Volume I Part 15 (1/2)
[139] In a few rare cases the objects destined for the nourishment of the _double_ are represented in the round instead of being painted upon the wall In the to terra-cotta vases and plucked geese carved in calcareous stone, has been found
(MARIETTE, _Tombes de l'Ancien Empire_, p 17) The vases must have been full of water when they were placed in the toeese may be coe
A custom which would seem to have established itself a little later may be referred to the sa in the tomb those statuettes which we meet with in such vast numbers after the commencement of the second Theban Empire[140] Mariette obtained some from tombs of the twelfth dynasty, and the sixth chapter of the _Book of the Dead_, which is engraved upon theists are now inclined to believe that the essential parts of this ritual date back as far as the Meyptian collections contain coffers of painted wood, often decorated in the most brilliant fashi+on, which served to hold these statues when they were placed in the tomb The size and the richness of their ornament depended upon the wealth of the deceased for who they wereup ears of corn, froypte_)]
These statuettes are of different sizes and ht to twelve inches, but there are a fehich are three feet or ht Soranite, but as a rule they are reen or blue enayptian porcelain They are like a mummy in appearance; their hands are crossed upon the breast and hold instruriculture such as hoes and picks, and a sackof all this is to be sought in the Egyptian notions of a future life; it is also explained by the picture in chapter XC of the _Ritual_, which shows us the dead tilling, sowing and harvesting in the fields of the other world The texts of the Ritual and of certain inscriptions call these little figures _oushebti_ or _answerers_ from the verb _ousheb_, to answer It is therefore easy to divine the part attributed to theination They answered to the name traced upon the tomb and acted as substitute for its tenant in the cultivation of the subterranean regions[141] With the help of the attendants painted and sculptured upon the walls they saved hiue and from the chance of want This is another branch of the saainst the misery and final annihilation which would result froo too far in furnishi+ng, provisioning and peopling his toyptische Fetischdienst_, &c, p 155), has well grasped the character and significance of these statuettes Conf PIERRET, _Dictionnaire d'Archeologie egyptienne_, vol v See also, in connection with the personality attributed to them and to the services which were expected from them, a note by M MASPERO, _Sur une Tablette appartenant a M Rogers_ (_Recueil de Travaux_, vol ii p
12)
[Illustration: FIGS 95, 96--Sepulchral statuettes, froenuity of their contrivances is extraordinary Food in its natural state would not keep, and various accidents, ht, as we have shown, lead to the death of the _double_ by inanition It was the same with furniture and clothes; the narrow dimensions of the tomb,which its soht desire On the other hand the funerary statuettes were made of the s were one with the thick walls of stone or living rock These have survived practically unaltered until our day We visited the tomb of Ti a short time after its chambers had been opened and cleared It was marvellous to see how form and colour had been preserved intact and fresh under the sand, and this hich was four or five thousand years old seehtness of their colours and the sharp precision of their contours these char reliefs had the effect of a newly struck medal Such scenes froyptian tombs from the old empire to the new When their study and coun different explanations were put forward
Soraphy of the deceased, a representation of his achieve the course of his mortal life; others saw in the forth of the joys and pleasures of the Egyptian Elysiuive way before the critical examination of the pictures the inscriptions It was soon perceived, through comparisons easily made, that these scenes were not anecdotic On a few very rare occasions they seem to be connected with circumstances peculiar to the inhabitant of the tomb There are a few steles and tombs upon which the dead man seems to have caused his services to be described, with the object, no doubt, of continuing in the next world his career of honour and success in this Such an inscription is so far biographical, and a similar spirit may extend to the decorations of the stele and walls of the toraphs we ives us the life of a sort of grand-vizier to the two first Kings of the sixth dynasty;[142] also the inscriptions upon the tombs of those feudal princes ere buried at Beni-Hassan In the latter there are historical representations as co these is the often reproduced painting of a band of Asiatic e, perhaps, a supply of wheat in return, like the Hebrews in the time of Jacob
[142] DE ROUGe, _Memoire sur les Monuments des six premieres Dynasties_ (p 80 _et seq_) Conf MASPERO, _Histoire Ancienne_, pp 88-92
[Illustration: FIG 97--Vignette from a Ritual upon papyrus, in the Louvre Chap XC, 20th dynasty]
But all this is exceptional As a rule the saain, in the persistent fashi+on which characterizes traditional theures by which the flocks and herds and other possessions of the deceased were nureat for literal truth[143] On the other hand the pictured tradesmen and artificers, from the labourer, the baker, and the butcher up to the sculptor, seey which excludes the notion of ideal felicity They, one and all, labour conscientiously, and we feel that they are carrying out a task which has been imposed upon them as a duty
[143] See MARIETTE, _Tombes de l'Ancien Empire_, p 88
For whose benefit do they take all this trouble? If we attempt to enter into the es and compare the pictured representations with the texts which accompany them, we shall be enabled to answer that question Let us take by chance any one of the inscriptions which accoured upon the fa and pressing of the grape and all the labours of the country” Again, ”To see the picking of the flax, the reaping of the corn, the transport upon donkeys, the stacking of the crops of the toain, ”Ti sees the stalls of the oxen and of the sutters and water-channels of the toe takes place, that the flax is picked, that the wheat is threshed, that oxen are driven into the fields, that the soil is ploughed and irrigated It is for the supply of his wants that all these sturdy arms are employed
We shall leave M Maspero to suyptian tomb, but first we must draw our readers' notice to the fact that he, more than once, alludes to a conception of the future life which differs sos rather to the Second Theban Empire and its successors
[Illustration: FIG 98--Arrival in Egypt of a corants (Champollion, pls 362, 393)]
”The scenes chosen for the decoration of toic intention; whether drawn from civil life in the world or from that of Hades, they were er and to insure him a happy existence beyond the touaranteed the performance of the acts represented The _double_ shut up in his s?????[144] saw hi walls and he went to the chase; eating and drinking with his wife, and he ate and drank with her; crossing in safety the terrible gulfs of the loorld in the barque of the Gods, and he crossed the on his walls were for hi So, too, the statuettes placed in his toic influence all the work of the fields, and, like the sorcerer's pestle in Goethe's ballad, dreater for hirain The workmen painted in his papyri made shoes for him and cooked his food; they carried him to hunt in the deserts or to fish in the marshes And, after all, the world of vassals upon the sides of the sepulchre was as real as the _double_ for which they laboured; the picture of a slave ht that by filling his tomb with pictures he insured the reality of all the objects, people, and scenes represented in another world, and he was thus encouraged to construct his toht that they were doing a service to the deceased when they carried out all the mysterious ceremonies which accompanied his burial The certainty that they had been the cause of some benefit to him consoled and supported them on their return froretted dead in possession of his iinary domain”[145]
[144] This word, s????? (flute), was ealleries cut in the rock of the necropolis at Thebes, in the valley called the _Valley of the Kings_; eneral sense to all tombs cut deeply into the flanks of the mountain
For the reason which led the Greeks to adopt a term which now seeie egyptienne_ The chief passages in ancient authors in which the terypt or to other galleries of the saether by Jomard in the third volume of the _Description_ (_Antiquites_, vol iii pp 12-14)
[145] _Journal asiatique_, May-June, 1880, pp 419, 420
Such a belief is astonishi+ng to us; it deination to which we reat difficulty in realising a state of mind so different froht Those early races had neither a long enough experience of things, nor a sufficiently capable power of reflection to enable theuish the possible from the impossible They did not appreciate the difference between living things and those which we call inanis about them with souls like their own They found nolife to their carved and painted domestics, than to the mummy or statue of the deceased, or to the phantom which they called the double Is it not natural to the child to take revenge upon the table against which he hurts himself, or to speak tenderly to the doll which he holds in his arms?
[Illustration: FIG 99--The to the lands of the deceased, carrying the funeral gifts]
This power to endow all things with life and personality is now reserved for the poet and the infant, but in the pried to all people alike Iination had then a power over a whole race which in our days is the gift of great poets alone In the efforts which they made to forestall the wants of the helpless dead, they were not content with providing the food and furniture which we find upon the walls They had a secret iht be insufficient for wants renewed through eternity, and they made another step upon the way upon which they had embarked
By a still one before, they attributed to prayer the power of ic sentences, all objects of the first necessity to the inhabitants of the tomb