As soon as I returned to my old post, I resumed the excavations of the pyramids at the point where I had left them in 1886. I had then made a systematic search of the entrance into the funerary vaults: it was now necessary to seek out the exterior chapels, the caves, the secondary pyramids or the mastabas, which, shut in by a walled enclosure, completed the burial-place. At the end of November, 1899, I placed workmen round Ounas, and as I found it impossible to direct the operations myself with the requisite care, I entrusted the surveillance of them to M. Alexandre Barsanti, the curator-restorer of the Museum, with detailed instructions. The campaign then begun was only ended in the last days of May, 1900, and the account of it will be published elsewhere. I now wish to draw the attention of amateurs and scholars to the discovery of a mass of Saïte jewels.

The progress of the clearing away revealed the existence of a series of intact tombs at the south of the pyramid. The last of those that had been opened belonged to a very high personage named Zannehibou, in his lifetime commandant of the king’s boats. The mummy, a block of shining bitumen, was at once recognised as a very rich one. At the height of the face it had a large gold mask which fitted on the front part of the head like the cartonnage case usual with mummies of the second Saïte Period. It had a broad necklace round its neck of beads of gold and of green felspar or of lapis lazuli mounted with gold thread, and fastened to it were numerous amulets, also of gold. Below the necklace, on the chest, an image of the goddess Nouît, in gold, spread its wings. A network of gold and felspar hung down to the hip, and from the image of the Nouît to the ankles might be read, on a long band of gold-leaf, the usual inscriptions in relief: the name of the dead man, his filiation, with short formulas of prayer. Two gold figures of Isis and Nephthys were sewn on the chest, two leaves of gold cut as sandals were fitted to the soles of the feet; a silver plaque with a line engraving of a mystic eye for the incision whence the entrails had been extracted, gold cases for the twenty fingers and toes, completed this magnificent decoration. Everything that with the lower classes of the same period would have been in cardboard, or gilded paste, or enamelled clay, was pure gold and fine stones with Zannehibou. The find, estimated by weight alone, would be valuable, but what gave it inestimable worth was the delicate and artistic workmanship of the greater number of the objects. A few of them, like the sandals and the finger-cases, are only worth the raw metal; the rest are the work of veritable artists. The inscriptions of the legs, the winged Nouît, the Isis and the Nephthys, the mask, are stamped, and although the mask and the two goddesses were miserably crushed by the lid when the sarcophagus was closed, the mould of hard stone which was used to fix them was so delicately cut that the best-preserved pieces, the winged Nouît, for instance, may be quoted as the highest degree of perfection that could be attained by that process. The amulet in shape of a necklace is only a leaf cut with the chisel, on which a chapter of the “Book of the Dead” is engraved with the graving needle. The vulture amulet is a small, thin plaque, on one side of which the stamped figure of a vulture with spread wings has been stuck, while on the other the chapter of the “Book of the Dead” has been engraved, as with the necklace. It is all of good workmanship, but in the amulets hanging on the real necklace of the mummy the goldsmith has surpassed himself.

They are extraordinarily small, and in order to show the detail I have had the illustrations made twice the actual size, a proceeding that weakens the contours and the modelling. To realize their beauty it is necessary to have held them in the hand. The palm-tree, which has lost some leaves, is a unique object, more curious than elegant, but the mystic boat which is beside it, unique also so far, is a prodigy of delicate chiselling. It is the boat of the god Sokaris, a boat of most archaic construction, and which was already used for the accomplishment of the sacred rites under the Thinite Dynasty. The belly is broad and round, the stern rather heavy, but the bows very light and much decorated. It rests on a sort of side-ladder of beams and ropes, which is itself built on to a sledge: it was pulled along in the public ceremonies by means of a rope put through a hole made in the curved front of the sledge. The decoration and the equipage are most curious. On the bow is a gazelle’s head with straight horns turned to the interior, and along the prow a row of divergent plates of thin metal, the use of which is not very clear: it is as if the carcase of the gazelle was opened and showed the ribs fixed on the spine. At the back, to terminate the poop, there is a ram’s head with curved horns. In the middle, on an oblong rectangular pedestal, a hawk proudly perches; behind him are the four oar-rudders, two on each side; in front of him six little hawks ascend in procession, two by two, towards the gazelle’s head, led by a Nile fish placed edgeways on its ventral fin. For the moment I will not attempt to explain the meaning of these emblems, but what we can never grow tired of admiring is the cleverness with which the craftsman has grouped these widely differing elements into an harmonious whole, and especially the extraordinary skill with which he worked his metal. His gazelle’s head, a mere fraction of an inch in size, is of as proud a bearing as if it were of natural size: everything is exact, intelligent; the curve of the forehead, the flattening of the snout, the expression of the face, even to the natural pout of the creature. Each of the six hawks preserves its individual physiognomy, and the fish itself, reduced in size as it is, has the exact shape of the big Nile perch, and not that of any sort of fish.

Similar qualities are to be seen in the neighbouring pieces, in the ram’s head, the ordinary hawk, the hawk with a human head, and that with a ram’s head, and in the vulture. The seated Isis who nurses her child on her lap and the crouching Neîth have their usual characteristics of resignation and gentleness, and at the same time the simplicity of line that lends so dignified an air to the smallest Egyptian figures. It has all been chiselled out of the ingot itself, and the detail cut with so minute a point that we ask where the artisan could have obtained it.

Tiny lions addorsed or couchant, tiny mystic eyes, tiny monkeys worshipping the emblem of Osiris, tiny vultures, and tiny hawks extending their wings, each piece claims careful examination, and would by itself alone bring joy to the heart of a collector. The masterpiece of the series is, however, the soul, the hawk with a human head, enamelled body and wings, of which both back and front views are here reproduced. The back follows the usual manner, small rods of bent gold, curved, soldered on to a gold plaque and encrusted with thin plates of felspar to simulate feathers; but on the other side, the body, wings, and claws are modelled with the new purpose of reproducing the natural form of the bird. The little human head is a marvel of somewhat weak gracefulness: the eyes are well open, the mouth is smiling, the nostrils actually palpitate, the ear is cut out and is hollowed broad and high as is customary, and there is nothing, even to the wrinkles of the neck and the roundness of a double chin, that does not clearly stand out under the reflection of the gold. Here again, it is all chiselled by a master-hand, with a sureness I have only found in the hawk with a ram’s head in the Louvre,90 with which this soul of Gizeh may be compared.

The circumstances of the discovery would not have informed us of the date, if the style of the jewels had not done so. It is Saïte art with its lightness, suppleness, somewhat arch charm, its almost too high relief. A tendency is felt in the direction of the exaggerated roundness of the Ptolemies, and, in fact, a note furnished by M. Chassinat permits us to fix the time at which Zannehibou lived. He belonged to the family of a certain Psammetichus, whose tomb is near his, which an inscription in the Louvre found by Mariette in the Serapeum places at the beginning of the fifth century, during the last years of the reign of Darius I. If, as is likely, he was the grandson of that Psammetichus, he died at the end of the fourth century, just when the Saïte kings were resuming their superiority over the Persians, at most, a hundred years before the Macedonian conquest. The goldsmiths who fashioned his ornaments had probably seen Greek jewels, and had perhaps already felt Hellenic influence: in that way the almost Ptolemaic characteristics of the collection are explained. We know that Saïte jewels are very rare; the Louvre alone possesses any that are out of the ordinary run: the two necklace fastenings in form of a ship bought by M. G. Bénédite a few years ago. The mummy of Zannehibou has filled up the lacuna in the Gizeh series, and thanks to it, we now know that the goldsmith’s art yielded in nothing to the other arts at the time of the last Egyptian renaissance. Let us add that these jewels, although found on a mummy and made for it, are not, as is too often the case, jewels of the dead, pleasing in colour and design, but too weakly mounted to stand the wear and tear if worn by a living person. Like the jewels of Ramses II in the Louvre,91 like those of Queen Ahhotpou at Gizeh, they are real jewels, identical at all points, except perhaps in the choice of subjects, with the jewels worn every day.

Such is the find that made a happy termination to our Saqqarah campaign. All the pieces were covered with bitumen, and it is no slight merit to M. Barsanti that he should have discovered them and separated them one after the other. Several pits, equally untouched, await us at the same spot under fifteen or eighteen yards of sand, and I have a good hope that next year’s excavations may have as glad surprises for us as those of this year.