ARCHEOLOGY. 



17 



were mummified about A. u. 400. The cover of the 

 coffin of Mycerinus is inscribed with a text that 

 was already several thousand years old in his time 

 and describes the king as " living forever," a 

 phrase which is cited in favor of the hypothesis 

 that the Egyptians believed in a future life. Close 

 by the remains of Mycerinus are six fine coffins, of, 

 perhaps, about a thousand years later than he. 

 The most important of these is the coffin of 

 Amamu, which is inscribed within and without 

 with a very ancient version of the Book of the 

 Dead. The skeletons of Ileni and Khati in this 



S-oup are also of considerable interest, the skull of 

 hati being marked with two curious indentations 

 on the upper part, one on each side, and both being 

 free from indications of gout and rheumatism, from 

 which Mycerinus seems to have suffered. Two 

 coffins next to these, painted in bright colors, and 

 ' differing in every way from the somber rectangu- 

 lar coffins of the Amamu class," are of the twenty- 

 second dynasty, and form part of a large collection 

 of coffins of the priests of Amen, the god to whose 

 power the Thebans ascribed the victory which their 

 king, Sekenen Ra, gained over the king of northern 

 Egypt. Amasis I enlarged the shrine of Amen at 

 Thebes and made provision for his priests ; his suc- 

 cessors in the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties 

 enriched the shrine and conferred large benefits on 

 the priests ; and (probably) Amenophis I founded 

 the college of Amen Ra and endowed it sufficiently 

 to support a considerable number of Egyptians of 

 high rank who as priests and priestesses, superin- 

 tended the education of youth, the writing of the 

 Books of the Dead and the embalming of the 

 dead. To this confraternity we owe the splendid 

 Books of the Dead of the eighteenth dynasty and 

 the preservation of the funeral texts which were in 

 use during the early dynasties at Heliopolis and 

 Memphis, as well as several hundreds of very fine 

 coffins. Its power was enormous, and its gradual 

 growth from B. c. 1700 to B. c. 1000, when its chief 

 priest seized the government, is described as one of 

 the most instructive portions of Egyptian history. 

 The progress of the confraternity can be plainly 

 seen in the coffins. At first (about B. c. 1650) the 

 color work on the coffins was done by the best 

 artists, and the texts were written by the most care- 

 ful scribes ; two or three hundred years later we 

 find careless painting and writing, inferior woodwork, 

 .and incomplete pictures and texts. About B. c. 1000, 

 when the high priest became king, the colors on 

 the coffins are gaudy, the varnish is daubed on, and 

 new colors appear, with a number of gods and 

 mythological passages never found on the coffins of 

 the oldest time. The places of the old texts are 

 usurped by what is called the Litany of the Sun, 

 and scenes illustrative of new mythological concep- 

 tions begin to appear. From this it is clear that 

 the confraternity of Amen did not abide entirely by 

 old standards in religious matters. The British 

 Museum has many interesting examples of mum- 

 mies of the period from B. c. 900 to B. c. 600, swathed 

 in linen as fine in color and texture as any known. 

 About this time mummies were placed in cartonnage 

 i-;i s<>s, and the highly colored scenes were occasionally 

 defaced by daubing with bitumen. This is supposed 

 to have been done in troubled times to prevent the 

 tomb robbers from identifying the dead by the 

 texts written upon them. A little before the rule 

 of the twenty-sixth dynasty the mummies were 

 covered with faience heads. The shape of the 

 coffin changed considerably and a style of decoration 

 peculiar to the time arose. The huge coffins of the 

 fourth and fifth centuries before Christ are uninter- 

 esting, and it seemed as if the funereal artist en- 

 deavored to make up in size for what he lacked in 

 skill ; the mummies of the period, too, are of little 

 VOL. xxxvm. 2 A 



interest. At the beginning of the Ptolemaic period 

 gold was freely used on the faces of the coffins, 

 which are now identical in shape with the stone 

 coffins of Tabnith and Eshmunazer found at Sidon. 

 During the same period the coffins became much 

 plainer and more decoration was bestowed upon the 

 mummy. Brightly painted and gilded cartonnage 

 cases were laid over it. The plaques, on which are 

 painted figures of the gods, were made in hollow 

 work. About the time of the Romans the use of 

 coffins declined and the mummy, inclosed , in a 

 painted cartonnage case, or smothered in painted 

 bandages, was laid upon a rectangular board be- 

 neath a vaulted cover. Both board and cover were 

 brightly painted with colors which are characteris- 

 tic of the period. In the case of some mummies 

 the swathing is a work of art, but usually those 

 which belong to this period are shapeless bundles. 

 In the first and second centuries of our era a por- 

 trait of the deceased was painted in colors upon a 

 board which was fastened to the swathings of the 

 mummy. In a very fine group of cartonnages of 

 the members of one family, consisting of a man, his 

 two wives, and several children, the portrait of the 

 man is of considerable interest on account of the 

 style of decoration and the Demotic inscription upon 

 it, while the cartonnages of the women give an 

 exact representation of their appearance during life 

 as to height and figure, dress, ornaments, etc. 

 These cases are probably unique, and their value 

 archaeologically is much enhanced by the fact that 

 a date may be assigned to them which can not be 

 far wrong. In the fourth and fifth centuries of our 

 era models of the heads and necks of the deceased, 

 made of painted plaster, were placed on the covers 

 of coffins immediately over the heads of the mum- 

 mified dead. While specimens of extremely ancient 

 mummifications have not yet been acquired by the 

 museum, we can in this collection, says the writer 

 of a description of it in the London '' Times," " ex- 

 amine in a way never before possible all the various 

 developments of Egyptian funereal art and observe 

 the persistence of its chief characteristics during a 

 period of about four thousand years. We may also 

 see that from first to last the E'gyptians everywhere 

 held firmly the belief in the resurrection and in im- 

 mortality which had been handed down to them as 

 an assured thing in the early days of their marvel- 

 ous civilization. They mummified their dead and 

 performed elaborate rituals on their behalf and 

 hewed wonderful tombs for them, not from motives 

 of pride and vanity, but as the result of a living 

 faith in a world beyond the grave and of a hope of 

 the life everlasting which is to be lived in a spiritual 

 body after the judgment, along with the beatified, 

 in the kingdom of Osiris." 



The Oxyrynchus Papyri. A selection from 

 the papyri found at Oxyrynchus by B. F. Grenfell 

 and A. S. Hunt in 1897 was published by them 

 with notes, and in most cases an English transla- 

 tion in a quarto volume, at the Oxford University 

 Press. Including the Login, or sayings of Jesus, 

 which was described in the " Annual Cyclopaedia " 

 for 1897, the volume contains 158 documents printed 

 in full, descriptions of 49 others, and mentions 5 

 duplicates, recording therefore the contents of 212 

 manuscripts and fragments. Six of the documents, 

 including the Login, are theological. One of them, 

 a bit of vellum, not a papyrus, contains a few verses 

 from the gospel of Mark, belonging to a book 

 probably written in the fifth or sixth century, the 

 text of which agrees with the received text. An- 

 other has about two thirds of the first chapter of 

 Matthew, supposed to date from the third century, 

 and to be therefore older than any previously 

 known manuscript of the gospel. It apparently 

 tends to support the text of Westcott and Hort 



