December 1, 1898.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



225 



Briefly, then, these are the materials from which 

 Brugsch constructed his chronology. He accepted the 

 great tablet of Abydos as aflbrding the best list of kings 

 for the period prior to Seti I. ; assumed that on the 

 average three kings would reign one hundred years ; and 

 allowed some five hundred years for the period between the 

 twelfth and eighteenth dynasties, which the tablet of 

 Abydos ignores. For the next period, /.<•., from Seti I. to 

 the twenty-fifth dynasty, he gathered the succession from 

 contemporary monuments, still counting three kings to the 

 century ; and thenceforward he adopted the absolute dates 

 lixed by the Apis tablets. It is ob^•ious, therefore, that 

 the dates given by Brugsch for the earliest period (to 

 which the " Pyramid Kings " belong) leave room for some 

 error. This, however, could hardly amount to more than 

 five hundred years, and even if we allow one thousand 

 years, the " Pyramid Kings " may still claim an antiquity 

 in comparison with which the earliest periods of Greek 

 and Eoman history appear modern. 



Having now established, as far as the materials will 

 allow, the kings to whose reigns the pyramids are to be 

 assigned, and the place of those monarchs in the history of 

 Egypt, we may pass to an account of the discovery of 

 the coffin and sarcophagus of Menkaura, and finally 

 to a consideration of the recent attack upon the authen- 

 ticity of the former. In the year 1837 Colonel Howard 

 Vyse made a thorough examination of the pyramids, and 

 was fortunate enough to discover in the third a very beauti- 

 ful basalt sarcophagus, a wooden coffin, and portions 

 of a human body. If these latter are the remains of 

 the original occupant of the coffin, they are of surpassing 

 interest, as the oldest historical remnant of the body of a 

 human being extant. There have not been wanting those 

 who have denied their title to this description, and have 

 supposed them to belong to some prowling Arab. There 

 are two circumstances, however, which render such a view 

 wholly untenable. Portions of the coffin and mummy 

 were found together in a chamber adjoining that which 

 contained the sarcophagus. It would appear that the 

 Arabs had at some unknown period broken into the 

 pyi'amid for purposes of plunder (as is their habit), and 

 that, having taken the coffin and its contents out of the 

 sarcophagus, they removed them to a larger chamber for 

 more convenient examination. Here they broke open the 

 coffin, and tore the mummy to pieces in their search for 

 valuables. It does not seem otherwise possible to account 

 for the fi-agments of the body and the coffin being so 

 intimately associated. Another circumstance, apparently 

 very little known, which was brought to the notice of the 

 writer by a medical man, points in the same direction. 

 The person whose remains were found in the pyramid 

 suffered from anchylosis of the knee, and it is in the last 

 degree unlikely that anyone with such a complaint would 

 attempt to clamber about in a pyramid. 



The sarcophagus, coffin, and mummy were shipped for 

 conveyance to England, but the vessel was unfortunately 

 wrecked off" Gibraltar. The sarcophagus, owing lo its 

 weight, was lost beyond all hope of recovery ; but a con- 

 siderable portion of the mummy, and nearly the whole of 

 the Ud of the coffin were saved, and ultimately deposited 

 in the British Museum. It is on this lid that the i ascrip- 

 tion occurs which leads us to assign the third pyramid to 

 the reign of Menkaura. It runs as follows : — " Osiris, 

 King of the North and South, Menkaura, living for ever ! 

 Heaven has produced thee ; thou wast conceived by Nut ; 

 thou comest of the race of the god Seb. Thy mother Nut 

 spreads herself over thee in her form of heavenly mystery. 

 She grants that thou shalt be a god ; never more shalt 

 thou have enemies, O Menkaura, King of North and South, 



living for ever ! " {Guide tn the Britinh Mugeum, p. 102.) 

 On the faith of this inscription, the coffin has been hitherto 

 almost universally accepted as that in which the bones of 

 Menkaura originally reposed. Egyptology, however, is no 

 more than other sciences exempt from destructive criticism ; 

 and at last a man has arisen bold enough to dispute the 

 antiquity of this cherished relic. In the Xi'ituclirift fur 

 Aiii/ptim-lic SjiriH/ir of Leipzig there has recently appeared 

 an article by Herr Kurt Sethe, in which he contends, 

 chiefly on philological grounds, that the coffin must be 

 assigned to the twenty-sixth dynasty. The argument cannot 

 be fully explained without the use of hieroglyphics, but an 

 attempt may be made to indicate its general character. 



Let us take, for example, the first word of the inscription, 

 " Osiris." This word, as written here, and commonly 

 elsewhere, consists of three characters — a seat, an eye, 

 and a bearded human figure. The seat and eye are phonetic, 

 being pronounced respectively uas and n/-, making together 

 Uasar, which the Greeks converted into Osiris. The 

 bearded human figure is ideographic, and shows that the 

 preceding signs constitute the name of a god. Now it is a 

 singular fact, and quite contrary to what one would expect, 

 that the early texts are very deficient in these ideographic 

 signs, and this is markedly the case in the name of Osiris. 

 Herr Sethe states that it cannot be found with such a sign 

 till the middle of the fifth dynasty. This will serve as a 

 sample of the argument, similar reasoning being applied 

 to nearly every word in the inscription. Herr Sethe, 

 however, does not deny that the third pyramid was built 

 for Menkaura, or that he was buried in it. Taking his 

 stand on the admitted fact that under the twenty-sixth 

 dynasty there was a perfect rage for everything belonging 

 to the fourth dynasty, he suggests that it was thought 

 right to examine the tombs of those early kings and 

 "restore" whatever was defective. Finding the coffin of 

 Menkaura sadly decayed they made him a new one, putting 

 on it the old inscription. This they wrote, not in the 

 archaic manner, but as it was customarily written at the 

 time. The conclusion is not so startling as if the coffin 

 had been declared to be an out-and-out forgery ; still, it is 

 sufficiently striking to arouse the interest of all lovers of 

 antiquity. A difference of from two thousand to three 

 thousand years is not one to be lightly passed over. 



The object of this article being simply to state a curious 

 Egyptological problem in such a form that the non- 

 Egyptologist can readily grasp the point at issue, it is 

 beyond its scope to enter upon either an attack or defence 

 of the new view. This will be an easier task when the 

 "heresy" has been examined by the leaders of Egypto- 

 logical thought. ■■ 



CURIOUS COCOONS.-II. 



By E. A. Butler. 



WHEN once a moth has escaped from its cocoon 

 there is generally no further use for the deserted 

 shelter, and it is left to take its chance of wind 

 and weather. But in one or two instances, at 

 least, this rule does not hold good, and the 

 vacated cocoon still serves a useful purpose in the economy 

 of the insect. The vapourer moth {(Jr<jyia antiijua), whose 



* In his rceontly-published work on •' The Mummy," Dr. Budge 

 seems to rest, the case for the antiquity of the coffin on the appearance 

 of the wood (p. 208). It would be interesting to know how he di.stiii- 

 guishes wood .'5500 years okl from that which is 3000 years younger. It 

 is right to state that Dr. Budge is here replying to some obscure French 

 writer, having been apparently unacquainted with Herr Sethe's more 

 formidable attack. In a later portion of his work (p. 30ti), he mentions 

 the latter's artick>, but without offering an opinion on the question 

 at issue. 



