Drawn by Boudier,
from a photograph
taken by Éinil
Brugsch-Bey.
The body having been placed in the grave, the relatives who had taken part in the mourning heaped together in a neighbouring hole the funerary furniture, flint implements, copper needles, miniature pots and pans made of rough and badly burned clay, bread, dates, and eatables in dishes wrapped up in linen. The nobles ranged their mastabas in a single line to the north of the pyramid; these form fine-looking masses of considerable size, but they are for the most part unfinished and empty. Snofrûi having disappeared from the scene, Kheops who succeeded him forsook the place, and his courtiers, abandoning their unfinished tombs, went off to construct for themselves others around that of the new king. We rarely find at Mêdûm finished and occupied sepulchres except that of individuals who had died before or shortly after Snofrûi. The mummy of Eânofir, found in one of them, shows how far the Egyptians had carried the art of embalming at this period. His body, though much shrunken, is well preserved: it had been clothed in some fine stuff, then covered over with a layer of resin, which a clever sculptor had modelled in such a manner as to present an image resembling the deceased; it was then rolled in three or four folds of thin and almost transparent gauze.
Of these tombs the most important belonged to the Prince Nofirmâît and his wife Atiti: it is decorated with bas-reliefs of a peculiar composition; the figures have been cut in outline in the limestone, and the hollows thus made are filled in with a mosaic of tinted pastes which show the moulding and colour of the parts. Everywhere else the ordinary methods of sculpture have been employed, the bas-reliefs being enhanced by brilliant colouring in a simple and delicate manner.
The figures of men and animals are portrayed with a vivacity of manner which is astonishing; and the other objects, even the hieroglyphs, are rendered with an accuracy which does not neglect the smallest detail. The statues of Eâhotpû and of the lady Nofrît, discovered in a half-ruined mastaba, have fortunately reached us without having suffered the least damage, almost without losing anything of their original freshness; they are to be seen in the Gîzeh Museum just as they were when they left the hands of the workman. Eâhotpû was the son of a king, perhaps of Snofrûi: but in spite of his high origin, I find something humble and retiring in his physiognomy. Nofrît, on the contrary, has an imposing appearance: an indescribable air of resolution and command invests her whole person, and the sculptor has cleverly given expression to it. She is represented in a robe with a pointed opening in the front: the shoulders, the bosom, the waist, and hips, are shown under the material of the dress with a purity and delicate grace which one does not always find in more modern works of art. The wig, secured on the forehead by a richly embroidered band, frames with its somewhat heavy masses the firm and rather plump face: the eyes are living, the nostrils breathe, the mouth smiles and is about to speak. The art of Egypt has at times been as fully inspired; it has never been more so than on the day in which it produced the statue of Nofrît.
The worship of Snofrûi was perpetuated from century to century. After the fall of the Memphite empire it passed through periods of intermittence, during which it ceased to be observed, or was observed only in an irregular way; it reappeared under the Ptolemies for the last time before becoming extinct for ever. Snofrûi was probably, therefore, one of the most popular kings of the good old times; but his fame, however great it may have been among the Egyptians, has been eclipsed in our eyes by that of the Pharaohs who immediately followed him—Kheops, Khephren, and Mykerinos. Not that we are really better acquainted with their history. All we know of them is made up of two or three series of facts, always the same, which the contemporaneous monuments teach us concerning these rulers. Khnûmû-Khûfûi,* abbreviated into Khûfûi, the Kheops** of the Greeks, was probably the son of Snofrûi.***
* The existence of the two cartouches Khûfûi and Khnûmû-
Khûfûi on the same monuments has caused much embarrassment
to Egyptologists: the majority have been inclined to see
here two different kings, the second of whom, according to
M. Robiou, would have been the person who bore the pre-nomen
of Dadûfri. Khnûmû-Khûfûi signifies “the god Khnûmû protects
me.”
** Kheops is the usual form, borrowed from the account of
Herodotus; Diodorus writes Khembes or Khemmes, Eratosthenes
Saôphis, and Manetho Souphis.
*** The story in the “Westcar” papyrus speaks of Snofrûi as
father of Khûfûi; but this is a title of honour, and proves
nothing. The few records which we have of this period give
one, however, the impression that Kheops was the son of
Snofrûi, and, in spite of the hesitation of de Rougé, this
affiliation is adopted by the majority of modern historians.
[175.jpg alabaster statue of kheops]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey.
He reigned twenty-three years, and successfully defended the mines of the Sinaitic peninsula against the Bedouin; he may still be seen on the face of the rocks in the Wady Maghara sacrificing his Asiatic prisoners, now before the jackal Anubis, now before the ibis-headed Thot. The gods reaped advantage from his activity and riches; he restored the temple of Hâ-thor at Den-dera, embellished that of Bubastis, built a stone sanctuary to the Isis of the Sphinx, and consecrated there gold, silver, bronze, and wooden statues of Horus, Nephthys, Selkît, Phtah, Sokhît, Osiris, Thot, and Hâpis. Scores of other Pharaohs had done as much or more, on whom no one bestowed a thought a century after their death, and Kheops would have succumbed to the same indifference had he not forcibly attracted the continuous attention of posterity by the immensity of his tomb.*
* All the details relating to the Isis of the Sphinx are
furnished by a stele of the daughter of Kheops, discovered
in the little temple of the XXIst dynasty, situated to the
west of the Great Pyramid, and preserved in the Gîzeh
Museum. It was not a work entirely of the XXIst dynasty, as
Mr. Petrie asserts, but the inscription, barely readable,
engraved on the face of the plinth, indicates that it was
remade by a king of the Saïte period, perhaps by Sabaco, in
order to replace an ancient stele of the same import which
had fallen into decay.