History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 2 — 21 - Vol. 02, Ch. 02: The Memphite Empire, pt. 9

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey.

original is in the Gîzeh Museum.

--Vth dynasty.

The groups are repeated in one tomb after another; they are always the same, but sometimes they are reduced to two or three individuals, sometimes increased in number, spread out and crowded with figures and inscriptions.

Each chief draughtsman had his book of subjects and texts, which he combined in various ways, at one time bringing them close together, at another duplicating or extending them according to the means put at his disposal or the space he had to cover.

The same men, the same animals, the same features of the landscape, the same accessories, appear everywhere: it is industrial and mechanical art at its highest.

The whole is, however, harmonious, agreeable to the eye, and instructive.

The conventionalisms of the drawing as well as those of the composition are very different from ours.

Whether it is man or beast, the subject is invariably presented in outline by the brush, or by the graving tool in sharp relief upon the background; but the animals are represented in action, with their usual gait, movement, and play of limbs distinguishing each species.

The slow and measured walk of the ox, the short step, meditative ears, and ironical mouth of the ass, the calm strength of the lion at rest, the grimaces of the monkeys, the slender gracefulness of the gazelle and antelope, are invariably presented with a consummate skill in drawing and expression.

The human figure is the least perfect: every one is acquainted with those strange figures, whose heads in profile, with the eye drawn in full face, are attached to a torso seen from the front and supported by limbs in profile.

These are truly anatomical monsters, and yet the appearance they present to us is neither laughable nor grotesque.

The defective limbs are so deftly connected with those which are normal, that the whole becomes natural: the correct and fictitious lines are so ingeniously blent together that they seem to rise necessarily from each other.

The actors in these dramas are constructed in such a paradoxical fashion that they could not exist in this world of ours; they live notwithstanding, in spite of the ordinary laws of physiology, and to any one who will take the trouble to regard them without prejudice, their strangeness will add a charm which is lacking in works more conformable to nature.

A layer of colour spread over the whole heightens and completes them.

This colouring is never quite true to nature nor yet entirely false.

It approaches reality as far as possible, but without pretending to copy it in a servile way.

The water is always a uniform blue, or broken up by black zigzag lines; the skin of the men is invariably brown, that of the women pale yellow.

[Illustration: 249. jpg BAS-RELIEF IN IVORY] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Bouriant.

The original is in private possession.

The shade befitting each being or object was taught in the workshops, and once the receipt for it was drawn up, it was never varied in application.

The effect produced by these conventional colours, however, was neither discordant nor jarring.

The most brilliant colours were placed alongside each other with extreme audacity, but with a perfect knowledge of their mutual relations and combined effect.

They do not jar with, or exaggerate, or kill each other: they enhance each other’s value, and by their contact give rise to half-shades which harmonize with them.

The sepulchral chapels, in cases where their decoration had been completed, and where they have reached us intact, appear to us as chambers hung with beautifully luminous and interesting tapestry, in which rest ought to be pleasant during the heat of the day to the soul which dwells within them, and to the friends who come there to hold intercourse with the dead.

The decoration of palaces and houses was not less sumptuous than that of the sepulchres, but it has been so completely destroyed that we should find it difficult to form an idea of the furniture of the living if we did not see it frequently depicted in the abode of the double.

The great armchairs, folding seats, footstools, and beds of carved wood, painted and inlaid, the vases of hard stone, metal, or enamelled ware, the necklaces, bracelets, and ornaments on the walls, even the common pottery of which we find the remains in the neighbourhood of the pyramids, are generally distinguished by an elegance and grace reflecting credit on the workmanship and taste of the makers.

* The squares of ivory which they applied to their linen-chests and their jewel-cases often contained actual bas-reliefs in miniature of as bold workmanship and as skilful execution as the most beautiful pictures in the tombs: on these, moreover, were scenes of private life--dancing or processions bringing offerings and animals.

** * The study of the alabaster and diorite vases found near the pyramids has furnished Petrie with very ingenious views on the methods among the Egyptians of working hard stone.

Examples of stone toilet or sacrificial bottles are not unfrequent in our museums: I may mention those in the Louvre which bear the cartouches of Dadkerî Assi (No. 343), of Papi I.

, and of Papi II.

, the son of Papi I. ; not that they are to be reckoned among the finest, but because the cartouches fix the date of their manufacture.

They came from the pyramids of these sovereigns, opened by the Arabs at the beginning of this century: the vase of the VIth dynasty, which is in the Museum at Florence, was brought from Abydos.

** M.

Grébaut bought at the Great Pyramids, in 1887, a series of these ivory sculptures of the Ancient Empire.

They are now at the Gîzeh Museum.

Others belonging to the same find are dispersed among private collections: one of them is reproduced on p. 249 of this History.

[Illustration: 252. jpg STELE OF THE DAUGHTER OF KHEOPS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Bochard.

One would like to possess some of those copper and golden statues which the Pharaoh Kheops consecrated to Isis in honour of his daughter: only the representation of them upon a stele has come down to us; and the fragments of sceptres or other objects which too rarely have reached us, have unfortunately no artistic value.

A taste for pretty things was common, at least among the upper classes, including not only those about the court, but also those in the most distant nomes of Egypt.

The provincial lords, like the courtiers of the palace, took a pride in collecting around them in the other world everything of the finest that the art of the architect, sculptor, and painter could conceive and execute.

Their mansions as well as their temples have disappeared, but we find, here and there on the sides of the hills, the sepulchres which they had prepared for themselves in rivalry with those of the courtiers or the members of the reigning family.

They turned the valley into a vast series of catacombs, so that wherever we look the horizon is bounded by a row of historic tombs.

Thanks to their rock-cut sepulchres, we are beginning to know the Nomarchs of the Gazelle and the Hare, those of the Serpent-Mountain, of Akhmîm, Thinis, Qasr-es-Sayad, and Aswan,--all the scions, in fact, of that feudal government which preceded the royal sovereignty on the banks of the Nile, and of which royalty was never able to entirely disembarrass itself.

The Pharaohs of the IVth dynasty had kept them in such check that we can hardly find any indications during their reigns of the existence of these great barons; the heads of the Pharaonic administration were not recruited from among the latter, but from the family and domestic circle of the sovereign.

It was in the time of the kings of the Vth dynasty, it would appear, that the barons again entered into favour and gradually gained the upper hand; we find them in increasing numbers about Anû, Menkaûhorû, and Assi.

Did Unas, who was the last ruler of the dynasty of Elephantine, die without issue, or were his children prevented from succeeding him by force?

The Egyptian annals of the time of the Ramessides bring the direct line of Menés to an end with this king.

A new line of Memphite origin begins after him.

[Illustration: 253. jpg THE PHARAOH MENKAUHORÛ] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Faucher-Gudin.

The original, which came from Mariette’s excavations at the Serapeum, is in the Louvre.

It is almost certain that the transmission of power was not accomplished without contention, and that there were many claimants to the crown.

One of the latter, Imhotpû, whose legitimacy was always disputed, has left hardly any traces of his accession to power,* but Ati established himself firmly on the throne for a year at least:** he pushed on actively the construction of his pyramid, and sent to the valley of Hammamât for the stone of his sarcophagus.

* The monuments furnish proof that their contemporaries considered these ephemeral rulers as so many illegitimate pretenders.

Phtahshopsîsû and his son Sabû-Abibi, who exercised important functions at the court, mention only Unas and Teti III.

; Uni, who took office under Teti III.

, mentions after this king only Papi I. and Mihtimsaûf I. The official succession was, therefore, regulated at this epoch in the same way as we afterwards find it in the table of Saqqâra, Unas, Teti III.

, Papi I. , Mihtimsaûf I. , and in the Royal Canon of Turin, without the intercalation of any other king.

** Brugsch, in his Histoire d’Egypte, pp. 44, 45, had identified this king with the first Metesouphis of Manetho: E.

de Rougé prefers to transfer him to one of the two Memphite series after the VIth dynasty, and his opinion has been adopted by Wiedemann.

The position occupied by his inscription among those of Hamraamât has decided me in placing him at the end of the Vth or beginning of the VIth dynasty: this E. Meyer has also done.

We know not whether revolution or sudden death put an end to his activity: the “Mastabat-el-Faraun” of Saqqâra, in which he hoped to rest, never exceeded the height which it has at present.

* His name was, however, inscribed in certain official lists,** and a tradition of the Greek period maintained that he had been assassinated by his guards.

*** Teti III.

was the actual founder of the VIth dynasty,**** historians representing him as having been the immediate successor of Unas.

* Ati is known only from the Hammamât, inscription dated in the first year of his reign.

He was identified by Brugsch with the Othoes of Manetho, and this identification has been generally adopted.

M.

de Rougé is inclined to attribute to him as _prænomen_ the cartouche Usirkeri, which is given in the Table of Abydos between those of Teti III.

and Papi I. Mariette prefers to recognize in Urikeri an independent Pharaoh of short reign.

Several blocks of the Mastabat-el- Faraun at Saqqâra contain the cartouche of Unas, a fact which induced Mariette to regard this as the tomb of the Pharaoh.

The excavations of 1881 showed that Unas was entombed elsewhere, and the indications are in favour of attributing the mastaba to Ati.

We know, indeed, the pyramids of Teti III.

, of the two Papis, and of Metesouphis I.

; Ati is the only prince of this period with whose tomb we are unacquainted.

It is thus by elimination, and not by direct evidence, that the identification has been arrived at: Ati may have drawn upon the workshops of his predecessor Unas, which fact would explain the presence on these blocks of the cartouche of the latter.

** Upon that of Abydos, if we agree with E. de Rougé that the cartouche Usirkeri contains his prænomen; upon that from which Manetho borrowed, if we admit his identification with Othoes.

*** Manetho (Unger’s edition, p. 101), where the form of the name is Othoes.

**** He is called Teti Menephtah, with the cartouche prænomen of Seti I. , on a monument of the early part of the XIXth dynasty, in the Museum at Marseilles: we see him in his pyramid represented as standing.

This pyramid was opened in 1881, and its chambers are covered with long funerary inscriptions.

It is a work of the time of Seti I. , and not a contemporary production of the time of Menkaûhorû.

He lived long enough to build at Saqqâra a pyramid whose internal chambers are covered with inscriptions,* and his son succeeded him without opposition.

Papi I. reigned at least twenty years.

** * The true pronunciation of this name would be Pipi, and of the one before it Titi.

The two other Tetis are Teti I. of the Ist dynasty, and Zosir-Teti, or Teti II.

, of the IIIrd.

** From fragment 59 of the Royal Canon of Turin, An inscription in the quarries of Hât-nûbû bears the date of the year 24: if it has been correctly copied, the reign must have been four years at least longer than the chronologists of the time of the Ramessides thought.

[Illustration: 255. jpg THE MASTABAT-EL-FARAUN, LOOKING TOWARDS THE WEST FAÇADE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Béchard.

He manifested his activity in all corners of his empire, in the nomes of the Said as well as in those of the Delta, and his authority extended beyond the frontiers by which the power of his immediate predecessors had been limited.

He owned sufficient territory south of Elephantine to regard Nubia as a new kingdom added to those which constituted ancient Egypt: we therefore see him entitled in his preamble “the triple Golden Horus,” “the triple Conqueror-Horus,” “the Delta-Horus,” “the Said-Horus,” “the Nubia-Horus.

” The tribes of the desert furnished him, as was customary, with recruits for his army, for which he had need enough, for the Bedouin of the Sinaitic Peninsula were on the move, and were even becoming dangerous.

Papi, aided by Uni, his prime minister, undertook against them a series of campaigns, in which he reduced them to a state of helplessness, and extended the sovereignty of Egypt for the time over regions hitherto unconquered.

Uni began his career under Teti.

* At first a simple page in the palace,** he succeeded in obtaining a post in the administration of the treasury, and afterwards that of inspector of the woods of the royal domain.

*** * The beginning of the first line is wanting, and I have restored it from other inscriptions of the same kind: “I was born under Unas.

” Uni could not have been born before Unas; the first office that he filled under Teti III.

was while he was a child or youth, while the reign of Unas lasted thirty years.

** Literally, “crown-bearer.

” This was a title applied probably to children who served the king in his private apartments, and who wore crowns of natural flowers on their heads: the crown was doubtless of the same form as those which we see upon the brows of women on several tombs of the Memphite epoch.