A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume I Part 17

"The brick-built sepulchres are of two kinds also. The more elaborate are of black brick, while a yellowish brick is used for the others.

The yellow bricks are a mixture of sand and pebbles with a little clay; the black bricks are of earth and straw. The former are always small (88 in. x 44 in. x 28 in.); the latter are comparatively large (152 in. x 72 in. x 56 in.). Both kinds are dried simply in the sun. The yellow bricks seem to be the more ancient. Their employment begins and ends with the Ancient Empire. The black bricks, on the other hand, appear for the first time about midway through the fourth dynasty. At first they were rarely employed, but under the eighteenth dynasty and those which followed it, they came to be exclusively used."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 109.--The Mastabat-el-Faraoun.]

All these mastabas, whether of brick or stone, betray an amount of negligence in their construction which is astonishing. Considering the ideas which the Egyptians had formed of a future life, the chief preoccupation of their architects should have been to give a stability to their sepulchres which would have insured their perpetuity, and, with it, that of the deposit committed to their charge. The whole of our description will be pervaded by accounts of the minute precautions devised to that end. "Now these mastabas are constructed with care on their outsides alone. The core of their walls is composed of sand, of rubbish, of blocks of stone mingled with the flakes struck off by the masons, and all this in most cases without any cement to give it coherence. The mastabas of Sakkarah are not h.o.m.ogeneous constructions of masonry and cement, like the pyramids and most of the mastabas of Gizeh. They are confused heaps of ill a.s.sorted materials, which would collapse but for the retaining strength of their covering of solid stone.

"At Sakkarah the outward faces of the mastaba are not smooth. Each successive course is slightly set back from the one below it. At Gizeh the walls form a smooth plane gently inclined from the perpendicular.

"There are mastabas of all sizes. That of Sabou measures 172 feet by 84; that of Ha-ar, 149 by 74; that of Ra-en-ma 169 by 81, and that of Hapi no more than 25 ft. 6 in. by 19 ft. 6 in. In height they vary less. The highest are not more than from 26 to 30 ft. high, the smallest about 12."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 110.--Entrance to a Mastaba at Sakkarah.

Mariette.]

The roof of the mastaba is a plain surface without irregularity of any kind; but the soil above it is sprinkled with vases buried at a slight depth. These vases are pretty evenly distributed, but they are rather more numerous in that part of the soil which covers the ceilings of the chambers, a circ.u.mstance of which Mariette often made use to guide him in his excavations. Like all the vases of this epoch, those which are found upon the roof of the mastabas are roughly made, pointed at the bottom and without handles. They each contain a thin film of yellow clay deposited by the water with which they were filled. They were placed in their curious position under the notion that the water which they contained would quench the thirst of the dead man below.

The mouths of the jars were covered with flat stones, and the water would last long enough to satisfy at least the immediate necessities of the inhabitant of the tomb.

"The princ.i.p.al face of the mastaba is turned to the east. In four cases out of five the entrance to its chambers, when there is one, is found upon this face. The general arrangement is, almost always, as follows: 1. At a few metres distance from the _north-eastern_ angle we come upon a quadrangular niche or recess, very high and very narrow, in the depths of which those long vertical grooves which distinguish the steles of this epoch are carved upon the actual masonry of the tomb. For this recess an unimportant stele, with or without inscription, is occasionally subst.i.tuted, or (2) we find, at a few metres distance from the _south-eastern_ angle, either a deeper, larger, and more carefully built recess, in the depths of which a monolithic stele of white limestone covered with hieroglyphs is placed; or a regular architectural facade in miniature with a door in the centre. When the recess is found near the southern angle of the eastern face, the tomb begins and ends there. It has no internal chamber, or rather, the recess acts as subst.i.tute for one. But when, instead of the niche or recess, we meet with a door, we then know that we have come upon a regularly completed tomb. The name of its proprietor is often carved upon the lintel. Several of these lintels, of a peculiar shape, are to be seen in the Louvre.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 111.--Lintel of the tomb of Teta, 6th dynasty.

Louvre.]

"Next after the eastern face, in relative importance, comes that which is turned to the north. When the entrance is in the northern wall the door is invariably at the back of a kind of vestibule, in front of which are two monolithic columns, without base or capital, supporting the architrave which, in turn, supports the roof.

"Still more seldom than in the northern face, the entrance is occasionally found upon that which is turned to the south. This exceptional arrangement is, in most instances, caused by some local circ.u.mstance which may readily be perceived. When the entrance is on the south its arrangement is sometimes the one, sometimes the other, of the two which we have described.

"As for the western face, we have no evidence that it ever played any more ambitious _role_ than that of completing the inclosure. It is always dest.i.tute of both openings and ornaments."

We have thus explored, with Mariette, the outside of the mastaba. We have described its form and general aspect, we have noticed the materials of which it was constructed, the principles upon which it was oriented, and its average size. We have explained, too, how this single type of sepulchre was repeated many thousands of times with but slight variations, until, upon the plateau between Memphis and the desert there gradually arose a metropolis of the dead more populous than that of the living. It remains to describe the contents of those huge blocks of masonry. We shall begin by visiting the chambers planned by the architect in the building itself; we shall afterwards penetrate, by the paths which modern curiosity has established through the _debris_ of ages and the depths of the soil, to those recesses of the tomb which were meant to be for ever inaccessible.

The interior of a mastaba is composed of three parts--the chamber, the _serdab_, and the well. The last-named of the three is the only part which is never wanting. Many of the mastabas are, in fact, solid. In them the chamber is in a very rudimentary condition, being represented merely by one of those external niches which Mariette has described.

This arrangement was the earliest, and, as long as the mastaba continued to be built, the less ambitious tenants of the necropolis were contented to reproduce it. But in these pages, as in a natural history, it is important to study the species when fully developed and provided with all its organs. When we have clearly established a general type nothing is more easy than to recognise and point out its variations. It suffices to say here that some tombs are wanting in one, some in another of those const.i.tuent parts whose meaning and uses we shall attempt to determine, and that, in a few, they are of an unaccustomed importance.

It is natural that we should first turn our attention to the chamber.

This was a kind of neutral ground upon which the quick and the dead could meet, the former to present, the latter to receive the funeral offerings.

"The interior of a mastaba may be divided into several 'chambers'

(there are three in the tomb of Ti), but generally there is only one.

It is entered by the door in the middle of the _facade_.

"These chambers have, as a rule, to depend upon the door for light, but there are a few instances in which they are lighted from openings in the roof. A remarkable example of the latter arrangement is to be seen in the tomb of Ti, where the innermost chamber, which otherwise would be in complete darkness, is lighted from the roof.

"The chamber is sometimes quite bare, sometimes covered with sculptures and paintings such as those whose character and meaning we have already pointed out. At its further end, and always facing eastwards, stands the inscribed tablet or stele. There are some chambers in which the walls are bare and the stele engraved, but there are none where the walls are carved and the stele plain."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 112.--Plan of the tomb of Ti.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 113, 114.--Mastaba at Sakkarah, from Prisse.]

In the tomb of Ptah-Hotep, of which we reproduce the princ.i.p.al side, the stele proper is on the left, but the figures and the funerary inscriptions cover all the central part of the richly decorated wall (Fig. 115).

We see, then, that the stele is the one indispensable part of this complicated whole. It was, in fact, upon the formula with which it was inscribed, that the Egyptians depended for those magical agencies by which Osiris became the active medium of transmission between the living and the dead.

"At the foot of the stele there was often a table for offerings, in granite, alabaster, or limestone. This was laid flat upon the ground (Fig. 92).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 115.--Western wall in the chamber of the tomb of Ptah-Hotep, 5th dynasty. Drawn by Bourgoin.]

"As a rule this was the only piece of furniture in the chamber; but occasionally we find, on each side of the stele and always placed upon the ground, either two small limestone obelisks, or two objects in that material resembling table legs hollowed out at the top for the reception of offerings."

This chamber was left open to every comer. The entrance was in fact left without a door. To this rule Mariette found but two exceptions in the many hundreds of tombs which he examined.[167]

[167] One of these exceptions is furnished by the tomb of Ti, of which we shall often have to speak (Fig. 114). The large public hall near the entrance to the tomb was separated from the two chambers farther in by a corridor closed at two points by doors, some remains of which were found in place when the tomb was opened.

"Not far from the chamber, oftener on the south than the north, and oftener on the north than the west, a pa.s.sage in the masonry, high, narrow, and built of very large stones, is found. The workmen employed upon the excavations christened it the _serdab_, or corridor, and their name has been generally adopted."[168] In Figs. 116-119 we give the plan and three sections of a mastaba at Gizeh which has four serdabs.

[168] This is a word of Persian origin adopted by the Arabs. Its strict meaning is a dark subterranean opening, cave, or pa.s.sage.

"Sometimes the serdab has no communication with the other parts of the mastaba, it is entirely walled in, but in other instances there is a narrow quadrangular opening, a sort of pipe or conduit, which unites the serdab with the chamber. It is so small that the hand can only be introduced into it with difficulty.[169]

[169] The tomb of Ti had two serdabs as well as three chambers; one of these was close to the door, the other in the innermost part of the mastaba. In the latter several statues of Ti were found, the best preserved being now in the museum at Boulak.

"The use of the serdab is revealed by the objects which have been found in it; it was to hold one or more statues of the deceased. The Egyptians believed these statues to be the most certain guarantees, always with the exception of the mummy itself, of a future life for the dead. Hidden from sight in their dark prison, they were protected from all violence, while they were separated only by a few stones from the chamber where the friends and relations met together, and the conduit by which the intervening wall was often pierced, allowed the smell of fruit and incense and the smoke of burnt fat to come to their nostrils.[170]

[170] In a Theban tomb described by M. MASPERO (_etude sur quelques Peintures funeraires_) the tenant, Harmhabi, is made to speak thus: "I have come, I have received my bread; joining the embalmed offerings to my members, I have breathed the scent of the perfumes and incense." It is also possible that this conduit may have been intended to permit of the free circulation of the _double_, to allow it to pa.s.s from its supporting statues to the chapel in which it is honoured. This curious idea, that the spirit of the dead can pa.s.s through a very small hole, but that it cannot dispense with an opening altogether, is found among many nations. The Iroquois contrived an opening of very small diameter in their tombs, through which the soul of the dead could pa.s.s and repa.s.s. See HERBERT SPENCER, _Principles of Sociology_, vol. i. p. 192.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 116.--Plan of a mastaba with four Serdabs.

(Lepsius, i., pl. 24.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 117.--Longitudinal section of the same mastaba.]

"No inscriptions have been found in a serdab except those upon the statues. And no objects other than statues have ever been found in a serdab." So that the function of the serdab was to afford a safe and final asylum to the statues. These were, no doubt, to be found in other situations also, because, not to mention the numerous bas-reliefs upon which the figure of the deceased appeared in the chamber or in the niche which sometimes took its place, he was sometimes portrayed in high relief, and of full life size, in the public hall of the tomb.[171] Sometimes, also, we find a statue in one of those front courts which, especially at the time of the fourth dynasty, seem to have been in great favour. But this court, as well as the chamber, was open to every chance pa.s.ser by, and the statues which they both contained were in continual danger from careless or malicious hands. It was to guard against such chances as these that the inventive architects of Egypt contrived a safe retreat in the heart of the ma.s.sive structure which should provide a reserve of statues against every contingency. When all those which were exposed to accident should have perished, these would still survive and would furnish to the _double_ the material support, the tangible body, to which that phantom was obliged to attach himself unless he wished to perish entirely.

[171] There is an example of this in a mastaba at Gizeh (Fig.

120). See No. 95 of LEPSIUS (_Denkmaeler_, vol. i. p. 29; vol.

iii. pl. 44).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 118.--Transverse section through the chamber.]

These precautions were not ill conceived. The serdab kept efficient guard over its deposit; the museum of Boulak contains at least a hundred statues from the ancient empire which were found at Sakkarah, and nine-tenths of them were found in the serdabs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 119.--Transverse section through the serdabs.]

We have now described all those parts of the tomb which were above ground. We have not been content with visiting the chamber only, which was freely left open, we have penetrated into the farthest recesses, and have discovered those secrets of the ma.s.sive walls which their constructor thought to hide for ever from the eye of man. But even yet we have not arrived at the actual place of burial; we shall reach it, however, through our third internal division, the well or pit.

"The well is an artificial excavation, square or rectangular in plan, never round, at the bottom of which is the chamber in which the mummy is deposited.

"To arrive at the opening of the well, we must mount to the platform, or roof, of the mastaba (Fig. 122). As there was never any staircase to a mastaba either within or without, it will be seen that the well must have been a very inaccessible part of the tomb." In one single instance, namely, in the tomb of Ti, the well is sunk from the floor of the largest of the internal chambers, but whether it opened upon the roof or upon the floor of the chamber, it was always closed with the utmost care by means of a large flat stone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 120.--Figures in high relief, from a mastaba at Gizeh, 5th dynasty (from Lepsius).]

"The well is generally situated upon the major axis of the mastaba, and, as a rule, nearer to the north than to the south. Its depth varies, but, on an average, it is about forty feet. Now and then, however, it has a depth of sixty-five or even eighty feet. As the well begins at the platform and ends in the rock-carved mummy chamber, it follows that it pa.s.ses vertically first through the mastaba, secondly through the rock upon which the mastaba is founded. The built part of the well is carefully constructed of large and perfect stones, and in this we find one of the distinguishing characteristics of the tombs of the ancient empire." In the tomb of Ti the well takes the form of an inclined plain like a pa.s.sage in the pyramids. In the common form of well the mummy pit could only be reached by means of ropes.