silent darkness, a slight noise was heard on the

hillside, and immediately the challenge of the sentry rang out. This

was answered by a distant call, and after some moments of alertness on

our part we observed two figures approaching us. These, to my surprise,

proved to be a well-known American artist and his wife,[1] who had

obviously come on the expectation that trouble was ahead; but though in

this they were certainly destined to suffer disappointment, still, out

of respect for the absolute unconcern of both visitors, it may be

mentioned that the mouth of a lonely tomb already said by native rumour

to contain incalculable wealth is not perhaps the safest place in the

world. Here, then, on a level patch of rock we three lay down and slept

fitfully until the dawn. Soon after breakfast the wall at the mouth of

the tomb was pulled down, and the party passed into the low passage

which sloped down to the burial chamber. At the bottom of this passage

there was a second wall blocking the way; but when a few layers had been

taken off the top we were able to climb, one by one, into the chamber.

[Footnote 1: Mr and Mrs Joseph Lindon Smith.]

[Illustration: PL. XVII. Excavating the Osireion at Abydos. A chain of

boys handing up baskets of sand to the

surface.]

[_Photo by the Author._

Imagine entering a town house which had been closed for the summer:

imagine the stuffy room, the stiff, silent appearance of the furniture,

the feeling that some ghostly occupants of the vacant chairs have just

been disturbed, the desire to throw open the windows to let life into

room once more. That was perhaps the first sensation as we stood, really

dumfounded, and stared around at the relics of the life of over three

thousand years ago, all of which were as new almost as when they graced

the palace of Prince Yuaa. Three arm-chairs were perhaps the first

objects to attract the attention: beautiful carved wooden chairs,

decorated with gold. Belonging to one of these was a pillow made of down

and covered with linen. It was so perfectly preserved that one might

have sat upon it or tossed it from this chair to that without doing it

injury. Here were fine alabaster vases, and in one of these we were

startled to find a liquid, like honey or syrup, still unsolidified by

time. Boxes of exquisite workmanship stood in various parts of the room,

some resting on delicately wrought legs. Now the eye was directed to a

wicker trunk fitted with trays and partitions, and ventilated with

little apertures, since the scents were doubtless strong. Two most

comfortable beds were to be observed, fitted with springy string

mattresses and decorated with charming designs in gold. There in the far

corner, placed upon the top of a number of large white jars, stood the

light chariot which Yuaa had owned in his lifetime. In all directions

stood objects gleaming with gold undulled by a speck of dust, and one

looked from one article to another with the feeling that the entire

human conception of Time was wrong. These were the things of yesterday,

of a year or so ago. Why, here were meats prepared for the feasts in the

Underworld; here were Yuaa's favourite joints, each neatly placed in a

wooden box as though for a journey. Here was his staff, and here were

his sandals,--a new pair and an old. In another corner there stood the

magical figures by the power of which the prince was to make his way

through Hades. The words of the mystical "Chapter of the Flame" and of

the "Chapter of the Magical Figure of the North Wall" were inscribed

upon them; and upon a great roll of papyrus twenty-two yards in length

other efficacious prayers were written.

But though the eyes passed from object to object, they ever returned to

the two lidless gilded coffins in which the owners of this room of the

dead lay as though peacefully sleeping. First above Yuaa and then above

his wife the electric lamps were held, and as one looked down into their

quiet faces there was almost the feeling that they would presently open

their eyes and blink at the light. The stern features of the old man

commanded one's attention, again and again our gaze was turned from this

mass of wealth to this sleeping figure in whose honour it had been

placed here.

At last we returned to the surface to allow the thoughts opportunity to

collect themselves and the pulses time to quiet down, for, even to the

most unemotional, a discovery of this kind, bringing one into the very

presence of the past, has really an unsteadying effect. Then once more

we descended, and made the preliminary arrangements for the cataloguing

of the antiquities. It was now that the real work began, and, once the

excitement was past, there was a monotony of labour to be faced which

put a very considerable strain on the powers of all concerned. The hot

days when one sweated over the heavy packing-cases, and the bitterly

cold nights when one lay at the mouth of the tomb under the stars,

dragged on for many a week; and when at last the long train of boxes was

carried down to the Nile _en route_ for the Cairo Museum, it was with a

sigh of relief that the official returned to his regular work.

This, of course, was a very exceptional discovery. Mr Davis has made

other great finds, but to me they have not equalled in dramatic interest

the discovery just recorded. Even in this royal valley, however, there

is much drudgery to be faced, and for a large part of the season's work

it is the excavator's business to turn over endless masses of rock

chippings, and to dig huge holes which have no interest for the patient

digger. Sometimes the mouth of a tomb is bared, and is entered with the

profoundest hopes, which are at once dashed by the sudden abrupt ending

of the cutting a few yards from the surface. At other times a

tomb-chamber is reached and is found to be absolutely empty.

At another part of Thebes the well-known Egyptologist, Professor

Schiaparelli, had excavated for a number of years without finding

anything of much importance, when suddenly one fine day he struck the

mouth of a large tomb which was evidently intact. I was at once informed

of the discovery, and proceeded to the spot as quickly as possible. The

mouth of the tomb was approached down a flight of steep, rough steps,

still half-choked with _débris_. At the bottom of this the entrance of a

passage running into the hillside was blocked by a wall of rough stones.

After photographing and removing this, we found ourselves in a long, low

tunnel, blocked by a second wall a few yards ahead. Both these walls

were intact, and we realised that we were about to see what probably no

living man had ever seen before: the absolutely intact remains of a rich

Theban of the Imperial Age--_i.e._, about 1200 or 1300 B.C. When this

second wall was taken down we passed into a carefully-cut passage high

enough to permit of one standing upright.

At the end of this passage a plain wooden door barred our progress. The

wood retained the light colour of fresh deal, and looked for all the

world as though it had been set up but yesterday. A heavy wooden lock,

such as is used at the present day, held the door fast. A neat bronze

handle on the side of the door was connected by a spring to a wooden

knob set in the masonry door-post; and this spring was carefully sealed

with a small dab of stamped clay. The whole contrivance seemed so modern

that Professor Schiaparelli called to his servant for the key, who quite

seriously replied, "I don't know where it is, sir." He then thumped the

door with his hand to see whether it would be likely to give; and, as

the echoes reverberated through the tomb, one felt that the mummy, in

the darkness beyond, might well think that his resurrection call had

come. One almost expected him to rise, like the dead knights of Kildare

in the Irish legend, and to ask, "Is it time?" for the three thousand

years which his religion had told him was the duration of his life in

the tomb was already long past.

Meanwhile we turned our attention to the objects which stood in the

passage, having been placed there at the time of the funeral, owing to

the lack of room in the burial-chamber. Here a vase, rising upon a

delicately shaped stand, attracted the eye by its beauty of form; and

here a bedstead caused us to exclaim at its modern appearance. A

palm-leaf fan, used by the ancient Egyptians to keep the flies off their

wines and unguents, stood near a now empty jar; and near by a basket of

dried-up fruit was to be seen. This dried fruit gave the impression that

the tomb was perhaps a few months old, but there was nothing else to be

seen which suggested that the objects were even as much as a year old.

It was almost impossible to believe, and quite impossible to realise,

that we were standing where no man had stood for well over three

thousand years; and that we were actually breathing the air which had

remained sealed in the passage since the ancient priests had closed the

entrance thirteen hundred years before Christ.

Before we could proceed farther, many flashlight photographs had to be

taken, and drawings made of the doorway; and after this a panel of the

woodwork had to be removed with a fret-saw in order that the lock and

seal might not be damaged. At last, however, this was accomplished, and

the way into the tomb-chamber was open. Stepping through the frame of

the door, we found ourselves in an unencumbered portion of the floor,

while around us in all directions stood the funeral furniture, and on

our left the coffins of the deceased noble and his wife loomed large.

Everything looked new and undecayed, and even the order in which the

objects were arranged suggested a tidying-up done that very morning. The

gravel on the floor was neatly smoothed, and not a speck of dust was

anywhere to be observed. Over the large outer coffin a pall of fine

linen was laid, not rotting and falling to pieces like the cloth of

mediæval times we see in our museums, but soft and strong like the

sheets of our beds. In the clear space before the coffin stood a wooden

pedestal in the form of a miniature lotus column. On the top of this,

resting on three wooden prongs, was a small copper dish, in which were

the ashes of incense, and the little stick used for stirring them. One

asked oneself in bewilderment whether the ashes here, seemingly not

cold, had truly ceased to glow at a time when Rome and Greece were

undreamt of, when Assyria did not exist, and when the Exodus of the

Children of Israel was yet unaccomplished.

On low tables round cakes of bread were laid out, not cracked and

shrivelled, but smooth and brown, with a kind of white-of-egg glaze upon

them. Onions and fruit were also spread out; and the fruit of the _dôm_

palm was to be seen in plenty. In various parts of the chamber there

were numerous bronze vessels of different shapes, intended for the

holding of milk and other drinkables.

Well supplied with food and drink, the senses of the dead man were

soothed by a profusion of flowers, which lay withered but not decayed

beside the coffin, and which at the time of the funeral must have filled

the chamber with their sweetness. Near the doorway stood an upright

wooden chest closed with a lid. Opening this, we found it to contain the

great ceremonial wig of the deceased man, which was suspended from a

rail passing across the top of the chest, and hung free of the sides and

bottom. The black hair was plaited into hundreds of little tails, but in

size the wig was not unlike those of the early eighteenth century in

Europe. Chairs, beds, and other pieces of furniture were arranged around

the room, and at one side there were a number of small chests and boxes

piled up against the wall. We opened one or two of these, and found them

to contain delicate little vases of glass, stone, and metal, wrapped

round with rags to prevent them breaking. These, like everything else

in the tomb, were new and fresh, and showed no trace of the passing of

the years.

The coffins, of course, were hidden by the great casing in which each

rested, and which itself was partly hidden by the linen pall. Nothing

could be touched for many days, until photographs had been taken and

records made; and we therefore returned through the long passage to the

light of the day.

There must have been a large number of intact tombs to be found when

first the modern interest in Egyptian antiquities developed; but the

market thus created had to be supplied, and gangs of illicit diggers

made short work of the most accessible tombs. This illegal excavation,

of course, continues to some extent at the present day, in spite of all

precautions, but the results are becoming less and less proportionate to

the labour expended and risk taken. A native likes best to do a little

quiet digging in his own back yard and to admit nobody else into the

business. To illustrate this, I may mention a tragedy which was brought

to my notice a few years ago. A certain native discovered the entrance

of a tomb in the floor of his stable, and at once proceeded to worm his

way down the tunnel. That was the end of the native. His wife, finding

that he had not returned two hours or so later, went down the newly

found tunnel after him. That was the end of her also. In turn, three

other members of the family went down into the darkness; and that was

the end of them. A native official was then called, and, lighting his

way with a candle, penetrated down the winding passage. The air was so

foul that he was soon obliged to retreat, but he stated that he was just

able to see in the distance ahead the bodies of the unfortunate

peasants, all of whom had been overcome by what he quaintly described as

"the evil lighting and bad climate." Various attempts at the rescue of

the bodies having failed, we gave orders that this tomb should be

regarded as their sepulchre, and that its mouth should be sealed up.

According to the natives, there was evidently a vast hoard of wealth

stored at the bottom of this tomb, and the would-be robbers had met

their death at the hands of the demon in charge of it, who had seized

each man by the throat as he came down the tunnel and had strangled him.

The Egyptian peasants have a very strong belief in the power of such

creatures of the spirit world. A native who was attempting recently to

discover hidden treasure in a certain part of the desert, sacrificed a

lamb each night above the spot where he believed the treasure to lie, in

order to propitiate the _djin_ who guarded it. On the other hand,

however, they have no superstition as regards the sanctity of the

ancient dead, and they do not hesitate on that ground to rifle the

tombs. Thousands of graves have been desecrated by these seekers after

treasure, and it is very largely the result of this that scientific

excavation is often so fruitless nowadays. When an excavator states that

he has discovered a tomb, one takes it for granted that he means a

_plundered_ tomb, unless he definitely says that it was intact, in which

case one calls him a lucky fellow and regards him with green envy.

And thus we come back to my remarks at the beginning of this chapter,

that there is a painful disillusionment awaiting the man who comes to

dig in Egypt in the hope of finding the golden cities of the Pharaohs or

the bejewelled bodies of their dead. Of the latter there are but a few

left to be found. The discovery of one of them forms the subject of the

next chapter.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE TOMB OF TIY AND AKHNATON.[1]

[Footnote 1: A few paragraphs in this chapter also appear in my

'Life and Times of Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt.'

(Wm. Blackwood & Sons, 1910.)]

In January 1907 the excavations in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings

at Thebes, which are being conducted each year by Mr Davis, brought to

light the entrance of a tomb which, by its style, appeared to be that of

a royal personage of the XVIIIth Dynasty. The Valley lies behind the

cliffs which form the western boundary of Thebes, and is approached by a

long winding road running between the rocks and rugged hills of the

Lybian desert. Here the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth to the XXth Dynasties

were buried in large sepulchres cut into the sides of the hills; and the

present excavations have for their object the removal of the _débris_

which has collected at the foot of these hills, in order that the tombs

hidden beneath may be revealed. About sixty tombs are now open, some of

which were already known to Greek and Roman travellers; and there are

probably not more than two or three still to be discovered.

When this new tomb-entrance was uncovered I was at once notified, and

proceeded with all despatch to the Valley. It was not long before we

were able to enter the tomb. A rough stairway led down into the

hillside, bringing us to the mouth of a passage which was entirely

blocked by a wall of built stones. On removing this wall we found

ourselves in a small passage, descending at a sharp incline to a chamber

which could be seen a few yards farther on. Instead of this passage

being free from _débris_, however, as we had expected on finding the

entrance-wall intact, it was partly filled with fallen stones which

seemed to be the ruins of an earlier entrance-wall. On top of this heap

of stones lay one of the sides of a large funeral shrine, almost

entirely blocking the passage. This shrine, as we later saw, was in the

form of a great box-like sarcophagus, made of cedar-wood covered with

gold, and it had been intended as an outer covering for the coffin of

the deceased person. It was, however, not put together: three sides of

it were leaning against the walls of the burial-chamber, and the fourth

was here in the passage. Either it was never built up, or else it was in

process of being taken out of the tomb again when the work was

abandoned.

[Illustration: PL. XVIII. The entrance of the tomb of Queen Tiy, with

Egyptian policeman standing beside it. On

the left is the later tomb of Rameses X.]

[_Photo by R. Paul._

To pass this portion of the shrine which lay in the passage without

doing it damage was no easy matter. We could not venture to move it, as

the wood was rotten; and indeed, for over a year it remained in its

original position. We therefore made a bridge of planks within a few

inches of the low roof, and on this we wriggled ourselves across into

the unencumbered passage beyond. In the funeral-chamber, besides the

other portions of the shrine, we found at one corner a splendid coffin,

in the usual form of a recumbent figure, inlaid in a dazzling manner

with rare stones and coloured glass. The coffin had originally lain upon

a wooden bier, in the form of a lion-legged couch; but this had

collapsed and the mummy had fallen to the ground, the lid of the coffin

being partly thrown off by the fall, thus exposing the head and feet of

the body, from which the bandages had decayed and fallen off. In the

powerful glare of the electric light which we carried, the bare skull,

with a golden vulture upon it, could be seen protruding from the remains

of the linen bandages and from the sheets of flexible gold-foil in

which, as we afterwards found, the whole body was wrapped. The

inscription on the coffin, the letters of which were made of rare

stones, gave the titles of Akhnaton, "the beautiful child of the Sun";

but turning to the shrine we found other inscriptions stating that King

Akhnaton had made it for his mother, Queen Tiy, and thus no immediate

reply could be given to those at the mouth of the tomb who called to us

to know which of the Pharaoh's of Egypt had been found.

In a recess in the wall above the body there stood four alabaster

"canopy" jars, each with a lid exquisitely sculptured in the form of a

human head. In another corner there was a box containing many little

toilet vases and utensils of porcelain. A few alabaster vases and other

objects were lying in various parts of the chamber, arranged in some

sort of rough order.

Nothing, of course, could yet be touched, and for several days, during

the lengthy process of photographing and recording the contents of the

tomb _in situ_, no further information could be obtained as to the

identity of the owner of the tomb. The shrine was certainly made for

Queen Tiy, and so too were the toilet utensils, judging by an

inscription upon one of them which gave the names of Tiy and her

husband, King Amenhotep III., the parents of Akhnaton. It was,

therefore, not a surprise when a passing doctor declared the much broken

bones to be those of a woman--that is to say, those of Queen Tiy. For

reasons which will presently become apparent, it had been difficult to

believe that Akhnaton could have been buried in this Valley, and one was

very ready to suppose that the coffin bearing his name had but been

given by him to his mother.

The important discovery was now announced, and considerable interest and

excitement. At the end of the winter the various archæologists departed

to their several countries, and it fell to me to despatch the

antiquities to the Cairo Museum, and to send the bones, soaked in wax to

prevent their breakage, to Dr Elliot Smith, to be examined by that

eminent authority. It may be imagined that my surprise was considerable

when I received a letter from him reading--"Are you sure that the bones

you sent me are those which were found in the tomb? Instead of the bones

of an old woman, you have sent me those of a young man. Surely there is

some mistake."

There was, however, no mistake. Dr Elliot Smith later informed me that

the bones were those of a young man of about twenty-eight years of age,

and at first this description did not seem to tally with that of

Akhnaton, who was always thought to have been a man of middle age. But

there is now no possibility of doubt that the coffin and mummy were

those of this extraordinary Pharaoh, although the tomb and funeral

furniture belonged to Queen Tiy. Dr Elliot Smith's decision was, of

course, somewhat disconcerting to those who had written of the mortal

remains of the great Queen; but it is difficult to speak of Tiy without

also referring to her famous son Akhnaton, and in these articles he had

received full mention.

About the year B.C. 1500 the throne of Egypt fell to the young brother

of Queen Hatshepsut, Thutmosis III., and under his vigorous rule the

country rose to a height of power never again equalled. Amenhotep II.

succeeded to an empire which extended from the Sudan to the Euphrates

and to the Greek Islands; and when he died he left these great

possessions almost intact to his son, Thutmosis IV., the grandfather of

Akhnaton. It is important to notice the chronology of this period. The

mummy of Thutmosis IV. has been shown by Dr Elliot Smith to be that of a

man of not more than twenty-six years of age; but we know that his son

Amenhotep III. was old enough to hunt lions at about the time of his

father's death, and that he was already married to Queen Tiy a year

later. Thus one must suppose that Thutmosis IV. was a father at the age

of thirteen or fourteen, and that Amenhotep III. was married to Tiy at

about the same age. The wife of Thutmosis IV. was probably a Syrian

princess, and it must have been during her regency that Amenhotep III.

married Tiy, who was not of royal blood. Amenhotep and Tiy introduced

into Egypt the luxuries of Asia; and during their brilliant reign the

Nile Valley was more open to Syrian influence than it had ever been

before. The language of Babylon was perhaps the Court tongue, and the

correspondence was written in cuneiform instead of in the hieratic

script of Egypt. Amenhotep III., as has been said, was probably partly

Asiatic; and there is, perhaps, some reason to suppose that Yuaa, the

father of Queen Tiy, was also a Syrian. One has, therefore, to picture

the Egyptian Court at this time as being saturated with foreign ideas,

which clashed with those of the orthodox Egyptians.

Queen Tiy bore several children to the King; but it was not until they

had reigned over twenty years that a son and heir was born, whom they

named Amenhotep, that being changed later to Akhnaton. It is probable

that he first saw the light in the royal palace at Thebes, which was

situated on the edge of the desert at the foot of the western hills. It

was an extensive and roomy structure, lightly built and gaily decorated.

The ceiling and pavements of its halls were fantastically painted with

scenes of animal life: wild cattle ran through reedy swamps beneath

one's feet, and many-coloured fish swam in the water; while overhead

flights of pigeons, white against a blue sky, passed across the hall,

and the wild duck hastened towards the open casements. Through curtained

doorways one might obtain glimpses of a garden planted with flowers

foreign to Egypt; and on the east of the palace the King had made a

great pleasure-lake for the Queen, surrounded by the trees of Asia.

Here, floating in her golden barge, which was named _Aton-gleams_, the

Queen might look westwards over the tree-tops to the splendid Theban

hills towering above the palace, and eastwards to the green valley of

the Nile and the three great limestone hills beyond. Amenhotep III. has

been rightly called the "Magnificent," and one may well believe that his

son Akhnaton was born to the sound of music and to the clink of golden

wine-cups. Fragments of countless thousands of wine-jars and blue

fayence drinking-vessels have been found in the ruins of the palace;

and contemporary objects and paintings show us some of the exquisitely

wrought bowls of gold and silver which must have graced the royal

tables, and the charming toilet utensils which were to be found in the

sleeping apartments.

While the luxurious Court rejoiced at the birth of this Egypto-Asiatic

prince, one feels that the ancient priesthood of Amon-Ra must have stood

aloof, and must have looked askance at the baby who was destined one day

to be their master. This priesthood was perhaps the proudest and most

conservative community which conservative Egypt ever produced. It

demanded implicit obedience to its stiff and ancient conventions, and it

refused to recognise the growing tendency towards religious speculation.

One of the great gods of Syria was Aton, the god of the sun; and his

recognition at the Theban Court was a source of constant irritation to

the ministers of Amon-Ra.

Probably they would have taken stronger measures to resist this foreign

god had it not been for the fact that Atum of Heliopolis, an ancient god

of Egypt, was on the one hand closely akin to Ra, the associated deity

with Amon, and on the other hand to Aton of Syria. Thus Aton might be

regarded merely as another name for Ra or Amon-Ra; but the danger to the

old _régime_ lay in the fact that with the worship of Aton there went a

certain amount of freethought. The sun and its warm rays were the

heritage of all mankind; and the speculative mind of the Asiatic,

always in advance of the less imaginative Egyptian, had not failed to

collect to the Aton-worship a number of semi-philosophical teachings far

broader than the strict doctrines of Amon-Ra could tolerate.

[Illustration: PL. XIX. Toilet-spoons of carved wood, discovered in

tombs of the Eighteenth Dynasty. That on the

right has a movable lid.

--CAIRO MUSEUM.]

[_Photo by E. Brugsch Pasha._

There is much reason to suppose that Queen Tiy was the prime factor in

the new movement. It may, perhaps, be worth noting that her father was a

priest of the Egyptian god Min, who corresponded to the North Syrian

Aton in his capacity as a god of vegetation; and she may have imbibed

something of the broader doctrines from him. It is the barge upon _her_

pleasure-lake which is called _Aton-gleams_, and it is _her_ private

artist who is responsible for one of the first examples of the new style

of art which begins to appear at this period. Egyptian art was bound

down by conventions jealously guarded by the priesthood, and the slight

tendency to break away from these, which now becomes apparent, is

another sign of the broadening of thought under the reign of Amenhotep

III. and Tiy.

King Amenhotep III. does not seem to have been a man of strong

character, and in the changes which took place at this time he does not

appear to have taken so very large a part. He always showed the most

profound respect for, and devotion to, his Queen; and one is inclined to

regard him as a tool in her hands. According to some accounts he reigned

only thirty years, but there are contemporary monuments dated in his

thirty-sixth year, and it seems probable that for the last few years he

was reigning only in name, and that in reality his ministers, under the

regency of Queen Tiy, governed the land. Amenhotep III. was perhaps

during his last years insane or stricken with some paralytic disease,

for we read of an Asiatic monarch sending a miracle-working image to

Egypt, apparently for the purpose of attempting to cure him. It must

have been during these six years of absolute power, while Akhnaton was a

boy, that the Queen pushed forward her reforms and encouraged the

breaking down of the old traditions, especially those relating to the

worship of Amon-Ra.

Amenhotep III. died in about the forty-ninth year of his age, after a

total reign of thirty-six years; and Akhnaton, who still bore the name

of Amenhotep, ascended the throne. One must picture him now as an

enthusiastic boy, filled with the new thought of the age, and burning to

assert the broad doctrines which he had learned from his mother and her

friends, in defiance of the priests of Amon-Ra. He was already married

to a Syrian named Nefertiti, and certainly before he was fifteen years

of age he was the father of two daughters.

The new Pharaoh's first move, under the guidance of Tiy, was to proclaim

Aton the only true god, and to name himself high priest of that deity.

He then began to build a temple dedicated to Aton at Karnak; but it must

have been distasteful to observe how overshadowed and dwarfed was this

new temple by the mighty buildings in honour of the older gods which

stood there. Moreover, there must have been very serious opposition to

the new religion in Thebes, where Amon had ruled for so many centuries

unchallenged. In whatever direction he looked he was confronted with

some evidence of the worship of Amon-Ra: he might proclaim Aton to be

the only god, but Amon and a hundred other deities stared down at him

from every temple wall. He and his advisers, therefore, decided to

abandon Thebes altogether and to found a new capital elsewhere.

Akhnaton selected a site for the new city on the west bank of the river,

at a point now named El Amarna, about 160 miles above Cairo. Here the

hills recede from the river, forming a bay about three miles deep and

five long; and in this bay the young Pharaoh decided to build his

capital, which was named "Horizon of Aton." With feverish speed the new

buildings were erected. A palace even more beautiful than that of his

parents at Thebes was prepared for him; a splendid temple dedicated to

Aton was set up amidst a garden of rare trees and brilliant flowers;

villas for his nobles were erected, and streets were laid out. Queen

Tiy, who seems to have continued to live at Thebes, often came down to

El Amarna to visit her son; but it seems to have been at his own wish

rather than at her advice that he now took the important step which set

the seal of his religion upon his life.

Around the bay of El Amarna, on the cliffs which shut it off so

securely, the King caused landmarks to be made at intervals, and on

these he inscribed an oath which some have interpreted to mean that he

would never again leave his new city. He would remain, like the Pope in

the Vatican, for the rest of his days within the limits of this bay;

and, rather than be distracted by the cares of state and the worries of

empire, he would shut himself up with his god and would devote his life

to his religion. He was but a youth still, and, to his inexperienced

mind, this oath seemed nothing; nor in his brief life does it seem that

he broke it, though at times he must have longed to visit his domains.

The religion which this boy, who now called himself Akhnaton, "The Glory

of Aton," taught was by no means the simple worship of the sun. It was,

without question, the most enlightened religion which the world at that

time had ever known. The young priest-king called upon mankind to

worship the unknown power which is behind the sun, that power of which

the brilliant sun was the visible symbol, and which might be discerned

in the fertilising warmth of the sun's rays. Aton was originally the

actual sun's disk; but Akhnaton called his god "Heat which is in Aton,"

and thus drew the eyes of his followers towards a Force far more

intangible and distant than the dazzling orb to which they bowed down.

Akhnaton's god was the force which created the sun, the something which

penetrated to this earth in the sun's heat and caused the vegetation to

grow.

Amon-Ra and the gods of Egypt were for the most part but deified

mortals, endued with monstrous, though limited, power, and still having

around them traditions of exaggerated human deeds. Others had their

origin in natural phenomena--the wind, the Nile, the sky, and so on. All

were terrific, revengeful, and able to be moved by human emotions. But

Akhnaton's god was the intangible and yet ever-present Father of

mankind, made manifest in sunshine. The youthful High Priest called upon

his followers to search for their god not in the confusion of battle or

behind the smoke of human sacrifices, but amidst the flowers and trees,

amidst the wild duck and the fishes. He preached an enlightened

nature-study; he was perhaps the first apostle of the Simple Life. He

strove to break down conventional religion, and ceaselessly urged his

people to worship in Truth, simply, without an excess of ceremonial.

While the elder gods had been manifest in natural convulsions and in the

more awful incidents of life, Akhnaton's kindly god could be seen in the

chick which broke out of its egg, in the wind which filled the sails of

the ships, in the fish which leapt from the water. Aton was the joy

which caused the young sheep "to dance upon their feet," and the birds

to "flutter in their marshes." He was the god of the simple pleasures of

life, and Truth was the watchword of his followers.

It may be understood how the boy longed for truth in all things when one

remembers the thousand exaggerated conventions of Egyptian life at this

time. Court etiquette had developed to a degree which rendered life to

the Pharaoh an endless round of unnatural poses of mind and body. In the

preaching of his doctrine of truth and simplicity, Akhnaton did not fail

to call upon his subjects to regard their Pharaoh not as a god but as a

man. It was usual for the Pharaoh to keep aloof from his people:

Akhnaton was to be found in their midst. The Court demanded that their

lord should drive in solitary state through the city: Akhnaton sat in

his chariot with his wife and children, and allowed the artist to

represent him joking with his little daughter, who has mischievously

poked the horses with a stick. In representing the Pharaoh, the artist

was expected to draw him in some conventional attitude of dignity:

Akhnaton insisted upon being shown in all manner of natural

attitudes--now leaning languidly upon a staff, now nursing his children,

now caressing his wife.

As has been said, one of the first artists to break away from the

ancient conventions was in the service of Queen Tiy, and was probably

under her influence. But in the radical change in the art which took

place, Akhnaton is definitely stated to have been the leader, and the

new school acknowledge that they were taught by the King. The new art is

extraordinary, and it must be owned that its merit lies rather in its

originality than in its beauty. An attempt is made to do away with the

prescribed attitudes and the strict proportions, and to portray any one

individual with his natural defects. Some of the sculptured heads,

however, which have come down to us, and notably the four "canopic"

heads found in this tomb, are of wonderful beauty, and have no trace of

traditional mannerisms, though they are highly idealised. The King's

desire for light-heartedness led him to encourage the use of bright

colours and gay decorations in the palace. Some of the ceiling and

pavement paintings are of great beauty, while the walls and pillars

inlaid with coloured stones must have given a brilliancy to the halls

unequalled in Egypt at any previous time.

The group of nobles who formed the King's Court had all sacrificed much

in coming to the new capital. Their estates around Thebes had been left,

their houses abandoned, and the tombs which were in process of being

made for them in the Theban hills had been rendered useless. The King,

therefore, showered favours upon them, and at his expense built their

houses and constructed sepulchres for them. It is on the walls of these

tombs that one obtains the main portion of one's information regarding

the teachings of this wonderful youth, who was now growing into

manhood. Here are inscribed those beautiful hymns to Aton which rank so

high in ancient literature. It is unfortunate that space does not allow

more than a few extracts from the hymns to be quoted here; but something

of their beauty may be realised from these. (Professor Breasted's

translation.)

"Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of heaven,

O living Aton, Beginning of life!

When thou risest in the eastern horizon of heaven

Thou fillest every land with thy beauty."

"Though thou art afar, thy rays are on earth;

Though thou art on high, thy footprints are the day."

"When thou settest in the western horizon of heaven

The world is in darkness like the dead.

Men sleep in their chambers, their heads are wrapt up.

Every lion cometh forth from his den.

The serpents, they sting.

Darkness reigns, the world is in silence:

He that made them has gone to rest in his horizon."

"Bright is the earth when thou risest in the horizon ...

When thou sendest forth thy rays

The two lands of Egypt are in daily festivity,

Awake and standing upon their feet,

For thou hast raised them up.

Their limbs bathed, they take their clothing,

Their arms uplifted in adoration to thy dawning.

Then in all the world they do their work."

"All cattle rest upon their herbage, all trees and plants flourish.

The birds flutter in their marshes, their wings uplifted in

adoration to thee.

All the sheep dance upon their feet,

All winged things fly; they live when thou hast shone upon them."

"The barques sail up-stream and down-stream alike,...

The fish in the river leap up before thee,

And thy rays are in the midst of the great sea."

"Thou art he who createst the man-child in woman ...

Who giveth life to the son in the body of his mother;

Who soothest him that he may not weep,

A nurse even in the womb."

"When the chick crieth in the egg-shell,

Thou givest him breath therein to preserve him alive ...

He cometh forth from the egg, to chirp with all his might.

He runneth about upon his two feet."

"How manifold are all thy works!

They are hidden from before us."

There are several verses of this hymn which are almost identical with

Psalm civ., and those who study it closely will be forced to one of two

conclusions: either that Psalm civ. is derived from this hymn of the

young Pharaoh, or that both are derived from some early Syrian hymn to

the sun. Akhnaton may have only adapted this early psalm to local

conditions; though, on the other hand, a man capable of bringing to pass

so great a religious revolution in Egypt may well be credited with the

authorship of this splendid song. There is no evidence to show that it

was written before the King had reached manhood.

Queen Tiy probably did not now take any further part in a movement which

had got so far out of her hands. She was now nearly sixty years old, and

this, to one who had been a mother so early in life, was a considerable

age. It seems that she sometimes paid visits to her son at El Amarna,

but her interest lay in Thebes, where she had once held so brilliant a

Court. When at last she died, therefore, it is not surprising to find

that she was buried in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. The tomb

which has been described above is most probably her original sepulchre,

and here her body was placed in the golden shrine made for her by

Akhnaton, surrounded by the usual funeral furniture. She thus lay no

more than a stone's throw from her parents, whose tomb was discovered

two years ago, and which was of very similar size and shape.

After her death, although preaching this gentle creed of love and simple

truth, Akhnaton waged a bitter and stern war against the priesthoods of

the old gods. It may be that the priesthoods of Amon had again attempted

to overthrow the new doctrines, or had in some manner called down the

particular wrath of the Pharaoh. He issued an order that the name of

Amon was to be erased and obliterated wherever it was found, and his

agents proceeded to hack it out on all the temple walls. The names also

of other gods were erased; and it is noticeable in this tomb that the

word _mut_, meaning "mother," was carefully spelt in hieroglyphs which

would have no similarity to those used in the word _Mut_, the

goddess-consort of Amon. The name of Amenhotep III., his own father, did

not escape the King's wrath, and the first syllables were everywhere

erased.

As the years went by Akhnaton seems to have given himself more and more

completely to his new religion. He had now so trained one of his nobles,

named Merira, in the teachings of Aton that he was able to hand over to

him the high priesthood of that god, and to turn his attention to the

many other duties which he had imposed upon himself. In rewarding

Merira, the King is related to have said, "Hang gold at his neck before

and behind, and gold on his legs, because of his hearing the teaching of

Pharaoh concerning every saying in these beautiful places." Another

official whom Akhnaton greatly advanced says: "My lord advanced me

because I have carried out his teaching, and I hear his word without

ceasing." The King's doctrines were thus beginning to take hold; but one

feels, nevertheless, that the nobles followed their King rather for the

sake of their material gains than for the spiritual comforts of the

Aton-worship. There is reason to suppose that at least one of these

nobles was degraded and banished from the city.

But while Akhnaton was preaching peace and goodwill amidst the flowers

of the temple of Aton, his generals in Asia Minor were vainly struggling

to hold together the great empire created by Thutmosis III. Akhnaton had

caused a temple of Aton to be erected at one point in Syria at least,

but in other respects he took little or no interest in the welfare of

his foreign dominions. War was not tolerated in his doctrine: it was a

sin to take away life which the good Father had given. One pictures the

hardened soldiers of the empire striving desperately to hold the nations

of Asia faithful to the Pharaoh whom they never saw. The small garrisons

were scattered far and wide over Syria, and constantly they sent

messengers to the Pharaoh asking at least for some sign that he held

them in mind.

There is no more pathetic page of ancient history than that which tells

of the fall of the Egyptian Empire. The Amorites, advancing along the

sea-coast, took city after city from the Egyptians almost without a

struggle. The chiefs of Tunip wrote an appeal for help to the King: "To

the King of Egypt, my lord,--The inhabitants of Tunip, thy servant." The

plight of the city is described and reinforcements are asked for, "And

now," it continues, "Tunip thy city weeps, and her tears are flowing,

and there is no help for us. For twenty years we have been sending to

our lord the King, the King of Egypt, but there has not come a word to

us, no, not one." The messengers of the beleaguered city must have found

the King absorbed in his religion, and must have seen only priests of

the sun where they had hoped to find the soldiers of former days. The

Egyptian governor of Jerusalem, attacked by Aramæans, writes to the

Pharaoh, saying: "Let the King take care of his land, and ... let send

troops.... For if no troops come in this year, the whole territory of my

lord the King will perish." To this letter is added a note to the

King's secretary, which reads, "Bring these words plainly before my

lord the King: the whole land of my lord the King is going to ruin."

So city after city fell, and the empire, won at such cost, was gradually

lost to the Egyptians. It is probable that Akhnaton had not realised how

serious was the situation in Asia Minor. A few of the chieftains who

were not actually in arms against him had written to him every now and

then assuring him that all was well in his dominions; and, strange to

relate, the tribute of many of the cities had been regularly paid. The

Asiatic princes, in fact, had completely fooled the Pharaoh, and had led

him to believe that the nations were loyal while they themselves

prepared for rebellion. Akhnaton, hating violence, had been only too

ready to believe that the despatches from Tunip and elsewhere were

unjustifiably pessimistic. He had hoped to bind together the many

countries under his rule, by giving them a single religion. He had hoped

that when Aton should be worshipped in all parts of his empire, and when

his simple doctrines of love, truth, and peace should be preached from

every temple throughout the length and breadth of his dominions, then

war would cease and a unity of faith would hold the lands in harmony one

with the other.

When, therefore, the tribute suddenly ceased, and the few refugees came

staggering home to tell of the perfidy of the Asiatic princes and the

fall of the empire, Akhnaton seems to have received his deathblow. He

was now not more than twenty-eight years of age; and though his

portraits show that his face was already lined with care, and that his

body was thinner than it should have been, he seems to have had plenty

of reserve strength. He was the father of several daughters, but his

queen had borne him no son to succeed him; and thus he must have felt

that his religion could not outlive him. With his empire lost, with

Thebes his enemy, and with his treasury wellnigh empty, one feels that

Akhnaton must have sunk to the very depths of despondency. His religious

revolution had ruined Egypt, and had failed: did he, one wonders, find

consolation in the sunshine and amidst the flowers?

His death followed speedily; and, resting in the splendid coffin in

which we found him, he was laid in the tomb prepared for him in the

hills behind his new capital. The throne fell to the husband of one of

his daughters, Smenkhkara, who, after an ephemeral reign, gave place to

another of the sons-in-law of Akhnaton, Tutankhaton. This king was

speedily persuaded to change his name to Tutankhamon, to abandon the

worship of Aton, and to return to Thebes. Akhnaton's city fell into

ruins, and soon the temples and palaces became the haunt of jackals and

the home of owls. The nobles returned with their new king to Thebes, and

not one remained faithful to those "teachings" to which they had once

pretended to be such earnest listeners.

[Illustration: PL. XX. The coffin of Akhnaton lying in the tomb of

Queen Tiy.]

[_Photo by R. Paul._

The fact that the body in the new tomb was that of Akhnaton, and not of

Queen Tiy, gives a new reading to the history of the burial. When

Tutankhamon returned to Thebes, Akhnaton's memory was still, it appears,

regarded with reverence, and it seems that there was no question of

leaving his body in the neighbourhood of his deserted palace, where,

until the discovery of this tomb, Egyptologists had expected to find it.

It was carried to Thebes, together with some of the funeral furniture,

and was placed in the tomb of Queen Tiy, which had been reopened for the

purpose. But after some years had passed and the priesthood of Amon-Ra

had again asserted itself, Akhnaton began to be regarded as a heretic

and as the cause of the loss of Egypt's Asiatic dominions. These

sentiments were vigorously encouraged by the priesthood, and soon

Akhnaton came to be spoken of as "that criminal," and his name was

obliterated from his monuments. It was now felt that his body could no

longer lie in state together with that of Queen Tiy in the Valley of the

Tombs of the Kings. The sepulchre was therefore opened once more, and

the name Akhnaton was everywhere erased from the inscriptions. The tomb,

polluted by the presence of the heretic, was no longer fit for Tiy, and

the body of the Queen was therefore carried elsewhere, perhaps to the

tomb of her husband Amenhotep III. The shrine in which her mummy had

lain was pulled to pieces and an attempt was made to carry it out of the

tomb; but this arduous task was presently abandoned, and one portion of

the shrine was left in the passage, where we found it. The body of

Akhnaton, his name erased, was now the sole occupant of the tomb. The

entrance was blocked with stones, and sealed with the seal of

Tutankhamon, a fragment of which was found; and it was in this condition

that it was discovered in 1907.

The bones of this extraordinary Pharaoh are in the Cairo Museum; but, in

deference to the sentiments of many worthy persons, they are not

exhibited. The visitor to that museum, however, may now see the

"canopic" jars, the alabaster vases, the gold vulture, the gold

necklace, the sheets of gold in which the body was wrapped, the toilet

utensils, and parts of the shrine, all of which we found in the

burial-chamber.

CHAPTER IX.

THE TOMB OF HOREMHEB.

In the last chapter a discovery was recorded which, as experience has

shown, is of considerable interest to the general reader. The romance

and the tragedy of the life of Akhnaton form a really valuable addition

to the store of good things which is our possession, and which the

archæologist so diligently labours to increase. Curiously enough,

another discovery, that of the tomb of Horemheb, was made by the same

explorer (Mr Davis) in 1908; and as it forms the natural sequel to the

previous chapter, I may be permitted to record it here.

Akhnaton was succeeded by Smenkhkara, his son-in-law, who, after a brief

reign, gave place to Tutankhamon, during whose short life the court

returned to Thebes. A certain noble named Ay came next to the throne,

but held it for only three years. The country was now in a chaotic

condition, and was utterly upset and disorganised by the revolution of

Akhnaton, and by the vacillating policy of the three weak kings who

succeeded him, each reigning for so short a time. One cannot say to

what depths of degradation Egypt might have sunk had it not been for the

timely appearance of Horemheb, a wise and good ruler, who, though but a

soldier of not particularly exalted birth, managed to raise himself to

the vacant throne, and succeeded in so organising the country once more

that his successors, Rameses I., Sety I., and Rameses II., were able to

regain most of the lost dominions, and to place Egypt at the head of the

nations of the world.

Horemheb, "The Hawk in Festival," was born at Alabastronpolis, a city of

the 18th Province of Upper Egypt, during the reign of Amenhotep III.,

who has rightly been named "The Magnificent," and in whose reign Egypt

was at once the most powerful, the most wealthy, and the most luxurious

country in the world. There is reason to suppose that Horemheb's family

were of noble birth, and it is thought by some that an inscription which

calls King Thutmosis III. "the father of his fathers" is to be taken

literally to mean that that old warrior was his great-or

great-great-grandfather. The young noble was probably educated at the

splendid court of Amenhotep III., where the wit and intellect of the

world was congregated, and where, under the presidency of the beautiful

Queen Tiy, life slipped by in a round of revels.

As an impressionable young man, Horemheb must have watched the gradual

development of freethought in the palace, and the ever-increasing

irritation and chafing against the bonds of religious convention which

bound all Thebans to the worship of the god Amon. Judging by his future

actions, Horemheb did not himself feel any real repulsion to Amon,

though the religious rut into which the country had fallen was

sufficiently objectionable to a man of his intellect to cause him to

cast in his lot with the movement towards emancipation. In later life he

would certainly have been against the movement, for his mature judgment

led him always to be on the side of ordered habit and custom as being

less dangerous to the national welfare than a social upheaval or change.

Horemheb seems now to have held the appointment of captain or commander

in the army, and at the same time, as a "Royal Scribe," he cultivated

the art of letters, and perhaps made himself acquainted with those legal

matters which in later years he was destined to reform.

When Amenhotep III. died, the new king, Akhnaton, carried out the

revolution which had been pending for many years, and absolutely banned

the worship of Amon, with all that it involved. He built himself a new

capital at El Amârna, and there he instituted the worship of the sun, or

rather of the heat or power of the sun, under the name of Aton. In so

far as the revolution constituted a breaking away from tiresome

convention, the young Horemheb seems to have been with the King. No one

of intelligence could deny that the new religion and new philosophy

which was preached at El Amârna was more worthy of consideration on

general lines than was the narrow doctrine of the Amon priesthood; and

all thinkers must have rejoiced at the freedom from bonds which had

become intolerable. But the world was not ready, and indeed is still not

ready, for the schemes which Akhnaton propounded; and the unpractical

model-kingdom which was uncertainly developing under the hills of El

Amârna must have already been seen to contain the elements of grave

danger to the State.

Nevertheless the revolution offered many attractions. The frivolous

members of the court, always ready for change and excitement, welcomed

with enthusiasm the doctrine of the moral and simple life which the King

and his advisers preached, just as in the decadent days before the

French Revolution the court, bored with licentiousness, gaily welcomed

the morality-painting of the young Greuze. And to the more

serious-minded, such as Horemheb seems to have been, the movement must

have appealed in its imperial aspect. The new god Aton was largely

worshipped in Syria, and it seems evident that Akhnaton had hoped to

bind together the heterogeneous nations of the empire by a bond of

common worship. The Asiatics were not disposed to worship Amon, but Aton

appealed to them as much as any god, and Horemheb must have seen great

possibilities in a common religion.

It is thought that Horemheb may be identified amongst the nobles who

followed Akhnaton to El Amârna, and though this is not certain, there is

little doubt that he was in high favour with the King at the time. To

one whose tendency is neither towards frivolity nor towards fanaticism,

there can be nothing more broadening than the influence of religious

changes. More than one point of view is appreciated: a man learns that

there are other ruts than that in which he runs, and so he seeks the

smooth midway. Thus Horemheb, while acting loyally towards his King, and

while appreciating the value of the new movement, did not exclude from

his thoughts those teachings which he deemed good in the old order of

things. He seems to have seen life broadly; and when the new religion of

Akhnaton became narrowed and fanatical, as it did towards the close of

the tragic chapter of that king's short life, Horemheb was one of the

few men who kept an open mind.

Like many other nobles of the period, he had constructed for himself a

tomb at Sakkâra, in the shadow of the pyramids of the old kings of

Egypt; and fragments of this tomb, which of course was abandoned when he

became Pharaoh, are now to be seen in various museums. In one of the

scenes there sculptured Horemheb is shown in the presence of a king who

is almost certainly Akhnaton; and yet in a speech to him inscribed

above the reliefs, Horemheb makes reference to the god Amon whose very

name was anathema to the King. The royal figure is drawn according to

the canons of art prescribed by Akhnaton, and upon which, as a protest

against the conventional art of the old order, he laid the greatest

stress in his revolution; and thus, at all events, Horemheb was in

sympathy with this aspect of the movement. But the inscriptions which

refer to Amon, and yet are impregnated with the Aton style of

expression, show that Horemheb was not to be held down to any one mode

of thought. Akhnaton was, perhaps, already dead when these inscriptions

were added, and thus Horemheb may have had no further reason to hide his

views; or it may be that they constituted a protest against that

narrowness which marred the last years of a pious king.

Those who read the history of the period in the last chapter will

remember how Akhnaton came to persecute the worshippers of Amon, and how

he erased that god's name wherever it was written throughout the length

and breadth of Egypt. Evidently with this action Horemheb did not agree;

nor was this his only cause for complaint. As an officer, and now a

highly placed general of the army, he must have seen with feelings of

the utmost bitterness the neglected condition of the Syrian provinces.

Revolt after revolt occurred in these states; but Akhnaton, dreaming and

praying in the sunshine of El Amârna, would send no expedition to

punish the rebels. Good-fellowship with all men was the King's

watchword, and a policy more or less democratic did not permit him to

make war on his fellow-creatures. Horemheb could smell battle in the

distance, but could not taste of it. The battalions which he had trained

were kept useless in Egypt; and even when, during the last years of

Akhnaton's reign, or under his successor Smenkhkara, he was made

commander-in-chief of all the forces, there was no means of using his

power to check the loss of the cities of Asia. Horemheb must have

watched these cities fall one by one into the hands of those who

preached the doctrine of the sword, and there can be little wonder that

he turned in disgust from the doings at El Amârna.

During the times which followed, when Smenkhkara held the throne for a

year or so, and afterwards, when Tutankhamon became Pharaoh, Horemheb

seems to have been the leader of the reactionary movement. He did not

concern himself so much with the religious aspect of the questions:

there was as much to be said on behalf of Aton as there was on behalf of

Amon. But it was he who knocked at the doors of the heart of Egypt, and

urged the nation to awake to the danger in the East. An expedition

against the rebels was organised, and one reads that Horemheb was the

"companion of his Lord upon the battlefield on that day of the slaying

of the Asiatics." Akhnaton had been opposed to warfare, and had dreamed

that dream of universal peace which still is a far-off light to mankind.

Horemheb was a practical man in whom such a dream would have been but

weakness; and, though one knows nothing more of these early campaigns,

the fact that he attempted to chastise the enemies of the empire at this

juncture stands to his credit for all time.

Under Tutankhamon the court returned to Thebes, though not yet

exclusively to the worship of Amon; and the political phase of the

revolution came to an end. The country once more settled into the old

order of life, and Horemheb, having experienced the full dangers of

philosophic speculation, was glad enough to abandon thought for action.

He was now the most powerful man in the kingdom, and inscriptions call

him "the greatest of the great, the mightiest of the mighty, presider

over the Two Lands of Egypt, general of generals," and so on. The King

"appointed him to be Chief of the Land, to administer the laws of the

land as Hereditary Prince of all this land"; and "all that was done was

done by his command." From chaos Horemheb was producing order, and all

men turned to him in gratitude as he reorganised the various government

departments.

The offices which he held, such as Privy Councillor, King's Secretary,

Great Lord of the People, and so on, are very numerous; and in all of

these he dealt justly though sternly, so that "when he came the fear of

him was great in the sight of the people, prosperity and health were

craved for him, and he was greeted as 'Father of the Two Lands of

Egypt.'" He was indeed the saviour and father of his country, for he had

found her corrupt and disordered, and he was leading her back to

greatness and dignity.

[Illustration: PL. XXI. Head of a granite statue of the god Khonsu,

probably dating from about the period of

Horemheb.

--CAIRO MUSEUM.]

[_Photo by Beato._

At this time he was probably a man of about forty years of age. In

appearance he seems to have been noble and good to look upon. "When he

was born," says the inscription, "he was clothed with strength: the hue

of a god was upon him"; and in later life, "the form of a god was in his

colour," whatever that may mean. He was a man of considerable eloquence

and great learning. "He astonished the people by that which came out of

his mouth," we are told; and "when he was summoned before the King the

palace began to fear." One may picture the weak Pharaoh and his corrupt

court, as they watched with apprehension the movements of this stern

soldier, of whom it was said that his every thought was "in the

footsteps of the Ibis,"--the ibis being the god of wisdom.

On the death of Tutankhamon, the question of inviting Horemheb to fill

the vacant throne must have been seriously considered; but there was

another candidate, a certain Ay, who had been one of the most important

nobles in the group of Akhnaton's favourites at El Amârna, and who had

been the loudest in the praises of Aton. Religious feeling was at the

time running high, for the partizans of Amon and those of Aton seem to

have been waging war on one another; and Ay appears to have been

regarded as the man most likely to bridge the gulf between the two

parties. A favourite of Akhnaton, and once a devout worshipper of Aton,

he was not averse to the cults of other gods; and by conciliating both

factions he managed to obtain the throne for himself. His power,

however, did not last for long; and as the priests of Amon regained the

confidence of the nation at the expense of those of Aton, so the power

of Ay declined. His past connections with Akhnaton told against him, and

after a year or so he disappeared, leaving the throne vacant once more.

There was now no question as to who should succeed. A princess named

Mutnezem, the sister of Akhnaton's queen, and probably an old friend of

Horemheb, was the sole heiress to the throne, the last surviving member

of the greatest Egyptian dynasty. All men turned to Horemheb in the hope

that he would marry this lady, and thus reign as Pharaoh over them,

perhaps leaving a son by her to succeed him when he was gathered to his

fathers. He was now some forty-five years of age, full of energy and

vigour, and passionately anxious to have a free hand in the carrying out

of his schemes for the reorganisation of the government. It was

therefore with joy that, in about the year 1350 B.C., he sailed up to

Thebes in order to claim the crown.

He arrived at Luxor at a time when the annual festival of Amon was being

celebrated, and all the city was _en fête_. The statue of the god had

been taken from its shrine at Karnak, and had been towed up the river to

Luxor in a gorgeous barge, attended by a fleet of gaily-decorated

vessels. With songs and dancing it had been conveyed into the Luxor

temple, where the priests had received it standing amidst piled-up

masses of flowers, fruit, and other offerings. It seems to have been at

this moment that Horemheb appeared, while the clouds of incense streamed

up to heaven, and the morning air was full of the sound of the harps and

the lutes. Surrounded by a crowd of his admirers, he was conveyed into

the presence of the divine figure, and was there and then hailed as

Pharaoh.

From the temple he was carried amidst cheering throngs to the palace

which stood near by; and there he was greeted by the Princess Mutnezem,

who fell on her knees before him and embraced him. That very day, it

would seem, he was married to her, and in the evening the royal heralds

published the style and titles by which he would be known in the future:

"Mighty Bull, Ready in Plans; Favourite of the Two Goddesses, Great in

Marvels; Golden Hawk, Satisfied with Truth; Creator of the Two Lands,"

and so forth. Then, crowned with the royal helmet, he was led once more

before the statue of Amon, while the priests pronounced the blessing of

the gods upon him. Passing down to the quay before the temple the figure

of the god was placed once more upon the state-barge, and was floated

down to Karnak; while Horemheb was led through the rejoicing crowds back

to the palace to begin his reign as Pharaoh.

In religious matters Horemheb at once adopted a strong attitude of

friendship towards the Amon party which represented the old order of

things. There is evidence to show that Aton was in no way persecuted;

yet one by one his shrines were abandoned, and the neglected temples of

Amon and the elder gods once more rang with the hymns of praise.

Inscriptions tell us that the King "restored the temples from the

marshes of the Delta to Nubia. He fashioned a hundred images with all

their bodies correct, and with all splendid costly stones. He

established for them daily offerings every day. All the vessels of their

temples were wrought of silver and gold. He equipped them with priests

and with ritual-priests, and with the choicest of the army. He

transferred to them lands and cattle, supplied with all equipment." By

these gifts to the neglected gods, Horemheb was striving to bring Egypt

back to its normal condition, and in no way was he prejudiced by any

particular devotion to Amon.

A certain Patonemheb, who had been one of Akhnaton's favourites in the

days of the revolution, was appointed High Priest of Ra--the older

Egyptian form of Aton who was at this time identified with that god--at

the temple of Heliopolis; and this can only be regarded as an act of

friendship to the Aton-worshippers. The echoing and deserted temples of

Aton in Thebes, and El Amârna, however, were now pulled down, and the

blocks were used for the enlarging of the temple of Amon,--a fact which

indicates that their original dedication to Aton had not caused them to

be accursed.

The process of restoration was so gradual that it could not have much

disturbed the country. Horemheb's hand was firm but soothing in these

matters, and the revolution seems to have been killed as much by

kindness as by force. It was probably not till quite the end of his

reign that he showed any tendency to revile the memory of Akhnaton; and

the high feeling which at length brought the revolutionary king the name

of "that criminal of El Amârna" did not rise till half a century later.

The difficulties experienced by Horemheb in steering his course between

Amon and Aton, in quietly restoring the old equilibrium without in any

way persecuting those who by religious convictions were

Aton-worshippers, must have been immense; and one cannot but feel that

the King must have been a diplomatist of the highest standing. His

unaffected simplicity won all hearts to him; his toleration and

broadness of mind brought all thoughtful men to his train; and his

strong will led them and guided them from chaos to order, from fantastic

Utopia to the solid old Egypt of the past. Horemheb was the preacher of

Sanity, the apostle of the Normal, and Order was his watchword.

The inscriptions tell us that it was his custom to give public

audiences to his subjects, and there was not a man amongst those persons

whom he interviewed whose name he did not know, nor one who did not

leave his presence rejoicing. Up and down the Nile he sailed a hundred

times, until he was able truly to say, "I have improved this entire

land; I have learned its whole interior; I have travelled it entirely in

its midst." We are told that "his Majesty took counsel with his heart

how he might expel evil and suppress lying. The plans of his Majesty

were an excellent refuge, repelling violence and delivering the

Egyptians from the oppressions which were around them. Behold, his

Majesty spent the whole time seeking the welfare of Egypt, and searching

out instances of oppression in the land."