pyramids of Gizeh the most striking objects to the traveller and to the
historian of art.
Considering their age, these three pyramids are wonderfully well
preserved. In their presence, even in their actual state of partial ruin,
the oriental hyperbolism of Abd-ul-Latif, an Arab writer of the
thirteenth century, seems no more than natural. "All things fear Time,"
he cries, "but Time fears the Pyramids!" And yet time has done its
work during the last few hundreds of years. The summits of the great
structures have been slightly lowered; the gaping breaches in their
flanks have been gradually widened; and although in spite of their
stripped flanks and open wounds they still rear their heads proudly
into the Egyptian sky, all those accessory structures which
surrounded them, and fulfilled their own well-defined offices in the
general monumental ensemble, have either been destroyed by the
violence of man or engulfed by the encroaching sand. Where, for
example, are those wide and substantial causeways, whose large
and carefully adjusted blocks excited the wonder of Herodotus.[227]
After having afforded an unyielding roadway for the transport of so
many heavy materials, they formed truly regal avenues by which the
funeral processions of the Egyptians reached the centre of the
necropolis as long as
237
their civilization lasted. In the plain they were above the level of the
highest inundations, and their gentle slope gave easy access to the
western plateau. The great Sphinx, the image of Harmachis, or the
Rising Sun, was placed at the threshold of the plateau. Immovable
among the dead of the vast cemetery, he personified the idea of the
resurrection, of that eternal life which, like the morning sun, is ever
destined to triumph over darkness and death. His head alone now
rises above the sand, but in the days of Herodotus his vast bulk, cut
from a rock nearly 70 feet high, was well calculated to prepare the
eye of the traveller for the still more colossal masses of the pyramids.
His features have now been disfigured by all kinds of outrage, but in
the thirteenth century, although even then he had been mutilated,
Abd-ul-Latif
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was able to admire his serene smile, his head enframed in a richly
carved wig which added to its size and dignity. His body was never
more than roughly blocked out, but a painted decoration, of which
traces may still be found, compensated in some degree for the
deficiencies in the modelling.
Fig. 156.—Plan of the Pyramids of Gizeh and of that part of the
necropolis which immediately surrounds them.
The soil around each pyramid was carefully levelled and paved with
dressed limestone slabs. Upon this pavement rested the foundations
of the stylobate surrounding the pyramid. Both stylobate and
pavement are now in almost every case concealed by sand and
débris, but at the pyramid of Chephren, which is less banked up than
the others, traces of them have been proved to exist. They added
somewhat to the imposing effect of those monuments upon the eye,
and gave additional definition to their bases.[228] The area thus paved was inclosed with a wall, which had an opening towards the east, in
front of which the temple, or funerary chapel of the pyramid, was
raised. The latter, no doubt,
239
was magnificently decorated. At the foot of the mountains of stone
under which reposed the ashes of the Pharaohs themselves, smaller
pyramids were raised for their wives and children. Of these some half
dozen still exist upon the plateau of Gizeh. One of them has been
recognized as the tomb of that daughter of Cheops, about whom
Herodotus tells one of those absurd stories invented by the Egyptians
of the decadence, with which his dragomans took such delight in
imposing upon his simple faith.[229] Around the space which was thus consecrated to the adoration of the dead monarch, the long rows of
mastabas stretched away for miles through the vast necropolis.
Fig. 157.—The Sphinx.
The great ones of Egypt, all those who had been near the Pharaoh
and had received some of his reflected glory, grouped their tombs as
closely as possible about his. Distributed thus by reigns, the private
tombs were erected in close juxtaposition one with another, each
being provided with a stele, or sepulchral tablet upon which the name
of the deceased was inscribed, most of them being adorned with
painted bas-reliefs, and a few with statues placed upon their façades.
Upon the causeways which connected Memphis with the necropolis,
upon the esplanades erected by the Pharaohs to the memory and for
the adoration of their ancestors, in the countless streets, lanes, and
blind alleys which gave access to the private tombs, advanced
endless processions of mourners, driving before them the bleating
and lowing victims for the funeral rites. Priests in white linen, friends
and relations of the dead with their hands full of fruit and flowers,
flitted hither and thither. On the days appointed for the
commemoration of the dead, all this must have afforded a curiously
animated scene. The city of the dead had its peculiar life, we might
almost say its festivals, like that of the living. But amid the coming
and going, amid all the bustle of the Egyptian jour des morts, it was
the giant forms of
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the pyramids, with their polished slopes[230] and their long shadows turning with the sun, that gave the scene a peculiar solemnity and a
character of its own. Morning and evening this shadow passed over
hundreds of tombs, and thus, in a fashion, symbolized the royal
dignity and the almost superhuman majesty of the kingly office.
Fig. 158.—Pyramid with its inclosure, Abousir; from Perring.
Of all this harmonious conception but a few fragments remain. The
necropolis is almost as empty and deserted as the desert which it
adjoins. The silence is only broken by the cry of the jackal, by the
footsteps of a few casual visitors hurrying along its deserted avenues,
and by the harsh voices of the Bedouins who have taken possession
of the Pyramid of Cheops, and, in their own fashion, do its honours to
the curious visitor. But despoiled though they be of their ornaments
and of their proper surroundings, the pyramids are yet among those
monuments of the world which are sure to impress all who possess
sensibility or powers of reflection. In a remarkable passage in the
Description générale de Memphis et des Pyramides, Jomard has well
defined the effect which they produce upon the traveller and the
impressions which they leave behind: "The general effect produced
by the pyramids is very curious. Their summits, when seen from a
distance, look like those of high mountains standing out against the
sky. As we approach them this effect diminishes; but when we arrive
within a very short distance of their sides a totally different impression
succeeds; we begin to be amazed, to be oppressed, almost to be
stupefied by their size. When quite close to them their summits and
angles can no longer be seen. The wonder which they cause is not
like that caused by a great work of art. It is the sense of their simple
grandeur of form and of the disproportion between the individual
power and stature of man and these colossal creations of his hands.
The eye can hardly embrace them, nor the imagination grasp their
mass. We then begin to form some idea of the prodigious quantity of
dressed stone which goes to make up their height. We see hundreds
of stones each containing two hundred cubic feet and weighing some
thirty tons, and thousands of others which are but little less. We touch
them with our hands and endeavour
241
to realize the power which must have been required to quarry, dress,
carry, and fix such a number of colossal blocks, how many men must
have been employed on the work, what machines they used, and
how many years it must have taken; and the less we are able to
understand all these things, the greater is our admiration for the
patience and power which overcame such obstacles."[231]
§ 3. The Tomb under the Middle Empire.
We have shown how the mastaba, that is to say, the most ancient
form of tomb in the necropolis of Memphis, was an expression, both
in arrangement and in decoration, of the ideas of the Egyptians as to
a future life. In literature and in art the works created by a people in
its infancy, or at least in its youth, are the most interesting to the
historian, because they are the results of the sincere and unfettered
expansion of vital forces; this is especially the case when there is no
possibility of a desire to imitate foreign models. The mastaba
deserved therefore to be very carefully studied. No other race has
given birth in its funerary architecture, to a type so pure, a type which
may be explained in every detail by a master-idea at once original
and well defined. We therefore dwelt upon it at some length and
described it with the care which it demanded. We found it again in the
pyramids, the royal tombs of the Ancient Empire, which though
sensibly modified by the great change in proportion, by the colossal
dimensions which the pride of the Pharaohs gave to one part of their
tomb, are yet penetrated by the same spirit. We have yet to follow the
development of the same idea through the later years of Egyptian
civilization, and in localities more or less removed from that in which
she gave her first tokens of power. In one place we shall find it
modified by the nature of the soil to which the corpse had to be
committed, in another by the inevitable progress of ideas, by the
development of art, and by the caprices of fashion, which was no
more stationary in Egypt than elsewhere.
The most important necropolis of the First Theban Empire was that of
Abydos in Upper Egypt, upon the left bank of the
242
river. The great number of sepultures which took place in it, from the
first years of the monarchy until the end of the ancient civilization, is
to be explained by the peculiarly sacred character of the city of
Abydos, and by the great popularity, from one end of the Nile valley to
the other, of the myths which centred in it. According to the Egyptian
belief, the opening through which the setting sun sank into the bowels
of the earth for its nightly transit, was situated to the west of Abydos.
We know how the Egyptian intellect had established an analogy
between the career of the sun and that of man; we may therefore
conclude that in choosing a final resting-place as near as possible to
the spot where the great luminary seemed to make its nightly plunge,
they believed they were making more completely sure of triumphing,
like him, over darkness and death.
The sun is not extinguished, he is but hidden for a moment from the
eyes of man. This sun of the infernal regions is Osiris, who, of all the
Egyptian gods, was most universally adored. Although many Egyptian
towns could show tombs in which the members of Osiris, which had
been dispersed by Set, were re-united by Isis and Nephthys, none of
them were so famous, or the object of such deep devotion, as that at
Abydos. It was, if we may be permitted to use such a phrase, the
Holy Sepulchre of Egypt. As, in the early centuries of Christianity, the
faithful laid great stress upon burial in the neighbourhood of some
holy martyr, "The richest and most influential Egyptians," says a well
informed Greek writer, "were ambitious of a common tomb with
Osiris."[232]
Under such conditions it may readily be understood why Mariette
should have concentrated so much of his attention upon
243
Abydos. In spite of all his researches he did not succeed in
discovering the tomb of Osiris itself, but yet his digging campaigns
afforded results which are most interesting and important from every
point of view.[233]
Fig. 159.—The river transport of the Mummy. (Champollion, pl.
173.)
One district of this necropolis is made up by a vast number of tombs
dating from the time of the ancient empire, and particularly from the
sixth dynasty. Arrangements similar to those of the mastabas at
Sakkarah are found, but on a smaller scale—the same funerary
chambers, the same wells, sometimes vertical, sometimes horizontal
as in the tomb of Ti and the pyramids, the same materials. The
situation of this tomb-district, which Mariette calls the central
cemetery, has allowed arrangements to be adopted similar to those
on the plateau of Memphis, where the sand is the only covering to a
stratum of living rock in which it was easy to cut the well and the
mummy-chamber.
In the remainder of the space occupied by the tombs the subsoil is of
a very different nature. "The hard and impenetrable
244
rock is there covered with a sandstone in course of formation; this is
friable at some points, at others so soft that but few mummies have
been entrusted to it."[234] This formation extends over nearly the whole of the ground upon which the tombs of the eleventh, twelfth, and
especially of the thirteenth, dynasties, are packed closely together.
This Mariette calls the northern cemetery. The tombs of Abydos have
no subterranean story, properly speaking. Well, mummy-chamber,
and funerary chapel are all constructed, not dug. In the few instances
in which the ground has been excavated down to the friable
sandstone which over-lies the hard rock, the opening has been lined
with rubble.
Fig. 160.—Tomb at Abydos; drawn in perspective from the
elevation of Mariette.
Fig. 161.—Section of the above tomb.
"Hence the peculiar aspect which the necropolis of Abydos must have
presented when intact. Imagine a multitude of small pyramids five or
six metres high, carelessly oriented or not at all, and uniformly built of
crude brick. These pyramids always stand upon a plinth, they are
hollow, and within they are formed into a clumsy cupola by means of
roughly built off-sets. The pyramid stands directly over a chamber in
its foundations which shelters the mummy. As soon as the latter was
in place, the door of its chamber was closed by masonry."[235] An exterior chamber was often built in front of the pyramid, and being
always left
245
open, served for the performance of the sepulchral rites; but
sometimes this chamber was absent and then those rites were
carried through in the open air, before the stele of the deceased. This
latter was sometimes erected upon the plinth, sometimes let into its
face. A little cube of masonry is sometimes found at the foot of the
stele, destined, no doubt, for funeral offerings. Sometimes the tomb
had a surrounding wall of the same height as its plinth; this served to
mark out the ground which belonged to it, and when the friends of the
deceased met to do him honour, the entrance could be closed, and
comparative privacy assured even in the absence of a funerary
chapel.
Fig. 162.—Tomb at Abydos; drawn in perspective from the
elevation of Mariette.
Fig. 163.—Section of the above tomb.
These tombs, which were generally constructed with no great care,
were for the most part without casing. The pyramidal form was given
by setting each course of bricks slightly back from the one below it.
When this part of the work was finished, each face was covered, as a
rule, with a coat of rough concrete, which, in its turn, was hidden
under a layer of white stucco. This multitude of little monuments, all of
the same shape and of much the same size, must, when complete,
have looked like the tents of an encamped army.
246
Fig. 164.—Stele of the eleventh dynasty, Abydos. Drawn by
Bourgoin. (Boulak.)
As these tombs were all upon the surface of the ground they have
suffered more than any others from the attacks of man. Those which
are reproduced among these lines of text were only recovered by
Mariette by dint of patient excavation. And although these ill
constructed edifices, so far as their materials are concerned, are still
standing, they will soon follow the many thousands which once stood
in serried ranks round the sepulchre of Osiris. The only remains of
this necropolis which are likely to
249
be preserved are the numberless steles which Mariette rescued from
its débris. They form about four-fifths of the total number of those
monuments now preserved in the museum at Boulak.[236] We figure two of them, one belonging to the Middle, the other to the New
Empire (Figs. 164 and 165).
Fig. 165.—Stele of Pinahsi, priest of Ma: Abydos. New
Empire. Drawn by Bourgoin. (Boulak.)
Whenever religious motives did not affect their choice, the Egyptians
preferred, during the period we are now considering, to cut their
tombs horizontally out of some rocky eminence. Such a tomb was
called a σπέος by the Greeks. The most interesting examples of
these constructions are offered by the tombs of the twelfth dynasty at
Beni-Hassan and at Siout, both situated between Memphis and
Abydos.
Champollion was the first to appreciate the importance of the grottos
of Beni-Hassan. Ever since his time they have received, for various
reasons, much of the attention of egyptologists. We have already
referred to their inscriptions, which are as interesting to the historian
of ideas as to the student of political and social organizations. We
have alluded above to the varied scenes which cover the walls of
their chambers, the most important of which have been reproduced
by Champollion, Lepsius, and Prisse d'Avennes; we have finally to
speak of those famous protodoric columns, as they are called, in
which some have thought they saw the original model of the oldest
and most beautiful of the Grecian orders. We are at present
concerned, however, with the arrangement of the tombs themselves.
These are the same, with but slight variations, for the smallest and
most simple tombs as for those which are largest and most
elaborately decorated.
These façades are cut into the cliff-like sides of the hills of the Arab
Chain, about half-way up their total height. They are, therefore, high
above the surface of the river. When the cutting was made, two or
three columns were left to form a portico, the deep shadows of which
stand out strongly against the whiteness of the rock. This portico
leads to a chamber which is lighted only from the door. Its ceiling is
often cut into the form of a vault. A deep square niche is cut,
sometimes opposite to the door, sometimes in one of the angles. It
once contained the statue of the deceased. Most of the tombs have
but one
250
chamber, but a few have two or three. In a corner either of the only
chamber or of that which is farthest from the door, the opening of a
square well is found; this leads to the mummy-chamber, which is
excavated at a lower level.
Fig. 166.—Façade of a tomb at Beni-Hassan.
The chamber upon which the portico opens is the funerary chapel,
the place of reunion for the friends and relations of the dead. As
Mariette very truly remarks, from the first step which the traveller
makes in the tomb of Numhotep at Beni-Hassan, he perceives that, in
spite of all differences of situation, the
251
traditions of the Ancient Empire are still full of vitality. "The spirit which
governed the decorators of the tomb of Ti at Sakkarah still inspired
the painters who covered the walls of the tomb of Numhotep at Beni-
Hassan. The defunct is at home among his own possessions; he
fishes and hunts, his cattle defile before him, his people build boats,
cut down trees, cultivate the vine and gather the grapes, till the earth,
or give themselves up to gymnastics or to games of skill and chance,
and among them the figure of the dead is carried hither and thither in
a palanquin. We have already found pictures like these in the
mastabas of the Ancient Empire, and here we find them again.
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But at Beni-Hassan this painted decoration becomes more personal
to the occupant of the tomb, the inscriptions enter into precise and
copious biographical details, which are never found elsewhere."[237]
Fig. 167.—Façade of a tomb at Beni-Hassan, showing some of
the adjoining tombs.
The necropolis of Siout, in the Libyan chain, offers the same general
characteristics. The tomb of Hapi-Tefa, a feudal prince of the twelfth
dynasty, and consequently a contemporary of those princes of the