History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 2 — 14 - Vol. 02, Ch. 02: The Memphite Empire, pt. 2

Plan made by Thuillier, from the sketch by Brugscii, _Wanderung nach den Tiirhis Minen_, p. 70. The workmen, partly recruited from the country itself, partly despatched from the banks of the Nile, dwelt in an entrenched camp upon an isolated peak at the confluence of Wady Genneh and Wady Maghara.

A zigzag pathway on its smoothest slope ends, about seventeen feet below the summit, at the extremity of a small and slightly inclined tableland, upon which are found the ruins of a large village; this is the High Castle--Hâît-Qaît of the ancient inscriptions.

Two hundred habitations can still be made out here, some round, some rectangular, constructed of sandstone blocks without mortar, and not larger than the huts of the fellahîn: in former times a flat roof of wicker-work and puddled clay extended over each.

The entrance was not so much a door as a narrow opening, through which a fat man would find it difficult to pass; the interior consisted of a single chamber, except in the case of the chief of the works, whose dwelling contained two.

[Illustration: 164. jpg THE HIGH CASTLE OF THE MINERS--HAÎT-QAÎT--AT THE CONFLUENCE OF WADY GENNEH AND WADY MAGHARA]

Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph published in the Ordnance Survey of the Peninsula of Sinai, Photographs, vol. ii.

pls.

59, 60. A rough stone bench from two to two and a half feet high surrounds the plateau on which the village stands; a _cheval défrise_ made of thorny brushwood probably completed the defence, as in the _duars_ of the desert.

The position was very strong and easily defended.

Watchmen scattered over the neighbouring summits kept an outlook over the distant plain and the defiles of the mountains.

Whenever the cries of these sentinels announced the approach of the foe, the workmen immediately deserted the mine and took refuge in their citadel, which a handful of resolute men could successfully hold, as long as hunger and thirst did not enter into the question.

As the ordinary springs and wells would not have been sufficient to supply the needs of the colony, they had transformed the bottom of the valley into an artificial lake.

A dam thrown across it prevented the escape of the waters, which filled the reservoir more or less completely according to the season.

It never became empty, and several species of shellfish flourished in it--among others, a kind of large mussel which the inhabitants generally used as food, which with dates, milk, oil, coarse bread, a few vegetables, and from time to time a fowl or a joint of meat, made up their scanty fare.

Other things were of the same primitive character.

The tools found in the village are all of flint: knives, scrapers, saws, hammers, and heads of lances and arrows.

A few vases brought from Egypt are distinguished by the fineness of the material and the purity of the design; but the pottery in common use was made on the spot from coarse clay without care, and regardless of beauty.

As for jewellery, the villagers had beads of glass or blue enamel, and necklaces of strung cowrie-shells.

In the mines, as in their own houses, the workmen employed stone tools only, with handles of wood, or of plaited willow twigs, but their chisels or hammers were more than sufficient to cut the yellow sandstone, coarse-grained and very friable as it was, in the midst of which they worked.

* * E.

H.

Palmer, however, from his observations, is of opinion that the work in the tunnels of the mines was executed entirely by means of bronze chisels and tools; the flint implements serving only to incise the scenes which cover the surfaces of the rocks.

The tunnels running straight into the mountain were low and wide, and were supported at intervals by pillars of sandstone left _in situ_.

These tunnels led into chambers of various sizes, whence they followed the lead of the veins of precious mineral.

The turquoise sparkled on every side--on the ceiling and on the walls--and the miners, profiting by the slightest fissures, cut round it, and then with forcible blows detached the blocks, and reduced them to small fragments, which they crushed, and carefully sifted so as not to lose a particle of the gem.

The oxides of copper and of manganese which they met with here and elsewhere in moderate quantities, were used in the manufacture of those beautiful blue enamels of various shades which the Egyptians esteemed so highly.

The few hundreds of men of which the permanent population was composed, provided for the daily exigencies of industry and commerce.

Royal inspectors arrived from time to time to examine into their condition, to rekindle their zeal, and to collect the product of their toil.

When Pharaoh had need of a greater quantity than usual of minerals or turquoises, he sent thither one of his officers, with a select body of carriers, mining experts, and stone-dressers.

Sometimes as many as two or three thousand men poured suddenly into the peninsula, and remained there one or two months; the work went briskly forward, and advantage was taken of the occasion to extract and transport to Egypt beautiful blocks of diorite, serpentine or granite, to be afterwards manufactured there into sarcophagi or statues.

Engraved stelæ, to be seen on the sides of the mountains, recorded the names of the principal chiefs, the different bodies of handicraftsmen who had participated in the campaign, the name of the sovereign who had ordered it and often the year of his reign.

It was not one tomb only which Snofrui had caused to be built, but two.

He called them “Khâ,” the Rising, the place where the dead Pharaoh, identified with the sun, is raised above the world for ever.

One of these was probably situated near Dahshur; the other, the “Khâ rîsi,” the Southern Rising, appears to be identical with the monument of Mêdûm. [Illustration: 167. jpg THE PYRAMID OF MÊDÛM] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the plans of Flinders Petrie, _Medum_, pl.

ii.

The pyramid, like the mastaba,* represents a tumulus with four sides, in which the earthwork is replaced by a structure of stone or brick.

It indicates the place in which lies a prince, chief, or person of rank in his tribe or province.

It was built on a base of varying area, and was raised to a greater or less elevation according to the fortune of the deceased or of his family.

** * No satisfactory etymon for the word _pyramid_, has as yet been proposed: the least far-fetched is that put forward by Cantor-Eisenlohr, according to which _pyramid_ is the Greek form, irupauç, of the compound term “piri-m-ûisi,” which in Egyptian mathematical phraseology designates the _salient angle_, the ridge or height of the pyramid.

** The brick pyramids of Abydos were all built for private persons.

The word “mirit,” which designates a pyramid in the texts, is elsewhere applied to the tombs of nobles and commoners as well as to those of kings.

The fashion of burying in a pyramid was not adopted in the environs of Memphis until tolerably late times, and the Pharaohs of the primitive dynasties were interred, as their subjects were, in sepulchral chambers of mastabas.

Zosiri was the only exception, if the step-pyramid of Saqqâra, as is probable, served for his tomb.

* * It is difficult to admit that a pyramid of considerable dimensions could have disappeared without leaving any traces behind, especially when we see the enormous masses of masonry which still mark the sites of those which have been most injured; besides, the inscriptions connect none of the predecessors of Snofrûi with a pyramid, unless it be Zosiri.

The step-pyramid of Saqqâra, which is attributed to the latter, belongs to the same type as that of Mêdûm; so does also the pyramid of Rigah, whose occupant is unknown.

If we admit that this last-mentioned pyramid served as a tomb to some intermediate Pharaoh between Zosiri and Snofrûi--for instance, Hûni--the use of pyramids would be merely exceptional for sovereigns anterior to the IVth dynasty.

The motive which determined Snofrûi’s choice of Mêdûm as a site, is unknown to us: perhaps he dwelt in that city of Heracleopolis, which in course of time frequently became the favourite residence of the kings;

perhaps he improvised for himself a city in the plain between El-Wastah and Kafr el-Ayat.

His pyramid, at the present time, is composed of three large unequal cubes with slightly inclined sides, arranged in steps one above the other.

Some centuries ago five could be still determined, and in ancient times, before ruin had set in, as many as seven.

Each block marked a progressive increase of the total mass, and bad its external face polished--a fact which we can still determine by examining the slabs one behind another; a facing of large blocks, of which many of the courses still exist towards the base, covered the whole, at one angle from the apex to the foot, and brought it into conformity with the type of the classic pyramid.

The passage had its orifice in the middle of the north face about sixty feèt above the ground: it is five feet high, and dips at a tolerably steep angle through the solid masonry.

At a depth of a hundred and ninety-seven feet it becomes level, without increasing in aperture, runs for forty feet on this plane, traversing two low and narrow chambers, then making a sharp turn it ascends perpendicularly until it reaches the floor of the vault.

The latter is hewn out of the mountain rock, and is small, rough, and devoid of ornament: the ceiling appears to be in three heavy horizontal courses of masonry, which project one beyond the other corbel-wise, and give the impression of a sort of acutely pointed arch.

Snofrûi slept there for ages; then robbers found a way to him, despoiled and broke up his mummy, scattered the fragments of his coffin upon the ground, and carried off the stone sarcophagus.

The apparatus of beams and cords of which they made use for the descent, hung in their place above the mouth of the shaft until ten years ago.

The rifling of the tomb took place at a remote date, for from the XXth dynasty onwards the curious were accustomed to penetrate into the passage: two scribes have scrawled their names in ink on the back of the framework in which the stone cover was originally inserted.

The sepulchral chapel was built a little in front of the east face; it consisted of two small-sized rooms with bare surfaces, a court whose walls abutted on the pyramid, and in the court, facing the door, a massive table of offerings flanked by two large stelo without inscriptions, as if the death of the king had put a stop to the decoration before the period determined on by the architects.

It was still accessible to any one during the XVIIIth dynasty, and people came there to render homage to the memory of Snofrûi or his wife Mirisônkhû.

Visitors recorded in ink on the walls their enthusiastic, but stereotyped impressions: they compared the “Castle of Snofrûi” with the firmament, “when the sun arises in it; the heaven rains incense there and pours out perfumes on the roof.

” Ramses II.

, who had little respect for the works of his predecessors, demolished a part of the pyramid in order to procure cheaply the materials necessary for the buildings which he restored to Heracleopolis.

His workmen threw down the waste stone and mortar beneath the place where they were working, without troubling themselves as to what might be beneath; the court became choked up, the sand borne by the wind gradually invaded the chambers, the chapel disappeared, and remained buried for more than three thousand years.

The officers of Snofrûi, his servants, and the people of his city wished, according to custom, to rest beside him, and thus to form a court for him in the other world as they had done in this.

The menials were buried in roughly made trenches, frequently in the ground merely, without coffins or sarcophagi.

The body was not laid out its whole length on its back in the attitude of repose: it more frequently rested on its left side, the head to the north, the face to the east, the legs bent, the right arm brought up against the breast, the left following the outline of the chest and legs.

* * W.

Fl.

Petrie, _Medum_, pp. 21, 22. Many of these mummies were mutilated, some lacking a leg, others an arm or a hand;

these were probably workmen who had fallen victims to an accident during the building of the pyramid.

In the majority of cases the detached limb had been carefully placed with the body, doubtless in order that the double might find it in the other world, and complete himself when he pleased for the exigencies of his new existence.

The people who were interred in a posture so different from that with which we are familiar in the case of ordinary mummies, belonged to a foreign race, who had retained in the treatment of their dead the customs of their native country.

[Illustration: 171. jpg THE COURT AND THE TWO STELÆ OF THE CHAPEL ADJOINING THE PYRAMID OF MÊDÛM]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Fl.

Petrie, _Ten Years’ Digging in Egypt_, p. 141. The Pharaohs often peopled their royal cities with prisoners of war, captured on the field of battle, or picked up in an expedition through an enemy’s country.

Snofrûi peopled his city with men from the Libyan tribes living on the borders of the Western desert or Monîtû captives.

* * Petrie thinks that the people who were interred in a contracted position belonged to the aboriginal race of the valley, reduced to a condition of servitude by a race who had come from Asia, and who had established the kingdom of Egypt.

The latter were represented by the mummies disposed at full length (_Medum_, p. 21).

The body having been placed in the grave, the relatives who had taken part in the mourning heaped together in a neighbouring hole the funerary furniture, flint implements, copper needles, miniature pots and pans made of rough and badly burned clay, bread, dates, and eatables in dishes wrapped up in linen.

The nobles ranged their mastabas in a single line to the north of the pyramid; these form fine-looking masses of considerable size, but they are for the most part unfinished and empty.

Snofrûi having disappeared from the scene, Kheops who succeeded him forsook the place, and his courtiers, abandoning their unfinished tombs, went off to construct for themselves others around that of the new king.

We rarely find at Mêdûm finished and occupied sepulchres except that of individuals who had died before or shortly after Snofrûi. The mummy of Eânofir, found in one of them, shows how far the Egyptians had carried the art of embalming at this period.

His body, though much shrunken, is well preserved: it had been clothed in some fine stuff, then covered over with a layer of resin, which a clever sculptor had modelled in such a manner as to present an image resembling the deceased; it was then rolled in three or four folds of thin and almost transparent gauze.

Of these tombs the most important belonged to the Prince Nofirmâît and his wife Atiti: it is decorated with bas-reliefs of a peculiar composition; the figures have been cut in outline in the limestone, and the hollows thus made are filled in with a mosaic of tinted pastes which show the moulding and colour of the parts.

Everywhere else the ordinary methods of sculpture have been employed, the bas-reliefs being enhanced by brilliant colouring in a simple and delicate manner.

[Illustration: 173. jpg NOFKÎT, LADY OF MÊDÛM] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph taken by Éinil Brugsch- Bey.

The figures of men and animals are portrayed with a vivacity of manner which is astonishing; and the other objects, even the hieroglyphs, are rendered with an accuracy which does not neglect the smallest detail.

The statues of Eâhotpû and of the lady Nofrît, discovered in a half-ruined mastaba, have fortunately reached us without having suffered the least damage, almost without losing anything of their original freshness; they are to be seen in the Gîzeh Museum just as they were when they left the hands of the workman.

Eâhotpû was the son of a king, perhaps of Snofrûi: but in spite of his high origin, I find something humble and retiring in his physiognomy.

Nofrît, on the contrary, has an imposing appearance: an indescribable air of resolution and command invests her whole person, and the sculptor has cleverly given expression to it.

She is represented in a robe with a pointed opening in the front: the shoulders, the bosom, the waist, and hips, are shown under the material of the dress with a purity and delicate grace which one does not always find in more modern works of art.

The wig, secured on the forehead by a richly embroidered band, frames with its somewhat heavy masses the firm and rather plump face: the eyes are living, the nostrils breathe, the mouth smiles and is about to speak.

The art of Egypt has at times been as fully inspired; it has never been more so than on the day in which it produced the statue of Nofrît.