THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS.--RECENT DISCOVERIES OF ROYAL MUMMIES.
"From temples to tombs," wrote one of the boys in his journal, "the
transition is a natural one. The kings built the temples, and recorded
their exploits on the walls. When they were done with temples and all
other earthly things, they were carried to their tombs and laid away to
rest. We saw their temples yesterday, and to-day we have made an
excursion to their tombs.
[Illustration: SACRED MUSICIANS, AND A PRIEST OFFERING INCENSE.]
"The tombs of the kings are about three miles from the river, and the
road to them is along a valley as barren as any part of the desert can
possibly be. It must have been a weary route for the funeral processions
from Thebes to this desolate spot, and it is probable that the kings
deferred their journeys there as long as possible. The way is impassable
for carriages, and so we rode on donkeys, as we have done in most of our
Egyptian excursions.
[Illustration: VALLEY OF THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS.]
"The tombs are scattered along a narrow valley of barren mountains at
the edge of the Libyan Desert, or, rather, just within its borders;
they are excavated in the solid rock, and some of them are very large.
Every few years a new discovery is made, and the government allows any
explorer to search for tombs under certain conditions: the conditions
are now so onerous that few private researches have been undertaken for
some time, and none are likely to be till the laws are changed. In the
early part of the century several English, French, German, and other
explorers were on the ground, and some of their discoveries were of
great interest. The tombs they opened are generally known by the names
of those who found them, though several have lost that distinction
through a system of numbering adopted by Sir Gardner Wilkinson. The
guides usually point them out by their numbers. About thirty tombs in
all have been opened, and it is certain there are ten or twelve more
that have not been discovered. Strabo, the Greek historian, who came
here about the beginning of the Christian era, says he saw forty tombs;
but some have conjectured that he included those in another valley, and
known as the Tombs of the Queens.
[Illustration: VIEW IN BELZONI'S TOMB.]
"We didn't have time to see the whole twenty-five, and it would not
have been worth while for us to do so, as several of them have no
particular interest. We went first to number seventeen, which is also
known as Belzoni's tomb; it was discovered by Belzoni, an Italian
traveller, and the most of its contents were carried to England, and are
now in the British Museum. Perhaps you may wonder why these tombs are so
difficult to find, but the reason is this:
"When a king died, and had been properly turned into a mummy, the
funeral rites were performed, and he was taken to the excavation in the
rock prepared for him. When he was packed away in his stone coffin the
entrance to the tomb was sealed up, and the side of the mountain broken
away; all trace of the tomb or the entrance of it was destroyed; and
there is a rumor that the men who performed the work were killed, in
order to prevent any revelations. Doubtless the locality of the tombs
was known to a good many people; but the knowledge of it would be
gradually lost, especially when the country was devastated by wars, and
the whole population, in some instances, swept away. Certainly the most
of these tombs were unknown for a thousand years or so previous to the
present century, with a few exceptions where the Arabs had accidentally
hit upon them, though many of them had been plundered and again closed
during the Greek and Roman period. Belzoni was guided in his search by
an incident which the Arabs had told him of the sinking of the earth in
consequence of a rain, and the disappearance of water at a certain
point. This led him to suspect that there might be a tomb there, and by
digging away the fallen fragments of rock on the side of the mountain he
came upon the entrance.
"There is a general similarity in these tombs, and so we will not weary
you with repetitions by describing them all.
"The tomb has a narrow entrance, from which there is a descending
passage-way, and sometimes a staircase. There are long halls and lateral
chambers, and now and then the real resting-place of the king is beneath
the main hall, which contained a bogus mummy intended to mislead any
unauthorized visitor. The Egyptians exhausted their brains in devices to
conceal the royal mummies, and it is quite possible that in some cases
they have succeeded. When Belzoni opened the tomb that bears his name he
came upon a staircase at the end of the passage, which he descended;
there he found a horizontal chamber terminating in another staircase,
and at its foot was an oblong chamber, or pit, of considerable depth.
"This appeared to be the end of the tomb, and it was, as an Hibernian
might say, full of emptiness.
"Belzoni was disappointed, as his search had been fruitless. While
wondering what to do next, he struck his hammer against the wall at the
top of the pit, and found that it gave forth a hollow sound. He reasoned
that the sound indicated a chamber beyond, and that the apparently solid
rock was only a wall of masonry, carefully covered with stucco and
hieroglyphics.
"He sent out for the best battering-ram that could be procured, and it
soon came in the shape of a log cut from a palm-tree. With this log he
knocked down the wall and opened a way into the actual tomb. The
inscriptions on the walls were found quite unharmed, and so was the
alabaster coffin, which is now in London, but contained nothing of
consequence when discovered. The tomb appears to be one of those that
was partially plundered within a few hundred years of its occupation by
the royal mummy, and again closed up.
"The total distance from the entrance to the farthest point in Belzoni's
tomb is four hundred and seventy feet, and the perpendicular descent of
the various stairways and inclines is one hundred and eighty feet. We
had a fatiguing walk through it, in consequence of the unevenness of the
way and the fragments of broken and fallen rock. The air was somewhat
stifling, partly owing to its confined character, and partly from the
effect of our torches and candles. We burnt a good deal of magnesium
wire to light up the halls, and reveal the beautiful inscriptions that
were around us in all directions except beneath our feet. Remember that
there was hardly a foot of space without inscriptions. The walls of this
tomb afford material for a year's study, and hard study at that.
"Some of the inscriptions refer to the daily occupations of the
Egyptians, others to the deeds of the kings of Egypt, and others to the
funeral ceremonies attending the death of a king. These last are by far
the most numerous, and there are long extracts from the 'Book of the
Dead,' showing the progress of the soul after it leaves the body.
"One inscription shows the soul passing to Amenthes, where, after a
short halt, it was ordered to the Hall of Justice. On its way to this
hall it was attacked by demons and wild beasts, but all these were
driven away if the body had been properly provided with prayers written
on the rolls of papyrus and the scarabæi that are always found with the
mummies.
"Another picture represents the soul in the Hall of Justice, where its
heart is placed in one scale and the Goddess of Truth in the other. Two
of the gods superintend the weighing, and a third makes a note of the
result. The god Osiris (with forty-two councillors) pronounces sentence.
The heart was found heavy, and therefore the spirit was ordered to the
regions of the blessed, where it was to pass through centuries of
happiness and then return to the mummy, which would be restored to life.
Of course they always found that the heart of the king was of the proper
weight; it would have been dangerous for the artist to discover it too
light, and thereby condemn it to suffer long tortures as a punishment
for its sins before it could pass to a state of rest, and get ready to
return to the mummy that waited for it.
"Belzoni's tomb was made for King Sethi I., whose temple we visited from
Girgeh. Portions of it were left unfinished, and some of the drawings
are incomplete. This condition of the wall is to be regretted for some
reasons, but is very fortunate in other respects, as it shows how the
Egyptian artists performed their work. The draughtsman made the outlines
in red chalk, and they were then inspected by the chief artist, who
corrected any errors or made alterations with a black crayon; the marks
were then followed by the sculptor, and were afterward colored with the
proper pigments. In some cases the wall was laid out in squares before
the figures were drawn, but this does not seem to have been the
universal rule, and there is abundant evidence that the Egyptian
artists were accomplished in what we call 'free-hand' drawing.
[Illustration: AN EGYPTIAN HARPER.]
"From this tomb we went to that of Rameses III. It was discovered by
Bruce, the famous traveller in Egypt and Abyssinia, and usually bears
his name, though it is sometimes called 'the Harper's Tomb,' from the
figure of a man playing on a harp, which is painted on one of the walls.
It is much easier to visit than Belzoni's, and its chief interest lies
in the great number of agricultural, pastoral, and other scenes depicted
on the walls. The daily life of the people is very clearly shown, and we
have an excellent idea of what the ancient Egyptians did, how they
lived, and what were their articles of furniture, dress, and the like.
We were astonished to see pictures of sofas, chairs, tables, and other
adornments of the house that would be considered luxurious at the
present time. Doctor Bronson says the designers of modern furniture
might learn a great deal by coming here and copying the pictures on the
walls.
[Illustration: A CHAIR FROM BRUCE'S TOMB.]
"We saw half a dozen tombs of the kings, and then went to the tombs of
the Assaséef. Perhaps you'd like to know what they are?
"They were the tombs of certain high-priests of Thebes, who are reputed
to have been very wealthy and powerful, and certainly they must have
been pretty nearly as important as the king under whom they lived. Their
tombs are even larger than any of the tombs of the kings: the greatest
of the Assaséef tombs has a lineal distance from the entrance to the
farthest point of eight hundred and sixty-two feet, and the floors of
the various passages, rooms, and pits include an area of about an acre
and a quarter. Isn't that a pretty large tomb for one person--even
though he included the members of his family and a few personal friends?
"We lighted our torches at the entrance, and then began a long walk
through the interior, though we did not visit all the side chambers and
narrow rooms, of which there are a great many. The sculptures on the
walls are inferior to those in Belzoni's and Bruce's tombs, and we did
not spend much time over them.
"Several times some of our torches were put out by the bats, of which
there are great numbers in the tomb. It was quite as bad for the bats as
for the torches, as they could not fly into the flame without risk of
having their wings singed. They flew in our faces, and were anything but
agreeable. One of our party said he had heard of receiving 'a bat in the
eye,' but never before experienced the sensation. He had a dozen of them
at least before he got out of the place.
"From this place we went to some private tombs, and then to the tombs of
the queens, but only visited one of each. Neither of these was
particularly interesting after what we had seen, though they contained
the usual profusion of mural paintings, which we had no time for
inspecting. The best of the paintings and sculptures have been copied by
Wilkinson and others, and we may study them at our leisure when we get
home, and our friends who are interested in the subject can do the same
thing. In one of the tombs we found the work of an artist who evidently
had the spirit of fun in him, as there were several caricatures of no
mean order. In one picture a boat has collided with another, and a whole
lot of cakes and other eatables are overturned on the rowers. We find
caricatures occasionally, but not often, and, on the whole, the
Egyptians seem to have been a serious people.
"We got back all right to the bank of the river, where the boats were
waiting to ferry us over to Luxor. So ends our sight-seeing at Thebes,
as we leave to-morrow morning to continue our journey up the Nile. We
have had no accident beyond a few slight tumbles and bruises, and have
obtained a store of information that will severely tax our memories to
retain. Let us hope that we can remember it, and be able to impart our
knowledge to others; if we can, we shall be rewarded a thousand times
over for the trouble we have taken, and for the fatigues of our visits
to the temples and tombs of this famous city of thirty centuries ago."
Since the travels of our friends in Egypt an event has occurred of great
interest to all who have any familiarity with the history of the land of
the Pharaohs. It will be noted that Frank and Fred, during their visits
to the tombs of the kings, and to the museum at Boulak, did not see the
mummy of any royal personage, if we except that of Queen Amen-Hotep,
which was found by Mariette Bey, together with the remarkable collection
of jewellery described in Chapter VIII.
Remembering that no mummy of a king had been found down to the date of
the journey of our friends in Egypt, and that all the royal tombs when
opened were found to have been previously visited by vandals as
free-handed as those of modern days, we can appreciate the importance of
the announcement, toward the end of 1881, that a new tomb had been
opened and found to contain the mummies of several kings, together with
those of other royal personages. The following description is taken from
a recent publication, the details having been derived from the reports
of M. Maspero, the able successor of Mariette Pasha:
"For the last ten years or more it had been suspected that the
Theban Arabs (whose main occupation is tomb-pillage and
mummy-snatching) had found a royal sepulchre. Objects of great
rarity and antiquity were being brought to Europe every season by
travellers who had purchased them from native dealers living on the
spot; and many of these objects were historically traceable to
certain royal dynasties which made Thebes their capital city. At
length suspicion became certainty. An English tourist, passing
through Paris, presented Professor Maspero with some photographs
from a superb papyrus which he had then lately bought at Thebes
from an Arab named Abd-er-Ranoul. This papyrus proved to be the
Ritual, or funereal sacred book, written for Pinotem I., third
priest-king of the twenty-first dynasty. Evidently, then, the tomb
of this sovereign had been discovered and pillaged. In January,
1881, the late lamented Mariette Pasha died at Cairo, and was
succeeded by Professor Maspero, the present Conservator of
Antiquities to H.H. the Khedive. Professor Maspero at once resolved
to get to the bottom of the Theban mystery; and, with that object
chiefly in view, proceeded last April to Upper Egypt upon his first
official trip of inspection. Arriving at Luxor he straightway
arrested the said Abd-er-Ranoul. Threats, bribery, persuasion were,
however, tried in vain, and Abd-er-Ranoul was consigned to the
district prison at Keneh, the chief town of the province. Here for
two months he maintained an obstinate silence. In the mean while
Professor Maspero offered a reward of £500 for the discovery of
the secret, and returned to Europe. Scarcely had he embarked when
the elder brother of Abd-er-Ranoul went privately before the
Governor of Keneh, offered to betray the secret, and claimed the
reward.
[Illustration: SECTION OF PAPYRUS.]
"The governor telegraphed immediately to Cairo; and Herr Emil
Brugsch, Keeper of the Boulak Museum (whom Professor Maspero had
deputed to act for him in any case of emergency), was forthwith
despatched to Thebes. Here he was conducted to a lonely spot in the
most desolate and unfrequented part of the great necropolis which
extends for between three and four miles along the western bank of
the Nile. Hidden behind an angle of limestone cliff, and masked by
a huge fragment of fallen rock, he beheld the entrance to a
perpendicular shaft descending to a depth of thirty-nine feet. At
the bottom of this shaft opened a gallery two hundred and forty
feet in length, leading to a sepulchral vault measuring
twenty-three feet by thirteen. In this gallery and vault were found
some thirty-six mummies, including more than twenty kings and
queens, besides princes, princesses, and high-priests, to say
nothing of an immense store of sacred vessels, funereal statuettes,
alabaster vases, and precious objects in glass, bronze,
acacia-wood, etc. The treasure thus brought to light consisted of
some six thousand items, not the least valuable of which were four
royal papyri. Professor Maspero, in his official report, warmly
eulogizes the energy with which Herr Emil Brugsch, by the aid of
five hundred native laborers, exhumed, packed, shipped, and brought
to Cairo the whole contents of this now famous hiding-place.
[Illustration: COFFIN AND MUMMY OF A ROYAL PRINCESS.]
"The following are the principal royal mummies found in this
recently opened tomb:
"King Rasekenen-Taaken and Queen Ansera, of the seventeenth
dynasty.
"King Ahmes Ra-neb-Pehti, Queen Ahmes Nofretari, Queen Aah-Hotep,
Queen Merit-Amen, Queen Hontimoo-hoo, Prince Se Amen, Princess
Set-Amen, King Amen-Hotep I., King Thothmes I.,* King Thothmes II.,
King Thothmes III., Queen Sitka, all of the eighteenth dynasty.
[Illustration: COFFIN OF QUEEN NOFRETARI.]
"King Rameses I.,* King Sethi I., King Rameses II., of the
nineteenth dynasty.
[The asterisk indicates that the mummy is missing.]
"Queen Notem-Maut, King and High-priest Pinotem I., King Pinotem
II., Prince and High-priest Masahirti, Queen Hathor Hout-Taui,
Queen Makara, Queen Isi-em-Kheb, Princess Nasi-Khonsu, Prince
Tat-f-Ankh, Nebseni, a priest, Noi-Shounap, a priest, of the
twenty-first dynasty.
"In some instances the mummy reposes in its original mummy-case,
and sometimes in two or three mummy-cases, the whole enclosed in an
enormous outer sarcophagus. In others, only the mummy case is left,
the mummy having been destroyed or abstracted. Farther, some
mummies are found in mummy-cases not their own, or in mummy-cases
which have been altered and usurped for their use in ancient times.
"There can be no doubt that the vault in which these various
mummies and funereal treasures were found was the family sepulchre
of the kings of the twenty-first dynasty. This dynasty was founded
by Her-Hor, High-priest of Amen of the great Temple of Amen at
Thebes, who, toward the close of the twentieth dynasty, at a time
the throne of the last Ramessides was tottering to its foundations,
either inherited the crown by right of descent or seized it by
force.
"The close of the twentieth dynasty was an epoch of great internal
trouble and disorder. During the reigns of the last four or five
kings of that line there had been little security for life and
property in Thebes; and organized bands of robbers committed
constant depredations in the more retired quarters of the
necropolis, attacking chiefly the tombs of great personages, and
venturing even to break open the sepulchres of the royal dead.
Hence it became the sacred duty of the reigning monarch to take
every possible precaution to insure the mummies of his predecessors
against profanation and pillage.
"We accordingly find that Her-Hor caused the sepulchres of his
predecessors to be periodically visited by a service of regularly
appointed Inspectors of Tombs, whose duty it was to report upon the
condition of the royal mummies; to repair their wrappings and
mummy-cases when requisite; and, if necessary, to remove them from
their own sepulchres into any others which might be deemed more
secure. All of them seem to have been moved several times: at one
time the tomb of Queen Ansera, at another time the tomb of Sethi
I., at another time the tomb of one of the Amen-Hoteps would seem
to have been selected as the chosen hiding-place of several royal
mummies, all of whom had been removed from their own original
sepulchres by order of Her-Hor or his successors. The mummy of
Rameses II. (to whose memory, as the supposed Pharaoh of the
oppression of the Hebrews, so strong an interest attaches) appears
to have been removed more frequently, and to have suffered more
vicissitudes of fortune than any of the others. That his sepulchre
in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings had been violated by
robbers can scarcely be doubted, for his original mummy-cases were
either destroyed or damaged beyond repair.
"All the mummies were eventually consigned to the tomb of the
Her-Hor family near the end of the twenty-first dynasty. Professor
Maspero believes this final measure to have been taken during the
reign of King Menkheperra, the last sovereign but one of the
Her-Hor line. Menkheperra himself is not among those found in the
vault; neither is his son and successor, Pinotem III. Having
piously deposited all these revered and deified Pharaohs and other
royal personages in the last home of his own immediate ancestors,
Menkheperra evidently closed the vault forever, and was himself
content to be buried elsewhere.
"It is interesting to learn from the reports of Professor Maspero
and Herr Brugsch the heights of some of the famous kings of Egypt.
Raskenen, it seems, was among Egyptian kings like Saul in Israel.
He measured six feet one inch, and very few of his descendants took
after him in this particular. Ashmes, for instance (his grandson),
measured only five feet six inches, and the great Thothmes III.
five feet seven inches. Thothmes II. approached the stature of his
ancestor, but Sethi I. was no more than five feet nine inches. It
is satisfactory to learn that Rameses II. was taller than his
father, and not, like Thothmes III., a little man, by any means,
for his mummy wants but one inch of six feet.
[Illustration: COFFIN OF RAMESES II.]
"One of the most interesting objects in the collection is the
coffin of Rameses II. The face of the king is represented on the
lid, and the hands are in high relief, grasping the Osirian scourge
and crook, but the face is not from the studio of the artists who
carved the walls of Abydus, and designed the sitting figures of
Aboo-Simbel. On the breast is a legend which includes two royal
cartouches or ovals, with an inscription in that hieratic or
cursive hieroglyphic writing which is so difficult to read. The
names in the ovals are easily read, however--'Ra-messes-mer-Amen'
in one, 'Ra-user-Ma Setep-en-Ra' in the other.
"Considerable interest attaches to the mummy of King Pinotem, as it
was the latest of all the royal collection. Pinotem was the third
king of the twenty-first dynasty, who reigned as nearly as possible
a millennium B.C. In addition to the royal mummies, a multitude of
objects bearing cartouches will throw great light upon the
succession of these kings; and the tent of Pinotem, of leather,
embroidered and colored, and covered with hieroglyphics, cannot
fail to clear up some historical difficulties as to the
priest-kings of Thebes. His face has an Ethiopian cast of features,
and he is believed to have been descended from the princes of Egypt
who came from the South. The lips are slightly parted, and the
upper teeth are almost visible. The absence of the eyeball is
indicated by the way in which the eyelids are sunken; and the
nostrils are forcibly distended, in consequence of the method
employed by the embalmers for the removal of the brain, which was
effected by means of a hooked instrument passed up through the
nose. The expression is, nevertheless, not unpleasing. The shrouds
are of somewhat coarse texture; and a few withered flowers may be
observed stuck through the bands which hold the wrappings
together."