History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 2 — 02 - Vol. 02, Ch. 01: The Political Constitution of Egypt, pt. 2

Even to-day, when we enter one of these decorated chapels, the idea of death scarcely presents itself: we have rather the impression of being in some old-world house, to which the master may at any moment return.

We see him portrayed everywhere upon the walls, followed by his servants, and surrounded by everything which made his earthly life enjoyable.

One or two statues of him stand at the end of the room, in constant readiness to undergo the “Opening of the Mouth” and to receive offerings.

Should these be accidentally removed, others, secreted in a little chamber hidden in the thickness of the masonry, are there to replace them.

These inner chambers have rarely any external outlet, though occasionally they are connected with the chapel by a small opening, so narrow that it will hardly admit of a hand being passed through it.

Those who came to repeat prayers and burn incense at this aperture were received by the dead in person.

The statues were not mere images, devoid of consciousness.

Just as the double of a god could be linked to an idol in the temple sanctuary in order to transform it into a prophetic being, capable of speech and movement, so when the double of a man was attached to the effigy of his earthly body, whether in stone, metal, or wood, a real living person was created and was introduced into the tomb.

So strong was this conviction that the belief has lived on through two changes of religion until the present day.

The double still haunts the statues with which he was associated in the past.

As in former times, he yet strikes with madness or death any who dare to disturb is repose; and one can only be protected from him by breaking, at the moment of discovery, the perfect statues which the vault contains.

The double is weakened or killed by the mutilation of these his sustainers.

* * The legends still current about the pyramids of Gîzeh furnish some good examples of this kind of superstition.

“The guardian of the Eastern pyramid was an idol...

who had both eyes open, and was seated on a throne, having a sort of halberd near it, on which, if any one fixed his eye, he heard a fearful noise, which struck terror to his heart, and caused the death of the hearer.

There was a spirit appointed to wait on each guardian, who departed not from before him.

” The keeping of the other two pyramids was in like manner entrusted to a statue, assisted by a spirit.

I have collected a certain number of tales resembling that of Mourtadi in the _Études de Mythologie et Archéologie Égyptiennes,_ vol. i.

p. 77, et seq.

The statues furnish in their modelling a more correct idea of the deceased than his mummy, disfigured as it was by the work of the embalmers; they were also less easily destroyed, and any number could be made at will.

Hence arose the really incredible number of statues sometimes hidden away in the same tomb.

These sustainers or imperishable bodies of the double were multiplied so as to insure for him a practical immortality; and the care with which they were shut into a secure hiding-place, increased their chances of preservation.

All the same, no precaution was neglected that could save a mummy from destruction.

The shaft leading to it descended to a mean depth of forty to fifty feet, but sometimes it reached, and even exceeded, a hundred feet.

Running horizontally from it is a passage so low as to prevent a man standing upright in it, which leads to the sepulchral chamber properly so called, hewn out of the solid rock and devoid of all ornament; the sarcophagus, whether of fine limestone, rose-granite, or black basalt, does not always bear the name and titles of the deceased.

The servants who deposited the body in it placed beside it on the dusty floor the quarters of the ox, previously slaughtered in the chapel, as well as phials of perfume, and large vases of red pottery containing muddy water; after which they walled up the entrance to the passage and filled the shaft with chips of stone intermingled with earth and gravel.

The whole, being well watered, soon hardened into a compact mass, which protected the vault and its master from desecration.

During the course of centuries, the ever-increasing number of tombs at length formed an almost uninterrupted chain of burying-places on the table-land.

At Gîzeh they follow a symmetrical plan, and line the sides of regular roads; at Saqqâra they are scattered about on the surface of the ground, in some places sparsely, in others huddled confusedly together.

Everywhere the tombs are rich in inscriptions, statues, and painted or sculptured scenes, each revealing some characteristic custom, or some detail of contemporary civilization.

From the womb, as it were, of these cemeteries, the Egypt of the Memphite dynasties gradually takes new life, and reappears in the full daylight of history.

Nobles and fellahs, soldiers and priests, scribes and craftsmen,--the whole nation lives anew before us; each with his manners, his dress, his daily round of occupation and pleasures.

It is a perfect picture, and although in places the drawing is defaced and the colour dimmed, yet these may be restored with no great difficulty, and with almost absolute certainty.

The king stands out boldly in the foreground, and his tall figure towers over all else.

He so completely transcends his surroundings, that at first sight one may well ask if he does not represent a god rather than a man; and, as a matter of fact, he is a god to his subjects.

They call him “the good god,” “the great god,” and connect him with Râ through the intervening kings, the successors of the gods who ruled the two worlds.

His father before him was “Son of Râ,” as was also his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, and so through all his ancestors, until from “son of Râ” to “son of Râ” they at last reached Râ himself.

Sometimes an adventurer of unknown antecedents is abruptly inserted in the series, and we might imagine that he would interrupt the succession of the solar line; but on closer examination we always find that either the intruder is connected with the god by a genealogy hitherto unsuspected, or that he is even more closely related to him than his predecessors, inasmuch as Râ, having secretly descended upon the earth, had begotten him by a mortal mother in order to rejuvenate the race.

* * A legend, preserved for us in the Westcar Papyrus (Erman’s edition, pl.

ix.

11. 5-11, pl.

x.

1. 5, et seq.

), maintains that the first three kings of the Vth dynasty, Ûsirkaf, Sahûrî, and Kakiû, were children born to Râ, lord of Sakhîbû, by Rûdîtdidît, wife of a priest attached to the temple of that town.

If things came to the worst, a marriage with some princess would soon legitimise, if not the usurper himself, at least his descendants, and thus firmly re-establish the succession.

[Illustration: 021. jpg THE BIRTH OF A KING AND HIS DOUBLE] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Gay et.

The king is Amenôthes III.

, whose conception and birth are represented in the temple of Luxor, with the same wealth of details that we should have expected, had he been a son of the god Amon and the goddess Mût. The Pharaohs, therefore, are blood-relations of the Sun-god, some through their father, others through their mother, directly begotten by the God, and their souls as well as their bodies have a supernatural origin; each soul being a double detached from Horus, the successor of Osiris, and the first to reign alone over Egypt.

This divine double is infused into the royal infant at birth, in the same manner as the ordinary double is incarnate in common mortals.

It always remained concealed, and seemed to lie dormant in those princes whom destiny did not call upon to reign, but it awoke to full self-consciousness in those who ascended the throne at the moment of their accession.

From that time to the hour of their death, and beyond it, all that they possessed of ordinary humanity was completely effaced; they were from henceforth only “the sons of Râ,” the Horus, dwelling upon earth, who, during his sojourn here below, renews the blessings of Horus, son of Isis.

Their complex nature was revealed at the outset in the form and arrangement of their names.

Among the Egyptians the choice of a name was not a matter of indifference; not only did men and beasts, but even inanimate objects, require one or more names, and it may be said that no person or thing in the world could attain to complete existence until the name had been conferred.

The most ancient names were often only a short word, which denoted some moral or physical quality, as Titi the Runner, Mini the Lasting, Qonqeni the Crusher, Sondi the Formidable, Uznasît the Flowery-tongued.

They consisted also of short sentences, by which the royal child confessed his faith in the power of the gods, and his participation in the acts of the Sun’s life--“Khâfrî,” his rising is Râ; “Men-kaûhorû,” the doubles of Horus last for ever; “Usirkerî,” the double of Râ is omnipotent.

Sometimes the sentence is shortened, and the name of the god is understood: as for instance, “Ûsirkaf,” his double is omnipotent; “Snofmi,” he has made me good; “Khûfïïi,” he has protected me, are put for the names “Usirkerî,” “Ptahsnofrûi,” “Khnûmkhûfûi,” with the suppression of Râ, Phtah, and Khnûrnû.

[Illustration: 023. jpg PAGE IMAGE] The name having once, as it were, taken possession of a man on his entrance into life, never leaves him either in this world or the next;

the prince who had been called Unas or Assi at the moment of his birth, retained this name even after death, so long as his mummy existed, and his double was not annihilated.

{Hieroglyphics indicated by [--], see the page images in the HTML file} When the Egyptians wished to denote that a person or thing was in a certain place, they inserted their names within the picture of the place in question.

Thus the name of Teti is written inside a picture of Teti’s castle, the result being the compound hieroglyph [--] Again, when the son of a king became king in his turn, they enclose his ordinary name in the long flat-bottomed frame [--] which we call a cartouche;

the elliptical part [--] of which is a kind of plan of the world, a representation of those regions passed over by Râ in his journey, and over which Pharaoh, because he is a son of Râ, exercises his rule.

When the names of Teti or Snofrûi, following the group [----] which respectively express sovereignty over the two halves of Egypt, the South and the North, the whole expression describing exactly the visible person of Pharaoh during his abode among mortals.

But this first name chosen for the child did not include the whole man; it left without appropriate designation the double of Horus, which was revealed in the prince at the moment of accession.

The double therefore received a special title, which is always constructed on a uniform plan: first the picture [--] hawk-god, who desired to leave to his descendants a portion of his soul, then a simple or compound epithet, specifying that virtue of Horus which the Pharaoh wished particularly to possess--“Horû nîb-mâîfc,” Horus master of Truth; “Horû miri-toûi,” Horus friend of both lands; “Horû nîbkhâùû,” Horus master of the risings; “Horu mazîti,” Horus who crushes his enemies.

[Illustration: 024. jpg THE ADULT KING ADVANCING, FOLLOWED BY HIS DOUBLE] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an illustration in Arundale- Bonomi-Birch’s _Gallery of Antiquities from the British Museum,_ pl.

31. The king thus represented is Thutmosis II.

of the XVIIIth dynasty; the spear, surmounted by a man’s head, which the double holds in his hand, probably recalls the human victims formerly sacrificed at the burial of a chief.

The variable part of these terms is usually written in an oblong rectangle, terminated at the lower end by a number of lines portraying in a summary way the façade of a monument, in the centre of which a bolted door may sometimes be distinguished: this is the representation of the chapel where the double will one day rest, and the closed door is the portal of the tomb.

* The stereotyped part of the names and titles, which is represented by the figure of the god, is placed outside the rectangle, sometimes by the side of it, sometimes upon its top: the hawk is, in fact, free by nature, and could nowhere remain imprisoned against his will.

* This is what is usually known as the “Banner Name;”

indeed, it was for some time believed that this sign represented a piece of stuff, ornamented at the bottom by embroidery or fringe, and bearing on the upper part the title of a king.

Wilkinson thought that this “square title,” as he called it, represented a house.

The real meaning of the expression was determined by Professor Flinders Petrie and by myself.

This artless preamble was not enough to satisfy the love of precision which is the essential characteristic of the Egyptians.

When they wished to represent the double in his sepulchral chamber, they left out of consideration the period in his existence during which he had presided over the earthly destinies of the sovereign, in order to render them similar to those of Horus, from whom the double proceeded.

[Illustration: 026. jpg Page Image] They, therefore, withdrew him from the tomb which should have been his lot, and there was substituted for the ordinary sparrow-hawk one of those groups which symbolize sovereignty over the two countries of the Nile--the coiled urasus of the North, and the vulture of the South, [--]; there was then finally added a second sparrow-hawk, the golden sparrow-hawk, [--], the triumphant sparrow-hawk which had delivered Egypt from Typhon.

The soul of Snofrai, which is called, as a surviving double, [--], “Horus master of Truth,” is, as a living double, entitled “[--]” “[--]” the Lord of the Vulture and of the “Urous,” master of Truth, and Horus triumphant.

* * The Ka, or double name, represented in this illustration is that of the Pharaoh Khephren, the builder of the second of the great pyramids at Gîzeh; it reads “Horu usir-Hâîti,” Horus powerful of heart.

On the other hand, the royal prince, when he put on the diadem, received, from the moment of his advancement to the highest rank, such an increase of dignity, that his birth-name--even when framed in a cartouche and enhanced with brilliant epithets--was no longer able to fully represent him.

This exaltation of his person was therefore marked by a new designation.

As he was the living flesh of the sun, so his surname always makes allusion to some point in his relations with his father, and proclaims the love which he felt for the latter, “Mirirî,” or that the latter experienced for him, “Mirnirî,” or else it indicates the stability of the doubles of Râ, “Tatkerî,” their goodness, “Nofirkerî,” or some other of their sovereign virtues.

Several Pharaohs of the IVth dynasty had already dignified themselves by these surnames;

those of the VIth were the first to incorporate them regularly into the royal preamble.