Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 3, 2025
I have elsewhere described the little funerary obelisks, the altar bases, the statues, and the tables of offerings found in tombs of the ancient empire. These tables were made of alabaster and limestone during the Pyramid period, of granite or red sandstone under the Theban kings, and of basalt or serpentine from the time of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty.
The object of every prayer, every spell, every hymn, and every incantation contained in these Texts, was to preserve the king's life. This might be done in many ways. In the first place it was necessary to provide a daily supply of offerings, which were offered up in the funerary temple that was attached to every pyramid.
I have performed the commandments of men, and the things which make the gods contented. I have given bread to the hungry man, and water to the thirsty man, and apparel to the naked man, and a ferry boat to him that had none. I have made offerings to the gods, and given funerary meals to the spirits. Welcome! I offer up my prayers to the gods, and I know their persons.
All the statues, the carved and painted tombs, all the curious little model boats and workshops, all the painted mummies, all the amulets, the scarabs, the little funerary statuettes, all this mummery which seems to be so characteristic and so essential, is only the means to an end, and an ever changing means to secure a successful comfortable existence of the spirit in the life after death, in the ghostly duplicate of life on earth.
So, for example, the skill acquired in stone-cutting, during the construction of the great pyramids, was utilized a little later in producing rock-cut tombs from one end of Egypt to the other. The functions of the grave remained the same. Yet with the changes in form resulting from the growth of skill, modifications in the funerary customs crept in.
The Macedonian conquest brought back the same revolution in funerary fashions which followed the fall of the Ramessides, and double and triple mummy cases, over-painted and over-gilded, were again in demand.
Thaiemhetep was an important member of the semi-royal, great high-priestly family of Memphis, and her funerary inscription throws much light on the theology of the Ptolemaic Period. "And the heart of the Ur-kherp-hem rejoiced in her exceedingly. I bore to him a child three times, but I did not bear a man child besides these three daughters. And they did everything according as he had said.
Neither texts nor monuments help us to fill up the gap. The excavations of M. de Sarzec have indeed brought to light the fragments of an Assyrian stele in which a funerary scene is represented, but unfortunately its meaning is by no means clear. I cannot point to an Assyrian relief in which the same theme is treated.
We do not possess a single funerary inscription dating from the days when the two nations who divided Mesopotamia between them were still their own masters. The arrangements of the nameless tombs in lower Chaldæa are extremely simple and their furnishing very poor, if we compare them with the sepulchres in the Egyptian cemeteries. As for Assyrian burying-places, none have yet been discovered.
The town stretching to the middle of the plain, near the Euphrates, the funerary mound was conspicuous at many stades' distance like an acropolis; they tell me that it still exists although Nineveh was overthrown by the Medes when they destroyed the Assyrian empire." The exaggerations in which Ctesias indulged may here be recognized.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking