HAWARA.
1888.
When considering the places favourable for future excavations I had
named Hawara and Illahun, amongst other sites, to M. Grébaut; and he
proposed to me that I should work in the Fayum province in general. The
exploration of the pyramids of this district was my main object, as
their arrangement, their date, and their builders were quite unknown.
Hawara was not a convenient place to work at, as the village was two
miles from the pyramid, and a canal lay between; I therefore determined
to form a camp of workmen to live on the spot, as at Daphnae. For this
purpose I needed to recruit a party from a little distance, and began my
work therefore at the ancient Arsinoe or Crocodilopolis, close to
Medinet el Fayum. Here I cleared the pylon of the temple, of which a few
disturbed blocks remain, and found a second mention of Amenemhat II
beside that already known; but his work had all been altered and
rebuilt, probably by Ramessu II. Four or five different levels of
building and reconstruction could be traced, and the depth of rubbish
over the approach to the temple in the shallowest part of the mounds was
twenty-four feet. Within the great enclosure of mud-brick wall, the site
of the temple could be traced by following the bed of sand, on which the
foundations had been laid; but scarcely a single stone was left. One
re-used block had a figure of a king of the nineteenth dynasty, probably
Ramessu II; and this leads us to date as late as Ptolemy II the temple
which we can trace here. He doubtless built a large temple, as the place
received much attention in his time, and was dedicated to his
sister-wife Arsinoe; she was specially worshipped along with the great
gods, as we know from the stele of Pithom. The only early objects found
here were flint knives in the soil of the temple; these belong to the
twelfth dynasty, as we know from later discoveries.
[Illustration: 65. FLINT KNIFE.]
A short work of a few days at Biahmu resolved the questions about the
so-called pyramids there. So soon as we began to turn over the soil we
found chips of sandstone colossi; the second day the gigantic nose of a
colossus was found, as broad as a man’s body; then pieces of carved
thrones, and a fragment
[Illustration: 66. PEDESTALS OF BIAHMU.]
[Illustration: 67. WALL OF COURT.]
of inscription of Amenemhat III. It was evident that the two great piles
of stone had been the pedestals of colossal seated monolithic statues,
carved in hard quartzite sandstone, and brilliantly polished. These
statues faced northward, and around each was a court-yard wall with
sloping outer face, and red granite gateway in the north front. The
total height of the colossi was about sixty feet from the ground. The
limestone pedestal rose twenty-one feet, then the sandstone colossus had
a base of four feet, on which the figure, seated on its throne, rose to
a height of thirty-five feet more. Thus the whole statue and part of its
pedestal would be visible above the enclosing court-yard wall, and it
would appear from a distance as if it were placed on a truncated
pyramid. The description of Herodotos, therefore, is fully accounted
for; and it shows that he actually saw the figures, though from a
distance, as any person who visited them closely would not have
described them in such a manner.
[Illustration: 68. SECTION OF COURT, WITH STATUE.]
Having by this time formed and organised a good body of workmen, I moved
over to Hawara, with as many men as I wanted; and the only difficulty
was to restrain the numbers who wished to work. The pyramid had never
been entered in modern times, and its arrangement was wholly unknown;
explorers had fruitlessly destroyed much of the brickwork on the north
side, but yet the entrance was undiscovered. In Roman times the stone
casing had been removed, and as the body of the structure was of mud
bricks, it had crumbled away somewhat; each side was therefore
encumbered with chips and mud. After vainly searching the ground on the
north side for any entrance, I then cleared the middle of the east side,
but yet no trace of any door could be found. As it was evident then that
the plan was entirely different to that of any known pyramid, and it
would be a hopeless task to clear all the ground around it, I therefore
settled to tunnel to the midst. This work was very troublesome, as the
large bricks were laid in sand, and rather widely spaced; hence as soon
as any were removed, the sand was liable to pour out of the joints, and
to loosen all the surrounding parts. The removal of each brick was
therefore done as quietly as possible, and I had to go in three times a
day and insert more roofing boards, a matter which needed far more skill
and care than a native workman would use. After many weeks’ work (for
there was only room for one man), I found that we were halfway through,
but all in brick. On one side of the tunnel, however, I saw signs of a
built wall, and guessing that it had stood around the pit made for the
chamber during the building, I examined the rock-floor, and found that
it sloped down slightly, away from the wall. We turned then to the west,
and tunnelling onwards, we reached the great roofing beams of the
chamber in a few days. No masons of the district, however, could cut
through them, and I had to leave the work till the next season. Then,
after a further search on all the four sides for the entrance, the
masons attacked the sloping stone roof, and in two or three weeks’ time
a hole beneath them was reported; anxiously I watched them enlarge it
until I could squeeze through, and then I entered the chamber above the
sepulchre; at one side I saw a lower hole, and going down I found a
broken way into the sandstone sepulchre, but too narrow for my
shoulders. After sounding the water inside it, a boy was put down with a
rope-ladder; and at last, on looking through the hole, I could see by
the light of his candle the two sarcophagi, standing rifled and empty.
In a day or two we cleared away the rubbish from the original entrance
passage to the chamber, and so went out into the passages, which turned
and wandered up and down. These were so nearly choked with mud, that in
many parts the only way along them was by lying flat, and sliding along
the mud, pushed by fingers and toes. In this way, sliding, crawling, and
wading, I reached as near to the outer mouth of the passage as possible;
and then by measuring back to the chamber, the position of the mouth on
the outside of the pyramid was pretty nearly found. But so deep was it
under the rubbish, and so much encumbered with large blocks of stone,
that it took about a fortnight to reach it from the outside.
The pyramid had been elaborately arranged so as to deceive and weary the
spoiler, and it had apparently occupied a great amount of labour to
force an entrance. The mouth was on the ground level, on the south
side,
[Illustration: 69. PLAN OF PYRAMID.]
a quarter of the length from the south-west corner. The original
explorers descended a passage with steps to a chamber, from which
apparently there was no exit. The roof consisted of a sliding trap-door,
however, and breaking through this another chamber was reached at a
higher level. Then a passage opened to the east, closed with a wooden
door, and leading to another chamber with a trap-door roof. But in front
of the explorer was a passage carefully plugged up solid with stone;
this they thought would lead to the prize, and so all the stones were
mined through, only to lead to nothing. From the second trap-door
chamber a passage led northward to the third such chamber. From that a
passage led west to a chamber with two wells, which seemed as if they
led to the tomb, but both were false. This chamber also was almost
filled with masonry, which all concealed nothing, but had given plenty
of occupation to the spoilers who removed it in vain. A filled-up trench
in the floor of the chamber really led to the sepulchre; but arriving
there no door was to be found, as the entrance had been by the roof, an
enormous block of which had been let down into place to close the
chamber. So at last the way had been forced by breaking away a hole in
the edge of the glassy-hard sandstone roofing block, and thus reaching
the chamber and its sarcophagi. By a little widening of the spoilers’
hole I succeeded in getting through it into the chamber. The water was
up to the middle of my body, and so exploration was difficult; but the
floor was covered with rubbish and chips, which might contain parts of
the funereal vessels, and therefore needed searching. The rubbish in the
sarcophagi I cleared out myself; and then I set some lads to gather up
the scraps from the floor on the flat blade of a hoe (as it was out of
arms’ reach under water), and after searching them they threw them into
the sarcophagi. Thus we anxiously worked on for any inscribed fragments;
my anxiety being for the cartouche of the king, the boys’ anxiety for
the big bakhshish promised, at _per_ hieroglyph found, extra value given
for cartouches. The system worked, for in the first day I got the
coveted
[Illustration: 70. INSCRIPTION OF AMENEMHAT III.]
[Illustration: 71. ALTAR OF NEFERU-PTAH.]
prize, a piece of an alabaster vessel with the name of Amenemhat III,
proving finally to whom the pyramid belonged; and other parts of
inscribed vessels were found. Still there was a puzzle as to the second
sarcophagus, which had been built up between the great central one and
the chamber side. On clearing in the chamber which led to the sepulchre,
however, they found a beautiful altar of offerings in alabaster, covered
with figures of the offerings all named, over a hundred in all, and
dedicated for the king’s daughter, Neferu-ptah; near it were parts of
several bowls in the form of half a trussed duck, also bearing her name:
so doubtless the second interment was hers; and she must have died
during her father’s life, and before the closing of the pyramid. Of the
actual bodies I found a few scraps of charred bones, besides bits of
charcoal and grains of burnt diorite in the sarcophagi; also a beard of
lazuli for inlaying was found in the chamber. The wooden inner coffins,
inlaid with hard stone carving, had therefore been burnt. The chamber
itself is a marvellous work; nearly the whole height of it is carved out
of a single block of hard quartzite sandstone, forming a huge tank, in
which the sarcophagus was placed. In the inside it is twenty-two feet
long and nearly eight feet wide, while the sides are about three feet
thick. The surface is polished, and the corners so sharply cut that I
mistook it for masonry, until I searched in vain for the joints. Of
course it was above water level originally; but all this region has been
saturated by a high level canal of Arab times. Afterwards I had all the
earth removed from the pyramid passages as far as practicable, but
nothing further was found there. No trace of inscription exists on
either the walls or sarcophagi; and but for the funereal furniture, even
the very name would not have been recovered.
Though the pyramid was the main object at Hawara, it was but a lesser
part of my work there. On the south of the pyramid lay a wide mass of
chips and fragments of building, which had long been generally
identified with the celebrated labyrinth. Doubts, however, existed,
mainly owing to Lepsius having considered the brick buildings on the
site to have been part of the labyrinth. When I began to excavate the
result was soon plain, that the brick chambers were built on the top of
the ruins of a great stone structure; and hence they were only the
houses of a village, as they had at first appeared to me to be. But
beneath them, and far away over a vast area, the layers of stone chips
were found; and so great was the mass that it was difficult to persuade
visitors that the stratum was artificial, and not a natural formation.
Beneath all these fragments was a uniform smooth bed of _beton_ or
plaster, on which the pavement of the building had been laid: while on
the south side, where the canal had cut across the site, it could be
seen how the chip stratum, about six feet thick, suddenly ceased, at
what had been the limits of the building. No trace of architectural
arrangement could be found, to help in identifying this great structure
with the labyrinth: but the mere extent of it proved that it was far
larger than any temple known in Egypt. All the temples of Karnak, of
Luxor, and a few on the western side of Thebes, might be placed
together within the vast space of these buildings at Hawara. We know
from Pliny and others, how for centuries the labyrinth had been a great
quarry for the whole district; and its destruction occupied such a body
of masons, that a small town existed there. All this information, and
the recorded position of it, agrees so closely with what we can trace,
that no doubt can now remain regarding the position of one of the
wonders of Egypt.
The cemetery of Hawara was a great resource for discoveries, and it
proved to be one of the richest fields that I have found, although it
was entirely an unexpected prize. The oldest tombs, of the pyramid time,
had all been ruined ages ago, and the pits re-used for the nineteenth
dynasty, the Ptolemaic times, and crocodile burial of the Roman age. But
some slabs from the stone chapels on the surface had fallen down the
tomb shafts, and were thus preserved.
The oldest unravaged tomb was of about the end of the twenty-sixth
dynasty; and that was a treasury of amulets, being the funeral vault of
the family of a great noble, Horuta. It was half inundated, the water
being thigh deep, and though all woodwork and stucco was spoilt, yet the
amulets of stone, and some of pottery, were uninjured. The great
interment was that of Horuta himself. In a side chamber, branching from
the large chamber, a huge sarcophagus of hard and tough limestone had
been placed, containing three successive coffins of wood. This was built
in solidly with masonry all around it, filling up the whole chamber, so
that its very existence was hardly to be suspected by any one in the
large chamber. To clear this out in such a position was hard work; a
party of good hands were steadily labouring at it, mainly by contract,
for two or three months. Down a well, forty feet deep, and in a
pitch-black chamber, splashing about in bitter water, and toiling by
candle-light, all the work had to be done; and dragging out large blocks
of masonry in a very confined space in such circumstances is slow and
tedious. While thus mining the way to the expected burial, we lit on a
hole in the masonry filled with large ushabtis standing in rows, two
hundred in all, of the finest workmanship; and, before long, on the
other side of the sarcophagus, two hundred more were found in a similar
recess. But the sarcophagus itself was most difficult to open. The lid
block was nearly two feet thick, and almost under water. It was far too
heavy for us to move entire, so some weeks were spent in cutting it in
two. One piece was then raised, but it proved to be the foot end; and
though I spent a day struggling with the inner coffins, sitting in the
sarcophagus up to my nose in water, I yet could not draw them out from
under the rest of the stone lid. So after some days the men raised that,
enough to get one’s head in between the under side of it and the water;
and then I spent another gruesome day, sitting astride of the inner
coffin, unable to turn my head under the lid without tasting the bitter
brine in which I sat. But though I got out the first coffin lid, the
inner one was firmly fastened down to its coffin; and though I tried
every way of loosening the coffin, it was so firmly set in a bed of sand
that crowbars and mining with the feet were useless, and it was so low
in the water as to be out of arms’ reach. The need of doing everything
by feeling, and the impossibility of seeing what was done under the
black water, made it a slow business. A third day I then attacked it,
with a helpful friend, Mr. Fraser. We drilled holes in the coffin, as it
was uninscribed, and fixed in stout iron bolts. Then, with ropes tied to
them, all our party hauled again and again at the coffin; it yielded:
and up came an immense black mass to the surface of the water. With
great difficulty we drew it out, as it was very heavy, and we had barely
room for it beneath the low ceiling. Anxiously opening it, we found a
slight inner coffin, and then the body of Horuta himself, wrapped in a
network of beads of lazuli, beryl, and silver, the last all decomposed.
Tenderly we towed him out to the bottom of the entrance pit, handling
him with the same loving care as Izaak his worms. And then came the
last, and longed-for scene, for which our months of toil had whetted our
appetites,--the unwrapping of Horuta. Bit by bit the layers of pitch and
cloth were loosened, and row after row of magnificent amulets were
disclosed, just as they were laid on in the distant past. The gold ring
on the finger which bore his name and titles, the exquisitely inlaid
gold birds, the chased gold figures, the lazuli statuettes delicately
wrought, the polished lazuli and beryl and carnelian amulets finely
engraved, all the wealth of talismanic armoury, rewarded our eyes with a
sight which has never been surpassed to archaeological gaze. No such
complete and rich a series of amulets has been seen intact before; and
as one by one they were removed all their positions were recorded, and
they may now be seen lying in their original order in the Ghizeh Museum.
The rest of the family of Horuta lay in the large chamber, some in stone
sarcophagi, some only in wooden coffins. They also had their due
funereal wealth; and a dozen other sets of amulets rewarded our search,
some of them as fine a series as any known before, but not to compare
for a moment with those of the walled-in patriarch.
[Illustration: 72. VULTURE AND COW, FROM COFFIN LID.]
Of rather later age, perhaps Ptolemaic, was a large wooden coffin that
we found; the body and the lid were two equal parts, plainly
rectangular; and they lay where some old spoiler had left them,
separated, and afterwards buried under a heap of stuff thrown out in
digging later tombs. The whole surface of this sarcophagus was stuccoed,
inside and outside, top and bottom, and every part of it finely painted
and inscribed. The top of the lid had the deities of the district, the
hawk, the Osiris-crocodile, and the bennu, with inscriptions; the lower
part inside bore other animals, the vulture, the cow, and white
hippopotamus; the inside of the lid had the two crocodile-headed Sebeks
and the ape; and underneath the lower part, or body, was a long
inscription, partly biographical. I had a terrifying experience with
this coffin; when I found it much of the stucco was loose, and any
amount of trouble was worth while to preserve so beautiful and important
an object. I observed in copying it that parts had been waxed, to
heighten the colour, and this suggested to me to fasten down the stucco
by wax. I tried melting it on with a plate of hot iron, but could
scarcely do it without blackening it with smoke. In course of this I
poured a layer of wax over the surface; but what was my horror to see as
the wax cooled that it contracted into saucer-formed patches, lifting up
with it the stucco, and leaving bare wood beneath! To touch these wax
patches must irrevocably ruin all hopes of replacing the stucco; so I
covered it with sheets of paper, and thought on it for some days, a
spectre of dismal failure. I tried in vain to buy a brazier at Medinet;
so at last, making a grating of wire, I filled it with red-hot charcoal,
and supported it over part of the unlucky coffin. As I watched it, the
wax softened, flattened, and dropped exactly into place again; patch
after patch settled down, the wax melted and ran in under the stucco;
and at last I saw the whole surface completely relaid, and fixed so
firmly that even the fearful rattle of an Egyptian railway wagon, in the
long journey to Bulak, did not injure it.
But perhaps the greatest success at Hawara was in the direction least
expected. So soon as I went there I observed a cemetery on the north of
the pyramid; on digging in it I soon saw that it was all Roman, the
remains of brick tomb-chambers; and I was going to give it up as not
worth working, when one day a mummy was found, with a painted portrait
on a wooden panel placed over its face. This was a beautifully drawn
head of a girl, in soft grey tints, entirely classical in its style and
mode, without any Egyptian influence. More men were put on to this
region, and in two days another portrait-mummy was found; in two days
more a third, and then for nine days not one; an anxious waiting,
suddenly rewarded by finding three. Generally three or four were found
every week, and I have even rejoiced over five in one day. Altogether
sixty were found in clearing this cemetery, some much decayed and
worthless, others as fresh as the day they were painted.
Not only were these portraits found thus on the mummies, but also the
various stages of decoration that led up to the portrait. First, the
old-fashioned stucco cartonnage coverings, purely Egyptian, of the
Ptolemies. Next, the same made more solidly, and with distinct
individual differences, in fact, modelled masks of the deceased persons.
Then arms modelled in one with the bust, the rest of the body being
covered with a canvas wrapper painted with mythologic scenes, all purely
Egyptian. Probably under Hadrian the first portraits are found, painted
on a canvas wrapper, but of Greek work. Soon the canvas was abandoned,
[Illustration: 73. FOUR STAGES OF MUMMY DECORATION.]
and a wooden panel used instead; and then the regular series of panel
portraits extends until the decline in the third century. All this
custom of decorating the mummies arose from their being kept above
ground for many years in rooms, probably connected with the house.
Various signs of this usage can be seen on the mummies, and in the
careless way in which they were at last buried, after such elaborate
decoration.
Though only a sort of undertaker’s business, in a provincial town of
Egypt, and belonging to the Roman age, when art had greatly declined,
yet these paintings give us a better idea of what ancient painting was,
and what a high state it must have reached in its prime, than anything
yet known, excepting some of the Pompeian frescoes. Mannerism is evident
in nearly all of these, and faults may be easily detected; yet there is
a spirit, a sentiment, an expression about the better examples which can
only be the relic of a magnificent school, whose traditions and skill
were not then quite lost. A few indeed of these heads are of such power
and subtlety that they may stand beside the works of any age without
being degraded. If such was Greek painting still, centuries after its
zenith, by obscure commercial artists, and in a distant town of a
foreign land, we may dimly credit what it may have been in its grandeur.
The National Gallery now begins its history of paintings far before that
of any other collection; the finest examples left, after the selection
of the Bulak Museum, being now at Trafalgar Square.
The technical methods of these paintings have been much discussed.
Certainly the colours were mixed with melted wax as a medium, and it
seems most likely that both the brush and hard point were used. The
backing is a very thin cedar panel, on which a coat of lead colour
priming was laid, followed by a flesh-coloured ground where the face was
to come. The drapery is freely marked in with bold brushfuls of colour,
while the flesh is carefully and smoothly laid on with zigzag strokes.
In some portraits the boldness of the work is almost like some modern
romanticist’s; at a foot distance the surface is nearly
incomprehensible, at six or eight feet it produces a perfect effect.
Several of these pictures when found were in a perilous state; the film
of wax paint was scaled loose from the panel, and they could never be
even tilted up on edge without perishing. After finding several in this
tender state, and pondering on their preservation, I ventured to try the
same process as for the stucco coffin. The wire-grating was filled with
red-hot charcoal, and then the frail portrait was slid in beneath it, a
few drops of melted wax laid on it, and watched. In a few seconds the
fresh wax began to spread, and then at once I ladled melted wax all over
the surface; a second too long, and it began to fry and to blister; too
sharp a tilt to drain it when it came out, and the new wax washed away
the paint. But with care and management it was possible to preserve even
the most rotten paintings with fresh wax; and afterwards I extended this
waxing to all substances that were perishable, woodwork and leather, as
well as stucco and paint.
This custom, however, of preserving the mummies above ground, adorned
with the portraits, gave way about the time of Constantine, or perhaps a
little earlier, and immediate burial was adopted. Probably this was
partly due to the progress of Christianity.
[Illustration: 74. CUT-GLASS VASE.]
Instead, therefore, of finding the portraits of the persons, we have
their embroidered and richly woven garments; for they were buried in the
finest clothes they had when alive. And their possessions were buried
with them. In one grave was a lady’s casket made of wood inlaid with
ivory panels, on which figures were carved and coloured with inlaying.
The fine cut-glass vase from another grave is of the whitest glass, and
excellently cut with the wheel; perhaps the finest example of such work
from Roman times. The toys were also buried with the children, and
dolls, with all their furniture,--bedstead, mirror, table, toilet-box,
clothes-basket, and other paraphernalia--were placed with the little
ones who had died. Even more elaborate toys were laid here, such as the
curious _terra cotta_ of a sedan chair, borne by two porters, with a
lady seated inside; a loose figure that can be removed.
[Illustration: 75. SIDE OF IVORY CASKET. 1: 4.]
[Illustration: 76. SEDAN CHAIR, TERRA COTTA. 1: 4.]
In one instance a far more valuable prize accompanied a body; under the
head of a lady lay a papyrus roll, which still preserved a large part
of the second book of the Iliad, beautifully written, and with marginal
notes. A great quantity of pieces of papyrus, letters and accounts, of
Roman age, were also found scattered about in the cemetery. In a large
jar buried in the ground lay a bundle of title-deeds: they recorded the
sale of some monastic property, and were most carefully rolled, bound up
with splints of reed, to prevent their being bent, and wrapped in
several old cloths.
[Illustration: 77. 1:6. ROMAN RAG DOLLS. 1: 4.]
In yet another respect Hawara proved a rich field. In the coffins, in
the graves, and in the ruins of the chambers, were still preserved the
wreaths with which the dead had been adorned, and the flowers which the
living had brought to the tombs. These wreaths were often in the most
perfect condition, every detail of the flowers being as complete as if
dried for a herbarium. They illustrate the accounts of Pliny and other
writers about ancient wreaths, and the plants used for them, and show
what a careful and precise trade the wreath-maker’s was. Beside the
decorative plants there were many seeds, and remains of edible fruits
and vegetables, which had been left behind in the surface chambers of
the tombs after the funereal feasts. Altogether, the cemetery of Hawara
has doubled the extent of our list of ancient Egyptian botany, under the
careful examination given by Mr. Newberry to the boxes full of plants
which I brought away.
Few places, then, have such varied interest as Hawara; the twelfth
dynasty pyramid, the labyrinth, the amulets of Horuta, the portraits,
the botany, and the papyri, are each of special interest and historical
value.
In this year also I visited the other side of the lake of the Fayum, now
known as the Birket Kerun. There, at some miles back in that utter
solitude, stands a building of unknown age and unknown purport. It is
massively constructed, but without any trace of inscription, or even
ornament, which would tell its history. That it cannot be as late as the
Kasr Kerun, is probable from its being at a much higher level. There
would be no object in making a building at some miles distant in the
desert, as it now is; and we must rather suppose it to belong to the age
when the lake was full, and extended out so far. But where it comes
before the Ptolemaic age we cannot say. The front doorway leads into a
long court, which has a chamber at each end, and seven recesses in the
long
[Illustration: 78. BUILDING NORTH OF BIRKET KERUN.]
[Illustration: 79. INTERIOR OF BUILDING.]
side opposite the entrance. These recesses have had doors, of which the
pivot holes can be seen. There are no traces of statues or of
sarcophagi about; and the place has been keenly tunnelled and explored
by treasure-seekers.
[Illustration: 80. TOY BIRD ON WHEELS, HAWARA.]
[Illustration: 81. PYRAMID OF ILLAHUN.]