NATURE 



19: 



THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 1882 



THE FUNERAL TENT OF AN EGYPTIAN 



QUEEN 



The Funeral Tent of an Egyptian Queen. By YLliers 



Stuart, of Dromana, M.P. (London: John Murray, 



1882.) 



THE startling discoveries of the royal mummies in 

 the pit of the Deir-el-Bahari has already been the 

 subject of great interest, and cast an unexpected light on 

 the history of embalming and the vicissitudes of the dead 

 as well as the living, revealing the unexpected transport 

 of the monarchs from their costly chambers and sarco- 

 phagi of the Biban-el-Molouk to the Deir-el-Bahari in 

 the fifth year of a monarch named Herhor, of the 21st 

 dynasty, one of that line of ambitious pontiffs who, at a 

 time of national decay, mounted the Egyptian throne. 

 That the tomb of the Deir-el-Bahari was the resting-place 

 of Herhor himself and his family appears from the dis- 

 covery of their mummies at the same site along with 6000 

 sepulchral objects, some of which are already filtering to 

 Europe, and others discovered at least ten years ago, 

 already enrich the collections of the Louvre. The nume- 

 rous duplicates of the smaller and portable objects can 

 neither be all retained in the country, nor is it desirable 

 they should be in the interests of science, for the interest 

 would be languid which allowed them all to remain on 

 the banks of the Nile. The reason why these archaeolo- 

 gical treasures were deposited in the Deir-el-Bahari is 

 quite uncertain, and as the hieratic inscriptions on the 

 shrouds only speak of their removal and condition, the 

 cause is likely for the present to remain undiscovered. 

 The Deir-el-Bahari was built by Thothmes I., II., Hatasu, 

 the ambitious queen, and her warlike brother Thothmes 

 III., as it was a spot especially favoured by the 18th 

 dynasty. Probably the 21st dynasty was descended by 

 the female line from the iSth, for families do not readily 

 become extinct in that direction, and there are living 

 descendants of the Plantagenets at the present day. The 

 resumption of the titular names of the 18th dynasty by 

 the 2 1 st also points to a connection between the two 

 families, although it is difficult to conceive the precise 

 point from which it started. As however the first monarch 

 of the 2 1st had been a prince of Kush or ^Ethiopia, and 

 these princes or viceroys were continued in a lineal 

 descent during the 18th and 19th dynasties, it may 

 perhaps be the case that Pinotem I. and II. were de- 

 scended by that family from the monarchs of the 18th 

 dynasty. 



It is not necessary to dwell on the mummies, but some 

 of the facts mentioned by Mr. Villiers Stuart in his work 

 are remarkable, such for example as the wailing of the 

 Arab women along the Nile on their removal by the 

 steamers to the Museum of Boulaq, for although pro- 

 fessional mourners the lamentations of these women were 

 spontaneous and gratuitous. On the arrival of the 

 mummies at Cairo, that of Thothmes III. was unrolled, 

 and that illustrious soldier, a little man, a martial 

 pigmy of the most fragile mould, far more fragile than 

 the flowers with which he was surrounded, vanished 

 like a dream after, as it is said, a rapid photograph had 

 Vol. xxvi. — N o. 661 



been taken of his features, so that only a carte de visite 

 of his remains has been left for posterity. Rameses II- 

 was a hero of the grenadier type, for his height is at least 

 six feet, but he has not been unrolled, the loss of 

 Thothmes III. having discouraged the Boulaq authorities, 

 so that for the present the vexed question of his features, 

 whether the heroic aquiline nose or the ordinary flat 

 Egyptian, remains in abeyance. The other mummies 

 which have been partly denuded are the priest Nebseni, 

 of the iSth dynasty, whose features are good Egyptian, 

 and Pinotem II., whose capacious mouth and thick lips 

 announce a Nigritic origin or intermixture of blood : 

 others, as Isiemkheb and Makara, have been left in their 

 bandages for a future period to unravel. The queen 

 Notemut, the grandmother of Makara, and a remote 

 progenitor of Isiemkheb, had however hair streaked with 

 silvery gray, and was an old woman still retaining the 

 coquetry of a careful plaiting of her locks. Some of the 

 family were of mixed origin, and when was the Egyptian 

 race otherwise, except when foreign conquests introduced 

 other blood into the country. The greater portion, how- 

 ever, of Mr. Stuart's work is occupied with the description 

 of the leather canopy of the queen Isiemkheb. Thisancient 

 pall was composed of numerous pieces of leather tanned by 

 the bark of the stmt or acacia, and sewn together by red 

 cord, and is supposed to have covered the mortuary cabin 

 of the sacred boat or horse, to which it formed a kind of 

 baldacchino. It is exceedingly brittle, and the colours are 

 still well preserved, the centre 9 feet long by 6 feet wide, and 

 divided into two equal sections, one of which is covered 

 by pink and yellow rosettes on a blue ground, the other 

 displaying six flying vultures flying with extended wings 

 and holding feather sceptres in their claws; they are sepa- 

 rated from one another by horizontal lines of hieroglyphs, 

 the name and titles of Masaharuta, high priest of Amen 

 Ra, the deity of Thebes, and a row of pink rosettes on a 

 yellow ground. On either side is a flap divided from the 

 central section by four bands of colours — blue, red, yellow, 

 and green— and further divided by a border of spearhead 

 pattern. Below this comes a row of panels containing a 

 row of emblematical devices, predominant amongst which 

 is the scarabseus, flying with extended wings, thrusting 

 forward the solar disk — emblems of the sun-god— but 

 having with this emblem the representation of a gazelle, 

 supposed to be the favourite of the queen, twice repeated, 

 a singular representation of two united ducks, and orna- 

 ments like the Greek antefixal and the cartouche or 

 royal name of Pinotem II. seven times repeated. Below 

 this is a border of pink and blue chequers at the 

 bottom, with a broad kilt of pink or perhaps originally 

 scarlet. This magnificent work of leather measures 22 

 feet 6 inches in length, and 19 feet 6 inches wide, contain- 

 ing a space of 201 square feet of leather. It is the most 

 remarkable object next to the historical mummies of the 

 whole collection, and exhibits the greatest technical skill in 

 preparation, and artistic excellence in execution and design. 

 Its age is somewhere about the time of Solomon, but the 

 length of the reigns of the monarchs of the 21st dynasty 

 lies entombed in the vaults of the Serapeum, which con- 

 tained the 24th, 25th, and 26th Apis mummies, and which 

 Mariette found practically inaccessible from the collapse 

 of the vault. The period, however, was that of foreign 

 alliances, as shown by the flight of Adad, the Idumasan 



