THE RESURRECTION OF ANCIENT EGYPT 



963 



alties and the accumulation of a most 

 interesting mass of information with re- 

 gard to the civihzation of their time, the 

 organization of their courts, and the at- 

 tainments of the race over which they 

 ruled. 



The tombs of these ancient monarchs 

 were not such as could be erected by a 

 race undeveloped or just emerging from 

 barbarism ; they could only have been the 

 product of a people comparatively far 

 advanced in culture, and their contents 

 revealed evidence not only of an aston- 

 ishing proficiency in the arts of peace, 

 but also of an elaborate and complex 

 social organization, such as we should 

 scarcely have deemed possible at so early 

 a date. 



The kings of the earliest dynasties 

 reared no pyramids. Their tombs were 

 great structures mainly underground — • 

 that of Aha (who is possibly Mena, the 

 first king of Egypt) at Naqada measures 

 175 feet by 88 and contains 21 cham- 

 bers — built sometimes of brick, with a 

 lining of wood, and sometimes floored 

 with stone, as in the case of the tomb of 

 King Den at Abydos, whose granite floor 

 furnishes the earliest known example of 

 the use of stone in building. 



These huge homes of the dead were 

 filled with all sorts of objects which 

 might be necessary or useful for the de- 

 ceased king in the underworld. 



THE king's slaves were SLAIN AT HIS 



GRAVE TO ACCOMPANY AND SERVE 



HIM IN THE AETER-LIEE 



Around him were buried his slaves, 

 who were doubtless slain at his grave 

 that they might accompany and serve 

 him in the after-life. The chambers of 

 his tomb were stored with stacks of 

 great vases of wine and corn, with 

 pottery dishes, splendid copper bowls, 

 carved ivory boxes, golden buttons, pal- 

 ettes for grinding face paint, chairs and 

 couches of elaborate design and decora- 

 tion, ivory and pottery figurines, and 

 plaques bearing records of the king's 

 valor in war or his piety in the founding 

 of temples. 



Here and there in this wreckage of 

 immemorial splendors a little touch helps 



us to realize that these dim historic fig- 

 ures were real men, who loved and sor- 

 rowed as men do still. Close to Mena's 

 second tomb at Abydos lies that of his 

 daughter — Bener-ab, ''Sweetheart," as 

 he called her — to suggest how love and 

 death went side by side then as now. 



The furniture of the tombs reveals 

 an amazing proficiency in the arts and 

 crafts. Ebony chests inlaid with ivory, 

 stools with ivory feet carved in the shape 

 of bull's legs, vessels cut and ground to 

 translucent thinness, not only out of soft 

 alabaster, but out of an iron-hard stone 

 like diorite, finely wrought copper ewers, 

 all tell us that the Egyptian of the earliest 

 dynastic period was no rude barbarian, 

 but a highly civilized craftsman. Per- 

 haps the daintiest and most convincing 

 evidence of his skill is given by the brace- 

 lets which were found encircling the 

 skeleton arm of the queen of King Zer, 

 of the first dynasty, which, alike for the 

 grace of their design and for the skill 

 with which the gold is wrought and sol- 

 dered, are admirable. 



But these tombs have not only yielded 

 evidence of the skill of the Egyptian 

 workman ; they have taught us that even 

 at this incredibly early date the nation 

 had a complete method of expressing its 

 thought and had reached a thoroughness 

 of organization which we should not 

 have imagined possible. At an early 

 period in the first dynasty hieroglyphic 

 writing has begun to make its appear- 

 ance ; by the middle of the period it is 

 completely developed; before the end of 

 the dynasty it has already become so 

 familiar that the symbols are carelessly 

 engraved. On the very lowest date which 

 may be assigned to the dynasty this fact 

 gives the Egyptian an astounding start 

 of all other nations in the art of writing. 



The inscriptions tell us of a court fully 

 organized, with a complete bureaucracy. 

 Mena has his chamberlain. His suc- 

 cessor, Zer, tells us of a "commander of 

 the inundation," a proof of the early 

 date at which the Nile flood was utilized 

 and regulated for the benefit of the land. 

 In subsequent reigns of the same dynasty 

 we meet with a "commander of the 

 elders," a "keeper of the wine" (the ear- 



