Volume I Part 14 (1/2)
These beliefs see that period of their existence which is lost in the shadow of prehistoric times From India to Italy all the prihts betray their presence For this fact and its consequences we e, _La Cite antique_[124]
[124] Seventh edition, Hachette, 18mo, 1879
[Illustration: FIG 86--Stele of the 11th dynasty Boulak Drawn by Bourgoin]
With the progress of centuries and the developht, rowth of the scientific spirit tended tosuspended between life and death ever e and inadmissible Experience accumulated its results and it became daily more evident that death not only put an end to the activity of the organs, but that, ian to dissolve and decompose their tissues As time rolled on men must have found it very difficult to believe in a shadow thus placed outside the nor which was not a spirit and yet survived the destruction of its organs
It would seeical reflection should soon have led to the abandonment of a theory which now appears so puerile; but, even in these scientific times, those whose intellects demand well defined ideas are few indeed[125] At a period when the diffusion of intellectual culture and the perfection of scientific e, most men allow their souls to be stirred and their actions to be proreater then es have been in antiquity when but a few rare minds, and those ill provided with means of research and analysis, atteinality, clearness and freedoenious and subtle analysis of _primitive ideas_ draws our attention to their frequent inconsistencies and even positive contradictions; but he shows us at the sahly civilised races in these ically quite as irreconcilable as those which seem to us so absurdly inconsistent e think of the beliefs of the ancients or of savage races Custom renders us insensible to contradictions which we should perceive at once e rey_, vol i pp 119, 185)
The prestige of this illusion was increased and perpetuated by its intimate connection with several of those sentiments which are most honourable to human nature Such a worshi+p of the dead surprises and even scandalizes us by its frank materialism, but if we seek for the source of its inspiration and its pri, we find thes broken by the supreratitude of children to the parents who gave thenition by the living of the blessings which they enjoy through the long and laborious efforts of their ancestors There was no doubt a perishable eleress of reason was sure to destroy, and we yptian giving himself the trouble to feed his departed ancestors with blood, milk, or honey, but with all their simplicity, both one and the other were alive to a truth which the revolutionary spirit of our days, with its childish and brutal conterasp They realized the coeneration with another Guided by their hearts alone they anticipated the results at which ht has arrived by close and attentive study of history From a reasoned out conviction of this truth and its consequences, philosophy nos the principles of a high rateful, sentiments which it provoked had been a powerful instrument in the moral improvement of the first-born of civilization and a bond of union for their civil and doht to dwell upon this worshi+p of the dead and to describe its character at soth, because the beliefs upon which it was based are not to be found so clearly set forth in the art of any other people Their most complete, clear, and eloquent expression, in a plastic form, is to be seen in the tombs which border the Nile
And why is this so? It is because the Egyptian industries were already in full possession of their resources at the period when those beliefs had their strongest hold over the s of the people In the case of Greece, art did not arrive at its full developh place in the national conscience When the Greek genius had arrived, after , at its complete power of plastic expression, the Gods of Olympus had been created for several centuries, and art was called upon to interpret the brilliant polytheise to those Gods, and to construct worthy dwellings for their habitation
Sculptors, painters, and architects still worked indeed, at the decoration of the toement, and to adorn its walls with bas-reliefs and pictures; they designed for it those vases and terra cottas which, in our own day, have been found in thousands in the cemeteries of Greece and Italy, but all this was only a subordinate use of their talent Their ambition was to build temples, to model statues of Zeus, Pallas, and Apollo On the other hand, those distant ages in which priion prevailed, had no art in which to manifest their beliefs with clearness and precision
It was otherwise in the valley of the Nile A well provided industry and an experienced art laid themselves out to interpret the popular beliefs and to defend the dead against final dissolution, or the agonies of hunger and thirst Egypt did not differ from other nations in its opinions upon the mystery of death In the infancy of every race the same notions on this matter are to be found, and in this respect the only difference between the Egyptians and the rest of the world is very much to the credit of the forree of civilization which was only reached by other races after their religious develope, they were enabled to push their ideas to consequences which were not to be attained by tribes which were little less than barbarous, and they had no difficulty in expressing them with sufficient force and precision
It reyptiansainst the chances which ht shorten the duration or destroy the happiness of their life in the tomb The fulfilhtly affirmed, their chief pre-occupation Their sepulchral architecture was, of all their creations, the enius, especially in the forms which we find in the cemeteries of the Ancient Empire In the time of the New Eeneous In the latter the arrange, as a whole, from a unique conception; we find traces in it of new hypotheses and novel forms of belief These do not supersede the primitive ideas; they are added to them, and they bear witness to the restless efforts ht to solve the problem of human destiny These apparent contradictions and hesitations are of great interest to the student of the Egyptian religion, but from the art point of view the Memphite tombs are more curious and ireatcomplete in their unity both of artistic for of a single growth, and are perfect in their clear logical expression And again, they are the type of all the later tombs, of those at Abydos, at Beni-Hassan, and at Thebes
Certain details, indeed, are eneral disposition remains the sa principle of Egyptian sepulchral architecture most clearly laid down in the cemeteries of Gizeh and Sakkarah
The first and most obvious necessity for the obscure form of life which was supposed to commence as soon as the tomb had received its inmate, was the body No pains, therefore, were spared which could retard its dissolution and preserve the organs to which the _double_ and the soul , practised as it was by the Egyptians, rendered a , at least, as it reypt On the warm sands of Sakkarah and close to the excavations fro at the end of their day's labour, we--reat lady of the ties in which she was closely enveloped, and found her body much in the same condition as it must have been when it left the workshop of the Memphite embalmer! Her black hair was plaited into fine tresses; all her teeth were in place between the slightly contracted lips; the almond-shaped nails of her feet and hands were stained with henna The liraceful shapes but little altered under the still firm and smooth skin, which, moreover, seemed to be still supported by flesh in some parts Had it not been for its colour of tarred linen or scorched paper, and the smell of naphtha which arose froes which were strewn about, we ht have shared the sentiment attributed to Lord Evandale in Theophile Gautier's brilliant _Roood-e could almost sympathise with those emotions of tenderness and adlishypt whose perfect beauty had once troubled the heart of the proudest of the Pharaohs[127]
[126] The texts also bear witness to the ideas hich the co were undertaken See P
PIERRET, _Le Dogme de la la Resurrection_, &c, p 10 ”It was necessary that noat the final summons; resurrection depended on that” ”_Thou countest thy yptian funerary text) ”Arise in To-deser (the sacred region in which the renewal of life is prepared), thou august and coffined mummy
Thy bones and thy substance are re-united with thy flesh, and thy flesh is again in its place; thy head is replaced upon thy neck, thy heart is ready for thee” (Osirian statue in the Louvre) The dead took care to demand of the Gods ”_that the earth should not bite him, that the soil should not consume him_” (MARIETTE, _Feuilles d'Abydos_) The preservation of the body must therefore have been an object of solicitude at the earliest ti did not attain perfection until the Theban period Under the ancient empire men were content with comparatively simple methods Mariette says that ”ether than he had been able to discover before the question of mummification under the ancient empire could be decided It is certain, first, that no authentic piece of mummy cloth from that period is now extant; secondly, that the bones found in the sarcophagi have the brownish colour and the bituminous smell of i have been found
On each of these occasions the corpse has been discovered in the skeleton state And as for linen, nothing beyond a little dust upon the bottoht be the _debris_ of s than of a linen shroud” (_Les Toives the following description of thewoman which he discovered at Thebes: ”Her hair and the rotundity and surprising regularity of her form showed me that she had been a beauty in her time, and that she had died in the flower of her youth” He then gives a minute description of her condition and orna that ”the peculiar beauty of the proportions of this reatly impressed the Arabs themselves that they had exhuhbours” (_Catalogue raisonne et historique des Antiquites decouvertes en egypte_, 8vo 1826)
In order that all the expense of e should not be throay, the mumhest inundations of the river The cemeteries were therefore established either upon a plateau surrounded by the desert, as in the case of Mees and in the ravines by which they were pierced, as at Thebes and Beni-Hassan In the whole valley of the Nile, no ancient tomb has been discovered which ithin reach of the inundation at its highest[128]
[128] RHIND describes several mummy-pits in the necropolis of Thebes which receive the water of the Nile by infiltration; but, as he hi the of the valley, and, consequently, of the level attained in recent ages by the waters of the Nile It is doubtless only within the last few centuries that the water has penetrated into these tombs (_Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants_, p 153)
The corpse was thus preserved fro, secondly by placing its dwelling above the highest ”Nile” Besides this we shall see that the Egyptian architects made use of many curious artifices of construction in order to conceal the entrance to the to with evil intentions All kinds of obstacles and pitfalls are accumulated in the path of the unbidden visitor, with a fertility and patient ingenuity of invention which has often carried despair into the minds of modern explorers, especially in the case of the pyra that there are ypt which will never, in the strictest sense of the word, be brought to light
But in spite of all this pious and subtle foresight, it soreed of gain, upset every calculation Ene to the sepulchres of the dead, in destroying their bodies, and thus inflicting a second death worse than the first; or a thiefplace, and leave it naked and dishonoured upon the sands, that he old and jehich it had been adorned
[Illustration: FIG 87--Mummy case from the 18th dynasty Boulak]
The liability of the ainst The idea of the unhappy condition in which the _double_ would find itself when its mummy had been destroyed, led to the provision of an artificial support for it in the shape of a statue Art was sufficiently advanced not only to reproduce the costue and sex, but even to render the individual characteristics of his physiogno allowed the name and qualities of the deceased to be inscribed upon his statue Thus identified by its resemblance and its inscriptions it served to perpetuate the life of the _double_, which was in continual danger of dissolution or evaporation in the absence of a material support
The statues werestood in the way of their ave but one chance of duration to the _double_; twenty statues represented twenty chancesnule toes of the dead wererelations, and consequently the _double_ was assured a duration which practically amounted to immortality[129]
[129] MASPERO, _Conference_, p 381
[Illustration: FIG 88--Man and his wife in the style of the 5th dynasty Calcareous stone From the Louvre]