« PreviousContinue »
of her protection of Osiris; the inscriptions give the names and titles of the king, and refer to the course of the sun in the nether-world. On the other side, by the feet, is Isis, also with outstretched wings; on one side is Ap-uat, and on the other Anubis, each jackal-headed. The two sides are ornamented with scenes and inscriptions referring to the passage of the sun, who is being towed along in his boat through the various divisions of the nether-world by their gods, and to his attack, defeat, and slaughter of Apepi, his chief enemy. Two scenes at the feet, in which Neith and Isis promise to put together the limbs of Osiris, complete the ornamentation of the outside.1 At the head, inside, arc the solar disk, a mummy with a disk and star on his head, and a head of a goddess on each side holding out an arm, the hand of which supports a being who pours out water on the head of the deceased in the form of a mummy. On the sides are figures of an ithyphallic god, hawks, etc., forming scenes from the "Book of being in the Under-world." At the foot is the god Chepera in a disk around which are twined the folds of a serpent; above is the head of a ram being adored by figures of the king, by the sides of which are the cartouches of Rameses III. On the bottom of the sarcophagus is the figure of Hathor, goddess of Amenta, with wings outstretched to receive the deceased.
The sarcophagi of the XXVIth dynasty are usually rectangular, and are made of green and black basalt, and variegated hard stone. Many of the scenes and inscriptions upon them are copied from sarcophagi of the XlXth and XXth dynasties, but long extracts from the Book of the Dead are characteristic of this period, and some sarcophagi Sarare covered entirely with such funereal inscriptions,1 with the'New the exception of the spaces occupied by the figures of the Empire, deceased and Nut, on the outside and inside of the cover respectively, and the figure of Hathor on the bottom inside.
1 For a fuller description of this sarcophagus see De Rouge1, Notice dts Monuments au Mush du Louvre, Paris, 1872, pp. 173-175, and Seyflarth, Beitrdge, 2-5, Bl. 6.
* E.g., the sarcophagus of Anch-nes-nefer-ab-Ra, B.M. No. 32.
Such sarcophagi are beautifully sculptured, carefully inscribed, and the attention given to detail is marvellous.
After the XXVIth dynasty sarcophagi are sometimes rounded at the head, and the covers have human faces ; they are ornamented with rows of figures of gods, the four children of Horus, a number of genii of the netherworld, and inscriptions which state that they have taken the deceased under their protection. Rectangular sarcophagi which taper slightly towards the feet, and are narrower at the base than at the top, are also common.
In the XXXth dynasty massive sarcophagi of granite, basalt and agglomerate, highly polished and beautifully sculptured, become very plentiful; they are found chiefly in Lower Egypt. The inscriptions and scenes upon them are extracts, more or less complete, from the "Book of being in the Under-world," and, in arrangement, they greatly resemble those of the earlier dynasties; a fine example of this period is the sarcophagus of Nectanebus I., B.M. No. 10. Sar- Under the rule of the Ptolemies and Romans wooden
of'the8' sarcophagi became very common; they consisted of two Graeco- parts, viz., the board upon which the deceased in his coffin period. was laid, and the rectangular, vaulted cover, which is, at times, as much as eighteen inches high. The planks from which the covers are made are rarely more than an inch thick, and they are let into four rectangular uprights, which are often made of a hard wood with a fine texture. The vaulted cover has, at times, a gilded hawk upon the top, and a cornice running round the four sides; it was fastened to the board, upon which the coffin stood, by its uprights, one at each corner, which, projecting slightly below the lower edge of the sides, fitted into four rectangular cavities cut in the board. The inside and outside of the vaulted cover are painted in gaudy colours with figures of the gods, the signs of the Zodiac, and inscriptions in hieroglyphics; when the deceased was a Greek, his name and that of his father were also inscribed in Greek. The mummies which belong to such coffins are covered over with a linen cloth on which is painted the god Osiris, with the features of the deceased, wearing the atef crown, and holding ^ and Jf\; on each side of him are two of the children of Horus. The scenes and inscriptions on the sarcophagi of this period show that the people of Egypt had ceased to attach any importance to their meaning, and they appear simply as funereal decorations, without which the sarcophagi would have been incomplete.
The Egyptian Tombs.
The extreme care which the Egyptians took to preserve the bodies of their dead would have been all in vain, if they had not provided secure resting places for their mummies. To guard the mummy intact and ready for the return of the Double soul, it was necessary to provide tombs which should be fherpose 0 safe from the attacks of human beings and from the Egyptian prowlings of wild animals, and also out of the reach of the tomh" infiltration of the waters of the Nile, or of the inundation itself. If the preservation of a mummy was regarded as a sacred duty to be performed by the relatives of the deceased, who were morally bound to show all honour to it, and to spend their money freely on whatever was necessary for its adornment, it follows of a necessity that a house or tomb meet for the habitation of the ka, and for the soul after it had been decreed triumphant in the judgment hall of Osiris, must also be provided. The size and beauty of a tomb and its furniture depended, as much as the making of the mummy, upon the means at the disposal of the relatives of a deceased person. Every person in Egypt knew perfectly well that to ensure the resurrection of his body, after the pure soul had returned to inhabit it, it was necessary that every part of it should be preserved in a fitting state, but nevertheless, every person was not able to afford the costly embalming, and the still more costly furniture and tomb and procession which were, no doubt, held by the wealthy to be absolutely necessary for "living a second time." The burial of the very poor of Egypt must have been much the same in all times and in all dynasties. The body, having been salted only, was laid in the sand to a depth of three or four feet, without covering, without ornament, and even without a coffin ; sometimes even the salting was
Drying dispensed with. The drying up qualities of the sand of Egyptian0 Egypt are very remarkable. Some few years ago Sir C. sand. Holled Smith, K.C.B., while making some excavations among the ruins of a temple at Wady Halfah, on the west bank of the river, dug up a box, which, having been opened, was seen to contain the body of a European; on making inquiries he found that an English engineer had died there about a dozen years before. The hair and beard and features were unaltered as far as appearance went, but the skin had dried up like parchment, and the body had become much smaller. In tombs of the lower classes of the Ancient