Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/226

 136 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. ^ henna. The Hmbs were flexible and the graceful shapes but little altered under the still firm and smooth skin, which, moreover, seemed to be still supported by flesh in some parts. Had it not been for its colour of tarred linen or scorched paper, and the smell of naphtha which arose from the body and from the numberless bandages which were strewn about, we might have shared the sentiment attributed to Lord Evandale in Theophile Gautier's brilliant Roman de la Mojiiie ; with an effort of good-will we could almost sympathise with those emotions of tenderness and admi- ration which were excited in the breast of the young Englishman at the sight of the unveiled charms of that daughter of Egypt whose perfect beauty had once troubled the heart of the proudest of the Pharaohs.^ In order that all the expense of embalming should not be thrown away, the mummy had to be so placed that it could not be reached by the highest inundations of the river. The cemeteries were therefore established either upon a plateau surrounded by the desert, as in the case of Memphis and Abydos, or in the sides of the mountain ranges and in the ravines by which they were pierced, as at Thebes and Beni Hassan. In the whole valley of the Nile, no ancient tomb has been discovered which was within reach of the inundation at its hio-hest.- The corpse was thus preserved from destruction, first by careful and scientific embalming, secondly by placing its dwelling above the highest " Nile." Besides this we shall see that the Egyptian architects made use of many curious artifices of construction in order to conceal the entrance to the tomb, and to prevent the ^ Passalacqua gives the following description of the mummy of a young woman which he discovered at Thebes : " Her hair and the rotundity and surprising regularity of her form showed me that she had been a beauty in her time, and that she had died in the flower of her youth." He then gives a minute description of her condition and ornaments, and concludes by saying that "the peculiar beauty of the proportions of this mummy, and its perfect preservation, had so greatly im- pressed the Arabs themselves that they had exhumed it more than once to show to their wives and neighbours." {^Catalogue raisonne et historique des A?ifiquiics decoiivertes en Egypte, 8vo. 1826.) 2 Rhind describes several mummy-pits in the necropolis of Thebes which receive the water of the Nile by infiltration ; but, as he himself remarks, this is because those who dug them did not foresee the gradual raising of the valley, and, con- sequently, of the level attained in recent ages by the waters of the Nile. It is doubtless only within the last few centuries that the water has penetrated into these tombs. {Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants, ^. 153.)