Volume I Part 22 (2/2)

Of all this harments remain The necropolis is almost as empty and deserted as the desert which it adjoins The silence is only broken by the cry of the jackal, by the footsteps of a few casual visitors hurrying along its deserted avenues, and by the harsh voices of the Bedouins who have taken possession of the Pyramid of Cheops, and, in their own fashi+on, do its honours to the curious visitor But despoiled though they be of their ornas, the pyra those monuments of the world which are sure to impress all who possess sensibility or powers of reflection In a reenerale de Memphis et des Pyramides_, Jomard has well defined the effect which they produce upon the traveller and the ieneral effect produced by the pyramids is very curious Their suh ainst the sky As we approach them this effect diminishes; but e arrive within a very short distance of their sides a totally different iin to be amazed, to be oppressed, almost to be stupefied by their size When quite close to theer be seen The wonder which they cause is not like that caused by a great work of art It is the sense of their sirandeur of form and of the disproportion between the individual power and stature of man and these colossal creations of his hands The eye can hardly erasp their ious quantity of dressed stone which goes to ht We see hundreds of stones each containing two hundred cubic feet and weighing some thirty tons, and thousands of others which are but little less We touch them with our hands and endeavour to realize the pohich must have been required to quarry, dress, carry, and fix such a number of colossal blocks, how many men must have been employed on the work, what machines they used, and how many years it must have taken; and the less we are able to understand all these things, the greater is our admiration for the patience and pohich overcaypte, Antiquites_, vol v p 597

-- 3 _The Tomb under the Middle Empire_

We have sho the mastaba, that is to say, the most ancient form of tomb in the necropolis of Meeyptians as to a future life In literature and in art the works created by a people in its infancy, or at least in its youth, are theto the historian, because they are the results of the sincere and unfettered expansion of vital forces; this is especially the case when there is no possibility of a desire to in models The mastaba deserved therefore to be very carefully studied No other race has given birth in its funerary architecture, to a type so pure, a type which inal and well defined We therefore dwelt upon it at soth and described it with the care which it deain in the pyrah sensibly e in proportion, by the colossal diave to one part of their tomb, are yet penetrated by the same spirit We have yet to follow the developyptian civilization, and in localities ave her first tokens of power In one place we shall find it modified by the nature of the soil to which the corpse had to be coress of ideas, by the development of art, and by the caprices of fashi+on, which was no ypt than elsewhere

The most important necropolis of the First Theban Eypt, upon the left bank of the river The great number of sepultures which took place in it, from the first years of the monarchy until the end of the ancient civilization, is to be explained by the peculiarly sacred character of the city of Abydos, and by the great popularity, from one end of the Nile valley to the other, of the yptian belief, the opening through which the setting sun sank into the bowels of the earth for its nightly transit, was situated to the west of Abydos We kno the Egyptian intellect had established an analogy between the career of the sun and that ofa final resting-place as near as possible to the spot where the great lue, they believed they were , like hiuished, he is but hidden for a ions is Osiris, who, of all the Egyptian Gods, was yptian towns could show tombs in which the members of Osiris, which had been dispersed by Set, were re-united by Isis and Nephthys, none of them were so famous, or the object of such deep devotion, as that at Abydos It was, if we may be perypt_ As, in the early centuries of Christianity, the faithful laid great stress upon burial in the neighbourhood of soyptians,” says a well informed Greek writer, ”were ambitious of a common tomb with Osiris”[232]

[232] PSEUDO-PLUTARCH, _On Isis and Osiris_, c xx M Maspero finds, however, no confirmation of this statement in the monuments themselves ”All the tombs which have yet been discovered at Abydos,” he says (_Revue Critique_, January 31, 1881), ”are those of Egyptians domiciled at Abydos But the author from whom this Plutarch derived his inspirationto which the soul could only pass into the next world by betaking itself to Abydos, and thence through the opening to the west of that tohich gave access to the regions of Ae of the dead to Abydos which we find so often represented on to safely at Thebes or Me 159) At all events, the fa his own life, could deposit upon the _ladder of Osiris_ a stele, upon which the to his body could be represented and uninal by the formula inscribed upon it”

Under such conditions it may readily be understood why Mariette should have concentrated so much of his attention upon Abydos In spite of all his researches he did not succeed in discovering the tons afforded results which areand important from every point of view[233]

[233] MARIETTE, _Abydos, Description des Fouilles executees sur l'Emplacement de cette Ville_, folio, vol i 1869; vol ii

1880 Mariette thought that the sacred tohbourhood of the artificial mound called _Koum-es-Soultan_, which may cover its very site In the article which we quote above, M Maspero has set forth the considerations which lead him to think that the staircase of Osiris, upon which the consecrated steles were placed, was the flight of steps which led up to the temple of that God

Consequently the tomb of Osiris, at Abydos as at Denderah, would be upon the roof of his temple

[Illustration: FIG 159--The river transport of the Mummy

(Champollion, pl 173)]

One district of this necropolis isfrom the time of the ancient eements similar to those of the mastabas at Sakkarah are found, but on a smaller scale--the same funerary chambers, the same wells, sometimes vertical, sometimes horizontal as in the tomb of Ti and the pyramids, the same materials The situation of this tomb-district, which Mariette calls the central ceements to be adopted similar to those on the plateau of Me to a stratu rock in which it was easy to cut the well and the mummy-chamber

In the remainder of the space occupied by the tombs the subsoil is of a very different nature ”The hard and impenetrable rock is there covered with a sandstone in course of formation; this is friable at some points, at others so soft that but few mummies have been entrusted to it”[234] This forround upon which the tombs of the eleventh, twelfth, and especially of the thirteenth, dynasties, are packed closely together

This Mariette calls the northern cemetery The to Well, mu In the few instances in which the ground has been excavated down to the friable sandstone which over-lies the hard rock, the opening has been lined with rubble

[234] MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, vol i 1879

[Illustration: FIG 160--Tomb at Abydos; drawn in perspective from the elevation of Mariette]

[Illustration: FIG 161--Section of the above tomb]

”Hence the peculiar aspect which the necropolis of Abydos ine a h, carelessly oriented or not at all, and uniformly built of crude brick These pyramids always stand upon a plinth, they are hollow, and within they are forhly built off-sets The pyramid stands directly over a chamber in its foundations which shelters the mummy As soon as the latter was in place, the door of its chamber was closed by masonry”[235] An exterior cha always left open, served for the performance of the sepulchral rites; but sometimes this chah in the open air, before the stele of the deceased

This latter was sometimes erected upon the plinth, sometimes let into its face A little cube of masonry is sometimes found at the foot of the stele, destined, no doubt, for funeral offerings Soht as its plinth; this served to ed to it, and when the friends of the deceased met to do him honour, the entrance could be closed, and comparative privacy assured even in the absence of a funerary chapel

[235] _Ibidem_

[Illustration: FIG 162--Tomb at Abydos; drawn in perspective from the elevation of Mariette]

[Illustration: FIG 163--Section of the above toenerally constructed with no great care, were for the iven by setting each course of bricks slightly back from the one below it

When this part of the as finished, each face was covered, as a rule, with a coat of rough concrete, which, in its turn, was hidden under a layer of white stucco This multitude of little monuments, all of the same shape and of much the same size, must, when complete, have looked like the tents of an encamped army

[Illustration: FIG 164--Stele of the eleventh dynasty, Abydos Drawn by Bourgoin (Boulak)]