Book: The Treasury of Ancient Egypt

A >> Arthur E. P. B. Weigall >> The Treasury of Ancient Egypt




As a protest against the dilettante antiquarian (who is often as
objectionable a character as the unwashed scholar) there are certain
archaeologists who wear the modern equivalent of a hair shirt, who walk
abroad with pebbles in their shoes, and who speak of the sitting upon an
easy-chair as a moral set-back. The strained and posed life which such
savants lead is not to be regarded as a rough one; for there is constant
luxury in the thought of their own toughness, and infinite comfort in
the sense of superiority which they permit themselves to feel. It is not
roughing it to feed from a bare board when a tablecloth adds
insignificantly to the impedimenta of the camp: it is pretending to
rough it. It is not roughing it to eat tinned food out of the tin when a
plate costs a penny or two: it is either hypocrisy or slovenliness.

To rough it is to lead an exposed life under conditions which preclude
the possibility of indulging in certain comforts which, in their place
and at the right time, are enjoyed and appreciated. A man may well be
said to rough it when he camps in the open, and dispenses with the
luxuries of civilisation; when he pours a jug of water over himself
instead of lying in ecstasy in an enamelled bath; eats a meal of two
undefined courses instead of one of five or six; twangs a banjo to the
moon instead of ravishing his ear with a sonata upon the grand piano;
rolls himself in a blanket instead of sitting over the library fire;
turns in at 9 P.M. and rises ere the sun has topped the hills instead of
keeping late hours and lying abed; sleeps on the ground or upon a narrow
camp-bed (which occasionally collapses) instead of sprawling at his ease
in a four-poster.

A life of this kind cannot fail to be of benefit to the health; and,
after all, the work of a healthy man is likely to be of greater value
than that of one who is anaemic or out of condition. It is the first duty
of a scholar to give attention to his muscles, for he, more than other
men, has the opportunity to become enfeebled by indoor work. Few
students can give sufficient time to physical exercise; but in Egypt the
exercise is taken during the course of the work, and not an hour is
wasted. The muscles harden and the health is ensured without the
expending of a moment's thought upon the subject.

Archaeology is too often considered to be the pursuit of weak-chested
youths and eccentric old men: it is seldom regarded as a possible
vocation for normal persons of sound health and balanced mind. An
athletic and robust young man, clothed in the ordinary costume of a
gentleman, will tell a new acquaintance that he is an Egyptologist,
whereupon the latter will exclaim in surprise: "Not really?--you don't
look like one." A kind of mystery surrounds the science. The layman
supposes the antiquarian to be a very profound and erudite person, who
has pored over his books since a baby, and has shunned those games and
sports which generally make for a healthy constitution. The study of
Egyptology is thought to require a depth of knowledge that places its
students outside the limits of normal learning, and presupposes in them
an unhealthy amount of schooling. This, of course, is absurd.

Nobody would expect an engineer who built bridges and dams, or a great
military commander, to be a seedy individual with longish hair, pale
face, and weak eyesight; and yet probably he has twice the brain
capacity of the average archaeologist. It is because the life of the
antiquarian is, or is generally thought to be, unhealthy and sluggish
that he is so universally regarded as a worm.

Some attempt should be made to rid the science of this forbidding
aspect; and for this end students ought to do their best to make it
possible for them to be regarded as ordinary, normal, healthy men. Let
them discourage the popular belief that they are prodigies, freaks of
mental expansion. Let their first desire be to show themselves good,
useful, hardy, serviceable citizens or subjects, and they will do much
to remove the stigma from their profession. Let them be acquainted with
the feeling of a bat or racket in the hands, or a saddle between the
knees; let them know the rough path over the mountains, or the
diving-pool amongst the rocks, and their mentality will not be found to
suffer. A winter's "roughing it" in the Theban necropolis or elsewhere
would do much to banish the desire for perpetual residence at home in
the west; and a season in Egypt would alter the point of view of the
student more considerably than he could imagine. Moreover, the
appearance of the scholar prancing about upon his fiery steed (even
though it be but an Egyptian donkey) will help to dispel the current
belief that he is incapable of physical exertion; and his reddened face
rising, like the morning sun, above the rocks on some steep pathway over
the Theban hills will give the passer-by cause to alter his opinion of
those who profess and call themselves Egyptologists.

As a second argument a subject must be introduced which will be
distasteful to a large number of archaeologists. I refer to the
narrow-minded policy of the curators of certain European and American
museums, whose desire it is at all costs to place Egyptian and other
eastern antiquities actually before the eyes of western students, in
order that they and the public may have the entertainment of examining
at home the wonders of lands which they make no effort to visit. I have
no hesitation in saying that the craze for recklessly bringing away
unique antiquities from Egypt to be exhibited in western museums for the
satisfaction of the untravelled man, is the most pernicious bit of folly
to be found in the whole broad realm of archaeological misbehaviour.

A museum has three main justifications for its existence. In the first
place, like a home for lost dogs, it is a repository for stray objects.
No curator should endeavour to procure for his museum any antiquity
which could be safely exhibited on its original site* and in its original
position. He should receive only those stray objects which otherwise
would be lost to sight, or those which would be in danger of
destruction. The curator of a picture gallery is perfectly justified in
purchasing any old master which is legitimately on sale; but he is not
justified in obtaining a painting direct from the walls of a church
where it has hung for centuries, and where it should still hang. In the
same way a curator of a museum of antiquities should make it his first
endeavour not so much to obtain objects direct from Egypt as to gather
in those antiquities which are in the possession of private persons who
cannot be expected to look after them with due care.

*Transcriber's note: Original text read "sight".

In the second place, a museum is a store-house for historical documents
such as papyri and ostraca, and in this respect it is simply to be
regarded as a kind of public library, capable of unlimited and perfectly
legitimate expansion. Such objects are not often found by robbers in the
tombs which they have violated, nor are they snatched from temples to
which they belong. They are almost always found accidentally, and in a
manner which precludes any possibility of their actual position having
much significance. The immediate purchase, for example, by museum agents
of the Tell el Amarna tablets--the correspondence of a great
Pharaoh--which had been discovered by accident, and would perhaps have
been destroyed, was most wise.

In the third place, a museum is a permanent exhibition for the
instruction of the public, and for the enlightenment of students
desirous of obtaining comparative knowledge in any one branch of their
work, and for this purpose it should be well supplied not so much with
original antiquities as with casts, facsimiles, models, and
reproductions of all sorts.

To be a serviceable exhibition both for the student and the public a
museum does not need to possess only original antiquities. On the
contrary, as a repository for stray objects, a museum is not to be
expected to have a complete series of original antiquities in any
class, nor is it the business of the curator to attempt to fill up the
gaps by purchase, except in special cases. To do so is to encourage the
straying of other objects. The curator so often labours under the
delusion that it is his first business to collect together as large a
number as possible of valuable masterpieces. In reality that is a very
secondary matter. His first business, if he is an Egyptologist, is to
see that Egyptian masterpieces remain in Egypt so far as is practicable;
and his next is to save what has irrevocably strayed from straying
further. If the result of this policy is a poor collection, then he must
devote so much the more time and money to obtaining facsimiles and
reproductions. The keeper of a home for lost dogs does not search the
city for a collie with red spots to complete his series of collies, or
for a peculiarly elongated dachshund to head his procession of those
animals. The fewer dogs he has got the better he is pleased, since this
is an indication that a larger number are in safe keeping in their
homes. The home of Egyptian antiquities is Egypt, a fact which will
become more and more realised as travelling is facilitated.

But the curator generally has the insatiable appetite of the collector.
The authorities of one museum bid vigorously against those of another at
the auction which constantly goes on in the shops of the dealers in
antiquities. They pay huge prices for original statues, vases, or
sarcophagi: prices which would procure for them the finest series of
casts or facsimiles, or would give them valuable additions to their
legitimate collection of papyri. And what is it all for? It is not for
the benefit of the general public, who could not tell the difference
between a genuine antiquity and a forgery or reproduction, and who would
be perfectly satisfied with the ordinary, miscellaneous collection of
minor antiquities. It is not for that class of Egyptologist which
endeavours to study Egyptian antiquities in Egypt. It is almost solely
for the benefit of the student and scholar who cannot, or will not, go
to Egypt. Soon it comes to be the curator's pride to observe that
savants are hastening to his museum to make their studies. His civic
conceit is tickled by the spectacle of Egyptologists travelling long
distances to take notes in his metropolitan museum. He delights to be
able to say that the student can study Egyptology in his well-ordered
galleries as easily as he can in Egypt itself.

All this is as wrong-headed as it can be. While he is filling his museum
he does not seem to understand that he is denuding every necropolis in
Egypt. I will give one or two instances of the destruction wrought by
western museums. I them at random from my memory.

In the year 1900 the then Inspector-General of Antiquities in Upper
Egypt discovered a tomb at Thebes in which there was a beautiful relief
sculptured on one of the walls, representing Queen Tiy. This he
photographed (Plate XXVI.), and the tomb was once more buried. In 1908 I
chanced upon this monument, and proposed to open it up as a "show place"
for visitors; but alas!--the relief of the queen had disappeared, and
only a gaping hole in the wall remained. It appears that robbers had
entered the tomb at about the time of the change of inspectors; and,
realising that this relief would make a valuable exhibit for some
western museum, they had cut out of the wall as much as they could
conveniently carry away--namely, the head and upper part of the figure
of Tiy. The hieroglyphic inscription which was sculptured near the head
was carefully erased, in case it should contain some reference to the
name of the tomb from which they were taking the fragment; and over the
face some false inscriptions were scribbled in Greek characters, so as
to give the stone an unrecognisable appearance. In this condition it was
conveyed to a dealer's shop, and it now forms one of the exhibits in the
Royal Museum at Brussels. The photograph on Plate XXVII. shows the
fragment as it appears after being cleaned.


[Illustration: PL. XXVII. A Relief representing Queen Tiy, from the tomb
of Userhat, Thebes.
--BRUSSELS MUSEUM.
(See PL. xxvi.)]

[_Photo by T. Capart._


In the same museum, and in others also, there are fragments of beautiful
sculpture hacked out of the walls of the famous tomb of Khaemhat at
Thebes. In the British Museum there are large pieces of wall-paintings
broken out of Theban tombs. The famous inscription in the tomb of Anena
at Thebes, which was one of the most important texts of the early
XVIIIth Dynasty, was smashed to pieces several years ago to be sold in
small sections to museums; and the scholar to whom this volume is
dedicated was instrumental in purchasing back for us eleven of the
fragments, which have now been replaced in the tomb, and, with certain
fragments in Europe, form the sole remnant of the once imposing stela.
One of the most important scenes out of the famous reliefs of the
Expedition to Pount, at Der el Bahri, found its way into the hands of
the dealers, and was ultimately purchased by our museum in Cairo. The
beautiful and important reliefs which decorated the tomb of Horemheb at
Sakkara, hacked out of the walls by robbers, are now exhibited in six
different museums: London, Leyden, Vienna, Bologna, Alexandria, and
Cairo. Of the two hundred tombs of the nobles now to be seen at Thebes,
I cannot, at the moment, recall a single one which has not suffered in
this manner at some time previous to the organisation of the present
strict supervision.

The curators of western museums will argue that had they not purchased
these fragments they would have fallen into the hands of less desirable
owners. This is quite true, and, indeed, it forms the nearest approach
to justification that can be discovered. Nevertheless, it has to be
remembered that this purchasing of antiquities is the best stimulus to
the robber, who is well aware that a market is always to be found for
his stolen goods. It may seem difficult to censure the purchaser, for
certainly the fragments were "stray" when the bargain was struck, and it
is the business of the curator to collect stray antiquities. But why
were they stray? Why were they ever cut from the walls of the Egyptian
monuments? Assuredly because the robbers knew that museums would
purchase them. If there had been no demand there would have been no
supply.

To ask the curators to change their policy, and to purchase only those
objects which are legitimately on sale, would, of course, be as futile
as to ask the nations to disarm. The rivalry between museum and museum
would alone prevent a cessation of this indiscriminate traffic. I can
see only one way in which a more sane and moral attitude can be
introduced, and that is by the development of the habit of visiting
Egypt and of working upon archaeological subjects in the shadow of the
actual monuments. Only the person who is familiar with Egypt can know
the cost of supplying the stay-at-home scholar with exhibits for his
museums. Only one who has resided in Egypt can understand the fact that
Egypt itself is the true museum for Egyptian antiquities. He alone can
appreciate the work of the Egyptian Government in preserving the remains
of ancient days.

The resident in Egypt, interested in archaeology, comes to look with a
kind of horror upon museums, and to feel extraordinary hostility to what
may be called the museum spirit. He sees with his own eyes the
half-destroyed tombs, which to the museum curator are things far off and
not visualised. While the curator is blandly saying to his visitor:
"See, I will now show you a beautiful fragment of sculpture from a
distant and little-known Theban tomb," the white resident in Egypt, with
black murder in his heart, is saying: "See, I will show you a beautiful
tomb of which the best part of one wall is utterly destroyed that a
fragment might be hacked out for a distant and little-known European
museum."

To a resident in Europe, Egypt seems to be a strange and barbaric land,
far, far away beyond the hills and seas; and her monuments are thought
to be at the mercy of wild Bedwin Arabs. In the less recent travel books
there is not a published drawing of a temple in the Nile valley but has
its complement of Arab figures grouped in picturesque attitudes. Here a
fire is being lit at the base of a column, and the black smoke curls
upwards to destroy the paintings thereon; here a group of children sport
upon the lap of a colossal statue; and here an Arab tethers his camel at
the steps of the high altar. It is felt, thus, that the objects
exhibited in European museums have been _rescued_ from Egypt and
recovered from a distant land. This is not so. They have been snatched
from Egypt and lost to the country of their origin.

He who is well acquainted with Egypt knows that hundreds of watchmen,
and a small army of inspectors, engineers, draughtsmen, surveyors, and
other officials now guard these monuments, that strong iron gates bar
the doorways against unauthorised visitors, that hourly patrols pass
from monument to monument, and that any damage done is punished by long
terms of imprisonment; he knows that the Egyptian Government spends
hundreds of thousands of pounds upon safeguarding the ancient remains;
he is aware that the organisation of the Department of Antiquities is an
extremely important branch of the Ministry of Public Works. He has seen
the temples swept and garnished, the tombs lit with electric light, and
the sanctuaries carefully rebuilt. He has spun out to the Pyramids in
the electric tram or in a taxi-cab; has strolled in evening dress and
opera hat through the halls of Karnak, after dinner at the hotel; and
has rung up the Theban Necropolis on the telephone.

A few seasons' residence in Egypt shifts the point of view in a
startling manner. No longer is the country either distant or insecure;
and, realising this, the student becomes more balanced, and he sees both
sides of the question with equal clearness. The archaeologist may
complain that it is too expensive a matter to come to Egypt. But why,
then, are not the expenses of such a journey met by the various museums?
A hundred pounds will pay for a student's winter in Egypt and his
journey to and from that country. Such a sum is given readily enough
for the purchase of an antiquity; but surely rightly-minded students are
a better investment than wrongly-acquired antiquities.

It must now be pointed out, as a third argument, that an Egyptologist
cannot study his subject properly unless he be thoroughly familiar with
Egypt and the modern Egyptians.

A student who is accustomed to sit at home, working in his library or
museum, and who has never resided in Egypt, or has but travelled for a
short time in that country, may do extremely useful work in one way and
another, but that work will not be faultless. It will be, as it were,
lop-sided; it will be coloured with hues of the west, unknown to the
land of the Pharaohs and antithetical thereto. A London architect may
design an apparently charming villa for a client in Jerusalem, but
unless he knows by actual and prolonged experience the exigencies of the
climate of Palestine, he will be liable to make a sad mess of his job.
By bitter experience the military commanders learnt in South Africa that
a plan of campaign prepared in England was of little use to them. The
cricketer may play a very good game upon the home ground, but upon a
foreign pitch the first straight ball will send his bails flying into
the clear blue sky.

An archaeologist who attempts to record the material relating to the
manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians cannot complete his task,
or even assure himself of the accuracy of his statements, unless he has
studied the modern customs and has made himself acquainted with the
permanent conditions of the country. The modern Egyptians, as has been
pointed out in chapter ii. (page 28), are the same people as those who
bowed the knee to Pharaoh, and many of their customs still survive. A
student can no more hope to understand the story of Pharaonic times
without an acquaintance with Egypt as she now is than a modern statesman
can hope to understand his own times solely from a study of the past.

Nothing is more paralysing to a student of archaeology than continuous
book-work. A collection of hard facts is an extremely beneficial mental
exercise, but the deductions drawn from such a collection should be
regarded as an integral part of the work. The road-maker must also walk
upon his road to the land whither it leads him; the shipbuilder must
ride the seas in his vessel, though they be uncharted and unfathomed.
Too often the professor will set his students to a compilation which
leads them no farther than the final fair copy. They will be asked to
make for him, with infinite labour, a list of the High Priests of Amon;
but unless he has encouraged them to put such life into those figures
that each one seems to step from the page to confront his recorder,
unless the name of each calls to mind the very scenes amidst which he
worshipped, then is the work uninspired and as deadening to the student
as it is useful to the professor. A catalogue of ancient scarabs is
required, let us suppose, and students are set to work upon it. They
examine hundreds of specimens, they record the variations in design,
they note the differences in the glaze or material. But can they picture
the man who wore the scarab?--can they reconstruct in their minds the
scene in the workshop wherein the scarab was made?--can they hear the
song of the workmen or their laughter when the overseer was not nigh? In
a word, does the scarab mean history to them, the history of a period,
of a dynasty, of a craft? Assuredly not, unless the students know Egypt
and the Egyptians, have heard their songs and their laughter, have
watched their modern arts and crafts. Only then are they in a position
to reconstruct the picture.

Theodore Roosevelt, in his Romanes lecture at Oxford, gave it as his
opinion that the industrious collector of facts occupied an honourable
but not an exalted position; and he added that the merely scientific
historian must rest content with the honour, substantial, but not of the
highest type, that belongs to him who gathers material which some time
some master shall arise to use. Now every student should aim to be a
master, to _use_ the material which he has so laboriously collected; and
though at the beginning of his career, and indeed throughout his life,
the gathering of material is a most important part of his work, he
should never compile solely for the sake of compilation, unless he be
content to serve simply as a clerk of archaeology.

An archaeologist must be an historian. He must conjure up the past; he
must play the Witch of Endor. His lists and indices, his catalogues and
note-books, must be but the spells which he uses to invoke the dead. The
spells have no potency until they are pronounced: the lists of the kings
of Egypt have no more than an accidental value until they call before
the curtain of the mind those monarchs themselves. It is the business of
the archaeologist to awake the dreaming dead: not to send the living to
sleep. It is his business to make the stones tell their tale: not to
petrify the listener. It is his business to put motion and commotion
into the past that the present may see and hear: not to pin it down,
spatchcocked, like a dead thing. In a word, the archaeologist must be in
command of that faculty which is known as the historic imagination,
without which Dean Stanley was of opinion that the story of the past
could not be told.

But how can that imagination be at once exerted and controlled, as it
must needs be, unless the archaeologist is so well acquainted with the
conditions of the country about which he writes that his pictures of it
can be said to be accurate? The student must allow himself to be
saturated by the very waters of the Nile before he can permit himself
to write of Egypt. He must know the modern Egyptians before he can
construct his model of Pharaoh and his court.

In a recent London play dealing with ancient Egypt, the actor-manager
exerted his historic imagination, in one scene, in so far as to
introduce a _shadoof_ or water-hoist, which was worked as a naturalistic
side-action to the main incident. But, unfortunately, it was displayed
upon a hillside where no water could ever have reached it; and thus the
audience, all unconsciously, was confronted with the remarkable
spectacle of a husbandman applying himself diligently to the task of
ladelling thin air on to crops that grew upon barren sand. If only his
imagination had been controlled by a knowledge of Egypt, the picture
might have been both true and effective.

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