Cleopatra's Needle Part 11

Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, and certainly nothing in romantic literature can surpa.s.s in dramatic interest the revelation which awaited the Boolak officials in the subterranean sepulchral chambers of Deir-el-Bahari. At the bottom of the shaft the explorers noticed a dark pa.s.sage running westward; so, having lit their candles, they groped their way slowly along the pa.s.sage, which ran in a straight line for twenty-three feet, and then turned abruptly to the right, stretching away northward into total darkness. At the corner where the pa.s.sage turned northward, they found a royal funeral canopy, flung carelessly down in a tumbled heap. As they proceeded, they found the roof so low in some places that they were obliged to stoop, and in other parts the rocky floor was very uneven. At a distance of sixty feet from the corner, the explorers found themselves at the top of a flight of stairs, roughly hewn out of the rock. Having descended the steps, each with his flickering candle in hand, they pursued their way along a pa.s.sage slightly descending, and penetrating deeper and further into the heart of the mountain. As they proceeded, the floor became more and more strewn with fragments of mummy cases and tattered pieces of mummy bandages.

Presently they noticed boxes piled on the top of each other against the wall, and these boxes proved to be filled with porcelain statuettes, libation jars, and canopic vases of precious alabaster. Then appeared several huge coffins of painted wood; and great was their joy when they gazed upon a crowd of mummy cases, some standing, some laid upon the ground, each fas.h.i.+oned in human form, with folded hands and solemn faces.

On the breast of each was emblazoned the name and t.i.tles of the occupant.

Words fail to describe the joyous excitement of the scholarly explorers, when among the group they read the names of Seti I., Thothmes II., Thothmes III., and Rameses II., surnamed the Great.

The Boolak officials had journeyed to Thebes, expecting at most to find a few mummies of petty princes; but on a sudden they were brought, as it were, face to face with the mightiest kings of ancient Egypt, and confronted the remains of heroes whose exploits and fame filled the ancient world with awe more than three thousand years ago.

The explorers stood bewildered, and could scarcely believe the testimony of their own eyes, and actually inquired of each other if they were not in a dream. At the end of a pa.s.sage, one hundred and thirty feet from the bottom of the rock-cut pa.s.sage, they stood at the entrance of a sepulchral chamber, twenty-three feet long, and thirteen feet wide, literally piled to the roof with mummy cases of enormous size. The coffins were brilliant with colour-gilding and varnish, and looked as fresh as if they had recently come out of the workshops of the Memnonium.

Among the mummies of this mortuary chapel were found two kings, four queens, a prince and a princess, besides royal and priestly personages of both s.e.xes, all descendants of Her-Hor, the founder of the line of priest-kings known as the XXIst dynasty. The chamber was manifestly the family vault of the Her-Hor family; while the mummies of their more ill.u.s.trious predecessors of the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties, found in the approaches to the chamber, had evidently been brought there for the sake of safety. Each member of the family was buried with the usual mortuary outfit. One queen, named Isi-em-Kheb (Isis of Lower Egypt), was also provided with a sumptuous funereal repast, as well as a rich sepulchral toilet, consisting of ointment bottles, alabaster cups, goblets of exquisite variegated gla.s.s, and a large a.s.sortment of full dress wigs, curled and frizzed. As the funereal repast was designed for refreshment, so the sepulchral toilet was designed for the queen's use and adornment on the Resurrection morn, when the vivified dead, clothed, fed, anointed and perfumed, should leave the dark sepulchral chamber and go forth to the mansions of everlasting day.

When the temporary excitement of the explorers had somewhat abated, they felt that no time was to be lost in securing their newly discovered treasures. Accordingly, three hundred Arabs were engaged from the neighbouring villages; and working as they did with unabated vigour, without sleep and without rest, they succeeded in clearing out the sepulchral chamber and the long pa.s.sages of their valuable contents in the short s.p.a.ce of forty-eight hours. All the mummies were then carefully packed in sail-cloth and matting, and carried across the plain of Thebes to the edge of the river. Thence they were rowed across the Nile to Luxor, there to lie in readiness for embarkation on the approach of the Nile steamers.

Some of the sarcophagi are of huge dimensions, the largest being that of Nofretari, a queen of the XVIIIth dynasty. The coffin is ten feet long, made of cartonnage, and in style resembles one of the Osiride pillars of the Temple of Medinat Aboo. Its weight and size are so enormous that sixteen men were required to remove it. In spite of all difficulties, however, only five days elapsed from the time the Boolak officials were lowered down the shaft until the precious relics lay ready for embarkation at Luxor.

The Nile steamers did not arrive for three days, and during that time Messrs. Brugsch and Kemal, and a few trustworthy Arabs, kept constant guard over their treasure amid a hostile fanatical people who regarded tomb-breaking as the legitimate trade of the neighbourhood. On the fourth morning the steamers arrived, and having received on board the royal mummies, steamed down the stream _en route_ for the Boolak Museum.

Meanwhile the news of the discovery had spread far and wide, and for fifty miles below Luxor, the villagers lined the river banks, not merely to catch a glimpse of the mummies on deck as the steamers pa.s.sed by, but also to show respect for the mighty dead. Women with dishevelled hair ran along the banks shrieking the death-wail; while men stood in solemn silence, and fired guns into the air to greet the mighty Pharaohs as they pa.s.sed. Thus, to the mummified bodies of Thothmes the Great, and Rameses the Great, and their ill.u.s.trious compeers, the funeral honours paid to them three thousand years ago were, in a measure, repeated as the mortal remains of these ancient heroes sailed down the Nile on their way to Boolak.

The princ.i.p.al personages found either as mummies, or represented by their mummy cases, include a king and queen of the XVIIth dynasty, five kings and four queens of the XVIIIth dynasty, and three successive kings of the XIXth dynasty, namely, Rameses the Great, his father, and his grandfather.

The XXth dynasty, strange to say, is not represented; but belonging to the XXIst dynasty of royal priests are four queens, two kings, a prince, and a princess.

These royal mummies belong to four dynasties, and between the earliest and the latest there intervenes a period of above seven centuries,--a s.p.a.ce of time as long as that which divides the Norman Conquest from the accession of George III. Under the dynasties above mentioned ancient Egypt reached the summit of her fame, through the expulsion of the Hykshos invaders, and the extensive conquests of Thothmes III. and Rameses the Great. The oppression of Israel in Egypt and the Exodus of the Hebrews, the colossal temples of Thebes, the royal sepulchres of the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, the greater part of the Pharaonic obelisks, and the rock-cut temples of the Nile Valley, belong to the same period.

It would be beyond the scope of this brief account to describe each royal personage, and therefore there can only be given a short description of the two kings connected with the London Obelisk, namely, Thothmes III. and Rameses the Great, the mightiest of the Pharaohs.

Standing near the end of the long dark pa.s.sage running northward, and not far from the threshold of the family vault of the priest-kings, lay the sarcophagus of Thothmes III., close to that of his brother Thothmes II.

The mummy case was in a lamentable condition, and had evidently been broken into and subjected to rough usage. On the lid, however, were recognized the well-known cartouches of this ill.u.s.trious monarch. On opening the coffin, the mummy itself was exposed to view, completely enshrouded with bandages; but a rent near the left breast showed that it had been exposed to the violence of tomb-breakers. Placed inside the coffin and surrounding the body were found wreaths of flowers: larkspurs, acacias and lotuses. They looked as if but recently dried, and even their colours could be discerned.

Long hieroglyphic texts found written on the bandages contained the seventeenth chapter of the "Ritual of the Dead," and the "Litanies of the Sun."

The body measured only five feet two inches; so that, making due allowance for shrinking and compression in the process of embalming, still it is manifest that Thothmes III. was not a man of commanding stature; but in shortness of stature as in brilliancy of conquests, finds his counterpart in the person of Napoleon the Great.

It was desirable in the interests of science to ascertain whether the mummy bearing the monogram of Thothmes III. was really the remains of that monarch. It was therefore unrolled. The inscriptions on the bandages established beyond all doubt the fact that it was indeed the most distinguished of the kings of the brilliant XVIIIth dynasty; and once more, after an interval of thirty-six centuries, human eyes gazed on the features of the man who had conquered Syria, and Cyprus, and Ethiopia, and had raised Egypt to the highest pinnacle of her power; so that it was said that in his reign she placed her frontiers where she pleased. The spectacle was of brief duration; the remains proved to be in so fragile a state that there was only time to take a hasty photograph, and then the features crumbled to pieces and vanished like an apparition, and so pa.s.sed away from human view for ever. The director felt such remorse at the result that he refused to allow the unrolling of Rameses the Great, for fear of a similar catastrophe.

Thothmes III. was the man who overran Palestine with his armies two hundred years before the birth of Moses, and has left us a diary of his adventures; for, like Caesar, he was author as well as soldier. It seems strange that though the body mouldered to dust, the flowers with which it had been wreathed were so wonderfully preserved, that even their colour could be distinguished; yet a flower is the very type of ephemeral beauty, that pa.s.seth away and is gone almost as soon as born. A wasp which had been attracted by the floral treasures, and had entered the coffin at the moment of closing, was found dried up, but still perfect, having lasted better than the king whose emblem of sovereignty it had once been; now it was there to mock the embalmer's skill, and to add point to the sermon on the vanity of human pride and power preached to us by the contents of that coffin. Inexorable is the decree, "Unto dust thou shalt return."

Following the same line of meditation, it is difficult to avoid a thought of the futility of human devices to achieve immortality. These Egyptian monarchs, the veriest type of earthly grandeur and pride, whose rule was almost limitless, whose magnificent tombs seem built to outlast the hills, could find no better method of ensuring that their names should be had in remembrance than the embalmment of their frail bodies. These remain, but in what a condition, and how degraded are the uses to which they are put.

The spoil of an ignorant and thieving population, the pet curiosity of some wealthy tourist, who buys a royal mummy as he would buy the Sphinx, if it were moveable; "to what base uses art thou come," O body, so tenderly nurtured, so carefully preserved!

Rameses II. died about thirteen centuries before the Christian era. It is certain that this ill.u.s.trious monarch was originally buried in the stately tomb of the magnificent subterranean sepulchre by royal order hewn out of the limestone cliffs in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. In the same valley his grandfather and father were laid to rest; so that these three mighty kings "all lay in glory, each in his own house." This burial-place of the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties is in a deep gorge behind the western hills of the Theban plain. "The valley is the very ideal of desolation. Bare rocks, without a particle of vegetation, overhanging and enclosing in a still narrower and narrower embrace a valley as rocky and bare as themselves--no human habitation visible--the stir of the city wholly excluded. Such is, such always must have been, the awful aspect of the resting-place of the Theban kings. The sepulchres of this valley are of extraordinary grandeur. You enter a sculptured portal in the face of these wild cliffs, and find yourself in a long and lofty gallery, opening or narrowing, as the case may be, into successive halls and chambers, all of which are covered with white stucco, and this white stucco, brilliant with colours, fresh as they were thousands of years ago.

The sepulchres are in fact gorgeous palaces, hewn out of the rock, and painted with all the decorations that could have been seen in palaces."

One of the most gorgeous of these sepulchral palaces was that prepared in this valley by Rameses II., and after the burial of the king the portals were walled up, and the mummified body laid to rest in the vaulted hall till the morn of the Resurrection. From a hieratic inscription found on the mummy-case of Rameses, it appears that official Inspectors of Tombs visited this royal tomb in the sixth year of Her-Hor, the founder of the priestly line of kings; so that for at least two centuries the mummy of Rameses the Great lay undisturbed in the original tomb prepared for its reception. From several papyri still extant, it appears that the neighbourhood of Thebes at this period, and for many years previously, was in a state of social insecurity. Lawlessness, rapine and tomb-breaking, filled the whole district with alarm. The "Abbott Papyrus" states that royal sepulchres were broken open, cleared of mummies, jewels, and all their contents. In the "Amherst Papyrus," a lawless tomb-breaker, in relating how he broke into a royal sepulchre, makes the following confession:--"The tomb was surrounded by masonry, and covered in by roofing-stones. We demolished it, and found the king and queen reposing therein. We found the august king with his divine axe beside him, and his amulets and ornaments of gold about his neck. His head was covered with gold, and his august person was entirely covered with gold. His coffins were overlaid with gold and silver, within and without, and incrusted with all kinds of precious stones. We took the gold which we found upon the sacred person of this G.o.d, as also his amulets, and the ornaments which were about his neck and the coffins in which he reposed. And having likewise found his royal wife, we took all that we found upon her in the same manner; and we set fire to their mummy cases, and we seized upon their furniture, their vases of gold, silver, and bronze, and we divided them amongst ourselves."

Such being the dreadful state of insecurity during the latter period of the XXth dynasty, and throughout the whole of the Her-Hor dynasty, we are not surprised to find that the mummy of Rameses II., and that of his grandfather, Rameses I., were removed for the sake of greater security from their own separate catacombs into the tomb of his father Seti I. In the sixteenth year of Her-Hor, that is, ten years after the official inspection mentioned above, a commission of priests visited the three royal mummies in the tomb of Seti. On an entry found on the mummy case of Seti and Rameses II., the priests certify that the bodies are in an uninjured condition; but they deemed it expedient, on grounds of safety, to transfer the three mummies to the tomb of Ansera, a queen of the XVIIth dynasty. For ten years at least Rameses' body reposed in this abode; but in the tenth year of Pinotem was removed into "the eternal house of Amen-hotep." A fourth inscription on the breast bandages of Rameses relates how that after resting for six years the body was again carried back to the tomb of his father in "the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings,"

a valley now called "Bab-el-Molook."

How long the body remained in this resting-place, and how many transfers it was subsequently subjected to, there exists no evidence to show; but after being exposed to many vicissitudes, the mummy of Rameses, together with those of his royal relatives, and many of his ill.u.s.trious predecessors, was brought in as a refugee into the family vault of the Her-Hor dynasty. In this subterranean hiding-place, buried deep in the heart of the Theban Hills, Rameses the Great, surrounded by a goodly company of thirty royal mummies, lay undisturbed and unseen by mortal eye for three thousand years, until, a few years ago, the lawless tomb-breakers of Thebes burrowed into this sepulchral chamber.

The mummy-case containing Rameses' mummy is not the original one, for it belongs to the style of the XXIst dynasty, and was probably made at the time of the official inspection of his tomb in the sixth year of Her-Hor's reign. It is made of unpainted sycamore wood, and the lid is of the shape known as Osirian, that is, the deceased is represented in the well-known att.i.tude of Osiris, with arms crossed, and hands grasping a crook and flail. The eyes are inserted in enamel, while the eyebrows, eyelashes, and beard are painted black. Upon the breast are the familiar cartouches of Rameses II., namely, _Ra-user-Ma-sotep-en-Ra_, his prenomen; and _Ra-me-su-Meri-amen_, his nomen.

The mummy itself is in good condition, and measures six feet; but as in the process of mummification the larger bones were probably drawn closer together in their sockets, it seems self-evident that Rameses was a man of commanding appearance. It is thus satisfactory to learn that the mighty Sesostris was a hero of great physical stature, that this conqueror of Palestine was in height equal to a grenadier.

The outer shrouds of the body are made of rose-coloured linen, and bound together by very strong bands. Within the outer shrouds, the mummy is swathed in its original bandages; and Professor Maspero has expressed his intention of removing these inner bandages on some convenient opportunity, in the presence of scholars and medical witnesses.

It has been urged that since Rameses XII., of the XXth dynasty, had a prenomen similar though not identical with the divine cartouche of Rameses II., the mummy in question may be that of Rameses XII. We have, however, shown that the mummies of Rameses I., Seti I., and Rameses II., were exposed to the same vicissitudes, buried, transferred, and reburied again and again in the same vaults. When, therefore, we find in the sepulchre at Deir-el-Bahari, in juxta-position, the mummy-case of Rameses I., the mummy-case and acknowledged mummy of Seti I., and on the mummy-case and shroud the well-known cartouches of Rameses II., the three standing in the relation of grandfather, father, and son, it seems that the evidence is overwhelming in favour of the mummy in question being that of Rameses the Great.

All the royal mummies, twenty-nine in number, are now lying in state in the Boolak Museum. Arranged together side by side and shoulder to shoulder, they form a solemn a.s.sembly of kings, queens, royal priests, princes, princesses, and n.o.bles of the people. Among the group are the mummied remains of the greatest royal builders, the most renowned warriors, and mightiest monarchs of ancient Egypt. They speak to us of the military glory and architectural splendour of that marvellous country thirty-five centuries ago; they ill.u.s.trate the truth of the words of the Christian Apostle: "All flesh is as gra.s.s, and all the glory of man as the flower of gra.s.s. The gra.s.s withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you."[9]

These great Egyptian rulers, in all their magnificence and power, had no Gospel in their day, and can preach no Gospel to those who gaze wonderingly upon their remains, so strangely brought to light. Much as we should like to hear the tale they could unfold of a civilization of which we seem to know so much, and yet in reality know so little, on all these questions they are for ever silent. But they utter a weighty message to all whose temptation now is to lose sight of the future in the present, of the eternal by reason of the temporal. They show how fleeting and unsubstantial are even the highest earthly rank and wealth and influence; and how true is the lesson taught by him who knew all that Egypt could teach, and much that G.o.d could reveal, and whose life is interpreted for us by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews: "By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of G.o.d, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward."[10]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Harrison and Sons, Printers in Ordinary to Her Majesty, St. Martin's Lane, London.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Prov. iv. 18.

[2] Eph. ii. 13.

[3] Acts xvii. 30, 31.

[4] Rawlinson's "History of Ancient Egypt," Vol. II., pp. 240-243.

[5] Rawlinson's "History of Ancient Egypt," Vol. II., p. 253.

[6] Brugsch, "History of Egypt," Vol. II., p. 57, 1st ed.

[7] Rawlinson's "Ancient Egypt," Vol. II., p. 318.

[8] "History of Architecture," Vol. I., p. 113.

[9] 1 Peter i. 24, 25.

[10] Heb. xi. 24-26.

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