New light on ancient Egypt

Front matter

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Contents

I. THE DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF EL-AMARNA IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY B.C. — SUSA AND

THE DIEULAFOYS I

II. THE OLDEST KNOWN EXPLORERS OF THE AFRICAN

II The Oldest Known Explorers Of The African Desert

The most ancient explorers of Africa have recently risen from their graves. They are Egyptians, who belong to one of the most powerful families of the country, to that of the lords of Assouan and Elephantine. They lived somewhere about the year 3500 b.c. — two or three centuries are of no consequence in dealing with dates in the history of ancient Eastern empires. I cannot say that these explorers penetrated far into the interior of the Dark Continent, but their expeditions were long, fatiguing, dangerous, profitable. They inspired them with so much pride, and brought them so many good things, that "they desired to preserve their memory for posterity, and engraved the narrative in their tombs. In 1892 Schiaparelli copied and published the memoirs of one of them, named Hirkhouf. 3 De Morgan and Bouriant discovered several others 2 in 1893, equally as illustrious in their day, and as unknown in ours, as Hirkhouf. The inscriptions are mutilated in varying degrees, and what remains often serves only to make us regret what is lost; they prove, however, that the Egyptians who are always represented as home-keeping and hostile to travelling possessed active minds and a spirit of enterprise.

1 E. Schiaparelli : " Una tomba egiziana inedita della VI a dinastia, con inscrizioni storiche e geografiche," Rome, 1 892. (Extract from the Memoirs of the Reale Accademia dei Lincei, Ser. 4% at Vol. x, Pt. 1.)

2 Cf. De la frontière de Nubie à Kom-Ombo, 1893, pp. 143-599.

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Elephantine played the same part in ancient times as Assouan does in modern times; it was the most frequented commercial market of the Soudan. It filled a small portion of a little island, supported on several blocks of granite, which had been successively joined to each other by banks of sand, and over which the Nile had spread a thick covering of mud. Acacias, mulberry-trees, date-trees, and dôm-palms, either as hedges bordering the paths, or as a screen in front of the river, or in clumps in the middle of the fields, provided shade. Half-a-dozen norias, arranged like a battery along the river-banks, pumped up the water day and night, with their incessant, monotonous grinding noise. The inhabitants did not waste an inch of their narrow domain ; they managed to sow everywhere little patches of millet and barley, clover and vegetables. A few buffaloes and cows fed discreetly in the corners, innumerable chickens and pigeons roved around marauding. The ancient town was situated to the south, on a high granite plateau, out of the way of the inundation. The ruins are some 872 yards in extent, and are grouped round a ruined temple, the oldest parts of which do not go further back than the sixteenth century b.c. The town was surrounded by a high wall, and a conduit house built of dried bricks, situated on the south-east of a neighbouring island, allowed it to open or close the outlet of the cataract at will. On the east, but separated by a channel about 100 yards wide, stood Syene on the side of the hill, like a suburb of Elephantine. Marshy pasture land covered the actual site of Assouan, and there were gardens, vines which produced a wine famous throughout the valley, and a forest of date-trees and acacias running northwards along the edge of the water. The bazaars and streets of the twin cities must have presented at that period quite an interesting variety of types and costumes : Nubians, Soudanese negroes, and perhaps Arabs, rubbed shoulders with Libyans and the Egyptians of the Delta. On the other side of the river, the left bank, vast cemeteries offered one asylum to the diverse races. The tombs of the princes occupied an irregular line on the side of the steep hill which dominates the entrance of the port. A roughly constructed flight of steps of unhewn stone led from the bank to the entrance of the hypogeum. The mummy, after slowly climbing the ascent on the shoulders of its bearers, paused for a moment on the platform at the door of the chapel. The decoration did not admit of much variety; it was almost entirely displayed on the outer side of the walls which enclose the bay, and which is distinctly seen from the streets of Elephantine. A long inscription covers the lintel and the uprights, and the portrait of the dead man stands right and left, as if to guard safely his eternal home.

Mekhou is the first of the nobles whose adventures are known to us. He lived under Pioupi II, who is the Pharaoh before the last of the Vlth Dynasty. 1 His cousin Hirkhouf made three successive journeys during the reign of Metesouphis I, Pioupi IPs predecessor. Metesouphis I was still quite young when he came to Elephantine in the fifth year of his reign. There the chief nomad races of the desert, the Ouaouaîtou, the Mazaîou, the people of Iritît, paid him homage, and their submission doubtless encouraged him to send an expedition into the district, as little visited then as it is to-day, that lies along the left bank of the Nile as far as Dêrr. His choice fell on Irouî, Hirkhouf 's father, and on Hirkhouf himself. " His Majesty sent me with my father, Irouî, to the land of Amami to open up the road to that country ; I accomplished it in seven months, and brought back all kinds of commodities, for which I was

1 See inscription of Mekhou in J. de Morgan : De la frontière de V Egypt à Ko?n-Ombo, p. 147.

highly praised." 1 This was only, so to speak, a trial trip, in which he served his apprenticeship under his father's tuition. He soon set out again, and this time alone. " I set out by the Elephantine route; I travelled in the land of Iritît, then in the land of Mâkhir, then in Dar-risi, which belongs to Iritît, for the space of eight months ; I travelled there, and brought back great store of commodities of all kinds, such as had never before been brought into Egypt. I travelled through the territories of the Prince of Sitou, which belongs to the people of Iritît. I traversed those regions, a prowess accomplished by none of the chiefs of caravans who had gone before me to the land of Amami." 2 Returned home, the king did not allow him to remain long inactive. " His Majesty sent me a third time to the land of Amami; I left Elephantine by the road of the oasis, and found the Prince of Amami about to march towards the country of the Timihou, to make war on them, at the western corner of the sky. I accompanied him against the Timihou, and helped him to conquer them so thoroughly that he paid homage to all the gods of Pharaoh. I then won over the Prince of Amami, and traversed Amami from the country of Iritît to the borders of Sitou. I found the Prince of Iritît, Sitou, and the people of Ouaouit living in peace. I travelled with 300 asses laden with incense, ebony, ivory, rhinoceros skins, leopard skins, and all sorts of excellent commodities. " 3 Egyptian soldiers escorted him, as well as auxiliaries from Amami, and the sheikhs of Iritît had to furnish him with asses, oxen, and the provisions needed to maintain the little army. When he reached the frontiers of Egypt, Pharaoh sent "the Lord Ouni to meet him with a boat laden with confectionery, good things, and

1 Inscription of Hirkhouf, B, I. 4-5. 2 laid., B, I. 5-10. 3 Ibid., B, I. 10-14, and C, I. 1-5.

beer" 1 to comfort him after the privations he had endured in the course of his travels.

Hirkhouf cared nothing for oratorical developments; he said what he had to say, baldly, never suspecting that more could be desired of him than the names of the peoples among whom he travelled, and a brief list of the articles he brought back. His bare information must be supplemented by the testimony of more recent adventurers acting under similar conditions. Like the Arab travellers of the Middle Ages, the Egyptians of the Ancient Empire traversed the world for the sake of trade; they set out on their discoveries with a pack of trumpery wares, and returned from them with bales of valuable merchandise. It will perhaps be asked why the rulers of Elephantine, who had considerable troops at their disposal, did not resort to brute force to cut a way through the Nubian tribes. They did not hesitate on occasion to send bands of soldiers to the right or left of the Valley of the Nile, to the Red Sea, or to the oases of the Libyan desert ; indeed, their incursions into those regions brought them oxen, slaves, wood, coal, a few ounces of gold, a few packets of amethysts, or of green felspar, used for jewellery; they always gained something thereby, and the royal treasury disdained no contribution, however small. But their armies never went very far; directly they desired to carry their depredations to any great distance, the Nubian mountains stopped their foot soldiers, and the rapids of the second cataract offered an almost insuperable obstacle to their boats. They were obliged to lay down their arms, and to become perforce peaceful traders ; their caravans could then traverse in safety routes from which their soldiers would not have escaped unharmed. And Hirkhouf, or Mekhou, had to act by the king's decree. The objects chosen for barter were those that had most value in 1 Inscription of Hirkhouf, C, I. 8-9.

small compass and were of light weight : small glass wares, jewellery, coarse cutlery, strong perfumes, gaudy stuffs which, fifty centuries later, still have charm for the natives of Africa. They paid for these costly treasures in gold dust or bullion, ostrich feathers, lion or leopard skins, elephants' teeth, cowries, blocks of ebony wood, incense, myrrh, gum arabic. Monkeys, especially baboons, were greatly esteemed in Egypt. They amused the nobles who chained them to their chairs on days of solemn festival ; the traders willingly undertook to try and bring them back alive. The way was exhausting, the journey interminable ; the asses, the sole beasts of burden possessed or used in those regions, could only manage short stages, and it took many months to cover distances that a caravan of camels accomplishes in a few weeks. The routes they chose were those in which wells or springs occur at not too distant intervals, and the necessity of often watering the asses, and the impossibility of carrying a large provision of water, compelled the explorer to take tortuous or complicated routes. It is thus easy to understand that Hirkhouf and his contemporaries did not penetrate very far into the mystery of Africa. The countries that they were so proud of having visited were not so very distant from Egypt, Amami and Iritît in the desert, south-west of Elephantine, between the first and second cataract ; the Timihou, situated towards the western corner of the sky, were the Berbers who peopled the oases. In short, the nobles of Elephantine exerted themselves under the Pharaohs of the Vlth Dynasty to discover Nubia and the Libyan desert.

The knowledge gained was scarcely more than the names of races, mingled with marvellous tales or mythological legends. The Nile had its source in a divine river which enveloped the sky, and on which the Boat of the Sun continually sailed, the river-ocean of Greek tradition ; having reached the southern regions of the firmament, an arm was detached, and fell on the earth in a tumultuous cascade. The point where it touched our world was first placed at the first cataract, and then, as geographical knowledge widened, it was put further south. It is obvious that its neighbourhood should be inhabited by special races, intermediary between men and gods. All the travellers who approached it drew attention to the existence of an Island of Doubles, where a serpent with a human voice reigned over the doubles of the dead, and of a land of Manes, the name of which sufficiently indicates its nature. The last of the countries similar to Egypt was Pouanît, the land of gold and incense, which extended along the coast of the Red Sea. The traders who frequented it purchased objects or creatures hailing from the fabulous regions of the extreme south; what they sought most and found least was a particular kind of pygmy, whose name, Danga, curiously resembles that of several African tribes. The first Danga was brought into Egypt a little less than a century before Hirkhouf,under Pharaoh Assi, of the Vth Dynasty. The pygmy had been welcomed at court as a sort of buffoon, useful for charming away the sovereign's ennui by his savage cries and gestures, and, above all, by a sort of ballet that he performed alone admirably, called the Dance of the god. 1 The god whose dance he imitated was himself a dwarf, with a big head covered with long hair, a bearded face, and enormous limbs, and clothed in a leopard skin. He was named Bîsou, and came originally from the ports of Pouanît, early becoming naturalized in Egypt. Bîsou, both jovial and grim, both warrior and musician, expressed his variations of temper in warlike mimicry with sword and shield, or in joyous movements to the tune of the little

1 Inscription of Hirkhouf, D, I. 6-9. The Danga reminds us of the Satyrs who, according to Diodorus (I. 18), were brought to Osiris in Ethiopia, and whom he attached to his army.

triangular harp of the desert tribes, on which he accompanied himself.

The Danga of the time of Assi had so greatly astonished the courtiers by his agility, that ever since they had tried to procure a similar buffoon ; but the species was rare, and years passed without any success in replacing him. The admiration which he had inspired produced unexpected results. Souls, even those of the Pharaohs themselves, could not penetrate into the paradise of Osiris except by crossing an arm of the sea which divided it from the land of the living. A magic ferry-boat undertook the service on certain days, but the ferryman did not admit all and sundry of the would-be pas* sengers : they had to prove their right to embark, and to answer a hundred captious questions on transcendental theology before he consented to ferry them across. A prayer, doubtless composed a short while after the reign of Assi, when the memory of the Danga was still fresh, shows us the ferry-boat at its post awaiting the Manes. Suddenly a noise is heard among the gods and the souls on the bank; the Danga arrives, and he must be taken without delay to Pharaoh Osiris, who has sought him in vain until now, and who expects great pleasure from his dancing. The ferryman immediately loses his head, takes on board the soul which gives itself out to be the Danga, pilots it without asking a single question to the port of paradise, and puts it ashore at the steps leading to the tribunal of Osiris, where it will represent the qualities of the Danga it so cleverly usurped. 1

The ideal thing for an Egyptian explorer entrusted with an official mission was to come across a Danga, and to transport it alive into Egypt. Hirkhouf was more fortunate than many others; during his third journey he purchased one that the hazards of trade had brought

1 Papi I, i. 400-404 ; Mirinrî i., 570-571 ; cf. Maspero : Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie Egyptie7ines, Vol. ii, pp. 429-443.

to the land of Amami, and which came originally from the Land of Manes, The emotions of the court were greatly stirred at the good news, for Assi's Danga was the last that had been seen there, and the strange plaything was only known by tradition. Metesouphis, who had sent Hirkhouf on his travels, had just died after a reign of ten years; he took his rest in one of the pyramids of Sakkarah, whence he was not to come forth until 1881, to exhibit himself to admiring tourists in one of the glass cases in the Boulak museum, and to show us "what the mummy of a king was like in 3500 b.c. His youngest brother, Pioupi II, succeeded him, when he was about twenty years old, and the joy with which he welcomed the messenger who announced the capture of the Danga may well be imagined. The council of ministers was assembled, the king dispatched a scroll in which he overwhelmed Hirkhouf with compliments, and ordered him to bring his prisoner without delay. The royal missive was later engraved in the tomb of the traveller opposite Elephantine ! Pioupi II wished to give his faithful subject a reward so that in times to come, when speaking of the great honours of which such or such a personage had been the recipient, it might still be said, "They did for him what his Majesty did for Hirkhouf when he returned from his travels in Amami with the Danga!" The pygmies were so wild, and fear of losing them so great, that the government itself formulated the precautions to be taken against their escape. " When he is with you in the boat, arrange to place watchful persons on each side of the boat, so that he may not fall into the water; arrange that watchful persons shall sleep at night with him in his bed, and that they shall be changed ten times each night." A boat of the royal fleet was put at Hirkhouf's disposal, and all the civil, military, and religious officials of the kingdom were ordered to furnish him with provisions

The Pigmy Khnoumhotpou in the Museum at Cairo.

on his way. 1 The sands of Sakkarah, which preserved the mummy of Metesouphis for us, still hide, perhaps, that of the poor creature who so greatly amused his successor. The Cairo museum possesses the embalmed body of one of the favourite gazelles of Queen Moutemhaît; why should it not be enriched one day by that of the pygmy favourite of Pioupi II ? Nothing is lost in Egypt, and research there restores not only, as elsewhere, the narrative of events, but also the persons of those who took part in them ; both the materials and the heroes of history are disinterred from under the ruins.

Expeditions like those of Hirkhouf were frequent, and produced more lasting results than 'the capture of a dancing pygmy, and a sovereign's favour for a traveller. The peoples frequented by the traders of Elephantine, through hearing of Egypt, its industry, its wealth, its armies, ended by conceiving for her an admiration somewhat mingled with fear; they learned to consider her a superior power, and the Pharaoh a god whom no one dared resist. When, later, an army commanded by the Pharaoh himself came against them, they were prepared to submit ; once subdued, they rapidly adopted the manners, costume, religion, and language of their conquerors. The caravans of explorers did the pioneer work; the soldiers followed them, and formed the great Egypt which, stretching from Khartoum to the sea, ruled the eastern world for more than six centuries. We have seen the same order of events reproduced long after in neighbouring regions in the case of European travellers and traders.

1 Inscription of Hirkhouf, D, I. 1-25.

Ill

Tourists in Egypt who spend at Thebes the three or four days arranged by the promoters of rapid travel, see at least one of the tombs hollowed out in the hills on the left bank of the river. For this excursion the official itinerary allows three or four hours of an afternoon already well filled with an expedition through the Valley of the Kings, and a luncheon at Deîr El-Baharî. Usually Hypogeum No. 33 is visited, that of Rakhmirîya, and if only the paintings could be distinguished it would be one of the most interesting; but unfortunately the lower records, the only ones sufficiently lighted by the flame of the candles or of the smoky torches, have been greatly damaged by the generations of fellaheen who turned these mortuary chapels into dwelling-rooms. Travellers come away with an impression of splashes of colour, spread, as it were, by chance, over dirty walls, diversified here and there by columns of damaged hieroglyphics. The lamentable spectacle usually quenches their curiosity, and most of them refuse to enter the two or three other grottoes of a similar kind recommended to them by their dragoman. Those who persevere find elsewhere fresher tones, clearer pictures, and scenes more easily recognizable, but there are everywhere enormous lacunae which hinder them from imagining what a completely finished hypogeum was like, or from understanding the decoration. In order to make it intelligible as a whole, it would be necessary to transcribe what remains in each, and, putting the fragments together, to reconstruct, piece by piece, the three or four types of decoration most common in the immense necropolis. The work not only demands time, patience, and selfdenial, but also resistance to fatigue and discouragement. The members of the Cairo Mission undertook the task, some with real enthusiasm, others with praiseworthy resignation ; the twenty odd tombs they have so far copied are published, and the enormous service rendered to science can be judged from this small sample. 1

Every one wished to have a residence of his own in the hill of Thebes. The land of the dead, like the land of the living, belonged to the king and the gods, and a plot of ground there had to be acquired for money in the same way as the site of a garden, a meadow, or a corn-field. The king sometimes granted a well-situated plot to his servants. If he desired to reward one of them handsomely, he bestowed on him a slice of the hill, or had a chapel, corridors, a vault, indeed the whole dwelling required for a mummy, hewn out at his own expense. The inscriptions in such a case told how such a one received his sepulchre by the gracious command of Pharaoh, and that fact gave him a title of honour with posterity. The others applied to the gods, that is, to the temples, to negociate the purchase of an Eternal Home, and doubtless paid a high price. The ground procured, they had no need to trouble about the architect who should utilize it; it is almost certain that most of the syringes were prepared in advance and already hollowed out or even partly decorated at the time of purchase. The temples had companies of quarry-men, master-masons, designers, sculptors, painters who regularly worked for them, and whom they placed at the

1 Memoirs published by the members of the French Arch ceologi cal Mission in Cairo : Vol. v, Tombeaux Thébaiens^ published by MM. Virey, Bénédite, Bouriant, Boussac, Maspero.

disposal of their customers. The ordinary tombs were planned in one way at the same epoch : a straight façade cut out in the rock so as to allow of a little platform in front, a low door, sometimes entirely bare, sometimes flanked on either side by a figure representing the proprietor, and a few columns of hieroglyphics recording his titles; beyond, a narrow oblong chamber parallel to the façade; then, opposite the door, a corridor perpendicular to the chamber, or a second chamber terminated by a niche containing one or two statues, often sculptured in the rock itself. That was the exterior chapel where the relatives came to bring the votive offerings to their dead on days fixed by the ritual. It was closed by a wooden door, which offered slight protection against malefactors or the curious. The vault proper was better guarded; it was reached either by steep galleries which penetrated far into the mountain, or by shafts hidden in the ground of one of the rooms or of the platform, in most unexpected places and easy of concealment. The grants of land were crowded together, following the strata of the rock. Here might be seen groups of ûwe or six; there, twenty or thirty in file; isolated grants were rare, at least in the centre, at Assasif, Cheîkh- Abd-el-Gournah, or Gournet-Mourraî. The hills, perforated in every direction, seem to be gigantic hives, the honeycomb of which suddenly upset in confusion and exposed to the light of day, brings the half-opened cells to view. In certain spots the galleries are so close together that the rock wall which divides them measures only something between twenty-four inches and eight inches. The Copt monks, who inhabited them from the fifth century onwards, pierced or suppressed the partition walls in order to facilitate communication between the hermitages. Earthquakes have cracked the party- walls, the weight of the upper strata has crushed them, and the ceiling has fallen in. Near Assasif a whole hill has thus given way, and several portions of Cheîkh-Abd-el- Gournah appear to be only awaiting a pretext to subside, through the destruction wrought by the careless work of men and the imperceptible wear and tear of time.

As soon as the chambers were rough hewn by the masons, the sculptors and painters appeared on the scene. The hill of Thebes, unlike that of Memphis, is not of a compact and smooth consistency which lends itself to the chisel. The limestone, even in places where the quality is good, has been split and broken in the geological ages, and the cracks are filled up with infiltrations of black or red earth ; it often looks like a cake of puff-paste impregnated with chocolate and encrusted with enormous raisins of flint. It needed some skill to manipulate and fill in the cracks and depressions of the material in order to form a smooth surface on which the sculptor could work his reliefs; a great amount of trouble and labour produced only a poor result because the coatings and slabs of limestone with which the wall was patched soon gave way and the holes showed through the decoration. Therefore painting was often substituted for what sculpture could only accomplish with difficulty. To render the surface paintable, it was merely necessary to spread a rough layer of black clay or of common earth mixed with straw over the floor and wall, and then to give it a coat of milk of lime, or of white colour. Whether sculptured or painted the decoration never greatly varied. The artists to whom it was entrusted possessed two or three series of pictures, the combination of which formed the ideal decoration, as it were, of the tomb. The first series comprised scenes from the private or public life of the dead man, as well as the representation of the crafts needed to keep up a great house; the second series showed the funeral rites from the time the corpse became a mummy until the moment when the gods of the other world, Anubis the jackal and Amentît the mistress of the west, took possession of the mummy wreathed in flowers.

Some showed the ceremonies performed on the statue to accustom it to receive the offerings and nourish the soul; others presented to the spectators the different destinies of the human remains, its journeyings through the regions of darkness, its struggles against infernal monsters, its happiness in the paradise of Osiris or on the Boat of the Sun. Such decoration in its entirety would have required miles of wall space; therefore only fragments of it are to be found. The Pharaohs, even, flinched at the expense, and contented themselves with the most important parts. Rich men obtained some hundreds of yards, and as the ladder of fortune was descended, the space became restricted. The ordinary tomb would comprise only a sort of epitome, always conceived in the same terms unless the customer or his family expressed a desire for the substitution of some particular conception, or some particular picture. There is not the slightest difficulty in reconstructing the tomb even in the smallest details : the plates published by the members of the Cairo Mission would enable a mason and a painter accustomed to deal with buildings to erect it, if they so desired, in a corner of Paris exactly as it was.

The choice of subjects was not left, however, to the caprice of the undertakers or their employers; it corresponded to the needs of the Theban soul and to the prevailing idea of posthumous existence. The soul was nourished on votive offerings and absorbed their substance at first in reality, and then, when the rapidity with which new generations forgot the old ones was perceived, in symbol. The limestone or wooden figure of an animal or of a loaf of bread, the drawing of the same animal or loaf traced on the wall of the hypogeum, and endowed by the prayers of consecration with a sort of mysterious vitality, represented for the shade, the soul, the double dwelling in the bottom of the vault, the living animal or the kneaded and baked wheaten loaf. The designer had then to choose from his sketch-books one of the many motives dealing with alimentation. Did the dead man desire bread ? The artist would sketch the field and the canals by which it was irrigated, the oxen drawing the plough and the sower scattering the seed; then the harvest, and the reapers, scythe in hand, cutting the corn, the threshing of the ears, the grain stored in the granary. The vines were represented on a panel of the wall at the side, with the gathering of the grapes, the wine-pressing and the pouring of the unfermented liquor into jars. The dead man assisted in these labours in company with his wife, dressed in new clothes and wearing a new wig as on the days of his earthly harvests; everything represented in the fresco belonged to him, and his soul, in contemplating the representation of the objects, secured their effective possession.