Chapter III: Sepulchral Architecture (5)

"M. Maspero, encouraged by this first success, ordered a second pyramid to be opened. He wished to verify, upon the spot, a theory which he had long upheld in spite of the adverse opinions of the majority of egyptologists. It is well known that between the sixth and the tenth dynasties a great gap exists, so far as monumental remains are concerned. M. Maspero has always believed that there is no such gap. He has observed that the pyramids are, so to speak, grouped chronologically from north to south; those of the fourth dynasty at Gizeh, those of the fifth at Abooseer, those of the twelfth in the Fayoum. The excavations of Mariette as well as his own showed the tombs of the fifth and sixth dynasties to have been at Sakkarah. Hence M. Maspero thinks that the pyramids erected by the sovereigns of the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth dynasties are those between Sakkarah and the Fayoum. The future will show whether he is right or wrong. In any case science will profit by the new excavations which he is about to undertake."[226]

[226] _Moniteur Égyptien_, March 15, 1881.

When cross-examined by such questioners as M. Maspero the pyramids will tell us much. Hitherto they have attracted but little of that examination which discovers the most curious secrets, but their size and the beauty of their masonry will ever make the three great pyramids of Gizeh the most striking objects to the traveller and to the historian of art.

Considering their age, these three pyramids are wonderfully well preserved. In their presence, even in their actual state of partial ruin, the oriental hyperbolism of Abd-ul-Latif, an Arab writer of the thirteenth century, seems no more than natural. "All things fear Time," he cries, "but Time fears the Pyramids!" And yet time has done its work during the last few hundreds of years. The summits of the great structures have been slightly lowered; the gaping breaches in their flanks have been gradually widened; and although in spite of their stripped flanks and open wounds they still rear their heads proudly into the Egyptian sky, all those accessory structures which surrounded them, and fulfilled their own well-defined offices in the general monumental _ensemble_, have either been destroyed by the violence of man or engulfed by the encroaching sand. Where, for example, are those wide and substantial causeways, whose large and carefully adjusted blocks excited the wonder of Herodotus.[227] After having afforded an unyielding roadway for the transport of so many heavy materials, they formed truly regal avenues by which the funeral processions of the Egyptians reached the centre of the necropolis as long as their civilization lasted. In the plain they were above the level of the highest inundations, and their gentle slope gave easy access to the western plateau. The great Sphinx, the image of Harmachis, or the Rising Sun, was placed at the threshold of the plateau. Immovable among the dead of the vast cemetery, he personified the idea of the resurrection, of that eternal life which, like the morning sun, is ever destined to triumph over darkness and death. His head alone now rises above the sand, but in the days of Herodotus his vast bulk, cut from a rock nearly 70 feet high, was well calculated to prepare the eye of the traveller for the still more colossal masses of the pyramids. His features have now been disfigured by all kinds of outrage, but in the thirteenth century, although even then he had been mutilated, Abd-ul-Latif was able to admire his serene smile, his head enframed in a richly carved wig which added to its size and dignity. His body was never more than roughly blocked out, but a painted decoration, of which traces may still be found, compensated in some degree for the deficiencies in the modelling.

[227] The causeway which led to the Pyramid of Cheops still
exists for some 400 yards of its length; here and there it rises
as much as eighty-six feet above the surface of the plateau. A
similar causeway is to be distinguished on the eastern side of
the Third Pyramid. At Abou-Roash, at Abousir, and elsewhere,
similar remains are to be found.

The soil around each pyramid was carefully levelled and paved with dressed limestone slabs. Upon this pavement rested the foundations of the stylobate surrounding the pyramid. Both stylobate and pavement are now in almost every case concealed by sand and _débris_, but at the pyramid of Chephren, which is less banked up than the others, traces of them have been proved to exist. They added somewhat to the imposing effect of those monuments upon the eye, and gave additional definition to their bases.[228] The area thus paved was inclosed with a wall, which had an opening towards the east, in front of which the temple, or funerary chapel of the pyramid, was raised. The latter, no doubt, was magnificently decorated. At the foot of the mountains of stone under which reposed the ashes of the Pharaohs themselves, smaller pyramids were raised for their wives and children. Of these some half dozen still exist upon the plateau of Gizeh. One of them has been recognized as the tomb of that daughter of Cheops, about whom Herodotus tells one of those absurd stories invented by the Egyptians of the decadence, with which his dragomans took such delight in imposing upon his simple faith.[229] Around the space which was thus consecrated to the adoration of the dead monarch, the long rows of mastabas stretched away for miles through the vast necropolis.

[228] _Description de l'Égypte_, vol. v. p. 643. See also in the
plates, _Antiquités_, vol. v. Pl. xvi. Fig. 2. According to
Jomard, the surbase of the second pyramid was in two parts--a
stylobate, 10 feet high and 5 feet thick, and a plinth about 3
feet high.

[229] HERODOTUS, ii. 126.

The great ones of Egypt, all those who had been near the Pharaoh and had received some of his reflected glory, grouped their tombs as closely as possible about his. Distributed thus by reigns, the private tombs were erected in close juxtaposition one with another, each being provided with a stele, or sepulchral tablet upon which the name of the deceased was inscribed, most of them being adorned with painted bas-reliefs, and a few with statues placed upon their façades. Upon the causeways which connected Memphis with the necropolis, upon the esplanades erected by the Pharaohs to the memory and for the adoration of their ancestors, in the countless streets, lanes, and blind alleys which gave access to the private tombs, advanced endless processions of mourners, driving before them the bleating and lowing victims for the funeral rites. Priests in white linen, friends and relations of the dead with their hands full of fruit and flowers, flitted hither and thither. On the days appointed for the commemoration of the dead, all this must have afforded a curiously animated scene. The city of the dead had its peculiar life, we might almost say its festivals, like that of the living. But amid the coming and going, amid all the bustle of the Egyptian _jour des morts_, it was the giant forms of the pyramids, with their polished slopes[230] and their long shadows turning with the sun, that gave the scene a peculiar solemnity and a character of its own. Morning and evening this shadow passed over hundreds of tombs, and thus, in a fashion, symbolized the royal dignity and the almost superhuman majesty of the kingly office.

[230] Jomard remarks that the upper part of the second pyramid
still reflects the rays of the sun. "It still possesses," he
says, "a portion of its polished casing, which reflects the rays
of the sun and declares its identity to people at a vast
distance."

Of all this harmonious conception but a few fragments 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 fashion, do its honours to the curious visitor. But despoiled though they be of their ornaments and of their proper surroundings, the pyramids are yet among those monuments of the world which are sure to impress all who possess sensibility or powers of reflection. In a remarkable passage in the _Description générale de Memphis et des Pyramides_, Jomard has well defined the effect which they produce upon the traveller and the impressions which they leave behind: "The general effect produced by the pyramids is very curious. Their summits, when seen from a distance, look like those of high mountains standing out against the sky. As we approach them this effect diminishes; but when we arrive within a very short distance of their sides a totally different impression succeeds; we begin to be amazed, to be oppressed, almost to be stupefied by their size. When quite close to them their summits and angles can no longer be seen. The wonder which they cause is not like that caused by a great work of art. It is the sense of their simple grandeur 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 embrace them, nor the imagination grasp their mass. We then begin to form some idea of the prodigious quantity of dressed stone which goes to make up their height. 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 power which 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 power which overcame such obstacles."[231]

[231] _Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités_, vol. v. p. 597.

§ 3. _The Tomb under the Middle Empire._

We have shown how the mastaba, that is to say, the most ancient form of tomb in the necropolis of Memphis, was an expression, both in arrangement and in decoration, of the ideas of the Egyptians 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 the most interesting to 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 imitate foreign 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 may be explained in every detail by a master-idea at once original and well defined. We therefore dwelt upon it at some length and described it with the care which it demanded. We found it again in the pyramids, the royal tombs of the Ancient Empire, which though sensibly modified by the great change in proportion, by the colossal dimensions which the pride of the Pharaohs gave to one part of their tomb, are yet penetrated by the same spirit. We have yet to follow the development of the same idea through the later years of Egyptian civilization, and in localities more or less removed from that in which she gave 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 committed, in another by the inevitable progress of ideas, by the development of art, and by the caprices of fashion, which was no more stationary in Egypt than elsewhere.

* * * * *

The most important necropolis of the First Theban Empire was that of Abydos in Upper Egypt, 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 myths which centred in it. According to the Egyptian 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 know how the Egyptian intellect had established an analogy between the career of the sun and that of man; we may therefore conclude that in choosing a final resting-place as near as possible to the spot where the great luminary seemed to make its nightly plunge, they believed they were making more completely sure of triumphing, like him, over darkness and death.

The sun is not extinguished, he is but hidden for a moment from the eyes of man. This sun of the infernal regions is Osiris, who, of all the Egyptian gods, was most universally adored. Although many Egyptian 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 permitted to use such a phrase, the _Holy Sepulchre of Egypt_. As, in the early centuries of Christianity, the faithful laid great stress upon burial in the neighbourhood of some holy martyr, "The richest and most influential Egyptians," 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 inspiration must have
known the ancient fiction according to 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 town which gave
access to the regions of Ament. Hence the voyage of the dead to
Abydos which we find so often represented on tombs; an imaginary
voyage, as the mummy would be reposing safely at Thebes or
Memphis (Fig. 159). At all events, the family, after the death
of its head, or any Egyptian during his own life, could deposit
upon the _ladder of Osiris_ a stele, upon which the tomb
actually containing his body could be represented and
unmistakably identified with its original 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 tomb of Osiris itself, but yet his digging campaigns afforded results which are most interesting and important from every point of view.[233]

[233] MARIETTE, _Abydos, Description des Fouilles exécutées sur
l'Emplacement de cette Ville_, folio, vol. i. 1869; vol. ii.
1880. Mariette thought that the sacred tomb was probably in the
immediate neighbourhood 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.

One district of this necropolis is made up by a vast number of tombs dating from the time of the ancient empire, and particularly from the sixth dynasty. Arrangements 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 cemetery, has allowed arrangements to be adopted similar to those on the plateau of Memphis, where the sand is the only covering to a stratum of living 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 formation extends over nearly the whole of the ground 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 tombs of Abydos have no subterranean story, properly speaking. Well, mummy-chamber, and funerary chapel are all constructed, not dug. 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-Égypte_, vol. i. 1879.

"Hence the peculiar aspect which the necropolis of Abydos must have presented when intact. Imagine a multitude of small pyramids five or six metres high, 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 formed into a clumsy cupola by means of roughly 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 chamber was often built in front of the pyramid, and being always left open, served for the performance of the sepulchral rites; but sometimes this chamber was absent and then those rites were carried through 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. Sometimes the tomb had a surrounding wall of the same height as its plinth; this served to mark out the ground which belonged 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._

These tombs, which were generally constructed with no great care, were for the most part without casing. The pyramidal form was given by setting each course of bricks slightly back from the one below it. When this part of the work was 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.

As these tombs were all upon the surface of the ground they have suffered more than any others from the attacks of man. Those which are reproduced among these lines of text were only recovered by Mariette by dint of patient excavation. And although these ill constructed edifices, so far as their materials are concerned, are still standing, they will soon follow the many thousands which once stood in serried ranks round the sepulchre of Osiris. The only remains of this necropolis which are likely to be preserved are the numberless steles which Mariette rescued from its _débris_. They form about four-fifths of the total number of those monuments now preserved in the museum at Boulak.[236] We figure two of them, one belonging to the Middle, the other to the New Empire (Figs. 164 and 165).

[236] All these steles are figured in the last work published by
MARIETTE, the _Catalogue général des Monuments d'Abydos,
découverts pendant les Fouilles de cette Ville_, 1 vol. 4to.
Paris, 1880.

Whenever religious motives did not affect their choice, the Egyptians preferred, during the period we are now considering, to cut their tombs horizontally out of some rocky eminence. Such a tomb was called a σπέος by the Greeks. The most interesting examples of these constructions are offered by the tombs of the twelfth dynasty at Beni-Hassan and at Siout, both situated between Memphis and Abydos.

Champollion was the first to appreciate the importance of the grottos of Beni-Hassan. Ever since his time they have received, for various reasons, much of the attention of egyptologists. We have already referred to their inscriptions, which are as interesting to the historian of ideas as to the student of political and social organizations. We have alluded above to the varied scenes which cover the walls of their chambers, the most important of which have been reproduced by Champollion, Lepsius, and Prisse d'Avennes; we have finally to speak of those famous protodoric columns, as they are called, in which some have thought they saw the original model of the oldest and most beautiful of the Grecian orders. We are at present concerned, however, with the arrangement of the tombs themselves. These are the same, with but slight variations, for the smallest and most simple tombs as for those which are largest and most elaborately decorated.

These façades are cut into the cliff-like sides of the hills of the Arab Chain, about half-way up their total height. They are, therefore, high above the surface of the river. When the cutting was made, two or three columns were left to form a portico, the deep shadows of which stand out strongly against the whiteness of the rock. This portico leads to a chamber which is lighted only from the door. Its ceiling is often cut into the form of a vault. A deep square niche is cut, sometimes opposite to the door, sometimes in one of the angles. It once contained the statue of the deceased. Most of the tombs have but one chamber, but a few have two or three. In a corner either of the only chamber or of that which is farthest from the door, the opening of a square well is found; this leads to the mummy-chamber, which is excavated at a lower level.

The chamber upon which the portico opens is the funerary chapel, the place of reunion for the friends and relations of the dead. As Mariette very truly remarks, from the first step which the traveller makes in the tomb of Numhotep at Beni-Hassan, he perceives that, in spite of all differences of situation, the traditions of the Ancient Empire are still full of vitality. "The spirit which governed the decorators of the tomb of Ti at Sakkarah still inspired the painters who covered the walls of the tomb of Numhotep at Beni-Hassan. The defunct is at home among his own possessions; he fishes and hunts, his cattle defile before him, his people build boats, cut down trees, cultivate the vine and gather the grapes, till the earth, or give themselves up to gymnastics or to games of skill and chance, and among them the figure of the dead is carried hither and thither in a palanquin. We have already found pictures like these in the mastabas of the Ancient Empire, and here we find them again. But at Beni-Hassan this painted decoration becomes more personal to the occupant of the tomb, the inscriptions enter into precise and copious biographical details, which are never found elsewhere."[237]

[237] MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte_, vol. i. p. 51.

The necropolis of Siout, in the Libyan chain, offers the same general characteristics. The tomb of Hapi-Tefa, a feudal prince of the twelfth dynasty, and consequently a contemporary of those princes of the nome of Meh who are buried at Beni-Hassan, is the most remarkable. It is composed of three large chambers communicating one with another, and with the external air by a wide portico. The mummy-pit is reached from the innermost of these chambers.

Neither statues, mummies, nor any other movable objects have been found in these grottos. When their accessible situation and their conspicuous appearance is remembered, this should not cause surprise. Many centuries ago the acacia doors, which are mentioned in one of the texts at Beni-Hassan, disappeared, and, in spite of the accumulation of sand, the mouths of the wells could be found so easily, and could so readily be cleared, that all objects of value and interest must have been abstracted from the mummy-chambers in very remote times, perhaps before the fall of the antique civilization. The inscriptions and the painted walls alone remained practically intact down to the commencement of the present century. The dryness of the climate, and the difficulty of detaching them from the wall contributed to their preservation, which was nowhere more complete than at Beni-Hassan. But since travelling in Egypt became the fashion their sufferings have begun. The mania for carving names upon every surface, and for preserving souvenirs of all places of interest, has destroyed the whole of one wall. The smoke of torches has also done its work in reducing the brilliant tones and blunting the delicate contours. Happily, the more interesting examples are all reproduced in those great works to which we have already had such frequent occasion to refer.

The rich necropolis of Thebes has not preserved any monuments from this period in such good condition as those of Abydos, Beni-Hassan, or Siout. M. Maspero has discovered, however, in the district known as the _Drah-Aboul-Neggah_, some remains of the royal tombs of the eleventh dynasty. Several of these tombs resemble in their general arrangements those of the feudal princes of Meh and Siout. Thus the sepulchre of the King _Ra-Anoub-Khoper-Entef_ is what the Greeks called a _hemi-speos_, that is, it was partly built and partly hollowed out of the living rock. Before the façade thus built against the mountain, two obelisks were reared. The tombs of the other princes belonging to the family of Entef were built upon the open plain. They were structures in masonry, and seem at one time to have been crowned by pyramids. Some idea of their shape may be obtained from our illustrations of the tombs at Abydos.[238]

[238] MASPERO, _Rapport sur une Mission en Italie_ (in the
_Recueil de Travaux_, vol. ii. p. 166). The Abbott Papyrus gives
a list of these little pyramids.

To complete our observations upon the tombs of the first Theban Empire, it will be sufficient to recall what we have already said about the pyramids in the Fayoum, which were the work of the thirteenth dynasty. It is difficult to form an accurate idea of the appearance of those monuments when complete. Time has treated them with great severity, and in their present state it is impossible to verify the assertions of Herodotus as to the peculiarities of their casing and crowning ornaments. But it is quite certain that the Middle Empire made no original inventions in the matter of sepulchral architecture. It appears to have discontinued some of the ancient arrangements, but in those which it preserved its efforts were confined to putting old elements together in a new fashion and with new proportions. It made frequent use of one mode of sepulture which had previously been quite exceptional. No mastaba is known which dates from this epoch, but the kings had not ceased to confide their mummies and the perpetuation of their glory to pyramids, but these were no longer of such colossal dimensions as under the Ancient Empire, while their character was complicated, to some extent, by the colossi with which they are said to have been surmounted, and the figured decoration of their walls. Finally, they were often employed, not as self-contained monuments in themselves, but merely as the culminating points in a more complex _ensemble_. They were built upon a rectangular platform or tower with walls slightly inclined from the perpendicular.

It would seem that the idea of this arrangement had occurred to the primitive Egyptians. So, too, had that of the _speos_ or rock-cut tomb; but the Memphite architects have left nothing which at all resembles the grottos in the mountain sides of Beni-Hassan and Siout. Neither in the neighbourhood of the pyramids nor in any other district where the tombs of the early epoch are found, has any sepulchre been discovered which shows the monumental façades, the large internal development, and the simple and dignified lines of the artificial chambers in the Arab and Libyan chains.

§4. _The Tomb under the New Empire._

The subterranean tombs for which the first Theban Empire had shown so marked a preference, became firmly seated in public favour during the succeeding centuries. We do not know what the funeral customs may have been during those centuries when the Hyksos, or shepherd kings, were masters of Egypt; but, after their expulsion, the great Theban dynasties, the eighteenth, the nineteenth, and the twentieth, by whom the glory of Egyptian arms and culture was spread so widely, hardly made use of any sepulchre but the chamber hollowed laboriously in the rocky sides of that part of the Libyan chain which lies to the west of Thebes. Every traveller visits the royal tombs which lie in the gloomy ravine called the _Bab-el-Molouk_, or the Gate of the Kings. The valley is about three miles in length and has a mean width of about eleven hundred yards; its sides are riddled with galleries penetrating more or less deeply into the mountains, and starting sometimes from the slopes, sometimes from the base of the cliffs, which here and there attain a height of 400 feet. The word speos seeming to the Greeks to give an inadequate idea of the depth of these excavations and of their narrow proportions, they called them συρίγγες or pipes; and modern archæologists have often employed the same picturesque term in speaking of the Theban tombs. Five-and-twenty of these tombs are royal; the rest belong to wealthy subjects, priests, warriors, and high officers of state. In extent and richness of ornament some of the latter are in no way inferior to the tombs of the sovereigns.

Our studies must first, however, be directed to the royal tombs, because in them we find the most original types, the most important variations upon those which have gone before. In them the art of the New Empire gives a clearer indication of all the changes which the progress of ideas had brought about in the Egyptian conception of a future life. In them, too, the Egyptian taste for ample dimensions and luxuriant decoration is more freely indulged. The architects of Seti and Rameses had resources at command far beyond those of which their early rivals could dispose. They were, therefore, enabled to indulge their employers' tastes for magnificence, and to give to certain parts of the tomb a splendour which had been previously unknown. And such parts were never those upon which the pyramid builders had lavished most of their attention.

Nothing could be more simple than the course of proceeding of the earlier architects, whose services and high social position are indicated for us by more than one stele from the Ancient Empire. They had to distinguish the royal from the private tomb, and no means to such an end could be more obvious than to make use of a form of construction which allowed the height and extent to be added to _ad infinitum_ without compromising the stability of the monument. Their one idea, therefore, was to push the apex of the pyramid as far up into the sky as they could. The height grew as the flanks swelled, so that it became, by one process of accretion, ever more imposing and better fitted to safeguard the precious deposit hidden within it. In such a system the important point was this envelope of the mummy-chamber, an envelope composed of thousands of the most carefully dressed and fixed blocks of stone, which, in their turn, were covered with a cuirass of still harder and more durable materials. In order that all access to the sarcophagus might be more safely guarded against, the funerary chapel was separated from the mountain of hewn stone which inclosed the mummy-chamber. Supposing the latter to be decorated with all the taste and richness which we find in the tomb of Ti, it would still be comparatively small and unimportant beside the colossal mass which overshadowed it, and to which it belonged. The disproportion is easily explained. When the pyramids were built, the workman, the actual mason, had little more to learn. He was a thorough master of the dressing and fixing of stone and other materials; but, on the other hand, the art of architecture was yet in its infancy. It had no suspicion of those rich and varied effects which the later Egyptians were to obtain by the majesty of their orders and the variety of their capitals. It was not till much later that it learnt to raise the pylon before the sacred inclosures, to throw solemn colonnades about their courts, and to greet the visitor to the temples with long naves clothed in all the glory of colour.

Two periods of national renascence, in the thirteenth and eighteenth dynasties, had to intervene before these marvels could be realized. The earlier of these two periods is only known to us by a few works of sculpture in our museums. We are forced to guess at its architecture, as we have nothing but descriptions, which are at once incomplete and exaggerated, to guide our imaginations.

The second Theban Empire may be studied under very different conditions. The architects of that epoch excelled all their predecessors in the skill with which they used their materials, and the artistic ability with which they laid their plans. In a word, they realized the ideal towards which Egyptian builders had been tending for many centuries, and their genius is still to be seen in buildings which, even in their ruin, charm by the grandeur of their conception and the finish of their execution.

In the century which saw the construction of the great temples of Abydos, of Karnak, and of Luxor, the architect who was charged with the building of the royal tombs could dispose of all the resources of an empire which stretched from the southern boundaries of Ethiopia to Damascus and Nineveh. He would have fulfilled the wishes of neither prince nor people had he not found means to give an amplitude and a beauty to those tombs which should stand a comparison with the sumptuous edifices which the same kings had erected, in another part of the city, in honour of the great deities of the country.

The simple and massive forms of the pyramid did not lend themselves to success in such an enterprise. They afforded no opportunity for the happy combinations of horizontal and vertical lines, for the contrasts of light and shadow and splendour of decoration which distinguished the epoch. The experience of the Middle Empire proved that it was better to make a fresh departure than to attempt to foist upon the pyramid a class of ornament which was destructive to the simplicity in which so much of its grandeur consisted. The highest expression of the new form of art was in the temple, the development of which was rather in a horizontal than in a vertical direction; in the long avenues of sphinxes, in the pylons and colossal statues of the kings, in porticoes and forests of columns. The problem, therefore, was to embody some of these elements in the design of the tomb. For this purpose it was necessary to give increased dimensions and greater importance to a part of the royal sepulchre which had been hitherto comparatively neglected. The funerary chapel had to be expanded into a temple in miniature, into a temple where the king, who had rejoined the deities from whom he was descended, could receive the homage and worship of his people.

The exploits of these princes, which were greater than anything of which Egypt had to boast in the whole of its glorious past, must have helped to suggest the temple form of their tombs. To this form the general movement of the national art also pointed, and to give it effect nothing more was required than the separation of the chapel from the tomb proper, to which previous tradition had so closely allied it. The situation of the sepulchre, after Thebes had become a populous city and the real capital of Egypt, was no longer a matter of question. It was in the rocky flanks of the Libyan chain that all its inhabitants sought that asylum for their dead which the inhabitants of Memphis found upon the eastern edge of the desert. The Libyan chain to the west of Thebes offers no platform like that of the necropolis of Memphis. Its cliffs and intersecting ravines offer no sites for constructed works; hence the ordinary form of Theban tomb is the _speos_, or the _pipe_, which is but an exaggerated form of the _speos_.

Like the chief men among his subjects, the sovereign loved to take his last repose in the immediate neighbourhood of the city in which he had dwelt during his life, in which the streets had so often resounded to the cries of triumph which greeted his return from some successful campaign, or had seen him pass in some of those long processions which are figured upon the walls of Medinet-Abou (Fig. 172).[239] His tomb was a cavern like that of his subjects. Fashion and the physical conditions of the country governed him as well as his inferiors in rank. From the reign of Seti I. onwards, the kings chose for their place of sepulture the wild and deserted valley in which Belzoni found the tomb of that conqueror. In the time of the Ptolemies it contained the bones of no less than forty Egyptian monarchs. It would be difficult to imagine any site better calculated for the isolation and concealment of the mummy than this valley, where the rocks split and crumble under the sun, and the sand blown hither and thither by the winds from the desert fills up every crevice in the cliffs.

[239] Fig. 172 reproduces only a part of the long plate given
in Wilkinson. In order to bring the more important groups within
the scope of one page, we have been compelled to omit the
central portion, which consists principally of columns of
hieroglyphs.

Nothing could be easier than to mask the entrance in such a place, but, on the other hand, no constructed building of any importance was possible except at a great expenditure of time and labour.[240]

[240] See the description of the Valley of the Kings in the
_Lettres d'Égypte et de Nubie_ of CHAMPOLLION (p. 183 of the
second edition).

But the plain at the foot of the range offered all that the architect could wish. It was still within the district consecrated to the dead, and yet its level surface presented no obstacles to an unlimited extension of any buildings which might be placed upon it.

We have here then the facts which determined the course of the Egyptian architects.

In the space inclosed between the left bank of the river and the first slopes of the Libyan chain, certain edifices were raised which are still, in great part, extant. Their funerary signification was never completely understood, in spite of the confused hints to that effect given by the Greek writers, until within the last few years. To Mariette belongs the credit of having at last removed all doubt on the subject. It is probable enough that the number of these buildings was formerly much greater than it is at present, but those which have come down to us are still in sufficiently good preservation to enable us to discern and define their true character, a character which was doubtless common to all the temples on the left bank of the Nile.

They were certainly temples. Their general arrangements do not differ from those of other religious edifices, both in Thebes itself, and elsewhere in Egypt. There is, however, a difference which was not perceived until the texts which contained the history of each temple and of the prince who claimed the credit of its erection were deciphered. The famous buildings at Luxor and Karnak may be taken as typical examples of the temple, properly speaking, in its richest and most complete development. The translation of the inscriptions and royal ovals which cover their walls has sufficed to show that they were national monuments, public sanctuaries consecrated by the king, as the representative of the people, to the worship of those great deities who were at once the principles of life and the faithful protectors of the Egyptian race. Century after century they never ceased to found such temples, to increase and to embellish them. From the princes of the twelfth dynasty down to the Ptolemies, and even to the Roman emperors, every successive family which occupied the throne held it a point of honour to add to the creations of its predecessors. One prince built a hypostyle hall, or a court surrounded by a colonnade; another added to the long rows of human or ram-headed sphinxes which lined the approaches; a third added a pylon, and a fourth a laboriously chiselled obelisk. Some kings, who reigned in periods of recuperation after civil war or barbaric invasion, set themselves to repair the damage caused by time and the violence of man. They strengthened foundations, they lifted fallen columns, they restored the faded colours of the painted decorations. The foreign conquerors themselves, whether Ethiopians, Persians, or Greeks, as soon as they believed themselves to have a firm hold upon the country, set themselves with zeal to obliterate the traces of their own violence. Each of these sovereigns, whether his contribution to any work had been great or small, took care to inscribe his own name upon it, and thus to call upon both posterity and his own contemporaries to bear witness to his piety.

The temple as we see it at Karnak and Luxor is the collective and successive work of many generations. Such, too, was the character of the great buildings at Memphis which were consecrated to Ptah and Neith.

But on the left bank of the Nile, and in the neighbourhood of the Theban necropolis, we find a group of temples whose physiognomy is peculiar to themselves. Nothing exactly like them is to be found elsewhere;[241] and they all belong to one period, that of the three great Theban dynasties, the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth.[242] "These temples are monuments raised by the kings themselves to their own glory. They are not, like the temples at Karnak and Luxor, the accumulated results of several generations. Each temple was begun and finished by the king who planned it, so far at least as construction was concerned. In those cases where the decoration was left incomplete at the death of the royal builder, his successor finished it in his name. In these decorations the founder of the temple was represented either worshipping the gods, or in the eventful moments of his military career, or in his great hunts; and thus, while yet alive, he laid the foundations of an edifice destined to carry the memory of his glory and piety down to the latest posterity."[243]

[241] EBERS, indeed, found something of the same kind in the
temple of Abydos. He found there a cenotaph consecrated to his
own memory by Seti I. This cenotaph was near the tomb of Osiris,
while the king himself was buried in the Theban necropolis.
(_Ægypten_, pp. 234, 235.)

[242] The beautiful little temple of Dayr-el-Medinet, begun by
Ptolemy Philopator and finished by his successors, especially by
Physco, has often been considered a funerary monument. It is
alleged that the situation of the temple in the necropolis, and
the nature of the subjects represented in the interior,
particularly in the Western Chamber, prove that it was so. If we
accept this opinion, we must look upon the temple as a mere
freak of fancy, suggested to Ptolemy Philopator by a journey to
Thebes. The Greek prince was interred far from it, and it could
have formed no part of his tomb.

[243] MARIETTE, _Deir-el-Bahari_, § 1. (Atlas, folio, Leipsic,
1877, with 40 pages letterpress, 4to.)

Surrounded on all sides by tombs and packed into a comparatively narrow space, these temples are separated from the Bab-el-Molouk only by the slopes of the surrounding El-Assassif. The oldest of them is that at Dayr-el-Bahari. It was built by the regent Hatasu, of whose career we know enough to strongly excite, but too little to satisfy, our curiosity. We know that Hatasu, the wife and sister of Thothmes II., governed Egypt with skill and energy for seventeen years, in trust for her brother, Thothmes III. Where does her mummy repose? Is it in that ravine on the south-west of the Bab-el-Molouk which is called the _Valley of the Queens_, because the tombs of many Theban princesses have been found in it? Or is it in the slopes of the mountain behind the temple itself? Numerous sepulchral excavations have been found there, and many mummies have been drawn from their recesses. The artists to whom the decoration of the temple was committed, were charged to represent the chief actions of Hatasu as regent, and, although their works do not give us a detailed history of her eminently successful administration, they deal at length with the enterprise of which the regent herself seems to have been most proud, namely, the maritime expedition against _Punt_, a distant region which must have been either southern Arabia, the country of the Somalis, or the eastern coast of Africa.

Next in point of age to the building of Queen Hatasu is that which is called the _Ramesseum_; this is no other, as the members of the _Institut d'Égypte_ have clearly proved, than the so-called _Tomb of Osymandias_ which is described at such length by Diodorus.[244] Erroneous though it be, this latter designation is by no means without interest, as it proves that, at the time of Diodorus, persistent tradition ascribed a funerary origin to the edifice. The whole temple, inside and out, recalled Rameses II.; the great conqueror seemed to live and breathe on every stone; here majestic and calm, like force in repose, there menacing and terrible, with his threatening hand raised over the heads of his conquered enemies. His seated statue, fifty-six feet in height, was raised in the courtyard; to-day it lies broken upon the ground. Battle scenes are to be distinguished upon the remains of the walls. An episode of the war against the Khetas may be recognized, which seems to have made a great impression upon the king and his comrades in arms. It deals with that battle fought upon the bank of the Orontes, in which Rameses, when surrounded by the enemy, won safety for himself by his own personal valour and presence of mind. His prowess was celebrated by Pentaour, a contemporary poet, in an epic canto which has survived to our day. Rameses is there made to ascribe his safety and all the honour of his victory to his father Amen, who heard his appeal for help and, precipitating himself into the _mêlée_, snatched him from the very hands of his enemies.

[244] DIODORUS, i. §§ 47-49.

Medinet-Abou, which might be called _The Second Ramesseum_, is to Rameses III. what the pretended tomb of Osymandias is to Rameses II. His presence pervades both the temple itself and its adjoining pavilion. Its bas-reliefs represent one of the greatest events in Egyptian, we might almost say, in ancient, history, namely, the victory won by Rameses over a confederation of the nations of the north and west, of those who were called the maritime races. This victory was mainly instrumental in driving westwards certain peoples who were destined, in more recent times, to play a great part in the politics of the Mediterranean.

Each of the buildings which we have just noticed had but a single proprietor. They were each dedicated to the memory of some one individual; but there was nothing to prevent the association in a single temple of two sovereigns who might happen to be united by strong ties of blood, and this course was taken in the temple of Gournah, situated in the same district of Thebes. It was commenced by Rameses I., the founder of the nineteenth dynasty, continued by his son, Seti I., and finished by his grandson, Rameses II. The first Rameses and Seti figure in it with the attributes of Osiris. The inscriptions enumerate the sources of revenue set aside by the king, in each nome, for the service of the annual sacrificial celebrations; and thus the building reveals itself as a temple to the perpetual honour of the two first princes of a race which did so much to add to the greatness and prosperity of Egypt.

The famous colossi of Amenophis III., known to the ancients as the _Statues of Memnon_, no doubt formed part of a similar building (Fig. 18 and Pl. vi). The temple built by this prince near the site of the Ramesseum has almost entirely disappeared, but the slight traces which still exist cover a vast space, and suggest that the building must have been one of rare magnificence.[245]

[245] This must have been the structure which STRABO calls the
_Memnonium_, and near to which he seems to place the two colossi
(xvii. p. 816). The true name of the author of both temple and
colossi might easily be confused with that of the mythical Greek
personage which the Hellenic imagination persisted in
discovering everywhere in Egypt, and the similarity of sound
must have helped to perpetuate the mistake among all the foreign
travellers who visited the country. A curious passage in
PAUSANIAS (_Attica_, 42) shows us, however, that the Egyptian
scholars of his time knew how properly to convey the name of the
prince represented in the colossi to foreigners: "I was less
struck by that marvel," he says, in speaking of some sonorous
stone which was shown to him at Megara, "than by a colossal
statue which I saw beyond the Nile in Egypt, not far from the
_pipes_. This colossus is a statue of the sun, or of Memnon,
according to the common tradition. It is said that Memnon came
from Ethiopia into Egypt, and that he penetrated as far as Susa.
But the Thebans themselves deny that it is Memnon. They declare
that it represents Phamenoph (Φάμενοφ), who was born in their
own country...." The story told by PHILOSTRATUS (_Life of
Apollonius_, l. vi. p. 232) of the visit of the sorcerer to
Memnon, shows that in his time the colossus was surrounded by
nothing but ruins, such as broken columns and architraves,
fragmentary walls and shattered statues. Even then the
monumental completeness of the "Amenophium" had vanished.

Only one of those Theban temples which rise upon the left bank of the river is free from all trace of a funerary or commemorative purpose, namely, the temple at Medinet-Abou which bears the ovals of Thothmes II. and Thothmes III. It shows signs, moreover, of having been frequently enlarged and added to, some of the additions having been made as recently as in the time of the Roman Emperors. In this respect it resembles, in spite of its comparatively small size, the great temples upon the right bank of the river. Like them, its creation was a gradual and impersonal matter. Every century added its stone, and each successive king engraved his name upon its walls. How to account for its exceptional situation we do not know. It is possible that those funerary temples of which we have spoken were an original invention of the successors of Thothmes; perhaps that constructed by Hatasu at Dayr-el-Bahari was the first of the series.