Chapter 4 (part 5)

was employed in building his pyramid and funeral temple, the hereditary governors and nobles of important provinces in Upper Egypt were not slow to avail themselves of the opportunity which peace and the renewed prosperity of p. 11 the country gave them, and they began to make rock-hewn tombs for themselves and the members of their families in the hills, and to cause their bodies to be buried in elaborately inscribed or painted wooden coffins. Of coffins of this period, one of the oldest examples is that of AMAMU which was purchased by the Trustees of the British Museum so long ago as 1834. 1 On the inside of this coffin is inscribed in black ink in the hieratic character a series of texts which are extracts from the Heliopolitan Recension of the Book of the Dead; these are enclosed within a coloured border, formed of rectangles, painted in blue, green, yellow, and red. Above the texts are carefully drawn, and painted as nearly as possible in their natural colours, representations of most of the objects which the deceased hoped he would use in the Underworld, and these pictures prove that the knowledge of the elaborate funeral rites and ceremonies, which were observed at Memphis under the IVth Dynasty, had descended in a complete state to the period when Amamu's coffin was made and ornamented. In connection with Amamu's coffin reference must be made to a large group of coffins which was excavated a few years ago at Al-Barsha, a place situated on the north side of a rocky valley, just behind the modern Coptic village of Der An-Nakhla, near Shekh Abada p. 12 (the ancient Antinoë), in Upper Egypt. All the coffins found here are rectangular in shape, and have so much in common with the coffin of Amamu, in respect of shape, and in the arrangement of their texts and pictures, including the representations of mastaba doors, that it seems impossible to assign to them a date much earlier or later than the period of the XIth Dynasty. For our present purpose, however, whatever be their exact date, they are of the greatest importance, for on the insides of the panels of some of them are painted the oldest known illustrations of certain sections of Books of the Dead. The texts inscribed on them contain extracts from the Heliopolitan Recension of the Book of the Dead, of which we know so much from the selections given in the Pyramids of Unas, Teta, and other kings, but side by side with these are copies of chapters belonging to Books of the Dead, which seem to have been originally composed at some anterior period, and which were intended to reflect the more popular and more materialistic religious views and beliefs. Among such books must be mentioned the "Book of Two Ways," or the "Two Ways of the Blessed Dead," of which a version inscribed on a coffin in the Berlin Museum has been recently published. 1 The rubrical directions of this work show that it was compiled when implicit belief existed in the minds of the Egyptians as to the efficacy of p. 13 certain "words of power" ( hekau ) and of pictures of the gods, and it is clear that many portions of it are purely magical, and were intended to produce very material results. Thus concerning one passage a rubric says, "Whosoever knoweth this Chapter may have union with women by night or by day, and the heart (or, desire) of the woman shall come to him whensoever he would enjoy her." This rubric follows a text 1 in which the deceased is made to pray for power of generation similar to that possessed by the god Beba, and for the will and opportunity of overcoming women, and it was to be written on a bandlet which was to be attached to the right arm.