Fig. 6.—Part of a mace-head found by Mr J. E. Quibell at Hierakonpolis in 1897-8, showing one of the earliest kings of Egypt engaged in the task of cutting an irrigation canal.
The early kings of Egypt, rich in their newly acquired control of the labour and wealth of their dominion, did not hesitate to squander both in the preparation of their tombs, in the vain belief that thereby they were making certain their own survival. Twenty centuries later, in the times of Tutankhamen, they were still obsessed with the same idea, and spent fabulous sums in preparing their tombs in the Biban el Moluk.
The peculiar importance of the study of these strange customs and beliefs in Egypt depends upon the fact that, not only were they invented by the Egyptians, and preserved in their entirety, so that the whole story of its development can be read in all their childish directness and simplicity, but also because other peoples of antiquity, to whose civilization Europe owes her own heritage, adopted some of the results of these Egyptian devices, and, after eliminating some of their cruder details, transformed them into the essentials of the world’s civilization. Hence, in recovering the history of Egyptian cultural development, we are really probing into the sources of the customs and beliefs of our own everyday life and experience. Thus we must regard mummification as something more than an eccentric practice that excites our curiosity. For it played a fundamental part in shaping the development of civilization, both its arts and crafts, as well as its most vital customs and beliefs.
Giving Life to the Dead
If we turn to consider the process of mummification, and the aims of its practitioners, it will be found that throughout the long ages in which it was in vogue the Egyptian embalmer kept constantly striving to attain two aims. His first object was to preserve the actual tissues of the body as thoroughly as he could. But he was also attempting the much more difficult task of preserving the natural form of the body, and especially of the features. He was prompted to make this effort, not merely that the deceased should retain his distinctive traits in a recognizable form, but rather that the simulacrum should be the “living” image of himself. In other words, the aim was to make the representation of the dead man so life-like that he should, in fact, remain alive, and be certain of maintaining his existence. The early Egyptians seem to have entertained in all its childlike naïveté the belief that they were actually conferring vitality upon the image when they made it life-like. The Egyptian verb for describing the work of the sculptor who carved the portrait statue meant literally, according to Dr Alan Gardiner, “to give birth,” in the sense of “giving life”; and there is no doubt they meant this idea of life-giving to be accepted as the simple expression of a fact, and not merely as a symbol or analogy.
It must not be forgotten that when these beliefs were first formulated, more than fifty centuries ago, there was no knowledge or understanding of the principles of physics and biology to hinder the adoption of such naïve fancies as the simple and obvious truth. There is no reason to doubt that the philosophers of those days did honestly believe in the possibility of prolonging existence by fulfilling all the conditions that seemed to them essential and adequate to the maintenance of vitality.
When mummification was first devised, probably at the time of the earliest dynasty (about 3400 b.c.) it was realized that if, in the climate of Egypt, the preservation of the tissues of the body was not very difficult to effect, the task of retaining the distinctive features was practically unattainable. All kinds of devices were tried, during the second, third, and fourth dynasties, by wrapping the mummy so as to simulate the human form, painting it, applying clay or resinous paste, and modelling it into a portrait statue upon the enshrouded mummy itself. When these devices failed to achieve the desired aim of making life-like portraits, the art of modelling statues of the deceased in stone or wood was invented, and paint and artificial eyes were used to make them as life-like as possible. The skill with which the Egyptians of the Pyramid Age overcame the technical difficulties of the sculptors’ art and made life-size portraits which, as I have said before, could not untruthfully be called “living images,” is one of the most amazing achievements in the history of art. But it was more than the triumph of a craftsman: it was the realization of a deeper desire to preserve the image, and so prolong the existence of the sculptor’s model, the deceased, who was thus supposed to have been saved from annihilation.
In the first chapter of my book The Evolution of the Dragon, I have discussed this problem more fully.
