Fig. 88.—Man and his wife in the style of the 5th
dynasty. Calcareous stone. From the Louvre.
We shall see that a special recess was prepared in the thickness of
the built up portion of the tomb for the reception of wooden or stone
statues, so that they might be kept out of sight and safe from all
indiscreet curiosity. Other effigies were placed in the chambers of the
tomb or the courts in front of it. Finally, we know that persons of
consideration obtained from the king permission to erect statues in
the temples, where they were protected by the sanctity of the place
and the vigilance of the priests.[130]
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Fig. 89.—Sekhem-ka, his wife Ata, and his son Khnem, in the
style of the 5th dynasty. Limestone. From the Louvre.
From the point of view of the ancient Egyptians such precautions
were by no means futile. Many of these effigies have come down to
us safely through fifty or sixty centuries and have found an asylum in
our museums where they have nothing to fear but the slow effects of
climate and time. Those which remain intact may therefore count
upon immortality. If the double required nothing to preserve it from
annihilation but the continued existence of the image, that of
Chephren, the builder of the second great pyramid, would be still
alive, preserved by the magnificent statue of diorite which is the glory
of Boulak, and thanks to the durability
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of its material, it would have every chance of lasting as long as the
world itself. But, unhappily for the shade of Pharaoh, this posthumous
existence which is so difficult of comprehension to us, was only to be
prolonged by attention to conditions most of which could not long
continue to be observed.
Fig. 90.—Stele of Nefer-oun. Boulak.
It was entirely a material life. The dead-alive had need of food and
drink, which he obtained from supplies placed beside him in the
tomb,[131] and afterwards, when these were consumed, by the 143
repasts which took place periodically in the tomb, of which he had his
share. The first of these feasts was given upon the conclusion of the
funeral ceremonies,[132] and they were repeated from year to year on days fixed by tradition and sometimes by the expressed wish of the
deceased.[133] An open and public chamber was contrived in the tomb for the celebration of these anniversaries. It was a kind of chapel, or,
perhaps, to speak more accurately, a saloon in which all the relations
and friends of the deceased could find room. At the foot of the stele
upon which the dead man was represented sacrificing to Osiris, the
god of the dead, was placed a table for offerings, upon which the
share intended for the double was deposited and the libations
poured. A conduit was reserved in the thickness of the wall by which
the odour of the roast meats and perfumed fruits and the smoke of
the incense might reach the concealed statues.[134]
Fig. 91.—Preparation of the victims and arrival of funeral gifts,
5th dynasty. Height of each band, 13-1/2 inches. Boulak. Drawn
by Bourgoin.
The Egyptians did not trust only to the piety of their descendants to
preserve them from a final death by inanition in their neglected
tombs. At the end of a few generations that piety might grow cold and
relax its care; besides, a family might become
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extinct. All those who could afford it provided against such
contingencies as these by giving their tombs what we now call a
perpetual foundation. They devoted to the purpose the revenues of
some part of their property, which was also charged with the
maintenance of the priest or priests who had to perform the
ceremonial rites which we have described.[135] We find that, even under the Ptolemies, special ministers were attached to the
sepulchral chapel of Cheops, the builder of the great pyramid.[136] It may seem difficult to believe that a "foundation" of the ancient empire
should have survived so many changes of régime, but the honours
paid to the early kings had become one of the national institutions of
Egypt. Each restoring sovereign made it a point of duty to give
renewed life to the worship of those remote princes who represented
the first glories of the national history.
Fig. 92.—Table for offerings. Louvre.
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Besides which there were priests attached to each necropolis, who,
for certain fees, officiated at each tomb in turn. They were identified
by Mariette upon some of the bas-reliefs at Sakkarah. Their services
were retained much in the same way as masses are bought in our
days.[137]
Fig. 93.—Another form of the table for offerings. Boulak.
The same sentiment led to the burial with the dead of all arms,
clothes, jewels, and other objects of which they might have need in
the next life. We know what treasures of this kind have been obtained
from the Egyptian tombs and how they fill the cases of our museums.
But neither was this habit peculiar to Egypt. It was common to all
ancient people whether civilized or barbarous. Traces are to be found
even in the early traditions of the Hellenic race of a time when, like
those Scythians described by Herodotus,[138] the Greeks sacrificed, at the death of a chief, his wives and servants that they might
accompany him to the next world. When she began to reveal herself
in the arts Egypt was already too far civilized for such practices as
these; thanks to the simultaneous development of science, art and
religion, she found means to give the same advantages to her dead
without permitting Scythian cruelties. Those personal attendants and
domestic officers whose services would be so necessary in another
life, were secured to them at a small expense; instead of slaying them
at the door of the tomb, they were represented upon its walls in all the
variety of their occupations and in the actual moment of labour. So
too with all objects of luxury or necessity which the double would wish
to have at hand, as for instance his food and drink.[139]
A custom which would seem to have established itself a little later
may be referred to the same desire; we mean the habit of placing in
the tomb those statuettes which we meet with in such vast numbers
after the commencement of the second Theban Empire.[140] Mariette obtained some from tombs of the twelfth
146
dynasty, and the sixth chapter of the Book of the Dead, which is
engraved upon them, seems to be one of the most ancient.
Egyptologists are now inclined to believe that the essential parts of
this ritual date back as far as the Memphite period.
Fig. 94.—Labourers heaping up ears of corn, from a tomb at
Gizeh. ( Description de l'Égypte. )
These statuettes are of different sizes and materials. As a rule they
do not exceed from eight to twelve inches, but there are a few which
are three feet or more in height. Some are in wood, some in
limestone, and some in granite, but as a rule they are made of that
kind of terra cotta which, when covered with green or blue enamel,
has been called Egyptian porcelain. They are like a mummy in
appearance; their hands are crossed upon the breast and hold
instruments of agriculture such as hoes and picks, and a sack meant
for grain hangs from their shoulders. The meaning of all this is to be
sought in the Egyptian notions of a future life; it is also explained by
the picture in chapter XC. of the Ritual, which shows us the dead
tilling, sowing and harvesting in the fields of the other world. The texts
of the Ritual and of certain inscriptions call these little figures oushebti
or answerers from the verb ousheb, to answer. It is therefore easy
147
to divine the part attributed to them by the popular imagination. They
answered to the name traced upon the tomb and acted as substitute
for its tenant in the cultivation of the subterranean regions.[141] With the help of the attendants painted and sculptured upon the walls they
saved him from fatigue and from the chance of want. This is another
branch of the same old idea. In his desire to take
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every precaution against the misery and final annihilation which
would result from abandonment, the Egyptian thought he could never
go too far in furnishing, provisioning and peopling his tomb.
Figs. 95, 96.—Sepulchral statuettes, from the Louvre.
The ingenuity of their contrivances is extraordinary. Food in its natural
state would not keep, and various accidents, might, as we have
shown, lead to the death of the double by inanition. It was the same
with furniture and clothes; the narrow dimensions of the tomb,
moreover, would forbid the accumulation there of everything which its
sombre tenant might desire. On the other hand the funerary
statuettes were made of the most indestructible materials and the
bas-reliefs and paintings were one with the thick walls of stone or
living rock. These have survived practically unaltered until our day.
We visited the tomb of Ti a short time after its chambers had been
opened and cleared. It was marvellous to see how form and colour
had been preserved intact and fresh under the sand, and this work
which was four or five thousand years old seemed to be but lately
finished. By the brightness of their colours and the sharp precision of
their contours these charming reliefs had the effect of a newly struck
medal. Such scenes from the daily life of the people continued to be
figured upon Egyptian tombs from the old empire to the new. When
their study and comparison were first begun different explanations
were put forward. Some believed that they were an illustrated
biography of the deceased, a representation of his achievements or
of those over which he had presided during the course of his mortal
life; others saw in them an illustration of his future life, a setting forth
of the joys and pleasures of the Egyptian Elysium.
Both these interpretations have had to give way before the critical
examination of the pictures themselves and the decipherment of their
accompanying inscriptions. It was soon perceived, through
comparisons easily made, that these scenes were not anecdotic. On
a few very rare occasions they seem to be connected with
circumstances peculiar to the inhabitant of the tomb. There are a few
steles and tombs upon which the dead man seems to have caused
his services to be described, with the object, no doubt, of continuing
in the next world his career of honour and success in this. Such an
inscription is so far biographical, and a similar spirit may extend to the
decorations of the stele and walls of the tomb. As an example of such
narrative epigraphs we may cite the long inscription of Ouna, which
gives us the life of a sort of grand-vizier to the two first Kings of the
sixth dynasty;[142] also the inscriptions upon the tombs of those feudal princes who were buried at Beni-Hassan. In the latter there are
historical representations as commentaries upon the text. Among
these is the often reproduced painting of a band of Asiatic emigrants
bringing presents to the prince and demanding, perhaps, a supply of
wheat in return, like the Hebrews in the time of Jacob.
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
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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
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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]
Such a belief is astonishing to us; it demands an effort of the
imagination to which we moderns are in no way equal. We have great
difficulty in realising a state of mind so different from what ours has
become after centuries of progress and thought. Those early races
had neither a long enough experience of things, nor a
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sufficiently capable power of reflection to enable them to distinguish
the possible from the impossible. They did not appreciate the
difference between living things and those which we call inanimate.
They endowed all things about them with souls like their own. They
found no more difficulty in giving life to their carved and painted
domestics, than to the mummy or statue of the deceased, or to the
phantom which they called the double. Is it not natural to the child to
take revenge upon the table against which he hurts himself, or to
speak tenderly to the doll which he holds in his arms?
Fig. 99.—The tomb of Ti; women, representing the lands of the
deceased, carrying the funeral gifts.
This power to endow all things with life and personality is now
reserved for the poet and the infant, but in the primitive days of
civilization it belonged to all people alike. Imagination had then a
power over a whole race which in our days is the gift of great poets
alone. In the efforts which they made to forestall the wants of the
helpless dead, they were not content with providing the food and
furniture which we find upon the walls. They had a secret impression
that these might be insufficient for wants renewed through eternity,
and they made another step upon the way upon which they had
embarked. By a still more curious and still bolder fiction than those
which had gone before, they attributed to prayer
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the power of multiplying, by the use of a few magic sentences, all
objects of the first necessity to the inhabitants of the tomb.
Every sepulchre has a stele, that is to say, an upright stone tablet
which varied in form and place in different epochs, but always served
the same purpose and had the same general character. Most of these
steles were adorned with painting and sculpture; all of them had more
or less complicated inscriptions.[146] In the semicircle which forms the upper part of most of these inscribed slabs, the dead person,
accompanied by his family, presents offerings to a god, who is usually
Osiris. Under this an inscription is carved after an unchanging
formula: "Offering to Osiris (or to some other deity, as the case may
be) in order that he may give provision of bread, liquid, beef, geese,
milk, wine, beer, clothes, perfumes, and all good and pure things
upon which the god subsists, to the ka of N..., son of M...." Below this
the defunct is often shown in the act of himself receiving the offerings
of his family. In both divisions the objects figured are looked upon as
real, as in the wall decorations. In the lower division they are offered
directly to him who is to profit by them; in the upper, the god is
charged to see that they are delivered to the right address. The
provisions which the god is asked to pass on to the defunct are first
presented to him; by the intervention of Osiris the doubles of bread,
meat and drink pass into the other world to nourish the double of
man. But it was not essential for the gift to be effective that it should
be real, or even quasi-real; that its image should even be given in
paint or stone. The first-comer could procure all things necessary for
the deceased by their enumeration in the proper form. We find
therefore that many Egyptians caused the following invocation to
passing strangers, to be engraved upon their tombs:
"Oh you who still exist upon the earth, whether you be private
individuals, priests, scribes, or ministers entering into this tomb, if you
love life and do not know death, if you wish to be in favour with the
gods of your cities and to avoid the terrors of the other world, if you
wish to be entombed in your own sepulchres and to transmit your
dignities to your children, you must if you be scribes, recite the words
inscribed upon this stone, or, if not, you must listen to their recital:
say, offering to Amen, master of Karnak, that he may give thousands
of loaves of bread, thousands
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of jars of drink, thousands of oxen, thousands of geese, thousands of
garments, thousands of all good and pure things to the ka, or double,
of the prince Entef."[147]
Thanks to all these subtle precautions, and to the goodwill with which
the Egyptian intellect lent itself to their bold fictions, the tomb
deserved the name it received, the ho