Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/399

 The Tomb under the New Empire. 309 nucleus of the tombs at Sais. A hall divided, perhaps, into three aisles by tall shafts covered with figures and inscriptions, afforded a meeting-place and a place of worship for the living. The mummy chamber was replaced by a niche, placed, doubtless, in the wall which faced the entrance, and the well, the one essential constituent of an early Egyptian tomb, was suppressed. Such arrangements as these afforded much less security to the mummy than those of Memphis or Thebes, and to compensate in some measure for their manifest disadvantages, the tomb was placed within the precincts of the most venerable temple in the city, and the security of the corpse was made to depend upon the awe inspired by the sanctuary of Neith. As the event proved, this was but a slight protection against the fury of a victorious enemy. Less than a year after the death of Amasis, Cambyses tore his body from its resting-place, and burnt it to ashes after outrao^inof it in a childish fashion.^ The tombs of these Sait kings, consisting of so many com- paratively small buildings in one sacred inclosure, remind us of what are called, in the modern East, hirbehs, those sepulchres of Mohammedan saints or priests which are found in the immediate neighbourhood of the mosques. Vast differences exist, of course, between the Saracenic and Byzantine styles and that of Ancient Egypt, but yet the principle is the same. At Sais, as in modern Cairo or Constantinople, iron or wooden gratings must have barred the entrance to the persons while they admitted the glances of visitors ; rich stuffs were hung before the niche, as the finest shawls from India and Persia veil the coffins which lie beneath the domes of the modern burial-places. Perhaps, too, sycamores and palm-trees cast their shadows over the external walls.^ The most hasty visitor to the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn can hardly fail to remember the suburb of Eyoub, where the turbehs of the Ottoman princes stand half hidden among the cypresses and plane trees. The material condition which compelled the Sait princes to break with the customs of their ancestors, affected the tombs of ' Herodotus, iii. 16. Upon this subject see an interesting article by M. Eugkne Revillout, entitled : Le Roi Amasis et les inercenaires Grecs, selon les Donncs d' Herodote et les Renseig7iements de la Chronique Demotique de Paris. {Revue Egyptologique, first year ; p. 50 ef seq.) 2 There are two passages in Herodotus (ii. 91, and 138) from which we may infer that the Egyptians were fond of planting trees about their tcmitles.