ARTICLE VIII. NOTES ON EGYPTOLOGY. BY JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, D.D., LL.D., NEW YORK. THE war has seriously interrupted the publication of works on Egypt at their two principal centres, Paris and Berlin; yet the very last invoice from Paris, before the siege, embraced three volumes of unusual value. One of these was the first in the long-promised issue of the results of Mariette-Bey's explorations. Acting under the authorization of the Khedive, with men and means provided by the government, M. Mariette has been enabled to prosecute his researches for a series of years without interruption or delay; and his scientific method of excavating ruins has led to many discoveries and few disappointments. The museum at Boulak is his creation; and Egypt, no longer the spoil of foreign governments, will there preserve the treasures of her own antiquity. But the superb volumes now coming out under the auspices of Ismail Pacha will lay the results of Mariette's labors before the scholars of other nations, as fully as if Egypt were immediately under their eyes. Volume first is occupied solely with a description of the temple of Sethos I. at Abydos,—the principal seat of the worship of Osiris, — and consists of thirty pages of letterpress and upwards of a hundred folio plates.1 From indications of its former grandeur yet remaining in his day, Strabo ranked Abydos next to Thebes in magnitude and importance among the cities of Upper Egypt. This celebrity, however, was due less to its real importance as a city, than to its fame as a sacred city, and to the richness of its temples. As the chief seat of the worship of Osiris - the one universal divinity of Egypt-it attracted to its shrines pilgrims from all parts of the country; and to accommodate this concourse of worshippers the temples of the city were numerous and extensive. M. Mariette laments the paucity of the results of his explorations among the ruins of the ancient city—here and there a stone, a mutilated statue, or a diminutive temple being his only reward outside the precincts of the temple of Sethos; and even this yielded far less than would be expected from a monument so large and so complete. As a rule, the Pharaonic 1 Abydos. Description des fouilles exécutées sur l'emplacement de cette ville par Auguste Mariette-Bey. Ouvrage publie sous les auspices de S. A. Ismaïl Pacha, Khedive d'Egypte. Paris: Librairie A. Franck, Rue de Richelieu. 1869. 2 Book xvii. chap. i. sec. 42. temples are much more chary of explanatory inscriptions than the GrecoEgyptian temples of the Ptolemaic period. In the latter, the design of the temple, the attributes of the divinities, and the meaning of the cere monies are all made plain; but in the former there is an intentional mystery or reserve upon these points, so that one is left in doubt as to the philosophical or religious idea of the temple itself, and the origin, date, or significance of the ceremonies pictured on its walls. Nevertheless, this great temple of Osiris, which Strabo styled the Memnonium, and likened to the Labyrinth, is now unveiled; its walls and pillars lie before us in detail in these splendid plates, and the key to its inner mysteries may yet be found.. That this temple which impressed Strabo so strongly had always a special interest for travellers is evident from the numerous graffiti, both Greek and Phenician, upon its stairways and corridors. The Phenicians rendered honors to Osiris; and other temples of his in Egypt bear records of Phenician visitors upon their walls. Abydos, being the terminus of the route from the oasis of El-Khargeh to Egypt, was much frequented by the Libyan tribes of the western desert. The temple is divided into seven longitudinal naves, which open upon the façade by seven doors, and terminate in a corresponding number of arched halls or sanctuaries. The arch is here very distinctly introduced for architectural purposes. These halls are dedicated to Horus, Isis, Osiris, Ammon - who occupies the central one, - Armachis, Ptah, and the king, who is here enshrined among the gods. The walls and pillars are covered mainly with religious scenes and symbols; the sculptures are upon a scale of unusual grandeur; and the hieroglyphics are cut with remarkable neatness and precision. A favorite scene, several times repeated, represents the princes and princesses of the family of Ramses going in procession to the altars of the gods, with offerings of animals, fruits, flowers, bread. Again, the king himself offers to Isis incense, flowers, fruits, victuals, wine, oil; while Isis, in turn, gives to him the symbols of power, and pours over him the water of lustration. Another series of pictures represents the ceremonies prescribed for the king upon entering certain chambers of the gods, and the details of these compose a ritual that should satisfy the extremest devotee of St. Albans. There are instructions how to enter the door, how to prostrate himself so as to touch the ground with his fingers, how to adore the god and the goddess, each four times in turn, how many grains of incense to use in one and another of the offerings, how to put on the purple band, how to put on the green band, how to put on the white band—in a word, the whole ceremonial is here exhibited upon a scale of magnificence that puts to the blush the tawdry imitations of modern ritualism. The temple is remarkable for the deification of the monarch during his lifetime. In one scene Sethos is represented as a sphinx; and in others he personates Osiris himself. Phallic worship is strikingly and somewhat grossly portrayed in a scene where Osiris is sleeping upon a funeral couch, holding the phallus in his right hand, and pressing his left hand to his forehead, Horus and Isis standing by. This was intended to represent the dread mystery of life and resuscitation, about which the whole legend of Osiris revolves. The temple of Abydos, begun by Sethos, was completed by Ramses, and one of its grandest scenes represents Sethos receiving the felicitations of his royal son and of several divinities upon the work of piety so successfully achieved. Ramses opens the tribute, describing how the gods had assisted in the work, by marking out the boundaries of the temple and consecrating the wall, the pillars, and the sanctuaries as these in turn were completed. Then the goddess Sefek presents her congratulations: "Sethos has been established as king upon the throne of the sun; the world has been given him as a balance, which he holds in equilibrium by his beneficent virtue; the whole earth is filled with his fame; he is the guardian of sleep, the light of darkness." Next Toum addresses the king: "I am satisfied with thy deeds; I have united for thee the south and the north, and have placed them under thy feet. I have joined the plant of the south to the plant of the north, [i.e. the symbol of the two sections blended in one crown] to make thee king of Upper and Lower Egypt." Finally Thoth addresses to the monarch his felicitations: "The memory of Sethos shall endure for thousands of years. All the world shall gather unto the temple that he has founded. All the gods shall there repose. He has enriched their altars. He has purified the sanctuaries. He has multiplied their offerings. In strengthening himself, he has fortified Egypt. He has spread his wings over her inhabitants. He has been to her a wall of granite." Such panegyrics rival those of Babylon in Oriental hyperbole. The most important contribution of the Abydos temple to Egyptology is the now famous list of kings—the seventy-six royal predecessors to whom Sethos is offering homage. The list begins with Menes and has scarcely a break. A full description of it was given in the Bibliotheca Sacra for October 1867, p. 774. - Philology and Archaeology — M. A. Franck of Paris has commenced the publication of a serial, to be devoted to matters of philology and archaeology, both Egyptian and Assyrian. One number only has appeared, and this gives neither the name of the editor nor a prospectus of the magazine. It is to be hoped that it does not represent a new rivalry among the limited number of scholars in these departments; but with the Revue Archéologique at Paris and the Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde at Berlin, both freely open to scholars of all countries, and both encouraging the impartial discussion of disputed questions, one hardly sees the need of another journal for the same limited field. It imposes a new tax upon students who wish to keep pace with these spec ialties, and will cause confusion, or diffusion at least, where we had begun to look for harmony and concentration. No. 1 is beautifully printed in royal octavo,1 and contains four essays: The Poem of Pentauer, by Count Rougé; the Expression Mââ-Xeru, by M. A. Devéria; Studies in the Demotic by M. G. Maspero; and Moral Precepts from an ancient demotic papyrus, by M. P. Pierret. The poem of Pentauer, a fulsome eulogy of Ramses the great, was first brought to light in 1856 by the translation of the Sallier Papyrus, of the British Museum. A missing page of that papyrus has since been discovered in another collection, and several verses of the poem have been transcribed from the sculptured walls of Luxor and Karnak. From the collation of these Count Rougé has prepared the revised translation which he now gives to the public. This is but one example of the patience and fidelity with which Egyptologists are pursuing their work. The poem celebrates the king ever terrible and victorious in battle. He performs prodigies of valor. By his unaided powers he sweeps down his enemies like a flaming divinity. Then he returns serene to his capital and receives the acclamations of the people and the welcome of the gods. Some of the battle-scenes are pictured with graphic effect, and there is at times a Homeric grandeur in the impersonation of the divinity by the heroic monarch. The study of the Demotic has been greatly stimulated by the completion of Dr. Brugsch's Grammar and Dictionary, and the publication in facsimile of so many demotic papyri, under the editorship of M. Pleyte of Leyden. Several Egyptologists are now devoting themselves to this popular form of the ancient language, and its Coptic equivalents, with gratifying results. It is from a demotic papyrus of the Louvre that M. Pierret has derived the moral precepts which conclude this number of the Recueil. These precepts furnish so striking an illustration of the morality and humanity of the ancient Egyptians that we give the entire series. 1. In the heart of a mother there should be no place for gall. 2. Do not kill, for that is to expose thyself to be killed. 3. Do not take a wicked man for thy companion. 4. Do not follow the advice of a fool. 5. Do not build thy tomb under those who command thee. 6. Do not maltreat an inferior; respect the aged. 7. Do not maltreat a woman, whose strength is less than thy own. Let her find in thee her protector. 8. Do not curse thy master before the gods. 9. Do not speak against thy master. 10. Do not save thy life at the expense of another's. 11. Do not cause suffering to thy child, if he is weak, but rather help him. 1 Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l'Archéologie Égyptiennes et Assyriennes. Vol. i. Liv. 1. Paris, Libraire: A. Franck. 1870. 12. Do not make sport of those who are dependent upon thee. 13. Do not permit thy son to lie with a married woman. 14. Do not build thy tomb within the grounds. i.e. the sacred enclosures. 15. Do not build thy tomb in the approaches to the temple. 16. Do not walk with an enraged person. 17. Do not stop to listen to his words. 18. Do not pervert the heart of thy comrade, if it is pure. 19. Do not take on airs. 20. Do not make sport of an old man, thy superior. Many like precepts are found in other papyri, or as mottoes upon funeral monuments. Thus: "I have honored my father and my mother." "I have reached out my hand to the unfortunate." "I have given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, lodging to him who was without a home." "I have treated the powerful even as the wretched." "My doors have ever been open to those who were without, for furnishing them what was necessary to the support of life." "To the powerful I was a brother, to the unfortunate a father, and I never spread hatred among men." "If thou art intelligent, bring up thy son in the love of God. If he is courageous and active and increases thy property, give him the better recompense. But if the son whom thou hast begotten is a fool, do not turn away thy heart from him, for he is thy son." "If from a humble condition thou hast become powerful, and the first in the city for opulence, let not riches make thee proud, for the first author of these good things is God." A people capable of such sentiments as these, and accustomed to incorporate them into domestic precepts and monumental inscriptions, could not always have been so sunken in heathenism as the grossness of some of their religious symbols would seem to indicate; and the evidences are multiplying that they once had a relatively pure monotheism, with a corresponding morality. Assyrian.M. Jules Oppert has published in an elegant folio, the text of the Inscriptions of Dour. Sarkayan (Khorsabad), with an interlinear translation in Latin, and a separate version in French. Leaving to Rev. W. H. Ward the critical estimate of Oppert's readings and their historical value, we confine ourselves to a statement of the contents of the volume. These are (1) an inscription on the walls of Khorsabad, (2) the cylinder of Sargon, (3) inscriptions upon several native tablets, of silver and of mineral substances, more or less defaced, and finally the grand inscription of the Annals of Sargon. The burden of these inscriptions is the praise of Sargon and the glory of his achievements. The narrative of his cam paigns furnishes some geographical data of interest, and illustrates the relations of his kingdom with other peoples. Mention is made of Hamath, Ashdod, Samaria, Tyre, Gaza, Egypt, the whole of Phenicia, and of Syria, VOL. XXVIII. No. 110. 51 |