A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume I Part 22

[222] On the other hand, these awkwardly shaped prisms offered less inducement to those who looked upon the pyramids as open quarries than the easily squared blocks of Cheops, while their position in the angles of the internal masonry enabled them to keep their places independently of the lower courses of the casing.--ED.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 155.--The casing of the pyramids; drawn in perspective from the elevation of Perring.]

The casing of the Second Pyramid, moreover, does not seem to have been carried out on the same principle from top to bottom. The upper part, which still remains in place, is composed of a hard cement formed of chalk, gypsum, and pieces of burnt brick. They may have wished to obtain the parti-coloured effect of which Philo speaks, by making simultaneous use of granite and concrete, and it is quite possible that yet other materials entered into the composition of the casing.[223]

[223] The determination to use a concrete such as that described affords a good reason for the prismatic shape of the granite blocks used in the lower courses. It would evidently be easy enough to cover the pyramid with a coat of cement--working downwards--if its surface did not greatly overpa.s.s the salient angles of the steps, while the difficulty would be enormously increased if the coat were to have a considerable thickness of its own independently of the pyramid, like the casing shown in Fig. 155.--ED.

In other pyramids we find different combinations again. In the double-sloped erection at Dashour, the courses of casing stones are vertical instead of horizontal,[224] while a brick pyramid--the most northern--in the same locality, was covered with slabs of limestone, fixed, no doubt, with mortar.

[224] _Description de l'egypte, Antiquites_, vol. v. p. 7.

Sometimes we find the revetment in a state of semi-completion; the blocks in place, and cut to the proper angle, but without their final polish. Such is the case with the Second Pyramid, upon which blocks of granite are to be found which are still rough in face. It would seem that the patience required for the minute completion of such a terribly long and tedious piece of work was not forthcoming. But we ought in fact to be surprised, not so much at the unfinished state of a pyramid here and there, but rather that they should ever have been completed.

The variety which is so conspicuous in the architectural construction of the pyramids is also to be found in their epigraphy. The first explorers of the Pyramids of Gizeh were surprised at the absence of all inscriptions beyond the masons' marks; the silence of those enormous structures seemed amazing; but soon Colonel Vyse discovered in the pyramid of Mycerinus the sarcophagus of that king, and the mummy case, now in the British Museum, which bears an inscription of some length. Recent discoveries, too, of which full details are yet wanting, prove that some of the pyramids contained long texts, which contain the names of kings and other information which is of great importance to the historian of the Egyptian religion. In 1879 and 1880, Mariette caused three pyramids at Sakkarah to be opened, which until then had remained unexplored. One of them was silent and empty, but in the others the inscriptions and sarcophagi of two kings of the sixth dynasty, Papi and his son Merenzi, were found. Fragments of a Ritual of the Dead were recognized among them. Pleasure at this discovery, the last which he was destined to make in the soil of Egypt, brightened the last days of Mariette.[225]

[225] G. CHARMES, in the _Journal des Debats_, February 8, 1881.

In March 1881, M. Maspero, the successor of M. Mariette as director of the excavations, opened a pyramid belonging to a different group, which turned out to be the tomb of Ounas, the last Pharaoh of the fifth dynasty. In this pyramid, portcullis stones similar to those which have already been figured were found. When these obstacles were pa.s.sed "the continuation of the pa.s.sage was found, the first part of polished granite, the second of the close-grained limestone of Tourah.

The side walls are covered with fine hieroglyphs painted green, the roof sprinkled with stars of the same hue. The pa.s.sage finally opens into a chamber half filled with debris, upon the walls of which the inscription is continued.... The mummy-chamber, like that which precedes it, is covered with hieroglyphs, with the exception of the wall opposite to the entrance. This wall is of the finest alabaster, and is effectively decorated with painted ornaments. The sarcophagus is of black basalt, without inscription.... The text of the inscription which covers the walls is almost identical with that in the tomb of Papi, but it has the advantage of being complete. M.

Maspero, whom Mariette had previously entrusted with taking squeezes from the inscription in the tomb of Papi, recognised certain formulae and phrases which had already struck him in another place.... These texts make up a composition a.n.a.logous to one which covers the walls of certain little known Theban tombs. Without presenting any very considerable difficulties, they demand careful examination from those who would comprehend their meaning.

"M. Maspero, encouraged by this first success, ordered a second pyramid to be opened. He wished to verify, upon the spot, a theory which he had long upheld in spite of the adverse opinions of the majority of egyptologists. It is well known that between the sixth and the tenth dynasties a great gap exists, so far as monumental remains are concerned. M. Maspero has always believed that there is no such gap. He has observed that the pyramids are, so to speak, grouped chronologically from north to south; those of the fourth dynasty at Gizeh, those of the fifth at Abooseer, those of the twelfth in the Fayoum. The excavations of Mariette as well as his own showed the tombs of the fifth and sixth dynasties to have been at Sakkarah. Hence M. Maspero thinks that the pyramids erected by the sovereigns of the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth dynasties are those between Sakkarah and the Fayoum. The future will show whether he is right or wrong. In any case science will profit by the new excavations which he is about to undertake."[226]

[226] _Moniteur egyptien_, March 15, 1881.

When cross-examined by such questioners as M. Maspero the pyramids will tell us much. Hitherto they have attracted but little of that examination which discovers the most curious secrets, but their size and the beauty of their masonry will ever make the three great 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 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 ma.s.ses 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 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.

[227] The causeway which led to the Pyramid of Cheops still exists for some 400 yards of its length; here and there it rises as much as eighty-six feet above the surface of the plateau. A similar causeway is to be distinguished on the eastern side of the Third Pyramid. At Abou-Roash, at Abousir, and elsewhere, similar remains are to be found.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 156.--Plan of the Pyramids of Gizeh and of that part of the necropolis which immediately surrounds them.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 157.--The Sphinx.]

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 _debris_, 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, 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 s.p.a.ce which was thus consecrated to the adoration of the dead monarch, the long rows of mastabas stretched away for miles through the vast necropolis.

[228] _Description de l'egypte_, vol. v. p. 643. See also in the plates, _Antiquites_, vol. v. Pl. xvi. Fig. 2. According to Jomard, the surbase of the second pyramid was in two parts--a stylobate, 10 feet high and 5 feet thick, and a plinth about 3 feet high.

[229] HERODOTUS, ii. 126.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 158.--Pyramid with its inclosure, Abousir; from Perring.]

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 facades. 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 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 pa.s.sed over hundreds of tombs, and thus, in a fas.h.i.+on, symbolized the royal dignity and the almost superhuman majesty of the kingly office.

[230] Jomard remarks that the upper part of the second pyramid still reflects the rays of the sun. "It still possesses," he says, "a portion of its polished casing, which reflects the rays of the sun and declares its ident.i.ty to people at a vast distance."

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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 pa.s.sage in the _Description generale 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 ma.s.s. We then begin to form some idea of the prodigious quant.i.ty 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 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]

[231] _Description de l'egypte, Antiquites_, vol. v. p. 597.

-- 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 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 a.n.a.logy 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 G.o.ds, 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]

[232] PSEUDO-PLUTARCH, _On Isis and Osiris_, c. xx. M. Maspero finds, however, no confirmation of this statement in the monuments themselves. "All the tombs which have yet been discovered at Abydos," he says (_Revue Critique_, January 31, 1881), "are those of Egyptians domiciled at Abydos. But the author from whom this Plutarch derived his inspiration must have known the ancient fiction according to which the soul could only pa.s.s into the next world by betaking itself to Abydos, and thence through the opening to the west of that town which gave access to the regions of Ament. Hence the voyage of the dead to Abydos which we find so often represented on tombs; an imaginary voyage, as the mummy would be reposing safely at Thebes or Memphis (Fig. 159). At all events, the family, after the death of its head, or any Egyptian during his own life, could deposit upon the _ladder of Osiris_ a stele, upon which the tomb actually containing his body could be represented and unmistakably identified with its original by the formula inscribed upon it."

Under such conditions it may readily be understood why Mariette should have concentrated so much of his attention upon 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]

[233] MARIETTE, _Abydos, Description des Fouilles executees sur l'Emplacement de cette Ville_, folio, vol. i. 1869; vol. ii.

1880. Mariette thought that the sacred tomb was probably in the immediate neighbourhood of the artificial mound called _Koum-es-Soultan_, which may cover its very site. In the article which we quote above, M. Maspero has set forth the considerations which lead him to think that the staircase of Osiris, upon which the consecrated steles were placed, was the flight of steps which led up to the temple of that G.o.d.

Consequently the tomb of Osiris, at Abydos as at Denderah, would be upon the roof of his temple.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 s.p.a.ce occupied by the tombs the subsoil is of a very different nature. "The hard and impenetrable 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.

[234] MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, vol. i. 1879.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 160.--Tomb at Abydos; drawn in perspective from the elevation of Mariette.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 161.--Section of the above tomb.]

"Hence the peculiar aspect which the necropolis of Abydos must have presented when intact. Imagine a mult.i.tude 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 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 a.s.sured even in the absence of a funerary chapel.

[235] _Ibidem._

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 162.--Tomb at Abydos; drawn in perspective from the elevation of Mariette.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 mult.i.tude 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 164.--Stele of the eleventh dynasty, Abydos. Drawn by Bourgoin. (Boulak.)]