Book: The Treasury of Ancient Egypt

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But though the eyes passed from object to object, they ever returned to
the two lidless gilded coffins in which the owners of this room of the
dead lay as though peacefully sleeping. First above Yuaa and then above
his wife the electric lamps were held, and as one looked down into their
quiet faces there was almost the feeling that they would presently open
their eyes and blink at the light. The stern features of the old man
commanded one's attention, again and again our gaze was turned from this
mass of wealth to this sleeping figure in whose honour it had been
placed here.

At last we returned to the surface to allow the thoughts opportunity to
collect themselves and the pulses time to quiet down, for, even to the
most unemotional, a discovery of this kind, bringing one into the very
presence of the past, has really an unsteadying effect. Then once more
we descended, and made the preliminary arrangements for the cataloguing
of the antiquities. It was now that the real work began, and, once the
excitement was past, there was a monotony of labour to be faced which
put a very considerable strain on the powers of all concerned. The hot
days when one sweated over the heavy packing-cases, and the bitterly
cold nights when one lay at the mouth of the tomb under the stars,
dragged on for many a week; and when at last the long train of boxes was
carried down to the Nile _en route_ for the Cairo Museum, it was with a
sigh of relief that the official returned to his regular work.

This, of course, was a very exceptional discovery. Mr Davis has made
other great finds, but to me they have not equalled in dramatic interest
the discovery just recorded. Even in this royal valley, however, there
is much drudgery to be faced, and for a large part of the season's work
it is the excavator's business to turn over endless masses of rock
chippings, and to dig huge holes which have no interest for the patient
digger. Sometimes the mouth of a tomb is bared, and is entered with the
profoundest hopes, which are at once dashed by the sudden abrupt ending
of the cutting a few yards from the surface. At other times a
tomb-chamber is reached and is found to be absolutely empty.

At another part of Thebes the well-known Egyptologist, Professor
Schiaparelli, had excavated for a number of years without finding
anything of much importance, when suddenly one fine day he struck the
mouth of a large tomb which was evidently intact. I was at once informed
of the discovery, and proceeded to the spot as quickly as possible. The
mouth of the tomb was approached down a flight of steep, rough steps,
still half-choked with _debris_. At the bottom of this the entrance of a
passage running into the hillside was blocked by a wall of rough stones.
After photographing and removing this, we found ourselves in a long, low
tunnel, blocked by a second wall a few yards ahead. Both these walls
were intact, and we realised that we were about to see what probably no
living man had ever seen before: the absolutely intact remains of a rich
Theban of the Imperial Age--_i.e._, about 1200 or 1300 B.C. When this
second wall was taken down we passed into a carefully-cut passage high
enough to permit of one standing upright.

At the end of this passage a plain wooden door barred our progress. The
wood retained the light colour of fresh deal, and looked for all the
world as though it had been set up but yesterday. A heavy wooden lock,
such as is used at the present day, held the door fast. A neat bronze
handle on the side of the door was connected by a spring to a wooden
knob set in the masonry door-post; and this spring was carefully sealed
with a small dab of stamped clay. The whole contrivance seemed so modern
that Professor Schiaparelli called to his servant for the key, who quite
seriously replied, "I don't know where it is, sir." He then thumped the
door with his hand to see whether it would be likely to give; and, as
the echoes reverberated through the tomb, one felt that the mummy, in
the darkness beyond, might well think that his resurrection call had
come. One almost expected him to rise, like the dead knights of Kildare
in the Irish legend, and to ask, "Is it time?" for the three thousand
years which his religion had told him was the duration of his life in
the tomb was already long past.

Meanwhile we turned our attention to the objects which stood in the
passage, having been placed there at the time of the funeral, owing to
the lack of room in the burial-chamber. Here a vase, rising upon a
delicately shaped stand, attracted the eye by its beauty of form; and
here a bedstead caused us to exclaim at its modern appearance. A
palm-leaf fan, used by the ancient Egyptians to keep the flies off their
wines and unguents, stood near a now empty jar; and near by a basket of
dried-up fruit was to be seen. This dried fruit gave the impression that
the tomb was perhaps a few months old, but there was nothing else to be
seen which suggested that the objects were even as much as a year old.
It was almost impossible to believe, and quite impossible to realise,
that we were standing where no man had stood for well over three
thousand years; and that we were actually breathing the air which had
remained sealed in the passage since the ancient priests had closed the
entrance thirteen hundred years before Christ.

Before we could proceed farther, many flashlight photographs had to be
taken, and drawings made of the doorway; and after this a panel of the
woodwork had to be removed with a fret-saw in order that the lock and
seal might not be damaged. At last, however, this was accomplished, and
the way into the tomb-chamber was open. Stepping through the frame of
the door, we found ourselves in an unencumbered portion of the floor,
while around us in all directions stood the funeral furniture, and on
our left the coffins of the deceased noble and his wife loomed large.
Everything looked new and undecayed, and even the order in which the
objects were arranged suggested a tidying-up done that very morning. The
gravel on the floor was neatly smoothed, and not a speck of dust was
anywhere to be observed. Over the large outer coffin a pall of fine
linen was laid, not rotting and falling to pieces like the cloth of
mediaeval times we see in our museums, but soft and strong like the
sheets of our beds. In the clear space before the coffin stood a wooden
pedestal in the form of a miniature lotus column. On the top of this,
resting on three wooden prongs, was a small copper dish, in which were
the ashes of incense, and the little stick used for stirring them. One
asked oneself in bewilderment whether the ashes here, seemingly not
cold, had truly ceased to glow at a time when Rome and Greece were
undreamt of, when Assyria did not exist, and when the Exodus of the
Children of Israel was yet unaccomplished.

On low tables round cakes of bread were laid out, not cracked and
shrivelled, but smooth and brown, with a kind of white-of-egg glaze upon
them. Onions and fruit were also spread out; and the fruit of the _dom_
palm was to be seen in plenty. In various parts of the chamber there
were numerous bronze vessels of different shapes, intended for the
holding of milk and other drinkables.

Well supplied with food and drink, the senses of the dead man were
soothed by a profusion of flowers, which lay withered but not decayed
beside the coffin, and which at the time of the funeral must have filled
the chamber with their sweetness. Near the doorway stood an upright
wooden chest closed with a lid. Opening this, we found it to contain the
great ceremonial wig of the deceased man, which was suspended from a
rail passing across the top of the chest, and hung free of the sides and
bottom. The black hair was plaited into hundreds of little tails, but in
size the wig was not unlike those of the early eighteenth century in
Europe. Chairs, beds, and other pieces of furniture were arranged around
the room, and at one side there were a number of small chests and boxes
piled up against the wall. We opened one or two of these, and found them
to contain delicate little vases of glass, stone, and metal, wrapped
round with rags to prevent them breaking. These, like everything else
in the tomb, were new and fresh, and showed no trace of the passing of
the years.

The coffins, of course, were hidden by the great casing in which each
rested, and which itself was partly hidden by the linen pall. Nothing
could be touched for many days, until photographs had been taken and
records made; and we therefore returned through the long passage to the
light of the day.

There must have been a large number of intact tombs to be found when
first the modern interest in Egyptian antiquities developed; but the
market thus created had to be supplied, and gangs of illicit diggers
made short work of the most accessible tombs. This illegal excavation,
of course, continues to some extent at the present day, in spite of all
precautions, but the results are becoming less and less proportionate to
the labour expended and risk taken. A native likes best to do a little
quiet digging in his own back yard and to admit nobody else into the
business. To illustrate this, I may mention a tragedy which was brought
to my notice a few years ago. A certain native discovered the entrance
of a tomb in the floor of his stable, and at once proceeded to worm his
way down the tunnel. That was the end of the native. His wife, finding
that he had not returned two hours or so later, went down the newly
found tunnel after him. That was the end of her also. In turn, three
other members of the family went down into the darkness; and that was
the end of them. A native official was then called, and, lighting his
way with a candle, penetrated down the winding passage. The air was so
foul that he was soon obliged to retreat, but he stated that he was just
able to see in the distance ahead the bodies of the unfortunate
peasants, all of whom had been overcome by what he quaintly described as
"the evil lighting and bad climate." Various attempts at the rescue of
the bodies having failed, we gave orders that this tomb should be
regarded as their sepulchre, and that its mouth should be sealed up.
According to the natives, there was evidently a vast hoard of wealth
stored at the bottom of this tomb, and the would-be robbers had met
their death at the hands of the demon in charge of it, who had seized
each man by the throat as he came down the tunnel and had strangled him.

The Egyptian peasants have a very strong belief in the power of such
creatures of the spirit world. A native who was attempting recently to
discover hidden treasure in a certain part of the desert, sacrificed a
lamb each night above the spot where he believed the treasure to lie, in
order to propitiate the _djin_ who guarded it. On the other hand,
however, they have no superstition as regards the sanctity of the
ancient dead, and they do not hesitate on that ground to rifle the
tombs. Thousands of graves have been desecrated by these seekers after
treasure, and it is very largely the result of this that scientific
excavation is often so fruitless nowadays. When an excavator states that
he has discovered a tomb, one takes it for granted that he means a
_plundered_ tomb, unless he definitely says that it was intact, in which
case one calls him a lucky fellow and regards him with green envy.

And thus we come back to my remarks at the beginning of this chapter,
that there is a painful disillusionment awaiting the man who comes to
dig in Egypt in the hope of finding the golden cities of the Pharaohs or
the bejewelled bodies of their dead. Of the latter there are but a few
left to be found. The discovery of one of them forms the subject of the
next chapter.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE TOMB OF TIY AND AKHNATON.[1]


[Footnote 1: A few paragraphs in this chapter also appear in my
'Life and Times of Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt.'
(Wm. Blackwood & Sons, 1910.)]

In January 1907 the excavations in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings
at Thebes, which are being conducted each year by Mr Davis, brought to
light the entrance of a tomb which, by its style, appeared to be that of
a royal personage of the XVIIIth Dynasty. The Valley lies behind the
cliffs which form the western boundary of Thebes, and is approached by a
long winding road running between the rocks and rugged hills of the
Lybian desert. Here the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth to the XXth Dynasties
were buried in large sepulchres cut into the sides of the hills; and the
present excavations have for their object the removal of the _debris_
which has collected at the foot of these hills, in order that the tombs
hidden beneath may be revealed. About sixty tombs are now open, some of
which were already known to Greek and Roman travellers; and there are
probably not more than two or three still to be discovered.

When this new tomb-entrance was uncovered I was at once notified, and
proceeded with all despatch to the Valley. It was not long before we
were able to enter the tomb. A rough stairway led down into the
hillside, bringing us to the mouth of a passage which was entirely
blocked by a wall of built stones. On removing this wall we found
ourselves in a small passage, descending at a sharp incline to a chamber
which could be seen a few yards farther on. Instead of this passage
being free from _debris_, however, as we had expected on finding the
entrance-wall intact, it was partly filled with fallen stones which
seemed to be the ruins of an earlier entrance-wall. On top of this heap
of stones lay one of the sides of a large funeral shrine, almost
entirely blocking the passage. This shrine, as we later saw, was in the
form of a great box-like sarcophagus, made of cedar-wood covered with
gold, and it had been intended as an outer covering for the coffin of
the deceased person. It was, however, not put together: three sides of
it were leaning against the walls of the burial-chamber, and the fourth
was here in the passage. Either it was never built up, or else it was in
process of being taken out of the tomb again when the work was
abandoned.


[Illustration: PL. XVIII. The entrance of the tomb of Queen Tiy, with
Egyptian policeman standing beside it. On
the left is the later tomb of Rameses X.]

[_Photo by R. Paul._


To pass this portion of the shrine which lay in the passage without
doing it damage was no easy matter. We could not venture to move it, as
the wood was rotten; and indeed, for over a year it remained in its
original position. We therefore made a bridge of planks within a few
inches of the low roof, and on this we wriggled ourselves across into
the unencumbered passage beyond. In the funeral-chamber, besides the
other portions of the shrine, we found at one corner a splendid coffin,
in the usual form of a recumbent figure, inlaid in a dazzling manner
with rare stones and coloured glass. The coffin had originally lain upon
a wooden bier, in the form of a lion-legged couch; but this had
collapsed and the mummy had fallen to the ground, the lid of the coffin
being partly thrown off by the fall, thus exposing the head and feet of
the body, from which the bandages had decayed and fallen off. In the
powerful glare of the electric light which we carried, the bare skull,
with a golden vulture upon it, could be seen protruding from the remains
of the linen bandages and from the sheets of flexible gold-foil in
which, as we afterwards found, the whole body was wrapped. The
inscription on the coffin, the letters of which were made of rare
stones, gave the titles of Akhnaton, "the beautiful child of the Sun";
but turning to the shrine we found other inscriptions stating that King
Akhnaton had made it for his mother, Queen Tiy, and thus no immediate
reply could be given to those at the mouth of the tomb who called to us
to know which of the Pharaoh's of Egypt had been found.

In a recess in the wall above the body there stood four alabaster
"canopy" jars, each with a lid exquisitely sculptured in the form of a
human head. In another corner there was a box containing many little
toilet vases and utensils of porcelain. A few alabaster vases and other
objects were lying in various parts of the chamber, arranged in some
sort of rough order.

Nothing, of course, could yet be touched, and for several days, during
the lengthy process of photographing and recording the contents of the
tomb _in situ_, no further information could be obtained as to the
identity of the owner of the tomb. The shrine was certainly made for
Queen Tiy, and so too were the toilet utensils, judging by an
inscription upon one of them which gave the names of Tiy and her
husband, King Amenhotep III., the parents of Akhnaton. It was,
therefore, not a surprise when a passing doctor declared the much broken
bones to be those of a woman--that is to say, those of Queen Tiy. For
reasons which will presently become apparent, it had been difficult to
believe that Akhnaton could have been buried in this Valley, and one was
very ready to suppose that the coffin bearing his name had but been
given by him to his mother.

The important discovery was now announced, and considerable interest and
excitement. At the end of the winter the various archaeologists departed
to their several countries, and it fell to me to despatch the
antiquities to the Cairo Museum, and to send the bones, soaked in wax to
prevent their breakage, to Dr Elliot Smith, to be examined by that
eminent authority. It may be imagined that my surprise was considerable
when I received a letter from him reading--"Are you sure that the bones
you sent me are those which were found in the tomb? Instead of the bones
of an old woman, you have sent me those of a young man. Surely there is
some mistake."

There was, however, no mistake. Dr Elliot Smith later informed me that
the bones were those of a young man of about twenty-eight years of age,
and at first this description did not seem to tally with that of
Akhnaton, who was always thought to have been a man of middle age. But
there is now no possibility of doubt that the coffin and mummy were
those of this extraordinary Pharaoh, although the tomb and funeral
furniture belonged to Queen Tiy. Dr Elliot Smith's decision was, of
course, somewhat disconcerting to those who had written of the mortal
remains of the great Queen; but it is difficult to speak of Tiy without
also referring to her famous son Akhnaton, and in these articles he had
received full mention.

About the year B.C. 1500 the throne of Egypt fell to the young brother
of Queen Hatshepsut, Thutmosis III., and under his vigorous rule the
country rose to a height of power never again equalled. Amenhotep II.
succeeded to an empire which extended from the Sudan to the Euphrates
and to the Greek Islands; and when he died he left these great
possessions almost intact to his son, Thutmosis IV., the grandfather of
Akhnaton. It is important to notice the chronology of this period. The
mummy of Thutmosis IV. has been shown by Dr Elliot Smith to be that of a
man of not more than twenty-six years of age; but we know that his son
Amenhotep III. was old enough to hunt lions at about the time of his
father's death, and that he was already married to Queen Tiy a year
later. Thus one must suppose that Thutmosis IV. was a father at the age
of thirteen or fourteen, and that Amenhotep III. was married to Tiy at
about the same age. The wife of Thutmosis IV. was probably a Syrian
princess, and it must have been during her regency that Amenhotep III.
married Tiy, who was not of royal blood. Amenhotep and Tiy introduced
into Egypt the luxuries of Asia; and during their brilliant reign the
Nile Valley was more open to Syrian influence than it had ever been
before. The language of Babylon was perhaps the Court tongue, and the
correspondence was written in cuneiform instead of in the hieratic
script of Egypt. Amenhotep III., as has been said, was probably partly
Asiatic; and there is, perhaps, some reason to suppose that Yuaa, the
father of Queen Tiy, was also a Syrian. One has, therefore, to picture
the Egyptian Court at this time as being saturated with foreign ideas,
which clashed with those of the orthodox Egyptians.

Queen Tiy bore several children to the King; but it was not until they
had reigned over twenty years that a son and heir was born, whom they
named Amenhotep, that being changed later to Akhnaton. It is probable
that he first saw the light in the royal palace at Thebes, which was
situated on the edge of the desert at the foot of the western hills. It
was an extensive and roomy structure, lightly built and gaily decorated.
The ceiling and pavements of its halls were fantastically painted with
scenes of animal life: wild cattle ran through reedy swamps beneath
one's feet, and many-coloured fish swam in the water; while overhead
flights of pigeons, white against a blue sky, passed across the hall,
and the wild duck hastened towards the open casements. Through curtained
doorways one might obtain glimpses of a garden planted with flowers
foreign to Egypt; and on the east of the palace the King had made a
great pleasure-lake for the Queen, surrounded by the trees of Asia.
Here, floating in her golden barge, which was named _Aton-gleams_, the
Queen might look westwards over the tree-tops to the splendid Theban
hills towering above the palace, and eastwards to the green valley of
the Nile and the three great limestone hills beyond. Amenhotep III. has
been rightly called the "Magnificent," and one may well believe that his
son Akhnaton was born to the sound of music and to the clink of golden
wine-cups. Fragments of countless thousands of wine-jars and blue
fayence drinking-vessels have been found in the ruins of the palace;
and contemporary objects and paintings show us some of the exquisitely
wrought bowls of gold and silver which must have graced the royal
tables, and the charming toilet utensils which were to be found in the
sleeping apartments.

While the luxurious Court rejoiced at the birth of this Egypto-Asiatic
prince, one feels that the ancient priesthood of Amon-Ra must have stood
aloof, and must have looked askance at the baby who was destined one day
to be their master. This priesthood was perhaps the proudest and most
conservative community which conservative Egypt ever produced. It
demanded implicit obedience to its stiff and ancient conventions, and it
refused to recognise the growing tendency towards religious speculation.
One of the great gods of Syria was Aton, the god of the sun; and his
recognition at the Theban Court was a source of constant irritation to
the ministers of Amon-Ra.

Probably they would have taken stronger measures to resist this foreign
god had it not been for the fact that Atum of Heliopolis, an ancient god
of Egypt, was on the one hand closely akin to Ra, the associated deity
with Amon, and on the other hand to Aton of Syria. Thus Aton might be
regarded merely as another name for Ra or Amon-Ra; but the danger to the
old _regime_ lay in the fact that with the worship of Aton there went a
certain amount of freethought. The sun and its warm rays were the
heritage of all mankind; and the speculative mind of the Asiatic,
always in advance of the less imaginative Egyptian, had not failed to
collect to the Aton-worship a number of semi-philosophical teachings far
broader than the strict doctrines of Amon-Ra could tolerate.


[Illustration: PL. XIX. Toilet-spoons of carved wood, discovered in
tombs of the Eighteenth Dynasty. That on the
right has a movable lid.
--CAIRO MUSEUM.]

[_Photo by E. Brugsch Pasha._


There is much reason to suppose that Queen Tiy was the prime factor in
the new movement. It may, perhaps, be worth noting that her father was a
priest of the Egyptian god Min, who corresponded to the North Syrian
Aton in his capacity as a god of vegetation; and she may have imbibed
something of the broader doctrines from him. It is the barge upon _her_
pleasure-lake which is called _Aton-gleams_, and it is _her_ private
artist who is responsible for one of the first examples of the new style
of art which begins to appear at this period. Egyptian art was bound
down by conventions jealously guarded by the priesthood, and the slight
tendency to break away from these, which now becomes apparent, is
another sign of the broadening of thought under the reign of Amenhotep
III. and Tiy.

King Amenhotep III. does not seem to have been a man of strong
character, and in the changes which took place at this time he does not
appear to have taken so very large a part. He always showed the most
profound respect for, and devotion to, his Queen; and one is inclined to
regard him as a tool in her hands. According to some accounts he reigned
only thirty years, but there are contemporary monuments dated in his
thirty-sixth year, and it seems probable that for the last few years he
was reigning only in name, and that in reality his ministers, under the
regency of Queen Tiy, governed the land. Amenhotep III. was perhaps
during his last years insane or stricken with some paralytic disease,
for we read of an Asiatic monarch sending a miracle-working image to
Egypt, apparently for the purpose of attempting to cure him. It must
have been during these six years of absolute power, while Akhnaton was a
boy, that the Queen pushed forward her reforms and encouraged the
breaking down of the old traditions, especially those relating to the
worship of Amon-Ra.

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