Chapter 1164 The Elf of Louvre (1)

The lower floor of the Louvre's glass pyramid is both the entrance and the reception hall. I don't know if this is a coincidence or intentional. This hall is called the Napoleon Hall.

In many people's minds, pyramids are used to bury pharaohs, but not all pharaohs' tombs are under the pyramids.

Below the pyramid is a lost underground world with tunnels and caves, and not only the elite, but ordinary people, and even animal mummies can be buried under the pyramid. In one of the tombs, there is a sacrificial table dedicated to Osiris, and on the wall

It depicts Osiris, the Lord of the Underworld, who is responsible for judging the dead.

In fact, before Napoleon, many royal tombs in Egypt had been stolen. The lime layers on the pyramids were transported to Cairo for construction, and the valuable funerary objects were also looted by tomb thieves.

It would be better if they just took away the gold and silverware. The key is that those tomb robbers will destroy the murals on the walls and leave traces of their past. Even without Napoleon, Egypt's cultural relics are still "naturally consumed".

The phenomenon of tomb robbing has existed since the burial of the first pharaoh. In order to prevent these tomb thieves, the designers of the tomb have tried their best and have many defense mechanisms.

Quicksand shafts, giant stone doors, hidden entrances. The entrance to the tomb is hidden. With the solid structure of the pyramid itself, tomb robbers cannot enter.

In addition, the designers of the tomb will also design a "maze" so that as long as intruders do not enter the place where the coffin is parked, there is no need to worry about the theft of grave goods.

However, even after so much trouble, the high-ranking pharaohs still could not stop the pickaxe of the tomb robbers.

Not only the tombs of nobles are robbed, in fact everyone is not immune. If the situation is difficult, the living people on the ground will "borrow money" from the dead. Family members will steal the property of their ancestors. These "house thieves" are more likely to roam around than outside.

It is difficult to guard against grave robbers.

Tomb robbers come from all walks of life, not just the poor and crazy bottom class. The nobles who once ruled Thebes and the high priest Amun also entered the Valley of the Kings many times, opening the local tombs one after another and taking away everything they thought was valuable.

items.

No matter how sophisticated the mechanism is, it cannot stop those who know how to crack it.

The biggest difference between tomb robbing and archaeology is the speed of excavation. Archaeologists will use small brushes to brush away the sealing soil and dust on the tomb layer by layer.

Grave robbers steal everything that can be packed quickly, such as jewelry and utensils, and then sell them in the market.

Westerners are a bit more ruthless in their "archeology". Even the stone sculptures that cannot be moved were blown up with explosives and taken away.

The first director of the Egyptian Museum of the Louvre, Jean-Francois Champollion, known as the "Father of Egyptology", moved the entire ancient Egypt here in an effort to restore a complete ancient Egyptian world.

Not only the coffins of the pharaohs, but also the writing instruments, crop specimens, clothing, musical instruments, and toys used by the ancient Egyptians were all collected. Maybe Westerners know more about ancient Egypt than modern Egyptians know about their ancestors.

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Pomona didn't look at the seated statues of the Pharaohs, nor the famous sculpture of a scribe. She focused on a small sculpture.

Its base is inlaid with silver, and in front of a giant golden eagle of disproportionate size is a man kneeling on his knees, holding two spherical objects in his hands.

The eagle symbolizes holiness in Egypt. Horus, the son of Osiris, is an eagle-headed god. However, Seth only took away one eye of Horus, which is the left eye representing the moon. This sculpture seems to be Horus.

Both eyes were lost.

The right eye of Horus represents the sun, and the Egyptians also worshiped the sun. What made the Egyptians lose the sun?

Pomona thought of the Ten Troubles in Egypt, one of which was the Disaster of Darkness.

It is also possible that this sculpture is not meant to be "realistic", but to express a certain emotion of the Egyptians, their fear of darkness.

However, there are many stone statues carved in black stone in the Egyptian Museum. Black always gives people a solemn feeling, so it is most suitable for use in tombs.

Black skirts originally represented mourning wear, but now they have become daily wear. It seems that people no longer care about this taboo.

Sirius Black, his name "Sirius" represents the Sirius worshiped by the ancient Egyptians. Every time Sirius rises from the eastern horizon, it is also the time when the Nile River floods once a year.

Flooding rivers do not mean disaster, but a good harvest. They will wash fertile soil from upstream to downstream.

Of course, there will be sacrificial activities on such an important day. The ancient Egyptians would build temples to worship sculptures and offer sacrifices to the sculptures.

The ancient Egyptians did this not to seek psychological comfort, but to perform a ritual in order to let the gods live in the enshrined sculptures and images.

In addition to reciting scriptures, those who worship the Nile God must use an eagle to take eleven drops of blood, sprinkle it next to the sculpture of the Nile God, and invite the spirit of the Nile God to possess the sculpture.

This means that these sculptures stored in the Egyptian Museum may have been used for seance ceremonies, and they have some kind of supernatural power.

Many Egyptian sculptures have missing noses, including the famous Sphinx. Popular science books say that this is due to natural weathering.

In an era when science was underdeveloped, people tested whether a person was dead or alive, usually by sniffing and breathing. If there was no breathing, the person would die.

Ancient Egyptian statues are alive, and this "life" is different from the ancient Greek sculptures I have seen in the Hall of the Goddess Column before. In other words, the ancient Egyptians did not have the concept of art, and these sculptures are all "equipment".

The statue represents the intersection between gods and earth. Destroying the sculpture is destroying the powerful power contained in the sculpture. Breaking the nose of the sculpture will make it impossible for the statue to breathe.

Of course, not all sculpture noses will be destroyed. These people who destroy sculptures can destroy the nose of the sculpture very accurately without damaging other parts of the sculpture, which at least proves that they are well-trained.

During the early Christian period, these ancient Egyptian gods that possessed statues were regarded as pagan demons.

Before Chinese papermaking was introduced to the West, papyrus and parchment were the main writing tools, especially papyrus, which was the official writing tool of the church. Even papal decrees were written on it.

Kraft paper and parchment paper are more durable in moist environments.

At the same time, Egypt is also an important place for the spread of Christianity.

If the early Christian monks knew the hieroglyphs written on the papyrus, they may have deliberately destroyed the sculptures according to the descriptions on the inscriptions.

As time went by, a thousand years passed, and almost no one knew the hieroglyphics. It was not until the Rosetta Stone was unearthed that people regained the ability to decipher this language.

Champollion was the first scholar to decipher hieroglyphs and decipher the Rosetta Stone. He was like a star, and he would be treated with courtesy wherever he went. Pope Leo XII wanted to appoint him a cardinal, and the French Academy wanted to make him a cardinal.

To show his respect, he was given the position of chair of Egyptology.

But he was only forty-one when he died of a stroke. Most strokes occur in people over sixty-five years old, and a few young people also suffer from strokes. There is no specific age limit for strokes. After all, there are many causes of strokes.

For example, one summer night when the night was as cold as water, Champollion forgot to close the window and let the night wind blow on his face, and then he died.

When Champollion's reputation was at its peak, a young man named John Gardner Wilkinson came to Alexandria.

He was not as keen on digging as other "Egyptologists", but copied the copies of the rubbings of the inscriptions and compiled them silently.

He worked almost alone. Translating Egyptian hieroglyphs was almost a nationalist event at that time. The French took the lead in finding a way to translate, and almost all of the cultural relics with writing were searched by the British and placed in the British Museum.

In addition, collecting was popular in the upper class at that time, and every household would have one or two Egyptian cultural relics in their own display cabinets. Therefore, the translation of Egyptian texts was supported by government funds.

Unlike Champollion, who had huge resource support, Wilkinson relied entirely on minimal resources to overthrow Champollion's arbitrary authority.

At that time, it was generally believed that Champollion had deciphered the hieroglyphics, but Wilkinson believed that Champollion only understood part of the text and was not able to decipher it.

Unlike the authority who attended social events in prosperous Paris, Wilkins lived in a tomb that had long been emptied on the west bank of Thebes, paving it with carpets, furnishing his Egyptian furniture, and decorating his library.

, while admiring the sunset over the Nile River, copying those ancient scrolls.

According to Albus, Egyptologists at the time had a strange habit of burning mummies' wooden coffins in their fireplaces during the winter.

I don’t know who started this custom. The burning wood will emit an extremely unpleasant smell. The mummies will be embalmed and sprinkled with spices before burial, so that substances such as corpse oil and corpse water will not penetrate.

The shroud was passed over, contaminating the wood.

However, Wilkinson did not pay attention to these details. He happily entertained friends in his hermitage, and the smell, although pungent, was very light. A hearty breakfast was enough to dispel it, which was far worse than in Paris.

The stench from the dung mountain is unpleasant.

Wilkinson lived a long life and lived until 1875. Just because of his research results, the ruins of Thebes were destroyed, the temple stones were removed to build factories, and many stone statues were thrown into the Nile River.

Albus liked to listen to chamber music, and there was a song that he heard in Cairo when he was young. A harpist sang like this:

How is their residence now?

Their walls are broken.

Their residence has disappeared.

It's like they never existed.

Perhaps this is why he valued his friendship with historian Bagshot so much.

Even though he had already appeared in the Chocolate Frog cartoon and was remembered by every contemporary wizard, he still wanted future wizards to know about him.

'do not forget me.'

This may be Albus's true inner thoughts.

However, he said that he would really leave only when everyone forgets about him.

But when did Albus say this?

Pomona frowned and recalled, but there was no image. She turned her head and looked at the person who told her this sentence strangely. At this moment, he was looking at a very realistic sculpture. A scribe unfolded the papyrus roll.

Read in front of a baboon sculpture.

The words written on the papyrus on the sculpture's hand are clearly legible, except for the baboon's nose which is "weathered". Nature's miraculous craftsmanship really knows how to find its place.

She sneered and shook her head, without asking Severus where she heard Albus say this, and continued to visit this once glorious but now forgotten exhibition hall.
Chapter completed!