CHAPTER IV

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DISCOVERY

When the eyes of all the world are focussed on the tomb of Tutankhamen and the fresh revelation it affords of the superb achievements of the ancient Egyptians in the arts and crafts, it is worth while to consider how this new discovery is likely to affect our attitude to the history of civilization and to promote a fuller recognition of the human motives that found expression in its creation and development. Apart from the demonstration it affords of the fabulous wealth that was hidden away more than thirty centuries ago in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, the new discovery appeals as an æsthetic revelation of dazzling brilliance rather than as an addition to our knowledge. So far its effect has been to force the scholar and the man in the street to take an interest in the civilization that was capable of producing such perfect works of art, and to ask themselves whether this precocious culture was really so exotic as it is commonly supposed to have been, or whether, on the contrary, such achievements on the very threshold of a yet unenlightened Europe did not exert a far greater influence than it is usual to accord them.

But at present we are concerned simply in considering what is the significance of the discoveries so far made; the furniture, which has never been surpassed in the perfection of its workmanship and exquisite decoration; linen of a fineness and a beauty of texture that have never been excelled; carved alabaster vases such as the world has never seen before; and statues that afford some justification for the ancient belief that they were, in truth, “living images.” What is the meaning of all this lavish display of skill and beauty? Why was so much wealth poured into the hidden recesses of this desolate ravine, and the most exquisite products of the world’s achievement in the arts and crafts buried out of sight in this strange necropolis? The true answers to these questions reveal the motive force that brought about the development of civilization and made Egypt the pioneer in its creation.

_Embalming and Immortality_

All these elaborate preparations, the laborious and costly process of hewing the tomb out of the solid rock and furnishing it with such magnificence, were made because the ancient Egyptians believed that the king’s body to be housed in it had been made imperishable. They imagined that when the body was embalmed the continuation of the king’s existence had been assured. Hence they provided him with food and raiment, the furniture and amulets, the jewels and the unguents, and other luxuries which he had been accustomed to enjoy, before he was taken to his “eternal house” in the desolate Valley of the Tombs. There can be no doubt that in the early days of Egyptian history this naïve belief was regarded in all seriousness as the simple truth. In fact, the thoroughness with which at first the Egyptians gave concrete expression to their faith in making material provision for every want that the deceased might experience could only have been inspired by the confidence that all these preparations were indeed effective. This conviction was deeply rooted in the practice of mummifying the dead, preserving the body so that it should become incorruptible and everlasting; and this was supposed also to involve the feasibility of the prolongation of the dead man’s existence.

The hope of survival was thus based upon the efficacy of the embalmer’s art; and the extraordinary constancy with which for more than thirty centuries—for a span of years four times the length of time that separates us from the arrival of William the Conqueror in Britain—they persisted in their efforts to improve their methods and render more perfect this gruesome practice is a striking tribute to the fundamental importance of mummification to the Egyptians. The craft of the carpenter was first invented for the manufacture of coffins to protect the corpse; the stonemason’s first experiments had for their aim the preparation of rock-cut chambers still further to ensure its safety; the first buildings worthy of being called architecture were intended to promote the welfare of the dead, to provide places to which relatives could bring food necessary for the dead man’s sustenance, and a room to house his portrait statue—another art that was the outcome of the practice of mummification—which took his place at the temple of offerings and preserved his likeness for all time.

These elements of civilization, the arts of architecture and sculpture, and the crafts of the carpenter and the stonemason, were thus direct results of the custom of embalming. But its influence in moulding ritual and belief was no less profound and far-reaching.

_Early Beliefs_

The belief in the possibility of the continuation of existence after death may have been (and probably was) much older than the Egyptians; but the evidence now available seems fairly decisive that the belief in immortality was not definitely formulated by mankind until the means had been devised of making the corpse everlasting, when “the corruptible body put on incorruption.” Moreover, the ritual of the most primitive religions was based upon the practices of the early Egyptians for revivifying the mummy, or its surrogate, the mortuary statue, by burning incense, pouring out libations, opening its mouth to give it the breath of life, and performing a series of dramatic acts to animate it. By means of these ritual procedures it was supposed that the officiating priest was able to restore consciousness to the dead body and so make it possible for it not only to take an intelligent share in the life around it, but also to hear appeals for help and guidance and to answer such requests.

Egypt alone of the countries of antiquity provides the explanation of these strange beliefs and practices. They were devised by the concrete-minded people of the Nile Valley as part of a comprehensive philosophy of life and death which was formulated as a sort of life insurance, in accordance with the principles of which the deceased himself was supposed to be the beneficiary, and his reward an indefinite prolongation of existence.

This remarkable system of beliefs originated even before the beginning of civilization, sixty centuries ago; but the latter event was responsible for intensifying the conviction of its reality and increasing men’s hope in its potency.

_The Dawn of Civilization_

Civilization began when the Egyptians first devised the methods of agriculture and invented a system of irrigation. The irrigation engineer was the first man in the history of the world to control and organize the co-operative work of his fellow-men, and become the ruler of a whole community. If there is one lesson more than another that history has demonstrated in Egypt, equally in ancient and in modern times, it is the absolute necessity of a strong and autocratic Government, because the conditions in the Nile Valley are such that the prosperity of the country and the welfare of the whole community is entirely dependent upon the just and equitable distribution of the waters of irrigation throughout the land. It is not to be wondered at that the engineer who successfully achieved this task, and in a very special and real sense controlled the lives and destinies of his people, became the king, whose beneficence was apotheosized after his death, so that he became the god Osiris, who was identified with the river, whose life-giving powers he controlled. For to a people who had never experienced anything of the kind before it must have seemed an altogether miraculous and superhuman act for one man to have in his absolute control the prosperity of a whole community and every individual unit of it.

The connection between this story and the tomb of Tutankhamen may not be apparent. But when it is realized that the original invention of the social system was so closely identified with the god Osiris, it will be understood that the ritual of mummification and burial aimed at identifying the deceased with Osiris, and by imitating the incidents of his story to secure for the deceased a fate like that of the god, whose life-giving powers were sought to grant the continuation of existence.

The early kings of Egypt, rich in their newly acquired control of the labour and wealth of their dominion, did not hesitate to squander both in the preparation of their tombs, in the vain belief that thereby they were making certain their own survival. Twenty centuries later, in the times of Tutankhamen, they were still obsessed with the same idea, and spent fabulous sums in preparing their tombs in the Biban el Moluk.

The peculiar importance of the study of these strange customs and beliefs in Egypt depends upon the fact that, not only were they invented by the Egyptians, and preserved in their entirety, so that the whole story of its development can be read in all their childish directness and simplicity, but also because other peoples of antiquity, to whose civilization Europe owes her own heritage, adopted some of the results of these Egyptian devices, and, after eliminating some of their cruder details, transformed them into the essentials of the world’s civilization. Hence, in recovering the history of Egyptian cultural development, we are really probing into the sources of the customs and beliefs of our own everyday life and experience. Thus we must regard mummification as something more than an eccentric practice that excites our curiosity. For it played a fundamental part in shaping the development of civilization, both its arts and crafts, as well as its most vital customs and beliefs.

_Giving Life to the Dead_

If we turn to consider the process of mummification, and the aims of its practitioners, it will be found that throughout the long ages in which it was in vogue the Egyptian embalmer kept constantly striving to attain two aims. His first object was to preserve the actual tissues of the body as thoroughly as he could. But he was also attempting the much more difficult task of preserving the natural form of the body, and especially of the features. He was prompted to make this effort, not merely that the deceased should retain his distinctive traits in a recognizable form, but rather that the simulacrum should be the “living” image of himself. In other words, the aim was to make the representation of the dead man so life-like that he should, in fact, remain alive, and be certain of maintaining his existence. The early Egyptians seem to have entertained in all its childlike _naïveté_ the belief that they were actually conferring vitality upon the image when they made it life-like. The Egyptian verb for describing the work of the sculptor who carved the portrait statue meant literally, according to Dr Alan Gardiner, “to give birth,” in the sense of “giving life”; and there is no doubt they meant this idea of life-giving to be accepted as the simple expression of a fact, and not merely as a symbol or analogy.

It must not be forgotten that when these beliefs were first formulated, more than fifty centuries ago, there was no knowledge or understanding of the principles of physics and biology to hinder the adoption of such naïve fancies as the simple and obvious truth. There is no reason to doubt that the philosophers of those days did honestly believe in the possibility of prolonging existence by fulfilling all the conditions that seemed to them essential and adequate to the maintenance of vitality.

When mummification was first devised, probably at the time of the earliest dynasty (about 3400 B.C.) it was realized that if, in the climate of Egypt, the preservation of the tissues of the body was not very difficult to effect, the task of retaining the distinctive features was practically unattainable. All kinds of devices were tried, during the second, third, and fourth dynasties, by wrapping the mummy so as to simulate the human form, painting it, applying clay or resinous paste, and modelling it into a portrait statue upon the enshrouded mummy itself. When these devices failed to achieve the desired aim of making life-like portraits, the art of modelling statues of the deceased in stone or wood was invented, and paint and artificial eyes were used to make them as life-like as possible. The skill with which the Egyptians of the Pyramid Age overcame the technical difficulties of the sculptors’ art and made life-size portraits which, as I have said before, could not untruthfully be called “living images,” is one of the most amazing achievements in the history of art. But it was more than the triumph of a craftsman: it was the realization of a deeper desire to preserve the image, and so prolong the existence of the sculptor’s model, the deceased, who was thus supposed to have been saved from annihilation.

In the first chapter of my book _The Evolution of the Dragon_, I have discussed this problem more fully.

_Success after Twenty Centuries_

Although these early sculptors had achieved so signal a triumph, the embalmers never abandoned the hope of bringing their art to such a state of perfection as to make of the mummy itself the simulacrum of the deceased. With infinite patience and persistence they experimented through one millennium after another to attain this object. But it was not until the time of the twenty-first dynasty, more than twenty centuries after they first attempted to do it, that they were able to transform the mummy itself into a portrait statue. From the artistic point this represents to us a debasement of æsthetic motive and practice; but to the embalmer it was the culmination of his achievement. But it was also the prelude to the degradation of his art. For the technique became so complex and difficult of execution that failure became a common incident, and to disguise the evidence of such incompetence the practice grew up of paying chief attention to the external appearance of the wrappings rather than to the corpse.

But to us the complicated technique of the embalmers during the twenty-first dynasty appeals rather as ingenious trickery, a tampering with the natural body to give it a spurious and trumpery resemblance to a living being. Judged by our artistic standards there can be no doubt that the ancient Egyptian practice of mummification was seen at its best at the end of the eighteenth dynasty, that is about the time of Tutankhamen. The most successful results are revealed in the mummies of Yuaa and Tuaa and of Seti I (Fig. 3, p. 33), which means that at the time when Tutankhamen was embalmed the craftsmen had the skill and the material resources to make as perfect a mummy as Egyptian ingenuity in the whole of its experience was capable of doing.

But the Egyptian tomb-robbers brought to the attention of the official world many mummies of the earlier part of the eighteenth dynasty, as well as some of those of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties respectively before and after the culmination of the technical success in or about Tutankhamen’s time which revealed only too clearly certain faults that it seemed desirable to remedy.

The wholesale plundering of the Royal mummies in the twentieth dynasty, and the knowledge acquired by the priests when remedying the damage so inflicted, seem to have been responsible for the rapid transformation of the methods in the twenty-first dynasty. For this experience afforded them a unique opportunity of studying the results and appreciating the defects of their predecessors’ work.

That they profited by this experience is evident from the changes they effected in their technique after they had realized wherein the methods employed during the twentieth dynasty failed to attain the desired aim. For their innovations were directed towards remedying the most obtrusive distortions found in the mummies of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties. The sunken cheeks were filled out by means of packing them with linen or mud, artificial eyes were inserted, the nose, lips, and ears were protected from distortion by wax plates, and the cheeks were painted. Many other devices were introduced to convert the mummy from a shrunken caricature into a more life-like portrait.

Mummification reached its fullest and most successful development during the six centuries from 1500 B.C. to 940 B.C., which represents the period of the collection of royal mummies in the Cairo Museum. They reveal the ancient Egyptian practice of embalming in its highest perfection, and have provided most of the information we possess of the history of mummification.

I have called attention to the aims which the ancient Egyptians kept so persistently in view in constructing and furnishing the tombs of their kings. The pharaoh’s body was embalmed to make sure of the continuation of his existence beyond the grave. The conviction that this object was really attained when the mummy was made and housed in an imperishable building induced them to furnish the tomb lavishly and to provide an ample store of food to sustain him and give him all the comforts and luxuries to which he was accustomed when he was living upon earth. But, to make doubly sure, they inscribed upon the walls of his tomb, upon his sarcophagus and coffins, and on papyri placed in the tombs, certain texts to make clear his identification with Osiris, with the practical object of ensuring that he should share the fate of the god and attain the immortality which the god had secured. Moreover, other devices were adopted to make the issue more certain.

Of the objects found in association with the mummies of Egyptian kings of the eighteenth dynasty to which definite cultural importance was attached, none is more remarkable than the so-called “germinating Osiris.” Several examples of this singular symbol were found in the tombs of Tutankhamen’s predecessors, as far back as Amenhotep II. (1420 B.C.), and as it was observed in its fullest development in the tomb of his successor, Horemheb (1315 B.C.), it is more probable than not that Tutankhamen’s will also be similarly equipped. It consists of a shallow box about 5 ft. long, shaped so as to represent the god Osiris, wearing a crown and holding the crook and whip in his hands. By means of wooden partitions the features of the head, the necklace, the arms are represented. This shallow box was filled with earth in which barley was planted; when it germinated and the sprouts had attained two or three inches in height a closely-fitting lid was fastened on to the box by wooden pegs. The lid is slightly sculptured en ronde bosse, and painted yellow. The details of the body and the ornaments are indicated in relief, the effect of which is heightened by lines of black and red.

_The King and Osiris_

The symbolism expressed in this remarkable procedure was in keeping with the motives which were explained earlier in this chapter, the identification of the dead king with Osiris (who was himself a dead king), whose magical powers as the bestower of renewed life and a continuation of existence after death was symbolized by the germinating barley.

But the procedure was richly charged with the deepest religious significance. I have already explained that the whole of the burial customs of the early Egyptians and the dramatic ritual which formed part of the tomb ceremonies were inspired by the desire to ensure the prolongation of existence. The body was made imperishable and protected by every means the relatives could devise: it was supplied with abundance of food and all the necessaries of life; and, above all, the “germinating Osiris” was there to complete the process and perpetually to animate and prolong the existence of the corpse. If its potency was derived from the reproduction of the form of Osiris, an equally vital part of its supposed magical power was due to the fact that it consisted of barley in the act of producing new life.

As the earliest cereal that was cultivated and the staple diet of the earliest civilized people—and the chief factor in creating their civilization—barley came to occupy a peculiarly distinctive rôle in early belief. It was the staff of life and the material from which beer was made, the drink which was regarded as “divine,” in the sense that life-giving qualities were attributed to it, and to the ancient Egyptian the essence of divinity was the attainment of unlimited existence. But the form assumed by a grain of barley (_i.e._ its similarity to the organ of birth, the giver of life) led to the assimilation of its life-sustaining with definitely life-giving functions. It was identified with the Great Mother as a life-giver (in her forms as Hathor or Isis); and the “corn mother” acquired the reputation of being able to prolong existence in other ways than providing food and drink. The coffin texts of the Middle Kingdom (_circa_ 2000 B.C.) translated by M. Lacau refer to the identification of the deceased with Osiris and barley, and in the Pyramid texts many centuries earlier the dead king is represented, as making the following claim: “I am Osiris. I live as the gods; I live as ‘Grain’; I grow as ‘Grain.’ I am barley.” (Professor Breasted’s translation.) Just as the Nile (which was personified as Osiris) conveyed new life to the grains of barley by irrigating them, so the god was supposed to be able to grant a new lease of existence to the dead.