Page Content (OCR)
In 1953 Professor Emery discovered a large tomb in the archaic cemetery of North Sakkara that is attributed to a Pharaoh of the Ist dynasty (probably Uadyis). Apart from the main tomb there were 72 other tombs, arranged in 3 rows, in which lay the bodies of the servants who wanted to accompany their king in the new world. No trace of violence is visible on the bodies of the 64 young men and 8 Belief in a second life beyond the grave is the best known and also the simplest explanation of this phenomenon. In addition to gold and jewellery the Pharaoh was provided with grain, oil and spices in the tomb, which were obviously intended as provisions for the life to come. Apart from grave robbers, the tombs were also opened by later Pharaohs. In such cases the Pharaoh found the provisions in the tomb of his ancestor well preserved. In other words the dead man had neither eaten them nor taken them into another world. And when the tomb was closed again, fresh supplies were placed in the vault, which was shut up, protected against thieves and sealed with many traps. It seems obvious that the Egyptians believed in a reawakening in the distant future and not in an immediate reawakening in the hereafter. In June 1954, also at Sakkara, a tomb was discovered that had not been robbed, for a chest containing jewels and gold lay in the burial chamber. The sarcophagus was closed with a sliding lid, instead of a removable one. On the 9th June Dr Goneim ceremonially opened the sarcophagus. It contained nothing. Absolutely nothing. Did the mummy decamp, leaving its jewels behind? Mongolia. This grave takes the form of a rocky hill that is faced internally with wood. All the burial chambers are packed with eternal ice, and as a result the contents of the grave were preserved in a state of deep- freeze. One of these chambers contained an embalmed man and a similarly treated woman. Both of them were provided with everything that they might have needed for a life to come: foodstuffs in dishes, clothes, jewels and musical instruments. Everything was deep-frozen and in an excellent state of preservation, including the naked mummies. In one burial chamber scholars identified a rectangle containing four rows of six squares, each of which had a drawing inside it. The whole could be a copy of the stone carpet in the Assyrian palace at Nineveh! Strange sphinx-like figures with complicated horns on their heads and wings on their backs are clearly visible and their posture shows them to be But motives for a second spiritual life can scarcely be based on the finds in Mongolia. The deep- freezing used in the graves there—for that is what the chambers faced with wood and filled with ice amount to—is too much of this world and obviously intended for terrestrial ends. Why, and this question keeps on worrying us, did the ancients think that bodies prepared in this way achieved a state which would make reawakening possible? That is a puzzle for the time being. Five miles from Helwan lie more than 5,000 tombs of different sizes and all date to the time of the Ist and 2nd dynasties. These tombs show that the art of mummification is more than 6,000 years old. young women. Why did these 72 allow themselves to be walled up and killed? The Russian Rodenko discovered a grave, known as Kurgan V, 50 miles from the frontier of Outer aspiring skywards. In the Chinese village of Wu Chuan there exists a rectangular tomb measuring 45 by 39 ft; in it lie the