Chapter VI: Buried Royalties (2)

It took six days of hard labour, under the blazing sun of an Egyptian July, before the tomb was cleared; and then three days more were spent in waiting for the Museum steamboat to arrive. Brugsch must have been an anxious man as he watched the efforts of the three hundred professional tomb-robbers from whose hands he was snatching what they regarded as their legitimate prey; and no doubt he heaved a sigh of genuine relief when, on July 20, he handed over his precious freight to the Museum at Boulak, and was delivered from the burden of royalty. Sir Gaston Maspero has told us how all along the Nile, from Luxor to Quft, both banks of the river were covered with frantic crowds of fellahs, the women tearing their hair and wailing, the men firing rifles, as they followed the downstream progress of the steamer bearing the mummies. So, no doubt, only without the rifles and the steam, their ancestors had followed the funeral barks which bore across the river the dead bodies of these mighty kings three thousand years before!

The very richness of the find proved somewhat of an embarrassment to the authorities at the Cairo Museum, and it was several years before the results of Brugsch’s great haul of Pharaohs were properly sorted out and classified. It was not till May, 1886, that the unwrapping of the mummies began, and the task was only completed in the end of June. The figure of supreme interest was that of Ramses II, who was then believed to be the Pharaoh of the Oppression of the Israelites, and who was then taken more at the estimate of his own overweening vanity than he is at present. The mummy of the great king was solemnly unwrapped in the presence of an illustrious gathering, the Khedive of Egypt himself verifying the existence of the later inscription of the priests of the XXIst Dynasty on the wrappings around the body, before the process of unwrapping began. The state of the mummy agreed with the historical evidence as to the length of the reign of Ramses. The king must have been nearly one hundred years old when he died, and his body bears the marks of extreme old age.

“The mummy,” says Maspero, “is thin, much shrunken, and light; the bones are brittle, and the muscles atrophied, as one would expect in the case of a man who had attained the age of a hundred; but the figure is still tall and of perfect proportions. The mask of the mummy gives a fair idea of that of the living king; the somewhat unintelligent expression, slightly brutish perhaps, but haughty and firm of purpose, displays itself with an air of royal majesty beneath the sombre materials used by the embalmer.”

The hero of the battle of Kadesh must in his prime have been a man of large and powerful frame. “Even after the coalescence of the vertebræ and the shrinkage produced by mummification, his mummy still measures over 5 feet 8 inches”; so that we may picture him as a formidable figure over 6 feet in height, perhaps nearer 7 feet with the high war helmet of the Pharaohs crowning his head, as he charged with arrow drawn to the head, in his rattling war-chariot upon the Hittite ranks. His conduct at Kadesh suggests a good trooper, but a dull general, and his mummy does nothing to cause a revision of the judgment.

An infinitely nobler figure was that of the father of Ramses, Sety I, whose mummy was also found in the _cache_. “The fine kingly head was exposed to view,” says Maspero. “It was a masterpiece of the art of the embalmer, and the expression of the face was that of one who had only a few hours previously breathed his last. Death had slightly drawn the nostrils and contracted the lips, the pressure of the bandages had flattened the nose a little, and the skin was darkened by the pitch; but a calm and gentle smile still played over the mouth, and the half-open eyelids allowed a glimpse to be seen from under their lashes of an apparently moist and glistening line, the reflection from the white porcelain eyes let in to the orbit at the time of burial.” The somewhat gruesome art of the Egyptian embalmer reached its culmination in this extraordinary piece of work, and while to our minds the whole practice verges upon, if it does not overstep, the limits of the decent into the realm of the horrible, we may admit that it comes as near as possible to the attainment of what Professor Elliot Smith tells us was the aim of the embalmer--“to make the representation of the dead man so life-like that he should, in fact, remain alive.” We should never have known how noble and dignified a type the aristocratic Egyptian of 1300 B.C. had attained had it not been for the preservation of the grand head of Sety, which teaches us that the sculptor of the exquisite reliefs of Abydos was doing no more than bare justice to his king when he carved the delicate beauty which charms us to-day.

If the beauty of Sety’s face almost justified both the morbid skill which sought to deny the reality of death and the curiosity which unveiled the secrets of the grave, the same cannot be said of the mummy of Seqenen-Ra, not the least interesting of the grim assemblage. There are few things more ghastly than the head of the old hero of the Expulsion of the Hyksos, with three gaping wounds on skull and face, and the teeth clenched, in the death-agony, upon the mangled tongue. Yet even this grim evidence of a violent death on the field of battle seems to bring the reality of that ancient struggle in which the Pharaoh died more forcibly home to the imagination.

A still more horrible figure of nightmare was that of the unnamed person whose contorted limbs and writhen countenance suggested to Maspero the most ghastly of all suspicions as to how he met his end. “It makes one’s flesh creep to look at it,” says Maspero, speaking of this mummy; “the hands and feet are tied by strong bands, and are curled up as if under an intolerable pain; the abdomen is drawn up, the stomach projects like a ball, the chest is contracted, the head is thrown back, the face is contorted in a hideous grimace, the retracted lips expose the teeth, and the mouth is open as if to give utterance to a last despairing cry. The conviction is borne in upon us that the man was invested while still alive with the wrappings of the dead.” Others have suggested a less horrible interpretation of the condition of the figure. In the report of the trial which took place in the reign of Ramses III of individuals accused of a conspiracy against the life of the king it is significantly said of some of those whose guilt was established, “They died of themselves,” and the suggestion has been made that this figure, whose contortions might well be due to the action of an irritant poison, is that of one of these involuntary suicides. In either case, the thing is sufficiently horrible, and hints, not obscurely, at that darker aspect of Oriental Court life which lay beneath all the glitter and splendour of the Theban palace.

The find of Der el-Bahri was followed, in 1894–5, by the discoveries of M. de Morgan at Dahshur, which have given us the exquisite jewellery of the XIIth and XIIIth Dynasty already alluded to in our chapter on the Pyramids. And then, in 1898, M. Loret discovered in the Valley of the Kings the tomb of Amenhotep II, son of the great conqueror Thothmes III.

Until the great discovery of last year threw all others into the shade, this discovery of M. Loret was unique, for the mummy of Amenhotep was found still resting in its coffin under the gold-starred and blue-painted roof of the funerary chamber--the first Pharaoh who had ever been found sleeping in the tomb where he was laid. His own records tell us of his prowess. “He is a king very weighty of arm,” so the inscription of the Amada and Elephantine steles runs; “there is not one who can draw his bow among his army, among the hill-country sheikhs, or among the princes of Retenu, because his strength is so much greater than that of any king who has ever existed.” In later days this boast of the old Pharaoh got twisted into the curious legend which Herodotus records of the king of Ethiopia who challenged Cambyses to draw his bow. The redoubtable weapon itself, strange to say, was found in the tomb along with its owner. It bore the inscription: “Smiter of the Cave-dwellers, overthrower of Kush, hacking up their cities ... the great wall of Egypt, protector of his soldiers.” Amenhotep was still wrapped in his shroud and adorned with garlands; but the tomb had been ruthlessly plundered in ancient days, and little of artistic value was found. One of the side-chambers of the tomb, however, yielded a store of Pharaohs, only second in importance to the great find of Der el-Bahri. Here were gathered nine royal mummies, among them those of Thothmes IV, Amenhotep III, Siptah, Ramses IV, Ramses V, and Ramses VI. Most interesting of all, in view of the idea then prevalent of the date of the Exodus, was the discovery, along with these, of the mummy of Merenptah, who was held to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus. The absence of Merenptah from the royal gathering at Der el-Bahri was explained by interested but casual readers of Scripture by the fact that of course he was drowned in the Red Sea. The narrative of Exodus, of course, makes no such statement, and Merenptah duly appeared, though the interest attaching to him has somewhat waned with the progress of the view that the Exodus took place two hundred years before his reign.

The fate of the tomb of Amenhotep is suggestive of the difficulties which meet the explorer in his attempt to preserve for science and to treat with proper reverence the relics of the past which he unearths. The great king was left in his coffin, with a few articles of his funerary furniture beside him. The result was that in spite of the armed guard which is maintained in the Valley of the Kings, or perhaps with the complicity of the guard, the tomb was rifled in 1901, the mummy of the Pharaoh tumbled out on the floor, and the model boat which had been left beside the king stolen.

With the suggestion that Tutankhamen should be allowed to rest in the midst of the splendours which accompanied him to the grave, everyone must sympathise; the question is, will he be allowed to rest in peace, no matter what the precautions which may be taken, in the midst of a people with whom tomb-robbery is a profession of six thousand years standing, and who know the matchless value of the treasure which lies within their reach? Whatever the decision, it may be hoped that if the mummy of the last king in the direct line of the great XVIIIth Dynasty be found beneath his gorgeous canopy it will not be made the subject of a vulgar show, as is done with that of Amenhotep II.

In 1902 the work of excavation in the Valley of the Kings was undertaken by an American, Mr. Theodore M. Davis, or rather the funds for the work were provided by Mr. Davis, while the actual work of excavation was carried on by officials of the Service of Antiquities, first Mr. Howard Carter, then Mr. Weigall, and Mr. Ayrton. In 1903 Mr. Carter found the tomb of Thothmes IV, son of Amenhotep II, and father of Amenhotep III. His mummy had already been found in the tomb of his father, but many articles of funerary furniture, mostly broken, were found, including the embossed leather front of a state chariot, with decoration in gesso. Between 1902 and 1912, the work financed by Mr. Davis was crowned with the most astonishing success. In these years were found the tombs of Queen Hatshepsut, King Siptah, Akhenaten (or rather the tomb of Queen Tiy, with the mummy of Akhenaten), Horemheb, Prince Mentuherkhepshef, and, above all, the tomb which, though its occupants were not of royal rank, proved yet the richest and the most interesting which was ever discovered, till it was outclassed by that of Tutankhamen--the tomb of Yuaa and Tuau.

It was in February, 1905, that the workmen of Mr. Davis struck the first indication of the tomb in the shape of a well-cut stone step, which promised to prove the first of a flight descending to a tomb-passage. By February 12 the door was cleared, and the next day Mr. Davis, with the late Sir Gaston Maspero and Mr. Weigall, penetrated with some difficulty into the tomb-chamber, and the little party found themselves in the presence, not only of two of the most interesting personalities of Egyptian history, but also of the most wonderful collection of funerary furniture which, up to that time, had ever rewarded the explorer. Their delight was very nearly turned to tragedy before they had begun to realise the importance of their find. In his eagerness to inspect the funeral sledge, on which Maspero had just read the famous name of Yuaa, Mr. Davis stooped with his candle close to the bitumen-covered woodwork, and was pulled back just in time. One touch of the flame on the pitch, and the corridors of the tomb would have been a roaring tunnel of flame, in which Yuaa, his funerary equipment, and his discoverers would probably all have perished together.

The danger once realised, candles were discarded, and electric light led into the tomb. And then the explorers began to realise the full wonder of their discovery. The tomb was full of furniture of the finest and most careful workmanship. Armchairs carved and inlaid, coffers of wood inlaid and enamelled with that wonderful blue of which the Egyptians had the secret, boxes of painted wood, with figures in gilt gesso, designed to hold the canopic jars which contain the viscera of the dead, ushabti figures, some of them plated with gold or silver, wicker-work baskets for holding perfume bottles, couches of elegant design, a perfectly preserved specimen of the type of light chariot in which the Theban noble of the Empire took his airing, cushions stuffed with down, still soft and resilient after three millenniums, costly alabaster vases, toilet articles of all sorts, and a plentiful supply of the mummified meats which the dead might require for their journey through the Underworld; the chamber was a storehouse of all that the Egyptian deemed desirable for his use in this life or the next. Nor were the needs of the spirit neglected. There stood the magical figures by whose help the occupants of the tomb were to make their way through the dark paths of the Duat, inscribed with the “Chapter of the Flame,” or the “Chapter of the Magical Figure of the North Wall”; while a great roll of papyrus 22 yards long contained other prayers which would assist the sleepers to conquer all the dangers of their long road. Never had such an assemblage of beautiful and curious things rewarded the seeker even in this land of beautiful and curious things.

Fascinating as the treasures of the tomb were, however, the main interest was not in them, but in the two gilded coffins in which the owners of all this wealth lay quietly sleeping their long sleep. “First above Yuaa and then above his wife the electric lamps were held, and as one looked down into their quiet faces there was almost the feeling that they would presently open their eyes and blink at the light. The stern features of the old man commanded one’s attention, and again and again our gaze was turned from this mass of wealth to this sleeping figure in whose honour it had been placed there.” For these two silent tenants of the tomb were the man and woman to whose influence, in all probability, was due not a little of that great religious revolution which in a few years altered the whole course of Egyptian history, and swayed the balance of the destinies of the Ancient East. Prince Yuaa and his wife Tuau were the father and mother of that famous Queen Tiy, whose sway over the mind of her husband Amenhotep III prepared the way for the supremacy of that new spiritual faith of which her son, the ill-fated Akhenaten, was in the fulness of time to be the exponent and champion, and whose failure broke his heart in the midst of the downfall of the empire to which he had vainly attempted to teach the creed of the Brotherhood of Man. To few people has it been given to exercise so great an influence upon the course of history as to these two quiet figures whose rest was broken after 3300 years by the representatives of three nations whose ancestors were outer barbarians when Prince Yuaa and his wife were foremost figures in the most glittering court of the Ancient East.

Two years later, the work of Mr. Davis resulted in another discovery, less important from the point of view of the wealth of funerary furniture involved, for in this case there was little found, but even more interesting in view of the personality whose mummy occupied the tomb. The site of the new find was at the corner of the ravine leading to the well-known tomb of Sety I, and was covered with gravel and loose stones. “After some days of hard work, the regular rectangle of a pit appeared upon the soil, then two or three steps appeared, followed by a staircase open to the sky, a door, a narrow passage, and a wall of rock-work and beaten earth. The seals affixed by the guardians, more than thirty centuries before, were still intact on the lime-wash.” Breaking them on January 6, 1907, Mr. Davis and Mr. Weigall penetrated into a narrow passage, which was almost blocked by two panels of gilded wood, which had once formed part of a funeral canopy, like that of Tutankhamen. Wriggling past these with difficulty, they entered a roughly hewn and quite undecorated chamber, on the floor of which lay a few earthen pots, some alabaster ornaments, and a number of amulets. But the sight which arrested the eye was that of the coffin, which, at the first glance, seemed in the glare of the electric light to be made of massy gold. “It seemed,” says Maspero, “as if all the gold of ancient Egypt glittered and gleamed in that narrow space.” The news of a wonderful discovery of treasure spread far and wide through the neighbourhood, growing as it spread, till the report had reached such fabulous proportions that it was necessary to place a guard over the tomb to prevent an assault. Of course it was more seeming than reality, for the gold turned out to be mere gold-foil, and the tomb was in reality singularly poor in objects of value. The coffin had originally been placed upon a bier of the usual form; but this had decayed, and the heavy coffin had fallen, and its lid had come off in the fall, exposing the head and feet of its tenant, from which the bandages had decayed. The body was wrapped in sheets of gold-foil, and the inscription on the coffin, worked in semi-precious stones, gave the title of Akhenaten, “the beautiful child of the Sun.”

Such a discovery was, of course, most unexpected; for Akhenaten had made his capital, not at Thebes, which he hated, but at Tell el-Amarna, where he had declared his intention to be buried, and where his tomb was known. Besides, the inscription on the funeral canopy stated that Akhenaten had made it for his mother Queen Tiy. The explorers therefore concluded that they had indeed discovered the tomb, part of the funeral furniture, and the skeleton (it cannot be called a mummy) of Queen Tiy, and in this belief they sent the broken fragments of the skeleton to Professor Elliot Smith for examination, only to be informed by him that what they had sent was not the body of an old woman, but of a young man, who, if normal, which was doubtful, could not have been much older than twenty-six when he died. There seems in fact to be little doubt that the skeleton which was discovered in the tomb of Tiy was that of the man whose action in one direction and inaction in another changed the destiny of the ancient world in one of the most critical periods of its history. Mr. Davis, strange to say, could never bear the idea that he had found the bones of Akhenaten, though one would have thought that the discovery of the most pathetic and interesting figure of Egyptian history would have put the crown on the satisfaction with which he could justly regard his work. He had set his heart on discovering Queen Tiy, and to have even her far more famous son substituted for her was a bitter disappointment to him.

But how came Akhenaten, the heretic king, “that criminal of Akhetaten,”[1] as the priests of Amen always called him, to be buried, not in his own heretic capital at Tell el-Amarna, but in orthodox Thebes, and in his mother’s tomb? There is, of course, no certain explanation of the facts; but from what is known of the history of the period an explanation may at least be suggested with a reasonable amount of confidence that it is not very far from the truth. When Akhenaten died, his body was no doubt buried at Tell el-Amarna, as he had decreed. When his son-in-law, Tutankhaten, and his daughter, Ankh. s. en. pa Aten, found the pressure of circumstances too strong for them, and were obliged to return to Thebes, to restore the old religion, and to change their names to Tutankhamen and Ankh. s. en. Amen, they carried with them, doubtless, the body of the reformer, still revered and beloved, and gave it honourable burial in the tomb of Tiy--the most fitting place, since no royal tomb could have been prepared in Thebes. But as time went on, the reactionary priests of Amen became more and more the dominant element in the kingdom, and they had none of the chivalrous spirit which prompted Charles V’s “I war not with the dead,” at the tomb of Luther. The only way in which they could strike at the dead heretic was also, to an Egyptian mind, the most certain and the most deadly; they could destroy his hopes of immortality by desecrating his tomb, and blotting out his name from it. So the body of Queen Tiy was removed from the tomb which had been polluted by the presence of her son, his name was erased from the inscriptions, and the entrance of the tomb was blocked with stones and sealed with the seal of Tutankhamen. Then the body of “the world’s first great idealist and the world’s first _individual_” was left in solitude, and, as his enemies fondly believed, in eternal oblivion and shame, to await its resurrection, thirty centuries later, at the hands of a generation which has at least learned to appreciate and to honour the ideals for which he sacrificed so much.

[1] Akhetaten, the town created by Akhenaten, the man.

The remarkable success of Mr. Davis in the search for buried royalties was fittingly crowned a year later by the discovery of the tomb of Horemheb, the usurping reactionary who had formerly been a general in the service of Tutankhamen, and who seized the throne after the brief reigns of Tutankhamen and Ay. The tomb had been plundered and wrecked, but the beautiful red granite sarcophagus, 8 feet 11 inches in length by 3 feet 9½ inches in width and 4 feet in depth, was intact. In it were found the bones of one person, but in such a condition that it was impossible to determine the sex of the person to whom they had belonged. In 1906 Mr. Davis made another discovery, this time of an uninscribed chamber nearly filled with mud. The presence in the chamber and in the neighbourhood of a number of articles bearing the names of Tutankhamen and Ankh. s. en. Amen led him to believe that this was the tomb of Tutankhamen, and the sumptuous volume in which he published the results of these last two discoveries was therefore entitled “The Tombs of Harmhabi and Touatankhamanou.” Time and further investigation have proved that in this respect he was wrong, as also in the conviction which he expressed in the book that “the Valley of the Kings is now exhausted.” Another discovery was due sixteen years after his last find, which was to prove that the Valley yet held treasures whose beauty and richness could dazzle the world, and make even those of the tomb of Yuaa seem almost paltry by comparison. Yet the work of Mr. Davis remains as one of the most remarkable series of successes which has ever rewarded excavation in Egypt--a fitting prelude to the great find of November, 1922.