Volume I Part 15 (2/2)

Every sepulchre has a _stele_, that is to say, an upright stone tablet which varied in form and place in different epochs, but always served the saeneral character Most of these steles were adorned with painting and sculpture; all of them had more or less complicated inscriptions[146] In the semicircle which forms the upper part of most of these inscribed slabs, the dead person, accos to a God, who is usually Osiris Under this an inscription is carved after an unchanging for to Osiris (or to soive provision of bread, liquid, beef, geese, ood and pure things upon which the God subsists, to the ka of N, son of M” Below this the defunct is often shown in the act of his of his faured are looked upon as real, as in the wall decorations In the lower division they are offered directly to hied to see that they are delivered to the right address The provisions which the God is asked to pass on to the defunct are first presented to him; by the intervention of Osiris the _doubles_ of bread, meat and drink pass into the other world to nourish the double of ift to be effective that it should be real, or even _quasi_-real; that its iiven in paint or stone The first-cos necessary for the deceased by their enuyptians caused the following invocation to passing strangers, to be engraved upon their tos 87 and 91

”Oh you who still exist upon the earth, whether you be private individuals, priests, scribes, orinto this tomb, if you love life and do not know death, if you wish to be in favour with the Gods of your cities and to avoid the terrors of the other world, if you wish to be entonities to your children, you must if you be scribes, recite the words inscribed upon this stone, or, if not, youto Aive thousands of loaves of bread, thousands of jars of drink, thousands of oxen, thousands of geese, thousands of gars to the _ka_, or _double_, of the prince Entef”[147]

[147] We borrow the translation of this inscription, as well as the reflections which precede it, froe, it dates from about the twelfth dynasty An invocation of the saraph of the same period, the inscription of Amoni-Amenemhat, hereditary prince of the nome of Meh, at Beni-Hassan See MASPERO, _La Grande Inscription de Beni-Hassan_, p 171 (_Recueil de Travaux_, etc, vol i

4to)

Thanks to all these subtle precautions, and to the goodhich the Egyptian intellect lent itself to their bold fictions, the tomb deserved the name it received, the _house of the double_ The _double_, when thus installed in a dwelling furnished for his use, received the visits and offerings of his friends and relations; ”he had priests retained and paid to offer sacrifices to hied with his support He was like a great lord sojourning in a strange country and having his wants attended to by interned to his service”[148]

[148] MASPERO, _Conference_, p 282

This analogy between the house and the tomb is so coruous Like the house of the living, the tomb was strictly oriented, but after a an to think he perceived the most obvious of the similarities between the sun's career and that of rows froee of his wisdonified evening sun, ends by disappearing after his death into the depths of the soil

In Egypt the sun sets every evening behind the Libyan chain; thence he penetrates into those subterranean regions of Ament across which he has to yptian cemeteries were therefore placed on the left bank of the Nile, that is, in the west of the country All the known pyramids were built in the west, and there we find all the more important ”cities of the dead,” the necropolis of Meroups of tombs have indeed been found upon the eastern bank; but these exceptions to a general rule are doubtless to be explained by a question of distance For any city placed near the eastern border of the wider parts of the Nile valley, a burying-place in the Libyan chain would be very inconvenient both for the transport of the dead, and for the sepulchral duties of the survivors[149]

[149] Aht bank we may mention that of Tell-el-Amarna; where the to in the Libyan Chain The cemeteries of Beni-Hassan and of Eilithyia (_El-Kab_) are also in the Arab Chain In spite of these exceptions, however, the as the real quarter of the dead, their natural habitation, as is proved by the tearful funeral songs translated by M MASPERO: ”The mourners before the ever-to-be praised Hor-Khooest toward the West, the Gods lament thee' The friends who close the procession repeat, 'To the West, to the West, oh praiseworthy one, to the excellent West!'” MASPERO, _etude sur quelques Peintures funeraires_ (_Journal asiatique_, February-April, 1881, p 148)

Eachsees the sun rise as youthful and ardent as thehis subterranean journey and triu over the terrors of Aht of day? This undying hope was revivified at each dawn as by a new proy by the way in which they disposed their sepulchres They were placed in the west of their country, towards the setting sun, but their doors, the openings through which their inht, were turned to the east In the necropolis of Memphis, the door of nearly every tole stele which does not face in that direction[151] In the necropolis of Abydos, both door and stele are more often turned towards the south, that is towards the sun at its zenith[152] But neither at Mehted fro sun[153] Thus, from the shadowy depths where they dwell, the dead have their eyes turned to that quarter of the heavens where the life-giving fla for the ray which is to destroy their night and to rouse the repose[154]

[150] ”It is so,” says Mariette, ”four times out of five” (_Les Toique_, new series, vol xix p 12)

[151] ”In the further wall of the cha eastwards_, is a stele” (_Ibidem_, p 14)

[152] MARIETTE, _Abydos_, vol ii p 43

[153] The tombs in the Arab Chain form, of course, an exception to this rule The unusual circumstances which took thelect the traditional law

[154] The symbolic connection established by man between the course of the sun and his own life ell understood by Chas in the royal tombs at Thebes (See his rees of his _Lettres d'egypte_, &c)

The ideas and beliefs which we have described were coyptians, irrespective of class When he felt his last hour approaching, the humble peasant or boatman on the Nile was as anxious as Pharaoh hiainst the terrors of annihilation:

Mais, jusqu'en son trepas, Le riche a des honneurs que le pauvre n'a pas

[Illustration: FIG 100--Lid of the coffin of Entef, 11th dynasty

Louvre]

Those hen alive, had to be content with a hut of earth or of reeds, could not, when dead, expect to have a tomb of stone or brick, a habitation for eternity; they could not look for joys in the other world which they had been unable to procure in this So that such tombs as those which most fully embodied the ideas we have described eclasses These consisted of the king, the princes and nobles, the priests, the military chiefs, and functionaries of every kind down to the humblest of the scribes attached to the ad to this aristocracy, they had to be content with less expensive arrange them at least took measures to be embalmed and to be placed in a coffin of wood or _papier-mache_, accoainst ures upon the coffin also helped to keep off evil influences If they could afford it they purchased places in a common tomb, where the mummies were heaped one upon the other and confided to the care of priests who performed the funerary rites for a whole chamber at once[155] It was the frequent custom to put with the dead those pillows of wood or alabaster which the Egyptians seem to have used from the most ancient times for the support of their heads in sleep This contrivance, which does aith the necessity for continually rearranging their complicated head-dress, is still used by the Nubians and Abyssinians

[155] Upon the papyrus known as the _Papyrus Casati_, ed to watch over a whole collection ofto Osorvaris:-- ”Imouth, son of Petenefhotep, his wife and children; ”Medledk, the carpenter, his wife and children; ”Pipee, his wife and children, from Hermouth; ”The father of Phratreou, the fuller; ”Aplou, the son of Petenhefhotep the boatman, his wife and children, from Thebes; ”Psenmouth, the carpenter, his wife and children; ”Psenimonthis, the mason; ”Amenoth, the cowherd”