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. Another discovery, that
of the tomb of Horemheb, was made 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 reign of six or eight
years the court returned to Thebes. A certain noble named Ay came next
to the throne, but held it for only five 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 Eighteenth Province of Upper Egypt, during the reign of Amenophis
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 the old warrior was his great--or
great-great-grandfather. The young noble was probably educated at the
splendid court of Amenophis 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 free-thought 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 he was in later years destined to reform.
When Amenophis 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 Amarna, and there he instituted the worship of the sun, or
rather 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 Amarna was more worthy of consideration on general
grounds 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 doctrines which Akhnaton propounded; and the unpractical
model-kingdom which was uncertainly developing under the hills of El
Amarna 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 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 Amarna, 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 the
narrowness which marred the last years of the idealist.
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 Amarna, 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 immediate successor, 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 Amarna.
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 the 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 seemed 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 account 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.
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. A Hittite
document recently discovered shows the late King’s widow, Akhnaton’s
daughter, seeking an alliance with a Hittite prince, and promising to
make him King of Egypt; 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 Amarna, and who was the father of the beautiful
Nefertiti, Akhnaton’s queen. 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 in five years or so he
disappeared, leaving the throne vacant once more. We hear no more of
Tutankhamen’s widow or of her Hittite alliance.
There was now no question as to who should succeed. A princess named
Mutnezem, the sister of Akhnaton’s queen, and daughter of King Ay, was
the heiress to the throne. All men turned to Horemheb in the hope that
he would marry this lady, and thus reign as Pharaoh over them. 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 1345 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 have 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 blessings 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 not at once 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 Amarna, 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 some years later 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 Amarna” did not rise for some considerable time. 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
[Illustration: A statue of Tutankhamen, the Pharaoh whose tomb was
discovered by Lord Carnarvon in 1922. Now in Cairo.]
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.”
It is interesting, by the way, to note that in the eighth year the King
restored the tomb of Thutmosis IV., which had been robbed during the
revolution; and the inscription which the inspectors left behind them
was found on the wall when Mr. Howard Carter discovered the tomb a few
years ago. The plundering of the royal tombs is a typical instance of
the lawlessness of the times. The corruption, too, which followed on the
disorder was appalling; and wherever the King went he was confronted
with deceit, embezzlement, bribery, extortion, and official tyranny.
Every Government officer was attempting to obtain money from his
subordinates by illegal means; and _bakshish_--that bogy of the Nile
Valley--cast its shadow upon all men.
Horemheb stood this as long as he could; but at last, regarding justice
as more necessary than tact, we are told that “his Majesty seized a
writing-palette and scroll, and put into writing all that his Majesty
the King had said to himself.” It is not possible to record here more
than a few of the good laws which he then made, but the following
examples will serve to show how near to his heart were the interests of
his people.
It was the custom for the tax-collectors to place that portion of a
farmer’s harvest, which they had taken, upon the farmer’s own boat, in
order to convey it to the public granary. These boats often failed to be
returned to their owners when finished with, and were ultimately sold by
the officials for their own profit. Horemheb, therefore, made the
following law:--
“If the poor man has made for himself a boat with its sail, and, in
order to serve the State, has loaded it with the Government dues,
and has been robbed of the boat, the poor man stands bereft of his
property and stripped of his many labours. This is wrong, and the
Pharaoh will suppress it by his excellent measures. If there be a
poor man who pays the taxes to the two deputies, and he be robbed
of his property and his boat, my majesty commands: that every
officer who collects the taxes and takes the boat of any citizen,
this law shall be executed against him, and his nose shall be cut
off, and he shall be sent in exile to Tharu. Furthermore,
concerning the tax of timber, my majesty commands that if any
officer find a poor man without a boat, then he shall bring him a
craft belonging to another man in which to carry timber; and in
return for this let the former man do the loading of the timber for
the latter.”
The tax-collectors were wont to commandeer the services of all the
slaves in the town, and to detain them for six or seven days, “so that
it was an excessive detention indeed.” Often, too, they used to
appropriate a portion of the tax for themselves. The new law, therefore,
was as follows:--
“If there be any place where the officials are tax-collecting and
any one shall hear the report saying that they are tax-collecting
to take the produce for themselves, and another shall come to
report saying ‘My man slave or my female slave has been taken away
and detained many days at work by the officials,’ the offender’s
nose shall be cut off, and he shall be sent to Tharu.”
One more law may here be quoted. The police used often to steal the
hides which the peasants had collected to hand over to the Government as
their tax. Horemheb, having satisfied himself that a tale of his kind
was not merely an excuse for not paying the tax, made this law:--
“As for any policeman concerning whom one shall hear it said that
he goes about stealing hides, beginning with this day the law shall
be executed against him, by beating him a hundred blows, opening
five wounds, and taking from him by force the hides which he took.”
To carry out these laws he appointed two chief judges of very high
standing, who are said to have been “perfect in speech, excellent in
good qualities, knowing how to judge the heart.” Of these men the King
writes: “I have directed them to the way of life, I have led them to the
truth, I have taught them, saying, ‘Do not receive the reward of
another. How, then, shall those like you judge others, while there is
one among you committing a crime against justice?’” Under these two
officials Horemheb appointed many judges, who went on circuit around the
country; and the King took the wise step of arranging, on the one hand
that their pay should be so good that they would not be tempted to take
bribes, and, on the other hand, that the penalty for this crime should
be most severe.
So many were the King’s reforms that one is inclined to forget that he
was primarily a soldier. He appears to have made some successful
expeditions against the Syrians, but the fighting was probably near his
own frontiers, for the empire lost by Akhnaton was not recovered for
many years, and Horemheb seems to have felt that Egypt needed to learn
to rule herself before she attempted to rule other nations. An
expedition against some tribes in the Sudan was successfully carried
through, and it is said that “his name was mighty in the land of Kush,
his battlecry was in their dwelling-places.” Except for a semi-military
expedition which was dispatched to the land of Punt, these are the only
recorded foreign activities of the King; but that he had spent much time
in the organisation and improvement of the army is shown by the fact
that three years after his death the Egyptian soldiers were swarming
over the Lebanon and hammering at the doors of the cities of Jezreel.
Had he lived for another few years he might have been famous as a
conqueror as well as an administrator, though old age might retard and
tired bones refuse their office. As it is, however, his name is written
sufficiently large in the book of the world’s great men; and, when he
died, about B.C. 1315, after a reign of some thirty-five years, he had
done more for Egypt than had almost any other Pharaoh. He found the
country in the wildest disorder, and he left it the master of itself,
and ready to become once more the master of the empire which Akhnaton’s
doctrine of Peace and Goodwill had lost. Under his direction the purged
worship of the old gods, which for him meant but the maintenance of some
time-proved customs, had gained the mastery over the chimerical worship
of Aton; without force or violence he had substituted the practical for
the visionary; and to Amon and Order his grateful subjects were able to
cry, “The sun of him who knew thee not has set, but he who knows thee
shines; the sanctuary of him who assailed thee is overwhelmed in
darkness, but the whole earth is now in light.” In later years the names
of Akhnaton, Smenkhkara, Tutankhamon, and Ay were all removed from the
records as being tainted with the Aton-worship; and Horemheb was
described as the immediate successor of Amenophis III., some thirty
years thus being added to the actual length of his reign.
The tomb of this great Pharaoh was cut in the rocks on the west side of
the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, not far from the resting-place of
Amenophis II. In the days of the later Ramesside kings the
tomb-plunderers entered the sepulchre, pulled the embalmed body of the
king to pieces in the search for hidden jewels, scattered the bones of
the three members of his family who were buried with him, and stole
almost everything of value which they found. There must have been other
robberies after this, and finally the Government inspectors of about
B.C. 1100 entered the tomb, and, seeing its condition, closed its mouth
with a compact mass of stones. The torrents of rain which sometimes fall
in winter in Egypt percolated through this filling, and left it
congealed and difficult to cut through; and on the top of this hard mass
tons of rubbish were tossed from other excavations, thus completely
hiding the entrance.
In this condition, the tomb was found by us in February, 1908. We had
been working on the side of the valley opposite to the tomb of Rameses
III., where the accumulations of _débris_ had entirely hidden the face
of the rocks, and, as this was a central and likely spot for a “find,”
it was hoped that when the skin of rubbish had been cleared away the
entrance of a royal tomb might be exposed. After a few weeks of digging,
the mouth of a large shaft, cut into the limestone, was cleared. This
proved to lead into a small chamber half-filled with rubbish, amongst
which some fine jewellery, evidently hidden here, was found. This has
been published by Mr. Davis in facsimile, and further mention of it here
is unnecessary. Continuing the work it was not long before traces of
another tomb became apparent, and in a few days’ time we were able to
look down from the surrounding mounds of rubbish upon the commencement
of a rectangular cutting in the rock. The size and style of the entrance
left no doubt that the work was to be dated to the end of the Eighteenth
Dynasty, and the excavators were confident that the tomb of either
Tutankhamen or Horemheb lay before them. Steps leading down to the
entrance were presently uncovered, and finally the doorway itself was
freed from _débris_.
On one of the door-posts an inscription was now seen, written in black
ink by one of the Government inspectors of B.C. 1100. This stated that
in the fourth year of an unknown king the tomb had been inspected, and
had been found to be that of Horemheb.
We had hoped now to pass into the tomb without further difficulty, but
in this we were disappointed, for the first corridor was quite choked
with the rubbish placed there by the inspectors. This corridor led down
at a steep angle through the limestone hillside, and, like all other
parts of the tomb, it was carefully worked. It was not until two days
later that enough clearing had been done to allow us to crawl in over
the rubbish, which was still piled up so nearly to the roof that there
was only just room to wriggle downwards over it with our backs pressing
against the stone above. At the lower end of the corridor there was a
flight of steps towards which the rubbish shelved, and, sliding down the
slope, we were here able to stand once more. It was obvious that the
tomb did not stop here, and work, therefore, had to be begun on the
rubbish which choked the stairway in order to expose the entrance to
further passages. A doorway soon became visible, and at last this was
sufficiently cleared to permit of our crawling into the next corridor,
though now we were even more closely squeezed between the roof and the
_débris_ than before.
The party which made the entrance consisted of Mr. Davis, Mr. Ayrton,
Mr. Harold Jones, Mr. Max Dalison, formerly of the Egypt Exploration
Fund, and myself. Wriggling and crawling, we pushed and pulled ourselves
down the sloping rubbish, until, with a rattling avalanche of small
stones, we arrived at the bottom of the passage, where we scrambled to
our feet at the brink of a large rectangular well, or shaft. Holding the
lamps aloft, the surrounding walls were seen to be covered with
wonderfully preserved paintings, executed on slightly raised plaster.
Here Horemheb was seen standing before Isis, Osiris, Horus, and other
gods; and his cartouches stood out boldly from amidst the elaborate
inscriptions. The colours were extremely rich, and, though there was so
much to be seen ahead, we stood there for some minutes, looking at them
with a feeling much akin to awe.
The shaft was partly filled with rubbish, and not being very deep, we
were able to climb down it by means of a ladder, and up the other side
to an entrance which formed a kind of window in the sheer wall. In
entering a large tomb for the first time, there are one or two scenes
which fix themselves upon the memory more forcefully than others, and
one feels as though one might carry these impressions intact to the
grave. In this tomb there was nothing so impressive as this view across
the well and through the entrance in the opposite wall. At one’s feet
lay the dark pit; around one the gaudy paintings gleamed; and through
the window-like aperture before one, a dim suggestion could be obtained
of a white-pillared hall. The intense eagerness to know what was beyond,
and, at the same time, the feeling that it was almost desecration to
climb into those halls which had stood silent for thousands of years,
cast a spell over the scene and made it unforgetable.
This aperture had once been blocked up with stones, and the paintings
had passed across it, thus hiding it from view, so that a robber
entering the
[Illustration: The entrance of the Tomb of Horemheb in the Valley of the
Tombs of the Kings]
tomb might think that it ended here. But the trick was an old one, and
the plunderers had easily detected the entrance, had pulled away the
blocks, and had climbed through. Following in their footsteps, we went
up the ladder and passed through the entrance into the pillared hall.
Parts of the roof had fallen in, and other parts appeared to be likely
to do so at any moment. Clambering over the _débris_ we descended
another sloping corridor, which was entered through a cutting in the
floor of the hall, originally blocked up and hidden. This brought us
into a chamber covered with paintings, like those around the well; and
again we were brought to a standstill by the amazingly fresh colours
which arrested and held the attention.
We then passed on into the large burial-hall, the roof of which was
supported by crumbling pillars. Slabs of limestone had broken off here
and there and had crashed down on to the floor, bringing with them
portions of the ceiling painted with a design of yellow stars on a black
ground. On the walls were unfinished paintings, and it was interesting
to notice that the north, south, east, and west were clearly marked upon
the four walls for ceremonial purposes.
The main feature towards which our eyes were turned was the great
pink-granite sarcophagus which stood in the middle of the hall. Its
sides were covered with well-cut inscriptions of a religious nature; and
at the four corners there were figures of Isis and Nephthys, in relief,
with their wings spread out as though in protection around the body.
Looking into the sarcophagus, the lid having been thrown off by the
plunderers, we found it empty except for a skull and a few bones of more
than one person. The sarcophagus stood upon the limestone floor, and
under it small holes had been cut, in each of which a little wooden
statue of a god had been placed. Thus the king’s body was, so to speak,
carried on the heads of the gods, and held aloft by their arms. This is
a unique arrangement, and has never before been found in any burial.
In all directions broken figures of the gods were lying, and two defaced
wooden statues of the king were overthrown beside the sarcophagus. Dead
flowers were found here and there amidst the _débris_, these being the
remnant of the masses of garlands which were always heaped around and
over the coffin.
Peering into a little side chamber on the right, we saw two skulls and
some broken bones lying in the corner. These appeared to be female, and
one of the skulls may have been that of Mutnezem, the queen. In another
small chamber on the left there was a fine painting of Osiris on the
back wall; and, crouching at the foot of this, a statuette of a god with
upraised hands had been placed. As we turned the corner and come upon it
in the full glare of the lamps, one felt that the arms were raised in
horror at the sight of us, and that the god was gasping with surprise
and indignation at our arrival. In the floor of another ante-chamber a
square hole was cut, leading down to a small room. A block of stone had
neatly fitted over the opening, thus hiding it from view; but the
robbers had detected the crack, and had found the hiding-place. Here
there were a skull and a few bones, again of more than one person.
Altogether there must have been four bodies buried in the tomb; and it
seems that the inspectors, finding them strewn in all directions, had
replaced one skull in the sarcophagus, two in the side room, and one in
this hiding-place, dividing up the bones between these three places as
they thought fit. It may be that the king himself was buried in the
underground chamber, and that the sarcophagus was a sort of blind; for
he had seen the destruction caused by robbers in the tomb of Thutmosis
IV., which he had restored, and he may have made this attempt to secure
the safety of his own body. Whether this be so or not, Fate has not
permitted the body of the great king to escape the hands of the
destroyer, and it will now never be known with certainty whether one of
these four heads wore the crown of the Pharaohs.
The temperature was very great in the tomb, and the perspiration
streamed down our faces as we stood contemplating the devastation. Now
the electric lamps would flash upon the gods supporting the ransacked
sarcophagus, lighting for a moment their grotesque forms; now the
attention would concentrate upon some wooden figure of a
hippopotamus-god or cow-headed deity; and now the light would bring into
prominence the great overthrown statue of the king. There is something
peculiarly sensational in the examining of a tomb which has not been
entered for such thousands of years, but it must be left to the
imaginative reader to infuse a touch of that feeling of the dramatic
into these words. It would be hopeless to attempt to put into writing
those impressions which go to make the entering of a great Egyptian
sepulchre so thrilling an experience: one cannot describe the silence,
the echoing steps, the dark shadows, the hot breathless air; nor tell of
the sense of vast Time and the penetrating of it which stirs one so
deeply.
The air was too bad to permit of our remaining long so deep in the
bowels of the earth; and the falling ceilings were a source of much
danger. We therefore presently made our way through the halls and
corridors back to the upper world, scrambling and crashing over the
_débris_, and squeezing ourselves through the rabbit-hole by which we
had entered. As we passed out of his hot, dark tomb into the brilliant
sunshine and the bracing north wind, the gloomy wreck of the place was
brought before the imagination with renewed force. The scattered bones,
the broken statues, the dead flowers, grouped themselves in the mind
into a picture of utter decay. In some of the tombs which have been
opened the freshness of the objects has caused one to exclaim at the
inaction of the years; but here, where vivid and well-preserved
wall-paintings looked down on a jumbled collection of smashed fragments
of wood and bones, one felt how hardly the Powers deal with the dead.
How far away seemed the great fight between Amon and Aton; how futile
the task which Horemheb accomplished so gloriously! It was all over and
forgotten, and one asked oneself what it mattered whether the way was
difficult or the battle slow to win. In the fourth year of the reign of
Horemheb a certain harper named Neferhotep partly composed a song which
was peculiarly appropriate to the tune which ran in one’s head at the
opening of the tomb of this Pharaoh whom the harper served:
“(1) Behold the dwelling of the dead. Their walls fall down; their
place is no more: they are as though they had never existed. (2)
That which hath come into being must pass away again. The young man
and the maidens go to their places; the sun riseth at dawn, and
setteth again in the hills of the west. Men beget and women
conceive. The children, too, go to the places which are appointed
for them. O, then, be happy! Come, scents and perfumes are set
before thee: _mahu_-flowers and lilies for the arms and neck of thy
beloved. Come, songs and music are before thee. Set behind thee all
cares; think only upon gladness, until that day cometh whereon thou
shalt go down to the land which loveth silence.”
Horemheb must often have heard this song sung in his palace at Thebes by
its composer; but did he think, one wonders, that it would be the walls
of his own tomb which would fall down, and his own bones which would be
almost as though they had never existed?