History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 2 — 35 - Vol. 02, Ch. 03: The First Theban Empire, pt. 11

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

The sepulchral chambers, excavated at a great depth in the sand, are now filled with water which has infiltrated through the soil, and they have not as yet been sufficiently emptied to permit of an entrance being effected: one of them contained the body of Usirtasen I. ; does Amenemhâît I. or Amenemhâît II.

repose in the other?

We know, at all events, that Usirtasen II.

built for himself the pyramid of Illahun, and Amenemhâît III.

that of Hawâra.

“Hotpû,” the tomb of Usirtasen II.

, stood upon a rocky hill at a distance of some two thousand feet from the cultivated lands.

To the east of it lay a temple, and close to the temple a town, Haît-Usirtasen-Hotpû--“the Castle of the Repose of Usirtasen”--which was inhabited by the workmen employed in building the pyramid, who resided there with their families.

The remains of the temple consist of scarcely anything more than the enclosing wall, whose sides were originally faced with fine white limestone covered with hieroglyphs and sculptured scenes.

It adjoined the wall of the town, and the neighbouring quarters are almost intact: the streets were straight, and crossed each other at right angles, while the houses on each side were so regularly built that a single policeman could keep his eye on each thoroughfare from one end to the other.

The structures were of rough material hastily put together, and among the _débris_ are to be found portions of older buildings, stehe, and fragments of statues.

The town began to dwindle after the Pharaoh had taken possession of his sepulchre; it was abandoned during the XIIIth dynasty, and its ruins were entombed in the sand which the wind heaped over them.

The city which Amenemhâît III.

had connected with his tomb maintained, on the contrary, a long existence in the course of the centuries.

The king’s last resting-place consisted of a large sarcophagus of quartzose sandstone, while his favourite consort, Nofriuphtah, reposed beside him in a smaller coffin.

The sepulchral chapel was very large, and its arrangements were of a somewhat complicated character.

It consisted of a considerable number of chambers, some tolerably large, and others of moderate dimensions, while all of them were difficult of access and plunged in perpetual darkness: this was the Egyptian Labyrinth, to which the Greeks, by a misconception, have given a world-wide renown.

Amenemhâît III.

or his architects had no intention of building such a childish structure as that in which classical tradition so fervently believed.

He had richly endowed the attendant priests, and bestowed upon the cult of his double considerable revenues, and the chambers above mentioned were so many storehouses for the safekeeping of the treasure and provisions for the dead, and the arrangement of them was not more singular than that of ordinary storage depots.

As his cult persisted for a long period, the temple was maintained in good condition during a considerable time: it had not, perhaps, been abandoned when the Greeks first visited it.

* * The identity of the ruins at Hawâra with the remains of the Labyrinth, admitted by Jomard-Caristie and by Lepsius, disputed by Vassali, has been definitely proved by Pétrie, who found remains of the buildings erected by Amenemhâît III.

under the ruins of a village and some Græco-Roman tombs.

The other sovereigns of the XIIth dynasty must have been interred not far from the tombs of Amenemhâît III.

and Usirtasen II.

: they also had their pyramids, of which we may one day discover the site.

The outline of these was almost the same as that of the Memphite pyramids, but the interior arrangements were different.

As at Illahun and Dahshur, the mass of the work consisted of crude bricks of large size, between which fine sand was introduced to bind them solidly together, and the whole was covered with a facing of polished limestone.

The passages and chambers are not arranged on the simple plan which we meet with in the pyramids of earlier date.

Experience had taught the Pharaohs that neither granite walls nor the multiplication of barriers could preserve their mummies from profanation: no sooner was vigilance relaxed, either in the time of civil war or under a feeble administration, than robbers appeared on the scene, and boring passages through the masonry with the ingenuity of moles, they at length, after indefatigable patience, succeeded in reaching the sepulchral vault and despoiling the mummy of its valuables.

[Illustration: 399. jpg THE MOUNTAIN OF SILT WITH THE TOMBS OF THE PRINCES]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey, taken in 1884. With a view to further protection, the builders multiplied blind passages and chambers without apparent exit, but in which a portion of the ceiling was movable, and gave access to other equally mysterious rooms and corridors.

Shafts sunk in the corners of the chambers and again carefully closed put the sacrilegious intruder on a false scent, for, after causing him a great loss of time and labour, they only led down to the solid rock.

At the present day the water of the Nile fills the central chamber of the Hawâra pyramid and covers the sarcophagus; it is possible that this was foreseen, and that the builders counted on the infiltration as an additional obstacle to depredations from without.

* * Indeed, it should be noted that in the Græco-Roman period the presence of water in a certain number of the pyramids was a matter of common knowledge, and so frequently was it met with, that it was even supposed to exist in a pyramid into which water had never penetrated, viz.

that of Kheops.

Herodotus relates that, according to the testimony of the interpreters who acted as his guides, the waters of the Nile were carried to the sepulchral cavern of the Pharaoh by a subterranean channel, and shut it in on all sides, like an island.

The hardness of the cement, which fastens the lid of the stone coffin to the lower part, protects the body from damp, and the Pharaoh, lying beneath several feet of water, still defies the greed of the robber or the zeal of the archaeologist.

The absolute power of the kings kept their feudal vassals in check: far from being suppressed, however, the seignorial families continued not only to exist, but to enjoy continued prosperity.

Everywhere, at Elephantine, Koptos, Thinis, in Aphroditopolis, and in most of the cities of the Said and of the Delta, there were ruling princes who were descended from the old feudal lords or even from Pharaohs of the Memphite period, and who were of equal, if not superior rank, to the members of the reigning family.

The princes of Siut no longer en-joyed an authority equal to that exercised by their ancestors under the Heracleopolitan dynasties, but they still possessed considerable influence.

One of them, Hapizaûfi I. , excavated for himself, in the reign of Ûsirtasen I. , nor far from the burying-place of Khîti and Tefabi, that beautiful tomb, which, though partially destroyed by Coptic monks or Arabs, still attracts visitors and excites their astonishment.

[Illustration: 401. jpg MAP OF PRINCIPALITY OF THE GAZELLE] The lords of Shashotpu in the south, and those of Hermopolis in the north, had acquired to some extent the ascendency which their neighbours of Siût had lost.

The Hermopolitan princes dated at least from the time of the VIth dynasty, and they had passed safely through the troublous times which followed the death of Papi II.

A branch of their family possessed the nome of the Hare, while another governed that of the Gazelle.

The lords of the nome of the Hare espoused the Theban cause, and were reckoned among the most faithful vassals of the sovereigns of the south: one of them, Thothotpû, caused a statue of himself, worthy of a Pharaoh, to be erected in his loyal town of Hermopolis, and their burying-places at el-Bersheh bear witness to their power no less than to their taste in art.

During the troubles which put an end to the XIth dynasty, a certain Khnûmhotpû, who was connected in some unknown manner with the lords of the nome of the Gazelle, entered the Theban service and accompanied Amenemhâît I. on his campaigns into Nubia.

He obtained, as a reward of faithfulness, Monâît-Khûfûi and the district of Khûît-Horû,--“the Horizon of Horus,”--on the east bank of the Nile.

On becoming possessed of the western bank also, he entrusted the government of the district which he was giving up to his eldest son, Nakhîti I. ;

but, the latter having died without heirs, Usirtasen I. granted to Biqît, the sister of Nakhîti, the rank and prerogative of a reigning princess.

Biqît married Nûhri, one of the princes of Hermopolis, and brought with her as her dowry the fiefdom of the Gazelle, thus doubling the possessions of her husband’s house.

Khnûmhotpû II.

, the eldest of the children born of this union, was, while still young, appointed Governor of Monâît-Khûfuî, and this title appears to have become an appanage of his heir-apparent, just as the title of “Prince of Kaûshû” was, from the XIXth dynasty onwards, the special designation of the heir to the throne.

The marriage of Khnûmhotpû II.

with the youthful Khîti, the heiress of the nome of the Jackal, rendered him master of one of the most fertile provinces of Middle Egypt.

The power of this family was further augmented under Nakhîti II.

, son of Khnûmhotpû II.

and Khîti: Nakhîti, prince of the nome of the Jackal in right of his mother, and lord of that of the Gazelle after the death of his father, received from Usirtasen II.

the administration of fifteen southern nomes, from Aphroditopolis to Thebes.

This is all we know of his history, but it is probable that his descendants retained the same power and position for several generations.

The career of these dignitaries depended greatly on the Pharaohs with whom they were contemporary: they accompanied the royal troops on their campaigns, and with the spoil which they collected on such occasions they built temples or erected tombs for themselves.

The tombs of the princes of the nome of the Gazelle are disposed along the right bank of the Nile, and the most ancient are exactly opposite Minieh.

It is at Zawyet el-Meiyetîn and at Kom-el-Ahmar, nearly facing Hibonu, their capital, that we find the burying-places of those who lived under the VIth dynasty.

The custom of taking the dead across the Nile had existed for centuries, from the time when the Egyptians first cut their tombs in the eastern range; it still continues to the present day, and part of the population of Minieh are now buried, year after year, in the places which their remote ancestors had chosen as the site of their “eternal houses.

” The cemetery lies peacefully in the centre of the sandy plain at the foot of the hills; a grove of palms, like a curtain drawn along the river-side, partially conceals it; a Coptic convent and a few Mahommedan hermits attract around them the tombs of their respective followers, Christian or Mussulman.

The rock-hewn tombs of the XIIth dynasty succeed each other in one long irregular line along the cliffs of Beni-Hasan, and the traveller on the Nile sees their entrances continuously coming into sight and disappearing as he goes up or descends the river.

These tombs are entered by a square aperture, varying in height and width according to the size of the chapel.

Two only, those of Amoni-Amenemhâît and of Khnûm-hotpû II.

, have a columned façade, of which all the members--pillars, bases, entablatures--have been cut in the solid rock: the polygonal shafts of the façade look like a bad imitation of ancient Doric.

Inclined planes or nights of steps, like those at Elephantine, formerly led from the plain up to the terrace.

Only a few traces of these exist at the present day, and the visitor has to climb the sandy slope as best he can: wherever he enters, the walls present to his view inscriptions of immense extent, as well as civil, sepulchral, military, and historical scenes.

These are not incised like those of the Memphite mastabas, but are painted in fresco on the stone itself.

The technical skill here exhibited is not a whit behind that of the older periods, and the general conception of the subjects has not altered since the time of the pyramid-building kings.

The object is always the same, namely, to ensure wealth to the double in the other world, and to enable him to preserve the same rank among the departed as he enjoyed among the living: hence sowing, reaping, cattle-rearing, the exercise of different trades, the preparation and bringing of offerings, are all represented with the same minuteness as formerly.

But a new element has been added to the ancient themes.

[Illustration: 405. jpg THE MODERN CEMETERY OF ZAWYET EL-MEIYETÎN] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger.

We know, and the experience of the past is continually reiterating the lesson, that the most careful precautions and the most conscientious observation of customs were not sufficient to perpetuate the worship of ancestors.

The day was bound to come when not only the descendants of Khnûmhotpû, but a crowd of curious or indifferent strangers, would visit his tomb: he desired that they should know his genealogy, his private and public virtues, his famous deeds, his court titles and dignities, the extent of his wealth; and in order that no detail should be omitted, he relates all that he did, or he gives the representation of it upon the wall.

In a long account of two hundred and twenty-two lines, he gives a _résumé_ of his family history, introducing extracts from his archives, to show the favours received by his ancestors from the hands of their sovereigns.

Amoni and Khîti, who were, it appears, the warriors of their race, have everywhere recounted the episodes of their military career, the movements of their troops, their hand-to-hand fights, and the fortresses to which they laid siege.

These scions of the house of the Gazelle and of the Hare, who shared with Pharaoh himself the possession of the soil of Egypt, were no mere princely ciphers: they had a tenacious spirit, a warlike disposition, an insatiable desire for enlarging their borders, together with sufficient ability to realize their aims by court intrigues or advantageous marriage alliances.

We can easily picture from their history what Egyptian feudalism really was, what were its component elements, what were the resources it had at its disposal, and we may well be astonished when we consider the power and tact which the Pharaohs must have displayed in keeping such vassals in check during two centuries.