Chapter III: Sepulchral Architecture (6)

However this may have been, the new type became a success as soon as it was invented; all the other temples in the district may be more or less immediately referred to it. The great deities of Egypt, and more particularly those of Thebes, are never forgotten in them. They contain numerous representations of the princes in whose honour they were erected performing acts of worship before Amen-Ra, the Theban god _par excellence_, who is often accompanied by Mout and Khons, the other two members of the Theban triad. These temples were therefore consecrated, like almost all the other sacred buildings of Thebes, to those local deities which, after the establishment of that city as the capital of the whole country, became the supreme national gods. Those gods were as much at home in the temples of which we are speaking as in their own peculiar sanctuaries on the right bank of the river. In both places they received the same homage and sacrifices, but in the funerary temples of the left bank they found themselves associated, _paredral_ as the Greeks would say, with the princes to whose memory the temples were raised. These princes were represented with the attributes of Osiris, both in the statues which were placed against the piers in the courtyard and in the bas-reliefs upon the long flat surfaces of the walls. By these attributes they became more closely allied with the great deity who was the common protector of the dead and the guarantor of their future resurrection. In this capacity the deceased prince was worshipped as a god by his own family. Thus, in the temple of Gournah, we find Rameses I. seated in a _naos_ and receiving the homage of his grandson, Rameses II.; and, again, the latter worshipping Amen-Ra, Khons, and Rameses I. at one and the same time. This presentation of offerings to the deified king, as represented in the chambers of these temples, recalls the scene which is carved upon almost all the steles, and with greater variety and more detail, in the bas-reliefs on the internal walls of the mastabas.

The analogy which we are endeavouring to establish between the western temples at Thebes and the funerary chambers of the private tombs, is completed by the biographical nature of the pictures which form almost the sole decoration of those temples. The images presented to our gaze by the chamber walls of the mastaba are not, indeed, so personal and anecdotical as those of the temples, but they contain an epitomized representation of the every-day life, of the pleasures and the more serious occupations of a rich Egyptian. It is easy to understand how, with the progress of civilization, the more historic incidents in the life of an individual, and especially when that individual was a king, came to be figured in preference to those which were more general in their application. To embellish the tomb of a conqueror with pictures of his battles and victories was to surround him after death with the images, at least, of those things which made his happiness or his honour while alive. Pictures of some famous feat of arms would give joy to the _double_ of him who had performed them, and would help to relieve the _ennui_ of the monotonous life after death. Hence the tendency which is so marked in the bas-reliefs of the first Theban Empire, especially in those at Beni-Hassan. The constant and universal themes which sufficed for the early centuries of the Egyptian monarchy were not abandoned; scenes similar to those of the mastabas, are, indeed, frequently met with in the Theban tombs; but it is evident that in many cases scenes were sought out for reproduction which would have a more particular application; there is an evident desire to hand down to future generations concrete presentments of any political or other events which might appear worthy of remembrance. History and biography thus came in time to play an important part in sepulchral decoration, especially when kings or other royal personages were concerned.

Similar pictures are to be met with here and there in temples proper, as may be seen by a glance at the bas-relief figured upon the opposite page (Fig. 174), but in such cases they are invariably on the outer walls. At Luxor, for instance, the campaigns of Rameses II. against the peoples of Syria are thus displayed; and at Karnak it is upon the external walls of the hypostyle hall that the victories of Seti I. and Rameses II. are sculptured. In the interiors of all these courts and halls we hardly find any subjects treated but those which are purely religious; such as female deities assisting at the birth of a king, or taking him upon their knees and nourishing him from their breasts, a theme which is also found in royal tombs (Fig. 175); or one god presenting the king to another (Fig. 33); or the king paying homage to sometimes one, sometimes another, of his divine protectors (Figs. 14 and 176). We find such religious motives as these continually repeated, upon wall and column alike, from the first Theban kings to the epoch of the Ptolemies. On the right bank of the river pictures of a mystically religious character are universal; on the left bank those with an historical aim are more frequent.

It will be seen that the difference between the two kinds of temple, between that of the necropolis and that of the city, is not so striking and conspicuous as to be readily perceived by the first comer who crosses from the one bank of the river to the other; but the variations are quite sufficiently marked to justify the distinction propounded by Mariette. According to him the temples in the necropolis are funerary chapels which owe their increased size and the richness of their decoration to the general magnificence and highly developed taste of the century in which they were built. But it is enough for our present purpose to have indicated the places which they occupied in the vast architectural compositions which formed the tombs of a Seti or a Rameses. They had each a double function to fulfil. They were foundations made to the perpetual honour of a deceased king, chapels in which his fête-day could be kept and the memory of his achievements renewed; but they were at the same time temples in which the national gods were worshipped by himself and his descendants, in which those gods were perpetually adored for the services which they had done him while alive and for those which they might still do him when dead. In their latter capacity these buildings have a right to be considered temples, and we shall defer the consideration of their architectural arrangements, which differ only in details from those of the purely religious buildings, until we come to speak of the religious architecture of Egypt.

We shall here content ourselves with remarking that the separation of the tomb and the funerary chapel by some mile or mile and a half was a novelty in Egypt. The different parts of the royal tomb were closely connected under the Memphite Empire, and the change in arrangement must have been a consequence of some modification in the Egyptian notions as to a second life.

In the mastaba the _double_ had everything within reach of his hand. Without trouble to himself he could make use of all of the matters which had been provided for the support of his precarious existence: the corpse in the mummy pit, the statues in the _serdab_, the portraits in bas-relief upon the walls of the public chamber. Through the chinks between the pieces of stone by which the well was filled up, and through the conduits contrived in the thickness of the walls, the magic formulæ of the funerary prayers, the grateful scent of the incense, and of the burnt fat of the victims (Fig. 177), reached his attentive senses. Brought thus into juxtaposition one with another, the elements of the tomb were mutually helpful. They lent themselves to that intermittent act of condensation, so to speak, which from time to time gave renewed substance and consistency to the phantom upon which the future life of the deceased depended. This concentration of all the acts and objects, which had for their aim the preservation of the deceased for a second term of life, was obviously destroyed as soon as the division of the tomb into two parts took place. The mummy, hidden away in the depths of those horizontal wells in the flank of the Western Range of which we have spoken, would seem to be in danger of losing the benefit of the services held in its honour upon the Theban plain. At such a distance it would neither hear the prayers nor catch the scent of the offerings. And the _double_? Is it to be supposed that he oscillated between the colossi in the temple where the funerary sites were celebrated, and the chamber in which the corpse reposed?

Before they could have accepted this division of the tomb into two parts the Egyptians must have arrived at some less childish conception of the future life than that of their early civilization. That primitive conception was not entirely banished from their minds; evidence of its persistency is, indeed plentiful, but a more intelligent and less material notion gradually superimposed itself upon the ancient belief. The indescribable being which was the representative of the deceased after death became gradually less material and more spiritual; in time it escaped from its enforced sojourn in the tomb and approached more nearly to that which we call the soul. This soul, like the nocturnal sun, passed a period of probation and purgation in the under world, and, thanks to the protection of Osiris and the other deities of the shades, was at last enabled to return to earth and rejoin the body which it had formerly inhabited. The problem of death and a future life was resolved in much the same way by the Greeks and by all other races who drew much of their inspiration from the Egyptians. They all looked upon the corpse as still alive when they expressed their hopes that the earth upon which they poured out wine and milk would like lie lightly upon it. After a time they added Tartarus and the Elysian Fields to their beliefs, they introduced the heroic fathers of their race into the councils of the gods, and they described and figured the joys which awaited the just upon the Happy Islands.

These various hypotheses are contradictory enough from a logical point of view; they exclude and destroy one another. But when it is a question of notions which are essentially incapable of being strictly defined, the human intelligence is singularly content to rest in vague generalities. Contradictions do not embarrass it; its adaptability is practically infinite.

The beliefs which we have just described tended for many centuries to become more and more general. They were taught in that _Ritual of the Dead_ which, although certain of its parts date from the most ancient times, did not take its complete and definite form until the Theban epoch. Being more spiritual and less material, they were less opposed to the subdivision of the sepulchre than the more primitive idea; and this subdivision was necessary if the public and commemorative part of the tomb were to receive a splendour and amplitude befitting the exploits of a Thothmes, a Seti, or a Rameses. Dayr-el-Bahari proves that the change had already been made under the eighteenth dynasty, but it was not until the nineteenth that it became definitely adopted. The progress of ideas and of art had then advanced so far, that more ambitious desires could be satisfied, and the country filled with magnificent edifices, which, like the temples of the two Rameses, were original in so far as they belonged at one and the same time to religious and funerary architecture. We should call them cenotaphs, were it not that the Egyptians, like all the other races of antiquity, believed in the real presence of their dead in the buildings erected in their honour.

The other division of the tomb is that which contains the well and the mummy-chamber, the eternal dwelling-place of the illustrious dead. The second half of the royal sepulchre had to be as sumptuous and luxurious in its way as the first, but the problem placed before the architect was diametrically opposed to that which he had to solve in the other part of his task. In constructing and decorating the funerary temple upon the plain, he was working before the eyes of the public, for their benefit and for that of the remotest posterity.

But the task of hewing out the tomb was a very different one. For long years together he pursued his enterprise in the mystery and shadow of a subterranean workshop, to which all access was no doubt forbidden to the curious. He and his assistants cut and carved the living rock by the light of torches, and his best ingenuity was taxed to devise means for preserving from the sight of all future generations those works of the best artists of Egypt with which the walls were to be covered. Those prodigies of patience and skill were executed for the benefit of the deceased alone. Important though it was that the sepulchre of a great man should be ornamented to the greatest extent possible, it was of still greater moment that his last resting-place should not be troubled by the visits of the living; and the more completely the mummy was concealed, the greater were the deserts of the faithful servant upon whom the task had been placed.

In order that this blessing of undisturbed peace in his eternal dwelling should be secured, the royal tomb seems to have been constructed without any such external show as would call attention to its situation. The tombs of private individuals usually had a walled courtyard in front of them to which access was obtained by a kind of porch, or tower, with inclined sides and crowned by a small pyramid. But the explorers, Belzoni, Bruce and others, who disengaged the entrances to the royal tombs, found them without propylæa of any kind.[246] The doorway, cut vertically in the rock, is of the utmost simplicity, and we have every reason to suppose that, after the introduction of the mummy, it was carefully masked with sand and rocky _débris_.[247]

[246] In many cases the sites are wanting for such external
constructions. The fine tomb of Seti I., for instance, opens
upon a ravine which is filled with the waters of a mountain
torrent at certain seasons.

[247] When Belzoni's workmen found the entrance to the tomb of
Seti, they declared that they could not advance any farther,
because the passage was blocked with big stones to such an
extent as to be impracticable (_Narrative of the Operations and
Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, &c., in Egypt and
Nubia_, 1820, 4to.). Mariette also believed that as soon as the
mummy was in place, the external door was closed and earth
heaped against it in such a way as effectually to conceal it. It
is thus that the clashing between the tomb of Rameses III. and
another is accounted for. The workmen did not see the entrance
of the latter, and were, in fact, unaware of its existence until
they encountered it in the bowels of the rock. (_Voyage dans la
Haute-Égypte_, t. ii. p. 81.)

The existence of the temples in the plain made it unnecessary that the tombs themselves should be entered after that final operation had been performed. Some words of Diodorus are significant in this direction. "The priests say that their registers attest the existence of forty-seven royal tombs, but that at the time of Ptolemy the son of Lagus, only seventeen remained."[248] This assertion cannot be accepted literally, because twenty-one tombs have already been discovered in the Bab-el-Molouk, some of them in a state of semi-completion, besides four in the ravine which is called the _Valley of the West_, which makes twenty-five in all. What the priests meant when they spoke to Diodorus was no doubt, that at the time of the Ptolemies, no more than seventeen of their entrances had been discovered. If through the plans made for their construction and preserved in the national archives there were some who knew their situation, they preserved the secret. We know, by the inscriptions upon their walls, that fifteen of the tombs which are now accessible, were open in the time of the Ptolemies; several of them seem to have been shown, to the Roman and other travellers who visited Egypt, as national objects of interest.[249]

[248] DIODORUS, i. 46.

[249] "Above the Memnonium," says STRABO (xvii. 46), "there are
royal tombs cut in the living rock to the number of forty; their
workmanship is excellent and well worthy of attention."

The precautions taken to hide and obstruct the openings of the royal tombs were thus successful in many cases. Some of these have only been discovered in our own times, through the ardour and patience which characterize modern research, and we have still good reason to suppose that there are others which yet remain to be found. In 1872 Professor Ebers discovered a beautiful private tomb, that of Anemenheb, which, although situated close to one of the most frequented paths in the necropolis, had been previously unknown. It was open, but the opening had been carefully concealed with rough pieces of rock and general rubbish by the fellahs, who used the tomb as a hiding-place from the recruiting officers of the viceroy. They would remain concealed in it for weeks at a time until the officers had left their village. The royal cemetery of the Ramessides has possibly much more to tell us before its secrets are exhausted.

The entrance to the tomb always ran a certain chance of being discovered and freed from its obstacles. It was difficult, of course, to prevent the survival of some tradition as to the whereabouts of the burial-places of those great sovereigns whose memory was a consolation to Egyptian pride in the days of national abasement and decay. Provision had to be made, as in the case of the pyramids, against a forced entry into the gallery either by an enemy or by some robber in search of treasure, and we find that the precautions adopted were similar to those which we have described in noticing the royal tombs at Memphis. Let us take as an example the finest and most complete of all the tombs of the Ramessides, that of Seti I. After descending two flights of steps, and traversing two long and richly decorated corridors, Belzoni arrived, without discovering either sarcophagus or anything that looked like the site of a sarcophagus, at an oblong chamber 13 feet 6 inches by 12 feet. A wide and deep well, which here barred the passage, seemed to indicate that the extremity of the excavation had been reached. Belzoni caused himself to be lowered into the well. The walls were everywhere hard and firm, and without resonance, and there was no sign of a passage, either open or concealed, by which access to a lateral chamber, or to a second series of galleries might be obtained. But Belzoni was too old an explorer to be deceived by such appearances. On his first arrival at the edge of the well he had perceived in the wall on the farther side of it a small opening, about two feet wide, and two feet and a half high. This had been made, at some unknown period, in a wall covered with stucco and painted decorations. Across the well a beam was still lying, which had served the purpose of some previous visitor to the tomb. A cord hung from this beam, and it was after discovering that the well ended in nothing that the screen of masonry on the other side had been pierced. Belzoni had therefore only to follow the road opened for him by earlier explorers. A plank bridge was thrown across the well, the opening was enlarged, and a new series of galleries and chambers was reached, which led at last to the sarcophagus-chamber itself.[250]

[250] BELZONI, _Narrative of Operations, &c._, pp. 233 _et
seq._

Belzoni remarked that throughout the whole course of the excavation the doors of the chambers showed evidence of having been walled up, and that upon the first steps of one of the staircases a heap of stone rubbish had been collected, as if to discourage any one who might penetrate beyond the well and pierce the barrier beyond its gaping mouth. It seems likely that the first violator of the tomb knew the secret of all these arrangements, and consequently that its first opening took place in very ancient times, and was the work of some native Egyptian robber.

In the sarcophagus-chamber Belzoni discovered a contrivance of the same kind as that which had failed to stop him almost upon the threshold of the tomb. The sarcophagus of oriental alabaster was in place, but empty; the lid had been raised and broken.[251] From the sound given out by the floor when struck the explorer perceived that there must be a hollow space under the base of the sarcophagus. He cut a hole and brought to light the first steps of a staircase, which led to an inclined plane by which the interior of the mountain was deeply penetrated. A wall had been raised at the foot of these steps, beyond which a settlement of the superincumbent rock put an end to all advance after a distance of fifty-one yards had been traversed. Is it not possible that Belzoni only discovered a false sarcophagus, placed to deceive unbidden visitors like himself, and that the mummy was deposited, and still lies, in a chamber at the end of this corridor? The point at which the fallen rock arrested his progress is four hundred and eighty-three feet from the external opening, and about one hundred and eighty below the level of the valley. At such a depth, in these narrow and heated galleries, where there is no ventilation and where the smoke of the torches rapidly becomes stifling, it is not astonishing that, in spite of his admirable perseverance, Belzoni held his hand before completing the exploration.[252]

[251] This beautiful sarcophagus is now in the Soane
Museum.--ED.

[252] Belzoni believed that this passage led again into the open
air; that it was, in fact, another entrance to the tomb. "I
have," he says, "reasons to think so;" but he does not give his
reasons.

These subterranean tombs are hardly less astonishing than the colossal masses of the pyramids for the sustained effort which they imply; if we take the trouble to reflect upon the peculiarly difficult conditions under which they were constructed, they may even impress our imaginations more profoundly than the artificial mountains of Cheops and Chephren. We have already mentioned a figure which gives some idea of the surprising length of their passages; and although no one of the other tombs quite equals that of Seti, many approach it in dimensions. The tomb of Rameses III. is 416 feet long, that of Siptah 370 feet, and others varied between 200 and 270 feet. For the construction of such places an enormous number of cubic yards of rocky _débris_ had to be cut from the interior of the mountain, and carried up by narrow and steep corridors to be "shot" in the open air. Still more surprising is the elegance and completeness of the decoration. In the tombs of Seti and of Rameses III. there is not a single surface, whether of walls, piers, or ceilings, which is not covered with the work of the chisel and the brush, with ornamental designs, with the figures of gods and genii, of men and animals. These figures are far too numerous to count. They swarm like ants in an anthill; a single chamber often contains many hundreds. Colour is everywhere; here it is used to give salience to the delicate contours of the figures in relief, there it is laid flat upon the carefully-prepared surfaces of white stucco. In these sealed-up caverns, in which the air is constantly warm and dry, the pictures have preserved their freshness of tint in the most startling fashion. And to obtain all this harmonious effect no light but an artificial one was available. It was by the smoky glare of torches, or by the flickering flame of little terra-cotta lamps, suspended from the roof by metal threads, that the patient artists of Egypt drew these masterly contours, and elaborated the exquisite harmony of their colour compositions. Egyptian art never reached greater perfection than in these characteristic productions of its genius, and yet no human eye was to enjoy them after that day upon which the final touch was to be given to their beauties, upon which they were to be inclosed in a night which, it was hoped, would be eternal.

]

[253] The tomb of Seti having been so often reproduced, we have
thought it better to give the plan and section of that of
Rameses II., which is less generally known. The general
arrangements are pretty much the same as those of Seti's tomb,
but the plan is a little more complicated.

]

[254] _Panorama de l'Égypte et de la Nubie_, folio.

But yet all this work was not labour lost. These pictures, in which the details change continually from one tomb to another, were all inspired by a single desire, and all tended to the same end. Like those which we have found in the tombs of the Ancient Empire, they had a sort of magic virtue, a sovereign power to save and redeem. The personages and articles of food represented on the mastabas were shadows of people and shadows of material sustenance, destined for the service and the food of a shadow, the _double_ of the defunct proprietor of the tomb. The all-powerful influence of prayer and faith, working through Osiris, turned these shadows into realities.

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 passages. 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 passed 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 assembled.[255]

[255] This belief in the appearance of the dead before Osiris
and his assessors 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 illustrated papyri which were
unrolled for their gratification. In the fragments of some
funerary inscription or of some of these manuscripts, 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.

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 assurance 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 gods, 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 gods.

[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 illustrated 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 Phœnicians over the whole basin of the Mediterranean.
Coming under the eyes of the Greeks, it was modified by their
lively imaginations into that ψυχοστασία, 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 archéologique_,
1844, pp. 235-249, 291-307; 1845, pp. 707-717, and DE WITTE,
_ibidem_, 1844, pp. 647-656.)

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.

It was through long and gloomy galleries, like those of the σύριγξ, 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 principal highway, every journey, even that of the sun through space, was looked upon as a navigation. Spacious saloons were imagined to exist among those galleries, chambers where the infernal gods and their acolytes sat enthroned in all the majesty of their office; and so the passages 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 passes 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 harass the march of souls not yet absolved, and to overwhelm with frightful tortures those against whom sentence had already been pronounced. The tomb, therefore, had its snares and narrow passages, 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 gods, 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 worshipped during life, advancing to plead his cause before Osiris; on the other, the punishment of the wicked helps to give _éclat_ 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 gods, 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 god 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 formulæ 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 anticipate 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 masses 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 hitherto, 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 (BÆDEKER, _Unter-Ægypten_, 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-Hassan,
interpreted by M. MASPERO (_Recueil_, etc. vol. i. p. 168).

[261] _Description de l'Égypte_, (_Antiquités_, 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 mass 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. RHONÉ, _l'Égypt à petites journées_, 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.

These tombs are distinguished by great variety, but, before noticing the principal 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 associate his memory with the worship of the great Egyptian gods. 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 ignoble purposes. In more than one of these usurpations the new comer has been placed in a chamber constructed for some other object.

[263] PASSALACQUA describes a tomb of this kind in detail in his
_Catalogue raisonné et historique des Antiquités découvertes en
Égypte_ (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'Égypte_, (_Antiquités_,) plates, vol.
ii. p. 78.

[265] RHIND describes one of the most curious of these
substitutions 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 space 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.

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 manuscript, 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 mass 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 class, 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] _Athenæum Français_, 1855, p. 55 (_Renseignements sur les
soixante quatre Apis trouvés dans le Sérapeum de Memphis_).

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.

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 passage 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.

It must not be imagined that all the tombs were decorated; there are many which have received neither painted nor carved ornament, and in others the ornament has never been carried beyond the first sketch. But even in those which are quite bare, the walls are, in nearly every instance, covered with a coat of white stucco.