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Show Closing In on the Tomb of Osiris, Greatest God of Old Egypt; Professor Thomas Vhittemore, the Distinguished American Archaeologist, Describes the Fascination of Uncovering a Monument Greater than the Sphinx or the Pyramids PROFESSOR THOMAS WHITTEMORE. American representative of the Egypt Exploration Fund, has at last begun a iorough exploration of the most wonderful ot 11 Egyptian Bites, the Temple of Osiris, at Ltydos, and all the buildings connected tito it. Here was the abode and the shrine or OsirlA he judge of the dead in the Egyptian religion, he god who fights to save mankind from the Dvil One. The explerers have found the entrance to a orgotten tomb, which is perhaps that of Osiris limself, for the gods of the ancient religions fere onCT living men. The tomb dates from bout 3000 B. C, and is therefore nearly five bousand years old. Around are many temples and tombs and the reateat cemeteries ot human remains ever ound. Most remarkable is a cemetery of ountless jackals, all embalmed with the same are as human beings. The explanation is that he jackals were sacred to the dead, because n life they often guided men out of the track-ess track-ess desert 3y Prof. Thomas Whittemore, of the Egypt Exploration Fund. THREE hundred and fifty miles south of Cairo, In the western desert, reaohed by the highway of ancient pllgrimag n a bay of the Lybian hills, the flaming joundary of the Egyptian world, is Abydos, be city of the living dead, the abode of )sirls, the god aad judge of the dead, . the rastest cemetery oMemples and of tombs. Timi akes its measure in Egypt here. Plundered and obbed in every age, priceless treasure stili einalns. Near the curious seventeenth century Coptlu Deir, or convent, a little way from the cultiva-ion, cultiva-ion, green as an emerald just split, close to the f'llage of Beni Mansour, was found among nany other graves one very deep shaft of the ileventh or early twelfth dynasty, .2000 B. C, n which the two chambers, facing each other a the north and south, had been, thoroughly ifled. The robbers in their haste, however, lad failed to notice that the shaft descended nuch farther still to a lower chamber. Suddenly the words, "an unopened chamber!" ame up the ladder of boys standing over one mother, their bare feet gripping clawlike the :uts made in the hard gebel in both sides of he shaft, as they pass up the filled baskets torn below to the men at the top. It is an melting moment. All the boys are called up mt of the shaft, and one of the officers, who ias been watching all the time from the edge if the shaft, goes down, using the same cut iteps on which the boys have been standing. True enough, he finds the chamber there, ealed with two superimposed courses of brick, ilaced herringbonewise. The bricks are easily ind quickly loosened, and as they fall out a ilast of hot, damp air, almost like escaping Keam from a boiler, strikes his face. The -noialure is explained at once by the depth and ie Infiltration from the not distant cultivation. Flattened out like an eel, he wriggles In 'lose to the side ot the chamber, to disturb as Ittle as possible, and finds that he is literally n J""!. "Water Is a sore decayer of your dead dy," and the bones have been decomposed. Jut seven pale little vases three of alabaster, oree of pottery and one of limestone, show the '"time of the head and point the way to the way. By the light of a candle standing in the "id for a candlestick, notes are made of the measurements of the chamber and the direc- on in which the body lay, and all the objects, V- drwings. In the place. This before any "mg is touched. This chamber holds the secret of that mys-enous mys-enous building, the Osireion at Abydos a noit remarkable sanctuary, of a style compar-; compar-; e only with that of the Temple of the Pnmx at Glzeh, and probably of the same age, e time of the pyramid builders (c. 3000 B. C.) .'! tbe "Fountain" or "Well" of Osiris at ldos mentioned by Strabo. h nwe" wbich straD saw was in or near ; wilding of huge megalithic blocks, the uemnomum." which forcibly reminded him i tne Egyptian Labyrinth at Hawara, equally "owned for the huge size of its stones and iLsp'enclid halls. The new building cor-"Ponds cor-"Ponds to Strabo's description of the Mem- . I ... , f ., t . . . jf . U - fill -rri , 8 ;i ; The House of the Kgyptian Exploratioa l-'und in the Lfesett T ' r- 5 at Abydos. sZ&f' - "Sv - ' , " ' . ' 1 t'il - Skeleton of an Egyptian Woman Buried in a Jar at v ' , . I Osiris's Shrine 5,000 Years Ago. I I i ' , 1 k - 7 " the fountain H&ii ; y " , 0 5 10 20 30 0 50 60 1,0 00 U 100 I 1 . 1 1 I J I J II" ' i -it" Map of -the Famous Well of Osiris, The Mysterious Shaft, Not Yet Entirely Uncovered, That Is Long Thought a Myth, but Now Supposed to Lead to the Tomb of Osiris, Actually Uncovered. nonium; it Is in the requisite and probable position, immediately behind the Great Temple of Abydos, and close .to the innermost sanctuary. sanc-tuary. In front of the cells, which are ranged along the walls (these cells are the cells ot Osiris mentioned in "The Book of the Dead"), there Is no pavement; the granite threshold goes straight down all round to a depth of four metres, at which depth water was found. It looks certainly as if the building was a sacred sac-red pool or tank, partially roofed. The central cen-tral portion between the two colonnades or aisles was open to the sky. The ancient quarters quar-ters have worked their will upon it, especially In Roman times, but enough remains to show Its plan completely and reveal the enormous size of its stones and pillars. Another exciting and remarkable find is that of a woman buried in a simple trench. Very carefully, with bellows and sometimes even ' with our breath, the sand is gently blown away until her whole body is revealed to us in all her jewels, with which a tender fancy had decked her for the grave. Like a coronet about her brow lie masses of beads, corries, superb uncut carnelians; blue glazed amulets and scarabs. Her arm bears a bracelet of scarabs, amulets and beads, and on her left hand, lying like a withered leaf, she wears a ring of five email scarabs, one bearing the cartouche ot Sheshonk, or Shishak, of the twenty-second dynasty, the great king who defeated Roho-boam Roho-boam and sacked Jerusalem Itself. Again, as always, all the beads and scarabs are' drawn In position and their settings noted, 60 that they are restrung in the original order in which they were found. In the camel track close to the house of the Egypt Exploration Fund in which the excavators excava-tors live was found, just beneath the desert sand, a cemetery of Ptolemaic ibises. The ibis was a bird sacred to the god Thoth who, as measurer of the earth and heavens, the magician magi-cian priest, the scribe of th6 gods, stood near Osirib when he weighed the heart of the dead. Flocks of these sacred birds, moving in their slow, rhythmic flight over the temple lakes, have left their immortal shadow in the wall relief. They were held in divine honor, living and in death. They were mummified with the 6ame care given to the mummification of men, in elaborate wrappings of the linen and in an astounding variety of patterns and of form, in some of which was represented the bird-god himself. They were preserved in large clay jars, and in a few cases, individually, in pear-shaped pear-shaped pots. More than ninety of "the large jars were found and over 1.500 adult birds were examined. So ravaged were they by the white ant that scarcely fifty were brought out of Egypt, and these only by being strengthened with fixative showered over them from a blowpipe. blow-pipe. Similarly, it is often a thrilling operation to save figures of ivory or of wood which, if lifted as found, would Vanish into dust, but which, slowly and patiently fed with paraffin with a spoon until all their veins are filled again, stand once more upright. Camden M. Coburn, who was at the time visiting visit-ing the camp, made the following notes about the jackals which we found here: 1 Although deep underground, the stench was so great when the catacomb of jackals was first reopened that it was disagreeable at a hundred yards distant. The first man who attempted to enter the cave with him was almost al-most asphyxiated, but we crawled out without harm. To the writer, three days later, was assigned the odoriferous duty of finding among these tons of decayed or half mummified bodies a Dumber of specimens fit for scientific examination, examina-tion, to settle the question as to the exact relation re-lation existing between the ancient and modern jackal and to discuss also whether these beasts thus honored with religious burial were all true jackals or whether wolves and dogs were included, for even yet the ordinary modern Arab dog seems half jackal. I found these catacombs to be almost worthy of comparison in size with certain famous catacombs of the' early Christian period used for human cemeteries, while, ' so far as tne number of burials were concerned, these rooms contained more bodies than were ever put in any other series of catacombs. The central passage of this place I should estimate a3 being at least 150 feet long and perhaps seven to ten feet wide, and this was piled from end to end with corpses from three to six feet deep, while the many-sided chambers wer packed at least equally full. All Egypt must have been" searched Tor 'the hundreds of thousands of sacred animals which were crowded into this huge tomb dug for them in the holy ground of Abydos. Here were big and little, old and young, originally mummified mummi-fied and bandaged and sometimes with tine decorations wrought in needlework upon the mummy, wrappings. But either because this was defectively accomplished or because the burial place was not so well chosen as in the case of the ibises, or because of their brief opening to the air last year, these bodies were all partly decayed and the wrappings rotten. Crawling on hands and knees for four hours over these piles of bodies, one sees many a ghastly sight thousands of skulls or half-mummified half-mummified heads, bodies broken and mashed, bones that crumble at a touch, eys staring wild or hollow sockets filled with black paste, mouths closed just as they had been reverently reverent-ly arranged by the priestly undertaker 2,00) years ago, or sprung wide open as if the creature had sent out a horrible wail in the last moment of its life. The sight of white, sharp teeth glinting everywhere in the light of the candle was indeed weird and gruesome. That four hours' experience can never be forgotten; for-gotten; shoulders bent, back cramped, down almost with nose and faco touching these grinning skulls, feet, hands and knees crunching crunch-ing into a mass of putrefying bones which often fall to powder as you touch them or cause a cloud of mummy dust to ;envelop you, filling eyes and mouth and nostrils. Modern dust blown by the Khamsin is bad enough, but this is dust that no breath of wind has touched for 11 i4 lA K i'Ul i i r 1 i ' Mummies of Jackals Dug Up in the Animal Cemetery at Abydos. twenty centuries. The eyes are inflamed as It by a fever and the respiration is clogged and spasmodic. Let us be careful, too. If this mummification was with bitumen it only needs a careless movement of the candle, and In a moment your body and those of the sacred beasts will be offered to the gods in a hecatomb heca-tomb of flame! Why was the jackal so revered and why was his burial place selected in the holy city of Abydos? The answer is exactly the same as In the case of the ibis. The jackal was sacred to Anubls, who, In the myth of Osiris, was one of the chief deities concerned con-cerned in winning immortality for the human race. Anubis was the friend of the righteous dead and guided the soul across the trackless desert to the fields of Aalu. According to Egyptian Egyp-tian theology, the judgment came immediately after death and was held in the Hall of Maat, where forty-two judges listened to the plea of the deceased that he had been 6inless, and where the heart of the dead man was weighed in the scales against the ostrich feather symbol sym-bol of Maat goddess of truth. This weighing was conducted under the eye of Thoth, scribe of the gods, and of Anubis, the "Opener of the Ways," who stands close to the balance ready to start quickly on his journey with the justified dead, while a little further off crouches the monster Ament, "Devourer," waiting for his prey if the decision is adverse. 1 he reason why the 3ackal was chosen as 6ymbol or incarnation of Anubis is perfectly plain. On each side Egypt'is inclosed by mountains, moun-tains, beyond which lie limitless deserts. One day I climbed to the top of the "gebel" and started out over the Sahara toward the sunset to find out for myself what this region was that was regarded by the ancient Egyptians Egyp-tians as the Shadow of Death. Before night I had become satisfied that the Egyptian symbolism sym-bolism could not be improved; dreary, limitless, limit-less, with no hint of vegetation or life of any kind, no blade of grass, no bird or insect or beast to be seen, with its imitation wadys and deceptive mirages and endless stretches of bare sand curled into wild shapes; it looked like a demon land, and I did not wonder that the authorized version of the Old Testament translates "jackal," the one inhabitant of this ' realm of death, by "dragon." This is, peculiarly, pecu-liarly, the animal of the desert. Practically every soul must pass through this wilderness before it can reach the blessed oasis, the kingdom of Osiris. The jackal's omniscience as to where any dead body is hidden, hid-den, his wails in the night as if for lost souls, his certainty of direction out in the Hmltles3, trackless, demonic desert, and the fact that though his home is the desert, yet he is never far from an oasis, made this animal the best possible symbol ot a guide for the dead. Blessed even now is the lost traveler on these sands who sees a jackal track! It was only last year that a member of this very camp was lost on the "gebel," and would have spent the night there had he not, by good fortune, for-tune, found a jackal track which guided him to che valley. Not folly, but religious devotion, caused the Egyptians to honor this animal and thus pio-torially pio-torially teach a great truth concerning tba mystic journey from death to life and the soul's need of a heavenly guide if it make the journey successfully. Yonder far to the west is Khar-gah, Khar-gah, the longed for oasis, and Anubis is the only possible guide thither and the jackal i his embodiment. Let us give him honor! |
