[224] The crocodile represents Sebek. In one of the Boulak papyri, this god is called the son Isis, and combats the enemies of Osiris. Here he combats Apophis in behalf of Ra.
[225] The tomb numbered three in the first small ravine to the left as one rides up the valley bears the cartouches of Rameses II. The writer crawled in as far as the choked condition of the tomb permitted, but the passage becomes quite impassable after the first thirty or forty yards.
[226] When first seen by Sir G. Wilkinson, these harpers were still in such good preservation that he reported of one, at least, if not both, as obviously blind. The harps are magnificent, richly inlaid and gilded, and adorned with busts of the king. One has eleven strings, the other fourteen.
[227] The sarcophagus of Seti I, which was brought to England by Belzoni, is in Sir J. Soane’s Museum. It is carved from a single block of the finest alabaster, and is covered with incised hieroglyphic texts and several hundred figures, descriptive of the passage of the sun through the hours of the night. See “Le Sarcophage de Seti I.” P. Pierret. “Révue Arch.,” vol. xxi, p. 285: 1870. The sarcophagus of Rameses III is in the Fitz-William Museum, Cambridge, and the lid thereof is in the Egyptian collection of the Louvre. See “Remarks on the Sarcophagus of Rameses III.” S. Birch, LL.D.; Cambridge, 1876. Also “Notice Sommaire des Monuments Égyptiens du Louvre.” E. De Rougé, p. 51: Paris, 1873.
[228] Abbot Papyrus, British Museum. This papyrus, which has been translated by M. Chabas (“Mélanges Égyptologiques,” 3d Serie: Paris and Chalon, 1870), gives a list of royal tombs inspected by an Egyptian Commission in the month of Athyr (year unknown) during the reign of Rameses IX. Among the tombs visited on this occasion mention is especially made of “the funeral monument of the king En-Aa, which is at the north of the Amenophium of the terrace. The monument is broken into from the back, at the place where the stela is placed before the monument, and having the statue of the king upon the front of the stela, with his hound, named Bahuka, between his legs. Verified this day, and found intact.” Such was the report of the writer of this papyrus of 3000 years ago. And now comes one of the wonders of modern discovery. It was but a few years ago that Mariette, excavating in that part of the Necropolis called the Assaseef, which lies to the north of the ruins of the Amenophium, discovered the remains of the tomb of this very king, and the broken stela bearing upon its face a full-length bas-relief of King En-Aa (or Entef-Aa), with three dogs before him and one between his legs; the dog Bahuka having his name engraved over his back in hieroglyphic characters. See “Tablet of Antefaa II.” S. Birch, LL.D. “Transactions of the Biblical Arch. Society.” vol. iv, part i, p. 172.
[229] The beautiful jewels found upon the mummy of Queen Aah-Hotep show how richly the royal dead were adorned, and how well worth plundering their sepulchers must have been. These jewels have been so often photographed, engraved and described, that they are familiar to even those who have not seen them in the Boulak Museum. The circumstances of the discovery were suspicious, the mummy (in its inner mummy-case only) having been found by Marietta’s diggers in the loose sand but a few feet below the surface, near the foot of the hillside known as Drah Abu’l Neggah, between Gournah and the opening to the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. When it is remembered that the great outer sarcophagus of this queen was found in 1881 in the famous vault at Dayr-el-Bahari, where so many royal personages and relics were discovered “at one fell swoop;” and when to this is added the curious fact that the state ax of Prince Kames, and a variety of beautiful poniards and other miscellaneous objects of value were found laid in the loose folds of this queen’s outer wrappings, it seems to me that the mystery of her unsepulchered burial is susceptible of a very simple explanation. My own conviction is that Queen Aah-Hotep’s mummy had simply been brought thither from the depths of the said vault by the Arabs who had for so many years possessed the secret of that famous hidding-place, and that it was temporarily buried in the sand till a convenient opportunity should occur for transporting to Luxor. Moreover, it is significant that no jewels were found upon the royal mummies in the Dayr-el-Bahari vault, for the reason, no doubt, that they had long since been taken out and sold. The jewels found with Aah-Hotep may, therefore, have represented the final clearance, and have been collected from a variety of other royal mummy-cases. That the state ax of Prince Kames was among them does not, I imagine, prove that Prince Kames was the husband of Queen Aah-Hotep, but only that he himself was also a tenant of that historic vault. The actual proof that he was her husband lies in the fact that the bracelets on her wrists, the diadem on her head, and the pectoral ornament on her breast, were engraved, or inlaid, with the cartouches of that prince. [Note to second edition.]
[230] There is in one of the papyri of the Louvre a very curious illustration, representing—first, the funeral procession of one Neb-Set, deceased; second, the interior of the sepulcher, with the mummy, the offerings, and the furniture of the tomb, elaborately drawn and colored. Among the objects here shown are two torches, three vases, a coffer, a mirror, a Kohl bottle, a pair of sandals, a staff, a vase for ointment, a perfume bottle and an ablution jar. “These objects, all belonging to the toilette (for the coffer would have contained clothing), were placed in the tomb for that day of waking which the popular belief promised to the dead. The tomb was, therefore, furnished like the abodes of the living.”—Translated from T. Devéria, “Catalogue des Manuscrits Égyptiens du Louvre:” Paris, 1875, p. 80. The plan of the sepulcher of Neb-Set is also drawn upon this papyrus; and the soul of the deceased, represented as a human-headed bird, is shown flying down toward the mummy. A fine sarcophagus in the Boulak Museum (No. 84) is decorated in like manner with a representation of the mummy on its bier being visited, or finally rejoined, by the soul. I have also in my own collection a funeral papyrus vignetted on one side with this same subject; and bearing on the reverse side an architectural elevation of the monument erected over the sepulcher of the deceased.
[231] “King Rhampsinitus (Rameses III) was possessed, they said, of great riches in silver, indeed, to such an amount that none of the princes, his successors, surpassed or even equaled his wealth.”—Herodotus, Book ii, chap. 121.
[232] Impossible from the Egyptian point of view. “That the body should not waste or decay was an object of anxious solicitude; and for this purpose various bandlets and amulets, prepared with certain magical preparations, and sanctified with certain spells or prayers, of even offerings and small sacrifices, were distributed over various parts of the mummy. In some mysterious manner the immortality of the body was deemed as important as the passage of the soul; and at a later period the growth or natural reparation of the body was invoked as earnestly as the life or passage of the soul to the upper regions.”—See “Introduction to the Funereal Ritual,” S. Birch, LL.D., in vol. v, of Bunsen’s “Egypt:” Lond. 1867.
[233] “The Ancient Egyptians,” Sir G. Wilkinson; vol. i, chap. ii, wood-cut No. 92. Lond., 1871.