FOOTNOTES:
[1] Page 92, Vol. I.
[2] Our national library at the British Museum is, perhaps, the only one which does not deserve this reproach.—Ed.
[3] Geschichte der bildenden Kunst, 2nd ed., corrected and augmented, with wood engravings in the text, 8 vols. 8vo. 1865-1873. The first edition consisted of 7 vols., and appeared between 1843 and 1864.
[4] Germany had long felt the want which Schnaase attempted to satisfy. As early as 1841 Franz Kugler published his Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte, which embraces the whole history of art from the earliest times down to our own day. The book was successful; the fourth edition, revised and corrected by Wilhelm Lübke (2 vols. 8vo. 1861, Stuttgart), lies before us, but to give an idea of its inadequacy as a history of ancient art, it is enough to say that the whole of the antique period, both in Greece and Asia, occupies no more than 206 pages of the first volume. The few illustrations are not very good in quality, and their source is never indicated; the draughtsman has taken little care to reproduce with fidelity the style of the originals or to call attention to their peculiarities; finally, the arrangements adopted betray the defects of a severely scientific method. The author commences with Celtic monuments (dolmens and menhirs), and then passes to the structures of Oceania and America; before commencing upon Egypt he takes us to Mexico and Yucatan. Lübke, whilst still occupied with the work of Kugler, wished to supply for the use of students and artists a book of a more elementary character; he therefore published in 1860 an 8vo volume which he called Grundriss der Kunstgeschichte; the antique here occupies 208 pages out of 720. His plan seems to us to be open to the same objection as that of Kugler; he follows a geographical instead of an historical arrangement; he begins with the extreme east; he puts the Assyrians and the Persians before Egypt, and India before Assyria. His illustrations are sometimes better than those of Kugler, but many of the cuts are common to both works.
Under the title Geschichte der Plastik, Overbeck and Lübke have each written a comprehensive history of sculpture. [The word "comprehensive" must here be understood in a strictly limited sense.—Ed.] The word Plastik in the language of German critics has this special and restricted meaning—it comprises sculpture only. The work of Overbeck, far superior to that of Lübke, deserves the success which has attended it; the third edition, which contains the results of the searches at Olympia and at Pergamus, is now in course of publication.
[5] Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art should be read in connection with his Remarks upon the History of Art, which is a kind of supplement to it, and takes the place of that new edition of which the author's premature and tragic death deprived the world. It is an answer to the objections which made themselves heard on every side; the preface to Monumenti inediti (Rome, 1867, 2 vols. in folio, with 208 plates) should also be read. The method of Winckelmann is there most clearly explained. Finally, the student of the life and labours of Winckelmann may consult with profit the interesting work of Carl Iusti, Winckelmann, sein Leben, seine Werke, und seine Zeitgenossen, which will give him a clear idea of the state of archæology at the time when the German savant intervened to place it upon a higher footing.
[6] Zoëga busied himself greatly with Egypt, and in inaugurating the study of Coptic prepared the way for Champollion. But the work which gave him a place among the chief scholars of Winckelmann is unfinished; the Bassirilievi antichi di Roma (Rome, 2 vols. 4to. 1808) only contains the monuments in the Villa Albani, engraved by Piroli, with the help of the celebrated Piranesi. A volume containing most of his essays was given to the world by Welcker in 1817 (Abhandlungen herausgegeben und mit Zusätzen begleitet, 8vo. Göttingen), who also published his life and a volume of his correspondence (Zoëga, Sammlung seiner Briefe und Beurtheilung seiner Werke, 2 vols. 8vo. Stuttgart, 1819).
[7] Il Museo Pio-Clementino, Visconti, vol. i. 1782; by Enn. Quir. Visconti, vols. ii. to vii. Rome, 1784-1807. Museum Worsleyanum, 2 vols. folio. London, 1794. Monumenti Gabini della Villa Pinciana, Visconti, 8vo. 1797. Description des Antiques du Musée Royal, begun by Visconti and continued by the Comte de Clarac. 12mo. Paris, 1820. For the collection of the materials and the execution of the plates in the Iconographie Grecque et Romain, Visconti took advantage of his opportunities as director of the Musée Napoléon, into which the art treasures of all Europe, except England, were collected at the beginning of this century.
[8] They were discovered in 1811 amid the ruins of one of the temples at Ægina, by a company of excavators presided over by Mr. Cockerell. They were bought by Prince Louis of Bavaria in 1812, and Thorwaldsen was occupied during several years in putting together and restoring them. They were first exhibited in the Glyptothek of Munich in 1820.
[9] The débris of the temple at Bassæ was explored by the same company in the year 1812, and a whole frieze was found, which was bought by the British Museum in 1815.
[10] The Antiquities of Athens, Measured and Delineated by J. Stuart and N. Revett. Folio. London, 1761.
[11] Expédition scientifique de Morée, ordonnée par le Gouvernement Français. Architecture, Sculpture, Inscriptions, mesurées, dessinées, recueillies et publiées, par A. Blouet, A. Ravoisié, Alph. Poirot, F. Trézel, et Fr. de Gournay. Paris, 1831-7.
[12] The restoration of the temple of Athenè Polias and of the Parthenon, by Ballu and Paccard, dates from 1845. Since that time the students of the French Academy have drawn and restored all the most important monuments of Greece.
[13] One temple at Baalbec was restored in 1865 by M. Moyau; the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus by M. Bernier in 1878, and the temple of Athenè at Priene by M. Thomas in 1879.
[14] In 1872 this collection consisted of sixty-one restorations, comprising 691 original drawings upon a very large scale, and forming fifty-two bound volumes. Thanks to M. Jules Simon, then Minister of Public Instruction, and M. Charles Blanc, Director of Fine Arts, the publication of the series in its entirety was resolved upon. A commission, with M. Ernest Vinet as secretary, was appointed to superintend the expenditure of an annual grant of 20,000 francs voted by the Chamber. But the work progresses very slowly. In 1881 only five sections had appeared, the most important being the Restauration des Temples de Pæstum, by Labrouste.
[15] F. C. Penrose, An Investigation of the Principles of Athenian Architecture. Folio, with plates. London, 1851.
[16] J. J. Hittorf, Restitution du Temple d'Empédocle à Sèlinonte; ou, l'Architecture polychrome chez les Grecs, 4to. and plates in folio. Paris, 1851.
[17] See upon this subject M. Wolfgang Helbig's Untersuchungen ueber die Campanische Wandmalerei. Leipsic, 1873. M. Boissier has summed up the leading opinions in this matter in an interesting article in the Révue des Deux Mondes, entitled Les Peintures d'Herculaneum et de Pompéi (October 1, 1879).
[18] Rapporto intorno i Vasi Volcenti (Annali dell' Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica, vol. iii. p. 5).
[19] One of the first antiquaries to whom it occurred that the examination of these little objects might lead to profitable results was the Comte de Caylus, a savant who is in some danger of being forgotten, and who deserves that his claims to our gratitude should be recalled to the public mind. The work in which he has brought together the fruits of a long life spent in travelling, in collecting, and in examining the technical processes of the ancients, both by himself and with the help of specialists, may be consulted with advantage (Recueil d' Antiquites égyptiennes, étrusques, grecques, et romains, 6 vols. 4to. 1752-64. Supplement, 1 vol. 4to. 1767).
[20] Recherches sur les Figures de Femmes voilées dans l'Art Grec, 4to. Paris, 1873. Recherches sur un Groupe de Praxitèle, d'après les Figurines de terre cuite, 8vo. Paris, 1875. Les Figurines antiques de terre cuite du Musée du Louvre, 4to. 1878, Morel.
[21] For the history of the Instituto Archeologico, the notice written for the celebration, in 1879, of the fiftieth anniversary of its foundation, may be consulted. It is from the pen of Michaëlis, one of the most learned of modern German archæologists, and bears the following title: Storia dell' Instituto Archeologico Germano, 1829-1879, strenna pubblicata nell' occasione della festa del 21 Aprile, 1879, dalla direzione centrale dell' Instituto Archeologico, 8vo. Roma, 1879. It was also published in German. An article by M. Ernest Vinet in the volume entitled L'Art et l'Archéologie (pp. 74-91, 8vo. Didier, 1874), upon the origin and labours of the Instituto, will also be found interesting.
[22] Léo Joubert, Essais de critique et d'histoire (Paris, Firmin-Didot, 1 vol. 1863, p. 4). We shall never cease to regret that politics have deprived literature of this judicious and widely instructed critic.
[23] Kunstarchæologische Werke. Berlin, Calvary, 18 mo. 1873.
[24] Handbuch der Archæologie der Kunst, 1 vol. 8vo.
[25] The French translation, from the pen of M. P. Nicard, forms three volumes of the collection of handbooks known under the name of the Encyclopédie Roret. It appeared in 1841, so that the translator was unable to make use of the additions and corrections with which Welcker enriched the edition of 1848. But M. Nicard's edition has one great advantage over the German versions in the complete tables with which it is provided. The best English translation is that by J. Leitch, the second edition of which appeared in 1850.—Ed.
[26] Stark died at Heidelberg in October, 1879. The title of his work was identical with that of Müller: Handbuch der Archæologie der Kunst. The first 256 pages of the first volume were published in 1878 with the sub-title: Einleitender und grundlegender Theil (Leipsic, Engelmann, 8vo). A second instalment appeared in 1880, by which the introduction was completed. The entire work, which will not be continued, was to have formed three volumes. We explained its plan and made some remarks upon the part already published in the Revue Critique of July 14, 1879.
[27] Journal of a Tour in Asia Minor, with Comparative Remarks on the Ancient and Modern Geography of that Country (1 vol. in 8vo. London, Murray, 1821, pp. 31-33).
[28] A Description of some Ancient Monuments with Inscriptions still existing in Lydia and Phrygia. London, 1842, in folio.
[29] Timæus, p. 22.
[30] Dictionnaire archéologique de la Gaule, vol. i., Cavernes, figure 28. Al. Bertrand, Archéologie celtique et gauloise (1 vol. 8vo. Didier, 1876, p. 68).
[31] Schliemann, Mycenæ, see figs. 33 and 213; Cesnola, Cyprus, see pls. 44 and 46.
[32] Archæological Survey of India, 3 vols. 1871-73.
[33] Archæologische Zeitung, 1876, p. 90. Die Griechische Kunst in Indien.
[34] The Louvre has lately acquired some curious examples of this art.
[35] Histoire de l'Art; Huber's preface to his translation, p. xxxii.
[36] The word "plastic" is used throughout this work in its widest significance, and is not confined to works "in the round."—Ed.
[37] Herodotus, ii. 7.
[38] Mariette, Itineraire de la haute Égypte, p. 10 (edition of 1872, 1 vol. Alexandria, Mourès).
[39] The river should rise to this height upon the Nilometer at Cairo if there is to be a "good Nile." In upper Egypt the banks of the river are much higher than in middle Egypt. In order to flow over those banks it must rise to a height of some eleven or twelve metres, and unless it rises more than thirteen metres it will not have a proper effect.
[40] This work of Champollion's, to which we are greatly indebted, is entitled: Monuments de l'Égypte et de la Nubie, 4 vols. folio. It contains 511 plates, partly coloured, and was published between the years 1833 and 1845. The drawings for the plates were made by members of the great scientific expedition of which Champollion was the head. Many of those drawings were from the pencil of Nestor L'Hôte, one of those who have most sympathetically rendered the Egyptian monuments.
[41] This advantage was thoroughly appreciated by the ancients. Diodorus Siculus, speaking of the Egyptians, says that "At the beginning of all things, the first men were born in Egypt, in consequence of the happy climate of the country and the physical properties of the Nile, whose waters, by their natural fertility and their power of producing various kinds of aliment, were well fitted to nourish the first beings who received the breath of life.... It is evident that from the foundation of the world Egypt was, of all countries, the most favourable to the generation of men and women, by the excellent constitution of its soil" (i. 10).
[42] In all ages the rod has, in Egypt, played an important part in the collection of the taxes. In this connection M. Lieblein has quoted a passage from the well-known letter from the chief guardian of the archives of Ameneman to the scribe Pentaour, in which he says: "The scribe of the port arrives at the station; he collects the tax; there are agents with rattans, and negroes with branches of palm; they say 'Give us some corn!' and they are not to be repulsed. The peasant is bound and sent to the canal; he is driven on with violence, his wife is bound in his presence, his children are stripped; as for his neighbours, they are far off and are busy over their own harvest." (Les Récits de Recolte dans l'ancienne Égypte, comme Éléments chronologique, in Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l'Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes, t. i. p. 149).
[43] Robiou, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient, ch. v.
[44] Herodotus, ii. 4.
[45] Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient, pp. 6 and 7. In such general explanations as are unavoidable we shall content ourselves with paraphrasing M. Maspero.
[46] Their exceptional breadth of shoulder has been confirmed by an examination of the skeletons in the mummies. See on this subject a curious note in Bonomi's Some Observations on the Skeleton of an Egyptian Mummy (Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. iv. pp. 251-253).
[47] Maspero, Histoire ancienne, p. 16.
[48] Notice des principaux Monuments exposés dans les Galeries provisoires du Musée d' Antiquités égyptiennes de S. A. le Vice-Roi, à Boulaq (1876), No. 492. The actual statue holds the bâton in its left hand.
[49] Notice des principaux Monuments exposés dans les Galeries provisoires du Musée d' Antiquités égyptiennes de S. A. le Vice-Roi, à Boulaq (1876), p. 582. With the exception of a few woodcuts from photographs the contents of the museums at Cairo and Boulak have been reproduced from drawings by M. J. Bourgoin. The Boulak Museum will be referred to by the simple word Boulak. The reproductions of objects in the Louvre are all from the pencil of M. Saint-Elme Gautier.
[50] Maspero, Histoire ancienne, p. 17.
[51] Histoire des Langues sémitiques, Book i. ch. ii. § 4.
[52] See Lepsius, Ueber die Annahme eines sogenannten prehistorischen Steinalters in Ægypten (in the Zeitschrift für Ægyptische Sprache, 1870, p. 113, et seq.).
[53] Maspero, p. 18.
[54] Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient, p. 53. We believe that the division proposed by M. Maspero is, in fact, the best. It is the most suggestive of the truth as to the successive displacements of the political centre and the movement of history. We shall, however, have no hesitation in making use of the terms Ancient, Middle, and New Empire, as occasion arises.
[55] Mariette, Aperçu de l'Histoire d'Égypte, p. 66.
[56] Brugsch-Bey, Histoire de l'Égypt, pp. 6 and 7. Maspero's Histoire ancienne, p. 382, may also be consulted upon the character of the Ethiopian kingdom and the monuments of Napata. A good idea of this process of degradation may be gained by merely glancing through the plates to part v. of Lepsius's Denkmæler; plate 6, for example, shows what the caryatid became at Napata.
[57] Maspero, Histoire ancienne, p. 58. This affiliation of the king to the god was more than a figure of speech. In an inscription which is reproduced both at Ipsamboul and at Medinet-Abou, Ptah is made to speak in the following terms of Rameses II. and Rameses III. respectively: "I am thy father, as a god I have begotten thee; all thy members are divine; when I approached thy royal mother I took upon me the form of the sacred ram of Mendes" (line 3rd). This curious text has lately been interpreted by E. Naville (Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. vii. pp. 119-138). The monarchy of the Incas was founded upon an almost identical belief.
[58] See the account of the visit to Heliopolis of the conquering Ethiopian, Piankhi-Mer-Amen; we shall quote the text of this famous inscription in our chapter upon the Egyptian temple.
[59] Fr. Lenormant, Manuel d'Histoire ancienne, t. 1, pp. 485-486. The most celebrated of these is the famous Chamber of Ancestors from Karnak, which is now preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris.
[60] The beaters for the great hunts which took place in the Delta and the Fayoum were procured in the same fashion. These hunts were among the favourite pleasures of the kings and the great lords. See Maspero, Le Papyrus Mallet, p. 58 (in Recueil de Travaux, etc. t. 1).
[61] The work to which we here refer is the Histoire de l'Art Égyptien d'après les Monuments, 2 vols. folio. Arthus Bertrand, 1878. As the plates are not numbered, we can only refer to them generally.
[62] "The foundations of the great temple at Abydos, commenced by Seti I. and finished by Rameses II., consist of but a single course of generally ill-balanced masonry. Hence the settling which has taken place, and the deep fissure which divides the building in the direction of its major axis."—Mariette, Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, p. 59. The same writer speaks of Karnak in a similar strain: "The Pharaonic temples are built, as a rule, with extreme carelessness. The western pylon, for instance, fell because it was hollow, which made the inclination of the walls a source of weakness instead of strength."—Itineraire, p. 179.
[63] Herodotus, ii. 172. For an earlier epoch, see the history of a certain Ahmes, son of Abouna, as it is narrated upon his sepulchral inscription, which dates from the reign of Amosis, the founder of the eighteenth dynasty (De Rougé, Mémoire sur l'Inscription d'Ahmes, Chef des Nautoniers, 4to. 1851, and Brugsch, Histoire d'Égypte, t. i. p. 80). Starting as a private soldier for the war against the Shepherds, undertaken for the re-conquest of Avaris, he was noticed by the king for his frequent acts of gallantry, and promoted until he finally became something in the nature of high admiral.
[64] Louvre, c. i. Cf. Maspero, un Gouverneur de Thèbes au temps de la douzième dynastie.
[65] Quoted by Maspero, Conférence sur l'Histoire des Âmes dans l'Égypte ancienne, d'après les Monuments du Musée du Louvre (Association scientifique de France, Bulletin hebdomadaire, No. 594; 23 Mars, 1879).
[66] Translated by Maspero (la Grande Inscription de Beni-Hassan in the Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l'Archéologie égyptienne et assyrienne (t. i. pp. 173-174)).
[67] Brugsch-Bey, Histoire d'Égypte, pp. 14, 15.
[68] The saying of one of the characters of Petronius might be applied to Egypt: "This country is so thickly peopled with divinities that it is easier to find a god than a man." The place held by religious observances in the daily life of Egypt is clearly indicated by Herodotus (ii. 37): "The Egyptians," he says, "are very religious; they surpass all other nations in the adoration with which they regard their deities."
[69] Maspero, Histoire ancienne, pp. 26, 27.
[70] This formula frequently occurs in the texts. To cite but one occasion, we find upon a Theban invocation to Amen, translated by P. Pierret (Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l'Archéologie égyptienne et assyrienne, t. i. p. 70), at the third line of the inscription: "Sculptor, thou modelest thine own members; thou begettest them, not having thyself been begotten."
[71] See the fine hymns quoted and translated by M. Maspero in his Histoire ancienne, pp. 30-37.
[72] Several of the bronzes which we reproduce may belong to the Ptolemaic epoch; but they are repetitions of types and attributes which had been fixed for many centuries by tradition. It is in this capacity chiefly that we reproduce them, as examples of those forms which seemed to the Egyptian imagination to offer the most satisfactory emblems of their gods.
[73] In his work entitled Des deux Yeux du Disque solaire, M. Grébaut seems to have very clearly indicated how far we are justified in saying that Egyptian religious speculation at times approached monotheism (Recueil de Travaux, etc., t. i. p. 120).
[74] Herodotus, ii. 75-86.
[75] We do not mean to say that the higher qualities of the Egyptian religion were then altogether lost. In Roman Egypt the fetish superstitions were no doubt predominant, but still it had not lost all that theological erudition which it had accumulated by its own intellectual energy. In an inscription cut in the time of Philip the Arab, we find an antique hymn transcribed in hieroglyphs upon the wall of a temple. We find abstract and speculative ideas in all those Egyptian books which have come down to us, in a form which betrays the last two centuries of the Empire. Alexandria had its Egyptian Serapeum by the side of its Greek one. Monuments are to be found there which are Egyptian in every particular. Gnosticism was particularly successful in Egypt, which was predestined to accept it by the whole of its past. Certain doctrines of Plotinus are thus best explained. More than one purely Egyptian notion may be found interpreted in the works of Alexandrian philosophers and in the phraseology of Greek philosophy. The principal sanctuaries did not allow their rites and ceremonies to fall into disuse. Although Thebes was nothing but a heap of ruins, a dead city visited for its relics of the past, the worship of Vulcan, that is of Ptah, at Memphis, was carried on up to the establishment of Christianity. That of Isis, at Philæ, lasted until the time of Justinian. Diocletian negotiated a treaty with the Blemmyes, those people of Nubia who were at one time such redoubtable soldiers, which guaranteed to them the free use of that temple. It was not converted into a church until after the destruction of the Blemmyes by Silco and the Christian kings of Ethiopia.
The old religion and theology of the Egyptians did not expire in a single day. It was no more killed by the Roman conquest than it was by that of the Ptolemies. But although its rites did not cease, and some of its elaborate doctrines still continued to be transmitted, its vitality had come to an end. It exercised some remains of influence only on condition of being melted down and re-modelled in the crucible of Greek philosophy. A little coterie of thinkers set themselves to complete this transfusion, but the great mass of the people returned to simple practices which had been sanctified by thousands of years, and formed nearly the whole of their religion.
Porrum et cæpe nefas violare et frangere morsu.
O Sanctas gentes, quibus hæc nascuntur in hortis
Numina!—Juvenal, xv. 9-11.
[77] Clemens Alexandrinus, quoted by Maspero, Histoire ancienne, p. 46.
[78] This was perceived by the President de Brosses, a savant with few advantages but a bold and inquiring spirit, to whom the language is indebted for the use of the term fetishism as a name for a definite state of religious conception. We can still read with interest the book which he published anonymously in 1760, under the title: Du Culte des Dieux fétiches; ou, Parallèle de l'Ancienne Religion de l'Égypte avec la Religion actuelle de Nigritie (12mo). The study of the fetish elements of the Egyptian religion has been resumed lately with competent knowledge and talent by a German egyptologist, Herr Pietschmann, in an essay which appeared in 1878 in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, which is published in Berlin under the direction of M. Virchow. It is called Der Ægyptische Fetischdienst und Götterglaube—Prolegomena zur Ægyptischen Mythologie (28 pp. 8vo). A great many judicious observations and curious facts are to be found in it; the realistic and materialistic character of the Egyptian conceptions are very well grasped; it is perhaps to be regretted that the author has not endeavoured to make the creeds to which he gives this name of fétichisme somewhat clearer, and to show by what workings of the mind they were adopted and abandoned. With regard to the Egyptian religion, we shall find treated, in the excellent Manuel de l'Histoire des Religions, by Tiele, which M. Maurice Vernes has just translated from the Dutch (1 vol. 12mo, Ernest Leroux, 1880), views much the same as those which we have just described. The author denominates the religious state which we call fetishism animism, but he points out the fact that this class of conceptions had a perennial influence over the Egyptian mind. "The Egyptian religion," he says, "like the Chinese, was nothing to begin with but an organised animism." He finds traces of this animism in the worship of the dead, the deification of the kings, and the adoration of animals. From his point of view the custom of placing a symbol of the divinity rather than an image in the temple, must be traced to fetishism (pp. 44 and 45 of the French version).
[79] Pierret, Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Égyptienne.
[80] See in L'Oiseau the chapter-headed L'Épuration. With his genius for history and poetry Michelet has well understood the sentiment which gave birth to these primitive forms of worship, forms which have too long provoked unjust contempt. The whole of this beautiful chapter should be read; we shall only quote a few lines: "In America the law protects these public benefactors. Egyptian law does still more for them—it respects them and loves them. Although they no longer enjoy their ancient worship, they receive the friendly hospitality of man as in the time of Pharaoh. If you ask an Egyptian fellah why he allows himself to be besieged and deafened by birds, why he patiently suffers the insolence of the crow perched upon the horn of the buffalo, on the hump of a camel, or fighting upon the date-trees and shaking down the fruit, he will say nothing. Birds are allowed to do anything. Older than the Pyramids, they are the ancients of the country. Man's existence depends upon them, upon the persevering labour of the ibis, the stork, the crow and the vulture."
[81] Maspero, Notes sur différents Points de Grammaire et d'Histoire dans le Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l'Archéologie égyptienne et assyrienne, vol. i. p. 157.
[82] Herodotus, ii. 42.
[83] James Darmesteter, Le Dieu supréme dans la Mythologie indo-européenne (in the Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, 1880).
[84] τὴν αὐτὴν δὲ τέχνην ἀπειργασμένα, etc. Laws, 656. D. E. [We have quoted from Professor Jowett's English version, p. 226, vol. v.—Ed.]
[85] Cours d'Archéologie, 8vo. 1829, pp. 10, 11. This critic's ideas upon Egyptian art were both superficial and false. "Egyptian art," he says, "never attempted any realistic imitation." We even find sentences utterly devoid of meaning, such as, for instance, "The fundamental principle of Egyptian art was the absence of art." (p. 12.)
[86] See the Revue des Deux Mondes of April 1, 1865.
[87] Voyage dans la Haute Égypte, vol. i.
[88] M. Melchoir de Vogüé, Chez les Pharaons (Revue des Deux Mondes of Jan. 15, 1877).
[89] Diodorus, i. 98, 7, 8.
[90] Denkmæler aus Ægypten und Æthiopien (from drawings of the expedition sent into Egypt in 1842, which remained there till 1845), 12 vols. folio. Berlin, no date.
[91] Histoire de l'Art égyptien d'après les Monuments depuis les Temps les plus reculés jusqu'à la Domination romaine, 2 vols. Paris, Arthus Bertrand, 1878. The text (1 vol. 4to.), published after the death of Prisse, has this great inconvenience, that it is not always easy to distinguish what belongs to the editor, M. Marchandon de la Faye, from the contributions of Prisse, who was one of the most practical and experienced of egyptologists. The papers, sketches, and drawings left by Prisse became the property, in 1880, of the Bibliothèque Nationale; when they are classified and published we shall probably find among them several interesting documents; we have only been able hurriedly to look through them, when the illustrations to this work were already prepared. It is desirable that a complete inventory of these collections should be made as soon as possible.
[92] Lois générales de l'Inclinaison des Colonnes dans la Construction des Temples grecs de l'Antiquité, dedicated to his Majesty, Otho I., by Charles Villeroi, engineer. Athens, 1842, 8vo.
[93] Egyptian landscape is well characterised in these lines of M. Ch. Blanc, taken from the Voyage de la Haute Égypte (p. 116): "Pour le moment, notre plaisir se borne à regarder un paysage simple, monotone, mais grand par sa simplicité même et par sa monotonie. Ces lignes planes qui s'allongent et se prolongent sans fin, et qui s'interrompent un instant pour reprendre encore leur niveau et se continuer encore, impriment à la nature un caractère de tranquillité qui assoupit l'imagination et qui apaise le cœur. Par une singularité peut-être unique au monde, les variétés qui viennent rompre de distance en distance la vaste uniformité de la terre égyptienne se reproduisent toujours les mêmes." [We have refrained from translating this piece of word painting, lest its suggestive rhythm should vanish in the process.—Ed.]
[94] Similar notions are expressed by M. Ch. Blanc in his Grammaire des Arts du Dessin (Book i. ch. viii.). "The wide-spreading base is the distinguishing characteristic of the Egyptian monuments. Wall, pier, and column, all the constructive members of Egyptian architecture, are short and thick set. To add to this appearance of solidity the relative size of the base is increased by that tendency towards the pyramid which is to be found in every Egyptian building. The pyramids of Memphis, one of them the greatest building upon earth, stand upon enormous bases. Their height is far less than their largest horizontal diameter. The pyramid of Cheops, for instance, is 233 metres along one side of its base, and only 146 in height, i.e., its base is to its height as 8 to 5. All Egyptian monuments, even the most lofty, are more remarkable for the ground they cover than for their height [except the monoliths!—Ed.], and this extension of their bases gives them an appearance of absolutely eternal durability."
[95] This illustration has been compiled in order to give a general idea of the more persistent characteristics of the Egyptian temple.
[96] We know but one or two exceptions to this rule. It will suffice to quote the Royal Pavilion of Medinet-Abou, which is crowned by a row of battlements.
[97] From the work of the Abbé Uggeri, entitled: Le Détail des Matériaux dont se servaient les Anciens pour la Construction de leurs Bâtiments (Rome, oblong folio, 1800, pl. v.).
[98] The only granite quarries that were worked in antiquity were those of Syene now Assouan, in Upper Egypt, upon the right bank of the Nile.
[99] Sandstone was chiefly obtained from two localities, Djebel-Ahmar, near Cairo, and Djebel-Silsili in Upper Egypt.
[100] The Arab Chain is almost entirely calcareous. Near the sites of all the ancient cities it shows numerous excavations bearing witness to the activity of the ancient builders. The most celebrated of these quarries is that at Mokattam, near Cairo. The stone of which the body of the pyramids is composed was drawn from it.
[101] The alabaster quarries of to-day are all in the Arab Chain, between the southern slopes of the mountain Mahsarah, near Cairo, and the springs of the Wady-Siout, opposite the town of that name.
[102] The obelisk of Queen Hatasu, at Karnak, is 105 ft. 8 in. high; the statue of Rameses II. at Thebes, on the left bank of the river, is a monolith 55 ft. 5 in. high, and weighing about 1,200 tons. [The obelisk which still remains at Syene, never having been completely detached from the rock in which it was quarried, is nearly 96 ft. high and 11 ft. 1-1/2 in. diameter at its base.—Ed.]
[103] We find this construction in the so-called Temple of the Sphinx, near the Great Pyramid.
[104] The vertical support and the architrave form the two vital elements of an Egyptian building, which is therefore enabled to dispense with those buttresses and other lateral supports which are necessary to give stability to the edifices of many other nations.
[105] We may here remark that the modest dwellings of the Egyptian fellah are often covered by vaults of pisé, that is to say, of compressed and kneaded clay. None of the ancient monuments of Egypt possess such vaults, which are of much less durability than those of stone or brick. We are, however, disposed to believe that they were used in antique times.
[106] Another explanation has been given of the employment of the vault in subterranean work. Mariette believed the arch to be symbolic, to signify the canopy of heaven, the heaven of Amen. One objection to this is the fact that the vault was not universal in tombs; some of those at Beni-Hassan have flat ceilings, others have coves.
[107] In this respect there is a striking resemblance between Egyptian carpentry (see [Fig. 83]), and much of the joinery of the modern Japanese.—Ed.
[108] In this figure we have attempted to give some notion of what a wooden building must have been like in ancient Egypt, judging from the imitations of assembled construction which have been found in the tombs and sarcophagi of the ancient empire.
[109] We here speak of the fauna as a whole, disregarding particular genera and species. It may be said that some particular plant which is to be found both in France and Norway, is much brighter in colour when it grows in the neighbourhood of the pole than in our temperate climate, but this apparent exception only confirms the rule which we have laid down. The plant whose whole season of bloom is comprised between a late spring and an early autumn develops itself much more rapidly than with us, and, granting that it has become so hardened that it is able to resist the long and hard frosts of winter, it receives, during the short summer, much more light and sun than its French or German sister. During those fleeting summers of the north, whose strange charm has been so often described, the sun hardly descends below the horizon; the nights are an hour long, and not six or seven. The colour of flowers is therefore in exact proportion to the amount of light which they receive.
[110] This was perceived by Goethe. In art, as in natural science, he divined beforehand some of the discoveries of our century by the innate force of his genius. He was not surprised by the discovery that the temples of classic Sicily were painted in brilliant tones, which concealed the surface of their stone and accentuated the leading lines of their architecture. He was one of the first to accept the views of Hittorf and to proclaim that the architects who had found traces of colours upon the mouldings of Greek buildings were not deceiving themselves and others.
[111] We borrow these expressions from M. Ch. Blanc, who, when in Egypt, was very much struck with this phenomenon. "Those villages which approach in colour to that Nile mud of which they are composed, hardly stand out at all against the background, unless that be the sky itself or those sunny rocks which reflect the light in such a fashion that they fatigue the most accustomed eyes. I notice here, as I did in Greece, at Cape Sunium, that cupolas and round towers have their modelling almost destroyed by the strong reflections." (Voyage de la Haute Égypte, 1876, p. 114).
[112] Wilkinson thought there was always a layer of stucco, even upon the beautiful granite of the obelisks (Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, 2nd ed., 1878, vol. ii. p. 286.) His statement must be treated with great respect. During his long sojourn in Egypt he examined the remains of the ancient civilisation with great care and patience, but yet we think his opinion upon this point must be accepted with some reserve. There are in the Louvre certain sarcophagi and other objects in hard stone, upon which traces of colour are clearly visible on the sunk beds of the figures and hieroglyphics, while not the slightest vestige of anything of the kind is to be found upon the smooth surface around those carvings. But it is certain that granite was often stuccoed over. Mariette has verified that it was so on the obelisk of Hatasu at Thebes; both from the inscription and the appearance of the monument itself he came to the conclusion that it had been gilded from top to bottom, and that the gold had been laid upon a coat of white stucco. "The plain surface," he says, "alone received this costly decoration. It had been left slightly rough, but the hieroglyphs, which had their beds most carefully polished, preserved the colour and surface of the granite." (Itinéraire, p. 178.) As for buildings of limestone or sandstone, like the temples of Thebes, they are always coated.
[113] Apropos of the Temple of Khons, Jollois and Devilliers (Description générale de Thébes, ch. ix.) remark: "It was upon this coat that the hieroglyphs and figures were sculptured.... The contour of the figures is sometimes marked upon the stone beneath, because the depth of the cutting is greater than the thickness of the stucco."
[114] "Conférence sur l'Histoire des Âmes dans l'Égypte ancienne, d'après les Monuments du Musée du Louvre," in the Bulletin hebdomadaire de l'Association scientifique de France, No. 594. M. Maspero has often and exhaustively treated this subject, especially in his numerous lectures at the Collège de France. Those lectures afforded the material for the remarkable paper in the Journal asiatique entitled, "Étude sur quelques Peintures et sur quelques Textes relatifs aux Funérailles" (numbers for May, June, 1878, for December-June, and November, December, 1879, and May-June, 1880). These articles have been republished in a single volume with important corrections and additions (Maisonneuve, 1880).
[115] Or ba.—Ed.
[116] Conférence, p. 381. Mr. Herbert Spencer, in the first chapters of his Principles of Sociology, has given a curious and plausible explanation of how this conception of a double was formed. He finds its origin chiefly in the phenomena of sleep, of dreams, and of the faintness caused by wounds or illness. He shows how these more or less transitory suspensions of animation led men to suppose that death was nothing but a prolonged interruption of life. He also thinks that the actual shadow cast by a man's body contributed to the formation of that belief. But had it no other elements which belonged to the general disposition of humanity in those early periods of intellectual life? Into that question we cannot enter here further than to say that Mr. Spencer's pages make us acquainted with numerous facts which prove that the beliefs in question were not confined to a single race, but were common to all humanity.
[117] This expression, which is very common in the Egyptian texts, seems to have made a great impression upon the Greek travellers. The following passage of Diodorus is well known: "This refers to the beliefs of the natives, who look upon the life upon earth as a thing of minor importance, but set a high value upon those virtues of which the memory is perpetuated after death. They call their houses hotels, in view of the short time they have to spend in them, while they call their tombs their eternal dwellings" (i. 51).
[118] The dead were put under the protection of, and, as it were, combined with, Osiris; they talked of the Osiris so and so in naming one who was dead.
[119] Εἴδωλα καμόντων (Il. xxiii. 72; Od. xi. 476; xxiv. 14).
[120] This belief is clearly stated in a passage from Cicero quoted by Fustel: "Sub terrâ censebant reliquam vitam agi mortuorum" (Tusc. i. 16). This belief was so strong that it subsisted even after the universal establishment of the custom of burning the bodies of the dead.
[121] Texts to this effect abound. Fustel brought the more remarkable of them together in his Cité antique (p. 14). We shall be content with quoting three: "Son of Peleus," said Neoptolemus, "take this drink which is grateful to the dead; come and drink this blood" (Hecuba, 536). Electra says when she pours a libation: "This drink has penetrated the earth; my father has received it" (Choephorœ, 162). And listen to the prayer of Orestes to his dead father: "Oh my father, if I live thou shalt have rich banquets; if I die thou wilt have no portion of those smoking feasts which nourish the dead" (Choephorœ, 482-484). Upon the strange persistence of this belief, traces of which are still found in Eastern Europe, in Albania, in Thessaly, and Epirus, the works of Heuzey (Mission archéologique de Macédoine, p. 156), and Albert Dumont (le Balkan et l'Adriatique, pp. 354-356), may be consulted. Some curious details relating to the funeral feasts of the Chinese are to be found in the Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions, 1877, p. 325. There are some striking points of resemblance between the religion of China and that of ancient Egypt; in both one and the other the same want of power to develop may be found. Taking them as a whole, both the Chinese and the Egyptians failed to emerge from the condition of fetichism.
[122] In the eleventh book of the Odyssey it is only after "they have drunk deep draughts of black blood" that the shades are capable of recognising Ulysses, of understanding what he says and answering. The blood they swallowed restored their intelligence and powers of thought.
[123] The speeches of the Greek orators are full of proofs that these beliefs had a great hold upon the popular mind, even as late as the time of Demosthenes. In contested cases of adoption they always laid great stress upon the dangers which would menace the city if a family was allowed to become extinct for want of precautions against the failure of the hereditary line; there would then be some neglected tomb where the dead never received the visits of gift-bringing friends, a neglect which would be visited upon the city as a whole as the accomplice in such abandonment. Such an argument and others like it may not seem to us to be of great judicial value, but the talent of an Isæus understood how to make it tell with an audience, or we should not find it so often repeated in his pleadings (see G. Perrot, L'Éloquence politique et judiciare à Athènes. Les Précurseurs de Demosthène, pp. 359-364).
[124] Seventh edition, Hachette, 18mo., 1879.
[125] Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his ingenious and subtle analysis of primitive ideas draws our attention to their frequent inconsistencies and even positive contradictions; but he shows us at the same time that the most highly civilised races in these modern days admit and combine ideas which are logically quite as irreconcilable as those which seem to us so absurdly inconsistent when we think of the beliefs of the ancients or of savage races. Custom renders us insensible to contradictions which we should perceive at once were we removed to a distance from them. (The Principles of Sociology, vol. i. pp. 119, 185).
[126] The texts also bear witness to the ideas with which the complicated processes of embalming were undertaken. See P. Pierret, Le Dogme de la la Résurrection, &c., p. 10. "It was necessary that no member, no substance, should be wanting at the final summons; resurrection depended on that." "Thou countest thy members which are complete and intact." (Egyptian funerary text.) "Arise in To-deser (the sacred region in which the renewal of life is prepared), thou august and coffined mummy. Thy bones and thy substance are re-united with thy flesh, and thy flesh is again in its place; thy head is replaced upon thy neck, thy heart is ready for thee." (Osirian statue in the Louvre.) The dead took care to demand of the gods "that the earth should not bite him, that the soil should not consume him." (Mariette, Feuilles d'Abydos.) The preservation of the body must therefore have been an object of solicitude at the earliest times, but the art of embalming did not attain perfection until the Theban period. Under the ancient empire men were content with comparatively simple methods. Mariette says that "more examples would have to be brought together than he had been able to discover before the question of mummification under the ancient empire could be decided. It is certain, first, that no authentic piece of mummy cloth from that period is now extant; secondly, that the bones found in the sarcophagi have the brownish colour and the bituminous smell of mummies.
"Not more than five or six inviolate sarcophagi have been found. On each of these occasions the corpse has been discovered in the skeleton state. And as for linen, nothing beyond a little dust upon the bottom of the sarcophagus, which might be the débris of many other things than of a linen shroud." (Les Tombes de l'Ancien Empire, p. 16.)
[127] Passalacqua gives the following description of the mummy of a young woman which he discovered at Thebes: "Her hair and the rotundity and surprising regularity of her form showed me that she had been a beauty in her time, and that she had died in the flower of her youth." He then gives a minute description of her condition and ornaments, and concludes by saying that "the peculiar beauty of the proportions of this mummy, and its perfect preservation, had so greatly impressed the Arabs themselves that they had exhumed it more than once to show to their wives and neighbours." (Catalogue raisonné et historique des Antiquités découvertes en Égypte, 8vo. 1826.)
[128] Rhind describes several mummy-pits in the necropolis of Thebes which receive the water of the Nile by infiltration; but, as he himself remarks, this is because those who dug them did not foresee the gradual raising of the valley, and, consequently, of the level attained in recent ages by the waters of the Nile. It is doubtless only within the last few centuries that the water has penetrated into these tombs. (Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants, p. 153.)
[129] Maspero, Conférence, p. 381.
[130] Maspero, Notes sur différentes Points de Grammaire et d'Histoire, p. 155. (In the Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l'Archéologie Égyptienne et Assyrienne, vol. i.)
[131] Jars, which seem to have been once filled with water, are found in many tombs of all epochs. Different kinds of dates are also found, together with the fruit of the sycamore, corn, cakes, &c. See the Catalogue of Passalacqua, pp. 123, 151, and elsewhere. Quarters of meat have also been found in them, which are easily recognised by their well-preserved bones.
[132] Maspero, Études sur quelques Peintures funéraires, in the Journal Asiatique, May-June, 1880, p. 387, et seq.
[133] In one of the great inscriptions at Beni-Hassan, recently translated anew both by M. Maspero and Professor Birch, Chnoumhotep speaks thus: "I caused to prosper the name of my father. I completed the existing temples of the Ka. I served my statues at the great temples. I sacrificed to them their food, bread, beer, water, vegetables, pure herbs. My priest has verified (I chose a priest for the Ka,—Maspero). I procured them from the irrigation of my work-people (I made him master of fields and slaves,—Maspero). I ordered the sepulchral offerings of bread, beer, cattle, fowl, in all the festivals of Karneter, at the festivals of the beginning of the year, the opening of the year, increase of the year, diminution of the year (little year,—Brugsch and Maspero), close of the year, at the great festival, at the festival of the great burning, at the festival of the lesser burning, the five intercalary days, at the festival of bread making (of the entry of grain,—Maspero) at the twelve monthly and half monthly festivals, all the festivals on the earth (plain), terminating on the hill (of Anubis). But should my sepulchral priest or men conduct them wrongly may he not exist, nor his son in his place."—Birch, Records of the Past, vol. xii. p. 71.—Ed.
[134] In each opening of the serdab in the tomb of Ti, at Sakkarah, people, probably relatives of the deceased, are represented in the act of burning incense in a contrivance which resembles in form the θυμιατήριον of the Greek monuments. (Mariette, Notice des principaux Monuments de Boulak, p. 27, note 1.)
[135] See the paper by M. Maspero upon the great inscription at Siout, which has preserved for us a contract between Prince Hapi-Toufi and the priests of Ap-Môtennou, by which offerings should be regularly made to the prince's statue, which was deposited in a temple at Siout. (Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. vii. pp. 1-32.)
[136] It was the same in the case of a still older king, Seneferu, the founder of the fourth dynasty. (De Rougé, Recherches sur les Monuments que l'on peut attribuer aux six premières Dynasties de Manéthon, p. 41.)
[137] Tombes de l'Ancien Empire, p. 87.
[138] Herodotus, iv. 71, 72.
[139] In a few rare cases the objects destined for the nourishment of the double are represented in the round instead of being painted upon the wall. In the tomb of the personage called Atta, a wooden table, supporting terra-cotta vases and plucked geese carved in calcareous stone, has been found. (Mariette, Tombes de l'Ancien Empire, p. 17.) The vases must have been full of water when they were placed in the tomb; the stone geese may be compared to the papier-mâché loaves of the modern stage.
[140] All Egyptian collections contain coffers of painted wood, often decorated in the most brilliant fashion, which served to hold these statues when they were placed in the tomb. The size and the richness of their ornament depended upon the wealth of the deceased for who they were made.
[141] Pietschmann (Der Egyptische Fetischdienst, &c., p. 155), has well grasped the character and significance of these statuettes. Conf. Pierret, Dictionnaire d'Archéologie égyptienne, vol. v. See also, in connection with the personality attributed to them and to the services which were expected from them, a note by M. Maspero, Sur une Tablette appartenant à M. Rogers. (Recueil de Travaux, vol. ii. p. 12.)
[142] De Rougé, Mémoire sur les Monuments des six premières Dynasties (p. 80 et seq.). Conf. Maspero, Histoire Ancienne, pp. 88-92.
[143] See Mariette, Tombes de l'Ancien Empire, p. 88.
[144] This word, σύριγξ (flute), was employed by the Greeks to designate those long subterranean galleries cut in the rock of the necropolis at Thebes, in the valley called the Valley of the Kings; modern egyptologists apply it in a more general sense to all tombs cut deeply into the flanks of the mountain. For the reason which led the Greeks to adopt a term which now seems rather fantastic, see Pierret, Dictionnaire d'Archéologie égyptienne. The chief passages in ancient authors in which the term is applied either to the subterranean excavations of Egypt or to other galleries of the same kind, are brought together by Jomard in the third volume of the Description (Antiquités, vol. iii. pp. 12-14).
[145] Journal asiatique, May-June, 1880, pp. 419, 420.
[146] See above, [Figs. 87] and [91].
[147] We borrow the translation of this inscription, as well as the reflections which precede it, from M. Maspero (Conférence, p. 382). According to M. de Rougé, it dates from about the twelfth dynasty. An invocation of the same kind is to be found in another epigraph of the same period, the inscription of Amoni-Amenemhaït, hereditary prince of the nome of Meh, at Beni-Hassan. See Maspero, La Grande Inscription de Beni-Hassan, p. 171 (Recueil de Travaux, etc., vol. i. 4to.).
[148] Maspero, Conférence, p. 282.
[149] Among the cemeteries of the right bank we may mention that of Tell-el-Amarna; where the tombs would have been too far from the city had they been dug in the Libyan Chain. The cemeteries of Beni-Hassan and of Eilithyia (El-Kab) are also in the Arab Chain. In spite of these exceptions, however, the west was the real quarter of the dead, their natural habitation, as is proved by the tearful funeral songs translated by M. Maspero: "The mourners before the ever-to-be praised Hor-Khom say, 'O chief, as thou goest toward the West, the gods lament thee.' The friends who close the procession repeat, 'To the West, to the West, oh praiseworthy one, to the excellent West!'" Maspero, Étude sur quelques Peintures funéraires (Journal asiatique, February-April, 1881, p. 148).
[150] "It is so," says Mariette, "four times out of five." (Les Tombes de l'Ancien Empire, in the Revue archéologique, new series, vol. xix. p. 12).
[151] "In the further wall of the chamber, and invariably facing eastwards, is a stele." (Ibidem, p. 14.)
[152] Mariette, Abydos, vol. ii. p. 43.
[153] The tombs in the Arab Chain form, of course, an exception to this rule. The unusual circumstances which took them eastward of the river forced them also to neglect the traditional law.
[154] The symbolic connection established by man between the course of the sun and his own life was well understood by Champollion, who used it to explain the paintings in the royal tombs at Thebes. (See his remarks on the tomb of Rameses V. on the 185th and following pages of his Lettres d'Égypte, &c.)
[155] Upon the papyrus known as the Papyrus Casati, mention is made of a priest who is charged to watch over a whole collection of mummies.
"This is the list of bodies belonging to Osorvaris:—
"Imouth, son of Petenefhotep, his wife and children;
"Medledk, the carpenter, his wife and children;
"Pipee, his wife and children, from Hermouth;
"The father of Phratreou, the fuller;
"Aplou, the son of Petenhefhotep the boatman, his wife and children,
from Thebes;
"Psenmouth, the carpenter, his wife and children;
"Psenimonthis, the mason;
"Amenoth, the cowherd."
There are many more lists of the same kind. The above is cited from M. E. Le Blant (Tables égyptiennes à Inscriptions grecques, p. 6, 1875, 8vo.).
[156] See in the interesting work of Mr. H. Rhind (Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants, London, 1862, 8vo.), the chapter headed A Burial-place of the Poor.
[157] Mariette, Tombes de l'Ancien Empire, p. 83. See also the great inscription of Beni-Hassan, the first lines of which run thus: "The hereditary chief ... Khnumhotep ... has made a monument for the first time to embellish his district; he has sculptured his name for ever; he has embellished it for ever by his chamber of Karneter; he has sculptured the names of his household; he has assigned their place. The workmen, those attached to his house, he has reckoned amongst his dependants of all ranks." [Birch, Records of the Past, vol. xii. p. 67.—Ed.] It was, no doubt, in order to conform to the Egyptian custom that Antony and Cleopatra commenced in their lifetime that tomb which Augustus ordered to be finished after their death (Suetonius, Augustus, 17). "To be laid to rest in the tomb which he had made for himself and furnished with every necessary was the greatest good which the gods could insure to an Egyptian. In Papyrus IV. at Boulak we find the following phrases: 'Be found with thy dwelling finished in the funerary valley: in every enterprise which thou meditatest may the morning when thy body shall be hid be present to thee.'" (From the French of M. Maspero, Journal asiatique, 7th series, t. xv. p. 165, note 1.)
[158] Briefe aus Ægypten, p. 23 et seq. Before the Prussian commission left Middle for Upper Egypt they had studied 130 private tombs, of which the principal ones are figured in the Denkmæler.
[159] Lexicographers do not seem to know the origin of this word; they believe it to be foreign, perhaps Persian.
[160] Vol. xix. (1869), pp. 1-22 and 81-89.
[161] Ebers (Ægypten, p. 137) gives this necropolis a length of more than forty-five miles, but in making it extend to Meidoum he seems to be exaggerating.
[162] Upon the plateau which, at Sakkarah, extends westwards of the stepped pyramid the manner in which the necropolis was developed can be readily seen. In walking eastwards, that is, from the pyramid towards the cultivated land, we pass a first zone of tombs which date from the Ancient Empire, a second which possesses sculptures of the twenty-sixth dynasty, and a third which dates from the Greek period.
[163] We may quote as an interesting example of such usurpation the Theban tomb first opened by a Scottish traveller, Henry Rhind, to whose interesting work (Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants, Ancient and Present, with a Record of Excavations in the Necropolis, Longman, 1862, 8vo.) we shall often have to refer. This tomb seems to have been made in the reign of Amenophis III. by a brother and sister whose statues were found in it, but it also contained Sebau, son of Menkara, a high official of the time of the Ptolemies, with his wife and all his family (c. iv.).
[164] Mariette (Voyage dans la haute Égypte, p. 32) thought that the word Sakkarah was an ancient name derived from Socharis, a Memphite form of Osiris.
[165] The way in which the mastabas were arranged with respect to each other is well shown in plates xiv. and xviii. of Lepsius's first volume (map of the pyramids of Gizeh and panorama taken from the summit of the second pyramid).
[166] The general aspect of this city of the dead, and the regularity of its monuments, made a great impression upon the members of the "Institut d'Égypte." The following are the words of Jomard (Description, vol. v. p. 619): "From the top of the building one sees an infinite quantity of the long rectangular structures extending almost to the Pyramids. They are carefully oriented, and exactly aligned one with another. I counted fourteen rows of them, in each direction, on the west of the Great Pyramid, and as many on the east, making nearly four hundred in all. The sand under which many of them are buried leaves their forms easily distinguishable." Since the time of Jomard many of the mastabas have been changed by the excavations into mere formless heaps of débris, and yet the general arrangement can still be clearly followed.
[167] One of these exceptions is furnished by the tomb of Ti, of which we shall often have to speak ([Fig. 114]). The large public hall near the entrance to the tomb was separated from the two chambers farther in by a corridor closed at two points by doors, some remains of which were found in place when the tomb was opened.
[168] This is a word of Persian origin adopted by the Arabs. Its strict meaning is a dark subterranean opening, cave, or passage.
[169] The tomb of Ti had two serdabs as well as three chambers; one of these was close to the door, the other in the innermost part of the mastaba. In the latter several statues of Ti were found, the best preserved being now in the museum at Boulak.
[170] In a Theban tomb described by M. Maspero (Étude sur quelques Peintures funéraires) the tenant, Harmhabi, is made to speak thus: "I have come, I have received my bread; joining the embalmed offerings to my members, I have breathed the scent of the perfumes and incense." It is also possible that this conduit may have been intended to permit of the free circulation of the double, to allow it to pass from its supporting statues to the chapel in which it is honoured. This curious idea, that the spirit of the dead can pass through a very small hole, but that it cannot dispense with an opening altogether, is found among many nations. The Iroquois contrived an opening of very small diameter in their tombs, through which the soul of the dead could pass and repass. See Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, vol. i. p. 192.
[171] There is an example of this in a mastaba at Gizeh (Fig. 120). See No. 95 of Lepsius (Denkmæler, vol. i. p. 29; vol. iii. pl. 44).
[172] This figure is a composition by Mariette for the purpose of showing the relation between the subterranean and constructed parts of the tomb. (Notice des principaux Monuments, p. 22.) [It shows, however, the well opening from the floor of the upper chamber, an arrangement which is not characteristic of the mastaba.—Ed.]
[173] The broken up and decayed remains of wooden boats have been found in two or three mummy pits (Mariette, Les Tombes de l'Ancien Empire, p. 17). They originally formed part, perhaps, of the boats upon which the corpse was transported across the Nile to the nearest point of the western bank to the tomb. There can be no doubt that, in placing them in the well, the survivors believed that they were serving the deceased. Both the bas-reliefs in the tomb and the Ritual contain many representations of the soul navigating the regions of Ament (see the upper section of [Fig. 98]). In certain Theban tombs, models of fully rigged boats have been found; there are some of them in the Louvre (Salle Civile, case K). [There are two in the British Museum, and one, a very fine one, in the museum at Liverpool.—Ed.]
[174] Description de l'Égypte, vol. v. p. 647, and Atlas, Ant. vol. v. pl. 16, Figs. 3, 4, and 5.
[175] History of Egypt (English version, Murray, 1879), vol. i. pp. 72, 73.
[176] Fialin de Persigny, De la Destination et de l'Utilité permanente des Pyramides d'Égypte et de Nubie contre les Irruptions sablonneuses du Désert, Développements du Mémoire adressé à l'Académie des Sciences le 14 Juillet, 1844, suivie d'une nouvelle interprétation de la Fable d'Osiris et d'Isis. Paris, 1845, gr. in-8.
[177] Herodotus, ii. 127.
[178] Diodorus, l. 64, 4.
[179] Strabo, xvii. p. 1161, C.
[180] Mariette, Itinéraire de la Haute-Égypte, pp. 96, 97. [An excellent translation of this work into English, by M. Alphonse Mariette, has been published (Trübner, 1877, 8vo.)—Ed.]
[181] The existence of the passage leading to the mummy chamber was not unknown to Strabo. He says: "Very nearly at the middle of their sides, as to height, the pyramids had a stone which could be moved away; when this is done, a winding passage appears, which leads to the coffin" (xvii. p. 1161, C).
[182] This pyramid was opened on February 28, 1881. Circumstantial accounts of the discoveries to which it led have not yet been published. The Moniteur Égyptien of March 15, 1881, contains a short account of the opening. [Since this note was written, a full account of the entrance and exploration of this pyramid, together with the texts discovered, has been published by M. Maspero in the Recueil de Travaux, vol. iii. liv. 3 and 4, 1882.—Ed.]
[183] Vyse (Howard), Operations carried on at the Pyramids of Gizeh in 1837, with an Account of a Voyage into Upper Egypt, and an Appendix. (London, 1840, 3 vols. 8vo.)
[184] Perring (J. L.), The Pyramids of Gizeh, from Actual Survey and Admeasurement, illustrated by Notes and References to the Several Plans, with Sketches taken on the Spot by J. Andrews. (3 parts, large oblong folio. London, 1839-42.)
[185] The base of the great pyramid at Sakkarah is a rectangle, measuring 390 feet from north to south, and 347 from east to west. The three great pyramids at Gizeh like most of these structures, are built upon a base which is practically square.
[186] Mariette, Itinéraire de la Haute-Égypte, p. 96.
[187] This method of construction may be easily recognized in the Pyramid of Meidoum. That curious structure was built in concentric layers round a nucleus. These layers are by no means equal in the excellence either of the workmanship or of the materials employed. Some show supreme negligence; in others we find the builders of the Ancient Empire and their materials both at their best. The same fact has been observed in regard to the Stepped Pyramid and the pyramids at Abousir. It would seem that the work was assigned in sections to different corvées, whose consciences varied greatly in elasticity. (Mariette, Voyage de la Haute-Égypte, p. 45.)
[188] Lepsius, Briefe aus Ægypten, pp. 41, 42 (in speaking of the Pyramid of Meidoum, from which he received the first hint of this explanation). See also his paper entitled Ueber den Bau der Pyramiden, in the Monatsbericht of the Berlin Academy, 1843, pp. 177-203.
[189] Ægypten, First part, 1878, p. 341.
[190] It has been suggested by Mr. Cope Whitehouse that the nucleus of rock under the great pyramids was originally much more important than is commonly supposed. During his expedition in March, 1882, he ascertained that a profile from the Mokattam across the Nile valley into the western desert would present the contours shown in the annexed woodcut. He concludes that a large part of the material of those pyramids was obtained upon their sites, and quarried above the level at which the stones were finally placed. He cites Herodotus (ii. 125) as conveying in an imperfect form the tradition that the pyramids were "constructed from above."
[191] The weight of this stopper is about four tons, and it has long been a puzzle to egyptologists how it, and others like it, could be raised and lowered. M. Perrot's words must not, therefore, be taken too literally.—Ed.
[192] Arthur Rhoné, L'Égypte à petites Journées, p. 259.
[193] There are other stepped pyramids besides that at Sakkarah. Jomard describes one of crude and much crumbled brick at Dashour. It is, he says, about 140 feet high. Its height is divided into five stages, each being set back about 11 feet behind the one below. These steps are often found, he adds, among the southern pyramids, and there is one example of such construction at Gizeh. (Description de l'Égypte, vol. x., p. 5.) At Matarieh, between Sakkarah and Meidoum, there is a pyramid with a double slope like that at Dashour.
[194] Fig. 5 of his paper, Ueber den Bau der Pyramiden.
[195] Fig. 8 of his paper, Ueber den Bau der Pyramiden.
[196] Voyage au Temple de Jupiter Amman et dans la Haute-Égypte. (Berlin, 1824, 4to. and folio; Pl. xxvii. Fig. 3.)
[197] Bædeker, Egypt, part i. 1878. The pages dealing with the monumental remains were edited in great part by Professor Ebers.
[198] Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, vol. i. p. 45.
[199] Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, vol. i. p. 34.
[200] Lepsius, Denkmæler, part i. pl. 94. Rhind, Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants, p. 45. Mariette, Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, vol. ii. p. 80.
[201] Thus the Great Pyramid was 482 feet high, while the length of one side at the base is 764 feet. On the other hand, the "third pyramid" at Gebel-Barkal (Napata) is 35 feet square at the base and 60 feet high; the "fifth" is 39 feet square at the base and nearly 50 feet high. Their proportions are not constant, but the height of the Nubian pyramids is always far greater than the length of one side at its base.
[202] Herodotus, ii. 124.
[203] Du Barry de Merval, Études sur l'Architecture Égyptienne, pp. 129, 130.
[204] The discovery of these chambers was interesting from another point of view. The name of Choufou was found continually repeated upon the blocks of which they are formed. It was written in red ochre, and, in places, it was upside down, thus proving that it must have been written before the stones were put in place. It cannot therefore have been traced after the tradition which assigned the pyramid to Cheops, that is, to Khoufou, arose; and so it affords conclusive corroboration of the statements of Herodotus.
[205] This is no exaggeration. Jomard expresses himself to the same effect almost in the same terms. (Description de l'Égypte, vol. v. p. 628.)
[206] The extremity of this gallery appears on the right of Fig. 152.
[207] The presence of this lining in the "Queen's Chamber" also led to its being dubbed a funerary chamber, for no trace of a sarcophagus was found in it. If we had any reason to believe that the pyramid was built in successive wedges, we should look upon this as a provisional chamber, made before it was certain that the pyramid would attain its present dimensions. As the work went on, it would be decided that another, larger, and better defended chamber should be built. In this case the first may never have been used, and may always have been as empty as it is now.
[208] These observations are to be found in one of the early works of Letronne. Their presence is in no way hinted at by the title, which is: Recherches Géographiques et Critiques sur le Livre 'De mensura orbis terræ' (8vo. 1844). The treatise, Περὶ τῶν ἑπτὰ θεαμάτων, may have been written either by Philo of Heraclea or Philo of Byzantium. They both belonged to the third century before our era, but the bombastic style and numerous errors incline us to believe that the little work must have been from the pen of some unknown rhetorician of a later date.
[209] These are the words of Philo, which we have translated rather freely:— Ποικίλαι δὲ καὶ πορφυραὶ λίθων φύσεις ἀλλήλαις ἐπιδεδόμεναι, καὶ τὰ μέν ἐστιν ἡ πέτρα λευκὴ καὶ μαρμαρίτης· τῇ δὲ Αἰθιοπικὴ καὶ μέλαινα καὶ μετὰ ταύτην ὁ καλούμενος αἱματίτης λιθος· εἶτα ποικίλος καὶ διάχλωρος ἀπὸ τῆς Ἀραβίας κεκομισμένος, p. 2,259, A.
[210] According to the calculations of Letronne, the Great Pyramid must have been 482 feet high when it was complete. In the time of Diodorus it was slightly over 480 feet; in that of Abd-ul-Latif it measured 477 feet 3 inches. In 1795 it was only 456 feet and a few inches, so that it lost about 24 feet in the course of eighteen centuries. This lowering of the summit was mainly caused by the destruction and removal of the outer casing. Since it disappeared the Arabs have been in the habit of loosening the stones on the top and launching them down the sides for the amusement of travellers; the smooth casing alone could prevent such outrage as this. The common idea that the Pyramid of Cheops is the highest building in the world is erroneous. Even if we take its height when complete, it is surpassed by at least two modern buildings, as may be seen by the following table of the most lofty buildings now existing:—
| Feet. | |
| Spires of Cologne Cathedral | 533 |
| Flèche of the Cathedral at Rouen | 500 |
| Spire of St. Nicholas, Hamburg | 480 |
| Dome of St. Peter's, Rome | 476 |
| Spire of Strasbourg Cathedral | 473 |
| Pyramid of Cheops | 456 |
| Spire of St. Stephen's, Vienna | 450 |
| Spire of St. Martin's, Landshut | 443 |
| Spire of the Cathedral of Freiburg, Breisgau | 417 |
| Spire of Antwerp Cathedral, not including the cross | 411 |
| Spire of Salisbury Cathedral | 404 |
| Dome of Cathedral at Florence | 396 |
| Dome of St. Paul's, London | 371 |
| Flèche of Milan Cathedral | 363 |
| Tower of Magdeburg Cathedral | 344 |
| Victoria Tower, Westminster | 336 |
| Rathhaus Tower, Berlin | 293 |
| Spire of Trinity Church, New York | 287 |
| Pantheon, Paris | 266 |
| Towers of Nôtre Dame, Paris | 226 |
[211] Diodorus, i. 63, 64.
[212] Herodotus, ii. 49.
[213] M. Maspero has given in the Annuaire de l'Association pour l'Encouragement des Études Grecques and elsewhere, several extracts from a commentary upon the second book of Herodotus, which we should like to see published in its entirety. We may point out more particularly his remarks upon the text of the Greek historian in the matter of the 1,600 talents of silver which, he says, was the value of the onions, radishes, and garlic consumed by the workmen employed upon the Great Pyramid (ii. 125). He has no difficulty in showing that Herodotus made a mistake, for which he gives an ingenious and probable explanation. (Annuaire de 1875, p. 16.)
[214] Herodotus, ii. 148. Diodorus (l. 89) speaks of the same and Strabo, who also appears to have seen it, asserts its funerary character (p. 1165, C). He says it was four plethra (393 feet) both in width and height. This last dimension is obviously exaggerated, because in all the Egyptian pyramids that are known to us the shortest diameter of the base is far in excess of the height.
[215] If the passage in which Herodotus makes the statement here referred to be taken in connection with the remarks of Diodorus, a probable explanation of the old historian's assertion may be arrived at. Diodorus says that the king ὀρύττων τάυτην (λίμνην sub.) κατέλιπεν ἐν μἑσῃ τόπον, ἐν ᾧ τάφον ᾠκοδόμησε καὶ δύο πυραμίδας, τὴν μὲν ἑαυτοῦ, τὴν δὲ τῆς γυναικός, σταδιαίας τὸ ὕψος. By this it would appear that, in excavating the bed, or a part of the bed, of the famous lake, a mass of earth was left in order to bear future witness to the depth of the excavation and the general magnitude of the work. This mass would probably be reveted with stone, and, in order that even when surrounded and almost hidden by water, its significance should not be lost, the pyramids raised upon it were made exactly equal to it in height.—Ed.
[216] Notice sommaire des Monuments Égyptiens exposés dans les Galeries du Louvre (4th edition, 1865, p. 56).
[217] Ἐξεποιήθη δ' ὦν τὰ ἀνώτατα αὐτῆς πρῶτα, μετὰ δὲ τὰ ἑπόμενα τούτων ἐξεποίευν ... (ii. 125).
[218] Σύναρμον δὲ καὶ κατεξεσμένον τὸ πᾶν ἔργον, ὥστε δοκεῖν ὅλου τοῦ κατασκευάσματος μίαν εἶναι πέτρας συμφυίαν, p. 2,259, A. So, too, the elder Pliny, though with rather less precision: "Est autem saxo naturali elaborata et lubrica" (Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 12).
[219] According to Jomard, the casing stones of the Great Pyramid were "a compact grey limestone, harder and more homogeneous than those of the body of the building" (Description de l'Égypte, t. v. p. 640); but according to Philo, this casing was formed, as we have already said, of various materials, so we need feel no surprise if blocks of granite or other rock are shown to have formed part of it.
[220] Journal des Savants, August, 1841.
[221] Bædeker, Egypt, part i. p. 338 (ed. of 1878). Herodotus (ii. 127) says that the first course of the Great Pyramid was built of a parti-coloured Ethiopian stone (ὑποδείμας τὸν πρῶτον δόμον λίθου Αἰθιοπικοῦ ποικίλου). By Ethiopian stone we must understand, as several illustrations prove, the granite of Syene. The Greek historian seems to have thought that the whole of the first course, throughout the thickness of the pyramid, was of this stone. His mistake was a natural one. In his time the pyramid was in a good state of preservation, and he never thought of asking whether or no the core was of the same material as the outer case.
[222] On the other hand, these awkwardly shaped prisms offered less inducement to those who looked upon the pyramids as open quarries than the easily squared blocks of Cheops, while their position in the angles of the internal masonry enabled them to keep their places independently of the lower courses of the casing.—Ed.
[223] The determination to use a concrete such as that described affords a good reason for the prismatic shape of the granite blocks used in the lower courses. It would evidently be easy enough to cover the pyramid with a coat of cement—working downwards—if its surface did not greatly overpass the salient angles of the steps, while the difficulty would be enormously increased if the coat were to have a considerable thickness of its own independently of the pyramid, like the casing shown in [Fig. 155].—Ed.
[224] Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités, vol. v. p. 7.
[225] G. Charmes, in the Journal des Débats, February 8, 1881.
[226] Moniteur Égyptien, March 15, 1881.
[227] The causeway which led to the Pyramid of Cheops still exists for some 400 yards of its length; here and there it rises as much as eighty-six feet above the surface of the plateau. A similar causeway is to be distinguished on the eastern side of the Third Pyramid. At Abou-Roash, at Abousir, and elsewhere, similar remains are to be found.
[228] Description de l'Égypte, vol. v. p. 643. See also in the plates, Antiquités, vol. v. Pl. xvi. Fig. 2. According to Jomard, the surbase of the second pyramid was in two parts—a stylobate, 10 feet high and 5 feet thick, and a plinth about 3 feet high.
[229] Herodotus, ii. 126.
[230] Jomard remarks that the upper part of the second pyramid still reflects the rays of the sun. "It still possesses," he says, "a portion of its polished casing, which reflects the rays of the sun and declares its identity to people at a vast distance."
[231] Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités, vol. v. p. 597.
[232] Pseudo-Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, c. xx. M. Maspero finds, however, no confirmation of this statement in the monuments themselves. "All the tombs which have yet been discovered at Abydos," he says (Revue Critique, January 31, 1881), "are those of Egyptians domiciled at Abydos. But the author from whom this Plutarch derived his inspiration must have known the ancient fiction according to which the soul could only pass into the next world by betaking itself to Abydos, and thence through the opening to the west of that town which gave access to the regions of Ament. Hence the voyage of the dead to Abydos which we find so often represented on tombs; an imaginary voyage, as the mummy would be reposing safely at Thebes or Memphis ([Fig. 159]). At all events, the family, after the death of its head, or any Egyptian during his own life, could deposit upon the ladder of Osiris a stele, upon which the tomb actually containing his body could be represented and unmistakably identified with its original by the formula inscribed upon it."
[233] Mariette, Abydos, Description des Fouilles exécutées sur l'Emplacement de cette Ville, folio, vol. i. 1869; vol. ii. 1880. Mariette thought that the sacred tomb was probably in the immediate neighbourhood of the artificial mound called Koum-es-Soultan, which may cover its very site. In the article which we quote above, M. Maspero has set forth the considerations which lead him to think that the staircase of Osiris, upon which the consecrated steles were placed, was the flight of steps which led up to the temple of that god. Consequently the tomb of Osiris, at Abydos as at Denderah, would be upon the roof of his temple.
[234] Mariette, Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, vol. i. 1879.
[235] Ibidem.
[236] All these steles are figured in the last work published by Mariette, the Catalogue général des Monuments d'Abydos, découverts pendant les Fouilles de cette Ville, 1 vol. 4to. Paris, 1880.
[237] Mariette, Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, vol. i. p. 51.
[238] Maspero, Rapport sur une Mission en Italie (in the Recueil de Travaux, vol. ii. p. 166). The Abbott Papyrus gives a list of these little pyramids.
[239] [Fig. 172] reproduces only a part of the long plate given in Wilkinson. In order to bring the more important groups within the scope of one page, we have been compelled to omit the central portion, which consists principally of columns of hieroglyphs.
[240] See the description of the Valley of the Kings in the Lettres d'Égypte et de Nubie of Champollion (p. 183 of the second edition).
[241] Ebers, indeed, found something of the same kind in the temple of Abydos. He found there a cenotaph consecrated to his own memory by Seti I. This cenotaph was near the tomb of Osiris, while the king himself was buried in the Theban necropolis. (Ægypten, pp. 234, 235.)
[242] The beautiful little temple of Dayr-el-Medinet, begun by Ptolemy Philopator and finished by his successors, especially by Physco, has often been considered a funerary monument. It is alleged that the situation of the temple in the necropolis, and the nature of the subjects represented in the interior, particularly in the Western Chamber, prove that it was so. If we accept this opinion, we must look upon the temple as a mere freak of fancy, suggested to Ptolemy Philopator by a journey to Thebes. The Greek prince was interred far from it, and it could have formed no part of his tomb.
[243] Mariette, Deir-el-Bahari, § 1. (Atlas, folio, Leipsic, 1877, with 40 pages letterpress, 4to.)
[244] Diodorus, i. §§ 47-49.
[245] This must have been the structure which Strabo calls the Memnonium, and near to which he seems to place the two colossi (xvii. p. 816). The true name of the author of both temple and colossi might easily be confused with that of the mythical Greek personage which the Hellenic imagination persisted in discovering everywhere in Egypt, and the similarity of sound must have helped to perpetuate the mistake among all the foreign travellers who visited the country. A curious passage in Pausanias (Attica, 42) shows us, however, that the Egyptian scholars of his time knew how properly to convey the name of the prince represented in the colossi to foreigners: "I was less struck by that marvel," he says, in speaking of some sonorous stone which was shown to him at Megara, "than by a colossal statue which I saw beyond the Nile in Egypt, not far from the pipes. This colossus is a statue of the sun, or of Memnon, according to the common tradition. It is said that Memnon came from Ethiopia into Egypt, and that he penetrated as far as Susa. But the Thebans themselves deny that it is Memnon. They declare that it represents Phamenoph (Φάμενοφ), who was born in their own country...." The story told by Philostratus (Life of Apollonius, l. vi. p. 232) of the visit of the sorcerer to Memnon, shows that in his time the colossus was surrounded by nothing but ruins, such as broken columns and architraves, fragmentary walls and shattered statues. Even then the monumental completeness of the "Amenophium" had vanished.
[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.)
[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."
[250] Belzoni, Narrative of Operations, &c., pp. 233 et seq.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.)
[258] Recueil de Travaux, vol. i. pp. 155-159.
[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).
[262] A. Rhoné, l'Égypt à petites journées, p. 104.
[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.
[266] Athenæum Français, 1855, p. 55 (Renseignements sur les soixante quatre Apis trouvés dans le Sérapeum de Memphis).
[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.
[269] Rhind, Thebes, etc. pp. 56, 57.
[270] Rhind, Thebes, etc. p. 55.
[271] Maspero, Recueil de Travaux, vol. ii. p. 105. The formula which is generally found upon the funerary steles of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties hints at this: "That I may walk daily upon the border of my fountain; that my soul may rest upon the branches of the funerary garden which has been made for me, that each day I may be out under my sycamore!" These desires may be taken literally, as is proved by two steles in the museums of Turin and Boulak, which bear representations of tombs upon their lower portions. The latter, which we reproduce, comes from the Theban necropolis.
[272] Most of these statues were of calcareous stone, but in the Description de l'Égypte (Antiquités, vol. iii. p. 34) two granite ones are mentioned.
[273] In the tomb of Amenemheb, for instance, discovered by Professor Ebers. See also Description de l'Égypte, vol. iii. p. 41.
[274] Description de l'Égypte (Antiquités, vol. iii. p. 34).
[275] It is no part of our plan to describe this discovery, which did so much honour both to the perspicacity and the energy of Mariette. We refer all those who are interested in the matter to the article contributed by M. E. Desjardins to the Revue des Deux-Mondes of March 15, 1874, under the title: Les Découvertes de l'Égyptologie française, les Missions et les Travaux de M. Mariette. Many precious details will also be found, some of them almost dictated by Mariette, in the L'Égypte à petites Journeés of M. Arthur Rhoné (pp. 212-263). This work includes two plans, a general plan and a detailed plan of the subterranean galleries, which were supplied by the illustrious author of the excavations himself; views of the galleries are also given, and reproductions of various objects found in the course of the exploration. We may also mention the Choix des Monuments du Sérapéum, a collection of ten engraved plates published by Mariette, and the great work, unfortunately incomplete, which he commenced under the title: Le Sérapéum de Memphis (folio, Paris, Gide, 1858). In the second volume of Fouilles et Découvertes (Didier, 8vo., 1873, 2 vols.) Beulé has given a very good description of the bold but fortunate campaign which, begun in the month of October, 1850, brought fame to a young man who had, until then, both open enmity and secret intrigue to contend against.
[276] Herodotus, ii. 169. "The Egyptians strangled Apries, but, having done so, they buried him in the sepulchre of his fathers. This tomb is in the temple of Athenè (Neith), very near the sanctuary, on the left hand as one enters. The natives of Sais buried all the kings which belonged to their nome within this temple, and, in fact, it also contains the tomb of Amasis, as well as that of Apries and his family, but the former is not so close to the sanctuary as the former, but still it is within the buildings of the temple, in a large chamber constructed of stone, with columns in the shape of the trunks of palm-trees, and richly decorated besides, which incloses a kind of niche or shrine with folding doors, in which the mummy is placed." This is one of the most difficult passages in Herodotus, and has given much trouble to translators and commentators. See Larcher's note (ii. 565), and the passage in Stobæus (serm. xli. p. 251), which he cites in justification for the sense which is here given to the word θυρώματα. Strabo is content with but a line on this subject: "Sais," he says, "especially worships Athenè (Neith). The tomb of Psammitichos is in the very temple of that goddess" (xvii. 18).
[277] Herodotus affirms (ii. 129-132) that Mycerinus caused the body of his daughter to be inclosed in the flank of a wooden cow, richly gilt, and he says that "the cow in question was never placed in the earth." In his time it was exposed to the view of all comers in a magnificently decorated saloon of the royal palace of Sais. We may be allowed to suggest that Herodotus was mistaken in the name of the prince; Mycerinus is not likely to have so far abandoned all the funerary traditions of his time, or to have entombed the body of his daughter in a spot so distant from his own pyramid at Gizeh. There is one hypothesis, however, which may save us from the necessity of once again accusing the Greek historian of misunderstanding what was said to him; in their desire to weld together the present with the past, and to collect into their capital such national monuments as might appeal to the imaginations of their subjects, the Sait princes may have transported such a curiously shaped sarcophagus either from the pyramid of Mycerinus or from some small pyramid in its neighbourhood.
[278] Herodotus, iii. 16. Upon this subject see an interesting article by M. Eugène Revillout, entitled: Le Roi Amasis et les mercenaires Grecs, selon les Donnés d'Hérodote et les Renseignements de la Chronique Démotique de Paris. (Revue Égyptologique, first year; p. 50 et seq.)
[279] There are two passages in Herodotus (ii. 91, and 138) from which we may infer that the Egyptians were fond of planting trees about their temples.
[280] Lettres Écrites d'Égypte et de Nubie, 2nd edition, 1868, p. 41.
[281] Similar structures exist in lower Chaldæa, and have furnished many inscriptions of great interest and value to assyriologists.
[282] Rhind, Thebes, etc. p. 51. Belzoni, Narrative of the Operations, etc. p. 167.
[283] Rhind, p. 52. Among the mummified animals found at Thebes, Wilkinson also mentions monkeys, sheep, cows, cats, crocodiles, etc. See Belzoni, Narrative, p. 187.
[284] When Mariette discovered the tomb of the Apis which had died in the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Rameses II., the fingers of the Egyptian mason who laid the last stone of the wall built across the entrance to the tomb were found marked upon the cement, and "when I entered the sarcophagus-chamber I found upon the thin layer of dust which covered the floor the marks made by the naked feet of the workmen who had placed the god in his last resting place 3,200 years before." (Quoted by Rhôné in L'Égypte à Petites Journées, p. 239.)
[285] We may take a few of those in the Boulak Museum at random: Ra-Hotep (No. 590), Hathor-En-Khéou (588), Ra-Nefer (23), Ra-Our (25), Sokar-Kha-Ca-u (993), Noum-Hotep (26), Hathor-Nefer (41), Ptah-Asses (500), Ptah-Hotep, &c. The names of several deities are to be found in the inscription upon the wooden coffin or mummy-case of Mycerinus, now in the British Museum. (Maspero, Histoire Ancienne, p. 75). A priest of Apis is mentioned upon a tomb of the fourth dynasty; Osiris is invoked in the steles of the sixth dynasty. (Boulak Catalogue, No. 41.)
Amen, or Ammon, is never mentioned on the monuments of the Ancient Empire; his first appearance is contemporary with the twelfth dynasty. (Grébault, Hymne à Ammon-Ra, Introduction, part iii. p. 136.) This is natural enough. Amen was a Theban god, and Thebes does not seem to have existed in the time of the Ancient Empire.
[286] Notice des principaux Monuments exposés dans les Galeries provisoires du Musée d' ntiquités Égyptiennes à Boulak. (Edition of 1876, No. 582.)
[287] The total height of the Sphinx is 66 feet; the ear is 6 feet 4 inches high; the nose is 6 feet, the mouth 7 feet 9 inches, wide. The greatest width of the face across the cheeks is 14 feet 2 inches. If cleared entirely of sand the Sphinx would thus be higher than a five-storied house. For the history of the Sphinx, the different restorations which it has undergone, and the aspect which it has presented at different epochs, see Mariette, Questions relatives aux nouvelles Fouilles. Our plan ([Fig. 204]) shows the wide flight of steps which was constructed in the time of Trajan to give access to a landing constructed immediately in front of the fore-paws. Between these paws a little temple was contrived, where the steles consecrated by several of the Theban kings in honour of the Sphinx were arranged. Caviglia was the first to bring all these matters to light, in 1817, but the ensemble, as it now exists, only dates back to the Roman epoch. It is curious that neither Herodotus, nor Diodorus, nor Strabo, mention the Sphinx. Pliny speaks of it (N. H. xxxvi. 17); some of the information which he obtained was valuable and authentic, but it was mixed with errors; it was said to be, he tells us, the tomb of the king Armais, but he knows that the whole figure was painted red. The Denkmæler of Lepsius (vol. i. pl. 30) gives three sections and a plan of the little temple between the paws. The same work (vol. v. pl. 68) contains a reproduction of the great stele of Thothmes relative to the restoration of the Sphinx.
[288] Champollion, Lettres d'Égypte et de Nubie, pp. 125, 143, and 166. Under both the temples at Ombos, Champollion discovered remains of a building of the time of Thothmes III. The same thing occurred at Edfou and at Esneh. We except Philæ, because there is good reason to believe that in the time of the Ancient Empire that island did not exist, and that the cataract was then at Silsilis.
[289] Strabo, xvii. 128: Οὐδὲν ἔχει χαρίεν ὀυδὲ γραφικόν, etc.
[290] Lucian, § 3: Ἀξοάνοι νηοί, etc.
[291] The piers are not quite equidistant; their spacing varies by some centimetres. Exact symmetry has been sacrificed in consequence of the different lengths of the stones which formed the architrave.
[292] Mariette, Questions relatives aux nouvelles Fouilles à faire en Égypte. (Académie des Inscriptions, Comptes Rendus des Séances de l'Année, 1877, pp. 427-473.)
[293] Itinéraire des Invités du Vice-roi, p. 99.
[294] Bædeker, Guide to Lower Egypt, p. 350.
[295] The actual distance is about 670 yards.
[296] Mariette, Questions relatives aux nouvelles Fouilles, etc.
[297] Description de l'Égypte, Ant., vol. v. p. 654.
[298] Belzoni, Narrative of the Operations, etc. pp. 261-2.
[299] The little that now remains of the columns and foundations of the ancient temple is marked in the plan which forms plate 6 of Mariette's Karnak, Fig. a. In plate 8 the remains of all statues and inscriptions which date from the same period are figured. See also pages 36, 37, and 41-45 of the text.
[300] Mariette, Karnak, p. 4.
[301] We may infer from what Mariette says that they were separated from one another by a distance of 12 feet 4 inches.
[302] Mariette, Karnak, p. 5. We find, however, that sphinxes were sometimes placed in the interior of a temple. The two fine sphinxes in rose granite which form the chief ornaments of the principal court of the Boulak museum, were found in one of the inner halls of the temple at Karnak. They date, probably, from the time of Thothmes III., to whom this part of the building owes its existence.
[303] Description, etc.; Description générale de Thèbes, section viii. § 1.
[304] The wall of the principal inclosure at Denderah, that on the north, is not less than 33 feet high, and between 30 and 40 thick at the base. Its surface is perfectly smooth and naked, without ornament of any kind, or even rough-cast. (Mariette, Denderah, p. 27.) At Karnak the bounding walls are in a much worse state of preservation; they are ten or twelve centuries older than those of Denderah, and those centuries have had their effect upon the masses of crude brick. Our only means of estimating their original height is by comparing, in the representations furnished to us by certain bas-reliefs, the height of walls with that of the pylons on which they abut.
[305] Mariette, Karnak, pp. 5, 6.
[306] The word πυλών strictly means the place before the door (like θυρών), or rather great door (upon the augmentative force of the suffix ών, ῶνος, see Ad. Regnier, Traité de la Formation des Mots dans la Langue Grecque, § 184). Several passages in Polybius (Thesaurus, s. v.) show that in the military language of his time the term was employed to signify a fortified doorway with its flanking towers and other defences. We may therefore understand why Diodorus (i. 47) made use of it in his description of the so-called tomb of Osymandias. Strabo (xvii. 1, 28) preferred to use the word πρόπυλων. Modern usage has restricted the word propylœum to Greek buildings, and pylon to the great doorways which form one of the most striking features of Egyptian architecture.
[307] We learn the part played by these masts and banners in Egyptian decoration entirely from the representations in the bas-reliefs. The façade of the temple of Khons is illustrated in one of the bas-reliefs upon the same building. That relief was reproduced in the Description de l'Égypte (vol. iii. pl. 57, Fig. 9), and is so well known that we refrained from giving it in these pages. It shows the masts and banners in all their details. Another representation of the same kind will be found in Cailliaud, Voyage à Méroé, plates, vol. ii. pl. 64, Fig. 1. See in the text, vol. iii. p. 298. It is taken from a rock-cut tomb between Dayr-el-Medinet and Medinet-Abou.
[308] This plate ([v].) is not a picturesque restoration; it is merely a map in relief. Only those buildings are marked upon it which have left easily traceable remains. No attempt has been made to reconstruct by conjecture any of those edifices which are at present nothing but confused heaps of débris.
[309] The obelisk of Ousourtesen at Heliopolis is 20·27 metres, or 67 feet 6 inches, high; the Luxor obelisk at Paris, 22·80 metres, or 76 feet; that in the piazza before St. Peter's in Rome, 83 feet 9 inches; that of San Giovanni Laterano, the tallest in Europe, is 107 feet 2 inches; and that of Queen Hatasu, still standing amid the ruins at Karnak, 32·20 metres, or 107 feet 4 inches. This is the highest obelisk known. [The Cleopatra's Needle on the Victoria Embankment is only 68 feet 2 inches high.—Ed.]
[310] At Thebes, still existing inscriptions prove this to be the case, and at Memphis the same custom obtained, as we know from the statements of the Greek travellers. The temple of Ptah—the site of which seems to be determined by the colossal statue of Rameses which still lies there upon its face—must have rivalled Karnak in extent and in the number of its successive additions. According to Diodorus (i. 50) it was Mœris (Amenemhat III.) who built the southern propylons of this temple, which, according to the same authority, surpassed all their rivals in magnificence. At a much later period, Sesostris (a Rameses) erected several colossal monoliths, from 20 to 30 cubits high, in front of the same temple (Diodorus, cap. lvii.; Herodotus, ii. 140); at the same time he must have raised obelisks and constructed courts and pylons. Herodotus attributes to two other kings, whom he names Rhampsinite and Asychis, the construction of two more pylons on the eastern and western sides of the temple (ii. 121 and 136). Finally Psemethek I. built the southern propylons and the pavilion where the Apis was nursed after his first discovery. (Herodotus, ii. 153.)
[311] Strabo, xvii, 1, 28.
[312] This is the temple which the members of the Egyptian institute call the Great Southern Temple. In the background of our illustration ([Fig. 208]) the hypostyle hall and the southern pylons of the Great Temple are seen.
[313] Τοῦ δὲ προνάου παρ' ἑκάτερον πρόκειται τὰ λεγόμενα πτερά· ἔστι δὲ ταῦτα ἰσοΰψη τῷ ναῷ τείχη δύο, κατ' ἀρχὰς μὲν ἀφεστῶτα ἀπ' ἀλλήλων μικρὸν πλέον, ἢ τὸ πλάτος ἐστὶ τῆς κρηπῖδος τοῦ νεώ, ἔπειτ' εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν προϊόντι κατ' ἐπινευούσας γραμμὰς μέχρι πηχῶν πεντήκοντα ἢ ἑξήκοντα.—Strabo, xvii, 1, 28.
[314] Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités, vol. i. pl. 5.
[315] Description de l'Égypte, vol. iii. 55.
[316] According to Gau, there was, in 1817, a well preserved tabernacle in the sanctuary of the temple at Debout, in Nubia. (Antiquités de la Nubie, 1821, pl. v. Figs. A and B.)
[317] De Rougé, Notice des Monuments, etc. (Upon the ground floor and the staircase.) Monuments Divers, No. 29. The term naos has generally been applied to these monuments, but it seems to us to lack precision. The Greeks used the word ναός or νεώς to signify the temple as a whole. Abd-el-Latif describes with great admiration a monolithic tabernacle which existed in his time among the ruins of Memphis, and was called by the Egyptians the Green Chamber. Makrizi tells us that it was broken up in 1349. (Description de l'Égypte, Ant., vol. v. pp. 572, 573.)
[318] Herodotus, ii. 175.
[319] Translated by Maspero, Histoire Ancienne, p. 385. The whole inscription has been translated into English by the Rev. T. C. Cook, and published in vol. ii. of Records of the Past.—Ed.
[320] As M. Maspero has remarked (Annuaire de l'Association des Études Grecques, 1877, p. 135), these secret passages remind us of the movable stone which, according to Herodotus (ii. 121), the architect of Rhampsinit contrived in the wall of the royal treasure-house which he was commissioned to build. Herodotus's story was at least founded upon fact, as the arrangement in question was a favourite one with Egyptian constructors.
[321] Ἀναγλυφὰς δ' ἔχουσιν οἱ τοῖχοι οὗτοι μεγάλων εἰδώλων (Strabo, xvii, 1, 28).
[322] Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités, vol. i. p. 219. The authors of the Description générale de Thèbes noticed recesses sunk in the external face of one of the pylons at Karnak, which they believed to be intended to receive the leaves of the great door when it was open (p. 234); they also noticed traces of bronze pivots upon which the doors swung (p. 248), and they actually found a pivot of sycamore wood.
[323] These measurements are taken from Mariette, Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, vol. ii. p. 7.
[324] We have not given a general map. In order to do so we should either have had to overpass the limits of our page, or we should have had to give it upon too small a scale. Our fourth plate will give a sufficiently accurate idea of its arrangement. The plan in Lepsius's Denkmæler (part i. pl. 74-76) occupies three entire pages.
[325] Diodorus, i. 46.
[326] These are the figures given by Mariette (Itinéraire de la Haute-Égypte, p. 135). Other authorities give 340 feet by 177. Diodorus ascribed to the temple of which he spoke a height of 45 cubits (or 69 feet 3 inches). This is slightly below the true height. We may here quote the terms in which Champollion describes the impression which a first sight of these ruins made upon him: "Finally I went to the palace, or rather to the town of palaces, at Karnak. There all the magnificence of the Pharaohs is collected; there the greatest artistic conceptions formed and realised by mankind are to be seen. All that I had seen at Thebes, all that I had enthusiastically admired on the left bank of the river, sunk into insignificance before the gigantic structures among which I found myself. I shall not attempt to describe what I saw. If my expressions were to convey but a thousandth part of what I felt, a thousandth part of all that might with truth be said of such objects, if I succeeded in tracing but a faint sketch, in the dimmest colours, of the marvels of Karnak, I should be taken, at least for an enthusiast, perhaps for a madman. I shall content myself with saying that no people, either ancient or modern, have had a national architecture at once so sublime in scale, so grand in expression, and so free from littleness as that of the ancient Egyptians." (Lettres d'Égypte, pp. 79, 80.)
[327] Including a postern of comparatively small dimensions, there are five doorways to the hypostyle hall.—Ed.
[328] A plan of the successive accretions is given in plates 6 and 7 of Mariette's work. The different periods and their work are shown by changes of tint. The same information is given in another form in pages 36 and 37 of the text. The complete title of the work is as follows: Karnak, Étude topographique et archéologique, avec un Appendice comprenant les principaux Textes hiéroglyphigues. Plates in folio; text in a 4to. of 88 pages (1875).
[329] In presence of this double range of superb columns one is tempted to look upon them as the beginning of a hypostyle hall which was never finished, to suppose that a great central nave was constructed, and that, by force of circumstances unknown, the aisles were never begun, and that the builders contented themselves by inclosing and preserving their work as far as it had gone.
[330] Diodorus, i. 47-49.
[331] Strabo, xvii. i. 42. In another passage (xvii. i. 46) he seems to place the Memnonium close to the two famous colossi. He would, therefore, seem rather to have had in view an "Amenophium," the remains of which have been discovered in the immediate neighbourhood of the two colossi. The French savants suspected this to be the case, but they often defer to the opinions of their immediate predecessors among Egyptian travellers. (Description générale de Thèbes, section iii.)
[332] This pylon stands in the foreground of our view (Fig. 220). The face which is here shown was formerly covered—as we may judge from the parts which remain—with pictures of battles; and that we might not have to actually invent scenes of combat for our restoration, we have borrowed the ornamentation of the first pylon of the Temple of Khons. The scale of our cut is too small, however, to show any details.
[333] Lepsius, Denkmæler, part i. plates 88 and 89. The engineers of the Institut d'Égypte fell into an error in speaking of this hall. They failed to notice that it was smaller than the second court, and they accordingly gave it sixty columns. (Description générale de Thebes, vol. i. p. 132.)
[334] See Ebers, Ægypten, vol. ii. pp. 309 et seq.
[335] Ibid., p. 312.
[336] Ebers, Ægypten, vol. ii. p. 312.
[337] The plan in the Description de l'Égypte (Antiquités, vol. ii. pl. 4) does not go beyond the back wall of the second court. That of Lepsius goes to the back of the hypostyle hall. (Denkmæler, part i. pl. 92.) Ours is much more comprehensive—it goes three stages farther back; it was communicated to us by M. Brune, who measured the building in 1866.
[338] Here M. Perrot is in error, as may be seen by reference to his own plan. The columns of the central passage of the hypostyle hall are similar in section to those of the two peristyles, except that their bases are flattened laterally in a somewhat unusual fashion.—Ed.
[339] A few of these buildings—that, for instance, on the right of the great lake—seem to have been very peculiar in arrangement, but their remains are in such a state of confusion that it is at present impossible to describe their plans.
[340] Cailliaud, Voyage à Méroé, plates, vol. ii. pl. 9-14. Lepsius, Denkmæler, part i. pl. 116, 117. Hoskins, Travels in Ethiopia, plates 40, 41, and 42. The plan given by Hoskins agrees more with that of Lepsius than with Cailliaud, but it only shows the beginning of the first hypostyle hall and nothing of the second. These divergences are easily understood when it is remembered that nothing but some ten columns of two different types remain in situ, and that the mounds of débris are high and wide. In order to obtain a really trustworthy plan, this accumulation would have to be cleared away over the whole area of the temple. All the plans show a kind of gallery, formed of six columns, in front of the first pylon; it reminds us in some degree of the great corridor at Luxor; by its general form, however, rather than its situation.
[341] Full particulars of the more obscure parts of the temple at Abydos will be found in Mariette's first volume.
[342] Upon the funerary character of the great temple at Abydos, see Ebers, Ægypten, vol. ii. pp. 234, 235.
[343] We may cite as a peripteral temple of the Ptolemaic epoch the building at Edfou, called, in the Description, the Little Temple (Antiquités, vol. i. plates 62-65). It differs from the Pharaonic temples of the same class in having square piers only at the angles, the rest of the portico being supported by columns.
[344] Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités, vol. i. plates 34-38.
[345] This base contained a crypt, no doubt for the sake of economising the material. There seems to have been no means of access to it, either from without or within.
[346] Our plan, etc. shows the temple as it must have left the hands of the architect, according to the authors of the Description de l'Égypte. Jomard (pl. 35, Fig. 1) has imported a small chamber into his plan, placing it behind the large hall as a sort of opisthodomos; but he bids us remark that it was constructed of different materials, and in a different bond, from the rest of the temple. It showed no trace of the sculptured decoration which covered all the rest of the temple. This chamber was therefore a later addition, and one only obtained at the expense of the continuous portico, the back part of which was enclosed with a wall in which the columns became engaged. According to Jomard, this alteration dates from the Roman period, but however that may be, in our examination of the temple we may disregard an addition which appears to have been so awkwardly managed.
[347] In the Description de l'Égypte it is called The Northern Temple (see vol. i. pl. 38, Figs. 2 and 3). The only difference noted by Jomard was in the ornamentation of the capitals.
[348] Lepsius Denkmæler, part i. pl. 113.
[349] Description, Antiquités, vol. i. pl. 71, Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4; letterpress, vol. i. ch. vi. This temple is 50 feet long, 31 wide, and 15 feet 8 inches high.
[350] See Lepsius for plans of these buildings; Denkmæler, part i. plates 125, 127, and 128.
[351] Denkmæler, part i. pl. 100.
[352] The internal measurements of this chamber were 26 feet by 33. Lepsius gives it four columns, but at present there are only the remains of one to be found. Almost the same arrangements are to be found in the Temple of Sedeinga. (Lepsius, Denkmæler, part i. pl. 115.)
[353] See, for Gebel Silsilis, Lepsius, Denkmæler, part i. pl. 102.
[354] Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités, vol. iv. pl. 65, Fig. 1. The French draughtsmen thought this building was a disused quarry, and give nothing but a picturesque view of the façade.
[355] Lepsius, Denkmæler, part i. pl. 102; Rosellini (vol. iii. pl. 32, Fig. 3) gives a view of the interior of the Silsilis chapel.
[356] Lepsius, Denkmæler, part i. pl. 101.
[357] Lepsius, Denkmæler, part i. pl. 127.
[358] There are also a hemispeos or two of the Ptolemaic period. That, for instance, of which the plans are given in plate 101 of Lepsius's first part, was begun by Ptolemy Euergetes II.
[359] This description has been mainly taken from the plate given by Prisse (Histoire de l'Art Égyptien, vol. i.). There are discrepancies, however, between it and both the inscription of Isambert and the plan of Horeau (Panorama d'Égypte et Nubie), discrepancies which may probably be referred to the bad condition of the structural part of the building. According to Prisse's measurements the dromos, from its commencement to the foot of the first pylon, was about fifty-five yards long, and the rest of the temple, to the back of the niche, was about as much again. The rock-cut part was only about ten yards deep.
[360] The resemblance between Prisse's plan of Gherf-Hossein and Horeau's plan of Wadi-Asseboua is so great as to suggest that one of the two writers may have made a mistake.
[361] There are two polygonal columns resembling those at Beni-Hassan in the small speos at Beit-el-Wali ([Fig. 237]).
[362] For Beit-el-Wali and Gircheh, see plates 13, 30 and 31 in Gau, Antiquités de la Nubie. It seems that the statues, when they were drawn by him, were in a fairly good state.
[363] These words mean Convent of the North. The name is derived from an abandoned Coptic convent which existed among the ruins of the ancient building.
[364] This wide inclined plane agrees better, as it seems to us, with the indications in M. Brune's plan of the actual remains at Dayr-el-Bahari, than the narrow flight of steps given in his restoration; the effect, too, is better, more ample and majestic.
[365] The same idea caused M. Brune to place sphinxes upon the steps between the courts; he thought that some small heaps of débris at the ends of the steps indicated their situation; but M. Maspero, who recently investigated the matter, informs us that he found no trace of any such sphinxes.
[366] We must refer those who wish to study the remains of this temple in detail to the work devoted to it by M. Mariette. The plan which forms plate 1 in the said work was drawn, in 1866, by an architect, M. Brune, who is now a professor at the École des Beaux Arts. M. Brune succeeded, by intelligent and conscientious examination of all the remains, in obtaining the materials for a restoration which gave us for the first time some idea of what this interesting monument must have been in the great days of Egypt. Plate 2 contains a restored plan; plate 3 a view in perspective of the three highest terraces and of the hill which forms their support. We have attempted to give an idea of the building as a whole. Our view is taken from a more distant point than that of M. Brune, but except in some of the less important details, it does not greatly differ from his.
[367] Mariette, Dayr-el-Bahari, letterpress, p. 10.
[368] Ebers, Ægypten, p. 285.
[369] Maspero, Histoire Ancienne, pp. 202, 203. The bas-reliefs at Dayr-el-Bahari represent the booty brought back by Hatasu from the expedition into Pount. Among this booty thirty-two perfume shrubs, in baskets, may be distinguished; these shrubs were planted by the orders of Hatasu in the gardens of Thebes. On the subject of Hatasu and her expedition, see Maspero's paper entitled: De quelques Navigations des Égyptiens sur les Côtes de la Mer Érythrée (in the Revue Historique, 1878).
[370] Maspero, Histoire Ancienne, p. 203.
[371] Herodotus, ii. 175.
[372] Herodotus, ii. 153.
[373] Herodotus uses the word αὐλή, of which stable or cattle-shed was one of the primitive meanings.
[374] Égypte, etc. p. 406.
[375] The temple of Kerdasch or Gartasse in Nubia resembles the Eastern Temple at Philæ in plan; its date appears to be unknown.
[376] We have omitted to speak of those little temples known since the time of Champollion as mammisi or places for accouchement, because the existing examples all belong to the Ptolemaic period. The best preserved is that of Denderah. It is probable, however, that the custom of building these little edifices by the side of those great temples where a triad of gods was worshipped dated back as far as the Pharaonic period. The mammisi symbolised the celestial dwelling in which the goddess gave birth to the third person of the triad. The authors of the Description called them Typhonia, from the effigy of a grimacing deity which figures in their decoration. This deity has, however, nothing in common with Set-Typhon, the enemy of Osiris. We now know that his name was Bes, that he was imported into Egypt from the country of the Aromati, and that he presided over the toilette of women. (Ebers, L'Égypte, etc., p. 255.)
[377] Mariette, Itinérare, pp. 13-16, 157-159; Karnak, p. 19; Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, vol. i. pp. 15, 16.
[378] The canal figured in front of the Chariot of Rameses, in [Fig. 254] was, according to Ebers, the oldest of the Suez Canals, the one dug by Seti I. This canal was defended by fortifications, and is called in inscriptions the Cutting (L'Égypte, etc.).
[379] To follow these processions was an act of piety. Upon a Theban stele we find the following words addressed to Amen-Ra: "I am one of those who follow thee when thou goest abroad." The stele of Suti and Har, architects at Thebes, translated into French by Paul Pierret, in Recueil de Travaux, p. 72.
Transcriber's Note:
A mouse hover over Greek text will display English transliteration.
Archaic and inconsistent spelling and punctuation retained.
Most of the coloured plates were too faded to resolve colours.
Some of the figure references appear to be incorrect.
Fig. 460 (Referenced in [Fig. 56].) does not exist. It is possible Figure 205 in volume II.