58 



NA TURE 



[May 1 8, 1882 



dead, which, however, must have been of a simpler 

 nature than those in use at a later period. In all these 

 mastabas which, as a rule, face northwards, generally 

 towards the north-east angle, is a kind of stele or se- 

 pulchral tablet of limestone, some times like facade, 

 composed of separate pieces, and having two square 

 pillars or columns in front, without capitals or abaci, 

 forming a kind of entrance hall. This part of the mas- 

 taba is rarely on the south, never on the west, and (he 

 ceiling is always continuous, sometimes slightly vaulted 

 by the stones supporting one another. The tablet is 

 often like a door, with jambs, lintels, and hieroglyphics ; 

 sometime the facade or stele has a kind of false door with 

 large figures of the occupant of the tomb and his wife 

 at the sides of the false door, with a semicylindrical tam- 

 bour above the door and a kind of cornice above that, with 

 a sepulchral dedication to Anubis, never to Osiris, and 

 representations of the- person for whom the sepulchre 

 was made, at a repast or some other diversion, as the 

 fowling represented on the mastaba at Meidum. On the 

 portion of the soil covering the serdab or inner niche and 

 the well by which the sarcophagus and its mummy were 

 lowered, are found little vases filled with a coating con- 

 taining inside the trace of the water with which they were 

 filled. The interior chapel or rt-r/was either single, or had 

 more than one chamber, and the walls of these were 

 covered with pictures and inscriptions engraved in intaglio 

 and brightly coloured, still vivid after 6000 years, but no 

 furniture itself or offerings are discovered in the rooms, 

 which have been long open to the spoiler. The inscrip- 

 tions refer to the calendar and festivals throughout the 

 year, the titles of the deceased, adoration to Anubis, 

 and tables of food, or menus in use at the period ; and the 

 gourmands of the Egyptian aristocracy fared sumptuously 

 every day out of well-filled flesh-pots and jars of wine and 

 beer. The paintings on the walls depict the chase, the 

 farm, the industrial household, the amusement of dances 

 by professional women, games, and other diversions, and 

 were no doubt intended to recal to the spirit of the dead 

 his favourite occupations and his former wealth. Such 

 solaces were reserved for the rich ; the poor reposed 

 after death about as indifferently as during life. 



When constructed of masonry, the walls of the chapel 

 in the mastaba were often made of rubble revetted, and at 

 the end, at the foot of the false door is often found the 

 stone altar of libations, sometimes with two small obelisks 

 engraved only on one face ; at other times, instead of 

 obelisks, two supports in the shape of altars. The stele 

 or sepulchral tablet was at the earliest period made in 

 shape of a facade, but often quite blank, a mere white 

 slab. It is not till after the sixth dynasty that these tomb- 

 stones were rounded at the top, like those of the present 

 day. When the chapel was ornamented, the tombstones 

 are often blank ; when the walls of the chapel— the asi 

 — were unadorned, the tablets were often inscribed. In 

 the most ancient tombs the tombstones are often built up 

 of pieces and are inscribed with hieroglyphics of an early 

 and rude type. The art is bad, and the inscriptions are 

 not in regular lines, but dispersed over the area ; the 

 hieroglyphics themselves are often peculiar, executed 

 with more elaborate detail than at the later period 

 of the middle Empire. The object of these early in- 

 scriptions is to record the name and titles of the 

 departed, and it is remarkable that at this period per- 

 sons had the ran a,l, or "great name,'' and the nut-nets, 

 or "little name." A tomb, for example, of the second 

 dynasty, at Sakkarah, was made for a man whose 

 great n ime was Sekarkhabau, or " Sochan's rising 

 amongst spirits," whose small name was Hothes— that 

 of a rat or some small animal; and his wife's great 

 name was Atherhotcp, and her little name Teps ; and 

 this as early as the second dynasty. These chapels 

 now have no doors, if they ever had, and except the 

 vases found strewed here and there on the floor, the 



other objects which may have been deposited there have 

 entirely disappeared. Behind the wall, on the south side 

 more often than the north, and on the north more often 

 than the west, was a secret niche, which the Arabs call 

 the serdab, occasionally communicating with the chamber 

 by a square orifice. In this niche was deposited a statue 

 of the deceased. In this statue was supposed to reside 

 h\ska, or spirit, a kind of manes, or ghost, which inhabited 

 the tomb, went in and out of the sepulchre and Hades, 

 and to which was attached a priest, who performed the 

 liturgies or litanies, in certain ways, and with peculiar rites. 

 In the earlier inscriptions this ka is not mentioned, but at 

 the close of the twelfth dynasty, all the benefits conferred 

 by deities on the deceased were said to be due to his ka. 

 It was in this chapel and to this image that the ancestral 

 worship was paid, and the ka, which was a kind of 

 idolon of the dead, was supposed to receive the same 

 satisfaction as the dead himself. Most of the statues in 

 the museums of Europe at the time of the fourth and 

 sixth dynasties, came from the serdab of the sepulchre 

 of the period. They were portraits of the dead, and 

 sometimes represented him holding the tools or other 

 marks of his profession. The whole of the mastaba, or 

 chapel, and its mass was superposed on the real sepulchral 

 chamber beneath, which it covered. The descent to this 

 was by a rectangular well or shaft, from six feet six 

 inches, to nearly ten feet square, and this cell passed 

 through the masonry or platform of the mastaba, and 

 then through the living roots of the foundation, and was 

 made of large blocks ; it was down this well that the 

 sarcophagus was lowered to the chamber, by a shaft from 

 thirty to seventy-five feet deep. Hence, at the base of 

 the shaft, a short passage led to the rectangular chamber, 

 which was well built, but has only once been found un- 

 cemented, and in it was placed the sarcophagus of granite, 

 or calcareous stone, and the mummy, or body. The cell 

 itself was carefully blocked up with rubbish to prevent 

 access to the chamber, and the mouth of it is generally- 

 found either in the long axis of the tomb, or else behind 

 the tombstone. The sarcophagus of this period has no 

 resemblance to the later cases in shape of the human 

 form, generally made of wood, which prevailed from the 

 eleventh dynasty, or about 1800 B.C., to the first century, 

 a d., but are rectangular chests with vaulted cover, with 

 projections at the edges. The bodies found in these 

 chests are distinguished by the absence of linen or wraps 

 in which they may have been embalmed, and bones of 

 the skeleton are only discovered generally, of a brown 

 colour, with a faint odour of bitumen, which is the more 

 remarkable as the mummies found in the pyramid had 

 both linen and indications of bitumen. 



Of course, the ethnological question here arises, to what 

 race of men did these old Egyptians of the period of the 

 second and subsequent dynasties belong ; they have been 

 referred to the Caucasian races, and some of the skulls 

 show a high intellectual development, even frontal sutures 

 occurring. Their colour is painted in the sculptures, and 

 on their statues, either red or copper, the female yellow, 

 but their profile is not Semitic, and shows, as at the period 

 of their history, traces of African blood. Some of the 

 servants are dolicocephalic, and are supposed to be the 

 indigenous race, similar to the Libyans of Northern 

 Africa, who, however, at a later period, are classed 

 amongst the white races. 



It is, however, in vain to look for the origin of Egyptian 

 civilisation, either in Aethiopia or Nubia, or south of 

 Egypt, or on the northern coast of Africa, which lies to 

 the west, for there is no evidence of races in these parts 

 having ever attained a nascent civilisation, such as the 

 Egyptian might have started from. Recent discoveries 

 in Southern Mesopotamia, however, show a similar civili- 

 sation, almost, if not as old as the Egyptian, with a form 

 of written language developing from the ideographic to 

 that of the conventional type, into which the original 



