Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/332

 242 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. river. The great number of sepultures which took place in it, from the first years of the monarchy until the end of the ancient civilization, is to be explained by the peculiarly sacred character of the city of Abydos, and by the great popularity, from one end of the Nile valley to the other, of the myths which centred in it. According to the Egyptian belief, the opening through which the setting sun sank into the bowels of the earth for its nightly transit, was situated to the west of Abydos. We know how the Egyptian intellect had established an analogy between the career of the sun and that of man ; we may therefore conclude that in choosing a final resting-place as near as possible to the spot where the great luminary seemed to make its nightly plunge, they believed they were making more completely sure of triumphing, like him, over darkness and death. The sun is not extinguished, he is but hidden for a moment from the eyes of man. This sun of the infernal regions is Osiris, who, of all the Egyptian gods, was most universally adored. Although many Egyptian towns could show tombs in which the members of Osiris, which had been dispersed by Set, were re-united by Isis and Nephthys, none of them were so famous, or the object of such deep devotion, as that at Abydos. It was, if we may be permitted to use such a phrase, the Holy Sepulchre of Egypt. As, in the early centuries of Christianity, the faithful laid great stress upon burial in the neighbourhood of some holy martyr, " The richest and most influential Egyptians," says a well informed Greek writer, " were ambitious of a common tomb with Osiris." ^ Under such conditions it may readily be understood why Mariette should have concentrated so much of his attention upon 1 Pseudo-Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, c. xx. M. Maspero finds, however, no confirmation of this statement in the monuments themselves. " All the tombs which have yet been discovered at Abydos," he says {Revue Critique, January 31, t88i), "are those of Egyptians domiciled at Abydos. But the author from whom this Plutarch derived his inspiration must have known the ancient fiction according to which the soul could only pass into the next world by betaking itself to Abydos, and thence through the opening to the w^est of that town which gave access to the regions of Ament. Hence the voyage of the dead to Abydos which we find so often represented on tombs ; an imaginary voyage, as the mummy would be reposing safely at Thebes or Memphis (Fig. 159). At all events, the family, after the death of its head, or any Egyptian during his own life, could deposit upon the ladder of Osiris a stele, upon which the tomb actually containing his body could be represented and unmistakably identified with its original by the formula inscribed upon it."