THE RESURRECTION OF ANCIENT EGYPT 



the later Egyptians depended for service 

 in the Hfe beyond. Henceforward even 

 royalty had to content itself with these 

 mimic servants instead of the human 

 ushabtis who had formerly been sacri- 

 ficed to its importance (see page 975). 



AN artist's autobiography 



Fortunately the name of the chief 

 artist of Mentuhotep's reign has been 

 preserved to us, with his description of 

 his own qualifications. On a tombstone 

 from Abydos, now in the Louvre, this 

 great man, Mertisen by name, thus de- 

 scribes himself : 



"I was an artist skilled in my art. I 

 knew my art — how to represent the 

 forms of going forth and returning, so 

 that each limb might be in its proper 

 place. I knew how the figure of a man 

 should walk, and the carriage of a wo- 

 man, the poising of the arm to bring the 

 hippopotamus low, the going of the run- 

 ner. I knew how to make amulets, which 

 enable us to go without fire burning us 

 and without the flood washing us away. 

 No man could do this but I and the eld- 

 est son of my body. Him has the god 

 decreed to excel in art, and I have seen 

 the perfection of the work of his hands 

 in every kind of rare stone, in gold and 

 silver, in ivory and ebony." 



In all probability it was this great and 

 modest artist who planned Mentuhotep's 

 temple, and, if so, we know the names 

 of the builders of both the great temples 

 at Deir-el-Bahari, for that of Hatshepsut 

 was executed by Sen-mut, the queen's 

 famous minister and architect. 



The reasons which induced the Theban 

 princes of the following dynasty to shift 

 their court once more to the neighbor- 

 hood of Memphis are unknown, though 

 we may conjecture that the northern 

 part of the kingdom, long accustomed to 

 political supremacy, was proving restive 

 under the transference of authority to 

 the south. At all events the kings of the 

 twelfth dynasty, who must rank among 

 the greatest monarchs of the land, held 

 their court at a fortified palace called 

 Thet-taui, near the ancient Memphis, 

 and much of the great work which they 

 did for Egypt was accomplished in the 

 neighborhood of the Fayum. 



It was there that they were laid to rest 

 in their brick pyramids, which have been 

 explored, at various periods from 1888 

 onward, by Professor Petrie, M. de 

 Morgan, and MAI. Gautier and Jequier. 

 Had it not been for the evidence afforded 

 by the results of these excavations, we 

 should have been left without any ade- 

 quate illustration of the greatness of the 

 period, for the twelfth dynasty work has 

 otherwise largely disappeared from the 

 land. ' 



The earliest excavation was that of 

 the pyramid of Amenemhat III at Ha- 

 wara. The pyramid itself yielded but 

 little spoil. Its chief interest lay in the 

 elaborate precautions which had been 

 taken, by means of false passages and 

 gigantic plug blocks of stone closing the 

 true passages, to weary and defeat the 

 efforts of tomb-robbers. Yet, in spite of 

 all, it had been robbed in ancient days, 

 not improbably with the connivance of 

 the priests or officials in charge of the 

 building, as only the outermost of the 

 three great plug blocks closing the pas- 

 sages had ever been secured in its place. 



But the amazing feature of the whole 

 structure was the sepulchral chamber in 

 which the royal sarcophagus had lain. 

 No mere built chamber had been consid- 

 ered costly or safe enough for the re- 

 mains of so great a monarch. A hugej 

 block of quartzite had been hollowed out 

 into a chamber measuring inside 22 feet 

 by 8, with walls 3 feet in thickness. A 

 single block of the same stone formed a 

 roof, the chamber itself weighing no 

 tons and the roof 45. 



The later Egyptians of the eighteenth 

 and nineteenth dynasties handled, in the 

 open, blocks much larger than this, the 

 record being the seated colossus of 

 Rameses II at Thebes, which weighed 

 1,000 tons (see page 1004), but the skill 

 and resource involved in the accurate 

 placing of such a mass of stone in its 

 confined situation inspire a wholesome' 

 respect for the Egyptian workman of the 

 twelfth dynasty. 



The pyramid of Senusert II at Dashur 

 was excavated in 1894- 1896 by M. de 

 Morgan, with the assistance of MM. Le- 

 grain and Jequier. The chief find of 

 importance lay outside the pyramid, 



