Memphis (of ancient) Eygpt (5)
Other buildings have been excavated by the Germans at Abusir, notably the usual town of mastaba-tombs belonging to the chief dignitaries of the reign, which is always found at the foot of a royal pyramid of this period. Another building of the highest interest, belonging to the same
age, was also excavated, and its true character was determined. This is a building at a place called er-Regha or Abe Ghuraib, "Father of Crows," between Abusir and Giza. It was formerly supposed to be a pyramid, but the German excavations have shown that it is really a temple of the Sun-god Ra of Heliopolis, specially venerated by the kings of the Vth Dynasty, who were of Heliopolitan origin. The great pyramid-builders of the IVth Dynasty seem to have been the last true Memphites. At the end of the reign of Shepseskaf, the last monarch of the dynasty, the sceptre passed to a Heliopolitan family. The following VIth Dynasty may again have been Memphite, but this is uncertain. The capital continued to be Memphis, and from the beginning of the Hid Dynasty to the end of the Old Kingdom and the rise of Herakle-opolis and Thebes, Memphis remained the chief city of Egypt.
The Heliopolitans were naturally the servants of the Sun-god above all other gods, and they were the first to call themselves "Sons of the Sun," a title retained by the Pharaohs throughout all subsequent history. It was Ne-user-Ra who built the Sun-temple of Abu Ghuraib, on the edge of the desert, north of his pyramid and those of his two immediate predecessors at Abusir. As now laid bare by the excavations of 1900, it is seen to consist of an artificial mound, with a great court in front to the eastward. On the mound was erected a truncated obelisk, the stone emblem of the Sun-god. The worshippers in the court below looked towards the Sun's stone erected upon its mound in the west, the quarter of the sun's setting; for the Sun-god of Heliopolis was primarily the setting sun, Tum-Ra, not Ra Harmachis, the rising sun, whose emblem is the Great Sphinx at Giza, which looks towards the east. The sacred emblem of the Heliopolitan Sun-god reminds us forcibly of the Semitic _bethels_ or _baetyli_, the sacred stones of Palestine, and may give yet another hint of the Semitic origin of the Heliopolitan cult.
In the court of the temple is a huge circular altar of fine alabaster, several feet across, on which slain oxen were offered to the Sun, and behind this, at the eastern end of the court, are six great basins of the same stone, over which the beasts were slain, with drains running out of them by which their blood was carried away. This temple is a most interesting monument of the civilization of the "Old Kingdom" at the time of the Vth Dynasty.
At Sakkera itself, which lies a short distance south of Abusir, no new royal tombs have, as has been said, been discovered of late years. But a great deal of work has been done among the private mastaba-tombs by the officers of the _Service des Antiquitis_, which reserves to itself the right of excavation here and at Dasher. The mastaba of the sage and writer Kagernna (or rather Gemnika, "I-have-found-a-ghost," which sounds very like an American Indian appellation) is very fine. "I-have-found-a-ghost" lived in the reign of the king Tatkare Assa, the
"Tancheres" of Manetho, and he wrote maxims like his great contemporary Phtahhetep ("Offered to Phtah"), who was also buried at Sakk?ra. The officials of the _Service des Antiquitis_ who cleaned the tomb unluckily misread his name Ka-bi-n (an impossible form which could only mean, literally translated, "Ghost-soul-of" or "Ghost-soul-to-me"), and they
have placed it in this form over the entrance to his tomb. This mastaba, like those, already known, of Mereruka (sometimes misnamed "Mera") and the famous Ti, both also at Sakkera, contains a large number of chambers, ornamented with reliefs. In the vicinity M. Grebaut, then
Director of the Service of Antiquities, discovered a very interesting Street of Tombs, a regular Via Sacra, with rows of tombs of the dignitaries of the VIth Dynasty on either side of it. They are generally very much like one another; the workmanship of the reliefs is fine, and the portrait of the owner of the tomb is always in evidence.
Several of the smaller mastabas have lately been disposed of to the various museums, as they are liable to damage if they remain where they stand; moreover, they are not of great value to the Museum of Cairo, but are of considerable value to various museums which do not already
possess complete specimens of this class of tombs. A fine one, belonging to the chief Uerarina, is now exhibited in the Assyrian Basement of the British Museum; another is in the Museum of Leyden; a third at Berlin, and so on. Most of these are simple tombs of one chamber. In the centre of the rear wall we always see the _stele_ or gravestone proper, built into the fabric of the tomb. Before this stood the low table of offerings with a bowl for oblations, and on either side a tall incense-altar. From the altar the divine smoke (_senetr_) arose when the _hen-ka_, or priest of the ghost (literally, "Ghost's Servant"), performed his duty of venerating the spirits of the deceased, while the _Kher-heb_, or cantor, enveloped in the mystic folds of the leopard-skin
and with bronze incense-burner in hand, sang the holy litanies and spells which should propitiate the ghost and enable him to win his way to ultimate perfection in the next world.
