SEPULCHRAL ARCHITECTURE.
§ 1.--_The Egyptian Belief as to a Future Life and its Influence upon
their Sepulchral Architecture._
The most ancient monuments which have yet been discovered in Egypt are
the tombs; they have therefore a right to the first place in our
sketch of Egyptian architecture.
In every country the forms and characteristics of the sepulchre are
determined by the ideas of the natives as to the fate of their bodies
and souls after life is over. In order to understand the Egyptian
arrangements, we must begin then by inquiring into their notions upon
death and its consequences; we must ask whether they believed in
another life, and in what kind of life. We shall find a complete
answer to our question in the collation of written texts with figured
monuments.
In the first period of his intellectual development, man is unable to
comprehend any life but that which he experiences in his own person.
He is as yet unable to observe, to analyse or to generalize. He does
not perceive the characteristics which distinguish him from things
about him, and he sees nothing in nature but a repetition of himself.
He is therefore incapable of distinguishing between life such as he
leads it and mere existence. He dreams of no other way of being than
his own. As such is the tendency of his intellect, nothing could be
more natural or more logical than the conception to which it leads him
in presence of the problem offered to him every time that a corpse
descends into the grave. M. Maspero has so thoroughly understood the
originality of the solution adopted by the Egyptians that we cannot do
better, in attempting to explain the hypothesis, at once gross and
subtle, to which they had recourse for consolation, than borrow his
rendering of the texts which throw light upon this subject,
together with some of the reflections which those texts suggested to
him.[114]
[114] "_Conférence sur l'Histoire des Âmes dans l'Égypte
ancienne, d'après les Monuments du Musée du Louvre_," in the
_Bulletin hebdomadaire de l'Association scientifique de France_,
No. 594. M. Maspero has often and exhaustively treated this
subject, especially in his numerous lectures at the Collège de
France. Those lectures afforded the material for the remarkable
paper in the _Journal asiatique_ entitled, "_Étude sur quelques
Peintures et sur quelques Textes relatifs aux Funérailles_"
(numbers for May, June, 1878, for December-June, and November,
December, 1879, and May-June, 1880). These articles have been
republished in a single volume with important corrections and
additions (Maisonneuve, 1880).
[Illustration:
J. Sulpis del et sc.
SETI I
BAS-RELIEF AT ABYDOS
]
Were we to affirm that during thousands of years no change took place
in the ideas of the Egyptians upon a future life, we should not be
believed, and, as a fact, those ideas underwent a continual process of
refinement. Under the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, during
those centuries when the limits of Egyptian empire and Egyptian
thought were carried farthest afield, we find traces of doctrines
which offer notable variations, and even, when closely examined,
actual contradictions. These are successive answers made during a long
course of time to the eternal and never-changing enigma. As they
became more capable of philosophic speculation the Egyptians modified
their definition of the soul, and, by a necessary consequence, of the
manner in which its persistence after death must be understood, and as
always happens in such a case, these successive conceptions are
super-imposed one upon another; the last comer did not dethrone its
predecessor but became inextricably blended with it in the popular
imagination.
We refer all those who wish to follow minutely this curious
development of the Egyptian intellect to the subtle analysis of M.
Maspero. That historian has applied himself to the apprehension of
every delicate shade of meaning in a system of thought which has to be
grasped through the veil thrown around it by extreme difficulties of
language and written character, but at the same time he has never
attempted to endow it with a precision or logical completeness to
which it had no claim. By well chosen comparisons and illustrations he
enables us to understand how the Egyptian contented himself with vague
notions, and how he managed to harmonize ideas which seem to us
inconsistent.
We shall not enter into those details. We shall not seek to determine
the sense which the Egyptians attached, after a certain period, to the
word _bâi_,[115] which has been translated _soul_, nor the
distinction between it and _khou_, luminousness, which the soul seems
to have enveloped like a garment. We shall not follow the soul and its
internal light in its subterranean journey across _Ament_, the
Egyptian Hades, to which it entered by a cleft, _Pega_, to the west of
Abydos, which was the only portal to the kingdom of the shades; nor
shall we accompany them in the successive transformations which made
them acquainted with every corner of the earth and sky in the infinite
series of their _becomes_ (to use the Egyptian expression); what we
have to do is to trace out the most ancient of their religious
conceptions, the conception which, like the first teachings of
infancy, was so deeply engraved upon the soul and intellect of the
race as to exercise a much stronger influence than the later more
abstract and more philosophical theories, which were superimposed upon
it. In this primitive conception we ought to find the determining
cause of the Egyptian form of tomb. Its constitution was already
settled in the time of the ancient Empire, and, from the Memphite
dynasties until the end, it remained unchanged in principle. In this
constitution we shall find embodied the essential idea adopted by the
Egyptians when they first attempted to find some eternal element in
man, or, at least, some element which should resist the annihilation
of death for a period much longer than the few days which make up our
mortal life.
[115] Or _ba_.--ED.
The Egyptians called that which does not perish as the dying man draws
his last sigh, the _ka_, a term which M. Maspero has rendered as the
_double_. "This _double_ was a duplicate of the body in a matter less
dense than that of the body, a projection, coloured but aërial, of the
individual, reproducing him feature for feature, a child if coming
from a child, a woman if from a woman, and a man if from a man."[116]
[116] _Conférence_, p. 381. Mr. Herbert Spencer, in the first
chapters of his _Principles of Sociology_, has given a curious
and plausible explanation of how this conception of a _double_
was formed. He finds its origin chiefly in the phenomena of
sleep, of dreams, and of the faintness caused by wounds or
illness. He shows how these more or less transitory suspensions
of animation led men to suppose that death was nothing but a
prolonged interruption of life. He also thinks that the actual
shadow cast by a man's body contributed to the formation of that
belief. But had it no other elements which belonged to the
general disposition of humanity in those early periods of
intellectual life? Into that question we cannot enter here
further than to say that Mr. Spencer's pages make us acquainted
with numerous facts which prove that the beliefs in question
were not confined to a single race, but were common to all
humanity.
This _double_ had to be installed in a lodging suitable to its
existence, had to be surrounded by objects which it had used in its
former state, had to be supplied with the food which was necessary for
the sustenance of its life. And all these things it obtained from the
piety of its relations, who, on fixed days, brought them to the
threshold of the _good dwelling_ or the _eternal dwelling_, which were
the phrases used by the Egyptians.[117] By these offerings alone could
the hungry and thirsty phantom which had replaced the living man be
kept alive. The first duty of the survivors was to take care that this
dependent existence should not be extinguished by their neglect, to
provide food and drink for the support, if we may use such a phrase,
of the precarious life of the dead, who would otherwise be irritated
against them and use the almost godlike power attributed to his
mysterious condition for the punishment of his ungrateful
posterity.[118]
[117] This expression, which is very common in the Egyptian
texts, seems to have made a great impression upon the Greek
travellers. The following passage of DIODORUS is well known:
"This refers to the beliefs of the natives, who look upon the
life upon earth as a thing of minor importance, but set a high
value upon those virtues of which the memory is perpetuated
after death. They call their houses hotels, in view of the short
time they have to spend in them, while they call their tombs
their _eternal dwellings_" (i. 51).
[118] The dead were put under the protection of, and, as it
were, combined with, Osiris; they talked of _the Osiris so and
so_ in naming one who was dead.
This conception is not peculiar to Egypt. The _double_ of the Egyptian
sepulchral records corresponds exactly to the εἴδωλον[119] of
the Greeks and the _umbra_ of the Latins. Both Greeks and Latins
believed that when the funeral rites had been duly accomplished, this
image or shadow entered upon the possession of a subterranean dwelling
and began a life which was no more than the continuation of that in
the light.[120] The dead thus remained in close relation with the
living, on the one hand by the nourishment which they received, on the
other by the protection which they afforded; even in the funeral
repast they took their parts, in the strictest sense of the word, in
the eating and drinking.[121] They looked impatiently forward to these
supplies because, for a moment, they awoke their dormant thoughts and
feelings and gave them glimpses of the true life, the life above
ground and in the sunshine.[122] If they were kept waiting too long
they became angry and revenged themselves upon those who had caused
their sufferings. Woe to the family or city which was not careful to
interest the dead in its stability and thus to associate them with its
prosperity![123]
[119] Εἴδωλα καμόντων (_Il._ xxiii. 72; _Od._ xi. 476; xxiv.
14).
[120] This belief is clearly stated in a passage from Cicero
quoted by Fustel: "Sub terrâ censebant reliquam vitam agi
mortuorum" (_Tusc._ i. 16). This belief was so strong that it
subsisted even after the universal establishment of the custom
of burning the bodies of the dead.
[121] Texts to this effect abound. FUSTEL brought the more
remarkable of them together in his _Cité antique_ (p. 14). We
shall be content with quoting three: "Son of Peleus," said
Neoptolemus, "take this drink which is grateful to the dead;
come and drink this blood" (Hecuba, 536). Electra says when she
pours a libation: "This drink has penetrated the earth; my
father has received it" (Choephorœ, 162). And listen to the
prayer of Orestes to his dead father: "Oh my father, if I live
thou shalt have rich banquets; if I die thou wilt have no
portion of those smoking feasts which nourish the dead"
(Choephorœ, 482-484). Upon the strange persistence of this
belief, traces of which are still found in Eastern Europe, in
Albania, in Thessaly, and Epirus, the works of HEUZEY (_Mission
archéologique de Macédoine_, p. 156), and ALBERT DUMONT (_le
Balkan et l'Adriatique_, pp. 354-356), may be consulted. Some
curious details relating to the funeral feasts of the Chinese
are to be found in the _Comptes rendus de l'Académie des
Inscriptions_, 1877, p. 325. There are some striking points of
resemblance between the religion of China and that of ancient
Egypt; in both one and the other the same want of power to
develop may be found. Taking them as a whole, both the Chinese
and the Egyptians failed to emerge from the condition of
fetichism.
[122] In the eleventh book of the Odyssey it is only after "they
have drunk deep draughts of black blood" that the shades are
capable of recognising Ulysses, of understanding what he says
and answering. The blood they swallowed restored their
intelligence and powers of thought.
[123] The speeches of the Greek orators are full of proofs that
these beliefs had a great hold upon the popular mind, even as
late as the time of Demosthenes. In contested cases of adoption
they always laid great stress upon the dangers which would
menace the city if a family was allowed to become extinct for
want of precautions against the failure of the hereditary line;
there would then be some neglected tomb where the dead never
received the visits of gift-bringing friends, a neglect which
would be visited upon the city as a whole as the accomplice in
such abandonment. Such an argument and others like it may not
seem to us to be of great judicial value, but the talent of an
Isæus understood how to make it tell with an audience, or we
should not find it so often repeated in his pleadings (see G.
PERROT, _L'Éloquence politique et judiciare à Athènes. Les
Précurseurs de Demosthène_, pp. 359-364).
These beliefs seem to have been common to all ancient peoples during
that period of their existence which is lost in the shadow of
prehistoric times. From India to Italy all the primitive forms of
public and private rights betray their presence. For this fact and its
consequences we may refer our readers to the fine work of M. Fustel de
Coulange, _La Cité antique_.[124]
[124] Seventh edition, Hachette, 18mo., 1879.
[Illustration: FIG. 86.--Stele of the 11th dynasty. Boulak. Drawn by
Bourgoin.]
With the progress of centuries and the development of religious
thought, more elevated ideas prevailed. The growth of the scientific
spirit tended to make the notion of a being suspended between life and
death ever more strange and inadmissible. Experience accumulated its
results and it became daily more evident that death not only put an
end to the activity of the organs, but that, immediately upon its
occurrence, it began to dissolve and decompose their tissues. As time
rolled on men must have found it very difficult to believe in a shadow
thus placed outside the normal conditions of life, in a something
which was not a spirit and yet survived the destruction of its organs.
It would seem then that observation and logical reflection should soon
have led to the abandonment of a theory which now appears so puerile;
but, even in these scientific times, those whose intellects demand
well defined ideas are few indeed.[125] At a period when the diffusion
of intellectual culture and the perfection of scientific methods add
daily to our accumulations of positive knowledge, most men allow their
souls to be stirred and their actions to be prompted by the vaguest
words and notions; how much greater then must the influence of those
confused beliefs and baseless images have been in antiquity when but a
few rare minds, and those ill provided with means of research and
analysis, attempted to think with originality, clearness and freedom.
[125] Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his ingenious and subtle analysis
of _primitive ideas_ draws our attention to their frequent
inconsistencies and even positive contradictions; but he shows
us at the same time that the most highly civilised races in
these modern days admit and combine ideas which are logically
quite as irreconcilable as those which seem to us so absurdly
inconsistent when we think of the beliefs of the ancients or of
savage races. Custom renders us insensible to contradictions
which we should perceive at once were we removed to a distance
from them. (_The Principles of Sociology_, vol. i. pp. 119,
185).
The prestige of this illusion was increased and perpetuated by its
intimate connection with several of those sentiments which are most
honourable to human nature. Such a worship of the dead surprises and
even scandalizes us by its frank materialism, but if we seek for the
source of its inspiration and its primitive meaning, we find them in
the remembrance of lost objects of affection, in feelings broken by
the supreme separation, in the gratitude of children to the parents
who gave them birth and nourished their infancy, in the recognition by
the living of the blessings which they enjoy through the long and
laborious efforts of their ancestors. There was no doubt a perishable
element in the funerary ideas of Egypt, an element which the progress
of reason was sure to destroy, and we may be tempted to smile when we
think of the Greek or Egyptian giving himself the trouble to feed his
departed ancestors with blood, milk, or honey, but with all their
simplicity, both one and the other were alive to a truth which the
revolutionary spirit of our days, with its childish and brutal
contempt for the past, is often unable to grasp. They realized the
complete solidarity of one human generation with another. Guided by
their hearts alone they anticipated the results at which modern
thought has arrived by close and attentive study of history. From a
reasoned out conviction of this truth and its consequences, philosophy
now draws the principles of a high morality! but long before our days
this idea and the tender, grateful, sentiments which it provoked had
been a powerful instrument in the moral improvement of the first-born
of civilization and a bond of union for their civil and domestic life.
We have thought it right to dwell upon this worship of the dead and to
describe its character at some length, because the beliefs upon which
it was based are not to be found so clearly set forth in the art of
any other people. Their most complete, clear, and eloquent expression,
in a plastic form, is to be seen in the tombs which border the Nile.
And why is this so? It is because the Egyptian industries were already
in full possession of their resources at the period when those beliefs
had their strongest hold over the minds and feelings of the people. In
the case of Greece, art did not arrive at its full development until
the worship of the dead had lost its high place in the national
conscience. When the Greek genius had arrived, after much striving, at
its complete power of plastic expression, the gods of Olympus had been
created for several centuries, and art was called upon to interpret
the brilliant polytheism of Homer and Hesiod, to give outward image to
those gods, and to construct worthy dwellings for their habitation.
Sculptors, painters, and architects still worked indeed, at the
decoration of the tomb. They strove to give it beauty of shape and
arrangement, and to adorn its walls with bas-reliefs and pictures;
they designed for it those vases and terra cottas which, in our own
day, have been found in thousands in the cemeteries of Greece and
Italy, but all this was only a subordinate use of their talent. Their
ambition was to build temples, to model statues of Zeus, Pallas, and
Apollo. On the other hand, those distant ages in which primitive and
childish ideas of religion prevailed, had no art in which to manifest
their beliefs with clearness and precision.
It was otherwise in the valley of the Nile. A well provided industry
and an experienced art laid themselves out to interpret the popular
beliefs and to defend the dead against final dissolution, or the
agonies of hunger and thirst. Egypt did not differ from other nations
in its opinions upon the mystery of death. In the infancy of every
race the same notions on this matter are to be found, and in this
respect the only difference between the Egyptians and the rest of the
world is very much to the credit of the former; they rapidly attained
to a degree of civilization which was only reached by other races
after their religious development was comparatively mature. Thanks to
this advantage, they were enabled to push their ideas to consequences
which were not to be attained by tribes which were little less than
barbarous, and they had no difficulty in expressing them with
sufficient force and precision.
It remains for us to show the use which the Egyptians made of their
superiority in doing more honour to their dead, in guarding them more
safely against the chances which might shorten the duration or destroy
the happiness of their life in the tomb. The fulfilment of this duty
was, as the Greek travellers rightly affirmed, their chief
pre-occupation. Their sepulchral architecture was, of all their
creations, the most original and the most characteristic of their
genius, especially in the forms which we find in the cemeteries of the
Ancient Empire. In the time of the New Empire, at Thebes, it is less
complete and homogeneous. In the latter the arrangement and decoration
do not spring, as a whole, from a unique conception; we find traces in
it of new hypotheses and novel forms of belief. These do not supersede
the primitive ideas; they are added to them, and they bear witness to
the restless efforts made by human thought to solve the problem of
human destiny. These apparent contradictions and hesitations are of
great interest to the student of the Egyptian religion, but from the
art point of view the Memphite tombs are more curious and important
than those of later date. They have the great merit of being complete
in their unity both of artistic form and of intellectual conception.
They are the offspring of a single growth, and are perfect in their
clear logical expression. And again, they are the type of all the
later tombs, of those at Abydos, at Beni-Hassan, and at Thebes.
Certain details, indeed, are modified, but the general disposition
remains the same to the end. We shall, therefore, find the ruling
principle of Egyptian sepulchral architecture most clearly laid down
in the cemeteries of Gizeh and Sakkarah.
The first and most obvious necessity for the obscure form of life
which was supposed to commence as soon as the tomb had received its
inmate, was the body. No pains, therefore, were spared which could
retard its dissolution and preserve the organs to which the _double_
and the soul might one day return.[126] Embalming, practised as it was
by the Egyptians, rendered a mummy almost indestructible, so long, at
least, as it remained in the dry soil of Egypt. On the warm sands of
Sakkarah and close to the excavations from which the fellahs of the
_corvée_ were returning at the end of their day's labour, we--my
travelling companions and myself--stripped a great lady of the time of
Ramses of the linen cloths and bandages in which she was closely
enveloped, and found her body much in the same condition as it must
have been when it left the workshop of the Memphite embalmer! Her
black hair was plaited into fine tresses; all her teeth were in place
between the slightly contracted lips; the almond-shaped nails of her
feet and hands were stained with henna. The limbs were flexible and
the graceful shapes but little altered under the still firm and smooth
skin, which, moreover, seemed to be still supported by flesh in some
parts. Had it not been for its colour of tarred linen or scorched
paper, and the smell of naphtha which arose from the body and from the
numberless bandages which were strewn about, we might have shared the
sentiment attributed to Lord Evandale in Theophile Gautier's brilliant
_Roman de la Momie_; with an effort of good-will we could almost
sympathise with those emotions of tenderness and admiration which were
excited in the breast of the young Englishman at the sight of the
unveiled charms of that daughter of Egypt whose perfect beauty had
once troubled the heart of the proudest of the Pharaohs.[127]
[126] The texts also bear witness to the ideas with which the
complicated processes of embalming were undertaken. See P.
PIERRET, _Le Dogme de la la Résurrection_, &c., p. 10. "It was
necessary that no member, no substance, should be wanting at the
final summons; resurrection depended on that." "_Thou countest
thy members which are complete and intact._" (Egyptian funerary
text.) "Arise in To-deser (the sacred region in which the
renewal of life is prepared), thou august and coffined mummy.
Thy bones and thy substance are re-united with thy flesh, and
thy flesh is again in its place; thy head is replaced upon thy
neck, thy heart is ready for thee." (Osirian statue in the
Louvre.) The dead took care to demand of the gods "_that the
earth should not bite him, that the soil should not consume
him_." (MARIETTE, _Feuilles d'Abydos_.) The preservation of the
body must therefore have been an object of solicitude at the
earliest times, but the art of embalming did not attain
perfection until the Theban period. Under the ancient empire men
were content with comparatively simple methods. Mariette says
that "more examples would have to be brought together than he
had been able to discover before the question of mummification
under the ancient empire could be decided. It is certain, first,
that no authentic piece of mummy cloth from that period is now
extant; secondly, that the bones found in the sarcophagi have
the brownish colour and the bituminous smell of mummies.
"Not more than five or six inviolate sarcophagi have been found.
On each of these occasions the corpse has been discovered in the
skeleton state. And as for linen, nothing beyond a little dust
upon the bottom of the sarcophagus, which might be the _débris_
of many other things than of a linen shroud." (_Les Tombes de
l'Ancien Empire_, p. 16.)
[127] PASSALACQUA gives the following description of the mummy
of a young woman which he discovered at Thebes: "Her hair and
the rotundity and surprising regularity of her form showed me
that she had been a beauty in her time, and that she had died in
the flower of her youth." He then gives a minute description of
her condition and ornaments, and concludes by saying that "the
peculiar beauty of the proportions of this mummy, and its
perfect preservation, had so greatly impressed the Arabs
themselves that they had exhumed it more than once to show to
their wives and neighbours." (_Catalogue raisonné et historique
des Antiquités découvertes en Égypte_, 8vo. 1826.)
In order that all the expense of embalming should not be thrown away,
the mummy had to be so placed that it could not be reached by the
highest inundations of the river. The cemeteries were therefore
established either upon a plateau surrounded by the desert, as in the
case of Memphis and Abydos, or in the sides of the mountain ranges and
in the ravines by which they were pierced, as at Thebes and
Beni-Hassan. In the whole valley of the Nile, no ancient tomb has been
discovered which was within reach of the inundation at its
highest.[128]
[128] RHIND describes several mummy-pits in the necropolis of
Thebes which receive the water of the Nile by infiltration; but,
as he himself remarks, this is because those who dug them did
not foresee the gradual raising of the valley, and,
consequently, of the level attained in recent ages by the waters
of the Nile. It is doubtless only within the last few centuries
that the water has penetrated into these tombs. (_Thebes, its
Tombs and their Tenants_, p. 153.)
The corpse was thus preserved from destruction, first by careful and
scientific embalming, secondly by placing its dwelling above the
highest "Nile." Besides this we shall see that the Egyptian architects
made use of many curious artifices of construction in order to conceal
the entrance to the tomb, and to prevent the intrusion of any one
coming with evil intentions. All kinds of obstacles and pitfalls are
accumulated in the path of the unbidden visitor, with a fertility and
patient ingenuity of invention which has often carried despair into
the minds of modern explorers, especially in the case of the pyramids.
Mariette was fond of saying that there are mummies in Egypt which will
never, in the strictest sense of the word, be brought to light.
But in spite of all this pious and subtle foresight, it sometimes
happened that private hate or, more often, the greed of gain, upset
every calculation. Enemies might succeed in penetrating to the
sepulchres of the dead, in destroying their bodies, and thus
inflicting a second death worse than the first; or a thief might drag
the corpse from its resting place, and leave it naked and dishonoured
upon the sands, that he might, with the greater ease, possess himself
of the gold and jewels with which it had been adorned.
[Illustration: FIG. 87.--Mummy case from the 18th dynasty. Boulak.]
The liability of the mummy to accident had to be provided against. The
idea of the unhappy condition in which the _double_ would find itself
when its mummy had been destroyed, led to the provision of an
artificial support for it in the shape of a statue. Art was
sufficiently advanced not only to reproduce the costume and ordinary
attitude of the defunct and to mark his age and sex, but even to
render the individual characteristics of his physiognomy. It aspired
to portraiture; and the development of writing allowed the name and
qualities of the deceased to be inscribed upon his statue. Thus
identified by its resemblance and its inscriptions it served to
perpetuate the life of the _double_, which was in continual danger of
dissolution or evaporation in the absence of a material support.
The statues were more solid than the mummy, and nothing stood in the
way of their multiplication. The body gave but one chance of duration
to the _double_; twenty statues represented twenty chances more. Hence
the astonishing number of statues which are sometimes found in a
single tomb. The images of the dead were multiplied by the piety of
surviving relations, and consequently the _double_ was assured a
duration which practically amounted to immortality.[129]
[129] MASPERO, _Conférence_, p. 381.
[Illustration: FIG. 88.--Man and his wife in the style of the 5th
dynasty. Calcareous stone. From the Louvre.]
We shall see that a special recess was prepared in the thickness of
the built up portion of the tomb for the reception of wooden or stone
statues, so that they might be kept out of sight and safe from all
indiscreet curiosity. Other effigies were placed in the chambers of
the tomb or the courts in front of it. Finally, we know that persons
of consideration obtained from the king permission to erect statues in
the temples, where they were protected by the sanctity of the place
and the vigilance of the priests.[130]
[130] MASPERO, _Notes sur différentes Points de Grammaire et
d'Histoire_, p. 155. (In the _Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la
Philologie et à l'Archéologie Égyptienne et Assyrienne_, vol.
i.)
[Illustration: FIG. 89.--Sekhem-ka, his wife Ata, and his son Khnem,
in the style of the 5th dynasty. Limestone. From the Louvre.]
From the point of view of the ancient Egyptians such precautions were
by no means futile. Many of these effigies have come down to us safely
through fifty or sixty centuries and have found an asylum in our
museums where they have nothing to fear but the slow effects of
climate and time. Those which remain intact may therefore count upon
immortality. If the _double_ required nothing to preserve it from
annihilation but the continued existence of the image, that of
Chephren, the builder of the second great pyramid, would be still
alive, preserved by the magnificent statue of diorite which is the
glory of Boulak, and thanks to the durability of its material, it
would have every chance of lasting as long as the world itself. But,
unhappily for the shade of Pharaoh, this posthumous existence which is
so difficult of comprehension to us, was only to be prolonged by
attention to conditions most of which could not long continue to be
observed.
[Illustration: FIG. 90.--Stele of Nefer-oun. Boulak.]
It was entirely a material life. The dead-alive had need of food and
drink, which he obtained from supplies placed beside him in the
tomb,[131] and afterwards, when these were consumed, by the repasts
which took place periodically in the tomb, of which he had his share.
The first of these feasts was given upon the conclusion of the funeral
ceremonies,[132] and they were repeated from year to year on days
fixed by tradition and sometimes by the expressed wish of the
deceased.[133] An open and public chamber was contrived in the tomb
for the celebration of these anniversaries. It was a kind of chapel,
or, perhaps, to speak more accurately, a saloon in which all the
relations and friends of the deceased could find room. At the foot of
the stele upon which the dead man was represented sacrificing to
Osiris, the god of the dead, was placed a table for offerings, upon
which the share intended for the _double_ was deposited and the
libations poured. A conduit was reserved in the thickness of the wall
by which the odour of the roast meats and perfumed fruits and the
smoke of the incense might reach the concealed statues.[134]
[131] Jars, which seem to have been once filled with water, are
found in many tombs of all epochs. Different kinds of dates are
also found, together with the fruit of the sycamore, corn,
cakes, &c. See the _Catalogue_ of PASSALACQUA, pp. 123, 151, and
elsewhere. Quarters of meat have also been found in them, which
are easily recognised by their well-preserved bones.
[132] MASPERO, _Études sur quelques Peintures funéraires_, in
the _Journal Asiatique_, May-June, 1880, p. 387, _et seq._
[133] In one of the great inscriptions at Beni-Hassan, recently
translated anew both by M. Maspero and Professor Birch,
Chnoumhotep speaks thus: "I caused to prosper the name of my
father. I completed the existing temples of the Ka. I served my
statues at the great temples. I sacrificed to them their food,
bread, beer, water, vegetables, pure herbs. My priest has
verified (I chose a priest for the Ka,--Maspero). I procured
them from the irrigation of my work-people (I made him master of
fields and slaves,--Maspero). I ordered the sepulchral offerings
of bread, beer, cattle, fowl, in all the festivals of Karneter,
at the festivals of the beginning of the year, the opening of
the year, increase of the year, diminution of the year (little
year,--Brugsch and Maspero), close of the year, at the great
festival, at the festival of the great burning, at the festival
of the lesser burning, the five intercalary days, at the
festival of bread making (of the entry of grain,--Maspero) at
the twelve monthly and half monthly festivals, all the festivals
on the earth (plain), terminating on the hill (of Anubis). But
should my sepulchral priest or men conduct them wrongly may he
not exist, nor his son in his place."--BIRCH, _Records of the
Past_, vol. xii. p. 71.--ED.
[134] In each opening of the serdab in the tomb of Ti, at
Sakkarah, people, probably relatives of the deceased, are
represented in the act of burning incense in a contrivance which
resembles in form the θυμιατήριον of the Greek monuments.
(MARIETTE, _Notice des principaux Monuments de Boulak_, p. 27,
note 1.)
[Illustration: FIG. 91.--Preparation of the victims and arrival of
funeral gifts, 5th dynasty. Height of each band, 13-1/2 inches.
Boulak. Drawn by Bourgoin.]
The Egyptians did not trust only to the piety of their descendants to
preserve them from a final death by inanition in their neglected
tombs. At the end of a few generations that piety might grow cold and
relax its care; besides, a family might become extinct. All those who
could afford it provided against such contingencies as these by giving
their tombs what we now call a perpetual foundation. They devoted to
the purpose the revenues of some part of their property, which was
also charged with the maintenance of the priest or priests who had to
perform the ceremonial rites which we have described.[135] We find
that, even under the Ptolemies, special ministers were attached to the
sepulchral chapel of Cheops, the builder of the great pyramid.[136] It
may seem difficult to believe that a "foundation" of the ancient
empire should have survived so many changes of _régime_, but the
honours paid to the early kings had become one of the national
institutions of Egypt. Each restoring sovereign made it a point of
duty to give renewed life to the worship of those remote princes who
represented the first glories of the national history.
[135] See the paper by M. MASPERO upon the great inscription at
Siout, which has preserved for us a contract between Prince
Hapi-Toufi and the priests of Ap-Môtennou, by which offerings
should be regularly made to the prince's statue, which was
deposited in a temple at Siout. (_Transactions of the Society of
Biblical Archæology_, vol. vii. pp. 1-32.)
[136] It was the same in the case of a still older king,
Seneferu, the founder of the fourth dynasty. (DE ROUGÉ,
_Recherches sur les Monuments que l'on peut attribuer aux six
premières Dynasties de Manéthon_, p. 41.)
[Illustration: FIG. 92.--Table for offerings. Louvre.]
[Illustration: FIG. 93.--Another form of the table for offerings.
Boulak.]
Besides which there were priests attached to each necropolis, who,
for certain fees, officiated at each tomb in turn. They were
identified by Mariette upon some of the bas-reliefs at Sakkarah. Their
services were retained much in the same way as masses are bought in
our days.[137]
[137] _Tombes de l'Ancien Empire_, p. 87.
The same sentiment led to the burial with the dead of all arms,
clothes, jewels, and other objects of which they might have need in
the next life. We know what treasures of this kind have been obtained
from the Egyptian tombs and how they fill the cases of our museums.
But neither was this habit peculiar to Egypt. It was common to all
ancient people whether civilized or barbarous. Traces are to be found
even in the early traditions of the Hellenic race of a time when, like
those Scythians described by Herodotus,[138] the Greeks sacrificed, at
the death of a chief, his wives and servants that they might accompany
him to the next world. When she began to reveal herself in the arts
Egypt was already too far civilized for such practices as these;
thanks to the simultaneous development of science, art and religion,
she found means to give the same advantages to her dead without
permitting Scythian cruelties. Those personal attendants and domestic
officers whose services would be so necessary in another life, were
secured to them at a small expense; instead of slaying them at the
door of the tomb, they were represented upon its walls in all the
variety of their occupations and in the actual moment of labour. So
too with all objects of luxury or necessity which the _double_ would
wish to have at hand, as for instance his food and drink.[139]
[138] HERODOTUS, iv. 71, 72.
[139] In a few rare cases the objects destined for the
nourishment of the _double_ are represented in the round instead
of being painted upon the wall. In the tomb of the personage
called Atta, a wooden table, supporting terra-cotta vases and
plucked geese carved in calcareous stone, has been found.
(MARIETTE, _Tombes de l'Ancien Empire_, p. 17.) The vases must
have been full of water when they were placed in the tomb; the
stone geese may be compared to the _papier-mâché_ loaves of the
modern stage.
A custom which would seem to have established itself a little later
may be referred to the same desire; we mean the habit of placing in
the tomb those statuettes which we meet with in such vast numbers
after the commencement of the second Theban Empire.[140] Mariette
obtained some from tombs of the twelfth dynasty, and the sixth
chapter of the _Book of the Dead_, which is engraved upon them, seems
to be one of the most ancient. Egyptologists are now inclined to
believe that the essential parts of this ritual date back as far as
the Memphite period.
[140] All Egyptian collections contain coffers of painted wood,
often decorated in the most brilliant fashion, which served to
hold these statues when they were placed in the tomb. The size
and the richness of their ornament depended upon the wealth of
the deceased for who they were made.
[Illustration: FIG. 94.--Labourers heaping up ears of corn, from a
tomb at Gizeh. (_Description de l'Égypte._)]
These statuettes are of different sizes and materials. As a rule they
do not exceed from eight to twelve inches, but there are a few which
are three feet or more in height. Some are in wood, some in limestone,
and some in granite, but as a rule they are made of that kind of terra
cotta which, when covered with green or blue enamel, has been called
Egyptian porcelain. They are like a mummy in appearance; their hands
are crossed upon the breast and hold instruments of agriculture such
as hoes and picks, and a sack meant for grain hangs from their
shoulders. The meaning of all this is to be sought in the Egyptian
notions of a future life; it is also explained by the picture in
chapter XC. of the _Ritual_, which shows us the dead tilling, sowing
and harvesting in the fields of the other world. The texts of the
Ritual and of certain inscriptions call these little figures
_oushebti_ or _answerers_ from the verb _ousheb_, to answer. It is
therefore easy to divine the part attributed to them by the popular
imagination. They answered to the name traced upon the tomb and acted
as substitute for its tenant in the cultivation of the subterranean
regions.[141] With the help of the attendants painted and sculptured
upon the walls they saved him from fatigue and from the chance of
want. This is another branch of the same old idea. In his desire to
take every precaution against the misery and final annihilation which
would result from abandonment, the Egyptian thought he could never go
too far in furnishing, provisioning and peopling his tomb.
[141] PIETSCHMANN (_Der Egyptische Fetischdienst_, &c., p. 155),
has well grasped the character and significance of these
statuettes. Conf. PIERRET, _Dictionnaire d'Archéologie
égyptienne_, vol. v. See also, in connection with the
personality attributed to them and to the services which were
expected from them, a note by M. MASPERO, _Sur une Tablette
appartenant à M. Rogers_. (_Recueil de Travaux_, vol. ii. p.
12.)
[Illustration: FIGS. 95, 96.--Sepulchral statuettes, from the Louvre.]
The ingenuity of their contrivances is extraordinary. Food in its
natural state would not keep, and various accidents, might, as we have
shown, lead to the death of the _double_ by inanition. It was the same
with furniture and clothes; the narrow dimensions of the tomb,
moreover, would forbid the accumulation there of everything which its
sombre tenant might desire. On the other hand the funerary statuettes
were made of the most indestructible materials and the bas-reliefs and
paintings were one with the thick walls of stone or living rock. These
have survived practically unaltered until our day. We visited the tomb
of Ti a short time after its chambers had been opened and cleared. It
was marvellous to see how form and colour had been preserved intact
and fresh under the sand, and this work which was four or five
thousand years old seemed to be but lately finished. By the brightness
of their colours and the sharp precision of their contours these
charming reliefs had the effect of a newly struck medal. Such scenes
from the daily life of the people continued to be figured upon
Egyptian tombs from the old empire to the new. When their study and
comparison were first begun different explanations were put forward.
Some believed that they were an illustrated biography of the deceased,
a representation of his achievements or of those over which he had
presided during the course of his mortal life; others saw in them an
illustration of his future life, a setting forth of the joys and
pleasures of the Egyptian Elysium.
Both these interpretations have had to give way before the critical
examination of the pictures themselves and the decipherment of their
accompanying inscriptions. It was soon perceived, through comparisons
easily made, that these scenes were not anecdotic. On a few very rare
occasions they seem to be connected with circumstances peculiar to the
inhabitant of the tomb. There are a few steles and tombs upon which
the dead man seems to have caused his services to be described, with
the object, no doubt, of continuing in the next world his career of
honour and success in this. Such an inscription is so far
biographical, and a similar spirit may extend to the decorations of
the stele and walls of the tomb. As an example of such narrative
epigraphs we may cite the long inscription of Ouna, which gives us
the life of a sort of grand-vizier to the two first Kings of the sixth
dynasty;[142] also the inscriptions upon the tombs of those feudal
princes who were buried at Beni-Hassan. In the latter there are
historical representations as commentaries upon the text. Among these
is the often reproduced painting of a band of Asiatic emigrants
bringing presents to the prince and demanding, perhaps, a supply of
wheat in return, like the Hebrews in the time of Jacob.
[142] DE ROUGÉ, _Mémoire sur les Monuments des six premières
Dynasties_ (p. 80 _et seq._). Conf. MASPERO, _Histoire
Ancienne_, pp. 88-92.
[Illustration: FIG. 97.--Vignette from a Ritual upon papyrus, in the
Louvre. Chap. XC., 20th dynasty.]
But all this is exceptional. As a rule the same subjects occur upon
the tombs again and again, in the persistent fashion which
characterizes traditional themes. The figures by which the flocks and
herds and other possessions of the deceased were numbered are too
great for literal truth.[143] On the other hand the pictured tradesmen
and artificers, from the labourer, the baker, and the butcher up to
the sculptor, seem to apply themselves to their work with an energy
which excludes the notion of ideal felicity. They, one and all, labour
conscientiously, and we feel that they are carrying out a task which
has been imposed upon them as a duty.
[143] See MARIETTE, _Tombes de l'Ancien Empire_, p. 88.
For whose benefit do they take all this trouble? If we attempt to
enter into the minds of the people who traced these images and compare
the pictured representations with the texts which accompany them, we
shall be enabled to answer that question. Let us take by chance any
one of the inscriptions which accompany the scenes figured upon the
famous tomb of Ti, and here is what we find. "To see the picking and
pressing of the grape and all the labours of the country." Again, "To
see the picking of the flax, the reaping of the corn, the transport
upon donkeys, the stacking of the crops of the tomb." Again, "Ti sees
the stalls of the oxen and of the small animals, the gutters and
water-channels of the tomb."
It is for the dead that the vintage takes place, that the flax is
picked, that the wheat is threshed, that oxen are driven into the
fields, that the soil is ploughed and irrigated. It is for the supply
of his wants that all these sturdy arms are employed.
We shall leave M. Maspero to sum up the ideas which presided at the
construction of the Egyptian tomb, but first we must draw our
readers' notice to the fact that he, more than once, alludes to a
conception of the future life which differs somewhat from the early
Egyptian notions, and belongs rather to the Second Theban Empire and
its successors.
[Illustration: FIG. 98.--Arrival in Egypt of a company of Asiatic
emigrants (Champollion, pls. 362, 393).]
"The scenes chosen for the decoration of tomb walls had a magic
intention; whether drawn from civil life in the world or from that of
Hades, they were meant to preserve the dead from danger and to insure
him a happy existence beyond the tomb.... Their reproduction upon the
walls of the sepulchre guaranteed the performance of the acts
represented. The _double_ shut up in his σύριγξ[144] saw
himself going to the chase upon the surrounding walls and he went to
the chase; eating and drinking with his wife, and he ate and drank
with her; crossing in safety the terrible gulfs of the lower world in
the barque of the gods, and he crossed them in safety. The tilling,
reaping, and housing on his walls were for him real tilling, reaping,
and housing. So, too, the statuettes placed in his tomb carried out
for him under magic influence all the work of the fields, and, like
the sorcerer's pestle in Goethe's ballad, drew water for him and
carried grain. The workmen painted in his papyri made shoes for him
and cooked his food; they carried him to hunt in the deserts or to
fish in the marshes. And, after all, the world of vassals upon the
sides of the sepulchre was as real as the _double_ for which they
laboured; the picture of a slave might well satisfy the shadow of a
master. The Egyptian thought that by filling his tomb with pictures he
insured the reality of all the objects, people, and scenes represented
in another world, and he was thus encouraged to construct his tomb
while he was yet alive. Relations, too, thought that they were doing a
service to the deceased when they carried out all the mysterious
ceremonies which accompanied his burial. The certainty that they had
been the cause of some benefit to him consoled and supported them on
their return from the cemetery where they had left their regretted
dead in possession of his imaginary domain."[145]
[144] This word, σύριγξ (flute), was employed by the Greeks to
designate those long subterranean galleries cut in the rock of
the necropolis at Thebes, in the valley called the _Valley of
the Kings_; modern egyptologists apply it in a more general
sense to all tombs cut deeply into the flanks of the mountain.
For the reason which led the Greeks to adopt a term which now
seems rather fantastic, see PIERRET, _Dictionnaire d'Archéologie
égyptienne_. The chief passages in ancient authors in which the
term is applied either to the subterranean excavations of Egypt
or to other galleries of the same kind, are brought together by
Jomard in the third volume of the _Description_ (_Antiquités_,
vol. iii. pp. 12-14).
[145] _Journal asiatique_, May-June, 1880, pp. 419, 420.
Such a belief is astonishing to us; it demands an effort of the
imagination to which we moderns are in no way equal. We have great
difficulty in realising a state of mind so different from what ours
has become after centuries of progress and thought. Those early races
had neither a long enough experience of things, nor a sufficiently
capable power of reflection to enable them to distinguish the possible
from the impossible. They did not appreciate the difference between
living things and those which we call inanimate. They endowed all
things about them with souls like their own. They found no more
difficulty in giving life to their carved and painted domestics, than
to the mummy or statue of the deceased, or to the phantom which they
called the double. Is it not natural to the child to take revenge upon
the table against which he hurts himself, or to speak tenderly to the
doll which he holds in his arms?
[Illustration: FIG. 99.--The tomb of Ti; women, representing the lands
of the deceased, carrying the funeral gifts.]
This power to endow all things with life and personality is now
reserved for the poet and the infant, but in the primitive days of
civilization it belonged to all people alike. Imagination had then a
power over a whole race which in our days is the gift of great poets
alone. In the efforts which they made to forestall the wants of the
helpless dead, they were not content with providing the food and
furniture which we find upon the walls. They had a secret impression
that these might be insufficient for wants renewed through eternity,
and they made another step upon the way upon which they had embarked.
By a still more curious and still bolder fiction than those which had
gone before, they attributed to prayer the power of multiplying, by
the use of a few magic sentences, all objects of the first necessity
to the inhabitants of the tomb.
Every sepulchre has a _stele_, that is to say, an upright stone tablet
which varied in form and place in different epochs, but always served
the same purpose and had the same general character. Most of these
steles were adorned with painting and sculpture; all of them had more
or less complicated inscriptions.[146] In the semicircle which forms
the upper part of most of these inscribed slabs, the dead person,
accompanied by his family, presents offerings to a god, who is usually
Osiris. Under this an inscription is carved after an unchanging
formula: "Offering to Osiris (or to some other deity, as the case may
be) in order that he may give provision of bread, liquid, beef, geese,
milk, wine, beer, clothes, perfumes, and all good and pure things upon
which the god subsists, to the ka of N..., son of M...." Below this
the defunct is often shown in the act of himself receiving the
offerings of his family. In both divisions the objects figured are
looked upon as real, as in the wall decorations. In the lower division
they are offered directly to him who is to profit by them; in the
upper, the god is charged to see that they are delivered to the right
address. The provisions which the god is asked to pass on to the
defunct are first presented to him; by the intervention of Osiris the
_doubles_ of bread, meat and drink pass into the other world to
nourish the double of man. But it was not essential for the gift to be
effective that it should be real, or even _quasi_-real; that its image
should even be given in paint or stone. The first-comer could procure
all things necessary for the deceased by their enumeration in the
proper form. We find therefore that many Egyptians caused the
following invocation to passing strangers, to be engraved upon their
tombs:
[146] See above, Figs. 87 and 91.
"Oh you who still exist upon the earth, whether you be private
individuals, priests, scribes, or ministers entering into this tomb,
if you love life and do not know death, if you wish to be in favour
with the gods of your cities and to avoid the terrors of the other
world, if you wish to be entombed in your own sepulchres and to
transmit your dignities to your children, you must if you be scribes,
recite the words inscribed upon this stone, or, if not, you must
listen to their recital: say, offering to Amen, master of Karnak, that
he may give thousands of loaves of bread, thousands of jars of drink,
thousands of oxen, thousands of geese, thousands of garments,
thousands of all good and pure things to the _ka_, or _double_, of the
prince Entef."[147]
[147] We borrow the translation of this inscription, as well as
the reflections which precede it, from M. MASPERO (_Conférence_,
p. 382). According to M. de Rougé, it dates from about the
twelfth dynasty. An invocation of the same kind is to be found
in another epigraph of the same period, the inscription of
Amoni-Amenemhaït, hereditary prince of the nome of Meh, at
Beni-Hassan. See MASPERO, _La Grande Inscription de
Beni-Hassan_, p. 171 (_Recueil de Travaux_, etc., vol. i.
4to.).
Thanks to all these subtle precautions, and to the goodwill with which
the Egyptian intellect lent itself to their bold fictions, the tomb
deserved the name it received, the _house of the double_. The
_double_, when thus installed in a dwelling furnished for his use,
received the visits and offerings of his friends and relations; "he
had priests retained and paid to offer sacrifices to him; he had
slaves, beasts of burden, and estates charged with his support. He was
like a great lord sojourning in a strange country and having his wants
attended to by intermediary officials assigned to his service."[148]
[148] MASPERO, _Conférence_, p. 282.
This analogy between the house and the tomb is so complete that it
embraces details which do not seem very congruous. Like the house of
the living, the tomb was strictly oriented, but after a mystic
principle of its own.
As soon as the Egyptian began to think he perceived the most obvious
of the similarities between the sun's career and that of man. Man has
his dawn and his setting. Man grows from the early glimmerings of
infancy to the apogee of his wisdom and strength; he then begins to
decline and, like the magnified evening sun, ends by disappearing
after his death into the depths of the soil.
In Egypt the sun sets every evening behind the Libyan chain; thence he
penetrates into those subterranean regions of Ament across which he
has to make his way before the dawn of the next day. The Egyptian
cemeteries were therefore placed on the left bank of the Nile, that
is, in the west of the country. All the known pyramids were built in
the west, and there we find all the more important "cities of the
dead," the necropolis of Memphis and those of Abydos and Thebes. A few
unimportant groups of tombs have indeed been found upon the eastern
bank; but these exceptions to a general rule are doubtless to be
explained by a question of distance. For any city placed near the
eastern border of the wider parts of the Nile valley, a burying-place
in the Libyan chain would be very inconvenient both for the transport
of the dead, and for the sepulchral duties of the survivors.[149]
[149] Among the cemeteries of the right bank we may mention that
of Tell-el-Amarna; where the tombs would have been too far from
the city had they been dug in the Libyan Chain. The cemeteries
of Beni-Hassan and of Eilithyia (_El-Kab_) are also in the Arab
Chain. In spite of these exceptions, however, the west was the
real quarter of the dead, their natural habitation, as is proved
by the tearful funeral songs translated by M. MASPERO: "The
mourners before the ever-to-be praised Hor-Khom say, 'O chief,
as thou goest toward the West, the gods lament thee.' The
friends who close the procession repeat, 'To the West, to the
West, oh praiseworthy one, to the excellent West!'" MASPERO,
_Étude sur quelques Peintures funéraires_ (_Journal asiatique_,
February-April, 1881, p. 148).
Each morning sees the sun rise as youthful and ardent as the morning
before. Why then should not man, after completing his subterranean
journey and triumphing over the terrors of Ament, cast off the
darkness of the tomb and again see the light of day? This undying hope
was revivified at each dawn as by a new promise, and the Egyptians
followed out the analogy by the way in which they disposed their
sepulchres. They were placed in the west of their country, towards the
setting sun, but their doors, the openings through which their inmates
would one day regain the light, were turned to the east. In the
necropolis of Memphis, the door of nearly every tomb is turned to the
east,[150] and there is not a single stele which does not face in that
direction.[151] In the necropolis of Abydos, both door and stele are
more often turned towards the south, that is towards the sun at its
zenith.[152] But neither at Memphis, at Abydos, nor at Thebes is there
a tomb which is lighted from the west or presents its inscription to
the setting sun.[153] Thus, from the shadowy depths where they dwell,
the dead have their eyes turned to that quarter of the heavens where
the life-giving flame is each day rekindled, and seem to be waiting
for the ray which is to destroy their night and to rouse them from
their long repose.[154]
[150] "It is so," says Mariette, "four times out of five." (_Les
Tombes de l'Ancien Empire_, in the _Revue archéologique_, new
series, vol. xix. p. 12).
[151] "In the further wall of the chamber, and _invariably
facing eastwards_, is a stele." (_Ibidem_, p. 14.)
[152] MARIETTE, _Abydos_, vol. ii. p. 43.
[153] The tombs in the Arab Chain form, of course, an exception
to this rule. The unusual circumstances which took them eastward
of the river forced them also to neglect the traditional law.
[154] The symbolic connection established by man between the
course of the sun and his own life was well understood by
Champollion, who used it to explain the paintings in the royal
tombs at Thebes. (See his remarks on the tomb of Rameses V. on
the 185th and following pages of his _Lettres d'Égypte_, &c.)
The ideas and beliefs which we have described were common to all
Egyptians, irrespective of class. When he felt his last hour
approaching, the humble peasant or boatman on the Nile was as anxious
as Pharaoh himself to insure the survival of his double and to guard
against the terrors of annihilation:
... Mais, jusqu'en son trépas,
Le riche a des honneurs que le pauvre n'a pas.
[Illustration: FIG. 100.--Lid of the coffin of Entef, 11th dynasty.
Louvre.]
Those who, when alive, had to be content with a hut of earth or of
reeds, could not, when dead, expect to have a tomb of stone or brick,
a habitation for eternity; they could not look for joys in the other
world which they had been unable to procure in this. So that such
tombs as those which most fully embodied the ideas we have described
must always have remained the exclusive privilege more or less of the
governing classes. These consisted of the king, the princes and
nobles, the priests, the military chiefs, and functionaries of every
kind down to the humblest of the scribes attached to the
administration. As for those Egyptians who did not belong to this
aristocracy, they had to be content with less expensive arrangements.
The less poor among them at least took measures to be embalmed and to
be placed in a coffin of wood or _papier-mâché_, accompanied by
scarabs and other charms to protect them against malignant spirits.
The painted figures upon the coffin also helped to keep off evil
influences. If they could afford it they purchased places in a common
tomb, where the mummies were heaped one upon the other and confided to
the care of priests who performed the funerary rites for a whole
chamber at once.[155] It was the frequent custom to put with the dead
those pillows of wood or alabaster which the Egyptians seem to have
used from the most ancient times for the support of their heads in
sleep. This contrivance, which does away with the necessity for
continually rearranging their complicated head-dress, is still used by
the Nubians and Abyssinians.
[155] Upon the papyrus known as the _Papyrus Casati_, mention is
made of a priest who is charged to watch over a whole collection
of mummies.
"This is the list of bodies belonging to Osorvaris:--
"Imouth, son of Petenefhotep, his wife and children;
"Medledk, the carpenter, his wife and children;
"Pipee, his wife and children, from Hermouth;
"The father of Phratreou, the fuller;
"Aplou, the son of Petenhefhotep the boatman, his wife and
children, from Thebes;
"Psenmouth, the carpenter, his wife and children;
"Psenimonthis, the mason;
"Amenoth, the cowherd."
There are many more lists of the same kind. The above is cited
from M. E. LE BLANT (_Tables égyptiennes à Inscriptions
grecques_, p. 6, 1875, 8vo.).
[Illustration: FIGS. 101, 102.--Scarabs. Louvre.]
[Illustration: FIGS. 103, 104.--Funerary amulets. _Oudja_ and _ta_.
Louvre.]
But those who could procure even these slight advantages were still
among the favourites of fortune. Many were unable to obtain even this
minimum of funeral honours. On the confines of all the great
cemeteries, at Thebes as well as at Memphis, corpses are found
deposited in the loose sand two or three feet from the surface. Some
of these are packed in the leaves of the palm, others are roughly
enveloped in a few morsels of linen. They have been hastily dipped in
a bath of natron, which has dirtied rather than embalmed them.[156]
Sometimes even these slender precautions have been omitted. Bodies
have been found in the earth without vestige of either coffin or linen
swathes. The sand seems to have been intrusted with the work of drying
them, and they have been found in our days in the condition of
skeletons.
[156] See in the interesting work of Mr. H. RHIND (_Thebes, its
Tombs and their Tenants_, London, 1862, 8vo.), the chapter
headed _A Burial-place of the Poor_.
[Illustration: FIG. 105.--Pillow, Louvre.]
On the other hand, the fortunate ones of the world, those who were so
easy in their circumstances in this life that they could place
themselves in the same happy condition in the next, spared no expense
in anything connected with their burial. They never allowed themselves
to be surprised by death, as we so often do. Whether kings or private
individuals, they made their preparations while they were still alive,
and caused their tombs to be constructed under their own eyes.[157]
Their forethought when living and the piety of relations spared
nothing that could add to the beauty and convenience of dwellings
which were to be the eternal resting places of their inmates. The
palaces of the princes and rich men of Egypt were so lightly built
that they have left no traces upon the soil; but many of their tombs
have subsisted uninjured to our day, and it is from them that we have
obtained our treasures of Egyptian art. All the other nations of the
ancient world followed the good example thus set, or rather, to speak
more accurately, being all penetrated with similar ideas, they took
similar courses without borrowing one from the other. Whenever we
moderns have opened any of those ancient tombs which have happily
remained intact, we have been met by the same discoveries. Whether it
be in Egypt or Phœnicia, in Asia Minor, Cyprus or Greece, in
Etruria or Campania, the same astonishing sight meets our eyes. The
tombs are filled with precious objects and _chefs d'œuvres_ of art
which their depositors had intended never again to see the light of
day.
[157] MARIETTE, _Tombes de l'Ancien Empire_, p. 83. See also the
great inscription of Beni-Hassan, the first lines of which run
thus: "The hereditary chief ... Khnumhotep ... has made a
monument for the first time to embellish his district; he has
sculptured his name for ever; he has embellished it for ever by
his chamber of Karneter; he has sculptured the names of his
household; he has assigned their place. The workmen, those
attached to his house, he has reckoned amongst his dependants of
all ranks." [BIRCH, _Records of the Past_, vol. xii. p.
67.--ED.] It was, no doubt, in order to conform to the Egyptian
custom that Antony and Cleopatra commenced in their lifetime
that tomb which Augustus ordered to be finished after their
death (SUETONIUS, _Augustus_, 17). "To be laid to rest in the
tomb which he had made for himself and furnished with every
necessary was the greatest good which the gods could insure to
an Egyptian. In Papyrus IV. at Boulak we find the following
phrases: 'Be found with thy dwelling finished in the funerary
valley: in every enterprise which thou meditatest _may the
morning when thy body shall be hid be present to thee_.'" (From
the French of M. MASPERO, _Journal asiatique_, 7th series, t.
xv. p. 165, note 1.)
In modern times, when piety or pride stimulates to the decoration of a
tomb, all the care of the architect, the sculptor and the painter is
given to the outside, to the edifice which surmounts the actual grave.
The grave or other receptacle for the coffin is as plain and simple in
the most sumptuous monuments of our cemeteries as in the most humble.
Our funerary architecture is based upon our belief that the tomb is
empty; that the vital part of the deposit confided to it has escaped
to rejoin the current of eternal life. Under such conditions the tomb
becomes above all things a commemorative structure, a more or less
sincere manifestation of the grief of a family or of society at large
for the loss of one of its members. As for the narrow pit into which
the "mortal coil" is lowered, all that we demand of it is that it
should be deep enough and properly closed. Art makes no attempt to
illumine its darkness. She leaves to workmen the task of excavation
and of building its walls and confines herself to the visible parts of
the tomb. The dead within furnishes the pretext for her activity, but
it is the admiration of the living that is her real incentive.
The ideas of the ancients on this matter were, as we have seen, very
different. They looked upon the tomb as an inhabited house; as a house
in which the dead was to lead some kind of existence. Rich men wished
their tombs to look well outside, even to the distant spectator, but
it was to the inside that their chief attention was turned. They
wished to find there all the necessaries, the comforts, the luxuries,
to which they had been accustomed during life. So we find that the
Egyptians, the Greeks or the Etruscans, were willing enough, when they
built their own tombs or those of their relations, to throw a
_tumulus_ of earth above it, or, later, a constructed building which
was conspicuous at a distance. In those sepulchres which were cut out
of the side of a mountain, the fronts were carved with frieze,
pediment and columns into the shape of a regularly constructed
portico; but the chief object of solicitude to the proud possessor of
such a tomb, was its internal furnishing and disposition. For him
there was no removal should he be discontented with his lodging. When
a man is condemned by illness or accident to keep his room, he takes
care to surround himself with everything that he may want. He gathers
immediately about him all the comforts and luxuries which he can
afford; and death is an illness from which there is no recovery.
Impelled by such ideas as these, the ancients filled their tombs with
precious objects and decorated them with sumptuous art, all the more
that they seemed well guarded against intrusion for the sake of gain.
Thus the Achæans of Mycenæ (if that be the proper name of those
mysterious people) buried, in the sepulchres discovered by Dr.
Schliemann, the innumerable objects of gold and silver which now fill
the museum of Athens; thus the tombs of Bœotia were filled with
those marvels of grace and delicate workmanship, the terra cottas of
Tanagra; and those of Etruria and Campania with the most beautiful
painted vases ever produced by Greek taste.
Identity of religious conception thus led, from end to end of the
antique world, to funerary arrangements which bore a curious
resemblance one to another, so that sepulchral architecture among the
ancients had, as a whole, a very different character from that of the
moderns. This character is more strongly marked in Egypt than anywhere
else, and therefore we have studied it in detail. The general
observations to which it has given rise have been made once for all,
and we shall not have to repeat them when we describe the funeral
customs of other ancient peoples. We shall then confine ourselves to
pointing out the slight differences which naturally spring up in the
several interpretations of a common belief.
We have still to show how the varying circumstances of time and place
caused the Egyptian tomb to pass through certain modifications of form
and decoration, which, however, were never of so radical a nature as
to affect its general appearance and arrangement. Until Egypt became a
mere geographical expression and her venerable civilization lost its
independence and originality, these latter remained practically
unchanged.
§2.--_The Tomb under the Ancient Empire._
Among the tombs which date from the time of the ancient empire, the
most interesting to the traveller are, of course, the Pyramids. Long
before his arrival at Cairo he sees the summits of those artificial
mountains rising into the air above the vapours raised by the sun, and
above the dust thrown up by the teeming population of the city. At
that distance their peaks seem light and slender from their height
above the horizon (Plate I. 2).
The tourist's first visit is paid to the Pyramids, and many an
European leaves Egypt without seeing any other ancient building. He
thinks that he has qualified himself to discourse upon Egyptian
architecture because a few shouting Arabs have landed him, exhausted,
upon the topmost stone of the pyramid of Cheops, and have painfully
dragged and thrust him along those passages of the interior which will
ever be among his most disagreeable recollections. During all this his
eyes and thoughts are entirely given to the preservation of his own
equilibrium, and he sees nothing of the real constitution of the
structure he has come to visit.
In spite of the wonderful panorama which repays the fatigues of the
ascent, and of the overpowering impression made upon the mind by their
colossal mass, the Pyramids, as we see them to-day are far from being
the most complete and interesting of the sepulchral monuments left to
us by the early dynasties. The largest and best preserved are not so
old as some of the tombs in the necropolis of Memphis, and, royal
burying-places as they are, their arrangement and ornamentation are
less rich and expressive than those of many sepulchres built by
private individuals. Many of the latter, in their comparatively
restricted dimensions, answer better to the definition of a tomb
suggested to us by our study of the national beliefs.
We shall, therefore, reserve the Pyramids for future treatment, and in
our review of the successive forms taken by sepulchral architecture,
we shall assign the first place to those private tombs, dating from
the Ancient Empire, which are to be found in the necropolis of
Memphis. Notwithstanding a few differences, to which we shall refer
hereafter, these tombs, as a whole, can be traced to a single type, of
which Lepsius was the first to perceive the interest.[158] This type,
which was first clearly brought to light by the many and deep
excavations carried out by Mariette, has been known for some years
past by the Arab term _mastaba_,[159] which means literally a _bench_,
a bench of stone or wood. This name was given by the labourers
employed upon the excavations, and seemed well adapted to their long
and low shapes, which bear some resemblance to those divans, or
ottomans, which are found in every room of an oriental dwelling.
Mariette was struck by the fitness of the expression, and used it ever
after to designate that particular kind of tomb.
[158] _Briefe aus Ægypten_, p. 23 _et seq._ Before the Prussian
commission left Middle for Upper Egypt they had studied 130
private tombs, of which the principal ones are figured in the
_Denkmæler_.
[159] Lexicographers do not seem to know the origin of this
word; they believe it to be foreign, perhaps Persian.
Mariette will be our constant guide in this part of our study. After
having opened many hundreds of these monuments, he published in
the _Revue archéologique_, what we may call a _theory of the
mastaba_.[160] In all essential matters we shall allow his words to
speak for themselves; when he enters into more detail than is
necessary for our purpose, we shall content ourselves with epitomizing
his descriptions.
[160] Vol. xix. (1869), pp. 1-22 and 81-89.
THE MASTABAS OF THE NECROPOLIS OF MEMPHIS.
The space over which the monuments which we propose to describe are
spread, is on the left bank of the Nile, and extends from _Abou-Roash_
to _Dashour_; it is thus, in all probability, the largest cemetery in
the world, being more than fifteen miles in length, and of an average
width of from two to two and a half miles.[161] It was, in a word, the
burial-place for Memphis and its suburbs, and Memphis seems to have
been the largest city of Egypt, and to have boasted an antiquity which
only Thinis could rival. Excavations have failed, apparently, to
confirm the assertion of Strabo, who describes the early capital of
Egypt as reaching to the foot of the Libyan chain. On the contrary, it
seems to have been confined between the canal which is called the
_Bahr Yussef_ and the Nile. It would thus have formed a very long and
rather narrow city, close upon the river, of which the site may still
be traced by the more or less barren hillocks strewn with blocks of
granite and fragments of walls, which crop up from the plain between
Gizeh and Chinbab. For forty centuries there was a continual
procession of corpses from Memphis itself, and probably from towns on
the other side of the Nile, such as Heliopolis, to the plateau which
lies along the foot of the Libyan chain. The formation of this plateau
makes it peculiarly well adapted for the purpose to which it was put.
It consists of a thick bed of soft limestone, covered by a layer of
sand which varies in depth from many yards to a few feet according to
the inequalities of the ground beneath it.
[161] EBERS (_Ægypten_, p. 137) gives this necropolis a length
of more than forty-five miles, but in making it extend to
Meidoum he seems to be exaggerating.
It was easy, therefore, either to lay bare the rock and to construct
the tomb upon it, or to dig the mummy pits in its substance, and the
winds might be trusted to quickly cover the grave with sand which
would protect it when made. The same sand covered the coffinless
corpse of the pauper with its kindly particles. Age after age the dead
were interred by millions in this great haven of rest. At first there
was plenty of room, and the corpses were strewn somewhat thinly in the
sand,[162] but with time economy of space had to be practised, until
at last bodies were squeezed into the narrowest spaces between older
inhabitants. Sometimes these new comers even intruded into the tombs
of those who had gone before them, and that without always troubling
themselves to conceal their usurpation by effacing the name of the
rightful owner.[163]
[162] Upon the plateau which, at Sakkarah, extends westwards of
the stepped pyramid the manner in which the necropolis was
developed can be readily seen. In walking eastwards, that is,
from the pyramid towards the cultivated land, we pass a first
zone of tombs which date from the Ancient Empire, a second which
possesses sculptures of the twenty-sixth dynasty, and a third
which dates from the Greek period.
[163] We may quote as an interesting example of such usurpation
the Theban tomb first opened by a Scottish traveller, HENRY
RHIND, to whose interesting work (_Thebes, its Tombs and their
Tenants, Ancient and Present, with a Record of Excavations in
the Necropolis_, Longman, 1862, 8vo.) we shall often have to
refer. This tomb seems to have been made in the reign of
Amenophis III. by a brother and sister whose statues were found
in it, but it also contained Sebau, son of Menkara, a high
official of the time of the Ptolemies, with his wife and all his
family (c. iv.).
The number of tombs was increased to a prodigious extent by the
non-employment of those family tombs which, as we shall see, were made
use of by the Phœnicians, the Greeks, and the Etruscans. The
Egyptian sepulchre was a personal appanage. The husband and father of
a family admitted into it only his wife and such of their children as
died young. The son, when he in turn became the head of a family,
built a tomb for himself. Each generation, each human couple marked
their passage through the world by the erection of a new tomb.
All the _mastabas_ belong to the period of the Memphite empire. Those
who built them were able to give free play to their fancies, and to
develop the structure, both above and below ground, both in
arrangement and in decoration, to any extent they pleased. We may
therefore look upon them as the freest, the most spontaneous, and the
most complete expression of the ideas formed by the men of that remote
age concerning death and the life beyond the grave.
The mastabas of Sakkarah will receive most of our attention, and in
describing them we shall often have occasion to quote the words of
Mariette.[164] Those which are to be found in the more northern part
of the necropolis, in the neighbourhood of the Great Pyramid, differ
only in unimportant details from those at Sakkarah. The general
appearance now presented by these monuments may be guessed from the
sketch which M. Bourgoin has sent us of the tomb of Sabou (Fig. 106).
The other mastabas figured by us have all been more or less restored.
[164] MARIETTE (_Voyage dans la haute Égypte_, p. 32) thought
that the word Sakkarah was an ancient name derived from
_Socharis_, a Memphite form of _Osiris_.
"The _mastaba_ is a massive structure, rectangular on plan, with four
faces of plain walling, each being inclined at a stated angle towards
their common centre. This inclination has led some people to assert
that it is nothing more than an unfinished pyramid. Such an idea is
refuted, however, by the fact that the divergence from the
perpendicular is in some cases so slight that, were the walls
prolonged upwards, their ridges, or _arêtes_, would not meet for some
eight or nine hundred yards. The mastaba might be more justly compared
to the space comprised between two horizontal sections of an obelisk,
supposing the obelisk to have an oblong base.
[Illustration: FIG. 106.--Actual condition of a mastaba. The tomb of
Sabou. Drawn by Bourgoin.]
"The major axis of the rectangle upon which these structures are
planned, always runs due north and south, and at the pyramids of
Gizeh, the necropolis of the west, they are arranged upon a
symmetrical plan so as to resemble a chess board on which all the
squares are strictly oriented.[165] The more carefully built mastabas
are oriented according to the true astronomical north. All the others
show the same intention, and, in those instances where an error of a
few degrees is to be discovered, it is to be clearly attributed to
carelessness on the part of the builder, a common fault in these
tombs, and not to a difference of intention. We often find that the
northern face is not strictly parallel to the southern, nor that on
the west to that on the east.
[165] The way in which the mastabas were arranged with respect
to each other is well shown in plates xiv. and xviii. of
Lepsius's first volume (map of the pyramids of Gizeh and
panorama taken from the summit of the second pyramid).
[Illustration: FIG. 107.--Three mastabas at Gizeh. Perspective view,
after the plan of Lepsius. (_Denkmæler_, vol. i. pl. 24.)]
"Although not varying much from true orientation, the mastabas of
Sakkarah are not arranged with the symmetry which distinguishes those
on the south and west of the Great Pyramid.[166] They are sprinkled
about in a rather haphazard fashion. Here we find them well
interspaced and there actually placed one upon another. It follows
that the chess-board arrangement which is so conspicuous at Gizeh is
not here to be noticed. Even at Sakkarah there were streets between
the rows of tombs, but they are so irregularly placed, and they are
often so narrow, many of them being nothing more than blind alleys,
that the inexperienced visitor may well fancy himself in a maze.
[166] The general aspect of this city of the dead, and the
regularity of its monuments, made a great impression upon the
members of the "Institut d'Égypte." The following are the words
of JOMARD (_Description_, vol. v. p. 619): "From the top of the
building one sees an infinite quantity of the long rectangular
structures extending almost to the Pyramids. They are carefully
oriented, and exactly aligned one with another. I counted
fourteen rows of them, in each direction, on the west of the
Great Pyramid, and as many on the east, making nearly four
hundred in all. The sand under which many of them are buried
leaves their forms easily distinguishable." Since the time of
Jomard many of the mastabas have been changed by the excavations
into mere formless heaps of _débris_, and yet the general
arrangement can still be clearly followed.
"The Sakkarah mastabas are built either of stone or brick.
"The mastabas of stone are of two kinds: those of a very hard blue
siliceous limestone and those of a softer chalky limestone which is
found upon the spot. This latter stone was used for the Stepped
Pyramid. The tombs upon which it was used seem to be much the oldest
in the necropolis; they are also the least rich and important.
[Illustration: FIG. 108.--Restoration of part of the Necropolis of
Gizeh.]
"Our general notion of Egyptian architecture would lead us to look for
the use of huge stones in these mastabas, and, in fact, certain
important monuments, such as the _Mastabat-el-Faraoun_, and parts of
important monuments, such as the Temple of the Sphinx and the passages
and chambers of the greater pyramids, were constructed of very large
blocks. But the Sakkarah architects were more modest. Apart from the
ceilings, architraves and other places where big stones were
necessary, the blocks are of an average height of about half a yard,
with a proportionate length and thickness.
"The brick-built sepulchres are of two kinds also. The more elaborate
are of black brick, while a yellowish brick is used for the others.
The yellow bricks are a mixture of sand and pebbles with a little
clay; the black bricks are of earth and straw. The former are always
small (8·8 in. x 4·4 in. x 2·8 in.); the latter are comparatively
large (15·2 in. x 7·2 in. x 5·6 in.). Both kinds are dried simply in
the sun. The yellow bricks seem to be the more ancient. Their
employment begins and ends with the Ancient Empire. The black bricks,
on the other hand, appear for the first time about midway through the
fourth dynasty. At first they were rarely employed, but under the
eighteenth dynasty and those which followed it, they came to be
exclusively used."
[Illustration: FIG. 109.--The Mastabat-el-Faraoun.]
All these mastabas, whether of brick or stone, betray an amount of
negligence in their construction which is astonishing. Considering the
ideas which the Egyptians had formed of a future life, the chief
preoccupation of their architects should have been to give a stability
to their sepulchres which would have insured their perpetuity, and,
with it, that of the deposit committed to their charge. The whole of
our description will be pervaded by accounts of the minute precautions
devised to that end. "Now these mastabas are constructed with care on
their outsides alone. The core of their walls is composed of sand, of
rubbish, of blocks of stone mingled with the flakes struck off by the
masons, and all this in most cases without any cement to give it
coherence. The mastabas of Sakkarah are not homogeneous constructions
of masonry and cement, like the pyramids and most of the mastabas of
Gizeh. They are confused heaps of ill assorted materials, which would
collapse but for the retaining strength of their covering of solid
stone.
"At Sakkarah the outward faces of the mastaba are not smooth. Each
successive course is slightly set back from the one below it. At Gizeh
the walls form a smooth plane gently inclined from the perpendicular.
"There are mastabas of all sizes. That of Sabou measures 172 feet by
84; that of Ha-ar, 149 by 74; that of Ra-en-ma 169 by 81, and that of
Hapi no more than 25 ft. 6 in. by 19 ft. 6 in. In height they vary
less. The highest are not more than from 26 to 30 ft. high, the
smallest about 12."
[Illustration: FIG. 110.--Entrance to a Mastaba at Sakkarah.
Mariette.]
The roof of the mastaba is a plain surface without irregularity of any
kind; but the soil above it is sprinkled with vases buried at a slight
depth. These vases are pretty evenly distributed, but they are rather
more numerous in that part of the soil which covers the ceilings of
the chambers, a circumstance of which Mariette often made use to guide
him in his excavations. Like all the vases of this epoch, those which
are found upon the roof of the mastabas are roughly made, pointed at
the bottom and without handles. They each contain a thin film of
yellow clay deposited by the water with which they were filled. They
were placed in their curious position under the notion that the water
which they contained would quench the thirst of the dead man below.
The mouths of the jars were covered with flat stones, and the water
would last long enough to satisfy at least the immediate necessities
of the inhabitant of the tomb.
"The principal face of the mastaba is turned to the east. In four
cases out of five the entrance to its chambers, when there is one, is
found upon this face. The general arrangement is, almost always, as
follows: 1. At a few metres distance from the _north-eastern_ angle we
come upon a quadrangular niche or recess, very high and very narrow,
in the depths of which those long vertical grooves which distinguish
the steles of this epoch are carved upon the actual masonry of the
tomb. For this recess an unimportant stele, with or without
inscription, is occasionally substituted, or (2) we find, at a few
metres distance from the _south-eastern_ angle, either a deeper,
larger, and more carefully built recess, in the depths of which a
monolithic stele of white limestone covered with hieroglyphs is
placed; or a regular architectural façade in miniature with a door in
the centre. When the recess is found near the southern angle of the
eastern face, the tomb begins and ends there. It has no internal
chamber, or rather, the recess acts as substitute for one. But when,
instead of the niche or recess, we meet with a door, we then know that
we have come upon a regularly completed tomb. The name of its
proprietor is often carved upon the lintel. Several of these lintels,
of a peculiar shape, are to be seen in the Louvre.
[Illustration: FIG. 111.--Lintel of the tomb of Teta, 6th dynasty.
Louvre.]
"Next after the eastern face, in relative importance, comes that which
is turned to the north. When the entrance is in the northern wall the
door is invariably at the back of a kind of vestibule, in front of
which are two monolithic columns, without base or capital, supporting
the architrave which, in turn, supports the roof.
"Still more seldom than in the northern face, the entrance is
occasionally found upon that which is turned to the south. This
exceptional arrangement is, in most instances, caused by some local
circumstance which may readily be perceived. When the entrance is on
the south its arrangement is sometimes the one, sometimes the other,
of the two which we have described.
"As for the western face, we have no evidence that it ever played any
more ambitious _rôle_ than that of completing the inclosure. It is
always destitute of both openings and ornaments."
We have thus explored, with Mariette, the outside of the mastaba. We
have described its form and general aspect, we have noticed the
materials of which it was constructed, the principles upon which it
was oriented, and its average size. We have explained, too, how this
single type of sepulchre was repeated many thousands of times with but
slight variations, until, upon the plateau between Memphis and the
desert there gradually arose a metropolis of the dead more populous
than that of the living. It remains to describe the contents of those
huge blocks of masonry. We shall begin by visiting the chambers
planned by the architect in the building itself; we shall afterwards
penetrate, by the paths which modern curiosity has established through
the _débris_ of ages and the depths of the soil, to those recesses of
the tomb which were meant to be for ever inaccessible.
The interior of a mastaba is composed of three parts--the chamber, the
_serdab_, and the well. The last-named of the three is the only part
which is never wanting. Many of the mastabas are, in fact, solid. In
them the chamber is in a very rudimentary condition, being represented
merely by one of those external niches which Mariette has described.
This arrangement was the earliest, and, as long as the mastaba
continued to be built, the less ambitious tenants of the necropolis
were contented to reproduce it. But in these pages, as in a natural
history, it is important to study the species when fully developed and
provided with all its organs. When we have clearly established a
general type nothing is more easy than to recognise and point out its
variations. It suffices to say here that some tombs are wanting in
one, some in another of those constituent parts whose meaning and uses
we shall attempt to determine, and that, in a few, they are of an
unaccustomed importance.
It is natural that we should first turn our attention to the chamber.
This was a kind of neutral ground upon which the quick and the dead
could meet, the former to present, the latter to receive the funeral
offerings.
"The interior of a mastaba may be divided into several 'chambers'
(there are three in the tomb of Ti), but generally there is only one.
It is entered by the door in the middle of the _façade_.
"These chambers have, as a rule, to depend upon the door for light,
but there are a few instances in which they are lighted from openings
in the roof. A remarkable example of the latter arrangement is to be
seen in the tomb of Ti, where the innermost chamber, which otherwise
would be in complete darkness, is lighted from the roof.
"The chamber is sometimes quite bare, sometimes covered with
sculptures and paintings such as those whose character and meaning we
have already pointed out. At its further end, and always facing
eastwards, stands the inscribed tablet or stele. There are some
chambers in which the walls are bare and the stele engraved, but there
are none where the walls are carved and the stele plain."
[Illustration: FIG. 112.--Plan of the tomb of Ti.]
[Illustration: FIGS. 113, 114.--Mastaba at Sakkarah, from Prisse.]
In the tomb of Ptah-Hotep, of which we reproduce the principal side,
the stele proper is on the left, but the figures and the funerary
inscriptions cover all the central part of the richly decorated wall
(Fig. 115).
We see, then, that the stele is the one indispensable part of this
complicated whole. It was, in fact, upon the formula with which it was
inscribed, that the Egyptians depended for those magical agencies by
which Osiris became the active medium of transmission between the
living and the dead.
"At the foot of the stele there was often a table for offerings,
in granite, alabaster, or limestone. This was laid flat upon the
ground (Fig. 92).
[Illustration: FIG. 115.--Western wall in the chamber of the tomb of
Ptah-Hotep, 5th dynasty. Drawn by Bourgoin.]
"As a rule this was the only piece of furniture in the chamber; but
occasionally we find, on each side of the stele and always placed upon
the ground, either two small limestone obelisks, or two objects in
that material resembling table legs hollowed out at the top for the
reception of offerings."
This chamber was left open to every comer. The entrance was in fact
left without a door. To this rule Mariette found but two exceptions in
the many hundreds of tombs which he examined.[167]
[167] One of these exceptions is furnished by the tomb of Ti, of
which we shall often have to speak (Fig. 114). The large public
hall near the entrance to the tomb was separated from the two
chambers farther in by a corridor closed at two points by doors,
some remains of which were found in place when the tomb was
opened.
"Not far from the chamber, oftener on the south than the north, and
oftener on the north than the west, a passage in the masonry, high,
narrow, and built of very large stones, is found. The workmen employed
upon the excavations christened it the _serdab_, or corridor, and
their name has been generally adopted."[168] In Figs. 116-119 we give
the plan and three sections of a mastaba at Gizeh which has four
serdabs.
[168] This is a word of Persian origin adopted by the Arabs. Its
strict meaning is a dark subterranean opening, cave, or
passage.
"Sometimes the serdab has no communication with the other parts of the
mastaba, it is entirely walled in, but in other instances there is a
narrow quadrangular opening, a sort of pipe or conduit, which unites
the serdab with the chamber. It is so small that the hand can only be
introduced into it with difficulty.[169]
[169] The tomb of Ti had two serdabs as well as three chambers;
one of these was close to the door, the other in the innermost
part of the mastaba. In the latter several statues of Ti were
found, the best preserved being now in the museum at Boulak.
"The use of the serdab is revealed by the objects which have been
found in it; it was to hold one or more statues of the deceased. The
Egyptians believed these statues to be the most certain guarantees,
always with the exception of the mummy itself, of a future life for
the dead. Hidden from sight in their dark prison, they were protected
from all violence, while they were separated only by a few stones from
the chamber where the friends and relations met together, and the
conduit by which the intervening wall was often pierced, allowed the
smell of fruit and incense and the smoke of burnt fat to come to their
nostrils.[170]
[170] In a Theban tomb described by M. MASPERO (_Étude sur
quelques Peintures funéraires_) the tenant, Harmhabi, is made to
speak thus: "I have come, I have received my bread; joining the
embalmed offerings to my members, I have breathed the scent of
the perfumes and incense." It is also possible that this conduit
may have been intended to permit of the free circulation of the
_double_, to allow it to pass from its supporting statues to the
chapel in which it is honoured. This curious idea, that the
spirit of the dead can pass through a very small hole, but that
it cannot dispense with an opening altogether, is found among
many nations. The Iroquois contrived an opening of very small
diameter in their tombs, through which the soul of the dead
could pass and repass. See HERBERT SPENCER, _Principles of
Sociology_, vol. i. p. 192.
[Illustration: FIG. 116.--Plan of a mastaba with four Serdabs.
(Lepsius, i., pl. 24.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 117.--Longitudinal section of the same mastaba.]
"No inscriptions have been found in a serdab except those upon the
statues. And no objects other than statues have ever been found in a
serdab." So that the function of the serdab was to afford a safe and
final asylum to the statues. These were, no doubt, to be found in
other situations also, because, not to mention the numerous
bas-reliefs upon which the figure of the deceased appeared in the
chamber or in the niche which sometimes took its place, he was
sometimes portrayed in high relief, and of full life size, in the
public hall of the tomb.[171] Sometimes, also, we find a statue in one
of those front courts which, especially at the time of the fourth
dynasty, seem to have been in great favour. But this court, as well as
the chamber, was open to every chance passer by, and the statues
which they both contained were in continual danger from careless or
malicious hands. It was to guard against such chances as these that
the inventive architects of Egypt contrived a safe retreat in the
heart of the massive structure which should provide a reserve of
statues against every contingency. When all those which were exposed
to accident should have perished, these would still survive and would
furnish to the _double_ the material support, the tangible body, to
which that phantom was obliged to attach himself unless he wished to
perish entirely.
[171] There is an example of this in a mastaba at Gizeh (Fig.
120). See No. 95 of LEPSIUS (_Denkmæler_, vol. i. p. 29; vol.
iii. pl. 44).
[Illustration: FIG. 118.--Transverse section through the chamber.]
These precautions were not ill conceived. The serdab kept efficient
guard over its deposit; the museum of Boulak contains at least a
hundred statues from the ancient empire which were found at Sakkarah,
and nine-tenths of them were found in the serdabs.
[Illustration: FIG. 119.--Transverse section through the serdabs.]
We have now described all those parts of the tomb which were above
ground. We have not been content with visiting the chamber only, which
was freely left open, we have penetrated into the farthest recesses,
and have discovered those secrets of the massive walls which their
constructor thought to hide for ever from the eye of man. But even yet
we have not arrived at the actual place of burial; we shall reach it,
however, through our third internal division, the well or pit.
"The well is an artificial excavation, square or rectangular in plan,
never round, at the bottom of which is the chamber in which the mummy
is deposited.
"To arrive at the opening of the well, we must mount to the platform,
or roof, of the mastaba (Fig. 122). As there was never any staircase
to a mastaba either within or without, it will be seen that the well
must have been a very inaccessible part of the tomb." In one single
instance, namely, in the tomb of Ti, the well is sunk from the floor
of the largest of the internal chambers, but whether it opened upon
the roof or upon the floor of the chamber, it was always closed with
the utmost care by means of a large flat stone.
[Illustration: FIG. 120.--Figures in high relief, from a mastaba at
Gizeh, 5th dynasty (from Lepsius).]
"The well is generally situated upon the major axis of the mastaba,
and, as a rule, nearer to the north than to the south. Its depth
varies, but, on an average, it is about forty feet. Now and then,
however, it has a depth of sixty-five or even eighty feet. As the well
begins at the platform and ends in the rock-carved mummy chamber, it
follows that it passes vertically first through the mastaba, secondly
through the rock upon which the mastaba is founded. The built part of
the well is carefully constructed of large and perfect stones, and in
this we find one of the distinguishing characteristics of the tombs of
the ancient empire." In the tomb of Ti the well takes the form of an
inclined plain like a passage in the pyramids. In the common form of
well the mummy pit could only be reached by means of ropes.
"When the bottom of the well is reached a gaping passage is seen in
the rock which forms its southern wall. This passage, which is not
high enough to allow one to walk upright, does not run quite parallel
to the axis of the mastaba. It is directed obliquely towards the
south-east, like the chamber above. Suddenly it becomes enlarged into
a small cavern, which is the mortuary chamber properly speaking, that
is to say, the room with a view to which the whole structure has been
planned and to which all its other parts are but accessories.
"This mortuary chamber is vertically under the public hall above, so
that the survivors who came together in the latter for the funeral
ceremonies had the corpse of the deceased under their feet, at a
distance which varied according to the depth of the well."
[Illustration: FIG. 121.--The upper chamber, well, and mummy
chamber.[172]]
[172] This figure is a composition by Mariette for the purpose
of showing the relation between the subterranean and constructed
parts of the tomb. (_Notice des principaux Monuments_, p. 22.)
[It shows, however, the well opening from the floor of the upper
chamber, an arrangement which is not characteristic of the
mastaba.--ED.]
The mortuary chambers are large and carefully built, but generally
without ornament or inscription. Of all those explored by him Mariette
found but one which had its walls ornamented; in the middle of its
decorations, which he does not describe, he contrived to make out a
few phrases which seemed to belong to the _Ritual of the Dead_.
The sarcophagus was placed in one corner of the chamber. It was
generally of fine limestone, sometimes of red granite, and on a few
occasions of opaque black basalt. It was rectangular on plan with a
round-topped lid squared at the angles.
Mariette found none at Sakkarah with inscriptions. On the other hand
we find them upon the sarcophagus at Khoo-foo-Ankh, which was
discovered at Gizeh and belongs to the fourth dynasty (Figs. 123,
124).
[Illustration: FIG. 122.--Double mastaba at Gizeh, transverse section
(from Lepsius, t. i., pl. 22).]
"The Egyptians did not always trust to the mere size and weight of the
lid for the secure closing of the sarcophagus. The under-side of the
cover is made with a rebate at its edge which fits into a
corresponding groove on the upper edge of the sarcophagus, and the two
edges were bound still more tightly together by a very hard cement.
Finally, as if all these precautions were not enough, wooden bolts
were affixed to the under-side of the lid which fitted into slots in
the sarcophagus and helped to render the two inseparable."
So far as we can judge from the few human remains which have been
gathered from these ancient tombs, the process of embalmment was then
carried on in simple and elementary fashion, and it was this
imperfection that the Egyptians attempted to neutralize, by the
innumerable and complicated precautions which they took to insure that
the corpse should not be disturbed in its envelope of stone. In later
times, when the preparation of the mummy was better understood, they
were not so careful to seal up the sarcophagus from the outer air.
"The furniture of the mummy chamber comprised neither statues, nor
funerary statuettes, nor amulets of any kind. Sometimes a few ox bones
bestrew the ground. Two or three large and pointed red vases,
containing nothing but a thin deposit of clay, rest against the walls.
Within the sarcophagus we find the same sobriety of sepulchral
furniture. Beyond a wooden or alabaster pillow (Fig. 105) and half a
dozen little drinking cups of alabaster, nothing has been found there
but the mummy itself."
[Illustration: FIG. 123.--Sarcophagus of Khoo-foo-Ankh. Perspective
after Bourgoin. Red granite. Height 1·33 metres. Boulak.]
These beef bones must be the remains of the quarters of meat which
were placed in the tomb for the nourishment of the dead. No scene is
more frequently represented upon the walls of the public chamber of
the mastaba than the killing and flaying of victims for the funeral
ceremonies (Fig. 125). Like those which are found upon the roof, the
vases must have held water for the double. The pillow was placed under
the head of the mummy, it was the one he had used during his life. As
for the drinking cups, their use has not yet been determined, so far
as we know.
"As soon as the mummy was in the sarcophagus, the sarcophagus sealed,
and the various objects which we have described in place, the opening
at the bottom of the well was walled up; the well itself was filled
with stones, earth, and sand, and the dead was left to his eternal
sleep."[173] These precautions make it no easy thing to reach the
mummy chamber. To find the entrance to the well is the first
difficulty, and when it is found, many hands and no little time are
required to remove the rubbish with which it is filled. The only
mechanical helps which the Egyptians have ever used in such work are
those which we ourselves have seen in the hands of Mariette's
labourers, namely, the wooden shovel and the little rush basket which
is filled with a few handfuls of sand and pebbles, and then carried on
the head to be emptied at a convenient distance. It may be guessed how
many journeys to and fro have to be made before a few cubic yards of
_débris_ are cleared by such means as this!
[173] The broken up and decayed remains of wooden boats have
been found in two or three mummy pits (MARIETTE, _Les Tombes de
l'Ancien Empire_, p. 17). They originally formed part, perhaps,
of the boats upon which the corpse was transported across the
Nile to the nearest point of the western bank to the tomb. There
can be no doubt that, in placing them in the well, the survivors
believed that they were serving the deceased. Both the
bas-reliefs in the tomb and the _Ritual_ contain many
representations of the soul navigating the regions of Ament (see
the upper section of Fig. 98). In certain Theban tombs, models
of fully rigged boats have been found; there are some of them in
the Louvre (_Salle Civile_, case K). [There are two in the
British Museum, and one, a very fine one, in the museum at
Liverpool.--ED.]
[Illustration: FIG. 124.--Details of the Sarcophagus of
Khoo-foo-Ankh.]
[Illustration: FIG. 125.--Bas-relief from Sakkarah. Boulak.]
We have so far followed Mariette, and have frequently had to make use
of his _ipsissima verba_. To his pages and to the plates of the great
work of Lepsius, we must refer those readers who are not contented
with being told general rules but wish to know the exceptions also. We
shall not go into all the changes which variety of taste and the
progress of art introduced into the arrangement and decoration of
Egyptian buildings; they do not affect the general statements which we
have made. We shall not re-state the evidence which enabled Mariette
to apportion the 142 painted and sculptured mastabas explored by him
in 1869, to the first six dynasties. It is certain that those
monuments form a chronological series extending over a space of from
twelve to fifteen centuries, and that during the whole of that long
period, the general character of Egyptian sepulchral architecture
remained unchanged.
We should here, perhaps, in order to make our description complete,
attempt to convey a true idea of the reliefs which cover the sides of
the chamber, and of the statues which fill the serdab. We should,
perhaps, by a judicious choice of examples, endeavour to estimate
their style and composition; but we shall postpone all such
examination until we come to treat of sculpture, and of the way in
which the earliest Egyptian artists treated the human form. A didactic
and analytic method is so far despotic that it compels us, in order to
marshal our facts and to make them easily understood, to separate
phenomena which are intimately connected, and to destroy the unity of
natural groups. We have thus been driven to separate the figured
decorations of the tomb from the architectural arrangements which
enframe and support them; with the latter, alone, are we now
concerned.
We may sum up the foregoing details by the following general
description of the Egyptian tomb as it was established in the early
ages of the national life, in those years when the national
civilization put on the form and colour which it retained until the
last days of antiquity.
This tomb, when complete, included (1) a built up part which, being
raised well above the surface of the soil, was a conspicuous object in
the landscape; and (2) a subterranean part cut in the living rock
which was never more than a few feet below the surface of the sand.
The constructed part inclosed a chamber which was sometimes internal
and sometimes external, a chamber in which the relations of the
deceased deposited the funeral offerings, and in which the priests
officiated before the stele, to which the most conspicuous place was
always given. Sometimes this chamber is nothing more than a recess in
the _façade_, a mere frame for the stele. The structure also contains
a retreat in its thickness where the statues of the deceased were
walled up. The subterranean part is composed of the well and the mummy
chamber. The well is sunk from different parts of the building;
usually traversing its whole depth; it leads to the mummy chamber
which is found at varying depths in the bowels of the earth.
Such are the constituent elements of the _mastaba_, that is to say, of
those private tombs which were contemporary with the Pyramids. All
over Egypt, in every one of the cemeteries, no matter where they are
situated or what their date, the same elements are to be found,
modified in certain particulars by the rank of the deceased, by the
nature of the soil, by the size of the tomb, and by the changes of
fashion, but always to be easily recognized. Of all these elements
there is but one which does not persistently reappear in monuments
other than the mastaba, and that is the _serdab_. This retreat for
statues has not, as yet, been found in any of the royal tombs of the
first six dynasties, neither has it been met with in the tombs of the
two Theban empires, or of later epochs. And yet it was connected with
one of the most vital hopes of the Egyptian religion. It fulfilled in
the happiest manner, one of the conditions imposed upon the Egyptian
architect by the strange conceptions of a future life which we have
described. Why then do we, as a rule, find the serdab only in the
mastabas of the Memphite necropolis? Its absence under the Theban
princes is, perhaps to be explained by the progress made in the
science of embalming. The heads of more than one mummy have now been
exhibited in the cases of European museums for many years, and, in
spite of the dampness of our climates, they still preserve their skin,
their teeth and their hair (Fig. 126). When they had learnt the secret
of preserving the body from corruption, so that after a long series of
centuries it should be pretty much in the same condition as on the day
after death, they did not indeed, cease to make those images which
were supposed to guard the _double_ from annihilation, but they
attached less importance to their safety, and took less trouble to
hide them. They considered that they had done enough for their
preservation by putting them in the precincts of their tombs and
temples, and so under the guardianship of their venerated religion.
As for the other parts of the tomb, a little attention will always
suffice for their identification even in those sepulchres which differ
most from the mastaba. In some instances we shall find the mummy
chamber contrived in the upper structure, in others the whole tomb is
cut in the living rock. Sometimes we find the chapel, as we may call
the public chamber in which the miraculous nourishment of the _double_
took place, more or less distantly separated from the mummy chamber;
sometimes the well almost disappears, sometimes it ceases to be
vertical and becomes a long corridor with but a gentle slope. As a
rule all these variations are easily explained, and may be connected
without difficulty with that primitive type which we have attempted to
define by its most wide-spread and constant features.
[Illustration: FIG. 126.--Head of a Mummy. Louvre.]