Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/383

 The ToxMB under the New Empire. 293 We may say the same of the well, which plays the same part in the private tombs of the New Empire as in the Mastaba and the Spcos of the Ancient and Middle Empires. In almost every instance the mummy chamber is reached by a well, whether the tomb be constructed in the plain or in the side of the mountains. It is seldom so deep as those of Gizeh or Sakkarah ; its depth hardly exceeds from 20 to 30 feet ; but its arrangement is similar to those in the early necropolis. The mummy chamber opens directly upon it. Sometimes there are two chambers facing each other at the foot of the well, and of unequal heights.^ After the introduction of the corpse, which was facilitated by notches cut in two faces of the well, the door of the mummy chamber was built up — the well filled in. In a few exceptional instances, the tombs of private individuals seem to have had no well, and the innermost chamber, as in the case of ro^-al tombs, received the mummy. "^ In such cases it is very necessary to make sure that explorers have not been deceived by appearances. In these dusty interiors the carefully sealed opening might easily escape any but the most careful research ; and as for a sarcophagus, when one is found in such a chamber, it may have been placed there long after the making of the tomb. Such usurpations are by no means unknown.^ In the time of the Ptolemies, influential people, such as priests and military functionaries, made them without scruple. The venerable mummies, dating from the time of Rameses, were thrown into a corner ; their cases were made use of, sometimes for the mummy of the usurper, sometimes for more ignoble purposes. In more than one of these usurpations the new comer has been placed in a chamber constructed for some other object. ' Passalacqua describes a tomb of this kind in detail in his Cataloi^iie raisoufie et historiqiie des Antiquites decouvertes en Egypte (8vo, 1826). This tomb had been visited and pillaged at some unknown epoch. One of the two chambers had been opened and stripped, but the second, which opened lower down the well, and on the other side, escaped the notice of the violators (pp. 1 18-120). In the tomb opened by Rhind {Thebes, its Tombs, etc. pi. 5, v.), the well gave access to four chambers of different sizes arranged round it like the arms of a cross. " Description de V Egypte, {Antiquites,) plates, vol. ii. p. 78. ^ Rhind describes one of the most curious of these substitutions in his chapter IV. In that case an usurper of the time of Ptolemy established himself and all his family in the mummy chambers at the foot of the well, after relegating the statues and mummies of the rightful owner and his people to the room above.