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Title: A century of excavation in the land of the Pharaohs
Author: James Baikie
Release date: March 22, 2025 [eBook #75684]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1924
Credits: deaurider and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CENTURY OF EXCAVATION IN THE LAND OF THE PHARAOHS ***
[Illustration: 1. PORTRAIT STATUE OF THOTHMES III, CAIRO MUSEUM.]
A
Century of Excavation
in the
Land of the Pharaohs
BY
JAMES BAIKIE, F.R.A.S.
AUTHOR OF “WONDER TALES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD,”
“LANDS AND PEOPLE OF THE BIBLE,” “THE SEA KINGS OF CRETE,”
“THE STORY OF THE PHARAOHS,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED WITH 32 PLATES
SPECIALLY PREPARED FOR THIS VOLUME
[Illustration]
Fleming H. Revell Company
NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
BY
WILLIAM CLOWES & SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.
PREFACE
It is somewhat remarkable that, in spite of the considerable, if
spasmodic, interest which is taken in the results of research in Egypt,
no adequate account of the work of excavation has ever been written.
The student who wishes to learn how, when, and where the facts and
objects which interest him were discovered, has himself to excavate
the desired information from the innumerable volumes of reports issued
by the various exploration societies. It is much to be desired that
someone who is master of the subject, and preferably, someone who has
had actual experience of the work of excavation, should tell the story,
not in a manner suited only to the ears of experts, but so that the
educated public on whom in the long run excavation must depend for its
resources, could appreciate and enjoy a narrative which ought to be as
fascinating as any story of search for buried treasure.
This volume makes no pretension to the discharge of such a task. All
that it attempts to do is to outline the story of certain aspects of
the great work which has given us back so many of the wonders of the
ancient civilisation of Egypt. Its omissions are, doubtless, many;
but two will be at once conspicuous to anyone who has the slightest
acquaintance with the subject. Nothing is said of the Search for the
Cities, which in the closing years of the nineteenth century created
so much interest, and resulted in so many identifications of sites; and
nothing is said of the great work of Papyrus-hunting which has added
so much to our knowledge of ancient life. These two matters were left
untouched for reasons which seemed valid. In the case of the Cities,
many of the identifications of the ’nineties are at present being
questioned, and it seemed better to leave the matter till something
like agreement is reached. In the case of the Papyri, the subject has
become so specialised, and has developed so large a literature of its
own as to render impossible any attempt to deal with it, on the scale
which it deserves, in such a volume as the present.
It may be that at some time in the not far distant future, when
controversy has resulted in more or less general agreement as to the
sites, these two aspects of Egyptian excavation may be dealt with in a
volume which may be a sequel and companion to this. My indebtedness to
many authorities is manifest on almost every page of the book; but I
wish specially to acknowledge my debt to Professor Sir W. M. Flinders
Petrie, D.C.L., F.R.S., not only for the kindness which has allowed me
to use the material of several of the plates in the book (7, 9, 10),
but also for the constant inspiration and stimulus which his work has
given to me, as to so many other students of the wonderful civilisation
of Ancient Egypt.
JAMES BAIKIE.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE STORY OF THE PIONEERS 7
CHAPTER II
MARIETTE AND HIS WORK 18
CHAPTER III
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MODERN PERIOD 35
CHAPTER IV
THE PYRAMIDS AND THEIR EXPLORERS 48
CHAPTER V
WORK AMONG THE TEMPLES 84
CHAPTER VI
BURIED ROYALTIES 128
CHAPTER VII
TUTANKHAMEN AND HIS SPLENDOURS 177
CHAPTER VIII
LIFE, ARTS, AND CRAFTS IN THE LAND OF THE NILE 213
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE
1. Portrait Statue of Thothmes III, Cairo Museum _Frontispiece_
PAGE
2. Wall of Chamber, Tomb of Sety I, Valley of the Kings 10
3. Detail of Decoration, Tomb of Sety I 18
4. Temple of Ramses III, Medinet Habu 30
5. Temple of Edfu--The Pylon, and View from the Pylon 40
6. Great Pyramid and Sphinx 52
7. Gold Pectorals of Senusert II and III, XIIth Dynasty 72
8. Diadems of Princess Khnumit, Gold work, XIIth Dynasty 80
9. Hatshepsut’s Temple, Der el-Bahri. General view 88
10. North Colonnade, Der el-Bahri; “Proto-Doric” Columns 92
11. Reliefs, Der el-Bahri 96
12. Karnak, Avenue of Sphinxes 104
13. Karnak, Nave of Hypostyle Hall 112
14. Karnak, Columns of the Side-Aisle, Hypostyle Hall 116
15. Karnak, View from the North; Obelisks of Hatshepsut, and
Thothmes I 120
16. Luxor, Forecourt of Amenhotep III 124
17. Luxor, Papyrus-Bud Columns and Colossi of Ramses II 128
18. Colonnade in Temple of Sety I, Abydos 136
19. Bracelets of 1st Dynasty Queen, Chain and Gold Seal, VIth
Dynasty, with XIIth Dynasty Goldsmith’s Work 144
20. Entrance to the Valley of the Kings, Thebes 148
21. Tomb of Ramses IX, Valley of the Kings 152
22. Granite Head of Tutankhamen, Cairo Museum 178
23. Decoration from a Theban Tomb 184
24. Decoration from a Theban Tomb: Sowing, Reaping, the Vintage 192
25. Head of the Hathor-Cow, Der el-Bahri 200
26. Colossus of Ramses II, Luxor 208
27. Portrait-Statue of Mentuemhat, Cairo Museum 216
28. Vth Dynasty Relief-Work, Tomb of Ptah-Hetep 224
29. XIXth Dynasty Relief-Work, Temple of Sety I, Abydos 228
30. XIXth Dynasty Relief-Work, Temple of Ramses II, Luxor 232
31. XXth Dynasty Relief-Work, Temple of Ramses III, Medinet Habu 236
32. Ptolemaic Relief-Work, Kom Ombos 240
A CENTURY OF
EXCAVATION IN
THE LAND OF
THE PHARAOHS
CHAPTER I
THE STORY OF THE PIONEERS
The story of the beginnings of research into the wonders of antiquity
in Egypt is unique in at least one point. In no other land does a
conquering army march at the head of the pioneers of exploration; but
the true beginnings of the century and a quarter of research which has
given to us so many wonders from the Land of the Nile are to be found
with that amazing troop of learned camp-followers who accompanied
Napoleon’s army on the expedition of 1798. The wonders of ancient Egypt
had never altogether been blotted from the memory and the interest of
man, as was the case with some of the other lands of the Classic East.
The pages of Herodotus, never fuller or more vivid than when he is
dealing with Egypt, prevented that oblivion; and therefore Herodotus
has some right to be named at the very beginning of the story of the
exploration of ancient Egypt as the pioneer of pioneers. But the world
was first really awakened to the richness of the Treasury of Egypt by
the colossal production, twelve volumes of plates and twenty-four of
text, which was the result of the untiring labours of Vivant Denon and
his collaborators--the famous _Description de l’Egypte_--a work almost
comparable in scale and grandeur with the monuments which it described.
Few armies have left behind them such a memorial of their passage
across a land--the more credit to the man whose inexhaustibly fertile
brain conceived the idea of making even war subserve the interests of
science.
Unfortunately, however, the tie with international strifes and
jealousies, which had drawn the French savants originally to the Nile
Valley, remained unbroken for many years; and questions of archæology
were continually complicated by questions of national pride and
prestige, so that the early story of Egyptian exploration is not
the story of pure research, conducted for the love of truth and of
antiquity, but very often merely the story of how the representative
of France strove with the representative of Britain or Italy for the
possession of some ancient monument whose capture might bring glory to
his nation, or profit to his own purse. There are few more melancholy
chapters in the story of human frailty than those in which the early
explorers of Egypt (if you can dignify them by such a name) describe
how they wrangled and intrigued, lied and cheated, over relics whose
mutilated antiquity might have taught them enough of the vanity of
human wishes to make them ashamed of their pettiness.
Dr. Macalister has told us in the Cambridge Ancient History that “it
is impossible to give any complete survey of the history of Egyptian
excavation.” This is true for the later period, because the field
is so vast, and the workers are so many; it is not less true for
the beginnings, because it is impossible to write a history of the
scufflings of kites and crows--or rather, one might say, of ghouls. It
must be almost a nightmare to the modern excavator, with his ingrained
appreciation of the importance of even the very smallest object which
may add to the knowledge of ancient lands and peoples, to think of the
priceless material which was destroyed by the undiscriminating zeal of
men like Belzoni, Drovetti, and their fellows, or if not destroyed,
at least deprived of half its value by being torn from its historical
place and connection. These were the lamentable days when interest in
the antiquities of Egypt had advanced but little beyond that displayed
by the gentleman of Addison’s first _Spectator_, whose Egyptian
researches are thus described by himself--“I made a voyage to Grand
Cairo on purpose to take the measure of a pyramid; and as soon as I had
set myself right in that particular, returned to my native country with
great satisfaction,” or by Lord Charlemont, who according to Johnson
had nothing to tell of his travels except a story of a large serpent
which he had seen in one of the pyramids of Egypt.
In the early years of the nineteenth century, and, indeed, till
Mariette in 1858 laid his masterful hand upon the key of the great
treasure-house and allowed no one to spoil it but himself, there was a
perfect orgy of spoliation carried on, not in the interests of science,
but partly out of vanity, and partly out of greed. Every important or
noble traveller had to add a few curios from Egypt to his miscellaneous
collection gathered from half a dozen other lands, and sculptures,
inscriptions, and papyri of the greatest value were thus uselessly
dispersed in paltry private collections, where, when they had gratified
a passing curiosity or ministered to a momentary spirit of emulation,
they were allowed to gather dust through years of neglect, till at last
the futile cabinet of curios was dispersed, and its items were lost
sight of altogether.
Some collections, such as those of Belzoni, Passalacqua, Drovetti, and
a few others, had better fortune, and were finally purchased for one
or other of the great European Museums, which nearly all formed the
nucleus of their Egyptological collections in this fashion; but the
amount of unnecessary loss of what can never now be replaced must have
been deplorable.
[Illustration: 2. WALL OF CHAMBER, TOMB OF SETY I, VALLEY OF THE KINGS.]
This “unbridled pillage,” as Maspero justly calls it, in which the
consuls of the various European powers played an ignoble but doubtless
lucrative part, lasted for more than thirty years, in spite of the
protests of men like Champollion, who could understand the irreparable
loss which was being inflicted on the infant science of Egyptology
by this mutilation and confounding of the documents on which its
future depended. Among its practitioners were one or two men who
were distinguished from the vulgar crowd of papyrus, scarab, and
mummy hunters by a certain dim appreciation of the fact that the
treasures with which they were dealing had a value greater than that
of their price in the curio-market, and who have added at least a few
interesting and remarkable items to the mass of Egyptian treasure
which the nineteenth century accumulated, though our gratitude to them
for this must always be qualified by the fact that we have no certain
knowledge of what they lost and destroyed in the process, but can only
judge from their own admissions that it must have been far more than
they preserved.
Of these men who may be pronounced guilty, but with extenuating
circumstances, the most interesting, and perhaps the least harmful,
was the inimitable Belzoni, to whose unwearying efforts we owe the
opening of the Second Pyramid, the discovery of the tomb of Sety I,
the most perfect example of the rock-hewn tomb of a Pharaoh of the
New Empire, and the magnificent alabaster sarcophagus of Sety which
is one of the treasures of the Soane Museum, London, besides several
of the most important royal statues in the Egyptian Galleries of the
British Museum. No one who wishes to realise what the young science
had to endure at the hands of its first devotees can afford to neglect
the extraordinary farrago of vanity and pomposity, ignorance and
self-seeking, but also of patience and endurance, and a certain inborn
instinct for what was either beautiful or valuable, which Belzoni has
jumbled together under the sounding title--“Narrative of the Operations
and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs, and
Excavations, in EGYPT AND NUBIA.”
Belzoni’s original object in going to Egypt was simply to get “The
Bashaw” to adopt a hydraulic machine for irrigation work--a project
in which it is almost needless to say that he failed; his knowledge
of the precious material with which he was soon dealing was nothing
at the beginning, and not much more at the end of his “Researches and
Operations”; he had a positive gift for quarrelling with everybody
with whom he came into contact, Egyptian or European, and a mania
for imputing the vilest motives to anyone who coveted any piece of
antiquity on which he had set his own heart; but with it all he had the
_flair_ of the true explorer for a promising site, and could foresee
hidden treasures where his rivals dreamed of nothing, and with all his
petulance he had a patience which was almost inexhaustible. It was
these qualities which have made him the only explorer of those unhappy
days whose name is really remembered, or deserves to be remembered, in
connection with our knowledge of ancient Egypt.
As to his methods, these, of course, were unspeakable, and the mere
mention of them is enough to turn a modern excavator’s hair white. He
finds the entrance of a royal tomb in the Western Valley of the Kings,
and proceeds to open it--with a battering-ram made of two palm-logs!
As to his reverence for the mighty dead of the past one sentence may
suffice: “Every step I took I crushed a mummy in some part or other.”
Again he describes his journey through a tomb-gallery which the modern
excavator would have given his ears to see as Belzoni saw it. “It was
choked with mummies, and I could not pass without putting my face in
contact with that of some decayed Egyptian; but as the passage inclined
downwards my own weight helped me on; however, I could not avoid being
covered with bones, legs, arms, and heads rolling from above.”
The object of these ghoulish journeys was simply to plunder the coffins
of their papyri, which, of course, were marketable, though as yet
no one could read them; and there can be little doubt that far more
was destroyed than was preserved by methods which were only a little
above those of the Ramesside tomb-robbers who stripped the mummies
of King Sebek-em-saf and Queen Nub-khas of their jewels, and then
burned them. Such was Egyptian excavation in the first quarter of the
nineteenth century, and in the hands of one of its most distinguished
practitioners, for Belzoni was an angel of light compared with some of
his rivals, native or foreign.
Fortunately, however, the time for such ignorant and sordid
exploitation of the treasures of the past was not to last for long;
though it lasted far too long for the welfare of Egyptology. By 1822,
Jean François Champollion, working on the material supplied by the
Rosetta Stone and the Philæ Obelisk, and aided to some extent in his
brilliant achievement by the previous labours of Akerblad and Young,
gave to the world the key to the hieroglyphic inscriptions, so that the
Egyptian monuments were no longer dumb. In 1828 came the second great
general survey of the monuments under Rosellini and Champollion.
It was now possible to read some, at least, of the inscriptions, and
therefore to reach some approach to order in the classification of
the monuments dealt with. The work suffered an irreparable loss by
the early death of Champollion; but the results of the expedition,
presented in the ten volumes of the _Monumenti storichi dell’ Egitto
e della Nubia_ constituted a great enlargement of real knowledge as
opposed to the conjectures which had previously held the field.
For a time after the Rosellini Expedition, the field was left to
individual workers, of whom the most notable were two Englishmen, F. E.
Perring and Colonel Howard Vyse, whose careful measurements of the
pyramids, especially the great group of Gizeh, laid the foundation for
all subsequent study of these wonderful structures. The work of Perring
and Vyse was done in 1837, and three years later came the important
Prussian Expedition directed by Karl Richard Lepsius, whose name must
always stand among the foremost on the roll of Egyptology.
Lepsius began with the Pyramid field at Memphis, where his theorising
on the method of erection of the pyramids, though perhaps the part of
his work by which he is most generally known, was of less importance
than his investigation of the Old Kingdom tombs of the nobles in the
necropolis, with its revelation of the life and culture of the Egypt of
3000 B.C. Thence the mission worked southwards, visiting the Fayum, and
carrying out investigations as to the whereabouts of Lake Moeris and
the Labyrinth.
Passing on up the Nile Valley, Lepsius paid special attention to the
tombs of the Middle Kingdom with their valuable pictures of Egyptian
life a millennium later than the pyramid period, and also visited the
site which has since become so famous as Tell el-Amarna. Not content
with carrying his researches to the limit of the Second Cataract, where
Rosellini had stopped, he pressed on through Nubia as far as Napata
and Meroë, the former seats of that Ethiopian extension of Egyptian
civilisation which gave to Egypt its ill-starred XXVth Dynasty,
while on his return journey he visited the Sinai Peninsula, where
he discovered and published the very valuable inscriptions left by
the Egyptian expeditions which for many centuries were sent to work
the copper mines at the Wady Maghareh and Serabit el-Khadem. He thus
revealed to us the first chapter of the wonderful story of Egyptian
exploring and commercial activity, whose subsequent disclosures have
at last almost succeeded in destroying the time-honoured myth which
represented the ancient Egyptians as a cloistered nation, the Chinese
of the Near East.
The _Denkmäler aus Ægypten und Æthiopien_, published from 1849 to 1858
gave to the world the results of the wonderfully fruitful work of
Lepsius, and has scarcely yet been altogether superseded as a source of
illustration of the manners and culture of the ancient Egyptians. “In
the main,” says Dr. Macalister, “the statement may stand, that Lepsius
exhausted the general topographical study of the country.” Subsequent
researches have done no more than to add filling in to the broad
outlines which he drew with such care and certainty.
But now the period of superficial survey of the wealth of material
which Egypt offers to the student was drawing to a close, and was to be
succeeded by the period in which excavation, conducted with constantly
growing skill and attention to the most minute details, was to do, as
it is still doing, what no amount of superficial cataloguing of the
monuments of the land could ever do, and to give us back, not only
pictures of the life of these ancient days, but the tools and weapons
with which the Egyptian worked, fought, and hunted, the vessels which
he used for all the purposes of life, the jewels with which he and his
women-kind adorned themselves, the books which they read, and the songs
which they sang; all the material from which, if we have the vision and
the insight, we may reconstruct the life of those far-off days; and to
crown its gifts by calling up from the tomb the very men themselves who
ruled and warred in the land of the Nile in the great days when Egypt
was the first of all empires, and her Pharaoh a god incarnate, before
whose golden sandals all the lesser kings of the world bowed in the
dust “seven times and seven times.” The pioneer of this work, surely
the most romantic and interesting, as it has proved not the least
fruitful, in the whole realm of scientific research, was the brilliant
Frenchman, Auguste Mariette.
CHAPTER II
MARIETTE AND HIS WORK
The story of the life-work of the man who, more than any other, was
responsible for the creation of a genuine interest in the great
works of ancient Egypt, as distinguished from the aimless or sordid
antiquity-grubbing which has been described in the preceding chapter,
is one of the romances of science. Mariette was one of those men who,
in the words of Cromwell, never go so far as when they do not know
whither they are going, and in his early connection with Egypt he was
like Saul the son of Kish, who went out to look for his father’s asses
and found a kingdom. Born in 1821, at Boulogne, and employed as a
teacher in the college of his native town, he was drawn to the study
of ancient Egypt by the fact that the town museum had acquired a fine
Egyptian sarcophagus from the collection of Denon, one of the savants
who had accompanied Napoleon’s Army of Egypt.
[Illustration: 3. DETAIL OF DECORATION, TOMB OF SETY I.]
In 1849 he was appointed assistant in the Egyptian Department of the
Louvre, and in the following year he was sent out to Egypt for the
purpose of buying Coptic manuscripts. The mission, a comparatively
trifling one in itself, was one of those trifles which often prove
turning-points in a man’s life; and from the moment when he set foot on
Egyptian soil, Mariette’s future career was marked out for him.
The thing which determined his fate was a passage from the old
geographer and historian Strabo. The god of Memphis, the most ancient
capital of Egypt, was Ptah, the artificer-god, who was supposed to
become incarnate in the sacred bull Apis. As each successive Apis
died, it was buried with all the reverence and splendour due to an
incarnation of Divinity, in a special necropolis at Saqqara. Later
in the complicated story of Egyptian religion Apis was identified
with the god of the Underworld, Osiris, and was called Osiris-Apis,
and the Greeks speedily corrupted this into Serapis, and called the
burial-place of the Apis bulls the Serapeum.
Now Strabo, in writing his account of Egypt, inserted the following
passage about this ancient bull-cemetery. “One finds also [at Memphis]
a temple of Serapis in a spot so sandy that the wind causes the sand
to accumulate in heaps, under which we could see many sphinxes, some
of them almost entirely buried, others only partially covered; from
which we may conjecture that the route leading to this temple might be
attended with danger if one were surprised by a sudden gust of wind.”
While Mariette was pursuing his inquiries after Coptic manuscripts, he
noticed in a garden at Alexandria several sphinxes, and shortly after,
when at Cairo, he came across several more of the same type, while
more still were found at Gizeh. It was plain that there was somewhere
not far off some storehouse of sphinxes which was being plundered to
furnish ornaments for the gardens of local officials. The matter lay
in Mariette’s mind until one day when he was at Saqqara he noticed the
head of a similar sphinx sticking up out of the sand. Searching round
about it, he found a libation-tablet, inscribed with a dedication to
Osiris-Apis. At once Strabo’s statement occurred to his mind, and he
realised that he was standing over the avenue of sphinxes which the
ancient writer refers to.
Coptic manuscripts went to the winds. Without apparently asking
permission of anybody, “almost furtively,” as he says himself, Mariette
gathered a handful of workmen, and began the excavation. “The first
attempts were hard indeed,” he says; “but before very long lions and
peacocks, and the Grecian statues of the dromos, together with the
monumental tablets or _stelæ_ of the temple of Nectanebo, were drawn
out of the sand, and I was able to announce my success to the French
Government, informing them, at the same time, that the funds placed
at my disposal for the researches after the manuscripts were entirely
exhausted, and that a further grant was indispensable. Thus was begun
the discovery of the Serapeum.”
The passage is entirely characteristic of Mariette, and the calmness
with which he assumes that the Government which had sent him out to buy
manuscripts will be quite pleased to hear that he has spent all their
money on something quite different, and has committed them to a huge
excavation which was to last four years, instead of to the purchase of
a few parchments, is particularly delightful. One wonders what were
the first thoughts of officialdom at Paris when his letter reached the
Louvre, and his chiefs realised the kind of man and the irrepressible
energy which they had let loose in Egypt to spend money on things which
they had never dreamed of.
His action at the Serapeum was typical of his whole career in Egypt.
When Mariette had once reached the conclusion that a certain object
was desirable, nothing was allowed to stand in the way. He went for
his object, one cannot always say straight, for he had caution as well
as daring, and knew how to use the wisdom of the serpent, but with a
resolute determination which seldom failed in the end to accomplish
its purpose; and if regulations stood in the way, so much the worse
for the regulations. It was this self-reliance and impatience of
restraint which were responsible for a good deal of the wastefulness
which undoubtedly was a marked feature of his Egyptian work; but, on
the other hand, without these same qualities it is difficult to see
how his work could have been accomplished at all, in the face of all
the obstacles which were thrown in his way by Oriental lethargy and
corruption, and by European jealousy and selfishness.
The great Apis-cemetery which was thus discovered by Mariette’s happy
disregard of the limits of his commission is all that remains of
the original Serapeum. When the place was complete, it comprised an
avenue of sphinxes at least 600 feet in length, leading up to the
great temple of Osiris-Apis. No fewer than 141 of the sphinxes were
discovered, together with the pedestals of others. The temple had
entirely disappeared, having, no doubt, been used as a quarry for
other building operations; but an inclined passage led from one of its
chambers downwards into the vast vaults where for centuries the bodies
of the dead Apis-bulls were given burial with splendours which rival
those of the Pharaohs.
The vaults belong to three periods. In the first, which belongs to the
XVIIIth Dynasty, the tombs are separate vaults hewn here and there in
the rock; in the second, which is that of Dynasties XXII to XXV, a
long gallery was excavated, on either side of which mortuary chambers
were excavated as needed; in the third (XXVIth Dynasty) the gallery
plan is followed, but on a much larger scale. The total length of the
galleries of the XXVIth Dynasty is 1150 feet, and the great gallery
alone measures 640 feet in length. In the side chambers are the immense
granite coffins, of superb workmanship, which were provided for the
last resting-place of the Apis. Twenty-four of these were found in the
third gallery. They average 13 feet in length, 11 feet in height, and
7 feet 8 inches in breadth, and weigh not less than 65 tons apiece,
magnificent specimens of the engineering skill of the ancient workers
who transported these vast blocks from Aswan to Memphis, a distance of
almost 600 miles.
The discovery of the Serapeum set the seal on Mariette’s destiny.
Henceforward his life-work was to lie in the excavation and
preservation of the relics of that ancient land to which fate had
brought him; but as yet he occupied no official position in the
country, and was, indeed, looked upon rather as an unauthorised
interloper by the native antiquity-hunters and the foreign officials
who encouraged the constant and shameless pillage which had been going
on for half a century. It was in his struggles with these vampires that
the great explorer acquired the habits of secret and solitary planning
and working which characterised his reign as chief of the Egyptian
Service of Antiquities, and the distrust of all other excavators which
led him to forbid all such work even to the most famous scholars or to
his dearest friends, and to retain the right to excavate exclusively in
his own hands to the day of his death.
“Forced to struggle for more than three years,” says Maspero in his
vivid sketch of his predecessor, “against the jealousy of the dealers
of the time and the sharp practices of the Egyptian officials, he
was not long in learning and putting into practice all the dodges
which the natives employed to track out their rivals or to cheat the
treasury. No one knew better than he how to conceal a quest, to pack
up the product of it in secret, and to dispatch it without arousing
the suspicion of anyone.” Curious qualifications for the head of a
great Government department; yet they served him well in what was
really a lifelong battle against the rivalry of men of science, who,
instead of encouraging him in his efforts to set Egyptology on a firm
foundation in its native land, did their worst to rob him of the fruits
of his labours; and against the apathy and indifference of his master,
who regarded the antiquities which his untiring servant unearthed as
valuable only because he could gratify a globe-trotting potentate by
the gift of some of them, or in the last resort might raise a loan on
the precious treasures of his Museum.
Mariette’s appointment as head of the Service of Antiquities was
due, indeed, to a piece of skilful wire-pulling in which de Lesseps
and Prince Napoleon, afterwards Napoleon III, were concerned; and
Said Pasha gave him the post, not because he cared for his royal
predecessors, but because, as Maspero caustically puts it, “he came to
the conclusion that he would be more acceptable to the Emperor if he
made some show of taking pity on the Pharaohs.”
An appointment due to no higher inspiration than self-interest on the
part of the giver obviously depended largely on how long self-interest
coincided with the interests of the new post; and perhaps the most
arduous part of Mariette’s task consisted in trying to make his
thoroughly Oriental master see that it was his interest to maintain
what he had begun, and in overcoming the whims and caprices, and the
secret intrigues which continually threatened to undermine his position
and destroy the structure which he was so painfully rearing. He never
could get a permanent grant for the work of his department from the
Egyptian Government. When money was needed he had always to ask it
direct from the Khedive, who granted a subsidy or refused it according
to the mood in which he happened to be at the moment. Again and again
Mariette had to close down his excavations because he had unfortunately
approached Said when the Khedive was in a bad temper; but though the
continuance of work under such conditions might have driven the most
phlegmatic of men, let alone a mercurial Frenchman, to despair, he
never for a moment lost sight of his end. Repulsed once, he only waited
a more favourable opportunity to return to the charge, and in the end
he was almost invariably successful.
When his work is criticised, as it has often, and not unjustly, been,
as hasty and wanting in thoroughness, let it be remembered that, with
all its faults, it was done under conditions which would have driven
most men mad, and that thoroughness and minute care are not precisely
the qualities which are encouraged by the knowledge that the exchequer
is empty, and that there is no prospect of being able to pay the
workmen unless one can catch a wayward prince in a favourable mood.
All things considered, the wonder is, not that so much was overlooked
and left undone, but that so much was actually accomplished under such
maddening conditions.
His main object was to form such a Museum in Egypt that it would no
longer be possible for the representatives of the European powers to
excuse their spoliation by the suggestion that Egypt was unable to
safeguard her own treasures of antiquity. With this end in view he was
indefatigable in the work of excavation, doing his utmost to gather
from Memphis, Thebes, Abydos, Tanis, and other famous sites, such a
collection of historical monuments as should render the creation of a
permanent home for them a crying necessity.
Erelong he had so far succeeded that his collection included fine
statues of Ramses II, the well-known Amenartas, the so-called Hyksos
Sphinxes, the Triumphal Stele of Thothmes III, and a great mass of
amulets from the cemeteries of Memphis, Abydos, and Thebes. To house
these treasures he was provided with a set of miserable buildings
which were of no use for any other purpose--a deserted mosque which
was falling into ruin, some filthy sheds, and a dwelling-house alive
with vermin, in which he lived himself. Making the most of this heap
of ruins, he improvised pedestals for the statues and cases for the
amulets, and turned his early training as a drawing-master to account
in the painting of the decorations of his crazy walls.
The incident which finally determined Said to yield to the importunity
of his energetic Director of Antiquities was highly characteristic,
both of the daring and persistence of Mariette, and the waywardness of
the ruler with whom he had to deal. One of the chief hindrances to the
erection of the Museum was the fact that the excavations, though highly
productive of objects of historic interest, had as yet yielded nothing
in the way of gold or jewellery, and Said, a thorough Oriental, cared
but little for researches which only produced inscribed or sculptured
stones. Early in 1859, Mariette’s workmen at Drah-Abou’l-Neggah,
near Thebes, discovered the splendid gilded sarcophagus of the Queen
Aah-hotep. Mariette sent orders for it to be sent to Cairo at once; but
meanwhile the Mudir of Keneh had laid hands on it, opened it in his
harem, and, throwing aside the mummy, took possession of the fine set
of jewellery which the coffin contained, and hurried off by boat to
present it to the Khedive as an offering from himself.
Mariette immediately set out on his steamboat, the _Samanoud_, to
meet the robber. Boarding the Mudir’s boat, he tried to persuade him
to give up his ill-gotten goods, and when persuasion failed he passed
to threats, and from threats to blows. Finally he triumphed, and took
possession of the treasure. Knowing the danger which he ran of having
his action represented to the Khedive as sheer robbery of a treasure
addressed to the Royal Palace, Mariette took care to be the first to
tell the story to his royal master, and did so with such effect that
the Khedive thoroughly enjoyed the joke, and laughed heartily at the
spoiling of the spoiler. He kept a gold chain for one of his wives, and
himself wore for awhile a fine scarab which he afterwards returned;
but the rest of the treasure was reserved, as Mariette wished, for his
darling Museum, and the Khedive, now convinced that the collection was
worth housing, gave orders for the erection of a suitable building at
Boulak.
Thus, by a happy combination of good fortune and daring, the great
explorer succeeded in the attainment of at least a part of his heart’s
desire. The buildings at Boulak, however, were far from satisfactory,
and his heart was always set on a dream-museum, which he did not
live to realise, which indeed has not yet been realised, though the
great Egyptian Museum has known two changes of abode since his time,
and is now preparing for a fresh extension to house the treasures of
Tutankhamen’s tomb. In addition, he had to be continually on his guard
to see that the priceless things which he had gathered with such pains,
and housed at such risk, were not dissipated to gratify his patron’s
passing whims of generosity towards some favourite guests, or sold
_en masse_ to act as security for a loan. Mariette had no intention
of allowing his treasures to be treated as pawnbroker’s pledges;
but it took all his energy and authority to prevent this happening,
for whenever Said was short of money, which happened with unfailing
regularity, his first thought was to raise a loan on the Museum, and it
was only the Director’s personal acceptability with his master which
enabled him to stave off disaster once and again.
The narrowest escape came just on the heels of what had seemed the
greatest triumph of his life. At the Paris Exhibition of 1867, he had
secured the first adequate representation of Egyptian antiquities.
A small Egyptian temple was built, preceded by a short avenue of
sphinxes; and within the temple were housed the finest specimens of art
and craftsmanship which Egypt could produce. For six months all the
world admired and wondered; then came the blow. Mariette had wrought
too well, and made his treasures look too inviting. The Empress
Eugenie had cast covetous eyes upon them, and the Khedive Ismail was
informed that she desired to have the whole collection offered to her
as a gift. Ismail, taken by surprise, and, as usual, short of cash, did
not dare to refuse; but he had the sense to make his consent subject
to one condition. “There is,” he said to the emissary of the Empress,
“someone at Boulak more powerful than I, and you must address yourself
to him.” It must have been the cruellest of blows to Mariette thus to
be wounded in the house of his friends; but his resolution was proof
against both imperial wiles and threats, and the collection returned in
safety to its native home. The explorer had saved the treasures of the
land of his adoption from the greed of his native land; but it was at
a heavy cost that the victory was gained. The favour of France, which
had always been one of his main supports, was immediately withdrawn,
and for the next two or three years Mariette found himself in disgrace
at the palace, and unable to obtain any support for his schemes.
Curiously enough, it was the downfall of France in 1870 which brought
him into favour once more with the Khedive, and for the last ten years
of his life he saw the work to which he had given himself steadily
growing, though on at least one occasion the proposal to raise a loan
on the Museum was revived, and though Ismail’s grandiose plans for the
extension of the buildings remained only dreams, which came through the
ivory gate.
In respect to the excavations which he kept so jealously in his
own hands, Mariette’s energy was amazing, though its results were
never so carefully chronicled as they might have been, and were
sometimes scarcely chronicled at all. The two greatest charges to be
brought against him as an excavator are, first, this lack of adequate
publication of his results, a huge mass of precious material being
gathered without anything to tell the student its actual provenance,
or its historical connection, and, second, the craving for big and
imposing results, which led him often to neglect the smaller but often
more important material which would have been of priceless value
to modern workers, but did not appeal to him, and consequently got
overlooked and lost.
With regard to the latter point, however, we must remember that
the knowledge of the infinite importance of the small game of the
archæologist is a thing of modern growth, and that it is scarcely fair
to blame Mariette for not being a quarter of a century in advance
of his time; and also that the difficulties of his position obliged
him to lay stress on the big and imposing monument, even at the cost
of neglecting what was really of more value to the serious student.
Broken potsherds may mean far more for the reconstruction of history
than intact colossi; but to the men in authority on whom depended the
continuance of the excavator’s work, they were just-broken potsherds.
[Illustration: 4. TEMPLE OF RAMSES III, MEDINET HABU.]
Spite of all the defects of his methods, we owe him an infinite debt,
both for what he accomplished and for what he hindered others from
destroying. The chief fruit of his toil, apart from the work at
the Serapeum and in the necropolis at Saqqara, was the unveiling at
Abydos of the noble temple of Sety I, with its exquisite reliefs, which
will always rank among the very finest work of the artists of the New
Empire. Besides the excavation of the temple, he did an immense amount
of work, very imperfectly recorded, alas, in the great necropolis
of Abydos, where he unearthed over 15,000 monuments of one kind or
another. It ought not to be forgotten either, though it often has been,
and though it has been stated that in his work at Abydos he had no idea
of the existence there of any remains of the early dynasties, that it
was Mariette who prophesied both the discovery of Ist Dynasty tombs and
that of the great subterranean “Pool of Osiris,” which is the latest
fruit of M. Naville’s work there.
Scarcely less important was his work at Thebes, where he for the first
time made some approach to establishing the architectural history of
the great temple of Karnak from its foundation under the Middle Kingdom
down to the close of building under the Ptolemies. To him, also, we owe
the excavation of the great temple of Ramses III at Medinet Habu, and
the first beginnings of that huge piece of work which M. Naville and
his assistants at Der el-Bahri only completed, after thirteen years’
hard labour, in 1908.
How many of the visitors to Hatshepsut’s beautiful memorial temple, who
wonder at the patience which unearthed this most exquisite of Egyptian
buildings, remember that it was Mariette who first gave to the world
the most interesting part of the whole building with its reliefs of the
royal expedition to the Land of Punt?
To tell of all his work at the thirty-seven places in which he
excavated would take a volume, and not a chapter. One of his greatest
successes, though it dealt only with a Ptolemaic building, was
the excavation of the very perfect temple of Edfu. He found it so
completely covered with rubbish that an Arab village had established
itself upon the roof of the ancient sanctuary of Horus. Mariette
succeeded in getting these interlopers cleared away, and was at last
able to reveal the whole of a building, which, while comparatively
modern as Egyptian temples go, is yet one of the most complete and
perfect specimens of Egyptian architecture, showing the almost pure
type of temple architecture as it can be seen only in one or two other
instances in the whole land.
The great explorer’s work in Egypt lasted for almost exactly thirty
years. Before his death on January 18, 1881, he had the satisfaction
of knowing that the work of which he had so well laid the foundations
would not be interrupted when he had to lay it down. He never, indeed,
saw the accomplishment of his great life-dream, the completion of a
Museum really worthy of the treasures which he had gathered. Sir Gaston
Maspero, his able successor, has told us how that vision hovered round
his death-bed, and cheered his last hours; but even to-day the great
Museum at Cairo is scarcely worthy of the matchless stores which it
holds, and it is becoming more and more doubtful whether Cairo is the
right place for a collection of such priceless value. But at least
Mariette accomplished one thing which will never be undone; he put a
stop to the worst of the pillage of Egyptian antiquities which had
gone on unchecked for half a century, and he established the fact that
the proper place where the historical monuments of a great nation’s
past should be gathered is on national soil, where they are at home,
and where they have a value which could never be theirs if they were
scattered through a score of alien collections.
A noble statue keeps his memory alive in the Cairo Museum. Maspero
tells us that a great personage who visited the Museum asked whether
this monument was that of a Pharaoh or of a modern individual; and
when he was told that it was the monument of Mariette, the founder of
the Museum, “Mariette,” said he, “I did not know that the founder of
the Museum was a woman!” Such is fame, even in the land where memories
seem to endure longer than in any other spot on earth. But Mariette’s
worth to the world does not depend on monuments, though he had so much
to do with them, nor on great personages, though he suffered so much
at their hands all his life. It lies in this, that he saved the relics
of ancient Egyptian history from the bottomless bog of international
jealousies and greed and insisted that a nation with a great past had
the right and the responsibility to hold the treasures of that past
within its own bounds--in trust for the world.
“Assuredly,” says Maspero, “Mariette is not a model to be blindly
imitated; and the man who should imitate him to-day would run the risk
of committing irreparable blunders; but let anyone who is tempted to
depreciate him replace himself in spirit in the Egypt of sixty years
ago, and let him ask himself how he would have acted in the midst of
the difficulties which would then have assailed him on all sides; I
believe that, if he is an honest man, he will be forced to admit that
though perhaps he would have handled matters differently, he would not
have come better out of the business. Mariette was the man who fitted
the time.”
CHAPTER III
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MODERN PERIOD
The coming of Mariette in 1850 marked the close of the old and bad
period of reckless pillage in Egypt. His thirty years of ceaseless
struggle against difficulties formed the transition period, in which
the foundations of the modern science of Egyptology were being laid,
but in which its aims and methods were as yet but partially and
imperfectly understood. With his death in 1881, and the beginning of
the reign of his successor, the late Sir Gaston Maspero, we may fairly
be said to reach the dawn of the modern period, in which new men
and new methods have completely revolutionised the whole conception
of archæology, and made it one of the most fruitful aids to the
reconstruction and the comprehension of ancient history, and above all
the indispensable interpreter of the life of ancient peoples. It seems
fitting, therefore, that at this point we should stop for a little to
consider what archæology is, and what are its aims, its methods, and
its materials; for with regard to all these points there is, save in
the case of those who are more or less students of the past, a very
general haziness in the public mind.
To the average man, archæology might be quite satisfactorily defined
as the study of old stones and old bones, potsherds, and fragments of
corroded metal--a study presupposing, on the part of the student, a
curious and perverted taste for the dry and the dusty and a disregard
for all the things which have in them the true sap and joy of life.
“Your true antiquarian,” it has been said, “loveth a thing the better
for that it is rotten and stinketh”; and this judgment, more pointed
than polite, fairly represents the conception which most people cherish
of the work of the excavator and the interpreter of his results.
Now and again this crude and summary judgment is shaken for a little
by some wonderful discovery which seems to hint that there is more in
archæology than the man in the street had thought. Some Pharaoh, like
Tutankhamen, is found “lying in glory, in his own house,” as Isaiah
puts it, and the world in general begins to turn in its sleep and dream
for a while of the romance of buried treasure. It may be suspected that
no small part of the interest awakened with regard to Tutankhamen’s
tomb arose from the fact that there was talk of the money value of the
find running into millions sterling. A science which can produce assets
like that must be worth attention. To tell anyone whose interest has
thus been excited that the money value of the find, even if it has
not been ridiculously overestimated, as is most likely the case, is
the least important aspect of it, absolutely negligible in comparison
with its other values, is merely to invite incredulity, polite or
otherwise. In any case the temporary interest of the find soon dies
away, and the public reverts to its old and normal conception of the
archæologist as an amiable and quite harmless lunatic, and of his study
as the dullest and dustiest thing under heaven.
All this, of course, is just about as wrong, and as stupidly wrong, as
anything well can be. It is, indeed, exactly the opposite of the truth.
The explorer, instead of being inspired with a malignant disregard for
the sap and joy of life, is really so enamoured of these very things
that one of his main objects is to endeavour to make the world realise
them not only in the present, but for the past also. His purpose, and
his business, if he has any real understanding of the end for which
Providence created him (for there are some archæologists who have not,
and who almost justify the worst that the public can believe of their
science), is not the mere gathering of facts, but the reconstruction
by means of these of the life of the past, for the interest, the help,
and the guidance of the present. His work is not complete until he has
presented a picture of that ancient world in which he is interested,
not as it is now, a handful of unrelated fragments of dry bone and
dusty papyrus and mouldering metal, but as it was when the dry bones
were alive, clothed with flesh and inspired with spirit, when the
words on the scroll throbbed with the hopes and fears of a living man
or woman, and the corroded bronze or iron was a sword in the hand of
a mighty man of valour, or a chisel in that of a cunning sculptor.
Unless he keeps this in view as his real object, he is misconceiving
his whole purpose, and substituting means for ends; unless he can to
some extent accomplish this (no man, of course, can do it completely)
he is failing of his aim.
But we are still waiting for our definition of what archæology is,
and what are the ways in which it is to accomplish this desirable
revivifying of the past. It has been defined by a well-known excavator
and writer as “the study of the facts of ancient history and ancient
lore”--which is very well as far as it goes, but omits, strangely
enough, the very point in which its author has shown himself most
keenly interested. To complete the definition, one would need to add,
“and of ancient life in all aspects.”
The archæologist deals with ancient history, and may prove helpful to
the historian of the past in many ways; he deals with ancient lore, and
may reveal material which is of the utmost importance for the study
of the knowledge and literature of the past; but his main concern is
always with the life of the past, and his main use to the world is to
enable the present to see and to realise the life of the past as it
really was, to give life again to the men of old so that they shall
no longer be names in a dry text-book, but flesh-and-blood figures,
and to do this for the common man of the past as well as for his
rulers, so that ancient history shall no longer be the chronicle of
the deeds, great or otherwise, of Pharaohs and monarchs of all sorts,
but shall give you the whole many-coloured tapestry of life as it was
in those far-off days with the fates of common men interwoven with the
glittering destinies of their lords and masters.
“Archæological research,” says Dr. R. A. S. Macalister in the latest
summary of its results, “consists principally in the discovery and the
classification of the common things of daily life, houses, personal
ornaments, domestic utensils, tools, weapons, and the like.” To
have said such a thing fifty years ago would have been to make the
scientific man of those days hold up his hands in horror at such a
degradation of a science whose chief end was the discovery of the great
monuments of great men, and the substantiation or correction of history
by their means.
To put the change of view in a word, archæology has during the modern
period become human. It has learned that history never existed, and
cannot be viewed, in a vacuum; and that quite as important for its
right apprehension of the facts is the realisation of the medium in
which the facts transpired, and which largely conditioned them. “The
true function of archæological research,” says Dr. Macalister again,
“is to discover the conditions amid which lived such heroes of old
as we have mentioned; to show them, no longer as solitary, more or
less idealised or superhuman, figures, but as men of like passions
to ourselves moving with other men, in a busy world engrossed in its
secular interests, and making daily use of the common things of life.”
To take an illustration from a familiar figure of Egyptian history,
we know, as a fact of history, that the favourite son of the mighty
Ramses II was Setna-Khaemuast, that he fought in his father’s Syrian
wars, that about the middle of the reign he was high-priest of Memphis,
and that he died somewhere before the fifty-fifth year of Ramses; in
other words, so far as the big records of the historical monuments
go, he is to us “magni nominis umbra,” and no more. The real living
interest of the man begins for us with the discovery of a papyrus of
the Ptolemaic period, now in the Cairo Museum, which shows him studying
the old inscriptions at Memphis in search of magic charms, stealing the
roll of Thoth from the tomb of an earlier prince, just like a modern
explorer, and getting into trouble over the theft.
[Illustration: 5. TEMPLE OF EDFU--THE PYLON, AND VIEW FROM THE PYLON.]
“The lofty personages,” says Maspero in the Introduction to his
charming _Contes Populaires_, “The lofty personages whose mummies
repose in our museums had a reputation for gravity so thoroughly
established, that nobody suspected them of having ever diverted
themselves with such futilities in those days when they were only
mummies in expectation.” That is just the point. It is not the
impassive mummies, with their reputation for gravity, thoroughly
well-deserved for the last three thousand years, since they became
mummies, that we want to know; it is the folk who were only “mummies
in expectation,” who lived and loved, hated and fought, and made fools
of themselves, like other people. And the business of archæology is
to show you these people, in their habit as they lived, and in the
ordinary medium which conditioned their actions. If it cannot or
does not do that, then it deserves all the vivid abuse which Carlyle
used to hurl at the Dry-as-dusts of the past.
Now it is the supreme merit of the modern period that it has been
steadily learning the importance of this aspect of its work among the
treasures of the past, till now it can say “nothing human is foreign to
me.” The change of view is set before us very plainly in the contrast
between our modern histories of Egypt and those of our forefathers.
Take, for instance, Maspero’s _Histoire Ancienne_, or Breasted’s
_History of Egypt_, and compare the brilliant pictures of ancient
Egyptian life which you will find in their pages with the dry summaries
of events which passed for Egyptian history fifty years ago. What
has made the difference? Simply the fact that in the interval the
archæologist has been learning that his business is not only or even
chiefly with the great historical monuments of the land with which
he is dealing, but, above all, with the small things which made the
background of life, “the pots and pans,” as Dr. Macalister puts it,
“which are essential if he is to fill in the picture of the ancient
life of the region.”
The change of view thus brought about is marked by a corresponding
change of judgment as to what shall constitute the chief object of
search in the excavations which reveal the past to us. In the dawn
of excavation it was the big and imposing monument which was eagerly
and almost exclusively sought for--very naturally, for it was only
by the discovery of such relics that the explorer could hope, in the
existing state of knowledge, to justify his work, and to create the
interest on the part of the public which would provide him with the
funds which were needed for its prosecution. Colossal statues, granite
sarcophaguses, intact burials in Egypt, winged human-headed bulls,
alabaster slabs carved in relief, cuneiform tablets inscribed with
legends of the Creation and the Flood in Mesopotamia; such were the
prizes which rewarded and vindicated the labours of men like Mariette,
Botta, and Layard in the middle of last century. It was all very
natural and inevitable, as things then were; and it is both unjust and
unreasonable to denounce the work of such pioneers because they worked
with the knowledge and under the conditions of their own time.
The science of excavation and the knowledge of its true objects did
not exist when they did their work; it had to be slowly and painfully
created by experience, and in the process it was inevitable that many
things should suffer and that there should be much loss of material
which a better instructed generation would have known how to value.
These great men would doubtless do their work very differently now;
but it is vain to criticise them for not possessing a knowledge which
nobody possessed in their day. We owe them rather our gratitude for
that they accomplished so much in such unfavourable circumstances.
There can be no doubt, nevertheless, that the methods of the early
excavators, judged from the modern point of view, were wasteful to
a large degree of the things which we have learned to consider of
supreme importance in the study of the past. In their search for the
big game of excavation they overlooked, too often with fatal loss to
the science of the future, the common things which would have made
the indispensable background to their more imposing discoveries, and
in many instances what they let slip will never be recovered. To-day
the outlook is entirely changed, and the man who should excavate on
the lines of Mariette or Layard would be a hopeless anachronism among
explorers. The excavator goes to his work now, not with the hope of
finding some great monument which will confirm some doubtful statement
of history or disprove some theory of succession, not even with the
hope of discovering some store of tablets which will let new light in
on a dark period. Such things may of course be found, and are welcomed
when they are found; and such discoveries as that of the tomb of
Tutankhamen tell us that the romance of exploration is by no means a
thing of the past. But the modern explorer has learned the infinite
importance of little things, and the results for which he mainly
hopes are such things as would be heartily despised by the casual and
uninstructed beholder. Perhaps the change may be expressed most simply
by saying that while the explorer of two generations back looked for
colossi, his present-day successor looks for crockery.
It may seem that from a science thus occupied and concerned mainly with
the infinitely little, the romance of the early days of exploration
has departed; but this is to misunderstand the situation. The
explorer’s work was never romantic in the sense in which the average
man understands the word. The idea of the excavator as a man who spends
his days in exploring wonderful underground chambers filled with the
treasures of the past, is just about as true as the picture of the
great detective who is always unravelling the mysteries of crime by
the most amazing strokes of genius, and landing himself incidentally
in the most appalling situations. There never was such an explorer, or
such a detective; and the life of the one as of the other is mainly
one of monotonous drudgery at which most of the folk who talk about
romance would shudder. The great thrilling moments, when a discovery
which will excite the imagination of the world is made, have always
been far between, and the finding of Tutankhamen’s tomb has shown that
they may still come to the modern explorer just as richly as to his
predecessor. But the true romance of modern excavation lies in this,
not that it can reveal the dead monarchs of thirty centuries back
in all their splendour, but that by its patient piecing together of
innumerable small details it can give back to us the actual life of the
period in which the dead monarch lived, and let us see the order of his
court, and what is far more important to our knowledge of the past,
the traffic of the market-place in his cities, and the intercourse of
his land with the nations around it. It is scarcely too much to say
that because of the minute care with which the modern excavator has
treated the minutest fragments of the relics of ancient days we are
better acquainted with the life of the Egypt of the New Empire than we
are with that of the ordinary European nation of the Dark Ages, though
the latter be more than two millenniums nearer us in time. A science
which can accomplish such a miracle of resurrection can never lack the
element of true romance in the eyes of anyone who has a real sense of
the wonder of life.
It follows from the fact that the modern excavator is called to deal
with such a multitude of matters, each in itself perhaps comparatively
insignificant, but each of importance, as an additional stroke in the
picture of the past which is being slowly built up on the canvas, that
far more extensive qualifications are exacted of him than sufficed for
his predecessor. “Our explorer in Egypt,” says Miss Amelia Edwards, “is
only called upon to be an ‘all-round’ archæologist within the field
of the national history: namely, from the time of Mena, the prototype
of Egyptian royalty, who probably reigned about five thousand years
before Christ, down to the time of the Emperor Theodosius, Anno Domini
379. Yet even within that limit, he has to know about a vast number of
things. He must be familiar with all the styles and periods of Egyptian
architecture, sculpture and decoration; with the forms, patterns and
glazes of Egyptian pottery; with the distinctive characteristics of the
mummy-cases, sarcophagi, methods of embalmment and styles of bandaging
peculiar to interments of various epochs; and with all phases of the
art of writing, hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic. Nor is this all.
He must know by the measurement of a mud brick, by the colour of a
glass bead, by the modelling of a porcelain statuette, by the pattern
of an earring, to what period each should be assigned. He must be
conversant with all the types of all the gods; and last, not least,
he must be able to recognise a forgery at first sight. After this, it
must, I think, be admitted that the explorer, like the poet, is ‘born,
not made’! The wonder perhaps is that he should ever be born at all.”
It seems, no doubt, a sufficiently formidable catalogue of
qualifications; but to Miss Edwards’ list others would now have to
be added. For the progress of investigation of the inter-relation of
the nations of the ancient east has broken down the limitation which
she imposed upon the knowledge of her imaginary explorer, and the
Egyptian excavator of the present day must be familiar, not only with
all that has been mentioned, but with the related work of Mesopotamia
and Babylonia, with the art of the brilliant Minoan craftsman, with
all that is known of the enigmatic Hittite civilisation, and with the
art, both archaic and mature, of Greece, together with a score of other
related matters!
All this development of a science which has grown almost within the
lifetime of some of its exponents from a comparatively simple thing
to one of the most complex and exacting of human studies, has, of
course, been the work of many minds and hands. But if the name of any
one man must be associated with modern excavation as that of the
chief begetter of its principles and methods, it must be the name of
Professor Sir W. M. Flinders Petrie. It was he, as one of the most
brilliant of the exponents of his methods has recently stated, who
first called the attention of modern excavators to the importance of
“unconsidered trifles,” as means for the reconstruction of the past.
Above all, it was he who first taught us that for purposes of certainty
in the establishment of the succession of different periods, the
“broken earthenware” of a people may be of far greater value than its
most gigantic monuments. And it has been men trained in the principles
which he established who have during the last generation been doing
the work which has made the past of the Classic East a living thing
to the world of to-day. It remains now to trace the outline of their
accomplishment in Egypt.
CHAPTER IV
THE PYRAMIDS AND THEIR EXPLORERS
Of all the works of man there is none which has attained such lasting
and universal fame as the group of buildings known as the Pyramids of
Gizeh. For the best part of five thousand years this group of mighty
structures has been one of the wonders of the world, and the theories
which have been framed to account for their existence have been more
numerous than the Pyramids themselves. Egypt has many buildings far
more beautiful, and perhaps as wonderful; but the Pyramids are, to the
great majority of people, the characteristic buildings of the land, and
whenever Egypt is named there rises before the mind at once a vision of
three vast bulks of masonry squatting defiantly on the rising ground
above the Libyan desert, as though challenging Time himself to make
any impression on their stupendous mass. “All things dread Time,” it
has been said, “but Time itself dreads the Pyramids”; and the very
exaggeration testifies to the profound impression which their bulk and
strength have made upon the mind of man. The mere lapse of forty-five
centuries would seemingly of itself have made next to no impression
on them; the vandalism of man has done a little more; but even the
efforts of those who for many centuries have used the vast masses as a
convenient quarry have done little more than show more convincingly the
power and skill of the builders who reared in the beginning these huge
mausoleums around whose bases the workers of succeeding generations
have pottered and scratched like children playing with toy spades in
the sand.
Yet though the Pyramids may fairly claim to be the most famous and
the best-known buildings in the world, the ignorance in the average
mind with regard to them and the purpose for which they were reared is
still just about as general and widespread as the fame of them; and the
purpose of this chapter is, first, to tell what, and how many, and of
what kind they are; next, what was the end for which they were reared
in the beginning of history; and lastly, to recount something of the
efforts which have taught us what is really known about them.
To most people the Pyramids mean solely the great group at Gizeh; but
though these are by far the greatest and the most famous, they are by
no means the only pyramids, nor are they even the oldest. The chief
field, known as the Great Pyramid Field, begins almost opposite Cairo,
on the western side of the Nile, at Abu Roash, where is the pyramid of
Dadefra (Razedef) of the IVth Dynasty, and extends south along the bank
of the Nile for a distance of about sixty miles to the Fayum, where
lie the pyramids of the great XIIth Dynasty Pharaohs, the last of the
regular kings of Egypt to build pyramids for themselves. Far to the
south again in the country which we know as the Soudan, there lie two
other pyramid fields, the one at Gebel Barkal or Napata, near to the
Fourth Cataract, the other at Begarawiyah, the ancient Meroë, between
the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts, and a little more than a hundred miles
north of Khartoum. These two fields have neither the greatness of scale
nor the historic importance and interest of the Great Pyramid Field,
for they belong to the Ethiopian kings, some of whom, for a time,
reigned over Egypt in the days of its decline. The Napata group belongs
to the earlier Ethiopian monarchs, who founded the XXVth Egyptian
Dynasty, which was finally driven out of Egypt by the Assyrians in the
reign of Tanutamen, and to their successors, who after the disasters
of 661 B.C. maintained the old Ethiopian sovereignty in the south; the
Meroë group belongs to the later Ethiopian kings who reigned after 300
B.C. As things go in Egypt, therefore, these southern pyramids are
quite modern, nor do they belong to the most interesting period of
Egyptian history, and though they have been long known, they are only
now in process of being investigated by the Harvard-Boston Expedition
under G. A. Reisner, whose work at Begarawiyah is still unfinished. Our
attention, therefore, may be given solely to the Great Pyramid Field.
Beginning with Abu Roash, the next site of importance is Gizeh itself,
with all its wonders of IVth Dynasty work. Passing southwards, we
come to Abusir, with its remains of the pyramids and temples of the
Sun-worshipping Pharaohs of the Vth Dynasty, lately excavated by
the German expedition; beyond these again comes the great field of
Saqqara, with remains dating over a long period of Egyptian history.
The Step-Pyramid of King Zeser of the IIIrd Dynasty is, of course,
the most important and imposing monument; but besides, there are
pyramids dating from the latter part of the Vth Dynasty, a number of
VIth Dynasty ones, and the splendid tombs of many of the nobles of the
early dynastic period, so that, though the Saqqara portion of the field
cannot compare with Gizeh in the size of its monuments, it is only
second to its northern rival, and surpasses it in the variety and the
pictorial interest of its minor tombs. Still travelling southwards, we
pass in succession Dahshur and Lisht with their pyramids of the great
Pharaohs of the XIIth Dynasty, Medum, with its remarkable pyramid of
King Seneferu of the IIIrd Dynasty, rising in three stages, like a
Mesopotamian Ziggurat, to a height of 114 feet, and Illahun, where
Senusert II had his pyramid, and where the exquisite jewellery of some
of the royal princesses was found recently, and reach the last of the
series at Hawara, where Amenemhat III, one of the greatest and noblest
of the long line of Egyptian Pharaohs, had his last resting-place.
In later days there were pyramid tombs at Thebes and Abydos; but the
pyramid part of these structures was comparatively unimportant, and
they have, in any case, left few traces behind. Indeed, after the
XIIth Dynasty the fashion of pyramid-burial seems to have gradually
died out, though we know from the revelations of the Abbott Papyrus
that in the XXth Dynasty there were in the Theban necropolis at least
ten royal pyramids belonging to kings of the XIIIth to the XVIIIth
Dynasty. Altogether there must be at present in Egypt something like
seventy pyramids of greater or less importance, without reckoning the
later and less important groups of Napata and Meroë.
Passing by the Abu Roash pyramid of King Razedef, we begin our survey
with the magnificent group of Gizeh, which to the ordinary man are the
Pyramids to the exclusion of all others. Everyone knows, of course,
what the Pyramids are like, and has some rough idea of their surpassing
size, and perhaps the only way to impress the sense of their vastness
on the mind is to use one or other of the comparisons which have
been worked out to illustrate the stupendous scale on which they are
built. To tell the reader that the weight of the stones built into the
Great Pyramid is over six million tons is merely to bewilder him; the
vastness of the business may be better appreciated when one realises
that a town of the size of Aberdeen might be built out of the materials
which Khufu gathered together for his monstrous tomb, or that if the
stones were divided into blocks a foot square, and these blocks placed
end to end in a straight line, the line would be long enough to reach
two-thirds of the length of the circumference of the earth at the
Equator.
[Illustration: 6. GREAT PYRAMID AND SPHINX, WITH PART OF TEMPLE OF THE
SPHINX.]
Khufu’s pyramid was originally about 481 feet in height, and each of
its sides measured at the base a matter of 755 feet 8 inches, and these
long lines were laid out and built with such wonderful accuracy that
the maximum error is not more than an inch. “The laying out of the base
of the Great Pyramid of Khufu,” says Professor Sir W. M. F. Petrie, “is
a triumph of skill; its errors, both in length and in angles, could be
covered by placing one’s thumb on them; and to lay out a square of more
than a furlong in the side (and with rock in the midst of it, which
prevented any diagonal checks being measured) with such accuracy shows
surprising care. The work of the casing stones which remain is of the
same class; the faces are so straight and so truly square, that when
the stones were built together the film of mortar left between them is
on an average not thicker than one’s thumb-nail, though the joint is a
couple of yards long; and the levelling of them over long distances has
not any larger errors.” “Equal to optician’s work of the present day,”
says the same authority elsewhere, “but on a scale of acres instead of
feet or yards of material.”
The Second Pyramid is slightly inferior to the first in size, its
measurements being 472 feet in height and 706 feet 3 inches on each
side; and its workmanship is also of inferior accuracy, the errors
in length being double, and those of angle quadruple those of its
predecessor, while the masonry is of poorer quality. Curiously enough,
the sarcophagus, the core of the whole vast building, was in the case
of the Great Pyramid one of the poorest pieces of work of its kind in
the period, and much inferior to that of Khafra in the Second Pyramid.
Spite of its smaller size, which most travellers scarcely notice
owing to the fact of its somewhat superior position, and its inferior
workmanship, the Second Pyramid is itself a world’s wonder.
Beside these great twin brethren, Menkaura’s Third Pyramid, with its
215 feet of height and its length on the side of 346 feet 2 inches,
seems diminutive, though its partial outer casing of granite may have
given it a richness of appearance which to some extent compensated for
its smallness.
Here, then, we have a group of buildings which, from whatever point of
view they are regarded, are among the most wonderful ever reared by the
hand of man, and which in sheer bulk are by far the greatest of all
architectural works. What was the purpose for which these stupendous
bulks were built and maintained for so long? To ask such a question
was, not so long ago, to let loose all the flood of vain imaginations
which always gathers about a subject which is great and imperfectly
understood.
The theories which have been framed about the Great Pyramid in
particular are almost as monstrous as itself, but have none of its
solidity. Of these, perhaps the favourite, because of a certain romance
attaching to it, and because of the reputation of some of those who
have supported it, is, or rather one should say, was, that it was
designed for an astronomical observatory. R. A. Proctor, to whose
advocacy the idea owes a great deal of what vogue it had, has told
us that the entrance passage is so placed that at the date which he
assumes for the erection of the pyramid (3400 B.C.) it bore directly
on the then Pole-Star, Thuban, or Theta Draconis, when the star was
on the meridian below the pole, and further, that the great gallery
which leads up to the King’s Chamber was designed to serve the purpose
of a great transit instrument, through whose open upper end the
transits of stars could be observed by astronomers occupying seats
on cross-benches laid across the gallery at different levels! Still
wilder are the fancies which would have us see in the measurements of
the Great Pyramid divinely inspired revelations as to units of length,
capacity, and so forth, and which gravely inform us that the granite
sarcophagus of Khufu is really a standard measure of capacity, of which
our British quarter is a fourth part. It seems rather a pity in view of
this wonderful theory that Professor Petrie should have just told us of
the inferiority of Khufu’s sarcophagus in accuracy to that of Khafra,
as such a fact tends to disturb the mind as to the truth of our own
measures; but it is a sufficient indication of the flimsy nature of the
foundations on which all these theories rest.
The fact is that no evidence worth consideration has been brought
forward in support of any of them, and in especial that the idea of the
great gallery having been a gigantic transit instrument (surely the
most cumbrous and inefficient ever designed) is absolutely negatived
by the knowledge which we possess of the object with which the whole
building was constructed--an object whose all-important condition was
absolute secrecy and concealment. To dream that Khufu built a pyramid
to secure his body from discovery and destruction, and then allowed its
passages to remain open to the sky for years that astronomers might
observe the stars, and tomb-robbers the plan of the pyramid, is to put
a fool’s cap on the whole business. The Great Pyramid, like all the
other pyramids, great and small, was none of the extraordinary things
which we have been told it was; it was something simpler and more
wonderful than any of them--the greatest witness ever given on earth to
the human craving for immortality!
There is no longer any doubt that all the pyramids, from the first
imperfect conception of the form in the Step-Pyramid of Saqqara,
through the giants of Gizeh, down to the crumbling heaps of brickwork
which are all that remain of some of the later fabrics, were built
simply and solely as tombs, and that their one object was to render the
resting-place of their royal tenant as secure as precautions could make
it from the attacks of dynastic enemies or mere robbers.
The pyramid was just one pathetic expression of that marvellously
persistent passion which gave us the tomb-chambers of Abydos, with
their storerooms for the supply of the dead king’s wants in the
Underworld, the Mummy with all its wonderful elaboration of means
for preserving the shape and likeness of the dead man, the Funerary
Statue, with its amazingly lifelike portrait of the man whose place
it was designed to take when time had reduced the mummy to dust, and
the soul still craved a recognisable dwelling-place, and the long,
rock-hewn galleries of the Valley of the Kings, with their pictured
representations of all that could help their owner through the dangers
and difficulties of the long journey to the Egyptian Fields of
Contentment.
No race has ever been so possessed by any religious idea as was the
ancient Egyptian by the faith that it was possible to secure immortal
life for humanity beyond the gates of death, possible, but difficult
to the last degree, and needing all the effort which could be given
to secure so great and so difficult an end; and the Great Pyramid is
just the most colossal seal ever put on that creed, expressing, as
nothing else ever could, both the intensity of the conviction and the
consciousness of the extreme difficulty of its attainment in actual
fact. The Egyptian Pharaoh built his pyramid as the expression of
his faith in life everlasting; he built it as huge and as massy as
he could, as the expression of his consciousness of the numberless
difficulties and dangers which compassed the road which led to the
attainment of immortality, and of his determination that, so far as
human effort could secure it, he would be secured against everything
which might prejudice his chance of winning eternity.
The Pyramid, then, is a tomb, or rather it is the sole surviving part
of the elaborate and complicated structure which the Egyptians of the
Pyramid period devised for the accomplishment of this end of securing
the duration of the personality of its owner. For what we see now at
Gizeh and elsewhere is by no means what the Egyptians of the early
dynasties saw when they looked upon the “eternal dwelling-places”
of their great kings, but only a fragment, which by reason of its
massiveness, and especially of its form, has survived while the rest of
the fabric has perished. The complete pyramid-complex was a development
of the normal Egyptian arrangement of tomb-chamber and tomb-chapel.
Each Egyptian of any rank or pretensions was buried in a chamber,
generally underground, which contained his coffin of stone or wood; but
he had also another chamber above ground, where the necessary rites
might be observed at the stated times, and the daily offerings of food
and drink made for his use in the other world by his relations or by
the priests who were appointed for this purpose. These two chambers
were combined in the “mastabas” of the Old Kingdom nobles, with their
shafts and their chapels. The pyramid took the place of the mastaba,
and as it developed, the chapel, instead of being within the same mass
of building as the tomb-chamber, was built outside, at the foot of the
great structure which protected the mummy of the king, as was fondly
hoped, from sacrilegious attack. This pyramid-temple lay at the east
side of the pyramid, and in close connection with it. But the pyramids
were situated on rising ground, generally at a considerable distance
from the cultivated land, and it was therefore necessary to arrange
for a convenient approach to them, instead of allowing the priests or
the royal relatives to scramble over the rough ground. Accordingly
a secondary temple, or portico, was built down on the level of the
cultivated land in a position where it could be approached by boats
during the inundation; and from this portico-temple a covered causeway
led up to the temple proper at the foot of the pyramid.
We are to conceive of the pyramid fabric, then, as consisting of
these four parts, first the part for whose sake all the rest existed,
the pyramid itself, with its concealed passages and its carefully
protected sarcophagus-chamber, in which lay the mummy of the king in
its granite coffin; then the temple crouching at the foot of the great
tomb-chamber; then the long covered causeway leading down to the lower
levels, and finally the Portico-temple on the margin of the flooded
river. One imagines the scene on the feast-day of a great Pharaoh--the
graceful and gaily decorated Egyptian river-skiffs drawing up to
the stately columned portico on the river bank, and landing their
freight of white-robed priests and gorgeous courtiers and princes of
the blood, the preliminary service within the lower temple, and then
the solemn procession up the causeway to the temple proper where the
memory of Khufu or Khafra is celebrated, and his wants for the other
world supplied under the shadow of the mighty mass of stone where the
bones of the great builder are laid. The Pyramids are impressive enough
to-day in their stripped and gaunt majesty--one wonders if they could
be more impressive even in the days of their perfected splendour.
Possibly not, but at all events the world can have seen few more
imposing sights than an Egyptian Pyramid Field such as that of Gizeh,
when its three giants were girt with all the sumptuous fabrics which
were part of their essential design as their architects planned them,
and without which we are no more seeing them as they were meant to be
seen than if we were viewing Salisbury without its spire, or the Duomo
of Florence without its campanile.
As to the sumptuousness of these subsidiary parts of the
pyramid-complex, we have fortunately first-hand evidence. Little
remains of the temple proper of the Second Pyramid, though what there
is has been completely excavated; but the causeway leading down from
it has been traced, and it terminates in a building which has been for
long familiar as one of the most striking examples of the combined
restraint and magnificence of the Egyptian architects of the early
dynasties, the so-called Temple of the Sphinx, which is in reality
the Portico-temple of Khafra’s pyramid. With its severely simple
architecture of vertical and horizontal lines, its great blocks of
stone absolutely without ornament of any sort, and the richness of
its granite monoliths and its alabaster wall-surfaces, it tells us
something of what must have been the dignity and splendour of the Gizeh
Pyramid Field when it stood intact.
So far as the fulfilment of the object for which they were erected
is concerned, the Pyramids of Gizeh are no more than a melancholy
monument of the vanity of human wishes, and an illustration of how
human cupidity or malice will in the long run break through the most
elaborate system of defence. Professor Petrie has suggested that
Sir Thomas Browne was in the wrong when he wrote that “to be but
pyramidally extant is a fallacy of duration,” and comments upon that
characteristic utterance: “Khufu has provided the grandest monument
that any man ever had, and is by this means better remembered than any
other Eastern king throughout history.”
That is so; and yet one cannot help remembering that this was not at
all Khufu’s object in the rearing of his vast mausoleum. It was not to
keep his memory green, but to keep his body intact that the greatest
builder of the world raised the Great Pyramid, and in that simple
object he utterly failed, as did all his brother pyramid-builders great
and small. The evidence shows that not in one single case has greed
or hatred failed to overcome all the obstacles placed in their way by
royal power. Every pyramid known has been rifled in ancient times,
probably not long after its builder was laid to rest in his stately
tomb, and the duration of the mass of senseless stone, which bids fair
to be as long as that of the everlasting hills, only mocks the hopes
with which it was reared. The pyramid remains; but the jewel for whose
sake so costly a casket was devised is long ages since “blown about the
desert dust.”
The story of excavation at the Pyramids of Gizeh has nothing very
exciting about it. The first excavators were, no doubt, the enemies
of the Crown, who, as Petrie has suggested, penetrated into the
burial-chambers in the troubled days between the VIIth and Xth
Dynasties and wreaked their spite on the bodies of their dead masters.
Thereafter, through the Classical period, the entrance into the
subterranean passages of the Great Pyramid was well known; but the
knowledge had been lost by the time of the Arab Conquest, and the
Khalif Mamun had laboriously to quarry his way through the masonry
into the actual passages, leaving behind him the great hole, which is
still called “Mamun’s Hole.” This was the beginning of the vandalism
which has done so much destruction at the Pyramids of Gizeh, though the
worst efforts of human stupidity have somehow only seemed to emphasise
the dignity and grandeur of the great buildings whose might mocks at
the puny attempts of the destroyer. After Mamun had showed the way,
his successors followed him, and used the pyramid as a quarry. In
1356 Sultan Hasan used part of the casing of the Great Pyramid in the
building of his mosque, and though his work may be, as it has been
called, “the finest monument in Cairo,” and “the most perfect specimen
extant of Saracenic architecture,” its beauty is sadly discounted by
the fact that it was created by the robbery of the most magnificent
example of an architecture more ancient and more noble. Hasan, or one
of his immediate successors, added to his crime by stripping part of
the casing from the Second Pyramid also, leaving it in the partially
despoiled condition in which it now appears, for one of his coins was
found by Petrie deep down in the southern foundation. Compared with
such barbarities, the indignities which the Pyramids have had to suffer
in all ages at the hands of tourists, who have insisted on disgracing
their undistinguished names by scrawling them on these great memorials
of the past, are mere trifles.
Early in the nineteenth century Caviglia succeeded in penetrating into
the centre of the Great Pyramid, and he was followed in the spring of
1818 by the redoubtable Belzoni, whose account of the manner in which
he forced an entrance into the Second Pyramid is as vivacious as the
rest of his narrative. Belzoni’s earlier efforts only resulted in the
discovery of one of the passages by which former explorers had vainly
attempted to force their way into the pyramid; but his disappointment
only quickened his desire, and as he says in his own inimitable way:
“Hope returned to cherish my pyramidical brains.” His workmen were
speedily set to work again at a new spot. “As to expectation that the
entrance might be found, they had none; and I often heard them utter,
in a low voice, the word ‘_magnoon_,’ in plain English, _madman_. I
pointed out to the Arabs the spot where they had to dig, and such
was my measurement, that I was right within two feet, in a straight
direction, as to the entrance; and I have the pleasure of reckoning
this day as fortunate.” Even after the passage was discovered, the
removal of the blocks of stone which obstructed it required several
days of hard labour; but at last, thirty days after the work began,
the explorer found himself standing in the sarcophagus chamber of
Khafra. Besides the empty sarcophagus, Belzoni found the evidence that
he had not been the first who had penetrated into the secret of the
pyramid, for in addition to many graffiti on the walls of the chamber,
which were written in charcoal and rubbed off at the slightest touch,
there was an Arabic inscription which ran: “The Master Mohammed Ahmed,
lapicide, has opened them; and the Master Othman attended this opening:
and the King Ali Mohammed, from the beginning to the closing up.”
The Third Pyramid, that of Menkaura, was opened in 1226 by
treasure-hunters. “After passing through various passages, a room was
reached wherein was found a long blue vessel [the sarcophagus] quite
empty.... They found in this basin, after they had broken the covering
of it, the decayed remains of a man, but no treasures, excepting some
golden tablets inscribed with characters of a language which nobody
could understand.” The disappointed treasure-seekers were succeeded in
1837 by Colonel Howard Vyse, some of the results of whose discoveries
are in the British Museum in the shape of a fragment of the basalt
sarcophagus, and portions of a wooden coffin, purporting to be that
of “the King of the North and South, Men-kau-Ra, living for ever,”
together with the remains of a man, wrapped in a coarse woollen cloth
of a yellow colour. “In clearing the rubbish out of the large entrance
room,” says Colonel Vyse, “after the men had been employed there
several days and had advanced some distance towards the south-eastern
corner, some bones were first discovered at the bottom of the rubbish;
and the remaining bones and part of the coffin were immediately
discovered all together. No other parts of the coffin or bones could
be found in the room; I therefore had the rubbish which had been
previously turned out of the same room carefully re-examined, when
several pieces of the coffin and of the mummy-cloth were found; but in
no other part of the pyramid were any parts of it to be discovered,
although every place was most minutely examined, to make the coffin as
complete as possible.” Unfortunately some doubt exists as to the coffin
being actually of the period which its inscription claims, and the same
doubt hangs over the remains. It has been suggested that the coffin is
a restoration of the time of the XXVIth Dynasty, and that the remains
are not those of Menkaura, but of one of the treasure-hunters who lost
his life in the attempt of 1226. Accordingly we cannot say, as might
otherwise have been the case, that Vyse actually discovered a Pharaoh
in the great tomb which he had built for his eternal abode. The fine
basalt sarcophagus was taken out of the pyramid by Vyse, and shipped
for England in 1838; but the ill-luck which has dogged the pyramid
explorations attended Menkaura’s coffin also. The ship left Leghorn on
October 12, 1838, and was never heard of again, though some bits of
wreckage were picked up off Carthagena.
Valuable work was done at Gizeh during the years after Vyse’s
researches by Perring and Piazzi Smyth, though the careful measurement
work of the latter was somewhat obscured by the fanciful theories which
possessed his mind on the subject of the purpose of the Great Pyramid;
but the most complete survey of the Gizeh field was due to Flinders
Petrie, who in 1880–1881 measured and planned the whole site with the
most scrupulous care.
Perhaps the most interesting result of his work, apart from the
evidence which he gathered as to Egyptian methods of working stone,
was his discovery, behind the Second Pyramid, of the barracks in which
the skilled masons who were permanently employed on the building lived
while the work was going on. These were capable of containing easily
about 4000 men. The rest of the 100,000, who, as Herodotus tells us,
were employed in the building of the Great Pyramid, were doubtless
merely labourers employed during the three months of high Nile, when
work on the land was impossible, to bring up the blocks of stone and
leave them ready for the skilled hewers and masons to work upon. As to
the methods of these skilled workmen, evidence of the most interesting
kind was accumulated. It was found that the great blocks of stone were
sawn by means of bronze saws over nine feet in length, and equipped
with jewelled cutting points. The sarcophagi of hard granite or basalt
were thus sawn to shape with the most remarkable accuracy, while they
were hollowed out by cutting rows of holes with tubular drills also
set with jewelled cutting points. The chief difference between this
kind of ancient Egyptian work and modern practice with diamond drills
is that the ancient work is undeniably superior to the modern. “Truth
to tell, modern drill cores cannot hold a candle to the Egyptians;
by the side of the ancient work they look wretchedly scraped out and
irregular.” “There has been no flinching or jumping of the tool,” says
Petrie again, speaking of a drill core from Gizeh, “every crystal,
quartz, or felspar has been cut through in the most equable way, with a
clean irresistible cut.”
Our wonder at the mighty mass of the Pyramids of Gizeh, then, is not to
be mere wonder at the barbaric power which summoned myriads of slaves
and forced them to toil till by sheer brute force they had piled up
these mountains of stone. Brute force, unguided and unorganised, would
never have built the Pyramids, though millions instead of thousands had
been employed, and for centuries instead of decades, but would only
have led to disaster and confusion. The wonder of the Pyramids is that
five thousand years ago there was found a race whose keen intelligence
so clearly understood the need and the marvellous power of organised
and trained human labour, architects and engineers who were capable
of directing the energies of a hundred thousand men without confusion
towards a clearly foreseen end, and craftsmen who were capable of
producing, with tools whose material seems to us pathetic in its
inadequacy, results which put to shame the best achievements of men
using the finest modern tools.
The recent excavations in the Gizeh Pyramid Field, directed by Dr.
G. A. Reisner, have added much to our knowledge of the subordinate
tombs of the period, and of the life of the times.
Moving southwards from Gizeh, we come to the pyramid field of Abusir,
passing on the way the unfinished pyramid of Zawiyet el Aryan. Of this
pyramid, designed for the Pharaoh Nefer-ka-Ra of the IIIrd Dynasty,
nothing exists above ground. The remains consist simply of the trenches
destined for the superstructure, and the inclined plane leading
down to the mortuary chamber with its fine oval libation-trough, or
sarcophagus. Yet there are few works of ancient Egypt which impress one
more with the sense of the magnificent power with which these early
architects carried out their designs. “The whole,” says Maspero, “is
merely a T-shaped ditch, some 100 feet deep; and yet the impression it
makes when one goes down into it is unforgettable. The richness and the
cutting of the materials, the perfection of the joints and sections,
the incomparable finish of the basin, the boldness of the lines and the
height of the walls all combine to make up a unique creation.”
The German excavations have resulted in the discovery at Abusir of a
curious development both of the pyramid idea and of the early Egyptian
temple. It was already known from one of the magical tales of the
Westcar Papyrus, that the kings of the Vth Dynasty were probably a
priestly line of usurpers, who claimed to be related to the Sun-god
Ra by direct descent--a relationship which was henceforth claimed
by every subsequent Pharaoh, and embodied in the royal titulary. The
German Expedition has revealed to us the unmistakable proof of the
devotion of the Vth Dynasty kings to the worship of the Sun-god, and
the unique form which their temples took. The temple of Ne-user-ra, for
example, consisted of a rectangular court, 380 feet by 280 feet, whose
main axis ran east and west. In the western half of this area rose the
pyramid, a curious combination of the idea of the mastaba-pyramid of
Seneferu at Medum and the later obelisk. On a great block of building
about 130 feet square by 100 feet in height, shaped like a truncated
pyramid, rose a squat brick obelisk whose point reached a height of
about 120 feet. Roofed corridors surrounded the enclosure on the other
three sides, and probably provided storerooms for the temple furniture,
and for the materials of the offerings. At the foot of the pyramid
an immense alabaster altar stood in a small court surrounded by low
walls. The obelisk, on its truncated pyramid, represented the Sun-god,
and outside the temple wall, near the south side, was placed the most
curious of all the furnishings of this curious temple, in the shape
of a great boat, built of brick, which bore all the sacred insignia
of the Sun-god in his voyage across the heavens. The interior of the
temple walls was covered with sculptured scenes of the life created by
the god, scenes from the river, the swamps, the fields and the desert,
these being the earliest specimens of such mural decorations in any
Egyptian temple.
The next stage of the Great Pyramid Field is at Saqqara, where the
chief feature is the most ancient, and save for the monsters of Gizeh,
the most famous of all the pyramids, the Stepped-Pyramid of King Zeser
of the IIIrd Dynasty, the earliest great stone structure in the world.
This remarkable building was probably the work of Zeser’s famous
counsellor and architect Imhotep, the typical wise man of early Egypt,
whose counsel was “as though one inquired at the oracle of God,” and
who was subsequently deified and became the patron-deity of the scribes.
The tomb which he reared for his master (who had also another great
tomb at Bet-Khallaf) was built in six stages, stands about 197 feet in
height, and has the peculiarity that its base is not a square but a
rectangle, measuring 394 by 351 feet. But though the interest attaching
to man’s first great piece of stonework must always be great, the
actually living interest at Saqqara attaches not so much to Zeser’s
hoary and imposing tomb, as to the comparatively insignificant and
decayed pyramids of the Vth and VIth Dynasty kings, Unas, Teti, Pepy
I, Merenra, and Pepy II. Mere heaps of rubble and sand as they seem,
with none of the splendour of construction or greatness of scale of the
Gizeh group, these monuments of the time when the royal power of the
Old Kingdom was beginning to decline are yet of supreme value; for they
are the first pyramids in which inscriptions have been found, and the
long religious texts discovered in them, and now known as the Pyramid
Texts, are unique and of infinite importance.
Up to the end of his career, Mariette believed that the pyramids were
dumb, as the Gizeh group had proved to be, and therefore looked upon
the attempt to open any of the Saqqara group as mere waste labour.
Maspero, however, believed otherwise, and the opening of the pyramid
of Pepy I in 1880 proved that he was right. The other pyramids named
proved also to be inscribed, and altogether the five pyramids give us
a series of religious texts covering a period of about one hundred
and fifty years, or perhaps one hundred and eighty, from 2825 to 2644
B.C., or, on Petrie’s dating, from 4275 to 4090 B.C. Even taking the
later dates, these Pyramid Texts form by far the earliest large body of
religious writings which have come down from any part of the ancient
East, and their importance as sources of knowledge as to the beliefs of
the earliest Dynastic period can scarcely be overrated.
Apart from the interest of its pyramids, Saqqara has proved of infinite
value to the student of ancient Egyptian life because of the richness
of its necropolis in the great mastaba tombs of the nobles of the
Old Kingdom. Since Mariette’s excavation of the tomb of Ti, who was
a great man in his day, and architect to two successive kings of the
Vth Dynasty, Nefer-ari-ka-ra and Ne-user-ra, the sculptures of this
splendid tomb, and those, scarcely less remarkable, of the tombs of
Ptah-hetep, Mereruka and Kagemni, have been recognised as among the
most precious accomplishments of ancient art.
Apart altogether from their artistic value, their importance as
first-hand documents for the reconstruction of life in ancient Egypt
five thousand years ago is supreme, for their representations, executed
with infinite vivacity and spirit, cover almost every department of
Egyptian life. The great man is represented as surrounded by all
the busy life which ministered to his comfort when he was on earth,
or engaged in the sports and diversions which were his relaxation
in the intervals of his public duties, sailing, fishing, fowling,
or hippopotamus-hunting among the Nile swamps. Farm life, with its
changing activities according to the season, and all its peaceful and
beautiful incident, is faithfully depicted, so that the crops which the
Egyptian landowner grew and the stock he kept can be perfectly known;
while all the crafts which were necessary to the upkeep of a great
estate are also depicted with abundant detail and a charming directness
and dash. The tomb-paintings of the New Empire at Thebes are much and
deservedly admired; but even they must yield in freshness and charm to
these pictures from the dawn of history, which have the dew of youth
still upon them, and all the vigour of an art which is already quite
sure of itself, but has not had the time to grow stale.
[Illustration: 7. CHASED GOLD PECTORAL ORNAMENTS OF SENUSERT II AND III
(XIIth DYNASTY).
(_From “Arts and Crafts of Ancient Egypt.”_)]
From Dahshur down to Illahun and Hawara lie the pyramids of the great
kings of the XIIth Dynasty, who, though Thebans, realised that the
centre of gravity of the national government must be further north, and
who therefore made their royal residence between Memphis and the Fayum.
The earlier kings of the dynasty, Amenemhat I and Senusert I, had their
pyramids at Lisht; Amenemhat II and Senusert III preferred Dahshur
for their resting-place; while Senusert II chose Lahun, and Amenemhat
III Hawara, where he could sleep beside the great works which he had
wrought at Lake Moeris for the welfare of his land. The XIIth Dynasty
pyramids are not imposing externally. The ruinous piles of brickwork
at Dahshur and Lahun look more like gigantic ant-heaps than true
pyramids; yet they were the work of kings who in their own way were
quite as powerful as the pyramid-builders of the IVth Dynasty, and the
detail of the inner workmanship of the sarcophagus chambers is quite as
remarkable as anything to be seen at Gizeh. Part of the reason for the
difference is a change, not so much in the ideal for which the pyramid
was constructed (for that remained constant throughout the history of
Egypt), but in the conception of the best means towards the realising
of the ideal. “It seems,” says Petrie, describing the change which
Senusert II introduced in his pyramid at Lahun, “that the pyramids of
the earlier kings had fallen a prey to violence already, the signs of
personal spite in the destructions are evident. Therefore Senusert II
determined to abandon the old system of a north entrance in the face,
and to conceal the access to the interior by a new method.” His method
was to excavate his sarcophagus chamber entirely out of the solid rock
on which the pyramid was founded, and to place the entrance to the
passage which led to the chamber outside of the pyramid altogether.
The shaft which gives access to the passage actually opens out on the
plain, beneath the floor of the tomb of one of the princesses of the
dynasty. Inside the rock-hewn chamber which was protected with such
care, and which was splendidly lined with red granite, stood the red
granite sarcophagus, “exquisitely wrought,” says Petrie, “the errors of
flatness and straightness being matters of thousandths of an inch.”
Yet the cunning and the skill of the XIIth Dynasty architects and
masons proved as helpless as the massive power of the IVth Dynasty to
protect the dead monarchs from the ravages of hatred or greed. Nor
were the elaborate precautions of Amenemhat III any more successful
than those of his grandfather had been. Petrie’s description of the
construction of the inner passages of Amenemhat’s pyramid at Hawara
reads like something planned to be a nightmare to explorers. “The
explorer,” he says, “who had found the entrance in the unusual place
on the south side, descended a long staircase, which ended in a dumb
chamber. The roof of this, if slid aside, showed another passage, which
was filled with blocks. This was a mere blind, to divert attention
from the real passage, which stood ostentatiously open. A plunderer
has, however, fruitlessly mined his way through all these blocks. On
going down the real passage, another dumb chamber was reached; another
sliding trap-door was passed; another passage led to a third dumb
chamber; a third trap-door was passed; and now a passage led along
past one side of the real sepulchre; and to amuse explorers, two false
wells open in the passage floor, and the wrong side of the passage is
filled with masonry blocks fitted in. Yet by some means the plunderers
found a cross trench in the passage floor which led to the chamber.
Here another device was met. The chamber had no door, but was entered
solely by one of the immense roof-blocks, weighing 45 tons, being left
raised, and afterwards dropped into place on closing the pyramid.” One
would have imagined that with such precautions the sleep of Amenemhat
would surely be undisturbed; but when Petrie in 1889 tunnelled his
way through the roofing-beams of the sepulchral chamber he found that
an early plunderer had anticipated him by mining right through the
great 45-ton block. “The royal interments had been entirely burnt; and
only fired grains of diorite and pieces of lazuli inlaying showed the
splendour of the decorations of the coffins.”
Here, as in all the other cases of the pyramids, the very elaboration
of the means adopted for the preservation of the dead body of the king
had only whetted the appetite of the spoiler and destroyer, and little
has survived from the XIIth Dynasty pyramids to reward the modern
explorer. The great finds in the XIIth Dynasty pyramid fields were all
from outside the pyramids. Of these one of the most valuable, though
by no means the most spectacular, was Petrie’s discovery, near the
pyramid of Senusert II at Lahun, of the town, created specially for the
occasion, in which the workmen of Senusert had lived with their staff
of architects, overseers, and scribes, while the pyramid was under
construction.
The little town of Ha-hetep-Senusert, Kahun as it is now called, gives
us the most complete instance extant of the character of an Egyptian
town of the Middle Kingdom. It occupied an area of about 18 acres, and
the plans of the narrow streets and of the houses, mostly small and
closely crowded together, though there are exceptions to this rule,
have been completely wrought out. Much that is interesting in the way
of pottery, tools, and papyri came from the ruins of the deserted
houses of the little pyramid-town, whose existence seems to have been
a very brief one, probably not much longer than was necessary for the
erection of the pyramid.
Again it was not in Amenemhat’s elaborately devised pyramid at
Hawara, but in the Roman cemetery to the north of it, that the great
find was made which has made Hawara famous in the history of ancient
Egyptian art, and has given us one of the most valuable contributions
ever made to our knowledge of the processes and technique of ancient
painting. A cemetery which dates mostly from A.D. instead of from B.C.
has in general comparatively little attraction to the explorer in
ancient Egypt, unless he be a specialist in the Greco-Roman Period.
Accordingly, when Petrie in 1888 found that the cemetery in question
was of the first and second centuries A.D., he was on the point of
giving it up as not worth working, when one day a mummy was found
with a painted portrait on a wooden panel inserted above its face.
The picture was a beautifully drawn head of a girl, painted in soft
tones, and quite un-Egyptian in its style. It proved to be only the
forerunner of a whole series of similar portraits, of which about sixty
were found before the excavations closed. The work was resumed in 1911
with further success. The portraits are of varying merit, and of even
the best of them it has to be remembered that we are not dealing with
the product of the studio of a skilled artist, but only with that of
the workshop of a firm of local undertakers, who supplied funerary
portraits just as they supplied coffins. All things considered the
quality of the work is wonderfully good, and the information given
by these panel pictures as to the methods of the ancient painters is
of the highest importance. Before the Hawara discoveries, we were
left very much in the dark as to how Apelles, Zeuxis, Polygnotus and
their companions and rivals produced the masterpieces which have only
survived in the literary descriptions of their contemporaries. The
Hawara pictures may be very far, even the best of them, from being
masterpieces; but at least they tell us what were the methods by which
the great painters of ancient Greece produced the pictures which were
considered the equals in artistic merit of the statues which are now
the wonder of the world. The manner in which they were painted is
often described as “encaustic,” but this is an incorrect description
of portraits which, so far as can be judged, were simply painted with
melted coloured wax, laid on with a free brush, each tint being laid on
as a solid body, and not subjected to subsequent glazings.
The XIIth Dynasty pyramid fields at Dahshur and Illahun have yielded
two of the most remarkable finds of Egyptian jewellery which have ever
been made, and the results of the work of de Morgan and Petrie in this
respect are such as to increase our admiration for the marvellous
skill of the craftsmen of the Middle Kingdom. It was in 1894 and 1895
that de Morgan’s workmen, clearing up the area round the XIIth Dynasty
pyramids at Dahshur, found in the tombs of the princesses of the royal
house one of the most wonderful stores of jewellery which have ever
rewarded excavation. The two most notable pieces of the treasure were
the diadems of the princess Khnumit, the most exquisite examples of the
skill of the goldsmith ever worn. “The floret crown,” says Petrie, “is
perhaps the most charmingly graceful head-dress ever seen; the fine
wavy threads of gold harmonised with the hair, and the delicate little
flowers and berries seem scattered with the wild grace of Nature. Each
floret is held by two wires crossing in an eye behind it, and each pair
of berries has likewise an eye in which the wires cross. The florets
are not stamped, but each gold socket is made by hand for the four
inserted stones. The berries are of lazuli. In no instance, however
small, was the polishing of the stone done in its cloison; it was
always finished before setting.” The other diadem is more conventional,
but scarcely less beautiful. Eight rosettes of gold and precious
stones are surmounted with motives of lyre shape terminating in golden
flowers, and the rosettes are united by long links also bearing
jewelled rosettes. The stones of the two crowns are lapis-lazuli,
carnelian, red jasper, and green felspar. Along with the diadems
were found gold pectorals of fine design and execution, bearing the
cartouches of Senusert II, Senusert III, and Amenemhat III, and various
other articles of jewellery, and even the famous jewellery of Queen
Aah-hotep, so long the typical specimen of Egyptian craftsmanship, must
yield the palm to the earlier work in beauty of design and daintiness
of execution.
The second discovery came in February, 1914, when Professor Petrie’s
workmen were clearing a rifled tomb belonging to the “Royal daughter
Sat-Hathor-ant” at Lahun near the pyramid of Senusert II. How the
treasure of Lahun had ever escaped the plunderers who had rifled the
tomb is a mystery. “The tomb had been attacked,” says Petrie; “the long
and heavy work of shifting the massive granite lid of the sarcophagus,
and breaking it away, had been achieved; yet all this gold was left
in the recess of the passage untouched.... The whole treasure seems
to have been stacked in the recess at the time of the burial, and to
have gradually dropped apart as the wooden caskets decayed in course of
years, with repeated flooding of storm water and mud slowly washed into
the pit.... The whole treasure was standing in an open recess, within
arm’s reach of the gold-seekers, while they worked at breaking open the
granite sarcophagus.” We can only be thankful that all the luck did not
go to the ancient robber, and that, like his earlier companion who
left the arm of the Ist Dynasty queen, with its jewelled bracelets, at
Abydos, he overlooked something to tell a later age of the skill and
taste of ancient Egypt.
[Illustration: 8. _Above_, CROWNS OF GOLD INLAID WITH STONES OF
KHNUMIT. _Below_, GRANULATED GOLD WORK. ALL XIIth DYNASTY.
(_From “Arts and Crafts of Ancient Egypt.”_)]
The chief feature of the Lahun find was a perfect specimen of a royal
diadem, bearing the uræus on its front. No actual specimen of the
famous double crown of Egypt has ever come to light, familiar though
its appearance may be, probably because its materials were of a
perishable nature; but the diadem of Lahun gives us a unique specimen
of such a crown as Egyptian royalty may often have worn in preference
to the cumbrous mitre so frequently figured. “It is formed by a broad
band of highly burnished gold over an inch wide, and large enough to
pass round the bushy wig worn in the XIIth Dynasty. The uræus is of
open work, inlaid with lazuli and carnelian; the head is of lazuli,
which was found loose in the mud. Around the polished band were affixed
fifteen rosettes, each composed of four flowers with intermediate buds.
At the back a tube of gold was riveted on to the band, and into that
fitted a double plume of sheet gold, the stem of which slipped through
a flower of solid gold. The thickness of the plumes was such that
they would wave slightly with every movement of the head. At the back
and sides of the crown were streamers of gold, which hung from hinges
attached to the rosettes. The whole construction was over a foot and a
half high.” Such was an Egyptian diadem in the great days of the Middle
Kingdom, and surely never did a royal head wear a more graceful
emblem of sovereignty than that which came so strangely to light in
1914.
Along with the crown were found two pectorals, one of Senusert II, the
other of Amenemhat III, of even finer design than the famous pectorals
of Dahshur. “The earlier pectoral is inlaid with minute feathering of
lazuli and turquoise; the later with a different feathering of lazuli
and white paste, which has probably been green.... They were probably
suspended by necklaces of the very rich deep amethyst beads which were
found here.” With the pectorals went several gold and jewelled collars
and necklets, and broad armlets of golden bars with beads of carnelian
and turquoise, and inlaid clasps bearing the royal cartouche, and a
number of other articles, amulets and toilet utensils, including a
silver mirror with a handle of obsidian, inlaid with bands of plaited
gold, and bearing a cast gold head of Hathor. Another item came to
light from Lahun in 1920 in the shape of the royal uræus of Senusert
II, “a massive gold casting, with inlay of carnelian and lazuli, a
head of lazuli, and eyes of garnet in gold setting,” which was found
near the sepulchral chamber in the heart of the pyramid, amidst a heap
of dust and chips of stone. Doubtless this is the royal emblem which
adorned the brow of Senusert when he was laid to rest in his pyramid,
though how it escaped the notice of the robbers who plundered his tomb
is as great a mystery as the escape of the treasure of Sat-Hathor-ant.
Thus the pyramids of the XIIth Dynasty monarchs, insignificant as they
may seem in comparison with the gigantic piles of Gizeh, have proved
in their way no less interesting than the colossal work of Khufu,
Khafra, and Menkaura. Indeed each of the pyramid groups has its own
characteristics, and has given its own contribution to our knowledge
of the successive periods of early Egyptian history. To the mighty
structures of the IVth Dynasty we owe the revelation of the marvellous
organisation of the Egyptian kingdom, and the skill with which its
resources could be concentrated on a single gigantic task. To the less
imposing buildings of the Vth and VIth Dynasties we owe something
perhaps even more precious--the revelation of the thoughts which were
shaping themselves in the mind of man in these most ancient days with
regard to the soul and its life beyond the grave. To those of the XIIth
Dynasty we owe the evidence of the skill which shaped the marvellous
red-granite sarcophagus of Senusert II, or the great quartzite funeral
chamber of Amenemhat III, and the union of luxury with the finest taste
which created the jewellery of Dahshur and Lahun. It may be questioned
if even the tomb of Tutankhamen, with all its mass of splendour, will
have anything to show us which can surpass in grace and dignity the
diadems of Khnumit and Sat-Hathor-ant, or in exquisiteness of finish
their pectorals and armlets.
With the decline of the royal power at the close of the XIIth Dynasty,
the age of the pyramid-builders closes. Already the taste for these
huge structures was being modified, as it was continually found how
powerless they were to accomplish the great end for which they were
designed--the protection of the dead body of the king from the hatred
of his enemies or the greed of the professional tomb-robber. The
decay of the royal power which is so marked even in the beginnings of
the dark period which now ensues no doubt completed a process which
disillusionment had already begun; and when Egypt once more found
herself under a strong and stable government, the Theban kings who
delivered her from the Hyksos tyranny had recourse to another device
for securing the continuity of existence after death, and instead of
piling mountains of stone or brick above their sepulchral chambers,
were hewing in the Valley of the Kings the galleries and halls which
have been yielding up their secrets in our time for the wonder and
instruction of the world.
CHAPTER V
WORK AMONG THE TEMPLES
Scarcely less famous than the pyramids, and of far greater beauty,
are the splendid temples whose ruins extend from Heliopolis, close to
the Delta, to Philæ, where the beautiful shrines of Isis, exquisite
in their setting, even if of late date for Egypt, are now becoming
only memories of a beauty which has had to yield to the claims of
present-day life. Egypt, almost equally with Greece, may claim to be
the Land of Temples; and certainly no other land of the ancient East
can rival her in the number, the scale, and the magnificence of the
shrines which she reared to her innumerable gods. The claim of the
Greek to be the supreme temple-builder of the ancient world is, of
course, unquestioned, and nothing in Egypt can bear comparison with the
serene beauty of the Parthenon; but, though the Egyptian architect knew
nothing of that exquisite balance and harmony of proportion which has
made Greek architecture the crown of human effort in sacred building,
the temples of Egypt have a grandeur and impressiveness of their own
which make a profound appeal to the mind; and the contribution of the
Egyptian to the sum of human achievement in this respect is coming to
be more and more appreciated every day.
The pyramids show him to have been one of the great master-builders of
the world in respect of the vastness of his creations; the temples,
often scarcely less impressive in this respect, show him to have been
also a master in the art of constructing stately and nobly proportioned
examples of that art of the column and architrave of which the temples
of Hellas gave the supreme demonstration. The question of how much the
Greek owed to the earlier builder may still be the subject of debate;
but there can be no question of the originality of the architects who
gave to the world such noble specimens of the builder’s art as the
great colonnades of Karnak and Luxor, the beautiful terraces of Der
el-Bahri, and the later glories of Edfu and Philæ.
In one sense there can be comparatively little to tell in the way
of a story of excavation with regard to the Egyptian temples. In
Mesopotamia and Babylonia the remains of the great temples of Anu and
Adad, of Enlil, and of Marduk, owe their restoration to the light of
day entirely to the spade of the excavator, for they were completely
buried beneath the dust of ages in the great mounds of Ashur, Nippur,
and Babylon, and almost nothing was visible to tell of their former
splendours till the modern excavator patiently stripped away the mantle
in which time had wrapped them.
But the temples of Egypt had never experienced the oblivion which
had covered their northern rivals. They had suffered, indeed, many
things at the hands of Time and of human vandalism. Sometimes they were
half-buried in the sand which had risen higher and higher, century
after century, around their columns; sometimes the shrines of a rival
faith had been thrust incongruously into their ruined courts, or an
Arab village had grown up like an ugly parasite on their roofs; but
there always remained enough to tell that the work of one of the great
master-building races of the world was there, waiting the time when
it should be stripped of these paltry accretions, and revealed in its
full beauty. Karnak, Luxor, Edfu, Dendera, and their companion shrines
were never quite forgotten, and even Hatshepsut’s exquisite terraces at
Der el-Bahri, half-smothered beneath the sand, and wrecked by Coptic
fanaticism though they were, still showed enough to enable the first
European explorers who described them (MM. Jollois and Devilliers of
Napoleon’s Expedition of 1798) to be sure of the general character of
the building which lay beneath the rubbish-heaps.
Accordingly the work of the excavator in connection with the temples of
Egypt has not been so much the discovery of the unknown as the recovery
of the complete form of what was already partially known, the clearing
away of the excrescences which had attached themselves in the course
of centuries to the original structures; the preservation of the more
delicate work, such as relief-sculpture and painting, from further
injury; the re-establishment in a state of security of tottering
walls and columns; and, not least, the tracing out of the history of
the building of temples which were in general the work of centuries,
and of many kings. It has all been work which, from its very nature,
can have but little of the nature of romance about it, which has but
seldom led to any startling finds, which has involved a colossal amount
of sheer hard labour, without any very conspicuous rewards; but which
has resulted in the temples becoming intelligible to the ordinary
traveller, and safe for his interest for generations to come, and has
enabled us to trace, in the case of a great structure like Karnak, the
successive stages by which the vast building grew to a finished whole.
It is, of course, obviously impossible to attempt to tell, even in
the scantiest outline, the story of a work which has extended over
the whole length of the land from the Delta to the furthest bounds
of Egyptian influence in Nubia, and has been carried on by scores of
workers of all nationalities. Perhaps our end will best be served by
taking a typical instance of the recovery of a temple, and telling
in more or less detail the story of the work which gave it back to
present-day knowledge. We take as our example Queen Hatshepsut’s
terraced temple at Der el-Bahri, one of the most beautiful, as it is
now also one of the most famous, of Egyptian buildings.
In all Egypt there is probably no more beautiful or imposing site
than that of the “Paradise of Amen,” which the great queen reared to
the glory of the Theban god and of her own name. On the western side
of the Nile, almost exactly opposite Karnak, the limestone cliffs of
the Libyan Range sweep backwards in a great semicircle, forming a bay
across whose mouth is drawn the long line of the funerary temples of
the Theban kings of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties. Behind them, and
behind the innumerable tombs of Sheikh Abd el-Qurneh and the Northern
Assassif, there lies, close against the salmon-red cliffs, the building
which, of all Egyptian temples, makes the strongest appeal of pure
beauty, as distinguished from the impressiveness which comes from sheer
scale and mass.
[Illustration: 9. HATSHEPSUT’S TEMPLE, DER EL-BAHRI, GENERAL VIEW.]
The site is one which offers peculiar advantages, but is also
encompassed with peculiar risks. No more magnificent background for
a building could be desired; but the background is precisely of such
magnificence as to form a dangerous pitfall in which a merely mediocre
architect would have been lost. To attempt to compete with Nature,
when the work of man has to be placed in such close proximity with her
towering architecture, would be to ensure hopeless defeat and to invite
ridicule. Khufu’s mountain of stone gets its full value from contrast
with the long lines of the desert plateau on whose edge it stands. The
columns and obelisks of Karnak and Luxor are far enough from the hills
on either bank of the Nile to make the human handiwork the central
and impressive feature of the picture; but the site at Der el-Bahri
would have made what was possible elsewhere a mere derision. To have
placed the huge columns which seem so great on the Theban plain in
competition with the soaring vertical lines of the Libyan cliffs would
have been to place a fool’s cap on the most grandiose work of human
hands. What was needed at Der el-Bahri was a building which should
avoid the very idea of rivalry with Nature’s handiwork, and which
should conquer by subjection, a building where all the emphasis should
be laid on the horizontal lines of structure, so as to disclaim at once
the thought of competition with the towering buttresses and bastions
behind.
It may be questioned if ever an architect more thoroughly appreciated
the conditions of his problem, or more satisfactorily fulfilled them,
than did Senmut, when he designed for Queen Hatshepsut the three rising
courts of the Paradise of Amen, with the long slopes leading from the
one to the other, and the stately colonnades, where the shadows are so
cunningly pressed into the decorative scheme, and the vertical lines of
the columns give emphasis to the horizontality of the whole conception,
and never for one moment suggest rivalry with the cliffs above.
Excavation, which has done so much for our knowledge of Der el-Bahri,
has taught us that the originality of the XVIIIth Dynasty architect was
not quite so absolute as was once imagined, and that he owed at least
the idea of colonnaded terraces to the great man of the XIth Dynasty,
Mertisen or another, who designed the pyramid-temple, “Glorious are
the seats of King Mentuhotep Neb-hepet-Ra,” for his royal master. But
Senmut was one of those great men who, though they take their blessings
where they find them, can never be accused of plagiarism, because they
give back to the world the original idea transfigured and glorified.
He has made the idea of the terraced courts and colonnades his own,
while avoiding the heavy central block, which, with its somewhat paltry
pyramid (if this was ever completed), must have been a contradiction
to the whole conception of the rest of the building; and his spacious
courts, with their almost Greek grace of surrounding colonnade, seem
touched with a spirit which is lacking in the older work.
Mr. Robert Hichens has told us how “after the terrific masculinity of
Medinet-Abu, after the great freedom of the Ramesseum, and the grandeur
of its colossus, the temple at Deir-el-Bahari came upon him like a
delicate woman, perfumed and arranged, clothed in a creation of white
and blue and orange, standing--ever so knowingly--against a background
of orange and pink, of red and of brown-red, a smiling coquette of the
mountain”; and though his idea is quite too fantastically elaborated
(for the idea of conscious striving after prettiness is the last thing
one could think of in connection with Der el-Bahri), yet the idea of
femininity does occur to the mind when the temple is compared with
other Egyptian work. Hatshepsut had not much of the weak woman about
her, to all appearance, and Senmut, if his statues are any clue to the
man, was as rough-hewn and masculine a piece of granite as one might
encounter; but between them they managed to rear a temple which stands
alone in Egypt for the feminine quality of grace.
So now we may turn to the story of how this most graceful of Egyptian
temples, unique in its grace if not in its main idea, and unique also
in that it is the only temple in Egypt which came into being wholly at
the bidding of a woman, was rescued from the accumulations of two and a
half millenniums of neglect and the ravages of religious fanaticism.
Hatshepsut’s temple was first made known to the modern world, as we
have seen, by MM. Jollois and Devilliers, two of the savants attached
to Napoleon’s Expedition of 1798. The English traveller Pococke had
indeed visited the site in 1737; but the thing which chiefly interested
him was the abundance of mummies, and all that can be learned about
the temple from his mention of it is that in his day the sanctuary
was apparently accessible. “Here it seemed,” he says, “as though the
mountain had been vertically hewn out by the hand of man, and the
people of the place said that there had once been a passage through it
into the next valley”--the Valley of the Kings.
What the French explorers saw sixty years later was not a great deal
more. They traced what they believed to be the bases of a series of
sphinxes which had formerly formed an avenue, 42 feet wide and 437
yards long, leading up to the enclosure-wall of the temple, the remains
of a wall which must have formed part of one of the terraces, what they
took for the evidence of two flights of steps, leading to the higher
levels of the building, the central part of the highest platform, and
the rock-cut sanctuary which Pococke had seen. The rest of the temple
was completely covered with heaps of sand and rubbish.
The next visitor of importance was the famous Champollion, who, as
was natural in the first decipherer of the hieroglyphics, was chiefly
interested in the inscriptions which were visible, especially on the
granite trilithon portal of the upper platform; and the great scholar
at once recognised the existence in these of a puzzle which was only
to be solved later. He read the cartouche of Hatshepsut as that of a
king Amenenthe; but was surprised to see that all the nouns and verbs
referring to this unknown king were in the feminine, and that the royal
builder was addressed by Amen-Ra as “His daughter whom he loves.” He
imagined the existence of a female ruler Amense, who must have been
connected by marriage with an unknown Thothmes, and also with the
unknown Amenenthe, and his solution of the mystery, though his names
were incorrect, was, after all, not so far from the truth.
Champollion found evidence in the work of the temple of one of his
favourite theories--that Greek art found its origin in imitation
of Egyptian work; and here, again, he was only anticipating the
recognition of the fact that the colonnades of Der el-Bahri approach
nearer to the style of Greek work than almost any other work in Egypt.
[Illustration: 10. NORTH COLONNADE, DER EL-BAHRI; “PROTO-DORIC”
COLUMNS.]
Nearly thirty years after the first French explorers, and shortly after
the visit of Champollion, Wilkinson surveyed the ruins, and apparently
saw, not only the ramps of approach to the courts, but also one of
the pillared corridors whose walls were covered with sculptures of
soldiers carrying boughs and weapons, and with a scene representing
the dedication of two obelisks to Amen. His reading of the name of the
builder of the temple, Amunneitgori, or Amun-noohet, was no nearer
to the truth than that of Champollion, though he saw that the French
scholar’s unknown Thothmes was no other than Thothmes II.
Lepsius, who evidently saw more of the temple than any of his
predecessors, was the first to make a real approach to the true reading
of its builder’s name. His version of the name, “Numt Amen,” was indeed
an almost correct reading of part of Hatshepsut’s title, Khnum Amen;
and he conjectured that she was the eldest sister of Thothmes III, who
occupied the throne during the minority of her brother, but was not
permitted to rank in the regular lists of the kings of Egypt.
In 1858 the indefatigable Mariette visited the temple, and added it to
the thirty-six other sites at which he carried on excavations during
his thirty years of ceaseless toil. He was too busy with other work at
Qurneh to give to Der el-Bahri the attention which it deserved, and
his work there was carried on only with a small staff, and for a short
time, though he worked again at the place in 1862 and 1866. Nor were
his methods here such as to be helpful to his successors. Working, as
he did all his lifetime, under the lash, as it were, and with the need
of getting the largest possible results with the smallest expenditure
of money and time, it was impossible for him to make his clearances
thorough and methodical. Indeed, he seriously added to the difficulties
of subsequent excavators by the fact that instead of removing the
rubbish of his excavations completely outside the probable limits of
the temple, he was forced by stress of time and want of money simply
to dump his waste on the nearest convenient spot within the temple
area. The consequence was that when Naville came to make the systematic
clearance of the whole building, he found several of the most important
chambers completely buried, not only beneath the debris of the
centuries, but beneath that also which Mariette had heaped on the top
of everything.
All the same, it was Mariette who, as in so many other instances,
first revealed to the world the real wonder of Der el-Bahri and the
surpassing interest of its sculptured halls. His was the first plan to
give us anything like a true conception of the form of the temple, then
held to be unique in Egyptian architecture; and though his restoration
of the details, or rather the restoration of M. Brune, working on his
material, was incorrect in several points, it was a good deal less so
than some more pretentious attempts which succeeded it, and at least
gave an impression intelligible, and in the main not very far from the
actuality.
It was to this first excavation of Mariette also that we owe what has
ever since been the most picturesque, and not the least informing,
of the treasures of Der el-Bahri--the wonderful series of reliefs
representing the voyage of Hatshepsut’s squadron to Punt, which
decorates the retaining wall terminating the middle platform of the
temple. This series of sculptures, one of the priceless treasures
of New Empire Egyptian art, would of itself be the justification of
Mariette’s work.
In 1893 the Egypt Exploration Fund took up the great task of completely
excavating Queen Hatshepsut’s temple, and their work, conducted by
M. Edouard Naville and a number of assistants, only closed with the
publication, in 1908, of the sixth folio volume of plates and plans,
completing, with the introductory memoir, a present-day memorial which
even the great queen need not have disdained, and which is worthy
of her fine achievement. By the patient efforts of M. Naville and
his fellow-workers the long ramps and spacious courts of the temple
were completely cleared of the rubbish of centuries, their graceful
colonnades put in a condition of safety, and the priceless coloured
reliefs roofed over so as to protect them from the ruinous effects of
the weather, which, even in the period between the work of Mariette
and that of the Egypt Exploration Fund, had wrought more damage to the
wonderful series of scenes of the Expedition to Punt than had been done
by all the centuries of neglect.
Wisely the explorers made no attempt at restoration. Their aim was
solely one of preservation, and we owe to them the fact that the most
interesting temple of the XVIIIth Dynasty is now in a condition which
permits some realisation of its former beauty, and which promises its
endurance for centuries to come. Thanks to the explorers’ labours, and
to the complete view of the building which we owe to Mr. Somers Clarke,
the memorial temple of Egypt’s greatest queen is now as well known in
all its essential features as almost any structure in the world.
The work at Der el-Bahri, however, only ended in one aspect to begin
in another. Already in 1879 Mariette, to whose instinct for the
possibilities of the various Egyptian sites full justice has never
been done, had declared his belief, founded on his discovery of a
block of stone bearing the name of King Mentuhotep Neb-hepet-Ra of the
XIth Dynasty, and of several fragments of columns, that a small temple
of the XIth Dynasty had once existed not far from Hatshepsut’s great
temple. In 1903, after the completion of the actual work of excavation
at the great temple, M. Naville began the excavation of the large
mounds to the south of the site of his former labours, and with the
assistance of Dr. H. R. Hall and others, the work was carried on till
1907, the final volume of results being published in 1913.
[Illustration: 11. RELIEFS, DER EL-BAHRI.]
The work began, as M. Naville tells us, chiefly with the view of
clearing the XIth Dynasty cemetery which the explorer was convinced lay
beneath the great mounds of rubbish; but the cemetery soon proved to
be less, and other objects more, important than had been anticipated.
Ere long the diggers made out the line of a ramp, running parallel to
the outer wall of Hatshepsut’s temple, and, following up the traces
of building which successively revealed themselves, as the mounds,
often from 15 to 20 feet in height, were cleared away, they at last
completely unearthed the remains of a building which is as unique
in the history of Egyptian architecture as Hatshepsut’s temple was
formerly thought to be. The temple was at an early stage found to
belong, as Mariette had suggested, to the XIth Dynasty, and to be the
work of one of the greatest kings of this little-known line of rulers,
the Mentuhotep Neb-hepet-Ra who has already been mentioned.
It is by no means in such good preservation as its great companion, for
about the end of the XIXth Dynasty it appears to have been definitely
abandoned as a temple, and handed over to the tender mercies of the
masons who used it as a convenient quarry for material. Nothing is now
standing above 10 feet from the pavement level, and none of the pillars
are above 7 feet in height. Yet the remains are sufficiently complete
to allow of the understanding of the appearance which the whole must
have presented in the days when Hatshepsut’s architect took its
platform and colonnades as the inspiration of the great work on which
he was engaged at its side.
At the end of a spacious enclosure, bounded by a double temenos wall of
which the outer member was of brick and the inner of limestone, a broad
ramp, sloping somewhat steeply, rose to the level of a rectangular
platform. The retaining wall of the platform was faced, as in the
later temple, with a colonnade consisting of a double row of pillars
square on plan. The platform itself was surrounded by a double range
of similar square pillars, which was roofed over, and made a kind of
veranda completely enclosing the central mass of the temple. In the
centre of this colonnade, a door, curiously narrow and paltry for so
fine a building (it is only 3 feet wide), gave access to an almost
square hypostyle hall, whose roof was supported by a perfect forest
of octagonal columns ranged on three sides in three rows, and on the
fourth, at the back of the hall, in two. In the centre of this hall,
and probably with a narrow open space between it and the innermost row
of columns, rose the unique feature of the temple--a rectangular mass
of rubble faced with hewn stone, and surmounted by a pyramid of similar
materials. Behind the pyramid, and against the wall which separated
the pyramid-court from the rear portion of the temple, were several
shrines, corresponding to certain tombs in the court beyond.
Passing through another granite doorway, of the same meagre proportions
as the one in the front of the hall, the visitor entered an open
court surrounded by a colonnade of octagonal columns, two deep on the
southern side, but single on the east and west. In the midst of this
court the mouth of a sloping passage, which descended for 150 metres
to the rock-hewn sanctuary, lined with granite and furnished with an
alabaster shrine, where the _Ka_ of King Mentuhotep was worshipped,
formed a strange and impressive feature. Beyond the open court stood
another hypostyle hall, with eight rows of octagonal columns, ten deep,
and, last of all, a passage, bounded by two walls which reached from
the seventh of the two central rows of columns in the hall, led to a
tiny sanctuary hewn out of the cliff behind the temple.
Such was the temple of Mentuhotep as excavation has revealed it
to us--undoubtedly a most interesting memorial of Middle Kingdom
architecture, and most important as being by far the most complete
example which has survived of the work of that period. Probably we
should have thought the dominant feature of the building, the central
pyramid, rather an incongruity than otherwise, and evidently Senmut,
when he came to his great task six hundred years later, thought so
too, for he adopted the ideas of his predecessor in other respects,
but discarded what seems to us the clumsy pyramid block altogether.
One thing, however, Senmut could not do. He could not secure for
his splendid design anything like the fineness of masonry which
Mentuhotep’s architect had been able to compass in the older temple.
The XVIIIth Dynasty builders, clever though they were in many respects,
left poor work behind them compared with the magnificent masonry of the
XIth Dynasty men.
One of the most interesting features of the older building was found
in the six shrines which have been already mentioned. They belonged
to certain princesses, Aashait, Sadhe, Kauit, Kemsit, and Henhenit,
with one unnamed, who were also priestesses. These shrines were in
connection with the tombs of the ladies in question, who were buried
within the temple.
The building had been completed before either the tombs or the shrines
were inserted; and the inference has been drawn that these were the
ladies of the harem who were chosen for the honour of accompanying
King Mentuhotep on his voyage through the Underworld to the regions of
the blessed--in other words, who were killed at his funeral so that he
should not lack company in the world of the dead. The survival to so
late a period of this barbarous custom is not proved, though it has
been suggested that it continued even as late as the middle of the
XVIIIth Dynasty; but at all events the shrines of the princesses have
furnished us with some fine examples of the work of the little-known
XIth Dynasty.
In the extreme north corner of the temple, Thothmes III intruded
another shrine to the goddess Hathor, which was discovered during the
progress of the excavations in February, 1906, and has provided us with
one of the most admirable examples extant of Egyptian sculpture. The
shrine is a small chamber, 10 feet long and 8 feet high, hewn in the
rock and lined with sandstone. The slabs are sculptured with religious
scenes in which Thothmes III makes offerings to Hathor. The goddess
herself stood in the centre of the shrine in the shape of a life-sized
figure of a cow, suckling a kneeling figure of a king, while another
royal figure stands in front under her head. The name of Amenhotep II
is attached to these figures; but the probability is that they were
meant to represent Thothmes III, who dedicated the chapel, and that all
that Amenhotep II had to do with the act of piety was the engraving of
his cartouche on his father’s work. The Hathor cow of Der el-Bahri is
quite one of the masterpieces of New Empire art, quite eclipsing the
famous example of the same figure which has come from the Saite period
and has hitherto been esteemed one of the finest specimens of Egyptian
animal sculpture. “Neither Greece nor Rome,” says Maspero of the Der
el-Bahri cow, “has left us anything that can be compared with it; we
must go to the great sculptors of animals of our own day to find an
equally realistic piece of work.” Indeed the Hathor cow and the two
lions of Amenhotep III and Tutankhamen, now in the British Museum,
might be safely taken as the pieces on which Egyptian sculpture might
elect to stand as an interpreter of animal figure.
Such, then, have been the main results of excavation on a single
Egyptian site; surely enough to afford ample justification of the
expenditure of time and money and labour which has been involved. Two
great temples have been given back to the knowledge of the world--one
of them, it is true, from a period otherwise fairly well known, the
other from a period which was hitherto almost a blank. Even in the case
of the later temple, where the results contained no surprises, and
only extended our already existing knowledge, the contribution of this
site to our estimate of Egyptian art was of surpassing value; while
Mentuhotep’s temple has filled a gap at one of the points where further
knowledge of Egyptian history and art was most to be desired.
There have been no marvels of buried treasure to gild the pages of
the story of excavation at Der el-Bahri; but there has been a solid
addition to the sum of human knowledge of the past. At a score of
other sites, work similar to that which has just been described has
been continually going on during the last thirty years. Mariette’s
beginnings of clearance at sites such as Edfu, Esneh, Denderah, and
Abydos have been followed by work whose thoroughness has been such as
Mariette, from the nature of the case, could never have accomplished.
To tell the story of excavation, even in the most meagre outline, would
take a volume instead of a chapter, and Der el-Bahri must suffice as a
typical example of the kind of work which has been done all up and down
the land of Egypt.
Reference must be made, however, to one piece of work, associated,
curiously enough, also with the name of the explorer of Der el-Bahri,
which has a unique interest of its own. This is the discovery of the
Pool of Osiris, which, as Strabo told us, lay beneath the great temple,
or, as he called it, the Memnonium, at Abydos. In 1914 M. Naville,
following up the work of Miss M. A. Murray and Professor Petrie in
1902–3, found a great underground chamber, 100 feet by 60 feet,
constructed of huge blocks of limestone, cased inside with hard red
sandstone. The pillars, the architraves, and the roofing-blocks of the
aisles of this chamber were all of fine granite, without adornment or
inscription, and in fact resembled almost exactly the similar work in
the so-called “Temple of the Sphinx” at Gizeh, with this difference,
that whereas the granite pillars of the Temple of the Sphinx are 3
feet square, those of the chamber at Abydos are 8½ feet square. The
wonder of the building, however, was its arrangement. In the centre
of the chamber stood two rows of these great granite monoliths, each
row consisting of five pillars. Around the central block of masonry on
which these pillars rested, ran a deep channel, which had manifestly
once been filled with water, so as to render the central block an
island.
Around this channel runs a ledge of stonework about 3 feet wide, and
from this ledge access is given to a set of seventeen cells each about
6 feet square and 6 feet high.
Manifestly this extraordinary building is Strabo’s “well,” which, as
he tells us, was below the temple, and was built like the Labyrinth,
only on a smaller scale, with passages covered by a single stone. What
may have been its use it is as yet impossible to say. The water channel
and the ledge round it suggest that the boat of Osiris may have been
towed around the pool by his priests on the great feast-days, or when
the Passion Play of Abydos, representing the death and resurrection
of Osiris, was being celebrated. Two things alone seem certain, the
first, the identity of the chamber with the pool described by the old
geographer, and the second, that we have here one of the most ancient
sacred buildings in Egypt.
Other parts of the structure are the work of the XIXth Dynasty,
which did so much at Abydos, and bear the cartouche of Merenptah and
representations of this king worshipping the gods; but the chamber of
the pool is another matter. Its construction is of such a character
as to refer it at once to a very much earlier date; and there can be
little doubt that the resemblance to the Temple of the Sphinx is only
the evidence of the fact that the two buildings are of the same period,
and that the Pool of Osiris is the earliest Egyptian building of any
size known, apart from the pyramids.
The magnificence of its masonry shows how far the Egyptians of this
early period had already carried the system of construction which they
were to use to such splendid purpose in the great temples of the land.
Never again, however, even in the great days of New Empire building,
did they put together such a piece of sumptuous massiveness as the
underground chamber of Osiris at Abydos.
Another aspect of work among the temples must be referred to, as being,
in its own way, not less important than the rescuing of the actual
structures from obscurity and neglect; and that is the interpretation
of the work thus rescued, the tracing of its history, and the
disentangling of the various periods of building which are represented,
and the different hands which have been at work in the completion of
a building whose history as a growing organism may stretch through
centuries, and involve the activities of half a dozen dynasties.
[Illustration: 12. KARNAK, AVENUE OF SPHINXES.]
To make the temples intelligible is a matter scarcely less important
than to make them visible, and it has involved scarcely less effort.
Even after all that has been accomplished in this direction, a great
Egyptian temple such as Karnak remains a sufficiently complicated
business to bewilder the ordinary sight-seer and make him turn with
relief to the clarity of Greek architecture; but at least it is now
possible to arrive at something like an understanding of how the vast
bulk of Karnak grew, century after century, to what we now see, and to
realise a little of the romance of history which is involved in the
succession of Pharaohs who have laboured to make great and splendid the
holy and beautiful house of Amen in Thebes.
Let us turn, then, to Karnak, and try to see a little of what modern
work has done in the direction of making this vastest of extant
Egyptian temples intelligible. A century ago, Belzoni wandered round
the ruins of the great temple, his mind filled with vague dreams of
Memnon, Osymandias, and Psammethes, perhaps as appreciative of the
wonder of what he saw as the most enlightened of his successors, but
absolutely in the dark as to the significance of what he saw, or the
history of how the great building had been reared; to-day the story of
Karnak is practically as well understood as that of one of our European
cathedrals, and anyone who likes to take the trouble may trace out
the evidence of its age-long growth. Indeed it is difficult for the
modern to realise how lengthy is the story which unfolds itself in the
sculptured stones of the great temple. We think with something like
awe of the long process which reared some of our cathedrals, and which
may, perhaps, have lasted for a century, or perhaps, in an extreme
case, for two; but Karnak was a growing organism for a period of time
more than twice as long, not only as any of our cathedrals took in the
building, but twice as long as any of them have been standing. Towards
the eastern end of the vast complex of Karnak there are still to be
seen the scanty relics of the earliest builders of the temple of whom
we have any knowledge--the Middle Kingdom Pharaohs, who began their
work at Karnak certainly not much later than 2000 B.C. On the western
face of the great temple is the Pylon of the Ptolemies, whose dynasty
only closed with the subjection of Egypt to Roman rule in 30 B.C.
Karnak, in other words, was building for a period which was certainly
not less than seventeen hundred years, and which may have been almost
two thousand! Such a consideration makes our ideas as to duration seem
very small indeed.
Nor has the work been less complicated than it has been lengthy.
Practically every Pharaoh worth naming has left his mark on the great
building in some form or another, and often the work of the reigning
king was done without the slightest regard to that of his forerunners;
sometimes, indeed, with the deliberate design of obscuring it and
blotting out its memory. Consequently the task of disentangling the
story of Karnak has been no easy one. It has been like the reading
of a manuscript where interpolations of different writers, dealing
with different matters, continually break the thread of the main
narrative, and where, to add to the confusion, part of the writing is a
palimpsest, written over the faded script of an earlier author. Along
with the difficulty of interpreting the story of the various buildings
has gone that of preserving them from destruction.
One of the curious facts about Egyptian building is that, for a race
of master-builders such as they showed themselves to be, they were
strangely, even culpably careless about their foundations. If the
mighty halls which they reared had been built on such foundations
as modern builders would insist on for even much less important
structures, there seems no reason why, short of deliberate destruction
by the hand of man, the Egyptian temples should not stand practically
for ever. But the Egyptian architect was content to pile walls and
colonnades which are the wonder of the world on the most flimsy
foundations, and his work is in most cases literally a house built on
the sand.
The wonder is, not that there have been occasional collapses, but
that the buildings have stood so long as they have; indeed nothing
but their sheer mass and weight has enabled them to endure. Even so,
earth-tremors, and the constant and insidious work of infiltration,
have worked havoc on the badly founded buildings, and were it not
for the constant care devoted to them, and the work of practically
refounding them which has been carried out, the great halls of Karnak
would ere long be only masses of tumbled ruin. There is nothing
dramatic about the work of either the interpreter or the preserver;
neither can point, in general, to any treasure-trove which has resulted
from his efforts, though occasionally, as notably in connection with
the work of M. Legrain at Karnak, the work of preservation has resulted
in the unearthing of a mass of the most wonderful ancient statuary.
But we owe the double fact that Karnak stands to-day and is likely to
stand for centuries to come, and that its vast complex of building is
intelligible, to many years of quiet and unobtrusive work on the part
of scholars and architects.
In the great days of Egypt’s glory under the New Empire, Thebes must
have been one of the wonder-cities of the world, and one of the fairest
sights on which the sun ever shone. It may be that Babylon, in the
short-lived glory of the Neo-Babylonian Empire of Nebuchadnezzar,
was vaster in extent, and the German excavations have taught us how
gorgeous were some of the great buildings of the city, with their
facings of enamelled brick and their wealth of colour; but it may be
questioned if even Babylon could show anything to match the solemn
splendour of Karnak or Luxor, and beside the ordered sumptuousness
of the huge Egyptian temples, with their wonders of megalithic
construction, one imagines that Babylon’s glories would have seemed
rather cheap and tawdry. And of all the glories of Thebes, Karnak was
the centre and crown.
Petrie tells us that the pitiful remains of the Labyrinth, the great
temple of Amenemhat III of the XIIth Dynasty, show that it was big
enough to hold all the temples of Karnak and Luxor put together; but
the imagination is scarcely capable of trying to comprehend the extent
of such a building, and Karnak is quite big enough for most people.
The actual area of its buildings is about equal to that of St. Peter’s
(Rome), Milan, and Nôtre Dame (Paris); while the sacred enclosure, the
Cathedral Close, so to speak, would hold another half-dozen of the
biggest cathedrals of Europe, without crowding them unduly.
Let us try to imagine ourselves visiting the great temple in the days
when it had reached its greatest extent, though, by that time, the
glory of Thebes had in great measure departed. Still the building,
as we now see it, was practically completed only in the days of the
Ptolemies, and no survey of it would be adequate without including
their work. Unfortunately in taking the temple in the natural order of
approach, by its west front, so to speak, we reverse almost exactly
the order of its building, which was, generally speaking, from east
to west. Yet the history of the building is sufficiently intelligible
even when thus taken in reverse order, and though there are other
approaches to Karnak, and the approach by either the Eastern or the
Western Avenue of Sphinxes must have been very impressive, yet the main
front of the temple must always have been that which faced the Nile, in
the termination of the axis of the whole structure. No doubt also the
Egyptian Kings, with their fondness for using their great river as the
scene of ceremonial processions, used the western front of the temple
for their visits to the shrine of Amen.
We land, then, at a quay of hewn stone, adorned with two small obelisks
of Sety II of the XIXth Dynasty, and with two statues of couchant
lions. Passing down a short and gentle slope, we move along a broad
paved way between rows of couchant ram-headed sphinxes, which were
placed here by Ramses II. The path extends for 200 feet, and leads up
to the vastest portal to be found even in this land of vast portals.
This is the First Pylon of Karnak--first in point of approach, but last
in point of erection, for it is the work of the Ptolemaic Pharaohs who
grasped the sceptre of Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great;
and indeed, as you can see, the work is not yet complete. Building is
still going on, and the ramps of crude brick by which the great stones
are dragged up to their positions are still heaped against the walls,
where they will continue to stand for more than two thousand years.
The pylon itself is gigantic. The breadth of the west front of St.
Paul’s, the greatest building familiar to English minds, is 179 feet,
and its height, to the top of the statue of St. Paul on the pediment,
is 135 feet. The Pylon of the Ptolemies measures 370 feet in breadth,
or rather more than double St. Paul’s, while its height is 142½ feet,
so that it overtops St. Paul’s head by 7½ feet. In addition its walls
are 49 feet thick. No mightier approach to a temple was ever devised.
Passing through this great gateway we find ourselves in an open court
whose dimensions are worthy of the portal which gave access to it. From
the gateway where you stand to the scarcely less imposing pylon of
Ramses I, which faces you across the open space, this court measures
275 feet, while its breadth is 338 feet. The area of St. Paul’s is
84,000 square feet, so that this single court of Karnak exceeds our
great cathedral in area by 8000 square feet. Around its walls runs a
colonnade of single columns. In the north corner of the court there
stands a little grey sandstone temple, divided into three chapels,
which are dedicated to Amen, Mut, and Khonsu, the members of the Theban
Triad. The southern colonnade is broken by the intruding front of a
larger temple. This is the temple of Ramses III, the last of the great
warrior kings of Egypt, who saved the land, in the degenerate days of
the XXth Dynasty, from being overrun and ravaged by the raid of the
Sea-Peoples. His temple, though very modest in size (it measures only
170 feet in length), is important as giving one of the most perfect
examples extant of a complete Egyptian temple, built from start to
finish by one monarch, and on a straightforward and homogeneous plan.
The great court which has taken these two lesser buildings into its
sweep was the work of the Libyan Pharaohs of the XXIInd Dynasty, who
held their court at Bubastis, and is therefore often called the Court
of the Bubastites. The temple of Ramses III was cleared of rubbish in
1896–7 by M. Legrain, in the course of his great work at Karnak. Down
the central avenue of the Bubastite court the Ethiopian Pharaohs of
the XXVth Dynasty began the erection of a colonnade whose purpose has
not been quite determined. As they left it, it consisted of a double
range of huge columns, five in each row. Of the ten, only one solitary
survivor now stands, and is known as the Column of Taharqa, after the
Ethiopian king who was responsible for its erection, and for some of
the sorest disasters of Egypt in her declining days. It was Taharqa
and his successor Tanutamen who brought down upon Egypt the wrath of
the Assyrian conqueror, Ashurbanipal, whose ruthless soldiery by the
sack of Thebes dealt the imperial city a blow from which she never
recovered. Taharqa’s column stands as the memorial of a man who “began
to build, and was not able to finish” in more senses than one.
Leaving the court for a moment by the portal in the south-east corner,
we find on the wall of the second pylon one of the most interesting
records of the temple. This is the inscription in which Sheshanq, one
of the Libyan Pharaohs, records the triumph of that campaign in Syria
in the course of which he humbled the pride of Rehoboam of Judah, and
robbed Solomon’s temple of all the riches which the wise king had
accumulated. In Sheshanq’s relief a gigantic figure of Amen leads up
before the now vanished figure of the king five rows of captive towns
of Palestine, each represented by a circular wall enclosing its name,
from which emerges the upper part of a bound prisoner.
[Illustration: 13. KARNAK, NAVE OF HYPOSTYLE HALL.]
Before us, as we return to the great court, rises the second pylon, the
work of Ramses I, the founder of the XIXth Dynasty. Scarcely any part
of the temple is more eloquent of the jumble of times, and kings, and
even faiths, which goes to make up Karnak, than the neighbourhood of
this pylon. The great gateway itself is of Ramses I; but its materials
had their own story before he built them into his new approach to the
temple of Amen, and had served another god; for some of the blocks of
the pylon once belonged to one of the heretical temples of Akhenaten,
and bear his name and those of his successors, Tutankhamen and Ay. The
little vestibule before the pylon is flanked by statues of Ramses II;
but within the doorway are found the cartouches of Ramses I and Sety
II, as well as that of Ramses II, while part of the vestibule is the
work of two of the Ptolemies. Thus in this little space the work of no
fewer than eight Pharaohs, covering a period of more than a thousand
years, is represented.
The gateway of Ramses I gives access to what is perhaps the most
remarkable, though by no means the most beautiful, of the halls of
Karnak. The Hypostyle Hall, one of the hugest of human creations, was,
like so much else at Karnak, the work of several sovereigns, though
in this case the completion of the building was not so very long
protracted as in some other instances. The hall was begun by Ramses
I, whose short reign of two years only enabled him to see the work
started. The greater part of the hall as we now see it is the work of
Sety I, one of the finest of Egyptian Pharaohs, whose work everywhere
is in accordance with the nobility of his face as it can be seen at
Cairo.
Sety carried out the erection of what is by far the most imposing
feature of the hall, the nave, with its double row of gigantic
open-flower columns, the largest in existence. Each of the twelve
tremendous columns is 69 feet in height and 33 feet in circumference,
while the spreading capitals, 11 feet in height, have an area large
enough for one hundred men to stand upon. Imagine twelve versions of
the Trajan Column at Rome, or the Vendôme Column at Paris, facing
one another in two rows and supporting gigantic architraves of sixty
to a hundred tons in weight, which in their turn support the great
roofing-slabs. These form the central avenue of the great hall. On
either side of them the papyrus-bud columns of the two side aisles rise
to a height of 42½ feet. The rows nearest to the central avenue on
either side bear above their architraves rectangular pillars which make
up the difference between the height of the side columns and those of
the centre, and which bear the extremities of the roof of the nave with
its cornice. On the lower level of the side pillars, the roof of the
hall continues over the rest of the area, supported by a forest of one
hundred and twenty-two columns.
Sety I is responsible for the whole of the northern half of the hall,
as well as for the central avenue, so that the southern portion of the
building is all that Ramses II can claim as his work, if indeed even
this part was not erected by his father, and only sculptured by him.
Ramses II, however, had the knack of securing to himself the glory
of work which was done by other men, and to most people the great
Hypostyle Hall of Karnak is his work, though he had really very little
to do with it.
The architectural merits of the huge building are undoubted, up to a
certain point; but its faults are equally unquestionable. Mere size
tells here, as indeed it almost always does, unless its impression
is spoilt by sheer incapacity. There can be no question of the
impressiveness of the great building. The central avenue, with its
soaring columns, and its grated clerestory rising above the roofs
of the side-aisles, is the prototype of all subsequent cathedral
architecture. But the side-aisles do not add to the dignity of the
great chamber. Their forest of squat, shapeless columns, instead of
being impressive, is only bewildering. Here, very certainly, you cannot
see the wood for the trees, and the spaciousness of the hall is quite
destroyed by the multitude of the supports of its roof. “The size that
strikes us,” says Professor Petrie, “is not the grandeur of strength,
but the bulkiness of disease.”
The outer walls of the great hall are sculptured with reliefs
representing the wars of its two creators. The north wall bears a fine
series of scenes, covering over 200 feet of surface, in which the wars
of Sety I are depicted with great spirit. In some later instances such
war-reliefs are merely wearisome; but these of Sety are both vivacious
and well-executed, and such scenes as that of the king smiting
the Libyans are among the best examples of work in this kind, and
infinitely superior to the pretentious work of his son. The southern
wall has reliefs of Ramses II, his eternal Battle of Kadesh, which
he could never forget, or allow anyone else to forget, a copy of the
treaty of peace with the Hittites, and the so-called Poem of Pentaur,
in which the king’s valour at Kadesh is celebrated.
Behind the Hypostyle Hall comes the IIIrd Pylon, which was reared
by the most magnificent, if not the greatest, of Egyptian Pharaohs,
the gorgeous Amenhotep III, in whose glittering reign the glories of
the New Empire seemed to culminate, before the shadows of his son’s
ill-starred attempt at religious reform dimmed their splendour. When
Thebes was at the height of its fame, and when all the kings of the
ancient east were sending their ambassadors to the great city to fall
“seven times and seven times” in the dust before the golden sandals of
the man who was God visible on earth to a great part of the ancient
world, this third pylon was the main front of the great Theban temple,
which then occupied not much more than half the space which it now
covers. Its western face was used by Sety as the back wall of the
Hypostyle Hall; but on the northern tower on the eastern side can still
be seen the faint remains of a great scene in which a royal procession
on the Nile in honour of Amen is depicted. One great ship over 40
feet long has the king standing on the poop, and cabins with cornices
amidships. Thirty or forty rowers urge it along, and it tows behind it
the sacred barge of Amen, which bears in a shrine a small processional
bark of the god, and at the bow a sphinx and an altar.
[Illustration: 14. KARNAK, COLUMNS OF THE SIDE-AISLE, HYPOSTYLE HALL.]
Besides his pylon, Amenhotep wrought a vast amount of work at Karnak;
but it was not, like that of Sety and Ramses, concentrated in a single
great structure, but dispersed in various parts of the sacred
enclosure, and so does not produce the same effect. To see the work of
Amenhotep on a scale worthy of his importance in the line of Egyptian
Pharaohs, you have to go to Luxor with its fine papyrus-bud forecourt,
and its noble nave, which, had it been finished, would have almost
rivalled the Hypostyle Hall of the later kings in size and exceeded it
in beauty; or to try to think back the vanished glories of what was
probably the most gorgeous and beautiful of all the Theban temples--the
Funerary temple of Amenhotep, which was destroyed, not by the Assyrian
conqueror, but by the royal vandals of the XIXth Dynasty, Ramses II and
his son Merenptah.
All the same, Amenhotep accomplished no small amount of work, in one
way and another, within the enclosure of Karnak. Just beyond the
girdle-wall of the great temple on the north side, he built a temple to
Mentu, the Theban War-God, with a pylon, and obelisks of red granite.
This temple once contained statues in black granite of the king, and of
the goddess Sekhmet, towards whom he evidently cherished a feeling of
deep devotion, if we may judge by the number of statues to her which he
dedicated in the temple of Mut.
The temple of Mentu shared the usual fate of Amenhotep’s work, and
was meddled with by Merenptah, Ramses V, and at least four of the
Ptolemies, a fair specimen of the fashion in which the history of
Karnak is complicated by the multitude of superimposed strata, or
rather of interwoven strands, with which you have to do.
On the south side, and just at the girdle-wall, stands the beautiful
temple of Khonsu (the son of the Theban Triad), one of the finest
examples of a complete Egyptian temple of normal form. This is not
the work of Amenhotep, but of Ramses III; but apparently an earlier
temple of Amenhotep must have once occupied the site, for the king set
up before the gateway a noble avenue of one hundred and twenty-two
sandstone sphinxes bearing his name. Beyond the wall, and approached
by the eastern avenue of sphinxes, lies another of Amenhotep’s
contributions to the glories of Karnak--the temple of Mut, the
mother-goddess of the Theban Triad, which was excavated in 1895–7 by
two English ladies, Miss Margaret Benson and Miss Janet Gourlay. It is
full of Sekhmet statues, and behind it lies a sacred lake, shaped like
a horse-shoe.
But the following out of the work of Amenhotep has drawn us away from
our main quest, the tracing of the story of Karnak proper. Returning
to the great temple by the eastern avenue of sphinxes, we pass the
girdle-wall by a pylon built by Horemheb out of the material of a
temple which the unfortunate Akhenaten had reared in Thebes to his
new deity the Aten. Beside the pylon stands a stele inscribed with a
manifesto of Horemheb, which was designed to promote peace in the state
after the religious troubles of Akhenaten’s times. The square court
behind the pylon has on its east side the ruins of a small temple of
Amenhotep II, and the walls of the court have reliefs of Horemheb.
Another pylon of Horemheb, in a very ruinous condition, closes the
court on the north side, and passing through it we are faced by one
of the most ancient parts of the whole building, the pylon of Queen
Hatshepsut. The pylon bears witness both to what Professor Breasted
calls “the Feud of the Thutmosids,” and to the religious strifes of
the XVIIIth Dynasty, for Hatshepsut’s name was erased from her reliefs
by Thothmes II, and all allusions to Amen were scrupulously removed by
Akhenaten, and restored by Sety I. Behind Hatshepsut’s pylon we pass a
pylon of Thothmes III, her successor and enemy, and traversing a court
whose walls bear inscriptions of Merenptah, the son and successor of
Ramses II, in which he describes his victories over the Libyans and the
Peoples of the Mediterranean, we find ourselves back at the point from
which our digression started, in the central court behind the great
pylon of Amenhotep III. Here was the western front of the temple in the
days of Thothmes I, and here still stands the solitary remaining member
of the quartette of obelisks with which this king and Thothmes III
adorned the front of the pylon which now lies in ruins behind them. The
obelisks of the later king are both gone--the survivor of the pair of
Thothmes I is a fine shaft, 75½ feet high.
Behind his pylon, and between it and a smaller one which he erected to
the east, Thothmes reared a fine ceremonial hall with roof and columns
of cedar wood; but his work was not permitted to endure for long.
It was within this hall that the priests of Amen arranged a little
piece of play-acting in which the god Amen declared his preference
for Thothmes III as king, and it was perhaps this unpalatable fact
which determined Queen Hatshepsut to make it the scene of a piece of
vandalism which was to redound to her own glory. Anyhow, as the time
for the celebration of her jubilee drew near, she sent her architect,
Senmut, up to Aswan to bring down two great shafts of granite for
her jubilee obelisks, and when the tremendous blocks, 97½ feet high,
arrived, she stripped off the roof from part of her father’s hall and
set them up there. Apart from the filial piety of such an act, the
obelisks were things of which she might justly be proud.
With the single exception of the stone, the work of her deadly enemy
Thothmes III, which now stands before St. John Lateran in Rome, and
which is 8 feet higher than its rival, the shaft of Hatshepsut, which
still remains erect at Karnak, is the largest obelisk existing, and is
more than 20 feet higher than the so-called “Cleopatra’s Needle,” which
represents to Londoners, as its twin does to the folk of New York, the
skill of ancient Egypt.
[Illustration: 15. KARNAK, VIEW FROM THE NORTH, OBELISKS OF HATSHEPSUT,
AND THOTHMES I.]
Hatshepsut was so proud of her achievement that she caused the shafts
to be engraved with an inscription in which she swears, “As Ra loves
me, as my father Amen favours me ... as I shall be unto eternity like
an Imperishable, as I shall go down in the west like Atum, so surely
these two great obelisks which My Majesty hath wrought with electrum
for my father, Amen, in order that my name may abide in his temple,
enduring for ever and ever, they are of one block of enduring granite,
without seam or joining.” She goes on to say, what is still more
surprising, that the time occupied in the extraction and transportation
of the mighty shafts was seven months!
When Thothmes III came to the throne, he showed his love for his
distinguished relative by casing her obelisks to a height of 82 feet
with sandstone, so that her inscriptions might not be read. As rulers,
the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth Dynasty, male or female, stand in the very
front rank; they cannot be said to have shone as exponents of family
affection.
To the east of his second pylon, Thothmes I had another court, which
was altered and added to by Thothmes III, who built also a small pylon
in front of his Halls of Records, which come next in the great complex
of building, jostling the apartments of Hatshepsut, which stand beside
them. In the First Hall of Records stand the two pillars which strike
everyone who sees them as one of the beauties of Karnak, and examples
of a type not common in Egyptian work. They are of granite, the
southern one carved with the Lotus of Upper Egypt, the northern with
the Papyrus of Lower Egypt. The Second Hall was turned into the chapel
of the temple, in which the sacred bark was kept, by Philip Arrhidæus,
at the beginning of the Ptolemaic dominion, so that one of the oldest
and one of the newest parts of the building are here united.
In the open space behind the chapel lie the scanty remains of the
earliest Karnak known to us--that of the XIIth Dynasty. A few broken
polygonal columns suggest a kinship in style, for the earliest parts
of the great temple, with the work of the XIth Dynasty at Der el-Bahri;
but it is impossible to say with the least approach to certainty what
the first temple may have looked like. East again of these remnants
comes the last important part of the vast building--the great Festal
Temple of Thothmes III, with its fine Hall, 144 feet by 52 feet, and
its eastern sanctuary and complex of store-chambers.
The Festal Hall presents a feature unique in Egyptian Architecture.
Its colonnade consists of thirty-two rectangular piers ranged round
the sides, while down the centre of the hall run two rows of ten round
columns, not spaced with the piers, and of extraordinary shape. Instead
of tapering from the base to the top, their taper runs the opposite
way, and their capitals are inverted, and present the appearance of
a bell standing on its mouth. The downwards tapering column is, of
course, a familiar feature in Minoan architectural practice, and it is
within the bounds of possibility that Thothmes’ columns are an Egyptian
adaptation of a Minoan motive, for, as the tombs of Senmut and Rekhmara
show, Minoan influence was at its height in the middle of the XVIIIth
Dynasty, and intercourse between Crete and Egypt was frequent. Whether
Thothmes owed the idea to some Minoan suggestion or not, it never
established itself in Egypt. In Crete, with its regular use of wooden
pillars resting on stone bases, the downward taper was quite natural;
in Egypt, with a prevalent stone construction, it was an exotic, and
could show no reason for its existence, and it was never repeated.
One cannot say that its disappearance was any great loss to Egyptian
architecture, for the effect of the inversion is singularly clumsy.
We have thus traced the story of Karnak as one traverses the great
temple from front to rear, and the bewildering complexity of the
building is reflected in the variegated fabric of the narrative. To
call Karnak, as is often done, “the typical temple of the Egyptian
Empire,” is to create an entire misapprehension in the mind of anyone
who hears such a phrase used. Karnak is anything but a typical temple;
indeed it is not a temple, but rather an aggregate of many temples,
and above everything else an epitome of Egyptian history for at least
a millennium and a half. One would not even seek it for typical
representatives of Egyptian architecture. Karnak, in this respect,
possesses its beauties--and its monstrosities; but one would look
rather to smaller specimens of the builder’s art for an adequate
representation of Egyptian achievement in this respect.
The great temple claims, and will always claim, our attention and
wonder, by its sheer vastness, to begin with, for undoubtedly vastness
has its own effect, though it is not the highest, in the elements
of architectural impressiveness; then by the extraordinary way in
which it presents a summary in stone of the vicissitudes of Egyptian
history; last, and perhaps least, by the surprising quality, and in
some instances the beauty, of some of its detail. The main element in
its appeal will always be wonder; admiration, and even that qualified
by many reservations, is a bad second to the impression of simple
amazement, that human hands and brains should have ever wrought so vast
a thing.
The preservation of the temple is, and will continue to be, a work
almost as great, and as difficult, as its erection. It lies in the
hands of the Egyptian Service of Antiquities, and is a task as unending
as the web of Penelope. Generally speaking, such work is of the kind
which has to be its own reward, for it makes no appeal to the average
visitor, who only sees that his enjoyment of this court or that is
more or less hindered by the progress of work whose one merit is that
it will keep safe for future generations priceless treasures which
otherwise would ere long pass away. Sometimes, however, the work does
bring other prizes in its train.
[Illustration: 16. LUXOR, FORECOURT OF AMENHOTEP III.]
Such was the case when, in November, 1903, M. Legrain, in the course
of his work near the pylon of Thothmes III by which we returned to
the central court after our digression to the south, found what has
since been known as “the Karnak Cachette,” a great pit full of pieces
of sculpture of all types and periods. “For a year and eight months,”
wrote Maspero in February, 1905, “we have been fishing for statues in
the Temple of Karnak.... Seven hundred stone monuments have already
come out of the water, and we are not yet at the end.... Statues whole
and in fragments, busts, mutilated trunks, headless bodies, bodiless
heads, vases on which there were only broken feet, Pharaohs enthroned,
queens standing upright, priests of Amon and individuals holding
naos, or images of gods, in front of them, crouching, kneeling,
sitting, found in all the attitudes of their profession or rank, in
limestone, in black or pink granite, in yellow or red sandstone, in
green breccia, in schist, in alabaster--indeed, a whole population
returns to the upper air and demands shelter in the galleries of the
Museum.”
The reason for the existence of this extraordinary dump of discarded
sculpture, whose richness Maspero’s vivacious sentences do not in the
least exaggerate, and which gave us, to mention only two examples, the
masterly pink granite head of Senusert III, one of the most brilliant
examples of XIIth Dynasty sculpture, and the schist Thothmes III,
equally one of the finest examples of the art of the New Empire, seems
to have been this. The Ptolemies, the presence of whose coins in the
pit sufficiently dates it, did a great deal of building at Karnak, and
in the course of their cleaning up of the places where they worked,
they, no doubt, came on an infinity of out-of-date _ex voto_ statues,
some of them broken, some of them whole, but all rather a nuisance and
obstruction, as the persons with whom they were associated had long
since ceased to be of importance. What was to be done with them? They
could not simply be thrown out as rubbish, for they had been dedicated
to the god, and were therefore sacred; and they could not be allowed to
stand littering up the courts which the Ptolemies were busily tidying.
Accordingly the great pit was dug within the sacred enclosure, and
Senusert, Thothmes, Senmut, and hundreds of other old Egyptian notables
were consigned to its muddy depths, thence to be resurrected, more
than two thousand years later, by their degenerate descendants, who
baled out the water from the pit with old petroleum cans, and hoisted
Pharaoh, High-priest or Statesman, unceremoniously out of his dark
resting-place with lever and tackle. It has been a fortunate chance
for us, for Egyptian portrait-sculpture might stake its reputation on
the two pieces which I have mentioned, and the pit has yielded scores
almost as good.
The work of preserving the building, and putting it in a condition of
safety for the future, has had a curious interest from the fact that
in its progress Karnak has been to some extent rebuilt, and by exactly
the same methods by means of which it was built in the beginning. For
there can be little doubt, in spite of all talk about the wonderful
mechanical knowledge of the ancient Egyptians, and their possession
of secrets which have been lost to our time, that Karnak, like all
the great Egyptian buildings, was built, not by means of any of these
remarkable secrets which never existed save in the imagination of those
who have talked about them, but by the disciplined and ordered use of
the very simplest means known to man, the inclined plane, the lever,
and any amount of obedient human muscle. These were the mechanical
secrets which M. Legrain found most useful and most economical in
the end of the nineteenth century A.D., as those who had gone before
him had done in the nineteenth, the fifteenth, the fourth century
B.C. Senusert, Thothmes, Hatshepsut, Sety, Ramses, Sheshanq, Taharqa,
Ptolemy, they all built Karnak by sheer force of human labour,
disciplined and guided by a race of builders who for thousands of
years had specialised in the training of men for such tasks, and with
no more marvellous secrets to aid them than those oldest of man’s
mechanical triumphs, the ramp and the lever. M. Legrain has repeated
their miracles with the same equipment; and in an age of machinery has
shown that the human machine may still be the most adequate, the most
adaptable, and the most economical.
Thus, then, we have seen, at two of the most interesting sites in
Egypt, something of the work which has been going on with the double
object of extending our knowledge of the past and of preserving its
treasures for the future. Realising something of the importance of such
buildings as Der el-Bahri and Karnak, and their scores of companions
throughout the land, buildings which are, in effect, ancient Egypt
to us, one can feel that work such as that which has been meagrely
described in these pages, unspectacular though it may be compared with
the work of Pharaoh-hunting, is yet of great and enduring importance,
the indispensable fabric on which the glittering embroidery of the
treasure-troves from the Valley of the Kings and elsewhere is wrought,
and without whose rich and durable substance to form a background the
golden glory of the royal tombs would lose half its meaning and beauty.
CHAPTER VI
BURIED ROYALTIES
Among the most curious of ancient Egyptian documents are the two
papyri, the Abbott and the Amherst, which tell the story of the
robberies of the royal tombs at Thebes, which came to light in the
reign of Ramses IX, about 1100 B.C. At that time the capital city was
ruled, under the Governor, by a certain noble named Paser, who was
called “The Prince of the Town.” Western Thebes, however, the City
of the Dead, was not under the care of Paser, but was supervised by
another official named Pewero, who rejoiced in the title of “Prince
of the West.” Between the Prince of the Town and the Prince of the
West there was no love lost, as is not uncommon with the heads of two
adjacent jurisdictions; and Paser, on the eastern bank of the river,
kept his ears open to all the tittle-tattle of discontented workmen
from the Necropolis which drifted across the river. It so fell out
in the sixteenth year of Ramses IX, that certain thefts from the
Necropolis were reported by the Prince of the West to the Governor;
and Paser seized the opportunity of making the most to the Council
of the laxity of administration which allowed such things, and of
suggesting that infinitely worse robberies, involving the Royal Tombs,
were occurring under his enemy’s jurisdiction.
[Illustration: 17. LUXOR, PAPYRUS-BUD COLUMNS AND COLOSSI OF RAMSES II.]
A special commission was appointed to investigate the charges, and
the importance of the case is shown by the rank of the members of the
court. These were Khaemuas, the Governor, “The Royal Vassal Nesamen,
Scribe of Pharaoh,” _i.e._ the King’s private Secretary, and “The Royal
Vassal Neferkara-em-per-Amen, the Speaker of Pharaoh,” doubtless the
King’s Public Orator. This august court went at great length into the
charges, and it is impossible to read the account of the case without
feeling that Paser had right on his side, though he rather made a
bungle of his case. Obviously his information was mainly derived from
ill-natured gossip, for it was so inaccurate in detail that the very
royal tomb which he positively declared to have been robbed was found
on examination to be untouched; but equally obviously there was a great
deal going on in the Necropolis which should not have gone on, and
Pewero either connived at the thefts or was culpably careless.
On the whole Paser failed to establish his charges, though in one case,
to be mentioned directly, there was plain evidence of the violation of
a royal tomb. The Prince of the Town took his failure rather badly, and
spoke wild whirling words before a riotous deputation of Necropolis
workmen, which got him into trouble; but bit by bit the actual truth
leaked out, though not in the Commission.
Three years later, in the reign of Ramses X, sixty persons, mainly
priests and officials of the Necropolis, were arrested on the charge
of complicity in the thefts; and even this big bag of robbers did not
bring security to the royal dead. Ere long the priests of the dead
kings were frantically hustling the mummies of their dead masters from
one tomb to another in the vain attempt to put them beyond the reach
of the spoilers, until at last the bulk of the great Theban Pharaohs
were gathered, or rather huddled, together, in the obscure shaft of the
unfinished tomb of Queen Astemkheb at Der el-Bahri, or in the tomb of
Amenhotep II in the Valley of the Kings.
The kind of treatment which was meted out to the mighty dead by the
sacrilegious rascals in the Theban Necropolis is detailed for us in
the confession of one of them, a confession extracted, for the rest,
by the time-honoured Eastern questionary of the bastinado. “We found
the august mummy of this god,” says the thief, describing his work at
the tomb of King Sebek-em-saf and his wife Queen Nub-khas, “with a long
chain of golden amulets and ornaments round the neck; the head was
covered with gold. The august mummy of this god was entirely overlaid
with gold, and his coffin was covered both within and without with
gold, and adorned with every splendid costly stone. We stripped off
the gold which we found on the august mummy of this god, as well as
the amulets and ornaments from around the neck, and the bandages in
which the mummy was wrapped. We found the royal wife equipped in like
manner, and we stripped off all that we found upon her. We burnt her
bandages, and we also stole the household goods which we found with
them, and the gold and silver vessels. We divided all between us; we
divided into eight parts the gold which we found with this god, the
mummies, the amulets, the ornaments and the bandages.”
Such was the treatment accorded to a Pharaoh of Egypt by one of
his subjects three thousand years ago; a curious commentary on the
present-day Egyptian protests against the opening of the royal tombs in
the interests of science! But the story of the Ramesside tomb-robberies
is only an illustration of two contradictory cravings which are seen
working all down the long record of the Egyptian monarchy. On the one
hand there is the constant attempt of royalty to secure for itself by
the most elaborate precautions that age-long endurance of the physical
frame which was deemed a necessary condition for the welfare of the
dead king in the Underworld, an attempt which expresses itself in
different ways, some of them most wonderful, in the successive periods
of Egyptian history; on the other, there is the equally constant
and resolute determination of the Egyptian tomb-robber that not all
the divinity which doth hedge a king, and especially a Pharaoh,
shall keep him from his prey. The Ramesside thief has any amount of
lip-reverence for the dead king whose rest he so rudely disturbs; but
all the time that he is talking about “the august mummy of this god,”
he is stripping the gold and jewels from it, and his accomplices are
kindling the fire which will shortly destroy, from an Egyptian point of
view, King Sebek-em-saf’s hope of immortality; and the contradiction is
an epitome of a good deal in the story of Egyptian royalty.
The most enduring religious feeling in the Egyptian was the craving
for immortality; and the most permanent, as it was one of the earliest
religious convictions, was that immortality was linked with faith in
the god Osiris, who, as the legend ran, had been treacherously slain
by his brother Set, had risen from the dead, had been judged and
pronounced just by the tribunal of the gods, and thenceforth reigned as
the god of the Underworld and the judge of the dead.
The devout Egyptian believed that after death, if the necessary
conditions had been fulfilled on his behalf, he was identified with
his god, and like him rose again, was justified, and admitted to the
Egyptian Elysian Fields. These conditions, briefly stated, were, first,
the continuance for as long a period as possible, of the body, in a
state as closely as possible resembling that of life. Whether this
need, which, of course, was responsible for the characteristically
Egyptian practice of mummification, sprang from the belief that the
spiritual essence of the dead man might find a resting-place after
death in the mummified shell of its living abode, or whether the
creation of the mummy was merely, as Professor Peet asserts, a counsel
of despair, an attempt to deny death for as long as possible, is not
certain; but the attempt to preserve the body, first by the provision
of a secure tomb, and later by mummification as well, endures through
the whole of Egyptian history. The second condition was the provision
of food and drink, and all the comforts of life, for the dead man in
his tomb. The third was the equipping of him with all the words of
power which would enable him to escape the dangers which haunted the
ways of the Underworld, and to pass the ordeal of the judgment, and
with amulets which would prove efficacious in warding off the assaults
of the demons of the Underworld. Last of all, as in the Elysian Fields
there was work to be done, and it was not fitting that a king or a
great noble should stoop to manual labour, the dead man had to be
provided with simulacra of servants who should answer for him when he
was called upon for service, and take upon themselves his burden of
labour.
Out of all these conditions there arose gradually the whole wealth of
Egyptian funerary equipment, as it is found in the tombs of the great
men of the land, and above all in those of the Pharaohs, an equipment
whose splendour has dazzled the whole world in the revelations of the
tomb of Tutankhamen. From the very earliest times the kings of Egypt
were laid to rest with elaborate provision for the wants of the dead
monarch, and the provision grew in completeness and complexity with
each successive generation, till it reached its culmination in the
gorgeous tombs of the Theban Pharaohs of the New Empire, with their
hundreds of feet of rock-hewn chamber and corridor, their glittering
canopies, their nests of gilded coffins, their wealth of costly
amulets and illuminated papyri, their stores of ushabtis, and, at the
heart of all, the wonderfully preserved mummy of the man for whom all
this magnificence had been prepared.
It may be questioned, however, whether all these precautions did not
rather tend to defeat their own end, and whether Pharaoh might not have
slumbered in greater security had his tomb been less gorgeous and less
richly equipped than he could hope to do when his tomb was a wonder of
the world, and when all men knew that wealth untold was stored within
its dark depths. At all events we know that from the earliest days of
the Egyptian kingdom to the latest the kings were few indeed whose rest
was not rudely broken by the sacrilegious hands of robbers. The fate of
King Sebek-em-saf, already described, is typical of that of the royal
tombs in general. For five thousand years human greed has proved more
powerful than human piety or even than human superstition. To-day, the
professional tomb-robber of native birth, though his activities are as
skilfully conducted as ever, finds a rival in the scientific explorer,
whose disturbance of the rest of the royal dead, though there are still
many who object to the work as a profanation of what all men should
regard as sacred, is at least conducted with as much reverence as
possible, and in the interests not of individual greed of gain, but of
the general sum of knowledge of the human race.
In this respect the situation should be clearly understood. It is not
a question of whether the dead kings of ancient Egypt shall or shall
not be allowed to rest in peace in their tombs. That question has
been settled, and settled in the negative, for many centuries by the
persistent habit of the Egyptians themselves. Robbed the tombs of the
Pharaohs (such of them as still remain undisturbed) will inevitably
be. That is as sure as death itself. The only question is whether the
robbery shall be conducted by ignorant fellahin for the sake of private
gain, and in such a fashion that the whole of the results shall be
scattered among a score of private collections, and all their historic
value forever lost, or whether it shall be conducted in orderly and
scientific fashion, the finds duly catalogued in their true order, and
gathered together in one great assemblage in a place where they can be
studied in their true relation to one another, and to other finds of
similar character.
There can be no doubt as to which of these methods is preferable.
To deny to the man of science the opportunity of investigating the
history, the art, and the life of the past as revealed in the treasures
of the royal tombs is simply to make it certain that, without securing
in the least the sanctity of the tombs, all the knowledge which might
have been drawn from them shall be lost forever to the world. This is
the sufficient justification of those excavations which, in spite of
all the interest created by their revelations, have so often created
also a feeling of repugnance and protest.
The story of the royal tombs of Egypt begins with the excavation of
the Sacred City of Osiris, Abydos. The work there is by no means the
earliest in point of time of the series of discoveries which have
been made in connection with the burial of royalty, though Abydos was
one of the sites excavated by Mariette, who revealed to the world
the wonderful XIXth Dynasty work of the temple of Sety I there. Much
had been discovered at Thebes and at Memphis before Amélineau and
Petrie began at Abydos those researches which have revolutionised our
knowledge of early Egyptian history and civilisation, and have given
back to us several centuries of the story of human effort which had
previously been shrouded in darkness; but it seems best to follow
the subject down the line of history rather than to follow the order
of discovery with its consequent mixing up of all the dynasties and
periods.
Up to the nineties of last century, it may be said that practically
nothing was known of those earliest Kings of Egypt who reigned before
the time of the IVth Dynasty. The history of Egypt began with the
Pyramid-builders, Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura; and so far as any real
knowledge went, Egyptian civilisation sprang, like Athene, full-armed
and full grown into being, and offered to the world as its firstfruits
the most gigantic structures ever reared by the hand of man.
[Illustration: 18. COLONNADE IN TEMPLE OF SETY I, ABYDOS.]
Obviously this was an impossibility, for things do not happen thus
in real life, and the advance of civilisation is a business, not of
leaps and bounds, but of slow and ordered progress; but before the
Pyramid-builders there was nothing in Egyptian history but a gulf
of misty darkness, in which a few dim and mighty shapes could be
faintly discerned through the clouds. Manetho, the Egyptian historian
of Sebennytos, preserved in the few fragments of his story which have
survived the names, and a few more or less incredible legends, of the
great men who had lived and reigned before the Pyramid-period; but they
were only shadows, and the bulk of what little he told us of them was
too fantastic to command any respect. The chief figure of his story
was the king Menes, or Mena, who was said to have founded Memphis, and
who seemed to have some semblance of reality among the pale shades
of the others; but even he came to us in Manetho’s pages in such a
questionable shape as to seem more a figure of romance than of fact.
The discoveries of the closing years of the nineteenth century,
however, have put an end to all that vagueness, and while our knowledge
about the earliest dynastic kings of Egypt is still scanty enough, it
is quite solid and real as far as it goes. Not only so, but excavation
has resulted in the extension of knowledge to the period before the
rise of the earliest dynastic rulers, and such a mass of material has
been accumulated bearing on the life of the pre-dynastic Egyptians as
to justify Professor Peet’s statement, “it may reasonably be said that
we are as well acquainted with the material civilisation of this era as
with that of any other in Egyptian history, though at the same time it
has to be admitted that our knowledge of its actual history amounts to
practically nothing.”
With the pre-dynastic tombs, however, and with their comparatively
meagre provision for the dead, we have not to do at present. All that
need be said is that the pre-dynastic Egyptian buried his dead in a
shallow pit cut in the sand or the soft rock, the body being laid on
its side in a crouching posture, the knees drawn up towards the chin,
and the hands placed in a supplicating attitude before the face. Around
the dead man, who was often covered with a reed mat, were placed the
vases for food and drink, the various utensils, flint knives, ivory
tablets, and suchlike things which were held to be necessary or useful
for him in the life beyond, and above all the carved slate palette
which was used for grinding the green face-paint in which the early
Egyptian delighted, and the material for making the paint itself.
From these early tombs we have learned that the pre-dynastic Egyptian
was far from being an uncultured savage. His funerary equipment,
primitive as it is in some respects, shows us that he had already
acquired the rudiments of that art of representing human and animal
form which was to be carried to such remarkable heights in the dynastic
period; he was an accomplished potter, whose vessels, though he was as
yet ignorant of the potter’s wheel, are so perfectly moulded by hand
that the absence of the wheel is no loss, and who “belonged to one of
those rare and happy periods when the craftsman seems incapable of an
error of taste, and in consequence almost every form that leaves his
hands is a thing of beauty”; and he had an inexhaustible patience and
an amazing skill in the working of vessels of the hardest stone which
make the pre-dynastic hard stoneware the standard of quality by which
all succeeding periods are judged.
The disclosure of the tombs of the true early dynastic period, as
distinguished from the earlier tombs which we have been describing,
was to come from the Holy City of ancient Egypt--Abydos. The reason
for the fact that the royal tombs of this period are to be found in
the neighbourhood of a town which was never the capital of the land,
and not at such important cities as Memphis or Thebes, is, of course,
that Abydos had a sanctity to which no other place in Egypt could lay
claim, as the burial-place of the head of the God of the Resurrection,
Osiris, after his slaughter and dismemberment by Set. Osiris was
not the original god of the dead at Abydos, for there existed, long
before his supremacy, the worship of a local god Khenti--“The First
of the Westerners,” whose place Osiris usurped, or rather with whom
he was identified. But from a very early date Osiris was supreme at
Abydos. Every devout Egyptian desired to be buried, if possible, at
Abydos, and as close as might be to the burial-place of the God of the
Resurrection; if actual burial was impossible, as in the vast majority
of cases, the next best thing was to be allowed to set up a memorial
slab in the neighbourhood, or to make a pilgrimage, even after death,
to the Holy City, before being laid in the less holy ground elsewhere;
while if none of these expedients was feasible, at least one could
send a little votive vase of common pottery, and have it laid near
to the sacred site. Accordingly the Necropolis at Abydos is full of
memorials of all periods of Egyptian history, and in particular the
ground is so crowded with broken pottery of all ages and types that the
Arabs call the place “Umm el-Ga’ab,” “The Mother of Pots.”
It was on this site that M. Amélineau began his excavations in 1895,
continuing them till the spring of 1898. He discovered several large
chamber tombs, which contained many articles of exquisite workmanship,
vases, and plaques in fine stone and in pottery, ebony and ivory
tablets, bearing inscriptions in archaic hieroglyphics, and evidence
that the tombs had belonged to kings of Egypt earlier in date than the
period of the Pyramid-builders. In particular he found the tomb of a
king whose name he read as Khent, and whom he identified with Osiris
himself, as one of the titles of the god is “Khent-Amenti.” In January,
1898, he found in this tomb part of a skull which he conjectured to
be the skull of the god, and on the same day his workmen unearthed a
granite bier of familiar Egyptian shape to which he gave the name of
“The Bed of Osiris.”
Had these attributions been established M. Amélineau’s discoveries,
important enough in themselves, would have been absolutely unique in
character. But the somewhat acrimonious discussion which followed the
announcement of the finds, established the fact that though he had
discovered the tomb of one of the earliest kings of Egypt it was the
tomb of a man, and not of a god. The Bed of Osiris proved to be a New
Empire copy of some more ancient bier placed there by Egyptians who
had made the same mistake as the modern explorer, and imagined that
they were restoring the actual tomb of the god of the Underworld. The
great discovery thus failed to produce the effect which its importance
deserved, and rather cast ridicule upon the possibility of retrieving
for serious history the period of the earliest dynasties. M. Amélineau
shortly afterwards abandoned his uncompleted task, believing that the
site was completely worked out, and for a time Abydos remained without
any further attempts to unravel its mysteries.
In the winter of 1899–1900, however, Professor Flinders Petrie began
work on the abandoned site, and the results of his patient and skilful
study have been of supreme importance for the reconstruction of this
earliest period of the history of the ancient Egyptian kingdom. He
not only found in the tombs already discovered a great quantity of
valuable material, but added considerably to the number of known
tombs, and planned with the utmost care all those which came to light.
In the main, these royal tombs of the earliest dynasties proved to
conform to a single type, though the variations in size and in the
number of apartments are considerable. Generally speaking, there is a
large central chamber, dug in the soil, and sometimes approached by a
stairway. This chamber, which we may believe to have been the actual
royal sepulchre, is lined, and sometimes floored, with wood, though
in some instances the flooring is of stone, in one case of granite,
the earliest known examples of stonework. Around the central chamber
are grouped smaller cells, in which were stored the provision for the
use of the dead king in the Underworld, or where the bodies of his
favourites who were doomed to accompany him in his dark journey were
laid after they had been slain during his funeral rites.
The great tomb of King Kha-sekhem of the IInd Dynasty, 223 feet by 54
feet, is unique in the fact that its central chamber, 10 feet by 17
feet, and nearly 6 feet deep, is entirely built of stone, and is the
earliest known example of a piece of mason-work. Each tomb, when it was
completed and occupied, was roofed with wooden beams, and above it the
sand was piled in a low mound, the precursor of the great stone burial
mounds which were to appear ere long when the pride of the IVth Dynasty
monarchs was no longer content with anything less than a pyramid for
its memorial. Above the tomb a pair of grave-steles bearing the king’s
name were placed, so that the royal cemetery of Abydos must have
presented an appearance not unlike that of a modern churchyard with its
mounds and its headstones.
No royal bodies, of course, were found in these earliest tombs.
Time and the tomb-robber had done their work too well for that, and
the art of mummification was as yet unknown. At a very early date
the tombs had been rifled, and some of them burned, no doubt in the
process of disposing of the bodies after they had been plundered, as
the Ramesside robber disposed of the mummy of Sebek-em-saf. The most
unquestionably personal relic discovered was the shrivelled arm of
the queen of King Zer, which had been stolen by some robber who had
not time to carry off his plunder, and had thrust it into a hole in
the tomb wall, where it was found, with its four beautiful bracelets
still intact, by one of Petrie’s workmen. What was left in the tombs
is simply what previous robbers had not deemed worth the trouble of
carrying away. Yet these pieces of pottery, these broken bits of
ivory furniture, these ebony and ivory plaques, with their archaic
inscriptions, have proved of inestimable importance; for they have
enabled us to fashion in our minds a picture, rude enough, no doubt,
and sadly lacking in detail, but unquestionably true in its main
outline of the earliest ordered civilisation in the history of the
world.
We can see that by 3500 B.C., the very latest date to which the Ist
Dynasty can be brought down (Petrie dates it from 5500 B.C.), the
Egyptian state, under “The Scorpion,” Narmer, or Aha-men, the group of
kings who probably stand for the Menes of Manetho’s story, had long and
completely emerged from the barbarism which swathed the rest of the
world save Babylonia, and possibly Crete, and was already thoroughly
organised and master of all its own resources. War, which had produced
the union of the two sections of the land, the Delta and the Upper
Valley, was carried on, not as a matter of chance razzias, but with the
movement of great armies which could sweep a whole populace into their
net. The great mace-head of King Narmer records the capture of 120,000
men, 400,000 oxen, and 1,422,000 goats. The same king has in his train
a Leader of the Ceremonies, a title which shows that the etiquette of
the court was already thoroughly organised, and at an early date the
Commander of the Inundation shows by his presence that the Egyptian
already realised the importance of this great annual event, which,
indeed, was no doubt the compelling cause which resulted in the
extraordinarily early growth of organisation in Egypt as compared with
other lands.
[Illustration: 19. BRACELETS (Ist DYNASTY); CHAIN (VIth DYNASTY); GOLD
SEAL (VIth DYNASTY); GOLD URÆUS (XIIth DYNASTY).
(_From “Arts and Crafts of Ancient Egypt.”_)]
That the equipment of the royal household was sumptuous and tasteful,
and that the personal adornments of the glittering figures who occupied
its stage were of the richest material and of the highest artistic
quality, even the pitiful relics which have survived are sufficient
to assure us. Pharaoh’s palace was adorned with vases and bowls of
diorite, breccia, rock-crystal, and alabaster, wrought with matchless
skill, and ground to translucent thinness; his furniture was of ebony
and ivory exquisitely carved and adorned with hammered gold. Nor was
the glow of beautiful colour wanting to the picture; for the Egyptian
craftsman had already mastered that art of glazing objects with
brilliant colour which his successors practised with such satisfying
results. The ladies of the court found that the goldsmith was capable
of meeting their desire for costly and tasteful jewellery in a fashion
that has never been surpassed, and the bracelets of the Queen of Zer,
of amethyst, turquoise, lazuli, and gold, are of fine design and
astonishingly good workmanship; while the existence of a Court barber
is attested by the plait of false hair which was found in the tomb of
Zer, and was perhaps worn by the lady of the bracelets.
The art of hieroglyphic writing was already fully established,
and though the hieroglyphics are archaic in form, they are quite
intelligible. In many of the tombs are found small ivory plaques, “made
by the king’s carpenter.” These are inscribed, each with the records
of the events of a single year; so that we have evidence of a regular
system of chronicling. The British Museum possesses the lid of the
ivory box in which King Semti kept his Great Seal--“The Golden Seal
of Judgment of King Den”--so that manifestly official documents were
in existence, and had to be authenticated by the royal seal. Of art,
nothing on a large scale has survived; but the artist who carved the
little ivory statuette of a king (perhaps Semti) wearing the White
Crown, and clothed in a long parti-coloured robe, was already, within
his limits, a master; and Professor Petrie says of the statuette of
Kha-sekhem of the IInd Dynasty, found at Hierakonpolis, “the art of
these figures shows a complete mastery of sculpture, the face being
more delicately modelled than almost any later work.” Altogether we
must conceive of the Court of the earliest Dynastic Kings of Egypt as
being organised on a high plane of luxury, and indeed of comparative
refinement. There is little that can be called barbaric, save the
possible survival of the custom of slaying the king’s favourites to
accompany him in his journey through the Underworld.
The results of this exploration of the resting-places of the first
buried royalties of Egypt may not in themselves be imposing, when
compared with the bewildering wealth of some of the later royal
interments; but their importance is not to be measured by mere quantity
or richness in the precious metals, but by the fact that they have
given to us a revelation of a whole period of human activity which was
previously hidden beneath the mists of antiquity. Viewed in this light
it becomes apparent that these poor fragments from the tombs of Abydos
have a value far exceeding that of many much more gorgeous finds,
and scarcely surpassed by the discoveries of any period. They stand,
in this respect, on the same level with the revelation of the Minoan
civilisation at Knossos, or that of the city-states of Sumer at Lagash.
The search for the buried royalties of Egypt next brings us into touch
with the great age of the Pyramid-builders, beginning with Zeser and
Seneferu, and extending, with gradually diminishing splendour, down
to the last relics of the XIIth Dynasty--a period which has already
been dealt with in detail. It is followed by the dark period which
witnessed the incursion and supremacy of the Hyksos kings, and the War
of Independence--a troubled period from which few relics have survived,
though the account of the robbery of the tomb of King Sebek-em-saf of
the XIIIth Dynasty, with which our chapter began, shows that the kings
of even these dark days were laid to rest with at least something of
the ancient splendour of Egyptian royalty.
When we resume our story, we find that two great changes have taken
place, one in the course of the national history, the other in the
burial customs with which we have to deal. The centre of gravity of the
Empire has shifted from the area south of the Delta, embracing Saqqara,
Memphis, and the Fayum, to the great city from which the Theban princes
had been directing the struggle against the Hyksos; and henceforward,
throughout all the most brilliant period of Egyptian history, Thebes
remains almost exclusively the royal abode, and, particularly for our
purpose, the place where the great monarchs of the New Empire were
buried in the midst of all their magnificence.
Along with this political change has gone another, which has completely
revolutionised the funerary customs consecrated by so long usage. The
resting-place of a Pharaoh is no longer marked by a “star-y-pointing
Pyramid,” with its temple and causeway. The tombs of the great nobles
of the Middle Kingdom at Beni Hasan and elsewhere had already been
indicating a change in the funerary ideal, and the temple of Mentuhotep
at Der el-Bahri, with its combination of pyramid and rock-hewn shrine,
may perhaps be looked upon as the compromise between the old ideal and
the new. Henceforward the actual tomb and the funerary temple were to
be separated by the necessities of the locality in which the first was
situated. The Temple was to stand by itself, free in the open plain
on the western bank of the Nile; the Tomb was to be hidden from human
knowledge, so far as possible, in a wild and desolate valley of the
Libyan hills behind the plain and its girdling cliffs.
[Illustration: 20. ENTRANCE TO THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS, THEBES.]
On the western bank of the Nile, opposite Thebes, there lies a great
bay of the Libyan cliffs, extending for more than two miles from the
ruined palace of Amenhotep III and the temple of Ramses III at Medinet
Habu on the south, to Drah Abu’l Neggah and the temple of Sety I at
Qurneh on the north. From cape to cape of the bay there stretches, like
the string of a bow, a row of ruined funerary temples, built by most
of the notable Theban Pharaohs. Beyond the line of the string towards
the Nile, the two Memnon colossi still keep watch and ward--all that
remains of the most gorgeous of all the western temples, reared by
the most gorgeous of Theban Pharaohs--Amenhotep III; while between
the string and the bow, and clinging close to the curving cliffs, lie
the temples of Der el-Medinet and Der el-Bahri. Beyond the northern
nock of the bow at Drah Abu’l Neggah, a rugged winding path leads
north-westwards into the heart of the hills for about a mile, then
turning sharply westwards, it reveals a forked valley, one branch of
which is known as the West Valley, and the other and more important as
the East Valley. Together these two ravines make up the Biban el-Moluk,
or Valley of the Kings, the most famous place of royal sepulture
in the world, where for a thousand years the kings of the earliest of
world-empires were laid “all of them in glory, everyone in his own
house.”
They chose for their resting-place one of the wildest and most barren
scenes which it is possible to imagine, a sun-scorched wilderness of
rock and tumbled stone, where the heat, reverberated from rock to rock
under a sky of brass, is like that of Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace. But
it was not beauty or richness that they were seeking when they came
to the Valley of the Kings; it was the security which not even the
Great Pyramid had been able to give to the mighty dead. The loneliness
and desolation of the place were the very things which prompted its
selection; for they sought--how vainly the future was to show--a place
where human foot had never trod, and where they might expect that their
long sleep would be unbroken by any intruder. The sacrilegious attempts
of the type of robber who had scattered to the winds the dust of Khufu
they foresaw, and tried, though with only imperfect success, to guard
against; what they could not foresee was the advent of the scientific
excavator, with a patience which rivals and a skill which far surpasses
that of the native plunderer, whose work has put the crown on the
lengthy demonstration of the futility of all their pathetic efforts at
security.
The type of tomb which is characteristic of the Valley of the Kings
is simple enough in its general idea, though its development is
sometimes complex enough. An entrance gallery is driven into the rock
sloping downwards, the passage-way being sometimes an inclined plane,
sometimes a stairway. This corridor is sometimes interrupted by a deep
pit, possibly meant to catch any water which might flow in through
the doorway, but more probably to render the task of the robber more
difficult. Beyond the pit, the passage is continued, and gives access
to chambers and halls varying in number and size, until at last the
sarcophagus chamber is reached. Of this general type there are all
varieties, from the simplicity of such a tomb as that of Tutankhamen,
with its short entrance passage, and its scanty provision of poorly
decorated rooms, to the complexity of the tombs of Ramses III or Sety
I, with their hundreds of feet of corridor and chamber, brilliantly
decorated with the finest art which their time could produce.
The decoration of the royal tombs, though often of high quality
artistically, is generally of a sombre and gloomy character, differing
in this from the brilliant pictures of life which are characteristic
of the Old Kingdom tombs of the nobles at Saqqara, or even from some
of the private tombs, such as those of Nekht and Rekhmara at Thebes.
Generally speaking, the leading conception is that the dead king,
accompanied by the sun-god or identified with him, sails in the bark of
Ra through the Underworld, bringing light as he passes. On his voyage
he is accompanied by all manner of spirits and genii, which ward off
the enemies of the soul from the divine boat. The subjects of the
illustrations are largely derived from two books of funerary ritual,
_The Book of Him Who is in the Duat_ (Underworld), and _The Book of the
Gates_, while portions of the _Book of the Dead_ are also illustrated.
These wonderful tombs have always been more or less known in historic
times. Strabo mentions that there were in his time forty tombs worthy
of a visit, and we may be sure that the bulk of these had already been
long rifled, or at least cleared of their contents to avoid the danger
of desecration, before the Egyptian Empire ended its long course. The
centuries between the visit of the old geographer and that of the
scholars of the French Expedition had brought oblivion to the majority
of the tombs, for the French explorers mention only eleven, the others
having meanwhile got covered up and forgotten.
It is with the coming of Belzoni on his second journey in 1817 that
the modern search for buried Pharaohs may be said to begin, and since
his discovery of the tomb of Sety I, the work of finding Pharaohs has
gone on for more than a century with more or less success, until at
the present time something like sixty tombs have been found, including
a few which are not royal, and some which are merely pits. The
probability is that few tombs remain to be discovered in the Valley,
for most of the great royalties of the Empire have now been accounted
for in one way or another.
One chance of some importance, however, remains. The last king whom we
know to have been buried in the Valley of the Kings is Ramses XII of
the XXth Dynasty. In the great _cache_ at Der el-Bahri, which will
fall to be spoken of shortly, several of the mummies of kings of the
XXIst Dynasty were found, along with those of the earlier and more
famous lines; but the actual tombs of the XXIst Dynasty have never yet
come to light, and it is possible that some fortunate explorer may yet
fall, in one of the desolate valleys among the Libyan hills, on the
necropolis of a line of kings who, if they do not fill so great a place
in the history of Egypt as their predecessors of the XVIIIth and XIXth
Dynasties, were yet sufficiently important to make the discovery of
their resting-place a matter of great moment.
[Illustration: 21. TOMB OF RAMSES IX, VALLEY OF THE KINGS.]
It was on October 6 that Belzoni began those excavations in the Valley
which resulted in the discovery of what is still the finest example
of a royal tomb of the Empire. On the 9th he was fortunate enough to
discover two tombs of considerable importance, one of them beautifully
painted, the other undecorated, but containing some funerary furniture
and two female mummies. “Their hair,” says Belzoni, whose summary
method of dealing with mummies we have already noticed, “was pretty
long, and well-preserved, though it was easily separated from the head
by pulling it a little”! On the 11th, this amazingly fortunate man, who
knew so little the greatness of his good fortune, entered another tomb,
evidently one of still greater importance, which, with its contents,
is dismissed in half a page of his story. “We found a sarcophagus of
granite, with two mummies in it, and in a corner a statue standing
erect, 6 feet 6 inches high, and beautifully cut out of sycamore
wood; it is nearly perfect except the nose. We found also a number of
little images of wood, well carved, representing symbolical figures.
Some had a lion’s head, others a fox’s, others a monkey’s.... In the
chamber on our right hand we found another statue like the first, but
not perfect.” Thus summarily Belzoni dismisses a discovery which would
make most present-day explorers green with envy. What became of the two
mummies, the two funerary statues, and the ushabtis, we are not told,
but can easily imagine.
These, however, were only the preliminaries of the great find which
was awaiting the lucky excavator. On October 16 he started operations
at a point about 15 yards from the tomb already mentioned (which would
seem, therefore, to have been that of Ramses I), and in a spot which
seemed to his workmen most unlikely to yield anything. On the 17th they
struck the first indications of a cutting, and on the next day the
entrance of a tomb was laid bare. Before the close of the day Belzoni
had penetrated into the tomb as far as the antechamber to the first of
its pillared halls, where his progress was interrupted for the time by
a pit 30 feet deep, which had to be bridged before he could advance
further. Crossing it on the next day, he gained access to the rest
of the tomb, and the next three weeks he spent as a man in a dream
wandering through the chambers of the great tomb, and recording to the
best of his ability the wonders which he had been the first to see
for nearly three thousand years. His attempts at representation of
what he saw were imperfect enough, and his nomenclature of the various
chambers is merely paltry. Titles like “The Drawing-room,” “The Room of
Beauties,” “The Side-board Room,” seem ludicrously out of place amidst
the sombre dignity of Sety’s sepulchre. Still Belzoni cannot be denied
the merits of patience and perseverance, and it was no careless worker
who spent a whole twelve-month in the stifling atmosphere of a tomb in
the Valley of the Kings taking impressions in wax of all the figures on
a tomb which measures 328 feet from end to end.
Belzoni attributed the tomb to Necho and Psamtek II of the XXVIth
Dynasty, finding evidence to his satisfaction of the attribution
in a procession on the walls, in which he saw Persians, Jews, and
Ethiopians, all of whom, according to him, “Nichao and Psammethis”
had conquered. He was thus a matter of seven hundred years out in his
dating of his discovery, for the tomb is that of Sety I of the XIXth
Dynasty, and a monument of the art of the New Empire just at that point
when it had passed its zenith, and was trembling on the verge of the
decadence, though still capable of the wonders of Abydos, which are
rivalled by some of the work here. Sety himself, of course, he did not
find in the magnificent alabaster sarcophagus which stood in one of the
pillared halls of the tomb. Luckily, when we think of how the explorer
would probably have treated him, that honourable king and valiant
soldier had long centuries before been removed from his splendid
underground palace to the obscurer but safer hiding-place where he was
discovered in our own time, and treated with a little more reverence
than he would have received from Belzoni; but his sarcophagus was in
itself a prize more than sufficient to reward the excavator for all the
labour he had spent.
“It is a sarcophagus,” says the lucky discoverer, “of the finest
Oriental alabaster, 9 feet 5 inches long, and 3 feet 7 inches wide.
Its thickness is only 2 inches; and it is transparent, when a light
is placed in the inside of it. It is minutely sculptured within and
without with several hundred figures, which do not exceed 2 inches
in height.... I cannot give an idea of this beautiful and invaluable
piece of antiquity, and can only say that nothing has been brought into
Europe from Egypt that can be compared with it.” He was not far wrong
in his enthusiastic estimate of the artistic value of his find, as
anyone who has seen the exquisite piece of carving in the Soane Museum
will admit.
The fame of Belzoni’s discovery was not long in reaching the ears of
the Turkish officials, and ere long the chief local authority, Hamed
Aga of Keneh, appeared upon the scene with a troop of cavalry, having
been so eager over the find that he had made the journey in thirty-six
hours instead of forty-eight. It was no love for antiquity, however,
which had brought him. All the artistic wonders of the tomb were lost
on him and his following; but they ransacked every corner of the tomb
with great eagerness. After a long search the Aga dismissed his
soldiers, and turning to Belzoni, he revealed the true object of his
anxiety. “Pray, where have you put the treasure?” he said. Belzoni’s
denial of the existence of any such thing was met with an incredulous
smile. “I have been told,” said this characteristic specimen of
Turkish officialdom, “by a person to whom I can give credit, that you
have found in this place a large golden cock filled with diamonds and
pearls. I must see it. Where is it?” The explorer at length succeeded
in convincing the Aga that there was nothing to lay hands on, and with
supreme disgust he rose to leave the tomb. Belzoni asked him what he
thought of the beautiful figures which surrounded him. “He just gave
a glance at them, quite unconcerned, and said, ‘This would be a good
place for a harem, as the women would have something to look at.’”
Thirty years later, Layard’s experience of the Turkish official was
almost identical with that of Belzoni.
Forty-two years elapsed before anything of importance was added to
our knowledge of the buried royalties of Egypt. It was in 1859 the
beautiful jewellery of Queen Aah-hotep was rescued by Mariette from
the hands of the worthy successor of Hamed Aga, as has already been
told. But it was not till 1881 that there occurred the first of those
amazing resurrections of the Theban Pharaohs which since then have been
repeated on several occasions, culminating with the discovery of the
most splendid of all royal burials in the tomb of Tutankhamen.
The story of the 1881 find is one of the romances of excavation,
though the credit of it, if there is any, goes, not to the scientific
explorer, but to the native practitioner of the gentle art of
tomb-robbery. It was in 1876 that evidence began to accumulate, in the
shape of various papyri and other articles of XXIst Dynasty date which
appeared mysteriously on the market, that the fellahs of Sheikh Abd
el-Qurneh had somehow or other gained access to some royal tomb of that
period. The Service of Antiquities took the matter up, and suspicion
fell on the members of a family named Abd-er-Rassoul. In April, 1881,
Maspero arrested with his own hand Ahmed, one of the members of the
family, and committed him to the tender mercies of Daoud Pasha, the
third Mudir of Keneh who has appeared in this chapter, but who, unlike
his predecessors, comes in on this occasion on the side of the angels,
so to speak. Justice, in the Egypt of the eighties, had ways and
means of arriving at its ends which seem strange to mere Occidentals,
and Maspero covers a good deal in his simple statement that Daoud
Pasha carried on the investigation “with his habitual severity.” The
Ramesside inspectors, in 1100 B.C., put things more bluntly--“They
were beaten with sticks both on their hands and feet”--but probably
the facts were not very different in the modern trial. The only result
was to produce a flood of testimony that Ahmed Abd-er-Rassoul “never
had excavated, and never would excavate, that he was incapable of
misappropriating the tiniest antiquity, to say nothing of violating a
royal tomb,” and the spotless victim of oppression had to be liberated
“provisionally.” “The vigour with which the inquiry had been conducted
by Daoud Pasha” had, however, impressed the mind of one of the
Abd-er-Rassoul family with the conviction that there are cases where
honesty, or the best possible imitation of it, is the best policy.
Mohammed Ahmed Abd-er-Rassoul came secretly to the Mudir, made a clean
breast, or at least a breast as clean as was convenient, to that
Rhadamanthus, and on July 5, 1881, Emile Brugsch Bey, representing the
Service of Antiquities, at last found the truth about the business, as
usual, at the bottom of a well.
He was led by the penitent sinner Mohammed to a lonely spot at the foot
of the Libyan cliffs, not far from Hatshepsut’s famous temple at Der
el-Bahri. There, after a long climb up the hillside, and the scaling of
a high cliff, he found behind a great rock the mouth of a black shaft
about 6 feet square, the well of the unfinished tomb of Queen Astemkheb
of the XXIst Dynasty; and the story of his experiences may best be told
by himself.
“Finding Pharaoh was an exciting experience for me. It is true I was
armed to the teeth, and my faithful rifle, full of shells, hung over
my shoulder; but my assistant from Cairo, Ahmed Effendi Kemal, was the
only person with me whom I could trust. Any one of the natives would
have killed me willingly, had we been alone, for everyone of them knew
better than I did that I was about to deprive them of a great source
of revenue. But I exposed no sign of fear, and proceeded with the work.
The well cleared out, I descended, and began the exploration of the
underground passage.”
There are many types of courage; but surely not the least remarkable
is that of the man of science who allows himself to be lowered on an
Arab rope, down a 40-feet shaft, to explore a dark gallery of the dead,
while the rope which is his only link with life and light is held above
by a man who would cheerfully have left him to keep unending vigil
beside the Pharaohs whom he was seeking.
Mohammed’s penitence, however, or perhaps we had better say, his
respect for Daoud Pasha’s “habitual severity,” kept him true, and
Brugsch had no other terrors to face than those of his strange task.
“Soon,” he says, “we came upon cases of porcelain funeral offerings,
metal and alabaster vessels, draperies and trinkets, until, reaching
the turn in the passage, a cluster of mummy-cases came to view in
such number as to stagger me. Collecting my senses, I made the best
examination of them I could by the light of my torch, and at once saw
that they contained the mummies of royal personages of both sexes; and
yet that was not all. Plunging on ahead of my guide, I came to the
chamber, and there, standing against the walls, or lying on the floor,
I found even a greater number of mummy-cases of stupendous size and
weight. Their gold coverings and their polished surfaces so plainly
reflected my own excited visage that it seemed as though I was looking
into the faces of my own ancestors. The gilt face on the coffin
of the amiable Queen Nefertari seemed to smile upon me like an old
acquaintance.” “The fellahs,” says Maspero, “had unearthed a catacomb
crammed with Pharaohs.” Among the mummies were those of several of the
most famous Pharaohs of the New Empire, Seqenen-Ra, the hero of the
War of Independence, Amenhotep I, and Queen Aahmes Nefertari, Thothmes
II, and Thothmes III, the greatest soldier of Egyptian history, Sety
I, Ramses II, and Ramses III, the most famous kings of the XIXth and
XXth Dynasties, Pinezem I and Pinezem II of the XXIst Dynasty, Queen
Hent-taui, Queen Nezem-Mut, and others.
The question of the removal to a place of security of this astonishing
mass of dead royalty presented its own difficulties. The removal had
to be as speedy as possible, for now that the secret was out every
hour would add to the danger of a violent attack on the shaft, and
the dispersal for ever of its previous treasures. Yet the problem of
removal was no easy one. The spot where the shaft lies is lonely and
difficult of access; and the coffins of some of the kings and queens
were of huge size and corresponding weight. That of Queen Aahmes
Nefertari, for instance, is 10 feet long, and required sixteen men to
lift it.
“Early the next morning,” says Brugsch, “three hundred Arabs were
employed under my direction--each one a thief. One by one the coffins
were hoisted to the surface, were securely sewed up in sailcloth and
matting, and then were carried across the plain of Thebes to the
steamers awaiting them at Luxor.”
It took six days of hard labour, under the blazing sun of an Egyptian
July, before the tomb was cleared; and then three days more were spent
in waiting for the Museum steamboat to arrive. Brugsch must have
been an anxious man as he watched the efforts of the three hundred
professional tomb-robbers from whose hands he was snatching what they
regarded as their legitimate prey; and no doubt he heaved a sigh of
genuine relief when, on July 20, he handed over his precious freight to
the Museum at Boulak, and was delivered from the burden of royalty. Sir
Gaston Maspero has told us how all along the Nile, from Luxor to Quft,
both banks of the river were covered with frantic crowds of fellahs,
the women tearing their hair and wailing, the men firing rifles, as
they followed the downstream progress of the steamer bearing the
mummies. So, no doubt, only without the rifles and the steam, their
ancestors had followed the funeral barks which bore across the river
the dead bodies of these mighty kings three thousand years before!
The very richness of the find proved somewhat of an embarrassment to
the authorities at the Cairo Museum, and it was several years before
the results of Brugsch’s great haul of Pharaohs were properly sorted
out and classified. It was not till May, 1886, that the unwrapping of
the mummies began, and the task was only completed in the end of June.
The figure of supreme interest was that of Ramses II, who was then
believed to be the Pharaoh of the Oppression of the Israelites, and who
was then taken more at the estimate of his own overweening vanity than
he is at present. The mummy of the great king was solemnly unwrapped in
the presence of an illustrious gathering, the Khedive of Egypt himself
verifying the existence of the later inscription of the priests of the
XXIst Dynasty on the wrappings around the body, before the process of
unwrapping began. The state of the mummy agreed with the historical
evidence as to the length of the reign of Ramses. The king must have
been nearly one hundred years old when he died, and his body bears the
marks of extreme old age.
“The mummy,” says Maspero, “is thin, much shrunken, and light; the
bones are brittle, and the muscles atrophied, as one would expect in
the case of a man who had attained the age of a hundred; but the figure
is still tall and of perfect proportions. The mask of the mummy gives
a fair idea of that of the living king; the somewhat unintelligent
expression, slightly brutish perhaps, but haughty and firm of purpose,
displays itself with an air of royal majesty beneath the sombre
materials used by the embalmer.”
The hero of the battle of Kadesh must in his prime have been a man of
large and powerful frame. “Even after the coalescence of the vertebræ
and the shrinkage produced by mummification, his mummy still measures
over 5 feet 8 inches”; so that we may picture him as a formidable
figure over 6 feet in height, perhaps nearer 7 feet with the high war
helmet of the Pharaohs crowning his head, as he charged with arrow
drawn to the head, in his rattling war-chariot upon the Hittite ranks.
His conduct at Kadesh suggests a good trooper, but a dull general, and
his mummy does nothing to cause a revision of the judgment.
An infinitely nobler figure was that of the father of Ramses, Sety I,
whose mummy was also found in the _cache_. “The fine kingly head was
exposed to view,” says Maspero. “It was a masterpiece of the art of
the embalmer, and the expression of the face was that of one who had
only a few hours previously breathed his last. Death had slightly drawn
the nostrils and contracted the lips, the pressure of the bandages had
flattened the nose a little, and the skin was darkened by the pitch;
but a calm and gentle smile still played over the mouth, and the
half-open eyelids allowed a glimpse to be seen from under their lashes
of an apparently moist and glistening line, the reflection from the
white porcelain eyes let in to the orbit at the time of burial.” The
somewhat gruesome art of the Egyptian embalmer reached its culmination
in this extraordinary piece of work, and while to our minds the whole
practice verges upon, if it does not overstep, the limits of the decent
into the realm of the horrible, we may admit that it comes as near as
possible to the attainment of what Professor Elliot Smith tells us was
the aim of the embalmer--“to make the representation of the dead man
so life-like that he should, in fact, remain alive.” We should never
have known how noble and dignified a type the aristocratic Egyptian
of 1300 B.C. had attained had it not been for the preservation of the
grand head of Sety, which teaches us that the sculptor of the exquisite
reliefs of Abydos was doing no more than bare justice to his king when
he carved the delicate beauty which charms us to-day.
If the beauty of Sety’s face almost justified both the morbid skill
which sought to deny the reality of death and the curiosity which
unveiled the secrets of the grave, the same cannot be said of the
mummy of Seqenen-Ra, not the least interesting of the grim assemblage.
There are few things more ghastly than the head of the old hero of the
Expulsion of the Hyksos, with three gaping wounds on skull and face,
and the teeth clenched, in the death-agony, upon the mangled tongue.
Yet even this grim evidence of a violent death on the field of battle
seems to bring the reality of that ancient struggle in which the
Pharaoh died more forcibly home to the imagination.
A still more horrible figure of nightmare was that of the unnamed
person whose contorted limbs and writhen countenance suggested to
Maspero the most ghastly of all suspicions as to how he met his end.
“It makes one’s flesh creep to look at it,” says Maspero, speaking
of this mummy; “the hands and feet are tied by strong bands, and are
curled up as if under an intolerable pain; the abdomen is drawn up,
the stomach projects like a ball, the chest is contracted, the head is
thrown back, the face is contorted in a hideous grimace, the retracted
lips expose the teeth, and the mouth is open as if to give utterance
to a last despairing cry. The conviction is borne in upon us that the
man was invested while still alive with the wrappings of the dead.”
Others have suggested a less horrible interpretation of the condition
of the figure. In the report of the trial which took place in the
reign of Ramses III of individuals accused of a conspiracy against
the life of the king it is significantly said of some of those whose
guilt was established, “They died of themselves,” and the suggestion
has been made that this figure, whose contortions might well be due to
the action of an irritant poison, is that of one of these involuntary
suicides. In either case, the thing is sufficiently horrible, and
hints, not obscurely, at that darker aspect of Oriental Court life
which lay beneath all the glitter and splendour of the Theban palace.
The find of Der el-Bahri was followed, in 1894–5, by the discoveries of
M. de Morgan at Dahshur, which have given us the exquisite jewellery of
the XIIth and XIIIth Dynasty already alluded to in our chapter on the
Pyramids. And then, in 1898, M. Loret discovered in the Valley of the
Kings the tomb of Amenhotep II, son of the great conqueror Thothmes III.
Until the great discovery of last year threw all others into the shade,
this discovery of M. Loret was unique, for the mummy of Amenhotep
was found still resting in its coffin under the gold-starred and
blue-painted roof of the funerary chamber--the first Pharaoh who had
ever been found sleeping in the tomb where he was laid. His own records
tell us of his prowess. “He is a king very weighty of arm,” so the
inscription of the Amada and Elephantine steles runs; “there is not one
who can draw his bow among his army, among the hill-country sheikhs, or
among the princes of Retenu, because his strength is so much greater
than that of any king who has ever existed.” In later days this boast
of the old Pharaoh got twisted into the curious legend which Herodotus
records of the king of Ethiopia who challenged Cambyses to draw his
bow. The redoubtable weapon itself, strange to say, was found in the
tomb along with its owner. It bore the inscription: “Smiter of the
Cave-dwellers, overthrower of Kush, hacking up their cities ... the
great wall of Egypt, protector of his soldiers.” Amenhotep was still
wrapped in his shroud and adorned with garlands; but the tomb had been
ruthlessly plundered in ancient days, and little of artistic value
was found. One of the side-chambers of the tomb, however, yielded a
store of Pharaohs, only second in importance to the great find of Der
el-Bahri. Here were gathered nine royal mummies, among them those of
Thothmes IV, Amenhotep III, Siptah, Ramses IV, Ramses V, and Ramses
VI. Most interesting of all, in view of the idea then prevalent of the
date of the Exodus, was the discovery, along with these, of the mummy
of Merenptah, who was held to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus. The absence
of Merenptah from the royal gathering at Der el-Bahri was explained by
interested but casual readers of Scripture by the fact that of course
he was drowned in the Red Sea. The narrative of Exodus, of course,
makes no such statement, and Merenptah duly appeared, though the
interest attaching to him has somewhat waned with the progress of the
view that the Exodus took place two hundred years before his reign.
The fate of the tomb of Amenhotep is suggestive of the difficulties
which meet the explorer in his attempt to preserve for science and to
treat with proper reverence the relics of the past which he unearths.
The great king was left in his coffin, with a few articles of his
funerary furniture beside him. The result was that in spite of the
armed guard which is maintained in the Valley of the Kings, or perhaps
with the complicity of the guard, the tomb was rifled in 1901, the
mummy of the Pharaoh tumbled out on the floor, and the model boat which
had been left beside the king stolen.
With the suggestion that Tutankhamen should be allowed to rest in the
midst of the splendours which accompanied him to the grave, everyone
must sympathise; the question is, will he be allowed to rest in peace,
no matter what the precautions which may be taken, in the midst of a
people with whom tomb-robbery is a profession of six thousand years
standing, and who know the matchless value of the treasure which lies
within their reach? Whatever the decision, it may be hoped that if the
mummy of the last king in the direct line of the great XVIIIth Dynasty
be found beneath his gorgeous canopy it will not be made the subject of
a vulgar show, as is done with that of Amenhotep II.
In 1902 the work of excavation in the Valley of the Kings was
undertaken by an American, Mr. Theodore M. Davis, or rather the funds
for the work were provided by Mr. Davis, while the actual work of
excavation was carried on by officials of the Service of Antiquities,
first Mr. Howard Carter, then Mr. Weigall, and Mr. Ayrton. In 1903 Mr.
Carter found the tomb of Thothmes IV, son of Amenhotep II, and father
of Amenhotep III. His mummy had already been found in the tomb of his
father, but many articles of funerary furniture, mostly broken, were
found, including the embossed leather front of a state chariot, with
decoration in gesso. Between 1902 and 1912, the work financed by Mr.
Davis was crowned with the most astonishing success. In these years
were found the tombs of Queen Hatshepsut, King Siptah, Akhenaten (or
rather the tomb of Queen Tiy, with the mummy of Akhenaten), Horemheb,
Prince Mentuherkhepshef, and, above all, the tomb which, though its
occupants were not of royal rank, proved yet the richest and the most
interesting which was ever discovered, till it was outclassed by that
of Tutankhamen--the tomb of Yuaa and Tuau.
It was in February, 1905, that the workmen of Mr. Davis struck
the first indication of the tomb in the shape of a well-cut stone
step, which promised to prove the first of a flight descending to a
tomb-passage. By February 12 the door was cleared, and the next day Mr.
Davis, with the late Sir Gaston Maspero and Mr. Weigall, penetrated
with some difficulty into the tomb-chamber, and the little party found
themselves in the presence, not only of two of the most interesting
personalities of Egyptian history, but also of the most wonderful
collection of funerary furniture which, up to that time, had ever
rewarded the explorer. Their delight was very nearly turned to tragedy
before they had begun to realise the importance of their find. In his
eagerness to inspect the funeral sledge, on which Maspero had just read
the famous name of Yuaa, Mr. Davis stooped with his candle close to the
bitumen-covered woodwork, and was pulled back just in time. One touch
of the flame on the pitch, and the corridors of the tomb would have
been a roaring tunnel of flame, in which Yuaa, his funerary equipment,
and his discoverers would probably all have perished together.
The danger once realised, candles were discarded, and electric light
led into the tomb. And then the explorers began to realise the full
wonder of their discovery. The tomb was full of furniture of the finest
and most careful workmanship. Armchairs carved and inlaid, coffers
of wood inlaid and enamelled with that wonderful blue of which the
Egyptians had the secret, boxes of painted wood, with figures in gilt
gesso, designed to hold the canopic jars which contain the viscera of
the dead, ushabti figures, some of them plated with gold or silver,
wicker-work baskets for holding perfume bottles, couches of elegant
design, a perfectly preserved specimen of the type of light chariot in
which the Theban noble of the Empire took his airing, cushions stuffed
with down, still soft and resilient after three millenniums, costly
alabaster vases, toilet articles of all sorts, and a plentiful supply
of the mummified meats which the dead might require for their journey
through the Underworld; the chamber was a storehouse of all that the
Egyptian deemed desirable for his use in this life or the next. Nor
were the needs of the spirit neglected. There stood the magical figures
by whose help the occupants of the tomb were to make their way through
the dark paths of the Duat, inscribed with the “Chapter of the Flame,”
or the “Chapter of the Magical Figure of the North Wall”; while a great
roll of papyrus 22 yards long contained other prayers which would
assist the sleepers to conquer all the dangers of their long road.
Never had such an assemblage of beautiful and curious things rewarded
the seeker even in this land of beautiful and curious things.
Fascinating as the treasures of the tomb were, however, the main
interest was not in them, but in the two gilded coffins in which the
owners of all this wealth lay quietly sleeping their long sleep. “First
above Yuaa and then above his wife the electric lamps were held, and
as one looked down into their quiet faces there was almost the feeling
that they would presently open their eyes and blink at the light. The
stern features of the old man commanded one’s attention, and again and
again our gaze was turned from this mass of wealth to this sleeping
figure in whose honour it had been placed there.” For these two silent
tenants of the tomb were the man and woman to whose influence, in all
probability, was due not a little of that great religious revolution
which in a few years altered the whole course of Egyptian history,
and swayed the balance of the destinies of the Ancient East. Prince
Yuaa and his wife Tuau were the father and mother of that famous Queen
Tiy, whose sway over the mind of her husband Amenhotep III prepared
the way for the supremacy of that new spiritual faith of which her
son, the ill-fated Akhenaten, was in the fulness of time to be the
exponent and champion, and whose failure broke his heart in the midst
of the downfall of the empire to which he had vainly attempted to teach
the creed of the Brotherhood of Man. To few people has it been given
to exercise so great an influence upon the course of history as to
these two quiet figures whose rest was broken after 3300 years by the
representatives of three nations whose ancestors were outer barbarians
when Prince Yuaa and his wife were foremost figures in the most
glittering court of the Ancient East.
Two years later, the work of Mr. Davis resulted in another discovery,
less important from the point of view of the wealth of funerary
furniture involved, for in this case there was little found, but even
more interesting in view of the personality whose mummy occupied the
tomb. The site of the new find was at the corner of the ravine leading
to the well-known tomb of Sety I, and was covered with gravel and loose
stones. “After some days of hard work, the regular rectangle of a pit
appeared upon the soil, then two or three steps appeared, followed by
a staircase open to the sky, a door, a narrow passage, and a wall of
rock-work and beaten earth. The seals affixed by the guardians, more
than thirty centuries before, were still intact on the lime-wash.”
Breaking them on January 6, 1907, Mr. Davis and Mr. Weigall penetrated
into a narrow passage, which was almost blocked by two panels of
gilded wood, which had once formed part of a funeral canopy, like that
of Tutankhamen. Wriggling past these with difficulty, they entered a
roughly hewn and quite undecorated chamber, on the floor of which lay
a few earthen pots, some alabaster ornaments, and a number of amulets.
But the sight which arrested the eye was that of the coffin, which,
at the first glance, seemed in the glare of the electric light to be
made of massy gold. “It seemed,” says Maspero, “as if all the gold
of ancient Egypt glittered and gleamed in that narrow space.” The
news of a wonderful discovery of treasure spread far and wide through
the neighbourhood, growing as it spread, till the report had reached
such fabulous proportions that it was necessary to place a guard over
the tomb to prevent an assault. Of course it was more seeming than
reality, for the gold turned out to be mere gold-foil, and the tomb
was in reality singularly poor in objects of value. The coffin had
originally been placed upon a bier of the usual form; but this had
decayed, and the heavy coffin had fallen, and its lid had come off in
the fall, exposing the head and feet of its tenant, from which the
bandages had decayed. The body was wrapped in sheets of gold-foil, and
the inscription on the coffin, worked in semi-precious stones, gave the
title of Akhenaten, “the beautiful child of the Sun.”
Such a discovery was, of course, most unexpected; for Akhenaten had
made his capital, not at Thebes, which he hated, but at Tell el-Amarna,
where he had declared his intention to be buried, and where his tomb
was known. Besides, the inscription on the funeral canopy stated that
Akhenaten had made it for his mother Queen Tiy. The explorers therefore
concluded that they had indeed discovered the tomb, part of the funeral
furniture, and the skeleton (it cannot be called a mummy) of Queen Tiy,
and in this belief they sent the broken fragments of the skeleton to
Professor Elliot Smith for examination, only to be informed by him that
what they had sent was not the body of an old woman, but of a young
man, who, if normal, which was doubtful, could not have been much older
than twenty-six when he died. There seems in fact to be little doubt
that the skeleton which was discovered in the tomb of Tiy was that of
the man whose action in one direction and inaction in another changed
the destiny of the ancient world in one of the most critical periods of
its history. Mr. Davis, strange to say, could never bear the idea that
he had found the bones of Akhenaten, though one would have thought that
the discovery of the most pathetic and interesting figure of Egyptian
history would have put the crown on the satisfaction with which he
could justly regard his work. He had set his heart on discovering Queen
Tiy, and to have even her far more famous son substituted for her was a
bitter disappointment to him.
But how came Akhenaten, the heretic king, “that criminal of
Akhetaten,”[1] as the priests of Amen always called him, to be buried,
not in his own heretic capital at Tell el-Amarna, but in orthodox
Thebes, and in his mother’s tomb? There is, of course, no certain
explanation of the facts; but from what is known of the history of
the period an explanation may at least be suggested with a reasonable
amount of confidence that it is not very far from the truth. When
Akhenaten died, his body was no doubt buried at Tell el-Amarna, as
he had decreed. When his son-in-law, Tutankhaten, and his daughter,
Ankh. s. en. pa Aten, found the pressure of circumstances too strong
for them, and were obliged to return to Thebes, to restore the old
religion, and to change their names to Tutankhamen and Ankh. s. en.
Amen, they carried with them, doubtless, the body of the reformer,
still revered and beloved, and gave it honourable burial in the tomb
of Tiy--the most fitting place, since no royal tomb could have been
prepared in Thebes. But as time went on, the reactionary priests of
Amen became more and more the dominant element in the kingdom, and
they had none of the chivalrous spirit which prompted Charles V’s “I
war not with the dead,” at the tomb of Luther. The only way in which
they could strike at the dead heretic was also, to an Egyptian mind,
the most certain and the most deadly; they could destroy his hopes of
immortality by desecrating his tomb, and blotting out his name from
it. So the body of Queen Tiy was removed from the tomb which had been
polluted by the presence of her son, his name was erased from the
inscriptions, and the entrance of the tomb was blocked with stones and
sealed with the seal of Tutankhamen. Then the body of “the world’s
first great idealist and the world’s first _individual_” was left in
solitude, and, as his enemies fondly believed, in eternal oblivion and
shame, to await its resurrection, thirty centuries later, at the hands
of a generation which has at least learned to appreciate and to honour
the ideals for which he sacrificed so much.
[1] Akhetaten, the town created by Akhenaten, the man.
The remarkable success of Mr. Davis in the search for buried royalties
was fittingly crowned a year later by the discovery of the tomb of
Horemheb, the usurping reactionary who had formerly been a general in
the service of Tutankhamen, and who seized the throne after the brief
reigns of Tutankhamen and Ay. The tomb had been plundered and wrecked,
but the beautiful red granite sarcophagus, 8 feet 11 inches in length
by 3 feet 9½ inches in width and 4 feet in depth, was intact. In it
were found the bones of one person, but in such a condition that it
was impossible to determine the sex of the person to whom they had
belonged. In 1906 Mr. Davis made another discovery, this time of
an uninscribed chamber nearly filled with mud. The presence in the
chamber and in the neighbourhood of a number of articles bearing the
names of Tutankhamen and Ankh. s. en. Amen led him to believe that
this was the tomb of Tutankhamen, and the sumptuous volume in which
he published the results of these last two discoveries was therefore
entitled “The Tombs of Harmhabi and Touatankhamanou.” Time and further
investigation have proved that in this respect he was wrong, as also in
the conviction which he expressed in the book that “the Valley of the
Kings is now exhausted.” Another discovery was due sixteen years after
his last find, which was to prove that the Valley yet held treasures
whose beauty and richness could dazzle the world, and make even those
of the tomb of Yuaa seem almost paltry by comparison. Yet the work of
Mr. Davis remains as one of the most remarkable series of successes
which has ever rewarded excavation in Egypt--a fitting prelude to the
great find of November, 1922.
CHAPTER VII
TUTANKHAMEN AND HIS SPLENDOURS
Wonderful as the results of the work of Mr. Davis and his assistants
had been, they were destined to be completely eclipsed by the most
remarkable discovery which has ever been made in all the long story
of Egyptological research. It may very well prove in the long run
that the importance of the find historically is less than that of
many less striking discoveries; but as a revelation of the sheer
wealth and artistic quality of the provision which was made three
thousand years ago for the journey through the Underworld of even a
comparatively obscure and unimportant Pharaoh, there has never been
anything to compare with the discovery the news of which was flashed
across the world on November 30, 1922. “This afternoon,” the message
ran, “Lord Carnarvon and Mr. Howard Carter revealed to a large company
what promises to be the most sensational Egyptological discovery of
the century. The find consists of, among other objects, the funeral
paraphernalia of the Egyptian King Tutankhamen, one of the famous
heretic kings of the XVIIIth Dynasty, who reverted to Amen worship.”
It is not often that newspaper reports err on the side of making too
little of their subject; but as the days and weeks passed on, and
what seemed to be an unending procession of marvels defiled from the
dark cave in the Valley of the Kings before the astonished eyes of
numberless tourists, it became manifest that the half had not been
told, and that Egyptology was faced with a wealth of material such as
had never before been dealt with, and such as will take many years
to appreciate and measure the full significance of. All that can be
attempted here is to give a summary account of the find itself, and
a brief provisional account of some of the more important of the
treasures which have so far been disclosed; for there can be no doubt
that what has been handled is but a fraction of the treasure which
still remains to be dealt with when the tomb is reopened and the actual
sarcophagus-chamber and its annexe are cleared as the outer chambers
have been.
[Illustration: 22. GRANITE HEAD OF TUTANKHAMEN, CAIRO MUSEUM.]
Some great Egyptological discoveries have been the result of a mere
happy chance, as was the case in 1887, when a fellah woman, grubbing
for phosphates among the rubbish heaps of Akhenaten’s ruined capital,
found that store of cuneiform tablets which have since become
world-famous as “The Tell el-Amarna Tablets,” and disposed of her
interest in the find to a friend for the sum of two shillings. Some,
as in the case of the Der el-Bahri _cache_, have resulted from the
watch kept on the illegitimate practitioners of research; and some,
as in the case of Belzoni’s discovery of the tomb of Sety I, have
been made with so little trouble that the wonder is that they were not
made long before. But the discovery made by Lord Carnarvon and Mr.
Howard Carter fell into none of these categories. It was the result
of long and persistent and systematic work, carried on under very
disappointing conditions, but with a clear appreciation of the object
in view. For sixteen years the two explorers had been working together
at Thebes, and already in 1912, they had published the results of their
work in _Five Years’ Exploration at Thebes_. Their work had not been
particularly fruitful, and when seven years ago they took over the
abandoned right to work in the Valley of the Kings, their first efforts
yielded no very brilliant success. “Mostly disappointments,” was Lord
Carnarvon’s summary of his previous finds. The explorers, however, were
proceeding on a plan which was bound to lead to success in the end, if
there was anything left to be found, and if their patience, or their
resources, held out long enough in the face of a continued monotony
of failure. Previous explorers, like Mr. Davis, had proceeded on the
method of _sondages_, or trial pits, sinking a pit here and another
there in spots which they judged likely. Such a method, obviously,
may lead to success very simply and easily; or, on the other hand, it
may result in your missing the very spot where the treasure lies. The
method adopted by Lord Carnarvon and Mr. Carter was much more thorough,
though also much more laborious and monotonous. They systematically
cleared the ground over a selected area down to the virgin rock. The
labour involved in such a method of work is, of course, enormous; it
is said that the two explorers moved 200,000 tons of rubbish in their
researches; but it is plain that there is no chance of missing your
object by a foot or two, as is quite possible with the other plan.
There may, of course, be nothing in your area at all; but if there is
anything, you are bound to get it.
So it proved at last in this case. On the fifth of November, Mr.
Carter, who was working on a spot which so far had been untouched
because it lay in front of the tomb of Ramses VI, which is one of the
regular electrically lighted show-tombs of the Valley, came upon a
rock-cut step, which seemed like the beginning of a flight leading to a
tomb. He cleared a few more steps, and then came to a door, or rather
to a cement-covered wall, blocking a doorway. On the cement of the wall
was visible the seal of the royal portion of the Theban necropolis,
consisting of a jackal couchant above nine captives in rows of three.
When the excavation had reached this stage, Mr. Carter cabled to Lord
Carnarvon to come out to Egypt at once, as a fine discovery had been
made, and the spot was covered up till his arrival.
The resumption of the excavation showed that in ancient days a thief
had broken into the tomb, which had been inspected and sealed by the
inspectors of Ramses IX subsequent to his entrance. On the undamaged
portion of the wall there could be seen the cartouche of the Pharaoh
Tutankhamen, son-in-law and successor to the famous Akhenaten. After
arrangements had been made for protecting the tomb and whatever
it might contain from the efforts of the modern successors of the
Ramesside thief, the entrance passage, about 8 metres long, was
cleared, and another sealed door was reached. It was uncertain whether
the explorers would find another staircase or passage behind this new
obstacle, or whether it would give access to one of the chambers of the
tomb. What followed may best be told in the words of Lord Carnarvon
himself:
“I asked Mr. Carter to take out a few stones and have a look in.
After a few minutes this was done. He pushed his head partly into
the aperture. With the help of a candle he could dimly discern what
was inside. A long silence followed, till I said, I fear in somewhat
trembling tones, ‘Well, what is it?’ ‘There are some wonderful objects
here,’ was the welcome reply. Having given up my place to my daughter,
I myself went to the hole, and I could with difficulty restrain my
excitement. At the first sight, with the inadequate light, all that one
could see was what appeared to be gold bars. On getting a little more
accustomed to the light it became apparent that there were colossal
gilt couches with extraordinary heads, boxes here and boxes there. We
enlarged the hole, and Mr. Carter managed to scramble in--the chamber
is sunk 2 feet below the bottom of the passage--and then, as he moved
around with a candle, we knew that we had found something absolutely
unique and unprecedented. Even with the poor light of the candle one
could see a marvellous collection of furniture and other objects in the
chamber. There were two life-sized statues of the king, beds, chariots,
boxes of all sizes and shapes--some with every sort of inlay, while
others were painted--walking sticks, marvellous alabaster vases, and
so on. After slightly enlarging the hole we went in, and this time we
realised in a fuller degree the extent of the discovery, for we had
managed to tap the electric light from the tomb above, which gave us
far better illumination for our examination.”
Inspection quickly proved that the first revelation was only the
beginning of marvels. Beneath one of the state couches a small opening
in the wall of the chamber showed where a second chamber opened off the
first. This room it was impossible even to enter, for it was crammed
to a height of 5 feet with articles of furniture of all descriptions,
packed close together in seemingly inextricable confusion. At the
one end of the first chamber stood two life-sized statues of the
king in bituminised wood with gold adornments, and between them was
the evidence that other chambers lay beyond; for this part of the
room had been closed with a wall on which the seals of the Ramesside
inspectors could still be seen, and in the centre of this wall, on the
floor level, there were traces of the fact that a break had once been
made in the wall, sufficiently large to admit a small man. This had
subsequently been sealed up again, probably by the inspectors of Ramses
IX.
Manifestly there was more to follow behind that sealed wall. In the
two chambers which had been seen there was no trace of any sarcophagus,
or any evidence whatever of any interment. It was obvious, therefore,
that, unless this wonderful mass of artistic craftsmanship was only
a _cache_ where robbers’ loot was gathered, or a gathering of costly
material drawn together for safety from robbers, both of which
alternatives seemed somewhat unlikely, the real tomb-chamber, with
what was in all probability the unimaginable wealth of the great nest
of coffins under its canopy, the coffers for the canopic vases, and
all the other funerary regalia of a Pharaoh of the Empire, lay beyond
the wall which closed the end of the first chamber. In that case,
the revelations which awaited the explorers might well be of a kind
which would make even the glories which had so far been disclosed
look dim and paltry. The explorers must have been sorely tempted to
pierce the wall at once, and so arrive at least at some conception of
the magnitude of their find; but prudence forbade this. The amount of
material already under their hands in the outer chambers was sufficient
to occupy all the time of the experts who had gathered to the scene
for many weeks. The fabrics concerned were all of them priceless, and
some of them were of almost inconceivable delicacy. All of them were
at least three thousand years old, and had during all that time been
shut up in the still air of a subterranean vault. Until they had been
carefully treated with preservatives, and insured, so far as possible,
from the risks of exposure to the air and the heat of the upper world,
it was impossible to do anything that would add to the task, already
one of great labour and difficulty, which lay upon the explorers and
their assistants. Accordingly curiosity was kept in check until the
results of the first discovery should be secured, and the opening of
what was hoped would prove the first intact royal tomb-chamber ever
found in Egypt was deferred for awhile. Meanwhile for weeks the Valley
of the Kings was beset, day after day, by throngs of tourists before
whose astonished eyes there passed a seemingly endless procession of
the marvels of ancient Egyptian craftsmanship of thirty centuries ago,
and who seemed to take it as a personal grievance when the articles
removed on any particular day were not sufficiently numerous or
gorgeous to satisfy their craving for sensation. Tutankhamen became
the fashion, and leaped at once into greater prominence than he ever
enjoyed during his short and not particularly glorious reign.
[Illustration: 23. DECORATION FROM A THEBAN TOMB.]
When the contents of the outer chamber had been placed in safety,
the time came for the breaking of the sealed wall which barred
the sarcophagus-chamber from view; and on February 16 this was at
last accomplished in the presence of a distinguished company of
Egyptologists, though the formal opening, at which the Queen of the
Belgians was present, did not take place till two days later. When
it was possible to see through the growing aperture into the inner
chamber, the sight revealed was one to take the breath away from the
most hardened treasure-hunter. Practically the whole chamber was
filled, from end to end, and side to side, by an object which no man
has seen intact for more than three millenniums--the funerary canopy
or shrine of an Egyptian Pharaoh of the New Empire, beneath which, it
might be hoped, lay the successive coffins, with all their wealth of
amulets and ushabtis, which guarded the mummy of the dead king. The
canopy itself was of the most extraordinary beauty and splendour. It
was of wood heavily gilded, carved with representations of the Buckle
of Isis and the Pillar of Osiris, and inlaid with panels of that
exquisite blue glaze of which the Egyptians were so justly fond. Its
upper edge was formed by the familiar Egyptian gorge-cornice, and its
roof was of the usual coved type, common in shrines of all sorts. So
completely did it fill the chamber, that there was scarcely room to
pass between it and the rock walls, which were rather poorly decorated
with painted figures. On the east side of the canopy were bronze-hinged
doors, and when these were opened, there appeared within a second
canopy, entirely gilt, and closed with doors on which the seals, with
their strings, were perfectly intact, a fact of great importance,
since it signifies that in all probability the inner shrine remains
absolutely as it was left on the day when the Pharaoh was laid to rest
amidst all his splendours. Between the two canopies there lay alabaster
vessels, amulets, scarabs of rare colour and fine material, and
precious stones. Between the outer canopy and the wall of the chamber
lay the paddles for the king’s barge on the waters of the Underworld.
On the same side of the sarcophagus-chamber as the doors of the
shrine, a large opening in the wall, which had never been closed, led
into an annexe. On guard near the entrance of this room was an ebony
and gold figure of the god Anubis as a jackal couchant on the top of
his shrine. Perhaps the most conspicuous thing in the room was a great
gilt coffer, standing over 5 feet high, and adorned along the top with
golden uræi, which in all likelihood is the shrine containing the
Canopic Jars in which the viscera of the royal mummy were deposited.
On its four sides were figures of guardian goddesses, enfolding the
shrine with their arms, and wrought with the most wonderful delicacy of
modelling and realism of expression. They seemed, said one observer, to
be turning reproachful faces towards the intruders who were disturbing
the long peace of the tomb. The whole room was crowded with objects
of all sorts, coffers and boxes of splendid material and workmanship,
model boats for the king’s use in the Elysian Fields, ushabti figures
in gold and silver, and one exquisite and unique specimen, absolutely
complete, of the ostrich-feather fans which are so often depicted on
the reliefs of royal processions. The handle of this beautiful piece
of craftsmanship was of ivory, delicately carved and adorned with the
royal cartouche inlaid in coloured stones.
Such was something of the general impression which was left on the
minds of the fortunate few who were privileged to be present at the
most marvellous disclosure of the wealth and artistry of ancient Egypt
which has ever been given to the world. The impression was of the
briefest, for the explorers had reluctantly to come to the conclusion
that it was impossible to carry the work further this season. The heat
of the Egyptian spring in the sun-scorched valley was already growing
almost unbearable; the amount of precious material already collected
was such as would require months for its proper preservation and
arrangement, and it was impossible to add to it a far greater quantity
of still more priceless treasure without risking loss and damage.
Accordingly, after the tomb had been kept open for a few days longer,
it was decided to close it again until the autumn, when the conditions
for work would be more favourable. The gang of workmen was set to work
again, and by the end of February the tomb of Tutankhamen was once more
piled with many hundred tons of rubbish, and the king was left beneath
his gorgeous canopy to enjoy for a few months longer the sleep which
had been unbroken for 3300 years.
Strangely enough, the incident did not close without an event which
seemed to cast a dark shadow across all the splendour of the discovery.
Almost immediately after the triumph of the opening, and before the
freshness of its interest had faded from men’s minds, Lord Carnarvon
was stricken down with fever, and in the beginning of April he died
in Cairo, leaving his great work still incomplete. There is no need
to talk of the flood of superstitious drivel which was let loose over
the world by what seemed so tragic an ending to so great a success.
It is hard to say whether stupidity or cruelty were more conspicuous
in it, and it remains self-condemned in the eyes of all reasonable
people. There is, no doubt, an element of sadness in the thought that
he without whom these treasures of the past might never have been
disclosed did not live to see the completion of his work; but there
is surely also an element of satisfaction in the thought that he knew
that his long toil had not been in vain, and that he had accomplished
something unique in the story of the exploration of that ancient world
to which we owe so much. To leave the scene of triumph while the
splendour of accomplishment is still undimmed has ever been esteemed
the happiest of destinies. If it be so, then Lord Carnarvon was _felix
opportunitate mortis_.
Before we turn to the consideration of some of the chief treasures
which have so far been gathered from the outer chambers of the tomb,
let us devote a moment to the question of who the Pharaoh is whose
splendours have thus dazzled the world, and what is known of his reign
and his times. Not the least remarkable feature of the whole find is
that the man around whom all this magnificence was gathered is just
about one of the last of the Pharaohs whom one would have suspected
of creating a sensation in the world of Egyptology. His reign is one
of the shortest and least fully recorded in the roll of the XVIIIth
Dynasty; indeed the only kings of the Dynasty who seem yet more
insignificant than himself are his immediate predecessor Smenkhara, and
his immediate successor Ay. The circumstances of his reign, so far as
they are known, are briefly these. Tutankhamen began his career as one
of the courtiers of Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), and one of his supporters
in the great revolution which he attempted to carry out on the religion
of Egypt; though, from his apparent youth at the time of his death, he
can scarcely have had any real share in the movement. Whether he was of
the blood royal or not is uncertain. On the lion from Gebel Barkal, now
in the British Museum, he calls Amenhotep III his father. If this means
direct relationship, then he must have been the son of Amenhotep III by
a secondary wife, and in that case he was a half-brother of Akhenaten,
whose son-in-law he afterwards became. On the other hand, the title
may be only one of respect applied to an indirect ancestor--really his
grandfather-in-law. In any case he must have been of such noble rank,
and of a family of such influence, that it was worth Akhenaten’s while
to secure his adhesion to the new cause, even when he was no more than
a boy, by marrying him to one of the young princesses. Accordingly
he was married to the third of Akhenaten’s daughters, the princess
Ankh. s. en. pa. aten, the first daughter, Meryt-aten, being married
to another noble of the court, Smenkhara, and the second, Makt-aten,
having died probably between her ninth and eleventh year; and at this
time, and till after his accession to the throne, he bears the name
Tutankhaten, the name of Amen being of course proscribed by the new
faith.
On the death of Akhenaten without male issue, Smenkhara, the husband
of the eldest princess, naturally, according to Egyptian custom,
succeeded to the throne, and reigned for a short and uncertain period;
then on his death or deposition, the succession fell to Tutankhaten.
For a time, apparently, he maintained himself in the new capital of
Akhetaten (Tell el-Amarna), but the reaction in favour of the old faith
of Amen proved too strong for him, and he was obliged to remove the
court to Thebes, and to conform to the worship of Amen. His name was
changed to Tutankhamen (Living Image of Amen), and that of his wife
to Ankh. s. en. Amen (Her Life is from Amen), and every trace of the
religious revolution was obliterated so far as possible. The duration
of his reign is uncertain, and probably it cannot have been longer than
nine years. It has been suggested, from the evidence of some of the
articles in his tomb, that he died before attaining maturity--at all
events he must have been still a young man at the time of his death.
As to the events of his reign, we are much in the dark. The brilliance
of his funerary equipment has led to the rather hasty conclusion that
the reign was marked by a great renaissance of Egyptian art and power,
and an attempt to regain the Empire which had been largely lost during
the pacifist reign of Akhenaten; but this theory rests on very slight
foundations, and, as we shall see, there is another and much more
likely explanation of the splendour of the tomb. The only evidences of
foreign enterprise during the reign are found in the inscriptions in
the tombs of two of the great nobles of the period, Huy and Horemheb,
the latter of whom usurped the throne after the death or deposition of
Tutankhamen’s successor, Ay. In the tomb of Huy there are records of
tribute from Syria and the Soudan, so that it is evident that Egyptian
influence was not altogether gone in these two quarters; and one of
the statements in the tomb of Horemheb seems to point to military
operations in Syria under Tutankhamen. In this inscription, from a
fragment in the Cairo Museum, Horemheb describes himself as “King’s
follower on his expeditions in the south and north country,” and
“Companion of the feet of his lord upon the battlefield on that day of
slaying the Asiatics.”
Beyond this, there is really no evidence as to any events of importance
during the reign, whose significance is not in itself, but in the fact
that it marks the triumph of the forces of reaction and the reversion
to the ancient customs and faith of the land. The early death of
Tutankhamen left his wife, Ankh. s. en. Amen, in a very difficult
position. She was the only representative in the direct line of the
great XVIIIth Dynasty; but in all probability her own tenure of the
throne was very uncertain, and almost impossible.
For a woman to rule the land was a thing not unheard of, for Hatshepsut
had ruled with vigour and success; but it was an unusual thing, though
a woman could give to her husband a legitimate title to the royal
dignity. Further, there was a point which rendered the reign of Ankh.
s. en. Amen virtually an impossibility. She was deeply stained, in
the eyes of the dominant priesthood of Amen, by the fact that she was
the daughter of “that criminal of Akhetaten,” as her father was now
called. Her husband had saved his throne, and probably his life, by
his conformity to the old faith, and her conversion had accompanied
his; but the daughter of Akhenaten can never have been _persona grata_
to the priests of Amen, and when her husband was gone she must have
felt that her tenure of the crown, and her very life, hung by a very
frail thread. Accordingly she took steps to place herself in a position
of greater security. Curiously enough, there has come to light from
Boghaz-Kyoi, the Hittite capital, a letter from one of the Hittite
kings, probably Mursil II, telling of some of the events of the reign
of his father Shubbiluliuma, which gives us our last glimpse of the
poor widowed queen struggling in desperation to escape from the net of
deadly danger which was drawing closer and closer around her.
[Illustration: 24. DECORATION FROM A THEBAN TOMB--SOWING, REAPING, THE
VINTAGE.]
“Then their ruler,” says the Hittite king, “namely Bib-khuru-riyas [the
Hittite version of Neb. kheperu-Ra, the Solar name of Tutankhamen],
just at that moment died; now the Queen of Egypt was Dakhamun [the
Hittite version of Ankh. s. en. Amen]. She sent an ambassador to my
father; she said thus to him: ‘My husband is dead; I have no children;
your sons are said to be grown up; if to me one of your sons you
will give, and if he will be my husband, he will be a help; send
him accordingly, and thereafter I will make him my husband. I send
bridal gifts.’” The negotiations thus frankly opened by the queen
apparently proceeded, not without some hitches, to the point when the
bridegroom was selected from among the Hittite princes; for Mursil’s
statement closes thus: “And then the lady soon fulfilled her words
and selected one of the sons.” Something, however, must have hindered
the completion of the marriage. What it was we may guess, but with no
assurance that we are right. The Hittites were old enemies of Egypt,
and while Ramses II, a century later, might safely wed a Hittite
princess, it was quite another thing for a woman, very insecurely
established on the throne, to propose to give Egypt a Hittite king.
In itself the plan was likely to be most unpopular with poor Ankh. s.
en. Amen’s subjects. Even more fatal to it would be the opposition of
the priesthood. They, no doubt, had no desire to see the line of their
great enemy established on the throne with a new lease of power, and
backed by the might of the formidable Hittite Confederacy. It would
be an easy thing for them to play on the native prejudice against the
attempt to bring in a Hittite consort for their queen. The probability
is that the very step which Ankh. s. en. Amen took to secure herself
actually hastened, or at least made inevitable, her downfall. At all
events the unlucky young widow disappears, with this letter, from the
page of history; nor is it difficult to imagine the manner of her
disappearance. The journey from the palace to the tomb has never been a
long one for an unpopular sovereign in the East, whether in ancient or
modern days.
Such, then, is the story of Tutankhamen’s reign, so far as we know it.
It may be that when all the secrets of his tomb are disclosed we may
learn a little more of the man and his times, though that is rather
more than unlikely, for the papyri which may be found in the great
shrine of the sarcophagus-chamber will probably be, not historical,
but purely religious. Meantime, at all events, we know no more, and
the little that is known only seems to underline the contrast between
the insignificance of the king and the splendour of the tomb which
has dazzled all the world. The pathos of the whole thing can scarcely
fail to appeal to the imagination. Here you have a dead monarch laid
to rest with such pomp and magnificence that a mere glimpse of the
glitter of his equipment has left the world bewildered and gaping; and
when you try to conceive the actual facts of the lives behind all this
gorgeousness, what you dimly discern, so far as you can see anything,
is a poor young couple of children, for Tutankhamen and his wife were
scarcely more than that, striving for a little to keep their heads
above the dark flood of poisonous priestly hatred and intrigue which
surged around them on every side, and sinking one after the other
beneath their doom.
“The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things.”
Obviously the time has not yet come for the discussion of the results
of the discovery as these affect our ideas of Egyptian art and
craftsmanship. It will be many months, perhaps years, before all the
material is before the world in the shape of colour reproductions of
the various articles, and until this work is completed comparisons
with already known work cannot be made. Much that has been said with
regard to the revolution in our ideas of Egyptian art which is to be
brought about by the revelations of Tutankhamen’s tomb may have to
be qualified or withdrawn in the light of fuller and more leisurely
study, and certain things which were for the moment acclaimed as
masterpieces will beyond doubt be deposed from an eminence which they
would never have attained save under the influence of the enthusiasm of
the moment. Still, even when all deductions have been made, there will
remain an amount of material of the very highest quality, such as has
never before been gathered together for the study of one of the most
interesting periods of Egyptian history and art.
Already it is manifest that some of the articles are quite without
parallel in any existing collection of Egyptian antiquities. Parallels
to most of them, probably to all, doubtless existed, and we can well
imagine that even the finest things may have been far surpassed by the
magnificence of a really great Pharaoh, such as Amenhotep III; but
these splendours of the culminating period of the Empire no longer
exist, or at least have not yet come to light, and we were obliged to
form our conception of them from reliefs and paintings, and to fill in
the details of their magnificence from our knowledge of the grandeur
of the monarch for whose use they were made. Now for the first time
we can see the actual creations themselves, and even if they belong,
not to one of the greatest of the Pharaohs, but to a comparatively
undistinguished monarch, still they represent the art of a period not
far removed from the historic culmination of Egypt’s greatness, and it
is quite within the bounds of possibility, as we shall see, that some
of the most striking of them do indeed belong to the greater age of
Tutankhamen’s ancestors, rather than to his own.
Of all the articles so far removed from the tomb, the one which has
attracted the most attention, and excited the most admiration, has
been the Royal Throne, or Chair of State, which was found in the outer
chamber. “It is one of the wonders of the world,” was the comment of
Professor Breasted on his first view of it, and there seems to be
little doubt that this enthusiastic praise is well deserved. Within
the last quarter of a century, two of the royal thrones of two of the
greatest empires of the ancient world have been brought to light, and
the simple dignity of the Throne of Minos, discovered by Sir Arthur
Evans in the Palace of Knossos, forms a most effective contrast and
foil to the gorgeousness of the Throne of Tutankhamen of Thebes, from
which it may be separated in date by not much more than a century, the
Cretan throne being the earlier, and indeed the earliest royal throne
known to exist.
The Throne of Tutankhamen is of wood, covered with a thin plating of
gold and adorned with finely carved lions’ heads. The arms of the
chair are of modelled wood also overlaid with gold, and beneath them,
on either side, is a sacred uræus, partly wrought in glaze, with the
crown of Egypt in silver. On the back of the throne is a panel of
beautiful workmanship, on which the king is represented seated, with
his legs crossed, and giving his hand to the Queen, who is standing--a
motive which in its unconventionality speaks distinctly of the
realistic art of Tell el-Amarna, and suggests comparisons with the
famous Berlin relief in which Akhenaten leans on his staff, while his
Queen Nefertiti holds out a lotus bloom for him to sniff. The exposed
flesh of the faces and other parts of the body is beautifully modelled
in semi-opaque reddish glaze, while the King’s costume is rendered in
painting overlaid with crystal. The queen’s dress is wrought in silver,
and beside her, on a table, there stands a charming bouquet formed
of semi-precious stones inlaid. The seat of the throne is patterned
with blue, white, and gold mosaic squares, set in diagonal lines. The
whole effect is gorgeous in the extreme, and the description of the
workmanship takes one’s mind back at once to the King’s Gaming Board
of the Palace of Knossos, with its blaze of blue and gold and crystal
on ivory. Whether we are to infer Cretan influence in the Egyptian
splendour, or whether Crete derived from earlier Egyptian work, is a
question which may prove of interest in the future. At any rate, we
know that the two great cultures were for many centuries in the closest
touch, and that each borrowed from the other, adapting the foreign
ideas to its own tastes.
One of the features of the throne is highly suggestive of the
conditions of Tutankhamen’s reign. On the gold plating of the chair,
the royal cartouche has been altered, and shows the name which the
king adopted after his conversion to orthodoxy. At the side of the
arms, however, the cartouche, wrought in inlay of semi-precious stones
and glass, remains unaltered, and still shows the old heretical form
Tutankhaten. The manifest reason for the difference is that while it
was comparatively easy to alter a cartouche wrought in gold plate, it
was very much the opposite with one wrought in inlay. Tutankhamen,
spite of his royal dignity, had, like Mrs. Gilpin, a frugal mind, and
could see no sense in discarding his old Tell el-Amarna throne, even
though it could not be perfectly adapted to his change of circumstances
and of faith.
So the throne survives to tell us, not only of the wonderful artistic
skill of the Egyptian craftsman of 3300 years ago, but also of the
difficulties and inconsistencies of such a period of transition as
that in which Tutankhamen’s lot was cast. On the stele which he set
up at Karnak, and which is now in the Cairo Museum, the king has
described the miserable state of the kingdom on his accession. “When
His Majesty became King of the South, the whole country was in a state
of chaos, similar to that in which it had been in primeval times.
From Elephantine to the Swamps of the Delta the properties of the
temples of the gods and goddesses had been destroyed, their shrines
were in a state of ruin, and their estates had become a desert. Weeds
grew in the courts of the temples.” He tells us of the wonders of
restoration which he accomplished when “Egypt and the Red Land came
under his supervision, and every land greeted his will with bowings of
submission.”
But Horemheb’s Coronation Inscription suggests a somewhat different
state of affairs from the picture of restored prosperity which
Tutankhamen presents, and the hatred with which the later monarch
pursued the memory of his predecessor hints that the reign of the
half-heretic king was but reluctantly accepted, as a stage on the way
to the full restoration of the ancient state of affairs--a stage whose
fitting emblem is the throne with its symbols of the old faith and the
new intermingled.
One of the most interesting among the finds of the outer chamber is
that of the boxes containing royal robes, both of the King and the
Queen. Whether it may be found possible to preserve permanently these
exquisitely dainty fabrics remains to be seen; meanwhile it may be said
that what has been seen of them enhances our respect for the skill of
the weavers of the XVIIIth Dynasty who wrought such superlatively fine
stuffs. Incidentally, the Queen’s robes give us a curious link with the
Egypt of a day far earlier than even that of Tutankhamen.
In the Westcar Papyrus we are told how King Seneferu, the last king of
the IIIrd Dynasty, about seventeen hundred years before the time of
Tutankhamen, feeling bored one day, called to him the wizard Zazamankh,
and demanded a cure for his ennui, and how the wizard prescribed a sail
in the royal barge manned by twenty of the most beautiful maidens
of the royal harem. “Bring me twenty oars of ebony inlaid with gold,
with blades of light wood, inlaid with electrum; and bring me twenty
maidens, fair in their limbs, their bosoms and their hair, all virgins;
and bring me twenty fishing-nets, and give these nets unto the maidens
for their garments.” Now the Queen’s robes, found in the tomb, “are
made of the daintiest diaphanous bead net material.” Evidently the
taste which inspired the novel prescription of the IIIrd Dynasty wizard
persisted in the Egyptian Court. We should have inferred as much from
the reliefs and paintings which have come down to us, but the robes
from the Tutankhamen tomb are the solitary specimens of the royal dress
of ancient Egypt which have survived to the present day.
[Illustration: 25. HEAD OF THE HATHOR-COW, DER EL-BAHRI.]
Along with these robes may be grouped the so-called coat of mail,
which is one of the wonders of the ceremonial art of the time. The
general type of this wonderful garment is familiar from Wilkinson’s
representation of the corselet pictured in the tomb of Ramses III, with
its overlapping scales of metal. In the case of Tutankhamen’s corselet,
however, the scales, instead of being of bronze on leather, are
pear-shaped links of faience laid on gold and backed with linen, which,
of course, has almost entirely perished, rendering the reconstitution
of the coat a matter of great difficulty. The collar shows a rich
pattern of concentric rings and rectangular plaques of faience in deep
turquoise blue, and red and yellow. Below the collar, and wrought into
the breast of this superb piece of mail, is a brilliant design
stretching right across the chest, representing the hawk-headed Horus
introducing Tutankhamen to Amen. Should it be possible to complete
the restoration of this beautiful piece of design, we shall be in
possession of a unique specimen of the Egyptian armourer’s art, though,
of course, it is such a piece of armour as was never destined to be
worn on active service, but only on ceremonial occasions. Indeed, it
is probable that the ceremonial occasion for which it was designed was
that of the King’s funeral; for we know from the Rainer Papyrus that
such corselets formed, at least in later days, an essential portion of
the royal funerary furnishing--so much so that the funeral could not be
completed without them.
Between six and seven hundred years after the time of Tutankhamen, the
funeral of Eiorhoreru, prince of Heliopolis, could not be completed
because Ka. amenhotep, prince of Mendes, had stolen his funerary
breastplate. Pimay, the son of the dead prince, has to win the corselet
back in a tournament before he can get his father buried with the
proper ceremonies. A matter of seven hundred years is nothing in the
life of an Egyptian custom; and there can be little doubt that the
corselet of Tutankhamen is just such a ceremonial breastplate as that
for whose possession Pimay and his allies fought in tourney against
Ka. amenhotep and his friends, with Pedubast of Tanis, overlord of the
Delta, as judge of the passage of arms.
Among the other articles of royal wearing apparel were the magnificent
sandals with their decoration of golden ducks’ heads and gold
roundels. The leather of the sandals had almost entirely perished with
the lapse of time, being turned into a substance more like glue; but
it retained sufficient tenacity to hold the decorative work together,
and to let us see how magnificently a Pharaoh of the Empire was shod
and how gorgeous were the feet before which the vassal kings of Syria
and the Soudan bowed down, “seven times and seven times.” Interesting
too, in their own way, were the child’s linen glove, and the child’s
tippet, of linen with sequin decoration. Speculation has framed, on the
basis of the small size of these and other articles, the theory that
the king died in early youth, in fact when he had scarcely emerged from
childhood. We know nothing, however, of the reason for the presence of
these articles in the tomb; and the foundation for such speculations
is far too slight to bear the weight of inference which it is sought
to rear upon it. From other and more satisfactory reasons it has
been inferred that Tutankhamen died in early maturity; but that is a
different matter.
Nothing is more fitted to reconcile us to the destiny which has
decreed that we should live in the drab and unpicturesque twentieth
century than the contemplation of the inconveniences with which the
kings and great folk of the bygone ages had to put up in the midst
of the glittering splendours which dazzle our imagination. One of
these is hinted at by the presence in the tomb of the candlesticks
which bore the light of Tutankhamen’s days. They are small bronze
articles, shaped in the form of the Ankh, and carrying fastened to
them linen wicks, which were, no doubt, soaked in oil. As small
pieces of decorative workmanship, they are pretty enough; but it is
impossible to imagine anything much less satisfactory in the way of
lighting than they would seem to be. No doubt there were other and
bigger candlesticks than these, and we cannot imagine that a luxurious
court like that of Thebes would not have something corresponding to
the great stone standard lamps which flared and sputtered in the halls
and corridors of the contemporary palace of Minos at Knossos; but even
so, the lighting of an Egyptian palace must have been what we should
think miserably inefficient, and Pharaoh must have been sorely put to
it to find occupation for his evenings, when all the glitter of his
gorgeousness grew dim and shabby in the light of the miserable smoking
and flickering lamps which at best can have done little more than to
make darkness visible.
A prominent feature among the heaps of wonderful things in the tomb
was the group of elaborately carved alabaster vases which has been so
often figured and so much be-praised since the discovery was made.
Of the interest attaching to these extraordinary vases there can be
no question; but when we are told that they are “the most beautiful
alabaster vases in the world,” it is time to enter a protest. They are
nothing of the sort.
As specimens of workmanship they are wonderful enough; as specimens of
art they are flagrantly bad,--characteristic types of an art which has
passed its maturity and is on the downgrade. The over-elaboration and
the far too complicated character of their decoration are sufficient to
condemn them, and they are not to be compared for one moment, from the
point of artistic value, with the simple and graceful forms of earlier
work. Indeed, even in Tutankhamen’s tomb, and in the same chamber with
these over-praised and overdone pieces of pretentiousness, there were
vases far more worthy of praise for their artistic quality than the
ones whose noisy ornamentation has singled them out for a notice which
they do not deserve.
Of all the objects so far removed from the tomb, none has attracted
more attention, and none seems likely to create more controversy,
than the group of extraordinary gilt state couches, the Lion, Hathor,
and Typhon couches, as they came to be called. The thing which drew
attention to them was not their beauty, for anything more hideous it
is impossible to imagine; it was their strangeness. With Egyptian
couches and biers the world was pretty familiar before; but these were
widely different, with their quiet and shapely lines, from the barbaric
monstrosities of Tutankhamen’s tomb. The heads of the couches present,
indeed, some resemblances to familiar Egyptian types; but even so, the
suggestion which rises to the mind on viewing them is that these are
Egyptian types interpreted by an alien temperament and executed by
alien craftsmen. It seems almost impossible to believe that an Egyptian
craftsman, with his tradition of taste and restraint, would ever have
produced such abortions, calculated to produce nightmares instead of
slumber in those who tried to rest upon them.
Accordingly Professor Petrie has asserted that these couches are
not of Egyptian workmanship at all. No Egyptian workman, he says,
ever produced work assembled with bronze joints as these couches
are; they must have been produced in a distant country, and jointed
in this fashion for convenience of transport, being reassembled on
their arrival. Further, the decoration (trefoil) on one of them is
characteristically Babylonian. Therefore it seems probable that we
must look to Babylon for their origin; and Professor Petrie suggests
that these are the identical couches to which the Babylonian king
Kadashman-Enlil refers in one of the Tell el-Amarna letters, where he
says, writing to Amenhotep III, that he is sending to the Egyptian king
“a couch of _ushu_ wood, ivory and gold, three couches and six thrones
of _ushu_ and gold,” and other furniture.
There is nothing unlikely in the idea that couches of such
international importance, coming from one great monarch to another,
should have been preserved for the matter of forty years or so,
and buried as heirlooms in the tomb of the last of the line; and
the suggestion lends an added interest to the ugly things. Sir
E. A. W. Budge, however, rejects the idea, and asserts that the beast
represented on the most hideous of the couches is simply the composite
monster Ammit, “the Eater of the Dead,” so often represented in the
Judgment Scene in the vignettes of the _Book of the Dead_. “The
Mesopotamians knew of no such beast, and the couch or bier could only
have been made in Egypt, where the existence of Ammit was believed in
and the fear of her was great.” In support of his opinion he quotes
from the Papyrus of Hunefer--“Her forepart is crocodile,” and anyone
familiar with the Judgment Scene will remember that this certainly is
so. The trouble is that whatever the hideous monster of Tutankhamen’s
tomb may represent, “her forepart” certainly is _not_ crocodile. It
is ugly and sinister enough for anything; but no Egyptian craftsman
would have dreamed of trying to pass this clumsy monster off as a
representation of a crocodile--one of the most familiar of objects.
Especially in view of the methods of construction involved--a point
on which no man is better qualified than Petrie to pronounce an
opinion--Budge seems to have done nothing to invalidate the Babylonian
suggestion, which, for the rest, takes its place very naturally, as we
shall see, in the explanation of the extraordinary wealth of furniture
found in the tomb of one of the least famous Pharaohs of the XVIIIth
Dynasty. The couches seem, to an unprejudiced mind, just such work as
would be produced by a clever workman working on motives which were
quite foreign to his usual practice, and therefore producing results
which, while they have a distinct resemblance to the types which he was
imitating, yet show these as seen and interpreted by an outsider, and
not by one to whom they were parts of his normal training.
Of the statues found in the tomb, two, the life-sized ones of
bituminised wood adorned with gold, were fine specimens of the normal
type of tomb portrait; the third, the so-called “Mannikin,” was of a
different class. It was only a half-length, and lacked the arms; but
in other respects it was a careful and artistic piece of work and
obviously a faithfully studied portrait. The idea that its imperfect
condition is due to the fact that it was a sort of glorified tailor’s
dummy, on which the royal robes were fitted before being worn by the
Pharaoh, may probably be dismissed without ceremony. It is not obvious
why, in a period when court dress was of the most elaborate type,
with long robes of fine linen falling to the feet, and wide sleeves
coming almost to the elbow, the mannikin should have neither legs
nor arms, which one would have judged essential for the purpose of
trying the fall of the robe. Another view was that it was a portrait,
not of Tutankhamen, but of his wife, Ankh. s. en. Amen. There can be
no doubt about the quality of the portrait, though to talk of “the
strange pensive smile playing about the lips, recalling the baffling
smile of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa,” is to invite comparisons which are
scarcely fair to the older work of art; but it certainly is not the
portrait of a woman. It may be a head-portrait of the type not uncommon
in Old Kingdom tombs; or it may be part of the foundation of a copper
statue, like that of Pepy of the Old Kingdom, though in that case it is
difficult to see why it should have been so carefully coloured.
In the meantime it is impossible to say much about the treasures of the
sarcophagus-chamber and its annexe. Scarcely more than a glimpse has
been vouchsafed of these, no more than enough to whet curiosity and
expectation. But there can be little doubt that the splendour of the
two inner chambers will be in accordance with the preface to it which
the outer chambers have yielded. No one can doubt the magnificence of
the great canopy, which in itself would be a treasure beyond price;
and all observers are at one as to the marvellous beauty of the shrine
with the four goddesses. The motive of its decoration is, of course,
one perfectly familiar in Egyptian art, and is found in all ages. The
beautiful pink granite sarcophagus of Tutankhamen’s successor and enemy
Horemheb, for instance, has as part of its adornment another version
of the same idea of the protecting goddess. But the detail of the
Canopic Shrine, if it prove to be such, appears to be of a quality and
inspiration rare even in the finest Egyptian work. For the rest, we can
only wait and hope.
[Illustration: 26. COLOSSUS OF RAMSES II, LUXOR.]
A good deal has been said about the need of recasting our ideas of
Egyptian history in the light of the new information which has been
gained from the tomb of Tutankhamen, and some writers have hinted that
our whole conception of the close of the XVIIIth Dynasty is wrong, and
must be recast to square with the new facts. We are asked to discard
the idea of an Egypt beginning to decline from the lofty position which
she had held under Thothmes III and Amenhotep III, and to substitute
for this the picture of an Egypt waking with renewed strength from
the uneasy religious dreams of the reign of Akhenaten, and asserting
once more, and with greater vigour than ever, her dominion in the
realms of both politics and art.
All this is merely a vain imagination. Historically, no new facts have
emerged from the tomb of Tutankhamen. It is scarcely true to say, with
Budge, that “we know no more now about the reign of this king than we
did before Lord Carnarvon made his phenomenal discovery.” That would
only be the case on the narrow reading of the meaning of history
which would confine it to the mere recording of dates, conquests, and
legislation. The art of any period constitutes no small part of its
history, and for the history of far-past times it is one of our most
valuable sources of information; and we may surely look for a large
extension of our knowledge of the art of ancient Egypt in the reign of
Tutankhamen from the treasures of his tomb.
But so far as concerns the facts of what the king, and Egypt under his
leadership, accomplished in the matter of raising again the declining
prestige and power of the Empire, we know no more than we did before
the tomb was opened; nor is it likely that when the work is completed
we shall have gained much more information, if any, on this point.
For the likelihood is that if there are any papyri beneath the great
golden canopy, they will be of a purely religious type, versions of
one or other of the different forms of spiritual guide-book which the
devout Egyptian carried with him on his long journey through the dark
Underworld.
The artistic value of the find is another matter. There can be no
question but that this splendid collection of the finest work of the
craftsmen of the XVIIIth Dynasty, by far the greatest assemblage of
such work known to exist, will prove of the utmost importance in
shaping and correcting our ideas of Egyptian art at one of the most
interesting points of its long development. Never before has such a
mass of material of the highest class been available for study. Yet
even here it would be rash to assume that the result will be any
considerable modification of our views as to the period of culmination
of the art of the New Empire. At the most, and assuming that all the
art of the tomb is strictly of the time of the king with whose burial
it is associated, and that its quality is all of the supreme standard
which has been attributed to it, the net result would be the shifting
of the apex of the curve a matter of thirty or thirty-five years, a
small thing when we are dealing with an art whose history is written in
millenniums. But it seems likely that even this is more than we need
necessarily assume.
There is always the possibility that in the tomb of Tutankhamen we are
dealing, not only with the splendours of one king, but perhaps also
with many of the heirlooms of the royal house to which he belonged, in
which case we should be faced with specimens of the art, not of one
period of a few years’ duration, but with those of perhaps a whole
century, perhaps of a longer period still. The work of sifting out
the various sources and periods of the materials found in the tomb
will prove a most fascinating, if also a most difficult, task; when it
is accomplished--the work of years--we may be in a position to speak
more definitely about the change or the confirmation which the tomb
of Tutankhamen has brought to our previous theories of the growth and
decline of Egyptian art; meanwhile we must wait, with the assurance
that even in the extremest case, the discovery can scarcely commit us
to anything revolutionary of our previous conceptions.
The mention of the possibility of some of the articles found in the
tomb being family heirlooms of the XVIIIth Dynasty brings up the last
question with which it is necessary to deal in this short survey.
How does it come about that a Pharaoh of no great standing in the
long line of Egyptian monarchs--a mere stopgap king, a pigmy between
giants--was buried with surroundings whose splendour exceeds anything
known in all the story of royal magnificence? The discoveries of
Tutankhamen’s wonderful funerary equipment make us wonder what we may
have lost in the fact that his is the only royal tomb which has been
found practically unrifled. Had we found, for instance, the tomb of
a really great Pharaoh, such as Amenhotep III, as intact as that of
his descendant, we should have been in a better position to form a
judgment on the matter; but that unfortunately has been denied us.
One suggestion may be made, with the proviso that it is no more than
a suggestion, which may be confirmed or disproved by subsequent
investigation. It has already been suggested that some of the most
curious, if not the most beautiful, of the finds are relics, not of the
time of Tutankhamen, but of Amenhotep III, dating therefore from forty
years before the time when they were stored away in the Valley of the
Kings; and it has also been suggested that another very interesting
article, the footstool with figures of Asiatic captives inlaid upon
it, dates from an even earlier period, that of Amenhotep II, and is
therefore a century older than the time to which the burial belongs.
Tutankhamen, we know, was the last king of the direct line of the
XVIIIth Dynasty. His widow, Ankh. s. en. Amen, was left in a most
insecure position from which she made, as we know, a desperate and
unavailing effort to extricate herself. May it not be that, with the
consciousness that all the glories of her house were in danger of
passing to mere usurpers of undistinguished origin, such as the obscure
priest Ay, who succeeded Tutankhamen, or the commonplace soldier
Horemheb, who drove Ay from the throne, she secured at least some of
the most treasured heirlooms of the royal house from desecration by
hiding them in the tomb of her dead husband?
It is, of course, only an idea, which must stand or fall by the results
of future study; but it seems, at least in the meantime, to offer a
reasonable explanation of a point on which no other explanation is for
the present forthcoming.
CHAPTER VIII
LIFE, ARTS, AND CRAFTS IN THE LAND OF THE NILE
Practically the whole of our knowledge of the conditions under which
life was lived in Egypt, of the organisation of society, of the arts
and crafts by which the needs and tastes of the people were met, is
due to the results of excavation during the last century. We owe, of
course, a great deal to the statements of Herodotus and Diodorus as to
the conditions which they found existing in their time; but the great
source of information must always be the mass of first-hand material
which has been gathered, mainly from the tombs with their wealth of
funerary furnishings, by the work of the excavator. Therefore it would
seem that the fitting conclusion to our brief survey of the various
aspects of excavation should be a sketch of the life of ancient Egypt,
with the arts and crafts which ministered to its necessities and its
luxuries. Such a sketch must, of course, be of the slightest and least
elaborated type, for the amount of material is so enormous that only
the most salient points can be touched; but it may still be true so far
as it goes, and may perhaps serve as an outline within which further
details may be inserted by the student of ancient Egyptian life.
First of all, we may take the framework of society. Through the whole
of Egyptian history the outline of this is very much the same, though
there are many variations in the relative importance of the various
parts. The head of the state is always the Pharaoh, placed on a level
immensely above even the most powerful of his subjects, but, as we
shall see, by no means an irresponsible tyrant, but rather a limited
monarch, governing in accordance with strictly defined customs.
Beneath him are the great nobles and the great official class--two
sections of society which were not in ancient Egypt, as in so many
other ancient realms, virtually different names for the same thing.
Then came the priestly class, at all times one of the most important
in the land, and tending at certain periods, with the weakening of the
royal power, to overshadow all the other interests.
It appears that there was a definitely military class, with definite
lands assigned to it for its support, though in the earlier days of
the kingdom the wars were not the business of a separate class of
professional soldiers, but were carried on by a general levy of the
people. The other great land-holding class of the nation was that of
the husbandmen, who apparently were much of our own old yeoman type,
holding their land by the payment of taxes.
Behind these classes, which, so to speak, formed the backbone of
the nation, came the shepherds, hunters, artificers, traders, and
workers at other subsidiary occupations. These held no land, and their
occupations appear to have been mainly hereditary, no artisan being
allowed to pass from one trade to another, or to have his children
reckoned in any other class than his own. The various trades must
have been organised more or less after the plan of the mediæval
trade-guilds, though in the case of Egypt the organisation was
apparently a national, and not a local affair. Beneath the tradesmen
came the slave class, whose number varied pretty much according to the
wars on which the nation was engaged, and their fruitfulness, or the
opposite, in yielding captives.
Slave labour was never a prominent feature of Egyptian life, and Petrie
estimates the slave population of the land at its maximum at no more
than a quarter of a million out of a possible population of twelve
millions.
To the imagination of most folk probably the mention of “Pharaoh,
King of Egypt,” suggests a typical Oriental tyrant, responsible to
nothing but his own passions, and governing according to the whim
of the moment. Such a picture may have been true of an Assyrian or
Babylonian king, like Ashurbanipal or Nebuchadnezzar, and perhaps
the frequency of assassination in the records of the Assyrian kings
hints that it was; but it certainly was not true of ancient Egypt.
Pharaoh’s own grandiose inscriptions, and the fiction which regarded
him as a god incarnate, may suggest unbridled power; but as a matter
of fact, Pharaoh was anything but the rampant and romantic despot whom
we imagine distributing life and death at his own capricious will, but
rather a somewhat humdrum constitutional monarch, whose every action
was regulated for him centuries before he was born, by an unchanging
custom, and who could no more step beyond the limits which immemorial
laws had assigned to him than he could jump out of his skin, or off his
own shadow.
The thing which amazed the Greeks, with their experience of
irresponsible tyrants, was the fact that so great a king as Pharaoh
was not the master, but the servant of the laws. “He could not do any
public business, condemn or punish any man to gratify his own humour or
revenge, or for any other unjust cause; but was bound to do according
as the laws had ordered in every particular case.... The kings,
therefore, carrying this even hand towards all their subjects, were
more beloved by them than by their own kindred.”
Petrie has suggested that it is this limitation of the power of the
Pharaoh which is accountable for the unusual stability of the Egyptian
throne. “The absence of republican interludes, so frequent in other
parts of the Mediterranean, was apparently due to the monarchy being
strictly limited by law. However bad an Egyptian might be personally,
he could not earn the hatred of his subjects like the irresponsible
Greek tyrants or Roman emperors.”
[Illustration: 27. PORTRAIT-STATUE OF MENTUEMHAT, CAIRO MUSEUM.]
Indeed Pharaoh according to fact is a very different figure from
Pharaoh according to imagination. We must try to substitute for
the gorgeous tiger of our fancies the figure, gorgeous enough indeed,
so far as concerns his apparel, of a laborious servant of the State
whose life, instead of being spent in wild orgies of licence and wild
explosions of ferocity, was mainly occupied, from the time when he rose
in the morning to the time when he crawled to bed at night, in a manner
quite familiar to royalty in our own country, in signing dull reports,
and reading dull dispatches, presiding over long and wearisome temple
services, and travelling about the country to see that everything was
working smoothly.
The new picture is by no means so picturesque as the old one; but it
is the real Pharaoh, and no doubt it was for the good, both of his
subjects and himself, that “Pharaoh had to act every hour according
to fixed routine, without room for the licence of a Dionysius or a
Caligula.” The brilliant tiger looks romantic in a story, but when
his despotism becomes unbearable it has generally to be tempered by
assassination, as with Sargon, Sennacherib, and many another; but as a
matter of fact the Egyptian Pharaoh generally managed to die quietly in
his own bed when his time came.
Not that he had not his own power, and his own initiative. His headship
of the State involved headship of the army in war, and this was no
polite fiction, where Pharaoh reaped the glory while his soldiers had
the danger. Seqenen-Ra’s mummy, with its ghastly wounds on head and
face, tells us how real was the duty of Egyptian royalty in the day
of battle. Thothmes III led the van of his army through the defile of
Aaruna, when his chosen captains shirked the task, and though we need
not believe all that Ramses II tells us about his share in the battle
of Kadesh, there is no doubt that he fought hand to hand with the
Hittites in the forefront of the battle, and at least proved himself a
good trooper, whatever may be thought of his generalship. Much power
also lay in his hands in respect of the selection and advancement of
able men from the lower to the higher ranks of the public service, and
of rewarding their work with grants of land, of initiating the great
public works which were often of such untold benefit to the land, and
of conducting the Foreign-Office business of the country, and the
negotiation of treaties. In short, Pharaoh had no lack of work to do,
and was probably like his modern successors in Kingship, one of the
hardest-worked men in the land; but from start to finish, the Egyptian
monarchy was a limited one.
Two instances of the limitation of the royal power, and its strict
subjection to law, may be given. When Queen Amtes was tried, in the
reign of Pepy I of the VIth Dynasty, for some unspecified offence,
the trial was conducted without even the presence of the king. “His
Majesty,” says Una in his famous inscription, “caused me to enter in
order to hear the case alone. No chief judge and vizier at all, no
prince at all was there, but only I alone, because I was excellent,
because I was pleasant to the heart of His Majesty.” Again, in
the time of King Ramses III of the XXth Dynasty, there was a great
palace conspiracy arising out of an intrigue in the harem to dethrone
Ramses, and put the son of one of the harem ladies on the throne. In
most other Oriental palaces the discovery of such a thing would have
been the signal for a general massacre. Instead of executing summary
justice, Ramses appointed a commission, giving them these remarkable
instructions: “What the people have spoken, I do not know. Hasten to
investigate it. You will go and question them, and those who must die,
you will cause to die by their own hand, without my knowing anything
of it. You will also cause the punishment awarded to the others to be
carried out without my knowing anything of it.”
Pharaoh may not always have been a model of propriety or of rectitude;
but he was far too strictly hedged about by precedent to allow of
the brutal tyranny and licence which have so often marked other
Eastern monarchies, and, besides, one fails to see how, with his time
so completely filled as we know it to have been, with all sorts of
necessary routine, he can have had much opportunity for mischief, even
if he had the desire.
The king’s chief functionary and right-hand man was the Vizier, who
must have been just about as hard-worked a man as his master. The
inscription in the tomb of Rekhmara, who was vizier under Thothmes III,
enumerates thirty separate functions which had to be discharged by the
fortunate holder of this great office. “The vizier is Grand Steward of
all Egypt, and all the activities of the State are under his control.
He has general oversight of the treasury, and the chief treasurer
reports to him; he is chief justice, or head of the judiciary; he
is chief of police, both for the residence-city and the kingdom; he
is minister of war, both for army and navy; he is secretary of the
interior and of agriculture, while all general executive functions of
State, with many that may not be classified, are incumbent upon him.
There is indeed no prime function of the State which does not operate
through his office. He is a veritable Joseph, and it must be this
office which the Hebrew writer has in mind in the story of Joseph.”
Altogether we may conclude that, whatever the salary of the vizier may
have been, he probably earned it.
A quaint picture of the way in which a high Egyptian official was
hedged about with routine is given by Rekhmara in his description
of the procedure of the court of justice. “As for every act of this
official, the vizier while hearing in the hall of the vizier, he shall
sit upon a chair, with a rug upon the floor, and a dais upon it, a
cushion under his back, a cushion under his feet, and a baton at his
hand; the forty skins [parchments of the codified law] shall be open
before him. Then the magnates of the South shall stand in the two
aisles before him, while the master of the privy chamber is on his
right, the receiver of income on his left, the scribes of the vizier
at his either hand; one corresponding to another, with each man at his
proper place. One shall be heard after another, without allowing one
who is behind to be heard before one who is in front.”
The great offices of State, of course, often fell to men of high rank,
and of hereditary influence. Rekhmara himself came of noble family,
and succeeded his uncle in the vizierate. But this was by no means
necessarily the case. Egypt always presented the career open to talent
which Napoleon desired. “All through the history there was a free
rising of ability from the lower levels, as we see in England--Wolsey,
the butcher’s son, and many others.... This was a chief cause of the
durability of Egyptian society; great as the differences were, there
was a gradation interlocking all through, as in England.”
A notable instance of the rise of a talented man is given by the
tomb-inscription of that same Una whom we have already seen presiding
over the trial of Queen Amtes. Beginning his official career as an
“inferior custodian of the domain of Pharaoh,” Una during three reigns
steadily climbed up the official ladder, until at last he became
governor of the South under Merenra, and was the favoured official
chosen to fetch the granite for the royal sarcophagus and pyramid from
the quarries at Aswan. Senmut again, the famous architect and minister
of Queen Hatshepsut, tells us in the inscription on his statue at
Karnak that he was “the greatest of the great in the whole land,” and
seems to have held power not inferior to that of the vizier, though
there is no evidence that he held that office; yet he tells us in his
Berlin inscription that “his ancestors were not found in writing,” or
in other words, that he was a self-made man.
The elaborately organised court held many offices both ornamental and
useful, which gave openings for talent or ambition. Perhaps one of the
most influential positions was one which involved no very important
duties, but brought the holder of it into close and constant touch
with Pharaoh. This was the position of the “fan-bearer at the king’s
right hand.” His function was purely ornamental, and he can be seen
in paintings and reliefs carrying a tiny fan beside the king’s litter
as the symbol of his office, while the real work of fanning is done
by the ordinary fan-bearers with their big business-like fans; but
he was the highest court-official, a sort of Lord Chamberlain, with
powers of giving or denying entry to the presence, and no doubt his
favour was all-important to a petitioner, as that of one who had the
ear of Pharaoh. As to the rest of the court, there was a multitude of
officials quite comparable to the tail of useless boot-lickers who
adorned the court of Louis XIV; but one imagines that, in earlier days
at least, the courtier of Pharaoh had to do more for his position than
the hanger-on of the Grand Monarque.
The priesthood formed a very large and very influential class. In
theory, the King was always the Supreme Priest, the Pontifex Maximus
of the kingdom, and very often several of the high-priesthoods of the
different gods were held by members of the royal family, thus securing
that the Pharaoh should be represented in the priestly councils whose
loyalty or disloyalty might mean so much to the stability of his
throne. Thus in the reign of Ramses II, his favourite son Khaemuast,
the Wizard-Prince of the Setna papyrus, was high-priest of Ptah at
Memphis. No doubt the fact that there was such a multitude of gods,
whose priesthoods were all jealous of one another, was some security
against the overwhelming influence of the priestly caste, especially in
the earlier days; but the fate of Akhenaten’s movement showed that in
spite of local jealousies the priestly caste was really one in face of
any attempt to diminish its power and privileges; and in the end the
unquestioned supremacy of Amen led to the Amen priesthood gaining a
position and influence which was superior to that of the weak Ramesside
Pharaohs, and which resulted in the supersession of the true royal
line, and the substitution for it of the XXIst Dynasty of priest-kings.
Even before things had reached such a pitch, the immense wealth which
the piety of successive kings had accumulated in the coffers of the
priesthoods, and especially of that of Amen, must have constituted a
real danger to the state, while the amount of land held by the priests,
and so exempt from taxation, went with the other accumulation to
constitute a steady drain on the national resources which in the end
they were not able to bear.
The class of the great nobles was held in strict subordination to
the royal power in the days of the strong early monarchs of the
Old Kingdom; but, with the weakening of the royal authority which
followed the Vth Dynasty, the honours and powers which Pharaoh had
heaped on his faithful courtiers, and which had been a convenient
relief to the central authority as shifting part of the burden of
local administration to the shoulders of the local great men, proved
a danger to the State. A kind of feudal system grew up in which the
local chieftains assumed the powers and as much as they could afford
of the splendours of Pharaoh himself, claiming to hold their offices
by hereditary right, maintaining their own armies, holding their own
courts of justice, and even daring to place after their own names in
their proclamations the formula, “Living for ever and ever,” which had
hitherto been the sacred attribute of the crown alone.
The revival of the monarchy, first under the Antefs and Mentuhoteps
of the XIth Dynasty, and then under the Senuserts and Amenemhats of
the XIIth Dynasty, however, soon curbed the pretensions of these petty
princelets, and the changes of the Hyksos invasion and the War of
Independence wiped out the last relics of the Egyptian feudal system,
which never revived under the New Empire. Even under strong kings like
the Pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom, the courts of the local nomarchs
were no small things, as they might employ anything from fifty to a
hundred officials, from the steward down to the “mat-spreader.”
[Illustration: 28. Vth DYNASTY RELIEF-WORK, TOMB OF PTAH-HETEP.]
Tomb-inscriptions are not perhaps the most trustworthy sources as to
the personal character of a class of men, nor are we to expect that
Ameny or Khnemhotep will tell us anything of the shady side of
their administration. Yet it must be confessed that Ameny’s story
of his administration of the Oryx Nome gives a pleasant picture of
the relations of a great local noble and official to the people of
his province; and we may say that if Egypt in the time of the Middle
Kingdom had many nomarchs of his stamp, she was a fortunate land.
“There was no citizen’s daughter whom I misused,” says the great
man, “there was no widow whom I oppressed, there was no peasant whom
I repulsed, there was no shepherd whom I repelled, there was not a
foreman of five from whom I took his men for forced work. There was not
a pauper around me; there was not a hungry man of my time. When there
came years of famine, I arose, I ploughed all the fields of the Oryx
Nome to its southern and its northern boundary, I kept its inhabitants
alive, making provision so that there was not a hungry man in it. I
gave to the widow as to her that possessed a husband; nor did I exalt
the great above the small in all that I gave. Thereafter great rises of
the Nile took place, producing wheat and barley and all things; but I
did not exact the arrears of the farm.” “I gave bread to the hungry,”
says another noble, “and clothes to the naked, and gave a passage in my
own boat to those who could not cross. I was a father to the orphan, a
husband to the widow, a protection from the wind to the shivering; I am
one who spake what was good, and related what was good. I acquired my
possessions in a just manner.”
All this may savour a little of Pharisaic self-righteousness to us;
but at least it shows that there was a recognised idea, among the
governing class, of the duties which a great man owed to those under
him, and the possession of such an ideal must have made bad government
more difficult.
The same praise can scarcely be given to the ideals of the other
important, though minor, official class, the scribes. The Egyptian
scribe belonged to a type with which we are perfectly familiar still,
the type of the petty official who thinks that there is nothing in
all the world so fine as petty officialdom, unless it be superior
officialdom, and who looks down on all other professions with a scorn
which is only equalled by his ignorance. In a land where writing was so
complicated a matter, and where it so early assumed supreme importance,
where also the annual inundation with its obliterating of landmarks
made the possession of written records a matter of great importance,
the scribe obviously had a splendid field for his work, and for the
development of all his peculiar vices. It was possible for a careful
scribe to climb from the humblest position to one of great dignity and
power, and the Egyptian scribe never forgot that every scribe carried
in his writing-case the wand of office of a potential vizier.
The scribes have left us many examples of what they thought of
themselves and of all other people and professions, and it may be
safely said that of no other class of Egyptian do we carry away so
unpleasant an impression as of that one which no doubt imagined that
it was impressing its own immense superiority on the minds of all
posterity. The Egyptian cherished a profound admiration for learning;
but his devotion to letters was not because of the beauty of learning
in itself, but simply because it was the avenue to preferment and the
way of escape from the miseries of toil or the dangers of war. Both the
admiration and the mercenary reason for it are expressed in the words
of an ancient sage recorded for us in the Sallier Papyrus:
“Give thy heart to learning and love her like a mother,
For there is nothing that is so precious as learning ...
Behold there is no profession which is not governed,
It is only the learned man who rules himself.”
The scribe saw himself, because of his possession of letters,
immeasurably above all the poor creatures who had to earn their bread
by the sweat of their brow. He was exempt from all the pains and
anxieties of the workman, and loved maliciously to contemplate them
while he issued the orders which imposed further burdens on backs
already heavily burdened. “The poor ignorant man, ‘whose name is
unknown, is like a heavily-laden donkey, he is driven by the scribe,’
while the fortunate man ‘who has set his heart upon learning’ is above
work, and becomes a wise prince.” “The learned man has enough to eat
because of his learning.” Therefore, “set to work and become a scribe,
for then thou shalt become a leader of men.”
No matter what the trade was, or how wonderful its results, it seemed
to the smug scribe a contemptible thing in comparison with his own
precious profession of letters. Here is his opinion of the craftsmen
who created the miracles of metal- and wood-work of the Middle Kingdom:
“I have never seen the smith as an ambassador,
Or the goldsmith carry tidings;
But I have seen the smith at his work
At the mouth of his furnace,
His fingers were like crocodile skin,
He stank more than the roe of fish ...
Each artist who works with the chisel
Tires himself more than he who hoes a field.
The wood is his field, of metal are his tools.
In the night--is he free?
He works more than his arms are able,
In the night--he lights a light.”
No doubt this seemed very fine and humorous to our scribe; but we who
have the chance of comparing his literary achievement with the works
of the craftsmen whom he satirised may be pardoned for preferring the
diadems of Khnumit and Sat-Hathor, or the statues of Senusert and
Amenemhat to all the paltry drivel he ever wrote.
[Illustration: 29. XIXth DYNASTY RELIEF-WORK, TEMPLE OF SETY I, ABYDOS.]
Nor was his opinion of the soldier’s calling any higher. Indeed the
ancient Egyptian was no more of a warlike person than his successor
the modern fellah, who makes a good enough soldier under British
officers, but is about the most unmilitary person on earth when left
to the freedom of his own will. There is no more curious inversion of
fact than the common idea which pictures the Egyptian as one of the
great warrior races of the world, and classes him along with that
bloodthirsty tiger the Assyrian. Only at one period of his history
did the Egyptian ever show the least sign of developing a craving for
world-dominion and the warfare which goes along with it; and when the
brief imperial fever of his early XVIIIth Dynasty had wrought itself
out, he reverted for the rest of his history to his natural rôle of
the finest craftsman on earth, only bestirring himself when there was
need to defend his frontiers, a business which he did fairly, but only
fairly, well. On the whole, he would have thoroughly agreed with Alan
Breck Stewart that war “is generally rather a bauchle of a business.”
But it was reserved for the smug and flabby scribe--you can see him
still in the Louvre with his cunning eyes and his rolls of unhealthy
flesh--to make a mock of the calling which won for Egypt all the empire
she ever possessed, and which was that of her greatest Pharaohs.
“Oh, what does it mean,” says this early pacifist, “Oh, what does
it mean that thou sayest: ‘The officer has a better lot than the
scribe’? Come, let me relate to thee the fate of the officer, so full
of trouble.” Then he goes on to relate in a fashion which he no doubt
thinks humorous, the life of an officer on active duty in Syria:
“Come, let me relate to thee how he travels to Syria,
How he marches in the upland country.
His food and his water he has to carry on his arm,
Laden like a donkey;
This makes his neck stiff like that of a donkey,
And the bones of his back break ...
If he arrives in face of the enemy,
He is like a bird in a snare ...
If he arrives at his home in Egypt ...
He is ill, and must lie down.
They have to bring him home on the donkey,
Whilst his clothes are stolen, and his servants run away.
Therefore, O scribe,
Reverse thine opinion about the happiness of the scribe and of the
officer.”
As literature this precious effusion is merely contemptible; but
it is very illuminating as to the character of the class which was
responsible for the production of it. Generally speaking, the Egyptian
leaves you with the pleasant impression that he is a decent kindly
fellow, with a cheery outlook on life, and a love of pretty things
and laughter; but the scribe is an undoubted fly in the ointment. He
thought himself its finest perfume; but that is just precisely what
makes him so unquestionably the fly.
We need not imagine that the condition either of the soldier or of the
artisan was quite so miserable as the scribe would have us believe. The
misfortune is that it was only the scribe who was vocal. If the soldier
or the craftsman had been able to leave behind him his opinion of the
scribe, it would probably have been quite as unflattering, and perhaps
more pungently expressed. It would not have required great genius to
make fun of a profession which lived by the favour of the great man,
and whose typical figure is the kneeling scribe of the Cairo Museum,
with his twisted deprecating smile, and his submissively crossed
hands, waiting, like a dog, uncertain whether his master will kick him
or fling him a bone.
Behind all the glitter of the court and official circle, with its
innumerable hangers-on, there comes the great mass of the people, the
farmers, the skilled workmen, the shepherds, fishers, toilers of all
sorts. Of no race in the world can it be said that the conditions of
its workers have been so fully depicted as of the Egyptians. On the
sculptured and painted tomb-reliefs we see the workmen of almost every
trade under heaven busily engaged in the prosecution of their calling.
Whatever the scribe might think of the indignity of being a smith or a
carpenter, his impression was confined to himself, and the great man
had not the least objection to see these and a score of other common
occupations pictured on the walls of his “eternal habitation.” But
while the outward aspect of these callings is thus fully represented,
so that it might be possible to produce a handbook of the Egyptian
crafts, we are not so well informed as to the environment in which
these wonderfully skilled workmen spent their lives, what were the
conditions of their service, the manner of their housing, and the
question of whether their lot was a happy one or not. Petrie’s
excavations at Kahun have given us the almost complete plan of an Old
Kingdom workmen’s town, where the skilled masons who were building the
pyramid of Senusert II were housed. Though this is only a temporary
town, we may probably take its conditions as more or less typical of
those which prevailed for the artisan class in the Old Kingdom. The
houses are of all sizes, ranging from four rooms to sixty, the larger
houses being, no doubt, those of the overseers and clerks of works. The
streets are narrow, varying from 11 feet to 15 feet wide, and having
a drain down the middle of each. The simplest type of small house has
an open court opposite the entrance, a common room on one side, and
two storerooms on the other, with a stair leading up to the roof. The
larger class of artisan’s house has a court, four rooms opening off
it, and five other rooms dependent on the main rooms. On the whole,
one would imagine that the housing conditions were not so very bad;
though certainly the houses were too crowded together. The average
artisan’s house of the present day has not the number of rooms which
were possessed by the pyramid mason of four thousand years ago, though
his advantages in other respects are considerable.
[Illustration: 30. XIXth DYNASTY RELIEF-WORK, TEMPLE OF RAMSES II,
LUXOR.]
The workman’s wages were at all events partly paid in kind. Herodotus
tells us of the amount expended in provision for the workmen who built
the Great Pyramid: “On the pyramid is shown an inscription, in Egyptian
characters, how much was expended in radishes, onions, and garlic,
for the workmen; which the interpreter, as I well remember, reading
the inscription, told me amounted to one thousand six hundred talents
of silver.” Payment was still in kind in the time of the New Empire.
One of the foremen of the craftsmen of the Theban necropolis in the
time of Ramses IX (1142–1123 B.C.), fortunately kept with great care
a record of all that happened to his gang, noting whether the men
were on full work or were “idle.” Festival days broke in considerably
on their working time, as we hear of two full months’ holiday, and
again of another month, in the same year; but the workmen’s rations
ran on all the same whether they were working or not. The worry was
that the rations were often behind time, and when that happened there
was trouble. One month the rations were only one day late, but another
they did not come at all, and then the workmen went on strike. This
produced the supplies; but ere long the same thing happened again, and
this time the gang went in a body to Thebes, and complained to the
“great princes,” and the “chief prophets of Amen.” Again the result was
good, and the journal of the careful foreman gives us a quaint hint
of how it had been necessary to use a little palm-oil in the case of
the influential “fan-bearer” to secure the desired end. “We received
to-day our corn-rations; we gave two boxes and a writing-tablet to the
fan-bearer.”
We cannot be sure whether the condition of the necropolis workmen,
who were mostly skilled craftsmen, metal workers, carvers, painters,
and so forth, was worse than that of the workmen in the city of the
living; probably the conditions in both cases were much the same. In
any case, it is the necropolis workmen who supply us with our instances
of insufficient or delayed payment, and who give us the first historic
examples of strikes. In the twenty-ninth year of Ramses III (1170 B.C.)
things were pretty bad in the necropolis, and wages had not been paid
for half a year. After giving the officials nine days’ grace, the
workmen naturally went on strike in a body.
They left the necropolis, with their wives and children, and though the
two overseers tried to entice them back to work “with great oaths,”
the workmen were not to be caught with chaff, and stayed outside the
necropolis walls. Finally the affair assumed so threatening an aspect
that two chiefs of police and a number of priests tried to make them
return to duty; but in vain. Their answer was, “We have been driven
here by hunger and thirst, we have no clothes, we have no oil, we have
no food. Write to our lord the Pharaoh on the subject, and write to
the governor who is over us that they may give us something for our
sustenance.” This unheard-of request had its effect--“on that day they
received the provision for the month Tybi.” In another month, however,
they were back again, as supplies had failed once more. This time the
governor of the town met them, and though he asked them how he was to
pay their wages when the storehouses were empty, he at least ordered
that they should receive half of the overdue rations.
Altogether the evidence goes to show that life was not all pleasure in
ancient Egypt, any more than in other lands; but it is only fair to
say that the other side of the matter has been grossly exaggerated,
and that life in the Land of the Pharaohs was not the gloomy, morbid,
perpetually death-contemplating thing which it has been represented as
being. This idea, of course, we owe, partly to the amiable Herodotus
and his picture of the model coffin and mummy being carried round at
all their banquets, with the words, “Look on this, then drink and enjoy
yourself; for when dead you will be like this,” and partly to the fact
that practically all the knowledge we have of the Egyptians comes from
their tombs.
The necessary corrective to this one-sided view of a great nation is
given by their books, and particularly by the romantic fiction which
they were the first nation to cultivate. Erman has said that “the
romances are not to be relied upon; the country which they describe is
not Egypt but fairyland.” This may be so as regards scenery and detail;
but the writer of the Tale of the Doomed Prince, or of Setna and the
Magic Roll, whether he may cast the scene of his story in Naharina
or in Egypt, cannot help revealing in his tale the habitual outlook
on life of the Egypt of his time; and in this respect the romances
are far more to be relied upon than either the vainglorious vauntings
of a royal inscription or the carefully dressed-up moralisings of a
scribe. The picture which they give of the Egyptian nature is that of
a simple, kindly race, singularly free from the savage cruelty which
disgraced their great rivals the Assyrians, loving pleasure, and all
the brightness and beauty of life, with a straightforward and childlike
affection, not greedy of power, but ready to live and let live,
singularly advanced in their conception of family life, and especially
worthy of our admiration in the respect which they paid to women, and
the position accorded to woman from the very earliest times.
It is time to rid our minds of that sinister conception of the Egyptian
as a dark, uncanny, supernaturally wise and diabolically malignant
being, which is still to be found in second-rate fiction, and in the
vain imaginings of gropers in the occult and the miraculous, and to see
this great race as it really was--a race of true children of the Sun,
leading in the dawn of the world’s story a clean, healthy, open-air
life, with its own imperfections and weaknesses, but with its plain
virtues as well, and with a moral standard not unworthy of comparison
with that of any race in the world. What they have accomplished is
plain for all the world to see; surely it is common sense to see also
that such things were not the work of gloomy fanatics or of drivelling
dabblers in the black arts, but of men.
[Illustration: 31. XXth DYNASTY RELIEF-WORK, TEMPLE OF RAMSES III,
MEDINET HABU.]
We turn now to consider the art of ancient Egypt as it has now come
to be known by the accumulation of specimens of it during the last
century. Egyptian art has been somewhat slow in coming to its own
in the judgment of the world, and that for two reasons. First that
opinion, which had been accustomed to very different things, had to be
gradually trained to appreciate the merit of work which differed from
the accepted canons in many respects, even in the type of material
which it used for its self-expression; and next, that the Egyptian
work by which the national art was first introduced to the attention
of the modern world was mostly of a period which we have now learned
to know as decadent. Denderah, Esneh, Edfu, Philæ, these were the
products of Egyptian art which first roused the wonder of European
visitors; and very naturally, for these great shrines are not only
wonderful in themselves, but are also in a state of preservation which
renders them intelligible and attractive to everyone who sees them. But
all the same they are very unworthy to be taken as examples of what
Egyptian art could do at its best, and so we need not wonder that, when
the first impulse of surprise had passed away, the voice of criticism
was heard, pointing out the conspicuous faults in this claimant for
recognition among the great arts of the world, and refusing to allow
the claim. Similarly with the works of sculpture on which another part
of the Egyptian claim must be based, in almost all cases the specimens
of Egyptian sculpture which were first brought under the eyes of the
judges were colossal fragments of a style and a period which had their
own merits, but were far from being representative of the actual work
of the Egyptian sculptor at its best, as we have now come to know it.
In these circumstances it is not to be wondered at that Egyptian art
has only found slow and grudging recognition as one of the great arts
of the world. What is strange, however, is that even to-day, when
the periods of Egyptian architecture are as clearly defined, perhaps
more clearly defined than the periods of Gothic, and when Egyptian
sculpture is represented all over the world by either originals or
reproductions of its best work in all respects, the judgment which was
not unaccountable, or inapplicable in the day of the beginnings of
knowledge of things Egyptian should still be repeated, and Egyptian
art be characterised as a thing, interesting indeed, but essentially
crude and barbaric, the product of a race which has no claim to rank
alongside the other great artistic races of the world.
Thus we find so learned an art critic as Lord Balcarres remarking
(_Donatello_, p. 21), “The massive and abiding art of Egypt ignored
the personality of its gods and Pharaohs, distinguishing the various
persons by dress, ornament, and attribute.” For the gods, this may
pass, but when such a thing is said of the Pharaohs one can only say
that it is simply the opposite of the truth. Is it possible that the
author of such a statement had never seen, before he made it, such
vivid impressions of personality as the great diorite Khafra, with its
splendid dignity, or, at the opposite end of the scale, the Reisner
Menkaura, the very embodiment of a bourgeois “Farmer George” royalty,
doing his best to look as dignified as becomes the wearer of the double
crown, and failing so absolutely? Here are two successive occupants of
the Egyptian throne, whose personality, according to Lord Balcarres,
should be ignored in Egyptian art, and yet the sharp discrimination of
personality is just the thing that immediately strikes everyone who
sees the two statues together.
Lord Balcarres, however, is not the only sinner in this respect.
“The emptiness of the Sphinx’s face,” says Mr. March Phillipps in
his charming book, _The Works of Man_, “is a prevailing trait in all
Egyptian sculpture. All Egyptian faces stare before them with the
same blank regard which can be made to mean anything precisely because
it means nothing.... The truth is, Egyptian sculpture is a sculpture
barren of intellectual insight and intellectual interest.”
Has the writer of this confident condemnation, one wonders, ever seen
the granite Senusert III, either of the Cairo or of the British Museum,
with the strong harsh features which express, if ever any work of the
sculptor’s hands expressed, both the pride and the bitter weariness
of power, or, to take a New Empire instance, the masterful Thothmes
III of the Cairo Museum, the face of a daring soldier, if there ever
was one, or the ugly capable face of Prince Mentuemhat, also at Cairo?
Mentuemhat has no claims to personal beauty, and, one imagines, no
illusions on that matter; but strong character has seldom been more
admirably expressed than in this specimen of the art which, as we are
told, is “barren of intellectual insight and intellectual interest.”
The fact is, that both these criticisms, and many others similar to
them, rest upon a fundamental misconception about Egyptian sculpture.
It is quite obvious that both Lord Balcarres and Mr. March Phillipps,
in making them, are founding upon the colossal pieces of Egyptian
sculpture which are the prominent objects in the galleries of our
Museums, and taking them as adequately representative of the art which
they are criticising; and to do this is hopelessly to misconceive the
actual position.
Egyptian sculpture in the round had two entirely different objects,
which were reached by different methods, and are seen in different
examples. The first was purely monumental and decorative, and its
purposes are served by the production of the colossal statues,
monuments of royal pride and glory, and, not less, pieces of decoration
in a great architectural scheme. These gigantic works are not to be
viewed as portraiture in the strict sense, and that the Egyptians
themselves did not so view them is manifest from the fact that a
reigning Pharaoh seldom hesitated to appropriate to himself any
convenient statues of one of his predecessors by the simple process of
cutting his own cartouche on the figure, and obliterating that of the
original owner.
The question of likeness or unlikeness was a very small one; what was
required was a figure which should convey the impression of power and
dignity, linked with the name of a particular Pharaoh. In this respect,
and as elements of an architectural whole, these statues unquestionably
served their purpose; more was never expected of them, and to criticise
them as lacking in expression, and in individuality, is to do them an
injustice. They can only be judged as what they were designed to be,
not as something radically different.
[Illustration: 32. PTOLEMAIC RELIEF-WORK, KOM OMBOS.]
The position is quite different with regard to the other object of
Egyptian sculpture, which was definitely portraiture. Apart from his
monumental work, which in a limited sense may be said to have ideal
elements in it, the Egyptian sculptor, unlike his successor, the
Greek, produced no ideal work. He was simply and solely, from first
to last, a portrait sculptor, and in this respect he has seldom been
excelled. The whole object of his work was to produce a tomb-statue,
which should be the refuge of the _Ka_ of the dead man when his mummy
had perished by lapse of time. Therefore the one condition of his art
was that it should produce likenesses as absolute as the power of man
could compass. The result of such an aim is manifest, both in the
successes and in the limitations of Egyptian sculpture. In the one
point to which he gave his whole strength, the sculptor scored, not
always, of course, but in many instances, a most astonishing success.
It is impossible to imagine anything more lifelike than the heads of
some of the Old Kingdom statues--the Ti or the Ranefer of the Cairo
Museum, or among royal statues, the Menkaura with the figures of the
Nomes, or in later times the exquisite Berlin head of Queen Nefertiti,
the astonishing ebony head of a royal princess of the same period, who
may be Queen Tiy, or, to come down to still later days, the other head
of Mentuemhat which Miss Benson and Miss Gourlay unearthed from the
temple of Mut, or in the very latest days of Egyptian independence,
the head of an unknown man in green schist which is now in the Berlin
Museum. Until the rise of Roman portrait-sculpture, no ancient school
of art presents anything to be compared with the realism of the ancient
Egyptian sculptor.
Unfortunately for the completeness of his art, the absolute dominance
of the need for recognisable likeness in the head limited his work in
other respects. So long as the head was a success, the rest of the body
did not matter so much; and consequently we have, even in such fine
examples as the Ti and the Ranefer, a noble head joined to a body which
is much less thoroughly studied, while in examples of poorer quality
the contrast between the care with which the head is worked out and the
rude blocking out of the torso and the extremities is almost ludicrous.
Still, Egyptian art, like all art, is entitled to be judged by its
best, and not, as has so often been done, by its worst; and even when
we admit all its limitations the fact remains that to charge it with
incapacity to interpret individuality is, to anyone who is familiar
with its best work, merely ridiculous.
The case is the same when we turn to the criticisms which have been
directed against the other great branch of Egyptian sculpture--its
relief-work. The great reliefs of the temples, with their battle
pictures and scenes of offerings, are what at once commands the
attention and invites the criticism. We are told, and very justly
so far, that “Kings, gods, prisoners, the smiting champion, and the
transfixed victim are all equally expressionless. Clearly the idea that
art can be charged with, and visibly body forth, the emotions and ideas
of the human mind was never grasped by Egyptian sculptors”; but who in
the world ever dreamed of taking the vast advertisements of the glory
and valour of Pharaoh, for that is what the battle reliefs of Karnak
and Medinet Habu are--contract work, at so much the square yard--as
fair representatives of the delicate and most decorative work which has
given us the tomb-reliefs of the Old Kingdom?
In some respects Egyptian relief-work is decidedly inferior to the
remarkable animal sculpture with which the Assyrian kings decorated
their palaces. The Egyptian sculptor rarely attempts anything like the
difficulty of the problems of motion which the Assyrian tackled with
such dash and light-heartedness, and when he does make the attempt
his work is apt to seem stiff beside that of his rival, whose hunting
scenes have rarely been equalled; but in his portrayal of quiet scenes
of home, field, and farmyard the Egyptian comes to his own again, and
it is difficult to imagine anything more effective as wall decoration
than his quiet and unstrained work, which, unlike that of the bitter
Assyrian, almost invariably leaves a pleasant impression on the mind.
The comprehension and appreciation of Egyptian architecture has been
hindered by the same fact which has delayed the appreciation of the art
of the Nile Valley--namely, that the specimens of it which are to-day
the most complete, and which command for that reason most attention,
belong, not to the days when Egypt was at the summit of her achievement
in all respects, but to periods when taste and artistic feeling were
decaying along with power. To take, as is often done, such a temple
as Medinet Habu as fairly representative of Egyptian architecture, is
simply to make adequate appreciation of what Egyptian architecture
is a thing impossible. The Egyptian builders had, no doubt, great
faults, which have already been touched upon. They were often, indeed
almost always, strangely careless about the very factors which should
ensure the “eternal duration” which they craved for the works of their
hands; they had, generally speaking, comparatively little of that
exquisite sense of proportion which makes a fine Greek temple seem
a thing inevitable, though sometimes, as at Der el-Bahri, and the
little temple of Amenhotep III at Elephantine, now, alas, destroyed,
something of this was revealed to them; they sometimes mistook mere
mass for greatness, and the multiplication of forms for beauty, as in
the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, where a magnificent opportunity was lost
because the architect did not know that too much is too much. But with
it all they have left us a heritage of which it can safely be said that
few of the works of man can surpass it in impressiveness. “It is a part
of my intention,” says Mr. Lethaby (_Architecture_, pp. 65, 66), “to
try to point out what contributions were made to universal architecture
by the several civilisations as they arose and passed away, but to do
so of Egypt would be practically to rewrite what has been said; to a
large degree Architecture is an Egyptian art.”
The nation of which such a statement can be made needs no further
witness as to its place among the great master-building nations of the
world’s history.
Whatever hesitations and doubts there may be as to the right of the
ancient Egyptian to rank high among the artistic nations of the world,
there can be none as to his place as a craftsman. In prehistoric days
he was already the finest flint-worker that the world has ever known,
so that his flint knives are to this day the standards by which all
other similar work falls to be tested, and in presence of which it
always comes short; while his vessels of hard stone were shaped, with
a skill and a patience which to us seem little short of marvellous,
into shapes of grace and beauty which have never been surpassed by
the workers of any land or time. Later he translated these into fine
pottery, and was always a skilful and satisfying potter, though his
work never perhaps attained the grace and beauty of that of his brother
craftsman over the sea in Crete. His greatest gift to us in this
respect was his development of the art of covering pottery of all kinds
with the exquisite glazes which still charm us on scarabs, amulets,
ushabti figures, and all sorts of vessels.
As a linen worker, of course, he was incomparable, and the finest
specimens of modern linen look wretchedly coarse when viewed under
a microscope alongside the best products of his loom. The earliest
jewellery of the world was of his workmanship, and the bracelets of the
Ist Dynasty queen found at Abydos show us that the Egyptian jeweller of
six thousand years ago needed no lessons from any of the most skilled
modern practitioners of the crafts. Indeed, all through the history
of the land the craftsmanship of the goldsmith was beyond reproach.
In the later periods his design was much inferior to the happy
inspirations of the morning of art, though his technique was fairly
well maintained to the end; but in the best days of the craft, which
pretty closely correspond to the best days of the history, design and
technique were alike admirable.
Anything finer in their own way than the diadems of Khnumit, the
royal crown, or the pectorals of the Lahun treasure, it is impossible
to imagine, while if the standard of the furniture in the tomb of
Tutankhamen is maintained by the jewellery, we may look for evidence
from this source that the skill of the craftsman had not degenerated in
the interval between the Middle Kingdom and the New Empire.
With regard to woodwork, the evidence of the furniture which has
been found in the tombs is conclusive both as to the skilful and
sound design of the Egyptian cabinet-maker, and as to his careful and
accurate workmanship. The chairs, the coffers, and the couches from the
tomb of Yuaa and Tuau are delightful to the eye, with their simple and
sensible lines, and suggest that they would be equally satisfactory in
use. The wonders which have been disclosed in the tomb of Tutankhamen
have already been discussed in their own place, so far as that is
possible at present, and while they reveal nothing new, save the ugly
and clumsy state couches, whose provenance has been also discussed,
they show an amount of richness in detail and material for which even
previous discoveries had scarcely prepared us.
Professor Petrie tells us that structurally the work of the Egyptian
joiner was as good as it was satisfying to the eye, and the state in
which his works have come down to us through so many centuries bears
witness to the soundness of the materials which he used, and of the
work which he put out upon them; and perhaps the carefully moderate
estimate of so great an expert is more impressive as to the quality of
Egyptian craftsmanship than the multiplication of superlatives would
be. “The powerful technical skill of Egyptian art, its good sense of
limitations, and its true feeling for harmony and expression, will
always make it of the first importance to the countries of the West
with which it was so early and so long connected.”
In sum the debt which the modern world owes to the culture of ancient
Egypt is no small one. We owe to Egypt the first book, the first
building, the first ship, the first statue, the first romance, the
first relief, and the first picture, in the modern sense, of which we
have any knowledge; and if some of these anticipations are crude and
primitive, and show but little sign of the wonderful development of
which the future was to prove them capable, yet it is only due to this
pioneer nation to remember that it is to her that we owe the seed which
has borne so manifold a harvest.
INDEX
Aahmes Nefertari, Queen, 160
Aah-hotep, Queen, 27, 156
Aashait, Princess, 99
Abbott Papyrus, 128
Abd-er-Rassoul, Ahmed, 157;
Mohamed, 158
Abu-Roash, 49, 52
Abusir, 50, 68, 69
Abydos, Temple of Sety I, 31;
Royal Tombs, 135 _et seq._
Akerblad, 14
Akhenaten, 113, 118, 168, 171, 172 _et seq._, 189
Akhetaten, 174, 190
Amélineau, 136, 140, 141
Amen, 111
Amenartas, 26
Amenemhat I, 72;
II, 73;
III, 51, 73, 81, 82
Amenhotep I, 160;
II, 100, 130,
tomb of, 165 _et seq._;
III, 116, 148, 166
Ameny, 224, 225
Amherst Papyrus, 128
Ammit, 205, 206
Amtes, Queen, 218, 221
Ankh.s.en.Amen (Ankh.s.en.pa. Aten), 174, 189, 190 _et seq._
Antefs, the, 224
Anubis, 186
Apis, 19
Archæology, methods and aims of, 35 _et seq._
Architecture, Egyptian, 243 _et seq._
Art, Egyptian, 236 _et seq._
Artisans, condition of, 231 _et seq._
Ashurbanipal, 112
Astemkheb, Queen, 130
Ay (Pharaoh), 113, 188, 191
Ayrton, Mr., 168
Balcarres, Lord, 238
Begarawiyah, 50
Belzoni, 9, 11, 12, 13, 63, 64, 105, 151–3
Benson, Miss, 118, 241
Biban el-Moluk, 148 _et seq._
Bib-khuru-Riyas (Tutankhamen), 192
Boghaz-Kyoi, 192
Book of the Dead, 151
Book of the Gates, 151
Book of Him who is in the Duat, 151
Breasted, Prof., 41, 196
Browne, Sir T., 61
Brugsch, E., 158 _et seq._
Brune, 94
Budge, Sir E. A. W., 205, 206, 209
Canopic Jars, 186
Carnarvon, Lord, 177 _et seq._
Carter, Mr. Howard, 168, 177 _et seq._
Caviglia, Capt., 63
Champollion, J. F., 13, 14, 92
Clarke, Somers, 96
Corselet of Eiorhoreru, 201
Corselet of Tutankhamen, 200
Couches, State (Tutankhamen’s), 204 _et seq._
Craftsmanship, Egyptian, 245 _et seq._
Dadefra, 49
Dahshur, 73, 77
Dakhamun (Ankh.s.en.Amen), 192
Daoud Pasha, 157–8
Davis, T. M., 168 _et seq._
Denon, V., 8, 18
Der el-Bahri, 31, 87 _et seq._;
_Cache_ of, 158 _et seq._
_Description de l’Egypte_, 8
Devilliers, 86, 91
Diodorus, 213
Drovetti, 9
Edfu, 32
Edwards, Miss A., 45–6
Elliot Smith, Prof., 163, 173
Eugenie, Empress, 29
Fan-bearer, the, 222, 233
Fayum, the, 49
Gebel Barkal (Napata), 50
Gizeh, 48, 49, 50, 52
Gourlay, Miss, 118, 241
Hall, H. R., 96
Hamed Aga, 155–6
Hasan, Sultan, 62
Hathor, shrine, Der el-Bahri, 100
Hatshepsut, Queen, 31, 78 _et seq._, 119, 120, 168
Hawara, 51, 73, 75, 76
Henhenit, Princess, 99
Hent-taui, Queen, 160
Herodotus, 7, 213, 232, 235
Hichens, R., 90
Hierakonpolis, 145
Horemheb, 118, 168, 175, 190, 199
Hunefer, Papyrus of, 206
Huy, 190, 191
Hyksos Sphinxes, 26
Hypostyle Hall, Karnak, 113
Illahun, 51, 78
Imhotep, 70
Ismail, Khedive, 29
Jewellery, Egyptian, 78, 79, 82, 142, 144
Jollois, 86, 91
Ka. amenhotep, 201
Kadashman-Enlil, 205
Kagemni, 71
Kahun, 75, 231
Karnak, temple of, 105 _et seq._;
Mariette’s work at, 31
Kauit, Princess, 99
Kemsit, Princess, 99
Keneh, Mudir of, 27, 155, 156–8
Khaemuas, the Governor, 129
Khafra, pyramid of, 53, 54
Kha-Sekhem, tomb of, 142, 145
Khenti, 139, 140
Khnemhotep, 224
Khnumit, Princess, 78, 82
Khonsu, 111;
temple of, 118
Khufu, pyramid of, 52 _et seq._
Labyrinth, the, 15, 108
Lahun, 73, 75, 80
Layard, 43, 156
Legrain, work of, at Karnak, 108, 111, 124 _et seq._
Lepsius, 14–16, 93
Lesseps, F. de, 24
Lethaby, W. R., on Egyptian Architecture, 244
Lisht, 51, 73
Loret, 165
Luxor, work of Amenhotep III at, 117
Macalister, R. A. S., 9, 16, 39, 41, 43
Maghareh, Wady, 15
Makt-aten, 189
Mamun, 62
Manetho, 137
Mannikin, the, 8, 207
March Phillipps, on Egyptian Art, 238–9
Mariette, A., 10, 17, 18, 34, 93, 156
Maspero, Sir G., 10, 23, 32, 35, 40, 41, 68, 101, 124, 157, 161, 164,
165, 168
Mastabas, 58, 71
Medinet Habu, Mariette’s work at, 31
Medum, pyramid of, 54
Memphis, 19
Mena, 45, 137, 143
Menkaura, pyramid of, 54–64, 65;
statue of, 238
Mentu, 117
Mentuemhat, Prince, 239, 241
Mentuherkhepshef, Prince, 168
Mentuhotep-neb-Hepet-Ra, 89, 96 _et seq._, 147
Merenptah, 117, 166
Merenra, 70, 221
Mereruka, 71
Meroë, 15, 50
Mertisen, 89
Meryt-Aten, 189
Moeris, Lake, 15
Morgan, J. de, 78, 165
Murray, Miss M. A., 102
Mursil II, 192
Mut, 111, 117, 118
Napata, 15, 50
Napoleon I, 7
Napoleon III, 24
Narmer, 143, 144
Naville, E. de, 31, 95 _et seq._;
102 _et seq._
Necho, 154
Nectanebo, 20
Nefer-ka-Ra, 68
Nefer-ka-ra-em-per-Amen, 129
Nekht, tomb of, 150
Nesamen, Pharaoh’s Scribe, 129
Ne-user-Ra, temple of, 69
Nezem-mut, Queen, 160
Osireion, Abydos, 31, 102 _et seq._
Osiris, 139;
bed of, 140, 141
Osiris-Apis (Serapis), 19
Paser, Governor of Thebes, 128, 129
Passalacqua, 10
Pedubast, 201
Peet, Prof. T. E., 132, 137
Pentaur, poem of, 116
Pepy I, 70, 218
Pepy II, 70
Perring, 14
Petrie, Sir W. M. F., 47, 53, 61, 66, 67, 73, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 81,
102, 108, 115, 136, 141, 145, 205, 216, 231, 247
Pewero, 128, 129
Pharaoh, conditions of rule of, 215 _et seq._
Philæ, Obelisk of, 13
Philip Arrhidæus, chapel of, at Karnak, 121
Pimay, 201
Pinezem I and II, 160
Pococke, 91
Pool of Osiris, Abydos, 102 _et seq._
Predynastic tombs, 138
Priesthood, the Egyptian, 223
Proctor, R. A., 54
Psamtek II, 154
Ptah, 19
Ptah-hetep, 71
Ptolemaic work at Karnak, 110, 113, 125
Punt, 32, 95
Pyramids, the, 48 _et seq._
Pyramid temples, 58 _et seq._
Pyramid texts, 70, 71
Quft, 161
Rainer Papyrus, 201
Ramses I, 110, 112, 113
Ramses II, 26, 40, 113, 114, 117, 160, 162, 218
Ramses III, 31, 111, 148, 160, 165, 219, 233
Ramses IV and V, 166
Ramses VI, 166, 180
Ramses IX, 128, 232
Ramses X, 129
Ramses XII, 151
Razedef, 49, 52
Rehoboam, 112
Reisner, G. A., 68
Rekhmara, 122, 150, 129
Rosellini, 14
Rosetta Stone, the, 13
Sadhe, Princess, 99
Said, Khedive, 24–7
Sallier Papyrus, 227
Saqqara, Mariette’s work at, 31;
stepped pyramid at, 70
Sat-hathor-ant, Princess, 79
“Scorpion,” the, 143
Scribes, the Egyptian, 226 _et seq._
Sebek-em-saf, 13, 130, 146
Sekhmet, 117
Semti, seal of, 145
Seneferu, pyramid of, 51, 69, 146, 199
Senmut, 89, 122, 221
Senusert I, 72
Senusert II, 51, 73, 75, 87, 231
Senusert III, 73, 125
Seqenen Ra, 160, 164, 217
Serabit el-Khadem, 15
Serapeum, Serapis, 19 _et seq._
Setna-Khaemuast, 40, 223
Sety I, 11, 113, 148, 160, 163;
tomb of, 153 _et seq._
Sety II, 113
Sheshanq, 112
Shubbiluliuma, 192
Siptah, 166, 168
Smenkhara, 188, 189
Society in Egypt, 214 _et seq._
Sphinx, temple of, 60
Strabo, 19, 102, 103, 151
Strikes of workmen, 233, 234
Taharqa, 112
Tanutamen, 112
Tell el-Amarna, 174;
tablets, 178;
art of, 197
Temples, Der el-Bahri, 86, 87 _et seq._;
Karnak, 105 _et seq._
Teti, 70
Thothmes I, 119
Thothmes II, 119, 160
Thothmes III, 26, 100, 119, 120, 121, 122, 125, 160, 218
Thothmes IV, 166, 168
Throne of Tutankhamen, 196
Ti, 71
Tiy, Queen, 168, 171, 173, 174
Tuau, 168 _et seq._
Tutankhamen, 36, 113, 175, 177 _et seq._;
reign of, 188
Tutankhaten, 174
Umm el-Ga’ab, 140
Una, 218, 221
Unas, 70
Valley of the Kings, 148 _et seq._
Vizier, duties of, 219–221
Vyse, Col. H., 14, 64, 65
Weigall, 168, 172
Westcar Papyrus, 199
Wilkinson, 92
Young, 14
Yuaa, tomb of, 168 _et seq._
Zawiyet el-Aryan, 68
Zazamankh, 199
Zer, King, 142, 144, 145
Zeser, pyramid of, 51, 70, 146
THE END
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