A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume I Part 25

Representations of this kind are common enough in the royal tombs of Thebes. It will suffice if we notice those which are still to be seen in the sepulchre of Rameses III., in the series of small chambers in the first two pa.s.sages. Like the hunting scene which we take from the walls of a private tomb (Fig. 183), these pictures have, beyond a doubt, the same meaning and value as those in the mastaba. But in the Theban tombs their significance is only secondary. Ideas had progressed to some purpose since the days of the Memphite kings. Both in its general arrangement and in the details of its ornamentation, the sepulchres in the Bab-el-Molouk gave expression to the new, more philosophical, and more moral conception which had come to overlie the primitive beliefs.

The first conception was that of the double, inhabiting the tomb, and kept alive in it by sacrifice and prayer. But in time the Egyptians would appear to have realized that the double was not the only thing that remained after the death of a human unit. Their powers of apprehension were quickened, in all probability, by that high moral instinct of which the oldest pages of their literature give evidence.

Good or bad, every man had a double, the continuance and prosperity of which depended in no way upon his merits or demerits. Unless the just and the unjust were to come to one and the same end, something more was wanting. This something was the soul (_ba_). Instead of vegetating in the interior of the tomb, this soul had to perform a long and difficult subterranean journey--in imitation of the sun and almost upon his footsteps--during which it had to undergo certain tests and penances. From this period of trial it would emerge with more or less honour, according to its conduct during the few short years pa.s.sed by it on earth and in company with the body to which it had belonged. It had to appear before the tribunal of Osiris-Khent-Ament, the Sun of Night, around whose seat the forty-two members of the infernal jury were a.s.sembled.[255]

[255] This belief in the appearance of the dead before Osiris and his a.s.sessors gave rise to one of the most curious errors made by the Greeks in speaking of Egypt. The scene in question is figured upon many of the tombs visited by the Greek travellers, and in many of the ill.u.s.trated papyri which were unrolled for their gratification. In the fragments of some funerary inscription or of some of these ma.n.u.scripts, hastily translated for them by the accompanying priests, they found frequent allusions to this act of trial and judgment. They were greatly struck by the importance attached by the Egyptians to the sentence of this tribunal, but, always in a hurry, and sometimes not especially intelligent, they do not seem to have always understood what the dragoman, without whom they could not stir from the frontier, told them as to this matter. They believed that the judges in question were living men, and their tribunal an earthly one, and that they were charged to decide whether sepulture should be granted to the dead or not. One of the early travellers, we do not know which, gave currency to this belief, and we know how it has served as the foundation for much fine writing, from the time of Diodorus to that of Bossuet.

We can find nothing either in the figured monuments or in the written texts which hints at the existence of such a custom.

Ever since the key to the hieroglyphics was found, egyptologists have been agreed upon this point. Every Egyptian was placed in a sepulchre befitting his station and fortune; his relations and friends had to ask no permission before they placed him in it; it was in the other world that he was brought up for judgment, and had to fear the sentence of an august tribunal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 183.--Hunting scene upon a tomb at Gournah.

(Champollion, pl. 171.)]

There, before the "Lords of truth and justice," the soul had to plead its cause, and there it had to repeat, with an amount of a.s.surance and success which would depend upon its conduct in the light, that negative confession which we read in chapter cxxv. of the "_Book of the Dead_," which contains an epitome of Egyptian morality.[256] But those incorruptible judges were not guided solely by the testimony of the _ba_ in its own favour. They weighed its actions in a pair of scales and gave judgment according to their weight.[257] The impious soul was flogged, was delivered to storm and tempest, and, after centuries of suffering, underwent a second death, the death of annihilation. The just soul, on the other hand, had to conquer in many a combat before it was admitted to contemplate the supreme verities.

During its transit across the infernal regions, hideous forms of evil sprang up before it and did their best to arrest its progress by terrifying threats. Thanks to the help of Osiris and of other soul-protecting G.o.ds, such as Anubis, it triumphed in the end over all obstacles, and, as the sun reappears each morning upon the eastern horizon, it arrived surely at last at those celestial dwellings where it became incorporated among the G.o.ds.

[256] MASPERO gives a translation of it into French in his _Histoire Ancienne_, pp. 44 and 45.

[257] This weighing of the actions of the deceased was represented in the ill.u.s.trated specimens of the _Ritual of the Dead_ and upon the walls of the tombs, and perhaps upon those monuments decorated with Egyptian motives which were sprinkled by the Phnicians over the whole basin of the Mediterranean.

Coming under the eyes of the Greeks, it was modified by their lively imaginations into that ????stas?a, or _weighing of souls_, which we find in the Iliad (xxii. 208-212), where success in a combat between two heroes depends upon the result of that operation. (See ALFRED MAURY, _Revue archeologique_, 1844, pp. 235-249, 291-307; 1845, pp. 707-717, and DE WITTE, _ibidem_, 1844, pp. 647-656.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 184.--The weighing of actions. (From an ill.u.s.trated _Ritual of the Dead_ in the British Museum.)]

The Egyptian imagination spared no effort to represent with the greatest possible precision those mysterious regions where the soul had to undergo its appointed tests. Such beliefs afforded a wide scope for the individual influence of the artist and the poet, and accordingly we find that they were modified with a rapidity which is unique in Egyptian art. But the Egyptians were accustomed, from such early times, to give a concrete form to all their ideas, that they were sure to clothe the plastic expression of this theme in a richness and brilliancy of colour which we do not find to the same degree in any other people of antiquity. On the other hand, although they did not escape the operation of the eternal law of change, their temperament was sufficiently conservative to give to each of their creations a peculiar fixity and consistency. Their _Hades_, if we may call it so, took on a very definite form, and features which varied but little through a long course of centuries; and this form is practically that which we find in the sepulchres of the great Theban kings and in some belonging to private individuals.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 185.--Anubis, in a funerary pavilion; from a bas-relief. (_Description de l'egypte_, i., pl. 74.)]

It was through long and gloomy galleries, like those of the s?????, that the perilous voyage of the soul had to be undertaken. A boat carried it over the subterranean river, for in a country which had the Nile for its princ.i.p.al highway, every journey, even that of the sun through s.p.a.ce, was looked upon as a navigation. s.p.a.cious saloons were imagined to exist among those galleries, chambers where the infernal G.o.ds and their acolytes sat enthroned in all the majesty of their office; and so the pa.s.sages of the tomb were expanded here and there into oblong or square chambers, their roofs supported by pillars left in the living rock. On either side of the audience chambers the imagination placed narrow pa.s.ses and defiles, in which the walls seemed to close in upon the soul and bar its progress; tortuous corridors and gloomy gulfs were fixed in these defiles, in which the terrible ministers of divine vengeance held themselves in ambush, prepared to hara.s.s the march of souls not yet absolved, and to overwhelm with frightful tortures those against whom sentence had already been p.r.o.nounced. The tomb, therefore, had its snares and narrow pa.s.sages, its gaping depths and the mazes of its intersecting and twisting corridors. To complete the resemblance nothing more was required than to paint and chisel upon the walls the figures of those G.o.ds, genii, and monsters who peopled the regions below. On one side the pious king may be seen, escorted by Amen-Ra and the other divinities whom he had wors.h.i.+pped during life, advancing to plead his cause before Osiris; on the other, the punishment of the wicked helps to give _eclat_ to the royal apotheosis by the contrasts which it affords.

Thus the tombs of the Theban period embody the Egyptian solution of the problem which has always exercised mankind. Their subterranean corridors were a reproduction upon a small scale of the leading characteristics of the under world, and we should commit a great mistake were we to look upon the series of pictures which decorate its walls as mere ornament resulting from a desire for luxury and display.

Between the ideal models of these pictures and the pictures themselves the Egyptians established one of those mutual confusions which have always been readily accepted by the faithful. Nothing seemed more natural to the Egyptian, or to the Ethiopian who was his pupil, than to ascribe the power of speech and movement to the images of the G.o.ds, even when they had painted or carved them with their own hands. This M. Maspero has shown by an ingenious collation of various texts.[258]

The chisel which created such tangible deities gave them something more than the appearance of life. Each G.o.d exercised his own proper function in that tomb which was a reproduction in small of the regions of the other world. His gestures and the written formulae which appeared beside him on the walls, each had their protective or liberating power. To represent the king in his act of self-justification before Osiris was in some measure to antic.i.p.ate that justification. The reality and the image were so intimately commingled in the mind of the believer that he was unable to separate one from the other.

[258] _Recueil de Travaux_, vol. i. pp. 155-159.

Did the royal tombs contain statues of the defunct? None have been found in any of those already opened, and yet there is a chamber in the tomb of Rameses IV. which appears from its inscriptions to have been called the _Statue chamber_, while another apartment in its neighbourhood is reserved for the funerary statuettes. The tombs of private individuals contained statues; why then should none have been put in those of the sovereigns? The commemorative sanctuary, the external funerary temple, was adorned with his image often repeated, which in order that it might be in better keeping with the magnificence of its surroundings, and should have a better chance of duration, was colossal in its proportions. In the inclosures of the temples of the two Rameses and upon the site of the Amenophium, the remains of these huge figures are to be counted by dozens, most of them are of rose granite from Syene; the smallest are from 24 to 28 feet high, and some, with their pedestals, are as much as from 55 to more than 60 feet. The two colossi of Amenophis III., the Pharaoh whom the Greeks called Memnon, reached the latter height. Flayed, mutilated, dishonoured as they have been, these gigantic statues are still in place. They should be seen in autumn and from a little distance as they raise their solitary and imposing ma.s.ses above the inundated plain, when their size and the simplicity of their lines will have an effect upon the traveller which he will never forget (Fig. 20, and Plate vi.).

In the royal tombs at Thebes, as in those at Memphis, the approach to the mummy-chamber is not by a well, but by an inclined plane. The only wells which have been discovered in the tombs of the Bab-el-Molouk are, if we may use the term, false wells, ingeniously contrived to throw any would-be violator off the right scent. We have already mentioned one of these false wells as existing in the tomb of Seti. In the pyramids the corridor which leads to the mummy-chamber is sometimes an ascending plane, but in the Theban tomb it is always descending. At the end of the long descent the mummy-chamber is reached with its sarcophagus, generally a very simple one of red granite, which has. .h.i.therto, in every instance, been found empty.

It is doubtful whether the sarcophagus-chamber was closed by a door or not. It is known that tombs were sometimes thus closed; some of the doors have been found in place,[259] and in a few of the texts mention is made of doors,[260] but not the slightest vestige of one has yet been discovered in the royal sepulchres at Thebes. "All the doorways have sills and grooved jambs, as if they had been closed, but no trace of hinges or of the leaves of a door itself have been found."[261] It is possible that they were never put in place. The exact and accurate spirit which marks all the work of Egyptian artists would lead them to prepare for the placing of a door at the entrance to each chamber; but at the same time it is obvious that a few panels of sycamore would do little to stop the progress of any one who should attempt to violate the royal sepulchre. This latter consideration may have caused them to abstain from expending time and trouble upon a futile precaution.

[259] One was found in a Theban tomb opened by RHIND (_Thebes_, &c., pp. 94 and 95). In the tomb of Ti easily recognized traces of a door were found (BaeDEKER, _Unter-aegypten_, p. 405); nothing but a new door was required to put the opening in its ancient state.

[260] See one of the great inscriptions at Beni-Ha.s.san, interpreted by M. MASPERO (_Recueil_, etc. vol. i. p. 168).

[261] _Description de l'egypte_, (_Antiquites_, vol. iii. p.

35).

These tombs seem to have varied greatly in size from reasons similar to those which determined the dimensions of the pyramids, namely, the length of reign enjoyed by their respective makers. Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus continually added to the height and ma.s.s of their tombs until death put an end to the work. In the same way, Seti and Rameses never ceased while they lived to prolong the quarried galleries in the Bab-el-Molouk. As these galleries were meant to be sealed from the sight of man, this prolongation was caused, no doubt, by the desire to develop to the utmost possible extent those pictures which were to be so powerful for good over the fortunes of the defunct in the under world.

Apart from the question of duration, reigns which were glorious would give us larger and more beautiful tombs than those which were obscure and marked by weakness in the sovereign. The three great Theban dynasties included several of those monarchs who have been called the Louis the Fourteenths and the Napoleons of Egypt,[262] and it was but natural that they should employ the crowd of artificers and artists which their enterprises gathered about them, for the excavation and decoration of their own tombs. Either for this reason or for some other, there is an extraordinary difference between king and king in the matter of their tombs. Even when we admit that a certain number of royal sepulchres have so far escaped discovery, it is difficult to find place for all the sovereigns of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties in the two _Valleys of the Kings_. Many things lead us to believe that several of those princes were content with very simple tombs; some of them may have been merely buried in the sand. Thus Mariette discovered, at _Drah-Abou'l-Neggah_, the mummy of Queen Aah-hotep, of the nineteenth dynasty, some few feet beneath the surface. The mummy chamber consisted of a few ill-adjusted stone slabs. Like other mummies found on the same place, it seemed never to have been disturbed since it had been placed beneath the soil. It was gilt all over, and was decorated with jewels which now form some of the most priceless treasures of the Boulak Museum.

[262] A. RHONe, _l'egypt a pet.i.tes journees_, p. 104.

The private tombs in the Theban necropolis, which are much more numerous than those of kings, do not, like the latter, belong to a single period in the national history. The most ancient among them date back to the eleventh dynasty. There are some also of the Sait period, and a few contemporary with the Ptolemies and the Roman emperors. But by far the greater number belong to that epoch which saw Thebes promoted to be the capital of the whole country, to the centuries, namely, between Amosis, the conqueror of the Hyksos, and the last of the Ramessides.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 186.--Plan and section of a royal tomb.

(_Description de l'egypte_, vol. ii., pl. 79.)]

These tombs are distinguished by great variety, but, before noticing the princ.i.p.al types to which they may be referred, the points which distinguish them from the royal burying-places should be indicated.

The private sepulchre is never subdivided like those of the kings.

This subdivision is to be explained by the exceptional position of the sovereign mid-way between his subjects and the national deities. A funerary chapel cut in the sides of the mountain would obviously be too small for the purposes to which the commemorative part of the tomb of a Rameses or a Seti would be put. On the other hand, no private individual could hope to receive royal honours nor to a.s.sociate his memory with the wors.h.i.+p of the great Egyptian G.o.ds. We find that for him the chapel always remains closely connected with the mummy chamber. Sometimes it is in front of it, sometimes above it, but in neither case does it ever fail to form an integral part of the tomb, so that the latter preserves at once its traditional divisions and its indissoluble unity.

We may say the same of the well, which plays the same part in the private tombs of the New Empire as in the Mastaba and the _Speos_ of the Ancient and Middle Empires. In almost every instance the mummy chamber is reached by a well, whether the tomb be constructed in the plain or in the side of the mountains. It is seldom so deep as those of Gizeh or Sakkarah; its depth hardly exceeds from 20 to 30 feet; but its arrangement is similar to those in the early necropolis. The mummy chamber opens directly upon it. Sometimes there are two chambers facing each other at the foot of the well, and of unequal heights.[263] After the introduction of the corpse, which was facilitated by notches cut in two faces of the well, the door of the mummy chamber was built up--the well filled in. In a few exceptional instances, the tombs of private individuals seem to have had no well, and the innermost chamber, as in the case of royal tombs, received the mummy.[264] In such cases it is very necessary to make sure that explorers have not been deceived by appearances. In these dusty interiors the carefully sealed opening might easily escape any but the most careful research; and as for a sarcophagus, when one is found in such a chamber, it may have been placed there long after the making of the tomb. Such usurpations are by no means unknown.[265] In the time of the Ptolemies, influential people, such as priests and military functionaries, made them without scruple. The venerable mummies, dating from the time of Rameses, were thrown into a corner; their cases were made use of, sometimes for the mummy of the usurper, sometimes for more ign.o.ble purposes. In more than one of these usurpations the new comer has been placed in a chamber constructed for some other object.

[263] Pa.s.sALACQUA describes a tomb of this kind in detail in his _Catalogue raisonne et historique des Antiquites decouvertes en egypte_ (8vo., 1826). This tomb had been visited and pillaged at some unknown epoch. One of the two chambers had been opened and stripped, but the second, which opened lower down the well, and on the other side, escaped the notice of the violators (pp.

118-120). In the tomb opened by RHIND (_Thebes_, _its Tombs_, etc. pl. 5, v.), the well gave access to four chambers of different sizes arranged round it like the arms of a cross.

[264] _Description de l'egypte_, (_Antiquites_,) plates, vol.

ii. p. 78.

[265] RHIND describes one of the most curious of these subst.i.tutions in his chapter IV. In that case an usurper of the time of Ptolemy established himself and all his family in the mummy chambers at the foot of the well, after relegating the statues and mummies of the rightful owner and his people to the room above.

The well and mummy chamber in the rock are, then, found almost universally, but the form of the rest of the tomb varies according to its date and site. Those in the plain are arranged differently to those in the hill sides. But it must be understood that when we speak of the plain in connection with the Theban tombs, we do not mean the s.p.a.ce over which spread the waters of the Nile. We mean the gentle sandy slopes which lie between the foot of the cliffs and the cultivated fields, a narrow band which widens a little between the long spurs which the mountains throw out towards the river. In these land-gulfs the rock crops up here and there, and nowhere is it covered by more than a thin layer of sand. Such a soil, being above the reach of the annual inundation, was marvellously well-fitted both for the construction of the tomb and for the preservation of the mummy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 187, 188.--Theban tombs from the bas-reliefs.

(From Wilkinson, ch. xvi.)]

In this, which may be called the level part of the necropolis, the tombs have left but slight and ill-defined traces. Their superstructures have almost entirely disappeared, and yet some which have now completely vanished were seen by travellers to Thebes in the first half of the present century. By comparing what they tell us with the figured representations in bas-relief and ma.n.u.script, we may form some idea of the aspect which this part of the cemetery must formerly have presented. The tombs which it contained were built upon the same principles as those of Abydos; a square or rectangular structure with slightly sloping walls was surmounted by a small pyramid. There was, however, an essential difference between the two. At Abydos the nature of the subsoil compelled the architect to contrive the mummy chamber in the interior of his own structure; at Thebes, on the other hand, there was nothing to prevent him from being faithful to a tradition which had manifest advantages, and to intrust the corpse to the keeping of the earth, at a depth below the surface which would ensure it greater safety both from violence and from natural causes of decay.

At Thebes the rock was soft enough to be cut with sufficient ease, and yet firm enough to be free from all danger of settlement or disintegration. The soil of all this region is honeycombed with mummy pits, which have long ago been pillaged and are now filled up with sand. The superstructure was built above the well and inclosed the funerary chapel. Sometimes it was surmounted by a small pyramid; sometimes it was a quadrangular ma.s.s standing upon a surbase, with a pilaster at each angle and a boldly projecting cornice at the top. The oldest of the known tombs of Apis may be taken as specimens of this latter cla.s.s, which must also have been represented at Thebes. These are contemporary with the eighteenth dynasty, and were discovered by M. Mariette at Sakkarah.[266]

[266] _Athenaeum Francais_, 1855, p. 55 (_Renseignements sur les soixante quatre Apis trouves dans le Serapeum de Memphis_).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 189.--Theban tomb from a bas-relief. (From Wilkinson, ch. xvi.)]

These little monuments have either been destroyed since 1851 or covered by the sand (see Fig. 190).

The other type is that of the _Speos_. We have here seen that it dates from the Ancient Empire, but came into general employment and obtained its full development under the First and Second Theban Empires. We have already given some idea of the architectural character and of the decoration of the royal sepulchres, we must now indicate the peculiarities which in these respects distinguish the tombs of the kings from those of their subjects.

One of the points of difference has already been noticed; the employment of vertical wells instead of inclined planes as approaches to the mummy chamber. The most extensive of all the Theban catacombs is that of a private individual, the priest Petamounoph (Fig.

191).[267] In this the galleries have not less than 895 feet of total length, besides which there are a large number of chambers, the whole being covered with painted reliefs. But this tomb is quite exceptional. The great majority, those of Rekhmara, for instance, and others excavated in the hill of _Sheikh-Abd-el-Gournah_, are composed of two or three chambers at most, united by corridors. The mummy pit opens sometimes upon the corridor between two of the chambers, sometimes upon the innermost chamber, sometimes upon a corridor opening out of the latter. Rhind tells us that he followed one of these corridors for about 300 feet beyond the chamber without arriving at the mummy pit, the air then became too bad for further progress.[268]

[267] This view is obtained by a series of horizontal and vertical sections in the rock to the right of the galleries. By this operation we are enabled to show the subterranean parts of the tomb.

[268] RHIND, _Thebes_, etc. p. 43.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 190.--A tomb of Apis. From Mariette.]

The chamber for the funerary celebration is easily recognized by its decorations. It is sometimes the first, but more often the second in order, in which case the first acts as a sort of vestibule. A considerable number of tombs are very simple in arrangement. The door gives access to a rectangular chamber, from 6 to 10 feet high and 10 to 12 wide, which extends, in a direction parallel to the wall, for from 12 to 24 feet. This chamber is the funerary chapel. From its posterior wall a pa.s.sage opens which is nearly equal in height and width to the chamber. It has a gentle slope and penetrates into the rock to a distance of some 25 to 35 feet, terminating, in some cases, in the mummy chamber itself, but more frequently in a small apartment containing the opening of a mummy pit.[269]

[269] RHIND, _Thebes_, etc. pp. 56, 57.