Chapter II: The Memphite Empire (3)

* This appears to follow from a passage in the inscription
of Uni. This minister was raising troops and exacting wood
for building among the desert tribes whose territories
adjoined at this part of the valley: the manner in which the
requisitions were effected shows that it was not a question
of a new exaction, but a familiar operation, and
consequently that the peoples mentioned had been under
regular treaty obligations to the Egyptians, at least for
some time previously.

Those natives who dwelt on the banks of the river appear to have offered but a slight resistance to the invaders: the desert tribes proved more difficult to conquer. The Nile divided them into two distinct bodies. On the right side, the confederation of the Uaûaiu spread in the direction of the Bed Sea, from the district around Ombos to the neighbourhood of Korosko, in the valleys now occupied by the Ababdehs: it was bounded on the south by the Mâzaiû tribes, from whom our contemporary Mâazeh have probably descended. The Amamiu were settled on the left bank opposite to the Mâzaiû, and the country of Iritît lay facing the territory of the Uaûaiu. None of these barbarous peoples were subject to Egypt, but they all acknowledged its suzerainty,--a somewhat dubious one, indeed, analogous to that exercised over their descendants by the Khedives of to-day. The desert does not furnish them with the means of subsistence: the scanty pasturages of their wadys support a few flocks of sheep and asses, and still fewer oxen, but the patches of cultivation which they attempt in the neighbourhood of springs, yield only a poor produce of vegetables or dourah. They would literally die of starvation were they not able to have access to the banks of the Nile for provisions. On the other hand, it is a great temptation to them to fall unawares on villages or isolated habitations on the outskirts of the fertile lands, and to carry off cattle, grain, and male and female slaves; they would almost always have time to reach the mountains again with their spoil and to protect themselves there from pursuit, before even the news of the attack could reach the nearest police station. Under treaties concluded with the authorities of the country, they are permitted to descend into the plain in order to exchange peaceably for corn and dourah, the acacia-wood of their forests, the charcoal that they make, gums, game, skins of animals, and the gold and precious stones which they get from their mines: they agree in return to refrain from any act of plunder, and to constitute a desert police, provided that they receive a regular pay.

The same arrangement existed in ancient times. The tribes hired themselves out to Pharaoh. They brought him beams of “sont” at the first demand, when he was in need of materials to build a fleet beyond the first cataract. They provided him with bands of men ready armed, when a campaign against the Libyans or the Asiatic tribes forced him to seek recruits for his armies: the Mâzaiû entered the Egyptian service in such numbers, that their name served to designate the soldiery in general, just as in Cairo porters and night watchmen are all called Berberines. Among these people respect for their oath of fealty yielded sometimes to their natural disposition, and they allowed themselves to be carried away to plunder the principalities which they had agreed to defend: the colonists in Nubia were often obliged to complain of their exactions. When these exceeded all limits, and it became impossible to wink at their misdoings any longer, light-armed troops were sent against them, who quickly brought them to reason. As at Sinai, these were easy victories. They recovered in one expedition what the Ûaûaiû had stolen in ten, both in flocks and fellahîn, and the successful general perpetuated the memory of his exploits by inscribing, as he returned, the name of Pharaoh on some rock at Syene or Elephantine: we may surmise that it was after this fashion that Usirkaf, Nofiririkerî, and Unas carried on the wars in Nubia. Their armies probably never went beyond the second cataract, if they even reached so far: further south the country was only known by the accounts of the natives or by the few merchants who had made their way into it. Beyond the Mâzaiû, but still between the Nile and the Red Sea, lay the country of Pûanît, rich in ivory, ebony, gold, metals, gums, and sweet-smelling resins. When some Egyptian, bolder than his fellows, ventured to travel thither, he could choose one of several routes for approaching it by land or sea. The navigation of the Red Sea was, indeed, far more frequent than is usually believed, and the same kind of vessels in which the Egyptians coasted along the Mediterranean, conveyed them, by following the coast of Africa, as far as the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. They preferred, however, to reach it by land, and they returned with caravans of heavily laden asses and slaves.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Professor
Petrie. This head was taken from the bas-relief at Karnak,
on which the Pharaoh Harmhabi of the XVIIIth dynasty
recorded his victories over the peoples of the south of
Egypt.

All that lay beyond Pûanît was held to be a fabulous region, a kind of intermediate boundary land between the world of men and that of the gods, the “Island of the Double,” “Land of the Shades,” where the living came into close contact with the souls of the departed. It was inhabited by the Dangas, tribes of half-savage dwarfs, whose grotesque faces and wild gestures reminded the Egyptians of the god Bîsû (Bes). The chances of war or trade brought some of them from time to time to Pûanît, or among the Amamiû: the merchant who succeeded in acquiring and bringing them to Egypt had his fortune made. Pharaoh valued the Dangas highly, and was anxious to have some of them at any price among the dwarfs with whom he loved to be surrounded; none knew better than they the dance of the god--that to which Bîsû unrestrainedly gave way in his merry moments. Towards the end of his reign Assi procured one which a certain Biûrdidi had purchased in Pûanît. Was this the first which had made its appearance at court, or had others preceded it in the good graces of the Pharaohs? His wildness and activity, and the extraordinary positions which he assumed, made a lively impression upon the courtiers of the time, and nearly a century later there were still reminiscences of him.

A great official born in the time of Shopsiskaf, and living on to a great age into the reign of Nofiririkerî, is described on his tomb as the “Scribe of the House of Books.” This simple designation, occurring incidentally among two higher titles, would have been sufficient in itself to indicate the extraordinary development which Egyptian civilization had attained at this time. The “House of Books” was doubtless, in the first place, a depository of official documents, such as the registers of the survey and taxes, the correspondence between the court and the provincial governors or feudal lords, deeds of gift to temples or individuals, and all kinds of papers required in the administration of the State. It contained I also, however, literary works, many of which even at this early date were already old, prayers drawn up during the first dynasties, devout poetry belonging to times prior to the misty personage called Mini--hymns to the gods of light, formulas of black magic, collections of mystical works, such as the “Book of the Dead” * and the “Ritual of the Tomb;” scientific treatises on medicine, geometry, mathematics, and astronomy; manuals of practical morals; and lastly, romances, or those marvellous stories which preceded the romance among Oriental peoples.

* The “Book of the Dead” must have existed from
prehistoric times, certain chapters excepted, whose
relatively modern origin has been indicated by those who
ascribe the editing of the work to the time of the first
human dynasties.

All these, if we had them, would form “a library much more precious to us than that of Alexandria;” unfortunately up to the present we have been able to collect only insignificant remains of such rich stores. In the tombs have been found here and there fragments of popular songs. The pyramids have furnished almost intact a ritual of the dead which is distinguished by its verbosity, its numerous pious platitudes, and obscure allusions to things of the other world; but, among all this trash, are certain portions full of movement and savage vigour, in which poetic glow and religious emotion reveal their presence in a mass of mythological phraseology. In the Berlin Papyrus we may read the end of a philosophic dialogue between an Egyptian and his soul, in which the latter applies himself to show that death has nothing terrifying to man. “I say to myself every day: As is the convalescence of a sick person, who goes to the court after his affliction, such is death.... I say to myself every day: As is the inhaling of the scent of a perfume, as a seat under the protection of an outstretched curtain, on that day, such is death.... I say to myself every day: As the inhaling of the odour of a garden of flowers, as a seat upon the mountain of the Country of Intoxication, such is death.... I say to myself every day: As a road which passes over the flood of inundation, as a man who goes as a soldier whom nothing resists, such is death.... I say to myself every day: As the clearing again of the sky, as a man who goes out to catch birds with a net, and suddenly finds himself in an unknown district, such is death.” Another papyrus, presented by Prisse d’Avennes to the _Bibliothèque Nationale_, Paris, contains the only complete work of their primitive wisdom which has come down to us. It was certainly transcribed before the XVIIIth dynasty, and contains the works of two classic writers, one of whom is assumed to have lived under the IIIrd and the other under the Vth dynasty; it is not without reason, therefore, that it has been called “the oldest book in the world.” The first leaves are wanting, and the portion preserved has, towards its end, the beginning of a moral treatise attributed to Qaqimnî, a contemporary of Hûni. Then followed a work now lost: one of the ancient possessors of the papyrus having effaced it with the view of substituting for it another piece, which was never transcribed.

The last fifteen pages are occupied by a kind of pamphlet, which has had a considerable reputation, under the name of the “Proverbs of Phtahhotpû.”

This Phtahhotpû, a king’s son, flourished under Menkaûhorû and Assi: his tomb is still to be seen in the necropolis of Saqqâra. He had sufficient reputation to permit the ascription to him, without violence to probability, of the editing of a collection of political and moral maxims which indicate a profound knowledge of the court and of men generally. It is supposed that he presented himself, in his declining years, before the Pharaoh Assi, exhibited to him the piteous state to which old age had reduced him, and asked authority to hand down for the benefit of posterity the treasures of wisdom which he had stored up in his long career. The nomarch Phtahhotpû says: “‘Sire, my lord, when age is at that point, and decrepitude has arrived, debility comes and a second infancy, upon which misery falls heavily every day: the eyes become smaller, the ears narrower, strength is worn out while the heart continues to beat; the mouth is silent and speaks no more; the heart becomes darkened and no longer remembers yesterday; the bones become painful, everything which was good becomes bad, taste vanishes entirely; old age renders a man miserable in every respect, for his nostrils close up, and he breathes no longer, whether he rises up or sits down. If the humble servant who is in thy presence receives an order to enter on a discourse befitting an old man, then I will tell to thee the language of those who know the history of the past, of those who have heard the gods; for if thou conductest thyself like them, discontent shall disappear from among men, and the two lands shall work for thee!’ The majesty of this god says: ‘Instruct me in the language of old times, for it will work a wonder for the children of the nobles; whosoever enters and understands it, his heart weighs carefully what it says, and it does not produce satiety.’” We must not expect to find in this work any great profundity of thought. Clever analyses, subtle discussions, metaphysical abstractions, were not in fashion in the time of Phtahhotpû. Actual facts were preferred to speculative fancies: man himself was the subject of observation, his passions, his habits, his temptations and his defects, not for the purpose of constructing a system therefrom, but in the hope of reforming the imperfections of his nature and of pointing out to him the road to fortune. Phtahhotpû, therefore, does not show much invention or make deductions. He writes down his reflections just as they occur to him, without formulating them or drawing any conclusion from them as a whole. Knowledge is indispensable to getting on in the world; hence he recommends knowledge. Gentleness to subordinates is politic, and shows good education; hence he praises gentleness. He mingles advice throughout on the behaviour to be observed in the various circumstances of life, on being introduced into the presence of a haughty and choleric man, on entering society, on the occasion of dining with a dignitary, on being married. “If thou art wise, thou wilt go up into thine house, and love thy wife at home; thou wilt give her abundance of food, thou wilt clothe her back with garments; all that covers her limbs, her perfumes, is the joy of her life; as long as thou lookest to this, she is as a profitable field to her master.” To analyse such a work in detail is impossible: it is still more impossible to translate the whole of it. The nature of the subject, the strangeness of certain precepts, the character of the style, all tend to disconcert the reader and to mislead him in his interpretations. From the very earliest times ethics has been considered as a healthy and praiseworthy subject in itself, but so hackneyed was it, that a change in the mode of expressing it could alone give it freshness. Phtahhotpû is a victim to the exigencies of the style he adopted. Others before him had given utterance to the truths he wished to convey: he was obliged to clothe them in a startling and interesting form to arrest the attention of his readers. In some places he has expressed his thought with such subtlety, that the meaning is lost in the jingle of the words. The art of the Memphite dynasties has suffered as much as the literature from the hand of time, but in the case of the former the fragments are at least numerous and accessible to all. The kings of this period erected temples in their cities, and, not to speak of the chapel of the Sphinx, we find in the remains still existing of these buildings chambers of granite, alabaster and limestone, covered with religious scenes like those of more recent periods, although in some cases the walls are left bare. Their public buildings have all, or nearly all, perished; breaches have been made in them by invading armies or by civil wars, and they have been altered, enlarged, and restored scores of times in the course of ages; but the tombs of the old kings remain, and afford proof of the skill and perseverance exhibited by the architects in devising and carrying out their plans. Many of the mastabas occurring at intervals between Gîzeh and Mêdûm have, indeed, been hastily and carelessly built, as if by those who were anxious to get them finished, or who had an eye to economy; we may observe in all of them neglect and imperfection,--all the trade-tricks which an unscrupulous jerry-builder then, as now, could be guilty of, in order to keep down the net cost and satisfy the natural parsimony of his patrons without lessening his own profits.* Where, however, the master-mason has not been hampered by being forced to work hastily or cheaply, he displays his conscientiousness, and the choice of materials, the regularity of the courses, and the homogeneousness of the building leave nothing to be desired; the blocks are adjusted with such precision that the joints are almost invisible, and the mortar between them has been spread with such a skilful hand that there is scarcely an appreciable difference in its uniform thickness.**

* The similarity of the materials and technicalities of
construction and decoration seem to me to prove that the
majority of the tombs were built by a small number of
contractors or corporations, lay or ecclesiastical, both at
Memphis, under the Ancient, as well as at Thebes, under the
New Empire.

** Speaking of the Great Pyramid and of its casing,
Professor Petrie says: “Though the stones were brought as
close as [--] inch, or, in fact, into contact, and the mean
opening of the joint was but [--] inch, yet the builders
managed to fill the joint with cement, despite the great
area of it, and the weight of the stone to be moved--some 16
tons. To merely place such stones in exact contact at the
sides would be careful work; but to do so with cement in the
joint seems almost impossible.”

The long low flat mass which the finished tomb presented to the eye is wanting in grace, but it has the characteristics of strength and indestructibility well suited to an “eternal house.” The façade, however, was not wanting in a certain graceful severity: the play of light and shade distributed over its surface by the stelæ, niches, and deep-set doorways, varied its aspect in the course of the day, without lessening the impression of its majesty and serenity which nothing could disturb. The pyramids themselves are not, as we might imagine, the coarse and ill-considered reproduction of a mathematical figure disproportionately enlarged. The architect who made an estimate for that of Kheops, must have carefully thought out the relative value of the elements contained in the problem which had to be solved--the vertical height of the summit, the length of the sides on the ground line, the angle of pitch, the inclination of the lateral faces to one another--before he discovered the exact proportions and the arrangement of lines which render his monument a true work of art, and not merely a costly and mechanical arrangement of stones.*

* Cf. Borchardt’s article, _Wie wurden die Boschungen der
Pyramiden bestimmt?_ in which the author--an architect by
profession as well as an Egyptologist--interprets the
theories and problems of the _Rhind mathematical Papyrus_ in
a new manner, comparing the result with his own
calculations, made from measurements of pyramids still
standing, and in which he shows, by an examination of the
diagrams discovered on the wall of a mastaba at Mêdûm, that
the Egyptian contractors of the Memphite period were, at
that early date, applying the rules and methods of procedure
which we find set forth in the Papyri of Theban times.

The impressions which he desired to excite, have been felt by all who came after him when brought face to face with the pyramids. From a great distance they appear like mountain-peaks, breaking the monotony of the Libyan horizon; as we approach them they apparently decrease in size, and seem to be merely unimportant inequalities of ground on the surface of the plain. It is not till we reach their bases that we guess their enormous size. The lower courses then stretch seemingly into infinity to right and left, while the summit soars up out of our sight into the sky. “The effect is gained by majesty and simplicity of form, in the contrast and disproportion between the stature of man and the immensity of his handiwork: the eye fails to take it in; it is even difficult for the mind to grasp it. We see, we may touch hundreds of courses formed of blocks, two hundred cubic feet in size,... and thousands of others scarcely less in bulk, and wo are at a loss to know what force has moved, transported, and raised so great a number of colossal stones, how many men were needed for the work, what amount of time was required for it, what machinery they used; and in proportion to our inability to answer these questions, we increasingly admire the power which regarded such obstacles as trifles.”

We are not acquainted with the names of any of the men who conceived these prodigious works. The inscriptions mention in detail the princes, nobles, and scribes who presided over all the works undertaken by the sovereign, but they have never deigned to record the name of a single architect.*

* The title “mir kaûtû nîbû nîti sûton,” frequently met
with under the Ancient Empire, does not designate the
architects, as many Egyptologists have thought: it signifies
“director of all the king’s works,” and is applicable to
irrigation, dykes and canals, mines and quarries, and all
branches of an engineer’s profession, as well as to those of
the architect’s. The “directors of all the king’s works ”
were dignitaries deputed by Pharaoh to take the necessary
measurements for the building of temples, for dredging
canals, for quarrying stone and minerals; they were
administrators, and not professionals possessing the
technical knowledge of an architect or engineer.

They were people of humble extraction, living hard lives under fear of the stick, and their ordinary assistants, the draughtsmen, painters, and sculptors, were no better off than themselves; they were looked upon as mechanics of the same social status as the neighbouring shoemaker or carpenter. The majority of them were, in fact, clever mechanical workers of varying capability, accustomed to chisel out a bas-relief or set a statue firmly on its legs, in accordance with invariable rules which they transmitted unaltered from one generation to another: some were found among them, however, who displayed unmistakable genius in their art, and who, rising above the general mediocrity, produced masterpieces. Their equipment of tools was very simple--iron picks with wooden handles, mallets of wood, small hammers, and a bow for boring holes. The sycamore and acacia furnished them with a material of a delicate grain and soft texture, which they used to good advantage: Egyptian art has left us nothing which, in purity of Hue and delicacy of modelling, surpasses the panels of the tomb of Hosi, with their seated or standing male figures and their vigorously cut hieroglyphs in the same relief as the picture. Egypt possesses, however, but few trees of suitable fibre for sculptural purposes, and even those which were fitted for this use were too small and stunted to furnish blocks of any considerable size. The sculptor, therefore, turned by preference to the soft white limestone of Turah.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey. The
original is now in the Gîzeh Museum.

He quickly detached the general form of his statue from the mass of stone, fixed the limits of its contour by means of dimension guides applied horizontally from top to bottom, and then cut away the angles projecting beyond the guides, and softened off the outline till he made his modelling correct. This simple and regular method of procedure was not suited to hard stone: the latter had to be first chiselled, but when by dint of patience the rough hewing had reached the desired stage, the work of completion was not entrusted to metal tools. Stone hatchets were used for smoothing off the superficial roughnesses, and it was assiduously polished to efface the various tool-marks left upon its surface. The statues did not present that variety of gesture, expression, and attitude which we aim at to-day. They were, above all things, the accessories of a temple or tomb, and their appearance reflects the particular ideas entertained with regard to their nature. The artists did not seek to embody in them the ideal type of male or female beauty: they were representatives made to perpetuate the existence of the model.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a chromolithograph by Prisse
d’Avennes, _Histoire de l’Art Égyptien_. The original is in
the tomb of Rakhmirî, who lived at Thebes under the XVIIIth
dynasty. The methods which were used did not differ from
those employed by the sculptors and painters of the Memphite
period more than two thousand years previously.

The Egyptians wished the double to be able to adapt itself easily to its image, and in order to compass that end, it was imperative that the stone presentment should be at least an approximate likeness, and should reproduce the proportions and peculiarities of the living prototype for whom it was meant. The head had to be the faithful portrait of the individual: it was enough for the body to be, so to speak, an average one, showing him at his fullest development and in the complete enjoyment of his physical powers. The men were always represented in their maturity, the women never lost the rounded breast and slight hips of their girlhood, but a dwarf always preserved his congenital ugliness, for his salvation in the other world demanded that it should be so. Had he been given normal stature, the double, accustomed to the deformity of his members in this world, would have been unable to accommodate himself to an upright carriage, and would not have been in a fit condition to resume his course of life.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey. The
original is now in the Gîzeh Museum.

The particular pose of the statue was dependent on the social position of the person. The king, the nobleman, and the master are always standing or sitting: it was in these postures they received the homage of their vassals or relatives. The wife shares her husband’s seat, stands upright beside him, or crouches at his feet as in daily life. The son, if his statue was ordered while he was a child, wears the dress of childhood; if he had arrived to manhood, he is represented in the dress and with the attitude suited to his calling. Slaves grind the grain, cellarers coat their amphoræ with pitch, bakers knead their dough, mourners make lamentation and tear their hair. The exigencies of rank clung to the Egyptians in temple and tomb, wherever their statues were placed, and left the sculptor who represented them scarcely any liberty. He might be allowed to vary the details and arrange the accessories to his taste; he might alter nothing in the attitude or the general likeness without compromising the end and aim of his work. The statues of the Memphite period may be counted at the present day by hundreds.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Béchard. The original
is now in the Gîzeh Museum.

Some are in the heavy and barbaric style which has caused them to be mistaken for primaeval monuments: as, for instance, the statues of Sapi and his wife, now in the Louvre, which are attributed to the beginning of the IIIrd dynasty or even earlier. Groups exactly resembling these in appearance are often found in the tombs of the Vth and VIth dynasties, which according to this reckoning would be still older than that of Sapi: they were productions of an inferior studio, and their supposed archaism is merely the want of skill of an ignorant sculptor. The majority of the remaining statues are not characterized either by glaring faults or by striking merits: they constitute an array of honest good-natured folk, without much individuality of character and no originality. They may be easily divided into five or six groups, each having a style in common, and all apparently having been executed on the lines of a few chosen models; the sculptors who worked for the mastaba contractors were distributed among a very few studios, in which a traditional routine was observed for centuries. They did not always wait for orders, but, like our modern tombstone-makers, kept by them a tolerable assortment of half-finished statues, from which the purchaser could choose according to his taste. The hands, feet, and bust lacked only the colouring and final polish, but the head was merely rough-hewn, and there were no indications of dress; when the future occupant of the tomb or his family had made their choice, a few hours of work were sufficient to transform the rough sketch into a portrait, such as it was, of the deceased they desired to commemorate, and to arrange his garment according to the latest fashion. If, however, the relatives or the sovereign* declined to be satisfied with these commonplace images, and demanded a less conventional treatment of body for the double of him whom they had lost, there were always some among the assistants to be found capable of entering into their wishes, and of seizing the lifelike expression of limbs and features.

* It must not be forgotten that the statues were often, like
the tomb itself, given by the king to the man whose services
he desired to reward. His burying-place then bore the
formulary, “By the favour of the king,” as I have mentioned
previously.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey.

We possess at the present day, scattered about in museums, some score of statues of this period, examples of consummate art,--the Khephrens, the Kheops, the Anû, the Nofrît, the Râhotpû I have already mentioned, the “Sheîkh-el-Beled” and his wife, the sitting scribe of the Louvre and that of Gîzeh, and the kneeling scribe. Kaâpirû, the “Sheîkh-el-Beled,” was probably one of the directors of the corvée employed to build the Great Pyramid.* He seems to be coming forward to meet the beholder, with an acacia staff in his hand. He has the head and shoulders of a bull, and a common cast of countenance, whose vulgarity is not wanting in energy. The large, widely open eye has, by a trick of the sculptor, an almost uncanny reality about it.

* It was discovered by Mariette at Saqqâra. “The head,
torso, arms, and even the staff, were intact; but the
pedestal and legs were hopelessly decayed, and the statue
was only kept upright by the sand which surrounded it.” The
staff has since been broken, and is replaced by a more
recent one exactly like it. In order to set up the figure,
Mariette was obliged to supply new feet, which retain the
colour of the fresh wood. By a curious coincidence, Kaâpirû
was an exact portrait of one of the “Sheikhs el-Beled,” or
mayors of the village of Saqqâra: the Arab workmen, always
quick to see a likeness, immediately called it the “Sheikh
el-Beled,” and the name has been retained ever since.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-
Bey.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey.
This scribe was discovered at Saqqâra, by M. de Morgan, in
the beginning of 1893.

The socket which holds it has been hollowed out and filled with an arrangement of black and white enamel; a rim of bronze marks the outline of the lids, while a little silver peg, inserted at the back of the pupil, reflects the light and gives the effect of the sparkle of a living glance. The statue, which is short in height, is of wood, and one would be inclined to think that the relative plasticity of the material counts for something in the boldness of the execution, were it not that though the sitting scribe of the Louvre is of limestone, the sculptor has not shown less freedom in its composition. We recognize in this figure one of those somewhat flabby and heavy subordinate officials of whom so many examples are to be seen in Oriental courts. He is squatting cross-legged on the pedestal, pen in hand, with the outstretched leaf of papyrus conveniently placed on the right: he waits, after an interval of six thousand years, until Pharaoh or his vizier deigns to resume the interrupted dictation. His colleague at the Gîzeh Museum awakens in us no less wonder at his vigour and self-possession; but, being younger, he exhibits a fuller and firmer figure with a smooth skin, contrasting strongly with the deeply wrinkled appearance of the other, aggravated as it is by his flabbiness. The “kneeling scribe” preserves in his pose and on his countenance that stamp of resigned indecision and monotonous gentleness which is impressed upon subordinate officials by the influence of a life spent entirely under the fear of the stick. Banofir, on the contrary, is a noble lord looking upon his vassals passing in file before him: his mien is proud, his head disdainful, and he has that air of haughty indifférence which is befitting a favourite of the Pharaoh, possessor of generously bestowed sinecures, and lord of a score of domains. The same haughtiness of attitude distinguishes the director of the granaries, Nofir. We rarely encounter a small statue so expressive of vigour and energy. Sometimes there may be found among these short-garmented people an individual wrapped and almost smothered in an immense _abayah_; or a naked man, representing a peasant on his way to market, his bag on his left shoulder, slightly bent under the weight, carrying his sandals in his other hand, lest they should be worn out too quickly in walking. Everywhere we observe the traits of character distinctive of the individual and his position, rendered with a scrupulous fidelity: nothing is omitted, no detail of the characteristics of the model is suppressed. Idealisation we must not expect, but we have here an intelligent and sometimes too realistic fidelity. Portraits have been conceived among other peoples and in other periods in a different way: they have never been better executed.

* Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Béchard. The
original is at Gizeh.--Vth dynasty.

The decoration of the sepulchres provided employment for scores of draughtsmen, sculptors, and painters, whose business it was to multiply in these tombs scenes of everyday life which were indispensable to the happiness or comfort of the double. The walls are sometimes decorated with isolated pictures only, each one of which represents a distinct operation; more frequently we find traced upon them a single subject whose episodes are superimposed one upon the other from the ground to the ceiling, and represent an Egyptian panorama from the Nile to the desert. In the lower portion, boats pass to and fro, and collide with each other, while the boatmen come to blows with their boat-hooks within sight of hippopotami and crocodiles. In the upper portions we see a band of slaves engaged in fowling among the thickets of the river-bank, or in the making of small boats, the manufacture of ropes, the scraping and salting of fish. Under the cornice, hunters and dogs drive the gazelle across the undulating plains of the desert. Every row represents one of the features of the country; but the artist, instead of arranging the pictures in perspective, separated them and depicted them one above the other.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey.
original is in the Gîzeh Museum.--Vth dynasty.

The groups are repeated in one tomb after another; they are always the same, but sometimes they are reduced to two or three individuals, sometimes increased in number, spread out and crowded with figures and inscriptions. Each chief draughtsman had his book of subjects and texts, which he combined in various ways, at one time bringing them close together, at another duplicating or extending them according to the means put at his disposal or the space he had to cover. The same men, the same animals, the same features of the landscape, the same accessories, appear everywhere: it is industrial and mechanical art at its highest. The whole is, however, harmonious, agreeable to the eye, and instructive. The conventionalisms of the drawing as well as those of the composition are very different from ours. Whether it is man or beast, the subject is invariably presented in outline by the brush, or by the graving tool in sharp relief upon the background; but the animals are represented in action, with their usual gait, movement, and play of limbs distinguishing each species. The slow and measured walk of the ox, the short step, meditative ears, and ironical mouth of the ass, the calm strength of the lion at rest, the grimaces of the monkeys, the slender gracefulness of the gazelle and antelope, are invariably presented with a consummate skill in drawing and expression. The human figure is the least perfect: every one is acquainted with those strange figures, whose heads in profile, with the eye drawn in full face, are attached to a torso seen from the front and supported by limbs in profile. These are truly anatomical monsters, and yet the appearance they present to us is neither laughable nor grotesque. The defective limbs are so deftly connected with those which are normal, that the whole becomes natural: the correct and fictitious lines are so ingeniously blent together that they seem to rise necessarily from each other. The actors in these dramas are constructed in such a paradoxical fashion that they could not exist in this world of ours; they live notwithstanding, in spite of the ordinary laws of physiology, and to any one who will take the trouble to regard them without prejudice, their strangeness will add a charm which is lacking in works more conformable to nature. A layer of colour spread over the whole heightens and completes them. This colouring is never quite true to nature nor yet entirely false. It approaches reality as far as possible, but without pretending to copy it in a servile way. The water is always a uniform blue, or broken up by black zigzag lines; the skin of the men is invariably brown, that of the women pale yellow.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Bouriant. The
original is in private possession.

The shade befitting each being or object was taught in the workshops, and once the receipt for it was drawn up, it was never varied in application. The effect produced by these conventional colours, however, was neither discordant nor jarring. The most brilliant colours were placed alongside each other with extreme audacity, but with a perfect knowledge of their mutual relations and combined effect. They do not jar with, or exaggerate, or kill each other: they enhance each other’s value, and by their contact give rise to half-shades which harmonize with them. The sepulchral chapels, in cases where their decoration had been completed, and where they have reached us intact, appear to us as chambers hung with beautifully luminous and interesting tapestry, in which rest ought to be pleasant during the heat of the day to the soul which dwells within them, and to the friends who come there to hold intercourse with the dead.

The decoration of palaces and houses was not less sumptuous than that of the sepulchres, but it has been so completely destroyed that we should find it difficult to form an idea of the furniture of the living if we did not see it frequently depicted in the abode of the double. The great armchairs, folding seats, footstools, and beds of carved wood, painted and inlaid, the vases of hard stone, metal, or enamelled ware, the necklaces, bracelets, and ornaments on the walls, even the common pottery of which we find the remains in the neighbourhood of the pyramids, are generally distinguished by an elegance and grace reflecting credit on the workmanship and taste of the makers.* The squares of ivory which they applied to their linen-chests and their jewel-cases often contained actual bas-reliefs in miniature of as bold workmanship and as skilful execution as the most beautiful pictures in the tombs: on these, moreover, were scenes of private life--dancing or processions bringing offerings and animals.**

* The study of the alabaster and diorite vases found near
the pyramids has furnished Petrie with very ingenious views
on the methods among the Egyptians of working hard stone.
Examples of stone toilet or sacrificial bottles are not
unfrequent in our museums: I may mention those in the Louvre
which bear the cartouches of Dadkerî Assi (No. 343), of Papi
I., and of Papi II., the son of Papi I.; not that they are
to be reckoned among the finest, but because the cartouches
fix the date of their manufacture. They came from the
pyramids of these sovereigns, opened by the Arabs at the
beginning of this century: the vase of the VIth dynasty,
which is in the Museum at Florence, was brought from Abydos.

** M. Grébaut bought at the Great Pyramids, in 1887, a
series of these ivory sculptures of the Ancient Empire. They
are now at the Gîzeh Museum. Others belonging to the same
find are dispersed among private collections: one of them is
reproduced on p. 249 of this History.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Bochard.

One would like to possess some of those copper and golden statues which the Pharaoh Kheops consecrated to Isis in honour of his daughter: only the representation of them upon a stele has come down to us; and the fragments of sceptres or other objects which too rarely have reached us, have unfortunately no artistic value.

A taste for pretty things was common, at least among the upper classes, including not only those about the court, but also those in the most distant nomes of Egypt. The provincial lords, like the courtiers of the palace, took a pride in collecting around them in the other world everything of the finest that the art of the architect, sculptor, and painter could conceive and execute. Their mansions as well as their temples have disappeared, but we find, here and there on the sides of the hills, the sepulchres which they had prepared for themselves in rivalry with those of the courtiers or the members of the reigning family. They turned the valley into a vast series of catacombs, so that wherever we look the horizon is bounded by a row of historic tombs. Thanks to their rock-cut sepulchres, we are beginning to know the Nomarchs of the Gazelle and the Hare, those of the Serpent-Mountain, of Akhmîm, Thinis, Qasr-es-Sayad, and Aswan,--all the scions, in fact, of that feudal government which preceded the royal sovereignty on the banks of the Nile, and of which royalty was never able to entirely disembarrass itself. The Pharaohs of the IVth dynasty had kept them in such check that we can hardly find any indications during their reigns of the existence of these great barons; the heads of the Pharaonic administration were not recruited from among the latter, but from the family and domestic circle of the sovereign. It was in the time of the kings of the Vth dynasty, it would appear, that the barons again entered into favour and gradually gained the upper hand; we find them in increasing numbers about Anû, Menkaûhorû, and Assi. Did Unas, who was the last ruler of the dynasty of Elephantine, die without issue, or were his children prevented from succeeding him by force? The Egyptian annals of the time of the Ramessides bring the direct line of Menés to an end with this king. A new line of Memphite origin begins after him.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Faucher-Gudin. The
original, which came from Mariette’s excavations at the
Serapeum, is in the Louvre.

It is almost certain that the transmission of power was not accomplished without contention, and that there were many claimants to the crown. One of the latter, Imhotpû, whose legitimacy was always disputed, has left hardly any traces of his accession to power,* but Ati established himself firmly on the throne for a year at least:** he pushed on actively the construction of his pyramid, and sent to the valley of Hammamât for the stone of his sarcophagus.

* The monuments furnish proof that their contemporaries
considered these ephemeral rulers as so many illegitimate
pretenders. Phtahshopsîsû and his son Sabû-Abibi, who
exercised important functions at the court, mention only
Unas and Teti III.; Uni, who took office under Teti III.,
mentions after this king only Papi I. and Mihtimsaûf I. The
official succession was, therefore, regulated at this epoch
in the same way as we afterwards find it in the table of
Saqqâra, Unas, Teti III., Papi I., Mihtimsaûf I., and in the
Royal Canon of Turin, without the intercalation of any other
king.

** Brugsch, in his Histoire d’Egypte, pp. 44, 45, had
identified this king with the first Metesouphis of Manetho:
E. de Rougé prefers to transfer him to one of the two
Memphite series after the VIth dynasty, and his opinion has
been adopted by Wiedemann. The position occupied by his
inscription among those of Hamraamât has decided me in
placing him at the end of the Vth or beginning of the VIth
dynasty: this E. Meyer has also done.

We know not whether revolution or sudden death put an end to his activity: the “Mastabat-el-Faraun” of Saqqâra, in which he hoped to rest, never exceeded the height which it has at present.* His name was, however, inscribed in certain official lists,** and a tradition of the Greek period maintained that he had been assassinated by his guards.*** Teti III. was the actual founder of the VIth dynasty,**** historians representing him as having been the immediate successor of Unas.

* Ati is known only from the Hammamât, inscription dated in
the first year of his reign. He was identified by Brugsch
with the Othoes of Manetho, and this identification has been
generally adopted. M. de Rougé is inclined to attribute to
him as _prænomen_ the cartouche Usirkeri, which is given in
the Table of Abydos between those of Teti III. and Papi I.
Mariette prefers to recognize in Urikeri an independent
Pharaoh of short reign. Several blocks of the Mastabat-el-
Faraun at Saqqâra contain the cartouche of Unas, a fact
which induced Mariette to regard this as the tomb of the
Pharaoh. The excavations of 1881 showed that Unas was
entombed elsewhere, and the indications are in favour of
attributing the mastaba to Ati. We know, indeed, the
pyramids of Teti III., of the two Papis, and of Metesouphis
I.; Ati is the only prince of this period with whose tomb we
are unacquainted. It is thus by elimination, and not by
direct evidence, that the identification has been arrived
at: Ati may have drawn upon the workshops of his predecessor
Unas, which fact would explain the presence on these blocks
of the cartouche of the latter.

** Upon that of Abydos, if we agree with E. de Rougé that
the cartouche Usirkeri contains his prænomen; upon that
from which Manetho borrowed, if we admit his identification
with Othoes.

*** Manetho (Unger’s edition, p. 101), where the form of the
name is Othoes.

**** He is called Teti Menephtah, with the cartouche
prænomen of Seti I., on a monument of the early part of the
XIXth dynasty, in the Museum at Marseilles: we see him in
his pyramid represented as standing. This pyramid was opened
in 1881, and its chambers are covered with long funerary
inscriptions. It is a work of the time of Seti I., and not a
contemporary production of the time of Menkaûhorû.

He lived long enough to build at Saqqâra a pyramid whose internal chambers are covered with inscriptions,* and his son succeeded him without opposition. Papi I. reigned at least twenty years.**

* The true pronunciation of this name would be Pipi, and of
the one before it Titi. The two other Tetis are Teti I. of
the Ist dynasty, and Zosir-Teti, or Teti II., of the IIIrd.

** From fragment 59 of the Royal Canon of Turin, An
inscription in the quarries of Hât-nûbû bears the date of
the year 24: if it has been correctly copied, the reign must
have been four years at least longer than the chronologists
of the time of the Ramessides thought.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Béchard.

He manifested his activity in all corners of his empire, in the nomes of the Said as well as in those of the Delta, and his authority extended beyond the frontiers by which the power of his immediate predecessors had been limited. He owned sufficient territory south of Elephantine to regard Nubia as a new kingdom added to those which constituted ancient Egypt: we therefore see him entitled in his preamble “the triple Golden Horus,” “the triple Conqueror-Horus,” “the Delta-Horus,” “the Said-Horus,” “the Nubia-Horus.” The tribes of the desert furnished him, as was customary, with recruits for his army, for which he had need enough, for the Bedouin of the Sinaitic Peninsula were on the move, and were even becoming dangerous. Papi, aided by Uni, his prime minister, undertook against them a series of campaigns, in which he reduced them to a state of helplessness, and extended the sovereignty of Egypt for the time over regions hitherto unconquered.

Uni began his career under Teti.* At first a simple page in the palace,** he succeeded in obtaining a post in the administration of the treasury, and afterwards that of inspector of the woods of the royal domain.***

* The beginning of the first line is wanting, and I have
restored it from other inscriptions of the same kind: “I
was born under Unas.” Uni could not have been born before
Unas; the first office that he filled under Teti III. was
while he was a child or youth, while the reign of Unas
lasted thirty years.

** Literally, “crown-bearer.” This was a title applied
probably to children who served the king in his private
apartments, and who wore crowns of natural flowers on their
heads: the crown was doubtless of the same form as those
which we see upon the brows of women on several tombs of the
Memphite epoch.

*** The word “Khoniti” probably indicates lands with
plantations of palms or acacias, the thinly wooded forests
of Egypt, and also of the vines which belonged to the
personal domain of the Pharaoh.