Fig. 122.—Double mastaba at Gizeh, transverse section
(from Lepsius, t. i., pl. 22).
So far as we can judge from the few human remains which have been gathered from these ancient tombs, the process of embalmment was then carried on in simple and elementary fashion, and it was this imperfection that the Egyptians attempted to neutralize, by the innumerable and complicated precautions which they took to insure that the corpse should not be disturbed in its envelope of stone. In later times, when the preparation of the mummy was better understood, they were not so careful to seal up the sarcophagus from the outer air.
"The furniture of the mummy chamber comprised neither statues, nor funerary statuettes, nor amulets of any kind. Sometimes a few ox bones bestrew the ground. Two or three large and pointed red vases, containing nothing but a thin deposit of clay, rest against the walls. Within the sarcophagus we find the same sobriety of sepulchral furniture. Beyond a wooden or alabaster pillow ([Fig. 105]) and half a dozen little drinking cups of alabaster, nothing has been found there but the mummy itself."
Fig. 123.—Sarcophagus of Khoo-foo-Ankh. Perspective after Bourgoin.
Red granite. Height 1·33 metres. Boulak.
These beef bones must be the remains of the quarters of meat which were placed in the tomb for the nourishment of the dead. No scene is more frequently represented upon the walls of the public chamber of the mastaba than the killing and flaying of victims for the funeral ceremonies ([Fig. 125]). Like those which are found upon the roof, the vases must have held water for the double. The pillow was placed under the head of the mummy, it was the one he had used during his life. As for the drinking cups, their use has not yet been determined, so far as we know.
"As soon as the mummy was in the sarcophagus, the sarcophagus sealed, and the various objects which we have described in place, the opening at the bottom of the well was walled up; the well itself was filled with stones, earth, and sand, and the dead was left to his eternal sleep."[173] These precautions make it no easy thing to reach the mummy chamber. To find the entrance to the well is the first difficulty, and when it is found, many hands and no little time are required to remove the rubbish with which it is filled. The only mechanical helps which the Egyptians have ever used in such work are those which we ourselves have seen in the hands of Mariette's labourers, namely, the wooden shovel and the little rush basket which is filled with a few handfuls of sand and pebbles, and then carried on the head to be emptied at a convenient distance. It may be guessed how many journeys to and fro have to be made before a few cubic yards of débris are cleared by such means as this!
Fig. 124.—Details of the Sarcophagus of Khoo-foo-Ankh.
We have so far followed Mariette, and have frequently had to make use of his ipsissima verba. To his pages and to the plates of the great work of Lepsius, we must refer those readers who are not contented with being told general rules but wish to know the exceptions also. We shall not go into all the changes which variety of taste and the progress of art introduced into the arrangement and decoration of Egyptian buildings; they do not affect the general statements which we have made. We shall not re-state the evidence which enabled Mariette to apportion the 142 painted and sculptured mastabas explored by him in 1869, to the first six dynasties. It is certain that those monuments form a chronological series extending over a space of from twelve to fifteen centuries, and that during the whole of that long period, the general character of Egyptian sepulchral architecture remained unchanged.