. The heads are portraits. The faces
are round, the eyes large, the expression mild and characterless. Each is
crowned with the flat-topped cap and lofty plumes of Amen or Maut. We
cannot but wonder for what reason these huge receptacles were made. The two
queens were small of stature, and their mummies--which were well-nigh lost
in the cases--had to be packed round with an immense quantity of rags, to
prevent them from shifting, and becoming injured. Apart from their abnormal
size, these cases are characterised by the same simplicity which
distinguishes other mummy-cases of royal or private persons of the same
period. Towards the middle of the Nineteenth Dynasty, the fashion changed.
The single mummy-case, soberly decorated, was superseded by two, three, and
even four cases, fitting the one into the other, and covered with paintings
and inscriptions. Sometimes the outer receptacle is a sarcophagus with
convex lid and square ears, upon which the deceased is pictured over and
over again upon a white ground, in adoration before the gods of the Osirian
cycle. When, however, it is shaped in human form, it retains somewhat of
the old simplicity. The face is painted; a collar is represented on the
chest, a band of hieroglyphs extends down the whole length of the body to
the feet, and the rest is in one uniform tone of black, brown, or dark
yellow. The inner cases were extravagantly rich, the hands and faces being
red, rose-coloured, or gilded; the jewellery painted, or sometimes imitated
by means of small morsels of enamel encrusted in the wood-work; the
surfaces frequently covered with many-coloured scenes and legends, and the
whole heightened by means of the yellow varnish already mentioned. The
lavish ornamentation of this period is in striking contrast with the
sobriety of earlier times; but in order to grasp the reason of this
change, one must go to Thebes, and visit the actual sepulchres of the dead.
The kings and private persons of the great conquering dynasties[70] devoted
their energies, and all the means at their disposal, to the excavation of
catacombs. The walls of those catacombs were covered with sculptures and
paintings. The sarcophagus was cut in one enormous block of granite or
alabaster, and admirably wrought. It was therefore of little moment if the
wooden coffin in which the mummy reposed were very simply decorated. But
the Egyptians of the decadence, and their rulers, had not the wealth of
Egypt and the spoi