CHAPTER VIII
Theromance of ancient Egypt is not nearly told. Hundreds of volumes have been written about it; hundreds more are still to write. Day by day something is being turned up under the spade to increase our knowledge of those far-off times, and though we know more than the people of a century ago, our present knowledge will probably prove trifling compared with the knowledge of a century hence.
For years the French, favoured by important digging concessions, made many fine discoveries, among them those of Mariette who, going up to Thebes, saw a few columns sticking out of the sand at Karnak and began to excavate the site. Most men would have quailed before the gigantic task, but Mariette set his diggers to work, and slowly but surely rescued from the clutches of the desert all that remained of one of the most remarkable temples in the world. Mountains of sand and broken rock were shifted, not by mammoth machines that dug out a truck-load of sand at once, but by natives whoshovelled it into baskets and ran off with it, seven pounds at a time!
When Mariette returned to Egypt with Louis Napoleon some years later, the Egyptologist was as keen on the work as ever. He again began to excavate, and among other things found a statue representing the god Ammon, in whose honour the temple at Karnak was originally built. Standing by the knee of the god was a headless figure, said to be that of Tutankhamen in his boyhood.
Mariette, well knowing the value of the group, showed his regard for Prince Napoleon by making him a present of the statue, and the Prince, fired by what he saw in Egypt, and no doubt by Mariette’s enthusiasm, started to collect things Egyptian.
The time came when Prince Napoleon made up his mind to sell his Egyptian treasures. He sold many things, but no one would look at the statue, so it was bought in at the sale for £20. For long it remained in the Prince’s château, until a dealer eventually acquired it for a trifling sum. Quickly assuring himself of the antiquity of the statue, the dealer went to the Louvre to offer the piece to the nation.
The authorities inquired the price.
“I have been offered 300,000 francs by an American, but I would rather let France have it for 250,000 francs,” was the reply.
It was true. An American had offered £12,000 for the despised statue, which no one would buy at the original sale, the same statue which the Louvre gladly acquired for £10,000.
Museums will pay almost anything for fine specimens that throw some light on past ages. They will willingly fit out special expeditions to various parts of the world. Often museums cooperate in working a site, as in the case of the Temple of the Moon God at Ur, in Mesopotamia, which has been worked by the University Museum of Philadelphia and the British Museum. The Americans are indeed taking an increasing interest in digging up the past, and they have many fine discoveries to their credit, not least among them being the finding of the famous Nippur tablets in Mesopotamia, tablets which now grace the museum at Philadelphia. Theodore Davis, too, has done splendid work in the Nile Valley, and found several important tombs, among them that of Thothmes IV.
Yet, since men began to dig in Egypt, no tomb has revealed so many treasures as that of Tutankhamen. The value of the contents of the tomb, with its lion-couches and chariots and alabaster statues and vases, is computed at £3,000,000. It is indeed impossible to fix the monetary worth of such things. All that can be said is that their value to science is incalculable.
This is by no means the first big find to be made by Mr. Howard Carter, for years ago he revealed the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut, whose temple is one of the sights of the Valley of the Kings. The entrance to her tomb, high up on the face of the rocky hillside, led to a gallery winding round and round like a corkscrew. The builders of the tomb must have had a terrible time, for they unluckily selected a very bad spot, where the rock was soft, and so they were driven to go down and down, until they hit on a place where the rock was hard enough to serve for the burial chamber. Here the chamber was hewn out of the rock, and here it was found by Mr. Howard Carter several thousand years later, after the usual thieves had plundered it. The stench and heat were almost overpowering.
Mr. Howard Carter is more familiar with Thebes than most Londoners are with London. At one time he was Inspector-General of Antiquities there, so it will be realized that his knowledge of the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings is quite exceptional, and that it was something more than good luck which led him to his greatest find of all.
It is astonishing how trifles sometimes lead to big discoveries. For instance, when Professor Flinders Petrie was at Gizeh in the ’eighties, an Arab offered to sell him part of an alabasterstatuette. Instantly Petrie recognized it as a very early Greek work.
“Where did you get it?” he asked.
The Arab told him, and at the first opportunity the Egyptologist took the train to the nearest point. For 20 miles he trudged over the country, often going astray, but coming in the end to many mounds in the desert. Countless fragments of early Greek pottery furnished Petrie with all the evidence he needed. Quickly filling his pockets, he started on his long walk back to the train.
The following year he returned to the mounds. His first task was to find a shelter. He had barely done this when he noticed two stones lying just outside. He stooped and turned one over, to find it was a proclamation of the long-lost city of Naukratis carved in Greek characters, a city which men had eagerly sought, a city the very existence of which some men doubted. It was a sudden revelation, a mighty discovery to spring from a little alabaster statue, and it provides one more indication of the genius of its discoverer.
Perhaps the weirdest experience in all Egyptology was Petrie’s discovery of the noble Horuta at Hawara down a well 40 feet deep. Here in a flooded chamber, amid impenetrable blackness, he and his labourers wrestled continually with mighty blocks, in order to get to the stone sarcophagus which hesuspected was there. They found it at last, with the lid barely peeping above the surface of the icy water.
For days they strove to shift it, but it was immovable, so he decided to cut the sarcophagus in halves in order to get at the inner coffin. Weeks of fatiguing labour saw this gigantic task accomplished, and there was another desperate fight, with men working up to their chests in water, to get it out.
Instead of the coveted head-end of the sarcophagus, the foot-end came to light. It was a terrible disappointment. The coffin still remained in the other half, and was apparently as far off as ever. The Egyptologist, groping in the murky water, fought with it, strove to shift it with his hands, with his feet. It was firmly fixed.
Still he was not beaten. After a sustained effort lasting several days, he and his workers managed to raise the lid of the other half of the sarcophagus with wedges, until the inside of it was a few inches above water-level. Then he wriggled inside, and for hours in the darkness he sat astride the coffin and struggled to loosen it. The top of his head touched the lid of the sarcophagus, he had hardly room to move at all, the water came up to his mouth and compelled him to breathe through his nose. More than once in the course of his tremendousexertions he took in a mouthful of the nauseous water. The sand clung to the coffin as though it were set in a bed of cement. He tried scraping away the sand with his feet, he prised at the coffin with crowbars. All his efforts failed to shift it a fraction of an inch.
Few men would have continued under such hopeless conditions; most would have acknowledged defeat and betaken themselves to an easier task. But Flinders Petrie was possessed of a determination that would not be denied. He set to work drilling holes in the coffin—a most difficult feat. When this was done bolts were inserted, strong ropes were attached, and the men went along the passage and hauled away with all their strength. For a time it was like heaving at a mountain, then the coffin stirred slightly, moved more and more. Backs were bending under the strain, arms almost cracking as the men taking part in that fantastic tug-of-war with a dead man finally triumphed and dragged the water-blackened coffin out of the depths.
Breathlessly they opened it, found the mummy of Horuta, “wrapped in a network of lapis lazuli, beryl, and silver.... Bit by bit the layers of pitch and cloth were loosened, and row after row of magnificent amulets were disclosed, just as they were laid on in the distant past. The gold ring on his finger which bore his name and titles, the exquisitelyinlaid gold birds, the chased gold figures, the lazuli statuettes, the polished lazuli and beryl and carnelian amulets finely engraved.”
Forgotten were the herculean labours of the past months, forgotten the icy water that froze their bodies, the blackness that blinded them, swept away by the sight of the treasures disclosed to their delighted eyes, the treasures for which they had endured so much and fought so long. The recovery of the mummy of Horuta is one of the epics of the Nile.
The world-famous tablets of Tell el Amarna were accidentally discovered by an Arab woman, who happened on them while searching the ruins for trifles to sell to tourists. The tablets were letters sent by the King of Babylon to the King of Egypt, written in the usual cuneiform characters on slabs of clay, and they disclose much concerning the life of that time. A remarkable thing is that in one of the letters, the King of Babylon mentions that he is sending a present of some couches to the King of Egypt, and the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen has brought to light what appear to be the very couches which were presented to the King of Egypt nearly four thousand years ago.
Professor Petrie has little doubt that the strange lion-couches are of Babylonian origin, and that these are the couches referred to in the Tell elAmarna letters. The couches found in Tutankhamen’s tomb are secured with bronze clasps. The Babylonians secured their furniture in this way, but the Egyptians never did, for in the Nile valley the furniture was held together with wooden pegs; so the evidence distinctly favours the view that these are indeed the Babylonian couches mentioned.
Lord Carnarvon, in a lecture at the Central Hall, Westminster, gave a vivid account of the opening of the tomb, telling how they cleared the passage leading to the first chamber, how they broke a hole through the sealed wall just large enough to see through, how Mr. Howard Carter held up his candle and peered into the tomb, uttering no word. All the time Lord Carnarvon was on tenterhooks, wondering what was behind the wall. A moment later he peered through, and saw one of the most wonderful sights that has ever greeted an excavator.
To come on such a wealth of treasure is actually a grave responsibility. Before now men have seen statues suddenly collapse into dust before their amazed eyes, have watched brilliantly decorated mummy cases crumble without warning into heaps of powder.
A most dramatic incident occurred after the unique discovery of all the royal mummies in 1881. Exercising the utmost care, Maspero slowly unwrappedone of the mummies in order to gaze on the actual features of the dead monarch. A camera was focused, the plate exposed, and even as the photograph was taken the face vanished into nothingness. Maspero was terribly upset at the loss of the mummy, so upset that he refused to allow the mummy of Rameses the Great to be unwrapped, for fear it, too, should vanish.
For things cannot last for ever, even in the dry air of Egypt. They cannot spend thousands of years in tombs without becoming fragile. Their preservation is therefore imperative. Everything must be photographed from many angles, in order to provide a complete record in pictures. In the case of the treasures of Tutankhamen, electric lamps of 2000 candle-power were installed in the tomb, for the use of the photographer. Paraffin wax, dissolved celluloid, sheets of glass, various acids, are used to prevent decay.
Even when all precautions are taken, things have to be very carefully handled. They literally need wrapping in cotton wool, and one of Lord Carnarvon’s first purchases, when he saw the extent of his discovery, was a mile and a half of cotton wool to wrap round the treasures.
By courtesy of the British MuseumTHESE MARVELLOUS COFFINS, FOUND AT THEBES, ARE DECORATED WITH SCENES FROM THE BOOK OF THE DEAD. THE REPRODUCTIONS GIVE ONLY A FAINT IDEA OF THE WONDERFUL BEAUTY OF THE ORIGINALS, WHICH ARE ALL PAINTED IN THE MOST GORGEOUS COLOURS AND IN SOME CASES HEAVILY OVERLAID WITH GOLD. THEY ARE FINE EXAMPLES OF THE REMARKABLE SKILL OF THE EGYPTIAN ARTISTS. THAT OF HU-EN-AMEN ON THE LEFT IS ABOUT 2,700 YEARS OLD, AND THE OTHER OF ATHA-NEB IS ABOUT 2,400 YEARS OLD
By courtesy of the British MuseumTHESE MARVELLOUS COFFINS, FOUND AT THEBES, ARE DECORATED WITH SCENES FROM THE BOOK OF THE DEAD. THE REPRODUCTIONS GIVE ONLY A FAINT IDEA OF THE WONDERFUL BEAUTY OF THE ORIGINALS, WHICH ARE ALL PAINTED IN THE MOST GORGEOUS COLOURS AND IN SOME CASES HEAVILY OVERLAID WITH GOLD. THEY ARE FINE EXAMPLES OF THE REMARKABLE SKILL OF THE EGYPTIAN ARTISTS. THAT OF HU-EN-AMEN ON THE LEFT IS ABOUT 2,700 YEARS OLD, AND THE OTHER OF ATHA-NEB IS ABOUT 2,400 YEARS OLD
By courtesy of the British Museum
THESE MARVELLOUS COFFINS, FOUND AT THEBES, ARE DECORATED WITH SCENES FROM THE BOOK OF THE DEAD. THE REPRODUCTIONS GIVE ONLY A FAINT IDEA OF THE WONDERFUL BEAUTY OF THE ORIGINALS, WHICH ARE ALL PAINTED IN THE MOST GORGEOUS COLOURS AND IN SOME CASES HEAVILY OVERLAID WITH GOLD. THEY ARE FINE EXAMPLES OF THE REMARKABLE SKILL OF THE EGYPTIAN ARTISTS. THAT OF HU-EN-AMEN ON THE LEFT IS ABOUT 2,700 YEARS OLD, AND THE OTHER OF ATHA-NEB IS ABOUT 2,400 YEARS OLD
As far back as 1888, Flinders Petrie was confronted by the problem of preserving a coffin from which the stucco was peeling. After much consideration, he dropped melted paraffin waxon the weak spots, and thought he had solved the difficulty. To his dismay the wax made matters worse. The outer margins of the wax contracted in cooling, and formed saucer-like depressions which pulled the stucco away from the wood.
He was so gravely concerned that for days he racked his brains to find a remedy. At last, he took a brazier full of glowing charcoal, and held it near the waxen saucers. To his joy he saw the wax melting into the cracks and under the stucco, cementing it firmly to the wood again.
Nowhere else on this earth are the past and present so intermixed as at Thebes. Here extreme antiquity may be seen side by side with modern science, motor-cars passing asses, and electricity illuminating the ancient tombs. The mummy of SetiIIlies with an electric light above his head, so that visitors may have no difficulty in gazing on his features!
The remarkable paintings in the tombs are executed so skilfully, the outlines are drawn and coloured so correctly, that the possibility of doing such work in the darkness of an underground chamber has often been questioned. More than once it has been said that the light of torches or candles would be quite inadequate, and it has been suggested that the Egyptians may haveanticipated modern science by using electric light thousands of years ago.
That the Egyptians were clever is beyond all doubt, that they may have known things of which we to-day are ignorant is more than possible, but the decorations of the tombs are no evidence that they were conversant with the use of electricity. The ancient methods of lighting the tombs so that the artists could see to work were after all quite simple. The artists worked by the light of the sun. The sun might be perhaps a hundred feet or more away along a passage, yet a white garment would serve excellently for reflecting the light into the tomb.
Professor Flinders Petrie has worked wonders with the lid of a biscuit box, and in bygone days a man might often have been seen holding a tin lid at the mouth of a tunnel leading into a tomb, deflecting the ray of light right into the tomb, to enable the Egyptologist to take photographs. If the lid of a biscuit box happened to be missing, then a turkish towel was made to serve the same purpose. The actinic qualities of the sun in the Nile valley are indeed remarkable.
Many things have turned up under the spade in Egypt, wonderful stone vases, jars with faint traces of perfume still pervading them, slate palettes on which the people mixed the paints with which they touched up their eyes and faces. While theAncient Britons were painting themselves with woad, the Egyptian ladies were sitting at their dressing-tables making up their eyes in quite the modern fashion, the Egyptian children were playing with toys such as the children play with to-day. The Egyptian forerunner of Pepys carved his diary on a piece of ebony, one page to a whole year!
Glass was in use in Egypt thousands of years before it was heard of in Europe; Egypt taught the world the use of bronze; and the flint implements found on the banks of the Nile are finer than any others so far discovered in the world. Some of the knives of the best period are simply marvellous and disclose extraordinary skill on the part of the Egyptian flint workers. There are stone knives in the British Museum with teeth as regular and as fine as those of a modern, machine-cut fret saw, teeth so minute as to be almost invisible to the naked eye. One masterpiece of a flint knife, cleverly flaked in the most remarkable manner, has about fifty tiny teeth to the inch, and it is astounding to think that such amazing hand work was performed by the Egyptians of the Stone Age. Probably there is not a living man who could duplicate such work.
Now the treasures of Tutankhamen grip the imagination and dazzle the eye. Tutankhamen made a priceless, a magnificent gift to posterity, yet it is to Ptolemy v. that we owe the greatestgift of all. The gift is merely that broken stone in the British Museum, the stone which was dug out of the ruins of Fort St. Julian in 1798. In causing that stone to be carved, Ptolemy presented us with the key to the knowledge of ancient Egypt.
By courtesy of the British MuseumTHE FAMOUS INSCRIPTION OF KING DARIUS AT BEHISTUN, IN PERSIA, FROM WHICH SIR HENRY RAWLINSON WRESTED THE LONG-LOST SECRET OF CUNEIFORM WRITING. AT THE EDGE OF THE NARROW LEDGE ON WHICH THE ARAB STANDS, THE ROCK DROPS SHEER FOR 300 FEET TO THE BOULDER-STREWN FOOT OF THE CLIFFS
By courtesy of the British MuseumTHE FAMOUS INSCRIPTION OF KING DARIUS AT BEHISTUN, IN PERSIA, FROM WHICH SIR HENRY RAWLINSON WRESTED THE LONG-LOST SECRET OF CUNEIFORM WRITING. AT THE EDGE OF THE NARROW LEDGE ON WHICH THE ARAB STANDS, THE ROCK DROPS SHEER FOR 300 FEET TO THE BOULDER-STREWN FOOT OF THE CLIFFS
By courtesy of the British Museum
THE FAMOUS INSCRIPTION OF KING DARIUS AT BEHISTUN, IN PERSIA, FROM WHICH SIR HENRY RAWLINSON WRESTED THE LONG-LOST SECRET OF CUNEIFORM WRITING. AT THE EDGE OF THE NARROW LEDGE ON WHICH THE ARAB STANDS, THE ROCK DROPS SHEER FOR 300 FEET TO THE BOULDER-STREWN FOOT OF THE CLIFFS