Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/250

 i6o A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. But those who could procure even these sHght advantages were still among the favourites of fortune. Many were unable to obtain even this minimum of funeral honours. On the confines of all the great cemeteries, at Thebes as well as at Memphis, corpses are found deposited in the loose sand two or three feet from the surface. Some of these are packed in the leaves of the palm, others are roughly enveloped in a few morsels of linen. They have been hastily dipped in a bath of natron, which has dirtied rather than embalmed them.^ Sometimes even these slender precautions have been omitted. Bodies have been found in the earth without vestige of either coffin or linen swathes. The sand seems to have been intrusted with the work of drying them, and they have been found in our days in the condition of skeletons. P'lG. 105. — Pillow, Louvre. On the other hand, the fortunate ones of the world, those who were so easy in their circumstances in this life that they could place themselves in the same happy condition in the next, spared no expense in anything connected with their burial. They never allowed themselves to be surprised by death, as we so often do. Whether kings or private individuals, they made their preparations while they were still alive, and caused their tombs to be constructed under their own eyes.^ Their forethought when living and the ^ See in the interesting work of INIr. H. Rhind {Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants, London, 1862, 8vo.), the chapter headed A Burial-place of the Poor. 2 Mariette, Tombes de V Ancien Empire, p. 83. See also the great inscription of Beni-Hassan, the first hnes of which run thus: "The hereditary chief. . . . Khnumhotep .... has made a monument for the first time to embeUish his district ; he has sculptured his name for ever ; he has embellished it for ever by his