Fig. 112.—Plan of the tomb of Ti. Figs. 113, 114.—Mastaba at
Sakkarah, from Prisse.
In the tomb of Ptah-Hotep, of which we reproduce the principal side,
the stele proper is on the left, but the figures and the funerary
inscriptions cover all the central part of the richly decorated wall (Fig.
We see, then, that the stele is the one indispensable part of this
complicated whole. It was, in fact, upon the formula with which it was
inscribed, that the Egyptians depended for those magical agencies by
which Osiris became the active medium of transmission between the
living and the dead.
"At the foot of the stele there was often a table for offerings,
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in granite, alabaster, or limestone. This was laid flat upon the ground
Fig. 115.—Western wall in the chamber of the tomb of Ptah-
Hotep, 5th dynasty. Drawn by Bourgoin.
"As a rule this was the only piece of furniture in the chamber; but
occasionally we find, on each side of the stele and always placed
upon the ground, either two small limestone obelisks, or two objects
in that material resembling table legs hollowed out at the top for the
reception of offerings."
This chamber was left open to every comer. The entrance was in fact
left without a door. To this rule Mariette found but two exceptions in
the many hundreds of tombs which he examined.[167]
"Not far from the chamber, oftener on the south than the north, and
oftener on the north than the west, a passage in the masonry, high,
narrow, and built of very large stones, is found. The workmen
employed upon the excavations christened it the serdab, or corridor,
and their name has been generally adopted."[168] In Figs. 116-119 we give the plan and three sections of a mastaba at Gizeh which has
four serdabs.
"Sometimes the serdab has no communication with the other parts of
the mastaba, it is entirely walled in, but in other instances there is a
narrow quadrangular opening, a sort of pipe or conduit, which unites
the serdab with the chamber. It is so small that the hand can only be
introduced into it with difficulty.[169]
"The use of the serdab is revealed by the objects which have been
found in it; it was to hold one or more statues of the deceased. The
Egyptians believed these statues to be the most certain guarantees,
always with the exception of the mummy itself, of a future life for the
dead. Hidden from sight in their dark prison, they were protected from
all violence, while they were separated only by a few stones from the
chamber where the
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friends and relations met together, and the conduit by which the
intervening wall was often pierced, allowed the smell of fruit and
incense and the smoke of burnt fat to come to their nostrils.[170]
Fig. 116.—Plan of a mastaba with four Serdabs. (Lepsius, i., pl.
24.)
Fig. 117.—Longitudinal section of the same mastaba.
"No inscriptions have been found in a serdab except those upon the
statues. And no objects other than statues have ever been found in a
serdab." So that the function of the serdab was to afford a safe and
final asylum to the statues. These were, no doubt, to be found in
other situations also, because, not to mention the numerous bas-
reliefs upon which the figure of the deceased appeared in the
chamber or in the niche which sometimes took its place, he was
sometimes portrayed in high relief, and of full life size, in the public
hall of the tomb.[171] Sometimes, also, we find a statue in one of those front courts which, especially at the time of the fourth dynasty, seem
to have been in great favour. But this court, as well as the chamber,
was open to every chance passer by, and the statues
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which they both contained were in continual danger from careless or
malicious hands. It was to guard against such chances as these that
the inventive architects of Egypt contrived a safe retreat in the heart
of the massive structure which should provide a reserve of statues
against every contingency. When all those which were exposed to
accident should have perished, these would still survive and would
furnish to the double the material support, the tangible body, to which
that phantom was obliged to attach himself unless he wished to
perish entirely.
Fig. 118.—Transverse section through the chamber.
These precautions were not ill conceived. The serdab kept efficient
guard over its deposit; the museum of Boulak contains at least a
hundred statues from the ancient empire which were found at
Sakkarah, and nine-tenths of them were found in the serdabs.
Fig. 119.—Transverse section through the serdabs.
We have now described all those parts of the tomb which were above
ground. We have not been content with visiting the chamber only,
which was freely left open, we have penetrated into the farthest
recesses, and have discovered those secrets of the massive walls
which their constructor thought to hide for ever from the eye of man.
But even yet we have not arrived at the actual place of burial; we
shall reach it, however, through our third internal division, the well or
pit.
"The well is an artificial excavation, square or rectangular in plan,
never round, at the bottom of which is the chamber in which the
mummy is deposited.
"To arrive at the opening of the well, we must mount to the
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platform, or roof, of the mastaba (Fig. 122). As there was never any staircase to a mastaba either within or without, it will be seen that the
well must have been a very inaccessible part of the tomb." In one
single instance, namely, in the tomb of Ti, the well is sunk from the
floor of the largest of the internal chambers, but whether it opened
upon the roof or upon the floor of the chamber, it was always closed
with the utmost care by means of a large flat stone.
Fig. 120.—Figures in high relief, from a mastaba at Gizeh, 5th
dynasty (from Lepsius).
"The well is generally situated upon the major axis of the mastaba,
and, as a rule, nearer to the north than to the south. Its depth varies,
but, on an average, it is about forty feet. Now and then, however, it
has a depth of sixty-five or even eighty feet. As the well begins at the
platform and ends in the rock-carved mummy chamber, it follows that
it passes vertically first through the mastaba, secondly through the
rock upon which the mastaba is founded. The built part of the well is
carefully
181
constructed of large and perfect stones, and in this we find one of the
distinguishing characteristics of the tombs of the ancient empire." In
the tomb of Ti the well takes the form of an inclined plain like a
passage in the pyramids. In the common form of well the mummy pit
could only be reached by means of ropes.
"When the bottom of the well is reached a gaping passage is seen in
the rock which forms its southern wall. This passage, which is not
high enough to allow one to walk upright, does not run quite parallel
to the axis of the mastaba. It is directed obliquely towards the south-
east, like the chamber above. Suddenly it becomes enlarged into a
small cavern, which is the mortuary chamber properly speaking, that
is to say, the room with a view to which the whole structure has been
planned and to which all its other parts are but accessories.
"This mortuary chamber is vertically under the public hall above, so
that the survivors who came together in the latter for the funeral
ceremonies had the corpse of the deceased under their feet, at a
distance which varied according to the depth of the well."
Fig. 121.—The upper chamber, well, and mummy chamber.[172]
The mortuary chambers are large and carefully built, but generally
without ornament or inscription. Of all those explored by him Mariette
found but one which had its walls ornamented; in the middle of its
decorations, which he does not describe, he contrived to make out a
few phrases which seemed to belong to the Ritual of the Dead.
The sarcophagus was placed in one corner of the chamber. It was
generally of fine limestone, sometimes of red granite, and on a few
occasions of opaque black basalt. It was rectangular on plan with a
round-topped lid squared at the angles.
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Mariette found none at Sakkarah with inscriptions. On the other hand
we find them upon the sarcophagus at Khoo-foo-Ankh, which was
discovered at Gizeh and belongs to the fourth dynasty (Figs. 123,
"The Egyptians did not always trust to the mere size and weight of
the lid for the secure closing of the sarcophagus. The under-side of
the cover is made with a rebate at its edge which fits into a
corresponding groove on the upper edge of the sarcophagus, and the
two edges were bound still more tightly together by a very hard
cement. Finally, as if all these precautions were not enough, wooden
bolts were affixed to the under-side of the lid which fitted into slots in
the sarcophagus and helped to render the two inseparable."
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,
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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
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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
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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,
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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.
Fig. 125.—Bas-relief from Sakkarah. Boulak.
We should here, perhaps, in order to make our description complete,
attempt to convey a true idea of the reliefs which cover the sides of
the chamber, and of the statues which fill the serdab. We should,
perhaps, by a judicious choice of examples, endeavour to estimate
their style and composition; but we shall postpone all such
examination until we come to treat of sculpture, and of the way in
which the earliest Egyptian artists treated the human form. A didactic
and analytic method is so far despotic that it compels us, in order to
marshal our facts and to make them easily understood, to separate
phenomena which are intimately connected, and to destroy the unity
of natural groups. We have thus been driven to separate the figured
decorations of the tomb from the architectural arrangements which
enframe and support them; with the latter, alone, are we now
concerned.
We may sum up the foregoing details by the following general
description of the Egyptian tomb as it was established in the early
ages of the national life, in those years when the national civilization
put on the form and colour which it retained until the last days of
antiquity.
This tomb, when complete, included (1) a built up part which, being
raised well above the surface of the soil, was a conspicuous object in
the landscape; and (2) a subterranean part cut in the living rock which
was never more than a few feet below the surface of the sand. The
constructed part inclosed a chamber which was sometimes internal
and sometimes external, a chamber in which the relations of the
deceased deposited the funeral offerings, and in which the priests
officiated before the stele, to which the most conspicuous place was
always given. Sometimes this chamber is nothing more than a recess
in the façade, a mere frame for the stele. The structure also contains
a retreat in its thickness where the statues of the deceased were
walled up. The subterranean part is composed of the well and the
mummy chamber. The well is sunk from different parts of the building;
usually traversing its whole depth; it leads to the mummy chamber
which is found at varying depths in the bowels of the earth.
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Such are the constituent elements of the mastaba, that is to say, of
those private tombs which were contemporary with the Pyramids. All
over Egypt, in every one of the cemeteries, no matter where they are
situated or what their date, the same elements are to be found,
modified in certain particulars by the rank of the deceased, by the
nature of the soil, by the size of the tomb, and by the changes of
fashion, but always to be easily recognized. Of all these elements
there is but one which does not persistently reappear in monuments
other than the mastaba, and that is the serdab. This retreat for
statues has not, as yet, been found in any of the royal tombs of the
first six dynasties, neither has it been met with in the tombs of the two
Theban empires, or of later epochs. And yet it was connected with
one of the most vital hopes of the Egyptian religion. It fulfilled in the
happiest manner, one of the conditions imposed upon the Egyptian
architect by the strange conceptions of a future life which we have
described. Why then do we, as a rule, find the serdab only in the
mastabas of the Memphite necropolis? Its absence under the Theban
princes is, perhaps to be explained by the progress made in the
science of embalming. The heads of more than one mummy have
now been exhibited in the cases of European museums for many
years, and, in spite of the dampness of our climates, they still
preserve their skin, their teeth and their hair (Fig. 126). When they had learnt the secret of preserving the body from corruption, so that
after a long series of centuries it should be pretty much in the same
condition as on the day after death, they did not indeed, cease to
make those images which were supposed to guard the double from
annihilation, but they attached less importance to their safety, and
took less trouble to hide them. They considered that they had done
enough for their preservation by putting them in the precincts of their
tombs and temples, and so under the guardianship of their venerated
religion.
As for the other parts of the tomb, a little attention will always suffice
for their identification even in those sepulchres which differ most from
the mastaba. In some instances we shall find the mummy chamber
contrived in the upper structure, in others the whole tomb is cut in the
living rock. Sometimes we find the chapel, as we may call the public
chamber in which the miraculous nourishment of the double took
place, more or less distantly separated from the mummy chamber;
sometimes the
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well almost disappears, sometimes it ceases to be vertical and
becomes a long corridor with but a gentle slope. As a rule all these
variations are easily explained, and may be connected without
difficulty with that primitive type which we have attempted to define by
its most wide-spread and constant features.
Fig. 126.—Head of a Mummy. Louvre.
Another method of sepulture was made use of in the Ancient Empire,
a method which afterwards came into general use in Egypt, we mean
the hypogeum, or subterranean tomb. The Egyptian Commission has
described several rock-cut tombs in the neighbourhood of the
Pyramids, especially some which face the western slope of the
Second Pyramid. Similar tombs are to be found near the pyramid of
Mycerinus. Some of these sepulchral grottos declare their extreme
antiquity by their imitations of wooden architecture;[174] others by their inscriptions dating from
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the fourth and fifth dynasties. We shall not dwell long upon these
rock-cut tombs. They are generally composed of one or two small
sculptured chambers, upon one of which the well opens which leads
to the mummy chamber. We shall postpone their study to a later
chapter, as the time of the Middle Empire affords us richer and more
complete examples of them than the earlier period; but, indeed, the
New Empire has left us the most important examples of this kind of
sepulchre. We shall here content ourselves with pointing out that the
architects of Memphis did not ignore the facilities offered by the easily
cut limestone rocks, not only for construction of well and mummy
chamber, but also for those open parts of the tomb where the funeral
rites and the ceremonies of the Ritual of the Dead were performed. In
the whole course of her long vitality Egypt did little more, either in art
or religion, than develop, with variations, the themes presented to her
by the generations which were ruled by her first six dynasties.
THE PYRAMIDS.
The mastaba was the private tomb of the great lord or rich citizen of
primitive Egypt; the pyramid was the royal tomb for the same epoch,
the tomb of that son of the gods, almost a god himself, before whom
all foreheads were bowed into the dust. As his head towered over
those of his prostrate subjects during life, so, after death, should his
sepulchre rise high above the comparatively humble tombs of his
proudest servants. The most imposing mastabas, before the sand
had buried them to the summit, must have looked small enough
beside those prodigious masses. They were ant-hills at the foot of a