History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 1 — 06 - Vol. 01, Ch. 01: The Nile and Egypt, pt. 6

We had, therefore, good grounds for supposing that the first Egyptians were semi-savages, like those still living in Africa and America, having an analogous organization, and similar weapons and tools.

A few lived in the desert, in the oasis of Libya, or in the deep valleys of the Red Land--Doshirit, To Doshiru--between the Nile and the sea; the poverty of the country fostering their native savagery.

Others, settled on the Black Land, gradually became civilized, and we have found of late considerable remains of those of their generations who, if not anterior to the times of written records, were at least contemporary with the earliest kings of the first historical dynasty.

[Illustration: 066. jpg NEGRO PRISONERS WEARING THE PANTHER'S SKIST AS A LOIN-CLOTH.

] Their houses were like those of the fellahs of to-day, low huts of wattle daubed with puddled clay, or of bricks dried in the sun.

They contained one room, either oblong or square, the door being the only aperture.

Those of the richer class only were large enough to make it needful to support the roof by means of one or more trunks of trees, which did duty for columns.

Earthen pots, turned by hand, flint knives and other implements, mats of reeds or plaited straw, two flat stones for grinding corn, a few pieces of wooden furniture, stools, and head-rests for use at night, comprised all the contents.

Their ordinary pottery is heavy and almost devoid of ornament, but some of the finer kinds have been moulded and baked in wickerwork baskets, which have left a quaint trellis-like impression on the surface of the clay.

In many cases the vases are bicolour, the body being of a fine smooth red, polished with a stone, while the neck and base are of an intense black, the surface of which is even more shining than that of the red part.

Sometimes they are ornamented with patterns in white of flowers, palms, ostriches, gazelles, boats with undulated or broken lines, or geometrical figures of a very simple nature.

More often the ground is coloured a fine yellow, and the decoration has been traced in red lines.

Jars, saucers, double vases, flat plates, large cups, supports for amphorae, trays raised on a foot--in short, every kind of form is found in use at that remote period.

The men went about nearly naked, except the nobles, who wore a panther's skin, sometimes thrown over the shoulders, sometimes drawn round the waist, and covering the lower part of the body, the animal's tail touching the heels behind, as we see later in several representations of the negroes of the Upper Nile.

They smeared their limbs with grease or oil, and they tattooed their faces and bodies, at least in part; but in later times this practice was retained by the lower classes only.

On the other hand, the custom of painting the face was never given up.

To complete their toilet, it was necessary to accentuate the arch of the eyebrow with a line of kohl (antimony powder).

A similar black line surrounded and prolonged the oval of the eye to the middle of the temple, a layer of green coloured the under lid, and ochre and carmine enlivened the tints of the cheeks and lips.

The hair, plaited, curled, oiled, and plastered with grease, formed an erection which was as complicated in the case of the man as in that of the woman.

[Illustration: 068. jpg NOTABLE WEARING THE LARGE CLOAK OVER THE LEFT SHOULDER.

1; AND PRIEST WEARING THE PANTHER'S SKIN ACROSS THE BREAST.

2] 1 Wooden statue in the Gîzeh Museum (IVth dynasty), drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Béchard.

2 Statue of the second prophet of Amon, Aa-nen, in the Turin Museum (XVIIIth dynasty).

Should the hair be too short, a black or blue wig, dressed with much skill, was substituted for it; ostrich feathers waved on the heads of warriors, and a large lock, flattened behind the right ear, distinguished the military or religious chiefs from their subordinates.

When the art of weaving became common, a belt and loin-cloth of white linen replaced the leathern garment.

Fastened round the waist, but so low as to leave the navel uncovered, the loin-cloth frequently reached to the knee; the hinder part was frequently drawn between the legs and attached in front to the belt, thus forming a kind of drawers.

Tails of animals and wild beast's skin were henceforth only the insignia of authority with which priests and princes adorned themselves on great days and at religious ceremonies.

The skin was sometimes carelessly thrown over the left shoulder and swayed with the movement of the body;

sometimes it was carefully adjusted over one shoulder and under the other, so as to bring the curve of the chest into prominence.

The head of the animal, skilfully prepared and enlivened by large eyes of enamel, rested on the shoulder or fell just below the waist of the wearer; the paws, with the claws attached, hung down over the thighs; the spots of the skin were manipulated so as to form five-pointed stars.

On going out-of-doors, a large wrap was thrown over all; this covering was either smooth or hairy, similar to that in which the Nubians and Abyssinians of the present day envelop themselves.

It could be draped in various ways; transversely over the left shoulder like the fringed shawl of the Chaldeans, or hanging straight from both shoulders like a mantle.

[**] ** This costume, to which Egyptologists have not given sufficient attention, is frequently represented on the monuments.

Besides the two statues reproduced above, I may cite those of Uahibri and of Thoth-nofir in the Louvre, and the Lady Nofrit in the Gîzeh Museum.

Thothotpû in his tomb wears this mantle.

Khnumhotpû and several of his workmen are represented in it at Beni-Hasan, as also one of the princes of Elephantine in the recently discovered tombs, besides many Egyptians of all classes in the tombs of Thebes (a good example is in the tomb of Harmhabi).

The reason why it does not figure more often is, in the first place, that the Egyptian artists experienced actual difficulty in representing the folds of its drapery, although these were simple compared with the complicated arrangement of the Roman toga; finally, the wall-paintings mostly portray either interior scenes, or agricultural labour, or the work of various trades, or episodes of war, or religious ceremonies, in all of which the mantle plays no part.

Every Egyptian peasant, however, possessed his own, and it was in constant use in his daily life.

In fact, it did duty as a cloak, sheltering the wearer from the sun or from the rain, from the heat or from the cold.

They never sought to transform it into a luxurious garment of state, as was the case in later times with the Roman toga, whose amplitude secured a certain dignity of carriage, and whose folds, carefully adjusted beforehand, fell around the body with studied grace.

The Egyptian mantle when not required was thrown aside and folded up.

The material being fine and soft it occupied but a small space and was reduced to a long thin roll; the ends being then fastened together, it was slung over the shoulder and round the body like a cavalry cloak.

[*] * Many draughtsmen, ignorant of what they had to represent, have made incorrect copies of the manner in which this cloak was worn; but examples of it are numerous, although until now attention has not been called to them.

The following are a few instances taken at random of the way in which it was used: Pepi I. , fighting against the nomads of Sinai, has the cloak, but with the two ends passed through the belt of his loin-cloth; at Zawyet el-Maiyitîn, Khunas, killing birds with the boomerang from his boat, wears it, but simply thrown over the left shoulder, with the two extremities hanging free.

Khnumhotpû at Beni-Hasan, the Khrihdbi, the overseers, or the peasants, all have it rolled and slung round them; the Prince of el-Bersheh wears it like a mantle in folds over the two shoulders.

If it is objected that the material could not be reduced to such small dimensions as those represented in these drawings of what I believe to be the Egyptian cloak, I way cite our cavalry capes, when rolled and slung, as an instance of what good packing will do in reducing volume.

[Illustration: 070. jpg a dignitary wrapped in his large cloak.

1] 1 Statue of Khiti in the Gîzeh Museum (XIIth and XIIIth dynasties), drawn by Faucher-Gudin.

Travellers, shepherds, all those whose occupations called them to the fields, carried it as a bundle at the ends of their sticks; once arrived at the scene of their work, they deposited it in a corner with their provisions until they required it.

The women were at first contented with a loin-cloth like that of the men; it was enlarged and lengthened till it reached the ankle below and the bosom above, and became a tightly fitting garment, with two bands over the shoulders, like braces, to keep it in place.

The feet were not always covered; on certain occasions, however, sandals of coarse leather, plaited straw, split reed, or even painted wood, adorned those shapely Egyptian feet, which, to suit our taste, should be a little shorter.

[Illustration: 072. jpg COSTUME OF EGYPTIAN WOMAN, SPINNING.

1] 1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the spinning-women at the Paris Exhibition of 1889. It was restored from the paintings in the tomb of Khnumhotpû at Beni-Hasan.

Both men and women loved ornaments, and covered their necks, breasts, arms, wrists, and ankles with many rows of necklaces and bracelets.

The bracelets were made of elephant ivory, mother-of-pearl, or even flint, very cleverly perforated.

The necklaces were composed of strings of pierced shells,[**] interspersed with seeds and little pebbles, either sparkling or of unusual shapes.

[***] Subsequently imitations in terra-cotta replaced the natural shells, and precious stones were substituted for pebbles, as were also beads of enamel, either round, pear-shaped, or cylindrical: the necklaces were terminated and a uniform distance maintained between the rows of beads, by several slips of wood, bone, ivory, porcelain, or terra-cotta, pierced with holes, through which ran the threads.

** The burying-places of Abydos, especially the most ancient, have furnished us with millions of shells, pierced and threaded as necklaces; they all belong to the species of cowries used as money in Africa at the present day.

*** Necklaces of seeds have been found in the tombs of Abydos, Thebes, and Gebelên. Of these Schweinfurth has identified, among others, the _Cassia absus_, "a weed of the Soudan whose seeds are sold in the drug bazaar at Cairo and Alexandria under the name of _shishn_, as a remedy, which is in great request among the natives, for ophthalmia."

For the necklaces of pebbles, cf.

Maspeeo, Guide du visiteur, pp. 270, 271, No. 4129. A considerable number of these pebbles, particularly those of strange shape, or presenting a curious combination of colours, must have been regarded as amulets or fetishes by their Egyptian owners; analogous cases, among other peoples, have been pointed out by E. B.

Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii.

p. 189. [Illustration: 073. jpg MAN WEARING WIG AND NECKLACES.

1] 1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a portrait of Pharaoh Seti I. of the XIXth dynasty: the lower part of the necklace has been completed.

Weapons, at least among the nobility, were an indispensable part of costume.

Most of them were for hand-to-hand fighting: sticks, clubs, lances furnished with a sharpened bone or stone point, axes and daggers of flint,[*] sabres and clubs of bone or wood variously shaped, pointed or rounded at the end, with blunt or sharp blades,--inoffensive enough to look at, but, wielded by a vigorous hand, sufficient to break an arm, crush in the ribs, or smash a skull with all desirable precision.

[**] The plain or triple curved bow was the favourite weapon for attack at a distance,[***] but in addition to this there were the sling, the javelin, and a missile almost forgotten nowadays, the boomerang, we have no proof however, that the Egyptians handled the boomerang[****] with the skill of the Australians, or that they knew how to throw it so as to bring it back to its point of departure.

[v] * In several museums, notably at Leyden, we find Egyptian axes of stone, particularly of serpentine, both rough and polished.

** In primitive times the bone of an animal served as a club.

This is proved by the shape of the object held in the hand in the sign and the hieroglyph which is the determinative in writing for all ideas of violence or brute force, comes down to us from a time when the principal weapon was the club, or a bone serving as a club.

*** For the two principal shapes of the bow, see Lepsius, Der Bogen in der Hieroglypliik (Zeitschrift, 1872, pp. 79- 88).

From the earliest times the sign m£ portrays the soldier equipped with the bow and bundle of arrows; the quiver was of Asiatic origin, and was not adopted until much later.

In the contemporary texts of the first dynasties, the idea of weapons is conveyed by the bow, arrow, and club or axe.

**** The boomerang is still used by certain tribes of the Nile valley.

It is portrayed in the most ancient tombs, and every museum possesses examples, varying in shape.

Besides the ordinary boomerang, the Egyptians used one which ended in a knob, and another of semicircular shape: this latter, reproduced in miniature in cornelian or in red jasper, served as an amulet, and was placed on the mummy to furnish the deceased in the other world with a fighting or hunting weapon.

v The Australian boomerang is much larger than the Egyptian one; it is about a yard in length, two inches in width, and three sixteenths of an inch in thickness.

For the manner of handling it, and what can be done with it, see Lubbock, Prehistoric Man, pp. 402, 403. [Illustration: 074. jpg the boomerang and FIGHTING bow.

2 ] 2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a painting in the tomb of Khnumhotpû at Beni-Hasan.

[Illustration: 075. jpg VOTIVE AXE.

3] 3 The blade is of bronze, and is attached to the wooden handle by interlacing thongs of leather (Gizeh Museum).

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch- Bey.

Such was approximately the most ancient equipment as far as we can ascertain; but at a very early date copper and iron were known in Egypt.

[**] Long before historic times, the majority of the weapons in wood were replaced by those of metal,--daggers, sabres, hatchets, which preserved, however, the shape of the old wooden instruments.

** Metals were introduced into Egypt in very ancient times, since the class of blacksmiths is associated with the worship of Horus of Edfû, and appears in the account of the mythical wars of that God.

The earliest tools we possess, in copper or bronze, date from the IVth dynasty: pieces of iron have been found from time to time in the masonry of the Great Pyramid.

Mons Montélius has again and again contested the authenticity of these discoveries, and he thinks that iron was not known in Egypt till a much later period.

Those wooden weapons which were retained, were used for hunting, or were only brought out on solemn occasions when tradition had to be respected.

The war-baton became the commander's wand of authority, and at last degenerated into the walking-stick of the rich or noble.

[Illustration: 076. jpg KING HOLDING THE BATON.

3] 3 Bas-relief in the temple of Luxor, from a photograph taken by Insinger in 1886. The club at length represented merely the rank of a chieftain,[*] while the crook and the wooden-handled mace, with its head of ivory, diorite, granite, or white stone, the favourite weapons of princes, continued to the last the most revered insignia of royalty.

[**] Life was passed in comparative ease and pleasure.

Of the ponds left in the open country by the river at its fall, some dried up more or less quickly during the winter, leaving on the soil an immense quantity of fish, the possession of which birds and wild beasts disputed with man.

[***] * The wooden club most commonly represented is the usual insignia of a nobleman.

Several kinds of clubs, somewhat difficult for us moderns to distinguish, yet bearing different names, formed a part of funereal furniture.

** The crook is the sceptre of a prince, a Pharaoh, or a god; the white mace has still the value apparently of a weapon in the hands of the king who brandishes it over a group of prisoners or over an ox which he is sacrificing to a divinity.

Most museums possess specimens of the stone heads of these maces, but until lately their use was not known.

I had several placed in the Boulak Museum.

It already possessed a model of one entirely of wood.

*** Cf.

the description of these pools given by Geoffroy- Saint-Hilaire in speaking of the fahaka.

Even at the present day the jackals come down from the mountains in the night, and regale themselves with the fish left on the ground by the gradual drying up of these ponds.

[Illustration: 077. jpg FISHING IN THE MARSHES] Other pools, however, remained till the returning inundation, as so many _vivaria_ in which the fish were preserved for dwellers on the banks.

Fishing with the harpoon, made either of stone or of metal, with the line, with a net or with traps, were all methods of fishing known and used by the Egyptians from early times.

Where the ponds failed, the neighbouring Nile furnished them with inexhaustible supplies.

Standing in light canoes, or rather supported by a plank on bundles of reeds bound together, they ventured into mid-stream, in spite of the danger arising from the ever-present hippopotamus; or they penetrated up the canals amid a thicket of aquatic plants, to bring down with the boomerang the birds which found covert there.

[Illustration: 078. jpg HUNTING IN THE MARSHES: ENCOUNTERING AND SPEARING A HIPPOPOTAMUS.

1] 1 Tomb of Ti.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Dûmichen, Besultate, vol. ii.

pl.

x.

The fowl and fish which could not be eaten fresh, were dried, salted, or smoked, and kept for a rainy day.

Like the river, the desert had its perils and its resources.

Only too frequently, the lion, the leopard, the panther, and other large felidse were met with there.

[Illustration: 079. jpg HUNTING IN THE DESERT: BULL, LION, AND ORYX PIERCED WITH ARROWS.

1] 1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a painting by Beni-Hasan, Lepsius, Denhm.

, ii.

136.