The body of the Apis, carefully embalmed, was sealed up in a coffin or sarcophagus of hard stone, the mouth of the vault was then walled up, and against the fresh masonry, at the foot of the neighbouring rocks, on the very floor of the passage, or wherever there was a clear space available, the high dignitaries, the workmen or the priests who had taken any part in the ceremonial, set up a votive stele calling down upon themselves and their families divine benedictions.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an engraving of Devéria.
The gallery was transformed by degrees into a kind of record-office, where each dynasty in turn recorded its name, whenever a fresh apotheosis afforded them the opportunity: these records were discovered in our own time by Mariette, almost perfect in spite of the destroying hand of men, and comprised inscriptions by the Bubastites, by Bocchoris, and even by the Ethiopians. Taharqa, when menaced by the Assyrians, had stayed at Memphis, only a year before his death, in the interval between two campaigns, in order to bury an Apis, and Psammetichus likewise took care not to neglect this part of his regal duties. He at first was content to imitate his predecessors, but a subsidence having occurred in that part of the Serapeum where the Apis who had died in the twentieth year of his reign reposed, he ordered his engineers to bore another gallery in a harder vein of limestone, and he performed the opening ceremony in his fifty-second year. It was the commencement of a thorough restoration. The vaults in which the sacred bulls were entombed were severally inspected, the wrappings were repaired together with the mummy cases, the masonry of the chapel was strengthened, and the building endowed with woods, stuffs, perfumes, and the necessary oils. No less activity apparently was displayed at Sais, the native home and favourite residence of the Pharaoh; but all the monuments which adorned the place, including the temple of Nit, and the royal palace, have been entirely destroyed; the enclosing wall of unbaked bricks alone remains, and here and there, amid the débris of the houses, may be seen some heaps of shattered stone where the public buildings once stood. On several blocks the name and titles of Psammetichus may yet be deciphered, and there are few cities in the Delta which cannot make a similar show. From one end of the Nile valley to the other the quarries were reopened, and the arts, stimulated by the orders which flowed in, soon flourished anew. The engraving of hieroglyphics and the art of painting both attained a remarkable degree of elegance; fine statues and bas-reliefs were executed in large numbers, and a widely spread school of art was developed. The local artists had scrupulously observed and handed down the traditions which obtained in the time of the Pyramids, and more especially those of the first Theban period; even the few fragments that have come down to us of the works of these artists in the age of the Ramessides recall rather the style of the VIth and XIIth dynasties than that of their Theban contemporaries. Their style, brought to perfection by evident imitation of the old Memphite masters, pleases us by its somewhat severe elegance, the taste shown in the choice of detail, and the extraordinary skill displayed in the working of the stone. The Memphites had by preference used limestone for their sculpture, the Thebans red and grey granite or sandstone; but the artists of the age of Psammetichus unhesitatingly attacked basalt, breccia, or serpentine, and obtained marvellous effects from these finely grained materials of regular and even texture. The artistic renaissance which they brought to its height had been already inaugurated under the Ethiopians, and many of the statues we possess of the reign of Taharqa are examples of excellent workmanship. That of Amenertas was over-praised at the time of its discovery; the face, half buried by the wig which we usually associate with the statues of the goddesses, has a dull and vacant expression in spite of its set smile, and the modelling of the figure is rather weak, but nevertheless there is something easy and refined in the gracefulness of the statue as a whole.
A statuette of another “Divine Spouse,” though mutilated and unfinished, is pleasing from its greater breadth of style, although such breadth is rarely found in the works of this school, which toned down, elongated, and attenuated the figure till it often lost in vigour what it gained in distinction. The one point in which the Saite artists made a real advance, was in the treatment of the heads of their models.
