Each of these temples had around it its enclosing wall of dried brick, and the collection of buildings within this boundary formed the Khîrû, or retreat of some one of the Theban Pharaohs, which, in the official language of the time, was designated the “august Khîrû of millions of years.”
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato.
A sort of fortified structure, which was built into one of the corners, served as a place of deposit for the treasure and archives, and could be used as a prison if occasion required.*
* This was the hliatmû, the dungeon, frequently mentioned in
the documents bearing upon the necropolis.
The remaining buildings consisted of storehouses, stables, and houses for the priests and other officials. In some cases the storehouses were constructed on a regular plan which the architect had fitted in with that of the temple. Their ruins at the back and sides of the Ramesseum form a double row of vaults, extending from the foot of the hills to the border of the cultivated lands. Stone recesses on the roof furnished shelter for the watchmen.* The outermost of the village huts stood among the nearest tombs. The population which had been gathered together there was of a peculiar character, and we can gather but a feeble idea of its nature from the surroundings of the cemeteries in our own great cities. Death required, in fact, far more attendants among the ancient Egyptians than with us. The first service was that of mummification, which necessitated numbers of workers for its accomplishment. Some of the workshops of the embalmers have been discovered from time to time at Sheikh Abd el-Qurneh and Deîr el-Baharî, but we are still in ignorance as to their arrangements, and as to the exact nature of the materials which they employed. A considerable superficial space was required, for the manipulations of the embalmers occupied usually from sixty to eighty days, and if we suppose that the average deaths at Thebes amounted to fifteen or twenty in the twenty-four hours, they would have to provide at the same time for the various degrees of saturation of some twelve to fifteen hundred bodies at the least.**
* The discovery of quantities of ostraca in the ruins of
these chambers shows that they served partly for cellars.
** I have formed my estimate of fifteen to twenty deaths per
day from the mortality of Cairo during the French
occupation. This is given by R. Desgenettes, in the
Description de l’Egypte, but only approximately, as many
deaths, especially of females, must have been concealed from
the authorities; I have, however, made an average from the
totals, and applied the rate of mortality thus obtained to
ancient Thebes. The same result follows from calculations
based on more recent figures, obtained before the great
hygienic changes introduced into Cairo by Ismail Pacha, i.e.
from August 1, 1858, to July 31, 1859, and from May 24,
1865, to May 16, 1866, and for the two years from April 2,
1869, to March 21, 1870, and from April 2, 1870, to March
21, 1871.
Each of the corpses,moreover, necessitated the employment of at least half a dozen workmen to wash it, cut it open, soak it, dry it, and apply the usual bandages before placing the amulets upon the canonically prescribed places, and using the conventional prayers.