Fig. 97.—Vignette from a Ritual upon papyrus,
in the Louvre. Chap. XC., 20th dynasty.
But all this is exceptional. As a rule the same subjects occur upon the tombs again and again, in the persistent fashion which characterizes traditional themes. The figures by which the flocks and herds and other possessions of the deceased were numbered are too great for literal truth.[143] On the other hand the pictured tradesmen and artificers, from the labourer, the baker, and the butcher up to the sculptor, seem to apply themselves to their work with an energy which excludes the notion of ideal felicity. They, one and all, labour conscientiously, and we feel that they are carrying out a task which has been imposed upon them as a duty.
For whose benefit do they take all this trouble? If we attempt to enter into the minds of the people who traced these images and compare the pictured representations with the texts which accompany them, we shall be enabled to answer that question. Let us take by chance any one of the inscriptions which accompany the scenes figured upon the famous tomb of Ti, and here is what we find. "To see the picking and pressing of the grape and all the labours of the country." Again, "To see the picking of the flax, the reaping of the corn, the transport upon donkeys, the stacking of the crops of the tomb." Again, "Ti sees the stalls of the oxen and of the small animals, the gutters and water-channels of the tomb."
It is for the dead that the vintage takes place, that the flax is picked, that the wheat is threshed, that oxen are driven into the fields, that the soil is ploughed and irrigated. It is for the supply of his wants that all these sturdy arms are employed.
We shall leave M. Maspero to sum up the ideas which presided at the construction of the Egyptian tomb, but first we must draw our readers' notice to the fact that he, more than once, alludes to a conception of the future life which differs somewhat from the early Egyptian notions, and belongs rather to the Second Theban Empire and its successors.
Fig. 98.—Arrival in Egypt of a company of Asiatic emigrants
(Champollion, pls. 362, 393).
Fig. 98, Continued.—Arrival in Egypt of a company of Asiatic emigrants
(Champollion, pls. 362, 393).
"The scenes chosen for the decoration of tomb walls had a magic intention; whether drawn from civil life in the world or from that of Hades, they were meant to preserve the dead from danger and to insure him a happy existence beyond the tomb.... Their reproduction upon the walls of the sepulchre guaranteed the performance of the acts represented. The double shut up in his σύριγξ[144] saw himself going to the chase upon the surrounding walls and he went to the chase; eating and drinking with his wife, and he ate and drank with her; crossing in safety the terrible gulfs of the lower world in the barque of the gods, and he crossed them in safety. The tilling, reaping, and housing on his walls were for him real tilling, reaping, and housing. So, too, the statuettes placed in his tomb carried out for him under magic influence all the work of the fields, and, like the sorcerer's pestle in Goethe's ballad, drew water for him and carried grain. The workmen painted in his papyri made shoes for him and cooked his food; they carried him to hunt in the deserts or to fish in the marshes. And, after all, the world of vassals upon the sides of the sepulchre was as real as the double for which they laboured; the picture of a slave might well satisfy the shadow of a master. The Egyptian thought that by filling his tomb with pictures he insured the reality of all the objects, people, and scenes represented in another world, and he was thus encouraged to construct his tomb while he was yet alive. Relations, too, thought that they were doing a service to the deceased when they carried out all the mysterious ceremonies which accompanied his burial. The certainty that they had been the cause of some benefit to him consoled and supported them on their return from the cemetery where they had left their regretted dead in possession of his imaginary domain."[145]