Page images
PDF
EPUB

Mummy labels.

Decline of em

balming in Egypt due to Christianity.

that silk was used for wrapping mummies is corroborated by the fact that within the last few years a number of mummies wrapped in cloths covered with silk1 have been found. In the British Museum is a fine specimen (No. 17,173), in which two men on horseback, four dogs, flowers, etc., are woven in green and yellow on a reddish ground. The whole is inside a circular border ornamented with flowers. This piece of silk is sewn on a piece of fine yellow silk which is in turn sewn on a piece of ordinary mummy cloth to strengthen it.

Mummies of the Roman period were identified by small wooden labels, of an average size of five inches by two inches, pierced at one end, and tied to the necks of the dead. The inscriptions record the name of the deceased, and sometimes those of his father and mother, and the number of years of his life; some are in Greek only, a large number are bilingual, Greek and demotic, and a few also give the equivalent of the inscriptions in hieroglyphics. Unfortunately they are very easy to forge, for the natives use old wood from Egyptian coffins, and are able to imitate the inscriptions very closely, and many imitations are sold to tourists annually.

The Egyptian Christians appear to have adopted the system of mummifying, and to have mixed up parts of the old Egyptian mythology with their newly adopted Christianity. Already in the IIIrd century of our era the art of mummifying had greatly decayed, and although it was adopted by wealthy people, both Christian and Pagan, for two or three centuries longer, it cannot be said to have been generally in use at a period later than the IVth century. I believe that this fact was due to the growth of Christianity in Egypt. The Egyptian embalmed his dead because he believed that the perfect soul would return to its body after death, and that it would animate it once more; he therefore took pains to preserve the body from all destroying influences in the grave. The Christian believed that Christ would give him back his body changed and incorruptible, and that it was therefore unnecessary for him to preserve it with spices

1 For excellent coloured representations of Byzantine mummies, see Plates A and B, in Mémoires de la Mission Archéologique Française au Caire, tom. iii., Paris, 1890.

and drugs. The idea of embalming the body and keeping it in the house with the living seems to have been repugnant to many famous Christians in Egypt, and Anthony the Great admonished his two faithful disciples not to allow his body to be taken into Egypt, but to bury it under the ground in a place known to none but themselves, lest it should be laid up in some dwelling. He disapproved of this custom, and had always entreated those who were in the habit of keeping the body above ground to give it up; and, concerning his own body, he said, "At the resurrection of the dead I shall receive it from the Saviour incorruptible." For the description of a plaque, which must have come from the mummy of a Copt, see under "Anubis" in the article "Figures of the Gods."

MUMMY CLOTH.

cloths were

cotton.

The bandages with which the bodies of men and animals Mummy are wrapped were, until comparatively lately, believed to be thought to made of cotton. In 1646 Greaves stated in his Pyramido- be made of graphia that the "ribbands, by what I observed, were of linen, which was the habit also of the Egyptian priests," and he adds, "of these ribbands I have seen some so strong and perfect as if they had been made but yesterday." Ronelle in the Mémoires de l'Académie R. des Sciences, for 1750, asserted that every piece of mummy cloth that he had seen was made of cotton, and Forster and Solander, Larcher 3 and Maty, Blumenbach and others accepted this opinion.

2

1 μὴ ἀφεῖτέ τινας τὸ σῶμά μου λαβεῖν εἰς Αἴγυπτον, μήπως ἐν τοῖς οἴκοις ἀπόθωνται· τούτου γὰρ χάριν εἰσῆλθον εἰς τὸ ὄρος, καὶ ἦλθον ὧδε. Οἴδατε δὲ καὶ πῶς ἀεὶ ἐνέτρεπον τοὺς τοῦτο ποιοῦντας, καὶ παρήγγελλον παύσασθαι τῆς τοιαύτης συνηθείας. Θάψατε οὖν τὸ ἡμέτερον ὑμεῖς, καὶ ὑπὸ γῆν κρύψατε· καὶ ἔστω τὸ παρ' ἐμοῦ ῥῆμα φυλαττόμενον παρ' ὑμῖν, ὥστε μηδένα γινώσκειν τὸν τόπον, πλὴν ὑμῶν μόνων. Εγὼ γὰρ ἐν τῇ ἀναστάσει τῶν νεκρῶν ἀπολήψομαι παρὰ τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἄφθαρτον αὐτό.—See Life of Antony by Athanasius.

(Migne, Patrologiae, Ser. Græc. tom. 26, col. 972.)

2 De Bysso Antiquorum, London, 1776, pp. 70, 71.

Hérodote, Paris, 1802, p. 357.

• Beiträge, Göttingen, 1811, pt. 2, p. 73.

Mummy cloths

made of linen.

Jomard thought that both cotton and linen were used for bandages of mummies;1 Granville, in the Philosophical Transactions for 1825, p. 274, also embraced this view. The question was finally settled by Mr. Thomson, who after a twelve years' study of the subject proved in the Philosophical Magazine (IIIrd Series, Vol. V., No. 29, Nov., 1834) that the bandages were universally made of linen. He obtained for his researches about four hundred specimens of mummy cloth, and employed Mr. Bauer of Kew to examine them with his microscopes. "The ultimate fibre of cotton is a transparent tube without joints, flattened so that its inward surfaces are in contact along its axis, and also twisted spirally round its axis: that of flax is a transparent tube jointed like a cane, and not flattened nor spirally twisted."" The coarse linen of the Egyptians was made of thick flax, and was used for making towels, awnings and sail-cloth;3 the fine linen, 'Olóvn, is thought by some to be the equivalent of the N of Proverbs vii. 16. The Greek Evdov Σινδών = Heb. 7, was used to denote any linen cloth, and sometimes cotton cloth; but the owdóvos Bvooívns with which mummies, according to Herodotus (II. 86), were bandaged, is certainly linen. The Egyptian word usually translated by "byssus is 8 shens, Coptic yenc; ordinary

[ocr errors]

words for linen are

[ocr errors]

nu, Coptic &

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

vir Bowvwv (Rosetta Stone,

1. 17). One piece of very fine texture of linen obtained at Thebes had 152 threads in the warp, and 71 in the woof, to each inch, and a second piece described by Wilkinson (Ancient Egyptians, III. 165) had 540 threads in the warp, and 110 in the woof. One of the cities in Egypt most

1 Description de l'Egypte; Mémoires sur les Hypogées, p. 35.

2 See Yates, Textrinum Antiquorum; London, 1843, p. 262, where the whole subject is carefully discussed.

[merged small][ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

4 See also an interesting letter by De Fleury to M. Devéria on Egyptiennes "in Rev. Arch., t. XXI, Paris, 1870, pp. 217-221.

"Les Etoffes

Ápu, the Pano- Panopolis

the great

linen

weavers.

famous for its linen industry was 0 polis of the Greeks,' the use or in of the Copts, centre of and Akhmîm2 of the Arabs; but as Egypt exported great quantities of this material, and also used immense quantities for bandages of mummies, it is probable that other cities also possessed large linen manufactories.3

The length and breadth of mummy bandages vary from Mummy bandages. about 3 feet by 24 inches, to 13 feet by 4 inches; some are made with fringe at both ends, like a scarf, and some have carefully made selvedges. Large linen sheets several feet square are also found in tombs. The saffron coloured pieces of linen with which mummies are finally covered measure about 8 feet by 4 feet. Usually two or three different kinds of linen cloth are used in bandaging mummies. Mummy cloths are with very few exceptions quite plain, and it is only in the Greek times that the fine outer linen covering is decorated with figures of gods, etc., in gaudy colours. Several square pieces of linen in the Museums of Europe are ornamented with blue stripes, and it is pretty certain that the threads which form them were dyed with indigo before they were woven into the piece. As far back as the time of Amenophis III. it was customary to inscribe texts in the hieratic and hieroglyphic characters upon mummy cloths, and at that period large vignettes accompany the chapters from the Book of the Dead; after the XXVIth dynasty hieratic only appears to have been used for this purpose, and the bandages, which are rarely more than four inches wide, are frequently so coarse that the text is almost illegible. Badly drawn vignettes, drawn in outline, usually stand at the top of each column of writing.

of the

The marvellous skill which the Egyptians displayed in Duration making linen did not die out with the fall of the native linen

· Πανῶν πόλις, λινουργῶν καὶ λιθουργῶν κατοικία παλαιά, Strabo, XVII., 1. .42. * Akhmîm has a population of about 10,000 souls, and of these 1000 are Christians.

In the map published by Yates (Textrinum Antiquorum, p. 250) to show the divisions of the ancient world in which sheep's-wool, goat's-hair, hemp, cotton, silk, beaver's-wool, camel's-wool, camel's-hair and linen are found, the only other districts where linen was made besides Egypt are Colchis, Cinyps, and a district near the mouth of the Rhine.

industry in Egypt.

sovereigns of Egypt, and the Copts, or native Christians of that country, carried on the industry with splendid success until the twelfth century of our era. Although they ceased to mummify their dead, for the hope of the resurrection of the body given by Christianity practically killed the art of embalming, they continued to dress them in garments which are remarkable for the beauty of the embroidery and Discovery tapestries with which they are decorated. A great "find"

of Christian necropolis at

of fine examples of this work was made at Akhmîm, the ancient Panopolis, in 1884. The graves at Akhmîm are Panopolis. about five feet deep, and are not indicated by any mound.

the bodies.

The bodies appear to have been buried with natron sprinkled over them, for many of their garments are covered with crystals of this substance; and they appear also to have been buried with their best clothes on. The head was provided with a band or cap, and was sometimes supported on a pillow. . The body wore a tunic, and the feet had stockings, sandals or shoes upon them; the head, breast, arms, and fingers were decorated with ornaments. The condition in life of the deceased was indicated by inscriptions on rectangular wooden tesseræ (see p. 188), or by his tools, which were buried with him. The body was entirely covered over with linen and laid upon a board, and thus dressed was then deposited in the Ornaments earth. The chief ornaments found in the tombs at Akhmîm found upon are: hair-pins and combs made of wood or bone; earrings of several shapes and forms made of glass; silver and bronze filigree work, gold with little gold balls, and iron with pendent agates; necklaces made of amber, coloured glass, and blue and green glazed faïence beads; torques, or neck-rings, made of bronze; bracelets, open and closed, made of bronze, iron, glass and horn; finger-rings of bronze; and bronze belt buckles made in the form of a Christian cross. A large number of ivory crosses are also found; the cross which is found so often on these objects was not used merely as an ornament, but as a special symbol and emblem of Christianity.1 Age of the The most ancient and the greater number of the tombs which necropolis. 1 I owe these details to Forrer, Die Gräber und Textilfunde von Achmim -Panopolis. Strassburg, 1891, pp. 12, 13. This book contains 16 plates on which are photographed, in colours, 250 pictures of the textile fabrics and the other most interesting objects found at Ahhmîm.

[ocr errors]
« PreviousContinue »