[Footnote 1: The Independent.]
By LUDWIG BORCHARDT, Ph.D., Director of the German School in
Cairo.
For many years various European collections of Egyptian antiquities
have contained a certain series of objects which gave archæologists
great difficulty. There were vases of a peculiar form and color,
greenish plates of slate, many of them in curious animal forms, and
other similar things. It was known, positively, that these objects had
been found in Egypt, but it was impossible to assign them a place in
the known periods of Egyptian art. The puzzle was increased in
difficulty by certain plates of slate with hunting and battle scenes
and other representations in relief in a style so strange that many
investigators considered them products of the art of Western Asia.
The first light was thrown on the question in the winter of 1894-95 by
the excavations of Flinders Petrie in Ballas and Neggadeh, two places
on the west bank of the Nile, a little below ancient Thebes. This
persevering English investigator discovered here a very large
necropolis in which he examined about three thousand graves. They all
contained the same kinds of pottery and the same slate tablets
mentioned above, and many other objects which did not seem to be
Egyptian. It was plain that the newly found necropolis and the
puzzling objects already in the museums belonged to the same period.
Petrie assumed that they represented the art of a foreign
people--perhaps the Libyans--who had temporarily resided in Egypt in
the time between the old and the middle kingdoms. He gave this unknown
people the name "New Race." But his theory met with little approval,
least of all from German Egyptologists; and even at that time, an
opinion was expressed that this unusual art belonged before the known
beginning of Egyptian culture. However, in spite of much discussion,
the question could not then be decided.
About the same time another riddle was presented to Egyptologists by
the results of the excavations made in Abydos by the French scholar
Amélineau; and another hot discussion was raised. Amélineau had
excavated several large tombs and had also found objects which could
not be arranged in the known development of Egyptian art. The
fortunate discoverer ascribed these to the dynasties of the demigods,
who, according to Egyptian tradition, reigned before the kings; but of
course this idea met with determined opposition, and indeed especially
among his French colleagues. The tomb of Abydos offered, however, on
quiet consideration, more material for establishing its date than
those of Ballas and Neggadeh. In Abydos a number of inscriptions had
been found which, rude as they were, showed that the people buried in
the tombs had known the hieroglyphic system of writing. The occurrence
of so-called "Horus names" in these inscriptions was especially
important. For every old Egyptian king had a long list of names and
titles, and among them a name surmounted by the picture of a hawk
(i.e., Horus), and called on that account the "Horus name." As the
name is, at the same time, written on a sort of standard, it is also
called the "Banner name." Such "Horus" or "Banner names" occur, then,
on the objects found by Amélineau. Accidentally, one of these names
occurs, also, on a statue in the Grizeh Museum which, according to its
style, is one of the oldest statues which the museum possesses. Thus
it became evident that the Abydos objects were, in any case, to be
placed in the earliest period of Egyptian history.
The discussion stood thus when, in the spring of 1897, the fortunate
hand of De Morgan, the former Directeur-général des Services des
antiquités égyptiennes, succeeded by renewed excavations in Neggadeh
in furnishing the connections between the objects found by Petrie in
Ballas and Neggadeh and those found by Amélineau in Abydos. He
discovered, not far from the necropolis, excavated by Petrie, the tomb
of a king which, on the one hand, contained pottery and tablets like
those found by Petrie, and on the other, objects entirely like those
found by Amélineau. Thus it was proved that both Petrie's tombs and
those of Amélineau belonged to the same period, and, indeed, the
oldest period, of Egyptian history, before the third dynasty. They
were older than the most ancient objects which we had thought that we
possessed. But it was still impossible to date them exactly.
At this point, an epoch-making discovery of Dr. Sethe, privat-docent
at the University of Berlin, placed the whole matter at a single
stroke on a comparatively sure foundation. He pointed out that the
inscriptions on a few unassuming potsherds from Abydos contained not
only Banner names of old kings, but also their ordinary names. These
names were not inclosed, as later, in cartouches, and even contained
many unusual spellings; but they were still too clear to be
misunderstood. Sethe succeeded in identifying the names of the fifth,
the sixth and the seventh kings of the first Manethonian dynasty,
called by the Greek authors Usaphais, Miebais and Semempses. Thus it
became extremely probable that all these newly discovered objects were
from the first dynasty, but still not absolutely certain; for the
three names occurred only on fragments of vases, and absolutely
nothing was known of how these fragments were found. The proof that
they belonged to the other objects was wanting. A very skeptical
investigator might still have said that the other objects were older,
that the potsherds had only fallen accidentally into ruined tombs of
an older period; or he might have said quite the contrary, that the
potsherds were older than the tombs.
At this point occurred the possibility of finding a solution of the
question in the objects found in the royal tomb of Neggadeh. For the
report of the excavations at Neggadeh was more exact than that of the
excavations at Abydos; and the whole contents of the tomb of Neggadeh
had been kept together and preserved in a separate room in the Grizeh
Museum. The possibility became a reality. One of the principal objects
of this royal tomb was found to bear the ordinary as well as the Horus
name of the king--a fact which had escaped the fortunate discoverer.
The object is a small ivory plate with incised representations of
funerary offerings before the king. Animals are being sacrificed to
him; jars full of beer and other things are being offered. The figure
of the king, in front of a hanging mat, is not preserved; but the
upper corner still remains with the two names, which were written
above the figure. First, there is the same Horus name which occurs on
all the inscribed objects of this tomb and which may be translated
"The Warrior." Beside the Horus name in a sort of cartouche is the
title "Lord of Vulture and Serpent Crown" (Lord of Upper and Lower
Egypt), and beneath the title the sign which represents a
checkerboard, and has the syllabic value Mn. There can therefore be no
doubt that the king buried in the royal tomb of Neggadeh, of whom we
had only known the Horus name "The Warrior," had also the name Mn.
Now, there is no other known Egyptian king who could be identified
with this name Mn than the first king of the first Manethonian
dynasty, called Menes by the Greeks. It is impossible here to go into
the philological basis of the identification of Mn and Menes. The
final conclusion is this: In Neggadeh, we have before us the tomb of
the oldest king of whom the Egyptians had preserved any memory, and
whom they considered the founder of the Egyptian monarchy.
In consideration of the importance of the questions involved, a short
description of the tomb of Menes and of the objects found in it will
certainly be of interest. The second part of De Morgan's book,
"Recherche sur les origines de l'Egypte," which has just appeared,
furnishes us with the facts concerning the tomb, and the objects found
in the tomb I will describe from the originals in the Gizeh Museum.
The tomb consists of a large building, standing alone, measuring 54 X
27 m. (about 100 X 50 Egyptian ells), and built of burned brick. The
outside walls were ornamented, as was usual in later Egyptian
buildings, with pilasters composed of groups of smaller rectangular
pilasters. It is the same motive so often to be observed in the sham
doors in tombs of the old kingdom, and is really the most natural
facade ornamentation for brick buildings, as it may be made by simply
setting every alternate column of bricks forward or backward. The
walls were, in addition, plastered. Back of the thick outside wall on
each side lay a row of narrow rectangular rooms, formed by dividing a
corridor by means of cross walls. Inside this surrounding row of rooms
was the real tomb, a building with thick walls and five rooms in a
row. The middle one of these rooms, noticeably larger than the others,
is the real burial chamber. These five rooms were originally connected
by doors which were afterward walled up. As to the roof, we can only
make surmises, as the excavator has furnished us with no material on
this point. The walls as they now stand are at the highest point about
four meters high, and thus may form only the lower part of the
building. Whether the roof was an arch of stone or simply of wood, is
uncertain; but it seems to me probable that it was of wood. For the
tomb contained a layer of ashes in which all the objects put in the
grave with the dead man were found; and, assuming that the roof was of
wood, it is possible that the roof was set on fire at the time when
the tomb was robbed and that the ashes came from this fire. The
explanation which the excavator gives of these ashes, that the body
and the offerings were burned in the closed grave, hardly deserves
consideration. In any case, the grave has been robbed and destroyed.
That is shown by the fact that many pieces of funeral furniture, which
originally could only have been put in the central rooms, were found
partly broken in the outside rooms, or on the side toward the fields,
the side most exposed to the attack of grave robbers.
The assumption that the grave has been robbed and intentionally
destroyed agrees entirely with the fact that all the more valuable
objects found in the grave were in fragments. But, fragmentary as they
are, they are sufficient to give us a good idea of the art of the
first period of the Egyptian kingdom, a period which is now most
generally estimated to be five and a half millenniums before the
present day (3600 B.C.) The skill with which ivory carving was done in
that early time is indeed amazing. Reclining lions, hunting dogs and
fish are so skillfully reproduced that one asks how many centuries of
development must have preceded before the art of carving reached this
perfection. A number of feet taken from the legs of small chairs and
other similar furniture, and made in imitation of bulls' legs, show
such a fixity of style and at the same time such a freedom of
execution, that no archæologist, without the report of the excavator,
would dare to proclaim them the oldest dated works of Egyptian art.
But it was not only in carving ivory, which is easy to work, that the
Egyptian artists showed their skill. They also make bowls and vases of
diorite and porphyry with the same success; and the forms presented by
the smaller ivory vases are also to be found in vases made of those
refractory stones. Further, the vases made of stone present not merely
such forms as might be made by turning or boring, but there are also
bowls with ribs which are as finely polished as the turned bowls. The
hardest material used in the objects already found is rock crystal, of
which several small flasks and bowls and a little lion are composed.
But the lion, it must be confessed, is rather rudely worked. A few
small vases of obsidian also occur--remarkable in view of the fact
that we do not know of any place in or near Egypt where this stone may
be found. Besides these vessels of hard stone, there are, of course, a
large number made of softer stone. Alabaster vases occur in every
conceivable form. Cylindrical pots, with wavy handles or simple
cordlike ornamentation, appear to have been especially favored. The
great beer jars, closed with enormous stoppers of unbaked clay, were
made of ordinary baked clay. Of course the different stone and clay
vessels, which, undoubtedly, originally contained offerings for the
dead, form the bulk of the contents of the grave. The slate tablets
for rubbing cosmetics for painting the body, and the flint weapons and
knives of all sorts, follow in point of numbers. Remarkably enough,
metal objects occur in this oldest historical period alongside the
stone implements, though, of course, in less numbers. Several objects
made of copper and a slender bead of gold have been found. Such, in
short, is all that remains of the things put in the tomb with the
king. But little as there is, it gives us an idea of the richness and
splendor with which these old royal tombs were furnished.
It might certainly be productive of unusual emotions to know that the
few human bones found in the tomb, and now preserved in the Gizeh
Museum, once belonged to the oldest Egyptian king. But as we know
almost nothing of him, except some unfounded traditions, this sort of
relic worship deserves very little respect. The scientific value of
the proof that Menes was the king buried in the royal tomb of Neggadeh
lies rather in the fact that we have now settled the question of the
age of that culture which was presented to us by the excavations of
Ballas, Neggadeh and Abydos. The products of a whole period of
Egyptian civilization which had been misunderstood, and had been
used to support false historical conclusions, fall into their true
place; and our knowledge of the history of Egyptian culture is
carried back not merely a few centuries, but to a period presenting
characteristics different from the oldest previously known period, but
containing the germs of the later development.
Cairo, Egypt.
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