The house was generally built round a court-yard planted with trees and refreshed by a fountain. In the country the farm-yards and sheds were at some distance from the dwelling-house; the cattle were tied up at feeding-time to rings placed in rows, and were often fed by the hand. Around the country-houses were orchards of fig-trees, together with sycamore, peach, pomegranate, date, olive, and almond trees, besides others of names and kinds unknown. Monkeys were sometimes employed in gathering the fruit, and we see from the pictures that they did not fail to help themselves at the same time. Our museums show us the tables and chairs of all sorts that were used by the Egyptians—common chairs, camp-stools, and arm-chairs of elegant workmanship, sometimes of ebony inlaid with ivory. There are the double chairs where the master and mistress of the house sat when receiving their guests—couches, footstools, carpets which served as bedding, and the wooden rests on which the head was placed at night. Children’s toys of all kinds may be seen, and a variety of musical instruments; for music was much studied, and was employed not only in the service of the temples, but in the social gatherings of the people, which seem to have been frequent. But both music and dancing on such occasions appear to have been performed for the amusement of the guests, who are themselves only lookers-on. Buffoons also exhibited, who seem generally to have been negroes; they are oddly dressed in a bit of bullock’s hide, with the tail attached and tags hanging like beads from their elbows. The chase was a most popular amusement, and besides stags, hares, etc., there was the exciting sport of hunting wilder beasts, wolves, jackals, and lions in the desert lands. Fowling and fishing were common pastimes. We do not meet with the least trace of anything approaching to gladiatorial shows; such scenes would have been abhorrent to the Egyptian nature. Amongst indoor games we see odd and even—mora (a guessing game), draughts, and others unknown to us. Athletic games and outdoor exercises were encouraged amongst children, and there was a great fondness for playing ball, especially amongst the girls, who attained great skill in the exercise, sometimes catching two or three balls at a time. There was great freedom in social intercourse, and women mixed in society quite as freely as men.[55]
Vincent Brooks-Day & Son, Lith.
PLAYING AT DRAUGHTS.
The Egyptians have, in fact, painted their social life for us themselves in fullest detail, whether it is the king standing proudly in his war-chariot and striking down his foe, or the potter patiently turning his wheel; the priest officiating in the temple rites, or the fisherman directing his tiny craft upon the river. We see the baker kneading the dough with his feet, and the flat loaves being carried round to the customers; the shoemaker, sitting on his three-legged stool, is busy fashioning the leather sandal; spinning-wheel and loom are producing the ‘fine linen’ of Egypt, and the needle is skilful in beautiful embroidered work. The pottery is of varied and graceful form, the jewellery of exquisite workmanship. Glass is fashioned, and so is brightly tinted porcelain ware; veneering too is practised with much skill.
We may picture to ourselves the active life and gay animation that reigned in the streets of the mighty city that had grown up around the great temples of Amen, or, on the broad waters of the stream, the scene of constant traffic, where boats laden with merchandise, fishing vessels, and gay-looking pleasure-boats went to and fro in ceaseless motion. The Nile valley is of unusual breadth on both sides of the river here, and forms a sort of amphitheatre closed in by mountain ranges of varied outlines. It seemed hidden away out of the invader’s track, the ‘great city’ in all her imperial beauty, Apu, the ‘city of thrones,’ or Nu, ‘the city,’ as her people called her of old. The sky is of a deeper blue than in the northern part of the country; and in spite of ceaseless sunshine the fields are clothed in richest verdure. Here, as everywhere, light and colour reign, the shadows themselves are luminous, so radiant is the light, and the colour harmonies of the sunset are thus described:—
‘The western horizon is a furnace of molten gold, the stems and foliage of the palm trees are likewise gold, and through this dazzling glow the purple tints of the hills can just be perceived. The sky and the Nile become in turn rose-coloured and violet, like the colour of an amethyst; then the light dies away.’[56]
Let us follow the western sun, and cross the stream, leaving behind us the life and animation of the great city. Here, too, is a city—Western Thebes[57]—and its streets contain a population vaster far than that upon the other side. But all is silent here; no man buys or sells or joins in festive mirth. It is the City of the Dead. Here lie in countless numbers the embalmed bodies of those who have passed away generation after generation: kings and priests—men, women, children—the freeman and the slave. The hills encircling the plain are pierced and honeycombed in all directions with passages and tombs. Here are the ‘eternal dwellings’ of those who on the other side inhabit ‘hostelries’ as strangers of a day. And far more thought and care are bestowed upon those than upon these.[58] There are large common tombs, in which the bodies of the poor lie ranged side by side. And there are the funeral chambers of the rich, with their sculptured façades, whence winding galleries lead into the heart of the rock. Shafts are sunk, false passages that lead nowhere are constructed. Everything is done that human ingenuity can suggest, if only the body hidden there might never be seen or handled again.[59] Nor is the silent city of the dead without its stately palaces and temples. The two colossal twin statues of Amenhotep III. sit there upon the plain, and behind them is his magnificent temple. A little farther is the Ramesseum, a great temple erected by Rameses ‘to his name,’ and to the memory of his ancestors, marvellous for size and splendour. In the face of the limestone cliff to the north-west arises the stately terraced temple of Queen Hatasu, and not far off is the narrow gorge leading to the desolate valley of the ‘tombs of the kings.’
The priests attached to the service of these temples must have lived in the neighbourhood and kept up intercourse with the world outside, and in Western Thebes were the dwellings of all those whose business was with the bodies of the dead,—of those who first opened the corpse, who were reckoned ceremonially unclean, and of those who skilfully embalmed and bandaged it afterwards. Not a day could have passed on which some company of mourners, rich or poor, did not land—their ‘dark freight, a vanished life;’ whilst now and again a gorgeous funeral procession wound its way through the narrow defile, bearing beneath a funeral tent of exquisite workmanship the body of some prince or princess of the Pharaoh’s house to its last long home in the western hills.