Volume I Part 27 (1/2)
Neither at Memphis nor at Thebes do the tombs of this late period contain any novel eleuished by their size and the luxury of their decoration In some, the wells are much wider than usual; in others it is upon the external courts and upon those double gatehich play a part similar to that of the successive pylons before a Theban temple, that extra care is bestowed Vaults are frequently eive variety of effect Private tons, and siyptian genius was beco exhausted, and it endeavoured to coination by an increase in richness and elegance
A chronological classification is only possible in the cases of those toures upon their walls At Memphis, as at Thebes, the reive no indication of their date So at the bottoraves between the border of the cultivated land and the foot of the Libyan chain In the mountains themselves there are hundreds of small chambers, with bare walls and often extremely minute in size, cut in the sides of the cliffs
Finally, there are the vast catacombs, in each chamber of which the mummies of labourers and artisans were crowded, often with the instruments of their trade by their sides[282] Pits full of raves Rhind saw some hundreds of the mummies of hawks and ibises taken froah They were each enveloped in bandages of mummy cloth, and beside them numerous small boxes, each with a carefully embalmed mouse inside it, were found The lids of these boxes had each a wooden ilt[283]
[282] RHIND, _Thebes_, etc p 51 BELZONI, _Narrative of the Operations_, etc p 167
[283] RHIND, p 52 A the mummified animals found at Thebes, Wilkinson also mentions monkeys, sheep, cows, cats, crocodiles, etc See BELZONI, _Narrative_, p 187
We have endeavoured to notice all that is of iypt, because the Egyptian civilization, as we know it through the still existing monuments, carries usof individual thought and consciousness in mankind The primitive conceptions of those early periods were, of course, different enough froht by later reflection, but nevertheless they were the preerhly understand the origin and constitution of this development it was necessary to follow it up to its source, to the clearness and transparency of its springs
The art of Egypt is the oldest of all the national arts, and the oldest ypt are its tombs By these alone is that earliest epoch in its history which we call the Ancient Ees the country was covered with nificent temples and sumptuous palaces, but, even then, the tomb did not lose its pre-ees was his place of rest after death Rich or poor, as soon as he arrived at full age he directed all his spare resources towards the construction and decoration of his tohts were far ht, upon which, whether it were a miserable mud hut or a vast edifice of brick or wood, he looked with co it as an enca traveller The to rock, were built with such solidity and care that they have survived in thousands, while the palaces of great sovereigns have perished and left no trace, and the temples which have been preserved are very few in nu mostly subterranean and hidden from the eye of man, sepulchres preserved the deposits entrusted to the the latter which were not coed, pillaged, stripped, and mutilated in a thousand ways All that subsists of their decoration--shattered colossi and bas-reliefs often broken and disfigured--tells us nothing beyond the pomps and triumphs of official history The tombs have suffered s which have been found in them, seem, in many instances, to have been the work of the very men whose footprints were found in the sand which covered their floors when they were opened[284] The pictures offered to our eyes by the walls of the private tombs are very different from those which we find in the temples All classes of the people appear in them in their every-day occupations and customary attitudes The whole national life is displayed before us in a long series of scenes which comment upon and explain each other Alypt has been derived from a study of her tomb-houses In every hundred of such objects which our museums contain at least ninety-nine come from those safe depositories
[284] When Mariette discovered the tomb of the Apis which had died in the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Rayptian mason who laid the last stone of the wall built across the entrance to the tomb were found us-chamber I found upon the thin layer of dust which covered the floor the marks made by the naked feet of the work place 3,200 years before” (Quoted by RHoNe in _L'egypte a Petites Journees_, p 239)
In order to give a true idea of the national character of the Egyptians and to enable the originality of their civilization to be thoroughly understood, it was necessary to show the place occupied in their thoughts by the anticipation of death; it was necessary to explain what the toeneral arrangements and its principal details responded; it was necessary to follow out the various ht about by the developious conceptions, from the time of the first six dynasties to that of the Theban Euished the first and second Theban Eht Almost all the peculiarities of the Memphite tomb are to be explained by the hypotheses hich priher types for the national Gods, when polytheism came to be superimposed upon fetishi+sm, the hour arrived for the temple to take its proper place in the national life, for majestic colonnades andriver The temple was later than the tomb, but it followed closely upon its footsteps, and the tere, in a fashi+on, united by those erections on the left bank of the Nile, under the Theban necropolis, which partook of the character of both The te those centuries which saw Egypt supreme over all the races of the East, supreme partly by force of arms, but mainly by the superiority of her civilization
CHAPTER IV
THE SACRED ARCHITECTURE OF EGYPT
-- 1--_The Temple under the Ancient Empire_
No statue of a God is knohich can be confidently referred to the first six dynasties Hence it has soyptian Gods were not born, if we may use the expression, that the notions of the people had not yet been condensed into any definite conception upon the point Soht had not yet reached the point where the polytheistic idea springs up, that they were still content with those fetishes which retained no slight hold upon their iinations until a much later period Others affiryptian people were so near to the first creation of ious truths which were revealed to the fathers of our race They believe that Egypt began with radual degradation of pure doctrine which took place a all but the chosen people
We shall not attees
It is a matter of faith and not of scientific demonstration But to the first hypothesis we shall oppose certain undoubted facts which prove it to be, at least, an exaggeration, and that Egypt was even in those early days much farther advanced, enerally ihtenment upon this point, searched the epitaphs of the ancient empire, and found in their nomenclature most of the sacred nanate the principal deities of the Egyptian pantheon[285] The composite proper names often seem to express individual devotion to some particular deity, and to indicate some connection between the latter and the mortal who bore his name and lived under his protection These divinities must, then, have already been in existence in the yptians The most that can be said is that they had not yet arrived at coiven the external features and characteristics which they retained to the last days of paganism It is quite possible that they were, more often than not, represented by those anihtened times, served them for symbols
[285] We may take a few of those in the Boulak Museum at random: Ra-Hotep (No 590), Hathor-En-Kheou (588), Ra-Nefer (23), Ra-Our (25), Sokar-Kha-Ca-u (993), Noum-Hotep (26), Hathor-Nefer (41), Ptah-asses (500), Ptah-Hotep, &c The names of several deities are to be found in the inscription upon the wooden coffin or mummy-case of Mycerinus, now in the British Museum (MASPERO, _Histoire Ancienne_, p 75) A priest of Apis is mentioned upon a tomb of the fourth dynasty; Osiris is invoked in the steles of the sixth dynasty (Boulak Catalogue, No 41)
Amen, or Ammon, is never mentioned on the monuments of the Ancient Empire; his first appearance is contemporary with the twelfth dynasty (GReBAULT, _Hymne a Ammon-Ra_, Introduction, part iii p 136) This is natural enough Amen was a Theban God, and Thebes does not seem to have existed in the tiured representations still existing upon a certain stele which was found a short distance eastward of the pyramid of Cheops[286] are to be taken literally, we must believe that that yptian Gods andto times much more recent than his The upper part of the stele in question shows the God of generation, Horus, Thoth, Isis in several different forer of his father, Harpocrates, Ptah, Setekh, Osiris, and Apis These statues would seeold, silver, bronze and wood Mariette, however, is inclined to think that this stele does not date fro theto restore so venerable a relic of the author of the greatest architectural work in their country, the scribes ures treated in the style of their own day to the ancient text It is equally doubtful, moreover, whether the text itself dates back to the earlier period, and we need, perhaps, accept as fact only this: that Cheops restored an already existing tes as revenues, and restored the statues of gold, silver, bronze, and wood, which adorned the sanctuary
[286] _Notice des principaux Monuments exposes dans les Galeries provisoires du Musee d' Antiquites egyptiennes a Boulak_ (Edition of 1876, No 582)
It ies were abundant even in those early days, but that they have failed to survive to our day The portraits of so many private individuals have been preserved because, in their desire to afford a proper support to their _double_, they reat an extent as their means would allow
Between the third and the sixth dynasties the ious rate, and their nued from the fact that twenty were taken froreater their nureater was the chance that one of theenuity of ures to generations in the reh to save them from destruction and to ensure them a chance of eternal existence To the thick walls of the mastabas, to the well-concealed serdabs, and,mask of sand laid upon the cemeteries of Gizeh and Sakkarah by the winds froh the troublous tiypt
In their more exposed situations in the tereater risks than the private statues
The old, silver, or bronze, would excite dangerous cupidity, while the wooden ones were pretty sure, sooner or later, to be destroyed or daht be overthrown and broken and replaced by others of a later fashi+on, besides which a vast number of them have perished in the li Cheops and Chephren to have paid their devotions before statues of Isis and Osiris, Ptah and Hathor, there is nothing very astonishi+ng in the total disappearance of those figures