Each morning sees the sun rise as youthful and ardent as the morning before. Why then should not man, after completing his subterranean journey and triumphing over the terrors of Ament, cast off the darkness of the tomb and again see the light of day? This undying hope was revivified at each dawn as by a new promise, and the Egyptians followed out the analogy by the way in which they disposed their sepulchres. They were placed in the west of their country, towards the setting sun, but their doors, the openings through which their inmates would one day regain the light, were turned to the east. In the necropolis of Memphis, the door of nearly every tomb is turned to the east,[150] and there is not a single stele which does not face in that direction.[151] In the necropolis of Abydos, both door and stele are more often turned towards the south, that is towards the sun at its zenith.[152] But neither at Memphis, at Abydos, nor at Thebes is there a tomb which is lighted from the west or presents its inscription to the setting sun.[153] Thus, from the shadowy depths where they dwell, the dead have their eyes turned to that quarter of the heavens where the life-giving flame is each day rekindled, and seem to be waiting for the ray which is to destroy their night and to rouse them from their long repose.[154]
Fig. 100.—Lid of the coffin of Entef, 11th dynasty. Louvre.
The ideas and beliefs which we have described were common to all Egyptians, irrespective of class. When he felt his last hour approaching, the humble peasant or boatman on the Nile was as anxious as Pharaoh himself to insure the survival of his double and to guard against the terrors of annihilation:
. . . . Mais, jusqu'en son trépas,
Le riche a des honneurs que le pauvre n'a pas.
Those who, when alive, had to be content with a hut of earth or of reeds, could not, when dead, expect to have a tomb of stone or brick, a habitation for eternity; they could not look for joys in the other world which they had been unable to procure in this. So that such tombs as those which most fully embodied the ideas we have described must always have remained the exclusive privilege more or less of the governing classes. These consisted of the king, the princes and nobles, the priests, the military chiefs, and functionaries of every kind down to the humblest of the scribes attached to the administration. As for those Egyptians who did not belong to this aristocracy, they had to be content with less expensive arrangements. The less poor among them at least took measures to be embalmed and to be placed in a coffin of wood or papier-mâché, accompanied by scarabs and other charms to protect them against malignant spirits. The painted figures upon the coffin also helped to keep off evil influences. If they could afford it they purchased places in a common tomb, where the mummies were heaped one upon the other and confided to the care of priests who performed the funerary rites for a whole chamber at once.[155] It was the frequent custom to put with the dead those pillows of wood or alabaster which the Egyptians seem to have used from the most ancient times for the support of their heads in sleep. This contrivance, which does away with the necessity for continually rearranging their complicated head-dress, is still used by the Nubians and Abyssinians.
Figs. 101, 102.—Scarabs. Louvre.
