The third couch is modelled in the form of a grotesque caricature of a hippopotamus, Tauert, another representative of the Great Mother Hathor. But her special duty was to act as a midwife at the births of gods and kings. In pictures she is often associated with the Hathor Cow at the door of the tomb in the Mountain of the West; and presumably her function was to preside at the rebirth of the dead king by which a new lease of life beyond the grave was conferred upon him.
If it seems far-fetched to regard the hippopotamus couch as symbolizing rebirth, it should not be overlooked that in the so-called “Birth Terrace” of the temple at Deir el Bahari[3] lion-headed couches are represented in the birth scene of Queen Hatshepsut. As I have pointed out already all three animals, cow, lioness, and female hippopotamus, represent primarily different forms of the same goddess Hathor.
Fig. 21.—Scene from The Book of the Dead (Papyrus of Ani) in which the three givers of divinity are seen, the cow at the entrance to the tomb, the hippopotamus with her, and Horus on guard.
The Egyptian custom of making these grotesque animal-shaped couches to symbolize the transference of the dead to the celestial regions and the conferring of immortality and deification upon them exerted far-reaching and manifold effects as it was diffused abroad among other peoples. I shall mention three examples of these diverse influences. The belief implied in such symbolism that a king borne by such an animal vehicle was transformed into a god led to the use of such designs in the representations of gods. Hence it became common in Syria and Mesopotamia, in Greece and India, and far away in outlying parts of the world where the influence of these civilizations played some part, directly or indirectly, to find gods and goddesses represented on animal vehicles, such as the bull or cow, the lion or lioness, or some fantastic composite monster, dragon or makara. The whole conception of animal vehicles, which plays such a large part in the religious symbolism of India, Eastern Asia and Central America, is a purely Egyptian fancy that finds such grotesque expression in Tutankhamen’s funerary couches, no less than in the borrowed symbolism that was spread abroad from Egypt to Asia and America.
Fig. 22.—The goddess Astarte borne on her lioness, symbolizing the attainment of immortality, which was the distinctive attribute of a deity.
Another expression of the essential meaning of these couches was the belief that the placing of the corpse or mummy on a raised stage was magically efficacious in transferring the deceased to the sky-world. The use of such raised platforms is practised over a very wide geographical area, and for the reasons given in my pamphlet The Migrations of Early Culture (1915). There can be no doubt that it gives expression to the same belief as the lofty and uncouth funerary beds in Tutankhamen’s tomb have forced upon our attention.
Another wave of diffusion of culture is represented in the adoption by European furniture-makers of the Egyptian method of designing legs for chairs, beds and couches. In Egypt itself such a practice can be traced back to the first dynasty 3400 or more b.c. But the lion paws were adopted in Europe as a design for legs of chairs, etc. almost as soon as the Egyptian craft of carpentering and joinery was introduced. Long after the Queen Anne period Chippendale introduced the Chinese variant, the dragon’s feet grasping the moon-pearl symbol. But as I explained in The Evolution of the Dragon (1919) the dragon is really a blending of Horus’s falcon (eagle) and lion into one composite beast.
Thus the study of these couches has revealed the development in Egypt of a very peculiar but distinctive series of symbolic expressions, each of which is so arbitrary and unexpected that one is able to recognize it and refer it to its true source, in whatever part of the world and at whatever historical period it manifests itself. Hence we are able to use the evidence provided by these three distinct aspects of one essential idea to demonstrate different waves of cultural diffusion which spread from Egypt throughout the world both in ancient and modern times.