Part 4 (1/2)
We must not omit to note an interesting point in connection with the royal tombs at Abydos, In that of King Khent or Tjer (the reading of the ideograph is doubtful) M. Amelineau found a large bed or bier of granite, with a figure of the G.o.d Osiris lying in state sculptured in high relief upon it. This led him to jump to the conclusion that he had found the tomb of the G.o.d Osiris himself, and that a skull he found close by was the veritable cranium of the primeval folk-hero, who, according to the euhemerist theory, was the deified original of the G.o.d.
The true explanation is given by Dr. Wallis Budge in his _History of Egypt_, i, p. 19. It is a fact that the tomb of Tjer was regarded by the Egyptians of the XIXth Dynasty as the veritable tomb of Osiris.
They thought they had discovered it, just as M. Amelineau did. When the ancient royal tombs of Umm el-Ga'ab were rediscovered and identified at the beginning of the XIXth Dynasty, and Seti I built the great temple of Abydos to the divine ancestors in honour of the discovery, embellis.h.i.+ng it with a relief of himself and his son Ramses making offerings to the names of his predecessors (the ”Tablet of Abydos ”), the name of King Khent or Tjer (which is perhaps the really correct original form) was read by the royal scribes as ”Khent” and hastily identified with the first part of the name of the G.o.d _Khent-amenti_ Osiris, the lord of Abydos. The tomb was thus regarded as the tomb of Osiris himself, and it was furnished with a great stone figure of the G.o.d lying on his bier, attended by the two hawks of Isis and Nephthys; ever after the site was visited by crowds of pilgrims, who left at Umm el-Ga'ab the thousands of little votive vases whose fragments have given the place its name of the ”Mother of Pots.” This is the explanation of the discovery of the ”Tomb of Osiris.” We have not found what M. Amelineau seems rather naively to have thought possible, a confirmation of the ancient view that Osiris was originally a man who ruled over Egypt and was deified after his death; but we have found that the Egyptians themselves were more or less euhemerists, and did think so.
It may seem remarkable that all this new knowledge of ancient Egypt is derived from tombs and has to do with the resting-places of the kings when dead, rather than with their palaces or temples when living. Of temples at this early period we have no trace. The oldest temple in Egypt is perhaps the little chapel in front of the pyramid of Snefru at Medm. We first hear of temples to the G.o.ds under the IVth Dynasty, but of the actual buildings of that period we have recovered nothing but one or two inscribed blocks of stone. Prof. Petrie has traced out the plan of the oldest temple of Osiris at Abydos, which may be of the time of Khufu, from scanty evidences which give us but little information. It is certain, however, that this temple, which is clearly one of the oldest in Egypt, goes back at least to his time. Its site is the mound called Kom es-Sultan, ”The Mound of the King,” close to the village of el-Kherba, and on the borders of the cultivation northeast of the royal tombs at Umm el-Oa'ab.
Of royal palaces we have more definite information. North of the Kom es-Sultan are two great fortress-enclosures of brick: the one is known as _Snet es-Zebib_, ”the Storehouse of Dried Orapes;” the other is occupied by the Coptic monastery of Der Anba Musas. Both are certainly fortress-palaces of the earliest period of the Egyptian monarchy. We know from the small record-plaques of this period that the kings were constantly founding or repairing places of this kind, which were always great rectangular enclosures with crenelated brick walls like those of early Babylonian buildings.
We have seen that the Northern Egyptian possessed similar fortress-cities which were captured by Narmer. These were the seats of the royal residence in various parts of the country. Behind their walls was the king's house, and no doubt also a town of n.o.bles and retainers, while the peasants lived on the arable land without.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 089.jpg THE SHUNET EZ-ZEBIB: THE FORTRESS-TOWN, About 3900 B.C.]
The Shnet ez-Zebib and its companion fortress were evidently the royal cities of the 1st and IId Dynasties at Abydos. The former has been excavated by Mr. E. R. Ayrton for the Egypt Exploration Fund, under the supervision of Prof. Petrie. He found jar-sealings of Khasekhemui and Perabsen. In later times the place was utilized as a burial-place for ibis-mummies (it had already been abandoned as a city before the time of the XIIth Dynasty), and from this fact it received the name of _Shenet deb-hib_, or ”Storehouse of Ibis Burials.” The Arab invaders adapted this name to their own language in the nearest form which would have any meaning, as _Shnet ez-Zebb_, ”the Storehouse of Dried Grapes.”
The Arab word _shna_ (”Barn” or ”Storehouse”) was, it should be noted, taken over from the Coptic _sheune,_ which is the old-Egyptian _shenet_.
The ident.i.ty of _sheune_ or _shna_ with the German ”Scheune” is a quaint and curious coincidence. In the ill.u.s.tration of the Shnet ez-Zebib the curved line of crenelated wall, following the contour of the hill, should be noted, as it is a remarkable example of the building of this early period.
It will have been seen from the foregoing description of what far-reaching importance the discoveries at Abydos have been. A new chapter of the history of the human race has been opened, which contains information previously undreamt of, information which Egyptologists had never dared to hope would be recovered. The sand of Egypt indeed conceals inexhaustible treasures, and no one knows what the morrow's work may bring forth.
_Ex Africa semper aliquid novi!_
CHAPTER III--MEMPHIS AND THE PYRAMIDS
Memphis, the ”beautiful abode,” the ”City of the White Wall,” is said to have been founded by the legendary Menes, who in order to build it diverted the stream of the Nile by means of a great d.y.k.e constructed near the modern village of Koshesh, south of the village of Mitrahena, which marks the central point of the ancient metropolis of Northern Egypt. It may be that the city was founded by Aha or Narmer, the historical originals of Mena or Menes; but we have another theory with regard to its foundation, that it was originally built by King Merpeba Atjab, whose tomb was also discovered at Abydos near those of Aha and Narmer. Merpeba is the oldest king whose name is absolutely identified with one occurring in the XIXth Dynasty king-lists and in Manetho. He is certainly the ”Merbap” or ”Merbepa” (”Merbapen”) of the lists and the _Miebis_ of Manetho. In both the lists and in Manetho he stands fifth in order from Mena, and he was therefore the sixth king of the Ist Dynasty.
The lists, Manetho, and the small monuments in his own tomb agree in making him the immediate successor of Semti Den (Ousaphas), and from the style of these latter it is evident that he comes after Tja, Tjer, Narmer, and Aha. That is to say, the contemporary evidence makes him the fifth king from Aha, the first original of ”Menes.”
Now after the piety of Seti I had led him to erect a great temple at Abydos in memory of the ancient kings, whose sepulchres had probably been brought to light shortly before, and to compile and set up in the temple a list of his predecessors, a certain pious sn.o.bbery or sn.o.bbish piety impelled a worthy named Tunure, who lived at Memphis, to put up in his own tomb at Sakkara a tablet of kings like the royal one at Abydos.
If Osiris-Khentamenti at Abydos had his tablet of kings, so should Osiris-Seker at Sakkara. But Tunure does not begin his list with Mena; his initial king is Merpeba. For him Merpeba was the first monarch to be commemorated at Sakkara. Does not this look very much as if the strictly historical Merpeba, not the rather legendary and confused Mena, was regarded as the first Memphite king? It may well be that it was in the reign of Merpeba, not in that of Aha or Narmer, that Memphis was founded.
The XIXth Dynasty lists of course say nothing about Mena or Merpeba having founded Memphis; they only give the names of the kings, nothing more. The earliest authority for the ascription of Memphis to ”Menes”, is Herodotus, who was followed in this ascription, as in many other matters, by Manetho; but it must be remembered that Manetho was writing for the edification of a Greek king (Ptolemy Philadelphus) and his Greek court at Alexandria, and had therefore to evince a respect for the great Greek cla.s.sic which he may not always have really felt. Herodotus is not, of course, accused of any wilful misstatement in this or in any other matter in which his accuracy is suspected. He merely wrote down what he was told by the Egyptians themselves, and Merpeba was sufficiently near in time to Aha to be easily confounded with him by the scribes of the Persian period, who no doubt ascribed everything to ”Mena” that was done by the kings of the Ist and IId Dynasties.
Therefore it may be considered quite probable that the ”Menes” who founded Memphis was Merpeba, the fifth or sixth king of the Ist Dynasty, whom Tunure, a thousand years before the time of Herodotus and his informants, placed at the head of the Memphite ”List of Sakkara.”
The reconquest of the North by Khasekhemui doubtless led to a further strengthening of Memphis; and it is quite possible that the deeds of this king also contributed to make up the sum total of those ascribed to the Herodotean and Manethonian Menes.
It may be that a town of the Northerners existed here before the time of the Southern Conquest, for Phtah, the local G.o.d of Memphis, has a very marked character of his own, quite different from that of Khen-tamenti, the Osiris of Abydos. He is always represented as a little bow-legged hydrocephalous dwarf very like the Phoenician _Kabeiroi_. It may be that here is another connection between the Northern Egyptians and the Semites. The name ”Phtah,” the ”Opener,” is definitely Semitic. We may then regard the dwarf Phtah as originally a non-Egyptian G.o.d of the Northerners, probably Semitic in origin, and his town also as antedating the conquest. But it evidently was to the Southerners that Memphis owed its importance and its eventual promotion to the position of capital of the united kingdom. Then the dwarf Phtah saw himself rivalled by another Phtah of Southern Egyptian origin, who had been installed at Memphis by the Southerners. This Phtah was a sort of modified edition of Osiris, in mummy-form and holding crook and whip, but with a refined edition of the Kabeiric head of the indigenous Phtah. The actual G.o.d of ”the White Wall” was undoubtedly confused vith the dead G.o.d of the necropolis, whose name was Seker or Sekri (Sokari), ”the Coffined.” The original form of this deity was a mummied hawk upon a coffin, and it is very probable that he was imported from the South, like the second Phtah, at the time of the conquest, when the great Northern necropolis began to grow up as a duplicate of that at Abydos. Later on we find Seker confused with the ancient dwarf-G.o.d, and it is the latter who was afterwards chiefly revered as Phtah-Socharis-Osiris, the protector of the necropolis, the mummied Phtah being the generally recognized ruler of the City of the White Wall.
It is from the name of Seker that the modern Sak-kara takes its t.i.tle.
Sakkara marks the central point of the great Memphite necropolis, as it is the nearest point of the western desert to Memphis. Northwards the necropolis extended to Griza and Abu Roash, southwards, to Daslmr; even the necropoles of Lisht and Medm may be regarded as appanages of Sakkara. At Sakkara itself Tjeser of the IIId Dynasty had a pyramid, which, as we have seen, was probably not his real tomb (which was the great mastaba at Bet Khallaf), but a secondary or sham tomb corresponding to the ”tombs” of the earliest kings at Umm el-Ga'ab in the necropolis of Abydos. Many later kings, however, especially of the Vith Dynasty, were actually buried at Sakkara. Their tombs have all been thoroughly described by their discoverer, Prof. Maspero, in his history.
The last king of the Hid Dynasty, Snefru, was buried away down south at Medm, in splendid isolation, but he may also have had a second pyramid at Sakkara or Abu Roash.
The kings of the IVth Dynasty were the greatest of the pyramid builders, and to them belong the huge edifices of Griza. The Vth Dynasty favoured Abusir, between Ciza and Sakkara; the Vith, as we have said, preferred Sakkara itself. With them the end of the Old Kingdom and of Memphite dominion was reached; the sceptre fell from the hands of the Memphite kings and was taken up by the princes of Herakleopolis (Ahnasyet el-Medina, near Beni Suef, south of the Eayym) and Thebes. Where the Herakleopolite kings were buried we do not know; probably somewhere in the local necropolis of the Gebel es-Sedment, between Ahnasya and the Fayym. The first Thebans (the XIth Dynasty) were certainly buried at Thebes, but when the Herakleopolites had finally disappeared, and all Egypt was again united under one strong sceptre, the Theban kings seem to have been drawn northwards. They removed to the seat of the dominion of those whom they had supplanted, and they settled in the neighbourhood of Herakleopolis, near the fertile province of the Fayym, and between it and Memphis. Here, in the royal fortress-palace of Itht-taui, ”Controlling the Two Lands,” the kings of the XIIth Dynasty lived, and they were buried in the necropoles of Dashr, Lisht, and Illahun (Hawara), in pyramids like those of the old Memphite kings. These facts, of the situation of Itht-taui, of their burial in the southern an ex of the old necropolis of Memphis, and of the fori of their tombs (the true Upper Egyptian and Thebian form was a rock-cut gallery and chamber driven deep into the hill), show how solicitous were the Amenemhats and Senusrets of the suffrages of Lower Egypt, how anxious they were to conciliate the ancient royal pride of Memphis.
Where the kings of the XIIIth Dynasty and the Hyksos or ”Shepherds” were buried, we do not know. The kings of the restored Theban empire were all interred at Thebes. There are, in fact, no known royal sepulchres between the Fayym and Abydos. The great kings were mostly buried in the neighbourhood of Memphis, Abydos, and Thebes. The sepulchres of the ”Middle Empire”--the XIth to XIIIth Dynasties--in the neighbourhood of the Fayym may fairly be grouped with those of the same period at Dashr, which belongs to the necropolis of Memphis, since it is only a mile or two south of Sakkara.
It is chiefly with regard to the sepulchres of the kings that the most momentous discoveries of recent years have been made at Thebes, and at Sakkara, Abusir, Dashr, and Lisht, as at Abydos. For this reason we deal in succession with the finds in the necropoles of Abydos, Memphis, and Thebes respectively. And with the sepulchres of the ”Old Kingdom,”
in the Memphite necropolis proper, we have naturally grouped those of the ”Middle Kingdom” at Dashr, Lisht, Illahun, and Hawara.
Some of these modern discoveries have been commented on and ill.u.s.trated by Prof. Maspero in his great history. But the discoveries that have been made since this publication have been very important,--those at Abusir, indeed, of first-rate importance, though not so momentous as those of the tombs of the Ist and IId Dynasties at Abydos, already described. At Abu Roash and at Giza, at the northern end of the Memphite necropolis, several expeditions have had considerable success, notably those of the American Dr. Reisner, a.s.sisted by Mr. Mace, who excavated the royal tombs at Umm el-Ga'ab for Prof. Petrie, those of the German Drs. Steindorff and Borchardt,--the latter working for the _Beutsch-Orient Gesellschaft_,--and those of other American excavators.