DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4859#0026
THE TOMB AND ITS OWNERS
situation they depict. For the pictures in the outer hall here are not
confined to memories; the dead are actually entering the presence of the
lords of eternity. Even if the injured scenes did represent Nebamun taking
his place at Henetnofret's side equally with Apuki, with what hope or
intention was this done? The Egyptian habit of pictorially illustrating
their faith would make such problems far more insistent for them than for
the Jew, with whom it was probably rather a question of casuistry than of
intense personal feeling when he asked, "Whose wife, then, shall she be in
the resurrection?" But it is dangerous to apply modern sentiment to an
age so remote and so different, and we have the good sense ourselves not
to allow a foolish curiosity regarding the modes of preternatural existence,
where all that we know of happiness may conceivably be surpassed with-
out marriage, to interfere with that which feeling and reason prescribe
as very desirable for this world. If acknowledged custom in Egypt as-
signed the wife in such cases to her first husband in that world beyond,
which then seemed so proximate to present existence, the admission of
these scenes by Nebamun may have been both natural and commend-
able.
For those who find Nebamun's complacence incompatible with gene-
ral human nature, and would regard such magnanimity or acceptance
of social dogma as contemptible poverty of spirit, there is still a way of
escape. The tomb, though excavated by Apuki and shared at his own
death by Nebamun, might have been decorated under the supervision of
Henetnofret after the decease of her second husband. The situation
would leave her free to decide herself which of the two intimate ties
which had divided her life here should dominate her existence hereafter,
and it would not surprise us to find that she chose the husband of her
youth and the father of most, if not all, of her children, and hence placed
herself by his side in all those pictures which might exercise a compul-
sion on destiny and determine her lot in the long vista of years yet to
be. On that supposition, she seems to have tried in every way to miti-
gate the unavoidable invidiousness of her choice. She gave Nebamun
that prominence in the scenes which was due to him by his rank and
ii
Objections
to this
hypothesis
The decora-
tion of the
tomb possibly
her act
situation they depict. For the pictures in the outer hall here are not
confined to memories; the dead are actually entering the presence of the
lords of eternity. Even if the injured scenes did represent Nebamun taking
his place at Henetnofret's side equally with Apuki, with what hope or
intention was this done? The Egyptian habit of pictorially illustrating
their faith would make such problems far more insistent for them than for
the Jew, with whom it was probably rather a question of casuistry than of
intense personal feeling when he asked, "Whose wife, then, shall she be in
the resurrection?" But it is dangerous to apply modern sentiment to an
age so remote and so different, and we have the good sense ourselves not
to allow a foolish curiosity regarding the modes of preternatural existence,
where all that we know of happiness may conceivably be surpassed with-
out marriage, to interfere with that which feeling and reason prescribe
as very desirable for this world. If acknowledged custom in Egypt as-
signed the wife in such cases to her first husband in that world beyond,
which then seemed so proximate to present existence, the admission of
these scenes by Nebamun may have been both natural and commend-
able.
For those who find Nebamun's complacence incompatible with gene-
ral human nature, and would regard such magnanimity or acceptance
of social dogma as contemptible poverty of spirit, there is still a way of
escape. The tomb, though excavated by Apuki and shared at his own
death by Nebamun, might have been decorated under the supervision of
Henetnofret after the decease of her second husband. The situation
would leave her free to decide herself which of the two intimate ties
which had divided her life here should dominate her existence hereafter,
and it would not surprise us to find that she chose the husband of her
youth and the father of most, if not all, of her children, and hence placed
herself by his side in all those pictures which might exercise a compul-
sion on destiny and determine her lot in the long vista of years yet to
be. On that supposition, she seems to have tried in every way to miti-
gate the unavoidable invidiousness of her choice. She gave Nebamun
that prominence in the scenes which was due to him by his rank and
ii
Objections
to this
hypothesis
The decora-
tion of the
tomb possibly
her act