Part 5 (2/2)

They were found lying on their sides, just as they had been hidden. Six figures of the king in the form of Osiris, with the face painted red, were also found. Such figures seem to have been regularly set up in front of a royal sepulchre; several were found in front of the funerary temple of Mentu-hetep III, Thebes, which we shall describe later. A fine altar of gray granite, with representations in relief of the nomes bringing offerings, was also recovered. The pyramid of Lisht itself is not built of bricks, like those of Dashr, but of stone. It was not, however, erected in so solid a fas.h.i.+on as those of earlier days at Giza or Abusir, and nothing is left of it now but a heap of debris. The XIIth Dynasty architects built walls of magnificent masonry, as we have seen, and there is no doubt that the stone casing of their pyramids was originally very fine, but the interior is of brick or rubble; the wonderful system of building employed by kings of the IVth Dynasty at Giza was not practised.

South of Lisht is Illahun, and at the entrance to the province of the Fayym, and west of this, nearer the Fayym, is Hawara, where Prof.

Petrie excavated the pyramids of Usertsen (Senusret) II and Amenem-hat III. His discoveries have already been described by Prof. Maspero in his history, so that it will suffice here merely to compare them with the results of M. de Morgan's later work at Dashr and that of MM. Gautier and Jequier at Lisht, to note recent conclusions in connection with them, and to describe the newest discoveries in the same region.

Both pyramids are of brick, lined with stone, like those of Dashr, with some differences of internal construction, since stone walls exist in the interior. The central chambers and pa.s.sages leading to them were discovered; and in both cases the pa.s.sages are peculiarly complex, with dumb chambers, great stone portcullises, etc., in order to mislead and block the way to possible plunderers. The extraordinary sepulchral chamber of the Hawara pyramid, which, though it is over twenty-two feet long by ten feet wide over all, is hewn out of one solid block of hard yellow quartzite, gives some idea of the remarkable facility of dealing with huge stones and the love of utilizing them which is especially characteristic of the XIIth Dynasty. The pyramid of Hawara was provided with a funerary temple the like of which had never been known in Egypt before and was never known afterwards. It was a huge building far larger than the pyramid itself, and built of fine limestone and crystalline white quartzite, in a style eminently characteristic of the XIIth Dynasty. In actual superficies this temple covered an extent of ground within which the temples of Karnak, Luxor, and the Ramesseum, at Thebes, could have stood, but has now almost entirely disappeared, having been used as a quarry for two thousand years. In Roman times this destroying process had already begun, but even then the building was still magnificent, and had been noted with wonder by all the Greek visitors to Egypt from the time of Herodotus downwards. Even before his day it had received the name of the ”Labyrinth,” on account of its supposed resemblance to the original labyrinth in Crete.

That the Hawara temple was the Egyptian labyrinth was pointed out by Lepsius in the 'forties of the last century. Within the last two or three years attention has again been drawn to it by Mr. Arthur Evans's discovery of the Cretan labyrinth itself in the shape of the Minoan or early Mycenaean palace of Knossos, near Candia in Crete. It is impossible to enter here into all the arguments by which it has been proved that the Knossian palace is the veritable labyrinth of the Minotaur legend, nor would it be strictly germane to our subject were we to do so; but it may suffice to say here that the word

[Ill.u.s.tration: 125.jpg (Greek word)]

has been proved to be of Greek-or rather of pre-h.e.l.lenic-origin, and would mean in Karian ”Place of the Double-Axe,” like La-braunda in Karia, where Zeus was depicted with a double axe (labrys) in his hand.

The non-Aryan, ”Asianic,” group of languages, to which certainly Lycian and probably Karian belong, has been shown by the German philologer Kretschmer to have spread over Greece into Italy in the period before the Aryan Greeks entered h.e.l.las, and to have left undoubted traces of its presence in Greek place-names and in the Greek language itself.

Before the true h.e.l.lenes reached Crete, an Asianic dialect must have been spoken there, and to this language the word ”labyrinth” must originally have belonged. The cla.s.sical labyrinth was ”in the Knossian territory.” The palace of Knossos was emphatically the chief seat of the wors.h.i.+p of a G.o.d whose emblem was the double-axe; it was the Knossian ”Place of the Double-Axe,” the Cretan ”Labyrinth.”

It used to be supposed that the Cretan labyrinth had taken its name from the Egyptian one, and the, word itself was supposed to be of Egyptian origin. An Egyptian etymology was found for it as ”_Ro-pi-ro-henet_,”

”Temple-mouth-ca.n.a.l,” which might be interpreted, with some violence to Egyptian construction, as ”The temple at the mouth of the ca.n.a.l,” i.e.

the Bahr Yusuf, which enters the Fayym at Hawara. But unluckily this word would have been p.r.o.nounced by the natives of the vicinity as ”Elphilahune,” which is not very much like

[Ill.u.s.tration: 126.jpg (Greek word)]

”_Ro-pi-ro-henet_” is, in fact, a mere figment of the philological imagination, and cannot be proved ever to have existed. The element _Ro-henet_, ”ca.n.a.l-mouth” (according to the local p.r.o.nunciation of the Fayym and Middle Egypt, called _La-hune_), is genuine; it is the origin of the modern Illahun (_el-Lahun_), which is situated at the ”ca.n.a.l-mouth.” However, now that we know that the word labyrinth can be explained satisfactorily with the help of Karian, as evidently of Greek (pre-Aryan) origin, and as evidently the original name of the Knossian labyrinth, it is obvious that there is no need to seek a far-fetched explanation of the word in Egypt, and to suppose that the Greeks called the Cretan labyrinth after the Egyptian one.

The contrary is evidently the case. Greek visitors to Egypt found a resemblance between the great Egyptian building, with its numerous halls and corridors, vast in extent, and the Knossian palace. Even if very little of the latter was visible in the cla.s.sical period, as seems possible, yet the site seems always to have been kept holy and free from later building till Roman times, and we know that the tradition of the mazy halls and corridors of the labyrinth was always clear, and was evidently based on a vivid reminiscence. Actually, one of the most prominent characteristics of the Knossian palace is its mazy and labyrinthine system of pa.s.sages and chambers. The parallel between the two buildings, which originally caused the Greek visitors to give the pyramid-temple of Hawara the name of ”labyrinth,” has been traced still further. The white limestone walls and the s.h.i.+ning portals of ”Parian marble,” described by Strabo as characteristic of the Egyptian labyrinth, have been compared with the s.h.i.+ning white selenite or gypsum used at Knossos, and certain general resemblances between the Greek architecture of the Minoan age and the almost contemporary Egyptian architecture of the XIIth Dynasty have been pointed out.* Such resemblances may go to swell the amount of evidence already known, which tells us that there was a close connection between Egyptian and Minoan art and civilization, established at least as early as 2500 B.C.

* See H. R. Hall, Journal of h.e.l.lenic Studies, 1905 (Pt.

ii). The Temple of the Sphinx at Giza may also be compared with those of Hawara and Knossos. It seems most probable that the Temple of the Sphinx is a XIIth Dynasty building.

For it must be remembered that within the last few years we have learned from the excavations in Crete a new chapter of ancient history, which, it might almost seem, shows us Greece and Egypt in regular communication from nearly the beginnings of Egyptian history. As the excavations which have told us this were carried on in Crete, not in Egypt, to describe them does not lie within the scope of this book, though a short sketch of their results, so far as they affect Egyptian history in later days, is given in Chapter VII. Here it may suffice to say that, as far as the early period is concerned, Egypt and Crete were certainly in communication in the time of the XIIth Dynasty, and quite possibly in that of the VIth or still earlier. We have IIId Dynasty Egyptian vases from Knossos, which were certainly not imported in later days, for no ancient nation had antiquarian tastes till the time of the Sates in Egypt and of the Romans still later. In fact, this communication seems to go so far back in time that we are gradually being led to perceive the possibility that the Minoan culture of Greece was in its origin an offshoot from that of primeval Egypt, probably in early Neolithic times.

That is to say, the Neolithic Greeks and Neolithic Egyptians were both members of the same ”Mediterranean” stock, which quite possibly may have had its origin in Africa, and a portion of which may have crossed the sea to Europe in very early times, taking with it the seeds of culture which in Egypt developed in the Egyptian way, in Greece in the Greek way. Actual communication and connection may not have been maintained at first, and probably they were not. Prof. Petrie thinks otherwise, and would see in the boats painted on the predynastic Egyptian vases (see Chapter I) the identical galleys by which, in late Neolithic times, commerce between Crete and Egypt was carried on across the Mediterranean. It is certain, however, that these boats are ordinary little river craft, the usual Nile _felkas_ and _gya.s.sas_ of the time; they are depicted together with emblems of the desert and cultivated land,-ostriches, antelopes, hills, and palm-trees,-and the thoroughly inland and Upper Egyptian character of the whole design springs to the eye. There can be no doubt whatever that the predynastic boats were not seagoing galleys.

It was probably not till the time of the pyramid-builders that connection between the Greek Mediterraneans and the Nilotes was re-established. Thence-forward it increased, and in the time of the XIIth Dynasty, when the labyrinth of Amenemhat III was built, there seems to have been some kind of more or less regular communication between the two countries.

It is certain that artistic ideas were exchanged between them at this period. How communication was carried on we do not know, but it was probably rather by way of Cyprus and the Syrian coast than directly across the open sea. We shall revert to this point when we come to describe the connection between Crete and Egypt in the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty, when Cretan amba.s.sadors visited the Egyptian court and were depicted in tomb paintings at Thebes. Between the time of the XIIth Dynasty and that of the XVIIIth this connection seems to have been very considerably strengthened; for at Knossos have been found an Egyptian statuette of an Egyptian named Abnub, who from his name must have lived about the end of the XIIIth Dynasty, and the top of an alabastron with the royal name of Khian, one of the Hyksos kings.

Quite close to Hawara, at Illahun, in the ruins of the town which was built by Usertsen's workmen when they were building his pyramid, Prof.

Petrie found fragments of pottery of types which we now know well from excavations in Crete and Cyprus, though they were then unknown. They are fragments of the polychrome Cretan ware called, after the name of the place where it was first found in Crete, Kamares ware, and of a black ware ornamented with small punctures, which are often filled up with white. This latter ware has been found elsewhere a.s.sociated with XIIIth Dynasty antiquities. The former is known to belong in Crete to the ”early Minoan” period, long anterior to the ”late Minoan” or ”Palace”

period, which was contemporary with the Egyptian XVIIIth Dynasty.

We have here another interesting proof of a connection between XIIth Dynasty Egypt and early Minoan Crete. The later connection, under the XVIIIth and following dynasties, is also ill.u.s.trated in the same reign by Prof. Petrie's finds of late Mycenaean objects and foreign graves at Medinet Gurob.*

* One man who was buried here bore the name An-Tursha, ”Pillar of the Tursha.” The Tursha were a people of the Mediterranean, possibly Tylissians of Crete.

These excavations at Hawara, Illahun, Kahun, and Gurob were carried out in the years 1887-9. Since then Prof. Petrie and his co-workers have revisited the same district, and Gurob has been re-examined (in 1904) by Messrs. Loat and Ayrton, who discovered there a shrine devoted to the wors.h.i.+p of fish. This work was carried on at the same time as Prof.

Petrie's main excavation for the Egypt Exploration Fund at Annas, or Ahnas-yet el-Medina, the site of the ancient Henensu, the Herakleopolis of the Greeks. Prof. Naville had excavated there for the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1892, but had not completely cleared the temple.

This work was now taken up by Prof. Petrie, who laid the whole building bare. It is dedicated to Hershefi, the local deity of Herakleopolis.

This G.o.d, who was called Ar-saphes by the Greeks, and identified with Herakles, was in fact a form of Horus with the head of a ram; his name means ”Terrible-Face.” The greater part of the temple dates to the time of the XIXth Dynasty, and nothing of the early period is left. We know, however, that the Middle Kingdom was the flouris.h.i.+ng period of the city of Hershefi. For a comparatively brief period, between the age of Memphite hegemony and that of Theban dominion, Herakleopolis was the capital city of Egypt. The kings of the IXth and Xth Dynasties were Herakleopolites, though we know little of them. One, Kheti, is said to have been a great tyrant. Another, Nebkaura, is known only as a figure in the ”Legend of the Eloquent Peasant,” a cla.s.sical story much in vogue in later days. Another, Merikara, is a more real personage, for we have contemporary records of his days in the inscriptions of the tombs at Asyt, from which we see that the princes of Thebes were already wearing down the Northerners, in spite of the resistance of the adherents of Herakleopolis, among whom the most valiant were the chiefs of Asyt. The civil war eventuated in favour of Thebes, and the Theban XIth Dynasty a.s.sumed the double crown. The sceptre pa.s.sed from Memphis and the North, and Thebes enters upon the scene of Egyptian history.

With this event the Nile-land also entered upon a new era of development. The metropolis of the kingdom was once more s.h.i.+fted to the South, and, although the kings of the XIIth Dynasty actually resided in the North, their Theban origin was never forgotten, and Thebes was regarded as the chief city of the country. The XIth Dynasty kings actually reigned at Thebes, and there the later kings of the XIIIth Dynasty retired after the conquest of the Hyksos. The fact that with Thebes were a.s.sociated all the heroic traditions of the struggle against the Hyksos ensured the final stability of the capital there when the hated Semites were finally driven out, and the national kingdom was re-established in its full extent from north to south. But for occasional intervals, as when Akhunaten held his court at Tell el-Amarna and Ramses II at Tanis, Thebes remained the national capital for six hundred years, till the time of the XXIId Dynasty.

<script>