[13] These objects, known as “The Miramar Collection,” and catalogued by Professor Reinisch, are now removed to Vienna. [Note to second edition.]
[14] A more exhaustive study of the funerary texts has of late revolutionized our interpretation of these and similar sepulchral tableaux. The scenes they represent are not, as was supposed when this book was first written, mere episodes in the daily life of the deceased; but are links in the elaborate story of his burial and his ghostly existence after death. The corn is sown, reaped, and gathered in order that it may be ground and made into funerary cakes; the oxen, goats, gazelles, geese and other live stock are destined for sacrificial offerings; the pots, and furniture, and household goods are for burying with the mummy in his tomb; and it is his “Ka,” or ghostly double, that takes part in these various scenes, and not the living man. [Note to second edition.]
[15] These statues were not mere portrait-statues; but were designed as bodily habitations for the incorporeal ghost, or “Ka,” which it was supposed needed a body, food and drink, and must perish everlastingly if not duly supplied with these necessaries. Hence the whole system of burying food-offerings, furniture, stuffs, etc., in ancient Egyptian sepulchers. [Note to second edition.]
[16] The actual tomb of Prince Kha-em-nas has been found at Memphis by M. Maspero within the last three or four years. [Note to second edition.]
[17] The date is Mariette’s.
[18] There was no worship of Apis in the days of King Ouenephes, nor, indeed, until the reign of Kaiechos, more than one hundred and twenty years after his time. But at some subsequent period of the ancient empire his pyramid was appropriated by the priests of Memphis for the mummies of the sacred bulls. This, of course, was done before any of the known Apis catacombs were excavated. There are doubtless many more of these catacombs yet undiscovered, nothing prior to the eighteenth dynasty having yet been found.
[19] This colossus is now raised upon a brick pedestal. [Note to second edition.]
[20] Tell: Arabic for mound. Many of the mounds preserve the ancient names of the cities they entomb; as Tell Basta (Bubastis); Kóm Ombo (Ombos); etc., etc. Tell and Kóm are synonymous terms.
[21] Sorghum vulgare.
[22] The shâdûf has been so well described by the Rev. F. B. Zincke that I cannot do better than quote him verbatim: “Mechanically, the shadoof is an application of the lever. In no machine which the wit of man, aided by the accumulation of science, has since invented, is the result produced so great in proportion to the degree of power employed. The level of the shadoof is a long stout pole poised on a prop. The pole is at right angles to the river. A large lump of clay from the spot is appended to the inland end. To the river end is suspended a goat-skin bucket. This is the whole apparatus. The man who is working it stands on the edge of the river. Before him is a hole full of water fed from the passing stream. When working the machine he takes hold of the cord by which the empty bucket is suspended, and, bending down, by the mere weight of his shoulders dips it in the water. His effort to rise gives the bucket full of water an upward cant, which, with the aid of the equipoising lump of clay at the other end of the pole, lifts it to a trough into which, as it tilts on one side, it empties its contents. What he has done has raised the water six or seven feet above the level of the river. But if the river has subsided twelve or fourteen feet, it will require another shadoof to be worked in the trough into which the water of the first has been brought. If the river has sunk still more, a third will be required before it can be lifted to the top of the bank, so as to enable it to flow off to the fields that require irrigation.”—“Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Khedive,” p. 445 et seq.