CHAPTER VIII

LIFE, ARTS, AND CRAFTS IN THE LAND OF THE NILE

Practically the whole of our knowledge of the conditions under which life was lived in Egypt, of the organisation of society, of the arts and crafts by which the needs and tastes of the people were met, is due to the results of excavation during the last century. We owe, of course, a great deal to the statements of Herodotus and Diodorus as to the conditions which they found existing in their time; but the great source of information must always be the mass of first-hand material which has been gathered, mainly from the tombs with their wealth of funerary furnishings, by the work of the excavator. Therefore it would seem that the fitting conclusion to our brief survey of the various aspects of excavation should be a sketch of the life of ancient Egypt, with the arts and crafts which ministered to its necessities and its luxuries. Such a sketch must, of course, be of the slightest and least elaborated type, for the amount of material is so enormous that only the most salient points can be touched; but it may still be true so far as it goes, and may perhaps serve as an outline within which further details may be inserted by the student of ancient Egyptian life.

First of all, we may take the framework of society. Through the whole of Egyptian history the outline of this is very much the same, though there are many variations in the relative importance of the various parts. The head of the state is always the Pharaoh, placed on a level immensely above even the most powerful of his subjects, but, as we shall see, by no means an irresponsible tyrant, but rather a limited monarch, governing in accordance with strictly defined customs.

Beneath him are the great nobles and the great official class--two sections of society which were not in ancient Egypt, as in so many other ancient realms, virtually different names for the same thing.

Then came the priestly class, at all times one of the most important in the land, and tending at certain periods, with the weakening of the royal power, to overshadow all the other interests.

It appears that there was a definitely military class, with definite lands assigned to it for its support, though in the earlier days of the kingdom the wars were not the business of a separate class of professional soldiers, but were carried on by a general levy of the people. The other great land-holding class of the nation was that of the husbandmen, who apparently were much of our own old yeoman type, holding their land by the payment of taxes.

Behind these classes, which, so to speak, formed the backbone of the nation, came the shepherds, hunters, artificers, traders, and workers at other subsidiary occupations. These held no land, and their occupations appear to have been mainly hereditary, no artisan being allowed to pass from one trade to another, or to have his children reckoned in any other class than his own. The various trades must have been organised more or less after the plan of the mediæval trade-guilds, though in the case of Egypt the organisation was apparently a national, and not a local affair. Beneath the tradesmen came the slave class, whose number varied pretty much according to the wars on which the nation was engaged, and their fruitfulness, or the opposite, in yielding captives.

Slave labour was never a prominent feature of Egyptian life, and Petrie estimates the slave population of the land at its maximum at no more than a quarter of a million out of a possible population of twelve millions.

To the imagination of most folk probably the mention of “Pharaoh, King of Egypt,” suggests a typical Oriental tyrant, responsible to nothing but his own passions, and governing according to the whim of the moment. Such a picture may have been true of an Assyrian or Babylonian king, like Ashurbanipal or Nebuchadnezzar, and perhaps the frequency of assassination in the records of the Assyrian kings hints that it was; but it certainly was not true of ancient Egypt. Pharaoh’s own grandiose inscriptions, and the fiction which regarded him as a god incarnate, may suggest unbridled power; but as a matter of fact, Pharaoh was anything but the rampant and romantic despot whom we imagine distributing life and death at his own capricious will, but rather a somewhat humdrum constitutional monarch, whose every action was regulated for him centuries before he was born, by an unchanging custom, and who could no more step beyond the limits which immemorial laws had assigned to him than he could jump out of his skin, or off his own shadow.

The thing which amazed the Greeks, with their experience of irresponsible tyrants, was the fact that so great a king as Pharaoh was not the master, but the servant of the laws. “He could not do any public business, condemn or punish any man to gratify his own humour or revenge, or for any other unjust cause; but was bound to do according as the laws had ordered in every particular case.... The kings, therefore, carrying this even hand towards all their subjects, were more beloved by them than by their own kindred.”

Petrie has suggested that it is this limitation of the power of the Pharaoh which is accountable for the unusual stability of the Egyptian throne. “The absence of republican interludes, so frequent in other parts of the Mediterranean, was apparently due to the monarchy being strictly limited by law. However bad an Egyptian might be personally, he could not earn the hatred of his subjects like the irresponsible Greek tyrants or Roman emperors.”

[Illustration: 27. PORTRAIT-STATUE OF MENTUEMHAT, CAIRO MUSEUM.]

Indeed Pharaoh according to fact is a very different figure from Pharaoh according to imagination. We must try to substitute for the gorgeous tiger of our fancies the figure, gorgeous enough indeed, so far as concerns his apparel, of a laborious servant of the State whose life, instead of being spent in wild orgies of licence and wild explosions of ferocity, was mainly occupied, from the time when he rose in the morning to the time when he crawled to bed at night, in a manner quite familiar to royalty in our own country, in signing dull reports, and reading dull dispatches, presiding over long and wearisome temple services, and travelling about the country to see that everything was working smoothly.

The new picture is by no means so picturesque as the old one; but it is the real Pharaoh, and no doubt it was for the good, both of his subjects and himself, that “Pharaoh had to act every hour according to fixed routine, without room for the licence of a Dionysius or a Caligula.” The brilliant tiger looks romantic in a story, but when his despotism becomes unbearable it has generally to be tempered by assassination, as with Sargon, Sennacherib, and many another; but as a matter of fact the Egyptian Pharaoh generally managed to die quietly in his own bed when his time came.

Not that he had not his own power, and his own initiative. His headship of the State involved headship of the army in war, and this was no polite fiction, where Pharaoh reaped the glory while his soldiers had the danger. Seqenen-Ra’s mummy, with its ghastly wounds on head and face, tells us how real was the duty of Egyptian royalty in the day of battle. Thothmes III led the van of his army through the defile of Aaruna, when his chosen captains shirked the task, and though we need not believe all that Ramses II tells us about his share in the battle of Kadesh, there is no doubt that he fought hand to hand with the Hittites in the forefront of the battle, and at least proved himself a good trooper, whatever may be thought of his generalship. Much power also lay in his hands in respect of the selection and advancement of able men from the lower to the higher ranks of the public service, and of rewarding their work with grants of land, of initiating the great public works which were often of such untold benefit to the land, and of conducting the Foreign-Office business of the country, and the negotiation of treaties. In short, Pharaoh had no lack of work to do, and was probably like his modern successors in Kingship, one of the hardest-worked men in the land; but from start to finish, the Egyptian monarchy was a limited one.

Two instances of the limitation of the royal power, and its strict subjection to law, may be given. When Queen Amtes was tried, in the reign of Pepy I of the VIth Dynasty, for some unspecified offence, the trial was conducted without even the presence of the king. “His Majesty,” says Una in his famous inscription, “caused me to enter in order to hear the case alone. No chief judge and vizier at all, no prince at all was there, but only I alone, because I was excellent, because I was pleasant to the heart of His Majesty.” Again, in the time of King Ramses III of the XXth Dynasty, there was a great palace conspiracy arising out of an intrigue in the harem to dethrone Ramses, and put the son of one of the harem ladies on the throne. In most other Oriental palaces the discovery of such a thing would have been the signal for a general massacre. Instead of executing summary justice, Ramses appointed a commission, giving them these remarkable instructions: “What the people have spoken, I do not know. Hasten to investigate it. You will go and question them, and those who must die, you will cause to die by their own hand, without my knowing anything of it. You will also cause the punishment awarded to the others to be carried out without my knowing anything of it.”

Pharaoh may not always have been a model of propriety or of rectitude; but he was far too strictly hedged about by precedent to allow of the brutal tyranny and licence which have so often marked other Eastern monarchies, and, besides, one fails to see how, with his time so completely filled as we know it to have been, with all sorts of necessary routine, he can have had much opportunity for mischief, even if he had the desire.

The king’s chief functionary and right-hand man was the Vizier, who must have been just about as hard-worked a man as his master. The inscription in the tomb of Rekhmara, who was vizier under Thothmes III, enumerates thirty separate functions which had to be discharged by the fortunate holder of this great office. “The vizier is Grand Steward of all Egypt, and all the activities of the State are under his control. He has general oversight of the treasury, and the chief treasurer reports to him; he is chief justice, or head of the judiciary; he is chief of police, both for the residence-city and the kingdom; he is minister of war, both for army and navy; he is secretary of the interior and of agriculture, while all general executive functions of State, with many that may not be classified, are incumbent upon him. There is indeed no prime function of the State which does not operate through his office. He is a veritable Joseph, and it must be this office which the Hebrew writer has in mind in the story of Joseph.” Altogether we may conclude that, whatever the salary of the vizier may have been, he probably earned it.

A quaint picture of the way in which a high Egyptian official was hedged about with routine is given by Rekhmara in his description of the procedure of the court of justice. “As for every act of this official, the vizier while hearing in the hall of the vizier, he shall sit upon a chair, with a rug upon the floor, and a dais upon it, a cushion under his back, a cushion under his feet, and a baton at his hand; the forty skins [parchments of the codified law] shall be open before him. Then the magnates of the South shall stand in the two aisles before him, while the master of the privy chamber is on his right, the receiver of income on his left, the scribes of the vizier at his either hand; one corresponding to another, with each man at his proper place. One shall be heard after another, without allowing one who is behind to be heard before one who is in front.”

The great offices of State, of course, often fell to men of high rank, and of hereditary influence. Rekhmara himself came of noble family, and succeeded his uncle in the vizierate. But this was by no means necessarily the case. Egypt always presented the career open to talent which Napoleon desired. “All through the history there was a free rising of ability from the lower levels, as we see in England--Wolsey, the butcher’s son, and many others.... This was a chief cause of the durability of Egyptian society; great as the differences were, there was a gradation interlocking all through, as in England.”

A notable instance of the rise of a talented man is given by the tomb-inscription of that same Una whom we have already seen presiding over the trial of Queen Amtes. Beginning his official career as an “inferior custodian of the domain of Pharaoh,” Una during three reigns steadily climbed up the official ladder, until at last he became governor of the South under Merenra, and was the favoured official chosen to fetch the granite for the royal sarcophagus and pyramid from the quarries at Aswan. Senmut again, the famous architect and minister of Queen Hatshepsut, tells us in the inscription on his statue at Karnak that he was “the greatest of the great in the whole land,” and seems to have held power not inferior to that of the vizier, though there is no evidence that he held that office; yet he tells us in his Berlin inscription that “his ancestors were not found in writing,” or in other words, that he was a self-made man.

The elaborately organised court held many offices both ornamental and useful, which gave openings for talent or ambition. Perhaps one of the most influential positions was one which involved no very important duties, but brought the holder of it into close and constant touch with Pharaoh. This was the position of the “fan-bearer at the king’s right hand.” His function was purely ornamental, and he can be seen in paintings and reliefs carrying a tiny fan beside the king’s litter as the symbol of his office, while the real work of fanning is done by the ordinary fan-bearers with their big business-like fans; but he was the highest court-official, a sort of Lord Chamberlain, with powers of giving or denying entry to the presence, and no doubt his favour was all-important to a petitioner, as that of one who had the ear of Pharaoh. As to the rest of the court, there was a multitude of officials quite comparable to the tail of useless boot-lickers who adorned the court of Louis XIV; but one imagines that, in earlier days at least, the courtier of Pharaoh had to do more for his position than the hanger-on of the Grand Monarque.

The priesthood formed a very large and very influential class. In theory, the King was always the Supreme Priest, the Pontifex Maximus of the kingdom, and very often several of the high-priesthoods of the different gods were held by members of the royal family, thus securing that the Pharaoh should be represented in the priestly councils whose loyalty or disloyalty might mean so much to the stability of his throne. Thus in the reign of Ramses II, his favourite son Khaemuast, the Wizard-Prince of the Setna papyrus, was high-priest of Ptah at Memphis. No doubt the fact that there was such a multitude of gods, whose priesthoods were all jealous of one another, was some security against the overwhelming influence of the priestly caste, especially in the earlier days; but the fate of Akhenaten’s movement showed that in spite of local jealousies the priestly caste was really one in face of any attempt to diminish its power and privileges; and in the end the unquestioned supremacy of Amen led to the Amen priesthood gaining a position and influence which was superior to that of the weak Ramesside Pharaohs, and which resulted in the supersession of the true royal line, and the substitution for it of the XXIst Dynasty of priest-kings. Even before things had reached such a pitch, the immense wealth which the piety of successive kings had accumulated in the coffers of the priesthoods, and especially of that of Amen, must have constituted a real danger to the state, while the amount of land held by the priests, and so exempt from taxation, went with the other accumulation to constitute a steady drain on the national resources which in the end they were not able to bear.

The class of the great nobles was held in strict subordination to the royal power in the days of the strong early monarchs of the Old Kingdom; but, with the weakening of the royal authority which followed the Vth Dynasty, the honours and powers which Pharaoh had heaped on his faithful courtiers, and which had been a convenient relief to the central authority as shifting part of the burden of local administration to the shoulders of the local great men, proved a danger to the State. A kind of feudal system grew up in which the local chieftains assumed the powers and as much as they could afford of the splendours of Pharaoh himself, claiming to hold their offices by hereditary right, maintaining their own armies, holding their own courts of justice, and even daring to place after their own names in their proclamations the formula, “Living for ever and ever,” which had hitherto been the sacred attribute of the crown alone.

The revival of the monarchy, first under the Antefs and Mentuhoteps of the XIth Dynasty, and then under the Senuserts and Amenemhats of the XIIth Dynasty, however, soon curbed the pretensions of these petty princelets, and the changes of the Hyksos invasion and the War of Independence wiped out the last relics of the Egyptian feudal system, which never revived under the New Empire. Even under strong kings like the Pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom, the courts of the local nomarchs were no small things, as they might employ anything from fifty to a hundred officials, from the steward down to the “mat-spreader.”

[Illustration: 28. Vth DYNASTY RELIEF-WORK, TOMB OF PTAH-HETEP.]

Tomb-inscriptions are not perhaps the most trustworthy sources as to the personal character of a class of men, nor are we to expect that Ameny or Khnemhotep will tell us anything of the shady side of their administration. Yet it must be confessed that Ameny’s story of his administration of the Oryx Nome gives a pleasant picture of the relations of a great local noble and official to the people of his province; and we may say that if Egypt in the time of the Middle Kingdom had many nomarchs of his stamp, she was a fortunate land.

“There was no citizen’s daughter whom I misused,” says the great man, “there was no widow whom I oppressed, there was no peasant whom I repulsed, there was no shepherd whom I repelled, there was not a foreman of five from whom I took his men for forced work. There was not a pauper around me; there was not a hungry man of my time. When there came years of famine, I arose, I ploughed all the fields of the Oryx Nome to its southern and its northern boundary, I kept its inhabitants alive, making provision so that there was not a hungry man in it. I gave to the widow as to her that possessed a husband; nor did I exalt the great above the small in all that I gave. Thereafter great rises of the Nile took place, producing wheat and barley and all things; but I did not exact the arrears of the farm.” “I gave bread to the hungry,” says another noble, “and clothes to the naked, and gave a passage in my own boat to those who could not cross. I was a father to the orphan, a husband to the widow, a protection from the wind to the shivering; I am one who spake what was good, and related what was good. I acquired my possessions in a just manner.”

All this may savour a little of Pharisaic self-righteousness to us; but at least it shows that there was a recognised idea, among the governing class, of the duties which a great man owed to those under him, and the possession of such an ideal must have made bad government more difficult.

The same praise can scarcely be given to the ideals of the other important, though minor, official class, the scribes. The Egyptian scribe belonged to a type with which we are perfectly familiar still, the type of the petty official who thinks that there is nothing in all the world so fine as petty officialdom, unless it be superior officialdom, and who looks down on all other professions with a scorn which is only equalled by his ignorance. In a land where writing was so complicated a matter, and where it so early assumed supreme importance, where also the annual inundation with its obliterating of landmarks made the possession of written records a matter of great importance, the scribe obviously had a splendid field for his work, and for the development of all his peculiar vices. It was possible for a careful scribe to climb from the humblest position to one of great dignity and power, and the Egyptian scribe never forgot that every scribe carried in his writing-case the wand of office of a potential vizier.

The scribes have left us many examples of what they thought of themselves and of all other people and professions, and it may be safely said that of no other class of Egyptian do we carry away so unpleasant an impression as of that one which no doubt imagined that it was impressing its own immense superiority on the minds of all posterity. The Egyptian cherished a profound admiration for learning; but his devotion to letters was not because of the beauty of learning in itself, but simply because it was the avenue to preferment and the way of escape from the miseries of toil or the dangers of war. Both the admiration and the mercenary reason for it are expressed in the words of an ancient sage recorded for us in the Sallier Papyrus:

“Give thy heart to learning and love her like a mother, For there is nothing that is so precious as learning ... Behold there is no profession which is not governed, It is only the learned man who rules himself.”

The scribe saw himself, because of his possession of letters, immeasurably above all the poor creatures who had to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. He was exempt from all the pains and anxieties of the workman, and loved maliciously to contemplate them while he issued the orders which imposed further burdens on backs already heavily burdened. “The poor ignorant man, ‘whose name is unknown, is like a heavily-laden donkey, he is driven by the scribe,’ while the fortunate man ‘who has set his heart upon learning’ is above work, and becomes a wise prince.” “The learned man has enough to eat because of his learning.” Therefore, “set to work and become a scribe, for then thou shalt become a leader of men.”

No matter what the trade was, or how wonderful its results, it seemed to the smug scribe a contemptible thing in comparison with his own precious profession of letters. Here is his opinion of the craftsmen who created the miracles of metal- and wood-work of the Middle Kingdom:

“I have never seen the smith as an ambassador, Or the goldsmith carry tidings; But I have seen the smith at his work At the mouth of his furnace, His fingers were like crocodile skin, He stank more than the roe of fish ... Each artist who works with the chisel Tires himself more than he who hoes a field. The wood is his field, of metal are his tools. In the night--is he free? He works more than his arms are able, In the night--he lights a light.”

No doubt this seemed very fine and humorous to our scribe; but we who have the chance of comparing his literary achievement with the works of the craftsmen whom he satirised may be pardoned for preferring the diadems of Khnumit and Sat-Hathor, or the statues of Senusert and Amenemhat to all the paltry drivel he ever wrote.

[Illustration: 29. XIXth DYNASTY RELIEF-WORK, TEMPLE OF SETY I, ABYDOS.]

Nor was his opinion of the soldier’s calling any higher. Indeed the ancient Egyptian was no more of a warlike person than his successor the modern fellah, who makes a good enough soldier under British officers, but is about the most unmilitary person on earth when left to the freedom of his own will. There is no more curious inversion of fact than the common idea which pictures the Egyptian as one of the great warrior races of the world, and classes him along with that bloodthirsty tiger the Assyrian. Only at one period of his history did the Egyptian ever show the least sign of developing a craving for world-dominion and the warfare which goes along with it; and when the brief imperial fever of his early XVIIIth Dynasty had wrought itself out, he reverted for the rest of his history to his natural rôle of the finest craftsman on earth, only bestirring himself when there was need to defend his frontiers, a business which he did fairly, but only fairly, well. On the whole, he would have thoroughly agreed with Alan Breck Stewart that war “is generally rather a bauchle of a business.”

But it was reserved for the smug and flabby scribe--you can see him still in the Louvre with his cunning eyes and his rolls of unhealthy flesh--to make a mock of the calling which won for Egypt all the empire she ever possessed, and which was that of her greatest Pharaohs.

“Oh, what does it mean,” says this early pacifist, “Oh, what does it mean that thou sayest: ‘The officer has a better lot than the scribe’? Come, let me relate to thee the fate of the officer, so full of trouble.” Then he goes on to relate in a fashion which he no doubt thinks humorous, the life of an officer on active duty in Syria:

“Come, let me relate to thee how he travels to Syria, How he marches in the upland country. His food and his water he has to carry on his arm, Laden like a donkey; This makes his neck stiff like that of a donkey, And the bones of his back break ... If he arrives in face of the enemy, He is like a bird in a snare ... If he arrives at his home in Egypt ... He is ill, and must lie down. They have to bring him home on the donkey, Whilst his clothes are stolen, and his servants run away. Therefore, O scribe, Reverse thine opinion about the happiness of the scribe and of the officer.”

As literature this precious effusion is merely contemptible; but it is very illuminating as to the character of the class which was responsible for the production of it. Generally speaking, the Egyptian leaves you with the pleasant impression that he is a decent kindly fellow, with a cheery outlook on life, and a love of pretty things and laughter; but the scribe is an undoubted fly in the ointment. He thought himself its finest perfume; but that is just precisely what makes him so unquestionably the fly.

We need not imagine that the condition either of the soldier or of the artisan was quite so miserable as the scribe would have us believe. The misfortune is that it was only the scribe who was vocal. If the soldier or the craftsman had been able to leave behind him his opinion of the scribe, it would probably have been quite as unflattering, and perhaps more pungently expressed. It would not have required great genius to make fun of a profession which lived by the favour of the great man, and whose typical figure is the kneeling scribe of the Cairo Museum, with his twisted deprecating smile, and his submissively crossed hands, waiting, like a dog, uncertain whether his master will kick him or fling him a bone.

Behind all the glitter of the court and official circle, with its innumerable hangers-on, there comes the great mass of the people, the farmers, the skilled workmen, the shepherds, fishers, toilers of all sorts. Of no race in the world can it be said that the conditions of its workers have been so fully depicted as of the Egyptians. On the sculptured and painted tomb-reliefs we see the workmen of almost every trade under heaven busily engaged in the prosecution of their calling. Whatever the scribe might think of the indignity of being a smith or a carpenter, his impression was confined to himself, and the great man had not the least objection to see these and a score of other common occupations pictured on the walls of his “eternal habitation.” But while the outward aspect of these callings is thus fully represented, so that it might be possible to produce a handbook of the Egyptian crafts, we are not so well informed as to the environment in which these wonderfully skilled workmen spent their lives, what were the conditions of their service, the manner of their housing, and the question of whether their lot was a happy one or not. Petrie’s excavations at Kahun have given us the almost complete plan of an Old Kingdom workmen’s town, where the skilled masons who were building the pyramid of Senusert II were housed. Though this is only a temporary town, we may probably take its conditions as more or less typical of those which prevailed for the artisan class in the Old Kingdom. The houses are of all sizes, ranging from four rooms to sixty, the larger houses being, no doubt, those of the overseers and clerks of works. The streets are narrow, varying from 11 feet to 15 feet wide, and having a drain down the middle of each. The simplest type of small house has an open court opposite the entrance, a common room on one side, and two storerooms on the other, with a stair leading up to the roof. The larger class of artisan’s house has a court, four rooms opening off it, and five other rooms dependent on the main rooms. On the whole, one would imagine that the housing conditions were not so very bad; though certainly the houses were too crowded together. The average artisan’s house of the present day has not the number of rooms which were possessed by the pyramid mason of four thousand years ago, though his advantages in other respects are considerable.

[Illustration: 30. XIXth DYNASTY RELIEF-WORK, TEMPLE OF RAMSES II, LUXOR.]

The workman’s wages were at all events partly paid in kind. Herodotus tells us of the amount expended in provision for the workmen who built the Great Pyramid: “On the pyramid is shown an inscription, in Egyptian characters, how much was expended in radishes, onions, and garlic, for the workmen; which the interpreter, as I well remember, reading the inscription, told me amounted to one thousand six hundred talents of silver.” Payment was still in kind in the time of the New Empire. One of the foremen of the craftsmen of the Theban necropolis in the time of Ramses IX (1142–1123 B.C.), fortunately kept with great care a record of all that happened to his gang, noting whether the men were on full work or were “idle.” Festival days broke in considerably on their working time, as we hear of two full months’ holiday, and again of another month, in the same year; but the workmen’s rations ran on all the same whether they were working or not. The worry was that the rations were often behind time, and when that happened there was trouble. One month the rations were only one day late, but another they did not come at all, and then the workmen went on strike. This produced the supplies; but ere long the same thing happened again, and this time the gang went in a body to Thebes, and complained to the “great princes,” and the “chief prophets of Amen.” Again the result was good, and the journal of the careful foreman gives us a quaint hint of how it had been necessary to use a little palm-oil in the case of the influential “fan-bearer” to secure the desired end. “We received to-day our corn-rations; we gave two boxes and a writing-tablet to the fan-bearer.”

We cannot be sure whether the condition of the necropolis workmen, who were mostly skilled craftsmen, metal workers, carvers, painters, and so forth, was worse than that of the workmen in the city of the living; probably the conditions in both cases were much the same. In any case, it is the necropolis workmen who supply us with our instances of insufficient or delayed payment, and who give us the first historic examples of strikes. In the twenty-ninth year of Ramses III (1170 B.C.) things were pretty bad in the necropolis, and wages had not been paid for half a year. After giving the officials nine days’ grace, the workmen naturally went on strike in a body.

They left the necropolis, with their wives and children, and though the two overseers tried to entice them back to work “with great oaths,” the workmen were not to be caught with chaff, and stayed outside the necropolis walls. Finally the affair assumed so threatening an aspect that two chiefs of police and a number of priests tried to make them return to duty; but in vain. Their answer was, “We have been driven here by hunger and thirst, we have no clothes, we have no oil, we have no food. Write to our lord the Pharaoh on the subject, and write to the governor who is over us that they may give us something for our sustenance.” This unheard-of request had its effect--“on that day they received the provision for the month Tybi.” In another month, however, they were back again, as supplies had failed once more. This time the governor of the town met them, and though he asked them how he was to pay their wages when the storehouses were empty, he at least ordered that they should receive half of the overdue rations.

Altogether the evidence goes to show that life was not all pleasure in ancient Egypt, any more than in other lands; but it is only fair to say that the other side of the matter has been grossly exaggerated, and that life in the Land of the Pharaohs was not the gloomy, morbid, perpetually death-contemplating thing which it has been represented as being. This idea, of course, we owe, partly to the amiable Herodotus and his picture of the model coffin and mummy being carried round at all their banquets, with the words, “Look on this, then drink and enjoy yourself; for when dead you will be like this,” and partly to the fact that practically all the knowledge we have of the Egyptians comes from their tombs.

The necessary corrective to this one-sided view of a great nation is given by their books, and particularly by the romantic fiction which they were the first nation to cultivate. Erman has said that “the romances are not to be relied upon; the country which they describe is not Egypt but fairyland.” This may be so as regards scenery and detail; but the writer of the Tale of the Doomed Prince, or of Setna and the Magic Roll, whether he may cast the scene of his story in Naharina or in Egypt, cannot help revealing in his tale the habitual outlook on life of the Egypt of his time; and in this respect the romances are far more to be relied upon than either the vainglorious vauntings of a royal inscription or the carefully dressed-up moralisings of a scribe. The picture which they give of the Egyptian nature is that of a simple, kindly race, singularly free from the savage cruelty which disgraced their great rivals the Assyrians, loving pleasure, and all the brightness and beauty of life, with a straightforward and childlike affection, not greedy of power, but ready to live and let live, singularly advanced in their conception of family life, and especially worthy of our admiration in the respect which they paid to women, and the position accorded to woman from the very earliest times.

It is time to rid our minds of that sinister conception of the Egyptian as a dark, uncanny, supernaturally wise and diabolically malignant being, which is still to be found in second-rate fiction, and in the vain imaginings of gropers in the occult and the miraculous, and to see this great race as it really was--a race of true children of the Sun, leading in the dawn of the world’s story a clean, healthy, open-air life, with its own imperfections and weaknesses, but with its plain virtues as well, and with a moral standard not unworthy of comparison with that of any race in the world. What they have accomplished is plain for all the world to see; surely it is common sense to see also that such things were not the work of gloomy fanatics or of drivelling dabblers in the black arts, but of men.

[Illustration: 31. XXth DYNASTY RELIEF-WORK, TEMPLE OF RAMSES III, MEDINET HABU.]

We turn now to consider the art of ancient Egypt as it has now come to be known by the accumulation of specimens of it during the last century. Egyptian art has been somewhat slow in coming to its own in the judgment of the world, and that for two reasons. First that opinion, which had been accustomed to very different things, had to be gradually trained to appreciate the merit of work which differed from the accepted canons in many respects, even in the type of material which it used for its self-expression; and next, that the Egyptian work by which the national art was first introduced to the attention of the modern world was mostly of a period which we have now learned to know as decadent. Denderah, Esneh, Edfu, Philæ, these were the products of Egyptian art which first roused the wonder of European visitors; and very naturally, for these great shrines are not only wonderful in themselves, but are also in a state of preservation which renders them intelligible and attractive to everyone who sees them. But all the same they are very unworthy to be taken as examples of what Egyptian art could do at its best, and so we need not wonder that, when the first impulse of surprise had passed away, the voice of criticism was heard, pointing out the conspicuous faults in this claimant for recognition among the great arts of the world, and refusing to allow the claim. Similarly with the works of sculpture on which another part of the Egyptian claim must be based, in almost all cases the specimens of Egyptian sculpture which were first brought under the eyes of the judges were colossal fragments of a style and a period which had their own merits, but were far from being representative of the actual work of the Egyptian sculptor at its best, as we have now come to know it.

In these circumstances it is not to be wondered at that Egyptian art has only found slow and grudging recognition as one of the great arts of the world. What is strange, however, is that even to-day, when the periods of Egyptian architecture are as clearly defined, perhaps more clearly defined than the periods of Gothic, and when Egyptian sculpture is represented all over the world by either originals or reproductions of its best work in all respects, the judgment which was not unaccountable, or inapplicable in the day of the beginnings of knowledge of things Egyptian should still be repeated, and Egyptian art be characterised as a thing, interesting indeed, but essentially crude and barbaric, the product of a race which has no claim to rank alongside the other great artistic races of the world.

Thus we find so learned an art critic as Lord Balcarres remarking (_Donatello_, p. 21), “The massive and abiding art of Egypt ignored the personality of its gods and Pharaohs, distinguishing the various persons by dress, ornament, and attribute.” For the gods, this may pass, but when such a thing is said of the Pharaohs one can only say that it is simply the opposite of the truth. Is it possible that the author of such a statement had never seen, before he made it, such vivid impressions of personality as the great diorite Khafra, with its splendid dignity, or, at the opposite end of the scale, the Reisner Menkaura, the very embodiment of a bourgeois “Farmer George” royalty, doing his best to look as dignified as becomes the wearer of the double crown, and failing so absolutely? Here are two successive occupants of the Egyptian throne, whose personality, according to Lord Balcarres, should be ignored in Egyptian art, and yet the sharp discrimination of personality is just the thing that immediately strikes everyone who sees the two statues together.

Lord Balcarres, however, is not the only sinner in this respect. “The emptiness of the Sphinx’s face,” says Mr. March Phillipps in his charming book, _The Works of Man_, “is a prevailing trait in all Egyptian sculpture. All Egyptian faces stare before them with the same blank regard which can be made to mean anything precisely because it means nothing.... The truth is, Egyptian sculpture is a sculpture barren of intellectual insight and intellectual interest.”

Has the writer of this confident condemnation, one wonders, ever seen the granite Senusert III, either of the Cairo or of the British Museum, with the strong harsh features which express, if ever any work of the sculptor’s hands expressed, both the pride and the bitter weariness of power, or, to take a New Empire instance, the masterful Thothmes III of the Cairo Museum, the face of a daring soldier, if there ever was one, or the ugly capable face of Prince Mentuemhat, also at Cairo? Mentuemhat has no claims to personal beauty, and, one imagines, no illusions on that matter; but strong character has seldom been more admirably expressed than in this specimen of the art which, as we are told, is “barren of intellectual insight and intellectual interest.”

The fact is, that both these criticisms, and many others similar to them, rest upon a fundamental misconception about Egyptian sculpture. It is quite obvious that both Lord Balcarres and Mr. March Phillipps, in making them, are founding upon the colossal pieces of Egyptian sculpture which are the prominent objects in the galleries of our Museums, and taking them as adequately representative of the art which they are criticising; and to do this is hopelessly to misconceive the actual position.

Egyptian sculpture in the round had two entirely different objects, which were reached by different methods, and are seen in different examples. The first was purely monumental and decorative, and its purposes are served by the production of the colossal statues, monuments of royal pride and glory, and, not less, pieces of decoration in a great architectural scheme. These gigantic works are not to be viewed as portraiture in the strict sense, and that the Egyptians themselves did not so view them is manifest from the fact that a reigning Pharaoh seldom hesitated to appropriate to himself any convenient statues of one of his predecessors by the simple process of cutting his own cartouche on the figure, and obliterating that of the original owner.

The question of likeness or unlikeness was a very small one; what was required was a figure which should convey the impression of power and dignity, linked with the name of a particular Pharaoh. In this respect, and as elements of an architectural whole, these statues unquestionably served their purpose; more was never expected of them, and to criticise them as lacking in expression, and in individuality, is to do them an injustice. They can only be judged as what they were designed to be, not as something radically different.

[Illustration: 32. PTOLEMAIC RELIEF-WORK, KOM OMBOS.]

The position is quite different with regard to the other object of Egyptian sculpture, which was definitely portraiture. Apart from his monumental work, which in a limited sense may be said to have ideal elements in it, the Egyptian sculptor, unlike his successor, the Greek, produced no ideal work. He was simply and solely, from first to last, a portrait sculptor, and in this respect he has seldom been excelled. The whole object of his work was to produce a tomb-statue, which should be the refuge of the _Ka_ of the dead man when his mummy had perished by lapse of time. Therefore the one condition of his art was that it should produce likenesses as absolute as the power of man could compass. The result of such an aim is manifest, both in the successes and in the limitations of Egyptian sculpture. In the one point to which he gave his whole strength, the sculptor scored, not always, of course, but in many instances, a most astonishing success. It is impossible to imagine anything more lifelike than the heads of some of the Old Kingdom statues--the Ti or the Ranefer of the Cairo Museum, or among royal statues, the Menkaura with the figures of the Nomes, or in later times the exquisite Berlin head of Queen Nefertiti, the astonishing ebony head of a royal princess of the same period, who may be Queen Tiy, or, to come down to still later days, the other head of Mentuemhat which Miss Benson and Miss Gourlay unearthed from the temple of Mut, or in the very latest days of Egyptian independence, the head of an unknown man in green schist which is now in the Berlin Museum. Until the rise of Roman portrait-sculpture, no ancient school of art presents anything to be compared with the realism of the ancient Egyptian sculptor.

Unfortunately for the completeness of his art, the absolute dominance of the need for recognisable likeness in the head limited his work in other respects. So long as the head was a success, the rest of the body did not matter so much; and consequently we have, even in such fine examples as the Ti and the Ranefer, a noble head joined to a body which is much less thoroughly studied, while in examples of poorer quality the contrast between the care with which the head is worked out and the rude blocking out of the torso and the extremities is almost ludicrous. Still, Egyptian art, like all art, is entitled to be judged by its best, and not, as has so often been done, by its worst; and even when we admit all its limitations the fact remains that to charge it with incapacity to interpret individuality is, to anyone who is familiar with its best work, merely ridiculous.

The case is the same when we turn to the criticisms which have been directed against the other great branch of Egyptian sculpture--its relief-work. The great reliefs of the temples, with their battle pictures and scenes of offerings, are what at once commands the attention and invites the criticism. We are told, and very justly so far, that “Kings, gods, prisoners, the smiting champion, and the transfixed victim are all equally expressionless. Clearly the idea that art can be charged with, and visibly body forth, the emotions and ideas of the human mind was never grasped by Egyptian sculptors”; but who in the world ever dreamed of taking the vast advertisements of the glory and valour of Pharaoh, for that is what the battle reliefs of Karnak and Medinet Habu are--contract work, at so much the square yard--as fair representatives of the delicate and most decorative work which has given us the tomb-reliefs of the Old Kingdom?

In some respects Egyptian relief-work is decidedly inferior to the remarkable animal sculpture with which the Assyrian kings decorated their palaces. The Egyptian sculptor rarely attempts anything like the difficulty of the problems of motion which the Assyrian tackled with such dash and light-heartedness, and when he does make the attempt his work is apt to seem stiff beside that of his rival, whose hunting scenes have rarely been equalled; but in his portrayal of quiet scenes of home, field, and farmyard the Egyptian comes to his own again, and it is difficult to imagine anything more effective as wall decoration than his quiet and unstrained work, which, unlike that of the bitter Assyrian, almost invariably leaves a pleasant impression on the mind.

The comprehension and appreciation of Egyptian architecture has been hindered by the same fact which has delayed the appreciation of the art of the Nile Valley--namely, that the specimens of it which are to-day the most complete, and which command for that reason most attention, belong, not to the days when Egypt was at the summit of her achievement in all respects, but to periods when taste and artistic feeling were decaying along with power. To take, as is often done, such a temple as Medinet Habu as fairly representative of Egyptian architecture, is simply to make adequate appreciation of what Egyptian architecture is a thing impossible. The Egyptian builders had, no doubt, great faults, which have already been touched upon. They were often, indeed almost always, strangely careless about the very factors which should ensure the “eternal duration” which they craved for the works of their hands; they had, generally speaking, comparatively little of that exquisite sense of proportion which makes a fine Greek temple seem a thing inevitable, though sometimes, as at Der el-Bahri, and the little temple of Amenhotep III at Elephantine, now, alas, destroyed, something of this was revealed to them; they sometimes mistook mere mass for greatness, and the multiplication of forms for beauty, as in the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, where a magnificent opportunity was lost because the architect did not know that too much is too much. But with it all they have left us a heritage of which it can safely be said that few of the works of man can surpass it in impressiveness. “It is a part of my intention,” says Mr. Lethaby (_Architecture_, pp. 65, 66), “to try to point out what contributions were made to universal architecture by the several civilisations as they arose and passed away, but to do so of Egypt would be practically to rewrite what has been said; to a large degree Architecture is an Egyptian art.”

The nation of which such a statement can be made needs no further witness as to its place among the great master-building nations of the world’s history.

Whatever hesitations and doubts there may be as to the right of the ancient Egyptian to rank high among the artistic nations of the world, there can be none as to his place as a craftsman. In prehistoric days he was already the finest flint-worker that the world has ever known, so that his flint knives are to this day the standards by which all other similar work falls to be tested, and in presence of which it always comes short; while his vessels of hard stone were shaped, with a skill and a patience which to us seem little short of marvellous, into shapes of grace and beauty which have never been surpassed by the workers of any land or time. Later he translated these into fine pottery, and was always a skilful and satisfying potter, though his work never perhaps attained the grace and beauty of that of his brother craftsman over the sea in Crete. His greatest gift to us in this respect was his development of the art of covering pottery of all kinds with the exquisite glazes which still charm us on scarabs, amulets, ushabti figures, and all sorts of vessels.

As a linen worker, of course, he was incomparable, and the finest specimens of modern linen look wretchedly coarse when viewed under a microscope alongside the best products of his loom. The earliest jewellery of the world was of his workmanship, and the bracelets of the Ist Dynasty queen found at Abydos show us that the Egyptian jeweller of six thousand years ago needed no lessons from any of the most skilled modern practitioners of the crafts. Indeed, all through the history of the land the craftsmanship of the goldsmith was beyond reproach. In the later periods his design was much inferior to the happy inspirations of the morning of art, though his technique was fairly well maintained to the end; but in the best days of the craft, which pretty closely correspond to the best days of the history, design and technique were alike admirable.

Anything finer in their own way than the diadems of Khnumit, the royal crown, or the pectorals of the Lahun treasure, it is impossible to imagine, while if the standard of the furniture in the tomb of Tutankhamen is maintained by the jewellery, we may look for evidence from this source that the skill of the craftsman had not degenerated in the interval between the Middle Kingdom and the New Empire.

With regard to woodwork, the evidence of the furniture which has been found in the tombs is conclusive both as to the skilful and sound design of the Egyptian cabinet-maker, and as to his careful and accurate workmanship. The chairs, the coffers, and the couches from the tomb of Yuaa and Tuau are delightful to the eye, with their simple and sensible lines, and suggest that they would be equally satisfactory in use. The wonders which have been disclosed in the tomb of Tutankhamen have already been discussed in their own place, so far as that is possible at present, and while they reveal nothing new, save the ugly and clumsy state couches, whose provenance has been also discussed, they show an amount of richness in detail and material for which even previous discoveries had scarcely prepared us.

Professor Petrie tells us that structurally the work of the Egyptian joiner was as good as it was satisfying to the eye, and the state in which his works have come down to us through so many centuries bears witness to the soundness of the materials which he used, and of the work which he put out upon them; and perhaps the carefully moderate estimate of so great an expert is more impressive as to the quality of Egyptian craftsmanship than the multiplication of superlatives would be. “The powerful technical skill of Egyptian art, its good sense of limitations, and its true feeling for harmony and expression, will always make it of the first importance to the countries of the West with which it was so early and so long connected.”

In sum the debt which the modern world owes to the culture of ancient Egypt is no small one. We owe to Egypt the first book, the first building, the first ship, the first statue, the first romance, the first relief, and the first picture, in the modern sense, of which we have any knowledge; and if some of these anticipations are crude and primitive, and show but little sign of the wonderful development of which the future was to prove them capable, yet it is only due to this pioneer nation to remember that it is to her that we owe the seed which has borne so manifold a harvest.

INDEX

Aahmes Nefertari, Queen, 160

Aah-hotep, Queen, 27, 156

Aashait, Princess, 99

Abbott Papyrus, 128

Abd-er-Rassoul, Ahmed, 157; Mohamed, 158

Abu-Roash, 49, 52

Abusir, 50, 68, 69

Abydos, Temple of Sety I, 31; Royal Tombs, 135 _et seq._

Akerblad, 14

Akhenaten, 113, 118, 168, 171, 172 _et seq._, 189

Akhetaten, 174, 190

Amélineau, 136, 140, 141

Amen, 111

Amenartas, 26

Amenemhat I, 72; II, 73; III, 51, 73, 81, 82

Amenhotep I, 160; II, 100, 130, tomb of, 165 _et seq._; III, 116, 148, 166

Ameny, 224, 225

Amherst Papyrus, 128

Ammit, 205, 206

Amtes, Queen, 218, 221

Ankh.s.en.Amen (Ankh.s.en.pa. Aten), 174, 189, 190 _et seq._

Antefs, the, 224

Anubis, 186

Apis, 19

Archæology, methods and aims of, 35 _et seq._

Architecture, Egyptian, 243 _et seq._

Art, Egyptian, 236 _et seq._

Artisans, condition of, 231 _et seq._

Ashurbanipal, 112

Astemkheb, Queen, 130

Ay (Pharaoh), 113, 188, 191

Ayrton, Mr., 168

Balcarres, Lord, 238

Begarawiyah, 50

Belzoni, 9, 11, 12, 13, 63, 64, 105, 151–3

Benson, Miss, 118, 241

Biban el-Moluk, 148 _et seq._

Bib-khuru-Riyas (Tutankhamen), 192

Boghaz-Kyoi, 192

Book of the Dead, 151

Book of the Gates, 151

Book of Him who is in the Duat, 151

Breasted, Prof., 41, 196

Browne, Sir T., 61

Brugsch, E., 158 _et seq._

Brune, 94

Budge, Sir E. A. W., 205, 206, 209

Canopic Jars, 186

Carnarvon, Lord, 177 _et seq._

Carter, Mr. Howard, 168, 177 _et seq._

Caviglia, Capt., 63

Champollion, J. F., 13, 14, 92

Clarke, Somers, 96

Corselet of Eiorhoreru, 201

Corselet of Tutankhamen, 200

Couches, State (Tutankhamen’s), 204 _et seq._

Craftsmanship, Egyptian, 245 _et seq._

Dadefra, 49

Dahshur, 73, 77

Dakhamun (Ankh.s.en.Amen), 192

Daoud Pasha, 157–8

Davis, T. M., 168 _et seq._

Denon, V., 8, 18

Der el-Bahri, 31, 87 _et seq._; _Cache_ of, 158 _et seq._

_Description de l’Egypte_, 8

Devilliers, 86, 91

Diodorus, 213

Drovetti, 9

Edfu, 32

Edwards, Miss A., 45–6

Elliot Smith, Prof., 163, 173

Eugenie, Empress, 29

Fan-bearer, the, 222, 233

Fayum, the, 49

Gebel Barkal (Napata), 50

Gizeh, 48, 49, 50, 52

Gourlay, Miss, 118, 241

Hall, H. R., 96

Hamed Aga, 155–6

Hasan, Sultan, 62

Hathor, shrine, Der el-Bahri, 100

Hatshepsut, Queen, 31, 78 _et seq._, 119, 120, 168

Hawara, 51, 73, 75, 76

Henhenit, Princess, 99

Hent-taui, Queen, 160

Herodotus, 7, 213, 232, 235

Hichens, R., 90

Hierakonpolis, 145

Horemheb, 118, 168, 175, 190, 199

Hunefer, Papyrus of, 206

Huy, 190, 191

Hyksos Sphinxes, 26

Hypostyle Hall, Karnak, 113

Illahun, 51, 78

Imhotep, 70

Ismail, Khedive, 29

Jewellery, Egyptian, 78, 79, 82, 142, 144

Jollois, 86, 91

Ka. amenhotep, 201

Kadashman-Enlil, 205

Kagemni, 71

Kahun, 75, 231

Karnak, temple of, 105 _et seq._; Mariette’s work at, 31

Kauit, Princess, 99

Kemsit, Princess, 99

Keneh, Mudir of, 27, 155, 156–8

Khaemuas, the Governor, 129

Khafra, pyramid of, 53, 54

Kha-Sekhem, tomb of, 142, 145

Khenti, 139, 140

Khnemhotep, 224

Khnumit, Princess, 78, 82

Khonsu, 111; temple of, 118

Khufu, pyramid of, 52 _et seq._

Labyrinth, the, 15, 108

Lahun, 73, 75, 80

Layard, 43, 156

Legrain, work of, at Karnak, 108, 111, 124 _et seq._

Lepsius, 14–16, 93

Lesseps, F. de, 24

Lethaby, W. R., on Egyptian Architecture, 244

Lisht, 51, 73

Loret, 165

Luxor, work of Amenhotep III at, 117

Macalister, R. A. S., 9, 16, 39, 41, 43

Maghareh, Wady, 15

Makt-aten, 189

Mamun, 62

Manetho, 137

Mannikin, the, 8, 207

March Phillipps, on Egyptian Art, 238–9

Mariette, A., 10, 17, 18, 34, 93, 156

Maspero, Sir G., 10, 23, 32, 35, 40, 41, 68, 101, 124, 157, 161, 164, 165, 168

Mastabas, 58, 71

Medinet Habu, Mariette’s work at, 31

Medum, pyramid of, 54

Memphis, 19

Mena, 45, 137, 143

Menkaura, pyramid of, 54–64, 65; statue of, 238

Mentu, 117

Mentuemhat, Prince, 239, 241

Mentuherkhepshef, Prince, 168

Mentuhotep-neb-Hepet-Ra, 89, 96 _et seq._, 147

Merenptah, 117, 166

Merenra, 70, 221

Mereruka, 71

Meroë, 15, 50

Mertisen, 89

Meryt-Aten, 189

Moeris, Lake, 15

Morgan, J. de, 78, 165

Murray, Miss M. A., 102

Mursil II, 192

Mut, 111, 117, 118

Napata, 15, 50

Napoleon I, 7

Napoleon III, 24

Narmer, 143, 144

Naville, E. de, 31, 95 _et seq._; 102 _et seq._

Necho, 154

Nectanebo, 20

Nefer-ka-Ra, 68

Nefer-ka-ra-em-per-Amen, 129

Nekht, tomb of, 150

Nesamen, Pharaoh’s Scribe, 129

Ne-user-Ra, temple of, 69

Nezem-mut, Queen, 160

Osireion, Abydos, 31, 102 _et seq._

Osiris, 139; bed of, 140, 141

Osiris-Apis (Serapis), 19

Paser, Governor of Thebes, 128, 129

Passalacqua, 10

Pedubast, 201

Peet, Prof. T. E., 132, 137

Pentaur, poem of, 116

Pepy I, 70, 218

Pepy II, 70

Perring, 14

Petrie, Sir W. M. F., 47, 53, 61, 66, 67, 73, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 81, 102, 108, 115, 136, 141, 145, 205, 216, 231, 247

Pewero, 128, 129

Pharaoh, conditions of rule of, 215 _et seq._

Philæ, Obelisk of, 13

Philip Arrhidæus, chapel of, at Karnak, 121

Pimay, 201

Pinezem I and II, 160

Pococke, 91

Pool of Osiris, Abydos, 102 _et seq._

Predynastic tombs, 138

Priesthood, the Egyptian, 223

Proctor, R. A., 54

Psamtek II, 154

Ptah, 19

Ptah-hetep, 71

Ptolemaic work at Karnak, 110, 113, 125

Punt, 32, 95

Pyramids, the, 48 _et seq._

Pyramid temples, 58 _et seq._

Pyramid texts, 70, 71

Quft, 161

Rainer Papyrus, 201

Ramses I, 110, 112, 113

Ramses II, 26, 40, 113, 114, 117, 160, 162, 218

Ramses III, 31, 111, 148, 160, 165, 219, 233

Ramses IV and V, 166

Ramses VI, 166, 180

Ramses IX, 128, 232

Ramses X, 129

Ramses XII, 151

Razedef, 49, 52

Rehoboam, 112

Reisner, G. A., 68

Rekhmara, 122, 150, 129

Rosellini, 14

Rosetta Stone, the, 13

Sadhe, Princess, 99

Said, Khedive, 24–7

Sallier Papyrus, 227

Saqqara, Mariette’s work at, 31; stepped pyramid at, 70

Sat-hathor-ant, Princess, 79

“Scorpion,” the, 143

Scribes, the Egyptian, 226 _et seq._

Sebek-em-saf, 13, 130, 146

Sekhmet, 117

Semti, seal of, 145

Seneferu, pyramid of, 51, 69, 146, 199

Senmut, 89, 122, 221

Senusert I, 72

Senusert II, 51, 73, 75, 87, 231

Senusert III, 73, 125

Seqenen Ra, 160, 164, 217

Serabit el-Khadem, 15

Serapeum, Serapis, 19 _et seq._

Setna-Khaemuast, 40, 223

Sety I, 11, 113, 148, 160, 163; tomb of, 153 _et seq._

Sety II, 113

Sheshanq, 112

Shubbiluliuma, 192

Siptah, 166, 168

Smenkhara, 188, 189

Society in Egypt, 214 _et seq._

Sphinx, temple of, 60

Strabo, 19, 102, 103, 151

Strikes of workmen, 233, 234

Taharqa, 112

Tanutamen, 112

Tell el-Amarna, 174; tablets, 178; art of, 197

Temples, Der el-Bahri, 86, 87 _et seq._; Karnak, 105 _et seq._

Teti, 70

Thothmes I, 119

Thothmes II, 119, 160

Thothmes III, 26, 100, 119, 120, 121, 122, 125, 160, 218

Thothmes IV, 166, 168

Throne of Tutankhamen, 196

Ti, 71

Tiy, Queen, 168, 171, 173, 174

Tuau, 168 _et seq._

Tutankhamen, 36, 113, 175, 177 _et seq._; reign of, 188

Tutankhaten, 174

Umm el-Ga’ab, 140

Una, 218, 221

Unas, 70

Valley of the Kings, 148 _et seq._

Vizier, duties of, 219–221

Vyse, Col. H., 14, 64, 65

Weigall, 168, 172

Westcar Papyrus, 199

Wilkinson, 92

Young, 14

Yuaa, tomb of, 168 _et seq._

Zawiyet el-Aryan, 68

Zazamankh, 199

Zer, King, 142, 144, 145

Zeser, pyramid of, 51, 70, 146

THE END

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to the corresponding illustrations.

The index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.