Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/251

 Sepulchral Architecture. i6i piety of relations spared nothing that could add to the beauty and convenience of dwellino-s which were to be the eternal restingf places of their inmates. The palaces of the princes and rich men of Egypt were so lightly built that they have left no traces upon the soil ; but many of their tombs have subsisted uninjured to our day, and it is from them that we have obtained our treasures of Egyptian art. All the other nations of the ancient world followed the good example thus set, or rather, to speak more accurately, being all penetrated with similar ideas, they took similar courses without borrowinof one from the other. Whenever we moderns have opened any of those ancient tombs which have happily remained intact, we have been met by the same dis- coveries. Whether it be in Egypt or Phoenicia, in Asia Minor, Cyprus or Greece, in Etruria or Campania, the same astonishing sight meets our eyes. The tombs are filled with precious objects and chefs doettvres of art which their depositors had intended never again to see the light of day. In modern times, when piety or pride stimulates to the decoration of a tomb, all the care of the architect, the sculptor and the painter is given to the outside, to the edifice which surmounts the actual grave. The grave or other receptacle for the coffin is as plain and simple in the most sumptuous monuments of our cemeteries as in the most humble. Our funerary architecture is based upon our belief that the tomb is empty ; that the vital part of the deposit confided to it has escaped to rejoin the current of eternal life. Under such conditions the tomb becomes above all things a commemorative structure, a more or less sincere manifestation of the grief of a family or of society at large for the loss of one of its members. As for the narrow pit into which the "mortal coil " is lowered, all that we demand of it is that it should chamber of Karneter; he has sculptured the names of his household; he has assigned their place. The workmen, those attached to his house, he has reckoned amongst his dependants of all ranks." [Birch, Records of the Past, vol. xii. p. 67. — Ed.] It was, no doubt, in order to conform to the Egyptian custom that Antony and Cleopatra commenced in their lifetime that tomb which Augustus ordered to be finished after their death (Suetonius, Augustus, 17). " To be laid to rest in the tomb which he had made for himself and furnished with every necessary was the greatest good which the gods could insure to an Egyptian. In Papyrus IV. at Boulak we find the following phrases : ' Be found with thy dwelling finished in the funerary valley : in every enterprise which thou meditatest may the morning 7vhen thy body shall he hid be present to thee.' " (From the French of M. Maspero, Jour7ial asiatiqve, 7th series, t. xv. p. 165, note i). VOL. L Y