A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume I Part 18

"When the bottom of the well is reached a gaping pa.s.sage is seen in the rock which forms its southern wall. This pa.s.sage, which is not high enough to allow one to walk upright, does not run quite parallel to the axis of the mastaba. It is directed obliquely towards the south-east, like the chamber above. Suddenly it becomes enlarged into a small cavern, which is the mortuary chamber properly speaking, that is to say, the room with a view to which the whole structure has been planned and to which all its other parts are but accessories.

"This mortuary chamber is vertically under the public hall above, so that the survivors who came together in the latter for the funeral ceremonies had the corpse of the deceased under their feet, at a distance which varied according to the depth of the well."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 121.--The upper chamber, well, and mummy chamber.[172]]

[172] This figure is a composition by Mariette for the purpose of showing the relation between the subterranean and constructed parts of the tomb. (_Notice des princ.i.p.aux Monuments_, p. 22.) [It shows, however, the well opening from the floor of the upper chamber, an arrangement which is not characteristic of the mastaba.--ED.]

The mortuary chambers are large and carefully built, but generally without ornament or inscription. Of all those explored by him Mariette found but one which had its walls ornamented; in the middle of its decorations, which he does not describe, he contrived to make out a few phrases which seemed to belong to the _Ritual of the Dead_.

The sarcophagus was placed in one corner of the chamber. It was generally of fine limestone, sometimes of red granite, and on a few occasions of opaque black basalt. It was rectangular on plan with a round-topped lid squared at the angles.

Mariette found none at Sakkarah with inscriptions. On the other hand we find them upon the sarcophagus at Khoo-foo-Ankh, which was discovered at Gizeh and belongs to the fourth dynasty (Figs. 123, 124).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 122.--Double mastaba at Gizeh, transverse section (from Lepsius, t. i., pl. 22).]

"The Egyptians did not always trust to the mere size and weight of the lid for the secure closing of the sarcophagus. The under-side of the cover is made with a rebate at its edge which fits into a corresponding groove on the upper edge of the sarcophagus, and the two edges were bound still more tightly together by a very hard cement.

Finally, as if all these precautions were not enough, wooden bolts were affixed to the under-side of the lid which fitted into slots in the sarcophagus and helped to render the two inseparable."

So far as we can judge from the few human remains which have been gathered from these ancient tombs, the process of embalmment was then carried on in simple and elementary fashion, and it was this imperfection that the Egyptians attempted to neutralize, by the innumerable and complicated precautions which they took to insure that the corpse should not be disturbed in its envelope of stone. In later times, when the preparation of the mummy was better understood, they were not so careful to seal up the sarcophagus from the outer air.

"The furniture of the mummy chamber comprised neither statues, nor funerary statuettes, nor amulets of any kind. Sometimes a few ox bones bestrew the ground. Two or three large and pointed red vases, containing nothing but a thin deposit of clay, rest against the walls.

Within the sarcophagus we find the same sobriety of sepulchral furniture. Beyond a wooden or alabaster pillow (Fig. 105) and half a dozen little drinking cups of alabaster, nothing has been found there but the mummy itself."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 123.--Sarcophagus of Khoo-foo-Ankh. Perspective after Bourgoin. Red granite. Height 133 metres. Boulak.]

These beef bones must be the remains of the quarters of meat which were placed in the tomb for the nourishment of the dead. No scene is more frequently represented upon the walls of the public chamber of the mastaba than the killing and flaying of victims for the funeral ceremonies (Fig. 125). Like those which are found upon the roof, the vases must have held water for the double. The pillow was placed under the head of the mummy, it was the one he had used during his life. As for the drinking cups, their use has not yet been determined, so far as we know.

"As soon as the mummy was in the sarcophagus, the sarcophagus sealed, and the various objects which we have described in place, the opening at the bottom of the well was walled up; the well itself was filled with stones, earth, and sand, and the dead was left to his eternal sleep."[173] These precautions make it no easy thing to reach the mummy chamber. To find the entrance to the well is the first difficulty, and when it is found, many hands and no little time are required to remove the rubbish with which it is filled. The only mechanical helps which the Egyptians have ever used in such work are those which we ourselves have seen in the hands of Mariette's labourers, namely, the wooden shovel and the little rush basket which is filled with a few handfuls of sand and pebbles, and then carried on the head to be emptied at a convenient distance. It may be guessed how many journeys to and fro have to be made before a few cubic yards of _debris_ are cleared by such means as this!

[173] The broken up and decayed remains of wooden boats have been found in two or three mummy pits (MARIETTE, _Les Tombes de l'Ancien Empire_, p. 17). They originally formed part, perhaps, of the boats upon which the corpse was transported across the Nile to the nearest point of the western bank to the tomb. There can be no doubt that, in placing them in the well, the survivors believed that they were serving the deceased. Both the bas-reliefs in the tomb and the _Ritual_ contain many representations of the soul navigating the regions of Ament (see the upper section of Fig. 98). In certain Theban tombs, models of fully rigged boats have been found; there are some of them in the Louvre (_Salle Civile_, case K). [There are two in the British Museum, and one, a very fine one, in the museum at Liverpool.--ED.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 124.--Details of the Sarcophagus of Khoo-foo-Ankh.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 125.--Bas-relief from Sakkarah. Boulak.]

We have so far followed Mariette, and have frequently had to make use of his _ipsissima verba_. To his pages and to the plates of the great work of Lepsius, we must refer those readers who are not contented with being told general rules but wish to know the exceptions also. We shall not go into all the changes which variety of taste and the progress of art introduced into the arrangement and decoration of Egyptian buildings; they do not affect the general statements which we have made. We shall not re-state the evidence which enabled Mariette to apportion the 142 painted and sculptured mastabas explored by him in 1869, to the first six dynasties. It is certain that those monuments form a chronological series extending over a s.p.a.ce of from twelve to fifteen centuries, and that during the whole of that long period, the general character of Egyptian sepulchral architecture remained unchanged.

We should here, perhaps, in order to make our description complete, attempt to convey a true idea of the reliefs which cover the sides of the chamber, and of the statues which fill the serdab. We should, perhaps, by a judicious choice of examples, endeavour to estimate their style and composition; but we shall postpone all such examination until we come to treat of sculpture, and of the way in which the earliest Egyptian artists treated the human form. A didactic and a.n.a.lytic method is so far despotic that it compels us, in order to marshal our facts and to make them easily understood, to separate phenomena which are intimately connected, and to destroy the unity of natural groups. We have thus been driven to separate the figured decorations of the tomb from the architectural arrangements which enframe and support them; with the latter, alone, are we now concerned.

We may sum up the foregoing details by the following general description of the Egyptian tomb as it was established in the early ages of the national life, in those years when the national civilization put on the form and colour which it retained until the last days of antiquity.

This tomb, when complete, included (1) a built up part which, being raised well above the surface of the soil, was a conspicuous object in the landscape; and (2) a subterranean part cut in the living rock which was never more than a few feet below the surface of the sand.

The constructed part inclosed a chamber which was sometimes internal and sometimes external, a chamber in which the relations of the deceased deposited the funeral offerings, and in which the priests officiated before the stele, to which the most conspicuous place was always given. Sometimes this chamber is nothing more than a recess in the _facade_, a mere frame for the stele. The structure also contains a retreat in its thickness where the statues of the deceased were walled up. The subterranean part is composed of the well and the mummy chamber. The well is sunk from different parts of the building; usually traversing its whole depth; it leads to the mummy chamber which is found at varying depths in the bowels of the earth.

Such are the const.i.tuent elements of the _mastaba_, that is to say, of those private tombs which were contemporary with the Pyramids. All over Egypt, in every one of the cemeteries, no matter where they are situated or what their date, the same elements are to be found, modified in certain particulars by the rank of the deceased, by the nature of the soil, by the size of the tomb, and by the changes of fashion, but always to be easily recognized. Of all these elements there is but one which does not persistently reappear in monuments other than the mastaba, and that is the _serdab_. This retreat for statues has not, as yet, been found in any of the royal tombs of the first six dynasties, neither has it been met with in the tombs of the two Theban empires, or of later epochs. And yet it was connected with one of the most vital hopes of the Egyptian religion. It fulfilled in the happiest manner, one of the conditions imposed upon the Egyptian architect by the strange conceptions of a future life which we have described. Why then do we, as a rule, find the serdab only in the mastabas of the Memphite necropolis? Its absence under the Theban princes is, perhaps to be explained by the progress made in the science of embalming. The heads of more than one mummy have now been exhibited in the cases of European museums for many years, and, in spite of the dampness of our climates, they still preserve their skin, their teeth and their hair (Fig. 126). When they had learnt the secret of preserving the body from corruption, so that after a long series of centuries it should be pretty much in the same condition as on the day after death, they did not indeed, cease to make those images which were supposed to guard the _double_ from annihilation, but they attached less importance to their safety, and took less trouble to hide them. They considered that they had done enough for their preservation by putting them in the precincts of their tombs and temples, and so under the guardianship of their venerated religion.

As for the other parts of the tomb, a little attention will always suffice for their identification even in those sepulchres which differ most from the mastaba. In some instances we shall find the mummy chamber contrived in the upper structure, in others the whole tomb is cut in the living rock. Sometimes we find the chapel, as we may call the public chamber in which the miraculous nourishment of the _double_ took place, more or less distantly separated from the mummy chamber; sometimes the well almost disappears, sometimes it ceases to be vertical and becomes a long corridor with but a gentle slope. As a rule all these variations are easily explained, and may be connected without difficulty with that primitive type which we have attempted to define by its most wide-spread and constant features.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 126.--Head of a Mummy. Louvre.]

Another method of sepulture was made use of in the Ancient Empire, a method which afterwards came into general use in Egypt, we mean the _hypogeum_, or subterranean tomb. The Egyptian Commission has described several rock-cut tombs in the neighbourhood of the Pyramids, especially some which face the western slope of the Second Pyramid.

Similar tombs are to be found near the pyramid of Mycerinus. Some of these sepulchral grottos declare their extreme antiquity by their imitations of wooden architecture;[174] others by their inscriptions dating from the fourth and fifth dynasties. We shall not dwell long upon these rock-cut tombs. They are generally composed of one or two small sculptured chambers, upon one of which the well opens which leads to the mummy chamber. We shall postpone their study to a later chapter, as the time of the Middle Empire affords us richer and more complete examples of them than the earlier period; but, indeed, the New Empire has left us the most important examples of this kind of sepulchre. We shall here content ourselves with pointing out that the architects of Memphis did not ignore the facilities offered by the easily cut limestone rocks, not only for construction of well and mummy chamber, but also for those open parts of the tomb where the funeral rites and the ceremonies of the Ritual of the Dead were performed. In the whole course of her long vitality Egypt did little more, either in art or religion, than develop, with variations, the themes presented to her by the generations which were ruled by her first six dynasties.

[174] _Description de l'egypte_, vol. v. p. 647, and _Atlas, Ant._ vol. v. pl. 16, Figs. 3, 4, and 5.

THE PYRAMIDS.

The _mastaba_ was the private tomb of the great lord or rich citizen of primitive Egypt; the _pyramid_ was the royal tomb for the same epoch, the tomb of that son of the G.o.ds, almost a G.o.d himself, before whom all foreheads were bowed into the dust. As his head towered over those of his prostrate subjects during life, so, after death, should his sepulchre rise high above the comparatively humble tombs of his proudest servants. The most imposing mastabas, before the sand had buried them to the summit, must have looked small enough beside those prodigious ma.s.ses. They were ant-hills at the foot of a palace.

It may seem that in considering the mastaba before the pyramid we have reversed the natural order. We were led to do so by the fact that the enormous ma.s.s of the pyramids and their peculiarities of construction compelled their architects to separate elements which are found closely allied in the mastaba. In consequence of this separation the elements in question have not all had the same fate. In the case of the mastaba all survived or perished together, but, in the pyramids, some are in a marvellous state of preservation, while others have disappeared and left hardly a trace behind. We are therefore obliged to make use of the private tomb in our restoration of that which was peculiar to the king.

Philologists have attempted to trace back the etymology of the word p??a?? to the ancient language of Egypt. The term was first employed by the Greeks, and from their language it has been adopted into that of every civilized nation, with a meaning which is scientifically exact. Its origin has been sought for in the coptic term _pi-rama_, height, and in the term _pir-aa_, which occurs continually in Exodus, and was used by Moses to signify the reigning Pharaoh. But egyptologists now seem to be unanimous in rejecting both these derivations. They are, we are told, refuted by the fact that the terms which are supposed to have meant a pyramid are never used in that sense in any of the texts. 'The words which mean a royal tomb or a tomb of any kind, have not the remotest likeness,' says Herr Brugsch,[175] 'to the term p??a??. Each royal pyramid had its own name, a composite epithet which was peculiar to itself.' Thus the largest of them all was called "the brilliant dwelling of Choufou;"

the second, "the great;" the third, "that which is on high." The word _pyramid_ appears therefore to be a purely Greek term, derived from p??, fire, and suggested by the similarity between its shape and that of a tongue of flame.

[175] _History of Egypt_ (English version, Murray, 1879), vol.

i. pp. 72, 73.

We shall not waste our time in noticing and refuting those fantastic explanations of the pyramids which have been given in modern times. We shall not trouble ourselves to prove that they were not observatories.

Those sloping tunnels, at the bottom of which some modern writers would set unlucky astronomers to watch the pa.s.sage of stars across the meridian, were hermetically sealed, and minute precautions were taken with the sole object of obstructing and concealing their entrance. The four slopes of the pyramid faced to the cardinal points, simply because the orientation of the tomb was habitual with the Egyptians; we have already explained its meaning. Still less need we occupy ourselves with the theory, which made, however, some stir in its time, that the pyramids were bulwarks by which the ancient Egyptians attempted to keep back the sand from the fertile valley of the Nile.

The science of M. de Persigny was well worthy of his policy. There was in both, the same turn for fantastic invention, the same want of reflection and common sense. If such a costly barrier had been either useful or necessary it should at least have been prolonged from one end of Egypt to the other, and all the pyramids would not have been found a.s.sembled, with but few exceptions, in the neighbourhood of Memphis.[176]

[176] FIALIN DE PERSIGNY, _De la Destination et de l'Utilite permanente des Pyramides d'egypte et de Nubie contre les Irruptions sablonneuses du Desert, Developpements du Memoire adresse a l'Academie des Sciences le 14 Juillet, 1844_, suivie d'_une nouvelle interpretation de la Fable d'Osiris et d'Isis_.

Paris, 1845, gr. in-8.

No one in our day thinks of either starting or discussing such theories as these. There are, of course, several obscure points in the history of the pyramids, several details of their construction, which stimulate to fresh research and lend themselves to many different explanations; but there can be no doubt as to their general character.

Their exploration and the interpretations of the Egyptian texts have confirmed the a.s.sertions of those Greek writers who were most familiar with Egypt, such as Herodotus,[177] Diodorus Siculus,[178] and Strabo.[179] The Pyramids are sepulchres. "They are ma.s.sive, simply conceived, carefully sealed up tombs. All entrance is forbidden even to their most carefully built corridors. They are tombs without windows, without doors, without exterior openings of any kind. They are the gigantic and impregnable dwellings of the mummy; ... their colossal dimensions have been invoked to bear out the arguments of those who would attribute to them some other destination, but they are in fact to be found of all sizes, some being no more than twenty feet high. Besides this, it must be remembered that in all Egypt no pyramid, or rather group of pyramids, is to be found, which is not the centre of a necropolis, a fact which is enough by itself to indicate their funerary character."[180] It is proved still more definitely, if that be possible, by the sarcophagi which have been found in the internal chambers, empty in most cases, because those chambers had been entered and despoiled, either in the days of antiquity or in those of the middle ages, but sometimes intact, as in the pyramid of Mycerinus. The pyramids were hermetically sealed. Even without direct evidence we might a.s.sert that it was so, knowing as we do the precautions which the Egyptians took elsewhere to guard their tombs against intrusion; but direct proof of the fact is not wanting. When in the ninth century the Kaliph Al-Mamoun wished to penetrate into the Great Pyramid he was only enabled to do so by breaking into it violently, near the centre of its northern face, and thus stumbling accidentally upon the descending pa.s.sage at some distance from its mouth. That he was reduced to employ this method at the risk of meeting with nothing but the solid masonry shows that no external indication had been left of the opening through which the mummy had been carried in. The casing seems to have been then complete and consequently the four sides of the Pyramid must have been free from _debris_ and generally uniform. That the Arabs should have chosen the right side for their attack was perhaps owing to the survival of some ancient tradition indicating the northern side to be that of the entrance, which, as a fact, it has been found to be in all the pyramids as yet explored. Perhaps too the Arabs may have been guided by the traces of previous attempts made either in the time of the Persians or in that of the Romans.[181] However this may be it is very certain that had they perceived any signs of an original doorway, they would have directed their attentions to it. Those who seek for treasure do not, like archaeologists, strike out lines of exploration in all directions for the satisfaction of their curiosity, they go straight to their point.

[177] HERODOTUS, ii. 127.

[178] DIODORUS, l. 64, 4.

[179] STRABO, xvii. p. 1161, C.

[180] MARIETTE, _Itineraire de la Haute-egypte_, pp. 96, 97. [An excellent translation of this work into English, by M. Alphonse Mariette, has been published (Trubner, 1877, 8vo.)--ED.]

[181] The existence of the pa.s.sage leading to the mummy chamber was not unknown to STRABO. He says: "Very nearly at the middle of their sides, as to height, the pyramids had a stone which could be moved away; when this is done, a winding pa.s.sage appears, which leads to the coffin" (xvii. p. 1161, C).

The pyramid includes two of those four parts into which we have divided the typical Egyptian tomb; it contains the well and the mummy chamber. As for the funerary chapel, there were obvious difficulties in the way of including it in the thickness of the monument itself. It would have been difficult to preserve it from being crushed by the immense weight above it, and as it would have had to be lighted from the door alone, it must always have been of the most restricted dimensions. A different arrangement had therefore to be devised from that adopted in the case of the mastaba. The open part of the monument was separated from that which was destined to be sealed up from the outer world. The chapel or temple, in which the successors of the prince buried in the pyramid and the priests told off for its service performed the prescribed rites, was erected at some distance from the eastern face. The remains of such buildings have been found to the east of both the second and third pyramids. That of Cheops has not been discovered, but we may a.s.sert with confidence that it has either been destroyed by the hand of man, or that it still lies under the veil of sand. Were there any _serdabs_ concealed in the thickness of the temple walls? That question cannot be answered. The remains of those buildings are in such a condition that all traces of such an arrangement would have vanished had there been any. The walls have disappeared. The lower courses of masonry are still in place, and allow us to follow the very simple plan upon which these chapels were erected; and that is all. It is possible, however, that the Egyptians depended solely upon the profound respect which was felt for the royal person, combined with the sacredness of the spot and the vigilance of the established priesthood of the necropolis, to preserve the august images of the sovereign from insult or destruction. The seven or eight statues of Chephren which were found at the bottom of a pit in what is called the _Temple of the Sphinx_, were all more or less mutilated, proving that this want of precaution was sometimes disastrous. In the course of so many centuries, during which the Hyksos, the Ethiopians, the a.s.syrians, and the Persians overran the country by turns, such statues as were not sheltered in some well dissembled retreat must more than once have been struck off their pedestals and broken, or, like those of the unlucky Chephren, thrown head-foremost into the depths of the earth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 127.--Plans of the temples belonging to the second and third pyramids; from Perring.]

As such vast importance was attached to the preservation of the portrait statues upon which the prolongation of life after death was made so largely to depend, is it not probable that the idea of hiding some of them in the innermost recesses of the pyramids themselves may have occurred to those who caused those monuments to be built? It is obvious that no hiding-place could be more secure. No such retreats have yet been discovered in any of the galleries which have been explored by modern curiosity, but it does not follow that they do not exist in some corner which has not yet been reached, which will perhaps never be reached by the most persevering explorer. Quite lately M. Maspero believed that he recognized a serdab in a subterranean chamber with three niches which he found near the mummy chamber in the Pyramid of Ounas, the last king of the fifth dynasty.[182] Before we could say that such an arrangement does not exist elsewhere, we should have to take some pyramid to pieces from the first stone to the last. It might, however, be a.s.serted that the images of the deceased would, if hidden in the pyramid, be too far removed from that public hall to which his relations brought their offerings and their pious homage. At such a distance they would not have heard the friendly voices or the magic chants; nor would the scent of the incense have reached their nostrils. In a word, they would have been ill placed for the fulfilment of the office a.s.signed to them by the Egyptian faith.

[182] This pyramid was opened on February 28, 1881.

Circ.u.mstantial accounts of the discoveries to which it led have not yet been published. The _Moniteur egyptien_ of March 15, 1881, contains a short account of the opening. [Since this note was written, a full account of the entrance and exploration of this pyramid, together with the texts discovered, has been published by M. MASPERO in the _Recueil de Travaux_, vol. iii.

liv. 3 and 4, 1882.--ED.]