Grafton Elliot Smith

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For in the myth mankind was destroyed to provide the elixir of life for the king so that he might attain to the immortality, which was the distinctive prerogative of a god. The blood of the slaughtered saints was the elixir by which the mortal dweller on earth put on the immortality of a celestial being. ”

“ For it enables us to realize more vividly than before the relentless and persistent logic with which the ancient Egyptian theologian strove by any and every device he could think of, to make as certain as any physical or magical procedure could make it, to give a new lease of life or existence to the dead. Many modern scholars object to the use of the word logic to apply to a series of procedures inconsistent the one with the other except in their ultimate aim, and are constantly emphasizing and marvelling at their lack of cogency and consistency. ”

“ For if a youthful nonentity who reigned no more than six or seven years in one of the leanest phases of Egypt’s history had all this wealth poured into his tomb, one’s imagination tries in vain17 to picture the funerary equipment of the famous and longer-lived pharaohs, such as Thothmes III, who established the Egyptian Empire in Asia and could command the tribute of the then civilized world, or Amenhotep III, under whom the sovereign power in Egypt attained its culmination, and luxury and ostentation their fullest expression. ”

“ The whole conception of animal vehicles, which plays such a large part in the religious symbolism of India, Eastern Asia and Central America, is a purely Egyptian fancy that finds such grotesque expression in Tutankhamen’s funerary couches, no less than in the borrowed symbolism that was spread abroad from Egypt to Asia and America. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the modern psychologist has recently been insisting that we ourselves, and, in fact, all mankind, are just as illogical as the Ancient Egyptian priesthood. In our everyday life we are hourly doing things as glaringly inconsistent the one with the other as anything that the Egyptians ever did. ”

“ To understand why the cow, of all creatures, should have been selected for this purpose, we must remember the relentless logic and persistency that inspired all the preparations of the tomb and its furniture. ”

“ The wide interest in the revelation of Egypt’s achievements more than thirty centuries ago should prepare men’s minds impartially to study the vast significance of the facts thus displayed by Mr Howard Carter’s investigations.
Besides revealing the wonderful equipment of a royal tomb the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb enables us to examine many objects and articles of funerary equipment hitherto known to us only in pictures. ”

“ When the goddess was called upon to rejuvenate the ageing king, the 113 only elixir of life known in her pharmacopœia was human blood. Hence, she was driven to the necessity of slaying a human being, and her murderous action was compared to that of a man-slaying lioness, with which she was identified. But as the lioness was a particularly appropriate form to symbolize the Great Mother’s ability to protect the mummy from the perils that lurked in the pathway to the other world, it became an even more favourite form of the funerary vehicle than the gentle cow. ”

“ Map of the Ancient East.
23 The period which is so brilliantly illuminated by the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb is thus perhaps the most critical period in the whole history of civilization. A new era was dawning and every scrap of information that sheds any light upon the circumstances of this fateful time is of tremendous interest to us in understanding the civilization under which we ourselves are living. ”

“ Among no other people can we similarly detect all the stages in the logical development of the practices and beliefs of civilization—and not only are the various stages preserved in Egypt, but in so crudely childlike a guise that he who overcomes the impulse to seek for some recondite or cryptic meaning in things which are really simple can read their plain story as their inventors intended it. ”

“ For the mummy of Amenhotep II had been badly plundered like all those discovered before or since until the opening of Tutankhamen’s burial chamber made it practically certain that in it will be revealed for the first time to modern men the undisturbed tomb of an ancient Egyptian king. ”

“ Archæologists familiar with all the marvels of Egyptian art, now treasured in the museums scattered throughout the world, have exhausted their vocabularies of wonder and admiration in attempting to depict the splendours of Tutankhamen’s101 tomb. The outstanding feature of the discovery is, in fact, the recovery of so vast a collection of superb works of art and the new revelation it affords of the dazzling brilliance of Egyptian civilization thirty centuries ago. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 it is recalled that Egypt herself devised the ships and developed the seamanship which created the chief bond of union with Syria and Crete, East Africa and Arabia, the Persian Gulf and beyond, we should be in a better position to realize the plain meaning of the evidence that points to Egypt as the dominating factor in shaping the nascent civilization of the world. ”

“ But although there were scores of different devices for securing a safe transit to the celestial regions, there was one vehicle which from the very beginning of Egyptian history enjoyed a special reputation as the appropriate means of protecting the dead and conferring life and immortality upon him by conveying him to the other world. The Celestial Cow Hathor not only conferred life upon mortals by giving them birth: she also sustained them throughout life by giving them the divine milk, and at death she conveyed them to the sky. ”

“ For the mummies would become the lure for the greed of the Theban population, which for sixty centuries and more has been habituated to tomb-robbing, and has shown little respect for the mummies of even the most famous of its rulers. ”

“ The Great Mother was originally nothing more than the personification of an amulet, like a cowrie shell or a grain of barley, that was supposed to be able to exert the essentially maternal function of life-giving. Then, when cattle were domesticated and mankind discovered for the first time that cow’s milk could be used for feeding human children, people were profoundly impressed with this 111 revelation of the cow’s kinship with the human family. ”

“ But her special duty was to act as a midwife at the births of gods and kings. In pictures she is often associated with the Hathor Cow at the door of the tomb in the Mountain of the West; and presumably her function was to preside at the rebirth of the dead king by which a new lease of life beyond the grave was conferred upon him.
If it seems far-fetched to regard the hippopotamus couch as symbolizing rebirth, it should not be overlooked that in the so-called “Birth Terrace” of the temple at Deir el Bahari [3] lion-headed couches are represented in the birth scene of Queen Hatshepsut. ”

“ 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,50 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. ”

“ The fate of the mummy of Akhenaton’s successor Smenkhara is unknown: but Tutankhamen came after him, and Mr Howard Carter’s discovery has shown that he displayed his return to strict orthodoxy by making his tomb in the Eastern Valley among the worshippers of Amen. For some reason which has not been fully elucidated, his successor Ay made his tomb in the Western Valley and so was laid to rest alongside Amenhotep III, whose Minister he seems to have been during his life. He is supposed by some historians to have been the father or the foster-father of Nefertiti, the wife of Akhenaton. ”

“ If Egyptian rule had not been weakened at this particular time and Palestine had not been subjected to the disturbing influences of Syrian, Hittite, and Assyrian interference, the Old Testament would not have been composed in the atmosphere of strife that gives it its distinctive tone and seems to us to-day unduly to exalt the importance of warfare and the value of military courage. ”

“ Hence, in recovering the history of Egyptian cultural development, we are really probing into the sources of the customs and beliefs of53 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. ”

“ It is merely that our wider acquaintance with the nature of matter and the properties of living creatures enables us the more readily to hide our inconsistencies and rationalize our statements so as to hide our ignorance and lack of cogency. ”

“ It is this fundamental fact that gives the study of Egyptian customs and beliefs its tremendous importance. The essential elements of civilization were originally invented by the Egyptians, who gave them simpler and more obvious expression than other peoples, who borrowed them ready-made without acquiring the connecting stages in their 99 development or the naïve explanation of their meaning.
I have introduced this subject for consideration as an introduction to the study of the funerary equipment of Tutankhamen’s tomb, to which the next chapter will be devoted. ”

“ The sides of the Hathor couch are grotesque models of the Divine Cow, the earliest of the Great Mothers who were believed to have bestowed life and prosperity on mankind. It108 may seem strange that the artists of Tutankhamen’s time should have perpetrated such a monstrosity as this Hathor couch. When religious motives impelled the designers to fashion a piece of furniture in imitation of so uncouchlike a creature as a cow, the artist was set a task which was almost impossible of realization unless he sacrificed his artistic ideals. ”

“ The Celestial Cow, Hathor, was a divinity of the dead, for she was the Giver of Life who was supposed to be able to prolong existence beyond the grave, and as she was also identified107 with the sky she became the appropriate vehicle to convey the dead to the celestial regions where the sun-god dwelt. ”

“ 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. ”