Осирийон
Соберу в кучу, а то расползается все время
Margaret A.Murray . THE OSIREION AT ABYDOS
1, The excavations this year were carried on by Mrs. Fetrie and myself. Mrs. Petrie managed the actual excavations, overseeing the men, paying, the wages, in short, all the dull and uninteresting, though very necessary, part of the work, whereas I had the more congenial and amusing employment of copying the sculptures. Till the sculptures were sufficiently cleared for me to draw them, I spent my time in the Sety Temple, making fac-simile copies of the Coptic graffiti on its walls. Then, when it was possible to draw in the hypogeum, I set to work there, but it was entirely owing to Miss Hansard's kind help that I was able to secure drawings of all the sculpture that we uncovered (with one exception, the sloping passage), before they were silted up. I have to thank Miss Eckenstein also for her help in copying in fac-simile the Greek and Phoenician graffiti in the Sety Temple, which are published in this volume. My thanks are due also to many people for assistance in various ways, but particularly to Mr. Thompson and Dr. Walker for help in trans¬lating the hieroglyphic inscriptions, and to Mr. Griffith, Mr. Crum, and Mr. Milne for translating the hieratic, Coptic, and Greek graffiti.
I should like also to say that anything that is good in this book is due to Professor Petrie and to Mr. Griffith, to whom I owe all my knowledge of Egyptology.
In the previous season Mr. Caulfeild had partially cleared the long passage within the temenos wall; the passage itself had not been laid bare, but the great mass of sand had been removed, leaving a gigantic furrow like a natural ravine (PL. I. i.). The method of constructing this great hypogeum rendered it comparatively easy to discover that there was building below, though the depth at which it lay made it impossible to clear more than a small portion. The nature of the desert is that after removing from two to four feet of loose wind blown sand, the hard marl, called gebel by the workmen, comes into view. This is so firmly compacted together that it can be cut like rock. The ancient builders took advantage of this fact, and excavated passages and halls with steeply sloping, almost perpendicular, sides. These were lined and roofed with great blocks of stone, and the hollow at the top filled up with sand; the building was then completely hidden from the -outside. In our clearance it was only necessary to descend a few feet till the rock-like gebel was exposed, and then to follow down the excavation ; and the trial-pits that we sunk within the temenos invariably showed that the gebel had been cut perpendicularly to admit of building below. We spent three weeks in hunting for a place where the roof still appeared to remain, and were puzzled all the time at the number of right-angled turns which this extraordinary passage, as we then thought it, . appeared to make. These turns, as we now know, must be the rock cuttings to hold chambers and halls. Finally we decided on a likely place, where the Roman rubbish, which had filled the part already cleared by Mr. Caulfeild, touched the clean marl filling of the desert. Here it was that we hoped to find the place where the roof was still intact. For days I carried candles and matches in in my pocket ready to enter the passage as soon as there was a hole big enough to squeeze through ; but they were never required. Throughout this excavation it was always the unexpected that happened; we expected to find a passage, we found chambers and halls; we expected to find it roofed in, the roof had been completely quarried away; we expected to find a tomb, we found a place of worship.
Our first deep pit brought us into the South Chamber, which gave us the cartouche of Merenptah, and made us realize that we had found a building which has no known counterpart in Egypt. Then came the discovery of the Great Hall and then of Valley of the Kings; he was hardly likely to make two of such magnificence, one at Thebes and one at Abydos. The other hypothesis was that this was the building for the special worship of Osiris and the celebration of the Mysteries, and this appears to me to be the true explanation, for many reasons. Each reason may not be convincing in itself, but the accumulation of evidence goes to prove the case. There is no tomb even among the Tombs of the Kings that is like it in plan, none having the side chamber leading off the Great Hall. Then, again, no tomb has ever been found attached to a temple; the converse is often the case, I mean a temple attached to a tomb ; but this, as far as we can judge, is a kind of extra chapel, a "hidden shrine," as the mythological texts express it, belonging to the temple. It is only to be expected that Osiris, one of the chief deities of Egypt, should have a special place of worship at Abydos, where he was identified with the local god. And that it should be a part of the temple dedicated to the worship of the dead, and which had special chambers set apart for the celebration of the Osirian mysteries is very natural likewise. The building lies immediately in the axis of the temple; a line drawn through the temple and the desert pylon to the Royal Tombs passes through the sloping passage and across the centre of the Great Hall. This is not the result of accident, the temple being older than the hypogeum, but shows that both were dedicated to the same worship. The sculptures in the Great Hall are the Vivification of Osiris by Horus, and the offering of incense by Merenptah; between the two sculptures is inscribed chapter cxlii. of the " Book of the Dead," the " Chapter of knowing the Names of Osiris." The other chapters of the " Book of the Dead " inscribed on the walls were pronounced by M. Maspero, when he saw them, to be the "Book of Osiris." The books of "Gates" and of "Am Duat," which are sculptured and painted on the North passage, were said by the ancient Egyptians to have had their origin in the decorations which Horus executed on the walls of the tomb of his father Osiris.
CHAPTER I.
THE SOUTH CHAMBER.
4. The chamber south of the Great Hall is sculp¬tured on the east, south, and west walls with the clxviiith chapter of the " Book of the Dead." This is a rare chapter, being known only in three papyri, one in the Cairo Museum from the tomb of Amen-hotep II, one in the British Museum (No. 10,478) of the XXth Dynasty, and one at St. Petersburg. This, however, is the only instance in sculpture of this chapter. The papyrus of Amenhotep II has been published in fac-simile without translation, the British Museum papyrus has been translated by Dr. Budge, but the vignettes are not published ; and the St. Petersburg papyrus is still unpublished. In none of these papyri does the king appear, nor are the gods of the first seven Qererts mentioned.
THE GREAT HALL.
10. The Great Hall, the floor of which was more than forty feet below the surface of the desert, was fifteen feet wide, thirty-four feet long, and seventeen feet high. There were three doorways, one to the south, leading to the South Chamber; one to the east, to the sloping passage ; one to the north, to the north passage. The North and South Walls were covered with inscriptions. The West Wall is divided into three parts vertically; the portion to the left hand is filled with a colossal scene of the Vivification of Osiris; the middle portion contains part of the Chapter of knowing the Names of Osiris ; the right hand portion is occupied with the figure of King Merenptah standing before a heaped-up table of offerings, and making an offering of incense- The wall had originally had a frieze of the kheker ornament painted in yellow, blue, green, and black.
THE EAST WALL of the hall had had the facing of stone quarried away in Roman times, so that any decoration, either sculpture or painting, which might have been there, had perished. The floor, as in the South Chamber and the passages, was paved with blocks of sandstone. The roofing stones must have stretched from wall to wall, the entire width of the hall, as there are no pillars or other means of support. It is easy to see how stones of such a size would impress the minds of visitors, and Strabo's surprise is not to be wondered at.
Above the scene of Osiris and Horus {PL. I) are two rectangular holes for driving in the wedges by which the stones were split out of the walls by the Romans, From the weather stains and marks of bird droppings, it seems that the place must have
stood open and roofless for many years, though it was filled up again in Roman times. Sufficient traces of colour remained on all the sculptures to show that the background was white, the hieroglyphs red and blue, and the figures of various colours. Many of the details were added in the painting and do not appear in the sculptures, as, for instance, the bracelets on the arms of Merenptah and the striped garments of the figures of gods in the lists on the West Wall.
Margaret A.Murray . THE OSIREION AT ABYDOS
1, The excavations this year were carried on by Mrs. Fetrie and myself. Mrs. Petrie managed the actual excavations, overseeing the men, paying, the wages, in short, all the dull and uninteresting, though very necessary, part of the work, whereas I had the more congenial and amusing employment of copying the sculptures. Till the sculptures were sufficiently cleared for me to draw them, I spent my time in the Sety Temple, making fac-simile copies of the Coptic graffiti on its walls. Then, when it was possible to draw in the hypogeum, I set to work there, but it was entirely owing to Miss Hansard's kind help that I was able to secure drawings of all the sculpture that we uncovered (with one exception, the sloping passage), before they were silted up. I have to thank Miss Eckenstein also for her help in copying in fac-simile the Greek and Phoenician graffiti in the Sety Temple, which are published in this volume. My thanks are due also to many people for assistance in various ways, but particularly to Mr. Thompson and Dr. Walker for help in trans¬lating the hieroglyphic inscriptions, and to Mr. Griffith, Mr. Crum, and Mr. Milne for translating the hieratic, Coptic, and Greek graffiti.
I should like also to say that anything that is good in this book is due to Professor Petrie and to Mr. Griffith, to whom I owe all my knowledge of Egyptology.
In the previous season Mr. Caulfeild had partially cleared the long passage within the temenos wall; the passage itself had not been laid bare, but the great mass of sand had been removed, leaving a gigantic furrow like a natural ravine (PL. I. i.). The method of constructing this great hypogeum rendered it comparatively easy to discover that there was building below, though the depth at which it lay made it impossible to clear more than a small portion. The nature of the desert is that after removing from two to four feet of loose wind blown sand, the hard marl, called gebel by the workmen, comes into view. This is so firmly compacted together that it can be cut like rock. The ancient builders took advantage of this fact, and excavated passages and halls with steeply sloping, almost perpendicular, sides. These were lined and roofed with great blocks of stone, and the hollow at the top filled up with sand; the building was then completely hidden from the -outside. In our clearance it was only necessary to descend a few feet till the rock-like gebel was exposed, and then to follow down the excavation ; and the trial-pits that we sunk within the temenos invariably showed that the gebel had been cut perpendicularly to admit of building below. We spent three weeks in hunting for a place where the roof still appeared to remain, and were puzzled all the time at the number of right-angled turns which this extraordinary passage, as we then thought it, . appeared to make. These turns, as we now know, must be the rock cuttings to hold chambers and halls. Finally we decided on a likely place, where the Roman rubbish, which had filled the part already cleared by Mr. Caulfeild, touched the clean marl filling of the desert. Here it was that we hoped to find the place where the roof was still intact. For days I carried candles and matches in in my pocket ready to enter the passage as soon as there was a hole big enough to squeeze through ; but they were never required. Throughout this excavation it was always the unexpected that happened; we expected to find a passage, we found chambers and halls; we expected to find it roofed in, the roof had been completely quarried away; we expected to find a tomb, we found a place of worship.
Our first deep pit brought us into the South Chamber, which gave us the cartouche of Merenptah, and made us realize that we had found a building which has no known counterpart in Egypt. Then came the discovery of the Great Hall and then of Valley of the Kings; he was hardly likely to make two of such magnificence, one at Thebes and one at Abydos. The other hypothesis was that this was the building for the special worship of Osiris and the celebration of the Mysteries, and this appears to me to be the true explanation, for many reasons. Each reason may not be convincing in itself, but the accumulation of evidence goes to prove the case. There is no tomb even among the Tombs of the Kings that is like it in plan, none having the side chamber leading off the Great Hall. Then, again, no tomb has ever been found attached to a temple; the converse is often the case, I mean a temple attached to a tomb ; but this, as far as we can judge, is a kind of extra chapel, a "hidden shrine," as the mythological texts express it, belonging to the temple. It is only to be expected that Osiris, one of the chief deities of Egypt, should have a special place of worship at Abydos, where he was identified with the local god. And that it should be a part of the temple dedicated to the worship of the dead, and which had special chambers set apart for the celebration of the Osirian mysteries is very natural likewise. The building lies immediately in the axis of the temple; a line drawn through the temple and the desert pylon to the Royal Tombs passes through the sloping passage and across the centre of the Great Hall. This is not the result of accident, the temple being older than the hypogeum, but shows that both were dedicated to the same worship. The sculptures in the Great Hall are the Vivification of Osiris by Horus, and the offering of incense by Merenptah; between the two sculptures is inscribed chapter cxlii. of the " Book of the Dead," the " Chapter of knowing the Names of Osiris." The other chapters of the " Book of the Dead " inscribed on the walls were pronounced by M. Maspero, when he saw them, to be the "Book of Osiris." The books of "Gates" and of "Am Duat," which are sculptured and painted on the North passage, were said by the ancient Egyptians to have had their origin in the decorations which Horus executed on the walls of the tomb of his father Osiris.
CHAPTER I.
THE SOUTH CHAMBER.
4. The chamber south of the Great Hall is sculp¬tured on the east, south, and west walls with the clxviiith chapter of the " Book of the Dead." This is a rare chapter, being known only in three papyri, one in the Cairo Museum from the tomb of Amen-hotep II, one in the British Museum (No. 10,478) of the XXth Dynasty, and one at St. Petersburg. This, however, is the only instance in sculpture of this chapter. The papyrus of Amenhotep II has been published in fac-simile without translation, the British Museum papyrus has been translated by Dr. Budge, but the vignettes are not published ; and the St. Petersburg papyrus is still unpublished. In none of these papyri does the king appear, nor are the gods of the first seven Qererts mentioned.
THE GREAT HALL.
10. The Great Hall, the floor of which was more than forty feet below the surface of the desert, was fifteen feet wide, thirty-four feet long, and seventeen feet high. There were three doorways, one to the south, leading to the South Chamber; one to the east, to the sloping passage ; one to the north, to the north passage. The North and South Walls were covered with inscriptions. The West Wall is divided into three parts vertically; the portion to the left hand is filled with a colossal scene of the Vivification of Osiris; the middle portion contains part of the Chapter of knowing the Names of Osiris ; the right hand portion is occupied with the figure of King Merenptah standing before a heaped-up table of offerings, and making an offering of incense- The wall had originally had a frieze of the kheker ornament painted in yellow, blue, green, and black.
THE EAST WALL of the hall had had the facing of stone quarried away in Roman times, so that any decoration, either sculpture or painting, which might have been there, had perished. The floor, as in the South Chamber and the passages, was paved with blocks of sandstone. The roofing stones must have stretched from wall to wall, the entire width of the hall, as there are no pillars or other means of support. It is easy to see how stones of such a size would impress the minds of visitors, and Strabo's surprise is not to be wondered at.
Above the scene of Osiris and Horus {PL. I) are two rectangular holes for driving in the wedges by which the stones were split out of the walls by the Romans, From the weather stains and marks of bird droppings, it seems that the place must have
stood open and roofless for many years, though it was filled up again in Roman times. Sufficient traces of colour remained on all the sculptures to show that the background was white, the hieroglyphs red and blue, and the figures of various colours. Many of the details were added in the painting and do not appear in the sculptures, as, for instance, the bracelets on the arms of Merenptah and the striped garments of the figures of gods in the lists on the West Wall.