DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4858#0041
The form of
the tomb
depends little
on practical
considera-
tions
The royal
tombs betray
the double
motive
THE NECROPOLIS OF THEBES
its long passages and its culs de sac.1 The other impulse leads to the
many roomed family mastabas at Sakkara, the gaily painted chambers
at Kurneh, the columnar halls of El Amarna, the intricate catacombs
of the Ethiopian period in the Assasif, and perhaps even the great
mortuary temples at Thebes. One might have expected that the
simple desire for interment would rule almost exclusively in the rock-
cut tomb. But this was not so. It, too, was forced, in face of many
difficulties, to take on the semblance of a house. The desire to provide
within the mountain itself a place where the body will be safe from
violation or decay, naturally leads men either to sink a perpendicular
shaft with a chamber at the bottom or else to drive a horizontal or
descending gallery, having a room at the end to receive the inter-
ment. Such simple forms survived in Egypt to latest times, and when
we find this narrow gallery driven straight forward into the hillside,
it expresses the preponderating motive of burial, even though this
passage should only be part of a more complicated whole. Where,
however, a chamber is provided, not at the far end of the gallery but
at the entrance, there we have the idea of housing the spirit; even
though the provision be only a niche in the face of the mastaba or
cliff, where the ghost may feed on the offerings provided.2 From a
niche it becomes a walled chamber; store-rooms may be added, and
even columned halls and a porticoed front. In any case it is a home,
arising out of a more optimistic view of the condition of the spirits of
the dead and of their friendly attitude to those that meet with them
in the tomb chapel.
The distinction of the two motives in burial, though of course
they are never altogether severed, has its most complete expression
11 do not mean to say that any custom of burial, even the earliest, reveals nothing but a desire to
hide and preserve the body. There may have been a superstructure even to prehistoric graves. The early
mastaba and the pyramid had, as we now know, cult-chapels and elaborate temples. The disappearance of
the latter has left only the place of sepulture visible and created quite a false impression of the ideas behind
these burials. Yet their fate is not fortuitous. The survival of the place of sepulture is the result of the
disproportionate care lavished on it. I add this note at Dr. Gardiner's suggestion, who rightly judged that
the allusion in the text stood in need of it.
2Daga, the owner of Tomb io3, in the Xlth dyn. seems to have felt the insufficiency of this primitive
type and added to it (subsequently?) a long portico.
i4
the tomb
depends little
on practical
considera-
tions
The royal
tombs betray
the double
motive
THE NECROPOLIS OF THEBES
its long passages and its culs de sac.1 The other impulse leads to the
many roomed family mastabas at Sakkara, the gaily painted chambers
at Kurneh, the columnar halls of El Amarna, the intricate catacombs
of the Ethiopian period in the Assasif, and perhaps even the great
mortuary temples at Thebes. One might have expected that the
simple desire for interment would rule almost exclusively in the rock-
cut tomb. But this was not so. It, too, was forced, in face of many
difficulties, to take on the semblance of a house. The desire to provide
within the mountain itself a place where the body will be safe from
violation or decay, naturally leads men either to sink a perpendicular
shaft with a chamber at the bottom or else to drive a horizontal or
descending gallery, having a room at the end to receive the inter-
ment. Such simple forms survived in Egypt to latest times, and when
we find this narrow gallery driven straight forward into the hillside,
it expresses the preponderating motive of burial, even though this
passage should only be part of a more complicated whole. Where,
however, a chamber is provided, not at the far end of the gallery but
at the entrance, there we have the idea of housing the spirit; even
though the provision be only a niche in the face of the mastaba or
cliff, where the ghost may feed on the offerings provided.2 From a
niche it becomes a walled chamber; store-rooms may be added, and
even columned halls and a porticoed front. In any case it is a home,
arising out of a more optimistic view of the condition of the spirits of
the dead and of their friendly attitude to those that meet with them
in the tomb chapel.
The distinction of the two motives in burial, though of course
they are never altogether severed, has its most complete expression
11 do not mean to say that any custom of burial, even the earliest, reveals nothing but a desire to
hide and preserve the body. There may have been a superstructure even to prehistoric graves. The early
mastaba and the pyramid had, as we now know, cult-chapels and elaborate temples. The disappearance of
the latter has left only the place of sepulture visible and created quite a false impression of the ideas behind
these burials. Yet their fate is not fortuitous. The survival of the place of sepulture is the result of the
disproportionate care lavished on it. I add this note at Dr. Gardiner's suggestion, who rightly judged that
the allusion in the text stood in need of it.
2Daga, the owner of Tomb io3, in the Xlth dyn. seems to have felt the insufficiency of this primitive
type and added to it (subsequently?) a long portico.
i4