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Title: A thousand miles up the Nile
Author: Amelia B. Edwards
Release Date: April 16, 2023 [eBook #70565]
Language: English
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[Illustration: AMELIA BLANFORD EDWARDS.]
_Burt’s Library of the World’s Best Books._
A THOUSAND MILES
UP THE NILE.
BY AMELIA B. EDWARDS.
Author of “Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys,” “Lord Brackenbury,”
“Barbara’s History,” etc.
“It flows through old hush’d Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave, mighty thought, threading a dream.”
--_Leigh Hunt._
ILLUSTRATED.
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK: A. L. BURT, PUBLISHER.
PREFACE
TO THE FIRST EDITION.
“Un voyage en Égypte, c’est une partie d’ânes et une promenade en
bateau entremêlées de ruines.”--_Ampère._
AMPERE has put Egypt in an epigram. “A donkey ride and a boating trip
interspersed with ruins” does, in fact, sum up in a single line the
whole experience of the Nile traveler. Apropos of these three
things--the donkeys, the boat, and the ruins--it may be said that a good
English saddle and a comfortable dahabeeyah add very considerably to the
pleasure of the journey; and that the more one knows about the past
history of the country, the more one enjoys the ruins.
Of the comparative merits of wooden boats, iron boats, and steamers, I
am not qualified to speak. We, however, saw one iron dahabeeyah aground
upon a sand-bank, where, as we afterward learned, it remained for three
weeks. We also saw the wrecks of three steamers between Cairo and the
first cataract. It certainly seemed to us that the old-fashioned wooden
dahabeeyah--flat-bottomed, drawing little water, light in hand, and
easily poled off when stuck--was the one vessel best constructed for the
navigation of the Nile. Other considerations, as time and cost, are, of
course, involved in this question. The choice between dahabeeyah and
steamer is like the choice between traveling with post-horses and
traveling by rail. The one is expensive, leisurely, delightful; the
other is cheap, swift, and comparatively comfortless. Those who are
content to snatch but a glimpse of the Nile will doubtless prefer the
steamer. I may add that the whole cost of the Philæ--food, dragoman’s
wages, boat-hire, cataract, everything included, except wine--was about
£10 per day.
With regard to temperature, we found it cool--even cold, sometimes--in
December and January; mild in February; very warm in March and April.
The climate of Nubia is simply perfect. It never rains; and once past
the limit of the tropic there is no morning or evening chill upon the
air. Yet even in Nubia, and especially along the forty miles which
divide Abou Simbel from Wady Halfeh, it is cold when the wind blows
strongly from the north.[1]
Touching the title of this book, it may be objected that the distance
from the port of Alexandria to the second cataract falls short of a
thousand miles. It is, in fact, calculated at nine hundred and sixty
four and a half miles. But from the Rock of Abusîr, five miles above
Wady Halfeh, the traveler looks over an extent of country far exceeding
the thirty or thirty-five miles necessary to make up the full tale of a
thousand. We distinctly saw from this point the summits of mountains
which lie about one hundred and forty-five miles to the southward of
Wady Halfeh, and which look down upon the third cataract.
Perhaps I ought to say something in answer to the repeated inquiries of
those who looked for the publication of this volume a year ago. I can,
however, only reply that the writer, instead of giving one year, has
given two years to the work. To write rapidly about Egypt is impossible.
The subject grows with the book, and with the knowledge one acquires by
the way. It is, moreover, a subject beset with such obstacles as must
impede even the swiftest pen; and to that swiftest pen I lay no claim.
Moreover, the writer who seeks to be accurate, has frequently to go for
his facts, if not actually to original sources (which would be the texts
themselves), at all events to translations and commentaries locked up in
costly folios, or dispersed far and wide among the pages of scientific
journals and the transactions of learned societies. A date, a name, a
passing reference, may cost hours of seeking.
More pleasant is it to remember labor lightened than to consider time
spent; and I have yet to thank the friends who have spared no pains to
help this book on its way. To S. Birch, Esq., LL.D., etc., so justly
styled “the parent in this country of a sound school of Egyptian
philology,” who, besides translating the hieratic and hieroglyphic
inscriptions contained in chapter eighteen, has also, with infinite
kindness, seen the whole of that chapter through the press; to Reginald
Stuart Poole, Esq.; to Professor R. Owen, C. B., etc.; to Sir G. W. Cox,
I desire to offer my hearty and grateful acknowledgments. It is surely
not least among the glories of learning that those who adorn it most and
work hardest should ever be readiest to share the stores of their
knowledge.
Of the fascination of Egyptian travel, of the charm of the Nile, of the
unexpected and surpassing beauty of the desert, of the ruins which are
the wonder of the world, I have said enough elsewhere. I must, however,
add that I brought home with me an impression that things and people are
much less changed in Egypt than we of the present day are wont to
suppose. I believe that the physique and life of the modern fellâh is
almost identical with the physique and life of that ancient Egyptian
laborer whom we know so well in the wall paintings of the tombs. Square
in the shoulders, slight but strong in the limbs, full-lipped,
brown-skinned, we see him wearing the same loin-cloth, plying the same
shâdûf, plowing with the same plow, preparing the same food in the same
way, and eating it with his fingers from the same bowl, as did his
forefathers of six thousand years ago.
The household life and social ways of even the provincial gentry are
little changed. Water is poured on one’s hands before going to dinner
from just such a ewer and into just such a basin as we see pictured in
the festival scenes at Thebes. Though the lotus-blossom is missing, a
bouquet is still given to each guest when he takes his place at table.
The head of the sheep killed for the banquet is still given to the poor.
Those who are helped to meat or drink touch the head and breast in
acknowledgment, as of old. The musicians still sit at the lower end of
the hall, the singers yet clap their hands in time to their own voices;
the dancing-girls still dance and the buffoon in his high cap still
performs his uncouth antics, for the entertainment of the guests. Water
is brought to table in jars of the same shape manufactured at the same
town, as in the days of Cheops and Chephren; and the mouths of the
bottles are filled in precisely the same way with fresh leaves and
flowers. The cucumber stuffed with minced-meat was a favorite dish in
those times of old; and I can testify to its excellence in 1874. Little
boys in Nubia yet wear the side-lock that graced the head of Rameses in
his youth; and little girls may be seen in a garment closely resembling
the girdle worn by young princesses of the time of Thothmes I. A sheik
still walks with a long staff; a Nubian belle still plaits her tresses
in scores of little tails; and the pleasure-boat of the modern governor
or mudîr, as well as the dahabeeyah hired by the European traveler,
reproduces in all essential features the painted galleys represented in
the tombs of the kings.
In these and in a hundred other instances, all of which came under my
personal observation and have their place in the following pages, it
seemed to me that any obscurity which yet hangs over the problem of life
and thought in ancient Egypt originates most probably with ourselves.
Our own habits of life and thought are so complex that they shut us off
from the simplicity of that early world. So it was with the problem of
hieroglyphic writing. The thing was so obvious that no one could find it
out. As long as the world persisted in believing that every hieroglyph
was an abstruse symbol, and every hieroglyphic inscription a profound
philosophical rebus, the mystery of Egyptian literature remained
insoluble. Then at last came Champollion’s famous letter to Dacier,
showing that the hieroglyphic signs were mainly alphabetic and syllabic,
and that the language they spelled was only Coptic, after all.
If there were not thousands who still conceive that the sun and moon
were created and are kept going for no other purpose than to lighten the
darkness of our little planet; if only the other day a grave gentleman
had not written a perfectly serious essay to show that the world is a
flat plain, one would scarcely believe that there could still be people
who doubt that ancient Egyptian is now read and translated as fluently
as ancient Greek. Yet an Englishman whom I met in Egypt--an Englishman
who had long been resident in Cairo, and who was well acquainted with
the great Egyptologists who are attached to the service of the
khedive--assured me of his profound disbelief in the discovery of
Champollion. “In my opinion,” said he, “not one of these gentlemen can
read a line of hieroglyphics.”
As I then knew nothing of the Egyptian I could say nothing to controvert
this speech. Since that time, however, and while writing this book, I
have been led on step by step to the study of hieroglyphic writing; and
I now know that Egyptian can be read, for the simple reason that I find
myself able to read an Egyptian sentence.
My testimony may not be of much value; but I give it for the little that
it is worth.
The study of Egyptian literature has advanced of late years with rapid
strides. Papyri are found less frequently than they were some thirty or
forty years ago; but the translation of those contained in the museums
of Europe goes on now more diligently than at any former time.
Religious books, variants of the ritual, moral essays, maxims, private
letters, hymns, epic poems, historical chronicles, accounts, deeds of
sale, medical, magical and astronomical treatises, geographical records,
travels and even romances and tales, are brought to light, photographed,
fac-similed in chromo-lithography, printed in hieroglyphic type and
translated in forms suited both to the learned and to the general
reader.
Not all this literature is written, however, on papyrus. The greater
proportion of it is carved in stone. Some is painted on wood, written on
linen, leather, potsherds and other substances. So the old mystery of
Egypt, which was her literature, has vanished. The key to the
hieroglyphs is the master-key that opens every door. Each year that now
passes over our heads sees some old problem solved. Each day brings some
long-buried truth to light.
Some thirteen years ago,[2] a distinguished American artist painted a
very beautiful picture called “The Secret of the Sphinx.” In its widest
sense the secret of the sphinx would mean, I suppose, the whole
uninterpreted and undiscovered past of Egypt. In its narrower sense,
the secret of the sphinx was, till quite lately, the hidden significance
of the human-headed lion which is one of the typical subjects of
Egyptian art.
Thirteen years is a short time to look back upon; yet great things have
been done in Egypt and in Egyptology, since then. Edfu, with its
extraordinary wealth of inscriptions, has been laid bare. The whole
contents of the Boulak Museum have been recovered from the darkness of
the tombs. The very mystery of the sphinx has been disclosed; and even
within the last eighteen months, M. Chabas announces that he has
discovered the date of the pyramid of Mycerinus; so for the first time
establishing the chronology of ancient Egypt upon an ascertained
foundation. Thus the work goes on; students in their libraries,
excavators under Egyptian skies, toiling along different paths toward a
common goal. The picture means more to-day than it meant thirteen years
ago--means more, even, than the artist intended. The sphinx has no
secret now, save for the ignorant.
In the picture we see a brown, half-naked, toil-worn fellâh laying his
ear to the stone lips of a colossal sphinx, buried to the neck in sand.
Some instinct of the old Egyptian blood tells him that the creature is
godlike. He is conscious of a great mystery lying far back in the past.
He has, perhaps, a dim, confused notion that the Big Head knows it all,
whatever it may be. He has never heard of the morning-song of Memnon;
but he fancies, somehow, that those closed lips might speak if
questioned. Fellâh and sphinx are alone together in the desert. It is
night and the stars are shining. Has he chosen the right hour? What does
he seek to know? What does he hope to hear?
Mr. Vedder has permitted me to enrich this book with an engraving from
his picture. It tells its own tale; or rather it tells as much of its
own tale as the artist chooses.
[Illustration:
Each must interpret for himself
The secret of the sphinx.
]
AMELIA B. EDWARDS.
WESTBURY-ON-TRYM, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, December, 1877.
PREFACE
TO THE SECOND EDITION.
First published in 1877, this book has been out of print for several
years. I have, therefore, very gladly revised it for a new and cheaper
edition. In so revising it, I have corrected some of the historical
notes by the light of later discoveries; but I have left the narrative
untouched. Of the political changes which have come over the land of
Egypt since that narrative was written, I have taken no note; and
because I in no sense offer myself as a guide to others, I say nothing
of the altered conditions under which most Nile travelers now perform
the trip. All these things will be more satisfactorily, and more
practically, learned from the pages of Baedeker and Murray.
AMELIA B. EDWARDS.
WESTBURY-ON-TRYM, October, 1888.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
CAIRO AND THE GREAT PYRAMID.
PAGE.
Arrival at Cairo--Shepheard’s Hotel--The Moskee--The Khan Khaleel--The
Bazaars--Dahabeeyahs--Ghîzeh--The Pyramids 1
CHAPTER II.
CAIRO AND THE MECCA PILGRIMAGE.
The Mosque of Sultan Hassan--Moslems at Prayer--Mosque of Mehemet
Ali--View from the Platform--Departure of the Caravan for Mecca--The
Báb en-Nasr--The Procession--The Mahmal--Howling Dervishes--The Mosque
of Amr--The Shubra Road 15
CHAPTER III.
CAIRO TO BEDRESHAYN.
Departure for the Nile Voyage--Farewell to Cairo--Turra--The
Philæ and crew--The Dahabeeyah and the Nile Sailor--Native
Music--Bedreshayn 32
CHAPTER IV.
SAKKARAH AND MEMPHIS.
The Palms of Memphis--Three Groups of Pyramids--The M. B.’s and Their
Groom--Relic-hunting--The Pyramid of Ouenephes--The Serapeum--A Royal
Raid--The Tomb of Ti--The Fallen Colossus--Memphis 43
CHAPTER V.
BEDRESHAYN TO MINIEH.
The Rule of the Nile--The Shâdûf--Beni Suêf--Thieves by
Night--The Chief of the Guards--A Sand-storm--“Holy Sheik
Cotton”--The Convent of the Pulley--A Copt--The Shadow of the
World--Minieh--A Native Market--Prices of Provisions--The Dôm
Palm--Fortune-telling--Ophthalmia 65
CHAPTER VI.
MINIEH TO SIUT.
Christmas Day--The Party Completed--Christmas Dinner on the Nile--A
Fantasia--Noah’s Ark--Birds of Egypt--Gebel Abufayda--Unknown
Stelæ--Imprisoned--The Scarab-beetle--Manfalût--Siût--Red and Black
Pottery--Ancient Tombs--View Over the Plain--Biblical Legend 83
CHAPTER VII.
SIUT TO DENDERAH.
An “Experienced Surgeon”--Passing Scenery--Girgeh--Sheik Selîm--Kasr es
Syad--Forced Labor--Temple of Denderah--Cleopatra--Benighted 99
CHAPTER VIII.
THEBES AND KARNAK.
Luxor--Donkey-boys--Topography of Ancient Thebes--Pylons of Luxor--Poem
of Pentaur--The Solitary Obelisk--Interior of the Temple of
Luxor--Polite Postmaster--Ride to Karnak--Great Temple of Karnak--The
Hypostyle Hall--A World of Ruins 121
CHAPTER IX.
THEBES TO ASSUAN.
A Storm on the Nile--Erment--A Gentlemanly Bey--Esneh--A Buried
Temple--A Long Day’s Sketching--Salame the Chivalrous--Remarkable
Coin--Antichi--The Fellâh--The Pylons of Edfu--An Exciting Race--The
Philæ Wins by a Length 140
CHAPTER X.
ASSUAN AND ELEPHANTINE.
Assûan--Strange Wares for Sale--Madame Nubia--Castor
Oil--The Black Governor--An Enormous Blunder--Tannhäuser in
Egypt--Elephantine--Inscribed Potsherds--Bazaar of Assûan--The
Camel--A Ride in the Desert--The Obelisk of the Quarry--A Death in the
Town 157
CHAPTER XI.
THE CATARACT AND THE DESERT.
Scenery of the Cataract--The Sheik of the Cataract--Vexatious
Delays--The Painter’s Vocabulary--Mahatta--Ancient Bed of the
Nile--Abyssinian Caravan 176
CHAPTER XII.
PHILÆ.
Pharaoh’s Bed--The Temples--Champollion’s Discovery--The Painted
Columns--Coptic Philæ--Philæ and Desaix--Chamber of Osiris--Inscribed
Rock--View from the Roof of the Temple 188
CHAPTER XIII.
PHILÆ TO KOROSKO.
Nubian Scenery--A Sand-slope--Missing Yûsef--Trading by the
Way--Panoramic Views--Volcanic Cones--Dakkeh--Korosko--Letters from
Home 211
CHAPTER XIV.
KOROSKO TO ABOU SIMBEL.
El-Id el-Kebîr--Stalking Wild Ducks--Temple of Amada--Fine Art of
the Thothmes--Derr--A Native Funeral--Temple of Derr--The “Fair”
Families--The Sakkieh--Arrival at Abou Simbel by Moonlight 220
CHAPTER XV.
RAMESES THE GREAT.
Youth of Rameses the Great--Treaty with the Kheta--His Wives--His Great
Works--The Captivity--Pithom and Rameses--Kauiser and Keniamon--The
Birth of Moses--Tomb of Osymandias--Character of Rameses the
Great 236
CHAPTER XVI.
ABOU SIMBEL.
The Colossi--Portraits of Rameses the Great--The Great Sand-drift--The
Smaller Temples--“Rameses and Nefertari”--The Great Temple--A Monster
Tableau--Alone in the Great Temple--Trail of a Crocodile--Cleaning the
Colossus--The Sufferings of the Sketcher 258
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SECOND CATARACT.
Volcanic Mountains--Kalat Adda--Gebel est-Shems--The First
Crocodile--Dull Scenery--Wady Halfeh--The Rock of Abusîr--The
Second Cataract--The Great View--Crocodile-slaying--Excavating a
Tumulus--Comforts of Home on the Nile 283
CHAPTER XVIII.
DISCOVERIES AT ABOU SIMBEL.
Society at Abou Simbel--The Painter Discovers a Rock-cut
Chamber--Sunday Employment--Re-enforcement of Natives--Excavation--The
Sheik--Discovery of Human Remains--Discovery of Pylon and
Staircase--Decorations of Painted Chamber--Inscriptions 295
CHAPTER XIX.
BACK THROUGH NUBIA.
Temples _ad infinitum_--Tosko--Crocodiles--Derr and Amada
Again--Wady Sabooah--Haughty Beauty--A Nameless City--A River of
Sand--Undiscovered Temple--Maharrakeh--Dakkeh--Fortress of Kobban--Gerf
Hossayn--Dendoor--Bayt-et-Welly--The Karnak of Nubia--Silco of the
Ethiopians--Tafah--Dabôd--Baby-shooting--A Dilemma--Justice in
Egypt--The Last of Philæ 324
CHAPTER XX.
SILSILIS AND EDFU.
Shooting the Cataract--Kom Ombo--Quarries of Silsilis--Edfu the Most
Perfect of Egyptian Temples--View from the Pylons--Sand Columns 353
CHAPTER XXI.
THEBES.
Luxor Again--Imitation “Anteekahs”--Digging for Mummies--Tombs of
Thebes--The Ramesseum--The Granite Colossus--Medinet Habu--The Pavilion
of Rameses III--The Great Chronicle--An Arab Story-teller--Gournah--Bab
el Molûk--The Shadowless Valley of Death--The Tombs of the
Kings--Stolen Goods--The French House--An Arab Dinner and Fantasia--The
Coptic Church at Luxor--A Coptic Service--A Coptic Bishop 370
CHAPTER XXII.
ABYDUS AND CAIRO.
Last Weeks on the Nile--Spring in Egypt--Ninety-nine in the
Shade--Samata--Unbroken Donkeys--The Plain of Abydus--Harvest-time--A
Biblical Idyll--Arabat the Buried--Mena--Origin of the Egyptian
People--Temple of Seti--New Tablet of Abydus--Abydus and
Teni--Kom-es-Sultan--Visit to a Native Aga--The Hareem--Condition
of Women in Egypt--Back at Cairo--“In the Name of the Prophet,
Cakes!”--The Môlid-en-Nebee--A Human Causeway--The Boulak
Museum--Prince Ra-hotep and Princess Nefer-t--Early Drive to
Ghîzeh--Ascent of the Great Pyramid--The Sphinx--The View from the
Top--The End 421
APPENDIX.
I. A. McCallum, Esq., to the Editor of _The Times_ 447
II. The Egyptian Pantheon 447
III. The Religious Belief of the Egyptians 450
IV. Egyptian Chronology 452
V. Contemporary Chronology of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Babylon 454
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE.
The Secret of the Sphinx. After a Painting by Elihu Vedder, Esq. x
Head of Ti 57
The Shâdûf 69
Cleopatra 111
Shrines of Osiris, 1, 2 and 3 205-206
Resurrection of Osiris 207
Cartouches of Rameses the Great 237
Rameses the Great (Bayt-el-Welly) 260
Rameses the Great (Abydus) 260
Rameses the Great (Abou Simbel) 260
Profile of Rameses II (from the Southernmost Colossus; Abou
Simbel) 261
Ground-plan 307
Pattern of Cornice 308
Standard of Horus Aroëris 309
Rameses II of Speos 311
Temple of Amada (Wall Inscription) 313
Heraldic Inscription (North Wall of Speos) 317
Goddess Ta-ur-t (Silsilis) 359
Goddess Ta-ur-t (Philæ) 359
Vases and Goblets (Medinet Habu) 385
Prince Ra-Hotep and Princess Nefer-t 439
A THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE.
CHAPTER I.
CAIRO AND THE GREAT PYRAMID.
It is the traveler’s lot to dine at many table-d’hôtes in the course of
many wanderings; but it seldom befalls him to make one of a more
miscellaneous gathering than that which overfills the great dining-room
at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo during the beginning and height of the
regular Egyptian season. Here assemble daily some two to three hundred
persons of all ranks, nationalities, and pursuits; half of whom are
Anglo-Indians homeward or outward bound, European residents, or visitors
established in Cairo for the winter. The other half, it may be taken for
granted, are going up the Nile. So composite and incongruous is this
body of Nile-goers, young and old, well-dressed and ill-dressed, learned
and unlearned, that the new-comer’s first impulse is to inquire from
what motives so many persons of dissimilar tastes and training can be
led to embark upon an expedition which is, to say the least of it, very
tedious, very costly, and of an altogether exceptional interest.
His curiosity, however, is soon gratified. Before two days are over, he
knows everybody’s name and everybody’s business; distinguishes at first
sight between a Cook’s tourist and an independent traveler; and has
discovered that nine-tenths of those whom he is likely to meet up the
river are English or American. The rest will be mostly German, with a
sprinkling of Belgian and French. So far _en bloc_; but the details are
more heterogeneous still. Here are invalids in search of health; artists
in search of subjects; sportsmen keen upon crocodiles; statesmen out for
a holiday; special correspondents alert for gossip; collectors on the
scent of papyri and mummies; men of science with only scientific ends
in view; and the usual surplus of idlers who travel for the mere love of
travel or the satisfaction of a purposeless curiosity.
Now in a place like Shepheard’s, where every fresh arrival has the honor
of contributing, for at least a few minutes, to the general
entertainment, the first appearance of L---- and the writer, tired,
dusty, and considerably sunburned, may well have given rise to some of
the comments in usual circulation at those crowded tables. People asked
each other, most likely, where these two wandering Englishwomen had come
from; why they had not dressed for dinner; what brought them to Egypt;
and if they also were going up the Nile--to which questions it would
have been easy to give satisfactory answers.
We came from Alexandria, having had a rough passage from Brindisi,
followed by forty-eight hours of quarantine. We had not dressed for
dinner because, having driven on from the station in advance of dragoman
and luggage, we were but just in time to take seats with the rest. We
intended, of course, to go up the Nile; and had any one ventured to
inquire in so many words what brought us to Egypt, we should have
replied: “Stress of weather.”
For in simple truth we had drifted hither by accident, with no excuse of
health, or business, or any serious object whatever; and had just taken
refuge in Egypt as one might turn aside into the Burlington Arcade or
the Passage des Panoramas--to get out of the rain.
And with good reason. Having left home early in September for a few
weeks’ sketching in central France, we had been pursued by the wettest
of wet weather. Washed out of the hill country, we fared no better in
the plains. At Nismes it poured for a month without stopping. Debating
at last whether it were better to take our wet umbrellas back at once to
England, or push on farther still in search of sunshine, the talk fell
upon Algiers--Malta--Cairo; and Cairo carried it. Never was distant
expedition entered upon with less premeditation! The thing was no sooner
decided than we were gone. Nice, Genoa, Bologna, Ancona flitted by, as
in a dream; and Bedreddin Hassan when he awoke at the gates of Damascus
was scarcely more surprised than the writer of these pages when she
found herself on board of the Simla and steaming out of the port of
Brindisi.
Here, then, without definite plans, outfit, or any kind of oriental
experience, behold us arrived in Cairo on the 29th of November, 1873,
literally, and most prosaically, in search of fine weather.
But what had memory to do with rains on land, or storms at sea, or the
impatient hours of quarantine, or anything dismal or disagreeable, when
one awoke at sunrise to see those gray-green palms outside the window
solemnly bowing their plumed heads toward each other, against a
rose-colored dawn? It was dark last night, and I had no idea that my
room overlooked an enchanted garden, far-reaching and solitary, peopled
with stately giants beneath whose tufted crowns hung rich clusters of
maroon and amber dates. It was a still, warm morning. Grave gray and
black crows flew heavily from tree to tree, or perched, cawing
meditatively, upon the topmost branches. Yonder, between the pillared
stems, rose the minaret of a very distant mosque; and here, where the
garden was bounded by a high wall and a windowless house, I saw a veiled
lady walking on the terraced roof in the midst of a cloud of pigeons.
Nothing could be more simple than the scene and its accessories;
nothing, at the same time, more eastern, strange, and unreal.
But in order thoroughly to enjoy an overwhelming, ineffaceable first
impression of oriental out-of-door life one should begin in Cairo with a
day in the native bazaars; neither buying, nor sketching, nor seeking
information, but just taking in scene after scene, with its manifold
combinations of light and shade, color, costume, and architectural
detail. Every shop front, every street corner, every turbaned group is a
ready-made picture. The old Turk who sets up his cake stall in the
recess of a sculptured doorway; the donkey boy, with his gayly
caparisoned ass, waiting for customers; the beggar asleep on the steps
of the mosque; the veiled woman filling her water jar at the public
fountain--they all look as if they had been put there expressly to be
painted.
Nor is the background less picturesque than the figures. The houses are
high and narrow. The upper stories project; and from these again jut
windows of delicate turned lattice work in old brown wood, like big
bird-cages. The street is roofed in overhead with long rafters and
pieces of matting, through which a dusty sunbeam straggles here and
there, casting patches of light upon the moving crowd. The unpaved
thoroughfare--a mere narrow lane, full of ruts and watered profusely
twice or thrice a day--is lined with little wooden shop fronts, like
open cabinets full of shelves, where the merchants sit cross-legged in
the midst of their goods, looking out at the passers-by and smoking in
silence. Meanwhile, the crowd ebbs and flows unceasingly--a noisy,
changing, restless, party-colored tide, half European, half oriental, on
foot, on horseback, and in carriages. Here are Syrian dragomans in baggy
trousers and braided jackets; barefooted Egyptian fellaheen in ragged
blue shirts and felt skull-caps; Greeks in absurdly stiff white tunics,
like walking pen-wipers; Persians with high miter-like caps of dark
woven stuff; swarthy Bedouins in flowing garments, creamy-white, with
chocolate stripes a foot wide, and head-shawl of the same bound about
the brow with a fillet of twisted camel’s hair; Englishmen in palm-leaf
hats and knickerbockers, dangling their long legs across almost
invisible donkeys; native women of the poorer class, in black veils that
leave only the eyes uncovered, and long trailing garments of dark blue
and black striped cotton; dervishes in patchwork coats, their matted
hair streaming from under fantastic head-dresses; blue-black Abyssinians
with incredibly slender, bowed legs, like attenuated ebony balustrades;
Armenian priests, looking exactly like Portia as the doctor, in long
black gowns and high square caps; majestic ghosts of Algerine Arabs, all
in white; mounted Janissaries with jingling sabers and gold-embroidered
jackets; merchants, beggars, soldiers, boatmen, laborers, workmen, in
every variety of costume, and of every shade of complexion from fair to
dark, from tawny to copper-color, from deepest bronze to bluest black.
Now a water-carrier goes by, bending under the weight of his newly
replenished goatskin, the legs of which being tied up, the neck fitted
with a brass cock, and the hair left on, looks horribly bloated and
life-like. Now comes a sweetmeat-vender with a tray of that gummy
compound known to English children as “lumps of delight”; and now an
Egyptian lady on a large gray donkey led by a servant with a showy saber
at his side. The lady wears a rose-colored silk dress and white veil,
besides a black silk outer garment, which, being cloak, hood, and veil
all in one, fills out with the wind as she rides, like a balloon. She
sits astride; her naked feet, in their violet velvet slippers, just
resting on the stirrups. She takes care to display a plump brown arm
laden with massive gold bracelets, and, to judge by the way in which she
uses a pair of liquid black eyes, would not be sorry to let her face be
seen also. Nor is the steed less well dressed than his mistress. His
close-shaven legs and hindquarters are painted in blue and white zigzags
picked out with bands of pale yellow; his high-pommeled saddle is
resplendent with velvet and embroidery; and his head-gear is all tags,
tassels, and fringes. Such a donkey as this is worth from sixty to a
hundred pounds sterling. Next passes an open barouche full of laughing
Englishwomen; or a grave provincial sheik all in black, riding a
handsome bay Arab, _demi-sang_; or an Egyptian gentleman in European
dress and Turkish fez, driven by an English groom in an English phaeton.
Before him, wand in hand, bare-legged, eager-eyed, in Greek skull-cap
and gorgeous gold-embroidered waistcoat and fluttering white tunic,
flies a native saïs, or running footman. No person of position drives in
Cairo without one or two of these attendants. The saïs (strong, light
and beautiful, like John of Bologna’s Mercury) are said to die young.
The pace kills them. Next passes a lemonade-seller, with his tin jar in
one hand and his decanter and brass cups in the other; or an itinerant
slipper-vender with a bunch of red and yellow morocco shoes dangling at
the end of a long pole; or a London-built miniature brougham containing
two ladies in transparent Turkish veils, preceded by a Nubian outrider
in semi-military livery; or, perhaps, a train of camels, ill-tempered
and supercilious, craning their scrannel necks above the crowd, and
laden with canvas bales scrawled over with Arabic addresses.
But the Egyptian, Arab and Turkish merchants, whether mingling in the
general tide or sitting on their counters, are the most picturesque
personages in all this busy scene. They wear ample turbans, for the most
part white; long vests of striped Syrian silk reaching to the feet; and
an outer robe of braided cloth or cashmere. The vest is confined round
the waist by a rich sash; and the outer robe, or _gibbeh_, is generally
of some beautiful degraded color, such as maize, mulberry, olive, peach,
sea-green, salmon-pink, sienna-brown, and the like. That these stately
beings should vulgarly buy and sell, instead of reposing all their lives
on luxurious divans and being waited upon by beautiful Circassians,
seems altogether contrary to the eternal fitness of things. Here, for
instance, is a grand vizier in a gorgeous white and amber satin vest,
who condescends to retail pipe-bowls--dull red clay pipe-bowls of all
sizes and prices. He sells nothing else, and has not only a pile of them
on the counter, but a binful at the back of his shop. They are made at
Siout, in Upper Egypt, and may be bought at the Algerine shops in London
almost as cheaply as in Cairo. Another majestic pasha deals in brass and
copper vessels, drinking-cups, basins, ewers, trays, incense-burners,
chafing-dishes, and the like; some of which are exquisitely engraved
with arabesque patterns or sentences from the poets. A third sells silks
from the looms of Lebanon and gold and silver tissues from Damascus.
Others, again, sell old arms, old porcelian, old embroideries,
second-hand prayer-carpets, and quaint little stools and cabinets of
ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Here, too, the tobacco merchant sits
behind a huge cake of latakia as big as his own body; and the sponge
merchant smokes his long chibouk in a bower of sponges.
Most amusing of all, however, are those bazaars in which each trade
occupies its separate quarter. You pass through an old stone gateway or
down a narrow turning, and find yourself amid a colony of saddlers,
stitching, hammering, punching, riveting. You walk up one alley and down
another, between shop fronts hung round with tasseled head-gear and
hump-backed saddles of all qualities and colors. Here are ladies’
saddles, military saddles, donkey saddles, and saddles for great
officers of state; saddles covered with red leather, with crimson and
violet velvet, with maroon, and gray, and purple cloth; saddles
embroidered with gold and silver, studded with brass-headed nails, or
trimmed with braid.
Another turn or two, and you are in the slipper bazaar, walking down
avenues of red and yellow morocco slippers; the former of home
manufacture, the latter from Tunis. Here are slippers with pointed toes,
turned-up toes, and toes as round and flat as horseshoes; walking
slippers with thick soles, and soft yellow slippers to be worn as inside
socks, which have no soles at all. These absurd little scarlet bluchers
with tassels are for little boys; the brown morocco shoes are for
grooms; the velvet slippers embroidered with gold and beads and seed
pearls are for wealthy hareens, and are sold at prices varying from five
shillings to five pounds the pair.
The carpet bazaar is of considerable extent, and consists of a network
of alleys and counter-alleys opening off to the right of the Muski,
which is the Regent street of Cairo. The houses in most of these alleys
are rich in antique lattice windows and Saracenic doorways. One little
square is tapestried all round with Persian and Syrian rugs, Damascus
saddle-bags, and Turkish prayer-carpets. The merchants sit and smoke in
the midst of their goods; and up in one corner an old “kahwagee,” or
coffee-seller, plies his humble trade. He has set up his little stove
and hanging-shelf beside the doorway of a dilapidated khan, the walls of
which are faced with arabesque panelings in old carved stone. It is one
of the most picturesque “bits” in Cairo. The striped carpets of Tunis;
the dim gray and blue, or gray and red fabrics of Algiers; the shaggy
rugs of Laodicea and Smyrna; the rich blues and greens and subdued reds
of Turkey; and the wonderfully varied, harmonious patterns of Persia,
have each their local habitation in the neighboring alleys. One is never
tired of traversing these half-lighted avenues all aglow with gorgeous
color and peopled with figures that come and go like the actors in some
Christmas piece of oriental pageantry.
In the Khan Khaleel, the place of the gold and silver smiths’ bazaar,
there is found, on the contrary, scarcely any display of goods for sale.
The alleys are so narrow in this part that two persons can with
difficulty walk in them abreast; and the shops, tinier than ever, are
mere cupboards with about three feet of frontage. The back of each
cupboard is fitted with tiers of little drawers and pigeon-holes, and in
front is a kind of matted stone step, called a mastabah, which serves
for seat and counter. The customer sits on the edge of the mastabah; the
merchant squats, cross-legged, inside. In this position he can, without
rising, take out drawer after drawer; and thus the space between the two
becomes piled with gold and silver ornaments. These differ from each
other only in the metal, the patterns being identical; and they are sold
by weight, with a due margin for profit. In dealing with strangers who
do not understand the Egyptian system of weights, silver articles are
commonly weighed against rupees or five-franc pieces, and gold articles
against napoleons or sovereigns. The ornaments made in Cairo consist
chiefly of chains and earrings, anklets, bangles, necklaces strung with
coins or tusk-shaped pendants, amulet-cases of filigree or repoussé
work, and penannular bracelets of rude execution, but rich and ancient
designs. As for the merchants their civility and patience are
inexhaustible. One may turn over their whole stock, try on all their
bracelets, go away again and again without buying, and yet be always
welcomed and dismissed with smiles. L---- and the writer spent many an
hour practicing Arabic in the Khan Khaleel, without, it is to be feared,
a corresponding degree of benefit to the merchants.
There are many other special bazaars in Cairo, as the sweetmeat bazaar;
the hardware bazaar; the tobacco bazaar; the sword-mounters’ and
coppersmiths’ bazaars; the Moorish bazaar, where fez caps, burnouses and
Barbary goods are sold; and some extensive bazaars for the sale of
English and French muslins and Manchester cotton goods; but these last
are for the most part of inferior interest. Among certain fabrics
manufactured in England expressly for the eastern market, we observed a
most hideous printed muslin representing small black devils capering
over a yellow ground, and we learned that it was much in favor for
children’s dresses.
But the bazaars, however picturesque, are far from being the only sights
of Cairo. There are mosques in plenty; grand old Saracenic gates;
ancient coptic churches; the museum of Egyptian antiquities; and, within
driving distance, the tombs of the Caliphs, Heliopolis, the Pyramids and
the Sphinx. To remember in what order the present travelers saw these
things would now be impossible; for they lived in a dream and were at
first too bewildered to catalogue their impressions very methodically.
Some places they were for the present obliged to dismiss with only a
passing glance; others had to be wholly deferred till their return to
Cairo.
In the meanwhile, our first business was to look at dahabeeyahs; and the
looking at dahabeeyahs compelled us constantly to turn our steps and
our thoughts in the direction of Boulak--a desolate place by the river,
where some two or three hundred Nile boats lay moored for hire. Now,
most persons know something of the miseries of house-hunting, but only
those who have experienced them know how much keener are the miseries of
dahabeeyah-hunting. It is more bewildering and more fatiguing, and is
beset by its own special and peculiar difficulties. The boats, in the
first place, are all built on the same plan, which is not the case with
houses; and, except as they run bigger or smaller, cleaner or dirtier,
are as like each other as twin oysters. The same may be said of their
captains, with the same differences; for, to a person who has been only
a few days in Egypt, one black or copper-colored man is exactly like
every other black or copper-colored man. Then each reïs, or captain,
displays the certificates given him by former travelers; and these
certificates, being apparently in active circulation, have a mysterious
way of turning up again and again on board different boats and in the
hands of different claimants. Nor is this all. Dahabeeyahs are given to
changing their places, which houses do not do; so that the boats which
lay yesterday alongside the eastern bank may be over at the western bank
to-day, or hidden in the midst of a dozen others half a mile lower down
the river. All this is very perplexing; yet it is as nothing compared
with the state of confusion one gets into when attempting to weigh the
advantages or disadvantages of boats with six cabins and boats with
eight; boats provided with canteen, and boats without; boats that can
pass the cataract, and boats that can’t; boats that are only twice as
dear as they ought to be, and boats with that defect five or six times
multiplied. Their names, again--ghazal, sarawa, fostat, dongola--unlike
any names one has ever heard before, afford as yet no kind of help to
the memory. Neither do the names of their captains; for they are all
Mohammeds or Hassans. Neither do their prices; for they vary from day to
day, according to the state of the market as shown by the returns of
arrivals at the principal hotels.
Add to all this the fact that no reïs speaks anything but Arabic, and
that every word of inquiry or negotiation has to be filtered, more or
less inaccurately, through a dragoman, and then perhaps those who have
not yet tried this variety of the pleasures of the chase may be able to
form some notion of the weary, hopeless, puzzling work which lies before
the dahabeeyah-hunter in Cairo.
Thus it came to pass that, for the first ten days or so, some three or
four hours had to be devoted every morning to the business of the boats;
at the end of which time we were no nearer a conclusion than at first.
The small boats were too small for either comfort or safety, especially
in what Nile travelers call “a big wind.” The medium-sized boats (which
lie under the suspicion of being used in summer for the transport of
cargo) were for the most part of doubtful cleanliness. The largest
boats, which alone seemed unexceptionable, contained from eight to ten
cabins, besides two saloons, and were obviously too large for a party
consisting of only L----, the writer and a maid. And all were
exorbitantly dear. Encompassed by these manifold difficulties; listening
now to this and now to that person’s opinion; deliberating, haggling,
comparing, hesitating, we vibrated daily between Boulak and Cairo and
led a miserable life. Meanwhile, however, we met some former
acquaintances; made some new ones; and when not too tired or
downhearted, saw what we could of the sights of Cairo--which helped a
little to soften the asperities of our lot.
One of our first excursions was, of course, to the pyramids, which lie
within an hour and a half’s easy drive from the hotel door. We started
immediately after an early luncheon, followed an excellent road all the
way and were back in time for dinner at half-past six. But it must be
understood that we did not go to _see_ the pyramids. We went only to
look at them. Later on (having meanwhile been up the Nile and back and
gone through months of training), we came again, not only with due
leisure, but also with some practical understanding of the manifold
phases through which the arts and architecture of Egypt had passed since
those far-off days of Cheops and Chephren. Then, only, we can be said to
have seen the pyramids; and till we arrive at that stage of our
pilgrimage it will be well to defer everything like a detailed account
of them or their surroundings. Of this first brief visit, enough,
therefore, a brief record.
The first glimpse that most travelers now get of the pyramids is from
the window of the railway carriage as they come from Alexandria; and it
is not impressive. It does not take one’s breath away, for instance,
like a first sight of the Alps from the high level of the Neufchâtel
line, or the outline of the Acropolis at Athens as one first recognizes
it from the sea. The well-known triangular forms look small and shadowy,
and are too familiar to be in any way startling. And the same, I think,
is true of every distant view of them--that is, of every view which is
too distant to afford the means of scaling them against other objects.
It is only in approaching them, and observing how they grow with every
foot of the road, that one begins to feel they are not so familiar after
all.
But when at last the edge of the desert is reached, and the long
sand-slope climbed, and the rocky platform gained, and the great pyramid
in all its unexpected bulk and majesty towers close above one’s head,
the effect is as sudden as it is overwhelming. It shuts out the sky and
the horizon. It shuts out all the other pyramids. It shuts out
everything but the sense of awe and wonder.
Now, too, one discovers that it was with the forms of the pyramids, and
only their forms, that one had been acquainted all these years past. Of
their surface, their color, their relative position, their number (to
say nothing of their size), one had hitherto entertained no kind of
definite idea. The most careful study of plans and measurements, the
clearest photographs, the most elaborate descriptions, had done little
or nothing, after all, to make one know the place beforehand. This
undulating table-land of sand and rock, pitted with open graves and
cumbered with mounds of shapeless masonry, is wholly unlike the desert
of our dreams. The pyramids of Cheops and Chephren are bigger than we
had expected; the pyramid of Mycerinus is smaller. Here, too, are nine
pyramids, instead of three. They are all entered in the plans and
mentioned in the guide-books; but, somehow, one is unprepared to find
them there, and cannot help looking upon them as intruders. These six
extra pyramids are small and greatly dilapidated. One, indeed, is little
more than a big cairn.
Even the great pyramid puzzles us with an unexpected sense of
unlikeness. We all know and have known from childhood, that it was
stripped of its outer blocks some five hundred years ago to build Arab
mosques and palaces; but the rugged, rock-like aspect of that giant
staircase takes us by surprise, nevertheless. Nor does it look like a
partial ruin either. It looks as if it had been left unfinished, and as
if the workmen might be coming back to-morrow morning.
The color again is a surprise. Few persons can be aware beforehand of
the rich tawny hue that Egyptian limestone assumes after ages of
exposure to the blaze of an Egyptian sky. Seen in certain lights, the
pyramids look like piles of massy gold.
Having but one hour and forty minutes to spend on the spot, we
resolutely refused on this first occasion to be shown anything, or told
anything, or to be taken anywhere--except, indeed, for a few minutes to
the brink of the sand hollow in which the Sphinx lies couchant. We
wished to give our whole attention, and all the short time at our
disposal, to the great pyramid only. To gain some impression of the
outer aspect and size of this enormous structure--to steady our minds to
something like an understanding of its age--was enough, and more than
enough, for so brief a visit.
For it is no easy task to realize, however imperfectly, the duration of
six or seven thousand years; and the great pyramid, which is supposed to
have been some four thousand two hundred and odd years old at the time
of the birth of Christ, is now in its seventh millenary. Standing there
close against the base of it; touching it; measuring her own height
against one of its lowest blocks; looking up all the stages of that
vast, receding, rugged wall, which leads upward like an Alpine buttress
and seems almost to touch the sky, the writer suddenly became aware that
these remote dates had never presented themselves to her mind until this
moment as anything but abstract numerals. Now, for the first time, they
resolved themselves into something concrete, definite, real. They were
no longer figures, but years with their changes of season, their high
and low Niles, their seed-times and harvests. The consciousness of that
moment will never, perhaps, quite wear away. It was as if one had been
snatched up for an instant to some vast height overlooking the plains of
time, and had seen the centuries mapped out beneath one’s feet.
To appreciate the size of the great pyramid is less difficult than to
apprehend its age. No one who has walked the length of one side,
climbed to the top, and learned the dimensions from Murray, can fail to
form a tolerably clear idea of its mere bulk. The measurements given by
Sir Gardner Wilkinson are as follows: Length of each side, 732 feet;
perpendicular height, 480 feet 9 inches; area, 535,824 square feet.[3]
That is to say it stands 115 feet 9 inches higher than the cross on the
top of St. Paul’s and about 20 feet lower than Box Hill in Surrey; and
if transported bodily to London, it would a little more than cover the
whole area of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. These are sufficiently
matter-of-fact statements and sufficiently intelligible; but, like most
calculations of the kind, they diminish rather than do justice to the
dignity of the subject.
More impressive by far than the weightiest array of figures or the most
striking comparisons, was the shadow cast by the great pyramid as the
sun went down. That mighty shadow, sharp and distinct, stretched across
the stony platform of the desert and over full three quarters of a mile
of the green plain below. It divided the sunlight where it fell, just as
its great original divided the sunlight in the upper air; and it
darkened the space it covered, like an eclipse. It was not without a
thrill of something approaching to awe that one remembered how this
self-same shadow had gone on registering not only the height of the most
stupendous gnomon ever set up by human hands, but the slow passage day
by day of more than sixty centuries of the world’s history.
It was still lengthening over the landscape as we went down the long
sand-slope and regained the carriage. Some six or eight Arabs in
fluttering white garments ran on ahead to bid us a last good-by. That we
should have driven over from Cairo only to sit quietly down and look at
the great pyramid had filled them with unfeigned astonishment. With such
energy and dispatch as the modern traveler uses, we might have been to
the top and seen the temple of the Sphinx and done two or three of the
principal tombs in the time.
“You come again!” said they. “Good Arab show you everything. You see
nothing this time!”
So, promising to return ere long, we drove away; well content,
nevertheless, with the way in which our time had been spent.
The pyramid Bedouins have been plentifully abused by travelers and
guide-books, but we found no reason to complain of them now or
afterward. They neither crowded round us, nor followed us, nor
importuned us in any way. They are naturally vivacious and very
talkative; yet the gentle fellows were dumb as mutes when they found we
wished for silence. And they were satisfied with a very moderate
bakhshîsh at parting.
As a fitting sequel to this excursion, we went, I think next day, to see
the mosque of Sultan Hassan, which is one of those mediæval structures
said to have been built with the casing-stones of the great pyramid.
CHAPTER II.
CAIRO AND THE MECCA PILGRIMAGE.
The mosque of Sultan Hassan, confessedly the most beautiful in Cairo, is
also perhaps the most beautiful in the Moslem world. It was built at
just that happy moment when Arabian art in Egypt, having ceased merely
to appropriate or imitate, had at length evolved an original
architectural style out of the heterogeneous elements of Roman and early
Christian edifices. The mosques of a few centuries earlier (as, for
instance, that of Tulûn, which marks the first departure from the old
Byzantine model) consisted of little more than a court-yard with
colonnades leading to a hall supported on a forest of pillars. A little
more than a century later, and the national style had already
experienced the beginnings of that prolonged eclipse which finally
resulted in the bastard Neo-Byzantine renaissance represented by the
mosque of Mehemet Ali. But the mosque of Sultan Hassan, built
ninety-seven years before the taking of Constantinople, may justly be
regarded as the highest point reached by Saracenic art in Egypt after it
had used up the Greek and Roman material of Memphis, and before its
new-born originality became modified by influences from beyond the
Bosporus. Its pre-eminence is due neither to the greatness of its
dimensions nor to the splendor of its materials. It is neither so large
as the great mosque at Damascus, nor so rich in costly marbles as Saint
Sophia in Constantinople; but in design, proportion, and a certain lofty
grace impossible to describe, it surpasses these, and every other
mosque, whether original or adapted, with which the writer is
acquainted.
The whole structure is purely national. Every line and curve in it, and
every inch of detail, is in the best style of the best period of the
Arabian school. And above all, it was designed expressly for its present
purpose. The two famous mosques of Damascus and Constantinople having,
on the contrary, been Christian churches, betray evidences of
adaptation. In Saint Sophia, the space once occupied by the figure of
the Redeemer may be distinctly traced in the mosaic work of the apsis,
filled in with gold tesseræ of later date; while the magnificent gates
of the great mosque at Damascus are decorated, among other Christian
emblems, with the sacramental chalice. But the mosque of Sultan Hassan,
built by En Nasîr Hassan in the high and palmy days of the Memlook rule,
is marred by no discrepancies. For a mosque it was designed, and a
mosque it remains. Too soon it will be only a beautiful ruin.
A number of small streets having lately been demolished in this quarter,
the approach to the mosque lies across a desolate open space littered
with débris, but destined to be laid out as a public square. With this
desirable end in view, some half-dozen workmen were lazily loading as
many camels with rubble, which is the Arab way of carting rubbish. If
they persevere, and the minister of public works continues to pay their
wages with due punctuality, the ground will perhaps get cleared in eight
or ten years’ time.
Driving up with some difficulty to the foot of the great steps, which
were crowded with idlers smoking and sleeping, we observed a long and
apparently fast-widening fissure reaching nearly from top to bottom of
the main wall of the building, close against the minaret. It looked like
just such a rent as might be caused by a shock of earthquake, and, being
still new to the east, we wondered the government had not set to work to
mend it. We had yet to learn that nothing is ever mended in Cairo. Here,
as in Constantinople, new buildings spring up apace, but the old, no
matter how venerable, are allowed to molder away, inch by inch, till
nothing remains but a heap of ruins.
Going up the steps and through a lofty hall, up some more steps and
along a gloomy corridor, we came to the great court, before entering
which, however, we had to take off our boots and put on slippers brought
for the purpose. The first sight of this court is an architectural
surprise. It is like nothing one has seen before, and its beauty equals
its novelty. Imagine an immense marble quadrangle, open to the sky and
inclosed within lofty walls, with, at each side, a vast recess framed in
by a single arch. The quadrangle is more than one hundred feet square,
and the walls are more than one hundred feet high. Each recess forms a
spacious hall for rest and prayer, and all are matted; but that at the
eastern end is wider and considerably deeper than the other three, and
the noble arch that incloses it like the proscenium of a splendid stage,
measures, according to Fergusson, sixty-nine feet five inches in the
span. It looks much larger. This principal hall, the floor of which is
raised one step at the upper end, measures ninety feet in depth and
ninety in height. The dais is covered with prayer-rugs, and contains the
holy niche and the pulpit of the preacher. We observed that those who
came up here came only to pray. Having prayed, they either went away or
turned aside into one of the other recesses to rest. There was a
charming fountain in the court with a dome roof as light and fragile
looking as a big bubble, at which each worshiper performed his ablutions
on coming in. This done, he left his slippers on the matting and trod
the carpeted dais barefoot.
This was the first time we had seen moslems at prayer, and we could not
but be impressed by their profound and unaffected devotion. Some lay
prostrate, their foreheads touching the ground; others were kneeling;
others bowing in the prescribed attitudes of prayer. So absorbed were
they, that not even our unhallowed presence seemed to disturb them. We
did not then know that the pious moslem is as devout out of the mosque
as in it; or that it is his habit to pray when the appointed hours come
round, no matter where he may be, or how occupied. We soon became so
familiar, however, with this obvious trait of Mohammedan life, that it
seemed quite a matter of course that the camel-driver should dismount
and lay his forehead in the dust by the roadside; or the merchant spread
his prayer-carpet on the narrow mastabah of his little shop in the
public bazaar; or the boatman prostrate himself with his face to the
east, as the sun went down behind the hills of the Libyan desert.
While we were admiring the spring of the roof and the intricate
arabesque decorations of the pulpit, a custode came up with a big key
and invited us to visit the tomb of the founder. So we followed him into
an enormous vaulted hall a hundred feet square, in the center of which
stood a plain, railed-off tomb, with an empty iron-bound coffer at the
foot. We afterward learned that for five hundred years--that is to say,
ever since the death and burial of Sultan Hassan--this coffer had
contained a fine copy of the Korân, traditionally said to have been
written by Sultan Hassan’s own hand; but that the khedive, who is
collecting choice and antique Arabic manuscripts, had only the other day
sent an order for its removal.
Nothing can be bolder or more elegant than the proportions of this noble
sepulchral hall, the walls of which are covered with tracery in low
relief incrusted with disks and tesseræ of turquoise-colored porcelain;
while high up, in order to lead off the vaulting of the roof, the
corners are rounded by means of recessed clusters of exquisite arabesque
woodwork, like pendent stalactites. But the tesseræ are fast falling
out, and most of their places are vacant; and the beautiful woodwork
hangs in fragments, tattered and cobwebbed, like time-worn banners,
which the first touch of a brush would bring down.
Going back again from the tomb to the court-yard, we everywhere observed
traces of the same dilapidation. The fountain, once a miracle of
Saracenic ornament, was fast going to destruction. The rich marbles of
its basement were cracked and discolored, its stuccoed cupola was
flaking off piecemeal, its enamels were dropping out, its lace-like wood
tracery shredding away by inches.
Presently a tiny brown and golden bird perched with pretty confidence on
the brink of the basin, and having splashed, and drunk, and preened its
feathers like a true believer at his ablutions, flew up to the top of
the cupola and sang deliciously. All else was profoundly still. Large
spaces of light and shadow divided the quadrangle. The sky showed
overhead as a square opening of burning solid blue; while here and
there, reclining, praying, or quietly occupied, a number of turbaned
figures were picturesquely scattered over the matted floors of the open
halls around. Yonder sat a tailor cross-legged, making a waistcoat; near
him, stretched on his face at full length, sprawled a basket-maker with
his half-woven basket and bundle of rushes beside him; and here, close
against the main entrance, lay a blind man and his dog; the master
asleep, the dog keeping watch. It was, as I have said, our first
mosque, and I well remember the surprise with which we saw that tailor
sewing on his buttons and the sleepers lying about in the shade. We did
not then know that a Mohammedan mosque is as much a place of rest and
refuge as of prayer; or that the houseless Arab may take shelter there
by night or day as freely as the birds may build their nests in the
cornice, or as the blind man’s dog may share the cool shade with his
sleeping master.
From the mosque of this Memlook sovereign it is but a few minutes’
uphill drive to the mosque of Mehemet Ali, by whose orders the last of
that royal race were massacred just sixty-four years ago.[4] This
mosque, built within the precincts of the citadel on a spur of the
Mokattam Hills overlooking the city, is the most conspicuous object in
Cairo. Its attenuated minarets and clustered domes show from every point
of view for miles around, and remain longer in sight, as one leaves, or
returns to, Cairo, than any other landmark. It is a spacious, costly,
gaudy, commonplace building, with nothing really beautiful about it,
except the great marble court-yard and fountain. The inside, which is
entirely built of oriental alabaster, is carpeted with magnificent
Turkey carpets and hung with innumerable cut-glass chandeliers, so that
it looks like a huge vulgar drawing-room from which the furniture has
been cleared out for dancing.
The view from the outer platform is, however, magnificent. We saw it on
a hazy day, and could not therefore distinguish the point of the delta,
which ought to have been visible on the north; but we could plainly see
as far southward as the pyramids of Sakkârah, and trace the windings of
the Nile for many miles across the plain. The pyramids of Ghizeh, on
their daïs of desert rock about twelve miles off, looked, as they always
do look from a distance, small and unimpressive; but the great alluvial
valley dotted over with mud villages and intersected by canals and
tracts of palm forest; the shining river specked with sails; and the
wonderful city, all flat roofs, cupolas, and minarets, spread out like
an intricate model at one’s feet, were full of interest and absorbed
our whole attention. Looking down upon it from this elevation, it is as
easy to believe that Cairo contains four hundred mosques, as it is to
stand on the brow of the Pincio and believe in the three hundred and
sixty-five churches of modern Rome.
As we came away, they showed us the place in which the Memlook nobles,
four hundred and seventy[5] in number, were shot down like mad-dogs in a
trap, that fatal first of March, A.D. 1811. We saw the upper gate which
was shut behind them as they came out from the presence of the pasha,
and the lower gate which was shut before them to prevent their egress.
The walls of the narrow roadway in which the slaughter was done are said
to be pitted with bullet marks; but we would not look for them.
I have already said that I do not very distinctly remember the order of
our sight-seeing in Cairo, for the reason that we saw some places before
we went up the river, some after we came back, and some (as for instance
the museum at Boulak) both before and after, and indeed as often as
possible. But I am at least quite certain that we witnessed a
performance of howling dervishes, and the departure of the caravan for
Mecca, before starting.
Of all the things that people do by way of pleasure, the pursuit of a
procession is surely one of the most wearisome. They generally go a long
way to see it; they wait a weary time; it is always late; and when at
length it does come, it is over in a few minutes. The present pageant
fulfilled all these conditions in a superlative degree. We breakfasted
uncomfortably early, started soon after half-past seven, and had taken
up our position outside the Báb en-Nasr, on the way to the desert, by
half-past eight. Here we sat for nearly three hours, exposed to clouds
of dust and a burning sun, with nothing to do but to watch the crowd and
wait patiently. All Shepheard’s Hotel were there, and every stranger in
Cairo; and we all had smart open carriages drawn by miserable screws and
driven by bare-legged Arabs. These Arabs, by the way, are excellent
whips, and the screws get along wonderfully; but it seems odd at first,
and not a little humiliating, to be whirled along behind a coachman
whose only livery consists of a rag of dirty white turban, a scant tunic
just reaching to his knees, and the top boots with which nature has
provided him.
Here, outside the walls, the crowd increased momentarily. The place was
like a fair with provision stalls, swings, story-tellers,
serpent-charmers, cake-sellers, sweetmeat-sellers, sellers of sherbet,
water, lemonade, sugared nuts, fresh dates, hard-boiled eggs, oranges
and sliced watermelon. Veiled women carrying little bronze Cupids of
children astride upon the right shoulder, swarthy Egyptians, coal-black
Abyssinians, Arabs and Nubians of every shade from golden-brown to
chocolate, fellahs, dervishes, donkey boys, street urchins and beggars
with every imaginable deformity, came and went; squeezed themselves in
and out among the carriages; lined the road on each side of the great
towered gateway; swarmed on the top of every wall; and filled the air
with laughter, a babel of dialects, and those of Araby that are
inseparable from an eastern crowd. A harmless, unsavory, good-humored,
inoffensive throng, one glance at which was enough to put to flight all
one’s preconceived notions about oriental gravity of demeanor! For the
truth is that gravity is by no means an oriental characteristic. Take a
Mohammedan at his devotions, and he is a model of religious abstraction;
bargain with him for a carpet, and he is as impenetrable as a judge; but
see him in his hours of relaxation, or on the occasion of a public
holiday, and he is as garrulous and full of laughter as a big child.
Like a child, too, he loves noise and movement for the mere sake of
noise and movement, and looks upon swings and fire-works as the height
of human felicity. Now swings and fire-works are Arabic for bread and
circuses, and our pleb’s passion for them is insatiable. He not only
indulges in them upon every occasion of public rejoicing, but calls in
their aid to celebrate the most solemn festivals of his religion. It so
happened that we afterward came in the way of several Mohammedan
festivals both in Egypt and Syria, and we invariably found the swings at
work all day and the fire-works going off every evening.
To-day the swings outside the Báb en-Nasr were never idle. Here were
creaking Russian swings hung with little painted chariots for the
children; and plain rope swings, some of them as high as Haman’s
gallows, for the men. For my own part, I know no sight more comic and
incongruous than the serene enjoyment with which a bearded, turbaned,
middle-aged Egyptian squats upon his heels on the tiny wooden seat of
one of these enormous swings, and, holding on to the side-ropes for dear
life, goes careering up forty feet high into the air at every turn.
At a little before midday, when the heat and glare were becoming
intolerable, the swings suddenly ceased going, the crowd surged in the
direction of the gate, and a distant drumming announced the approach of
the procession. First came a string of baggage-camels laden with tent
furniture; then some two hundred pilgrims on foot, chanting passages
from the Korân; then a regiment of Egyptian infantry, the men in a
coarse white linen uniform, consisting of coat, baggy trousers and
gaiters, with cross-belts and cartouche-boxes of plain black leather,
and the red fez, or tarboosh, on the head. Next after these came more
pilgrims, followed by a body of dervishes carrying green banners
embroidered with Arabic sentences in white and yellow; then a native
cavalry regiment headed by a general and four colonels in magnificent
gold embroidery and preceded by an excellent military band; then another
band and a second regiment of infantry; then more colonels, followed by
a regiment of lancers mounted on capital gray horses and carrying lances
topped with small red and green pennants. After these had gone by there
was a long stoppage, and then, with endless breaks and interruptions,
came a straggling, irregular crowd of pilgrims, chiefly of the fellah
class, beating small darabukkehs, or native drums. Those about us
estimated their number at two thousand. And now, their guttural chorus
audible long before they arrived in sight, came the howling dervishes--a
ragged, wild-looking, ruffianly set, rolling their heads from side to
side, and keeping up a hoarse, incessant cry of “Allàh! Allàh! Allàh!”
Of these there may have been a couple of hundred. The sheiks of the
principal order of dervishes came next in order, superbly dressed in
robes of brilliant colors embroidered with gold and mounted on
magnificent Arabs. Finest of all, in a green turban and scarlet mantle,
rode the Sheik of Hasaneyn, who is a descendant of the prophet; but the
most important, the Sheik el Bekree, who is a sort of Egyptian
Archbishop of Canterbury, and head of all the dervishes, came last,
riding a white Arab with gold-embroidered housings. He was a
placid-looking old man, and wore a violet robe and an enormous red and
green turban.
This very reverend personage was closely followed by the chief of the
carpet-makers’ guild--a handsome man, sitting sidewise on a camel.
Then happened another break in the procession--an eager pause--a
gathering murmur. And then, riding a gaunt dromedary at a rapid trot,
his fat sides shaking and his head rolling in a drunken way at every
step, appeared a bloated, half-naked Silenus, with long fuzzy black
locks and triple chin, and no other clothing than a pair of short white
drawers and red slippers. A shiver of delight ran through the crowd at
sight of this holy man--the famous Sheik of the Camel (Sheik el-Gemel),
the “great, good priest”--the idol of the people. We afterward learned
that this was his twentieth pilgrimage, and that he was supposed to
fast, roll his head and wear nothing but this pair of loose drawers all
the way to and from Mecca.
But the crowning excitement was yet to come and the rapture with which
the crowd had greeted the Sheik el-Gemel was as nothing compared with
their ecstasy when the mahmal, preceded by another group of mounted
officers and borne by a gigantic camel, was seen coming through the
gateway. The women held up their children; the men swarmed up the
scaffoldings of the swings and behind the carriages. They screamed, they
shouted, they waved handkerchiefs and turbans; they were beside
themselves with excitement. Meanwhile the camel, as if conscious of the
dignity of his position and the splendor of his trappings, came on
slowly and ponderously with his nose in the air, and passed close before
our horses’ heads. We could not possibly have had better view of the
mahmal; which is nothing but a sort of cage, or pagoda, of gilded
tracery very richly decorated. In the days of the Memlooks, the mahmal
represented the litter of the sultan, and went empty, like a royal
carriage at the public funeral;[6] but we were told that it now carried
the tribute-carpet sent annually by the carpet-makers of Cairo to the
tomb of the prophet.
This closed the procession. As the camel passed, the crowd surged in,
and everything like order was at an end. The carriages all made at once
for the gate, so meeting the full tide of the outpouring crowd and
causing unimaginable confusion. Some stuck in the sand half-way--our own
among the number; and all got into an inextricable block in the narrow
part just inside the gate. Hereupon the drivers abused each other and
the crowd got impatient, and some Europeans got pelted.
Coming back, we met two or three more regiments. The men, both horse and
foot, seemed fair average specimens, and creditably disciplined. They
rode better than they marched, which was to be expected. The uniform is
the same for cavalry and infantry throughout the service; the only
difference being that the former wear short black riding-boots, and the
latter, zouave gaiters of white linen. They are officered up to a
certain point by Egyptians; but the commanding officers and the staff
(among whom are enough colonels and generals to form an ordinary
regiment) are chiefly Europeans and Americans.
It had seemed, while the procession was passing, that the proportion of
pilgrims was absurdly small when compared with the display of military;
but this, which is called the departure of the caravan, is in truth only
the procession of the sacred carpet from Cairo to the camp outside the
walls; and the troops are present merely as part of the pageant. The
true departure takes place two days later. The pilgrims then muster in
great numbers; but the soldiery is reduced to a small escort. It was
said that seven thousand souls went out this year from Cairo and its
neighborhood.
The procession took place on Thursday, the 21st day of the Mohammedan
month of Showwál, which was our 11th of December. The next day, Friday,
being the Mohammedan Sabbath, we went to the convent of the Howling
Dervishes, which lies beyond the walls in a quiet nook between the river
side and the part known as old Cairo.
We arrived a little after two, and passing through a court-yard shaded
by a great sycamore were ushered into a large, square, whitewashed hall
with a dome roof and a neatly matted floor. The place in its
arrangements resembled none of the mosques that we had yet seen. There
was, indeed, nothing to arrange--no pulpit, no holy niche, no lamps, no
prayer-carpets; nothing but a row of cane-bottomed chairs at one end,
some of which were already occupied by certain of our fellow-guests at
Shepheard’s Hotel. A party of some forty or fifty wild-looking dervishes
were squatting in a circle at the opposite side of the hall, their outer
kuftâns and queer pyramidal hats lying in a heap close by.
Being accommodated with chairs among the other spectators, we waited for
whatever might happen. More deverishes and more English dropped in from
time to time. The new dervishes took off their caps and sat down among
the rest, laughing and talking together at their ease. The English sat
in a row, shy, uncomfortable, and silent; wondering whether they ought
to behave as if they were in church, and mortally ashamed of their feet.
For we had all been obliged to take off or cover our boots before going
in, and those who had forgotten to bring slippers had their feet tied up
in pocket handkerchiefs.
A long time went by thus. At last, when the number of dervishes had
increased to about seventy, and every one was tired of waiting, eight
musicians came in--two trumpets, two lutes, a cocoanut fiddle, a
tambourine, and two drums. Then the dervishes, some of whom were old and
white haired and some mere boys, formed themselves into a great circle,
shoulder to shoulder; the band struck up a plaintive, discordant air;
and a grave middle aged man, placing himself in the center of the ring
and inclining his head at each repetition, began to recite the name of
Allàh.
Softly at first, and one by one, the dervishes took up the chant:
“Allàh! Allàh! Allàh!” Their heads and their voices rose and fell in
unison. The dome above gave back a hollow echo. There was something
strange and solemn in the ceremony.
Presently, however, the trumpets brayed louder--the voices grew
hoarser--the heads bowed lower--the name of Allàh rang out faster and
faster, fiercer and fiercer. The leader, himself cool and collected,
began sensibly accelerating the time of the chorus; and it became
evident that the performers were possessed by a growing frenzy. Soon the
whole circle was madly rocking to and fro; the voices rose to a hoarse
scream; and only the trumpets were audible above the din. Now and then a
dervish would spring up convulsively some three or four feet above the
heads of the others; but for the most part they stood firmly rooted to
one spot--now bowing their heads almost to their feet--now flinging
themselves so violently back that we, standing behind, could see their
faces foreshortened upside down; and this with such incredible rapidity
that their long hair had scarcely time either to rise or fall, but
remained as if suspended in mid-air. Still the frenzy mounted; still the
pace quickened. Some shrieked--some groaned--some, unable to support
themselves any longer, were held up in their places by the by-standers.
All were mad for the time being. Our own heads seemed to be going round
at last; and more than one of the ladies present looked longingly toward
the door. It was, in truth, a horrible sight, and needed only darkness
and torchlight to be quite diabolical.
At length, just as the fury was at its height and the very building
seemed to be rocking to and fro above our heads, one poor wretch
staggered out of the circle and fell, writhing and shrieking, close
against our feet. At the same moment the leader clapped his hands; the
performers, panting and exhausted, dropped into a sitting posture; and
the first zikr, as it is called, came abruptly to an end. Some few,
however, could not stop immediately, but kept on swaying and muttering
to themselves; while the one in the fit having ceased to shriek, lay out
stiff and straight, apparently in a state of coma.
There was a murmur of relief and a simultaneous rising among the
spectators. It was announced that another zikr, with a re-enforcement of
fresh dervishes, would soon begin; but the Europeans had had enough of
it, and few remained for the second performance.
Going out we paused beside the poor fellow on the floor, and asked if
nothing could be done for him.
“He is struck by Mohammed,” said gravely an Egyptian official who was
standing by.
At that moment the leader came over, knelt down beside him, touched him
lightly on the head and breast, and whispered something in his ear. The
man was then quite rigid and white as death. We waited, however, and
after a few more minutes saw him struggle back into a dazed,
half-conscious state, when he was helped to his feet and led away by his
friends.
The court-yard as we came out was full of dervishes sitting on cane
benches in the shade and sipping coffee. The green leaves rustled
overhead with glimpses of intensely blue sky between; and brilliant
patches of sunshine flickered down upon groups of wild-looking,
half-savage figures in party-colored garments. It was one of those
ready-made subjects that the sketcher passes by with a sigh, but which
live in his memory forever.
From hence, being within a few minutes’ drive of old Cairo, we went on
as far as the Mosque of Amr--an uninteresting ruin stands alone among
the rubbish-mounds of the first Mohammedan capital of Egypt. It is
constructed on the plan of a single quadrangle two hundred and
twenty-five feet square, surrounded by a covered colonnade one range of
pillars in depth on the west (which is the side of the entrance); four
on the north; three on the south; and six on the east, which is the
place of prayer, and contains three holy niches and the pulpit. The
columns, two hundred and forty-five in number, have been brought from
earlier Roman and Byzantine buildings. They are of various marbles and
have all kinds of capitals. Some being originally too short, have been
stilted on disproportionately high bases; and in one instance the
necessary height has been obtained by adding a second capital on the top
of the first. We observed one column of that rare black and white
speckled marble of which there is a specimen in the pulpit of St. Mark’s
in Venice; and one of the holy niches contains some fragments of
Byzantine mosaics. But the whole building seems to have been put
together in a barbarous way, and would appear to owe its present state
of dilapidation more to bad workmanship than to time. Many of the
pillars, especially on the western side, are fallen and broken; the
octagonal fountain in the center is a roofless ruin; and the little
minaret at the southeast corner is no longer safe.
Apart, however, from its poverty of design and detail, the Mosque of Amr
is interesting as a point of departure in the history of Saracenic
architecture. It was built by Amr Ebn el-As, the Arab conqueror of
Egypt, in the twenty-first year of the hegira (A.D. 642), just ten years
after the death of Mohammed; and it is the earliest Saracenic edifice in
Egypt. We were glad, therefore, to have seen it for this reason, if for
no other. But it is a barren, dreary place; and the glare reflected from
all sides of the quadrangle was so intense that we were thankful to get
away into the narrow streets beside the river.
Here we presently fell in with a wedding procession consisting of a
crowd of men, a band, and some three or four hired carriages full of
veiled women, one of whom was pointed out as the bride. The bridegroom
walked in the midst of the men, who seemed to be teasing him, drumming
round him, and opposing his progress; while high above the laughter, the
shouting, the jingle of tambourines and the thrumming of darabukkehs,
was heard the shrill squeal of some instrument that sounded exactly like
a bagpipe.
It was a brilliant afternoon, and we ended our day’s work, I remember,
with a drive on the Shubra road and a glance at the gardens of the
khedive’s summer palace. The Shubra road is the Champs Elysées of Cairo,
and is thronged every day from four to half-past six. Here little sheds
of roadside cafés alternate with smart modern villas; ragged fellâheen
on jaded donkeys trot side by side with elegant attachés on
high-stepping Arabs; while tourists in hired carriages, Jew bankers in
unexceptionable phaetons, veiled hareems in London built broughams,
Italian shop-keepers in preposterously fashionable toilets, grave sheiks
on magnificent Cairo asses, officers in frogged and braided frocks, and
English girls in tall hats and close-fitting habits, followed by the
inevitable little solemn-looking English groom, pass and repass, precede
and follow each other, in one changing, restless, heterogeneous stream,
the like of which is to be seen in no other capital in the world. The
sons of the khedive drive here daily, always in separate carriages and
preceded by four saïses and four guards. They are of all ages and sizes,
from the hereditary prince, a pale, gentlemanly looking young man of
four or five and twenty, down to one tiny, imperious atom of about six,
who is dressed like a little man, and is constantly leaning out of the
carriage window and shrilly abusing his coachman.[7]
Apart however, from those who frequent it, the Shubra road is a really
fine drive, broad, level, raised some six or eight feet above the
cultivated plain, closely planted on both sides with acacias and
sycamore fig trees, and reaching straight away for four miles out of
Cairo, counting from the railway terminus to the summer palace. The
carriage-way is about as wide as the road across Hyde Park which
connects Bayswater with Kensington; and toward the Shubra end, it runs
close beside the Nile. Many of the sycamores are of great size and quite
patriarchal girth. Their branches meet overhead nearly all the way,
weaving a delicious shade and making a cool green tunnel of the long
perspective.
We did not stay long in the khedive’s gardens, for it was already
getting late when we reached the gates; but we went far enough to see
that they were tolerably well kept, not over formal and laid out with a
view to masses of foliage, shady paths and spaces of turf inlaid with
flower-beds, after the style of the famous Sarntheim and Moser gardens
at Botzen in the Tyrol. Here are sont trees (_Acacia Nilotica_) of
unusual size, powdered all over with little feathery tufts of yellow
blossom; orange and lemon trees in abundance; heaps of little green
limes; bananas bearing heavy pendent bunches of ripe fruit; winding
thickets of pomegranates, oleanders and salvias; and great beds and
banks and trellised walks of roses. Among these, however, I observed
none of the rarer varieties. As for the pointsettia, it grows in Egypt
to a height of twenty feet, and bears blossoms of such size and color as
we in England can form no idea of. We saw large trees of it both here
and at Alexandria that seemed as if bending beneath a mantle of crimson
stars, some of which cannot have measured less than twenty-two inches in
diameter.
A large Italian fountain, in a rococo style, is the great sight of the
place. We caught a glimpse of it through the trees, and surprised the
gardener who was showing us over by declining to inspect it more nearly.
He could not understand why we preferred to give our time to the shrubs
and flower-beds.
Driving back presently toward Cairo with a big handful of roses apiece,
we saw the sun going down in an aureole of fleecy pink and golden
clouds, the Nile flowing by like a stream of liquid light, and a little
fleet of sailing boats going up to Boulak before a puff of north wind
that had sprung up as the sun neared the horizon. That puff of north
wind, those gliding sails, had a keen interest for us now and touched us
nearly; because--I have delayed this momentous revelation till the last
moment--because we were to start to-morrow!
And this is why I have been able, in the midst of so much that was new
and bewildering, to remember quite circumstantially the dates and all
the events connected with these last two days. They were to be our last
two days in Cairo; and to-morrow morning, Saturday, the 13th of
December, we were to go on board a certain dahabeeyah now lying off the
iron bridge at Boulak, therein to begin that strange aquatic life to
which we had been looking forward with so many hopes and fears, and
toward which we had been steering through so many preliminary
difficulties.
But the difficulties were all over now and everything was settled;
though not in the way we had at first intended. For, in place of a small
boat, we had secured one of the largest on the river; and instead of
going alone we had decided to throw in our lot with that of three other
travelers. One of these three was already known to the writer. The other
two, friends of the first, were on their way out from Europe and were
not expected in Cairo for another week. We knew nothing of them but
their names.
Meanwhile L---- and the writer, assuming sole possession of the
dahabeeyah, were about to start ten days in advance; it being their
intention to push on as far as Rhoda (the ultimate point then reached by
the Nile railway), and there to await the arrival of the rest of the
party. Now Rhoda (more correctly Roda) is just one hundred and eighty
miles south of Cairo, and we calculated upon seeing the Sakkârah
pyramids, the Turra quarries, the tombs of Beni Hassan, and the famous
grotto of the Colossus on the Sledge, before our fellow-travelers should
be due.
“It depends on the wind, you know,” said our dragoman, with a lugubrious
smile.
We knew that it depended on the wind; but what then? In Egypt the wind
is supposed always to blow from the north at this time of the year, and
we had ten good days at our disposal. The observation was clearly
irrelevant.
CHAPTER III.
CAIRO TO BEDRESHAYN.
A rapid raid into some of the nearest shops for things remembered at the
last moment--a breathless gathering up of innumerable parcels--a few
hurried farewells on the steps of the hotel--and away we rattle as fast
as a pair of raw-boned grays can carry us. For this morning every moment
is of value. We are already late; we expect visitors to luncheon on
board at midday; and we are to weigh anchor at two P.M. Hence our
anxiety to reach Boulak before the bridge is opened, that we may drive
across to the western bank, against which our dahabeeyah lies moored.
Hence, also, our mortification when we arrive just in time to see the
bridge swing apart and the first tall mast glide through.
Presently, however, when those on the look-out have observed our signals
of distress, a smart-looking sandal, or jolly-boat, decked with gay rugs
and cushions, manned by five smiling Arabs, and flying a bright little
new union jack, comes swiftly threading its way in and out among the
lumbering barges now crowding through the bridge. In a few more minutes
we are afloat. For this is our sandal and these are five of our crew;
and of the three dahabeeyahs moored over yonder in the shade of the
palms the biggest by far, and the trimmest, is our dear, memorable
Philæ.
Close behind the Philæ lies the Bagstones, a neat little dahabeeyah in
the occupation of two English ladies who chanced to cross with us in the
Simla from Brindisi, and of whom we have seen so much ever since that we
regard them by this time as quite old friends in a strange land. I will
call them the M. B.’s. The other boat, lying off a few yards ahead,
carries the tri-color, and is chartered by a party of French gentlemen.
All three are to sail to-day.
And now we are on board and have shaken hands with the captain and are
as busy as bees; for there are cabins to put in order, flowers to
arrange, and a hundred little things to be seen to before the guests
arrive. It is wonderful, however, what a few books and roses, an open
piano, and a sketch or two will do. In a few minutes the comfortless
hired look has vanished, and long enough before the first comers are
announced the Philæ wears an aspect as cozy and home-like as if she had
been occupied for a month.
As for the luncheon, it certainly surprised the givers of the
entertainment quite as much as it must have surprised their guests.
Being, no doubt, a pre-arranged display of professional pride on the
part of dragoman and cook, it was more like an excessive Christmas
dinner than a modest midday meal. We sat through it unflinchingly,
however, for about an hour and three quarters, when a startling
discharge of firearms sent us all running upon deck and created a
wholesome diversion in our favor. It was the French boat signaling her
departure, shaking out her big sail, and going off triumphantly.
I fear that we of the Bagstones and Philæ--being mere mortals and
Englishwomen--could not help feeling just a little spiteful when we
found the tri-color had started first; but then it was a consolation to
know that the Frenchmen were going only to Assuân. Such is the _esprit
du Nil_. The people in dahabeeyahs despise Cook’s tourists; those who
are bound for the second cataract look down with lofty compassion upon
those whose ambition extends only to the first; and travelers who engage
their boat by the month hold their heads a trifle higher than those who
contract for the trip. We, who were going as far as we liked and for as
long as we liked, could afford to be magnanimous. So we forgave the
Frenchmen, went down again to the saloon, and had coffee and music.
It was nearly three o’clock when our Cairo visitors wished us “bon
voyage” and good-by. Then the M. B.’s, who, with their nephew, had been
of the party, went back to their own boat; and both captains prepared to
sail at a given signal. For the M. B.’s had entered into a solemn
convention to start with us, moor with us, and keep with us, if
practicable, all the way up the river. It is pleasant now to remember
that this sociable compact, instead of falling through as such compacts
are wont to do, was quite literally carried out as far as Aboo Simbel;
that is to say, during a period of seven weeks’ hard going and for a
distance of upward of eight hundred miles.
At last all is ready. The awning that has all day roofed in the upper
deck is taken down; the captain stands at the head of the steps; the
steersman is at the helm; the dragoman has loaded his musket. Is the
Bagstones ready? We wave a handkerchief of inquiry--the signal is
answered--the mooring ropes are loosened--the sailors pole the boat off
from the bank--bang go the guns, six from the Philæ and six from the
Bagstones, and away we go, our huge sail filling as it takes the wind!
Happy are the Nile travelers who start thus with a fair breeze on a
brilliant afternoon. The good boat cleaves her way swiftly and steadily.
Water-side palaces and gardens glide by and are left behind. The domes
and minarets of Cairo drop quickly out of sight. The mosque of the
citadel and the ruined fort that looks down upon it from the mountain
ridge above diminish in the distance. The pyramids stand up sharp and
clear.
We sit on the high upper deck, which is furnished with lounge-chairs,
tables and foreign rugs, like a drawing-room in the open air, and enjoy
the prospect at our ease. The valley is wide here and the banks are
flat, showing a steep verge of crumbling alluvial mud next the river.
Long belts of palm groves, tracts of young corn only an inch or two
above the surface, and clusters of mud huts, relieved now and then by a
little whitewashed cupola or a stumpy minaret, succeed each other on
both sides of the river, while the horizon is bounded to right and left
by long ranges of yellow limestone mountains, in the folds of which
sleep inexpressibly tender shadows of pale violet and blue.
Thus the miles glide away, and by and by we approach Turra--a large,
new-looking mud village, and the first of any extent that we have yet
seen. Some of the houses are whitewashed; a few have glass windows, and
many seem to be unfinished. A space of white, stony, glaring plain
separates the village from the quarried mountains beyond, the flanks of
which show all gashed and hewn away. One great cliff seems to have been
cut sheer off for a distance of perhaps half a mile. Where the cuttings
are fresh the limestone comes out dazzling white and the long slopes of
débris heaped against the foot of the cliffs glisten like snow-drifts in
the sun. Yet the outer surface of the mountains is orange-tawny, like
the pyramids. As for the piles of rough hewn blocks that lie ranged
along the bank ready for transport, they look like salt rather than
stone. Here lies moored a whole fleet of cargo boats, laden and lading;
and along the tramway that extends from the river side to the quarries
we see long trains of mule-carts coming and going.
For all the new buildings in Cairo, the khedive’s palaces, the public
offices, the smart modern villas, the glaring new streets, the theaters
and foot pavements and cafés, all come from these mountains--just as the
pyramids did more than six thousand years ago. There are hieroglyphed
tablets and sculptured grottoes to be seen in the most ancient part of
the quarries, if one were inclined to stop for them at this early stage
of the journey; and Champollion tells of two magnificent outlines done
in red ink upon the living rock by some master hand of Pharaonic times,
the cutting of which was never even begun. A substantial new barrack and
an esplanade planted with sycamore figs bring the straggling village to
an end.
And now, as the afternoon wanes, we draw near to a dense, wide-spreading
forest of stately date-palms on the western bank, knowing that beyond
them, though unseen, lie the mounds of Memphis and all the wonders of
Sakkârah. Then the sun goes down behind the Libyan hills; and the palms
stand out black and bronzed against a golden sky; and the pyramids, left
far behind, look gray and ghostly in the distance.
Presently, when it is quite dusk and the stars are out, we moor for the
night at Bedreshayn, which is the nearest point for visiting Sakkârah.
There is a railway station here, and also a considerable village, both
lying back about half a mile from the river; and the distance from
Cairo, which is reckoned at fifteen miles by the line, is probably about
eighteen by water.
Such was our first day on the Nile. And perhaps, before going farther on
our way, I ought to describe the Philæ and introduce Reïs Hassan and his
crew.
A dahabeeyah, at the first glance, is more like a civic or an Oxford
University barge, than anything in the shape of a boat with which we in
England are familiar. It is shallow and flat-bottomed, and is adapted
for either sailing or rowing. It carries two masts; a big one near the
prow and a smaller one at the stern. The cabins are on deck and occupy
the after-part of the vessel; and the roof of the cabins forms the
raised deck, or open-air drawing-room already mentioned. This upper deck
is reached from the lower deck by two little flights of steps, and is
the exclusive territory of the passengers. The lower deck is the
territory of the crew. A dahabeeyah is, in fact, not very unlike the
Noah’s ark of our childhood, with this difference--the habitable part,
instead of occupying the middle of the vessel, is all at one end, top
heavy and many-windowed; while the fore-deck is not more than six feet
above the level of the water. The hold, however, is under the lower
deck, and so counterbalances the weight at the other end. Not to
multiply comparisons unnecessarily, I may say that a large dahabeeyah
reminds one of old pictures of the Bucentaur; especially when the men
are at their oars.
The kitchen--which is a mere shed like a Dutch oven in shape, and
contains only a charcoal stove and a row of stew-pans--stands between
the big mast and the prow, removed as far as possible from the
passengers’ cabins. In this position the cook is protected from a
favorable wind by his shed; but in the case of a contrary wind he is
screened by an awning. How, under even the most favorable circumstances,
these men can serve up the elaborate dinners which are the pride of a
Nile cook’s heart, is sufficiently wonderful; but how they achieve the
same results when wind-storms and sand-storms are blowing and every
breath is laden with the fine grit of the desert, is little short of
miraculous.
Thus far, all dahabeeyahs are alike. The cabin arrangements differ,
however, according to the size of the boat; and it must be remembered
that in describing the Philæ I describe a dahabeeyah of the largest
build--her total length from stem to stern being just one hundred feet,
and the width of her upper deck at the broadest part little short of
twenty.
Our floor being on a somewhat lower level than the men’s deck, we went
down three steps to the entrance door, on each side of which was an
external cupboard, one serving as a store-room and the other as a
pantry. This door led into a passage out of which opened four
sleeping-cabins, two on each side. These cabins measured about eight
feet in length by four and a half in width, and contained a bed, a
chair, a fixed washing-stand, a looking-glass against the wall, a shelf,
a row of hooks, and under each bed two large drawers for clothes. At the
end of this little passage another door opened into the dining-saloon--a
spacious, cheerful room, some twenty-three or twenty-four feet long,
situated in the widest part of the boat, and lighted by four windows on
each side and a skylight. The paneled walls and ceiling were painted in
white picked out with gold; a cushioned divan covered with a smart
woolen reps ran along each side; and a gay Brussels carpet adorned the
floor. The dining-table stood in the center of the room, and there was
ample space for a piano, two little book-cases, and several chairs. The
window-curtains and portières were of the same reps as the divan, the
prevailing colors being scarlet and orange. Add a couple of mirrors in
gilt frames; a vase of flowers on the table (for we were rarely without
flowers of some sort, even in Nubia, where our daily bouquet had to be
made with a few bean blossoms and castor-oil berries); plenty of books;
the gentlemen’s guns and sticks in one corner; and the hats of all the
party hanging in the spaces between the windows, and it will be easy to
realize the homely, habitable look of our general sitting-room.
Another door and passage opening from the upper end of the saloon led to
three more sleeping-rooms, two of which were single and one double; a
bath-room; a tiny back staircase leading to the upper deck; and the
stern-cabin saloon. This last, following the form of the stern, was
semicircular, lighted by eight windows, and surrounded by a divan. Under
this, as under the saloon divans, there ran a row of deep drawers,
which, being fairly divided, held our clothes, wine, and books. The
entire length of the dahabeeyah being exactly one hundred feet, I take
the cabin part to have occupied about fifty-six or fifty-seven feet
(that is to say, about six or seven feet over the exact half), and the
lower deck to have measured the remaining forty-three feet. But these
dimensions, being given from memory, are approximate.
For the crew there was no sleeping accommodation whatever, unless they
chose to creep into the hold among the luggage and packing-cases. But
this they never did. They just rolled themselves up at night, heads and
all, in rough brown blankets, and lay about the lower deck like dogs.
The reïs, or captain, the steersman, and twelve sailors, the dragoman,
head cook, assistant cook, two waiters, and the boy who cooked for the
crew, completed our equipment. Reïs Hassan--short, stern-looking,
authoritative--was a Cairo Arab. The dragoman, Elias Talhamy, was a
Syrian of Beyrout. The two waiters, Michael and Habîb, and the head cook
(a wizened old _cordon bleu_ named Hassan Bedawee) were also Syrians.
The steersman and five of the sailors were from Thebes; four belonged to
a place near Philæ; one came from a village opposite Kom Ombo; one from
Cairo, and two were Nubians from Assuân. They were of all shades, from
yellowish bronze to a hue not far removed from black; and though, at the
first mention of it, nothing more incongruous can well be imagined than
a sailor in petticoats and a turban, yet these men in their loose blue
gowns, bare feet, and white muslin turbans, looked not only picturesque
but dressed exactly as they should be. They were for the most part fine
young men, slender but powerful, square in the shoulders, like the
ancient Egyptian statues, with the same slight legs and long, flat feet.
More docile, active, good-tempered, friendly fellows never pulled an
oar. Simple and trustful as children, frugal as anchorites, they worked
cheerfully from sunrise to sunset, sometimes towing the dahabeeyah on a
rope all day long, like barge-horses; sometimes punting for hours, which
is the hardest work of all; yet always singing at their task, always
smiling when spoken to, and made as happy as princes with a handful of
coarse Egyptian tobacco, or a bundle of fresh sugar-canes bought for a
few pence by the river side. We soon came to know them all by
name--Mehemet Ali, Salame, Khalîfeh, Riskali, Hassan, Mûsa, and so on;
and as none of us ever went on shore without one or two of them to act
as guards and attendants, and as the poor fellows were constantly
getting bruised hands or feet and coming to the upper deck to be
doctored, a feeling of genuine friendliness was speedily established
between us.
The ordinary pay of a Nile sailor is two pounds a month, with an
additional allowance of about three and sixpence a month for flour.
Bread is their staple food, and they make it themselves at certain
places along the river where there are large public ovens for the
purpose. This bread, which is cut up in slices and dried in the sun, is
as brown as gingerbread and as hard as biscuit. They eat it soaked in
hot water, flavored with oil, pepper and salt, and stirred in with
boiled lentils till the whole becomes of the color, flavor, and
consistence of thick pea soup. Except on grand occasions, such as
Christmas day or the anniversary of the flight of the prophet, when the
passengers treat them to a sheep, this mess of bread and lentils, with a
little coffee twice a day, and now and then a handful of dates,
constitutes their only food throughout the journey.
The Nile season is the Nile sailors’ harvest time. When the warm weather
sets in and the travelers migrate with the swallows, these poor fellows
disperse in all directions; some to seek a living as porters in Cairo;
others to their homes in Middle and Upper Egypt, where, for about
four-pence a day, they take hire as laborers, or work at Shâdûf
irrigation till the Nile again overspreads the land. The Shâdûf work is
hard, and a man has to keep on for nine hours out of every twenty-four;
but he prefers it, for the most part, to employment in the government
sugar factories, where the wages average at about the same rate, but are
paid in bread, which, being doled out by unscrupulous inferiors, is too
often of light weight and bad quality. The sailors who succeed in
getting a berth on board a cargo-boat for the summer are the most
fortunate.
Our captain, pilot, and crew were all Mohammedans. The cook and his
assistant were Syrian Mohammedans. The dragoman and waiters were
Christians of the Syrian Latin church. Only one out of the fifteen
natives could write or read; and that one was a sailor named Egendi, who
acted as a sort of second mate. He used sometimes to write letters for
the others, holding a scrap of tumbled paper across the palm of his left
hand, and scrawling rude Arabic characters with a reed pen of his own
making. This Egendi, though perhaps the least interesting of the crew,
was a man of many accomplishments--an excellent comic actor, a bit of a
shoemaker, and a first-rate barber. More than once, when we happened to
be stationed far from any village, he shaved his messmates all round and
turned them out with heads as smooth as billiard balls.
There are, of course, good and bad Mohammedans as there are good and bad
churchmen of every denomination; and we had both sorts on board. Some of
the men were very devout, never failing to perform their ablutions and
say their prayers at sunrise and sunset. Others never dreamed of doing
so. Some would not touch wine--had never tasted it in their lives, and
would have suffered any extremity rather than break the law of their
prophet. Others had a nice taste in clarets and a delicate appreciation
of the respective merits of rum or whisky punch. It is, however, only
fair to add that we never gave them these things except on special
occasions, as on Christmas day, or when they had been wading in the
river, or in some other way undergoing extra fatigue in our service. Nor
do I believe there was a man on board who would have spent a para of his
scanty earnings on any drink stronger than coffee. Coffee and tobacco
are, indeed, the only luxuries in which the Egyptian peasant indulges;
and our poor fellows were never more grateful than when we distributed
among them a few pounds of cheap native tobacco. This abominable mixture
sells in the bazaars at sixpence the pound, the plant from which it is
gathered being raised from inferior seed in a soil chemically
unsuitable, because wholly devoid of potash.
Also it is systematically spoiled in the growing. Instead of being
nipped off when green and dried in the shade, the leaves are allowed to
wither on the stalk before they are gathered. The result is a kind of
rank hay without strength or flavor, which is smoked by only the very
poorest class, and carefully avoided by all who can afford to buy
Turkish or Syrian tobacco.
Twice a day, after their midday and evening meals, our sailors were wont
to sit in a circle and solemnly smoke a certain big pipe of the kind
known as a hubble-bubble. This hubble-bubble (which was of most
primitive make and consisted of a cocoanut and two sugar-canes) was
common property; and, being filled by the captain, went round from hand
to hand, from mouth to mouth, while it lasted.
They smoked cigarettes at other times, and seldom went on shore without
a tobacco-pouch and a tiny book of cigarette-papers. Fancy a bare-legged
Arab making cigarettes! No Frenchman, however, could twist them up more
deftly or smoke them with a better grace.
A Nile sailor’s service expires with the season, so that he is generally
a landsman for about half the year; but the captain’s appointment is
permanent. He is expected to live in Cairo, and is responsible for his
dahabeeyah during the summer months, while it lies up at Boulak. Reïs
Hassan had a wife and a comfortable little home on the outskirts of old
Cairo, and was looked upon as a well-to-do personage among his fellows.
He received four pounds a month all the year round from the owner of the
Philæ--a magnificent broad-shouldered Arab of about six foot nine, with
a delightful smile, the manners of a gentleman, and the rapacity of a
Shylock.
Our men treated us to a concert that first night, as we lay moored under
the bank near Bedreshayn. Being told that it was customary to provide
musical instruments, we had given them leave to buy a tar and darabukkeh
before starting. The tar, or tambourine, was pretty enough, being made
of rosewood inlaid with mother-of-pearl; but a more barbarous affair
than the darabukkeh was surely never constructed. This primitive drum is
about a foot and a half in length, funnel-shaped, molded of sun-dried
clay like the kullehs, and covered over the top with strained parchment.
It is held under the left arm and played like a tomtom with the fingers
of the right hand; and it weighs about four pounds. We would willingly
have added a double pipe or a cocoanut fiddle[8] to the strength of the
band but none of our men could play them. The tar and darabukkeh,
however, answered the purpose well enough, and were perhaps better
suited to their strange singing than more tuneful instruments.
We had just finished dinner when they began. First came a prolonged wail
that swelled, and sank, and swelled again, and at last died away. This
was the principal singer leading off with the keynote. The next followed
suit on the third of the key; and finally all united in one long,
shrill, descending cry, like a yawn, or a howl, or a combination of
both. This, twice repeated, preluded their performance and worked them
up, apparently, to the necessary pitch of musical enthusiasm. The primo
tenore then led off in a quavering roulade, at the end of which he slid
into a melancholy chant, to which the rest sang chorus. At the close of
each verse they yawned and howled again; while the singer, carried away
by his emotions, broke out every now and then into a repetition of the
same amazing and utterly indescribable vocal wriggle with which he had
begun. Whenever he did this, the rest held their breath in respectful
admiration and uttered an approving “Ah!”--which is here the customary
expression of applause.
We thought their music horrible that first night, I remember; though we
ended, as I believe most travelers do, by liking it. We, however, paid
them the compliment of going upon deck and listening to their
performance. As a night-scene, nothing could be more picturesque than
this group of turbaned Arabs sitting in a circle, cross-legged, with a
lantern in their midst. The singer quavered; the musicians thrummed; the
rest softly clapped their hands to time and waited their turn to chime
in with the chorus. Meanwhile the lantern lit up their swarthy faces and
their glittering teeth. The great mast towered up into the darkness. The
river gleamed below. The stars shone overhead. We felt we were indeed
strangers in a strange land.
CHAPTER IV.
SAKKARAH AND MEMPHIS.
Having arrived at Bedreshayn after dark and there moored for the night,
we were roused early next morning by the furious squabbling and
chattering of some fifty or sixty men and boys, who, with a score or two
of little rough-coated, depressed-looking donkeys, were assembled on the
high bank above. Seen thus against the sky, their tattered garments
fluttering in the wind, their brown arms and legs in frantic movement,
they looked like a troop of mad monkeys let loose. Every moment the
uproar grew shriller. Every moment more men, more boys, more donkeys
appeared upon the scene. It was as if some new Cadmus had been sowing
boys and donkeys broadcast and they had all come up at once for our
benefit.
Then it appeared that Talhamy, knowing how eight donkeys would be wanted
for our united forces, had sent up to the village for twenty-five,
intending, perhaps with more wisdom than justice, to select the best and
dismiss the others. The result was overwhelming. Misled by the magnitude
of the order and concluding that Cook’s party had arrived, every man,
boy and donkey in Bedreshayn and the neighboring village of Mîtrahîneh
had turned out in hot haste and rushed down to the river; so that by the
time breakfast was over there were steeds enough in readiness for all
the English in Cairo. I pass over the tumult that ensued when our party
at last mounted the eight likeliest beasts and rode away, leaving the
indignant multitude to disperse at leisure.
And now our way lies over a dusty flat, across the railway line, past
the long straggling village, and through the famous plantations known as
the Palms of Memphis. There is a crowd of patient-looking fellaheen at
the little whitewashed station, waiting for the train, and the usual
rabble of clamorous water, bread and fruit sellers. Bedreshayn, though
a collection of mere mud-hovels, looks pretty, nestling in the midst of
stately date-palms. Square pigeon towers, imbedded round the top with
layers of wide-mouthed pots and stuck with rows of leafless acacia
boughs like ragged banner poles, stand up at intervals among the huts.
The pigeons go in and out of the pots, or sit preening their feathers on
the branches. The dogs dash out and bark madly at us as we go by. The
little brown children pursue us with cries of “Bakhshïsh!” The potter,
laying out rows of soft, gray, freshly molded clay bowls and kullehs[9]
to bake in the sun, stops, open-mouthed, and stares as if he had never
seen a European till this moment. His young wife snatches up her baby
and pulls her veil more closely over her face, fearing the evil eye.
The village being left behind, we ride on through one long palm-grove
after another; now skirting the borders of a large sheet of tranquil
back-water; now catching a glimpse of the far-off pyramids of Ghîzeh,
now passing between the huge irregular mounds of crumbled clay which
mark the site of Memphis. Next beyond these we come out upon a high
embanked road some twenty feet above the plain, which here spreads out
like a wide lake and spends its last dark-brown alluvial wave against
the yellow rocks which define the edge of the desert. High on this
barren plateau, seen for the first time in one unbroken panoramic line,
there stand a solemn company of pyramids; those of Sakkârah straight
before us, those of Dahshûr to the left, those of Abusîr to the right
and the great pyramids of Ghîzeh always in the remotest distance.
It might be thought that there would be some monotony in such a scene
and but little beauty. On the contrary, however, there is beauty of a
most subtle and exquisite kind--transcendent beauty of color and
atmosphere and sentiment; and no monotony either in the landscape or in
the forms of the pyramids. One of these which we are now approaching is
built in a succession of platforms gradually decreasing toward the top.
Another down yonder at Dahshûr curves outward at the angles, half dome,
half pyramid, like the roof of the Palais de Justice, in Paris. No two
are of precisely the same size, or built at precisely the same angle;
and each cluster differs somehow in the grouping.
Then again the coloring--coloring not to be matched with any pigments
yet invented. The Libyan rocks, like rusty gold--the paler line of the
driven sand-slopes--the warm maize of the nearer pyramids which, seen
from this distance, takes a tender tint of rose, like the red bloom on
an apricot--the delicate tone of these objects against the sky--the
infinite gradations of that sky, soft and pearly toward the horizon,
blue and burning toward the zenith--the opalescent shadows, pale blue
and violet and greenish-gray, that nestle in the hollows of the rock and
the curves of the sand-drifts--all this is beautiful in a way impossible
to describe, and, alas! impossible to copy. Nor does the lake-like plain
with its palm-groves and corn-flats form too tame a foreground. It is
exactly what is wanted to relieve that glowing distance.
And now, as we follow the zigzags of the road, the new pyramids grow
gradually larger; the sun mounts higher; the heat increases. We meet a
train of camels, buffaloes, shaggy brown sheep, men, women, and children
of all ages. The camels are laden with bedding, rugs, mats, and crates
of poultry, and carry, besides, two women with babies and one very old
man. The younger men drive the tired beasts. The rest follow behind. The
dust rises after them in a cloud. It is evidently the migration of a
family of three, if not four generations. One cannot help being struck
by the patriarchal simplicity of the incident. Just thus, with flocks
and herds and all his clan, went Abraham into the land of Canaan close
upon four thousand years ago; and one at least of these Sakkârah
pyramids was even then the oldest building in the world.
It is a touching and picturesque procession--much more picturesque than
ours and much more numerous; notwithstanding that our united forces,
including donkey boys, porters and miscellaneous hangers-on, number
nearer thirty than twenty persons. For there are the M. B.’s and their
nephew, and L---- and the writer, and L----’s maid, and Talhamy, all on
donkeys; and then there are the owners of the donkeys, also on donkeys;
and then every donkey has a boy; and every boy has a donkey; and every
donkey-boy’s donkey has an inferior boy in attendance. Our style of
dress, too, however convenient, is not exactly in harmony with the
surrounding scenery; and one cannot but feel, as these draped and dusty
pilgrims pass us on the road, that we cut a sorry figure with our
hideous palm-leaf hats, green veils, and white umbrellas.
But the most amazing and incongruous personage in our whole procession
is unquestionably George. Now George is an English north-country groom
whom the M. B.’s have brought out from the wilds of Lancashire, partly
because he is a good shot and may be useful to “Master Alfred” after
birds and crocodiles, and partly from a well-founded belief in his
general abilities. And George, who is a fellow of infinite jest and
infinite resource, takes to eastern life as a duckling to the water. He
picks up Arabic as if it were his mother tongue. He skins birds like a
practiced taxidermist. He can even wash and iron on occasion. He is, in
short, groom, footman, house-maid, laundry-maid, stroke-oar, gamekeeper
and general factotum all in one. And, besides all this, he is gifted
with a comic gravity of countenance that no surprises and no disasters
can upset for a moment. To see this worthy anachronism cantering along
in his groom’s coat and gaiters, livery-buttons, spotted neckcloth, tall
hat, and all the rest of it; his long legs dangling within an inch of
the ground on either side of the most diminutive of donkeys; his
double-barreled fowling-piece under his arm, and that imperturbable look
in his face, one would have sworn that he and Egypt were friends of old,
and that he had been brought up on pyramids from his earliest childhood.
It is a long and shelterless ride from the palms to the desert; but we
come to the end of it at last, mounting just such another sand-slope as
that which leads up from the Ghîzeh road to the foot of the great
pyramid. The edge of the plateau here rises abruptly from the plain in
one long range of low perpendicular cliffs pierced with dark mouths of
rock-cut sepulchers, while the sand-slope by which we are climbing pours
down through a breach in the rock, as an Alpine snow-drift flows through
a mountain gap from the ice-level above.
And now, having dismounted through compassion for our unfortunate little
donkeys, the first thing we observe is the curious mixture of débris
underfoot. At Ghîzeh one treads only sand and pebbles; but here at
Sakkârah the whole plateau is thickly strewn with scraps of broken
pottery, limestone, marble, and alabaster; flakes of green and blue
glaze; bleached bones; shreads of yellow linen, and lumps of some
odd-looking, dark-brown substance, like dried-up sponge. Presently some
one picks up a little noseless head of one of the common blue-ware
funereal statuettes, and immediately we all fall to work, grubbing for
treasure--a pure waste of precious time; for, though the sand is full of
débris, it has been sifted so often and so carefully by the Arabs that
it no longer contains anything worth looking for. Meanwhile, one finds a
fragment of iridescent glass--another, a morsel of shattered vase--a
third, an opaque bead of some kind of yellow paste. And then, with a
shock which the present writer, at all events, will not soon forget, we
suddenly discover that these scattered bones are human--that those linen
shreds are shreds of cerement cloths--that yonder odd-looking brown
lumps are rent fragments of what once was living flesh! And now for the
first time we realize that every inch of this ground on which we are
standing, and all these hillocks and hollows and pits in the sand, are
violated graves.
“Ce n’est que le premier pas que coûte.” We soon became quite hardened
to such sights and learned to rummage among dusty sepulchers with no
more compunction than would have befitted a gang of professional
body-snatchers. These are experiences upon which one looks back
afterward with wonder and something like remorse; but so infectious is
the universal callousness, and so over-mastering is the passion for
relic-hunting, that I do not doubt we should again do the same things
under the same circumstances. Most Egyptian travelers, if questioned,
would have to make a similar confession. Shocked at first, they denounce
with horror the whole system of sepulchral excavation, legal as well as
predatory; acquiring, however, a taste for scarabs and funerary
statuettes, they soon begin to buy with eagerness the spoils of the
dead; finally, they forget all their former scruples and ask no better
fortune than to discover and confiscate a tomb for themselves.
Notwithstanding that I had first seen the pyramids of Ghîzeh, the size
of the Sakkârah group--especially of the pyramid in platforms--took me
by surprise. They are all smaller than the pyramids of Khufu and Khafra
and would no doubt look sufficiently insignificant if seen with them in
close juxtaposition; but taken by themselves they are quite vast enough
for grandeur. As for the pyramid in platforms (which is the largest at
Sakkârah, and next largest to the pyramid of Khafra), its position is so
fine, its architectural style so exceptional, its age so immense that
one altogether loses sight of these questions of relative magnitude. If
Egyptologists are right in ascribing the royal title hieroglyphed on the
inner door of this pyramid to Ouenephes, the fourth king of the first
dynasty, then it is the most ancient building in the world. It had been
standing from five to seven hundred years when King Khufu began his
great pyramid at Ghîzeh. It was over two thousand years old when Abraham
was born. It is now about six thousand eight hundred years old according
to Manetho and Mariette, or about four thousand eight hundred according
to the computation of Bunsen. One’s imagination recoils upon the brink
of such a gulf of time.
The door of this pyramid was carried off with other precious spoils by
Lepsius and is now in the museum at Berlin. The evidence that identifies
the inscription is tolerably direct. According to Manetho, an Egyptian
historian who wrote in Greek and lived in the reign of Ptolemy
Philadelphia, King Ouenephes built for himself a pyramid at a place
called Kokhome. Now a tablet discovered in the Serapeum by Mariette
gives the name of Ka-kem to the necropolis of Sakkârah; and as the
pyramid in stages is not only the largest on this platform, but is also
the only one in which a royal cartouche has been found, the conclusion
seems obvious.
When a building has already stood for five or six thousand years in a
climate where mosses and lichens, and all those natural signs of age to
which we are accustomed in Europe, are unknown, it is not to be supposed
that a few centuries more or less can tell upon its outward appearance;
yet to my thinking the pyramid of Ouenephes looks older than those of
Ghîzeh. If this be only fancy, it gives one, at all events, the
impression of belonging structurally to a ruder architectural period.
The idea of a monument composed of diminishing platforms is in its
nature more primitive than that of a smooth four-sided pyramid. We
remarked that the masonry on one side--I think on the side facing
eastward--was in a much more perfect condition than on either of the
others.
Wilkinson describes the interior as “a hollow dome supported here and
there by wooden rafters,” and states that the sepulchral chamber was
lined with blue porcelain tiles.[10] We would have liked to go inside,
but this is no longer possible, the entrance being blocked by a recent
fall of masonry.
Making up now for lost time, we rode on as far as the house built in
1850 for Mariette’s accommodation during the excavation of the
Serapeum--a labor which extended over a period of more than four years.
The Serapeum, it need hardly be said, is the famous and long-lost
sepulchral temple of the sacred bulls. These bulls (honored by the
Egyptians as successive incarnations of Osiris) inhabited the temple of
Apis at Memphis while they lived; and, being mummied after death, were
buried in catacombs prepared for them in the desert. In 1850, Mariette,
traveling in the interests of the French government, discovered both the
temple and the catacombs, being, according to his own narrative,
indebted for the clew to a certain passage in Strabo, which describes
the Temple of Serapis as being situate in a district where the sand was
so drifted by the wind that the approach to it was in danger of being
overwhelmed; while the sphinxes on either side of the great avenue were
already more or less buried, some having only their heads above the
surface. “If Strabo had not written this passage,” says Mariette, “it is
probable that the Serapeum would still be lost under the sands of the
necropolis of Sakkârah. One day, however (in 1850), being attracted to
Sakkârah by my Egyptological studies, I perceived the head of a sphinx
showing above the surface. It evidently occupied its original position.
Close by lay a libation-table on which was engraved a hieroglyphic
inscription to Apis-Osiris. Then that passage in Strabo came to my
memory, and I knew that beneath my feet lay the avenue leading to the
long and vainly sought Serapeum. Without saying a word to any one I got
some workmen together and we began excavating. The beginning was
difficult; but soon the lions, the peacocks, the Greek statues of the
Dromos, the inscribed tablets of the Temple of Nectanebo[11] rose up
from the sands. Thus was the Serapeum discovered.”
The house--a slight, one-storied building on a space of rocky
platform--looks down upon a sandy hollow which now presents much the
same appearance that it must have presented when Mariette was first
reminded of the fortunate passage in Strabo. One or two heads of
sphinxes peep up here and there in a ghastly way above the sand and mark
the line of the great avenue. The upper half of a boy riding on a
peacock, apparently of rude execution, is also visible. The rest is
already as completely overwhelmed as if it had never been uncovered. One
can scarcely believe that only twenty years ago the whole place was
entirely cleared at so vast an expenditure of time and labor. The work,
as I have already mentioned, took four years to complete. This avenue
alone was six hundred feet in length and bordered by an army of
sphinxes, one hundred and forty-one of which were found _in situ_. As
the excavation neared the end of the avenue, the causeway, which
followed a gradual descent between massive walls, lay seventy feet below
the surface. The labor was immense and the difficulties were
innumerable. The ground had to be contested inch by inch. “In certain
places,” says Mariette, “the sand was fluid, so to speak, and baffled us
like water continually driven back and seeking to regain its level.”[12]
If, however, the toil was great, so also was the reward. A main avenue
terminated by a semicircular platform, around which stood statues of
famous Greek philosophers and poets; a second avenue at right angles to
the first; the remains of the great temple of the Serapeum; three
smaller temples; and three distinct groups of Apis catacombs were
brought to light. A descending passage opening from a chamber in the
great temple led to the catacombs--vast labyrinths of vaults and
passages hewn out of the solid rock on which the temples were built.
These three groups of excavations represent three epochs of Egyptian
history. The first and most ancient series consists of isolated vaults
dating from the eighteenth to the twenty-second dynasty; that is to say,
from about B.C. 1703 to B.C. 980. The second group, which dates from the
reign of Sheshonk I (twenty-second dynasty, B.C. 980) to that of
Tirhakah, the last king of the twenty-fifth dynasty, is more
systematically planned, and consists of one long tunnel bordered on each
side by a row of funereal chambers. The third belongs to the Greek
period, beginning with Psammetichus I (twenty-sixth dynasty, B.C. 665)
and ending with the latest Ptolemies. Of these, the first are again
choked with sand; the second are considered unsafe; and the third only
is accessible to travelers.
After a short but toilsome walk and some delay outside a prison-like
door at the bottom of a steep descent, we were admitted by the
guardian--a gaunt old Arab with a lantern in his hand. It was not an
inviting looking place within. The outer daylight fell upon a rough step
or two, beyond which all was dark. We went in. A hot, heavy atmosphere
met us on the threshold; the door fell to with a dull clang, the echoes
of which went wandering away as if into the central recesses of the
earth; the Arab chattered and gesticulated. He was telling us that we
were now in the great vestibule and that it measured ever so many feet
in this and that direction; but we could see nothing--neither the
vaulted roof overhead, nor the walls on any side, nor even the ground
beneath our feet. It was like the darkness of infinite space.
A lighted candle was then given to each person and the Arab led the way.
He went dreadfully fast and it seemed at every step as if one were on
the brink of some frightful chasm. Gradually, however, our eyes became
accustomed to the gloom, and we found that we had passed out of the
vestibule into the first great corridor. All was vague, mysterious,
shadowy. A dim perspective loomed out of the darkness. The lights
twinkled and flitted like wandering sparks of stars. The Arab held his
lantern to the walls here and there, and showed us some votive tablets
inscribed with records of pious visits paid by devout Egyptians to the
sacred tombs. Of these they found five hundred when the catacombs were
first opened; but Mariette sent nearly all to the Louvre.
A few steps farther and we came to the tombs--a succession of great
vaulted chambers hewn out at irregular distances along both sides of the
central corridor and sunk some six or eight feet below the surface. In
the middle of each chamber stood an enormous sarcophagus of polished
granite. The Arab, flitting on ahead like a black ghost, paused a moment
before each cavernous opening, flashed the light of his lantern on the
sarcophagus and sped away again, leaving us to follow as we could.
So we went on, going every moment deeper into the solid rock and farther
from the open air and the sunshine. Thinking it would be cold
underground, we had brought warm wraps in plenty; but the heat, on the
contrary, was intense, and the atmosphere stifling. We had not
calculated on the dryness of the place, nor had we remembered that
ordinary mines and tunnels are cold because they are damp. But here for
incalculable ages--for thousands of years probably before the Nile had
even cut its path through the rocks of Silsilis--a cloudless African sun
had been pouring its daily floods of light and heat upon the dewless
desert overhead. The place might well be unendurable. It was like a
great oven stored with the slowly accumulated heat of cycles so remote
and so many, that the earliest periods of Egyptian history seem, when
compared with them, to belong to yesterday.
Having gone on thus for a distance of nearly two hundred yards, we came
to a chamber containing the first hieroglyphed sarcophagus we had yet
seen; all the rest being polished, but plain. Here the Arab paused; and,
finding access provided by means of a flight of wooden steps, we went
down into the chamber, walked round the sarcophagus, peeped inside by
the help of a ladder, and examined the hieroglyphs with which it is
covered. Enormous as they look from above, one can form no idea of the
bulk of these huge monolithic masses except from the level on which they
stand. This sarcophagus, which dates from the reign of Amasis, of the
twenty-sixth dynasty, measured fourteen feet in length by eleven in
height, and consisted of a single block of highly wrought black granite.
Four persons might sit in it round a small card-table, and play a rubber
comfortably.
From this point the corridor branches off for another two hundred yards
or so, leading always to more chambers and more sarcophagi, of which
last there are altogether twenty-four. Three only are inscribed; none
measure less than from thirteen to fourteen feet in length; and all are
empty. The lids in every instance have been pushed back a little way,
and some are fractured; but the spoilers have been unable wholly to
remove them. According to Mariette, the place was pillaged by the early
Christians, who, besides carrying off whatever they could find in the
way of gold and jewels, seem to have destroyed the mummies of the bulls
and razed the great temple nearly to the ground. Fortunately, however,
they either overlooked, or left as worthless, some hundreds of exquisite
bronzes and the five hundred votive tablets before mentioned, which, as
they record not only the name and rank of the visitor, but also, with
few exceptions, the name and year of the reigning Pharaoh, afford
invaluable historical data, and are likely to do more than any
previously discovered documents toward clearing up disputed points of
Egyptian chronology.
It is a curious fact that one out of the three inscribed sarcophagi
should bear the oval of Cambyses--that Cambyses of whom it is related
that, having desired the priests of Memphis to bring before him the god
Apis, he drew his dagger in a transport of rage and contempt and stabbed
the animal in the thigh. According to Plutarch, he slew the beast and
cast out its body to the dogs; according to Herodotus, “Apis lay some
time pining in the temple, but at last died of his wound, and the
priests buried him secretly;” but according to one of these precious
Serapeum tablets, the wounded bull did not die till the fourth year of
the reign of Darius. So wonderfully does modern discovery correct and
illustrate tradition.
And now comes the sequel to this ancient story in the shape of an
anecdote related by M. About, who tells how Mariette, being recalled
suddenly to Paris some months after the opening of the Serapeum, found
himself without the means of carrying away all his newly excavated
antiquities, and so buried fourteen cases in the desert, there to await
his return. One of these cases contained an Apis mummy which had escaped
discovery by the early Christians; and this mummy was that of the
identical Apis stabbed by Cambyses. That the creature had actually
survived his wound was proved by the condition of one of the
thigh-bones, which showed unmistakable signs of both injury and healing.
Nor does the story end here. Mariette being gone, and having taken with
him all that was most portable among his treasures, there came to
Memphis one whom M. About indicates as “a young and august stranger”
traveling in Egypt for his pleasure. The Arabs, tempted perhaps by a
princely bakhshîsh, revealed the secret of the hidden cases; whereupon
the archduke swept off the whole fourteen, dispatched them to
Alexandria, and immediately shipped them for Trieste.[13] “Quant au
coupable,” says M. About, who professes to have had the story direct
from Mariette, “il a fini si tragiquement dans un autre hemisphère que,
tout bien pesé, je renonce à publier son nom.” But through so
transparent a disguise it is not difficult to identify the unfortunate
hero of this curious anecdote.
The sarcophagus in which the Apis was found remains in the vaults of the
Serapeum; but we did not see it. Having come more than two hundred yards
already, and being by this time well-nigh suffocated, we did not care to
put two hundred yards more between ourselves and the light of day. So we
turned back at the half distance--having, however, first burned a pan of
magnesian powder, which flared up wildly for a few seconds; lit the huge
gallery and all its cavernous recesses and the wondering faces of the
Arabs, and then went out with a plunge, leaving the darkness denser than
before.
From hence, across a farther space of sand we went in all the blaze of
noon to the tomb of one Ti, a priest and commoner of the fifth dynasty,
who married with a lady named Neferhotep-s, the granddaughter of a
Pharaoh, and here built himself a magnificent tomb in the desert.
On the façade of this tomb, which must originally have looked like a
little temple, only two large pillars remain. Next comes a square
court-yard, surrounded by a roofless colonnade, from one corner of which
a covered passage leads to two chambers. In the center of the
court-yard yawns an open pit some twenty-five feet in depth, with a
shattered sarcophagus just visible in the gloom of the vault below. All
here is limestone--walls, pillars, pavements, even the excavated débris
with which the pit had been filled in when the vault was closed forever.
The quality of this limestone is close and fine like marble, and so
white that, although the walls and columns of the court-yard are covered
with sculptures of most exquisite execution and of the greatest
interest, the reflected light is so intolerable that we find it
impossible to examine them with the interest they deserve. In the
passage, however, where there is shade, and in the large chamber, where
it is so dark that we can see only by the help of lighted candles, we
find a succession of bas-reliefs so numerous and so closely packed that
it would take half a day to see them properly. Ranged in horizontal
parallel lines about a foot and a half in depth, these extraordinary
pictures, row above row, cover every inch of wall-space from floor to
ceiling. The relief is singularly low. I should doubt if it anywhere
exceeds a quarter of an inch. The surface, which is covered with a thin
film of very fine cement, has a quality and polish like ivory. The
figures measure an average height of about twelve inches, and all are
colored.
Here, as in an open book, we have the biography of Ti. His whole life,
his pleasures, his business, his domestic relations, are brought before
us with just that faithful simplicity which makes the charm of Montaigne
and Pepys. A child might read the pictured chronicles which illuminate
these walls and take as keen a pleasure in them as the wisest of
archæologists.
Ti was a wealthy man and his wealth was of the agricultural sort. He
owned flocks and herds and vassals in plenty. He kept many kinds of
birds and beasts--geese, ducks, pigeons, cranes, oxen, goats, asses,
antelopes and gazelles. He was fond of fishing and fowling, and used
sometimes to go after crocodiles and hippopotamuses, which came down as
low as Memphis in his time. He was a kind husband, too, and a good
father, and loved to share his pleasures with his family. Here we see
him sitting in state with his wife and children, while professional
singers and dancers perform before them. Yonder they walk out together
and look on while the farm-servants are at work, and watch the coming in
of the boats that bring home the produce of Ti’s more distant lands.
Here the geese are being driven home; the cows are crossing a ford; the
oxen are plowing; the sower is scattering his seed; the reaper plies his
sickle; the oxen tread the grain; the corn is stored in the granary.
There are evidently no independent tradesfolk in these early days of the
world. Ti has his own artificers on his own estate, and all his goods
and chattels are home-made. Here the carpenters are fashioning new
furniture for the house; the shipwrights are busy on new boats; the
potters mold pots; the metal-workers smelt ingots of red gold. It is
plain to see that Ti lived like a king within his own boundaries. He
makes an imposing figure, too, in all these scenes, and, being
represented about eight times as large as his servants, sits and stands
a giant among pigmies. His wife (we must not forget that she was of the
blood royal) is as big as himself; and the children are depicted about
half the size of their parents. Curiously enough, Egyptian art never
outgrew this early naîveté. The great man remained a big man to the last
days of the Ptolemies, and the fellah was always a dwarf.[14]
Apart from these and one or two other mannerisms, nothing can be more
natural than the drawing, or more spirited than the action, of all these
men and animals. The most difficult and transitory movements are
expressed with masterly certitude. The donkey kicks up his heels and
brays--the crocodile plunges--the wild duck rises on the wing; and the
fleeting action is caught in each instance with a truthfulness that no
landseer could distance. The forms, which have none of the conventional
stiffness of later Egyptian work, are modeled roundly and boldly yet
finished with exquisite precision and delicacy. The coloring, however,
is purely decorative; and, being laid on in single tints, with no
attempt at gradation or shading, conceals rather than enhances the
beauty of the sculptures. These, indeed, are best seen where the color
is entirely rubbed off. The tints are yet quite brilliant in parts of
the larger chamber; but in the passage and court-yard, which have been
excavated only a few years and are with difficulty kept clear from day
to day, there is not a vestige of color left. This is the work of the
sand--that patient laborer whose office it is not only to preserve but
to destroy. The sand secretes and preserves the work of the sculptor,
but it effaces the work of the painter. In sheltered places where it
accumulates passively like a snow-drift, it brings away only the surface
detail, leaving the under colors rubbed and dim. But nothing, as I had
occasion constantly to remark in the course of the journey, removes
color so effectually as sand which is exposed to the shifting action of
the wind.
[Illustration: HEAD OF TI.]
This tomb, as we have seen, consists of a portico, a court-yard, two
chambers, and a sepulchral vault; but it also contains a secret passage
of the kind known as a “serdab.” These “serdabs,” which are constructed
in the thickness of the walls and have no entrances, seem to be peculiar
to tombs of the ancient empire (_i.e._ the period of the pyramid kings);
and they contain statues of the deceased of all sizes, in wood,
lime-stone, and granite. Twenty statues of Ti were here found immured in
the “serdab” of his tomb, all broken save one--a spirited figure in
lime-stone, standing about seven feet high, and now in the museum at
Boulak. This statue represents a fine young man in a white tunic, and is
evidently a portrait. The features are regular; the expression is
good-natured; the whole tournure of the head is more Greek than
Egyptian. The flesh is painted of a yellowish brick tint, and the figure
stands in the usual hieratic attitude, with the left leg advanced, the
hands clenched, and the arms straightened close to the sides. One seems
to know Ti so well after seeing the wonderful pictures in his tomb,
that this charming statue interests one like the portrait of a familiar
friend.[15]
How pleasant it was, after being suffocated in the Serapeum and broiled
in the tomb of Ti, to return to Mariette’s deserted house and eat our
luncheon on the cool stone terrace that looks northward over the desert!
Some wooden tables and benches are hospitably left here for the
accommodation of travelers, and fresh water in ice-cold kullehs is
provided by the old Arab guardian. The yards and offices at the back are
full of broken statues and fragments of inscriptions in red and black
granite. Two sphinxes from the famous avenue adorn the terrace and look
down upon their half-buried companions in the sand-hollow below. The
yellow desert, barren and undulating, with a line of purple peaks on the
horizon, reaches away into the far distance. To the right, under a
jutting ridge of rocky plateau not two hundred yards from the house,
yawns an opened-mouthed black-looking cavern shored up with heavy beams
and approached by a slope of débris. This is the forced entrance to the
earlier vaults of the Serapeum, in one of which was found a mummy
described by Mariette as that of an Apis, but pronounced by Brugsch to
be the body of Prince Kha-em-nas, governor of Memphis and the favorite
son of Rameses the Great.
This remarkable mummy, which looked as much like a bull as a man, was
found covered with jewels and gold chains and precious amulets engraved
with the name of Kha-em-nas, and had on its face a golden mask; all
which treasures are now to be seen in the Louvre. If it was the mummy of
an Apis, then the jewels with which it was adorned were probably the
offering of the prince at that time ruling in Memphis. If, on the
contrary, it was the mummy of a man, then, in order to be buried in a
place of peculiar sanctity, he probably usurped one of the vaults
prepared for the god. The question is a curious one and remains
unsolved to this day; but it could no doubt be settled at a glance by
Professor Owen.[16]
Far more startling, however, than the discovery of either Apis or jewels
was the sight beheld by Mariette on first entering that long-closed
sepulchral chamber. The mine being sprung and the opening cleared he
went in alone; and there, on the thin layer of sand that covered the
floor he found the footprints of the workmen who, three thousand seven
hundred years[17] before, had laid that shapeless mummy in its tomb and
closed the doors upon it, as they believed, forever.
And now--for the afternoon is already waning fast--the donkeys are
brought round and we are told that it is time to move on. We have the
sight of Memphis and the famous prostrate colossus yet to see and the
long road lies all before us. So back we ride across the desolate sands;
and with a last, long, wistful glance at the pyramid in platforms, go
down from the territory of the dead into the land of the living.
There is a wonderful fascination about this pyramid. One is never weary
of looking at it--of repeating to one’s self that it is indeed the
oldest building on the face of the whole earth. The king who erected it
came to the throne, according to Manetho, about eighty years after the
death of Mena, the founder of the Egyptian monarchy. All we have of him
is his pyramid; all we know of him is his name. And these belong, as it
were, to the infancy of the human race. In dealing with Egyptian dates
one is apt to think lightly of periods that count only by centuries; but
it is a habit of mind which leads to error and it should be combated.
The present writer found it useful to be constantly comparing relative
chronological eras; as, for instance, in realizing the immense antiquity
of the Sakkârah pyramid, it is some help to remember that from the time
when it was built by King Ouenephes to the time when King Khufu erected
the great pyramid of Ghizeh, there probably lies a space of years
equivalent to that which, in the history of England, extends from the
date of the conquest to the accession of George II.[18] And yet Khufu
himself--the Cheops of the Greek historians--is but a shadowy figure
hovering upon the threshold of Egyptian history.
And now the desert is left behind and we are nearing the palms that lead
to Memphis. We have, of course, been dipping into Herodotus--every one
takes Herodotus up the Nile--and our heads are full of the ancient
glories of this famous city. We know that Mena turned the course of the
river in order to build it on this very spot, and that all the most
illustrious Pharaohs adorned it with temples, palaces, pylons and
precious sculptures. We had read of the great Temple of Ptah that
Rameses the Great enriched with colossi of himself; and of the sanctuary
where Apis lived in state, taking his exercise in a pillared court-yard
where every column was a statue; and of the artificial lake and the
sacred groves and the obelisks and all the wonders of a city which, even
in its later days, was one of the most populous in Egypt.
Thinking over these things by the way, we agree that it is well to have
left Memphis till the last. We shall appreciate it the better for having
first seen that other city on the edge of the desert to which, for
nearly six thousand years, all Memphis was quietly migrating, generation
after generation. We know now how poor folk labored, and how great
gentlemen amused themselves, in those early days when there were
hundreds of country gentlemen like Ti, with town-houses at Memphis and
villas by the Nile. From the Serapeum, too, buried and ruined as it is,
one cannot but come away with a profound impression of the splendor and
power of a religion which could command for its myths such faith, such
homage, and such public works.
And now we are once more in the midst of the palm-woods, threading our
way among the same mounds that we passed in the morning. Presently those
in front strike away from the beaten road across a grassy flat to the
right; and the next moment we are all gathered round the brink of a
muddy pool, in the midst of which lies a shapeless block of blackened
and corroded limestone. This, it seems, is the famous prostrate colossus
of Rameses the Great, which belongs to the British nation, but which the
British government is too economical to remove.[19] So here it lies,
face downward; drowned once a year by the Nile; visible only when the
pools left by the inundation have evaporated, and all the muddy hollows
are dried up. It is one of two which stood at the entrance to the great
Temple of Ptah; and by those who have gone down into the hollow and seen
it from below in the dry season, it is reported of as a noble and very
beautiful specimen of one of the best periods of Egyptian art.
Where, however, is the companion colossus? Where is the temple itself?
Where are the pylons, the obelisk, the avenues of sphinxes? Where, in
short, is Memphis?
The dragoman shrugs his shoulders and points to the barren mounds among
the palms.
They look like gigantic dust-heaps and stand from thirty to forty feet
above the plain. Nothing grows upon them, save here and there a tuft of
stunted palm; and their substance seems to consist chiefly of crumbled
brick, broken potsherds, and fragments of limestone. Some few traces of
brick foundations and an occasional block or two of shaped stone are to
be seen in places low down against the foot of one or two of the mounds;
but one looks in vain for any sign which might indicate the outline of a
boundary wall or the position of a great public building.
And is this all?
No--not quite all. There are some mud-huts yonder, in among the trees;
and in front of one of these we find a number of sculptured
fragments--battered sphinxes, torsos without legs, sitting figures
without heads--in green, black, and red granite. Ranged in an irregular
semicircle on the sward, they seem to sit in forlorn conclave, half
solemn, half ludicrous, with the goats browsing round, and the little
Arab children hiding behind them.
Near this, in another pool, lies another red-granite colossus--not the
fellow to that which we saw first, but a smaller one--also face
downward.
And this is all that remains of Memphis, eldest of cities--a few huge
rubbish-heaps, a dozen or so of broken statues, and a name! One looks
round and tries in vain to realize the lost splendors of the place.
Where is the Memphis that King Mena came from Thinis to found--the
Memphis of Ouenephes, and Khufa, and Khafra, and all the early kings who
built their pyramid-tombs in the adjacent desert? Where is the Memphis
of Herodotus, of Strabo, of Abd-el-Latîf? Where are those stately ruins
which, even in the middle ages, extended over a space estimated at “half
a day’s journey in every direction”? One can hardly believe that a great
city ever flourished on this spot, or understand how it should have been
effaced so utterly. Yet here it stood--here where the grass is green,
and the palms are growing, and the Arabs build their hovels on the verge
of the inundation. The great colossus marks the site of the main
entrance to the Temple of Ptah. It lies where it fell, and no man has
moved it. That tranquil sheet of palm-fringed back-water, beyond which
we see the village of Mitrâhîneh and catch a distant glimpse of the
pyramids of Ghîzeh, occupies the basin of a vast artificial lake
excavated by Mena. The very name of Memphis survives in the dialect of
the fellah, who calls the place of the mounds Tell Monf[20]--just as
Sakkârah fossilizes the name of Sokari, one of the special denominations
of the Memphite Osiris.
No capital in the world dates so far back as this or kept its place in
history so long. Founded four thousand years before our era, it beheld
the rise and fall of thirty-one dynasties; it survived the rule of the
Persian, the Greek, and the Roman; it was, even in its decadence, second
only to Alexandria in population and extent; and it continued to be
inhabited up to the time of the Arab invasion. It then became the quarry
from which Fostât (old Cairo) was built; and as the new city rose on the
eastern bank the people of Memphis quickly abandoned their ancient
capital to desolation and decay.
Still a vast field of ruins remained. Abd-el-Latîf, writing at the
commencement of the thirteenth century, speaks with enthusiasm of the
colossal statues and lions, the enormous pedestals, the archways formed
of only three stones, the bas-reliefs and other wonders that were yet to
be seen upon the spot. Marco Polo, if his wandering tastes had led him
to the Nile, might have found some of the palaces and temples of Memphis
still standing; and Sandys, who in A.D. 1610 went at least as far south
of Cairo as Kafr el Iyat, says that “up the river for twenty miles space
there was nothing but ruines.” Since then, however, the very “ruines”
have vanished; the palms have had time to grow; and modern Cairo has
doubtless absorbed all the building material that remained from the
middle ages.
Memphis is a place to read about, and think about, and remember; but it
is a disappointing place to see. To miss it, however, would be to miss
the first link in the whole chain of monumental history which unites the
Egypt of antiquity with the world of to-day. Those melancholy mounds and
that heron-haunted lake must be seen, if only that they may take their
due place in the picture-gallery of one’s memory.
It had been a long day’s work, but it came to an end at last; and as we
trotted our donkeys back toward the river a gorgeous sunset was
crimsoning the palms and pigeon-towers of Bedreshayn. Everything seemed
now to be at rest. A buffalo, contemplatively chewing the cud, lay close
against the path and looked at us without moving. The children and
pigeons were gone to bed. The pots had baked in the sun and been taken
in long since. A tiny column of smoke went up here and there from amid
the clustered huts; but there was scarcely a moving creature to be seen.
Presently we passed a tall, beautiful fellah woman standing grandly by
the wayside, with her veil thrown back and falling in long folds to her
feet. She smiled, put out her hand, and murmur’d “bakhshîsh!” Her
fingers were covered with rings and her arms with silver bracelets. She
begged because to beg is honorable, and customary, and a master of
inveterate habit; but she evidently neither expected nor needed the
bakhshîsh she condescended to ask for.
A few moments more and the sunset has faded, the village is left behind,
the last half-mile of plain is trotted over. And now--hungry, thirsty,
dusty, worn out with new knowledge, new impressions, new ideas--we are
once more at home and at rest.
CHAPTER V.
BEDRESHAYN TO MINIEH.
It is the rule of the Nile to hurry up the river as fast as possible,
leaving the ruins to be seen as the boat comes back with the current;
but this, like many another canon, is by no means of universal
application. The traveler who starts late in the season has, indeed, no
other course open to him. He must press on with speed to the end of his
journey, if he would get back again at low Nile without being
irretrievably stuck on a sand-bank till the next inundation floats him
off again. But for those who desire not only to see the monuments, but
to follow, however superficially, the course of Egyptian history as it
is handed down through Egyptian art, it is above all things necessary to
start early and to see many things by the way.
For the history of ancient Egypt goes against the stream. The earliest
monuments lie between Cairo and Siout, while the latest temples to the
old gods are chiefly found in Nubia. Those travelers, therefore, who
hurry blindly forward with or without a wind, now sailing, now tracking,
now punting, passing this place by night, and that by day, and never
resting till they have gained the farthest point of their journey, begin
at the wrong end and see all their sights in precisely inverse order.
Memphis and Sakkârah and the tombs of Beni Hassan should undoubtedly be
visited on the way up. So should El Kâb and Tell el Amarna, and the
oldest parts of Karnak and Luxor. It is not necessary to delay long at
any of these places. They may be seen cursorily on the way up, and be
more carefully studied on the way down; but they should be seen as they
come, no matter at what trifling cost of present delay and despite any
amount of ignorant opposition. For in this way only is it possible to
trace the progression and retrogression of the arts from the
pyramid-builders to the Cæsars; or to understand at the time and on the
spot in what order that vast and august procession of dynasties swept
across the stage of history.
For ourselves, as will presently be seen, it happened that we could
carry only a part of this programme into effect; but that part, happily,
was the most important. We never ceased to congratulate ourselves on
having made acquaintance with the pyramids of Ghîzeh and Sakkârah before
seeing the tombs of the kings at Thebes; and I feel that it is
impossible to overestimate the advantage of studying the sculptures of
the tomb of Ti before one’s taste is brought into contact with the
debased style of Denderah and Esneh. We began the great book, in short,
as it always should be begun--at its first page; thereby acquiring just
that necessary insight without which many an after-chapter must have
lost more than half its interest.
If I seem to insist upon this point it is because things contrary to
custom need a certain amount of insistence and are sure to be met by
opposition. No dragoman, for example, could be made to understand the
importance of historical sequence in a matter of this kind; especially
in the case of a contract trip. To him, Khufu, Rameses and the Ptolemies
are one. As for the monuments, they are all ancient Egyptian, and one is
just as odd and unintelligible as another. He cannot quite understand
why travelers come so far and spend so much money to look at them; but
he sets it down to a habit of harmless curiosity--by which he profits.
The truth is, however, that the mere sight-seeing of the Nile demands
some little reading and organizing, if only to be enjoyed. We cannot all
be profoundly learned; but we can at least do our best to understand
what we see--to get rid of obstacles--to put the right thing in the
right place. For the land of Egypt is, as I have said, a great book--not
very easy reading, perhaps, under any circumstances; but at all events
quite difficult enough already without the added puzzlement of being
read backward.
And now our next point along the river, as well as our next link in the
chain of early monuments, was Beni Hassan, with its famous rock-cut
tombs of the twelfth dynasty; and Beni Hassan was still more than a
hundred and forty-five miles distant. We ought to have gone on again
directly--to have weighed anchor and made a few miles that very evening
on returning to the boats; but we insisted on a second day in the same
place. This, too, with the favorable wind still blowing. It was against
all rule and precedent. The captain shook his head, the dragoman
remonstrated in vain.
“You will come to learn the value of a wind when you have been longer on
the Nile,” said the latter, with that air of melancholy resignation
which he always assumed when not allowed to have his own way. He was an
indolent, good-tempered man, spoke English fairly well, and was
perfectly manageable; but that air of resignation came to be aggravating
in time.
The M. B.’s being of the same mind, however, we had our second day, and
spent it at Memphis. We ought to have crossed over to Turra and have
seen the great quarries from which the casing-stones of the pyramids
came, and all the finer limestone with which the temples and palaces of
Memphis were built. But the whole mountain side seemed as if glowing at
a white heat on the opposite side of the river, and we said we would put
off Turra till our return. So we went our own way; and Alfred shot
pigeons; and the writer sketched Mitrâhîneh and the palms and the sacred
Lake of Mena; and the rest grubbed among the mounds for treasure,
finding many curious fragments of glass and pottery, and part of an
engraved bronze Apis; and we had a green, tranquil, lovely day, barren
of incident, but very pleasant to remember.
The good wind continued to blow all that night, but fell at sunrise,
precisely when we were about to start. The river now stretched away
before us, smooth as glass, and there was nothing for it, said Reïs
Hassan, but tracking. We had heard of tracking often enough since coming
to Egypt, but without having any definite idea of the process. Coming on
deck, however, before breakfast, we found nine of our poor fellows
harnessed to a rope like barge-horses, towing the huge boat against the
current. Seven of the M. B.s’ crew, similarly harnessed, followed at a
few yards’ distance. The two ropes met and crossed and dipped into the
water together. Already our last night’s mooring place was out of sight,
and the pyramid of Ouenephes stood up amid its lesser brethren on the
edge of the desert, as if bidding us good-by. But the sight of the
trackers jarred, somehow, with the placid beauty of the picture. We got
used to it, as one gets used to everything, in time; but it looked like
slaves’ work and shocked our English notions disagreeably.
That morning, still tracking, we pass the pyramids of Dahshûr. A
dilapidated brick pyramid standing in the midst of them looks like an
aiguille of black rock thrusting itself up through the limestone bed of
the desert. Palms line the bank and intercept the view, but we catch
flitting glimpses here and there, looking out especially for that
dome-like pyramid which we observed the other day from Sakkârah. Seen in
the full sunlight, it looks larger and whiter and more than ever like
the roof of the old Palais de Justice far away in Paris.
Thus the morning passes. We sit on deck writing letters, reading,
watching the sunny river-side pictures that glide by at a foot’s pace,
and are so long in sight. Palm-groves, sand-banks, patches of
fuzzy-headed dura[21] and fields of some yellow-flowering herb succeed
each other. A boy plods along the bank, leading a camel. They go slowly,
but they soon leave us behind. A native boat meets us, floating down
sidewise with the current. A girl comes to the water’s edge with a great
empty jar on her head and waits to fill it till the trackers have gone
by. The pigeon-towers of a mud village peep above a clump of lebbek
trees, a quarter of a mile inland. Here a solitary brown man, with only
a felt skull-cap on his head and a slip of scanty tunic fastened about
his loins, works a shâdûf,[22] stooping and rising, stooping and
rising, with the regularity of a pendulum. It is the same machine which
we shall see by and by depicted in the tombs at Thebes; and the man is
so evidently an ancient Egyptian, that we find ourselves wondering how
he escaped being mummified four or five thousand years ago.
[Illustration: THE SHADUF.]
By and by a little breeze springs up. The men drop the rope and jump on
board--the big sail is set--the breeze freshens--and away we go again,
as merrily as the day we left Cairo. Toward sunset we see a strange
object, like a giant obelisk broken off halfway, standing up on the
western bank against an orange-gold sky. This is the pyramid of Meydûm,
commonly called the false pyramid. It looks quite near the bank; but
this is an effect of powerful light and shadow, for it lies back at
least four miles from the river. That night, having sailed on till past
nine o’clock, we moor about a mile from Beni Suêf, and learn with some
surprise that a man must be dispatched to the governor of the town for
guards. Not that anything ever happened to anybody at Beni Suêf, says
Talhamy; but that the place is supposed not to have a first-rate
reputation. If we have guards, we at all events make the governor
responsible for our safety and the safety of our possessions. So the
guards are sent for; and being posted on the bank, snore loudly all
night long, just outside our windows.
Meanwhile the wind shifts round to the south, and next morning it blows
full in our faces. The men, however, track up to Beni Suêf to a point
where the buildings come down to the water’s edge and the towing-path
ceases; and there we lay to for awhile among a fleet of filthy native
boats, close to the landing-place.
The approach to Beni Suêf is rather pretty. The khedive has an
Italian-looking villa here, which peeps up white and dazzling from the
midst of a thickly wooded park. The town lies back a little from the
river. A few coffee-houses and a kind of promenade face the
landing-place; and a mosque built to the verge of the bank stands out
picturesquely against the bend of the river.
And now it is our object to turn that corner, so as to get into a better
position for starting when the wind drops. The current here runs deep
and strong, so that we have both wind and water dead against us. Half
our men clamber round the corner like cats, carrying the rope with them;
the rest keep the dahabeeyah off the bank with punting poles. The rope
strains--a pole breaks--we struggle forward a few feet and can get no
farther. Then the men rest awhile; try again; and are again defeated. So
the fight goes on. The promenade and the windows of the mosque become
gradually crowded with lookers on. Some three or four cloaked and
bearded men have chairs brought and sit gravely smoking their chibouques
on the bank above, enjoying the entertainment. Meanwhile the
water-carriers come and go, filling their goat-skins at the
landing-place; donkeys and camels are brought down to drink; girls in
dark-blue gowns and coarse black veils come with huge water-jars laid
sidewise upon their heads and, having filled and replaced them upright,
walk away with stately steps, as if each ponderous vessel were a crown.
So the day passes. Driven back again and again, but still resolute, our
sailors, by dint of sheer doggedness, get us round the bad corner at
last. The Bagstones follows suit a little later; and we both moor about
a quarter of a mile above the town. Then follows a night of adventures.
Again our guards sleep profoundly; but the bad characters of Beni Suêf
are very wide awake. One gentleman, actuated no doubt by the friendliest
motives, pays a midnight visit to the Bagstones; but being detected,
chased and fired at, escapes by jumping overboard. Our turn comes about
two hours later, when the writer, happening to be awake, hears a man
swim softly round the Philæ. To strike a light and frighten everybody
into sudden activity is the work of a moment. The whole boat is
instantly in an uproar. Lanterns are lighted on deck; a patrol of
sailors is set; Talhamy loads his gun; and the thief slips away in the
dark like a fish.
The guards, of course, slept sweetly through it all. Honest fellows!
They were paid a shilling a night to do it and they had nothing on their
minds.
Having lodged a formal complaint next morning against the inhabitants of
the town, we received a visit from a sallow personage clad in a long
black robe and a voluminous white turban. This was the chief of the
guards. He smoked a great many pipes; drank numerous cups of coffee;
listened to all we had to say; looked wise; and finally suggested that
the number of our guards should be doubled.
I ventured to object that if they slept unanimously forty would not be
of much more use than four. Whereupon he rose, drew himself to his full
height, touched his beard and said with a magnificent melodramatic air:
“If they sleep they shall be bastinadoed till they die!”
And now our good luck seemed to have deserted us. For three days and
nights the adverse wind continued to blow with such force that the men
could not even track against it. Moored under that dreary bank, we saw
our ten days’ start melting away and could only make the best of our
misfortunes. Happily the long island close by and the banks on both
sides of the river were populous with sand-grouse; so Alfred went out
daily with his faithful George and his unerring gun and brought home
game in abundance, while we took long walks, sketched boats and camels
and chaffered with native women for silver torques and bracelets. These
torques (in Arabic _Tók_) are tubular but massive, penannular, about as
thick as one’s little finger and finished with a hook at one end and a
twisted loop at the other. The girls would sometimes put their veils
aside and make a show of bargaining; but more frequently, after standing
for a moment with great wondering black velvety eyes staring shyly into
ours, they would take fright like a troop of startled deer and vanish
with shrill cries, half of laughter, half of terror.
At Beni Suêf we encountered our first sand-storm. It came down the river
about noon, showing like a yellow fog on the horizon and rolling rapidly
before the wind. It tore the river into angry waves and blotted out the
landscape as it came. The distant hills disappeared first; then the
palms beyond the island; then the boats close by. Another second and the
air was full of sand. The whole surface of the plain seemed in motion.
The banks rippled. The yellow dust poured down through every rift and
cleft in hundreds of tiny cataracts. But it was a sight not to be looked
upon with impunity. Hair, eyes, mouth, ears, were instantly filled and
we were driven to take refuge in the saloon. Here, although every window
and door had been shut before the storm came, the sand found its way in
clouds. Books, papers, carpets, were covered with it; and it settled
again as fast as it was cleared away. This lasted just one hour, and was
followed by a burst of heavy rain; after which the sky cleared and we
had a lovely afternoon. From this time forth, we saw no more rain in
Egypt.
At length, on the morning of the fourth day after our first appearance
at Beni Suêf and the seventh since leaving Cairo, the wind veered round
again to the north, and we once more got under way. It was delightful
to see the big sail again towering up overhead, and to hear the swish of
the water under the cabin windows; but we were still one hundred and
nine miles from Rhoda, and we knew that nothing but an extraordinary run
of luck could possibly get us there by the twenty-third of the month,
with time to see Beni Hassan on the way. Meanwhile, however, we make
fair progress, mooring at sunset when the wind falls, about three miles
north of Bibbeh. Next day, by help of the same light breeze which again
springs up a little after dawn, we go at a good pace between flat banks,
fringed here and there with palms, and studded with villages more or
less picturesque. There is not much to see, and yet one never wants for
amusement. Now we pass an island of sand-bank covered with snow-white
paddy-birds, which rise tumultuously at our approach. Next comes Bibbeh,
perched high along the edge of the precipitous bank, its odd-looking
Coptic convent roofed all over with little mud domes, like a cluster of
earth-bubbles. By and by we pass a deserted sugar factory, with
shattered windows and a huge, gaunt, blackened chimney, worthy of
Birmingham or Sheffield. And now we catch a glimpse of the railway and
hear the last scream of a departing engine. At night, we moor within
sight of the factory chimneys and hydraulic tubes of Magagha, and next
day get on nearly to Golosanèh, which is the last station-town before
Minieh.
It is now only too clear that we must give up all thought of pushing on
to Beni Hassan before the rest of the party shall come on board. We have
reached the evening of our ninth day; we are still forty-eight miles
from Rhoda; and another adverse wind might again delay us indefinitely
on the way. All risks taken into account, we decide to put off our
meeting till the twenty-fourth, and transfer the appointment to Minieh;
thus giving ourselves time to track all the way in case of need. So an
Arabic telegram is concocted, and our fleet runner starts off with it to
Golosanèh before the office closes for the night.
The breeze, however, does not fail, but comes back next morning with the
dawn. Having passed Golosanèh, we come to a wide reach in the river, at
which point we are honored by a visit from a Moslem santon of peculiar
sanctity, named “Holy Sheik Cotton.” Now Holy Sheik Cotton, who is a
well-fed, healthy-looking young man of about thirty, makes his first
appearance swimming, with his garments twisted into a huge turban on the
top of his head, and only his chin above water. Having made his toilet
in the small boat, he presents himself on deck and receives an
enthusiastic welcome. Reïs Hassan hugs him--the pilot kisses him--the
sailors come up one by one, bringing little tributes of tobacco and
piasters, which he accepts with the air of a pope receiving Peter’s
pence. All dripping as he is, and smiling like an affable Triton, he
next proceeds to touch the tiller, the ropes, and the ends of the yards,
“in order,” says Talhamy, “to make them holy;” and then, with some kind
of final charm or muttered incantation, he plunges into the river again,
and swims off to repeat the same performance on board the Bagstones.
From this moment the prosperity of our voyage is assured. The captain
goes about with a smile on his stern face, and the crew look as happy as
if we had given them a guinea. For nothing can go wrong with a
dahabeeyah that has been “made holy” by Holy Sheik Cotton. We are
certain now to have favorable winds--to pass the cataract without
accident--to come back in health and safety, as we set out. But what, it
may be asked, has Holy Sheik Cotton done to make his blessing so
efficacious? He gets money in plenty; he fasts no oftener than other
Mohammedans; he has two wives; he never does a stroke of work; and he
looks the picture of sleek prosperity. Yet he is a saint of the first
water; and when he dies, miracles will be performed at his tomb, and his
eldest son will succeed him in the business.
We had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with a good many saints in
the course of our eastern travels; but I do not know that we ever found
they had done anything to merit the position. One very horrible old man
named Sheik Saleem has, it is true, been sitting on a dirt heap near
Farshût, unclothed, unwashed, unshaven, for the last half-century or
more, never even lifting his hand to his mouth to feed himself; but
Sheik Cotton had gone to no such pious lengths, and was not even dirty.
We are by this time drawing toward a range of yellow cliffs that have
long been visible on the horizon, and which figure in the maps as Gebel
et Tâyr. The Arabian desert has been closing up on the eastern bank for
some time past and now rolls on in undulating drifts to the water’s
edge. Yellow bowlders crop out here and there above the mounded sand,
which looks as if it might cover many a forgotten temple. Presently the
clay bank is gone and a low barrier of limestone rock, black and shiny
next the water-line, has taken its place. And now, a long way ahead,
where the river bends and the level cliffs lead on into the far
distance, a little brown speck is pointed out as the Convent of the
Pulley. Perched on the brink of the precipice it looks no bigger than an
ant-heap. We had heard much of the fine view to be seen from the
platform on which this convent is built, and it had originally entered
into our programme as a place to be visited on the way. But Minieh has
to be gained now at all costs; so this project has to be abandoned with
a sigh.
And now the rocky barrier rises higher, quarried here and there in
dazzling gaps of snow-white cuttings. And now the convent shows clearer;
and the cliffs become loftier; and the bend in the river is reached; and
a long perspective of flat-topped precipice stretches away into the dim
distance.
It is a day of saints and swimmers. As the dahabeeyah approaches, a
brown poll is seen bobbing up and down in the water a few hundred yards
ahead. Then one, two, three bronze figures dash down a steep ravine
below the convent walls, and plunge into the river--a shrill chorus of
voices, growing momentarily more audible, is borne upon the wind--and in
a few minutes the boat is beset by a shoal of mendicant monks,
vociferating with all their might “_Ana Christian ya Hawadji!--Ana
Christian ya Hawadji!_” (“I am a Christian, oh, traveler!”) As these are
only Coptic monks and not Moslem santons, the sailors, half in rough
play, half in earnest, drive them off with punting poles; and only one
shivering, streaming object, wrapped in a borrowed blanket, is allowed
to come on board. He is a fine, shapely man, aged about forty, with
splendid eyes and teeth, a well-formed head, a skin the color of a
copper beech-leaf, and a face expressive of such ignorance, timidity,
and half-savage watchfulness as makes one’s heart ache.
And this is a Copt; a descendant of the true Egyptian stock; one of
those whose remote ancestors exchanged the worship of the old gods for
Christianity under the rule of Theodosius some fifteen hundred years
ago, and whose blood is supposed to be purer of Mohammedan intermixture
than any in Egypt. Remembering these things, it is impossible to look at
him without a feeling of profound interest. It maybe only fancy, yet I
think I see in him a different type to that of the Arab--a something,
however slight, which recalls the sculptured figures in the tomb of Ti.
But while we are thinking about his magnificent pedigree, our poor
Copt’s teeth are chattering piteously. So we give him a shilling or two
for the sake of all that he represents in the history of the world; and
with these and the donation of an empty bottle, he swims away contented,
crying out again and again: “_Ketther-kháyrak Sittát! Ketther-kháyrak
keteer!_” (“Thank you, ladies! thank you much!”)
And now the convent with its clustered domes is passed and left behind.
The rock here is of the same rich tawny hue as at Turra, and the
horizontal strata of which it is composed have evidently been deposited
by water. That the Nile must at some remote time have flowed here at an
immensely higher level seems also probable; for the whole face of the
range is honeycombed and water-worn for miles in succession. Seeing how
these fantastic forms--arched, and clustered, and pendent--resemble the
recessed ornamentation of Saracenic buildings, I could not help
wondering whether some early Arab architect might not once upon a time
have taken a hint from some such rocks as these.
Thus the day wanes, and the level cliffs keep with us all the way--now
breaking into little lateral valleys and _culs-de-sac_ in which nestle
clusters of tiny huts and green patches of lupin; now plunging sheer
down into the river; now receding inland and leaving space for a belt of
cultivated soil and a fringe of feathery palms. By and by comes the
sunset, when every cast shadow in the recesses of the cliffs turns to
pure violet; and the face of the rock glows with a ruddier gold; and the
palms on the western bank stand up in solemn bronze against a crimson
horizon. Then the sun dips, and instantly the whole range of cliffs
turns to a dead, greenish gray, while the sky above and behind them is
as suddenly suffused with pink. When this effect has lasted for
something like eight minutes, a vast arch of deep-blue shade, about as
large in diameter as a rainbow, creeps slowly up the eastern horizon and
remains distinctly visible as long as the pink flush against which it is
defined yet lingers in the sky. Finally the flush fades out; the blue
becomes uniform; the stars begin to show; and only a broad glow in the
west marks which way the sun went down. About a quarter of an hour later
comes the after-glow, when for a few minutes the sky is filled with a
soft, magical light, and the twilight gloom lies warm upon the
landscape. When this goes it is night; but still one long beam of light
streams up in the track of the sun and remains visible for more than two
hours after the darkness has closed in.
Such is the sunset we see this evening as we approach Minieh; and such
is the sunset we are destined to see, with scarcely a shade of
difference, at the same hour and under precisely the same conditions for
many a month to come. It is very beautiful, very tranquil, full of
wonderful light and most subtle gradations of tone, and attended by
certain phenomena of which I shall have more to say presently; but it
lacks the variety and gorgeousness of our northern skies. Nor, given the
dry atmosphere of Egypt, can it be otherwise. Those who go up the Nile
expecting, as I did, to see magnificent Turneresque pageants of purple,
and flame-color, and gold, will be disappointed as I was. For your
Turneresque pageant cannot be achieved without such accessories of cloud
and vapor as in Nubia are wholly unknown, and in Egypt are of the rarest
occurrence. Once, and only once, in the course of an unusually
protracted sojourn on the river, had we the good fortune to witness a
grand display of the kind; and then we had been nearly three months in
the dahabeeyah.
Meanwhile, however, we never weary of these stainless skies, but find in
them, evening after evening, fresh depths of beauty and repose. As for
that strange transfer of color from the mountains to the sky, we had
repeatedly observed it while traveling in the Dolomites the year before,
and had always found it take place, as now, at the moment of the sun’s
first disappearance. But what of this mighty after-shadow, climbing half
the heavens and bringing night with it? Can it be the rising shadow of
the world projected on the one horizon as the sun sinks on the other? I
leave the problem for wiser travelers to solve. We had not science
enough among us to account for it.
That same evening, just as the twilight came on, we saw another
wonder--the new moon on the first night of her first quarter; a perfect
orb, dusky, distinct, and outlined all round with a thread of light no
thicker than a hair. Nothing could be more brilliant than this tiny rim
of flashing silver; while every detail of the softly glowing globe
within its compass was clearly visible. Tycho, with its vast crater,
showed like a volcano on a raised map; and near the edge of the moon’s
surface, where the light and shadow met, keen sparkles of
mountain-summits catching the light and relieved against the dusk were
to be seen by the naked eye. Two or three evenings later, however, when
the silver ring was changed to a broad crescent, the unilluminated part
was as if it were extinguished, and could no longer be discerned even by
help of a glass.
The wind having failed as usual at sunset, the crew set to work with a
will and punted the rest of the way, so bringing us to Minieh about nine
that night. Next morning we found ourselves moored close under the
khedive’s summer palace--so close that one could have tossed a pebble
against the lattice windows of his highness’ hareem. A fat gate-keeper
sat outside in the sun, smoking his morning chibouque and gossiping with
the passers by. A narrow promenade scantily planted with sycamore figs
ran between the palace and the river. A steamer or two, and a crowd of
native boats, lay moored under the bank; and yonder, at the farther end
of the promenade, a minaret and a cluster of whitewashed houses showed
which way one must turn in going to the town.
It chanced to be market-day; so we saw Minieh under its best aspect,
than which nothing could well be more squalid, dreary, and depressing.
It was like a town dropped unexpectedly into the midst of a plowed
field; the streets being mere trodden lanes of mud dust, and the houses
a succession of windowless mud prisons with their backs to the
thoroughfare. The bazaar, which consists of two or three lanes a little
wider than the rest, is roofed over here and there with rotting
palm-rafters and bits of tattered matting; while the market is held in a
space of waste ground outside the town. The former, with its little
cupboard-like shops, in which the merchants sit cross-legged like
shabby old idols in shabby old shrines--the ill-furnished shelves--the
familiar Manchester goods--the gaudy native stuffs--the old red saddles
and faded rugs hanging up for sale--the smart Greek stores where Bass’
ale, claret, curaçoa, Cyprus, Vermouth, cheese, pickles, sardines,
Worcester sauce, blacking, biscuits, preserved meats, candles, cigars,
matches, sugar, salt, stationery, fire-works, jams, and patent medicines
can all be bought at one fell swoop--the native cook’s shop exhaling
savory perfumes of Kebabs and lentil soup, and presided over by an
Abyssinian Soyer blacker than the blackest historical personage ever was
painted--the surging, elbowing, clamorous crowd--the donkeys, the
camels, the street-cries, the chatter, the dust, the flies, the fleas,
and the dogs, all put us in mind of the poorer quarters of Cairo. In the
market it is even worse. Here are hundreds of country folk sitting on
the ground behind their baskets of fruits and vegetables. Some have
eggs, butter, and buffalo-cream for sale, while others sell sugar-canes,
limes, cabbages, tobacco, barley, dried lentils, split beans, maize,
wheat, and dura. The women go to and fro with bouquets of live poultry.
The chickens scream; the sellers rave; the buyers bargain at the top of
their voices; the dust flies in clouds; the sun pours down floods of
light and heat; you can scarcely hear yourself speak; and the crowd is
as dense as that other crowd which at this very moment, on this very
Christmas eve, is circulating among the alleys of Leadenhall Market.
The things were very cheap. A hundred eggs cost about fourteen pence in
English money; chickens sold for five pence each; pigeons from two-pence
to two-pence-half-penny; and fine live geese for two shillings a head.
The turkeys, however, which were large and excellent, were priced as
high as three-and-sixpence; being about half as much as one pays in
Middle and Upper Egypt for a lamb. A good sheep may be bought for
sixteen shillings or a pound. The M. B.’s, who had no dragoman and did
their own marketing, were very busy here, laying in stores of fresh
provision, bargaining fluently in Arabic, and escorted by a body-guard
of sailors.
A solitary dôm palm, the northernmost of its race and the first specimen
one meets with on the Nile, grows in a garden adjoining this
market-place; but we could scarcely see it for the blinding dust. Now,
a dôm palm is just the sort of tree that De Wint should have
painted--odd, angular, with long forked stems, each of which terminates
in a shock-headed crown of stiff finger-like fronds shading heavy
clusters of big shiny nuts about the size of Jerusalem artichokes. It
is, I suppose, the only nut in the world of which one throws away the
kernel and eats the shell; but the kernel is as hard as marble, while
the shell is fibrous, and tastes like stale gingerbread. The dôm palm
must bifurcate, for bifurcation is the law of its being; but I could
never discover whether there was any fixed limit to the number of stems
into which it might subdivide. At the same time, I do not remember to
have seen any with less than two heads or more than six.
Coming back through the town, we were accosted by a withered one-eyed
hag like a reanimated mummy, who offered to tell our fortunes. Before
her lay a dirty rag of handkerchief full of shells, pebbles and chips of
broken glass and pottery. Squatting, toad-like, under a sunny bit of
wall, the lower part of her face closely veiled, her skinny arms covered
with blue and green glass bracelets and her fingers with misshapen
silver rings, she hung over these treasures, shook, mixed and
interrogated them with all the fervor of divination, and delivered a
string of the prophecies usually forthcoming on these occasions.
“You have a friend far away, and your friend is thinking of you. There
is good fortune in store for you; and money coming to you; and pleasant
news on the way. You will soon receive letters in which there will be
something to vex you, but more to make you glad. Within thirty days you
will unexpectedly meet one whom you dearly love,” etc., etc., etc.
It was just the old familiar story, retold in Arabic, without even such
variations as might have been expected from the lips of an old fellâha
born and bred in a provincial town of Middle Egypt.
It may be that ophthalmia especially prevailed in this part of the
country, or that, being brought unexpectedly into the midst of a large
crowd, one observed the people more narrowly, but I certainly never saw
so many one-eyed human beings as that morning at Minieh. There must have
been present in the streets and market-place from ten to twelve thousand
natives of all ages, and I believe it is no exaggeration to say that at
least every twentieth person, down to little toddling children of three
and four years of age, was blind of an eye. Not being a particularly
well-favored race, this defect added the last touch of repulsiveness to
faces already sullen, ignorant and unfriendly. A more unprepossessing
population I would never wish to see--the men half stealthy, half
insolent; the women bold and fierce; the children filthy, sickly,
stunted and stolid. Nothing in provincial Egypt is so painful to witness
as the neglected condition of very young children. Those belonging to
even the better class are for the most part shabbily clothed and of more
than doubtful cleanliness; while the offspring of the very poor are
simply incrusted with dirt and sores and swarming with vermin. It is at
first hard to believe that the parents of these unfortunate babies err,
not from cruelty, but through sheer ignorance and superstition. Yet so
it is; and the time when these people can be brought to comprehend the
most elementary principles of sanitary reform is yet far distant. To
wash young children is injurious to health, therefore the mothers suffer
them to fall into a state of personal uncleanliness, which is alone
enough to engender disease. To brush away the flies that beset their
eyes is impious; hence ophthalmia and various kinds of blindness. I have
seen infants lying in their mothers’ arms with six or eight flies in
each eye. I have seen the little helpless hands put down reprovingly if
they approached the seat of annoyance. I have seen children of four and
five years old with the surface of one or both eyes eaten away; and
others with a large, fleshy lump growing out where the pupil had been
destroyed. Taking these things into account, the wonder is, after all,
not that three children should die in Egypt out of every five--not that
each twentieth person in certain districts should be blind, or partially
blind; but that so many as forty per cent of the whole infant population
should actually live to grow up, and that ninety-five per cent should
enjoy the blessing of sight. For my own part I had not been many weeks
on the Nile before I began systematically to avoid going about the
native towns whenever it was practicable to do so. That I may so have
lost an opportunity of now and then seeing more of the street-life of
the people is very probable; but such outside glimpses are of little
real value, and I at all events escaped the sight of much poverty,
sickness and squalor. The condition of the inhabitants is not worse,
perhaps, in an Egyptian beled[23] than in many an Irish village; but the
condition of the children is so distressing that one would willingly go
any number of miles out of the way rather than witness their suffering,
without the power to alleviate it.[24]
If the population in and about Minieh are personally unattractive, their
appearance at all events matches their reputation, which is as bad as
that of their neighbors. Of the manners and customs of Beni Suêf we had
already some experience; while public opinion charges Minieh, Rhoda and
most of the towns and villages north of Siût with the like marauding
propensities. As for the villages at the foot of Beni Hassan, they have
been mere dens of thieves for many generations; and though razed to the
ground some years ago by way of punishment, are now rebuilt and in as
bad odor as ever. It is necessary, therefore, in all this part of the
river, not only to hire guards at night, but, when the boat is moored,
to keep a sharp lookout against thieves by day. In Upper Egypt it is
very different. There the natives are good-looking, good-natured, gentle
and kindly; and though clever enough at manufacturing and selling modern
antiquities, are not otherwise dishonest.
That same evening (it was Christmas eve), nearly two hours earlier than
their train was supposed to be due, the rest of our party arrived at
Minieh.
CHAPTER VI.
MINIEH TO SIUT.
It is Christmas day. The M. B.’s are coming to dinner; the cooks are up
to their eyes in entrées; the crew are treated to a sheep in honor of
the occasion; the new-comers are unpacking; and we are all gradually
settling down into our respective places. Now the new-comers consist of
four persons: a painter, a happy couple and a maid. The painter has
already been up the Nile three times and brings a fund of experience
into the council. He knows all about sand-banks and winds and
mooring-places; is acquainted with most of the native governors and
consuls along the river; and is great on the subject of what to eat,
drink and avoid. The stern-cabin is given to him for a studio and
contains frames, canvases, drawing-paper and easels enough to start a
provincial school of art. He is going to paint a big picture at
Aboo-Simbel. The happy couple it is unnecessary to say are on their
wedding tour. In point of fact, they have not yet been married a month.
The bridegroom is what the world chooses to call an idle man; that is to
say, he has scholarship, delicate health and leisure. The bride, for
convenience, shall be called the little lady. Of people who are
struggling through that helpless phase of human life called the
honeymoon, it is not fair to say more than that they are both young
enough to make the situation interesting.
Meanwhile the deck must be cleared of the new luggage that has come on
board and the day passes in a confusion of unpacking, arranging and
putting away. Such running to and fro as there is down below; such
turning-out of boxes and knocking-up of temporary shelves; such talking,
and laughing, and hammering! Nor is the bustle confined to down-stairs.
Talhamy and the waiters are just as busy above, adorning the upper deck
with palm branches and hanging the boat all round with rows of colored
lanterns. One can hardly believe, however, that it is Christmas
day--that there are fires blazing at home in every room; that the church
field, perhaps, is white with snow; and that familiar bells are ringing
merrily across the frosty air. Here at midday it is already too hot on
deck without the awning, and when we moor toward sunset near a riverside
village in a grove of palms, the cooler air of evening is delicious.
There is novelty in even such a commonplace matter as dining out, on the
Nile. You go and return in your felucca, as if it were a carriage; and
your entertainers summon you by firing a dinner gun, instead of sounding
a gong. Wise people who respect the feelings of their cooks fire a
dressing gun as well; for watches soon differ in a hopeless way for want
of the church clock to set them by, and it is always possible that host
and guest may be an hour or two apart in their reckoning.
The customary guns having therefore been fired and the party assembled,
we sat down to one of cook Bedawee’s prodigious banquets. Not, however,
till the plum-pudding, blazing demoniacally, appeared upon the scene,
did any of us succeed in believing that it was really Christmas day.
Nothing could be prettier or gayer than the spectacle that awaited us
when we rose from table. A hundred and fifty colored lanterns outlined
the boat from end to end, sparkled up the masts, and cast broken
reflections in the moving current. The upper-deck, hung with flags and
partly closed in with awnings, looked like a bower of palms. The stars
and the crescent moon shone overhead. Dim outlines of trees and
headlands, and a vague perspective of gleaming river, were visible in
the distance; while a light gleamed now and then in the direction of the
village, or a dusky figure flitted along the bank.
Meanwhile, there was a sound of revelry by night; for our sailors had
invited the Bagstones’ crew to unlimited coffee and tobacco, and had
quite a large party on the lower deck. They drummed, they sang, they
danced, they dressed up, improvised a comic scene, and kept their
audience in a roar. Reïs Hassan did the honors. George, Talhamy and the
maids sat apart at the second table and sipped their coffee genteelly.
We looked on and applauded. At ten o’clock a pan of magnesium powder was
burned, and our fantasia ended with a blaze of light, like a pantomime.
In Egypt, by the way, any entertainment which is enlivened by music,
dancing, or fire-works is called a fantasia.
And now, sometimes sailing, sometimes tracking, sometimes punting, we go
on day by day, making what speed we can. Things do not, of course,
always fall out exactly as one would have them. The wind too often fails
when we most need it, and gets up when there is something to be seen on
shore. Thus, after a whole morning of tracking, we reach Beni Hassan at
the moment when a good breeze has suddenly filled our sails for the
first time in forty-eight hours; and so, yielding to counsels which we
afterward deplored, we pass on with many a longing look at the terraced
doorways pierced along the cliffs. At Rhoda, in the same way, we touch
for only a few minutes to post and inquire for letters, and put off till
our return the inland excursion to Dayr el Nakhl, where is to be seen
the famous painting of the Colossus on the Sledge. But sights deferred
are fated sometimes to remain unseen, as we found by and by to our
exceeding loss and regret.
Meanwhile, the skies are always cloudless, the days warm, the evenings
exquisite. We of course live very much in the open air. When there is no
wind, we land and take long walks by the river side. When on board, we
sketch, write letters, read Champollion, Bunsen, and Sir Gardner
Wilkinson: and work hard at Egyptian dynasties. The sparrows and
water-wagtails perch familiarly on the awnings and hop about the deck;
the cocks and hens chatter, the geese cackle, the turkeys gobble in
their coops close by; and our sacrificial sheep, leading a solitary life
in the felucca, comes baaing in the rear. Sometimes we have as many as a
hundred chickens on board (to say nothing of pigeons and rabbits) and
two or even three sheep in the felucca. The poultry-yard is railed off,
however, at the extreme end of the stern, so that the creatures are well
away from the drawing-room; and when we moor at a suitable place, they
are let out for a few hours to peck about the banks and enjoy their
liberty. L---- and the little lady feed these hapless prisoners with
breakfast-scraps every morning, to the profound amusement of the
steersman, who, unable to conceive any other motive, imagines they are
fatting them for the table.
Such is our Noah’s ark life--pleasant, peaceful and patriarchal. Even on
days when there is little to see and nothing to do it is never dull.
Trifling incidents which have for us the excitement of novelty are
continually occurring. Other dahabeeyahs, their flags and occupants, are
a constant source of interest. Meeting at mooring-places for the night,
we now and then exchange visits. Passing each other by day we dip
ensigns, fire salutes, and punctiliously observe the laws of maritime
etiquette. Sometimes a Cook’s excursion steamer hurries by crowded with
tourists; or a government tug towing three or four great barges closely
packed with wretched-looking, half-naked fellâheen bound for forced
labor on some new railway or canal. Occasionally we pass a dahabeeyah
sticking fast upon a sand-bank; and sometimes we stick on one ourselves.
Then the men fly to their punting poles or jump into the river like
water-dogs, and, grunting in melancholy cadence, shove the boat off with
their shoulders.
The birds, too, are new, and we are always looking out for them. Perhaps
we see a top-heavy pelican balancing his huge yellow bill over the edge
of the stream and fishing for his dinner--or a flight of wild geese
trailing across the sky toward sunset--or a select society of vultures
perched all in a row upon a ledge of rock and solemn as the bench of
bishops. Then there are the herons who stand on one leg and doze in the
sun; the strutting hoopoes with their legendary top-knots; the blue and
green bee-eaters hovering over the uncut dura. The pied kingfisher,
black and white like a magpie, sits fearlessly under the bank and never
stirs, though the tow-rope swings close above his head and the
dahabeeyah glides within a few feet of the shore. The paddy-birds whiten
the sand-banks by hundreds and rise in a cloud at our approach. The
sacred hawk, circling overhead, utters the same sweet, piercing,
melancholy note that the Pharaohs listened to of old.
The scenery is for the most part of the ordinary Nile pattern; and for
many a mile we see the same things over and over again--the level bank
shelving down steeply to the river; the strip of cultivated soil, green
with maize or tawny with dura; the frequent mud-village and palm-grove;
the deserted sugar factory with its ungainly chimney and shattered
windows; the water-wheel slowly revolving with its necklace of pots; the
shâdûf worked by two brown athletes; the file of laden camels; the
desert, all sand-hills and sand-plains, with its background of
mountains; the long reach and the gleaming sail ahead. Sometimes,
however, as at Kom Ahmar, we skirt the ancient brick mounds of some
forgotten city, with fragments of arched foundations, and even of walls
and doorways, reaching down to the water’s edge; or, sailing close under
ranges of huge perpendicular cliffs, as at Gebel Abufayda, startle the
cormorants from their haunts, and peer as we pass into the dim recesses
of many a rock-cut tomb excavated just above the level of the
inundation.
This Gebel Abufayda has a bad name for sudden winds; especially at the
beginning and end of the range, where the Nile bends abruptly and the
valley opens out at right angles to the river. It is fine to see Reïs
Hassan, as we approach one of the worst of these bad bits--a point where
two steep ravines divided by a bold headland command the passage like a
pair of grim cannon, and rake it with blasts from the northeastern
desert. Here the current, flowing deep and strong, is met by the wind
and runs high in crested waves. Our little captain, kicking off his
shoes, himself springs up the rigging and there stands silent and
watchful. The sailors, ready to shift our mainsail at the word of
command, cling some to the shoghool[25] and some to the end of the yard;
the boat tears on before the wind; the great bluff looms up darker and
nearer. Then comes a breathless moment. Then a sharp, sudden word from
the little man in the main rigging; a yell and a whoop from the sailors;
a slow, heavy lurch of the flapping sail; and the corner is turned in
safety.
The cliffs are very fine; much loftier and less uniform than at Gebel et
Tayr; rent into strange forms, as of sphinxes, cheesewrings, towers, and
bastions; honeycombed with long ranges of rock-cut tombs; and undermined
by water-washed caverns in which lurk a few lingering crocodiles. If at
Gebel et Tayr the rock is worn into semblances of arabesque
ornamentation, here it looks as if inscribed all over with mysterious
records in characters not unlike the Hebrew. Records they are, too, of
prehistoric days--chronicles of his own deeds carved by the great god
Nile himself, the Hapimu of ancient time--but the language in which
they are written has never been spoken by man.
As for the rock-cut tombs of Gebel Abufayda, they must number many
hundreds. For nearly twelve miles the range runs parallel to the river,
and throughout that distance the face of the cliffs is pierced with
innumerable doorways. Some are small and square, twenty or thirty
together, like rows of port-holes. Others are isolated. Some are cut so
high up that they must have been approached from above; others again
come close upon the level of the river. Some of the doorways are faced
to represent jambs and architraves; some, excavated laterally, appear to
consist of a series of chambers, and are lit from without by small
windows cut in the rock. One is approached by a flight of rough steps
leading up from the water’s edge; and another, hewn high in the face of
the cliff, just within the mouth of a little ravine, shows a simple but
imposing façade supported by four detached pillars. No modern travelers
seem to visit these tombs; while those of the old school, as Wilkinson,
Champollion, etc., dismiss them with a few observations. Yet, with the
single exception of the mountains behind Thebes, there is not, I
believe, any one spot in Egypt which contains such a multitude of
sepulchral excavations. Many look, indeed, as if they might belong to
the same interesting and early epoch as those of Beni Hassan.
I may here mention that about half-way, or rather less than half-way,
along the whole length of the range I observed two large hieroglyphed
stelæ incised upon the face of a projecting mass of boldly rounded cliff
at a height of perhaps a hundred and fifty feet above the river. These
stelæ, apparently royal ovals, and sculptured as usual side by side, may
have measured from twelve to fifteen feet in height; but in the absence
of any near object by which to scale them, I could form but a rough
guess as to their actual dimensions. The boat was just then going so
fast that to sketch or take notes of the hieroglyphs was impossible.
Before I could adjust my glass they were already in the rear; and by the
time I had called the rest of the party together they were no longer
distinguishable.
Coming back several months later, I looked for them again, but without
success; for the intense midday sun was then pouring full upon the
rocks, to the absolute obliteration of everything like shallow detail.
While watching vainly, however, for the stelæ, I was compensated by the
unexpected sight of a colossal bas-relief high up on the northward face
of a cliff standing, so to say, at the corner of one of those little
recesses or _culs-de-sac_ which here and there break the uniformity of
the range. The sculptural relief of this large subject was apparently
very low; but, owing to the angle at which it met the light, one figure,
which could not have measured less than eighteen or twenty feet in
height, was distinctly visible. I immediately drew L----’s attention to
the spot; and she not only discerned the figure without the help of a
glass, but believed like myself that she could see traces of a second.
As neither the stelæ nor the bas-relief would seem to have been observed
by previous travelers, I may add for the guidance of others that the
round and tower-like rock upon which the former are sculptured lies
about a mile to the southward of the sheik’s tomb and palm-tree (a
strikingly picturesque bit which no one can fail to notice), and a
little beyond some very large excavations near the water’s edge; while
the bas-relief is to be found at a short distance below the Coptic
convent and cemetery.
Having for nearly twelve miles skirted the base of Gebel Abufayda--by
far the finest panoramic stretch of rock scenery on this side of the
second cataract--the Nile takes an abrupt bend to the eastward, and
thence flows through many miles of cultivated flat. One coming to this
sudden elbow the wind, which had hitherto been carrying us along at a
pace but little inferior to that of a steamer, now struck us full on the
beam and drove the boat to shore with such violence that all the
steersman could do was just to run the Philæ’s nose into the bank and
steer clear of some ten or twelve native cangias that had been driven in
before us. The Bagstones rushed in next; and presently a large
iron-built dahabeeyah, having come gallantly along under the cliffs with
all sail set, was seen to make a vain struggle at the fatal corner, and
then plunge headlong at the bank, like King Agib’s ship upon the
Loadstone Mountain.
Imprisoned here all the afternoon, we exchanged visits of condolence
with our neighbors in misfortune; had our ears nearly cut to pieces by
the driving sand; and failed signally in the endeavor to take a walk on
shore. Still the fury of the storm went on increasing. The wind howled;
the river raced in turbid waves; the sand drove in clouds; and the face
of the sky was darkened as if by a London fog. Meanwhile, one boat after
another was hurled to shore, and before nightfall we numbered a fleet of
some twenty odd craft, native and foreign.
It took the united strength of both crews all next day to warp the Philæ
and Bagstones across the river by means of a rope and an anchor; an
expedient that deserves special mention not for its amazing novelty or
ingenuity, but because our men declared it to be impracticable. Their
fathers, they said, had never done it. Their fathers’ fathers had never
done it. Therefore it was impossible. Being impossible, why should they
attempt it?
They did attempt it, however, and, much to their astonishment, they
succeeded.
It was, I think, toward the afternoon of this second day, when,
strolling by the margin of the river, that we first made the
acquaintance of that renowned insect, the Egyptian beetle. He was a very
fine specimen of his race, nearly half an inch long in the back, as
black and shiny as a scarab cut in jet, and busily engaged in the
preparation of a large rissole of mud, which he presently began
laboriously propelling up the bank. We stood and watched him for some
time, half in admiration, half in pity. His rissole was at least four
times bigger than himself, and to roll it up that steep incline to a
point beyond the level of next summer’s inundation was a labor of
Hercules for so small a creature. One longed to play the part of the
_Deus ex machina_ and carry it up the bank for him; but that would have
been a dénouement beyond his power of appreciation.
We all know the old story of how this beetle lays its eggs by the
river’s brink; incloses them in a ball of moist clay; rolls the ball to
a safe place on the edge of the desert; buries it in the sand; and when
his time comes, dies content, having provided for the safety of his
successors. Hence his mythic fame; hence all the quaint symbolism that
by degrees attached itself to his little person, and ended by investing
him with a special sacredness which has often been mistaken for actual
worship. Standing by thus, watching the movements of the creature, its
untiring energy, its extraordinary muscular strength, its business-like
devotion to the matter in hand, one sees how subtle a lesson the old
Egyptian moralists had presented to them for contemplation, and with how
fine a combination of wisdom and poetry they regarded this little black
scarab not only as an emblem of the creative and preserving power, but
perhaps also of the immortality of the soul. As a type, no insect has
ever had so much greatness thrust upon him. He became a hieroglyph, and
stood for a word signifying both to be and to transform. His portrait
was multiplied a million-fold; sculptured over the portals of temples;
fitted to the shoulders of a god; engraved on gems; molded in pottery;
painted on sarcophagi and the walls of tombs; worn by the living and
buried with the dead.
Every traveler on the Nile brings away a handful of the smaller scarabs,
genuine or otherwise. Some may not particularly care to possess them;
yet none can help buying them, if only because other people do so, or to
get rid of a troublesome dealer, or to give to friends at home. I doubt,
however, if even the most enthusiastic scarab-fanciers really feel in
all its force the symbolism attaching to these little gems, or
appreciate the exquisite naturalness of their execution, till they have
seen the living beetle at its work.
In Nubia, where the strip of cultivable land is generally but a few feet
in breadth, the scarab’s task is comparatively light and the breed
multiplies freely. But in Egypt he has often a wide plain to traverse
with his burden, and is therefore scarce in proportion to the difficulty
with which he maintains the struggle for existence. The scarab race in
Egypt would seem indeed to have diminished very considerably since the
days of the Pharaohs, and the time is not perhaps far distant when the
naturalist will look in vain for specimens on this side of the first
cataract. As far as my own experience goes, I can only say that I saw
scores of these beetles during the Nubian part of the journey; but that
to the best of my recollection this was the only occasion upon which I
observed one in Egypt.
The Nile makes four or five more great bends between Gebel Abufayda and
Siût; passing Manafalût by the way, which town lies some distance back
from the shore. All things taken into consideration--the fitful wind
that came and went continually; the tremendous zigzags of the river; the
dead calm which befell us when only eight miles from Siût; and the long
day of tracking that followed, with the town in sight the whole way--we
thought ourselves fortunate to get in by the evening of the third day
after the storm. These last eight miles are, however, for open, placid
beauty, as lovely in their way as anything north of Thebes. The valley
is here very wide and fertile; the town, with its multitudinous
minarets, appears first on one side and then on the other, according to
the windings of the river; the distant pinky mountains look almost as
transparent as the air or the sunshine; while the banks unfold an
endless succession of charming little subjects, every one of which looks
as if it asked to be sketched as we pass. A shâdûf and a clump of
palms--a triad of shaggy black buffaloes, up to their shoulders in the
river, and dozing as they stand--a wide-spreading sycamore fig, in the
shade of which lie a man and camel asleep--a fallen palm uprooted by the
last inundation, with its fibrous roots yet clinging to the bank and its
crest in the water--a group of sheiks’ tombs with glistening white
cupolas relieved against a background of dark foliage--an old disused
water-wheel lying up sidewise against the bank like a huge teetotom, and
garlanded with wild tendrils of a gourd--such are a few out of many bits
by the way, which, if they offer nothing very new, at all events present
the old material under fresh aspects, and in combination with a distance
of such ethereal light and shade, and such opalescent tenderness of
tone, that it looks more like an air-drawn mirage than a piece of the
world we live in.
Like a mirage, too, that fairy town of Siût seemed always to hover at
the same unattainable distance and after hours of tracking to be no
nearer than at first. Sometimes, indeed, following the long reaches of
the river, we appeared to be leaving it behind; and although, as I have
said, we had eight miles of hard work to get to it, I doubt whether it
was ever more than three miles distant as the bird flies. It was late in
the afternoon, however, when we turned the last corner; and the sun was
already setting when the boat reached the village of Hamra, which is the
mooring-place for Siût--Siût itself, with clustered cupolas and arrowy
minarets, lying back in the plain at the foot of a great mountain
pierced with tombs.
Now, it was in the bond that our crew were to be allowed twenty-four
hours for making and baking bread at Siût, Esneh and Assuân. No sooner,
therefore, was the dahabeeyah moored than Reïs Hassan and the steersman
started away at full speed on two little donkeys to buy flour; while
Mehemet Ali, one of our most active and intelligent sailors, rushed off
to hire the oven. For here, as at Esneh and Assuân, there are large
flour stores and public bakehouses for the use of sailors on the river,
who make and bake their bread in large lots; cut it into slices; dry it
in the sun; and preserve it in the form of rusks for months together.
Thus prepared, it takes the place of ship-biscuit; and it is so far
superior to ship-biscuit that it neither molds nor breeds the maggot,
but remains good and wholesome to the last crumb.
Siût, frequently written Asyoot, is the capital of Middle Egypt and has
the best bazaars of any town up the Nile. Its red and black pottery is
famous throughout the country; and its pipe-bowls (supposed to be the
best in the east), being largely exported to Cairo, find their way not
only to all parts of the Levant, but to every Algerine and Japanese shop
in London and Paris. No lover of peasant pottery will yet have forgotten
the Egyptian stalls in the ceramic gallery of the international
exhibition of 1871. All those quaint red vases and lustrous black
tazzas, all those exquisite little coffee services, those crocodile
paperweights, those barrel-shaped and bird-shaped bottles came from
Siût. There is a whole street of such pottery here in the town. Your
dahabeeyah is scarcely made fast before a dealer comes on board and
ranges his brittle wares along the deck. Others display their goods upon
the bank. But the best things are only to be had in the bazaars; and not
even in Cairo is it possible to find Siût ware so choice in color, form
and design as that which the two or three best dealers bring out,
wrapped in soft paper, when a European customer appears in the market.
Besides the street of pottery there is a street of red shoes; another of
native and foreign stuffs; and the usual run of saddlers’ shops, kebab
stalls and Greek stores for the sale of everything in heaven or earth,
from third-rate cognac to patent wax vestas. The houses are of plastered
mud or sun-dried bricks, as at Minieh. The thoroughfares are dusty,
narrow, unpaved and crowded, as at Minieh. The people are one-eyed,
dirty and unfragrant, as at Minieh. The children’s eyes are full of
flies and their heads are covered with sores, as at Minieh. In short, it
is Minieh over again on a larger scale; differing only in respect of
its inhabitants, who, instead of being sullen, thievish and unfriendly,
are too familiar to be pleasant, and the most unappeasable beggars out
of Ireland. So our mirage turns to sordid reality, and Siût, which from
afar off looked like the capital of Dreamland, resolves itself into a
big mud town, as ugly and ordinary as its fellows. Even the minarets, so
elegant from a distance, betray for the most part but rough masonry and
clumsy ornamentation when closely looked into.
A lofty embanked road planted with fine sycamore figs leads from Hamra
to Siût; and another embanked road leads from Siût to the mountain of
tombs. Of the ancient Egyptian city no vestige remains, the modern town
being built upon the mounds of the earlier settlement; but the City of
the Dead--so much of it, at least, as was excavated in the living
rock--survives, as at Memphis, to commemorate the departed splendor of
the place.
We took donkeys next day to the edge of the desert and went up to the
sepulchers on foot. The mountain, which looked a delicate salmon-pink
when seen from afar, now showed bleached and arid and streaked with
ocherous yellow. Layer above layer, in beds of strongly marked
stratification, it towered overhead; tier above tier, the tombs yawned,
open-mouthed, along the face of the precipice. I picked up a fragment of
the rock, and found it light, porous and full of little cells, like
pumice. The slopes were strewn with stones, as well as with fragments of
mummy, shreds of mummy-cloth and human bones, all whitening and
withering in the sun.
The first tomb we came to was the so-called Stabl Antar--a magnificent
but cruelly mutilated excavation, consisting of a grand entrance, a
vaulted corridor, a great hall, two side chambers and a sanctuary. The
ceiling of the corridor, now smoke-blackened and defaced, has been
richly decorated with intricate patterns in light green, white and buff,
upon a ground of dark bluish-green stucco. The wall to the right on
entering is covered with a long hieroglyphic inscription. In the
sanctuary vague traces of seated figures, male and female, with lotus
blossoms in their hands, are dimly visible. Two colossal warriors
incised in outline upon the leveled rock--the one very perfect, the
other hacked almost out of recognition--stand on each side of the huge
portal. A circular hole in the threshold marks the spot where the great
door once worked upon its pivot; and a deep pit, now partially filled in
with rubbish, leads from the center of the hall to some long-rifled
vault deep down in the heart of the mountain. Wilful destruction has
been at work on every side. The wall-sculptures have been defaced--the
massive pillars that once supported the superincumbent rock have been
quarried away--the interior is heaped high with débris. Enough is left,
however, to attest the antique stateliness of the tomb; and the
hieroglyphic inscription remains almost intact to tell its age and
history.
This inscription (erroneously entered in Murray’s Guide as uncopied, but
interpreted by Brugsch, who published extracts from it as far back as
1862) shows the excavation to have been made for one Hepoukefa or
Haptefa, monarch of the Lycopolite nome and the chief priest of the
jackal god of Siût.[26] It is also famous among scientific students for
certain passages which contain important information regarding the
intercalary days of the Egyptian calendar.[27] We observed that the
full-length figures on the jambs of the doorway appeared to have been
incised, filled in with stucco and then colored. The stucco had for the
most part fallen out, though enough remained to show the style of the
work.[28]
From this tomb to the next we crept by way of a passage tunneled in the
mountain, and emerged into a spacious, quadrangular grotto, even more
dilapidated than the first. It had been originally supported by square
pillars left standing in the substance of the rock; but, like the
pillars in the tomb of Hepoukefa, they had been hewn away in the middle
and looked like stalactite columns in process of formation. For the
rest, two half-filled pits, a broken sarcophagus and a few painted
hieroglyphs upon a space of stuccoed wall were all that remained.
One would have liked to see the sepulcher in which Ampère, the brilliant
and eager disciple of Champollion, deciphered the ancient name of Siût;
but since he does not specify the cartouche by which it could be
identified, one might wander about the mountain for a week without being
able to find it. Having first described the Stabl Antar, he says: “In
another grotto I found twice over the name of the city written in
hieroglyphic characters, _Çi-ou-t_. This name forms part of an
inscription which also contains an ancient royal cartouche; so proving
that the present name of the city dates back to Pharaonic times.”[29]
Here, then, we trace a double process of preservation. This town, which
in the ancient Egyptian was written Ssout, became Lycopolis under the
Greeks; continued to be called Lycopolis throughout the period of Roman
rule in Egypt; reverted to its old historic name under the Copts of the
middle ages, who wrote it Siôout; and survives in the Asyoot of the Arab
fellâh. Nor is this by any means a solitary instance. Khemmis in the
same way became Panopolis, reverted to the Coptic Chmin, and to this day
as Ekhmîm perpetuates the legend of its first foundation. As with these
fragments of the old tongue, so with the race. Subdued again and again
by invading hordes; intermixed for centuries together with Phœnician,
Persian, Greek, Roman and Arab blood, it fuses these heterogeneous
elements in one common mold, reverts persistently to the early type and
remains Egyptian to the last. So strange is the tyranny of natural
forces. The sun and soil of Egypt demand one special breed of men, and
will tolerate no other. Foreign residents cannot rear children in the
country. In the Isthmus of Suez, which is considered the healthiest part
of Egypt, an alien population of twenty thousand persons failed in the
course of ten years to rear one infant born upon the soil. Children of
an alien father and an Egyptian mother will die off in the same way in
early infancy, unless brought up in the simple native fashion. And it is
affirmed of the descendants of mixed marriages, that after the third
generation the foreign blood seems to be eliminated, while the traits of
the race are restored to their original purity.
These are but a few instances of the startling conservatism of Egypt--a
conservatism which interested me particularly, and to which I shall
frequently have occasion to return.
Each nome or province of ancient Egypt had its sacred animals; and Siût
was called Lycopolis by the Greeks[30] because the wolf (now almost
extinct in the land) was there held in the same kind of reverence as the
cat at Bubastis, the crocodile at Ombos, and the lion at Leontopolis.
Mummy-wolves are, or used to be, found in the smaller tombs about the
mountain, as well as mummy-jackals; Anubis, the jackal-headed god, being
the presiding deity of the district. A mummied jackal from this place,
curiously wrapped in striped bandages, is to be seen in the first
Egyptian room at the British Museum.
But the view from the mountain above Siût is finer than its tombs and
more ancient than its mummies. Seen from within the great doorway of the
second grotto, it looks like a framed picture. For the foreground, we
have a dazzling slope of limestone débris; in the middle distance, a
wide plain clothed with the delicious tender green of very young corn;
farther away yet, the cupolas and minarets of Siût rising from the midst
of a belt of palm-groves; beyond these again, the molten gold of the
great river glittering away, coil after coil, into the far distance; and
all along the horizon the everlasting boundary of the desert. Large
pools of placid water left by the last inundation lie here and there,
like lakes amid the green. A group of brown men are wading yonder with
their nets. A funeral comes along the embanked road--the bier carried at
a rapid pace on men’s shoulders and covered with a red shawl; the women
taking up handfuls of dust and scattering it upon their heads as they
walk. We can see the dust flying and hear their shrill wail borne upon
the breathless air. The cemetery toward which they are going lies round
to the left, at the foot of the mountain--a wilderness of little white
cupolas, with here and there a tree. Broad spaces of shade sleep under
the spreading sycamores by the road side; a hawk cries overhead; and
Siût, bathed in the splendor of the morning sun, looks as fairy-like as
ever.
Lepsius is reported to have said that the view from this hillside was
the finest in Egypt. But Egypt is a long country and questions of
precedence are delicate matters to deal with. It is, however, a very
beautiful view; though most travelers who know the scenery about Thebes
and the approach to Assûan would hesitate, I should fancy, to give the
preference to a landscape from which the nearer mountains are excluded
by the position of the spectator.
The tombs here, as in many other parts of Egypt, are said to have been
largely appropriated by early Christian anchorites during the reigns of
the later Roman emperors; and to these recluses may perhaps be ascribed
the legend that makes Lycopolis the abode of Joseph and Mary during the
years of their sojourn in Egypt. It is, of course, but a legend and
wholly improbable. If the holy family ever journeyed into Egypt at all,
which certain Biblical critics now hold to be doubtful, they probably
rested from their wanderings at some town not very far from the eastern
border--as Tanis, or Pithom, or Bubastis. Siût would, at all events, lie
at least two hundred and fifty miles to the southward of any point to
which they might reasonably be supposed to have penetrated.
Still, one would like to believe a story that laid the scene of our
Lord’s childhood in the midst of this beautiful and glowing Egyptian
pastoral. With what a profound and touching interest it would invest the
place! With what different eyes we should look down upon a landscape
which must have been dear and familiar to Him in all its details and
which, from the nature of the ground, must have remained almost
unchanged from His day to ours! The mountain with its tombs, the green
corn-flats, the Nile and the desert, looked then as they look now. It is
only the Moslem minarets that are new. It is only the pylons and
sanctuaries of the ancient worship that have passed away.
CHAPTER VII.
SIUT TO DENDERAH.
We started from Siût with a couple of tons of new brown bread on board,
which, being cut into slices and laid to dry in the sun, was speedily
converted into rusks and stored away in two huge lockers on the upper
deck. The sparrows and water-wagtails had a good time while the drying
went on; but no one seemed to grudge the toll they levied.
“We often had a “big wind” now; though it seldom began to blow before
ten or eleven A.M., and generally fell at sunset. Now and then, when it
chanced to keep up, and the river was known to be free from shallows, we
went on sailing through the night; but this seldom happened, and, when
it did happen, it made sleep impossible--so that nothing but the
certainty of doing a great many miles between bedtime and breakfast
could induce us to put up with it.
We had now been long enough afloat to find out that we had almost always
one man on the sick list, and were therefore habitually short of a hand
for the navigation of the boat. There never were such fellows for
knocking themselves to pieces as our sailors. They were always bruising
their feet, wounding their hands, getting sunstrokes, and whitlows, and
sprains, and disabling themselves in some way. L----, with her little
medicine chest and her roll of lint and bandages, soon had a small but
steady practice, and might have been seen about the lower deck most
mornings after breakfast, repairing these damaged Alis and Hassans. It
was well for them that we carried “an experienced surgeon,” for they
were entirely helpless and despondent when hurt, and ignorant of the
commonest remedies. Nor is this helplessness confined to natives of the
sailor and fellâh class. The provincial proprietors and officials are to
the full as ignorant, not only of the uses of such simple things as
poultices or wet compresses, but of the most elementary laws of health.
Doctors there are none south of Cairo; and such is the general mistrust
of state medicine, that when, as in the case of any widely spread
epidemic, a medical officer is sent up the river by order of the
government, half the people are said to conceal their sick, while the
other half reject the remedies prescribed for them. Their trust in the
skill of the passing European is, on the other hand, unbounded. Appeals
for advice and medicine were constantly being made to us by both rich
and poor; and there was something very pathetic in the simple faith with
which they accepted any little help we were able to give them. Meanwhile
L----’s medical reputation, being confirmed by a few simple cures, rose
high among the crew. They called her the hakîm sitt (the doctor-lady);
obeyed her directions and swallowed her medicines as reverently as if
she were the college of surgeons personified; and showed their gratitude
in all kinds of pretty, child-like ways--singing her favorite Arab song
as they ran beside her donkey--searching for sculptured fragments
whenever there were ruins to be visited--and constantly bringing her
little gifts of pebbles and wild flowers.
Above Siût, the picturesqueness of the river is confined for the most
part to the eastern bank. We have almost always a near range of
mountains on the Arabian side, and a more distant chain on the Libyan
horizon. Gebel Sheik el Raáineh succeeds to Gebel Abufayda, and is
followed in close succession by the cliffs of Gow, of Gebel Sheik el
Hereedee, of Gebel Ayserat and Gebel Tûkh--all alike rigid in strongly
marked beds of level limestone strata; flat-topped and even, like lines
of giant ramparts; and more or less pierced with orifices which we know
to be tombs, but which look like loop-holes from a distance.
Flying before the wind with both sails set, we see the rapid panorama
unfold itself day after day, mile after mile, hour after hour. Villages,
palm groves, rock-cut sepulchers, flit past and are left behind. To-day
we enter the region of the dôm palm. To-morrow we pass the map-drawn
limit of the crocodile. The cliffs advance, recede, open away into
desolate-looking valleys, and show faint traces of paths leading to
excavated tombs on distant heights. The headland that looked shadowy in
the distance a couple of hours ago is reached and passed. The
cargo-boat on which we have been gaining all the morning is outstripped
and dwindling in the rear. Now we pass a bold bluff sheltering a sheik’s
tomb and a solitary dôm palm--now an ancient quarry from which the stone
has been cut out in smooth masses, leaving great halls, and corridors,
and stages in the mountain side. At Gow,[31] the scene of an
insurrection headed by a crazy dervish some ten years ago, we see, in
place of a large and populous village, only a tract of fertile corn
ground, a few ruined huts, and a group of decapitated palms. We are now
skirting Gebel Sheik el Hereedee; here bordered by a rich margin of
cultivated flat; yonder leaving space for scarce a strip of roadway
between the precipice and the river. Then comes Raáineh, a large village
of square mud towers, lofty and battlemented, with string-courses of
pots for the pigeons--and later on, Girgeh, once the capital town of
Middle Egypt, where we put in for half an hour to post and inquire for
letters. Here the Nile is fast eating away the bank and carrying the
town by storm. A ruined mosque with pointed arches, roofless cloisters,
and a leaning column that must surely have come to the ground by this
time, stands just above the landing-place. A hundred years ago it lay a
quarter of a mile from the river; ten years ago it was yet perfect;
after a few more inundations it will be swept away. Till that time
comes, however, it helps to make Girgeh one of the most picturesque
towns in Egypt.
At Farshût we see the sugar-works in active operation--smoke pouring
from the tall chimneys; steam issuing from the traps in the basement;
cargo-boats unlading fresh sugar-cane against the bank; heavily burdened
Arabs transporting it to the factory; bullock trucks laden with
cane-leaf for firing. A little higher up, at Sahîl Bajûra on the
opposite side of the river, we find the bank strewn for full a quarter
of a mile with sugar-cane _en masse_. Hundreds of camels are either
arriving laden with it, or going back for more--dozens of cargo-boats
are drawn up to receive it--swarms of brown fellâheen are stacking it on
board for unshipment again at Farshût. The camels snort and growl; the
men shout; the overseers, in blue-fringed robes and white turbans, stalk
to and fro, and keep the work going. The mountains here recede so far as
to be almost out of sight, and a plain rich in sugar-cane and date-palms
widens out between them and the river.
And now the banks are lovely with an unwonted wealth of verdure. The
young corn clothes the plain like a carpet, while the yellow-tasseled
mimosa, the feathery tamarisk, the dôm and date palm, and spreading
sycamore-fig, border the towing-path like garden trees beside a garden
walk.
Farther on still, when all this greenery is left behind and the banks
have again become flat and bare, we see to our exceeding surprise what
seems to be a very large grizzled ape perched on the top of a dust-heap
on the western bank. The creature is evidently quite tame, and sits on
its haunches in just that chilly, melancholy posture that the chimpanzee
is wont to assume in his cage at the Zoological Gardens. Some six or
eight Arabs, one of whom has dismounted from his camel for the purpose,
are standing round and staring at him, much as the British public stand
and stare at the specimen in the Regent’s Park. Meanwhile a strange
excitement breaks out among our crew. They crowd to the side; they
shout; they gesticulate; the captain salaams; the steersman waves his
hand; all eyes are turned toward the shore.
“Do you see Sheik Selîm?” cries Talhamy, breathlessly, rushing up from
below. “There he is! Look at him! That is Sheik Selîm!”
And so we find out that it is not a monkey but a man--and not only a
man, but a saint. Holiest of the holy, dirtiest of the dirty,
white-pated, white-bearded, withered, bent, and knotted up, is the
renowned Sheik Selîm--he who, naked and unwashed, has sat on that same
spot every day through summer heat and winter cold for the last fifty
years; never providing himself with food or water; never even lifting
his hand to his mouth; depending on charity not only for his food but
for his feeding! He is not nice to look at, even by this dim light, and
at this distance; but the sailors think him quite beautiful, and call
aloud to him for his blessing as we go by.
“It is not by our own will that we sail past, O father!” they cry. “Fain
would we kiss thy hand; but the wind blows and the mérkeb (boat) goes,
and we have no power to stay!”
But Sheik Selîm neither lifts his head nor shows any sign of hearing,
and in a few minutes the mound on which he sits is left behind in the
gloaming.
At How, where the new town is partly built on the mounds of the old
(Diospolis Parva), we next morning saw the natives transporting small
boat-loads of ancient brick rubbish to the opposite side of the river,
for the purpose of manuring those fields from which the early durra crop
had just been gathered in. Thus, curiously enough, the mud left by some
inundation of two or three thousand years ago comes at last to the use
from which it was then diverted, and is found to be more fertilizing
than the new deposit. At Kasr es Sayd, a little farther on, we came to
one of the well-known “bad bits”--a place where the bed of the river is
full of sunken rocks, and sailing is impossible. Here the men were half
the day punting the dahabeeyah over the dangerous part, while we grubbed
among the mounds of what was once the ancient city of Chenoboscion.
These remains, which cover a large superficial area and consist entirely
of crude brick foundations, are very interesting and in good
preservation. We traced the ground-plans of several houses; followed the
passages by which they were separated; and observed many small arches
which seemed built on too small a scale for doors or windows, but for
which it was difficult to account in any other way. Brambles and weeds
were growing in these deserted inclosures; while rubbish-heaps,
excavated pits, and piles of broken pottery divided the ruins and made
the work of exploration difficult. We looked in vain for the dilapidated
quay and sculptured blocks mentioned in Wilkinson’s “General View of
Egypt”; but if the foundation-stones of the new sugar factory close
against the mooring-place could speak, they would no doubt explain the
mystery. We saw nothing, indeed, to show that Chenoboscion had contained
any stone structures whatever, save the broken shaft of one small
granite column.
The village of Kasr es Sayd consists of a cluster of mud huts and a
sugar factory; but the factory was idle that day and the village seemed
half deserted. The view here is particularly fine. About a couple of
miles to the southward, the mountains, in magnificent procession, come
down again at right angles to the river, and thence reach away in long
ranges of precipitous headlands. The plain, terminating abruptly against
the foot of this gigantic barrier, opens back eastward to the remotest
horizon--an undulating sea of glistening sand, bordered by a chaotic
middle distance of mounded ruins. Nearest of all, a narrow foreground of
cultivated soil, green with young crops and watered by frequent shâdûfs,
extends along the river side to the foot of the mountains. A sheik’s
tomb shaded by a single dôm palm is conspicuous on the bank, while far
away, planted amid the solitary sands, we see a large Coptic convent
with many cupolas; a cemetery full of Christian graves; and a little
oasis of date palms indicating the presence of a spring.
The chief interest of this scene, however, centers in the ruins; and
these--looked upon from a little distance, blackened, desolate,
half-buried, obscured every now and then, when the wind swept over them,
by swirling clouds of dust--reminded us of the villages we had seen not
two years before, half-overwhelmed and yet smoking, in the midst of a
lava-torrent below Vesuvius.
We now had the full moon again, making night more beautiful than day.
Sitting on deck for hours after the sun had gone down, when the boat
glided gently on with half-filled sail and the force of the wind was
spent, we used to wonder if in all the world there was another climate
in which the effect of moonlight was so magical. To say that every
object far or near was visible as distinctly as by day, yet more
tenderly, is to say nothing. It was not only form that was defined; it
was not only light and shadow that were vivid--it was color that was
present. Color neither deadened nor changed; but softened, glowing,
spiritualized. The amber sheen of the sand-island in the middle of the
river, the sober green of the palm-grove, the little lady’s
turquoise-colored hood, were clear to the sight and relatively true in
tone. The oranges showed through the bars of the crate like nuggets of
pure gold. L----’s crimson shawl glowed with a warmer dye than it ever
wore by day. The mountains were flushed as if in the light of sunset. Of
all the natural phenomena that we beheld in the course of the journey, I
remember none that surprised us more than this. We could scarcely
believe at first that it was not some effect of after-glow, or some
miraculous aurora of the east. But the sun had nothing to do with that
flush upon the mountains. The glow was in the stone, and the moonlight
but revealed the local color.
For some days before they came in sight we had been eagerly looking for
the Theban hills; and now, after a night of rapid sailing, we woke one
morning to find the sun rising on the wrong side of the boat, the
favorable wind dead against us, and a picturesque chain of broken peaks
upon our starboard bow. By these signs we knew that we must have come to
the great bend in the river between How and Keneh, and that these new
mountains, so much more varied in form than those of Middle Egypt, must
be the mountains behind Denderah. They seemed to lie upon the eastern
bank, but that was an illusion which the map disproved, and which lasted
only till the great corner was fairly turned. To turn that corner,
however, in the teeth of wind and current, was no easy task, and cost us
two long days of hard tracking.
At a point about ten miles below Denderah we saw some thousands of
fellâheen at work amid clouds of sand upon the embankments of a new
canal. They swarmed over the mounds like ants, and the continuous murmur
of their voices came to us across the river like the humming of
innumerable bees. Others, following the path along the bank, were
pouring toward the spot in an unbroken stream. The Nile must here be
nearly half a mile in breadth; but the engineers in European dress and
the overseers with long sticks in their hands were plainly
distinguishable by the help of a glass. The tents in which these
officials were camping out during the progress of the work gleamed white
among the palms by the river side. Such scenes must have been common
enough in the old days when a conquering Pharaoh, returning from Libya
or the land of Kush, set his captives to raise a dyke, or excavate a
lake, or quarry a mountain. The Israelites, building the massive walls
of Pithom and Rameses with bricks of their own making, must have
presented exactly such a spectacle.
That we were witnessing a case of forced labor could not be doubted.
Those thousands yonder had most certainly been drafted off in gangs from
hundreds of distant villages, and were but little better off, for the
time being, than the captives of the ancient empire. In all cases of
forced labor under the present _régime_, however, it seems that the
laborer is paid, though very insufficiently, for his unwilling toil; and
that his captivity only lasts so long as the work for which he has been
pressed remains in progress. In some cases the term of service is
limited to three or four months, at the end of which time the men are
supposed to be returned in barges towed by government steam-tugs. It too
often happens, nevertheless, that the poor souls are left to get back
how they can; and thus many a husband and father either perishes by the
way or is driven to take service in some village far from home.
Meanwhile his wife and children, being scantily supported by the Sheik
el Beled, fall into a condition of semi-serfdom; and his little patch of
ground, left untilled through seed-time and harvest, passes after the
next inundation into the hands of a stranger.
But there is another side to this question of forced labor. Water must
be had in Egypt, no matter at what cost. If the land is not sufficiently
irrigated the crops fail and the nation starves. Now, the frequent
construction of canals has from immemorial time been reckoned among the
first duties of an Egyptian ruler; but it is a duty which cannot be
performed without the willing or unwilling co-operation of several
thousand workmen. Those who are best acquainted with the character and
temper of the fellâh maintain the hopelessness of looking to him for
voluntary labor of this description. Frugal, patient, easily contented
as he is, no promise of wages, however high, would tempt him from his
native village. What to him are the needs of a district six or seven
hundred miles away? His own shâdûf is enough for his own patch, and so
long as he can raise his three little crops a year neither he nor his
family will starve. How, then, are these necessary public works to be
carried out, unless by means of the _corvée_? M. About has put an
ingenious summary of this “other-side” argument into the mouth of his
ideal fellâh. “It is not the emperor,” says Ahmed to the Frenchman, “who
causes the rain to descend upon your land; it is the west wind--and the
benefit thus conferred upon you exacts no penalty of manual labor. But
in Egypt, where the rain from heaven falls scarcely three times in the
year, it is the prince who supplies its place to us by distributing the
waters of the Nile. This can only be done by the work of men’s hands;
and it is therefore to the interest of all that the hands of all should
be at his disposal.”
We regarded it, I think, as an especial piece of good fortune when we
found ourselves becalmed next day within three or four miles of
Denderah. Abydos comes first in order, according to the map; but then
the temples lie seven or eight miles from the river, and, as we happened
just thereabouts to be making some ten miles an hour, we put off the
excursion till our return. Here, however, the ruins lay comparatively
near at hand, and in such a position that we could approach them from
below and rejoin our dahabeeyah a few miles higher up the river. So,
leaving Reïs Hassan to track against the current, we landed at the first
convenient point, and, finding neither donkeys nor guides at hand, took
an escort of three or four sailors and set off on foot.
The way was long, the day was hot, and we had only the map to go by.
Having climbed the steep bank and skirted an extensive palm-grove, we
found ourselves in a country without paths or roads of any kind. The
soil, squared off as usual like a gigantic chess-board, was traversed by
hundreds of tiny water-channels, between which we had to steer our
course as best we could. Presently the last belt of palms was
passed--the plain, green with young corn and level as a lake, widened
out at the foot of the mountains--and the temple, islanded in that sea
of rippling emerald, rose up before us upon its platform of blackened
mounds.
It was still full two miles away; but it looked enormous--showing from
this distance as a massive, low-browed, sharply defined mass of
dead-white masonry. The walls sloped in slightly toward the top; and the
façade appeared to be supported on eight square biers, with a large
doorway in the center. If sculptured ornament, or cornice, or pictured
legend enriched those walls, we were too far off to distinguish them.
All looked strangely naked and solemn--more like a tomb than a temple.
Nor was the surrounding scene less deathlike in its solitude. Not a
tree, not a hut, not a living form broke the green monotony of the
plain. Behind the temple, but divided from it by a farther space of
mounded ruins, rose the mountains--pinky, aerial, with sheeny
sand-drifts heaped in the hollows of their bare buttresses and spaces of
soft blue shadow in their misty chasms. Where the range receded, a long
vista of glittering desert opened to the Libyan horizon.
Then as we drew nearer, coming by and by to a raised causeway which
apparently connected the mounds with some point down by the river, the
details of the temple gradually emerged into distinctness. We could now
see the curve and under shadow of the cornice; and a small object in
front of the façade, which looked at first sight like a monolithic
altar, resolved itself into a massive gateway, of the kind known as a
single pylon. Nearer still, among some low outlying mounds, we came upon
fragments of sculptured capitals and mutilated statues half-buried in
rank grass--upon a series of stagnant niter-tanks and deserted
workshops--upon the telegraph poles and wires which here come striding
along the edge of the desert and vanish southward with messages for
Nubia and the Soudan.
Egypt is the land of niter. It is found wherever a crude brick mound is
disturbed or an antique stone structure demolished. The Nile mud is
strongly impregnated with it; and in Nubia we used to find it lying in
thick talc-like flakes upon the surface of rocks far above the present
level of the inundation. These tanks at Denderah had been sunk, we are
told, when the great temple was excavated by Abbas Pasha more than
twenty years ago. The niter then found was utilized out of hand; washed
and crystallized in the tanks; and converted into gunpowder in the
adjacent workshops. The telegraph wires are more recent intruders, and
the work of the khedive; but one longed to put them out of sight, to
pull down the gunpowder sheds, and to fill up the tanks with débris. For
what had the arts of modern warfare or the wonders of modern science to
do with Hathor, the Lady of Beauty and the Western Shades, the Nurse of
Horus, the Egyptian Aphrodite, to whom yonder mountain of wrought stone
and all these wastes were sacred?
We were by this time near enough to see that the square piers of the
façade were neither square nor piers, but huge round columns with
human-headed capitals; and that the walls, instead of being plain and
tomb-like, were covered with an infinite multitude of sculptured
figures. The pylon--rich with inscriptions and bas-reliefs, but
disfigured by myriads of tiny wasps nests, like clustered
mud-bubbles--now towered high above our heads and led to a walled avenue
cut direct through the mounds and sloping downward to the main entrance
of the temple.
Not, however, till we stood immediately under those ponderous columns,
looking down upon the paved floor below and up to the huge cornice that
projected overhead like the crest of an impending wave, did we realize
the immense proportions of the building. Lofty as it looked from a
distance, we now found that it was only the interior that had been
excavated, and that not more than two-thirds of its actual height was
visible above the mounds. The level of the avenue was, indeed, at its
lowest part full twenty feet above that of the first great hall; and we
had still a steep temporary staircase to go down before reaching the
original pavement.
The effect of the portico as one stands at the top of this staircase is
one of overwhelming majesty. Its breadth, its height, the massiveness of
its parts, exceed in grandeur all that one has been anticipating
throughout the long two miles of approach. The immense girth of the
columns, the huge screens which connect them, the ponderous cornice
jutting overhead, confuse the imagination, and in the absence of given
measurements[32] appear, perhaps, even more enormous than they are.
Looking up to the architrave, we see a kind of Egyptian Panathenaic
procession of carven priests and warriors, some with standards and some
with musical instruments. The winged globe, depicted upon a gigantic
scale in the curve of the cornice, seems to hover above the central
doorway. Hieroglyphs, emblems, strange forms of kings and gods, cover
every foot of wall-space, frieze and pillar. Nor does this wealth of
surface-sculpture tend in any way to diminish the general effect of
size. It would seem, on the contrary, as if complex decoration were in
this instance the natural complement to simplicity of form. Every group,
every inscription, appears to be necessary and in its place; an
essential part of the building it helps to adorn. Most of these details
are as perfect as on the day when the last workman went his way and the
architect saw his design completed. Time has neither marred the surface
of the stone nor blunted the work of the chisel. Such injury as they
have sustained is from the hand of man; and in no country has the hand
of man achieved more and destroyed more than in Egypt. The Persians
overthrew the masterpieces of the Pharaohs; the Copts mutilated the
temples of the Ptolemies and Cæsars; the Arabs stripped the pyramids and
carried Memphis away piece-meal. Here at Denderah we have an example of
Græco-Egyptian work and early Christian fanaticism. Begun by Ptolemy
XI.,[33] and bearing upon its
[Illustration: CLEOPATRA.]
latest ovals the name and style of Nero, the present building was still
comparatively new when, in A.D. 379, the ancient religion was abolished
by the edict of Theodosius. It was then the most gorgeous as well as the
most recent of all those larger temples built during the prosperous
foreign rule of the last seven hundred years. It stood, surrounded by
groves of palm and acacia, within the precincts of a vast inclosure, the
walls of which, one thousand feet in length, thirty-five feet in height
and fifteen feet thick, are still traceable. A dromos, now buried under
twenty feet of débris, led from the pylon to the portico. The pylon is
there still, a partial ruin; but the temple, with its roof, its
staircases and its secret treasure-crypts, is in all essential respects
as perfect as on the day when its splendor was given over to the
spoilers. One can easily imagine how these spoilers sacked and ravaged
all before them; how they desecrated the sacred places and cast down the
statues of the goddess and divided the treasures of the sanctuary. They
did not, it is true, commit such wholesale destruction as the Persian
invaders of nine hundred years before; but they were merciless
iconoclasts and hacked away the face of every figure within easy reach,
both inside and outside the building.
Among those which escaped, however, is the famous external bas-relief of
Cleopatra on the back of the temple. This curious sculpture is now
banked up with rubbish for its better preservation and can no longer be
seen by travelers. It was, however, admirably photographed some years
ago by Signor Beati; which photograph is faithfully reproduced in the
annexed engraving. Cleopatra is here represented with a head-dress
combining the attributes of three goddesses; namely, the vulture of Maut
(the head of which is modeled in a masterly way), the horned disk of
Hathor and the throne of Isis. The falling mass below the head-dress is
intended to represent hair dressed according to the Egyptian fashion, in
an infinite number of small plaits, each finished off with an ornamental
tag. The women of Egypt and Nubia wear their hair so to this day and
unplait it, I am sorry to say, not oftener than once in every eight or
ten weeks. The Nubian girls fasten each separate tail with a lump of
Nile mud daubed over with yellow ocher; but Queen Cleopatra’s silken
tresses were probably tipped with gilded wax or gum.
It is difficult to know where decorative sculpture ends and portraiture
begins in a work of this epoch. We cannot even be certain that a
portrait was intended; though the introduction of the royal oval in
which the name of Cleopatra (Klaupatra) is spelled with its vowel sounds
in full, would seem to point that way. If it is a portrait, then large
allowance must be made for conventional treatment. The fleshiness of the
features and the intolerable simper are common to every head of the
Ptolemaic period. The ear, too, is pattern work, and the drawing of the
figure is ludicrous. Mannerism apart, however, the face wants for
neither individuality nor beauty. Cover the mouth, and you have an
almost faultless profile. The chin and throat are also quite lovely;
while the whole face, suggestive of cruelty, subtlety, and
voluptuousness, carries with it an indefinable impression not only of
portraiture, but of likeness.
It is not without something like a shock that one first sees the
unsightly havoc wrought upon the Hathor-headed columns of the façade at
Denderah. The massive folds of the head-gear are there; the ears, erect
and pointed like those of a heifer, are there; but of the benignant face
of the goddess not a feature remains. Ampère, describing these columns
in one of his earliest letters from Egypt, speaks of them as being still
“brilliant with colors that time had had no power to efface.” Time,
however, must have been unusually busy during the thirty years that have
gone by since then; for though we presently found several instances of
painted bas-reliefs in the small inner chambers, I do not remember to
have observed any remains of color (save here and there a faint trace of
yellow ocher) on the external decorations.
Without, all was sunshine and splendor; within, all was silence and
mystery. A heavy, death-like smell, as of long-imprisoned gases, met us
on the threshold. By the half-light that strayed in through the portico
we could see vague outlines of a forest of giant columns rising out of
the gloom below and vanishing into the gloom above. Beyond these again
appeared shadowy vistas of successive halls leading away into depths of
impenetrable darkness. It required no great courage to go down those
stairs and explore those depths with a party of fellow-travelers; but it
would have been a gruesome place to venture into alone.
Seen from within, the portico shows as a vast hall, fifty feet in height
and supported on twenty-four Hathor-headed columns. Six of these, being
engaged in the screen, form part of the façade, and are the same upon
which we have been looking from without. By degrees, as our eyes become
used to the twilight, we see here and there a capital which still
preserves the vague likeness of a gigantic female face; while, dimly
visible on every wall, pillar, and doorway, a multitude of fantastic
forms--hawk-headed, ibis-headed, cow-headed, mitered, plumed, holding
aloft strange emblems, seated on thrones, performing mysterious
rites--seem to emerge from their places, like things of life. Looking up
to the ceiling, now smoke-blackened and defaced, we discover elaborate
paintings of scarabæi, winged globes, and zodiacal emblems divided by
borders of intricate Greek patterns, the prevailing colors of which are
verditer and chocolate. Bands of hieroglyphic inscriptions of royal
ovals, of Hathor-heads of mitered hawks, of lion-headed chimeras, of
divinities and kings in bas-relief, cover the shafts of the great
columns from top to bottom; and even here, every accessible human face,
however small, has been laboriously mutilated.
Bewildered at first sight of these profuse and mysterious decorations,
we wander round and round; going on from the first hall to the second,
from the second to the third; and plunging into deeper darkness at every
step. We have been reading about these gods and emblems for weeks
past--we have studied the plan of the temple beforehand; yet now that we
are actually here, our book knowledge goes for nothing, and we feel as
hopelessly ignorant as if we had been suddenly landed in a new world.
Not till we have got over this first feeling of confusion--not till,
resting awhile on the base of one of the columns, we again open out the
plan of the building--do we begin to realize the purport of the
sculptures by which we are surrounded.
The ceremonial of Egyptian worship was essentially processional. Herein
we have the central idea of every temple and the key to its
construction. It was bound to contain store-chambers in which were kept
vestments, instruments, divine emblems, and the like; laboratories for
the preparation of perfumes and unguents; treasuries for the safe
custody of holy vessels and precious offerings; chambers for the
reception and purification of tribute in kind; halls for the assembling
and marshaling of priests and functionaries; and, for processional
purposes, corridors, staircases, court-yards, cloisters, and vast
inclosures planted with avenues of trees and surrounded by walls which
hedged in with inviolable secrecy the solemn rites of the priesthood.
In this plan, it will be seen, there is no provision made for anything
in the form of public worship; but then an Egyptian temple was not a
place for public worship. It was a treasure-house, a sacristy, a royal
oratory, a place of preparation, of consecration, of sacerdotal privacy.
There, in costly shrines, dwelt the divine images. There they were robed
and unrobed; perfumed with incense; visited and worshiped by the king.
On certain great days of the calendar, as on the occasion of the
festival of the new year, or the panegyries of the local gods, these
images were brought out, paraded along the corridors of the temple,
carried round the roof, and borne with waving of banners, and chanting
of hymns, and burning of incense, through the sacred groves of the
inclosure. Probably none were admitted to these ceremonies save persons
of royal or priestly birth. To the rest of the community, all that took
place within those massy walls was enveloped in mystery. It may be
questioned, indeed, whether the great mass of the people had any kind of
personal religion. They may not have been rigidly excluded from the
temple precincts, but they seem to have been allowed no participation in
the worship of the gods. If now and then, on high festival days, they
beheld the sacred bark of the deity carried in procession round the
temenos, or caught a glimpse of moving figures and glittering ensigns in
the pillared dusk of the Hypostyle Hall, it was all they ever beheld of
the solemn services of their church.
The temple of Denderah consists of a portico; a hall of entrance; a hall
of assembly; a third hall, which may be called the hall of the sacred
boats; one small ground-floor chapel; and upward of twenty side chambers
of various sizes, most of which are totally dark. Each one of these
halls and chambers bears the sculptured record of its use. Hundreds of
tableaux in bas-relief, thousands of elaborate hieroglyphic
inscriptions, cover every foot of available space on wall and ceiling
and soffit, on doorway and column, and on the lining-slabs of passages
and staircases. These precious texts contain, amid much that is mystical
and tedious, an extraordinary wealth of indirect history. Here we find
programmes of ceremonial observances; numberless legends of the gods;
chronologies of kings with their various titles; registers of weights
and measures; catalogues of offerings; recipes for the preparation of
oils and essences; records of repairs and restorations done to the
temple; geographical lists of cities and provinces; inventories of
treasure, and the like. The hall of assembly contains a calendar of
festivals, and sets forth with studied precision the rites to be
performed on each recurring anniversary. On the ceiling of the portico
we find an astronomical zodiac; on the walls of a small temple on the
roof, the whole history of the resurrection of Osiris, together with the
order of prayer for the twelve hours of the night, and a calendar of the
festivals of Osiris in all the principal cities of Upper and Lower
Egypt. Seventy years ago these inscriptions were the puzzle and despair
of the learned; but since modern science has plucked out the heart of
its mystery, the whole temple lies before us as an open volume filled to
overflowing with strange and quaint and heterogeneous matter--a Talmud
in sculptured stone.[34]
Given such help as Mariette’s hand-book affords, one can trace out most
of these curious things and identify the uses of every hall and chamber
throughout the building. The king, in his double character of Pharaoh
and high priest, is the hero of every sculptured scene. Wearing
sometimes the truncated crown of Lower Egypt, sometimes the helmet-crown
of Upper Egypt, and sometimes the pschent, which is a combination of
both, he figures in every tableau and heads every procession. Beginning
with the sculptures of the portico, we see him arrive, preceded by his
five royal standards. He wears his long robe; his sandals are on his
feet; he carries his staff in his hand. Two goddesses receive him at the
door and conduct him into the presence of Thoth, the ibis-headed, and
Horus, the hawk-headed, who pour upon him a double stream of the waters
of life. Thus purified, he is crowned by the goddesses of Upper and
Lower Egypt, and by them consigned to the local deities of Thebes and
Heliopolis, who usher him into the supreme presence of Hathor. He then
presents various offerings and recites certain prayers; whereupon the
goddess promises him length of days, everlasting renown, and other good
things. We next see him, always with the same smile and always in the
same attitude, doing homage to Osiris, to Horus and other divinities. He
presents them with flowers, wine, bread, incense; while they in return
promise him life, joy, abundant harvests, victory, and the love of his
people. These pretty speeches--chefs-d’œuvre of diplomatic style and
models of elegant flattery--are repeated over and over again in scores
of hieroglyphic groups. Mariette, however, sees in them something more
than the language of the court grafted upon the language of the
hierarchy; he detects the language of the schools, and discovers in the
utterances here ascribed to the king and the gods a reflection of that
contemporary worship of the beautiful, the good, and the true, which
characterized the teaching of the Alexandrian Museum.[35]
Passing on from the portico to the hall of assembly, we enter a region
of still dimmer twilight, beyond which all is dark. In the
side-chambers, where the heat is intense and the atmosphere stifling, we
can see only by the help of lighted candles. These rooms are about
twenty feet in length; separate, like prison cells; and perfectly dark.
The sculptures which cover their walls are, however, as numerous as
those in the outer halls, and indicate in each instance the purpose for
which the room was designed. Thus in the laboratories we find
bas-reliefs of flasks and vases and figures carrying perfume bottles of
the familiar aryballos form; in the tribute chambers, offerings of lotus
lilies, wheat sheaves, maize, grapes and pomegranates. In the oratories
of Isis, Amen, and Sekhet, representations of these divinities
enthroned, and receiving the homage of the king; while in the treasury,
both king and queen appear laden with precious gifts of caskets,
necklaces, pectoral ornaments, sistrums, and the like. It would seem
that the image-breakers had no time to spare for these dark cells; for
here the faces and figures are unmutilated, and in some places even the
original coloring remains in excellent preservation. The complexion of
the goddesses, for instance, is painted of a light buff; the king’s skin
is dark-red; that of Amen, blue. Isis wears a rich robe of the
well-known Indian pine-pattern; Sekhet figures in a many colored garment
curiously diapered; Amen is clad in red and green chain armor. The
skirts of the goddesses are inconceivably scant; but they are rich in
jewelry, and their head-dresses, necklaces, and bracelets are full of
minute and interesting detail. In one of the four oratories dedicated to
Sekhet, the king is depicted in the act of offering a pectoral ornament
of so rich and elegant a design that, had there been time and daylight
to spare, the writer would fain have copied it.
In the center room at the extreme end of the temple, exactly opposite
the main entrance, lies the oratory of Hathor. This dark chamber, into
which no ray of daylight has ever penetrated, contains the sacred niche,
the holy of holies, in which was kept the great golden sistrum of the
goddess. The king alone was privileged to take out that mysterious
emblem. Having done so, he inclosed it in a costly shrine, covered it
with a thick veil, and placed it in one of the sacred boats of which we
find elaborate representations sculptured on the walls of the hall in
which they were kept. These boats, which were constructed of cedar wood,
gold, and silver, were intended to be hoisted on wrought poles, and so
carried in procession on the shoulders of the priests. The niche is
still there--a mere hole in the hall, some three feet square and about
eight feet from the ground.
Thus, candle in hand, we make the circuit of these outer chambers. In
each doorway, besides the place cut out for the bolt, we find a circular
hole drilled above and a quadrant-shaped hollow below, where once upon a
time the pivot of the door turned in its socket. The paved floors, torn
up by treasure-seekers, are full of treacherous holes and blocks of
broken stone. The ceilings are very lofty. In the corridors a dim
twilight reigns; but all is pitch-dark beyond these gloomy thresholds.
Hurrying along by the light of a few flaring candles, one cannot but
feel oppressed by the strangeness and awfulness of the place. We speak
with bated breath, and even our chattering Arabs for once are silent.
The very air tastes as if it had been imprisoned here for centuries.
Finally, we take the staircase on the northern side of the temple, in
order to go up to the roof. Nothing that we have yet seen surprises and
delights us so much, I think, as this staircase.
We have hitherto been tracing in their order all the preparations for a
great religious ceremony. We have seen the king enter the temple;
undergo the symbolical purification; receive the twofold crown; and say
his prayers to each divinity in turn. We have followed him into the
laboratories, the oratories, and the holy of holies. All that he has yet
done, however, is preliminary. The procession is yet to come, and here
we have it. Here, sculptured on the walls of this dark staircase, the
crowning ceremony of Egyptian worship is brought before our eyes in all
its details. Here, one by one, we have the standard-bearers, the
hierophants with the offerings, the priests, the whole long, wonderful
procession, with the king marching at its head. Fresh and uninjured, as
if they had but just left the hand of the sculptor, these figures--each
in his habit as he lived, each with his foot upon the step--mount with
us as we mount, and go beside us all the way. Their attitudes are so
natural, their forms so roundly cut, that one could almost fancy them in
motion as the lights flicker by. Surely there must be some one weird
night in the year when they step out from their places and take up the
next verse of their chanted hymn, and, to the sound of instruments long
mute and songs long silent, pace the moonlit roof in ghostly order!
The sun is already down and the crimson light has faded, when at length
we emerge upon that vast terrace. The roofing-stones are gigantic.
Striding to and fro over some of the biggest, our idle man finds several
that measure seven paces in length by four in breadth. In yonder distant
corner, like a little stone lodge in a vast court-yard, stands a small
temple supported on Hathor-headed columns; while at the eastern end,
forming a second and loftier stage, rises the roof of the portico.
Meanwhile, the after-glow is fading. The mountains are yet clothed in an
atmosphere of tender half-light; but mysterious shadows are fast
creeping over the plain, and the mounds of the ancient city lie at our
feet, confused and tumbled, like the waves of a dark sea. How high it is
here--how lonely--how silent! Hark that thin, plaintive cry! It is the
wail of a night-wandering jackal. See how dark it is yonder, in the
direction of the river! Quick, quick! We have lingered too long. We must
be gone at once; for we are already benighted.
We ought to have gone down by way of the opposite staircase (which is
lined with sculptures of the descending procession) and out through the
temple; but there is no time to do anything but scramble down by a
breach in the wall at a point where the mounds yet lie heaped against
the south side of the building. And now the dusk steals on so rapidly
that before we reach the bottom we can hardly see where to tread. The
huge side wall of the portico seems to tower above us to the very
heavens. We catch a glimpse of two colossal figures, one lion-headed and
the other headless, sitting outside with their backs to the temple.
Then, making with all speed for the open plain, we clamber over
scattered blocks and among shapeless mounds. Presently night overtakes
us. The mountains disappear; the temple is blotted out; and we have only
the faint starlight to guide us. We stumble on, however, keeping all
close together; firing a gun every now and then, in the hope of being
heard by those in the boats; and as thoroughly and undeniably lost as
the babes in the wood.
At last, just as some are beginning to knock up, and all to despair,
Talhamy fires his last cartridge. An answering shot replies from near
by; a wandering light appears in the distance; and presently a whole
bevy of dancing lanterns and friendly brown faces come gleaming out from
among a plantation of sugar-canes to welcome and guide us home. Dear,
sturdy, faithful little Reïs Hassan, honest Khalîfeh, laughing Salame,
gentle Mehemet Ali, and Mûsa, “black but comely”--they were all there.
What a shaking of hands there was--what a gleaming of white teeth--what
a shower of mutually unintelligible congratulations! For my own part, I
may say with truth that I never was much more rejoiced at a meeting in
my life.
CHAPTER VIII.
THEBES AND KARNAK.
Coming on deck the third morning after leaving Denderah, we found the
dahabeeyah decorated with palm-branches, our sailors in their holiday
turbans, and Reïs Hassan _en grande tenue_; that is to say, in shoes and
stockings, which he only wore on very great occasions.
“Nehârak-sa’ïd--good-morning--Luxor!” said he, all in one breath.
It was a hot, hazy morning, with dim ghosts of mountains glowing through
the mist and a warm wind blowing.
We ran to the side; looked out eagerly; but could see nothing. Still the
captain smiled and nodded; and the sailors ran hither and thither,
sweeping and garnishing; and Egendi, to whom his worst enemy could not
have imputed the charge of bashfulness, said: “Luxor--kharûf[36]--all
right!”--every time he came near us.
We had read and dreamed so much about Thebes, and it had always seemed
so far away, that but for this delicate allusion to the promised sheep,
we could hardly have believed we were really drawing nigh unto those
famous shores. About ten, however, the mist was lifted away like a
curtain, and we saw to the left a rich plain studded with palm-groves;
to the right a broad margin of cultivated lands bounded by a bold range
of limestone mountains; and on the farthest horizon another range, all
gray and shadowy.
“Karnak--Gournah--Luxor!” says Reïs Hassan, triumphantly, pointing in
every direction at once. Talhamy tries to show us Medinet Habu and the
Memnonium. The painter vows he can see the heads of the sitting colossi
and the entrance to the valley of the tombs of the kings.
We, meanwhile, stare bewildered, incredulous; seeing none of these
things; finding it difficult, indeed, to believe that any one else sees
them. The river widens away before us; the flats are green on either
side; the mountains are pierced with terraces of rock-cut tombs; while
far away inland, apparently on the verge of the desert, we see here a
clump of sycamores--yonder a dark hillock--midway between both a
confused heap of something that may be either fallen rock or fallen
masonry; but nothing that looks like a temple, nothing to indicate that
we are already within recognizable distance of the grandest ruins in the
world.
Presently, however, as the boat goes on, a massive, windowless structure
which looks (heaven preserve us!) just like a brand-new fort or prison,
towers up above the palm-groves to the left. This, we are told, is one
of the propylons of Karnak; while a few whitewashed huts and a little
crowd of masts now coming into sight a mile or so higher up mark the
position of Luxor. Then up capers Egendi with his never-failing
“Luxor--kharûf--all right!” to fetch down the tar and darabukkeh. The
captain claps his hands. A circle is formed on the lower deck. The men,
all smiles, strike up their liveliest chorus, and so, with barbaric
music and well-filled sails, and flags flying, and green boughs waving
overhead, we make our triumphal entry into Luxor.
The top of another pylon; the slender peak of an obelisk; a colonnade of
giant pillars half-buried in the soil; the white houses of the English,
American and Prussian consuls, each with its flagstaff and ensign; a
steep slope of sandy shore; a background of mud walls and pigeon-towers;
a foreground of native boats and gayly painted dahabeeyahs lying at
anchor--such, as we sweep by, is our first panoramic view of this famous
village. A group of turbaned officials sitting in the shade of an arched
doorway rise and salute us as we pass. The assembled dahabeeyahs dozing
with folded sails, like sea-birds asleep, are roused to spasmodic
activity. Flags are lowered; guns are fired; all Luxor is startled from
its midday siesta. Then, before the smoke has had time to clear off, up
comes the Bagstones in gallant form; whereupon the dahabeeyahs blaze
away again as before.
And now there is a rush of donkeys and donkey boys, beggars, guides and
antiquity-dealers, to the shore--the children screaming for backshîsh;
the dealers exhibiting strings of imitation scarabs; the donkey boys
vociferating the names and praises of their beasts; all alike regarding
us as their lawful prey.
“Hi, lady! Yankee-Doodle donkey; try Yankee Doodle!” cries one.
“Far-away Moses!” yells another. “Good donkey--fast donkey--best donkey
in Luxor!”
“This Prince of Wales donkey!” shouts a third, hauling forward a
decrepit little weak-kneed, moth-eaten looking animal, about as good to
ride upon as a towel-horse. “First-rate donkey! splendid donkey! God
save the queen! Hurrah!”
But neither donkeys nor scarabs are of any importance in our eyes just
now, compared with the letters we hope to find awaiting us on shore. No
sooner, therefore, are the boats made fast than we are all off, some to
the British consulate and some to the poste restante, from both of which
we return rich and happy.
Meanwhile we propose to spend only twenty-four hours in Luxor. We were
to ride round Karnek this first afternoon; to cross to Medinet Habu and
the Ramesseum[37] to-morrow morning; and to sail again as soon after
midday as possible. We hope to get a general idea of the topography of
Thebes, and to carry away a superficial impression of the architectural
style of the Pharaohs. It would be but a glimpse; yet that glimpse was
essential. For Thebes represents the great central period of Egyptian
art. The earlier styles lead up to that point; the later depart from it;
and neither the earlier nor the later are intelligible without it. At
the same time, however, travelers bound for the second cataract do well
to put off everything like a detailed study of Thebes till the time of
coming back. For the present, a rapid survey of the three principal
group of ruins is enough. It supplies the necessary link. It helps one
to a right understanding of Edfu, of Philæ, of Abu Simbel. In a word, it
enables one to put things in their right places; and this, after all,
is a mental process which every traveler must perform for himself.
Thebes, I need scarcely say, was built, like London, on both sides of
the river. Its original extent must have been very great; but its public
buildings, its quays, its thousands of private dwellings, are gone and
have left few traces. The secular city, which was built of crude brick,
is represented by a few insignificant mounds; while of the sacred
edifice, five large groups of limestone ruins--three on the western bank
and two on the eastern, together with the remains of several small
temples and a vast multitude of tombs--are all that remain in permanent
evidence of its ancient splendor. Luxor is a modern Arab village,
occupying the site of one of the oldest of these five ruins. It stands
on the eastern bank, close against the river, about two miles south of
Karnak and nearly opposite the famous sitting colossi of the western
plain. On the opposite bank lie Gournah, the Ramesseum, and Medinet
Habu. A glance at the map will do more than pages of explanation to show
the relative position of these ruins. The Temple of Gournah, it will be
seen, is almost _vis-à-vis_ of Karnak. The Ramesseum faces about
half-way between Karnak and Luxor. Medinet Habu is placed farther to the
south than any building on the eastern side of the river. Behind these
three western groups, reaching far and wide along the edge of the Libyan
range, lies the great Theban Necropolis; while farther back still, in
the radiating valleys on the other side of the mountains, are found the
tombs of the kings. The distance between Karnak and Luxor is a little
less than two miles; while from Medinet Habu to the Temple of Gournah
may be roughly guessed at something under four. We have here, therefore,
some indication of the extent, though not of the limits, of the ancient
city.
Luxor is a large village inhabited by a mixed population of Copts and
Arabs and doing a smart trade in antiquities. The temple has here formed
the nucleus of the village, the older part of which has grown up in and
about the ruins. The grand entrance faces north, looking down toward
Karnak. The twin towers of the great propylon, dilapidated as they are,
stripped of their cornices, incumbered with débris, are magnificent
still. In front of them, one on each side of the central gateway sit two
helmeted colossi, battered and featureless and buried to the chin, like
two of the proud in the doleful fifth circle. A few yards in front of
these again stands a solitary obelisk, also half-buried. The colossi are
of black granite; the obelisk is of red, highly polished and covered on
all four sides with superb hieroglyphs in three vertical columns. These
hieroglyphs are engraved with the precision of the finest gem. They are
cut to a depth of about two inches in the outer columns and five inches
in the central column of the inscription. The true height of this
wonderful monolith is over seventy feet, between thirty and forty of
which are hidden under the accumulated soil of many centuries. Its
companion obelisk, already scaling away by imperceptible degrees under
the skyey influences of an alien climate, looks down with melancholy
indifference upon the petty revolutions and counter-revolutions of the
Place de la Concorde. On a line with the two black colossi, but some
fifty feet or so farther to the west, rises a third and somewhat smaller
head of chert or limestone, the fellow to which is doubtless hidden
among the huts that encroach half-way across the face of the eastern
tower. The whole outer surface of these towers is covered with elaborate
sculptures of gods and men, horses and chariots, the pageantry of
triumph and the carnage of war. The king in his chariot draws his
terrible bow, or slays his enemies on foot, or sits enthroned, receiving
the homage of his court. Whole regiments armed with lance and shield
march across the scene. The foe flies in disorder. The king, attended by
his fan-bearers, returns in state, and the priests burn incense before
him.
This king is Rameses II, called Sesostris and Osymandias by ancient
writers, and best known to history as Rameses the Great. His actual
names and titles as they stand upon the monuments are Ra-user-ma
Sotp-en-Ra Ra-messu Mer-Amen; that is to say: “Ra strong in truth,
approved of Ra, son of Ra, beloved of Amen.”
The battle scenes here represented relate to that memorable campaign
against the Kheta, which forms the subject of the famous “Third Sallier
Papyrus,”[38] and is commemorated upon the walls of almost every temple
built by this monarch. Separated from his army and surrounded by the
enemy, the king, attended only by his chariot-driver, is said to have
six times charged the foe--to have hewn them down with his sword of
might--to have trampled them like straw beneath his horses’ feet--to
have dispersed them, single-handed, like a god. Two thousand five
hundred chariots were there and he overthrew them; one hundred thousand
warriors and he scattered them. Those that he slew not with his hand he
chased unto the water’s edge, causing them to leap to destruction as
leaps the crocodile. Such was the immortal feat of Rameses, and such the
chronicle written by the royal scribe, Pentaur.
Setting aside the strain of Homeric exaggeration, which runs through
this narrative, there can be no doubt that it records some brilliant
deed of arms actually performed by the king, within sight, though not
within reach, of his army; and the hieroglyphic texts interspersed among
these tableaux state that the events depicted took place on the fifth
day of the month Epiphi, in the fifth year of his reign. By this we must
understand the fifth year of his sole reign, which would be five years
after the death of his father, Seti I, with whom he had from an early
age been associated on the throne. He was a man in the prime of life at
the time of this famous engagement, which was fought under the walls of
Kadesh on the Orontes; and the bas-relief sculptures show him to have
been accompanied by several of his sons, who, though evidently very
young, are represented in their war-chariots, fully armed and taking
part in the battle.[39]
The mutilated colossi are portrait statues of the conqueror. The
obelisk, in the pompous style of Egyptian dedications, proclaims that
“The Lord of the World, Guardian-Sun of Truth, approved of Ra, has built
this edifice in honor of his father Amen Ra, and has erected to him
these two great obelisks of stone in face of the house of Rameses in the
city of Ammon.”
So stately was the approach made by Rameses the Great to the temple
founded about a hundred and fifty years before his time by Amenhotep
III. He also built the court-yard upon which this pylon opened, joining
it to the older part of the building in such wise that the original
first court became now the second court, while next in order came the
portico, the hall of assembly, and the sanctuary. By and by, when the
long line of Rameses had passed away, other and later kings put their
hands to the work. The names of Shabaka (Sabaco), of Ptolemy Philopater
and of Alexander the younger appear among the later inscriptions; while
those of Amenhotep IV (Khu-en-Aten), Horemheb and Seti, the father of
Rameses the Great, are found in the earlier parts of the building. It
was in this way that an Egyptian temple grew from age to age, owing a
colonnade to this king and a pylon to that, till it came in time to
represent the styles of many periods. Hence, too, that frequent
irregularity of plan, which, unless it could be ascribed to the caprices
of successive builders, would form so unaccountable a feature in
Egyptian architecture. In the present instance, the pylon and court-yard
of Rameses II are set at an angle of five degrees to the court-yard and
sanctuary of Amenhotep III. This has evidently been done to bring the
Temple of Luxor into a line with the Temple of Karnak, in order that the
two might be connected by means of that stupendous avenue of sphinxes,
the scattered remains of which yet strew the course of the ancient
roadway.
As I have already said, these half-buried pylons, this solitary obelisk,
those giant heads rising in ghastly resurrection before the gates of the
temple, were magnificent still. But it was as the magnificence of a
splendid prologue to a poem of which only garbled fragments remain.
Beyond that entrance lay a smoky, filthy, intricate labyrinth of lanes
and passages. Mud hovels, mud pigeon-towers, mud yards and a mud mosque,
clustered like wasps’ nests in and about the ruins. Architraves
sculptured with royal titles supported the roofs of squallid cabins.
Stately capitals peeped out from the midst of sheds in which buffaloes,
camels, donkeys, dogs and human beings were seen herding together in
unsavory fellowship. Cocks crew, hens cackled, pigeons cooed, turkeys
gobbled, children swarmed, women were baking and gossiping and all the
sordid routine of Arab life was going on, amid winding alleys that
masked the colonnades and defaced the inscriptions of the Pharaohs. To
trace the plan of this part of the building was then impossible.
All communication being cut off between the courts and the portico, we
had to go round outside and through a door at the farther end of the
temple in order to reach the sanctuary and the adjoining chambers. The
Arab who kept the key provided an inch or two of candle. For it was very
dark in there; the roof being still perfect, with a large, rambling,
modern house built on the top of it--so that if this part of the temple
was ever partially lighted, as at Denderah and elsewhere, by small
wedge-like openings in the roof, even those faint gleams were excluded.
The sanctuary, which was rebuilt in the reign of Alexander Ægus; some
small side chambers; and a large hall, which was perhaps the hall of
assembly, were all that remained under cover of the original
roofing-stones. Some half-buried and broken columns on the side next the
river showed, however, that this end was formerly surrounded by a
colonnade. The sanctuary--an oblong granite chamber with its own
separate roof--stands inclosed in a larger hall, like a box within a
box, and is covered inside and outside with bas-reliefs. These
sculptures (among which I observed a kneeling figure of the king,
offering a kneeling image of Amen Ra) are executed in the mediocre style
of the Ptolemies. That is to say, the forms are more natural but less
refined than those of the Pharaonic period. The limbs are fleshy, the
joints large, the features insignificant. Of actual portraiture one
cannot detect a trace; while every face wears the same objectionable
smirk which disfigures the Cleopatra of Denderah.
In the large hall, which I have called the hall of assembly, one is
carried back to the time of the founder. Between Amenhotep III and
Alexander Ægus there lies a great gulf of twelve hundred years; and
their styles are as widely separated as their reigns. The merest novice
could not possibly mistake the one for the other. Nothing is, of course,
more common than to find Egyptian and Græco-Egyptian work side by side
in the same temple; but nowhere are the distinctive characteristics of
each brought into stronger contrast than in these dark chambers of
Luxor. In the sculptures that line the hall of Amenhotep we find the
pure lines, the severe and slender forms, the characteristic heads of a
period when the art, having as yet neither gained or lost by foreign
influences, was entirely Egyptian. The subjects relate chiefly to the
infancy of the king; but it is difficult to see anything properly by the
light of a candle tied to the end of a stick; and here, where the
bas-relief is so low and the walls are so high, it is almost impossible
to distinguish the details of the upper tableaux.
I could make out, however, that Amen, Maut, and their son Khonsu, the
three personages of the Theban triad, are the presiding deities of these
scenes; and that they are in some way identified with the fortunes of
Thothmes IV, his queen, and their son Amenhotep III. Amenhotep is born,
apparently, under the especial protection of Maut, the divine mother;
brought up with the youthful god Khonsu; and received by Amen as the
brother and equal of his own divine son. I think it was in this hall
that I observed a singular group representing Amen and Maut in an
attitude symbolical perhaps of troth-plight or marriage. They sit face
to face, the goddess holding in her right hand the left hand of the god,
while in her left hand she supports his right elbow. Their thrones,
meanwhile, rest on the heads and their feet are upheld on the hands of
two female genii. It is significant that Rameses III and one of the
ladies of his so-called hareem are depicted in the same attitude in one
of the famous domestic subjects sculptured on the upper stories of the
pavilion at Medinet Habu.
We saw this interesting temple[40] much too cursorily; yet we gave more
time to it than the majority of those who year after year anchor for
days together close under its majestic columns. If the whole building
could be transported bodily to some point between Memphis and Siût,
where the river is bare of ruins, it would be enthusiastically visited.
Here it is eclipsed by the wonders of Karnak and the western bank, and
is undeservedly neglected. Those parts of the original building which
yet remain are, indeed, peculiarly precious; for Amenhotep, or Amunoph
III, was one of the great builder-kings of Egypt, and we have here one
of the few extant specimens of his architectural work.
The Coptic quarter of Luxor lies north of the great pylon and partly
skirts the river. It is cleaner, wider, more airy than that of the
Arabs. The Prussian consul is a Copt; the polite postmaster is a Copt;
and in a modest lodging built half beside and half over the Coptic
church lives the Coptic bishop. The postmaster (an ungainly youth in a
European suit so many sizes too small that his arms and legs appeared to
be sprouting out at the ends of his garments) was profuse in his offers
of service. He undertook to forward letters to us at Assûan, Korosko,
and Wady Halfah, where postoffices had lately been established. And he
kept his promise, I am bound to say, with perfect punctuality--always
adding some queer little complimentary message on the outer wrapper,
such as “I hope you well my compliments;” or “Wishes you good news
pleasant voyage.” As a specimen of his literary style I copied the
following notice, of which it was evident that he was justly proud:
NOTICE: On the commandation. We have ordered the post stations in
lower Egypt from Assiut to Cartoom. Belonging to the Post Kedevy
Egyptian in a good order. Now to pay for letters in lower Egypt as
in the upper Egypt twice. Means that the letters which goes from
here far than Asiut; must pay for it two piastres per ten grs. Also
that which goes far than Cartoom. The letters which goes between
Asiut and Cartoom; must pay only one piastre per ten grs. This and
that is, to buy stamps from the Post and put it upon the letter.
Also if somebody wishes to send letters in insuranced, must two
piastres more for any letter. There is orderation in the Post to
receive the letters which goes to Europe, America and Asia, as
England France, Italy Germany, Syria, Constantinople etc. Also to
send newspapers patterns and other things.
“L’Ispettore,” M. ADDA.
Luxor the 1st January 1874.
This young man begged for a little stationery and a pen-knife at
parting. We had, of course, much pleasure in presenting him with such a
modest testimonial. We afterward learned that he levied the same little
tribute on every dahabeeyah that came up the river; so I conclude that
he must by this time have quite an interesting collection of small
cutlery.
From the point where the railroad ends the Egyptian and Nubian mails are
carried by runners stationed at distances of four miles all along the
route. Each man runs his four miles, and at the end thereof finds the
next man ready to snatch up his bag and start off at full speed
immediately. The next man transfers it in like manner to the next; and
so it goes by day and night without a break, till it reaches the first
railway station. Each runner is supposed to do his four miles in half an
hour, and the mail which goes out every morning from Luxor reaches Cairo
in six days. Considering that Cairo was four hundred and fifty miles
away, that two hundred and sixty-eight miles of this distance had to be
done on foot, and that the trains went only once a day, we thought this
a very creditable speed.
In the afternoon we took donkeys and rode out to Karnak. Our way lay
through the bazaar, which was the poorest we had yet seen. It consisted
of only a few open sheds, in one of which, seated on a mud-built divan,
cross-legged and turbanless like a row of tumbler mandarins, we saw five
of our sailors under the hands of the Luxor barber. He had just lathered
all five heads, and was complacently surveying the effect of his work,
much as an artistic cook might survey a dish of particularly successful
méringues à la crême. The méringues looked very sheepish when we laughed
and passed by.
Next came the straggling suburb where the dancing-girls most do
congregate. These damsels in gaudy garments of emerald green, bright
rose and flaming yellow, were squatting outside their cabins or lounging
unveiled about the thresholds of two or three dismal dens of cafés in
the market-place. They showed their teeth and laughed familiarly in our
faces. Their eyebrows were painted to meet on the bridge of the nose;
their eyes were blackened round with kohl; their cheeks were
extravagantly rouged; their hair was gummed, and greased, and festooned
upon their foreheads, and plaited all over in innumerable tails. Never
before had we seen anything in female form so hideous. One of these
houris was black; and she looked quite beautiful in her blackness,
compared with the painting and plastering of her companions.
We now left the village behind and rode out across a wide plain, barren
and hillocky in some parts; overgrown in others with coarse halfeh
grass; and dotted here and there with clumps of palms. The Nile lay low
and out of sight, so that the valley seemed to stretch away
uninterruptedly to the mountains on both sides. Now leaving to the left
a sheik’s tomb, topped by a little cupola and shaded by a group of
tamarisks; now following the bed of a dry watercourse; now skirting
shapeless mounds that indicated the site of ruins unexplored, the road,
uneven but direct, led straight to Karnak. At every rise in the ground
we saw the huge popylons towering higher above the palms. Once, but for
only a few moments, there came into sight a confused and wide-spread
mass of ruins, as extensive, apparently, as the ruins of a large town.
Then our way dipped into a sandy groove bordered by mud-walls and
plantations of dwarf-palms. All at once this groove widened, became a
stately avenue guarded by a double file of shattered sphinxes, and led
toward a lofty pylon standing up alone against the sky.
Close beside this grand gateway, as if growing there on purpose, rose a
thicket of sycamores and palms; while beyond it were seen the twin
pylons of a temple. The sphinxes were colossal, and measured about ten
feet in length. One or two were ram-headed. Of the rest--some forty or
fifty in number--all were headless, some split asunder, some overturned,
others so mutilated that they looked like torrent-worn bowlders. This
avenue once reached from Luxor to Karnak. Taking into account the
distance (which is just two miles from temple to temple) and the short
intervals at which the sphinxes are placed, there cannot originally have
been fewer than five hundred of them; that is to say, two hundred and
fifty on each side of the road.
Dismounting for a few minutes, we went into the temple; glanced round
the open court-yard with its colonnade of pillars; peeped hurriedly into
some ruinous side-chambers; and then rode on. Our books told us that we
had seen the small temple of Rameses III. It would have been called
large anywhere but at Karnak.
I seem to remember the rest as if it had all happened in a dream.
Leaving the small temple, we turned toward the river, skirted the mud
walls of the native village, and approached the great temple by way of
its main entrance. Here we entered upon what had once been another great
avenue of sphinxes, ram-headed, couchant on plinths deep cut with
hieroglyphic legends, and leading up from some grand landing-place
beside the Nile.
And now the towers that we had first seen as we sailed by in the morning
rose straight before us, magnificent in ruin, glittering to the sun, and
relieved in creamy light against blue depths of sky. One was nearly
perfect; the other, shattered as if by the shock of an earthquake, was
still so lofty than an Arab clambering from block to block midway of its
vast height looked no bigger than a squirrel.
On the threshold of this tremendous portal we again dismounted.
Shapeless crude-brick mounds, marking the limits of the ancient wall of
circuit, reached far away on either side. An immense perspective of
pillars and pylons leading up to a very distant obelisk opened out
before us. We went in, the great walls towering up like cliffs above our
heads, and entered the first court. Here, in the midst of a large
quadrangle open to the sky, stands a solitary column, the last of a
central avenue of twelve, some of which, disjointed by the shock, lie
just as they fell, like skeletons of vertebrate monsters left stranded
by the flood.
Crossing this court in the glowing sunlight, we came to a mighty doorway
between two more propylons--the doorway splendid with colored
bas-reliefs; the propylons mere cataracts of fallen blocks piled up to
right and left in grand confusion. The cornice of the doorway is gone.
Only a jutting fragment of the lintel stone remains. That stone, when
perfect, measured forty feet and ten inches across. The doorway must
have been full a hundred feet in height.
We went on. Leaving to the right a mutilated colossus engraven on arm
and breast with the cartouche of Rameses II, we crossed the shade upon
the threshold and passed into the famous Hypostyle Hall of Seti I.
It is a place that has been much written about and often painted; but of
which no writing and no art can convey more than a dwarfed and pallid
impression. To describe it, in the sense of building up a recognizable
image by means of words, is impossible. The scale is too vast; the
effect too tremendous; the sense of one’s own dumbness, and littleness,
and incapacity, too complete and crushing. It is a place that strikes
you into silence; that empties you, as it were, not only of words but of
ideas. Nor is this a first effect only. Later in the year, when we came
back down the river and moored close by, and spent long days among the
ruins, I found I never had a word to say in the great hall. Others might
measure the girth of those tremendous columns; others might climb hither
and thither, and find out points of view, and test the accuracy of
Wilkinson and Mariette; but I could only look and be silent.
Yet to look is something, if one can but succeed in remembering; and the
great hall of Karnak is photographed in some dark corner of my brain for
as long as I have memory. I shut my eyes, and see it as if I were
there--not all at once, as in a picture; but bit by bit, as the eye
takes note of large objects and travels over an extended field of
vision. I stand once more among those mighty columns, which radiate into
avenues from whatever point one takes them. I see them swathed in coiled
shadows and broad bands of light. I see them sculptured and painted with
shapes of gods and kings, with blazonings of royal names, with
sacrificial altars, and forms of sacred beasts, and emblems of wisdom
and truth. The shafts of these columns are enormous. I stand at the foot
of one--or of what seems to be the foot; for the original pavement lies
buried seven feet below. Six men standing with extended arms, finger-tip
to finger-tip, could barely span it round. It casts a shadow twelve feet
in breadth--such a shadow as might be cast by a tower. The capital that
juts out so high above my head looks as if it might have been placed
there to support the heavens. It is carved in the semblance of a
full-blown lotus, and glows with undying colors--colors that are still
fresh, though laid on by hands that have been dust these three thousand
years and more. It would take not six men, but a dozen, to measure round
the curved lip of that stupendous lily.
Such are the twelve central columns. The rest (one hundred and
twenty-two in number) are gigantic, too, but smaller. Of the roof they
once supported, only the beams remain. Those beams are stones--huge
monoliths[41] carved and painted, bridging the space from pillar to
pillar, and patterning the trodden soil with bands of shadow.
Looking up and down the central avenue, we see at the one end a
flame-like obelisk; at the other, a solitary palm against a background
of glowing mountain. To right, to left, showing transversely through
long files of columns, we catch glimpses of colossal bas-reliefs lining
the roofless walls in every direction. The king, as usual, figures in
every group, and performs the customary acts of worship. The gods
receive and approve him. Half in light, half in shadow, these slender,
fantastic forms stand out sharp and clear and colorless; each figure
some eighteen or twenty feet in height. They could scarcely have looked
more weird when the great roof was in its place and perpetual twilight
reigned. But it is difficult to imagine the roof on and the sky shut
out. It all looks right as it is; and one feels, somehow, that such
columns should have nothing between them and the infinite blue depths of
heaven.
The great central avenue was, however, sufficiently lighted by means of
a double row of clerestory windows, some of which are yet standing.
Certain writers have suggested that they may have been glazed; but this
seems improbable for two reasons. Firstly, because one or two of these
huge window-frames yet contain the solid stone gratings which in the
present instance seem to have done duty for a translucent material; and,
secondly, because we have no evidence to show that the early Egyptians,
though familiar since the days of Cheops with the use of the blow-pipe,
ever made glass in sheets, or introduced it in this way into their
buildings.
How often has it been written, and how often must it be repeated, that
the great hall at Karnak is the noblest architectural work ever designed
and executed by human hands? One writer tells us that it covers four
times the area occupied by the cathedral of Nôtre Dame in Paris. Another
measures it against St. Peter’s. All admit their inability to describe
it; yet all attempt the description. To convey a concrete image of the
place to one who has not seen it, is, however, as I have already said,
impossible. If it could be likened to this place or that, the task would
not be so difficult; but there is, in truth, no building in the wide
world to compare with it. The pyramids are more stupendous. The
colosseum covers more ground. The parthenon is more beautiful. Yet in
nobility of conception, in vastness of detail, in majesty of the highest
order, the hall of pillars exceeds them every one. This doorway, these
columns, are the wonder of the world. How was that lintel-stone raised?
How were these capitals lifted? Entering among those mighty pillars,
says a recent observer, “you feel that you have shrunk to the dimensions
and feebleness of a fly.” But I think you feel more than that. You are
stupefied by the thought of the mighty men who made them. You say to
yourself: “There were indeed giants in those days.”
It may be that the traveler who finds himself for the first time in the
midst of a grove of _Wellingtonia gigantea_ feels something of the same
overwhelming sense of awe and wonder; but the great trees, though they
have taken three thousand years to grow, lack the pathos and the mystery
that comes of human labor. They do not strike their roots through six
thousand years of history. They have not been watered with the blood and
tears of millions.[42] Their leaves know no sounds less musical than the
singing of birds, or the moaning of the night-wind as it sweeps over the
highlands of Calaveros. But every breath that wanders down the painted
aisles of Karnak seems to echo back the sighs of those who perished in
the quarry, at the oar, and under the chariot-wheels of the conqueror.
The Hypostyle Hall, though built by Seti, the father of Rameses II, is
supposed by some Egyptologists to have been planned, if not begun, by
that same Amenhotep III who founded the Temple of Luxor and set up the
famous colossi of the plain. However this may be, the cartouches so
lavishly sculptured on pillar and architrave contain no names but those
of Seti, who undoubtedly executed the work _en bloc_, and of Rameses,
who completed it.
And now, would it not be strange if we knew the name and history of the
architect who superintended the building of this wondrous hall, and
planned the huge doorway by which it was entered, and the mighty pylons
which lie shattered on either side? Would it not be interesting to look
upon his portrait and see what manner of man he was? Well, the Egyptian
room in the Glyptothek museum at Munich contains a statue found some
seventy years ago at Thebes, which almost certainly represents that man,
and is inscribed with his history. His name was Bak-en-Khonsu (servant
of Khonsu). He sits upon the ground, bearded and robed, in an attitude
of meditation. That he was a man of unusual ability is shown by the
inscriptions engraved upon the back of the statue. These inscriptions
record his promotion, step by step, to the highest grade of the
hierarchy. Having obtained the dignity of high priest and first prophet
of Amen during the reign of Seti I, he became chief architect of the
Thebaid under Rameses II, and received a royal commission to superintend
the embellishment of the temples. When Rameses II “erected a monument to
his divine father Amen Ra,” the building thereof was executed under the
direction of Bak-en-Khonsu. Here the inscription, as translated by M.
Deveria, goes on to say that “he made the sacred edifice in the upper
gate of the abode of Amen.[43] He erected obelisks of granite. He made
golden flagstaffs. He added very, very great colonnades.”
M. Deveria suggests that the Temple of Gournah may here be indicated;
but to this it might be objected that Gournah is situated in the lower
and not the upper part of Thebes; that at Gournah there are no great
colonnades and no obelisks; and that, moreover, for some reason at
present unknown to us, the erection of obelisks seems to have been
wholly confined to the eastern bank of the Nile. It is, however,
possible that the works here enumerated may not all have been executed
for one and the same temple. The “sacred edifice in the upper gate of
the abode of Amen” might be the Temple of Luxor, which Rameses did in
fact adorn with the only obelisks we know to be his in Thebes; the
monument erected by him to his divine father Amen (evidently a new
structure) would scarcely be any other than the Ramesseum; while the
“very, very great colonnades,” which are expressly specified as
additions, would seem as if they could only belong to the Hypostyle Hall
of Karnak. The question is at all events interesting; and it is pleasant
to believe that in the Munich statue we have not only a portrait of one
who at Karnak played the part of Michael Angelo to some foregone and
forgotten Bramante, but who was also the Ictinus of the Ramesseum. For
the Ramesseum is the Parthenon of Thebes.
The sun was sinking and the shadows were lengthening when, having made
the round of the principal ruins, we at length mounted our donkeys and
turned toward Luxor. To describe all that we saw after leaving the great
hall would fill a chapter. Huge obelisks of shining granite--some yet
erect, some shattered and prostrate; vast lengths of sculptured walls
covered with wondrous battle subjects, sacerdotal processions, and
elaborate chronicles of the deeds of kings; ruined court-yards
surrounded by files of headless statues; a sanctuary built all of
polished granite, and engraven like a gem; a second hall of pillars
dating back to the early days of Thothmes III; labyrinths of roofless
chambers; mutilated colossi, shattered pylons, fallen columns,
unintelligible foundations and hieroglyphic inscriptions without end,
were glanced at, passed by, and succeeded by fresh wonders. I dare not
say how many small outlying temples we saw in the course of that rapid
survey. In one place we came upon an undulating tract of coarse halfeh
grass, in the midst of which, battered, defaced, forlorn, sat a weird
company of green granite sphinxes and lioness-headed basts. In another,
we saw a magnificent colossal hawk upright on his pedestal in the midst
of a bergfall of ruins. More avenues of sphinxes, more pylons, more
colossi were passed before the road we took in returning brought us
round to that by which we had come. By the time we reached the sheik’s
tomb, it was nearly dusk. We rode back across the plain, silent and
bewildered. Have I not said that it was like a dream?
CHAPTER IX.
THEBES TO ASSUAN.
Hurrying close upon the serenest of Egyptian sunsets came a night of
storms. The wind got up about ten. By midnight the river was racing in
great waves, and our dahabeeyah rolling at her moorings like a ship at
sea. The sand, driving in furious gusts from the Libyan desert, dashed
like hail against our cabin windows. Every moment we were either bumping
against the bank or being rammed by our own felucca. At length, a little
before dawn, a huge slice of the bank gave way, thundering like an
avalanche upon our decks; whereupon Reïs Hassan, being alarmed for the
safety of the boat, hauled us up to a little sheltered nook a few
hundred yards higher. Taking it altogether, we had not had such a lively
night since leaving Benisouef.
The lookout next morning was dismal--the river running high in yeasty
waves; the boats all huddled together under the shore; the western bank
hidden in clouds of sand. To get under way was impossible, for the wind
was dead against us; and to go anywhere by land was equally out of the
question. Karnak in a sand-storm would have been grand to see; but one
would have needed a diving-helmet to preserve eyes and ears from
destruction.
Toward afternoon the fury of the wind so far subsided that we were able
to cross the river and ride to Medinet Habu and the Ramesseum. As we
achieved only a passing glimpse of these wonderful ruins, I will for the
present say nothing about them. We came to know them so well hereafter
that no mere first impression would be worth record.
A light but fitful breeze helped us on next day as far as Erment, the
Ptolemaic Hermonthis, once the site of a goodly temple, now of an
important sugar factory. Here we moored for the night, and after dinner
received a visit of ceremony from the bey--a tall, slender,
sharp-featured, bright-eyed man in European dress, remarkably dignified
and well bred--who came attended by his secretary, Kawass, and
pipe-bearer. Now the Bey of Erment is a great personage in these parts.
He is governor of the town as well as superintendent of the sugar
factory; holds a military command; has his palace and gardens close by,
and his private steamer on the river; and is, like most high officials
in Egypt, a Turk of distinction. The secretary, who was the bey’s
younger brother, wore a brown Inverness cape over a long white
petticoat, and left his slippers at the saloon door. He sat all the time
with his toes curiously doubled under, so that his feet looked like
clenched fists in stockings. Both gentlemen wore tarbooshes and carried
visiting-canes. The visiting-cane, by the way, plays a conspicuous part
in modern Egyptian life. It measures about two and a half feet in
length, is tipped at both ends with gold or silver, and is supposed to
add the last touch of elegance to the bearer.
We entertained our guests with coffee and lemonade, and, as well as we
could, with conversation. The bey, who spoke only Turkish and Arabic,
gave a flourishing account of the sugar works, and dispatched his
pipe-bearer for a bundle of fresh canes and some specimens of raw and
candied sugars. He said he had an English foreman and several English
workmen, and that for the English as a nation he had the highest
admiration and regard; but that the Arabs “had no heads.” To our
inquiries about the ruins, his replies were sufficiently discouraging.
Of the large temple every vestige had long since disappeared; while of
the smaller one only a few columns and part of the walls were yet
standing. They lay out beyond the town and a long way from the river.
There was very little to see. It was all “sagheer” (small); “mooshtaïb”
(bad); not worth the trouble of the walk. As for “anteekahs,” they were
rarely found here, and when found were of slight value.
A scarab which he wore in a ring was then passed round and admired. It
fell to our little lady’s turn to examine it last and restore it to the
owner. But the owner, with a bow and a deprecating gesture, would have
none of it. The ring was a toy--a nothing--the lady’s--his no longer.
She was obliged to accept it, however unwillingly. To decline would
have been to offend. But it was the way in which the thing was done that
made the charm of this little incident. The grace, the readiness, the
courtesy, the lofty indifference of it, were alike admirable. Macready
in his best days could have done it with as princely an air; but even he
would probably have missed something of the oriental reticence of the
Bey of Erment.
He then invited us to go over the sugar factory (which we declined on
account of the lateness of the hour), and presently took his leave.
About ten minutes after came a whole posse of presents--three large
bouquets of roses for the sittàt (ladies), two scarabei, a small
funereal statuette in the rare green porcelain, and a live turkey. We in
return sent a complicated English knife with all sorts of blades, and
some pots of English jam.
The wind rose next morning with the sun, and by breakfast time we had
left Erment far behind. All that day the good breeze served us well. The
river was alive with cargo-boats. The Philæ put on her best speed. The
little Bagstones kept up gallantly. And the Fostât, a large iron
dahabeeyah full of English gentlemen, kept us close company all the
afternoon. We were all alike bound for Esneh, which is a large trading
town and lies twenty-six miles south of Erment.
Now, at Esneh the men were to bake again. Great, therefore, was Reïs
Hassan’s anxiety to get in first, secure the oven and buy the flour
before dusk. The reïs of the Fostât and he of the Bagstones were equally
anxious, and for the same reasons. Our men, meanwhile, were wild with
excitement, watching every maneuver of the other boats; hanging on to
the shoghool like a swarm of bees; and obeying the word of command with
unwonted alacrity. As we neared the goal the race grew hotter. The honor
of the boats was at stake, and the bread question was for the moment
forgotten. Finally all three dahabeeyahs ran in abreast and moored side
by side in front of a row of little open cafés, just outside the town.
Esneh (of which the old Egyptian civil name was Sni, and the Roman name
Latopolis) stands high upon the mounds of the ancient city. It is a
large place--as large, apparently, as Minieh, and, like Minieh, it is
the capital of a province. Here dragomans lay in provision of limes,
charcoal, flour and live stock for the Nubian journey; and crews bake
for the last time before their return to Egypt. For in Nubia food is
scarce and prices are high, and there are no public ovens.
It was about five o’clock on a market day when we reached Esneh and the
market was not yet over. Going up through the usual labyrinth of
windowless mud-alleys where the old men crouched, smoking, under every
bit of sunny wall, and the children swarmed like flies, and the cry for
backshîsh buzzed incessantly about our ears, we came to an open space in
the upper part of the town, and found ourselves all at once in the midst
of the market. Here were peasant-folk selling farm produce;
stall-keepers displaying combs, looking-glasses, gaudy printed
handkerchiefs and cheap bracelets of bone and colored glass; camels
lying at ease and snarling at every passer-by; patient donkeys;
ownerless dogs; veiled women; blue and black robed men; and all the
common sights and sounds of a native market. Here too, we found Reïs
Hassan bargaining for flour, Talhemy haggling with a charcoal dealer;
and the M. B.’s buying turkeys and geese for themselves and a huge store
of tobacco for their crew. Most welcome sight of all, however, was a
dingy chemist’s shop, about the size of a sentry-box, over the door of
which was suspended an Arabic inscription; while inside, robed all in
black, sat a lean and grizzled Arab, from whom we bought a big bottle of
rose-water to make eye-lotion for L----’s ophthalmic patients.
Meanwhile there was a temple to be seen at Esneh; and this temple, as we
had been told, was to be found close against the market-place. We looked
round in vain, however, for any sign of pylon or portico. The chemist
said it was “kureiyib,” which means “near by.” A camel-driver pointed to
a dilapidated wooden gateway in a recess between two neighboring houses.
A small boy volunteered to lead the way. We were greatly puzzled. We had
expected to see the temple towering above the surrounding houses, as at
Luxor, and could by no means understand how any large building to which
that gateway might give access should not be visible from without.
The boy, however, ran and thumped upon the gate and shouted “Abbas!
Abbas!” Mehemet Ali, who was doing escort, added some thundering blows
with his staff and a little crowd gathered, but no Abbas came.
The by-standers, as usual, were liberal with their advice; recommending
the boy to climb over and the sailor to knock louder and suggesting that
Abbas the absent might possibly be found in a certain neighboring café.
At length I somewhat impatiently expressed my opinion that there was
“Mafeesh Birbeh” (no temple at all); whereupon a dozen voices were
raised to assure me that the Birbeh was no myth--that it was “kebîr”
(big)--that it was “kwy-ees” (beautiful)--and that all the “Ingleez”
came to see it.
In the midst of the clamor, however, and just as we are about to turn
away in despair, the gate creaks open; the gentlemen of the Fostât troop
out in puggaries and knickerbockers; and we are at last admitted.
This is what we see--a little yard surrounded by mud walls; at the
farther end of the yard a dilapidated doorway; beyond the doorway, a
strange-looking, stupendous mass of yellow limestone masonry, long and
low and level and enormously massive. A few steps farther and this
proves to be the curved cornice of a mighty temple--a temple neither
ruined nor defaced, but buried to the chin in the accumulated rubbish of
a score of centuries. This part is evidently the portico. We stand close
under a row of huge capitals. The columns that support them are buried
beneath our feet. The ponderous cornice juts out above our heads. From
the level on which we stand to the top of that cornice may measure about
twenty-five feet. A high mud wall runs parallel to the whole width of
the façade, leaving a passage of about twelve feet in breadth between
the two. A low mud parapet and a handrail reach from capital to capital.
All beyond is vague, cavernous, mysterious--a great shadowy gulf, in the
midst of which dim ghosts of many columns are darkly visible. From an
opening between two of the capitals a flight of brick steps leads down
into a vast hall so far below the surface of the outer world, so gloomy,
so awful, that it might be the portico of Hades.
Going down these steps we come to the original level of the temple. We
tread the ancient pavement. We look up to the massive ceiling, recessed
and sculptured and painted, like the ceiling at Denderah. We could
almost believe, indeed, that we are again standing in the portico of
Denderah. The number of columns is the same. The arrangement of the
intercolumnar screen is the same. The general effect and the main
features of the plan are the same. In some respects, however, Esneh is
even more striking. The columns, though less massive than those of
Denderah, are more elegant and look loftier. Their shafts are covered
with figures of gods and emblems and lines of hieroglyphed inscription,
all cut in low relief. Their capitals, in place of the huge draped
Hathor-heads of Denderah, are studied from natural forms--from the
lotus-lily, the papyrus-blossom, the plumy date-palm. The
wall-sculpture, however, is inferior to that at Denderah and
immeasurably inferior to the wall-sculpture at Karnak. The figures are
of the meanest Ptolemaic type and all of one size. The inscriptions,
instead of being grouped wherever there happened to be space and so
producing the richest form of wall decoration ever devised by man, are
disposed in symmetrical columns, the effect of which, when compared with
the florid style of Karnak, is as the methodical neatness of an
engrossed deed to the splendid freedom of an illuminated manuscript.
The steps occupy the place of the great doorway. The jambs and part of
the cornice, the intercolumnar screen, the shafts of the columns under
whose capitals we came in, are all there, half-projecting from and
half-imbedded in the solid mound beyond. The light, however, comes in
from so high up and through so narrow a space, that one’s eyes need to
become accustomed to the darkness before any of these details can be
distinguished. Then, by degrees, forms of deities familiar and
unfamiliar emerge from the gloom.
The temple is dedicated to Knum[44] or Kneph, the soul of the world,
whom we now see for the first time. He is ram-headed and holds in his
hand the “ankh,” or emblem of life. Another new acquaintance is Bes,[45]
the grotesque god of mirth and jollity.
Two singular little erections, built in between the columns to right and
left of the steps, next attract our attention. They are like stone
sentry-boxes. Each is in itself complete, with roof, sculptured cornice,
doorway, and, if I remember rightly, a small square window in the side.
The inscriptions upon two similar structures in the portico at Edfû show
that the right-hand closet contained the sacred books belonging to the
temple, while in the closet to the left of the main entrance the king
underwent the ceremony of purification. It may therefore be taken for
granted that these at Esneh were erected for the same purposes.
And now we look around for the next hall--and look in vain. The doorway
which should lead to it is walled up. The portico was excavated by
Mohammed Ali in 1842; not in any spirit of antiquarian zeal, but in
order to provide a safe underground magazine for gunpowder. Up to that
time, as may be seen by one of the illustrations to Wilkinson’s “Thebes
and General View of Egypt,” the interior was choked to within a few feet
of the capitals of the columns, and used as a cotton-store. Of the rest
of the building nothing is known; nothing is visible. It is as large,
probably, as Denderah or Edfû, and in as perfect preservation. So, at
least, says local tradition; but not even local tradition can point out
to what extent it underlies the foundations of the modern houses that
swarm above its roof. An inscription first observed by Champollion
states that the sanctuary was built by Thothmes III. Is that antique
sanctuary still there? Has the temple grown step by step under the hands
of successive kings, as at Luxor? Or has it been re-edified _ab ovo_, as
at Denderah? These are “puzzling questions,” only to be resolved by the
demolition of a quarter of the town. Meanwhile what treasures of
sculptured history, what pictured chambers, what buried bronzes and
statues may here await the pick of the excavator!
All next day, while the men were baking, the writer sat in a corner of
the outer passage and sketched the portico of the temple. The sun rose
upon the one horizon and set upon the other before that drawing was
finished; yet for scarcely more than one hour did it light up the front
of the temple. At about half-past nine A.M. it first caught the stone
fillet at the angle. Then, one by one, each massy capital became
outlined with a thin streak of gold. As this streak widened the cornice
took fire, and presently the whole stood out in light against the sky.
Slowly then, but quite perceptibly, the sun traveled across the narrow
space overhead; the shadows became vertical; the light changed sides;
and by ten o’clock there was shade for the remainder of the day. Toward
noon, however, the sun being then at its highest and the air transfused
with light, the inner columns, swallowed up till now in darkness, became
illuminated with a wonderful reflected light, and glowed from out the
gloom like pillars of fire.
Never to go on shore without an escort is one of the rules of Nile life,
and Salame has by this time become my exclusive property. He is a native
of Assûan, young, active, intelligent, full of fun, hot-tempered withal,
and as thorough a gentleman as I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
For a sample of his good-breeding, take this day at Esneh--a day which
he might have idled away in the bazaars and cafés, and which it must
have been dull work to spend cooped up between a mud wall and an
outlandish birbeh, built by the Djinns who reigned before Adam. Yet
Salame betrays no discontent. Curled up in a shady corner, he watches me
like a dog; is ready with an umbrella as soon as the sun comes round;
and replenishes a water bottle or holds a color box as deftly as though
he had been to the manner born. At one o’clock arrives my luncheon,
enshrined in a pagoda of plates. Being too busy to leave off work,
however, I put the pagoda aside, and dispatch Salame to the market, to
buy himself some dinner; for which purpose, wishing to do the thing
handsomely, I present him with the magnificent sum of two silver
piasters, or about five pence English. With this he contrives to
purchase three or four cakes of flabby native bread, a black-looking
rissole of chopped meat and vegetables, and about a pint of dried dates.
Knowing this to be a better dinner than my friend gets every day,
knowing also that our sailors habitually eat at noon, I am surprised to
see him leave these dainties untasted. In vain I say “Bismillah” (in the
name of God); pressing him to eat in vocabulary phrases eked out with
expressive pantomime. He laughs, shakes his head, and, asking permission
to smoke a cigarette, protests he is not hungry. Thus three more hours
go by. Accustomed to long fasting and absorbed in my sketch, I forget
all about the pagoda; and it is past four o’clock when I at length set
to work to repair tissue at the briefest possible cost of time and
daylight. And now the faithful Salame falls to with an energy that
causes the cakes, the rissole, the dates, to vanish as if by magic. Of
what remains from my luncheon he also disposes in a trice. Never, unless
in a pantomime, have I seen mortal man display so prodigious an
appetite.
I made Talhamy scold him, by and by, for this piece of voluntary
starvation.
“By my prophet!” said he, “am I a pig or a dog, that I should eat when
the sitt was fasting?”
It was at Esneh, by the way, that that hitherto undiscovered curiosity,
an ancient Egyptian coin, was offered to me for sale. The finder was
digging for niter, and turned it up at an immense depth below the mounds
on the outskirts of the town. He volunteered to show the precise spot,
and told his artless tale with child-like simplicity. Unfortunately,
however, for the authenticity of this remarkable relic, it bore,
together with the familiar profile of George IV, a superscription of its
modest value, which was precisely one farthing. On another occasion,
when we were making our long stay at Luxor, a colored glass button of
honest Birmingham make was brought to the boat by a fellah who swore
that he had himself found it upon a mummy in the tombs of the queens at
Kûrnet Murraee. The same man came to my tent one day when I was
sketching, bringing with him a string of more than doubtful scarabs--all
veritable “anteekahs,” of course, and all backed up with undeniable
pedigrees.
“La, la [no, no]! bring me no more anteekahs,” I said, gravely. “They
are old and worn out, and cost much money. Have you no imitation
scarabs, new and serviceable, that one might wear without the fear of
breaking them?”
“These are imitations. O sitt!” was the ready answer.
“But you told me a moment ago they were genuine anteekahs.”
“That was because I thought the sitt wanted to buy anteekahs,” he said,
quite shamelessly.
“See now,” I said, “if you are capable of selling me new things for old,
how can I be sure that you would not sell me old things for new?”
To this he replied by declaring that he had made the scarabs himself.
Then, fearing I should not believe him, he pulled a scrap of coarse
paper from his bosom, borrowed one of my pencils, and drew an asp, an
ibis, and some other common hieroglyphic forms, with tolerable
dexterity.
“Now you believe?” he asked, triumphantly.
“I see that you can make birds and snakes,” I replied; “but that neither
proves that you can cut scarabs, nor that these scarabs are new.”
“Nay, sitt,” he protested, “I made them with these hands. I made them
but the other day. By Allah! they cannot be newer.”
Here Talhamy interposed.
“In that case,” he said, “they are too new, and will crack before a
month is over. The sitt would do better to buy some that are well
seasoned.”
Our honest fellâh touched his brow and breast.
“Now in strict truth, O dragoman!” he said, with an air of the most
engaging candor, “these scarabs were made at the time of the inundation.
They are new; but not too new. They are thoroughly seasoned. If they
crack, you shall denounce me to the governor, and I will eat stick for
them!”
Now it has always seemed to me that the most curious feature in this
little scene was the extraordinary simplicity of the Arab. With all his
cunning, with all his disposition to cheat, he suffered himself to be
turned inside-out as unsuspiciously as a baby. It never occurred to him
that his untruthfulness was being put to the test, or that he was
committing himself more and more deeply with every word he uttered. The
fact is, however, that the fellâh is half a savage. Notwithstanding his
mendacity (and it must be owned that he is the most brilliant liar
under heaven), he remains a singularly transparent piece of humanity,
easily amused, easily deceived, easily angered, easily pacified. He
steals a little, cheats a little, lies a great deal; but on the other
hand he is patient, hospitable, affectionate, trustful. He suspects no
malice and bears none. He commits no great crimes. He is incapable of
revenge. In short, his good points outnumber his bad ones; and what man
or nation need hope for a much better character?
To generalize in this way may seem like presumption on the part of a
passing stranger; yet it is more excusable as regards Egypt than it
would be of any other equally accessible country. In Europe, and indeed
in most parts of the east, one sees too little of the people to be able
to form an opinion about them; but it is not so on the Nile. Cut off
from hotels, from railways, from Europeanized cities, you are brought
into continual intercourse with natives. The sick who come to you for
medicines, the country gentlemen and government officials who visit you
on board your boat and entertain you on shore, your guides, your donkey
boys, the very dealers who live by cheating you, furnish endless studies
of character, and teach you more of Egyptian life than all the books of
Nile-travel that were ever written.
Then your crew, part Arab, part Nubian, are a little world in
themselves. One man was born a slave, and will carry the dealer’s
brand-marks to his grave. Another has two children in Miss Whateley’s
school at Cairo. A third is just married, and has left his young wife
sick at home. She may be dead by the time he gets back, and we will hear
no news of her meanwhile. So with them all. Each has his simple story--a
story in which the local oppressor, the dreaded conscription, and the
still more dreaded _corvée_, form the leading incidents. The poor
fellows are ready enough to pour out their hopes, their wrongs, their
sorrows. Through sympathy with these, one comes to know the men; and
through the men, the nation. For the life of the beled repeats itself
with but little variation wherever the Nile flows and the khedive rules.
The characters are the same; the incidents are the same. It is only the
_mise en scène_ which varies.
And thus it comes to pass that the mere traveler who spends but half a
year on the Nile may, if he takes an interest in Egypt and the
Egyptians, learn more of both in that short time than would be possible
in a country less singularly narrowed in all ways--politically,
socially, geographically.
And this reminds me that the traveler on the Nile really sees the whole
land of Egypt. Going from point to point in other countries, one follows
a thin line of road, railway, or river, leaving wide tracts unexplored
on either side; but there are few places in Middle or Upper Egypt, and
none at all in Nubia, where one may not, from any moderate height,
survey the entire face of the country from desert to desert. It is well
to do this frequently. It helps one, as nothing else can help one, to an
understanding of the wonderful mountain waste through which the Nile has
been scooping its way for uncounted cycles. And it enables one to
realize what a mere slip of alluvial deposit is this famous land which
is “the gift of the river.”
A dull gray morning; a faint and fitful breeze carried us slowly on our
way from Esneh to Edfû. The new bread--a heavy boat-load when brought on
board--lay in a huge heap at the end of the upper deck. It took four men
one whole day to cut it up. Their incessant gabble drove us nearly
distracted.
“Uskût, Khaleefeh! Uskût, Ali!” (“Silence, Khaleefeh! Silence, Ali!”)
Talhamy would say from time to time. “You are not on your own deck. The
Howadji can neither read nor write for the clatter of your tongues.”
And then, for about a minute and a half, they would be quiet.
But you could as easily keep a monkey from chattering as an Arab. Our
men talked incessantly; and their talk was always about money. Listen to
them when we might, such words as “khámsa gurûsh” (five piasters), “nûs
riyâl” (half-a-dollar), “ethneen shilling” (two shillings), were
perpetually coming to the surface. We never could understand how it was
that money, which played so small a part in their lives, should play so
large a part in their conversation.
It was about midday when we passed El Kab, the ancient Eileithyias. A
rocky valley narrowing inland; a sheik’s tomb on the mountain-ridge
above; a few clumps of datepalms; some remains of what looked like a
long, crude brick wall running at right angles to the river; and an
isolated mass of hollowed limestone rock left standing apparently in the
midst of an exhausted quarry, were all we saw of El Kab as the
dahabeeyah glided by.
And now, as the languid afternoon wears on, the propylons of Edfû loom
out of the misty distance. We have been looking for them long enough
before they come into sight--calculating every mile of the way; every
minute of the daylight. The breeze, such as it was, has dropped now. The
river stretches away before us, smooth and oily as a pond. Nine of the
men are tracking. Will they pull us to Edfû in time to see the temple
before nightfall?
Reïs Hassan looks doubtful; but takes refuge as usual in “Inshallah!”
(“God willing”). Talhamy talks of landing a sailor to run forward and
order donkeys. Meanwhile the Philæ creeps lazily on; the sun declines
unseen behind a filmy veil; and those two shadowy towers, rising higher
and ever higher on the horizon, look gray, and ghostly, and far distant
still.
Suddenly the trackers stop, look back, shout to those on board, and
begin drawing the boat to shore. Reïs Hassan points joyously to a white
streak breaking across the smooth surface of the river about half a mile
behind. The Fostât’s sailors are already swarming aloft--the Bagstones’
trackers are making for home--our own men are preparing to fling in the
rope and jump on board as the Philæ nears the bank.
For the capricious wind, that always springs up when we don’t want it,
is coming!
And now the Fostât, being hindmost, flings out her big sail and catches
the first puff; the Bagstones’ turn comes next; the Philæ shakes her
wings free and shoots ahead; and in fewer minutes than it takes to tell,
we are all three scudding along before a glorious breeze.
The great towers that showed so far away half an hour ago are now close
at hand. There are palm-woods about their feet, and clustered huts, from
the midst of which they tower up against the murky sky magnificently.
Soon they are passed and left behind, and the gray twilight takes them
and we see them no more. Then night comes on, cold and starless; yet not
too dark for going as fast as wind and canvas will carry us.
And now, with that irrepressible instinct of rivalry that
flesh--especially flesh on the Nile--is heir to, we quickly turn our
good going into a trial of speed. It is no longer a mere business-like
devotion to the matter in hand. It is a contest for glory. It is the
Philæ against the Fostât, and the Bagstones against both. In plain
English, it is a race. The two leading dahabeeyahs are pretty equally
matched. The Philæ is larger than the Fostât; but the Fostât has a
bigger mainsail. On the other hand, the Fostât is an iron boat; whereas
the Philæ, being wooden-built, is easier to pole off a sand-bank, and
lighter in hand. The Bagstones carries a capital mainsail and can go as
fast as either upon occasion. Meanwhile, the race is one of perpetually
varying fortunes. Now the Fostât shoots ahead; now the Philæ. We pass
and repass; take the wind out of one another’s sails; economize every
curve; hoist every stitch of canvas, and, having identified ourselves
with our boats, are as eager to win as if a great prize depended on it.
Under these circumstances, to dine is difficult--to go to bed
superfluous--to sleep impossible. As to mooring for the night, it is not
to be thought of for a moment. Having begun the contest, we can no more
help going than the wind can help blowing; and our crew are as keen
about winning as ourselves.
As night advances, the wind continues to rise, and our excitement with
it. Still the boats chase each other along the dark river, scattering
spray from their bows and flinging out broad foam-tracks behind them.
Their cabin windows, all alight within, cast flickering flames upon the
waves below. The colored lanterns at their mast-heads, orange, purple
and crimson, burn through the dusk-like jewels. Presently the mist blows
off; the sky clears; the stars come out; the wind howls: the casements
rattle; the tiller scroops; the sailors shout, and race, and bang the
ropes about overhead; while we, sitting up in our narrow berths, spend
half the night watching from our respective windows.
In this way some hours go by. Then, about three in the morning, with a
shock, a recoil, a yell and a scuffle, we all three rush headlong upon a
sand-bank! The men fly to the rigging and furl the flapping sail. Some
seize punting poles. Others, looking like full-grown imps of darkness,
leap overboard and set their shoulders to the work. A strophe and
antistrophe of grunts are kept up between those on deck and those in
the water. Finally, after some ten minutes’ frantic struggle, the Philæ
slips off, leaving the other two aground in the middle of the river.
Toward morning, the noisy night having worn itself away, we all fall
asleep--only to be roused again by Talhamy’s voice at seven, proclaiming
aloud that the Bagstones and Fostât are once more close upon our heels;
that Silsilis and Kom Ombo are passed and left behind; that we have
already put forty-six miles between ourselves and Edfû; and that the
good wind is still blowing.
We are now within fifteen miles of Assûan. The Nile is narrow here, and
the character of the scenery has quite changed. Our view is bounded on
the Arabian side by a near range of black granitic mountains; while on
the Libyan side lies a chain of lofty sand-hills, each curiously capped
by a crown of dark bowlders. On both banks the river is thickly fringed
with palms.
Meanwhile the race goes on. Last night it was sport; to-day it is
earnest. Last night we raced for glory; to-day we race for a stake.
“A guinée for Reïs Hassan if we get first to Assûan!”
Reïs Hassan’s eyes glisten. No need to call up the dragoman to interpret
between us. The look, the tone, are as intelligible to him as the
choicest Arabic; and the magical word “guinée” stands for a sovereign
now, as it stood for one-pound-one in the days of Nelson and
Abercrombie. He touches his head and breast; casts a backward glance at
the pursuing dahabeeyahs, a forward glance in the direction of Assûan;
kicks off his shoes; ties a handkerchief about his waist; and stations
himself at the top of the steps leading to the upper deck. By the light
in his eye and the set look about his mouth, Reïs Hassan means winning.
Now to be first in Assûan means to be first on the governor’s list and
first up the cataract. And as the passage of the cataract is some two or
three days’ work this little question of priority is by no means
unimportant. Not for five times the promised “guinée” would we have the
Fostât slip in first, and so be kept waiting our turn on the wrong side
of the frontier.
And now, as the sun rises higher, so the race waxes hotter. At breakfast
time we were fifteen miles from Assûan. Now the fifteen miles have gone
down to ten; and when we reach yonder headland they will have dwindled
to seven. It is plain to see, however, that as the distance decreases
between ourselves and Assûan, so also it decreases between ourselves and
the Fostât. Reïs Hassan knows it. I see him measuring the space by his
eye. I see the frown settling on his brow. He is calculating how much
the Fostât gains in every quarter of an hour, and how many quarters we
are yet distant from the goal. For no Arab sailor counts by miles. He
counts by time and by the reaches in the river; and these may be taken
at a rough average of three miles each. When, therefore, our captain, in
reply to an oft-repeated question, says we have yet two bends to make,
we know that we are about six miles from our destination.
Six miles--and the Fostât creeping closer every minute! Just now we were
all talking eagerly; but as the end draws near, even the sailors are
silent. Reïs Hassan stands motionless at his post, on the lookout for
shallows. The words “Shamàl--Yemîn” (“left--right”), delivered in a
short, sharp tone, are the only sounds he utters. The steersman, all eye
and ear, obeys him like his hand. The sailors squat in their places,
quiet and alert as cats.
And now it is no longer six miles, but five--no longer five, but four.
The Fostât, thanks to her bigger sail, has well-nigh overtaken us; and
the Bagstones is not more than a hundred yards behind the Fostât. On we
go, however, past palm-woods of nobler growth than any we have yet seen;
past forlorn homeward-bound dahabeeyahs lying-to against the wind; past
native boats, and riverside huts, and clouds of driving sand; till the
corner is turned, and the last reach gained, and the minarets of Assûan
are seen as through a shifting fog in the distance. The ruined tower
crowning yonder promontory stands over against the town; and those black
specks midway in the bed of the river are the first outlying rocks of
the cataract. The channel there is hemmed in between reefs and
sand-banks, and to steer it is difficult in even the calmest weather.
Still our canvas strains to the wind, and the Philæ rushes on full-tilt,
like a racer at the hurdles.
Every eye now is turned upon Reïs Hassan; and Reïs Hassan stands rigid,
like a man of stone. The rocks are close ahead--so close that we can see
the breakers pouring over them and the swirling eddies between. Our way
lies through an opening between the bowlders. Beyond that opening the
channel turns off sharply to the left. It is a point at which everything
will depend on the shifting of a sail. If done too soon, we miss the
mark; if too late, we strike upon the rocks.
Suddenly our captain flings up his hand, takes the stairs at a bound,
and flies to the prow. The sailors spring to their feet, gathering some
round the shoghool, and some round the end of the yard. The Fostât is up
beside us. The moment for winning or losing is come.
And now, for a couple of breathless seconds, the two dahabeeyahs plunge
onward side by side, making for that narrow passage which is only wide
enough for one. Then the iron boat, shaving the sand-bank to get a wider
berth, shifts her sail first, and shifts it clumsily, breaking or
letting go her shoghool. We see the sail flap and the rope fly, and all
hands rushing to retrieve it.
In that moment Reïs Hassan gives the word. The Philæ bounds
forward--takes the channel from under the very bows of the
Fostât--changes her sail without a hitch--and dips right away down the
deep water, leaving her rival hard and fast among the shallows.
The rest of the way is short and open. In less than five minutes we have
taken in our sail, paid Reïs Hassan his well-earned guinée, and found a
snug corner to moor in. And so ends our memorable race of nearly
sixty-eight miles from Edfû to Assûan.
CHAPTER X.
ASSUAN AND ELEPHANTINE.
The green Island of Elephantine, which is about a mile in length, lies
opposite Assûan and divides the Nile in two channels. The Libyan and
Arabian deserts--smooth amber sand-slopes on the one hand; rugged
granite cliffs on the other--come down to the brink on either side. On
the Libyan shore a sheik’s tomb, on the Arabian shore a bold fragment of
Moorish architecture with ruined arches open to the sky, crown two
opposing heights, and keep watch over the gate of the cataract. Just
under the Moorish ruin, and separated from the river by a slip of sandy
beach, lies Assûan.
A few scattered houses, a line of blank wall, the top of a minaret, the
dark mouths of one or two gloomy alleys, are all that one sees of the
town from the mooring-place below. The black bowlders close against the
shore, some of which are superbly hieroglyphed, glisten in the sun like
polished jet.[46] The beach is crowded with bales of goods; with camels
laden and unladen; with turbaned figures coming and going; with damaged
cargo-boats lying up high and dry, and half heeled over, in the sun.
Others, moored close together, are taking in or discharging cargo. A
little apart from these lie some three or four dahabeeyahs flying
English, American, and Belgian flags. Another has cast anchor over the
way at Elephantine. Small rowboats cross and recross, meanwhile, from
shore to shore; dogs bark; camels snort and snarl; donkeys bray; and
clamorous curiosity dealers scream, chatter, hold their goods at arm’s
length, battle and implore to come on board, and are only kept off the
landing-plank by means of two big sticks in the hands of two stalwart
sailors.
The things offered for sale at Assûan are altogether new and strange.
Here are no scarabæi, no funerary statuettes, no bronze or porcelain
gods, no relics of a past civilization; but, on the contrary, such
objects as speak only of a rude and barbarous present--ostrich eggs and
feathers, silver trinkets of rough Nubian workmanship, spears, bows,
arrows, bucklers of rhinoceros hide, ivory bracelets, cut solid from the
tusk, porcupine quills, baskets of stained and plaited reeds, gold nose
rings and the like. One old woman has a Nubian lady’s dressing-case for
sale--an uncouth, fetich-like object with a cushion for its body, and a
top-knot of black feathers. The cushion contains two kohl-bottles, a
bodkin and a bone comb.
But the noisest dealer of the lot is an impish boy blessed with the
blackest skin and the shrillest voice ever brought together in one human
being. His simple costume consists of a tattered shirt and a white
cotton skull-cap; his stock in trade of a greasy leather fringe tied to
the end of a stick. Flying from window to window of the saloon on the
side next the shore, scrambling up the bows of a neighboring cargo-boat
so as to attack us in the rear, thrusting his stick and fringe in our
faces whichever way we turn, and pursuing us with eager cries of “Madame
Nubia! Madame Nubia!” he skips and screams and grins like an ubiquitous
goblin, and throws every competitor into the shade.
Having seen a similar fringe in the collection of a friend at home, I at
once recognized in “Madame Nubia” one of those curious girdles, which,
with the addition of a necklace and a few bracelets, form the entire
wardrobe of little girls south of the cataract. They vary in size
according to the age of the wearer; the largest being about twelve
inches in depth and twenty-five in length. A few are ornamented with
beads and small shells; but these are _parures de luxe_. The ordinary
article is cheaply and unpretentiously trimmed with castor-oil. That is
to say, the girdle when new is well soaked in the oil, which softens and
darkens the leather, besides adding a perfume dear to native nostrils.
For to the Nubian, who grows his own plants and bruises his own berries,
this odor is delicious. He reckons castor-oil among his greatest
luxuries. He eats it as we eat butter. His wives saturate their plaited
locks in it. His little girls perfume their fringes with it. His boys
anoint their bodies with it. His home, his breath, his garments, his
food are redolent of it. It pervades the very air in which he lives and
has his being. Happy the European traveler who, while his lines are cast
in Nubia, can train his degenerate nose to delight in the aroma of
castor-oil!
The march of civilization is driving these fringes out of fashion on the
frontier. At Assûan they are chiefly in demand among English and
American visitors. Most people purchase a “Madame Nubia” for the
entertainment of friends at home. L----, who is given to vanities in the
way of dress, bought one so steeped in fragrance that it scented the
Philæ for the rest of the voyage and retains its odor to this day.
Almost before the mooring-rope was made fast our painter, arrayed in a
gorgeous keffiyeh[47] and armed with the indispensible visiting-cane,
had sprung ashore and hastened to call upon the governor. A couple of
hours later the governor (having promised to send at once for the sheik
of the cataract and to forward our going by all means in his power)
returned the visit. He brought with him the mudîr[48] and kadi[49] of
Assûan, each attended by his pipe-bearer.
We received our guests with due ceremony in the saloon. The great men
placed themselves on one of the side-divans, and the painter opened the
conversation by offering them champagne, claret, port, sherry, curaçoa,
brandy, whisky and Angostura bitters. Talhamy interpreted.
The governor laughed. He was a tall young man, graceful, lively,
good-looking and black as a crow. The kadi and mudîr both elderly Arabs,
yellow, wrinkled and precise, looked shocked at the mere mention of
these unholy liquors. Somebody then proposed lemonade.
The governor turned briskly toward the speaker.
“Gazzoso?” he said, interrogatively.
To which Talhamy replied: “Aïwah [yes,] Gazzoso.”
Aerated lemonade and cigars were then brought. The governor watched the
process of uncorking with a face of profound interest and drank with the
undisguised greediness of a school-boy. Even the kadi and mudîr relaxed
somewhat of the gravity of their demeanor. To men whose habitual drink
consists of lime-water and sugar, bottled lemonade represents champagne
mousseux of the choicest brand.
Then began the usual attempts at conversation; and only those who have
tried small talk by proxy know how hard it is to supply topics, suppress
yawns and keep up an animated expression of countenance, while the
civilities on both sides are being interpreted by a dragoman.
We began, of course, with the temperature; for in Egypt, where it never
rains and the sun is always shining, the thermometer takes the place of
the weather as a useful platitude. Knowing that Assûan enjoys the
hottest reputation of any town on the surface of the globe, we were
agreeably surprised to find it no warmer than England in September. The
governor accounted for this by saying that he had never known so cold a
winter. We then asked the usual questions about the crops, the height of
the river, and so forth; to all of which he replied with the ease and
_bonhomie_ of a man of the world. Nubia, he said, was healthy--the
date-harvest had been abundant--the corn promised well--the Soudan was
quiet and prosperous. Referring to the new postal arrangements, he
congratulated us on being able to receive and post letters at the second
cataract. He also remarked that the telegraphic wires were now in
working order as far as Khartûm. We then asked how soon he expected the
railway to reach Assûan; to which he replied: “In two years, at latest.”
At length our little stock of topics came to an end and the
entertainment flagged.
“What shall I say next?” asked the dragoman.
“Tell him we particularly wish to see the slave market.”
The smile vanished from the governor’s face. The mudîr set down a glass
of fizzing lemonade, untasted. The kadi all but dropped his cigar. If a
shell had burst in the saloon their consternation could scarcely have
been greater.
The governor, looking very grave, was the first to speak.
“He says there is no slave trade in Egypt and no slave market in
Assûan,” interrupted Talhamy.
Now, we had been told in Cairo, on excellent authority, that slaves were
still bought and sold here, though less publicly than of old; and that
of all the sights a traveler might see in Egypt, this was the most
curious and pathetic.
“No slave market!” we repeated, incredulously.
The governor, the kadi and the mudîr shook their heads, and lifted up
their voices, and said all together, like a trio of mandarins in a comic
opera:
“Là, là, là! Mafeesh bazaar--mafeesh bazaar!” (“No, no, no! No
bazaar--no bazaar!”)
We endeavored to explain that in making this inquiry we desired neither
the gratification of an idle curiosity, nor the furtherance of any
political views. Our only object was sketching. Understanding,
therefore, that a private bazaar still existed in Assûan----
This was too much for the judicial susceptibilities of the kadi. He
would not let Talhamy finish.
“There is nothing of the kind,” he interrupted, puckering his face into
an expression of such virtuous horror as might become a reformed New
Zealander on the subject of cannibalism. “It is unlawful--unlawful.”
An awkward silence followed. We felt we had committed an enormous
blunder, and were disconcerted accordingly.
The governor saw, and with the best grace in the world took pity upon,
our embarrassment. He rose, opened the piano, and asked for some music;
whereupon the little lady played the liveliest thing she could remember;
which happened to be a waltz by Verdi.
The governor, meanwhile, sat beside the piano, smiling and attentive.
With all his politeness, however, he seemed to be looking for
something--to be not altogether satisfied. There was even a shade of
disappointment in the tone of his “Ketther-khayrik ketîr,” when the
waltz finally exploded in a shower of arpeggios. What could it be? Was
it that he wished for a song? Or would a pathetic air have pleased him
better?
Not a bit of it. He was looking for what his quick eye presently
detected--namely, some printed music, which he seized triumphantly and
placed before the player. What he wanted was “music played from a book.”
Being asked whether he preferred a lively or a plaintive melody, he
replied that “he did not care, so long as it was _difficult_.”
Now it chanced that he had pitched upon a volume of Wagner; so the
little lady took him at his word and gave him a dose of “Tannhaüser.”
Strange to say, he was delighted. He showed his teeth; he rolled his
eyes; he uttered the long-drawn “Ah!” which in Egypt signifies applause.
The more crabbed, the more far-fetched, the more unintelligible the
movement, the better, apparently, he liked it.
I never think of Assûan but I remember that curious scene--our little
lady at the piano; the black governor grinning in ecstasies close by;
the kadi in his magnificent shawl-turban; the mudîr half asleep; the air
thick with tobacco-smoke; and above all--dominant, tyrannous,
overpowering--the crash and clang, the involved harmonies, and the
multitudinous combinations of Tannhaüser.
The linked sweetness of an oriental visit is generally drawn out to a
length that sorely tries the patience and politeness of European hosts.
A native gentleman, if he has any business to attend to, gets through
his work before noon, and has nothing to do but smoke, chat, and doze
away the remainder of the day. For time, which hangs heavily on his
hands, he has absolutely no value. His main object in life is to consume
it, if possible, less tediously. He pays a visit, therefore, with the
deliberate intention of staying as long as possible. Our guests on the
present occasion remained the best part of two hours; and the governor,
who talked of going to England shortly, asked for all our names and
addresses, that he might come and see us at home.
Leaving the cabin, he paused to look at our roses, which stood near the
door. We told him they had been given to us by the Bey of Erment.
“Do they grow at Erment?” he asked, examining them with great curiosity.
“How beautiful! Why will they not grow in Nubia?”
We suggested that the climate was probably too hot for them.
He stooped, inhaling their perfume. He looked puzzled.
“They are very sweet,” he said. “Are they roses?”
The question gave us a kind of shock. We could hardly believe we had
reached a land where roses were unknown. Yet the governor, who had
smoked a rose-water narghilé and drunk rose-sherbet and eaten conserve
of roses all his days, recognized them by their perfume only. He had
never been out of Assûan in his life; not even as far as Erment. And he
had never seen a rose in bloom.
We had hoped to begin the passage of the cataract on the morning of the
day following our arrival at the frontier; but some other dahabeeyah, it
seemed, was in the act of fighting its way up to Philæ; and till that
boat was through, neither the sheik nor his men would be ready for us.
At eight o’clock in the morning of the next day but one, however, they
promised to take us in hand. We were to pay £12 English for the double
journey; that is to say, £9 down; and the remaining £3 on our return to
Assûan.
Such was the treaty concluded between ourselves and the sheik of the
cataract at a solemn conclave over which the governor, assisted by the
kadi and mudîr, presided.
Having a clear day to spend at Assûan, we of course gave part thereof to
Elephantine, which in the inscriptions is called Abu, or the Ivory
Island. There may perhaps have been a depôt, or “treasure-city,” here
for the precious things of the Upper Nile country; the gold of Nubia and
the elephant-tusks of Kush.
It is a very beautiful island--rugged and lofty to the south; low and
fertile to the north; with an exquisitely varied coast-line full of
wooded creeks and miniature beaches in which one might expect at any
moment to meet Robinson Crusoe with his goat-skin umbrella, or man
Friday bending under a load of faggots. They are all Fridays here,
however; for Elephantine, being the first Nubian outpost, is peopled by
Nubians only. It contains two Nubian villages, and the mounds of a very
ancient city which was the capital of all Egypt under the Pharaohs of
the sixth dynasty, between three and four thousand years before Christ.
Two temples, one of which dated from the reign of Amenhotep III, were
yet standing here some seventy years ago. They were seen by Belzoni in
1815, and had just been destroyed to build a palace and barracks when
Champollion went up in 1829. A ruined gateway of the Ptolemaic period
and a forlorn-looking sitting statue of Menephtah, the supposed Pharaoh
of the exodus, alone remain to identify the sites on which they stood.
Thick palm-groves and carefully tilled patches of castor-oil and cotton
plants, lentils, and durra, make green the heart of the island. The
western shore is wooded to the water’s edge. One may walk here in the
shade at hottest noon, listening to the murmur of the cataract and
seeking for wild flowers--which, however, would seem to blossom nowhere
save in the sweet Arabic name of Gezîret-el-Zahr, the island of flowers.
Upon the high ground at the southern extremity of the island, among
rubbish heaps, and bleached bones, and human skulls, and the sloughed
skins of snakes, and piles of party-colored potsherds, we picked up
several bits of inscribed terra-cotta--evidently fragments of broken
vases. The writing was very faint, and in part obliterated. We could see
that the characters were Greek; but not even our idle man was equal to
making out a word of the sense. Believing them to be mere disconnected
scraps to which it would be impossible to find the corresponding
pieces--taking it for granted, also, that they were of comparatively
modern date--we brought away some three or four as souvenirs of the
place, and thought no more about them.
We little dreamed that Dr. Birch, in his cheerless official room at the
British Museum so many thousand miles away, was at this very time
occupied in deciphering a collection of similar fragments, nearly all of
which had been brought from this same spot.[50] Of the curious interest
attaching to these illegible scrawls, of the importance they were
shortly to acquire in the eyes of the learned, of the possible value of
any chance additions to their number we knew, and could know, nothing.
Six months later we lamented our ignorance and our lost opportunities.
For the Egyptians, it seems, used potsherds instead of papyrus for short
memoranda; and each of these fragments which we had picked up contained
a record complete in itself. I fear we should have laughed if any one
had suggested that they might be tax-gatherers’ receipts. Yet that is
just what they were--receipts for government dues collected on the
frontier during the period of Roman rule in Egypt. They were written in
Greek, because the Romans deputed Greek scribes to perform the duties of
this unpopular office; but the Greek is so corrupt and the penmanship so
clownish that only a few eminent scholars can read them.
Not all the inscribed fragments found at Elephantine, however, are
tax-receipts, or written in bad Greek. The British Museum contains
several in the demotic, or current, script of the people, and a few in
the more learned hieratic, or priestly, hand. The former have not yet
been translated. They are probably business memoranda and short private
letters of Egyptians of the same period.
But how came these fragile documents to be preserved, when the city in
which their writers lived, and the temples in which they worshiped, have
disappeared and left scarce a trace behind? Who cast them down among
the potsherds on this barren hillside? Are we to suppose that some kind
of public record office once occupied the site, and that the receipts
here stored were duplicates of those given to the payers? Or is it not
even more probable that this place was the Monte Testaccio of the
ancient city, to which all broken pottery, written as well as unwritten,
found its way sooner or later?
With the exception of a fine fragment of Roman quay nearly opposite
Assûan, the ruined gateway of Alexander and the battered statue of
Menephtah are the only objects of archæological interest in the island.
But the charm of Elephantine is the everlasting charm of natural
beauty--of rocks, of palm-woods, of quiet waters.
The streets of Assûan are just like the streets of every other mud town
on the Nile. The bazaars reproduce the bazaars of Minieh and Siût. The
environs are noisy with cafés and dancing-girls, like the environs of
Esneh and Luxor. Into the mosque, where some kind of service was going
on, we peeped without entering. It looked cool, and clean, and spacious;
the floor being covered with fine matting, and some scores of
ostrich-eggs depending from the ceiling. In the bazaars we bought
baskets and mats of Nubian manufacture, woven with the same reeds, dyed
with the same colors, shaped after the same models, as those found in
the tombs at Thebes. A certain oval basket with a vaulted cover, of
which specimens are preserved in the British Museum, seems still to be
the pattern most in demand at Assûan. The basket-makers have neither
changed their fashion nor the buyers their taste since the days of
Rameses the Great.
Here also, at a little cupboard of a shop near the shoe bazaar, we were
tempted to spend a few pounds in ostrich feathers, which are conveyed to
Assûan by traders from the Soudan. The merchant brought out a feather at
a time, and seemed in no haste to sell. We also affected indifference.
The haggling on both sides was tremendous. The by-standers, as usual,
were profoundly interested, and commented on every word that passed. At
last we carried away an armful of splendid plumes, most of which
measured from two and a half to three feet in length. Some were pure
white, others white tipped with brown. They had been neither cleaned nor
curled, but were just as they came from the hands of the
ostrich-hunters.
By far the most amusing sight in Assûan was the traders’ camp down near
the landing-place. Here were Abyssinians like slender-legged baboons;
wild-looking Bisharîyah and Ababdeh Arabs with flashing eyes and flowing
hair; sturdy Nubians the color of a Barbedienne bronze; and natives of
all tribes and shades, from Kordofân and Sennâr, the deserts of the
Bahuda and the banks of the Blue and White Niles. Some were running from
Cairo; others were on their way thither. Some, having disembarked their
merchandise at Mahatta (a village on the other side of the cataract),
had come across the desert to re-embark it at Assûan. Others had just
disembarked theirs at Assûan, in order to re-embark it at Mahatta.
Meanwhile, they were living _sub jove_; each intrenched in his own
little redoubt of piled-up bales and packing-cases, like a spider in the
center of his web; each provided with a kettle and coffee-pot, and an
old rug to sleep and pray upon. One sulky old Turk had fixed up a roof
of matting, and furnished his den with a _kafas_, or palm-wood couch;
but he was a self-indulgent exception to the rule.
Some smiled, some scowled, when we passed through the camp. One offered
us coffee. Another, more obliging than the rest, displayed the contents
of his packages. Great bundles of lion and leopard skins, bales of
cotton, sacks of henna-leaves, elephant-tusks swathed in canvas and
matting, strewed the sandy bank. Of gum-arabic alone there must have
been several hundred bales; each bale sewed up in a raw hide and tied
with thongs of hippopotamus leather. Toward dusk, when the camp-fires
were alight and the evening meal was in course of preparation, the scene
became wonderfully picturesque. Lights gleamed; shadows deepened;
strange figures stalked to and fro, or squatted in groups amid their
merchandise. Some were baking flat cakes; others stirring soup, or
roasting coffee. A hole scooped in the sand, a couple of stones to
support the kettle, and a handful of dry sticks, served for kitchen
range and fuel. Meanwhile all the dogs in Assûan prowled round the camp,
and a jargon of barbaric tongues came and went with the breeze that
followed the sunset.
I must not forget to add that among this motley crowd we saw two
brothers, natives of Khartûm. We met them first in the town, and
afterward in the camp. They wore voluminous white turbans and flowing
robes of some kind of creamy cashmere cloth. Their small proud heads
and delicate aristocratic features were modeled on the purest Florentine
type; their eyes were long and liquid; their complexions, free from any
taint of Abyssinian blue or Nubian bronze, were intensely, lustrously,
magnificently black. We agreed that we had never seen two such handsome
men. They were like young and beautiful Dantes carved in ebony; Dantes
unembittered by the world, unsicklied by the pale cast of thought, and
glowing with the life of the warm south.
Having explored Elephantine and ransacked the bazaars, our party
dispersed in various directions. Some gave the remainder of the day to
letter-writing. The painter, bent on sketching, started off in search of
a jackal-haunted ruin up a wild ravine on the Libyan side of the river.
The writer and the idle man boldly mounted camels and rode out into the
Arabian desert.
Now the camel-riding that is done at Assûan is of the most commonplace
description, and bears to genuine desert traveling about the same
relation that half an hour on the Mer de Glace bears to the passage of
the Mortaretsch glacier or the ascent of Monte Rosa. The short cut from
Assûan to Philæ, or at least the ride to the granite quarries, forms
part of every dragoman’s programme, and figures as the crowning
achievement of every Cook’s tourist. The Arabs themselves perform these
little journeys much more pleasantly and expeditiously on donkeys. They
take good care, in fact, never to scale the summit of a camel if they
can help it. But for the impressionable traveler, the Assûan camel is
_de rigueur_. In his interests are those snarling quadrupeds, betasseled
and berugged, taken from their regular work, and paraded up and down the
landing-place. To transport cargoes disembarked above and below the
cataract is their vocation. Taken from this honest calling to perform in
an absurd little drama got up especially for the entertainment of
tourists, it is no wonder if the beasts are more than commonly
ill-tempered. They know the whole proceeding to be essentially cockney,
and they resent it accordingly.
The ride, nevertheless, has its advantages; not the least being that it
enables one to realize the kind of work involved in any of the regular
desert expeditions. At all events, it entitles one to claim acquaintance
with the ship of the desert, and (bearing in mind the probable
inferiority of the specimen) to form an _ex pede_ judgment of his
qualification.
The camel has his virtues--so much at least must be admitted; but they
do not lie upon the surface. My Buffon tells me, for instance, that he
carries a fresh-water cistern in his stomach; which is meritorious. But
the cistern ameliorates neither his gait nor his temper--which are
abominable. Irreproachable as a beast of burden, he is open to many
objections as a steed. It is unpleasant, in the first place, to ride an
animal which not only objects to being ridden, but cherishes a strong
personal antipathy to his rider. Such, however, is his amiable
peculiarity. You know that he hates you, from the moment you first walk
round him, wondering where and how to begin the ascent of his hump. He
does not, in fact, hesitate to tell you so in the roundest terms. He
swears freely while you are taking your seat; snarls if you but move in
the saddle; and stares you angrily in the face if you attempt to turn
his head in any direction save that which he himself prefers. Should you
persevere, he tries to bite your feet. If biting your feet does not
answer, he lies down.
Now the lying down and getting up of a camel are performances designed
for the express purpose of inflicting grievous bodily harm upon his
rider. Thrown twice forward and twice backward, punched in his “wind”
and damaged in his spine, the luckless novice receives four distinct
shocks, each more violent and unexpected than the last. For this
“execrable hunchback” is fearfully and wonderfully made. He has a
superfluous joint somewhere in his legs and uses it to revenge himself
upon mankind.
His paces, however, are more complicated than his joints and more trying
than his temper. He has four: a short walk, like the rolling of a small
boat in a chopping sea; a long walk, which dislocates every bone in your
body; a trot that reduces you to imbecility; and a gallop that is sudden
death. One tries in vain to imagine a crime for which the _peine forte
et dure_ of sixteen hours on camelback would not be a full and
sufficient expiation. It is a punishment to which one would not
willingly be the means of condemning any human being--not even a
reviewer.
They had been down on the bank for hire all day long--brown camels and
white camels, shaggy camels and smooth camels; all with gay worsted
tassels on their heads and rugs flung over their high wooden saddles, by
way of housings. The gentlemen of the Fostât had ridden away hours ago,
cross-legged and serene; and we had witnessed their demeanor with
mingled admiration and envy. Now, modestly conscious of our own daring,
we prepared to do likewise. It was a solemn moment when, having chosen
our beasts, we prepared to encounter the unknown perils of the desert.
What wonder if the happy couple exchanged an affecting farewell at
parting?
We mounted and rode away; two imps of darkness following at the heels of
our camels and Salame performing the part of body-guard. Thus attended,
we found ourselves pitched, swung and rolled along at a pace that
carried us rapidly up the slope, past a suburb full of cafés and
grinning dancing-girls and out into the desert. Our way for the first
half-mile or so lay among tombs. A great Mohammedan necropolis, part
ancient, part modern, lies behind Assûan and covers more ground than the
town itself. Some scores of tiny mosques, each topped by its little
cupola and all more or less dilapidated, stand here amid a wilderness of
scattered tombstones. Some are isolated; some grouped picturesquely
together. Each covers, or is supposed to cover, the grave of a Moslem
santon; but some are mere commemorative chapels dedicated to saints and
martyrs elsewhere buried. Of simple headstones defaced, shattered,
overturned, propped back to back on cairns of loose stones, or piled in
broken and dishonored heaps, there must be many hundreds. They are for
the most part rounded at the top like ancient Egyptian stelæ and bear
elaborately carved inscriptions, some of which are in the Cufic
character and more than a thousand years old. Seen when the sun is
bending westward and the shadows are lengthening, there is something
curiously melancholy and picturesque about this city of the dead in the
dead desert.
Leaving the tombs, we now strike off toward the left, bound for the
obelisk in the quarry, which is the stock sight of the place. The
horizon beyond Assûan is bounded on all sides by rocky heights, bold and
picturesque in form, yet scarcely lofty enough to deserve the name of
mountains. The sandy bottom under our camel’s feet is strewn with small
pebbles and tolerably firm. Clustered rocks of black and red granite
profusely inscribed with hieroglyphed records crop up here and there and
serve as landmarks just where landmarks are needed. For nothing would be
easier than to miss one’s way among these tawny slopes and to go
wandering off, like lost Israelites, into the desert.
Winding in and out among undulating hillocks and tracts of rolled
bowlders, we come at last to a little group of cliffs, at the foot of
which our camels halt unbidden. Here we dismount, climb a short slope
and find the huge monolith at our feet.
Being cut horizontally, it lies half-buried in drifted sand, with
nothing to show that it is not wholly disengaged and ready for
transport. Our books tell us, however, that the under-cutting has never
been done and that it is yet one with the granite bottom on which it
seems to lie. Both ends are hidden; but one can pace some sixty feet of
its yet visible surface. That surface bears the tool-marks of the
workmen. A slanting groove pitted with wedge-holes indicates where it
was intended to taper toward the top. Another shows where it was to be
reduced at the sides. Had it been finished, this would have been the
largest obelisk in the world. The great obelisk of Queen Hatshepsu at
Karnak, which, as its inscriptions record, came also from Assûan, stands
ninety-two feet high and measures eight feet square at the base;[51] but
this which lies sleeping in the desert would have stood ninety-five feet
in the shaft, and have measured over eleven feet square at the base. We
can never know now why it was left here, nor guess with what royal name
it should have been inscribed. Had the king said in his heart that he
would set up a mightier obelisk than was ever yet seen by eyes of men,
and did he die before the block could be extracted from the quarry? Or
were the quarrymen driven from the desert, and the Pharaoh from his
throne, by the hungry hordes of Ethiopia, or Syria, or the islands
beyond the sea? The great stone may be older than Rameses the Great, or
as modern as the last of the Romans; but to give it a date, or to divine
its history, is impossible. Egyptology, which has solved the enigma of
the sphinx, is powerless here. The obelisk of the quarry holds its
secret safe, and holds it forever.
Ancient Egyptian quarrying is seen under its most striking aspect among
extensive limestone or sandstone ranges, as at Turra and Silsilis; but
the process by which the stone was extracted can nowhere be more
distinctly traced than at Assûan. In some respects, indeed, the quarries
here, though on a smaller scale than those lower down the river, are
even more interesting. Nothing surprises one at Silsilis, for instance,
more than economy with which the sandstone has been cut from the heart
of the mountain; but at Assûan, as the material was more precious, so
does the economy seem to have been still greater. At Silsilis, the
yellow cliffs have been sliced as neatly as the cheese in a
cheese-monger’s window. Smooth, upright walls alone mark the place where
the work has been done; and the amount of débris is altogether
insignificant. But at Assûan, when, extracting granite for sculptural
purposes, they attacked the form of the object required and cut it out
roughly to shape. The great obelisk is but one of the many cases in
point. In the same group of rocks, or one very closely adjoining, we saw
a rough-hewn column, erect and three parts detached, as well as the
semi-cylindrical hollow from which its fellow had been taken. One
curious recess from which a quadrant-shaped mass had been cut away
puzzled us immensely. In other places the blocks appeared to have been
coffer shaped. We sought in vain, however, for the broken sarcophagus
mentioned in Murray.
But the drifted sands, we may be sure, hide more precious things than
these. Inscriptions are probably as abundant here as in the breccia of
Hamamat. The great obelisk must have had a fellow, if we only knew where
to look for it. The obelisks of Queen Hatshepsu, and the sarcophagi of
famous kings, might possibly be traced to their beds in these quarries.
So might the casing-stones of the Pyramid of Menkara, the massive slabs
of the Temple of the Sphinx, and the walls of the sanctuary of Philip
Aridæus at Karnak. Above all, the syenite Colossus of the Ramesseum and
the Colossus of Tanis,[52] which was the largest detached statue in the
world, must each have left its mighty matrix among the rocks close by.
But these, like the song of the sirens or the alias of Achilles, though
“not beyond all conjecture,” are among the things that will never now be
discovered.
As regards the process of quarrying at Assûan, it seems that rectangular
granite blocks were split off here, as the softer limestone and
sandstone elsewhere, by means of wooden wedges. These were fitted to
holes already cut for their reception; and, being saturated with water,
split the hard rock by mere force of expansion. Every quarried mass
hereabouts is marked with rows of these wedge-holes.
Passing by the way a tiny oasis where there were camels and a well, and
an idle water-wheel, and a patch of emerald-green barley, we next rode
back nearly to the outskirts of Assûan, where, in a dismal hollow on the
verge of the desert, may be seen a small, half-buried temple of
Ptolemaic times. Traces of color are still visible on the winged globe
under the cornice, and on some mutilated bas-reliefs at either side of
the principal entrance. Seeing that the interior was choked with
rubbish, we made no attempt to go inside; but rode away again without
dismounting.
And now, there being still an hour of daylight, we signified our
intention of making for the top of the nearest hill, in order to see the
sun set. This, clearly, was an unheard of innovation. The camel boys
stared, shook their heads, protested there was “mafeesh sikkeh” (no
road), and evidently regarded us as lunatics. The camels planted their
splay feet obstinately in the sand, tried to turn back, and, when
obliged to yield to the force of circumstances, abused us all the way.
Arrived at the top, we found ourselves looking down upon the Island of
Elephantine, with the Nile, the town, and the dahabeeyahs at our feet. A
prolongation of the ridge on which we were standing led, however, to
another height crowned by a ruined tomb; and seemed to promise a view of
the cataract. Seeing us prepare to go on, the camel boys broke into a
_furor_ of remonstrance, which, but for Salame’s big stick, would have
ended in downright mutiny. Still we pushed forward, and, still
dissatisfied, insisted on attacking a third summit. The boys now trudged
on in sullen despair. The sun was sinking; the way was steep and
difficult; the night would soon come on. If the howadji chose to break
their necks, it concerned nobody but themselves; but if the camels broke
theirs, who was to pay for them?
Such--expressed half in broken Arabic, half in gestures--were the
sentiments of our youthful Nubians. Nor were the camels themselves less
emphatic. They grinned; they sniffed; they snorted; they snarled; they
disputed every foot of the way. As for mine (a gawky, supercilious beast
with a bloodshot eye and a battered Roman nose), I never heard any dumb
animal make use of so much bad language in my life.
The last hill was very steep and stony; but the view from the top was
magnificent. We had now gained the highest point of the ridge which
divides the valley of the Nile from the Arabian desert. The cataract,
widening away reach after reach and studded with innumerable rocky
islets, looked more like a lake than a river. Of the Libyan desert we
could see nothing beyond the opposite sand-slopes, gold-rimmed against
the sunset. The Arabian desert, a boundless waste edged by a serrated
line of purple peaks, extended eastward to the remotest horizon. We
looked down upon it as on a raised map. The Moslem tombs, some five
hundred feet below, showed like toys. To the right, in a wide valley
opening away southward, we recognized that ancient bed of the Nile which
serves for the great highway between Egypt and Nubia. At the end of the
vista, some very distant palms against a rocky background pointed the
way to Philæ.
Meanwhile the sun was fast sinking--the lights were crimsoning--the
shadows were lengthening. All was silent; all was solitary. We listened,
but could scarcely hear the murmur of the rapids. We looked in vain for
the quarry of the obelisk. It was but one group of rocks among scores of
others, and to distinguish it at this distance was impossible.
Presently, a group of three or four black figures, mounted on little
gray asses, came winding in and out among the tombs, and took the road
to Philæ. To us they were moving specks; but our lynx-eyed camel boys at
once recognized the “Sheik el Shellàl” (sheik of the cataract) and his
retinue. More dahabeeyahs had come in; and the worthy man, having spent
the day in Assûan visiting, palavering, bargaining, was now going home
to Mahatta for the night. We watched the retreating riders for some
minutes, till twilight stole up the ancient channel like a flood and
drowned them in warm shadows.
The after-glow had faded off the heights when we at length crossed the
last ridge, descended the last hillside, and regained the level from
which we had started. Here once more we met the Fostât party. They had
ridden to Philæ and back by the desert and were apparently all the worse
for wear. Seeing us they urged their camels to a trot and tried to look
as if they liked it. The idle man and the writer wreathed their
countenances in ghastly smiles and did likewise. Not for worlds would
they have admitted that they found the pace difficult. Such is the moral
influence of the camel. He acts as a tonic; he promotes the Spartan
virtues; and if not himself heroic, is, at least, the cause of heroism
in others.
It was nearly dark when we reached Assûan. The cafés were all alight and
astir. There was smoking and coffee-drinking going on outside; there
were sounds of music and laughter within. A large private house on the
opposite side of the road was being decorated as if for some festive
occasion. Flags were flying from the roof, and two men were busy putting
up a gayly-painted inscription over the doorway. Asking, as was natural,
if there was a marriage or a fantasia afoot, it was not a little
startling to be told that these were signs of mourning, and that the
master of the house had died during the interval that elapsed between
our riding out and riding back again.
In Egypt, where the worship of ancestry and the preservation of the body
were once among the most sacred duties of the living, they now make
short work with their dead. He was to be buried, they said, to-morrow
morning, three hours after sunrise.
CHAPTER XI.
THE CATARACT AND THE DESERT.
At Assûan one bids good-by to Egypt and enters Nubia through the gates
of the cataract--which is, in truth, no cataract but a succession of
rapids extending over two-thirds of the distance between Elephantine and
Philæ. The Nile--diverted from its original course by some unrecorded
catastrophe, the nature of which has given rise to much scientific
conjecture--here spreads itself over a rocky basin bounded by
sand-slopes on the one side and by granite cliffs on the other. Studded
with numberless islets, divided into numberless channels, foaming over
sunken rocks, eddying among water-worn bowlders, now shallow, now deep,
now loitering, now hurrying, here sleeping in the ribbed hollow of a
tiny sand-drift, there circling above the vortex of a hidden whirlpool,
the river, whether looked upon from the deck of the dahabeeyah or the
heights along the shore, is seen everywhere to be fighting its way
through a labyrinth, the paths of which have never yet been mapped or
sounded.
Those paths are everywhere difficult and everywhere dangerous; and to
that labyrinth the shellalee, or cataract Arab, alone possesses the key.
At the time of the inundation, when all but the highest rocks are under
water and navigation is as easy here as elsewhere, the shellalee’s
occupation is gone. But as the floods subside and travelers begin to
reappear, his work commences. To haul dahabeeyahs up those treacherous
rapids by sheer stress of rope and muscle; to steer skillfully down
again through channels bristling with rocks and boiling with foam,
becomes now, for some five months of the year, his principal industry.
It is hard work, but he gets well paid for it, and his profits are
always on the increase. From forty to fifty dahabeeyahs are annually
taken up between November and March; and every year brings a larger
influx of travelers. Meanwhile, accidents rarely happen; prices tend
continually upward; and the cataract-Arabs make a little fortune by
their singular monopoly.[53]
The scenery of the first cataract is like nothing else in the
world--except the scenery of the second. It is altogether new, and
strange, and beautiful. It is incomprehensible that travelers should
have written of it in general with so little admiration. They seem to
have been impressed by the wildness of the waters, by the quaint forms
of the rocks, by the desolation and grandeur of the landscape as a
whole; but scarcely at all by its beauty--which is paramount.
The Nile here widens to a lake. Of the islands, which it would hardly be
an exaggeration to describe as some hundreds in number, no two are
alike. Some are piled up like the rocks at the Land’s End in Cornwall,
block upon block, column upon column, tower upon tower, as if reared by
the hand of man. Some are green with grass; some golden with slopes of
drifted sand; some planted with rows of blossoming lupins, purple and
white. Others again are mere cairns of loose blocks, with here and there
a perilously balanced top-bowlder. On one, a singular upright monolith,
like a menhir, stands conspicuous, as if placed there to commemorate a
date, or to point the way to Philæ. Another mass rises out of the water
squared and buttressed, in the likeness of a fort. A third, humped and
shining like the wet body of some amphibious beast, lifts what seems to
be a horned head above the surface of the rapids. All these blocks and
bowlders and fantastic rocks are granite; some red, some purple, some
black. Their forms are rounded by the friction of ages. Those nearest
the brink reflect the sky like mirrors of burnished steel. Royal ovals
and hieroglyphed inscriptions, fresh as of yesterday’s cutting, start
out here and there from those glittering surfaces with startling
distinctness. A few of the larger islands are crowned with clumps of
palms; and one, the loveliest of any, is completely embowered in
gum-trees and acacias, dôm and date palms, and feathery tamarisks, all
festooned together under a hanging canopy of yellow-blossomed creepers.
On a brilliant Sunday morning, with a favorable wind, we entered on this
fairy archipelago. Sailing steadily against the current, we glided away
from Assûan, left Elephantine behind, and found ourselves at once in the
midst of the islands. From this moment every turn of the tiller
disclosed a fresh point of view, and we sat on deck, spectators of a
moving panorama. The diversity of subjects was endless. The combinations
of form and color, of light and shadow, of foreground and distance, were
continually changing. A boat or a few figures alone were wanting to
complete the picturesqueness of the scene; but in all those channels,
and among all those islands, we saw no sign of any living creature.
Meanwhile the sheik of the cataract--a flat-faced, fishy-eyed old
Nubian, with his head tied up in a dingy yellow silk handkerchief--sat
apart in solitary grandeur at the stern, smoking a long chibouque.
Behind him squatted some five or six dusky strangers; and a new
steersman, black as a negro, had charge of the helm. This new steersman
was our pilot for Nubia. From Assûan to Wady Halfeh, and back again to
Assûan, he alone was now held responsible for the safety of the
dahabeeyah and all on board.
At length a general stir among the crew warned us of the near
neighborhood of the first rapid. Straight ahead, as if ranged along the
dike of a weir, a chain of small islets barred the way; while the
current, divided into three or four headlong torrents, came rushing down
the slope, and reunited at the bottom in one tumultuous race.
That we should ever get the Philæ up that hill of moving water seemed at
first sight impossible. Still our steersman held on his course, making
for the widest channel. Still the sheik smoked imperturbably. Presently,
without removing the pipe from his mouth, he delivered the one
word--“Roóhh!” “Forward!”
Instantly, evoked by his nod, the rocks swarmed with natives. Hidden
till now in all sorts of unseen corners, they sprang out shouting,
gesticulating, laden with coils of rope, leaping into the thick of the
rapids, splashing like water-dogs, bobbing like corks, and making as
much show of energy as if they were going to haul us up Niagara. The
thing was evidently a _coup de théatre_, like the apparition of Clan
Alpine’s warriors in the Donna del Lago--with backshîsh in the
background. The scene that followed was curious enough. Two ropes were
carried from the dahabeeyah to the nearest island, and there made fast
to the rocks. Two ropes from the island were also brought on board the
dahabeeyah. A double file of men on deck, and another double file on
shore, then ranged themselves along the ropes; the sheik gave the
signal; and, to a wild chanting accompaniment and a movement like a
barbaric Sir Roger de Coverley dance, a system of double hauling began,
by means of which the huge boat slowly and steadily ascended. We may
have been a quarter of an hour going up the incline; though it seemed
much longer. Meanwhile, as they warmed to their work, the men chanted
louder and pulled harder, till the boat went in at last with a rush, and
swung over into a pool of comparatively smooth water.
Having moored here for an hour’s rest, we next repeated the performance
against a still stronger current a little higher up. This time, however,
a rope broke. Down went the haulers, like a row of cards suddenly tipped
over--round swung the Philæ, receiving the whole rush of the current on
her beam! Luckily for us, the other rope held fast against the strain.
Had it also broken, we must have been wrecked then and there
ignominiously.
Our Nubian auxiliaries struck work after this. Fate, they said, was
adverse; so they went home, leaving us moored for the night in the pool
at the top of the first rapid. The sheik promised, however, that his
people should begin work next morning at dawn, and get us through before
sunset. Next morning came, however, and not a man appeared upon the
scene. At about midday they began dropping in, a few at a time; hung
about in a languid, lazy way for a couple of hours or so; moved us into
a better position for attacking the next rapid; and then melted away
mysteriously by twos and threes among the rocks, and were no more seen.
We now felt that our time and money were being recklessly squandered,
and we resolved to bear it no longer. Our painter therefore undertook to
remonstrate with the sheik, and to convince him of the error of his
ways. The sheik listened; smoked; shook his head; replied that in the
cataract, as elsewhere, there were lucky and unlucky days, days when men
felt inclined to work, and days when they felt disinclined. To-day as it
happened, they felt disinclined. Being reminded that it was unreasonable
to keep us three days going up five miles of river, and that there was a
governor at Assûan to whom we should appeal to-morrow unless the work
went on in earnest, he smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and muttered
something about “destiny.”
Now the painter, being of a practical turn, had compiled for himself a
little vocabulary of choice Arabic maledictions, which he carried in his
note-book for reference when needed. Having no faith in its possible
usefulness, we were amused by the industry with which he was constantly
adding to this collection. We looked upon it, in fact, as a harmless
pleasantry--just as we looked upon his pocket-revolver, which was never
loaded; or his brand-new fowling-piece, which he was never known to
fire.
But the sheik of the cataract had gone too far. The fatuity of that
smile would have exasperated the meekest of men; and our painter was not
the meekest of men. So he whipped out his pocket-book, ran his finger
down the line, and delivered an appropriate quotation. His accent may
not have been faultless; but there could be no mistake as to the energy
of his style or the vigor of his language. The effect of both was
instantaneous. The sheik sprang to his feet as if he had been
shot--turned pale with rage under his black skin--vowed the Philæ might
stay where she was till doomsday, for aught that he or his men would do
to help her a foot farther--bounded into his own ricketty sandal and
rowed away, leaving us to our fate.
We stood aghast. It was all over with us. We should never see Abou
Simbel now--never write our names on the Rock of Aboosîr, nor slake our
thirst at the waters of the second cataract. What was to be done? Must
the sheik be defied, or propitiated? Should we appeal to the governor,
or should we immolate the painter? The majority were for immolating the
painter.
We went to bed that night, despairing; but lo! next morning at sunrise
appeared the sheik of the cataract, all smiles, all activity, with no
end of ropes and a force of two hundred men. We were his dearest
friends now. The painter was his brother. He had called out the ban and
arrière ban of the cataract in our service. There was nothing, in short,
that he would not do to oblige us.
The dragoman vowed that he had never seen Nubians work as those Nubians
worked that day. They fell to like giants, tugging away from morn till
dewy eve, and never giving over till they brought us round the last
corner and up the last rapid. The sun had set, the after-glow had faded,
the twilight was closing in, when our dahabeeyah slipped at last into
level water, and the two hundred, with a parting shout, dispersed to
their several villages.
We were never known to make light of the painter’s repertory of select
abuse after this. If that note-book of his had been the drowned book of
Prospero, or the magical Papyrus of Thoth fished up anew from the bottom
of the Nile, we could not have regarded it with a respect more nearly
bordering upon awe.
Though there exists no boundary line to mark where Egypt ends and Nubia
begins, the nationality of the races dwelling on either side of that
invisible barrier is as sharply defined as though an ocean divided them.
Among the shellalee, or cataract villagers, one comes suddenly into the
midst of a people that have apparently nothing in common with the
population of Egypt. They belong to a lower ethnological type, and they
speak a language derived from purely African sources. Contrasting with
our Arab sailors the sulky-looking, half-naked, muscular savages who
thronged about the Philæ during her passage up the cataract, one could
not but perceive that they are to this day as distinct and inferior a
people as when their Egyptian conquerors, massing together in one
contemptuous epithet all nations south of the frontier, were wont to
speak of them as “the vile race of Kush.” Time has done little to change
them since those early days. Some Arabic words have crept into their
vocabulary. Some modern luxuries--as tobacco, coffee, soap, and
gunpowder--have come to be included in the brief catalogue of their
daily wants. But in most other respects they are living to this day as
they lived in the time of the Pharaohs; cultivating lentils and durra,
brewing barley beer, plaiting mats and baskets of stained reeds, tracing
rude patterns upon bowls of gourd-rind, flinging the javelin, hurling
the boomerang, fashioning bucklers of crocodile-skin and bracelets of
ivory, and supplying Egypt with henna. The dexterity with which, sitting
as if in a wager boat, they balance themselves on a palm-log, and paddle
to and fro about the river, is really surprising. This barbaric
substitute for a boat is probably more ancient than the pyramids.
Having witnessed the passage of the first few rapids, we were glad to
escape from the dahabeeyah and spend our time sketching here and there
on the borders of the desert and among the villages and islands round
about. In all Egypt and Nubia there is no scenery richer in picturesque
bits than the scenery of the cataract. An artist might pass a winter
there, and not exhaust the pictorial wealth of those five miles which
divide Assûan from Philæ. Of tortuous creeks shut in by rocks
fantastically piled--of sand-slopes golden to the water’s edge--of
placid pools low-lying in the midst of lupin-fields and tracts of tender
barley--of creaking sakkiehs, half-hidden among palms and dropping water
as they turn--of mud dwellings, here clustered together in hollows,
there perched separately on heights among the rocks, and perpetuating to
this day the form and slope of Egyptian pylons--of rude boats drawn up
in sheltered coves, or going to pieces high and dry upon the sands--of
water-washed bowlders of crimson, and black, and purple granite, on
which the wild fowl cluster at midday and the fisher spreads his nets to
dry at sunset--of camels, and caravans, and camps on shore--of
cargo-boats and cangias on the river--of wild figures of half-naked
athletes--of dusky women decked with barbaric ornaments, unveiled,
swift-gliding, trailing long robes of deepest gentian blue--of ancient
crones, and little naked children like live bronzes--of these, and a
hundred other subjects, in infinite variety and combination, there is
literally no end. It is all so picturesque, indeed, so biblical, so
poetical, that one is almost in danger of forgetting that the places are
something more than beautiful backgrounds, and that the people are not
merely appropriate figures placed there for the delight of sketchers,
but are made of living flesh and blood, and moved by hopes, and fears,
and sorrows, like our own.
Mahatta, green with sycamores and tufted palms, nestled in the hollow
of a little bay; half-islanded in the rear by an arm of backwater,
curved and glittering like the blade of a Turkish cimeter, is by far the
most beautifully situated village on the Nile. It is the residence of
the principal sheik, and, if one may say so, is the capital of the
cataract. The houses lie some way back from the river. The bay is
thronged with native boats of all sizes and colors. Men and camels,
women and children, donkeys, dogs, merchandise and temporary huts, put
together with poles and matting, crowd the sandy shore. It is Assûan
over again, but on a larger scale. The shipping is tenfold more
numerous. The traders’ camp is in itself a village. The beach is half a
mile in length and a quarter of a mile in the slope down to the river.
Mahatta is, in fact, the twin port to Assûan. It lies, not precisely at
the other extremity of the great valley between Assûan and Philæ, but at
the nearest accessible point above the cataract. It is here that the
Soudan traders disembark their goods for re-embarkation at Assûan. Such
ricketty, barbaric-looking craft as these Nubian cangias we had not yet
seen on the river. They looked as old and obsolete as the ark. Some had
curious carved verandas outside the cabin-entrance. Others were tilted
up at the stern like Chinese junks. Most of them had been slavers in the
palmy days of Defterdar Bey; plying then as now between Wady Halfeh and
Mahatta, discharging their human cargoes at this point for re-shipment
at Assûan; and rarely passing the cataract, even at the time of
inundation. If their wicked old timbers could have spoken they might
have told us many a black and bloody tale.
Going up through the village and palm gardens, and turning off in a
northeasterly direction toward the desert, one presently comes out about
midway of that valley to which I have made allusion more than once
already. No one, however unskilled in physical geography, could look
from end to end of that huge furrow and not see that it was once a
river-bed. We know not for how many tens of thousands, or hundreds of
thousands, of years the Nile may have held on its course within those
original bounds. Neither can we tell when it deserted them. It is,
however, quite certain that the river flowed that way within historic
times; that is to say, in the days of Amenemhat III (_circa_ B.C. 2800).
So much is held to be proven by certain inscriptions[54] which record
the maximum height of the inundation at Semneh during various years of
that king’s reign. The Nile then rose in Ethiopia to a level some
twenty-seven feet in excess of the highest point to which it is ever
known to attain at the present day. I am not aware what relation the
height of this ancient bed bears to the levels recorded at Semneh, or to
those now annually self-registered upon the furrowed banks of Philæ; but
one sees at a glance, without aid of measurements or hydrographic
science, that if the river were to come down again next summer in a
mighty “bore,” the crest of which rose twenty-seven feet above the
highest ground now fertilized by the annual overflow, it would at once
refill its long-deserted bed and convert Assûan into an island.
Granted, then, that the Nile flowed through the desert in the time of
Amenemhat III, there must at some later period have come a day when it
suddenly ran dry. This catastrophe is supposed to have taken place about
the time of the expulsion of the Hyksos (_circa_ B.C. 1703), when a
great disruption of the rocky barrier at Silsilis is thought to have
taken place; so draining Nubia, which till now had played the part of a
vast reservoir, and dispersing the pent-up floods over the plains of
Southern Egypt. It would, however, be a mistake to conclude that the
Nile was by this catastrophe turned aside in order to be precipitated in
the direction of the cataract. One arm of the river must always have
taken the present lower and deeper course; while the other must of
necessity have run low--perhaps very nearly dry--as the inundation
subsided every spring.
There remains no monumental record of this event; but the facts speak
for themselves. The great channel is there. The old Nile mud is
there--buried for the most part in sand, but still visible on many a
rocky shelf and plateau between Assûan and Philæ. There are even places
where the surface of the mass is seen to be scooped out, as if by the
sudden rush of the departing waters. Since that time, the tides of war
and commerce have flowed in their place. Every conquering Thothmes and
Rameses bound for the land of Kush, led his armies that way. Sabacon, at
the head of his Ethiopian hordes, took that short cut to the throne of
all the Pharaohs. The French under Desaix, pursuing the Memlooks after
the battle of the pyramids, swept down that pass to Philæ. Meanwhile the
whole trade of the Soudan, however interrupted at times by the ebb and
flow of war, has also set that way. We never crossed those five miles of
desert without encountering a train or two of baggage-camels laden
either with European goods for the far south, or with oriental treasures
for the north.
I shall not soon forget an Abyssinian caravan which we met one day just
coming out from Mahatta. It consisted of seventy camels laden with
elephant tusks. The tusks, which were about fourteen feet in length,
were packed in half-dozens and sewed up in buffalo hides. Each camel was
slung with two loads, one at either side of the hump. There must have
been about eight hundred and forty tusks in all. Beside each shambling
beast strode a bare-footed Nubian. Following these, on the back of a
gigantic camel, came a hunting-leopard in a wooden cage and a wildcat in
a basket. Last of all marched a coal-black Abyssinian nearly seven feet
in height, magnificently shawled and turbaned, with a huge cimeter
dangling by his side and in his belt a pair of enormous inlaid
seventeenth-century pistols, such as would have become the holsters of
Prince Rupert. This elaborate warrior represented the guard of the
caravan. The hunting-leopard and the wildcat were for Prince Hassan, the
third son of the viceroy. The ivory was for exportation. Anything more
picturesque than this procession, with the dust driving before it in
clouds and the children following it out of the village, it would be
difficult to conceive. One longed for Gerôme to paint it on the spot.
The rocks on either side of the ancient river-bed are profusely
hieroglyphed. These inscriptions, together with others found in the
adjacent quarries, range over a period of between three and four
thousand years, beginning with the early reigns of the ancient empire
and ending with the Ptolemies and Cæsars. Some are mere autographs.
Others run to a considerable length. Many are headed with figures of
gods and worshipers. These, however, are for the most part mere
graffiti, ill-drawn and carelessly sculptured. The records they
illustrate are chiefly votive. The passer-by adores the gods of the
cataract; implores their protection; registers his name and states the
object of his journey. The votaries are of various ranks, periods, and
nationalities; but the formula in most instances is pretty much the
same. Now it is a citizen of Thebes performing the pilgrimage to Philæ;
or a general at the head of his troops returning from a foray in
Ethiopia; or a tributary prince doing homage to Rameses the Great, and
associating his suzerain with the divinities of the place. Occasionally
we come upon a royal cartouche and a pompous catalogue of titles,
setting forth how the Pharaoh himself, the Golden Hawk, the Son of Ra,
the Mighty, the Invincible, the Godlike, passed that way.
It is curious to see how royalty, so many thousand years ago, set the
fashion in names, just as it does to this day. Nine-tenths of the
ancient travelers who left their signatures upon these rocks were called
Rameses or Thothmes or Usertasen. Others, still more ambitious, took the
names of gods. Ampère, who hunted diligently for inscriptions both here
and among the islands, found the autographs of no end of merely mortal
Amens and Hathors.[55]
Our three days’ detention in the cataract was followed by a fourth of
glossy calm. There being no breath of air to fill our sails and no
footing for the trackers, we could now get along only by dint of hard
punting; so that it was past midday before the Philæ lay moored at last
in the shadow of the holy island to which she owed her name.
CHAPTER XII.
PHILÆ.
Having been for so many days within easy reach of Philæ, it is not to be
supposed that we were content till now with only an occasional glimpse
of its towers in the distance. On the contrary, we had found our way
thither toward the close of almost every day’s excursion. We had
approached it by land from the desert; by water in the felucca; from
Mahatta by way of the path between the cliffs and the river. When I add
that we moored here for a night and the best part of two days on our way
up the river, and again for a week when we came down, it will be seen
that we had time to learn the lovely island by heart.
The approach by water is quite the most beautiful. Seen from the level
of a small boat, the island, with its palms, its colonnades, its pylons,
seems to rise out of the river like a mirage. Piled rocks frame it in on
either side, and purple mountains close up the distance. As the boat
glides nearer between glistening bowlders, those sculptured towers rise
higher and ever higher against the sky. They show no sign of ruin or of
age. All looks solid, stately, perfect. One forgets for the moment that
anything is changed. If a sound of antique chanting were to be borne
along the quiet air--if a procession of white-robed priests bearing
aloft the veiled ark of the god were to come sweeping round between the
palms and the pylons--we should not think it strange.
Most travelers land at the end nearest the cataract; so coming upon the
principal temple from behind and seeing it in reverse order. We,
however, bid our Arabs row round to the southern end, where was once a
stately landing-place with steps down to the river. We skirt the steep
banks and pass close under the beautiful little roofless temple commonly
known as Pharaoh’s bed--that temple which has been so often painted, so
often photographed, that every stone of it, and the platform on which it
stands, and the tufted palms that cluster round about it, have been
since childhood as familiar to our mind’s eye as the sphinx or the
pyramids. It is larger, but not one jot less beautiful than we had
expected. And it is exactly like the photographs. Still, one is
conscious of perceiving a shade of difference too subtle for analysis;
like the difference between a familiar face and the reflection of it in
a looking-glass. Anyhow, one feels that the real Pharaoh’s bed will
henceforth displace the photographs in that obscure mental pigeon-hole
where till now one has been wont to store the well-known image; and that
even the photographs have undergone some kind of change.
And now the corner is rounded; and the river widens away southward
between mountains and palm-groves; and the prow touches the débris of a
ruined quay. The bank is steep here. We climb, and a wonderful scene
opens before our eyes. We are standing at the lower end of a court-yard
leading up to the propylons of the great temple. The court-yard is
irregular in shape and inclosed on either side by covered colonnades.
The colonnades are of unequal lengths and set at different angles. One
is simply a covered walk; the other opens upon a row of small chambers,
like a monastic cloister opening upon a row of cells. The roofing-stones
of these colonnades are in part displaced, while here and there a pillar
or a capital is missing; but the twin towers of the propylon, standing
out in sharp, unbroken lines against the sky and covered with colossal
sculptures, are as perfect, or very nearly as perfect, as in the days of
the Ptolemies who built them.
The broad area between the colonnades is honeycombed with crude brick
foundations--vestiges of a Coptic village of early Christian time. Among
these we thread our way to the foot of the principal propylon, the
entire width of which is one hundred and twenty feet. The towers measure
sixty feet from base to parapet. These dimensions are insignificant for
Egypt; yet the propylon, which would look small at Luxor or Karnak, does
not look small at Philæ. The key-note here is not magnitude, but beauty.
The island is small--that is to say, it covers an area about equal to
the summit of the Acropolis at Athens; and the scale of the buildings
has been determined by the size of the island. As at Athens, the ground
is occupied by one principal temple of moderate size and several
subordinate chapels. Perfect grace, exquisite proportion, most varied
and capricious grouping, here take the place of massiveness; so lending
to Egyptian forms an irregularity of treatment that is almost gothic and
a lightness that is almost Greek.
And now we catch glimpses of an inner court, of a second propylon, of a
pillared portico beyond; while, looking up to the colossal bas-reliefs
above our heads, we see the usual mystic form of kings and deities,
crowned, enthroned, worshiping and worshiped. These sculptures, which at
first sight looked no less perfect than the towers, prove to be as
laboriously mutilated as those of Denderah. The hawk-head of Horus and
the cow-head of Hathor have here and there escaped destruction; but the
human-faced deities are literally “sans eyes, sans nose, sans ears, sans
everything.”
We enter the inner court--an irregular quadrangle inclosed on the east
by an open colonnade, on the west by a chapel fronted with Hathor-headed
columns, and on the north and south sides by the second and first
propylons. In this quadrangle a cloisteral silence reigns. The blue sky
burns above--the shadows sleep below--a tender twilight lies about our
feet. Inside the chapel there sleeps perpetual gloom. It was built by
Ptolemy Euergetes II, and is one of that order to which Champollion gave
the name of Mammisi. It is a most curious place, dedicated to Hathor and
commemorative of the nurture of Horus. On the blackened walls within,
dimly visible by the faint light which struggles through screen and
doorway, we see Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris, giving birth to
Horus. On the screen panels outside we trace the story of his infancy,
education, and growth. As a babe at the breast, he is nursed in the lap
of Hathor, the divine foster-mother. As a young child, he stands at his
mother’s knee and listens to the playing of a female harpist (we saw a
bare-footed boy the other day in Cairo thrumming upon a harp of just the
same shape and with precisely as many strings); as a youth, he sows
grain in honor of Isis and offers a jeweled collar to Hathor. This Isis,
with her long aquiline nose, thin lips, and haughty aspect, looks like
one of the complimentary portraits so often introduced among the
temple-sculptures of Egypt. It may represent one of the two Cleopatras
wedded to Ptolemy Physcon.
Two greyhounds with collars round their necks are sculptured on the
outer wall of another small chapel adjoining. These also look like
portraits. Perhaps they were the favorite dogs of some high priest of
Philæ.
Close against the greyhounds and upon the same wall-space, is engraven
that famous copy of the inscription of the Rosetta stone first observed
here by Lepsius in A.D. 1843. It neither stands so high nor looks so
illegible as Ampère (with all the jealousy of a Champollionist and a
Frenchman) is at such pains to make out. One would have said that it was
in a state of more than ordinary good preservation.
As a reproduction of the Rosetta decree, however, the Philæ version is
incomplete. The Rosetta text, after setting forth with official
pomposity the victories and munificence of the king--Ptolemy V, the
ever-living, the avenger of Egypt--concludes by ordaining that the
record thereof shall be engraven in hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek
characters, and set up in all temples of the first, second, and third
class throughout the empire. Broken and battered as it is, the precious
black basalt[56] of the British Museum fulfills these conditions. The
three writings are there. But at Philæ, though the original hieroglyphic
and demotic texts are reproduced almost verbatim, the priceless Greek
transcript is wanting. It is provided for, as upon the Rosetta stone, in
the preamble. Space has been left for it at the bottom of the tablet. We
even fancied we could here and there distinguish traces of red ink where
the lines should come. But not one word of it has ever been cut into the
surface of the stone.
Taken by itself, there is nothing strange in this omission; but, taken
in connection with a precisely similar omission in another inscription a
few yards distant, it becomes something more than a coincidence.
This second inscription is cut upon the face of a block of living rock
which forms part of the foundation of the easternmost tower of the
second propylon. Having enumerated certain grants of land made to the
temple by Ptolemies VI and VII, it concludes, like the first, by
decreeing that this record of the royal bounty shall be engraven in the
hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek; that is to say: in the ancient sacred
writing of the priests, the ordinary script of the people, and the
language of the court. But here again the sculptor has left his work
unfinished. Here again the inscription breaks off at the end of the
demotic, leaving a blank space for the third transcript. This second
omission suggests intentional neglect; and the motive for such neglect
would not be far to seek. The tongue of the dominant race is likely
enough to have been unpopular among the old noble and sacerdotal
families; and it may well be that the priesthood of Philæ, secure in
their distant solitary isle, could with impunity evade a clause which
their brethren of the Delta were obliged to obey.
It does not follow that the Greek rule was equally unpopular. We have
reason to believe quite otherwise. The conqueror of the Persian invader
was in truth the deliverer of Egypt. Alexander restored peace to the
country and the Ptolemies identified themselves with the interests of
the people. A dynasty which not only lightened the burdens of the poor,
but respected the privileges of the rich; which honored the priesthood,
endowed the temples, and compelled the Tigris to restore the spoils of
the Nile, could scarcely fail to win the suffrages of all classes. The
priests of Philæ might despise the language of Homer while honoring the
descendants of Philip of Macedon. They could naturalize the king. They
could disguise his name in hieroglyphic spelling. They could depict him
in the traditional dress of the Pharaohs. They could crown him with the
double crown, and represent him in the act of worshiping the gods of his
adopted country. But they could neither naturalize nor disguise his
language. Spoken or written, it was an alien thing. Carven in high
places, it stood for a badge of servitude. What could a conservative
hierarchy do but abhor, and, when possible, ignore it?
There are other sculptures in this quadrangle which one would like to
linger over; as, for instance, the capitals of the eastern colonnade, no
two of which are alike, and the grotesque bas-reliefs of the frieze of
the Mammisi.
Of these, a quasi-heraldic group, representing the sacred
hawk sitting in the center of a fan-shaped persea tree between two
supporters, is one of the most curious; the supporters being on the one
side a maniacal lion, and on the other a Typhonian hippopotamus, each
grasping a pair of shears.
Passing now through the doorway of the second propylon, we find
ourselves facing the portico--the famous painted portico of which we had
seen so many sketches that we fancied we knew it already. That
second-hand knowledge goes for nothing, however, in presence of the
reality; and we are as much taken by surprise as if we were the first
travelers to set foot within these enchanted precincts.
For here is a place in which time seems to have stood as still as in
that immortal palace where everything went to sleep for a hundred
years. The bas-reliefs on the walls, the intricate paintings on the
ceilings, the colors upon the capitals, are incredibly fresh and
perfect. These exquisite capitals have long been the wonder and delight
of travelers in Egypt. They are all studied from natural forms--from the
lotus in bud and blossom, the papyrus, and the palm. Conventionalized
with consummate skill, they are at the same time so justly proportioned
to the height and girth of the columns as to give an air of wonderful
lightness to the whole structure. But above all, it is with the
color--color conceived in the tender and pathetic minor of Watteau and
Lancret and Greuze--that one is most fascinated. Of those delicate
half-tones, the fac-simile in the “Grammar of Ornament” conveys not the
remotest idea. Every tint is softened, intermixed, degraded. The pinks
are coralline; the greens are tempered with verditer; the blues are of a
greenish turquoise, like the western half of an autumnal evening sky.
Later on, when we returned to Philæ from the second cataract, the writer
devoted the best part of three days to making a careful study of a
corner of this portico; patiently matching those subtle variations of
tint and endeavoring to master the secret of their combination.[57]
Architecturally, this court is unlike any we have yet seen, being quite
small, and open to the sky in the center, like the atrium of a Roman
house. The light thus admitted glows overhead, lies in a square patch on
the ground below, and is reflected upon the pictured recesses of the
ceiling. At the upper end, where the pillars stand two deep, there was
originally an intercolumnar screen. The rough sides of the columns show
where the connecting blocks have been torn away. The pavement, too, has
been pulled up by treasure-seekers, and the ground is strewn with broken
slabs and fragments of shattered cornice.
These are the only signs of ruin--signs traced not by the finger of
time, but by the hand of the spoiler. So fresh, so fair is all the rest,
that we are fain to cheat ourselves for a moment into the belief that
what we see is work not marred, but arrested. Those columns, depend on
it, are yet unfinished. That pavement is about to be relaid. It would
not surprise us to find the masons here to-morrow morning, or the
sculptor, with mallet and chisel, carrying on that band of lotus buds
and bees. Far more difficult is it to believe that they all struck work
forever some two-and-twenty centuries ago.
Here and there, where the foundations have been disturbed, one sees that
the columns are constructed of sculptured blocks, the fragments of some
earlier temple; while, at a height of about six feet from the ground, a
Greek cross cut deep into the side of the shaft stamps upon each pillar
the seal of Christian worship.
For the Copts who choked the colonnades and court-yards with their
hovels seized also on the temples. Some they pulled down for building
material; others they appropriated. We can never know how much they
destroyed; but two large convents on the eastern bank a little higher up
the river, and a small basilica at the north end of the island, would
seem to have been built with the magnificent masonry of the southern
quay, as well as with blocks taken from a structure which once occupied
the south-eastern corner of the great colonnade. As for this beautiful
painted portico, they turned it into a chapel. A little rough-hewn niche
in the east wall, and an overturned credence-table fashioned from a
single block of limestone, mark the site of the chancel. The Arabs,
taking this last for a gravestone, have pulled it up, according to their
usual practice, in search of treasure buried with the dead. On the front
of the credence-table,[58] and over the niche which some unskilled but
pious hand has decorated with rude Byzantine carvings, the Greek cross
is again conspicuous.
The religious history of Philæ is so curious that it is a pity it should
not find an historian. It shared with Abydos and some other places the
reputation of being the burial-place of Osiris. It was called the “Holy
Island.” Its very soil was sacred. None might land upon its shores, or
even approach them too nearly, without permission. To obtain that
permission and perform the pilgrimage to the tomb of the god, was to the
pious Egyptian what the Mecca pilgrimage is to the pious Mussulman of
to-day. The most solemn oath to which he could give utterance was “By
him who sleeps in Philæ.”
When and how the island first came to be regarded as the resting-place
of the most beloved of the gods does not appear; but its reputation for
sanctity seems to have been of comparatively modern date. It probably
rose into importance as Abydos declined. Herodotus, who is supposed to
have gone as far as Elephantine, made minute inquiry concerning the
river above that point; and he relates that the cataract was in the
occupation of “Ethiopian nomads.” He, however, makes no mention of Philæ
or its temples. This omission on the part of one who, wherever he went,
sought the society of the priests and paid particular attention to the
religions observances of the country, shows that either Herodotus never
got so far, or that the island had not yet become the home of the
Osirian mysteries. Four hundred years later, Diodorus Siculus describes
it as the holiest of holy places; while Strabo, writing about the same
time, relates that Abydos had then dwindled to a mere village. It seems,
possible, therefore, that at some period subsequent to the time of
Herodotus and prior to that of Diodorus or Strabo, the priests of Isis
may have migrated from Abydos to Philæ; in which case there would have
been a formal transfer not only of the relics of Osiris, but of the
sanctity which had attached for ages to their original resting-place.
Nor is the motive for such an exodus wanting. The ashes of the god were
no longer safe at Abydos. Situated in the midst of a rich corn country
on the high road to Thebes, no city south of Memphis lay more exposed to
the hazards of war. Cambyses had already passed that way. Other invaders
might follow. To seek beyond the frontier that security which might no
longer be found in Egypt, would seem therefore to be the obvious course
of a priestly guild devoted to its trust. This, of course, is mere
conjecture, to be taken for what it may be worth. The decadence of
Abydos coincides, at all events, with the growth of Philæ; and it is
only by help of some such assumption that one can understand how a new
site should have suddenly arisen to such a height of holiness.
The earliest temple here, of which only a small propylon remains, would
seem to have been built by the last of the native Pharaohs (Nectanebo
II, B.C. 361); but the high and palmy days of Philæ belong to the period
of Greek and Roman rule. It was in the time of the Ptolemies that the
holy island became the seat of the sacred college and the stronghold of
a powerful hierarchy. Visitors from all parts of Egypt, travelers from
distant lands, court functionaries from Alexandria charged with royal
gifts, came annually in crowds to offer their vows at the tomb of the
god. They have cut their names by hundreds all over the principal
temple, just like tourists of to-day. Some of these antique autographs
are written upon and across those of preceding visitors; while
others--palimpsests upon stone, so to say--having been scratched on the
yet unsculptured surface of doorway and pylon, are seen to be older than
the hieroglyphic texts which were afterward carved over them. These
inscriptions cover a period of several centuries, during which time
successive Ptolemies and Cæsars continued to endow the island. Rich in
lands, in temples, in the localization of a great national myth, the
sacred college was yet strong enough in A.D. 379 to oppose a practical
insistence to the edict of Theodosius. At a word from Constantinople the
whole land of Egypt was forcibly Christianized. Priests were forbidden
under pain of death to perform the sacred rites. Hundreds of temples
were plundered. Forty thousand statues of divinities were destroyed at
one fell swoop. Meanwhile, the brotherhood of Philæ, intrenched behind
the cataract and the desert, survived the degradation of their order and
the ruin of their immemorial faith. It is not known with certainty for
how long they continued to transmit their hereditary privileges; but two
of the above-mentioned votive inscriptions show that so late as A.D. 453
the priestly families were still in occupation of the island and still
celebrating the mysteries of Osiris and Isis. There even seems reason
for believing that the ancient worship continued to hold its own till
the end of the sixth century, at which time, according to an inscription
at Kalabsheh, of which I shall have more to say hereafter, Silco, “King
of all the Ethiopians,” himself apparently a Christian, twice invaded
Lower Nubia, where God, he says, gave him the victory, and the
vanquished swore to him “_by their idols_” to observe the terms of
peace.[59]
There is nothing in this record to show that the invaders went beyond
Tafa, the ancient Taphis, which is twenty-seven miles above Philæ; but
it seems reasonable to conclude that so long as the old gods yet reigned
in any part of Nubia, the island sacred to Osiris would maintain its
traditional sanctity.
At length, however, there must have come a day when for the last time
the tomb of the god was crowned with flowers and the “Lamentations of
Isis” were recited on the threshold of the sanctuary. And there must
have come another day when the cross was carried in triumph up those
painted colonnades and the first Christian mass was chanted in the
precincts of the heathen. One would like to know how these changes were
brought about; whether the old faith died out for want of worshipers, or
was expelled with clamor and violence. But upon this point history is
vague[60] and the graffiti of the time are silent. We only know for
certain that the old went out and the new came in; and that where the
resurrected Osiris was wont to be worshiped according to the most sacred
mysteries of the Egyptian ritual, the resurrected Christ was now adored
after the simple fashion of the primitive Coptic church.
And now the holy island, near which it was believed no fish had power to
swim or bird to fly and upon whose soil no pilgrim might set foot
without permission, became all at once the common property of a populous
community. Courts, colonnades, even terraced roofs, were overrun with
little crude brick dwellings. A small basilica was built at the lower
end of the island. The portico of the great temple was converted into a
chapel and dedicated to St. Stephen. “This good work,” says a Greek
inscription traced there by some monkish hand of the period, “was done
by the well-beloved of God, the Abbot-Bishop Theodore.” Of this same
Theodore, whom another inscription styles “the very holy father,” we
know nothing but his name.
The walls hereabout are full of these fugitive records. “The cross has
conquered and will ever conquer,” writes one anonymous scribe. Others
have left simple signatures; as, for instance: “I, Joseph,” in one place
and “I, Theodosius of Nubia,” in another. Here and there an added word
or two give a more human interest to the autograph. So, in the pathetic
scrawl of one who writes himself “Johannes, a slave,” we seem to read
the story of a life in a single line. These Coptic signatures are all
followed by the sign of the cross.
The foundation of the little basilica, with its apse toward the east and
its two doorways to the west, are still traceable. We set a couple of
our sailors one day to clear away the rubbish at the lower end of the
nave, and found the font--a rough-stone basin at the foot of a broken
column.
It is not difficult to guess what Philæ must have been like in the days
of Abbot Theodore and his flock. The little basilica, we may be sure,
had a cluster of mud domes upon the roof; and I fancy, somehow, that the
abbot and his monks installed themselves in that row of cells on the
east side of the great colonnade, where the priests of Isis dwelled
before them. As for the village, it must have been just like
Luxor--swarming with dusky life; noisy with the babble of children, the
cackling of poultry and the barking of dogs; sending up thin pillars of
blue smoke at noon; echoing to the measured chimes of the prayer-bell at
morn and even; and sleeping at night as soundly as if no ghostlike,
mutilated gods were looking on mournfully in the moonlight.
The gods are avenged now. The creed which dethroned them is dethroned.
Abbot Theodore and his successors, and the religion they taught, and the
simple folk that listened to their teaching, are gone and forgotten. For
the Church of Christ, which still languishes in Egypt, is extinct in
Nubia. It lingered long; though doubtless in some such degraded and
barbaric form as it wears in Abyssinia to this day. But it was absorbed
by Islamism at last; and only a ruined convent perched here and there
upon some solitary height, or a few crosses rudely carved on the walls
of a Ptolemaic temple, remain to show that Christianity once passed that
way.
The mediæval history of Philæ is almost a blank. The Arabs, having
invaded Egypt toward the middle of the seventh century, were long in the
land before they began to cultivate literature; and for more than three
hundred years history is silent. It is not till the tenth century that
we once again catch a fleeting glimpse of Philæ. The frontier is now
removed to the head of the cataract. The Holy Island has ceased to be
Christian; ceased to be Nubian; contains a mosque and garrison, and is
the last fortified outpost of the Moslems. It still retains, and
apparently will continue to retain for some centuries longer, its
ancient Egyptian name. That is to say (P being as usual converted into
B) the Pilak of the hieroglyphic inscriptions becomes in Arabic
Belak;[61] which is much more like the original than the Philæ of the
Greeks.
The native Christians, meanwhile, would seem to have relapsed
into a state of semi-barbarism. They make perpetual inroads upon the
Arab frontier and suffer perpetual defeat. Battles are fought; tribute
is exacted; treaties are made and broken. Toward the close of the
thirteenth century, their king being slain and their churches plundered,
they lose one-fourth of their territory, including all that part which
borders upon Assûan. Those who remain Christians are also condemned to
pay an annual capitation tax, in addition to the usual tribute of dates,
cotton, slaves and camels. After this we may conclude that they accepted
Islamism from the Arabs, as they had accepted Osiris from the Egyptians
and Christ from the Romans. As Christians, at all events, we hear of
them no more; for Christianity in Nubia perished root and branch, and
not a Copt, it is said, may now be found above the frontier.
Philæ was still inhabited in A.D. 1799, when a detachment of Desaix’s
army under General Beliard took possession of the island and left an
inscription[62] on the soffit of the doorway of the great pylon to
commemorate the passage of the cataract. Denon, describing the scene
with his usual vivacity, relates how the natives first defied and then
fled from the French; flinging themselves into the river, drowning such
of their children as were too young to swim and escaping into the
desert. They appear at this time to have been mere savages--the women
ugly and sullen, the men naked, agile and quarrelsome, and armed not
only with swords and spears, but with matchlock guns, with which they
used to keep up “a brisk and well-directed fire.”
Their abandonment of the island probably dates from this time; for when
Burckhardt went up in A.D. 1813, he found it, as we found it to this
day, deserted and solitary. One poor old man--if indeed he still
lives--is now the one inhabitant of Philæ; and I suspect he only crosses
over from Biggeh in the tourist-season. He calls himself, with or
without authority, the guardian of the island; sleeps in a nest of rags
and straw in a sheltered corner behind the great temple; and is so
wonderfully wizened and bent and knotted up that nothing of him seems
quite alive except his eyes. We gave him fifty copper paras[63] for a
parting present when on our way back to Egypt; and he was so oppressed
by the consciousness of wealth that he immediately buried his treasure
and implored us to tell no one what we had given him.
With the French siege and the flight of the native population closes the
last chapter of the local history of Philæ. The holy island has done
henceforth with wars of creeds or kings. It disappears from the domain
of history and enters the domain of science. To have contributed to the
discovery of the hieroglyphic alphabet is a high distinction; and in no
sketch of Philæ, however slight, should the obelisk[64] that furnished
Champollion with the name of Cleopatra be allowed to pass unnoticed.
This monument, second only to the Rosetta stone in point of philological
interest, was carried off by Mr. W. Bankes, the discoverer of the first
tablet of Abydos, and is now in Dorsetshire. Its empty socket and its
fellow obelisk, mutilated and solitary, remain _in situ_ at the southern
extremity of the island.
And now--for we have lingered over long in the portico--it is time we
glanced at the interior of the temple. So we go in at the central door,
beyond which opens some nine or ten halls and side-chambers leading, as
usual, to the sanctuary. Here all is dark, earthly, oppressive. In rooms
unlighted by the faintest gleam from without, we find smoke-blackened
walls covered with elaborate bas-reliefs. Mysterious passages,
pitch-dark, thread the thickness of the walls and communicate by means
of trap-like openings with vaults below. In the sanctuary lies an
overthrown altar; while in the corner behind it stands the very niche in
which Strabo must have seen that poor, sacred hawk of Ethiopia which he
describes as “sick and nearly dead.”
But in this temple dedicated not only to Isis, but to the memory of
Osiris and the worship of Horus their son, there is one chamber which we
may be quite sure was shown neither to Strabo nor Diodorus, nor to any
stranger of alien faith, be his repute or station what it might; a
chamber holy above all others; holier even than the sanctuary--the
chamber sacred to Osiris. We, however, unrestricted, unforbidden, are
free to go where we list; and our books tell us that this mysterious
chamber is somewhere overhead. So, emerging once again into the
daylight, we go up a well-worn staircase leading out upon the roof.
This roof is an intricate, up-and-down place, and the room is not easy
to find. It lies at the bottom of a little flight of steps--a small
stone cell some twelve feet square, lighted only from the doorway. The
walls are covered with sculptures representing the shrines, the
mummification and the resurrection of Osiris.[65] These shrines,
containing
[Illustration]
some part of his body, are variously fashioned. His head, for instance,
rests on a nilometer; his arm, surmounted by a head, is sculptured on a
stela, in shape resembling a
[Illustration]
high-shouldered bottle, surmounted by one of the head-dresses peculiar to the god; his legs and feet lie in a pylon-shaped mausoleum. Upon another shrine stands the miter-shaped crown which he wears as judge of the lower world. Isis and Nephthys keep guard over each shrine. In a lower frieze we see the mummy of the god laid upon a bier, with the four so-called canopic jars[66] ranged underneath. A little farther on he lies in state, surrounded by
[Illustration: RESURRECTION OF OSIRIS.]
lotus buds on tall stems, figuratively of growth, or returning life.[67]
Finally, he is depicted lying on a couch; his limbs reunited; his head,
left hand, and left foot upraised, as in the act of returning to
consciousness. Nephthys, in the guise of a winged genius, fans him with
the breath of life. Isis, with outstretched arms, stands at his feet and
seems to be calling him back to her embraces. The scene represents, in
fact, that supreme moment when Isis pours forth her passionate
invocations, and Osiris is resuscitated by virtue of the songs of the
divine sisters.[68]
Ill-modeled and ill-cut as they are, there is a clownish naturalness
about these little sculptures which lifts them above the conventional
dead level of ordinary Ptolemaic work. The figures tell their tale
intelligibly. Osiris seems really struggling to rise, and the action of
Isis expresses clearly enough the intention of the artist. Although a
few heads have been mutilated and the surface of the stone is somewhat
degraded, the subjects are by no means in a bad state of preservation.
In the accompanying sketches, nothing has been done to improve the
defective drawing or repair the broken outlines of the originals. Osiris
in one has lost his foot and in another his face; the hands of Isis are
as shapeless as those of a bran doll; and the naïveté of the treatment
verges throughout upon caricature. But the interest attaching to them is
altogether apart from the way in which they are executed. And now,
returning to the roof, it is pleasant to breathe the fresher air that
comes with sunset--to see the island, in shape like an ancient Egyptian
shield, lying mapped out beneath one’s feet. From here, we look back
upon the way we have come, and forward to the way we are going.
Northward lies the cataract--a network of islets with flashes of river
between. Southward, the broad current comes on in one smooth, glassy
sheet, unbroken by a single rapid. How eagerly we turn our eyes that
way; for yonder lie Abou Simbel and all the mysterious lands beyond the
cataracts! But we cannot see far, for the river curves away grandly to
the right and vanishes behind a range of granite hills. A similar chain
hems in the opposite bank; while high above the palm-groves fringing the
edge of the shore stand two ruined convents on two rocky prominences,
like a couple of castles on the Rhine. On the east bank opposite, a few
mud houses and a group of superb carob trees mark the site of a village,
the greater part of which lies hidden among palms. Behind this village
opens a vast sand valley, like an arm of the sea from which the waters
have retreated. The old channel along which we rode the other day went
plowing that way straight across from Philæ. Last of all, forming the
western side of this fourfold view, we have the island of
Biggeh--rugged, mountainous, and divided from Philæ by so narrow a
channel that every sound from the native village on the opposite steep
is as audible as though it came from the court-yard at our feet. That
village is built in and about the ruins of a tiny Ptolemaic temple, of
which only a screen and doorway and part of a small propylon remain. We
can see a woman pounding coffee on the threshold of one of the huts, and
some children scrambling about the rocks in pursuit of a wandering
turkey. Catching sight of us up here on the roof of the temple, they
come whooping and scampering down to the water side and with shrill
cries importune us for backshîsh. Unless the stream is wider than it
looks one might almost pitch a piaster into their outstretched hands.
Mr. Hay, it is said, discovered a secret passage of solid masonry
tunneled under the river from island to island. The entrance on this
side was from a shaft in the Temple of Isis.[69] We are not told how far
Mr. Hay was able to penetrate in the direction of Biggeh; but the
passage would lead up, most probably, to the little temple opposite.
Perhaps the most entirely curious and unaccustomed features in all this
scene are the mountains. They are like none that any of us have seen in
our diverse wanderings. Other mountains are homogeneous and thrust
themselves up from below in masses suggestive of primitive disruption
and upheaval. These seem to lie upon the surface foundationless; rock
loosely piled on rock, bowlder on bowlder; like stupendous cairns, the
work of demigods and giants. Here and there, on shelf or summit, a huge
rounded mass, many tons in weight, hangs poised capriciously. Most of
these blocks, I am persuaded, would “log” if put to the test.
But for a specimen stone commend me to yonder amazing monolith down by
the water’s edge opposite, near the carob trees and the ferry. Though
but a single block of orange-red granite, it looks like three; and the
Arabs, seeing it in some fancied resemblance to an arm-chair, call it
Pharaoh’s throne. Rounded and polished by primeval floods and
emblazoned with royal cartouches of extraordinary size, it seems to have
attracted the attention of pilgrims in all ages. Kings, conquerors,
priests, travelers, have covered it with records of victories, of
religious festivals, of prayers, and offerings, and acts of adoration.
Some of these are older by a thousand years and more than the temples on
the island opposite.
Such, roughly summed up, are the fourfold surroundings of Philæ--the
cataract, the river, the desert, the environing mo
untains. The Holy
Island--beautiful, lifeless, a thing of the far past, with all its
wealth of sculpture, painting, history, poetry, tradition--sleeps, or
seems to sleep, in the midst.
It is one of the world’s famous landscapes, and it deserves its fame.
Every sketcher sketches it; every traveler describes it. Yet it is just
one of those places of which the objective and subjective features are
so equally balanced that it bears putting neither into words nor colors.
The sketcher must perforce leave out the atmosphere of association which
informs his subject; and the writer’s description is at best no better
than a catalogue raisonnée.
CHAPTER XIII.
PHILÆ TO KOROSKO.
Sailing gently southward--the river opening wide before us, Philæ
dwindling in the rear--we feel that we are now fairly over the border;
and that if Egypt was strange and far from home, Nubia is stranger and
farther still. The Nile here flows deep and broad. The rocky heights
that hem it in so close on either side are still black on the one hand,
golden on the other. The banks are narrower than ever. The space in some
places is little wider than a towing-path. In others, there is barely
room for a belt of date-palms and a slip of alluvial soil, every foot of
which produces its precious growth of durra or barley. The steep verge
below is green with lentils to the water’s edge. As the river recedes,
it leaves each day a margin of fresh, wet soil, in which the careful
husbandman hastens to scratch a new furrow and sow another line of
seeds. He cannot afford to let so much as an inch of that kindly mud lie
idle.
Gliding along with half-filled sail, we observe how entirely the
population seems to be regulated by the extent of arable soil. Where the
inundation has room to spread, villages come thicker; more dusky figures
are seen moving to and fro in the shade of the palms; more children race
along the banks, shrieking for backshîsh. When the shelf of soil is
narrowed, on the contrary, to a mere fringe of luminous green dividing
the rock from the river, there is a startling absence of everything like
life. Mile after mile drags its slow length along, uncheered by any sign
of human habitation. When now and then a solitary native, armed with gun
or spear, is seen striding along the edge of the desert, he only seems
to make the general solitude more apparent.
Meanwhile, it is not only men and women whom we miss--men laboring by
the river side; women with babies astride on their shoulders, or
water-jars balanced on their heads--but birds, beasts, boats; everything
that we have been used to see along the river. The buffaloes dozing at
midday in the shallows, the camels stalking home in single file toward
sunset, the water-fowl haunting the sand-banks, seem suddenly to have
vanished. Even donkeys are now rare; and as for horses, I do not
remember to have seen one during the seven weeks we spent in Nubia. All
night, too, instead of the usual chorus of dogs barking furiously from
village to village, we hear only the long-drawn wail of an occasional
jackal. It is not wonderful, however, that animal life should be scarce
in a district where the scant soil yields barely food enough for those
who till it. To realize how very scant it is, one needs only to remember
that about Derr, where it is at its widest, the annual deposit nowhere
exceeds half a mile in breadth; while for the most part of the way
between Philæ and Wady Halfeh--a distance of two hundred and ten
miles--it averages from six to sixty yards.
Here, then, more than ever, one seems to see how entirely these lands
which we call Egypt and Nubia are nothing but the banks of one solitary
river in the midst of a world of desert. In Egypt, the valley is often
so wide that one forgets the stony waste beyond the corn-lands. But in
Nubia the desert is ever present. We cannot forget it, if we would. The
barren mountains press upon our path, showering down avalanches of
granite on the one side and torrents of yellow sand on the other. We
know that those stones are always falling; that those sands are always
drifting; that the river has hard work to hold its own; and that the
desert is silently encroaching day by day.
These golden sand-streams are the newest and most beautiful features in
the landscape. They pour down from the high level of the Libyan desert
just as the snows of Switzerland pour down from the upper plateaux of
the Alps. Through every ravine and gap they find a channel--here
trickling in tiny rivulets; flowing yonder in broad torrents that widen
to the river.
Becalmed a few miles above Philæ, we found ourselves at the foot of one
of these largest drifts. The M. B.’s challenged us to climb the slope
and see the sunset from the desert. It was about six o’clock, and the
thermometer was standing at 80° in the coolest corner of the large
saloon. We ventured to suggest that the top was a long way up; but the
M. B.’s would take no refusal. So away we went; panting, breathless,
bewailing our hard fate. L---- and the writer had done some difficult
walking in their time, over ice and snow, on lava cold and hot, up
cinder-slopes and beds of mountain torrents; but this innocent-looking
sand-drift proved quite as hard to climb as any of them. The sand lies
wonderfully loose and light, and is as hot as if it had been baked in an
oven. Into this the foot plunges ankle-deep, slipping back at every
step, and leaving a huge hole into which the sand pours down again like
water. Looking back, you trace your course by a succession of
funnel-shaped pits, each larger than a wash-hand basin. Though your
slipper be as small as Cinderella’s, the next comer shall not be able to
tell whether it was a lady who went up last, or a camel. It is toilsome
work, too; for the foot finds neither rest nor resistance, and the
strain upon the muscles is unremitting.
But the beauty of the sand more than repays the fatigue of climbing it.
Smooth, sheeny, satiny; fine as diamond-dust; supple, undulating,
luminous, it lies in the most exquisite curves and wreaths, like a
snow-drift turned to gold. Remodeled by every breath that blows, its
ever-varying surface presents an endless play of delicate lights and
shadows. There lives not the sculptor who could render those curves; and
I doubt whether Turner himself, in his tenderest and subtlest mood,
could have done justice to those complex grays and ambers.
Having paused to rest upon an out-cropping ledge of rock about half-way
up, we came at length to the top of the last slope and found ourselves
on the level of the desert. Here, faithful to the course of the river,
the first objects to meet our eyes were the old familiar telegraph posts
and wires. Beyond them, to north and south, a crowd of peaks closed in
the view; but westward, a rolling waste of hillock and hollow opened
away to where the sun, a crimson globe, had already half-vanished below
the rim of the world.
One could not resist going a few steps farther, just to touch the
nearest of those telegraph posts. It was like reaching out a hand toward
home.
When the sun dropped we turned back. The valley below was already
steeped in dusk. The Nile, glimmering like a coiled snake in the shade,
reflected the evening sky in three separate reaches. On the Arabian side
a far-off mountain-chain stood out, purple and jagged, against the
eastern horizon.
To come down was easy. Driving our heels well into the sand, we half
ran, half glissaded, and soon reached the bottom. Here we were met by an
old Nubian woman, who had trudged up in all haste from the nearest
village to question our sailors about one Yûsef, her son, of whom she
had heard nothing for nearly a year. She was a very poor old woman--a
widow--and this Yûsef was her only son. Hoping to better himself he had
worked his passage to Cairo in a cargo-boat some eighteen months ago.
Twice since then he had sent her messages and money; but now eleven
months had gone by in silence, and she feared he must be dead. Meanwhile
her date-palm, taxed to the full value of its produce, had this year
yielded not a piaster of profit. Her mud hut had fallen in, and there
was no Yûsef to repair it. Old and sick, she now could only beg; and her
neighbors, by whose charity she subsisted, were but a shade less poor
than herself.
Our men knew nothing of the missing Yûsef. Reïs Hassan promised when he
went back to make inquiries among the boatmen of Boulak. “But then,” he
added, “there are so many Yûsefs in Cairo!”
It made one’s heart ache to see the tremulous eagerness with which the
poor soul put her questions, and the crushed look in her face when she
turned away.
And now, being fortunate in respect of the wind, which for the most part
blows steadily from the north between sunrise and sunset, we make good
progress, and for the next ten days live pretty much on board our
dahabeeyah. The main features of the landscape go on repeating
themselves with but little variation from day to day. The mountains wear
their habitual livery of black and gold. The river, now widening, now
narrowing, flows between banks blossoming with lentils and lupins. With
these, and yellow acacia-tufts, and blue castor-oil berries, and the
weird coloquintida, with its downy leaf and milky juice and puff-bladder
fruit, like a green peach tinged with purple, we make our daily bouquet
for the dinner-table. All other flowers have vanished, and even these
are hard to get in a land where every green blade is precious to the
grower.
Now, too, the climate becomes sensibly warmer. The heat of the sun is so
great at midday that, even with the north breeze blowing, we can no
longer sit on deck between twelve and three. Toward sundown, when the
wind drops, it turns so sultry that to take a walk on shore comes to be
regarded as a duty rather than as a pleasure. Thanks, however, to that
indomitable painter who is always ready for an afternoon excursion, we
do sometimes walk for an hour before dinner; striking off generally into
the desert; looking for onyxes and carnelians among the pebbles that
here and there strew the surface of the sand, and watching in vain for
jackals and desert-hares.
Sometimes we follow the banks instead of the desert, coming now and then
to a creaking sakkieh turned by a melancholy buffalo; or to a native
village hidden behind dwarf-palms. Here each hut has its tiny forecourt,
in the midst of which stand the mud oven and mud cupboard of the
family--two dumpy cones of smooth gray clay, like big chimney-pots--the
one capped with a lid, the other fitted with a little wooden door and
wooden bolt. Some of the houses have a barbaric ornament palmed off, so
to say, upon the walls; the pattern being simply the impression of a
human hand dipped in red or yellow ocher and applied while the surface
is moist.
The amount of “bazaar” that takes place whenever we enter one of these
villages is quite alarming. The dogs first give notice of our approach;
and presently we are surrounded by all the women and girls of the place,
offering live pigeons, eggs, vegetable marrows, necklaces, nose-rings
and silver bracelets for sale. The boys pester us to buy wretched,
half-dead chameleons. The men stand aloof, and leave the bargaining to
the women.
And the women not only know how to bargain, but how to assess the
relative value of every coin that passes current on the Nile. Rupees,
roubles, reyals, dollars and shillings are as intelligible to them as
paras or piasters. Sovereigns are not too heavy nor napoleons too light
for them. The times are changed since Belzoni’s Nubian, after staring
contemptuously at the first piece of money he had ever seen, asked: “Who
would give anything for that small piece of metal?”
The necklaces consist of onyx, carnelian, bone, silver, and colored
glass beads, with now and then a stray scarab or amulet in the ancient
blue porcelain. The arrangement of color is often very subtle. The
brow-pendants in gold repoussée, and the massive old silver bracelets,
rough with knobs and bosses, are most interesting in design, and
perpetuate patterns of undoubted antiquity. The M. B.’s picked up one
really beautiful collarette of silver and coral, which might have been
worn three thousand years ago by Pharaoh’s daughter.
When on board, we begin now to keep a sharp lookout for crocodiles. We
hear of them constantly--see their tracks upon the sand-banks in the
river--go through agonies of expectation over every black speck in the
distance; yet are perpetually disappointed. The farther south we go the
more impatient we become. The E’s, whose dahabeeyah, homeward-bound,
drifts slowly past one calm morning, report “eleven beauties,” seen
altogether yesterday upon a sand island, some ten miles higher up. Mr.
C. B.’s boat, garlanded with crocodiles from stem to stern, fills us
with envy. We would give our ears (almost) to see one of these engaging
reptiles dangling from either our own mainmast or that of the faithful
Bagstones. Alfred, who has set his heart on bagging at least half a
dozen, says nothing, but grows gloomier day by day. At night, when the
moon is up and less misanthropic folk are in bed and asleep, he rambles
moodily into the desert, after jackals.
Meanwhile, on we go, starting at sunrise; mooring at sunset; sailing,
tracking, punting; never stopping for an hour by day, if we can help it;
and pushing straight for Abou Simbel with as little delay as possible.
Thus we pass the pylons of Dabôd with their background of desert;
Gertássee, a miniature Sunium, seen toward evening against the glowing
sunset; Tafah, rich in palms, with white columns gleaming through green
foliage by the water side; the cliffs, islands, and rapids of Kalabsheh,
and the huge temple which rises like a fortress in their midst; Dendûr,
a tiny chapel with a single pylon; and Gerf Hossayn, which from this
distance might be taken for the mouth of a rock-cut tomb in the face of
the precipice. About half way between Kalabsheh and Dendûr, we enter the
tropic of cancer. From this day till the day when we repass that
invisible boundary, there is a marked change in the atmospheric
conditions under which we live. The days get gradually hotter,
especially at noon, when the sun is almost vertical; but the freshness
of night and the chill of early morning are no more. Unless when a
strong wind blows from the north, we no longer know what it is to need a
shawl on deck in the evening; or an extra covering on our beds toward
dawn. We sleep with our cabin-windows open, and enjoy a delicious
equality of temperature from sundown to sunrise. The days and nights,
too, are of almost equal length.
Now, also, the southern cross and a second group of stars, which we
conclude must form part of the Centaur, are visible between two and four
every morning. They have been creeping up, a star at a time, for the
last fortnight; but are still so low upon the eastern horizon that we
can only see them when there comes a break in the mountain-chain on that
side of the river. At the same time, our old familiar friends of the
northern hemisphere, looking strangely distorted and decidedly out of
their proper place, are fast disappearing on the opposite side of the
heavens. Orion seems to be lying on his back, and the Great Bear to be
standing on his tail; while Cassiopeia and a number of others have
deserted _en masse_. The zenith, meanwhile, is but thinly furnished; so
that we seem to have traveled away from the one hemisphere and not yet
to have reached the other. As for the Southern Cross, we reserve our
opinion till we get farther south. It would be treason to hint that we
are disappointed in so famous a constellation.
After Gerf Hossayn, the next place of importance for which our maps bid
us look out, is Dakkeh. As we draw near, expecting hourly to see
something of the temple, the Nile increases in breadth and beauty. It is
a peaceful, glassy morning. The men have been tracking since dawn, and
stop to breakfast at the foot of a sandy bank, wooded with tamarisks and
gum-trees. A glistening network of gossamer floats from bough to bough.
The sky overhead is of a tender, luminous blue, such as we never see in
Europe. The air is wonderfully still. The river, which here takes a
sudden bend toward the east, looks like a lake and seems to be barred
ahead by the desert. Presently a funeral passes along the opposite bank;
the chief mourner flourishing a long staff, like a drum-major; the
women snatching up handfuls of dust and scattering it upon their heads.
We hear their wild wail long after the procession is out of sight.
Going on again presently, our whole attention becomes absorbed by the
new and singular geological features of the Libyan desert. A vast plain
covered with isolated mountains of volcanic structure, it looks like
some strange transformation of the Puy de Dôme plateau, with all its
wind-swept pastures turned to sand and its grassy craters stripped to
barrenness. The more this plain widens out before our eyes, the more it
bristles with peaks. As we round the corner, and Dakkeh, like a smaller
Edfû, comes into sight upon the western bank, the whole desert on that
side, as far as the eye can see, presents the unmistakable aspect of one
vast field of volcanoes. As in Auvergne, these cones are of all sizes
and heights; some low and rounded, like mere bubbles that have cooled
without bursting; others ranging apparently from one thousand to fifteen
hundred feet in height. The broken craters of several are plainly
distinguishable by the help of a field-glass. One in particular is so
like our old friend the Puy de Pariou that in a mere black-and-white
sketch the one might readily be mistaken for the other.
We were surprised to find no account of the geology of this district in
any of our books. Murray and Wilkinson pass it in silence; and writers
of travels--one or two of whom notice only the “pyramidal” shape of the
hills--are for the most part content to do likewise. None seem to have
observed their obvious volcanic origin.
Thanks to a light breeze that sprang up in the afternoon, we were able
to hoist our big sail again and to relieve the men from tracking. Thus
we glided past the ruins of Maharrakeh, which, seen from the river,
looked like a Greek portico set in a hollow waste of burning desert.
Next came Wady Sabooah, a temple half-buried in sand, near which we met
a tiny dahabeeyah, manned by two Nubians and flying the star and
crescent. A shabby government inspector, in European dress and a fez,
lay smoking on a mat outside his cabin door; while from a spar overhead
there hung a mighty crocodile. The monster was of a greenish-brown color
and measured at least sixteen feet from head to tail. His jaws yawned;
and one flat and flabby arm and ponderous paw swung with the motion of
the boat, looking horribly human.
The painter, with an eye to foregrounds, made a bid for him on the spot;
but the shabby inspector was not to be moved by considerations of gain.
He preferred his crocodile to infidel gold, and scarcely deigned even to
reply to the offer.
Seen in the half-light of a tropical after-glow--the purple mountains
coming down in detached masses to the water’s edge on the one side; the
desert with its volcanic peaks yet rosy upon the other--we thought the
approach to Korosko more picturesque than anything we had yet seen south
of the cataract. As the dusk deepened the moon rose; and the palms that
had just room to grow between the mountains and the river turned from
bronze to silver. It was half-twilight, half-moonlight, by the time we
reached the mooring-place where Talhamy, who had been sent forward in
the small boat half an hour ago, jumped on board laden with a packet of
letters and a sheaf of newspapers. For here, where the great
caravan-route leads off across the desert to Khartûm, we touched the
first Nubian postoffice. It was only ten days since we had received our
last budget at Assûan; but it seemed like ten weeks.
CHAPTER XIV.
KOROSKO TO ABOU SIMBEL.
It so happened that we arrived at Korosko on the eve of El-Id el-Kebîr,
or the anniversary of the sacrifice of Abraham; when, according to the
Moslem version, Ishmael was the intended victim and a ram the
substituted offering. Now El-Id el-Kebîr, being one of the great feasts
of the Mohammedan calendar, is a day of gifts and good wishes. The rich
visit their friends and distribute meat to the poor; and every true
believer goes to the mosque to say his prayers in the morning. So,
instead of starting as usual at sunrise, we treated our sailors to a
sheep and waited till past noon, that they might have a holiday.
They began the day by trooping off to the village mosque in all the
glory of new blue blouses, spotless turbans and scarlet leather
slippers; then loitered about till dinner-time, when the said sheep,
stewed with lentils and garlic, brought the festivities to an end. It
was a thin and ancient beast and must have been horribly tough; but an
epicure might have envied the childlike enjoyment with which our honest
fellows squatted, cross-legged and happy, round the smoking cauldron;
chattering, laughing, feasting; dipping their fingers in the common
mess; washing the whole down with long draughts of Nile water; and
finishing off with a hubble-bubble passed from lip to lip and a mouthful
of muddy coffee. By a little after midday they had put off their finery,
harnessed themselves to the tow-rope and set to work to haul us through
the rocky shoals which here impede the current.
From Korosko to Derr, the actual distance is about eleven miles and a
half; but what with obstructions in the bed of the river, and what with
a wind that would have been favorable but for another great bend which
the Nile takes toward the east, those eleven miles and a half cost us
the best part of two days’ hard tracking.
Landing from time to time when the boat was close in shore, we found the
order of planting everywhere the same, lupins and lentils on the slope
against the water-line; an uninterrupted grove of palms on the edge of
the bank; in the space beyond, fields of cotton and young corn; and then
the desert. The arable soil was divided off, as usual, by hundreds of
water channels, and seemed to be excellently farmed as well as
abundantly irrigated. Not a weed was to be seen; not an inch of soil
appeared to be wasted. In odd corners where there was room for nothing
else, cucumbers and vegetable-marrows flourished and bore fruit. Nowhere
had we seen castor-berries so large, cotton-pods so full, or palms so
lofty.
Here also, for the first time out of Egypt, we observed among the bushes
a few hoopoes and other small birds; and on a sand-slope down by the
river a group of wild ducks. We--that is to say, one of the M. B.’s and
the writer--had wandered off that way in search of crocodiles. The two
dahabeeyahs, each with its file of trackers, were slowly laboring up
against the current about a mile away. All was intensely hot and
intensely silent. We had walked far and had seen no crocodile. What we
should have done if we had met one I am not prepared to say. Perhaps we
should have run away. At all events, we were just about to turn back
when we caught sight of the ducks sunning themselves, half asleep, on
the brink of a tiny pool about an eighth of a mile away.
Creeping cautiously under the bank, we contrived to get within a few
yards of them. They were four--a drake, a duck, and two young
ones--exquisitely feathered and as small as teal. The parent-birds could
scarcely have measured more than eight inches from head to tail. All
alike had chestnut-colored heads with a narrow buff stripe down the
middle, like a parting; maroon backs; wing-feathers maroon and gray; and
tails tipped with buff. They were so pretty, and the little family party
was so complete, that the writer could not help secretly rejoicing that
Alfred and his gun were safe on board the Bagstones.
High above the Libyan bank on the sloping verge of the desert, stands,
half-drowned in sand, the little temple of Amada. Seeing it from the
opposite side while duck-hunting in the morning, I had taken it for one
of the many stone shelters erected by Mohammed Ali for the
accommodation of cattle levied annually in the Soudan. It proved,
however, to be a temple, small but massive; built with squared blocks of
sandstone; and dating back to the very old times of the Usurtesens and
Thothmes. It consists of a portico, a transverse atrium, and three small
chambers. The pillars of the portico are mere square piers. The rooms
are small and low. The roof, constructed of oblong blocks, is flat from
end to end. As an architectural structure it is in fact but a few
degrees removed from Stonehenge.
A shed without, this little temple is, however, a cameo within. Nowhere,
save in the tomb of Ti, had we seen bas-reliefs so delicately modeled,
so rich in color. Here, as elsewhere, the walls are covered with groups
of kings and gods and hieroglyphic texts. The figures are slender and
animated. The head-dresses, jewelry, and patterned robes are elaborately
drawn and painted. Every head looks like a portrait; every hieroglyphic
form is a study in miniature.
Apart from its exquisite finish, the wall-sculpture of Amada has,
however, nothing in common with the wall-sculpture of the ancient
empire. It belongs to the period of Egyptian renaissance; and, though
inferior in power and naturalness to the work of the elder school, it
marks just that moment of special development when the art of modeling
in low relief had touched the highest level to which it ever again
attained. That highest level belongs to the reigns of Thothmes II and
Thothmes III; just as the perfect era in architecture belongs to the
reigns of Seti I and Rameses II. It is for this reason that Amada is so
precious. It registers an epoch in the history of the art, and gives us
the best of that epoch in the hour of its zenith. The sculptor is here
seen to be working within bounds already prescribed; yet within those
bounds he still enjoys a certain liberty. His art, though largely
conventionalized, is not yet stereotyped. His sense of beauty still
finds expression. There is, in short, a grace and sweetness about the
bas-relief designs of Amada for which one looks in vain to the storied
walls of Karnak.
The chambers are half-choked with sand and we had to crawl into the
sanctuary upon our hands and knees. A long inscription at the upper end
records how Amenhotep II, returning from his first campaign against the
Ruten, slew seven kings with his own hand; six of whom were gibbeted
upon the ramparts of Thebes, while the body of the seventh was sent to
Ethiopia by water and suspended on the outer wall of the city of
Napata,[70] “in order that the negroes might behold the victories of the
Pharaoh in all the lands of the world.”
In the darkest corner of the atrium we observed a curious tableau
representing the king embraced by a goddess. He holds a short, straight
sword in his right hand and the crux ansata in his left. On his head he
wears the khepersh, or war-helmet; a kind of a blue miter studded with
gold stars and ornamented with the royal asp. The goddess clasps him
lovingly about the neck and bends her lips to his. The artist has given
her the yellow complexion conventionally ascribed to women; but her
saucy mouth and nez retroussé are distinctly European. Dressed in the
fashion of the nineteenth century, she might have served Leech as a
model for his girl of the period.
The sand has drifted so high at the back of the temple that one steps
upon the roof as upon a terrace only just raised above the level of the
desert. Soon that level will be equal; and if nothing is done to rescue
it within the next generation or two, the whole building will become
engulfed and its very site be forgotten.
The view from the roof, looking back toward Korosko and forward toward
Derr, is one of the finest--perhaps quite the finest--in Nubia. The Nile
curves grandly through the foreground. The palm-woods of Derr are green
in the distance. The mountain region which we have just traversed ranges
a vast crescent of multitudinous peaks, round two-thirds of the horizon.
Ridge beyond ridge, chain beyond chain, flushing crimson in light and
deepening through every tint of amethyst and purple in shadow, those
innumerable summits fade into tenderest blue upon the horizon. As the
sun sets they seem to glow; to become incandescent; to be touched with
flame--as in the old time when every crater was a font of fire.
Struggling next morning through a maze of sand-banks, we reached Derr
soon after breakfast. This town--the Nubian capital--lies a little lower
than the level of the bank, so that only a few mud walls are visible
from the river. Having learned by this time that a capital town is but a
bigger village, containing perhaps a mosque and a market-place, we were
not disappointed by the unimposing aspect of the Nubian metropolis.
Great, however, was our surprise when, instead of the usual clamorous
crowd screaming, pushing, scrambling and bothering for backshîsh, we
found the landing-place deserted. Two or three native boats lay up under
the bank, empty. There was literally not a soul in sight. L---- and the
little lady, eager to buy some of the basket-work for which the place is
famous, looked blank. Talhamy, anxious to lay in a store of fresh eggs
and vegetables, looked blanker.
We landed. Before us lay an open space, at the farther end of which,
facing the river, stood the governor’s palace; the said palace being a
magnified mud hut, with a frieze of baked bricks round the top and an
imposing stone doorway. In this doorway, according to immemorial usage,
the great man gives audience. We saw him--a mere youth,
apparently--purring away at a long chibouque, in the midst of a little
group of graybeard elders. They looked at us gravely, immovably; like
smoking automata. One longed to go up and ask them if they were all
transformed to black granite from the waists to the feet and if the
inhabitants of Derr had been changed into blue stones.
Still bent on buying baskets, if baskets were to be bought--bent also on
finding out the whereabouts of a certain rock-cut temple which our books
told us to look for at the back of the town, we turned aside into a
straggling street leading toward the desert. The houses looked better
built than usual; some pains having evidently been bestowed in smoothing
the surface of the mud and ornamenting the doorways with fragments of
colored pottery. A cracked willow-pattern dinner-plate set, like a
fanlight, over one, and a white soup-plate over another, came doubtless
from the canteen of some English dahabeeyah, and were the pride of their
possessors. Looking from end to end of this street--and it was a
tolerably long one, with the Nile at one end and the desert at the
other--we saw no sign or shadow of moving creature. Only one young
woman, hearing strange voices talking a strange tongue, peeped out
suddenly from a half-opened door as we went by; then, seeing me look at
the baby in her arms (which was hideous and had sore eyes), drew her
veil across its face and darted back again. She thought I coveted her
treasure and she dreaded the Evil Eye.
All at once we heard a sound like the far-off quivering cry of many
owls. It shrilled--swelled--wavered--dropped--then died away, like the
moaning of the wind at sea. We held our breath and listened. We had
never heard anything so wild and plaintive. Then suddenly, through an
opening between the houses, we saw a great crowd on a space of rising
ground about a quarter of a mile away. This crowd consisted of men
only--a close, turbaned mass some three or four hundred in number; all
standing quite still and silent; all looking in the same direction.
Hurrying on to the desert we saw the strange sight at which they were
looking.
The scene was a barren sand-slope hemmed in between the town and the
cliffs and dotted over with graves. The actors were all women. Huddled
together under a long wall some few hundred yards away, bareheaded and
exposed to the blaze of the morning sun, they outnumbered the men by a
full third. Some were sitting, some standing; while in their midst,
pressing round a young woman who seemed to act as leader, there swayed
and circled and shuffled a compact phalanx of dancers. Upon this young
woman the eyes of all were turned. A black Cassandra, she rocked her
body from side to side, clapped her hands above her head and poured
forth a wild declamatory chant which the rest echoed. This chant seemed
to be divided into strophes, at the end of each of which she paused,
beat her breast, and broke into that terrible wail that we had heard
just now from a distance.
Her brother, it seemed, had died last night; and we were witnessing his
funeral.
The actual interment was over by the time we reached the spot; but four
men were still busy filling the grave with sand, which they scraped up,
a bowlful at a time, and stamped down with their naked feet.
The deceased being unmarried, his sister led the choir of mourners. She
was a tall, gaunt young woman of the plainest Nubian type, with high
cheek-bones, eyes slanting upward at the corners, and an enormous mouth
full of glittering teeth. On her head she wore a white cloth smeared
with dust. Her companions were distinguished by a narrow white fillet,
bound about the brow and tied with two long ends behind. They had hidden
their necklaces and bracelets and wore trailing robes and shawls and
loose trousers of black or blue calico.
We stood for a long time watching their uncouth dance. None of the women
seemed to notice us; but the men made way civilly and gravely, letting
us pass to the front, that we might get a better view of the ceremony.
By and by an old woman rose slowly from the midst of those who were
sitting and moved with tottering, uncertain steps toward a higher point
of ground, a little apart from the crowd. There was a movement of
compassion among the men; one of whom turned to the writer and said,
gently: “His mother.”
She was a small, feeble old woman, very poorly clad. Her hands and arms
were like the hands and arms of a mummy, and her withered black face
looked ghastly under its mask of dust. For a few moments, swaying her
body slowly to and fro, she watched the grave-diggers stamping down the
sand; then stretched out her arms and broke into a torrent of
lamentations. The dialect of Derr[71] is strange and barbarous; but we
felt as if we understood every word she uttered. Presently the tears
began to make channels down her cheeks--her voice became choked with
sobs--and, falling down in a sort of helpless heap, like a
broken-hearted dog, she lay with her face to the ground, and there
stayed.
Meanwhile, the sand being now filled in and mounded up, the men betook
themselves to a place where the rock had given way and selected a couple
of big stones from the débris. These they placed at the head and foot of
the grave and all was done.
Instantly--perhaps at an appointed signal, though we saw none given--the
wailing ceased; the women rose; every tongue was loosened; and the whole
became a moving, animated, noisy throng dispersing in a dozen different
directions.
We turned away with the rest, the writer and the painter rambling off in
search of the temple, while the other three devoted themselves to the
pursuit of baskets and native jewelry. When we looked back presently the
crowd was gone; but the desolate mother still lay motionless in the
dust.
It chanced that we witnessed many funerals in Nubia; so many that one
sometimes felt inclined to doubt whether the governor of Assûan had not
reported over-favorably of the health of the province. The ceremonial,
with its dancing and chanting, was always much the same; always
barbaric, and in the highest degree artificial. One would like to know
how much of it is derived from purely African sources, and how much from
ancient Egyptian tradition. The dance is most probably Ethiopian.
Lepsius, traveling through the Soudan in A.D. 1844,[72] saw something of
the kind at a funeral in Wed Medineh, about half-way between Sennaar and
Khartûm. The white fillet worn by the choir of mourners is, on the other
hand, distinctly Egyptian. We afterward saw it represented in paintings
of funeral processions on the walls of several tombs at Thebes,[73]
where the wailing women are seen to be gathering up the dust in their
hands and casting it upon their heads, just as they do now. As for the
wail--beginning high and descending through a scale divided not by
semi-tones but thirds of tones to a final note about an octave and a
half lower than that from which it started--it probably echoes to this
day the very pitch and rhythm of the wail that followed the Pharaohs to
their sepulchers in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. Like the
zaghareet, or joy-cry, which every mother teaches to her little girls
and which, it is said, can only be acquired in very early youth, it has
been handed down from generation to generation through an untold
succession of ages. The song to which the fellâh works his shâdûf and
the monotonous chant of the sakkieh-driver have, perhaps, as remote an
origin. But of all old, mournful, human sounds, the death-wail that we
heard at Derr is perhaps one of the very oldest--certainly the most
mournful.
The temple here, dating from the reign of Rameses II, is of rude design
and indifferent execution. Partly constructed, partly excavated, it is
approached by a forecourt, the roof of which was supported by eight
square columns. Of these columns only the bases remain. Four massive
piers, against which once stood four colossi, upheld the roof of the
portico and gave admission by three entrances to the rock-cut chambers
beyond. The portico is now roofless. Nothing is left of the colossi but
their feet. All is ruin; and ruin without beauty.
Seen from within, however, the place is not without a kind of gloomy
grandeur. Two rows of square columns, three at each side, divide the
large hall into a nave and two aisles. This hall is about forty feet
square, and the pillars have been left standing in the living rock, like
those in the early tombs at Siût. The daylight, half-blocked out by the
fallen portico, is pleasantly subdued, and finds its way dimly to the
sanctuary at the farther end. The sculptures of the interior, though
much damaged, are less defaced than those of the outer court. Walls,
pillars, doorways, are covered with bas-reliefs. The king and Ptah, the
king and Ra, the king and Amen, stand face to face, hand in hand, on
each of the four sides of every column. Scenes of worship, of slaughter,
of anointing, cover the walls; and the blank spaces are filled in as
usual with hieroglyphic inscriptions. Among these Champollion discovered
an imperfect list of the sons and daughters of Rameses II. Four gods
once sat enthroned at the upper end of the sanctuary; but they have
shared the fate of the colossi outside and only their feet remain. The
wall sculptures of this dark little chamber are, however, better
preserved, and better worth preservation, than those of the hall. A
procession of priests, bearing on their shoulders the bari, or sacred
boat, is quite unharmed; and even the color is yet fresh upon a
full-length figure of Hathor close by.
But more interesting than all these--more interesting because more
rare--is a sculptured palm-tree against which the king leans while
making an offering to Amen Ra. The trunk is given with elaborate
truthfulness; and the branches, though formalized, are correct and
graceful in curvature. The tree is but an accessory. It may have been
introduced with reference to the date-harvests which are the wealth of
the district; but it has no kind of sacred significance, and is
noticeable only for the naturalness of the treatment. Such naturalness
is unusual in the art of this period, when the conventional persea and
the equally conventional lotus are almost the only vegetable forms which
appear on the walls of the temples. I can recall, indeed, but one
similar instance in the bas-relief sculpture of the new empire--namely,
the bent, broken and waving bulrushes in the great lion-hunting scene at
Medinet Habu, which are admirably free and studied, apparently, from
nature.
Coming out, we looked in vain along the court-yard walls for the
battle-scene in which Champollion was yet able to trace the famous
fighting lion of Rameses II with the legend describing him as “the
servant of his majesty rending his foes in pieces.” But that was
forty-five years ago. Now it is with difficulty that one detects a few
vague outlines of chariot-wheels and horses.
There are some rock-cut tombs in the face of the cliffs close by. The
painter explored them while the writer sketched the interior of the
temple; but he reported of them as mere sepulchers, unpainted and
unsculptured.
The rocks, the sands, the sky, were at a white heat when we again turned
our faces toward the river. Where there had so lately been a great
multitude there was now not a soul. The palms nodded; the pigeons dozed;
the mud town slept in the sun. Even the mother had gone from her place
of weeping and left her dead to the silence of the desert.
We went and looked at his grave. The fresh-turned sand was only a little
darker than the rest, and, but for the trampled foot-marks round about,
we should scarcely have been able to distinguish the new mound from the
old ones. All were alike nameless. Some, more cared for than the rest,
were bordered with large stones and filled with variegated pebbles. One
or two were fenced about with a mud wall. All had a bowl of baked clay
at the head. Wherever we saw a burial-ground in Nubia we saw these bowls
upon the graves. The mourners, they told us, mourn here for forty days;
during which time they come every Friday with fresh water, that the
birds may drink from it. The bowls on the other graves were dry and full
of sand; but the new bowl was brimming full and the water in it was hot
to the touch.
We found L---- and the happy couple standing at bay with their backs
against a big lebbich tree, surrounded by an immense crowd and far from
comfortable. Bent on “bazaaring,” they had probably shown themselves too
ready to buy; so bringing the whole population, with all the mats,
baskets, nose-rings, finger-rings, necklaces and bracelets in the place
about their ears. Seeing the straits they were in, we ran to the
dahabeeyah and dispatched three or four sailors to the rescue, who
brought them off in triumph.
Even in Egypt it does not answer, as a rule, to go about on shore
without an escort. The people are apt to be importunate and can with
difficulty be kept at a pleasant distance. But in Nubia, where the
traveler’s life was scarcely safe fifty years ago, unprotected Ingleezeh
are pretty certain to be disagreeably mobbed. The natives, in truth, are
still mere savages _au fond_--the old war-paint being but half-disguised
under a thin veneer of Mohammedanism.
Some of the women who followed our friends to the boat, though in
complexion as black as the rest, had light-blue eyes and frizzy red
hair, the effect of which was indescribably frightful. Both here and at
Ibrim there are many of these “fair” families, who claim to be descended
from Bosnian fathers stationed in Nubia at the time of the conquest of
Sultan Selim in A.D. 1517. They are immensely proud of their alien blood
and think themselves quite beautiful.
All hands being safe on board, we pushed off at once, leaving about a
couple of hundred disconsolate dealers on the bank. A long-drawn howl of
disappointment followed in our wake. Those who had sold, and those who
had not sold, were alike wronged, ruined, and betrayed. One woman tore
wildly along the bank, shrieking and beating her breast. Foremost among
the sellers, she had parted from her gold brow-pendant for a good price;
but was inconsolable now for the loss of it.
It often happened that those who had been most eager to trade were
readiest to repent of their bargains. Even so, however, their cupidity
outweighed their love of finery. Moved once or twice by the lamentations
of some dark damsel who had sold her necklace at a handsome profit, we
offered to annul the purchase. But it invariably proved that, despite
her tears, she preferred to keep the money.
The palms of Derr and of the rich district beyond were the finest we saw
throughout the journey. Straight and strong and magnificently plumed,
they rose to an average height of seventy or eighty feet. These superb
plantations supply all Egypt with saplings and contribute a heavy tax to
the revenue. The fruit, sun-dried and shriveled, is also sent northward
in large quantities.
The trees are cultivated with strenuous industry by the natives and owe
as much of their perfection to laborious irrigation as to climate. The
foot of each separate palm is surrounded by a circular trench, into
which the water is conducted by a small channel about fourteen inches in
width. Every palm-grove stands in a network of these artificial runlets.
The reservoir from which they are supplied is filled by means of a
sakkieh, or water-wheel--a primitive and picturesque machine consisting
of two wheels, the one set vertically to the river and slung with a
chain of pots; the other a horizontal cog turned sometimes by a camel,
but more frequently in Nubia by a buffalo. The pots (which go down
empty, dip under the water, and come up full) feed a sloping trough
which in some places supplies a reservoir, and in others communicates at
once with the irrigating channels. These sakkiehs are kept perpetually
going, and are set so close just above Derr, that the writer counted a
line of fifteen within the space of a single mile. There were probably
quite as many on the opposite bank.
The sakkiehs creak atrociously; and their creaking ranges over an
unlimited gamut. From morn till dewy eve, from dewy eve till morn, they
squeak, they squeal, they grind, they groan, they croak. Heard after
dark, sakkieh answering to sakkieh, their melancholy chorus makes night
hideous. To sleep through it is impossible. Being obliged to moor a few
miles beyond Derr and having lain awake half the night, we offered a
sakkieh-driver a couple of dollars if he would let his wheel rest till
morning. But time and water are more precious than even dollars at this
season; and the man refused. All we could do, therefore, was to punt
into the middle of the river and lie off at a point as nearly as
possible equidistant from our two nearest enemies.
The native dearly loves the tree which costs him so much labor, and
thinks it the chef-d’œuvre of creation. When Allah made the first man,
says an Arab legend, he found he had a little clay to spare; so with
that he made the palm. And to the poor Nubian, at all events, the gifts
of the palm are almost divine; supplying food for his children, thatch
for his hovel, timber for his water-wheel, ropes, matting, cups, bowls
and even the strong drink forbidden by the prophet. The date-wine is
yellowish-white, like whisky. It is not a wine, however, but a spirit;
coarse, fiery, and unpalatable.
Certain trees--as for instance the perky little pine of the German
wald--are apt to become monotonous; but one never wearies of the palm.
Whether taken singly or in masses, it is always graceful, always
suggestive. To the sketcher on the Nile it is simply invaluable. It
breaks the long parallels of river and bank and composes with the stern
lines of Egyptian architecture as no other tree in the world could do.
“Subjects, indeed!” said once upon a time an eminent artist to the
present writer; “fiddlesticks about subjects! Your true painter can make
a picture out of a post and a puddle.”
Substitute a palm, however, for a post; combine it with anything that
comes first--a camel, a shâdûf, a woman with a water-jar upon her
head--and your picture stands before you ready made.
Nothing more surprised me at first than the color of the palm-frond,
which painters of eastern landscape are wont to depict of a hard bluish
tint, like the color of a yucca leaf. Its true shade is a tender,
bloomy, sea-green gray; difficult enough to match, but in most exquisite
harmony with the glow of the sky and the gold of the desert.
The palm-groves kept us company for many a mile, backed on the Arabian
side by long level ranges of sandstone cliffs, horizontally stratified,
like those of the Thebaid. We now scarcely ever saw a village--only
palms and sakkiehs and sand-banks in the river. The villages were there,
but invisible, being built on the verge of the desert. Arable land is
too valuable in Nubia for either the living to dwell upon it or the dead
to be buried in it.
At Ibrim--a sort of ruined Ehrenbreitstein on the top of a grand
precipice overhanging the river--we touched for only a few minutes, in
order to buy a very small shaggy sheep which had been brought down to
the landing-place for sale. But for the breeze that happened just then
to be blowing we should have liked to climb the rock and see the view
and the ruins--which are part modern, part Turkish, part Roman, and
little, if at all, Egyptian.
There are also some sculptured and painted grottoes to be seen in the
southern face of the mountain. They are, however, too difficult of
access to be attempted by ladies. Alfred, who went ashore after quail,
was drawn up to them by ropes, but found them too much defaced as to be
scarcely worth the trouble of a visit.
We were now only thirty-four miles from Abou Simbel; but making slow
progress and impatiently counting every foot of the way. The heat at
times was great, frequent and fitful spells of Khamsîn wind alternating
with a hot calm that tried the trackers sorely. Still we pushed forward,
a few miles at a time, till by and by the flat-topped cliffs dropped out
of sight and were again succeeded by volcanic peaks, some of which
looked loftier than any of those about Dakkeh or Korosko.
Then the palms ceased and the belt of cultivated land narrowed to a
thread of green between the rocks and the water’s edge; and at last
there came an evening when we only wanted breeze enough to double two or
three more bends in the river.
“Is it to be Abou Simbel to-night?” we asked for the twentieth time
before going down to dinner.
To which Reïs Hassan replied: “Aiwah” (“certainly”).
But the pilot shook his head and added: “Bûkra” (“to-morrow”).
When we came up again the moon had risen but the breeze had dropped.
Still we moved, impelled by a breath so faint that one could scarcely
feel it. Presently even this failed. The sail collapsed; the pilot
steered for the bank; the captain gave word to go aloft--when a sudden
puff from the north changed our fortunes and sent us out again with a
well-filled sail into the middle of the river.
None of us, I think, will be likely to forget the sustained excitement
of the next three hours. As the moon climbed higher a light more
mysterious and unreal than the light of day filled and overflowed the
wide expanse of river and desert. We could see the mountains of Abou
Simbel standing, as it seemed, across our path, in the far distance--a
lower one first; then a larger; then a series of receding heights, all
close together, yet all distinctly separate.
That large one--the mountain of the great temple--held us like a spell.
For a long time it looked a mere mountain like the rest. By and by,
however, we fancied we detected a something--a shadow--such a shadow as
might be cast by a gigantic buttress. Next appeared a black speck, no
bigger than a port-hole. We knew that this black speck must be the
doorway. We knew that the great statues were there, though not yet
visible, and that we must soon see them.
For our sailors, meanwhile, there was the excitement of a chase. The
Bagstones and three other dahabeeyahs were coming up behind us in the
path of the moonlight. Their galley fires glowed like beacons on the
water; the nearest about a mile away, the last a spark in the distance.
We were not in the mood to care much for racing to-night, but we were
anxious to keep our lead and be first at the mooring place.
To run upon a sand-bank at such a moment was like being plunged suddenly
into cold water. Our sail flapped furiously. The men rushed to the
punting-poles. Four jumped overboard and shoved with all the might of
their shoulders. By the time we got off, however, the other boats had
crept up half a mile nearer, and we had hard work to keep them from
pressing closer on our heels.
At length the last corner was rounded and the great temple stood
straight before us. The façade, sunk in the mountain side like a huge
picture in a mighty frame, was now quite plain to see. The black speck
was no longer a port-hole, but a lofty doorway.
Last of all, though it was night, and they were still not much less than
a mile away, the four colossi came out, ghostlike, vague and shadowy, in
the enchanted moonlight. Even as we watched them they seemed to grow, to
dilate, to be moving toward us out of the silvery distance.
It was drawing on toward midnight when the Philæ at length ran in close
under the great temple. Content with what they had seen from the river
the rest of the party then went soberly to bed; but the painter and the
writer had no patience to wait till morning. Almost before the
mooring-rope could be made fast they had jumped ashore and began
climbing the bank.
They went and stood at the feet of the colossi, and on the threshold of
that vast portal beyond which was darkness. The great statues towered
above their heads. The river glittered like steel in the far distance.
There was a keen silence in the air; and toward the east the Southern
Cross was rising. To the strangers who stood talking there with bated
breath, the time, the place, even the sound of their own voices, seemed
unreal. They felt as if the whole scene must fade with the moonlight,
and vanish before morning.
CHAPTER XV.
RAMESES THE GREAT.
The central figure of Egyptian history has always been, probably always
will be, Rameses II. He holds this place partly by right, partly by
accident. He was born to greatness; he achieved greatness; and he had
borrowed greatness thrust upon him. It was his singular destiny not only
to be made a posthumous usurper of glory, but to be forgotten by his own
name and remembered in a variety of aliases. As Sesoosis, as Osymandias,
as Sesostris, he became credited in course of time with all the deeds of
all the heroes of the new empire, beginning with Thothmes III, who
preceded him by three hundred years, and ending with Sheshonk, the
captor of Jerusalem, who lived four centuries after him. Modern science,
however, has repaired this injustice; and, while disclosing the
long-lost names of a brilliant succession of sovereigns, has enabled us
to ascribe to each the honors which are his due. We know now that some
of these were greater conquerors than Rameses II. We suspect that some
were better rulers. Yet the popular hero keeps his ground. What he has
lost by interpretation on the one hand, he has gained by interpretation
on the other; and the _beau sabreur_ of the “Third Sallier Papyrus”
remains to this day the representative Pharaoh of a line of monarchs
whose history covers a space of fifty centuries, and whose frontiers
reached at one time from Mesopotamia to the ends of the Soudan.
The interest that one takes in Rameses II begins at Memphis and goes on
increasing all the way up the river. It is a purely living, a purely
personal interest; such as one feels in Athens for Pericles, or in
Florence for Lorenzo the Magnificent. Other Pharaohs but languidly
affect the imagination. Thothmes and Amenhotep are to us as Darius or
Artaxerxes--shadows that come and go in the distance. But with the
second Rameses we are on terms of respectful intimacy. We seem to know
the man--to feel his presence--to hear his name in the air. His features
are as familiar to us as those of Henry VIII or Louis XIV. His
cartouches meet us at every turn. Even to those who do not read the
hieroglyphic character, those well-known signs convey by sheer force of
association the name and style of Rameses, beloved of Amen.
[Illustration: CARTOUCHES OF RAMESES THE GREAT.]
This being so, the traveler is ill-equipped who goes through Egypt
without something more than a mere guide-book knowledge of Rameses II.
He is, as it were, content to read the argument and miss the poem. In
the desolation of Memphis, in the shattered splendor of Thebes, he sees
only the ordinary pathos of ordinary ruins. As for Abou Simbel, the most
stupendous historical record ever transmitted from the past to the
present, it tells him a but half-intelligible story. Holding to the
merest thread of explanation, he wanders from hall to hall, lacking
altogether that potent charm of foregone association which no Murray can
furnish. Your average Frenchman, straying helplessly through Westminster
Abbey under the conduct of the verger, has about as vague a conception
of the historical import of the things he sees.
What is true of the traveler is equally true of those who take the Nile
vicariously “in connection with Mudie.” If they are to understand any
description of Abou Simbel, they must first know something about Rameses
II. Let us then, while the Philæ lies moored in the shadow of the rock
of Abshek,[74] review, as summarily as may be, the leading facts of this
important reign; such facts, that is to say, as are recorded in
inscriptions, papyri, and other contemporary monuments.
* * * * *
Rameses II[75] was the son of Seti I, the second Pharaoh of the
nineteenth dynasty and of a certain Princess Tuaa, described on the
monuments as “royal wife, royal mother, and heiress and sharer of the
throne.” She is supposed to have been of the ancient royal line of the
preceding dynasty, and so to have had, perhaps, a better right than her
husband to the double crown of Egypt. Through her, at all events,
Rameses II seems to have been in some sense born a king[76] equal in
rank, if not in power, with his father; his rights, moreover, were fully
recognized by Seti, who accorded him royal and divine honors from the
hour of his birth, or, in the language of the Egyptian historians, while
he was “yet in the egg.” The great dedicatory inscription of the Temple
of Osiris at Abydos,[77] relates how his father took the royal child in
his arms, when he was yet little more than an infant, showed him to the
people as their king, and caused him to be invested by the great
officers of the palace with the double crown of the two lands. The same
inscription states that he was a general from his birth, and that as a
nursling he “commanded the body-guard and the brigade of
chariot-fighters”; but these titles must, of course, have been purely
honorary. At twelve years of age he was formally associated with his
father upon the throne, and by the gradual retirement of Seti I from the
cares of active government the co-royalty of Rameses became, in the
course of the next ten or fifteen years, an undivided responsibility. He
was probably about thirty when his father died; and it is from this time
that the years of his reign are dated. In other words, Rameses II, in
his official records, counts only from the period of his sole reign, and
the year of the death of Seti is the “year one” of the monumental
inscriptions of his son and successor. In the second, fourth, and fifth
years of his monarchy, he personally conducted campaigns in Syria, more
than one of the victories then achieved being commemorated on the
rock-cut tablets of Nahr-el-Kelb, near Beyrût; and that he was by this
time recognized as a mighty warrior is shown by the stela of Dakkeh,
which dates from the “third year,” and celebrates him as terrible in
battle--“the bull powerful against Ethiopia, the griffin furious against
the negroes, whose grip has put the mountaineers to flight.” The events
of the campaign of his “fifth year” (undertaken in order to reduce to
obedience the revolted tribes of Syria and Mesopotamia) are immortalized
in the poem of Pentaur.[78] It was on this occasion that he fought his
famous single-handed fight against overwhelming odds, in the sight of
both armies under the walls of Kadesh. Three years later he carried fire
and sword into the land of Canaan, and in his eleventh year, according
to inscriptions yet extant upon the ruined pylons of the Ramesseum at
Thebes, he took, among other strong places on sea and shore, the
fortresses of Ascalon and Jerusalem.
The next important record transports us to the twenty-first year of his
reign. Ten years have now gone by since the fall of Jerusalem, during
which time a fluctuating frontier warfare has probably been carried on,
to the exhaustion of both armies. Khetasira, Prince of Kheta,[79] sues
for peace. An elaborate treaty is thereupon framed, whereby the said
prince and “Rameses, chief of rulers, who fixes his frontiers where he
pleases,” pledge themselves to a strict offensive and defensive
alliance, and to the maintenance of good-will and brotherhood forever.
This treaty, we are told, was engraved for the Khetan prince “upon a
tablet of silver adorned with the likeness of the figure of Sutekh, the
great ruler of Heaven”; while for Rameses Mer-Amen it was graven on a
wall adjoining the great hall at Karnak,[80] where it remains to this
day.
According to the last clause of this curious document, the contracting
parties enter also into an agreement to deliver up to each other the
political fugitives of both countries; providing at the same time for
the personal safety of the offenders. “Whosoever shall be so delivered
up,” says the treaty, “himself, his wives, his children, let him not be
smitten to death; moreover, let him not suffer in his eyes, in his
mouth, in his feet; moreover, let not any crime be set up against
him.”[81] This is the earliest instance of an extradition treaty upon
record; and it is chiefly remarkable as an illustration of the clemency
with which international law was at that time administered.
Finally the convention between the sovereigns is placed under the joint
protection of the gods of both countries: “Sutekh of Kheta, Amen of
Egypt and all the thousand gods; the gods, male and female; the gods of
the hills, of the rivers, of the great sea, of the winds and the clouds,
of the land of Kheta and of the land of Egypt.”
The peace now concluded would seem to have remained unbroken throughout
the rest of the long reign of Rameses II. We hear, at all events, of no
more wars; and we find the king married presently to a Khetan princess,
who, in deference to the gods of her adopted country, takes the
official name of Ma-at-iri-neferu-Ra, or “Contemplating the beauties of
Ra.” The names of two other queens--Nefer-t-ari and Ast-nefert--are also
found upon the monuments.
These three were probably the only legitimate wives of Rameses II,
though he must also have been the lord of an extensive hareem. His
family, at all events, as recorded upon the walls of the Temple at Wady
Sabooah, amounted to no less than one hundred and seventy children, of
whom one hundred and eleven were princes. This may have been a small
family for a great king three thousand years ago. It was but the other
day, comparatively speaking, that Lepsius saw and talked with old Hasan,
Kashef of Derr--the same petty ruler who gave so much trouble to
Belzoni, Burckhardt, and other early travelers--and he, like a patriarch
of old, had in his day been the husband of sixty-four wives and the
father of something like two hundred children.
For forty-six years after the making of the Khetan treaty, Rameses the
Great lived at peace with his neighbors and tributaries. The evening of
his life was long and splendid. It became his passion and his pride to
found new cities, to raise dikes, to dig canals, to build fortresses, to
multiply statues, obelisks, and inscriptions, and to erect the most
gorgeous and costly temples in which man ever worshiped. To the
monuments founded by his predecessors he made additions so magnificent
that they dwarfed the designs they were intended to complete. He caused
artesian wells to be pierced in the stony bed of the desert. He carried
on the canal begun by his father and opened a water-way between the
Mediterranean and the Red Sea.[82] No enterprise was too difficult, no
project too vast, for his ambition. “As a child,” says the stela of
Dakkeh, “he superintended the public works and his hands laid their
foundations.” As a man, he became the supreme builder. Of his gigantic
structures, only certain colossal fragments have survived the ravages of
time; yet those fragments are the wonder of the world.
To estimate the cost at which these things were done is now impossible.
Every temple, every palace, represented a hecatomb of human lives.
Slaves from Ethiopia, captives taken in war, Syrian immigrants settled
in the delta, were alike pressed into the service of the state. We know
how the Hebrews suffered, and to what extremity of despair they were
reduced by the tasks imposed upon them. Yet even the Hebrews were less
cruelly used than some who were kidnaped beyond the frontiers. Torn from
their homes, without hope of return, driven in herds to the mines, the
quarries, and the brick-fields, these hapless victims were so dealt with
that not even the chances of desertion were open to them. The negroes
from the south were systematically drafted to the north; the Asiatic
captives were transported to Ethiopia. Those who labored underground
were goaded on without rest or respite, till they fell down in the mines
and died.
That Rameses II was the Pharaoh of the captivity,[83] and that Meneptah,
his son and successor, was the Pharaoh of the exodus,[84] are now among
the accepted presumptions of Egyptological science. The Bible and the
monuments confirm each other upon these points, while both are again
corroborated by the results of recent geographical and philological
research. The “treasure-cities Pithom and Raamses” which the Israelites
built for Pharaoh with bricks of their own making, are the Pa-Tum and
Pa-Rameses, of the inscriptions, and both have recently been identified
by M. Naville, in the course of his excavations conducted in 1883 and
1886 for the Egypt Exploration Fund.
The discovery of Pithom, the ancient biblical “treasure-city” of the
first chapter of Exodus, has probably attracted more public attention
and been more widely discussed by European savants than any
archæological event since the discovery of Nineveh. It was in February,
1883, that M. Naville opened the well-known mound of Tel-el-Maskhutah,
on the south bank of the new sweet-water canal in the Wady Tûmilât, and
there discovered the foundations and other remains of a fortified city
of the kind known in Egyptian as a _bekhen_, or store-fort. This
_bekhen_, which was surrounded by a wall thirty feet in thickness,
proved to be about twelve acres in extent. In one corner of the
inclosure were found the ruins of a temple built by Rameses II. The rest
of the area consisted of a labyrinth of subterraneous rectangular
cellars, or store-chambers, constructed of sun-dried bricks of large
size and divided by walls varying from eight to ten feet in thickness.
In the ruins of the temple were discovered several statues more or less
broken, a colossal hawk inscribed with the royal ovals of Rameses II,
and other works of art dating from the reigns of Osorkon II, Nectanebo
and Ptolemy Philadelphus. The hieroglyphic legends engraved upon the
statues established the true value of the discovery by giving both the
name of the city and the name of the district in which the city was
situated; the first being Pa-Tum (Pithom), the “Abode of Tum,” and the
second being Thuku-t (Succoth); so identifying “Pa-Tum, in the district
of Thuku-t,” with Pithom, the treasure-city built by the forced labor of
the Hebrews and Succoth, the region in which they made their first halt
on going forth from the land of bondage. Even the bricks with which the
great wall and the walls of the store-chambers are built bear eloquent
testimony to the toil of the suffering colonists and confirm in its
minutest details the record of their oppression; some being duly kneaded
with straw; others, when the straw was no longer forthcoming, being
mixed with the leafage of a reed common to the marsh lands of the delta;
and the remainder, when even this substitute ran short, being literally
“bricks without straw,” molded of mere clay crudely dried in the sun.
The researches of M. Naville further showed that the temple to Tum,
founded by Rameses II, was restored, or rebuilt, by Osorkon II, of the
twenty-second dynasty; while at a still higher level were discovered the
remains of a Roman fortress. That Pithom was still an important place in
the time of the Ptolemies is proved by a large and historically
important tablet found by M. Naville in one of the store-chambers, where
it had been thrown in with other sculptures and rubbish of various
kinds. This tablet records repairs done to the canal, an expedition to
Ethiopia and the foundation of the city of Arsinoë. Not less important
from a geographical point of view was the finding of a Roman milestone
which identifies Pithom with Hero (Heroöpolis), where, according to the
Septuagint, Joseph went forth to meet Jacob. This milestone gives nine
Roman miles as the distance from Heroöpolis to Clysma. A very curious
manuscript lately discovered by Sig. Gamurrini in the library of Arezzo,
shows that even so late as the fourth century of the Christian era this
ancient walled inclosure--the camp, or “Ero Castra,” of the Roman
period, the “Pithom” of the Bible--was still known to pious pilgrims as
“the Pithom built by the children of Israel;” that the adjoining town,
external to the camp, at that time established within the old Pithom
boundaries, was known as “Heroöpolis;” and that the town of Rameses was
distant from Pithom about twenty Roman miles.[85]
As regards Pa-Rameses, the other “treasure-city” of Exodus, it is
conjecturally, but not positively, identified by M. Naville with the
mound of Saft-el-Henneh, the scene of his explorations in 1886. That
Saft-el-Henneh was identical with “Kes,” or Goshen, the capital town of
the “Land of Goshen,” has been unequivocally demonstrated by the
discoverer; and that it was also known in the time of Rameses II as
“Pa-Rameses” is shown to be highly probable.[86] There are remains of a
temple built of black basalt, with pillars, fragments of statues and the
like, all inscribed with the cartouches of Rameses II; and the distance
from Pithom is just twenty Roman miles.
It was from Pa-Rameses that Rameses II set out with his army to attack
the confederate princes of Asia Minor then lying in ambush near
Kadesh;[87] and it was hither that he returned in triumph after the
great victory. A contemporary letter written by one Panbesa, a scribe,
narrates in glowing terms the beauty and abundance of the royal city,
and tells how the damsels stood at their doors in holiday apparel, with
nosegays in their hands and sweet oil upon their locks, “on the day of
the arrival of the war-god of the world.” This letter is in the British
Museum.[88]
Other letters written during the reign of Rameses II have by some been
supposed to make direct mention of the Israelites.
“I have obeyed the orders of my master,” writes the scribe Kauiser to
his superior Bak-en-Ptah, “being bidden to serve out the rations to the
soldiers, and also to the Aperiu [Hebrews?], who quarry stone for the
palace of King Rameses Mer-Amen.” A similar document written by a scribe
named Keniamon and couched in almost the same words shows these Aperiu
on another occasion to have been quarrying for a building on the
southern side of Memphis; in which case Turra would be the scene of
their labors.
These invaluable letters, written on papyrus in the hieratic character,
are in good preservation. They were found in the ruins of Memphis and
now form part of the treasures of the Museum of Leyden.[89] They bring
home to us with startling nearness the events and actors of the Bible
narrative. We see the toilers at their task and the overseers reporting
them to the directors of public works. They extract from the quarry
those huge blocks which are our wonder to this day. Harnessed to rude
sledges, they drag them to the river side and embark them for transport
to the opposite bank.[90] Some are so large and so heavy that it takes a
month to get them down from the mountain to the landing-place.[91] Other
laborers are elsewhere making bricks, digging canals, helping to build
the great wall which reached from Pelusium to Heliopolis, and
strengthening the defenses not only of Pithom and Rameses but of all the
cities and forts between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Their lot is
hard; but not harder than the lot of other workmen. They are well fed.
They intermarry. They increase and multiply. The season of their great
oppression is not yet come. They make bricks, it is true, and those who
are so employed must supply a certain number daily;[92] but the straw is
not yet withheld, and the task, though perhaps excessive, is not
impossible. For we are here on the reign of Rameses II, and the time
when Meneptah shall succeed him is yet far distant. It is not till the
king dies that the children of Israel sigh, “by reason of the bondage.”
There are in the British Museum, the Louvre, and the Bibliothèque
Nationale, some much older papyri than these two letters of the Leyden
collection--some as old, indeed, as the time of Joseph, but none,
perhaps, of such peculiar interest. In these, the scribes Kauiser and
Keniamon seem still to live and speak. What would we not give for a few
more of their letters! These men knew Memphis in its glory and had
looked upon the face of Rameses the Great. They might even have seen
Moses in his youth while yet he lived under the protection of his
adopted mother, a prince among princes. Kauiser and Keniamon lived, and
died, and were mummied between three and four thousand years ago; yet
these frail fragments of papyrus have survived the wreck of ages, and
the quaint writing with which they are covered is as intelligible to
ourselves as to the functionaries to whom it was addressed. The
Egyptians were eminently business-like, and kept accurate entries of the
keep and labor of their workmen and captives. From the earliest epoch of
which the monuments furnish record, we find an elaborate bureaucratic
system in full operation throughout the country. Even in the time of the
pyramid-builders, there are ministers of public works; inspectors of
lands, lakes, and quarries; secretaries, clerks, and overseers
innumerable.[93] From all these, we may be sure, were required strict
accounts of their expenditure, as well as reports of the work done under
their supervision. Specimens of Egyptian book-keeping are by no means
rare. The Louvre is rich in memoranda of the kind; some relating to the
date-tax; others to the transport and taxation of corn, the payment of
wages, the sale and purchase of land for burial, and the like. If any
definite and quite unmistakable news of the Hebrews should ever reach us
from Egyptian sources it will almost certainly be through the medium of
documents such as these.
An unusually long reign, the last forty-six years of which would seem to
have been spent in peace and outward prosperity, enabled Rameses II to
indulge his ruling passion without interruption. To draw up anything
like an exhaustive catalogue of his known architectural works would be
equivalent to writing an itinerary of Egypt and Ethiopia under the
nineteenth dynasty. His designs were as vast as his means appear to have
been unlimited. From the delta to Gebel Barkal, he filled the land with
monuments dedicated to his own glory and the worship of the gods. Upon
Thebes, Abydos, and Tanis he lavished structures of surpassing
magnificence. In Nubia, at the places now known as Gerf Hossayn, Wady
Sabooyah, Derr, and Abou Simbel, he was the author of temples and the
founder of cities. These cities, which would probably be better
described as provincial towns, have disappeared; and but for the mention
of them in various inscriptions we should not even know that they had
existed. Who shall say how many more have vanished, leaving neither
trace nor record? A dozen cities of Rameses[94] may yet lie buried under
some of these nameless mounds which follow each other in such quick
succession along the banks of the Nile in Middle and Lower Egypt. Only
yesterday, as it were, the remains of what would seem to have been a
magnificent structure decorated in a style absolutely unique, were
accidentally discovered under the mounds of Tel-el-Yahoodeh,[95] about
twelve miles to the northeast of Cairo. There are probably fifty such
mounds, none of which have been opened, in the delta alone; and it is no
exaggeration to say that there must be some hundreds between the
Mediterranean and the first cataract.
An inscription found of late years at Abydos shows that Rameses II
reigned over his great kingdom for the space of sixty-seven years. “It
is thou,” says Ramses IV, addressing himself to Osiris, “it is thou who
wilt rejoice me with such length of reign as Ramses II, the great god,
in his sixty-seven years. It is thou who wilt give me the long duration
of this great reign.”[96]
If only we knew at what age Ramses II succeeded to the throne, we
should, by help of this inscription, know also the age at which he died.
No such record has, however, transpired, but a careful comparison of the
length of time occupied by the various events of his reign, and above
all the evidence of ago afforded by the mummy of this great Pharaoh,
discovered in 1886, show that he must have been very nearly, if not
quite, a centenarian.
“Thou madest designs while yet in the age of infancy,” says the stela of
Dakkeh. “Thou wert a boy wearing the sidelock, and no monument was
erected and no order was given without thee. Thou wert a youth aged ten
years, and all the public works were in thy hands, laying their
foundations.” These lines, translated literally, cannot, however, be
said to prove much. They certainly contain nothing to show that this
youth of ten was, at the time alluded to, sole king and ruler of Egypt.
That he was titular king, in the hereditary sense, from his birth[97]
and during the lifetime of his father, is now quite certain. That he
should, as a boy, have designed public buildings and superintended their
construction is extremely probable. The office was one which might well
have been discharged by a crown prince who delighted in architecture and
made it his peculiar study. It was, in fact, a very noble office--an
office which from the earliest days of the ancient empire had constantly
been confided to princes of the royal blood;[98] but it carried with it
no evidence of sovereignty. The presumption, therefore, would be that
the stela of Dakkeh (dating as it does from the third year of the sole
reign of Rameses II) alludes to a time long since past, when the king as
a boy held office under his father.
The same inscription, as we have already seen, makes reference to the
victorious campaign in the south. Rameses is addressed as “the bull
powerful against Ethiopia; the griffin furious against the negroes;” and
that the events hereby alluded to must have taken place during the first
three years of his sole reign is proved by the date of the tablet. The
great dedicatory inscription of Abydos shows, in fact, that Rameses II
was prosecuting a campaign in Ethiopia at the time when he received
intelligence of the death of his father and that he came down the Nile,
northward, in order, probably, to be crowned at Thebes.[99]
Now the famous sculptures of the commemorative chapel at Bayt-el-Welly
relate expressly to the events of this expedition; and as they are
executed in that refined and delicate style which especially
characterizes the bas-relief work of Gourmah, of Adydos, of all those
buildings which were either erected by Seti I or begun by Seti and
finished during the early years of Rameses II, I venture to think we may
regard them as contemporary, or very nearly contemporary, with the
scenes they represent. In any case, it is reasonable to conclude that
the artists employed on the work would know something about the events
and persons delineated and that they would be guilty of no glaring
inaccuracies.
All doubt as to whether the dates refer to the associated reigns of Seti
and Rameses, or to the sole reign of the latter, vanish, however, when
in these same sculptures[100] we find the conqueror accompanied by his
son, Prince Amenherkhopeshef, who is of an age not only to bear his part
in the field, but afterward to conduct an important ceremony of state on
the occasion of the submission and tribute offering of the Ethiopian
commander. Such is the unmistakable evidence of the bas-reliefs at
Bayt-el-Welly, as those who cannot go to Bayt-el-Welly may see and judge
for themselves by means of the admirable casts of these great tableaux
which line the walls of the second Egyptian room at the British Museum.
To explain away Prince Amenherkhopeshef would be difficult. We are
accustomed to a certain amount of courtly exaggeration on the part of
those who record with pen or pencil the great deeds of the Pharaohs. We
expect to see the king always young, always beautiful, always
victorious. It seems only right and natural that he should be never less
than twenty and sometimes more than sixty feet in height. But that any
flatterer should go so far as to credit a lad of thirteen with a son at
least as old as himself is surely quite incredible.
Lastly, there is the evidence of the Bible.
Joseph being dead and the Israelites established in Egypt, there comes
to the throne a Pharaoh who takes alarm at the increase of this alien
race and who seeks to check their too rapid multiplication. He not only
oppresses the foreigners, but ordains that every male infant born to
them in their bondage shall be cast into the river. This Pharaoh is now
universally believed to be Rameses II. Then comes the old, sweet,
familiar Bible story that we know so well. Moses is born, cast adrift in
the ark of bulrushes and rescued by the king’s daughter. He becomes to
her “as a son.” Although no dates are given, it is clear that the new
Pharaoh has not been long upon the throne when these events happen. It
is equally clear that he is no mere youth. He is old in the uses of
state-craft; and he is the father of a princess of whom it is difficult
to suppose that she was herself an infant.
On the whole, then, we can but conclude that Rameses II, though born a
king, was not merely grown to manhood, but wedded, and the father of
children already past the period of infancy, before he succeeded to the
sole exercise of sovereign power. This is, at all events, the view taken
by Professor Maspero, who expressly says, in the latest edition of his
“Histoire Ancienne,” “that Rameses II, when he received news of the
death of his father, was then in the prime of life and surrounded by a
large family, some of whom were of an age to fight under his
command.”[101]
Brugsch places the birth of Moses in the sixth year of the reign of
Rameses II.[102] This may very well be. The fourscore years that elapsed
between that time and the time of the exodus correspond with sufficient
exactness to the chronological data furnished by the monuments. Moses
would thus see out the sixty-one remaining years of the king’s long
life, and release the Israelites from bondage toward the close of the
reign of Menepthah,[103] who sat for about twenty years on the throne of
his fathers. The correspondence of dates this time leaves nothing to be
desired.
The Sesostris of Diodorus Siculus went blind and died by his own hand;
which act, says the historian, as it conformed to the glory of his life,
was greatly admired by his people. We are here evidently in the region
of pure fable. Suicide was by no means an Egyptian, but a classical,
virtue. Just as the Greeks hated age, the Egyptians reverenced it; and
it may be doubted whether a people who seem always to have passionately
desired length of days would have seen anything to admire in a willful
shortening of that most precious gift of the gods. With the one
exception of Cleopatra--the death of Nitocris the rosy-cheeked being
also of Greek,[104] and therefore questionable, origin--no Egyptian
sovereign is known to have committed suicide; and even Cleopatra, who
was half Greek by birth, must have been influenced to the act by Greek
and Roman example. Dismissing, then, altogether this legend of his
blindness and self-slaughter, it must be admitted that of the death of
Rameses II we know nothing certain.
Such are, very briefly, the leading facts of the history of this famous
Pharaoh. Exhaustively treated, they would expand into a volume. Even
then, however, one would ask, and ask in vain, what manner of man he
was. Every attempt to evolve his personal character from these scanty
data is in fact a mere exercise of fancy.[105] That he was personally
valiant may be gathered with due reservation, from the poem of Pentaur;
and that he was not unmerciful is shown in the extradition clause of the
Khetan treaty. His pride was evidently boundless. Every temple which he
erected was a monument to his own glory; every colossus was a trophy;
every inscription a pæan of self-praise. At Abou Simbel, at Derr, at
Gerf Hossayn, he seated his own image in the sanctuary among the images
of the gods.[106] There are even instances in which he is depicted
under the twofold aspect of royalty and divinity--Rameses the Pharaoh
burning incense before Rameses the Deity.
For the rest, it is safe to conclude that he was neither better nor
worse than the general run of oriental despots--that he was ruthless in
war, prodigal in peace, rapacious of booty and unsparing in the exercise
of almost boundless power. Such pride and such despotism were, however,
in strict accordance with immemorial precedent and with the temper of
the age in which he lived. The Egyptians would seem beyond all doubt to
have believed that their king was always in some sense divine. They
wrote hymns[107] and offered up prayers to him, and regarded him as the
living representative of deity. His princes and ministers habitually
addressed him in the language of worship. Even his wives, who ought to
have known better, are represented in the performance of acts of
religious adoration before him. What wonder, then, if the man so deified
believed himself a god?
CHAPTER XVI.
ABOU SIMBEL.
We came to Abou Simbel on the night of the 31st of January and we left
at sunset on the 18th of February. Of these eighteen clear days we spent
fourteen at the foot of the rock of the great temple, called in the old
Egyptian tongue the Rock of Abshek. The remaining four (taken at the end
of the first week and the beginning of the second) were passed in the
excursion to Wady-Halfeh and back. By thus dividing the time our long
sojourn was made less monotonous for those who had no especial work to
do.
Meanwhile it was wonderful to wake every morning close under the steep
bank, and, without lifting one’s head from the pillow, to see that row
of giant faces so close against the sky. They showed unearthly enough by
moonlight, but not half so unearthly as in the gray of dawn. At that
hour, the most solemn of the twenty-four, they wore a fixed and fatal
look that was little less than appalling. As the sky warmed this awful
look was succeeded by a flush that mounted and deepened like the rising
flush of life. For a moment they seemed to glow--to smile--to be
transfigured. Then came a flash, as of thought itself. It was the first
instantaneous flash of the risen sun. It lasted less than a second. It
was gone almost before one could say it was there. The next moment
mountain, river and sky were distinct in the steady light of day; and
the colossi--mere colossi now--sat serene and stony in the open
sunshine.
Every morning I waked in time to witness that daily miracle. Every
morning I saw those awful brethren pass from death to life, from life to
sculptured stone. I brought myself almost to believe at last that there
must sooner or later come some one sunrise when the ancient charm would
snap asunder and the giants must arise and speak.
Stupendous as they are, nothing is more difficult than to see the
colossi properly. Standing between the rock and the river one is too
near; stationed on the island opposite one is too far off; while from
the sand-slope only a side view is obtainable. Hence, for want of a
fitting standpoint, many travelers have seen nothing but deformity in
the most perfect face handed down to us by Egyptian art. One recognizes
in it the negro and one the Mongolian type;[108] while another admires
the fidelity with which “the Nubian characteristics” have been seized.
Yet, in truth, the head of the young Augustus is not cast in a loftier
mold. These statues are portraits--portraits of the same man four times
repeated; and that man is Rameses the Great.
Now, Rameses, the Great if he was as much like his portraits as his
portraits are like each other, must have been one of the handsomest men,
not only of his own day, but of all history. Wheresoever we meet with
him, whether in the fallen colossus at Memphis or in the syenite torso
of the British Museum, or among the innumerable bas-reliefs of Thebes,
Abydos, Gournah, and Bayt-el-Welly, his features (though bearing in some
instances the impress of youth and in others of maturity) are always the
same. The face is oval; the eyes are long, prominent, and heavy-lidded;
the nose is slightly aquiline and characteristically depressed at the
tip; the nostrils are open and sensitive; the under lip projects; the
chin is short and square.
Here, for instance, is an outline from a bas-relief at Bayt-el-Welly.
The subject is commemorative of the king’s first campaign. A beardless
youth, fired with the rage of battle, he clutches a captive by the hair
and lifts his mace to slay. In this delicate and Dantesque face, which
lacks as yet the fullness and repose of the later portraits, we
recognize all the distinctive traits of the older Rameses.
[Illustration]
Here, again, is a sketch from Abydos in which the king, although he has
not yet ceased to wear the side-lock of youth, is seen with a boyish
beard, and looks four years older than in the previous portrait.
[Illustration]
It is interesting to compare these heads with the accompanying profile
of one of the caryatid colossi inside the great temple of Abou Simbel;
and all three with one of the giant portraits of the façade. This last,
whether regarded as a marvel of size or of portraiture, is the
chef-d’œuvre of Egyptian sculpture. We here see the great king in his
prime. His features are identical with those of the head at
Bayt-el-Welly; but the contours are more amply filled in and the
expression is altogether changed. The man is full fifteen or twenty
years older. He has outlived that rage of early youth. He is no longer
impulsive, but implacable. A godlike serenity, an almost superhuman
pride, an immutable will, breathe from the sculptured stone. He has
learned to believe his prowess irresistible and himself almost divine.
If he now raised his arm to slay it would be with the stern placidity of
a destroying angel.
[Illustration]
The annexed wood-cut gives the profile of the southern-most colossus,
which is the only perfect--or very nearly perfect--one of the four. The
original can be correctly seen from but one point of view; and that
point is
[Illustration: PROFILE OF RAMESES II.
(From the southernmost colossus, Abou Simbel.)]
where the sand-slope meets the northern buttress of the façade, at a
level just parallel with the beards of the statues. It was thence that
the present outline was taken. The sand-slope is steep and loose and hot
to the feet. More disagreeable climbing it would be hard to find, even
in Nubia; but no traveler who refuses to encounter this small hardship
need believe that he has seen the faces of the colossi.
Viewed from below, this beautiful portrait is foreshortened out of all
proportion. It looks unduly wide from ear to ear, while the lips and the
lower part of the nose show relatively larger than the rest of the
features. The same may be said of the great cast in the British Museum.
Cooped up at the end of a narrow corridor and lifted not more than
fifteen feet above the ground, it is carefully placed so as to be wrong
from every point of view and shown to the greatest possible
disadvantage.
The artists who wrought the original statues were, however, embarrassed
by no difficulties of focus, daunted by no difficulties of scale. Giants
themselves, they summoned these giants from out the solid rock and
endowed them with superhuman strength and beauty. They sought no
quarried blocks of syenite or granite for their work. They fashioned no
models of clay. They took a mountain and fell upon it like Titans and
hollowed and carved it as though it were a cherry stone; and left it for
the feebler men of after ages to marvel at forever. One great hall and
fifteen spacious chambers they hewed out from the heart of it, then
smoothed the rugged precipice toward the river, and cut four huge
statues with their faces to the sunrise, two to the right and two to the
left of the doorway, there to keep watch to the end of time.
These tremendous warders sit sixty-six feet high, without the platform
under their feet. They measure across the chest twenty-five feet and
four inches; from the shoulder to the elbow fifteen feet and six inches;
from the inner side of the elbow joint to the tip of the middle finger,
fifteen feet; and so on, in relative proportion. If they stood up, they
would tower to a height of at least eighty-three feet, from the soles of
their feet to the tops of their enormous double-crowns.
Nothing in Egyptian sculpture is perhaps quite so wonderful as the way
in which these Abou Simbel artists dealt with the thousands of tons of
material to which they here gave human form. Consummate masters of
effect, they knew precisely what to do and what to leave undone. These
were portrait statues; therefore they finished the heads up to the
highest point consistent with their size. But the trunk and the lower
limbs they regarded from a decorative rather than a statuesque point of
view. As decoration, it was necessary that they should give size and
dignity to the façade. Everything, consequently, was here subordinated
to the general effect of breadth, of massiveness, of repose. Considered
thus, the colossi are a triumph of treatment. Side by side they sit,
placid and majestic, their feet a little apart, their hands resting on
their knees. Shapely though they are, those huge legs look scarcely
inferior in girth to the great columns of Karnak. The articulations of
the knee-joint, the swell of the calf, the outline of the _peroneus
longus_ are indicated rather than developed. The toe-nails and
toe-joints are given in the same bold and general way; but the fingers,
because only the tips of them could be seen from below, are treated _en
bloc_.
The faces show the same largeness of style. The little dimple which
gives such sweetness to the corners of the mouth, and the tiny
depression in the lobe of the ear, are, in fact, circular cavities as
large as saucers.
How far this treatment is consistent with the most perfect delicacy and
even finesse of execution may be gathered from the sketch. The nose
there shown in profile is three feet and a half in length; the mouth, so
delicately curved, is about the same in width; even the sensitive
nostril, which looks ready to expand with the breath of life, exceeds
eight inches in length. The ear (which is placed high and is well
detached from the head) measures three feet and five inches from top to
tip.
A recent writer,[109] who brings sound practical knowledge to bear upon
the subject, is of opinion that the Egyptian sculptors did not even
“point” their work beforehand. If so, then the marvel is only so much
the greater. The men who, working in so coarse and friable a material,
could not only give beauty and finish to heads of this size, but could,
with barbaric tools, hew them out _ab initio_, from the natural rock,
were the Michael Angelos of their age.
It has already been said that the last Rameses to the southward is the
best preserved. His left arm and hand are injured, and the head of the
uræus sculptured on the front of the pschent is gone; but with these
exceptions the figure is as whole, as fresh in surface, as sharp in
detail, as on the day it was completed. The next is shattered to the
waist. His head lies at his feet, half-buried in sand. The third is
nearly as perfect as the first; while the fourth has lost not only the
whole beard and the greater part of the uræus, but has both arms broken
away and a big, cavernous hole in the front of the body. From the
double-crowns of the two last the top ornament is also missing. It looks
a mere knob; but it measures eight feet in height.
Such an effect does the size of these four figures produce on the mind
of the spectator that he scarcely observes the fractures they have
sustained. I do not remember to have even missed the head and body of
the shattered one, although nothing is left of it above the knees. Those
huge legs and feet, covered with ancient inscriptions,[110] some of
Greek, some of Phœnician origin, tower so high above the heads of those
who look at them from below that one scarcely thinks of looking higher
still.
The figures are naked to the waist and clothed in the usual striped
tunic. On their heads they wear the double-crown, and on their necks
rich collars of cabochon drops cut in very low relief. The feet are bare
of sandals and the arms of bracelets; but in the front of the body, just
where the customary belt and buckle would come, are deep holes in the
stone, such as might have been made to receive rivets, supposing the
belts to have been made of bronze or gold. On the breast, just below the
necklace, and on the upper part of each arm, are cut in magnificent
ovals, between four and five feet in length, the ordinary cartouches of
the king. These were probably tattooed upon his person in the flesh.
Some have supposed that these statues were originally colored, and that
the color may have been effaced by the ceaseless shifting and blowing of
the sand. Yet the drift was probably at its highest when Burckhardt
discovered the place in 1813; and on the two heads that were still above
the surface he seems to have observed no traces of color. Neither can
the keenest eye detect any vestige of that delicate film of stucco with
which the Egyptians invariably prepared their surfaces for painting.
Perhaps the architects were for once content with the natural color of
the sandstone, which is here very rich and varied. It happens, also,
that the colossi come in a light-colored vein of the rock, and so sit
relieved against a darker background. Toward noon, when the level of the
façade has just passed into shade and the sunlight still strikes upon
the statues, the effect is quite startling. The whole thing, which is
then best seen from the island, looks like a huge onyx-cameo cut in high
relief.
A statue of Ra,[111] to whom the temple is dedicated, stands some twenty
feet high in a niche over the doorway, and is supported on either side
by a bas-relief portrait of the king in an attitude of worship. Next
above these comes a superb hieroglyphic inscription reaching across the
whole front; above the inscription, a band of royal cartouches; above
the cartouches, a frieze of sitting apes; above the apes, last and
highest, some fragments of a cornice. The height of the whole may have
been somewhat over a hundred feet. Wherever it has been possible to
introduce them as decoration, we see the ovals of the king. Under those
sculptured on the platform and over the door I observed the hieroglypic
character [Illustration] which, in conjunction with the sign known as
the determinative of metals, signifies gold (nub); but when represented,
as here, without the determinative, stands for Nubia, the Land of Gold.
This addition, which I do not remember to have seen elsewhere in
connection with the cartouches of Rameses II,[112] is here used in an
heraldic sense, as signifying the sovereignty of Nubia.
The relative positions of the two temples of Abou Simbel have been
already described--how they are excavated in two adjacent mountains and
divided by a cataract of sand. The front of the small temple lies
parallel to the course of the Nile, here flowing in a northeasterly
direction. The façade of the great temple is cut in the flank of the
mountain and faces due east. Thus the colossi, towering above the
shoulder of the sand-drift, catch, as it were, a side view of the small
temple and confront vessels coming up the river. As for the sand-drift,
it curiously resembles the glacier of the Rhone. In size, in shape, in
position, in all but color and substance, it is the same. Pent in
between the rocks at top, it opens out like a fan at bottom. In this,
its inevitable course, it slants downward across the façade of the
great temple. Forever descending, drifting, accumulating, it wages the
old stealthy war; and, unhasting, unresting, labors, grain by grain, to
fill the hollowed chambers and bury the great statues and wrap the whole
temple in a winding-sheet of golden sand, so that the place thereof
shall know it no more.
It had very nearly come to this when Burckhardt went up (A.D. 1813). The
top of the doorway was then thirty feet below the surface. Whether the
sand will ever reach that height again must depend on the energy with
which it is combated. It can only be cleared as it accumulates. To avert
it is impossible. Backed by the illimitable wastes of the Libyan desert,
the supply from above is inexhaustible. Come it must; and come it will,
to the end of time.
The drift rose to the lap of the northernmost colossus and half-way up
the legs of the next when the Philæ lay at Abou Simbel. The doorway was
clear, however, almost to the threshold, and the sand inside was not
more than two feet deep in the first hall. The whole façade, we were
told, had been laid bare, and the interior swept and garnished, when the
Empress of the French, after opening the Suez Canal in 1869, went up the
Nile as far as the second cataract. By this time, most likely, that
yellow carpet lies thick and soft in every chamber, and is fast silting
up the doorway again.
How well I remember the restless excitement of our first day at Abou
Simbel! While the morning was yet cool, the painter and writer wandered
to and fro, comparing and selecting points of view and superintending
the pitching of their tents. The painter planted his on the very brink
of the bank, face to face with the colossi and the open doorway. The
writer perched some forty feet higher on the pitch of the sandslope; so
getting a side view of the façade and a peep of distance looking up the
river. To fix the tent up there was no easy matter. It was only by
sinking the tent-pole in a hole filled with stones that it could be
trusted to stand against the steady push of the north wind, which at
this season is almost always blowing.
Meanwhile the travelers from the other dahabeeyahs were tramping
backward and forward between the two temples; filling the air with
laughter and waking strange echoes in the hollow mountains. As the day
wore on, however, they returned to their boats, which one by one spread
their sails and bore away for Wady Halfeh.
When they were fairly gone and we had the marvelous place all to
ourselves we went to see the temples.
The smaller one, though it comes first in order of sailing, is generally
seen last; and seen therefore to disadvantage. To eyes fresh from the
“Abode of Ra,” the “Abode of Hathor” looks less than its actual size;
which is, in fact, but little inferior to that of the temple at Derr. A
first hall, measuring some forty feet in length by twenty-one in width,
leads to a transverse corridor, two side-chambers, and a sanctuary seven
feet square, at the upper end of which are the shattered remains of a
cow-headed statue of Hathor. Six square pillars, as at Derr, support
what, for want of a better word, one must call the ceiling of the hall;
though the ceiling is, in truth, the superincumbent mountain.
In this arrangement, as in the general character of the bas-relief
sculptures which cover the walls and pillars, there is much simplicity,
much grace, but nothing particularly new. The façade, on the contrary,
is a daring innovation. Here the whole front is but a frame for six
recesses, from each of which a colossal statue, erect and lifelike,
seems to be walking straight out from the heart of the mountain. These
statues, three to the right and three to the left of the doorway, stand
thirty feet high, and represent Rameses II and Nefertari, his queen.
Mutilated as they are, the male figures are full of spirit and the
female figures full of grace. The queen wears on her head the plumes and
disk of Hathor. The king is crowned with the pschent and with a
fantastic helmet adorned with plumes and horns. They have their children
with them; the queen her daughters, the king his sons--infants of ten
feet high, whose heads just reach to the parental knee.
The walls of these six recesses, as they follow the slope of the
mountain, form massive buttresses, the effect of which is wonderfully
bold in light and shadow. The doorway gives the only instance of a porch
that we saw in either Egypt or Nubia. The superb hieroglyphs which cover
the faces of these buttresses and the front of this porch are cut half a
foot deep into the rock and are so large that they can be read from the
island in the middle of the river. The tale they tell--a tale retold in
many varied turns of old Egyptian style upon the architraves within--is
singular and interesting.
“Rameses, the Strong in Truth, the Beloved of Amen,” says the outer
legend, “made this divine abode[113] for his royal wife, Nefertari, whom
he loves.”
The legend within, after enumerating the titles of the king, records
that “his royal wife who loves him, Nefertari the beloved of Maut,
constructed for him this abode in the mountain of the pure waters.”
On every pillar, in every act of worship pictured on the walls, even in
the sanctuary, we find the names of Rameses and Nefertari “coupled and
inseparable.” In this double dedication and in the unwonted tenderness
of the style one seems to detect traces of some event, perhaps of some
anniversary, the particulars of which are lost forever. It may have been
a meeting; it may have been a parting; it may have been a prayer
answered or a vow fulfilled. We see, at all events, that Rameses and
Nefertari desired to leave behind them an imperishable record of the
affection which united them on earth and which they hoped would reunite
them in Amemti. What more do we need to know? We see that the queen was
fair;[114] that the king was in his prime. We divine the rest; and the
poetry of the place, at all events, is ours. Even in these barren
solitudes there is wafted to us a breath from the shores of old romance.
We feel that Love once passed this way and that the ground is still
hallowed where he trod.
We hurried on to the great temple, without waiting to examine the lesser
one in detail. A solemn twilight reigned in the first hall, beyond which
all was dark. Eight colossi, four to the right and four to the left,
stand ranged down the center, bearing the mountain on their heads. Their
height is twenty-five feet. With hands crossed on their breasts, they
clasp the flail and crook--emblems of majesty and dominion. It is the
attitude of Osiris, but the face is the face of Rameses II. Seen by this
dim light, shadowy, mournful, majestic, they look as if they remembered
the past.
Beyond the first hall lies a second hall supported on four square
pillars; beyond this, again, a transverse chamber, the walls of which
are covered with colored bas-reliefs of various gods; last of all, the
sanctuary. Here, side by side, sit four figures larger than life--Ptah,
Amen-Ra, Ra and Rameses deified. Before them stands an altar, in shape a
truncated pyramid, cut from the solid rock. Traces of color yet linger
on the garments of the statues; while in the walls on either side are
holes and grooves such as might have been made to receive a screen of
metal-work.
The air in the sanctuary was heavy with an acrid smoke, as if the
priests had been burning some strange incense and were only just gone.
For this illusion we were indebted to the visitors who had been there
before us. They had lit the place with magnesian wire; the vapor of
which lingers long in these unventilated vaults.
To settle down then and there to a steady investigation of the
wall-sculptures was impossible. We did not attempt it. Wandering from
hall to hall, from chamber to chamber; now trusting to the faint gleams
that straggled in from without, now stumbling along by the light of a
bunch of candles tied to the end of a stick, we preferred to receive
those first impressions of vastness, of mystery, of gloomy magnificence,
which are the more profound for being somewhat vague and general.
Scenes of war, of triumph, of worship, passed before our eyes like the
incidents of a panorama. Here the king, borne along at full gallop by
plumed steeds gorgeously caparisoned, draws his mighty bow and attacks a
battlemented fortress. The besieged, some of whom are transfixed by his
tremendous arrows, supplicate for mercy. They are a Syrian people and
are by some identified with the northern Hittites. Their skin is yellow;
and they wear the long hair and beard, the fillet, the rich robe,
fringed cape and embroidered baldric with which we are familiar in the
Nineveh sculptures. A man driving off cattle in the foreground looks as
if he had stepped out of one of the tablets in the British Museum.
Rameses meanwhile towers, swift and godlike, above the crowd. His
coursers are of such immortal strain as were the coursers of Achilles.
His sons, his whole army, chariot and horse, follow headlong at his
heels. All is movement and the splendor of battle.
Farther on we see the king returning in state, preceded by his prisoners
of war. Tied together in gangs they stagger as they go, with heads
thrown back and hands uplifted. These, however, are not Assyrians, but
Abyssinians and Nubians, so true to the type, so thick-lipped,
flat-nosed and woolly-headed, that only the pathos of the expression
saves them from being ludicrous. It is naturalness pushed to the verge
of caricature.
A little farther still and we find Rameses leading a string of these
captives into the presence of Amen-Ra, Maut and Khons--Amen-Ra weird and
unearthly, with his blue complexion and towering plumes; Maut wearing
the crown of Upper Egypt; Khons, by a subtle touch of flattery, depicted
with the features of the king. Again, to right and left of the entrance,
Rameses, thrice the size of life, slays a group of captives of various
nations. To the left Amen-Ra, to the right Ra Harmachis,[115] approve
and accept the sacrifice. In the second hall we see, as usual, the
procession of the sacred bark. Ptah, Khem and Bast, gorgeous in
many-colored garments, gleam dimly, like figures in faded tapestry, from
the walls of the transverse corridor.
But the wonder of Abou Simbel is the huge subject on the north side of
the great hall. This is a monster battle-piece which covers an area of
fifty-seven feet seven inches in length, by twenty-five feet four inches
in height, and contains over eleven hundred figures. Even the heraldic
cornice of cartouches and asps which runs round the rest of the ceiling
is omitted on this side, so that the wall is literally filled with the
picture from top to bottom.
Fully to describe this huge design would take many pages. It is a
picture-gallery in itself. It represents not a single action, but a
whole campaign. It sets before us, with Homeric simplicity, the pomp and
circumstance of war, the incidents of camp life and the accidents of the
open field. We see the enemy’s city, with its battlemented towers and
triple moat; the besigers’ camp and the pavilion of the king; the march
of infantry; the shock of chariots; the hand-to-hand melée; the flight
of the vanquished; the triumph of the Pharaoh; the bringing in of the
prisoners; the counting of the hands of the slain. A great river winds
through the picture from end to end and almost surrounds the invested
city. The king in his chariot pursues a crowd of fugitives along the
bank. Some are crushed under his wheels; some plunge into the water and
are drowned.[116] Behind him, a moving wall of shields and spears,
advances with rhythmic step the serried phalanx; while yonder, where the
fight is thickest, we see chariots overturned, men dead and dying, and
riderless horses making for the open. Meanwhile, the besieged send out
mounted scouts and the country folk drive their cattle to the hills.
A grand frieze of chariots charging at full gallop divides the subject
lengthwise and separates the Egyptian camp from the field of battle. The
camp is square and inclosed, apparently, in a palisade of shields. It
occupies less than one-sixth part of the picture and contains about a
hundred figures. Within this narrow space the artist has brought
together an astonishing variety of incidents. The horses feed in rows
from a common manger, or wait their turn and impatiently paw the ground.
Some are lying down. One, just unharnessed, scampers round the
inclosure. Another, making off with the empty chariot at his heels, is
intercepted by a couple of grooms. Other grooms bring buckets of water
slung from the shoulders on wooden yokes. A wounded officer sits apart,
his head resting on his hand; and an orderly comes in haste to bring him
news of the battle. Another, hurt apparently in the foot, is having the
wound dressed by a surgeon. Two detachments of infantry, marching out to
re-enforce their comrades in action, are met at the entrance to the camp
by the royal chariot returning from the field. Rameses drives before him
some fugitives who are trampled down, seized and dispatched upon the
spot. In one corner stands a row of objects that look like joints of
meat; and near them are a small altar and a tripod brazier. Elsewhere, a
couple of soldiers, with a big bowl between them, sit on their heels and
dip their fingers in the mess, precisely as every fellâh does to this
day. Meanwhile, it is clear that Egyptian discipline was strict and that
the soldier who transgressed was as abjectly subject to the rule of
stick as his modern descendant. In no less than three places do we see
this time-honored institution in full operation, the superior officer
energetically flourishing his staff; the private taking his punishment
with characteristic disrelish. In the middle of the camp, watched over
by his keeper, lies Rameses’ tame lion; while close against the royal
pavilion a hostile spy is surprised and stabbed by the officer on guard.
The pavilion itself is very curious. It is evidently not a tent but a
building, and was probably an extemporaneous construction of crude
brick. It has four arched doorways, and contains in one corner an object
like a cabinet, with two sacred hawks for supporters. This object, which
is in fact almost identical with the hieroglyphic emblem used to express
a royal panegyry or festival, stands, no doubt, for the private oratory
of the king. Five figures kneeling before it in adoration.
To enumerate all or half the points of interest in this amazing picture
would ask altogether too much space. Even to see it, with time at
command and all the help that candles and magnesian torches can give,
is far from easy. The relief is unusually low, and the surface, having
originally been covered with stucco, is purposely roughened all over
with tiny chisel marks, which painfully confuse the details. Nor is this
all. Owing to some kind of saline ooze in that part of the rock, the
stucco has not only peeled off, but the actual surface is injured. It
seems to have been eaten away, just as iron is eaten by rust. A few
patches adhere, however, in places, and retain the original coloring.
The river is still covered with blue and white zigzags, to represent
water; some of the fighting groups are yet perfect; and two very
beautiful royal chariots, one of which is surmounted by a richly
ornamented parasol-canopy, are fresh and brilliant as ever.
The horses throughout are excellent. The chariot frieze is almost
Panathenaic in its effect of multitudinous movement; while the horses in
the camp of Rameses, for naturalness and variety of treatment, are
perhaps the best that Egyptian art has to show. It is worth noting,
also, that a horseman, that _rara avis_, occurs some four or five times
in different parts of the picture.
The scene of the campaign is laid in Syria. The river of blue and white
zigzags is the Orontes;[117] the city of the besieged Kadesh or
Kades;[118] the enemy are the Kheta. The whole is, in fact, a grand
picture-epic of the events immortalized in the poem of Pentaur--that
poem which M. de Rougé has described as “a sort of Egyptian Iliad.” The
comparison would, however, apply to the picture with greater force than
it applies to the poem. Pentaur, who was in the first place a courtier
and in the second place a poet, has sacrificed everything to the
prominence of his central figure. He is intent upon the glorification of
the king; and his poem, which is a mere pæan of praise, begins and ends
with the prowess of Rameses Mer-Amen. If, then, it is to be called an
Iliad, it is an Iliad from which everything that does not immediately
concern Achilles is left out. The picture, on the contrary, though it
shows the hero in combat and in triumph, and always of colossal
proportions, yet has space for a host of minor characters. The episodes
in which these characters appear are essentially Homeric. The spy is
surprised and slain, as Dolon was slain by Ulysses. The men feast, and
fight, and are wounded, just like the long-haired sons of Achaia; while
their horses, loosed from the yoke, eat white barley and oats:
“Hard by their chariots, waiting for the dawn.”
Like Homer, too, the artist of the battle-piece is careful to point out
the distinguishing traits of the various combatants. The Khetas go three
in a chariot; the Egyptians only two. The Khetas wear a mustache and
scalp-lock; the Egyptians pride themselves on “a clean shave,” and cover
their bare heads with ponderous wigs. The Sardinian contingent cultivate
their own thick hair, whiskers and mustachios; and their features are
distinctly European. They also wear the curious helmet surmounted by a
ball and two spikes, by which they may always be recognized in the
sculptures. These Sardinians appear only in the border-frieze, next the
floor. The sand had drifted up just at that spot and only the top of one
fantastic helmet was visible above the surface. Not knowing in the least
to what this might belong, we set the men to scrape away the sand; and
so, quite by accident, uncovered the most curious and interesting group
in the whole picture. The Sardinians[119] (in Egyptian Shardana), seem
to have been naturalized prisoners of war drafted into the ranks of the
Egyptian army; and are the first European people whose names appear on
the monuments.
There is but one hour in the twenty-four at which it is possible to form
any idea of the general effect of this vast subject; and that is at
sunrise. Then only does the pure day stream in through the doorway and
temper the gloom of the side-aisles with light reflected from the sunlit
floor. The broad divisions of the picture and the distribution of the
masses may then be dimly seen. The details, however, require
candle-light and can only be studied a few inches at a time. Even so, it
is difficult to make out the upper groups without the help of a ladder.
Salame, mounted on a chair and provided with two long sticks lashed
together, could barely hold his little torch high enough to enable the
writer to copy the inscription on the middle tower of the fortress of
Kadesh.
It is fine to see the sunrise on the front of the great temple; but
something still finer takes place on certain mornings of the year, in
the very heart of the mountain. As the sun comes up above the eastern
hill-tops, one long, level, beam strikes through the doorway, pierces
the inner darkness like an arrow, penetrates to the sanctuary and falls
like fire from heaven upon the altar at the feet of the gods.
No one who has watched for the coming of that shaft of sunlight can
doubt that it was a calculated effect and that the excavation was
directed at one especial angle in order to produce it. In this way Ra,
to whom the temple was dedicated, may be said to have entered in daily
and by a direct manifestation of his presence to have approved the
sacrifices of his worshipers.
I need scarcely say that we did not see half the wall-sculptures or even
half the chambers that first afternoon at Abou Simbel. We rambled to and
fro, lost in wonder and content to wonder, like rustics at a fair. We
had, however, ample time to come again and again, and learn it all by
heart. The writer went in constantly and at all hours; but most
frequently at the end of the day’s sketching, when the rest were walking
or boating in the cool of the late afternoon.
It is a wonderful place to be alone in--a place in which the very
darkness and silence are old and in which time himself seems to have
fallen asleep. Wandering to and fro among these sculptured halls, like a
shade among shadows, one seems to have left the world behind; to have
done with the teachings of the present: to belong one’s self to the
past. The very gods assert their ancient influence over those who
question them in solitude. Seen in the fast-deepening gloom of evening,
they look instinct with supernatural life. There were times when I
should scarcely have been surprised to hear them speak--to see them rise
from their painted thrones and come down from the walls. There were
times when I felt I believed in them.
There was something so weird and awful about the place, and it became so
much more weird and awful the farther one went in, that I rarely
ventured beyond the first hall when quite alone. One afternoon, however,
when it was a little earlier, and therefore a little lighter than usual,
I went to the very end and sat at the feet of the gods in the sanctuary.
All at once (I cannot tell why, for my thoughts just then were far away)
it flashed upon me that a whole mountain hung--ready, perhaps, to cave
in--above my head. Seized by a sudden panic such as one feels in dreams,
I tried to run; but my feet dragged and the floor seemed to sink under
them. I felt I could not have called for help, though it had been to
save my life. It is unnecessary, perhaps, to add that the mountain did
not cave in, and that I had my fright for nothing. It would have been a
grand way of dying, all the same; and a still grander way of being
buried. My visits to the great temple were not always so dramatic. I
sometimes took Salame, who smoked cigarettes when not on active duty, or
held a candle while I sketched patterns of cornices, head-dresses of
kings and gods, designs of necklaces and bracelets, heads of captives,
and the like. Sometimes we explored the side-chambers. Of these there
are eight; pitch-dark, and excavated at all kinds of angles. Two or
three are surrounded by stone benches cut in the rock; and in one the
hieroglyphic inscriptions are part cut, part sketched in black and left
unfinished. As this temple is entirely the work of Rameses II, and
betrays no sign of having been added to by any of his successors, these
evidences of incompleteness would seem to show that the king died before
the work was ended.
I was always under the impression that there were secret places yet
undiscovered in these dark chambers, and Salame and I were always
looking for them. At Denderah, at Edfû, at Medinet Habu, at Philæ,[120]
there have been found crypts in the thickness of the walls and recesses
under the pavements, for the safe-keeping of treasure in time of danger.
The rock-cut temples must also have had their hiding-places; and these
would doubtless take the form of concealed cells in the walls, or under
the floors of the side-chambers.
To come out from these black holes into the twilight of the great hall
and see the landscape set, as it were, in the ebon frame of the doorway,
was alone worth the journey to Abou Simbel. The sun being at such times
in the west, the river, the yellow sand-island, the palms and tamarisks
opposite, and the mountains of the eastern desert, were all flooded with
a glory of light and color to which no pen or pencil could possibly do
justice. Not even the mountains of Moab in Holman Hunt’s “Scapegoat”
were so warm with rose and gold.
Thus our days passed at Abou Simbel; the workers working; the idler
idling; strangers from the outer world now and then coming and going.
The heat on shore was great, especially in the sketching-tents; but the
north breeze blew steadily every day from about an hour after sunrise
till an hour before sunset, and on board the dahabeeyah it was always
cool.
The happy couple took advantage of this good wind to do a good deal of
boating, and by judiciously timing their excursions contrived to use the
tail of the day’s breeze for their trip out, and the strong arms of four
good rowers to bring them back again. In this way they managed to see
the little rock-cut temple of Ferayg, which the rest of us unfortunately
missed. On another occasion they paid a visit to a certain sheik who
lived at a village about two miles south of Abou Simbel. He was a great
man, as Nubian magnates go. His name was Hassan Ebn Rashwan el Kashef,
and he was a grandson of that same old Hassan Kashef who was vice-regent
of Nubia in the days of Burckhardt and Belzoni. He received our happy
couple with distinguished hospitality, killed a sheep in their honor,
and entertained them for more than three hours. The meal consisted of an
endless succession of dishes, all of which, like that bugbear of our
childhood, the hated air with variations, went on repeating the same
theme under a multitude of disguises; and, whether roasted, boiled,
stewed or minced, served on skewers, smothered in rice, or drowned in
sour milk, were always mutton _au fond_.
We now despaired of ever seeing a crocodile; and but for a trail that
our men discovered on the island opposite, we should almost have ceased
to believe that there were crocodiles in Egypt. The marks were quite
fresh when we went to look at them. The creature had been basking high
and dry in the sun, and this was the point at which he had gone down
again to the river. The damp sand at the water’s edge had taken the mold
of his huge fleshy paws, and even of the jointed armor of his tail,
though this last impression was somewhat blurred by the final rush with
which he had taken to the water. I doubt if Robinson Crusoe, when he saw
the famous footprint on the shore, was more excited than we of the Philæ
at sight of this genuine and undeniable trail.
As for the idle man, he flew at once to arms and made ready for the
fray. He caused a shallow grave to be dug for himself a few yards from
the spot; then went and lay in it for hours together, morning after
morning, under the full blaze of the sun--flat, patient, alert--with his
gun ready cocked, and a Pall Mall Budget up his back. It was not his
fault if he narrowly escaped sunstroke and had his labor for his reward.
That crocodile was too clever for him and took care never to come back.
Our sailors, meanwhile, though well pleased with an occasional holiday,
began to find Abou Simbel monotonous. As long as the Bagstones stayed,
the two crews met every evening to smoke, and dance, and sing their
quaint roundelays together. But when rumors came of wonderful things
already done this winter above Wady Halfeh--rumors that represented the
second cataract as a populous solitude of crocodiles--then our faithful
consort slipped away one morning before sunrise and the Philæ was left
companionless.
At this juncture, seeing that the men’s time hung heavy on their hands,
our painter conceived the idea of setting them to clean the face of the
northernmost colossus, still disfigured by the plaster left on it when
the great cast[121] was taken by Mr. Hay more than half a century
before. This happy thought was promptly carried into effect. A
scaffolding of spars and oars was at once improvised, and the men,
delighted as children at play, were soon swarming all over the huge
head, just as the carvers may have swarmed over it in the days when
Rameses was king.
All they had to do was to remove any small lumps that might yet adhere
to the surface, and then tint the white patches with coffee. This they
did with bits of sponge tied to the ends of sticks; but Reïs Hassan, as
a mark of dignity, had one of the painter’s old brushes, of which he was
immensely proud.
It took them three afternoons to complete the job; and we were all sorry
when it came to an end. To see Reïs Hassan artistically touching up a
gigantic nose almost as long as himself; Riskalli and the cook-boy
staggering to and fro with relays of coffee, brewed “thick and slab” for
the purpose; Salame perched cross-legged, like some complacent imp, on
the towering rim of the great pschent overhead; the rest chattering and
skipping about the scaffolding like monkeys, was, I will venture to say,
a sight more comic than has ever been seen at Abou Simbel before or
since.
Rameses’ appetite for coffee was prodigious. He consumed I know not how
many gallons a day. Our cook stood aghast at the demand made upon his
stores. Never before had he been called upon to provide for a guest
whose mouth measured three feet and a half in width.
Still, the result justified the expenditure. The coffee proved a capital
match for the sandstone; and though it was not possible wholly to
restore the uniformity of the original surface, we at least succeeded in
obliterating those ghastly splotches, which for so many years have
marred this beautiful face as with the unsightliness of leprosy.
What with boating, fishing, lying in wait for crocodiles, cleaning the
colossus, and filling reams of thin letter paper to friends at home, we
got through the first week quickly enough--the painter and the writer
working hard, meanwhile, in their respective ways; the painter on his
big canvas in front of the temple; the writer shifting her little tent
as she listed.
Now, although the most delightful occupation in life is undoubtedly
sketching, it must be admitted that the sketcher at Abou Simbel works
under difficulties. Foremost among these comes the difficulty of
position. The great temple stands within about twenty-five yards of the
brink of the bank, and the lesser temple within as many feet; so that to
get far enough from one’s subject is simply impossible. The present
writer sketched the small temple from the deck of the dahabeeyah; there
being no point of view obtainable on shore.
Next comes the difficulty of color. Everything, except the sky and the
river, is yellow--yellow, that is to say, “with a difference”; yellow
ranging through every gradation of orange, maize, apricot, gold and
buff. The mountains are sandstone; the temples are sandstone; the
sandslope is powdered sandstone from the sandstone desert. In all these
objects, the scale of color is necessarily the same. Even the shadows,
glowing with reflected light, give back tempered repetitions of the
dominant hue. Hence it follows that he who strives, however humbly, to
reproduce the facts of the scene before him, is compelled, _bon gré, mal
gré_, to execute what some of our young painters would nowadays call a
symphony in yellow.
Lastly, there are the minor inconveniences of sun, sand, wind, and
flies. The whole place radiates heat, and seems almost to radiate light.
The glare from above and the glare from below are alike intolerable.
Dazzled, blinded, unable to even look at his subject without the aid of
smoke-colored glasses, the sketcher whose tent is pitched upon the
sandslope over against the great temple enjoys a foretaste of cremation.
When the wind blows from the north (which at this time of the year is
almost always) the heat is perhaps less distressing, but the sand is
maddening. It fills your hair, your eyes, your water-bottles; silts up
your color-box; dries into your skies; and reduces your Chinese white to
a gritty paste the color of salad-dressing. As for the flies, they have
a morbid appetite for water-colors. They follow your wet brush along the
paper, leave their legs in the yellow ocher, and plunge with avidity
into every little pool of cobalt as it is mixed ready for use. Nothing
disagrees with them; nothing poisons them--not even olive-green.
It was a delightful time, however--delightful alike for those who worked
and those who rested--and these small troubles counted for nothing in
the scale. Yet it was pleasant, all the same, to break away for a day or
two, and be off to Wady Halfeh.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SECOND CATARACT.
A fresh breeze, a full sail, and the consciousness of a holiday well
earned, carried us gayly along from Abou Simbel to Wady Halfeh. We
started late in the afternoon of the first day, made about twelve miles
before the wind dropped, and achieved the remaining twenty-eight miles
before noon the next day. It was our last trip on the Nile under canvas.
At Wady Halfeh the Philæ was doomed to be dismantled. The big sail that
had so long been our pride and delight would there be taken down, and
our good boat, her grace and swiftness gone at one fell swoop, would
become a mere lumbering barge, more suggestive of civic outings on the
Thames than of Cleopatra’s galley.
For some way beyond Abou Simbel, the western bank is fringed by a long
line of volcanic mountains, as much alike in height, size, and shape, as
a row of martello towers. They are divided from one another by a series
of perfectly uniform sand-drifts; while on the rounded top of each
mountain, thick as the currants on the top of a certain cake, known to
schoolboys by the endearing name of “black-caps,” lies a layer of the
oddest black stones in the world. Having more than once been to the top
of the rock of Abshek (which is the first large mountain of the chain,
and strewn in the same way) we recognized the stones, and knew what they
were like. In color they are purplish black, tinged here and there with
dull red. They ring like clinkstone when struck, and in shape are most
fantastic. L---- picked up some like petrified bunches of grapes. Others
are twisted and writhen like the Vesuvian lava of 1871. They lie loose
upon the surface, and are of all sizes; some being as small as currants,
and others as large as quartern loaves. Speaking as one having no kind
of authority, I should say that these stones are unquestionably of fiery
parentage. One seems to see how, boiling and bubbling in a state of
fusion, they must have been suddenly checked by contact with some cooler
medium.
Where the chain ends, about three or four miles above Abou Simbel, the
view widens, and a host of outlying mountains are seen scattered over an
immense plain reaching for miles into the western desert. On the eastern
bank, Kalat Adda,[122] a huge, rambling Roman citadel, going to solitary
ruin on the last water-washed precipice to the left--brings the opposite
range to a like end, and abuts on a similar plain, also scattered over
with detached peaks. The scene here is desolately magnificent. A large
island covered with palms divides the Nile in two branches, each of
which looks as wide as the whole river. An unbounded distance opens away
to the silvery horizon. On the banks there is no verdure; neither is
there any sign of human toil. Nothing lives, nothing moves, save the
wind and the river.
Of all the strange peaks we have yet seen, the mountains hereabout are
the strangest. Alone or in groups, they start up here and there from
the desert, on both sides, like the pieces on a chess-board. They are
for the most part conical; but they are not extinct craters, such as are
the volcanic cones of Korosko and Dakkeh. Seeing how they all rose to
about the same height and were alike capped with that mysterious
_couche_ of shining black stones, the writer could not help fancying
that, like the isolated Rocher de Corneille and Rocher de St. Michael at
Puy, they might be but fragments of a rocky crust, rent and swept away
at some infinitely remote period of the world’s history, and that the
level of their present summits might represent perhaps the ancient level
of the plain.
As regards form, they are weird enough for the wildest geological
theories. All taper more or less toward the top. One is four-sided, like
a pyramid; another, in shape a truncated cone, looks as if crowned with
a pagoda summer-house; a third seems to be surmounted by a mosque and
cupola; a fourth is scooped out in tiers of arches; a fifth is crowned,
apparently, with a cairn of piled stones; and so on, with variations as
endless as they are fantastic. A geologist might perhaps account for
these caprices by showing how fire and earthquake and deluge had here
succeeded each other; and how, after being first covered with volcanic
stones and then split into chasms, the valleys thus opened had by and by
been traversed by torrents which wore away the softer parts of the rock
and left the harder standing.
Some way beyond Kalat Adda, when the Abou Simbel range and palm island
have all but vanished in the distance and the lonely peak called the
Mountain of the Sun (Gebel esh-Shems), has been left far behind, we came
upon a new wonder--namely: upon two groups of scattered tumuli, one on
the eastern, one on the western bank. Not volcanic forms these; not even
accidental forms, if one may venture to form an opinion from so far off.
They are of various sizes; some little, some big; all perfectly round
and smooth and covered with a rich, greenish-brown alluvial soil. How
did they come there? Who made them? What did they contain? The Roman
ruin close by--the two hundred and forty thousand[123] deserters who
must have passed this way--the Egyptian and Ethiopian armies that
certainly poured their thousands along these very banks, and might have
fought many a battle on this open plain, suggest all kinds of
possibilities and fill one’s head with visions of buried arms and jewels
and cinerary urns. We are more than half-minded to stop the boat and
land that very moment; but are content on second thoughts with promising
ourselves that we will at least excavate one of the smaller hillocks on
our way back.
And now, the breeze freshening and the dahabeeyah tearing gallantly
along, we leave the tumuli behind, and enter upon a more desolate
region, where the mountains recede farther than ever and the course of
the river is interrupted by perpetual sand-banks.
On one of these sand-banks, just a few yards above the edge of the
water, lay a log of drift-wood, apparently a battered old palm trunk,
with some remnants of broken branches yet clinging to it; such an
object, in short, as my American friends would very properly call a
“snag.”
Our pilot leaned forward on the tiller, put his finger to his lip and
whispered:
“Crocodilo!”
The painter, the idle man, the writer, were all on deck, and not one
believed him. They had seen too many of these snags already and were not
going to let themselves again be excited about nothing.
The pilot pointed to the cabin where L---- and the little lady were
indulging in that minor vice called afternoon tea.
“Sittèh!” said he, “call sittèh! Crocodilo!”
We examined the object through our glasses. We laughed the pilot to
scorn. It was the worst imitation of a crocodile that we had yet seen.
All at once the palm-trunk lifted up its head, cocked its tail, found
its legs, set off running, wriggling, undulating down the slope with
incredible rapidity and was gone before we could utter an exclamation.
We three had a bad time when the other two came up and found that we had
seen our first crocodile without them.
A sand-bank which we passed next morning was scored all over with fresh
trails and looked as if it had been the scene of a crocodile-parliament.
There must have been at least twenty or thirty members present at the
sitting; and the freshness of the marks showed that they had only just
dispersed.
A keen and cutting wind carried us along the last thirty miles of our
journey. We had supposed that the farther south we penetrated the hotter
we should find the climate; yet now, strange to say, we were shivering
in sealskins, under the most brilliant sky in the world and in a
latitude more southerly than that of Mecca or Calcutta. It was some
compensation, however, to run at full speed past the dullest of Nile
scenery, seeing only sand-banks in the river; sand-hills and sand-flats
on either hand; a disused shâdûf or a skeleton-boat rotting at the
water’s edge; a wind-tormented Dôm palm struggling for existence on the
brink of the bank.
At a fatal corner about six miles below Wady Halfeh, we passed a
melancholy flotilla of dismantled dahabeeyahs--the Fostât, the Zenobia,
the Alice, the Mansoorah--all alike weather-bound and laid up helplessly
against the wind. The Mansoorah, with Captain and Mrs. E---- on board,
had been three days doing these six miles; at which rate of progress
they might reasonably hope to reach Cairo in about a year and a month.
The palms of Wady Halfeh, blue with distance, came into sight at the
next bend; and by noon the Philæ was once more moored alongside the
Bagstones under a shore crowded with cangias, covered with bales and
packing-cases and, like the shores of Mahatta and Assûan, populous with
temporary huts. For here it is that traders going by water embark and
disembark on their way to and fro between Dongola and the first
cataract.
There were three temples--or at all events three ancient Egyptian
buildings--once upon a time on the western bank over against Wady
Halfeh. Now there are a few broken pillars, a solitary fragment of brick
pylon, some remains of a flight of stone steps leading down to the
river, and a wall of inclosure overgrown with wild pumpkins. These
ruins, together with a rambling native Khan and a noble old sycamore,
form a picturesque group backed by amber sand-cliffs, and mark the site
of a lost city[124] belonging to the early days of Usurtesen III.
The second, or great, cataract begins a little way above Wady Halfeh and
extends over a distance of many miles. It consists, like the first
cataract, of a succession of rocks and rapids, and is skirted for the
first five miles or so by the sand-cliff ridge which, as I have said,
forms a background to the ruins just opposite Wady Halfeh. This ridge
terminates abruptly in the famous precipice known as the Rock of Abusîr.
Only adventurous travelers bound for Dongola or Khartûm go beyond this
point; and they, for the most part, take the shorter route across the
desert from Korosko. L---- and the writer would fain have hired camels
and pushed on as far as Semneh; which is a matter of only two days’
journey from Wady Halfeh, and, for people provided with sketching-tents,
is one of the easiest of inland excursions.
One may go to the Rock of Abusîr by land or by water. The happy couple
and the writer took two native boatmen versed in the intricacies of the
cataract and went in the felucca. L---- and the painter preferred
donkeying. Given a good breeze from the right quarter, there is, as
regards time, but little to choose between the two routes. No one,
however, who has approached the Rock of Abusîr by water, and seen it
rise like a cathedral front from the midst of that labyrinth of rocky
islets--some like clusters of basaltic columns, some crowned with
crumbling ruins, some bleak and bare, some green with wild pomegranate
trees--can doubt which is the more picturesque.
Landing among the tamarisks at the foot of the cliff, we come to the
spreading skirts of a sand-drift steeper and more fatiguing to climb
than the sand-drift at Abou Simbel. We do climb it, however, though
somewhat sulkily, and, finding the donkey-party perched upon the top,
are comforted with draughts of ice-cold lemonade, brought in a kullah
from Wady Halfeh.
The summit of the rock is a mere ridge, steep and overhanging toward
east and south, and carved all over with autographs in stone. Some few
of these are interesting; but for the most part they record only the
visits of the illustrious-obscure. We found Belzoni’s name; but looked
in vain for the signatures of Burckhardt, Champollion, Lepsius and
Ampère.
Owing to the nature of the ground and the singular clearness of the
atmosphere, the view from this point seemed to be the most extensive I
had ever looked upon. Yet the height of the Rock of Abusîr is
comparatively insignificant. It would count but as a mole-hill, if
measured against some Alpine summits of my acquaintance. I doubt whether
it is as lofty as even the great pyramid. It is, however, a giddy place
to look down from, and seems higher than it is.
It is hard, now that we are actually here, to realize that this is the
end of our journey. The cataract--an immense multitude of black and
shining islets, among which the river, divided into hundreds of separate
channels, spreads far and wide for a distance, it is said, of more than
sixteen miles--foams at our feet. Foams, and frets, and falls; gushing
smooth and strong where its course is free; murmuring hoarsely where it
is interrupted; now hurrying; now loitering; here eddying in oily
circles; there lying in still pools unbroken by a ripple; everywhere
full of life, full of voices; everywhere shining to the sun. Northward,
where it winds away toward Abou Simbel, we see all the fantastic
mountains of yesterday on the horizon. To the east, still bounded by
out-liers of the same disconnected chain, lies a rolling waste of dark
and stony wilderness trenched with innumerable valleys through which
flow streams of sand. On the western side, the continuity of the view is
interrupted by the ridge which ends with Abusîr. Southward the Libyan
desert reaches away in a vast undulating plain; tawny, arid, monotonous;
all sun; all sand; lit here and there with arrowy flashes of the Nile.
Farthest of all, pale but distinct, on the outermost rim of the world,
rise two mountain summits, one long, one dome-like. Our Nubians tell us
that these are the mountains of Dongola. Comparing our position with
that of the third cataract as it appears upon the map, we come to the
conclusion that these ghostlike silhouettes are the summits of Mount
Fogo[125] and Mount Arambo--two apparently parallel mountains situate on
opposite sides of the river about ten miles below Hannek, and
consequently about one hundred and forty-five miles, as the bird flies,
from the spot on which we are standing.
In all this extraordinary panorama, so wild, so weird, so desolate,
there is nothing really beautiful except the color. But the color is
transcendent. Never, even in Egypt, have I seen anything so tender, so
transparent, so harmonious. I shut my eyes and it all comes before me. I
see the amber of the sands; the pink and pearly mountains; the cataract
rocks, all black and purple and polished; the dull gray palms that
cluster here and there upon the larger islands; the vivid verdure of the
tamarisks and pomegranates; the Nile, a greenish-brown flecked with
yeasty foam; over all, the blue and burning sky, permeated with light,
and palpitating with sunshine.
I made no sketch. I felt that it would be ludicrous to attempt it. And I
feel now that any endeavor to put the scene into words is a mere
presumptuous effort to describe the indescribable. Words are useful
instruments; but, like the etching needle and the burin, they stop short
at form. They cannot translate color.
If a traveler pressed for time asked me whether he should or should not
go as far as the second cataract, I think I should recommend him to
turn back from Abou Simbel. The trip must cost four days; and if the
wind should happen to be unfavorable either way, it may cost six or
seven. The forty miles of river that have to be twice traversed are the
dullest on the Nile; the cataract is but an enlarged and barren edition
of the cataract between Assûan and Philæ; and the great view, as I have
said, has not that kind of beauty which attracts the general tourist.
It has an interest, however, beyond and apart from that of beauty. It
rouses one’s imagination to a sense of the greatness of the Nile. We
look across a world of desert, and see the river still coming from afar.
We have reached a point at which all that is habitable and familiar
comes abruptly to an end. Not a village, not a bean-field, not a shâdûf,
not a sakkieh, is to be seen in the plain below. There is no sail on
those dangerous waters. There is no moving creature on those pathless
sands. But for the telegraphic wires stalking, ghostlike, across the
desert, it would seem as if we had touched the limit of civilization,
and were standing on the threshold of a land unexplored.
Yet for all this, we feel as if we were at only the beginning of the
mighty river. We have journeyed well-nigh a thousand miles against the
stream; but what is that to the distance which still lies between us and
the great lakes? And how far beyond the great lakes must we seek for the
source that is even yet undiscovered?
We stayed at Wady Halfeh but one night and paid but one visit to the
cataract. We saw no crocodiles, though they are still plentiful among
these rocky islets. The M. B.’s, who had been here a week, were full of
crocodile stories and of Alfred’s deeds of arms. He had stalked and shot
a monster, two days before our arrival; but the creature had rushed into
the water when hit, waving its tail furiously above its head, and had
neither been seen nor heard of since.
Like Achilles, the crocodile has but one vulnerable spot; and this is a
small unarmored patch behind the forearm. He will take a good deal of
killing even there, unless the bullet finds its way to a vital part, or
is of the diabolical kind called “explosive.” Even when mortally
wounded, he seldom drops on the spot. With his last strength, he rushes
to the water and dies at the bottom.
After three days the carcass rises and floats, and our friends were now
waiting in order that Alfred might bag his big game. Too often, however,
the poor brute either crawls into a hole, or, in his agony, becomes
entangled among weeds and comes up no more. For one crocodile bagged, a
dozen regain the river, and, after lingering miserably under water, die
out of sight and out of reach of the sportsman.
While we were climbing the Rock of Abusîr our men were busy taking down
the big sail and preparing the Philæ for her long and ignominious
journey down-stream. We came back to find the mainyard laid along like a
roof-tree above our heads; the sail rolled up in a huge ball and resting
on the roof of the kitchen; the small aftersail and yard hoisted on the
mainmast; the oars lashed six on each side; and the lower deck a series
of yawning chasms, every alternate plank being taken up so as to form
seats and standing places for the rowers.
Thus dismantled, the dahabeeyah becomes, in fact, a galley. Her oars are
now her chief motive power; and a crew of steady rowers (having always
the current in their favor) can do thirty miles a day. When, however, a
good breeze blows from the south, the small sail and the current are
enough to carry the boat well along; and then the men reserve their
strength for rowing by night, when the wind has dropped. Sometimes, when
it is a dead calm and the rowers need rest, the dahabeeyah is left to
her own devices and floats with the stream--now waltzing ludicrously in
the middle of the river; now drifting sidewise like Mr. Winkle’s horse;
now sidling up to the east bank; now changing her mind and blundering
over to the west; making upon an average about a mile and a half or two
miles an hour, and presenting a pitiful spectacle of helpless
imbecility. At other times, however, the head wind blows so hard that
neither oars nor current avail; and then there is nothing for it but to
lie under the bank and wait for better times.
This was our sad case in going back to Abou Simbel. Having struggled
with no little difficulty through the first five-and-twenty miles, we
came to a dead-lock about halfway between Faras and Gebel-esh-Shems.
Carried forward by the stream, driven back by the wind, buffeted by the
waves, and bumped incessantly by the rocking to and fro of the felucca,
our luckless Philæ, after oscillating for hours within the space of a
mile, was run at last into a sheltered nook, and there left in peace
till the wind should change or drop.
Imprisoned here for a day and a half, we found ourselves, fortunately,
within reach of the tumuli which we had already made up our minds to
explore. Making first for those on the east bank, we took with us in the
felucca four men to row and dig, a fire-shovel, a small hatchet, an iron
bar, and a large wicker basket, which were the only implements we
possessed. What we wanted both then and afterward, and what no
dahabeeyah should ever be without, were two or three good spades, a
couple of picks, and a crowbar.
Climbing to the top of one of the highest of these hillocks, we began by
surveying the ground. The desert here is firm to the tread, flat,
compact, and thickly strewn with pebbles. Of the fine yellow sand which
characterizes the Libyan bank, there is little to be seen, and that
little lies like snow in drifts and clefts and hollows, as if carried
thither by the wind. The tumuli, however, are mounded of pure alluvial
mold, smooth, solid, and symmetrical. We counted thirty-four of all
sizes, from five to about five-and-thirty feet in height, and saw at
least as many more on the opposite side of the river.
Selecting one of about eight feet high, we then set the sailors to work;
and although it was impossible, with so few men and such insufficient
tools, to cut straight through the center of the mound, we at all events
succeeded in digging down to a solid substratum of lumps of crude clay,
evidently molded by hand.
Whether these formed only the foundation of the tumulus, or concealed a
grave excavated below the level of the desert, we had neither time nor
means to ascertain. It was something at all events, to have convinced
ourselves that the mounds were artificial.[126]
As we came away, we met a Nubian peasant trudging northward. He was
leading a sorry camel; had a white cockerel under his arm; and was
followed by a frightened woman, who drew her shawl over her face and
cowered behind him at sight of the Ingleezeh.
We asked the man what the mounds were, and who made them; but he shook
his head, and said they had been there “from old time.” We then inquired
by what name they were known in these parts; to which, urging his camel
forward, he replied hesitatingly that they had a name, but that he had
forgotten it.
Having gone a little way, however, he presently turned back, saying that
he now remembered all about it, and that they were called “The Horns of
Yackma.”
More than this we could not get from him. Who Yackma was, or how he came
to have horns, or why his horns should take the form of tumuli, was more
than he could tell or we could guess.
We gave him a small backshîsh, however, in return for this mysterious
piece of information, and went our way with all possible speed;
intending to row across and see the mounds on the opposite bank before
sunset. But we had not calculated upon the difficulty of either
threading our way among a chain of sand-banks, or going at least two
miles farther north, so as to get round into the navigable channel at
the other side. We of course tried the shorter way, and after running
aground some three or four times, had to give it up, hoist our little
sail, and scud homeward as fast as the wind would carry us.
The coming back thus, after an excursion in the felucca, is one of the
many pleasant things that one has to remember of the Nile. The sun has
set; the after-glow has faded; the stars are coming out. Leaning back
with a satisfied sense of something seen or done, one listens to the old
dreamy chant of the rowers and to the ripple under the keel. The palms,
meanwhile, glide past, and are seen in bronzed relief against the sky.
Presently the big boat, all glittering with lights, looms up out of the
dusk. A cheery voice hails from the poop. We glide under the bows. Half
a dozen smiling brown faces bid us welcome, and as many pairs of brown
hands are outstretched to help us up the side. A savory smell is wafted
from the kitchen; a pleasant vision of the dining-saloon, with table
ready spread and lamps ready lit, flashes upon us through the open
doorway. We are at home once more. Let us eat, drink, rest, and be
merry; for to-morrow the hard work of sight-seeing and sketching begins
again.
CHAPTER XVIII.
DISCOVERIES AT ABOU SIMBEL.
We came back to find a fleet of dahabeeyahs ranged along the shore at
Abou Simbel and no less than three sketching-tents in occupation of the
ground. One of these, which happened to be pitched on the precise spot
vacated by our painter, was courteously shifted to make way for the
original tenant; and in the course of a couple of hours we were all as
much at home as if we had not been away for half a day.
Here, meanwhile, was our old acquaintance--the Fostât, with her party of
gentlemen; yonder the Zenobia, all ladies; the little Alice, with Sir J.
C---- and Mr. W---- on board; the Sirena, flying with stars and stripes;
the Mansoorah, bound presently for the Fayûm. To these were next day
added the Ebers, with a couple of German savants; and the Bagstones,
welcome back from Wady Halfeh.
What with arrivals and departures, exchange of visits, exhibitions of
sketches and sociabilities of various kinds, we had now quite a gay
time. The Philæ gave a dinner-party and fantasia under the very noses of
the colossi and every evening there was drumming and howling enough
among the assembled crews to raise the ghosts of Rameses and all his
queens. This was pleasant enough while it lasted; but when the strangers
dropped off one by one and at the end of three days we were once more
alone, I think we were not sorry. The place was, somehow, too solemn for
“Singing, laughing, ogling and all that.”
It was by comparing our watches with those of the travelers whom we met
at Abou Simbel, that we now found out how hopelessly our timekeepers and
theirs had gone astray. We had been altering ours continually ever
since leaving Cairo; but the sun was as continually putting them wrong
again, so that we had lost all count of the true time. The first words
with which we now greeted a new-comer were: “Do you know what o’clock it
is?” To which the stranger as invariably replied that it was the very
question he was himself about to ask. The confusion became at last so
great that, finding that we had about eleven hours of day to thirteen of
night, we decided to establish an arbitrary canon; so we called it seven
when the sun rose and six when it set, which answered every purpose.
It was between two and four o’clock, according to this time of ours,
that the southern cross was now visible every morning. It is undoubtedly
best seen at Abou Simbel. The river is here very wide and just where the
constellation rises there is an opening in the mountains on the eastern
bank, so that these four fine stars, though still low in the heavens,
are seen in a free space of sky. If they make, even so, a less
magnificent appearance than one has been led to expect, it is probably
because we see them from too low a point of view. To say that a
constellation is foreshortened sounds absurd; yet that is just what is
the matter with the Southern Cross at Abou Simbel. Viewed at an angle of
about thirty degrees, it necessarily looks distort and dim. If seen
burning in the zenith, it would no doubt come up to the level of its
reputation.
It was now the fifth day after our return from Wady Halfeh, when an
event occurred that roused us to an unwonted pitch of excitement and
kept us at high pressure throughout the rest of our time.
The day was Sunday; the date February 16, 1874; the time, according to
Philæ reckoning, about eleven A.M., when the painter, enjoying his
seventh day’s holiday after his own fashion, went strolling about among
the rocks. He happened to turn his steps southward and, passing the
front of the great temple, climbed to the top of a little shapeless
mound of fallen cliff and sand and crude-brick wall, just against the
corner where the mountain slopes down to the river. Immediately round
this corner, looking almost due south, and approachable only by a narrow
ledge of rock, are two votive tablets, sculptured and painted, both of
the thirty-eighth year of Rameses II. We had seen these from the river
as we came back from Wady Halfeh, and had remarked how fine the view
must be from that point. Beyond the fact that they are colored and that
the color upon them is still bright, there is nothing remarkable about
these inscriptions. There are many such at Abou Simbel. Our painter did
not, therefore, come here to examine the tablets; he was attracted
solely by the view.
Turning back presently his attention was arrested by some much mutilated
sculptures on the face of the rock, a few yards nearer the south
buttress of the temple, he had seen these sculptures before--so, indeed,
had I, when wandering about that first day in search of a point of
view--without especially remarking them. The relief was low, the
execution slight; and the surface so broken away that only a few
confused outlines remained.
The thing that now caught the painter’s eye, however, was a long crack
running transversely down the face of the rock. It was such a crack as
might have been caused, one would say, by blasting.
He stooped--cleared the sand away a little with his hand--observed that
the crack widened--poked in the point of his stick and found that it
penetrated to a depth of two or three feet. Even then it seemed to him
to stop, not because it encountered any obstacle, but because the crack
was not wide enough to admit the thick end of the stick.
This surprised him. No mere fault in the natural rock, he thought, would
go so deep. He scooped away a little more sand; and still the cleft
widened. He introduced the stick a second time. It was a long
palm-stick, like an alpenstock, and it measured about five feet in
length. When he probed the cleft with it this second time it went in
freely up to where he held it in his hand--that is to say, to a depth of
quite four feet.
Convinced now that there was some hidden cavity in the rock, he
carefully examined the surface. There were yet visible a few
hieroglyphic characters and part of two cartouches, as well as some
battered outlines of what had once been figures. The heads of these
figures were gone (the face of the rock, with whatever may have been
sculptured upon it, having come away bodily at this point), while from
the waist downward they were hidden under the sand. Only some hands and
arms, in short, could be made out.
They were the hands and arms, apparently, of four figures; two in the
center of the composition and two at the extremities. The two center
ones, which seemed to be back to back, probably represented gods; the
outer ones, worshipers.
All at once it flashed upon the painter that he had seen this kind of a
group many a time before--_and generally over a doorway_.
Feeling sure now that he was on the brink of a discovery he came back,
fetched away Salame and Mehemet Ali, and, without saying a syllable to
any one, set to work with these two to scrape away the sand at the spot
where the crack widened.
Meanwhile, the luncheon-bell having rung thrice, we concluded that the
painter had rambled off somewhere into the desert, and so sat down
without him. Toward the close of the meal, however, came a penciled
note, the contents of which ran as follows:
“Pray come immediately--I have found the entrance to a tomb. Please
send some sandwiches. A. M’C----.”
To follow the messenger at once to the scene of action was the general
impulse. In less than ten minutes we were there, asking breathless
questions, peeping in through the fast-widening aperture and helping to
clear away the sand.
All that Sunday afternoon, heedless of possible sunstroke, unconscious
of fatigue, we toiled upon our hands and knees, as for bare life, under
the burning sun. We had all the crew up, working like tigers. Every one
helped; even the dragoman and the two maids. More than once, when we
paused for a moment’s breathing-space, we said to each other: “If those
at home could see us what would they say?”
And now, more than ever, we felt the need of implements. With a spade or
two and a wheelbarrow we could have done wonders; but with only one
small fire-shovel, a birch broom, a couple of charcoal baskets, and
about twenty pairs of hands, we were poor indeed. What was wanted in
means, however, was made up in method. Some scraped away the sand; some
gathered it into baskets; some carried the baskets to the edge of the
cliff and emptied them into the river. The idle man distinguished
himself by scooping out a channel where the slope was steepest; which
greatly facilitated the work. Emptied down this chute and kept
continually going, the sand poured off in a steady stream like water.
Meanwhile the opening grew rapidly larger. When we first came up--that
is, when the painter and the two sailors had been working on it for
about an hour--we found a hole scarcely as large as one’s hand, through
which it was just possible to catch a dim glimpse of painted walls
within. By sunset the top of the doorway was laid bare, and where the
crack ended in a large triangular fracture there was an aperture about a
foot and a half square, into which Mehemet Ali was the first to squeeze
his way. We passed him in a candle and a box of matches; but he came out
again directly, saying that it was a most beautiful _birbeh_, and quite
light within.
The writer wriggled in next. She found herself looking down from the top
of a sand-slope into a small square chamber. This sand-drift, which here
rose to within a foot and a half of the top of the doorway, was heaped
to the ceiling in the corner behind the door, and thence sloped steeply
down, completely covering the floor. There was light enough to see every
detail distinctly--the painted frieze running round just under the
ceiling; the bas-relief sculptures on the walls, gorgeous with unfaded
color; the smooth sand, pitted near the top, where Mehemet Ali had
trodden, but undisturbed elsewhere by human foot; the great gap in the
middle of the ceiling, where the rock had given way; the fallen
fragments on the floor, now almost buried in sand.
Satisfied that the place was absolutely fresh and untouched, the writer
crawled out, and the others, one by by one, crawled in. When each had
seen it in turn the opening was barricaded for the night; the sailors
being forbidden to enter it lest they should injure the decorations.
That evening was held a solemn council, whereat it was decided that
Talhamy and Reïs Hassan should go to-morrow to the nearest village,
there to engage the services of fifty able-bodied natives. With such
help, we calculated that the place might easily be cleared in two days.
If it was a tomb we hoped to discover the entrance to the mummy pit
below; if but a small chapel, or speos, like those at Ibrim, we should
at least have the satisfaction of seeing all that it contained in the
way of sculptures and inscriptions.
This was accordingly done; but we worked again next morning just the
same, till midday. Our native contingent, numbering about forty men,
then made their appearance in a rickety old boat, the bottom of which
was half-full of water.
They had been told to bring implements; and they did bring such as they
had--two broken oars to dig with, some baskets, and a number of little
slips of planking which, being tied between two pieces of rope and drawn
along the surface, acted as scrapers and were useful as far as they
went. Squatting in double file from the entrance of the speos to the
edge of the cliff, and to the burden of a rude chant propelling these
improvised scrapers, the men began by clearing a path to the doorway.
This gave them work enough for the afternoon. At sunset, when they
dispersed, the path was scooped out to a depth of four feet, like a
miniature railway cutting between embankments of sand.
Next morning came the sheik in person with his two sons and a following
of a hundred men. This was so many more than we had bargained for that
we at once foresaw a scheme to extort money. The sheik, however, proved
to be that same Rashwan Ebn Hassan el Kashef, by whom the happy couple
had been so hospitably entertained about a fortnight before; we
therefore received him with honor, invited him to luncheon, and, hoping
to get the work done quickly, set the men on in gangs under the
superintendence of Reïs Hassan and the head sailor.
By noon the door was cleared down to the threshold, and the whole south
and west walls were laid bare to the floor.
We now found that the débris which blocked the north wall and the center
of the floor was not, as we had at first supposed, a pile of fallen
fragments, but one solid bowlder which had come down bodily from above.
To remove this was impossible. We had no tools to cut or break it and it
was both wider and higher than the doorway. Even to clear away the sand
which rose behind it to the ceiling would have taken a long time and
have caused inevitable injury to the paintings around. Already the
brilliancy of the color was marred where the men had leaned their
backs, all wet with perspiration, against the walls.
Seeing, therefore, that three-fourths of the decorations were now
uncovered, and that behind the fallen block there appeared to be no
subject of great size or importance, we made up our minds to carry the
work no further.
Meanwhile, we had great fun at luncheon with our Nubian sheik--a tall,
well-featured man with much natural dignity of manner. He was well
dressed, too, and wore a white turban most symmetrically folded; a white
vest buttoned to the throat; a long, loose robe of black serge; an outer
robe of fine black cloth with hanging sleeves and a hood; and on his
feet, white stockings and scarlet morocco shoes. When brought face to
face with a knife and fork his embarrassment was great. He was, it
seemed, too grand a personage to feed himself. He must have a “feeder;”
as the great men of the middle ages had a “taster.” Talhamy accordingly,
being promoted to this office, picked out choice bits of mutton and
chicken with his fingers, dipped pieces of bread in gravy and put every
morsel into our guest’s august mouth, as if the said guest were a baby.
The sweets being served, the little lady, L---- and the writer took him
in hand and fed him with all kinds of jams and preserved fruits.
Enchanted with these attentions, the poor man eat till he could eat no
longer; then laid his hand pathetically over the region next his heart
and cried for mercy. After luncheon he smoked his chibouque and coffee
was served. Our coffee did not please him. He tasted it, but immediately
returned the cup, telling the waiter with a grimace, that the berries
were burned and the coffee weak. When, however, we apologized for it, he
protested with oriental insincerity that it was excellent.
To amuse him was easy, for he was interested in everything; in L----’s
field-glass, in the painter’s accordion, in the piano, and the lever
corkscrew. With some eau-de-cologne he was also greatly charmed, rubbing
it on his beard and inhaling it with closed eyes, in a kind of rapture.
To make talk was, as usual, the great difficulty. When he had told us
that his eldest son was Governor of Derr; that his youngest was five
years of age; that the dates of Derr were better than the dates of Wady
Halfeh; and that the Nubian people were very poor, he was at the end of
his topics. Finally, he requested us to convey a letter from him to Lord
D----, who had entertained him on board his dahabeeyah the year before.
Being asked if he had brought his letter with him, he shook his head,
saying: “Your dragoman shall write it.”
So paper and a reed pen were produced and Talhamy wrote to dictation as
follows:
“God have care of you. I hope you are well. I am sorry not to have
had a letter from you since you were here. Your brother and friend,
“RASHWAN EBN HASSAN EL KASHEF.”
A model letter this; brief and to the point.
Our urbane and gentlemanly sheik was, however, not quite so charming
when it came to settling time. We had sent at first for fifty men, and
the price agreed upon was five piasters, or about a shilling English,
for each man per day. In answer to this call, there first came forty men
for half a day; then a hundred men for a whole day, or what was called a
whole day; so making a total of six pounds due for wages. But the
descendants of the Kashefs would hear of nothing so commonplace as the
simple fulfillment of a straightforward contract. he demanded full pay
for a hundred men for two whole days, a gun for himself, and a liberal
backshîsh in cash. Finding he had asked more than he had any chance of
getting, he conceded the question of wages, but stood out for a game-bag
and a pair of pistols. Finally, he was obliged to be content with the
six pounds for his men, and for himself two pots of jam, two boxes of
sardines, a bottle of eau-de-cologne, a box of pills, and half a
sovereign.
By four o’clock he and his followers were gone, and we once more had the
place to ourselves. So long as they were there it was impossible to do
anything, but now, for the first time, we fairly entered into possession
of our newly found treasure.
All the rest of that day, and all the next day, we spent at work in and
about the speos. L---- and the little lady took their books and knitting
there, and made a little drawing-room of it. The writer copied paintings
and inscriptions. The idle man and the painter took measurements and
surveyed the ground round about, especially endeavoring to make out the
plan of certain fragments of wall, the foundations of which were yet
traceable.
A careful examination of these ruins, and a little clearing of the sand
here and there, led to further discoveries. They found that the speos
had been approached by a large outer hall built of sun-dried brick, with
one principal entrance facing the Nile, and two side entrances facing
northward. The floor was buried deep in sand and débris, but enough of
the walls remained above the surface to show that the ceiling had been
vaulted and the side entrances arched.
The southern boundary wall of this hall, when the surface sand was
removed, appeared to be no less than twenty feet in thickness. This was
not in itself so wonderful, there being instances of ancient Egyptian
crude-brick walls which measure eighty feet in thickness;[127] but it
was astounding as compared with the north, east, and west walls, which
measured only three feet. Deeming it impossible that this mass could be
solid throughout, the idle man set to work with a couple of sailors to
probe the center part of it, and it soon became evident that there was a
hollow space about three feet in width running due east and west down
not quite exactly the middle of the structure.
All at once the idle man thrust his fingers into a skull!
This was such an amazing and unexpected incident that for the moment he
said nothing, but went on quietly displacing the sand and feeling his
way under the surface. The next instant his hand came in contact with
the edge of a clay bowl, which he carefully withdrew. It measured about
four inches in diameter, was hand-molded, and full of caked sand. He now
proclaimed his discoveries and all ran to help in the work. Soon a
second and smaller skull was turned up, then another bowl, and then,
just under the place from which the bowls were taken, the bones of two
skeletons, all detached, perfectly desiccated, and apparently complete.
The remains were those of a child and a small grown person--probably a
woman. The teeth were sound; the bones wonderfully delicate and brittle.
As for the little skull (which had fallen apart at the sutures), it was
pure and fragile in texture as the cup of a water-lily.
We laid the bones aside as we found them, examining every handful of
sand, in the hope of discovering something that might throw light upon
the burial. But in vain. We found not a shred of clothing, not a bead,
not a coin, not the smallest vestige of anything that might help one to
judge whether the interment had taken place a hundred years ago or a
thousand.
We now called up all the crew, and went on excavating downward into what
seemed to be a long and narrow vault measuring some fifteen feet by
three.
After-reflection convinced us that we had stumbled upon a chance Nubian
grave, and that the bowls (which at first we absurdly dignified with the
name of cinerary urns) were but the usual water-bowls placed at the
heads of the dead. But we were in no mood for reflection at the time. We
made sure that the speos was a mortuary chapel; that the vault was a
vertical pit leading to a sepulchral chamber; and that at the bottom of
it we should find--who could tell what? Mummies, perhaps, and
sarcophagi, and funerary statuettes, and jewels, and papyri and wonders
without end! That these uncared-for bones should be laid in the mouth of
such a pit, scarcely occurred to us as an incongruity. Supposing them to
be Nubian remains, what then? If a modern Nubian at the top, why not an
ancient Egyptian at the bottom?
As the work of excavation went on, however, the vault was found to be
entered by a steep inclined plane. Then the inclined plane turned out to
be a flight of much worn and very shallow stairs. These led down to a
small square landing, some twelve feet below the surface, from which
landing an arched doorway[128] and passage opened into the fore-court of
the speos. Our sailors had great difficulty in excavating this part, in
consequence of the weight of superincumbent sand and débris on the side
next the speos. By shoring up the ground, however, they were enabled
completely to clear the landing, which was curiously paved with cones of
rude pottery like the bottoms of amphoræ. These cones, of which we took
out some twenty eight or thirty, were not in the least like the
celebrated funerary cones found so abundantly at Thebes. They bore no
stamp, and were much shorter and more lumpy in shape. Finally, the cones
being all removed, we came to a compact and solid floor of baked clay.
The painter, meanwhile, had also been at work. Having traced the circuit
and drawn out a ground-plan, he came to the conclusion that the whole
mass adjoining the southern wall of the speos was in fact composed of
the ruins of a pylon, the walls of which were seven feet in thickness,
built in regular string-courses of molded brick, and finished at the
angles with the usual _torus_, or round molding. The superstructure,
with its chambers, passages, and top cornice, was gone; and this part
with which we were now concerned was merely the basement, and included
the bottom of the staircase.
The painter’s ground-plan demolished all our hopes at one fell swoop.
The vault was a vault no longer. The staircase led to no sepulchral
chamber. The brick floor had no secret entrance. Our mummies melted into
thin air, and we were left with no excuse for carrying on the
excavations. We were mortally disappointed. In vain we told ourselves
that the discovery of a large brick pylon, the existence of which had
been unsuspected by preceding travelers, was an event of greater
importance than the finding of a tomb. We had set our hearts on the
tomb; and I am afraid we cared less than we ought for the pylon.
Having traced thus far the course of the excavations and the way in
which one discovery led step by step to another, I must now return to
the speos, and, as accurately as I can, describe it, not only from my
notes made on the spot, but by the light of such observations as I
afterward made among structures of the same style and period. I must,
however, premise that, not being able to go inside while the excavators
were in occupation, and remaining but one whole day at Abou Simbel after
the work was ended, I had but a short time at my disposal. I would
gladly have made colored copies of all the wall-paintings; but this was
impossible. I therefore was obliged to be content with transcribing the
inscriptions and sketching a few of the more important subjects.
The rock-cut chamber which I have hitherto described as a speos, and
which we at first believed to be a tomb, was in fact neither the one or
the other. It was the adytum of a partly built, partly excavated
monument coeval in date with the great temple. In certain points of
design this monument resembles the contemporary speos of Bayt-el-Welly.
It is evident, for instance, that the outer halls of both were
originally vaulted; and the much mutilated sculptures over the doorway
of the excavated chamber at Abou Simbel are almost identical in subject
and treatment with those over the entrance to the excavated parts of
Bayt-el-Welly. As regards general conception, the Abou Simbel monument
comes under the same head with the contemporary Temples of Derr, Gerf
Hossayn, and Wady Sabooah; being in a mixed style which combines
excavation with construction. This style seems to have been peculiarly
in favor during the reign of Rameses II.
Situated at the southeastern angle of the rock, a little way beyond the
façade of the great temple, this rock-cut adytum and hall of entrance
face southeast by east, and command much the same view that is commanded
higher up by the Temple of Hathor. The adytum, or excavated speos,
measures twenty-one feet two and one-half inches in breadth by fourteen
feet eight inches in length. The height from floor to ceiling is about
twelve feet. The doorway measures four feet three and one-half inches in
width; and the outer recess for the door-frame, five feet. Two large
circle holes, one in the threshold and the other in the lintel, mark the
place of the pivot on which the door once swung.
It is not very easy to measure the outer hall in its present ruined and
encumbered state; but as nearly as we could judge, its dimensions are as
follows: Length, twenty-five feet; width, twenty-two and one-half feet;
width of principal entrance facing the Nile, six feet; width of two side
entrances, four feet and six feet respectively; thickness of crude-brick
walls, three feet. Engaged in the brickwork on either side of the
principal entrance to this hall are two stone door-jambs; and some six
or eight feet in front of these there originally stood two stone hawks
on hieroglyphed pedestals. One of these hawks we found _in situ_, the
other lay some little distance off, and the painter (suspecting nothing
of these after-revelations) had used it as a post to which to tie one
of the main ropes of his sketching-tent. A large hieroglyphed slab,
which I take to have formed part of the door, lay overturned against the
side of the pylon some few yards nearer the river.
[Illustration:
1. Wall of pylon.
2. Square landing.
3. Arched doorway and passage leading to vaulted hall.
4. Walls of outer hall or pronaos.
5. Door-jambs.
6. Stone hawks on pedestals.
7. Torus of pylon.
8. Arched entrances in north wall of pronaos.
]
As far as the adytum and outer hall are concerned, the accompanying
ground-plan--which is in part founded on my own measurements, and in
part borrowed from the ground-plan drawn out by the painter--may be
accepted as tolerably correct. But with regard to the pylon, I can only
say with certainty that the central staircase is three feet in width,
and that the walls on each side of it are seven feet in thickness. So
buried is it in débris and sand, that even to indicate where the
building ends and the rubbish begins at the end next the Nile, is
impossible. This part is, therefore, left indefinite in the ground-plan.
[Illustration: PATTERN OF CORNICE.]
So far as we could see, there was no stone revêtement upon the inner
side of the walls of the pronaos. If anything of the kind ever existed,
some remains of it would probably be found by thoroughly clearing the
area; an interesting enterprise for any who may have leisure to
undertake it.
I have now to speak of the decorations of the adytum, the walls of
which, from immediately under the ceiling to within three feet of the
floor, are covered with religious subjects elaborately sculptured in
bas-relief, coated as usual with a thin film of stucco and colored with
a richness for which I know no parallel, except in the tomb of Seti
I[129] at Thebes. Above the level of the drifted sand this color was as
brilliant in tone and as fresh in surface as on the day when it was
transferred to those walls from the palette of the painter. All below
that level, however, was dimmed and deranged.
The ceiling is surrounded by a frieze of cartouches supported by sacred
asps; each cartouche, with its supporters, being divided from the next
by a small sitting figure. These figures, in other respects uniform,
wear the symbolic heads of various gods--the cow-head of Hathor, the
ibis-head of Thoth, the hawk-head of Horus, the jackal-head of Anubis,
etc. The cartouches contain the ordinary style and title of Rameses II
(Ra-user-ma Sotep-en-Ra Rameses Mer-Amen), and are surmounted by a row
of sundisks. Under each sitting god is depicted the phonetic hieroglyph
signifying _Mer_, or beloved. By means of this device, the whole frieze
assumes the character of a connected legend and describes the king not
only as beloved of Amen, but as Rameses beloved of Hathor, of Thoth, of
Horus--in short, of each god depicted in the series.
These gods excepted, the frieze is almost identical in design with the
frieze in the first hall of the great temple.
WEST WALL.[130]
[Illustration: STANDARD OF HORUS
AROERIS.]
The west, or principal wall, facing the entrance, is divided into two
large subjects, each containing two figures the size of life. In the
division to the right, Rameses II worships Ra; in the division to the
left, he worships Amen-Ra; thus following the order observed in the
other two temples, where the subjects relating to Amen-Ra occupy the
left half and the subjects relating to Ra occupy the right half of each
structure. An upright ensign surmounted by an exquisitely drawn and
colored head of Horus Aroëris separates these two subjects.[131] In the
subject to the right, Rameses, wearing the red and white pschent,
presents an offering of two small aryballos vases without handles. The
vases are painted blue and are probably intended to represent lapis
lazuli; a substance much prized by the ancient Egyptians and known to
them by the name of _khesbet_. The king’s necklace, armlets and
bracelets are also blue. Ra sits enthroned, holding in one hand the
“ankh,” or crux ansata, emblem of life, and in the other the
greyhound-headed[132] scepter of the [Illustration: anch] gods. He is
hawk-headed and crowned with the sun-disk and asp. His flesh is painted
bright Venetian red. He wears a pectoral ornament; a rich necklace of
alternate vermilion and black drops; and a golden-yellow belt studded
with red and black stones. The throne, which stands on a blue platform,
is painted in stripes of red, blue and white. The platform is decorated
with a row of gold-colored stars and “ankh” emblems picked out with red.
At the foot of this platform, between the god and the king, stands a
small altar, on which are placed the usual blue lotus with red stalk and
a spouted libation vessel.
To the left of the Horus ensign, seated back to back with Ra upon a
similar throne, sits Amen-Ra--of all Egyptian gods the most terrible to
look upon--with his blue-black complexion, his corselet of golden
chain-armor, and his head-dress of towering plumes.[133] Here the
wonderful preservation of the surface enabled one to see by what means
the ancient artists were wont to produce this singular blue-black effect
of color. It was evident that the flesh of the god had first been laid
in with dead black, and then colored over with a dry, powdery
cobalt-blue, through which the black remained partially visible. He
carries in one hand the ankh, and in the other the greyhound-headed
scepter. To him advances the king, his right hand uplifted, and in his
left a small basket containing a votive statuette of Ma, the goddess of
truth and justice. Ma is, however, shorn of her distinctive feather, and
holds the jackal-headed staff instead of the customary crux ansata.
As portraiture, there is not much to be said for any of these heads of
Rameses II; but the features bear a certain resemblance to the
well-known profile of the king; the action of the figure is graceful and
animated; and the drawing displays in all its purity the firm and
flowing line of Egyptian draughtsmanship.
[Illustration: RAMESES II OF SPEOS.]
The dress of the king is very rich in color; the mitershaped casque
being of a vivid cobalt-blue[134] picked out with gold color; the belt,
necklace, armlets, and bracelets, of gold, studded apparently with
precious stones; the apron, green and gold. Over the king’s head hovers
the sacred vulture, emblem of Maut, holding in her claws a kind of
scutcheon upon which is depicted the crux ansata.
SOUTH WALL.
The subjects represented on this wall are as follows:
1. Rameses, life-size, presiding over a table of offerings. The king
wears upon his head the _klaft_, or head-cloth, striped gold and white
and decorated with the uræus. The table is piled in the usual way with
flesh, fowl and flowers. The surface being here quite perfect, the
details of these objects are seen to be rendered with surprising
minuteness. Even the tiny black feather-stumps of the plucked geese are
given with the fidelity of Chinese art; while a red gash in the breast
of each shows in what way it was slain for the sacrifice. The loaves are
shaped precisely like the so-called “cottage loaves” of to-day and have
the same little depression in the top, made by the baker’s finger.
Lotus and papyrus blossoms in elaborate bouquet-holders crown the pile.
2. Two tripods of light and elegant design, containing flowers.
3. The bari, or sacred boat, painted gold-color, with the usual veil
half-drawn across the naos, or shrine; the prow of the boat being richly
carved, decorated with the uta[135] or symbolic eye and preceded by a
large fan of ostrich feathers. The boat is peopled with small black
figures, one of which kneels at the stern; while a sphinx couchant, with
black body and human head, keeps watch at the prow. The sphinx
symbolizes the king.
On this wall, in a space between the sacred boat and the figure of
Rameses occurs the following inscription, sculptured in high relief and
elaborately colored:
[Illustration: heiroglphics]
NOTE.--This inscription reads according to the numbering of the columns,
beginning at 1 and reading to the right; then resuming at 7 and reading
to the left. The spaces lettered A B in the lowest figure of column 5
are filled in with the two cartouches of Rameses II.
[Illustration]
TRANSLATION.[136]
Said by Thoth, the Lord of Sesennu,[137] [residing] in Amenheri:[138] “I
give to thee an everlasting sovereignty over the two countries, O son of
[my] body, beloved, Ra-user-ma Sotep-en-Ra, acting as propitiator of thy
_Ka_. I give to thee myriads of festivals of Rameses, beloved of Amen,
Ra-user-ma Sotep-en-Ra, as prince of every place where the sun-disk
revolves. The beautiful living god, maker of beautiful things for [his]
father Thoth, Lord of Sesennu [residing] in Amenheri. He made mighty and
beautiful monuments forever facing the eastern horizon of heaven.”
* * * * *
The meaning of which is that Thoth, addressing Rameses II, then living
and reigning, promises him a long life and many anniversaries of his
jubilee,[139] in return for the works made in his (Thoth’s) honor at
Abou Simbel and elsewhere.
NORTH WALL.
At the upper end of this wall is depicted a life-size female figure
wearing an elaborate blue head-dress surmounted by a disk and two
ostrich feathers. She holds in her right hand the ankh, and in her left
the jackal-headed scepter. This not being the scepter of a goddess and
the head-dress resembling that of the queen as represented on the façade
of the Temple of Hathor, I conclude we have here a portrait of
Nefertari corresponding to the portrait of Rameses on the opposite wall.
Near her stands a table of offerings, on which, among other objects, are
placed four vases of a rich blue color traversed by bands of yellow.
They perhaps represent the kind of glass known as the false
murrhine.[140] Each of these vases contains an object like a pine, the
ground-color of which is deep yellow, patterned over with scale-like
subdivisions in vermilion. We took them to represent grains of maize
pyramidially piled.
Lastly, a pendant to that on the opposite wall, comes the sacred bari.
It is, however, turned the reverse way, with its prow toward the east;
and it rests upon an altar, in the center of which are the cartouches of
Rameses II and a small hieroglyphic inscription signifying: “Beloved by
Amen-Ra, king of the gods, resident in the land of Kenus.”[141]
Beyond this point, at the end nearest the northeast corner of the
chamber, the piled sand conceals whatever else the wall may contain in
the way of decoration.
EAST WALL.
If the east wall is decorated like the others (which may be taken for
granted), its tableaux and inscriptions are hidden behind the sand which
here rises to the ceiling. The doorway also occurs in this wall,
occupying a space four feet three and one-half inches in width on the
inner side.
One of the most interesting incidents connected with the excavation of
this little adytum remains yet to be told.
I have described the female figure at the upper end of the north wall
and how she holds in her right hand the ankh and in her left hand the
jackal-headed scepter. The hand that holds the ankh hangs by her side;
the hand that holds the scepter is half-raised. Close under this
upraised hand, at a height of between three and four feet from the
actual level of the floor, there were visible upon the un-colored
surface of the original stucco several lines of free-hand writing. This
writing was laid on, apparently, with the brush, and the ink, if ever it
had been black, had now become brown. Five long lines and three shorter
lines were uninjured. Below these were traces of other fragmentary
lines, almost obliterated by the sand.
We knew at once that this quaint faint writing must be in either the
hieratic or demotic hand. We could distinguish, or thought we could
distinguish, in its vague outlines of forms already familiar to us in
the hieroglyphs--abstracts, as it were, of birds and snakes and boats.
There could be no doubt, at all events, that the thing was curious; and
we set it down in our own minds as the writing of either the architect
or decorator of the place.
Anxious to make, if possible, an exact fac-simile of this inscription,
the writer copied it three times. The last and best of these copies is
here reproduced in photolithography, with a translation from the pen of
the late Dr. Birch. (See p. 317.) We all know how difficult it is to
copy correctly in a language of which one is ignorant; and the tiniest
curve or dot omitted is fatal to the sense of these ancient characters.
In the present instance, notwithstanding the care with which the
transcript was made, there must still have been errors; for it has been
found undecipherable in places; and in these places there occur
inevitable lacunæ.
Enough, however, remains to show that the lines were written, not as we
had supposed by the artist, but by a distinguished visitor, whose name
unfortunately is illegible. This visitor was a son of the Prince of
Kush, or as it is literally written, the Royal Son of Kush; that being
the official title of the Governor of Ethiopia.[142] As there were
certainly eight governors of Ethiopia during the reign of Rameses II
(and perhaps more, whose names have not reached us), it is impossible
even to hazard a guess at the parentage of our visitor. We gather,
however, that he was sent hither to construct a road; also that he built
transport boats; and that he exercised priestly functions in that part
of the temple which was inaccessible to all but dignitaries of the
sacerdotal order.
[Illustration]
HIERATIC INSCRIPTION,
NORTH WALL OF SPEOS.
_Translated by S. Birch, Esq., LL.D., etc._
... thy son having ... thou hast conquered the worlds at once Ammon
Ra-Harmachis,[143] the god at the first time,[144] who gives life,
health, and a time of many praises to the groom ... of the Khen,[145]
son of the Royal son of Cush,[146] Opener of the road, Maker of
transport boats, Giver of instructions to his lord ... Amenshaa....
Site, inscriptions, and decorations taken into account, there yet
remains this question to be answered:
What was the nature and character of the monument just described?
It adjoined a pylon, and, as we have seen, consisted of a vaulted
pronaos in crude brick, and an adytum excavated in the rock. On the
walls of this adytum are depicted various gods with their attributes,
votive offerings, and portraits of the king performing acts of
adoration. The bari, or ark, is also represented upon the north and
south walls of the adytum. These are unquestionably the ordinary
features of a temple, or chapel.
On the other hand, there must be noted certain objections to these
premises. It seemed to us that the pylon was built first and that the
south boundary wall of the pronaos, being a subsequent erection, was
supported against the slope of the pylon as far as where the spring of
the vaulting began. Besides which, the pylon would have been a
disproportionately large adjunct to a little monument, the entire length
of which, from the doorway of the pronaos to the west wall of the
adytum, was less than forty-seven feet. We therefore concluded that the
pylon belonged to the large temple and was erected at the side instead
of in front of the façade, on account of the very narrow space between
the mountain and the river.[147]
The pylon at Korn Ombo is, probably for the same reason, placed at the
side of the temple and on a lower level. To those who might object that
a brick pylon would hardly be attached to a temple of the first class, I
would observe that the remains of a similar pylon are still to be seen
at the top of what was once the landing-place leading to the great
temple at Wady Halfeh. It may, therefore, be assumed that this little
monument, although connected with the pylon by means of a doorway and
staircase, was an excrescence of later date.
Being an excrescence, however, was it, in the strict sense of the word,
a temple?
Even this seems to be doubtful. In the adytum there is no trace of any
altar--no fragment of stone dais or sculptured image--no granite shrine,
as at Philæ--no sacred recess, as at Denderah. The standard of Horus
Aroëris, engraved on page 311, occupies the center place upon the wall
facing the entrance, and occupies it, not as a tutelary divinity, but as
a decorative device to separate the two large subjects already
described. Again, the gods represented in these subjects are Ra and
Amen-Ra, the tutelary gods of the great temple; but if we turn to the
dedicatory inscription on page 313 we find that Thoth, whose image never
occurs at all upon the walls[148] (unless as one of the little gods in
the cornice), is really the presiding deity of the place. It is he who
welcomes Rameses and his offerings; who acknowledges the “glory” given
to him by his beloved son; and who, in return for the great and good
monuments erected in his honor, promises the king that he shall be given
“an everlasting sovereignty over the two countries.”
Now Thoth was, _par excellence_, the God of Letters. He is styled the
Lord of Divine Words; the Lord of the Sacred Writings; the Spouse of
Truth. He personifies the Divine Intelligence. He is the patron of art
and science; and he is credited with the invention of the alphabet. In
one of the most interesting of Champollion’s letters from Thebes,[149]
he relates how, in the fragmentary ruins of the western extremity of the
Ramesseum, he found a doorway adorned with the figures of Thoth and
Safek; Thoth as the God of Literature, and Safek inscribed with the
title of Lady President of the Hall of Books. At Denderah there is a
chamber especially set apart for the sacred writings, and its walls are
sculptured all over with a catalogue raisonnée of the manuscript
treasures of the temple. At Edfu, a kind of closet built up between two
of the pillars of the hall of assembly was reserved for the same
purpose. Every temple, in short, had its library; and as the Egyptian
books--being written on papyrus or leather, rolled up, and stored in
coffers--occupied but little space, the rooms appropriated to this
purpose were generally small.
It was Dr. Birch’s opinion that our little monument may have been the
library of the Great Temple of Abou Simbel. This being the case, the
absence of an altar, and the presence of Ra and Amen-Ra in the two
principal tableaux, are sufficiently accounted for. The tutelary deity
of the great temple and the patron deity of Rameses II would naturally
occupy, in this subsidiary structure, the same places that they occupy
in the principal one; while the library, though in one sense the domain
of Thoth, is still under the protection of the gods of the temple to
which it is an adjunct.
I do not believe we once asked ourselves how it came to pass that the
place had remained hidden all these ages long; yet its very freshness
proved how early it must have been abandoned. If it had been open in the
time of the successors of Rameses II, they would probably, as elsewhere,
have interpolated inscriptions and cartouches, or have substituted their
own cartouches for those of the founder. If it had been open in the time
of the Ptolemies and Cæsars, traveling Greeks and learned Romans and
strangers from Byzantium and the cities of Asia Minor would have cut
their names on the door-jambs and scribbled ex-votos on the walls. If it
had been open in the days of Nubian Christianity, the sculptures would
have been coated with mud and washed with lime and daubed with pious
caricatures of St. George and the holy family. But we found it
intact--as perfectly preserved as a tomb that had lain hidden under the
rocky bed of the desert. For these reasons I am inclined to think that
it became inaccessible shortly after it was completed. There can be
little doubt that a wave of earthquake passed, during the reign of
Rameses II, along the left bank of the Nile, beginning possibly above
Wady Halfeh, and extending at least as far north as Gerf Hossayn. Such a
shock might have wrecked the temple at Wady Halfeh, as it dislocated the
pylon of Wady Sabooah, and shook the built-out porticoes of Derr and
Gerf Hossayn; which last four temples, as they do not, I believe, show
signs of having been added to by later Pharaohs, may be supposed to have
been abandoned in consequence of the ruin which had befallen them. Here,
at all events, it shook the mountain of the great temple, cracked one of
the Osiride columns of the first hall,[150] shattered one of the four
great colossi, more or less injured the other three, flung down the
great brick pylon, reduced the pronaos of the library to a heap of ruin,
and not only brought down part of the ceiling of the excavated adytum,
but rent open a vertical fissure in the rock some twenty or twenty-five
feet in length.
With so much irreparable damage done to the great temple, and with so
much that was reparable calling for immediate attention, it is no wonder
that these brick buildings were left to their fate. The priests would
have rescued the sacred books from among the ruins, and then the place
would have been abandoned.
So much by way of conjecture. As hypothesis, a sufficient reason is
perhaps suggested for the wonderful state of preservation in which the
little chamber had been handed down to the present time. A rational
explanation is also offered for the absence of later cartouches, of
Greek and Latin ex-votos, of Christian emblems, and of subsequent
mutilation of every kind. For, save that one contemporary visitor--the
son of the Royal Son of Kush--the place contained, when we opened it, no
record of any passing traveler, no defacing autograph of tourist,
archæologist, or scientific explorer. Neither Belzoni nor Champollion
had found it out. Even Lepsius had passed it by.
It happens sometimes that hidden things, which in themselves are easy to
find, escape detection because no one thinks of looking for them. But
such was not the case in this present instance. Search had been made
here again and again; and even quite recently.
It seems that when the khedive[151] entertains distinguished guests and
sends them in gorgeous dahabeeyahs up the Nile, he grants them a virgin
mound, or so many square feet of a famous necropolis; lets them dig as
deep as they please; and allows them to keep whatever they may find.
Sometimes he sends out scouts to beat the ground; and then a tomb is
found and left unopened, and the illustrious visitor is allowed to
discover it. When the scouts are unlucky, it may even sometimes happen
that an old tomb is re-stocked; carefully closed up; and then, with all
the charm of unpremeditation, re-opened a day or two after.
Now Sheik Rashwan Ebn Hassan el Kashef told us that in 1869, when the
empress of the French was at Abou Simbel, and again when the Prince and
Princess of Wales came up in 1872, after the prince’s illness, he
received strict orders to find some hitherto undiscovered tomb,[152] in
order that the khedive’s guests might have the satisfaction of opening
it. But, he added, although he left no likely place untried among the
rocks and valleys on both sides of the river, he could find nothing. To
have unearthed such a birbeh as this would have done him good service
with the government, and have insured him a splendid backshîsh from
prince or empress. As it was, he was reprimanded for want of diligence,
and he believed himself to have been out of favor ever since.
I may here mention--in order to have done with this subject--that
besides being buried outside to a depth of about eight feet, the adytum
had been partially filled inside by a gradual infiltration of sand from
above. This can only have accumulated at the time when the old
sand-drift was at its highest. That drift, sweeping in one unbroken line
across the front of the great temple, must at one time have risen here
to a height of twenty feet above the present level. From thence the sand
had found its way down the perpendicular fissure already mentioned. In
the corner behind the door, the sand-pile rose to the ceiling, in shape
just like the deposit at the bottom of an hour-glass. I am informed by
the painter that when the top of the doorway was found and an opening
first effected, the sand poured out _from within_, like water escaping
from an opened sluice.
Here, then, is positive proof (if proof were needed) that we were first
to enter the place, at all events since the time when the great
sand-drift rose as high as the top of the fissure.
The painter wrote his name and ours, with the date (February 10, 1874),
on a space of blank wall over the inside of the doorway; and this was
the only occasion upon which any of us left our names upon an Egyptian
monument. On arriving at Korosko, where there is a postoffice, he also
dispatched a letter to the “Times,” briefly recording the facts here
related. That letter, which appeared on the 18th of March following, is
reprinted in the appendix at the end of this book.
I am told that our names are partially effaced and that the
wall-paintings which we had the happiness of admiring in all their
beauty and freshness are already much injured. Such is the fate of every
Egyptian monument, great or small. The tourist carves it all over with
names and dates and in some instances with caricatures. The student of
Egyptology, by taking wet-paper “squeezes,” sponges away every vestige
of the original color. The “collector” buys and carries off everything
of value that he can get; and the Arab steals for him. The work of
destruction, meanwhile, goes on apace. There is no one to prevent it;
there is no one to discourage it. Every day, more inscriptions are
mutilated--more tombs are rifled--more paintings and sculptures are
defaced. The Louvre contains a full-length portrait of Seti I, cut out
bodily from the walls of his sepulcher in the Valley of the Tombs of the
Kings. The museums of Berlin, of Turin, of Florence, are rich in spoils
which tell their own lamentable tale. When science leads the way, is it
wonderful that ignorance should follow?
CHAPTER XIX.
BACK THROUGH NUBIA.
There are fourteen temples between Abou Simbel and Philæ; to say nothing
of grottoes, tombs and other ruins. As a rule, people begin to get tired
of temples about this time and vote them too plentiful. Meek travelers
go through them as a duty; but the greater number rebel. Our happy
couple, I grieve to say, went over to the majority. Dead to shame, they
openly proclaimed themselves bored. They even skipped several temples.
For myself, I was never bored by them. Though they had been twice as
many, I should not have wished them fewer. Miss Martineau tells how, in
this part of the river, she was scarcely satisfied to sit down to
breakfast without having first explored a temple; but I could have
breakfasted, dined, supped on temples. My appetite for them was
insatiable and grew with what it fed upon. I went over them all. I took
notes of them all. I sketched them every one.
I may as well say at once that I shall reproduce but few of those notes
and only some of those sketches in the present volume. If, surrounded by
their local associations, these ruins fail to interest many who travel
far to see them, it is not to be supposed that they would interest
readers at home. Here and there, perhaps, might be one who would care to
pore with me over every broken sculpture; to spell out every
half-legible cartouche; to trace through Greek and Roman influences
(which are nowhere more conspicuous than in these Nubian buildings) the
slow deterioration of the Egyptian style. But the world for the most
part reserves itself, and rightly, for the great epochs and the great
names of the past; and because it has not yet had too much of Karnak, of
Abou Simbel, of the pyramids, it sets slight store by those minor
monuments which record the periods of foreign rule and the decline of
native art. For these reasons, therefore, I propose to dismiss very
briefly many places upon which I bestowed hours of delightful labor.
We left Abou Simbel just as the moon was rising on the evening of the
18th of February, and dropped down with the current for three or four
miles before mooring for the night. At six next morning the men began
rowing; and at half-past eight the heads of the colossi were still
looking placidly after us across a ridge of intervening hills. They were
then more than five miles distant in a direct line; but every feature
was still distinct in the early daylight. One went up again and again,
as long as they remained in sight, and bade good-by to them at last with
that same heartache which comes of a farewell view of the Alps.
When I say that we were seventeen days getting from Abou Simbel to
Philæ, and that we had the wind against us from sunrise till sunset
almost every day, it will be seen that our progress was of the slowest.
To those who were tired of temples, and to the crew who were running
short of bread, these long days of lying up under the bank, or of
rocking to and fro in the middle of the river, were dreary enough.
Slowly but surely, however, the hard-won miles go by. Sometimes the
barren desert hems us in to right and left, with never a blade of green
between the rock and the river. Sometimes, as at Tosko,[153] we come
upon an open tract, where there are palms and castor-berry plantations
and corn-fields alive with quail. The idle man goes ashore at Tosko with
his gun, while the little lady and the writer climb a solitary rock
about two hundred feet above the river. The bank shelves here, and a
crescent-like wave of inundation, about three miles in length, overflows
it every season. From this height one sees exactly how far the wave
goes, and how it must make a little bay when it is there. Now it is a
bay of barley, full to the brim, and rippling to the breeze. Beyond the
green comes the desert; the one defined against the other as sharply as
water against land. The desert looks wonderfully old beside the young
green of the corn, and the Nile flows wide among sand-banks, like a
tidal river near the sea. The village, squared off in parallelograms
like a cattle market, lies mapped out below. A field-glass shows that
the houses are simply cloistered court-yards roofed with palm-thatch;
the sheik’s house being larger than the rest, with the usual open space
and spreading sycamore in front. There are women moving to and fro in
the court-yards, and husbandmen in the castor-berry patches. A funeral
with a train of wailers goes out presently toward the burial-ground on
the edge of the desert. The idle man, a slight figure with a veil
twisted round his hat, wades, half-hidden, through the barley, signaling
his whereabouts every now and then by a puff of white smoke. A
cargo-boat, stripped and shorn, comes floating down the river, making no
visible progress. A native felucca, carrying one tattered brown sail,
goes swiftly up with the wind at a pace that will bring her to Abou
Simbel before nightfall. Already she is past the village; and those
black specks yonder, which we had never dreamed were crocodiles, have
slipped off into the water at her approach. And now she is far in the
distance--that glowing, illimitable distance--traversed by long silvery
reaches of river, and ending in a vast flat, so blue and aerial that,
but for some three or four notches of purple peaks on the horizon, one
could scarcely discern the point at which land and sky melt into each
other. Ibrim comes next; then Derr; then Wady Sabooyah. At Ibrim, as at
Derr, there are “fair” families, whose hideous light hair and blue eyes
(grafted on brown-black skins) date back to Bosnian forefathers of three
hundred and sixty years ago. These people give themselves airs, and are
the _haute noblesse_ of the place. The men are lazy and quarrelsome. The
women trail longer robes, wear more beads and rings, and are altogether
more unattractive and castor-oily than any we have seen elsewhere. They
keep slaves, too. We saw these unfortunates trotting at the heels of
their mistresses, like dogs. Knowing slavery to be officially illegal in
the dominions of the khedive, the M. B.’s applied to a dealer, who
offered them an Abyssinian girl for ten pounds. This useful
article--warranted a bargain--was to sweep, wash, milk, and churn; but
was not equal to cooking. The M. B.’s, it is needless to add, having
verified the facts, retired from the transaction.
At Derr we pay a farewell visit to the temple; and at Amada, arriving
toward close of day, see the great view for the last time in the glory
of sunset.
And now, though the north wind blows persistently, it gets hotter every
day. The crocodiles like it, and come out to bask in the sunshine.
Called up one morning in the middle of breakfast we see two--a little
one and a big one--on a sand-bank near by. The men rest upon their oars.
The boat goes with the stream. No one speaks; no one moves. Breathlessly
and in dead silence, we drift on till we are close beside them. The big
one is rough and black, like the trunk of a London elm, and measures
full eighteen feet in length. The little one is pale and greenish and
glistens like glass. All at once the old one starts, doubles itself up
for a spring, and disappears with a tremendous splash. But the little
one, apparently unconscious of danger, lifts its tortoise-like head and
eyes us sidewise. Presently some one whispers; and that whisper breaks
the spell. Our little crocodile flings up its tail, plunges clown the
bank, and is gone in a moment.
The crew could not understand how the idle man, after lying in wait for
crocodiles at Abou Simbel, should let this rare chance pass without a
shot. But we had heard since then of so much indiscriminate slaughter at
the second cataract, that he was resolved to bear no part in the
extermination of those old historic reptiles. That a sportsman should
wish for a single trophy is not unreasonable; but that scores of crack
shots should go up every winter killing and wounding these wretched
brutes at an average rate of from twelve to eighteen per gun, is mere
butchery and cannot be too strongly reprehended. Year by year, the
creatures become shyer and fewer; and the day is probably not far
distant when a crocodile will be as rarely seen below Semneh as it is
now rarely seen below Assûan.
The thermometer stands at 85° in the saloon of the Philæ, when we come
one afternoon to Wady Sabooah, where there is a solitary temple drowned
in sand. It was approached once by an avenue of sphinxes and standing
colossi, now shattered and buried. The roof of the pronaos, if ever it
was roofed, is gone. The inner halls and the sanctuary--all excavated in
the rock--are choked and impassable. Only the propylon stands clear of
sand; and that, massive as it is, looks as if one touch of a
battering-ram would bring it to the ground. Every huge stone in it is
loose, Every block in the cornice seems tottering in its place. In all
this we fancy we recognize the work of our Abou Simbel earthquake.[154]
At Wady Sabooah we see a fat native. The fact claims record, because it
is so uncommon. A stalwart, middle-aged man, dressed in a tattered kilt
and carrying a palm-staff in his hand, he stands before us the living
double of the famous wooden statue at Boulak. He is followed by his two
wives and three or four children, all bent upon trade. The women have
trinkets, the boys a live chameleon and a small stuffed crocodile for
sale. While the painter is bargaining for the crocodile and L---- for a
nose-ring, the writer makes acquaintance with a pair of self-important
hoopoes, who live in the pylon and evidently regard it as a big nest of
their own building. They sit observing me curiously while I sketch,
nodding their crested polls and chattering disparagingly, like a couple
of critics. By and by comes a small black bird with a white breast and
sings deliciously. It is like no little bird that I have ever seen
before; but the song that it pours so lavishly from its tiny throat is
as sweet and brilliant as a canary’s.
Powerless against the wind, the dahabeeyah lies idle day after day in
the sun. Sometimes, when we chance to be near a village, the natives
squat on the bank and stare at us for hours together. The moment any one
appears on deck they burst into a chorus of “Backshîsh!” There is but
one way to get rid of them, and that is to sketch them. The effect is
instantaneous. With a good-sized block and a pencil, a whole village may
be put to flight at a moment’s notice. If, on the other hand, one wishes
for a model, the difficulty is insuperable. The painter tried in vain to
get some of the women and girls (not a few of whom were really pretty)
to sit for their portraits. I well remember one haughty beauty, shaped
and draped like a Juno, who stood on the bank one morning, scornfully
watching all that was done on deck. She carried a flat basket
back-handed; and her arms were covered with bracelets and her fingers
with rings. Her little girl, in a Madame Nubia fringe, clung to her
skirts, half-wondering, half-frightened. The painter sent out an
ambassador plenipotentiary to offer her anything from a sixpence to half
a sovereign if she would only stand like that for half an hour. The
manner of her refusal was grand. She drew her shawl over her face, took
her child’s hand, and stalked away like an offended goddess. The writer,
meanwhile, hidden behind a curtain, had snatched a tiny sketch from the
cabin-window.
On the western bank, somewhere between Wady Sabooah and Maharrakeh, in a
spot quite bare of vegetation, stand the ruins of a fortified town which
is neither mentioned by Murray nor entered in the maps. It is built on a
base of reddish rock and commands the river and the desert. The painter
and writer, explored it one afternoon, in the course of a long ramble.
Climbing first a steep slope strewn with masonry, we came to the remains
of a stone gateway. Finding this impassable, we made our way through a
breach in the battlemented wall, and thence up a narrow road down which
had been poured a cataract of débris. Skirting a ruined postern at the
top of this road, we found ourselves in a close labyrinth of vaulted
arcades built of crude brick and lit at short intervals by openings in
the roof. These strange streets--for they were streets--were lined on
either side by small dwellings built of crude brick on stone
foundations. We went into some of the houses--mere ruined courts and
roofless chambers, in which were no indications of hearths or
staircases. In one lay a fragment of stone column about fourteen inches
in diameter. The air in these ancient streets was foul and stagnant and
the ground was everywhere heaped with fragments of black, red and
yellowish pottery, like the shards of Elephantine and Philæ. A more
desolate place in a more desolate situation I never saw. It looked as if
it had been besieged, sacked and abandoned, a thousand years ago; which
is probably under the mark, for the character of the pottery would seem
to point to the period of Roman occupation. Noting how the brick
super-structures were reared on apparently earlier masonry, we concluded
that the beginnings of this place were probably Egyptian and the later
work Roman. The marvel was that any town should have been built in so
barren a spot, there being not so much as an inch-wide border of lentils
for a mile or more between the river and the desert.
Having traversed the place from end to end, we came out through another
breach on the westward side, and, thinking to find a sketchable point of
view inland, struck down toward the plain. In order to reach this, one
first must skirt a deep ravine which divides the rock of the citadel
from the desert. Following the brink of this ravine to the point at
which it falls into the level, we found to our great surprise that we
were treading the banks of an extinct river.
It was full of sand now; but beyond all question it had once been full
of water. It came, evidently, from the mountains over toward the
northwest. We could trace its windings for a long way across the plain,
thence through the ravine and on southward in a line parallel with the
Nile. Here, beneath our feet, were the water-worn rocks through which it
had fretted its way; and yonder, half-buried in sand, were the bowlders
it had rounded and polished and borne along in its course. I doubt,
however, if when it was a river of water this stream was half as
beautiful as now, when it is a river of sand. It was turbid then, no
doubt, and charged with sediment. Now it is more golden than Pactolus
and covered with ripples more playful and undulating than were ever
modeled by Canaletti’s pencil.
Supposing yonder town to have been founded in the days when the river
was a river and the plain fertile and well watered, the mystery of its
position is explained. It was protected in front by the Nile and in the
rear by the ravine and the river. But how long ago was this? Here,
apparently, was an independent stream, taking its rise among the Libyan
mountains. It dated back, consequently, to a time when those barren
hills collected and distributed water--that is to say, to a time when it
used to rain in Nubia. And that time must have been before the rocky
barrier broke down at Silsilis, in the old days when the land of Kush
flowed with milk and honey.[155]
It would rain even now in Nubia, if it could. That same evening, when
the sun was setting, we saw a fan-like drift of dappled cloud miles high
above our heads, melting, as it seemed, in fringes of iridescent vapor.
We could distinctly see those fringes forming, wavering and evaporating;
unable to descend as rain, because dispersed at a high altitude by
radiated heat from the desert. This, with one exception, was the only
occasion on which I saw clouds in Nubia.
Coming back, we met a solitary native, with a string of beads in his
hand and a knife up his sleeve. He followed us for a long way,
volunteering a but half-intelligible story about some unknown
birbeh[156] in the desert. We asked where it was and he pointed up the
course of our unknown river.
“You have seen it?” said the painter.
“Marrat ketîr” (“many times”).
“How far is it?”
“One day’s march in the hagar” (“desert”).
“And have no Ingleezeh ever been to look for it?”
He shook his head at first, not understanding the question; then looked
grave and held up one finger.
Our stock of Arabic was so small and his so interlarded with Kensee,
that we had great difficulty in making out what he said next. We
gathered, however, that some howadji, traveling alone and on foot, had
once gone in search of this birbeh and never come back. Was he lost? Was
he killed? Who could say?
“It was a long time ago,” said the man with the beads. “It was a long
time ago and he took no guide with him.”
We would have given much to trace the river to its source and search for
this unknown temple in the desert. But it is one of the misfortunes of
this kind of traveling that one cannot easily turn aside from the beaten
track. The hot season is approaching; the river is running low; the
daily cost of the dahabeeyah is exorbitant; and, in Nubia, where little
or nothing can be bought in the way of food, the dilatory traveler risks
starvation. It was something, however, to have seen with one’s own eyes
that the Nile, instead of flowing for a distance of twelve hundred
miles unfed by any affluent, had here received the waters of a
tributary.[157]
To those who have a south breeze behind them the temples must now follow
in quick succession. We, however, achieved them by degrees and rejoiced
when our helpless dahabeeyah lay within rowing reach of anything worth
seeing. Thus we pull down one day to Maharrakeh--in itself a dull ruin
but picturesquely desolate. Seen as one comes up the bank on landing,
two parallel rows of columns stand boldly up against the sky, supporting
a ruined entablature. In the foreground a few stunted Dôm palms starve
in an arid soil. The barren desert closes in the distance.
We are beset here by an insolent crowd of savage-looking men and boys
and impudent girls with long frizzy hair and Nubian fringes, who pester
us with beads and pebbles; dance, shout, slap their legs and clap their
hands in our faces; and pelt us when we go away. One ragged warrior
brandishes an antique brass-mounted firelock full six feet long in the
barrel; and some of the others carry slender spears.
The temple--a late Roman structure--would seem to have been wrecked by
an earthquake before it was completed. The masonry is all in the
rough--pillars as they came from the quarry; capitals blocked out,
waiting for the carver. These unfinished ruins--of which every stone
looks new, as if the work was still in progress--affect one’s
imagination strangely. On a fallen wall south of the portico[158] the
idle man detected some remains of a Greek inscription; but for
hieroglyphic characters or cartouches, by which to date the building, we
looked in vain.[159]
Dakkeh comes next in order; then Gerf Hossayn, Dendoor and Kalebsheh.
Arriving at Dakkeh soon after sunrise we find the whole
population--screaming, pushing, chattering, laden with eggs, pigeons and
gourds for sale--drawn up to receive us. There is a large sand island in
the way here, so we moor about a mile above the temple.
We first saw the twin pylons of Dakkeh some weeks ago from the deck of
the Philæ and we then likened them to the majestic towers of Edfu.
Approaching them now by land, we are surprised to find them so small. It
is a brilliant, hot morning; and our way lies by the river, between the
lentil-slope and the castor-berry patches. There are flocks of pigeons
flying low overhead; barking dogs and crowing cocks in the village close
by; and all over the path hundreds of beetles--real live scarabs, black
as coal and busy as ants--rolling their clay pellets up from the water’s
edge to the desert. If we were to examine a score or so of these pellets
we should here and there find one that contained no eggs; for it is a
curious fact that the scarab-beetle makes and rolls her pellets, whether
she has an egg to deposit or not. The female beetle, though assisted by
the male, is said to do the heavier share of the pellet-rolling; and if
evening comes on before her pellet is safely stowed away, she will
sleep, holding it with her feet all night, and resume her labor in the
morning.[160]
The temple here--begun by an Ethiopian king named Arkaman (Ergamenes)
about whom Diodorus has a long story to tell, and carried on by the
Ptolemies and Cæsars--stands in a desolate open space to the north of
the village, and is approached by an avenue, the walls of which are
constructed with blocks from some earlier building. The whole of this
avenue and all the waste ground for three or four hundred yards round
about the temple is not merely strewn, but piled, with fragments of
pottery, pebbles and large, smooth stones of porphery, alabaster,
basalt, and a kind of marble like verde antico. These stones are
puzzling. They look as if they might be fragments of statues that had
been rolled and polished by ages of friction in the bed of a torrent.
Among the potsherds we find some inscribed fragments like those of
Elephantine.[161] Of the temple I will only say that, as masonry, it is
better put together than any work of the eighteenth or nineteenth
dynasties with which I am acquainted. The sculptures, however, are
atrocious. Such misshapen hieroglyphs; such dumpy, smirking goddesses;
such clownish kings in such preposterous head-dresses, we have never
seen till now. The whole thing, in short, as regards sculpturesque
style, is the Ptolemaic out-Ptolemied.
Rowing round presently to Kobban--the river running wide with the sand
island between--we land under the walls of a huge crude brick structure,
black with age, which at first sight looks quite shapeless; but which
proves to be an ancient Egyptian fortress, buttressed, towered,
loop-holed, finished at the angles with the invariable molded torus, and
surrounded by a deep dry moat, which is probably yet filled each summer
by the inundation.
Now, of all rare things in the valley of the Nile, a purely secular ruin
is the rarest; and this, with the exception of some foundations of
dwellings here and there, is the first we have seen. It is probably
very, very old; as old as the days of Thothmes III, whose name is found
on some scattered blocks about a quarter of a mile away, and who built
two similar fortresses at Semneh, thirty-five miles above Wady Halfeh.
It may be even a thousand years older still, and date from the time of
Amenemhat III, whose name is also found on a stela near Kobban.[162] For
here was once an ancient city, when Pselcis (now Dakkeh) was but a new
suburb on the opposite bank. The name of this ancient city is lost, but
it is by some supposed to be identical with the Metachompso of
Ptolemy.[163] As the suburb grew the mother town declined, and in time
the suburb became the city and the city became the suburb. The scattered
blocks aforesaid, together with the remains of a small temple, yet mark
the position of the elder city.
The walls of this most curious and interesting fortress have probably
lost much of their original height. They are in some parts thirty feet
thick, and nowhere less than twenty. Vertical on the inside, they are
built at a buttress-slope outside, with additional shallow buttresses at
regular distances. These last, as they can scarcely add to the enormous
strength of the original wall, were probably designed for effect. There
are two entrances to the fortress; one in the center of the north wall,
and one in the south. We enter the inclosure by the last named, and find
ourselves in the midst of an immense parallelogram measuring about four
hundred and fifty feet from east to west, and perhaps three hundred feet
from north to south.
All within these bounds is a wilderness of ruin. The space looks large
enough for a city, and contains what might be the débris of a dozen
cities. We climb huge mounds of rubbish; skirt cataracts of broken
pottery; and stand on the brink of excavated pits honeycombed forty feet
below, with brick foundations. Over these mounds and at the bottom of
these pits swarm men, women, and children, filling and carrying away
basket-loads of rubble. The dust rises in clouds. The noise, the heat,
the confusion, are indescribable. One pauses, bewildered, seeking in
vain to discover in this mighty maze any indication of a plan. It is
only by an effort that one gradually realizes how the place is but a
vast shell, and how all these mounds and pits mark the site of what was
once a huge edifice rising tower above tower to a central keep, such as
we see represented in the battle-subjects of Abou Simbel and Thebes.
That towered edifice and central keep--quarried, broken up, carried away
piecemeal, reduced to powder, and spread over the land as manure--has
now disappeared almost to its foundations. Only the well in the middle
of the inclosure, and the great wall of circuit remain. That wall is
doomed, and will by and by share the fate of the rest. The well, which
must have been very deep, is choked with rubbish to the brim. Meanwhile,
in order to realize what the place in its present condition is like, one
need but imagine how the Tower of London would look if the whole of the
inner buildings--white tower, chapel, armory, governor’s quarters, and
all--were leveled in shapeless ruin, and only the outer walls and moat
were left.
Built up against the inner side of the wall of circuit are the remains
of a series of massive towers, the tops of which, as they are, strangely
enough, shorter than the external structure, can never have communicated
with the battlements, unless by ladders. The finest of these towers,
together with a magnificent fragment of wall, faces the eastern desert.
Going out by the north entrance, we find the sides of the gateway, and
even the steps leading down into the moat, in perfect preservation;
while at the base of the great wall, on the outer side facing the river,
there yet remains a channel or conduit about two feet square, built and
roofed with stone, which in Murray is described as a water-gate.
The sun is high, the heat is overwhelming, the felucca waits; and we
turn reluctantly away, knowing that between here and Cairo we shall see
no more curious relics of the far-off past than this dismantled
stronghold. It is a mere mountain of unburned brick; altogether
unlovely: admirable only for the gigantic strength of its proportions;
pathetic only in the abjectness of its ruin. Yet it brings the lost ages
home to one’s imagination in a way that no temple could ever bring them.
It dispels for a moment the historic glamor of the sculptures, and
compels us to remember those nameless and forgotten millions, of whom
their rulers fashioned soldiers in time of war and builders in time of
peace.
Our adventures by the way are few and far between; and we now rarely
meet a dahabeeyah. Birds are more plentiful than when we were in this
part of the river a few weeks ago. We see immense flights of black and
white cranes congregated at night on the sand-banks; and any number of
quail may be had for the shooting. It is matter for rejoicing when the
idle man goes out with his gun and brings home a full bag; for our last
sheep was killed before we started for Wady Halfeh, and our last poultry
ceased cackling at Abou Simbel.
One morning early, we see a bride taken across the river in a big boat
full of women and girls, who are clapping their hands and shrilling the
tremulous zagharett. The bride--a chocolate beauty with magnificent
eyes--wears a gold brow-pendant and nose-ring, and has her hair newly
plaited in hundreds of tails, finished off at the ends with mud pellets
daubed with yellow ocher. She stands surrounded by her companions, proud
of her finery, and pleased to be stared at by the Ingleezeh.
About this time, also, we see one night a wild sort of festival going on
for some miles along both sides of the river. Watch-fires break out
toward twilight, first on this bank, then on that; becoming brighter and
more numerous as the darkness deepens. By and by, when we are going to
bed, we hear sounds of drumming on the eastern bank, and see from afar a
torchlight procession and dance. The effect of this dance of
torches--for it is only the torches that are visible--is quite diabolic.
The lights flit and leap as if they were alive; circling, clustering,
dispersing, bobbing, poussetting, pursuing each other at a gallop, and
whirling every now and then through the air, like rockets. Late as it
is, we would fain put ashore and see this orgy more nearly; but Reïs
Hassan shakes his head. The natives hereabout are said to be
quarrelsome; and if, as it is probable, they are celebrating the
festival of some local saint, we might be treated as intruders.
Coming at early morning to Gerf Hossayn, we make our way up to the
temple, which is excavated in the face of a limestone cliff, a couple of
hundred feet, perhaps, above the river. A steep path, glaring hot in the
sun, leads to a terrace in the rock; the temple being approached through
the ruins of a built-out portico and an avenue of battered colossi. It
is a gloomy place within--an inferior edition, so to say, of the Great
Temple of Abou Simbel; and of the same date. It consists of a first hall
supported by osiride pillars, a second and smaller hall with square
columns, a smoke-blackened sanctuary, and two side-chambers. The
osiride colossi, which stand twenty feet high without the entablature
over their heads or the pedestal under their feet, are thick-set,
bow-legged, and misshapen. Their faces would seem to have been painted
black originally; while those of the avenue outside have distinctly
Ethiopian features. One seems to detect here, as at Derr and Wady
Sabooah, the work of provincial sculptors; just as at Abou Simbel one
recognizes the master-style of the artists of the Theban Ramesseum.
The side-chambers at Gerf Hossayn are infested with bats. These bats are
the great sight of the place and have their appointed showman. We find
him waiting for us with an end of tarred rope, which he flings, blazing,
into the pitch-dark doorway. For a moment we see the whole ceiling hung,
as it were, with a close fringe of white, filmy-looking pendants. But it
is only for a moment. The next instant the creatures are all in motion,
dashing out madly in our faces like driven snowflakes. We picked up a
dead one afterward, when the rush was over, and examined it by the outer
daylight--a lovely little creature, white and downy, with fine
transparent wings and little pink feet and the prettiest mousey mouth
imaginable.
Bordered with dwarf palms, acacias and henna-bushes, the cliffs between
Gerf Hossayn and Dendoor stand out in detached masses so like ruins that
sometimes we can hardly believe they are rocks. At Dendoor, when the sun
is setting and a delicious gloom is stealing up the valley, we visit a
tiny temple on the western bank. It stands out above the river
surrounded by a wall of inclosure and consists of a single pylon, a
portico, two little chambers and a sanctuary. The whole thing is like an
exquisite toy, so covered with sculptures, so smooth, so new-looking, so
admirably built. Seeing them half by sunset, half by dusk, it matters
not that these delicately wrought bas-reliefs are of the decadence
school.[164] The rosy half-light of an Egyptian after-glow covers a
multitude of sins, and steeps the whole in an atmosphere of romance.
Wondering what has happened to the climate, we wake shivering next
morning an hour or so before break of day, and, for the first time in
several weeks, taste the old, early chill upon the air. When the sun
rises, we find ourselves at Kalabsheh, having passed the limit of the
tropic during the night. Henceforth, no matter how great the heat may be
by day, this chill invariably comes with the dark hour before dawn.
The usual yelling crowd, with the usual beads, baskets, eggs, and
pigeons, for sale, greets us on the shore at Kalabsheh. One of the men
has a fine old two-handed sword in a shabby blue velvet sheath, for
which he asks five napoleons. It looks as if it might have belonged to a
crusader. Some of the women bring buffalo-cream in filthy-looking black
skins slung round their waists like girdles. The cream is excellent; but
the skins temper one’s enjoyment of the unaccustomed dainty.
There is a magnificent temple here, and close by, excavated in the
cliff, a rock-cut speos, the local name of which is Bay-tel-Well. The
sculptures of this famous speos have been more frequently described and
engraved than almost any sculptures in Egypt. The procession of
Ethiopian tribute-bearers, the assault of the Amorite city, the triumph
of Rameses, are familiar not only to every reader of Wilkinson, but to
every visitor passing through the Egyptian rooms of the British Museum.
Notwithstanding the casts that have been taken from them, and the
ill-treatment to which they have been subjected by natives and visitors,
they are still beautiful. The colour of those in the roofless
court-yard, though so perfect when Bonomi executed his admirable
fac-similes, has now almost entirely peeled off; but in the portico and
inner chambers it is yet brilliant. An emerald-green Osiris, a crimson
Anubis, and an Isis of the brightest chrome yellow, are astonishingly
pure and forcibly in quality. As for the flesh-tones of the Anubis, this
was, I believe, the only instance I observed of a true crimson in Egypt
pigments.
Between the speos of Bayt-el-Welly and the neighboring temple of
Kalabsheh there lies about half a mile of hilly pathway and a gulf of
fourteen hundred years. Rameses ushers us into the presence of Augustus,
and we pass, as it were, from an oratory in the great house of Pharaoh
to the presence-chambers of the Cæsars.
But if the decorative work in the presence-chamber of the Cæsars was
anything like the decorative work in the temple of Kalabsheh, then the
taste thereof was of the vilest. Such a masquerade of deities; such
striped and spotted and cross-barred robes; such outrageous
head-dresses; such crude and violent coloring,[165] we have never seen
the like of. As for the goddesses, they are gaudier than the dancing
damsels of Luxur; while the kings balance on their heads diadems
compounded of horns, moons, birds, balls, beetles, lotus-blossoms, asps,
vases, and feathers. The temple, however, is conceived on a grand scale.
It is the Karnak of Nubia. But it is a Karnak that has evidently been
visited by a shock of earthquake far more severe than that which shook
the mighty pillars of the hypostyle hall and flung down the obelisk of
Hatasu. From the river it looks like a huge fortress; but, seen from the
threshold of the main gateway, it is a wilderness of ruin. Fallen
blocks, pillars, capitals, entablatures, lie so extravagantly piled that
there is not one spot in all those halls and courtyards upon which it is
possible to set one’s foot on the level of the original pavement. Here,
again, the earthquake seems to have come before the work was completed.
There are figures outlined on the walls, but never sculptured. Others
have been begun, but never finished. You can see where the chisel
stopped--you can even detect which was the last mark it made on the
surface. One traces here, in fact, the four processes of wall
decoration. In some places the space is squared off and ruled by the
mechanic; in others, the subject is ready drawn within those spaces by
the artist. Here the sculptor has carried it a stage farther; yonder the
painter has begun to color it.
More interesting, however, than aught else at Kalabsheh is the Greek
inscription of Silco of Ethiopia.[166] This inscription--made famous by
the commentaries of Niebuhr and Letronne--was discovered by M. Gau in
A.D. 1818. It consists of twenty-one lines very neatly written in red
ink, and it dates from the sixth century of the Christian era. It
commences thus:
I, Silco, puissant king of the Nubians and all the Ethiopians,
I came twice as far as Talmis[167] and Taphis.[168]
I fought against the Blemyes,[169] and God granted me the victory.
I vanquished them a second time; and the first time
I established myself completely with my troops.
I vanquished them, and they supplicated me.
I made peace with them; and they swore to me by their idols.
I trusted them; because they are a people of good faith.
Then I returned to my dominions in the Upper Country.
For I am a king.
Not only am I no follower in the train of other kings,
But I go before them.
As for those who seek strife against me,
I give them no peace in their homes till they entreat my pardon.
For I am a lion on the plains, and a goat upon the mountains.
Etc.
The historical value of this inscription is very great. It shows that in
the sixth century, while the native inhabitants of this part of the
valley of the Nile yet adhered to the ancient Egyptian faith, the
Ethiopians of the south were professedly Christian.
The descendants of the Blemmys are a fine race; tall, strong, and of a
rich chocolate complexion. Strolling through the village at sunset, we
see the entire population--old men sitting at their doors; young men
lounging and smoking; children at play. The women, with glittering white
teeth and liquid eyes, and a profusion of gold and silver ornaments on
neck and brow, come out with their little brown babies astride on hip or
shoulder, to stare as we go by. One sick old woman, lying outside her
hut on a palm-wood couch, raises herself for a moment on her elbow--then
sinks back with a weary sigh and turns her face to the wall. The mud
dwellings here are built in and out of a maze of massive stone
foundations, the remains of buildings once magnificent. Some of these
walls are built in concave courses; each course of stones, that is to
say, being depressed in the center and raised at the angles; which mode
of construction was adopted in order to offer less resistance when
shaken by earthquake.[170]
We observe more foundations built thus at Tafah, where we arrive next
morning. As the mason’s work at Tafah is of late Roman date, it follows
that earthquakes were yet frequent in Nubia at a period long subsequent
to the great shock of B.C. 27, mentioned by Eusebius. Travelers are too
ready to ascribe everything in the way of ruin to the fury of Cambyses
and the pious rage of the early Christians. Nothing, however, is easier
than to distinguish between the damage done to the monuments by the hand
of man and the damage caused by subterraneous upheaval. Mutilation is
the rule in the one case; displacement in the other. At Denderah, for
example, the injury done is wholly willful; at Abou Simbel it is wholly
accidental; at Karnak it is both willful and accidental. As for
Kalabsheh, it is clear that no such tremendous havoc could have been
effected by human means without the aid of powerful rams, fire, or
gunpowder; any of which must have left unmistakable traces.
At Tafah there are two little temples; one in picturesque ruin, one
quite perfect, and now used as a stable. There are also a number of
stone foundations, separate, quadrangular, subdivided into numerous
small chambers, and inclosed in boundary walls, some of which are built
in the concave courses just named. These sub-structions, of which the
painter counted eighteen, have long been the puzzle of travelers.[171]
Tafah is charmingly placed; and the seven miles which divide it from
Kalabsheh--once, no doubt, the scene of a cataract--are perhaps the most
picturesque on this side of Wady Halfeh. Rocky islets in the river;
palm groves, acacias, carobs, henna and castor-berry bushes and all
kinds of flowering shrubs, along the edges of the banks; fantastic
precipices riven and pinnacled, here rising abruptly from the water’s
edge and there from the sandy plain, make lovely sketches whichever way
one turns. There are gazelles, it is said, in the ravines behind Tafah;
and one of the natives--a truculent fellow in ragged shirt and dirty
white turban--tells how, at a distance of three hours up a certain glen,
there is another birbeh, larger than either of these, in the plain and a
great standing statue taller than three men. Here, then, if the tale be
true, is another ready-made discovery for whoever may care to undertake
it.
This same native, having sold a necklace to the idle man and gone away
content with his bargain, comes back by and by with half the village at
his heels, requiring double price. This modest demand being refused, he
rages up and down like a maniac; tears off his turban; goes through a
wild manual exercise with his spear; then sits down in stately silence,
with his friends and neighbors drawn up in a semicircle behind him.
This, it seems, is Nubian for a challenge. He has thrown down his
gantlet in form and demands trial by combat. The noisy crowd, meanwhile,
increases every moment. Reïs Hassan looks grave, fearing a possible
fracas; and the idle man, who is reading the morning service down below
(for it is on a Sunday morning) can scarcely be heard for the clamor
outside. In this emergency it occurs to the writer to send a message
ashore informing these gentlemen that the howadjis are holding mosque in
the dahabeeyah and entreating them to be quiet till the hour of prayer
is past. The effect of the message, strange to say, is instantaneous.
The angry voices are at once hushed. The challenger puts on his turban.
The assembled spectators squat in respectful silence on the bank. A
whole hour goes by thus, so giving the storm time to blow over; and when
the idle man reappears on deck his would-be adversary comes forward
quite pleasantly to discuss the purchase afresh.
It matters little how the affair ended; but I believe he was offered his
necklace back in exchange for the money paid and preferred to abide by
his bargain. It is as evidence of the sincerity of the religions
sentiment in the minds of a semi-savage people,[172] that I have thought
the incident worth telling.
We are now less than forty miles from Philæ; but the head wind is always
against us and the men’s bread is exhausted and there is no flour to be
bought in these Nubian villages. The poor fellows swept out the last
crumbs from the bottom of their bread-chest three or four days ago and
are now living on quarter-rations of lentil soup and a few dried dates
bought at Wady Halfeh. Patient and depressed, they crouch silently
beside their oars, or forget their hunger in sleep. For ourselves, it is
painful to witness their need and still more painful to be unable to
help them. Talhamy, whose own stores are at a low ebb, vows he can do
nothing. It would take his few remaining tins of preserved meat to feed
fifteen men for two days, and of flour he has barely enough for the
howadjis. Hungry? well, yes--no doubt they are hungry. But what of that?
They are Arabs; and Arabs bear hunger as camels bear thirst. It is
nothing new to them. They have often been hungry before--they will often
be hungry again. Enough! It is not for the ladies to trouble themselves
about such fellows as these!
Excellent advice, no doubt; but hard to follow. Not to be troubled and
not to do what little we can for the poor lads, is impossible. When that
little means laying violent hands upon Talhamy’s reserve of eggs and
biscuits and getting up lotteries for prizes of chocolate and tobacco,
that worthy evidently considers that we have taken leave of our wits.
Under a burning sky we touch for an hour or two at Gertássee and then
push on for Dabôd. The limestone quarries at Gertássee are full of
votive sculptures and inscriptions; and the little ruin--a mere cluster
of graceful columns supporting a fragment of cornice--stands high on the
brink of a cliff overhanging the river. Take it as you will, from above
or below, looking north or looking south, it makes a charming sketch.
If transported to Dabôd on that magic carpet of the fairy tale, one
would take it for a ruin on the “beached margent” of some placid lake in
dreamland. It lies between two bends of the river, which here flows
wide, showing no outlet and seeming to be girdled by mountains and
palm-groves. The temple is small and uninteresting; begun, like Dakkeh,
by an Ethiopian king and finished by Ptolemies and Cæsars. The one
curious thing about it is a secret cell, most cunningly devised.
Adjoining the sanctuary is a dark side-chamber; in the floor of the
side-chamber is a pit, once paved over; in one corner of the pit is a
man-hole opening into a narrow passage; and in the narrow passage are
steps leading up to a secret chamber constructed in the thickness of the
wall. We saw other secret chambers in other temples,[173] but not one in
which the old approaches were so perfectly preserved.
From Dabôd to Philæ is but ten miles; and we are bound for Torrigûr,
which is two miles nearer. Now Torrigûr is that same village at the foot
of the beautiful sand-drift, near which we moored on our way up the
river; and here we are to stay two days, followed by at least a week at
Philæ. No sooner, therefore, have we reached Torrigûr than Reïs Hassan
and three sailors start for Assûan to buy flour. Old Ali, Riskalli and
Mûsa, whose homes lie in the villages round about, get leave of absence
for a week; and we find ourselves reduced all at once to a crew of five,
with only Khaleefeh in command. Five, however, are as good as fifty when
the dahabeeyah lies moored and there is nothing to do; and our five,
having succeeded in buying some flabby Nubian cakes and green lentils,
are now quite happy. So the painter pitches his tent on the top of the
sand-drift; and the writer sketches the ruined convent opposite; and
L---- and the little lady write no end of letters; and the idle man,
with Mehemet Ali for a retriever, shoots quail, and everybody is
satisfied.
Hapless idle man! hapless but homicidal. If he had been content to shoot
only quail, and had not taken to shooting babies! What possessed him to
do it? Not--not let us hope--an ill-directed ambition foiled of
crocodiles! He went serene and smiling, with his gun under his arm, and
Mehemet Ali in his wake. Who so light of heart as that idle man? Who so
light of heel as that turbaned retriever? We heard our sportsman popping
away presently in the barley. It was a pleasant sound, for we knew his
aim was true. “Every shot,” said we, “means a bird.” We little dreamed
that one of those shots meant a baby.
All at once a woman screamed. It was a sharp, sudden scream, following a
shot--a scream with a ring of horror in it. Instantly it was caught up
from point to point, growing in volume and seeming to be echoed from
every direction at once. At the same moment the bank became alive with
human beings. They seemed to spring from the soil--women shrieking and
waving their arms; men running; all making for the same goal. The writer
heard the scream, saw the rush, and knew at once that a gun accident had
happened.
A few minutes of painful suspense followed. Then Mehemet Ali appeared,
tearing back at the top of his speed; and presently--perhaps five
minutes later, though it seemed like twenty--came the idle man; walking
very slowly and defiantly, with his head up, his arms folded, his gun
gone, and an immense rabble at his heels.
Our scanty crew, armed with sticks, flew at once to the rescue, and
brought him off in safety. We then learned what had happened.
A flight of quail had risen; and as quail fly low, skimming the surface
of the grain and diving down again almost immediately, he had taken a
level aim. At the instant that he fired, and in the very path of the
quail, a woman and child who had been squatting in the barley, sprang up
screaming. He at once saw the coming danger; and, with admirable
presence of mind, drew the charge of his second barrel. He then hid his
cartridge-box and hugged his gun, determined to hold it as long as
possible. The next moment he was surrounded, overpowered, had the gun
wrenched from his grasp, and received a blow on the back with a stone.
Having captured the gun, one or two of the men let go. It was then that
he shook off the rest and came back to the boat. Mehemet Ali at the same
time flew to call a rescue. He, too, came in for some hard knocks,
besides having his shirt rent and his turban torn off his head.
Here were we, meanwhile, with less than half our crew, a private war on
our hands, no captain, and one of our three guns in the hands of the
enemy. What a scene it was! A whole village, apparently a very
considerable village, swarming on the bank; all hurrying to and fro; all
raving, shouting, gesticulating. If we had been on the verge of a fracas
at Tafah, here we were threatened with a siege.
Drawing in the plank between the boat and the shore, we held a hasty
council of war.
The woman being unhurt, and the child, if hurt at all, hurt very
slightly, we felt justified in assuming an injured tone, calling the
village to account for a case of cowardly assault, and demanding instant
restitution of the gun. We accordingly sent Talhamy to parley with the
head man of the place and peremptorily demand the gun. We also bade him
add--and this we regarded as a master-stroke of policy--that if due
submission was immediately made, the howadji, one of whom was a Hakeem,
would permit the father to bring his child on board to have its hurts
attended to.
Outwardly indifferent, inwardly not a little anxious, we waited the
event. Talhamy’s back being toward the river, we had the whole
semicircle of swarthy faces full in view--bent brows, flashing eyes,
glittering teeth; all anger, all scorn, all defiance. Suddenly the
expression of the faces changed--the change beginning with those nearest
the speaker, and spreading gradually outward. It was as if a wave had
passed over them. We knew then that our _coup_ was made. Talhamy
returned. The villagers crowded round their leaders, deliberating.
Numbers now began to sit down; and when a Nubian sits down, you may be
sure that he is no longer dangerous.
Presently--after perhaps a quarter of an hour--the gun was brought back
uninjured, and an elderly man carrying a blue bundle appeared on the
bank. The plank was now put across; the crowd was kept off; and the man
with the bundle, and three or four others, were allowed to pass.
The bundle being undone, a little brown imp of about four years of age,
with shaven head and shaggy scalp-lock, was produced. He whimpered at
first, seeing the strange white faces; but when offered a fig, forgot
his terrors, and sat munching it like a monkey. As for his wounds, they
were literally skin-deep, the shot having but slightly grazed his
shoulders in four or five places. The idle man, however, solemnly
sponged the scratches with warm water, and L---- covered them with
patches of sticking-plaster. Finally, the father was presented with a
napoleon; the patient was wrapped in one of his murderer’s shirts; and
the first act of the tragedy ended. The second and third acts were to
come.
When the painter and the idle man talked the affair over, they agreed
that it was expedient, for the protection of future travelers, to lodge
a complaint against the village; and this mainly on account of the
treacherous blow dealt from behind, at a time when the idle man (who had
not once attempted to defend himself) was powerless in the hands of a
mob. They therefore went next day to Assûan; and the governor, charming
as ever, promised that justice should be done. Meanwhile we moved the
dahabeeyah to Philæ, and there settled down for a week’s sketching.
Next evening came a woful deputation from Torrigûr, entreating
forgiveness and stating that fifteen villagers had been swept off to
prison.
The idle man explained that he no longer had anything to do with it;
that the matter, in short, was in the hands of justice, and would be
dealt with according to law. Hereupon the spokesman gathered up a
handful of imaginary dust and made believe to scatter it on his head.
“O dragoman!” he said, “tell the howadji that there is no law but his
pleasure and no justice but the will of the governor!”
Summoned next morning to give evidence, the idle man went betimes to
Assûan, where he was received in private by the governor and mudîr.
Pipes and coffee were handed and the usual civilities exchanged. The
governor then informed his guest that fifteen men of Torrigûr had been
arrested; and that fourteen of them unanimously identified the fifteenth
as the one who struck the blow.
“And now,” said the governor, “before we send for the prisoners it will
be as well to decide on the sentence. What does his excellency wish done
to them?”
The idle man was puzzled. How could he offer an opinion, being ignorant
of the Egyptian civil code? and how could the sentence be decided upon
before the trial?
The governor smiled serenely.
“But,” he said, “this is the trial.”
Being an Englishman, it necessarily cost the idle man an effort to
realize the full force of this explanation--an explanation which, in its
sublime simplicity, epitomized the whole system of the judicial
administration of Egyptian law. He hastened, however, to explain that he
cherished no resentment against the culprit or the villagers, and that
his only wish was to frighten them into a due respect for travelers in
general.
The governor hereupon invited the mudîr to suggest a sentence; and the
mudîr--taking into consideration, as he said, his excellency’s lenient
disposition--proposed to award to the fourteen innocent men one month’s
imprisonment each; and to the real offender two month’s imprisonment,
with a hundred and fifty blows of the bastinado.
Shocked at the mere idea of such a sentence, the idle man declared that
he must have the innocent set at liberty; but consented that the
culprit, for the sake of example, should be sentenced to the one hundred
and fifty blows--the punishment to be remitted after the first few
strokes had been dealt. Word was now given for the prisoners to be
brought in.
The jailer marched first, followed by two soldiers. Then came the
fifteen prisoners--I am ashamed to write it!--chained neck to neck, in
single file.
One can imagine how the idle man felt at this moment.
Sentence being pronounced, the fourteen looked as if they could hardly
believe their ears; while the fifteenth, though condemned to his one
hundred and fifty strokes (“seventy-five to each foot,” specified the
governor), was overjoyed to be let off so easily.
He was then flung down; his feet were fastened soles uppermost; and two
soldiers proceeded to execute the sentence. As each blow fell, he cried:
“God save the governor! God save the mudîr! God save the howadji!”
When the sixth stroke had been dealt the idle man turned to the governor
and formally interceded for the remission of the rest of the sentence.
The governor as formally granted the request, and the prisoners, weeping
with joy, were set at liberty.
The governor, the mudîr, and the idle man then parted with a profusion
of compliments; the governor protesting that his only wish was to be
agreeable to the English, and that the whole village should have been
bastinadoed had his excellency desired it.
* * * * *
We spent eight enchanted days at Philæ, and it so happened, when the
afternoon of the eighth came round, that for the last few hours the
writer was alone on the island. Alone, that is to say, with only a
sailor in attendance, which was virtually solitude; and Philæ is a place
to which solitude adds an inexpressible touch of pathos and remoteness.
It has been a hot day, and there is dead calm on the river. My last
sketch finished, I wander slowly round from spot to spot, saying
farewell to Pharaoh’s bed--to the painted columns--to the terrace, and
palm, and shrine, and familiar point of view. I peep once again into the
mystic chamber of Osiris. I see the sun set for the last time from the
roof of the Temple of Isis. Then, when all that wondrous flush of rose
and gold has died away, comes the warm after-glow. No words can paint
the melancholy beauty of Philæ at this hour. The surrounding mountains
stand out jagged and purple against a pale amber sky. The Nile is
glassy. Not a breath, not a bubble, troubles the inverted landscape.
Every palm is twofold; every stone is doubled. The big bowlders in
mid-stream are reflected so perfectly that it is impossible to tell
where the rock ends and the water begins. The temples, meanwhile, have
turned to a subdued golden bronze; and the pylons are peopled with
shapes that glow with fantastic life, and look ready to step down from
their places.
The solitude is perfect, and there is a magical stillness in the air. I
hear a mother crooning to her baby on the neighboring island--a sparrow
twittering in its little nest in the capital of a column below my
feet--a vulture screaming plaintively among the rocks in the far
distance.
I look; I listen; I promise myself that I will remember it all in years
to come--all the solemn hills, these silent colonnades, these deep,
quiet spaces of shadow, these sleeping palms. Lingering till it is all
but dark, I at last bid them farewell, fearing lest I may behold them no
more.
CHAPTER XX.
SILSILIS AND EDFU.
Going, it cost us four days to struggle up from Assûan to Mahatta;
returning, we slid down--thanks to our old friend the sheik of the
cataract--in one short, sensational half-hour. He came--flat-faced,
fishy-eyed, fatuous as ever--with his head tied up in the same old
yellow handkerchief, and with the same chibouque in his mouth. He
brought with him a following of fifty stalwart shellalees; and under his
arm he carried a tattered red flag. This flag, on which were embroidered
the crescent and star, he hoisted with much solemnity at the prow.
Consigned thus to the protection of the prophet; windows and
tambooshy[174] shuttered up; doors closed; breakables removed to a place
of safety, and everything made snug, as if for a storm at sea, we put
off from Mahatta at seven A.M. on a lovely morning in the middle of
March. The Philæ, instead of threading her way back through the old
channels, strikes across to the Libyan side, making straight for the Big
Bab--that formidable rapid which as yet we have not seen. All last night
we heard its voice in the distance; now, at every stroke of the oars,
that rushing sound draws nearer.
The sheik of the cataract is our captain, and his men are our sailors
to-day; Reïs Hassan and the crew having only to sit still and look on.
The shellalees, meanwhile, row swiftly and steadily. Already the river
seems to be running faster than usual; already the current feels
stronger under our keel. And now, suddenly, there is sparkle and foam on
the surface yonder--there are rocks ahead; rocks to right and left;
eddies everywhere. The sheik lays down his pipe, kicks off his shoes,
and goes himself to the prow. His second in command is stationed at the
top of the stairs leading to the upper deck. Six men take the tiller.
The rowers are re-enforced, and sit two to each oar.
In the midst of these preparations, when everybody looks grave and even
the Arabs are silent, we all at once find ourselves at the mouth of a
long and narrow strait--a kind of ravine between two walls of
rock--through which, at a steep incline, there rushes a roaring mass of
waters. The whole Nile, in fact, seems to be thundering in wild waves
down that terrible channel.
It seems, at first sight, impossible that any dahabeeyah should venture
that way and not be dashed to pieces. Neither does there seem room for
boats and oars to pass. The sheik, however, gives the word--his second
echoes it--the men at the helm obey. They put the dahabeeyah straight at
that monster mill-race. For one breathless second we seem to tremble on
the edge of the fall. Then the Philæ plunges in headlong!
We see the whole boat slope down bodily under our feet. We feel the
leap--the dead fall--the staggering rush forward. Instantly the waves
are foaming and boiling up on all sides, flooding the lower deck and
covering the upper deck with spray. The men ship their oars, leaving all
to helm and current; and, despite the hoarse tumult, we distinctly hear
those oars scrape the rocks on either side.
Now the sheik, looking for the moment quite majestic, stands motionless
with uplifted arm; for at the end of the pass there is a sharp turn to
the right--as sharp as a street corner in a narrow London thoroughfare.
Can the Philæ, measuring one hundred feet from stem to stern, ever round
that angle in safety? Suddenly, the uplifted arm is waved--the sheik
thunders “Daffet!” (“helm”)--the men, steady and prompt, put the helm
about--the boat, answering splendidly to the word of command, begins to
turn before we are out of the rocks; then, shooting round the corner at
exactly the right moment, comes out safe and sound, with only an oar
broken!
Great is the rejoicing. Reïs Hassan, in the joy of his heart, runs to
shake hands all round; the Arabs burst into a chorus of “Taibs” and
“Salames;” and Talhamy, coming up all smiles, is set upon by half a
dozen playful shellalees, who snatch his keffîyeh from his head and
carry it off as a trophy. The only one unmoved is the sheik of the
cataract. His momentary flash of energy over, he slouches back with the
old stolid face; slips on his shoes; drops on his heels; lights his
pipe; and looks more like an owl than ever.
We had fancied till now that the cataract Arabs for their own profit and
travelers for their own glory had grossly exaggerated the dangers of the
Big Bab. But such is not the case. The Big Bab is in truth a serious
undertaking; so serious that I doubt whether any English boatman would
venture to take such a boat down such a rapid and between such rocks as
the shellalee Arabs took the Philæ that day.
All dahabeeyahs, however, are not so lucky. Of thirty-four that shot the
fall this season, several had been slightly damaged and one was so
disabled that she had to lie up at Assûan for a fortnight to be mended.
Of actual shipwreck, or injury to life and limb, I do not suppose there
is any real danger. The shellalees are wonderfully cool and skillful and
have abundant practice. Our painter, it is true, preferred rolling up
his canvases and carrying them round on dry land by way of the desert;
but this was a precaution that neither he nor any of us would have
dreamed of taking on account of our own personal safety. There is, in
fact, little, if anything, to fear; and the traveler who foregoes the
descent of the cataract foregoes a very curious sight and a very
exciting adventure.
At Assûan we bade farewell to Nubia and the blameless Ethiopians and
found ourselves once more traversing the Nile of Egypt. If instead of
five miles of cataract we had crossed five hundred miles of sea or
desert, the change could not have been more complete. We left behind us
a dreamy river, a silent shore, an ever-present desert. Returning, we
plunged back at once into the midst of a fertile and populous region.
All day long, now, we see boats on the river; villages on the banks;
birds on the wing; husbandmen on the land; men and women, horses, camels
and asses, passing perpetually to and fro on the towing-path. There is
always something moving, something doing. The Nile is running low and
the shâdûfs--three deep, now--are in full swing from morning till night.
Again the smoke goes up from clusters of unseen huts at close of day.
Again we hear the dogs barking from hamlet to hamlet in the still hours
of the night. Again, toward sunset, we see troops of girls coming clown
to the river side with their water-jars on their heads. Those Arab
maidens, when they stand with garments tightly tucked up and just their
feet in the water, dipping the goolah at arm’s length in the fresher
gush of the current, almost tempt one’s pencil into the forbidden paths
of caricature.
Kom Ombo is a magnificent torso. It was as large once as
Denderah--perhaps larger; for, being on the same grand scale, it was a
double temple and dedicated to two gods, Horus and Sebek;[175] the hawk
and the crocodile. Now there remain only a few giant columns, buried to
within eight or ten feet of their gorgeous capitals; a superb fragment
of architrave; one broken wave of sculptured cornice and some fallen
blocks graven with the names of Ptolemies and Cleopatras.
A great double doorway, a hall of columns and a double sanctuary are
said to be yet perfect, though no longer accessible. The roofing-blocks
of three halls, one behind the other, and a few capitals are yet visible
behind the portico.
What more may lie buried below the surface none can tell. We only know
that an ancient city and a mediæval hamlet have been slowly engulfed;
and that an early temple, contemporary with the Temple of Amada, once
stood within the sacred inclosure. The sand here has been accumulating
for two thousand years. It lies forty feet deep, and has never been
excavated. It will never be excavated now, for the Nile is gradually
sapping the bank and carrying away piecemeal from below what the desert
has buried from above. Half of one noble pylon--a cataract of sculptured
blocks--strews the steep slope from top to bottom. The other half hangs
suspended on the brink of the precipice. It cannot hang so much longer.
A day must soon come when it will collapse with a crash and thunder down
like its fellow.
Between Kom Ombo and Silsilis, we lost our painter. Not that he either
strayed or was stolen; but that, having accomplished the main object of
his journey, he was glad to seize the first opportunity of getting back
quickly to Cairo. That opportunity--represented by a noble duke
honeymooning with a steam-tug--happened half-way between Kom Ombo and
Silsilis. Painter and duke being acquaintances of old, the matter was
soon settled. In less than a quarter of an hour, the big picture and all
the paraphernalia of the studio were transported from the stern-cabin of
the Philæ to the stern-cabin of the steam-tug; and our painter--fitted
out with an extempore canteen, a cook-boy, a waiter, and his fair share
of the necessaries of life--was soon disappearing gayly in the distance
at the rate of twenty miles an hour. If the happy couple, so weary of
head-winds, so satiated with temples, followed that vanishing steam-tug
with eyes of melancholy longing, the writer at least asked nothing
better than to drift on with the Philæ.
Still, the Nile is long, and life is short; and the tale told by our
log-book was certainly not encouraging. When we reached Silsilis on the
morning of the 17th of March the north wind had been blowing with only
one day’s intermission since the 1st of February.
At Silsilis, one looks in vain for traces of that great barrier which
once blocked the Nile at this point. The stream is narrow here, and the
sand-stone cliffs come down on both sides to the water’s edge. In some
places there is space for a footpath; in others, none. There are also
some sunken rocks in the bed of the river--upon one of which, by the
way, a Cook’s steamer had struck two days before. But of such a mass as
could have dammed the Nile, and, by its disruption, not only have caused
the river to desert its bed at Philæ,[176] but have changed the whole
physical and climatic conditions of Lower Nubia, there is no sign
whatever.
The Arabs here show a rock fantastically quarried in the shape of a
gigantic umbrella, to which they pretend some king of old attached one
end of a chain with which he barred the Nile. It may be that in this
apocryphal legend there survives some memory of the ancient barrier.
The cliffs of the western bank are rich in memorial niches, votive
shrines, tombs, historical stela, and inscriptions. These last date from
the sixth to the twenty-second dynasties. Some of the tombs and alcoves
are very curious. Ranged side by side in a long row close above the
river, and revealing glimpses of seated figures and gaudy decorations
within, they look like private boxes with their occupants. In most of
these we found mutilated triads of gods,[177] sculptured and painted;
and in one larger than the rest were three niches, each containing three
deities.
The great speos of Horemheb, the last Pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty,
lies farthest north, and the memorial shrines of the Rameses family lie
farthest south of the series. The first is a long gallery, like a
cloister supported on four square columns; and is excavated parallel
with the river. The walls inside and out are covered with delicately
executed sculptures in low relief, some of which yet retain traces of
color. The triumph of Horemheb returning from conquest in the land of
Kush, and the famous subject on the south wall described by
Mariette[178] as one of the few really lovely things in Egyptian art
have been too often engraved to need description. The votive shrines of
the Rameses family are grouped altogether in a picturesque nook green
with bushes to the water’s edge. There are three, the work of Seti I,
Rameses II, and Menepthah--lofty alcoves, each like a little proscenium,
with painted cornices and side pillars, and groups of kings and gods
still bright with color. In most of the votive sculptures of Silsilis
there figure two deities but rarely seen elsewhere; namely Sebek, the
crocodile god, and Hapi-Mu, the lotus-crowned god of the Nile. This last
was the tutelary deity of the spot, and was worshiped at Silsilis with
special rites. Hymns, in his honor are found carved here and there upon
the rocks.[179] Most curious of all, however, is a goddess named
Ta-ur-t,[180] represented in one of the side subjects of the shrine of
Rameses II. This charming person, who has the body of a hippopotamus and
the face of a woman, wears a tie-wig and a robe of state with five
capes, and looks like a cross between a lord chancellor and a coachman.
Behind her stand Thoth and Nut; all three receiving the homage of Queen
Nefertari, who advances with an offering of two sistrums. As a
hippopotamus crowned with the disk and plumes, we had met with this
goddess before. She is not uncommon as an amulet; and the writer had
already sketched her at Philæ, where she occupies a prominent place in
the façade of the Mammisi. But the grotesque elegance of her attire at
Silsilis is, I imagine, quite unique.
[Illustration: TA-UR-T (SILSILIS).]
[Illustration: TA-UR-T (PHILÆ).]
The interest of the western bank centers in its sculptures and
inscriptions; the interest of the eastern bank in its quarries. We rowed
over to a point nearly opposite the shrines of the Ramessides, and,
climbing a steep verge of débris, came to the mouth of a narrow cutting
between walls of solid rock from forty to fifty feet in height. These
walls are smooth, clean-cut, and faultlessly perpendicular. The color of
the sand-stone is rich amber. The passage is about ten feet in width and
perhaps four hundred in length. Seen at a little after midday, with one
side in shadow, the other in sunlight, and a narrow ribbon of blue sky
overhead, it is like nothing else in the world; unless, perhaps, the
entrance to Petra.
Following this passage we came presently to an immense area, at least as
large as Belgrave Square; beyond which, separated by a thin partition of
rock, opened a second and somewhat smaller area. On the walls of these
huge amphitheaters, the chisel-marks and wedge-holes were as fresh as if
the last blocks had been taken hence but yesterday; yet it is some two
thousand years since the place last rang to the blows of the mallet, and
echoed back the voices of the workmen. From the days of the Theban
Pharaohs to the days of the Ptolemies and Cæsars, those echoes can never
have been silent. The temples of Karnak and Luxor, of Gournah, of
Medinet Habu, of Esneh and Edfu and Hermonthis, all came from here and
from the quarries on the opposite side of the river.[181]
Returning, we climbed long hills of chips; looked down into valleys of
débris; and came back at last to the river side by way of an ancient
inclined plane, along which the blocks were slid down to the transport
boats below. But the most wonderful thing about Silsilis is the way in
which the quarrying has been done. In all these halls and passages and
amphitheaters the sandstone has been sliced out smooth and straight,
like hay from a hay-rick. Everywhere the blocks have been taken out
square; and everywhere the best of the stone has been extracted and the
worst left. Where it was fine in grain and even in color it has been cut
with the nicest economy. Where it was whitish, or brownish, or
traversed by veins of violet, it has been left standing. Here and there
we saw places where the lower part had been removed and the upper part
left projecting, like the overhanging stories of our old mediæval timber
houses. Compared with this pussiant and perfect quarrying, our
rough-and-ready blasting looks like the work of savages.
Struggling hard against the wind, we left Silsilis that same afternoon.
The wrecked steamer was now more than half under water. She had broken
her back and begun filling immediately, with all Cook’s party on board.
Being rowed ashore with what necessaries they could gather together
these unfortunates had been obliged to encamp in tents borrowed from the
mudîr of the district. Luckily for them, a couple of homeward-bound
dahabeeyahs came by next morning, and took off as many as they could
accommodate. The duke’s steam-tug received the rest. The tents were
still there, and a gang of natives, under the superintendence of the
mudîr, were busy getting off all that could be saved from the wreck.
As evening drew on, our head-wind became a hurricane; and that hurricane
lasted day and night for thirty-six hours. All this time the Nile was
driving up against the current in great rollers, like rollers on the
Cornish coast when tide and wind set together from the west. To hear
them roaring past in the darkness of the night--to feel the Philæ
rocking, shivering, straining at her mooring-ropes and bumping
perpetually against the bank, was far from pleasant. By day the scene
was extraordinary. There were no clouds, but the air was thick with
sand, through which the sun glimmered feebly. Some palms, looking gray
and ghostlike on the bank above, bent as if they must break before the
blast. The Nile was yeasty and flecked with brown foam, large lumps of
which came swirling every now and then against our cabin windows. The
opposite bank was simply nowhere. Judging only by what was visible from
the deck one would have vowed that the dahabeeyah was moored against an
open coast with an angry sea coming in.
The wind fell about five A.M. the second day; when the men at once took
to their oars and by breakfast-time brought us to Edfu. Nothing now
could be more delicious than the weather. It was a cool, silvery, misty
morning--such a morning as one never knows in Nubia, where the sun is
no sooner up than one is plunged at once into the full blaze and stress
of day. There were donkeys waiting for us on the bank and our way lay
for about a mile through barley flats and cotton plantations. The
country looked rich; the people smiling and well conditioned. We met a
troop of them going down to the dahabeeyah with sheep, pigeons, poultry
and a young ox for sale. Crossing a back-water, bridged by a few rickety
palm-trunks, we now approached the village, which is perched, as usual,
on the mounds of the ancient city. Meanwhile the great pylons--seeming
to grow larger every moment--rose, creamy in light, against a soft-blue
sky.
Riding through lanes of huts we came presently to an open space and a
long flight of roughly built steps in front of the temple. At the top of
these steps we were standing on the level of the modern village. At the
bottom we saw the massive pavement that marked the level of the ancient
city. From that level rose the pylons which even from afar off had
looked so large. We now found that those stupendous towers not only
soared to a height of about seventy-five feet above our heads, but
plunged down to a depth of at least forty more beneath our feet.
Ten years ago nothing was visible of the great Temple of Edfu save the
tops of these pylons. The rest of the building was as much lost to sight
as if the earth had opened and swallowed it. Its court-yards were choked
with foul débris. Its sculptured chambers were buried under forty feet
of soil. Its terraced roof was a maze of closely packed huts, swarming
with human beings, poultry, dogs, kine, asses and vermin. Thanks to the
indefatigable energy of Mariette, these Augean stables were cleansed
some thirty years ago. Writing himself of this tremendous task, he says:
“I caused to be demolished the sixty-four houses which encumbered the
roof, as well as twenty-eight more which approached too near the outer
wall of the temple. When the whole shall be isolated from its present
surroundings by a massive wall, the work of restoration at Edfu will be
accomplished.”[182]
That wall has not yet been built; but the encroaching mound has been
cut clean away all round the building, now standing free in a deep open
space, the sides of which are in some places as perpendicular as the
quarried cliffs of Silsilis. In the midst of this pit, like a risen god
issuing from the grave, the huge building stands before us in the
sunshine, erect and perfect. The effect at first sight is overwhelming.
Through the great doorway, fifty feet in height, we catch glimpses of a
grand court-yard, and of a vista of doorways, one behind another. Going
slowly down, we see farther into those dark and distant halls at every
step. At the same time the pylons, covered with gigantic sculptures,
tower higher and higher, and seem to shut out the sky. The custode--a
pigmy of six foot two, in semi-European dress--looks up grinning,
expectant of backshîsh. For there is actually a custode here, and, which
is more to the purpose, a good strong gate, through which neither
pilfering visitors nor pilfering Arabs can pass unnoticed.
Who enters that gate crosses the threshold of the past, and leaves two
thousand years behind him. In these vast courts and storied halls all is
unchanged. Every pavement, every column, every stair, is in its place.
The roof, but for a few roofing-stones missing just over the sanctuary,
is not only uninjured, but in good repair. The hieroglyphic inscriptions
are as sharp and legible as the day they were cut. If here and there a
capital, or the face of a human-headed deity, has been mutilated, these
are blemishes which at first one scarcely observes, and which in no wise
mar the wonderful effect of the whole. We cross that great court-yard in
the full blaze of the morning sunlight. In the colonnades on either side
there is shade, and in the pillared portico beyond, a darkness as of
night; save where a patch of deep-blue sky burns through a square
opening in the roof, and is matched by a corresponding patch of blinding
light on the pavement below. Hence we pass on through a hall of columns,
two transverse corridors, a side chapel, a series of pitch-dark side
chambers, and a sanctuary. Outside all these, surrounding the actual
temple on three sides, runs an external corridor open to the sky, and
bounded by a superb wall full forty feet in height. When I have said
that the entrance-front, with its twin pylons and central doorway,
measures two hundred and fifty feet in width by one hundred and
twenty-five feet in height; that the first court-yard measures more than
one hundred and sixty feet in length by one hundred and forty in width;
that the entire length of the building is four hundred and fifty feet,
and that it covers an area of eighty thousand square feet, I have stated
facts of a kind which convey no more than a general idea of largeness to
the ordinary reader. Of the harmony of the proportions, of the amazing
size and strength of the individual parts, of the perfect workmanship,
of the fine grain and creamy amber of the stone, no description can do
more than suggest an indefinite notion.
Edfu and Denderah may almost be called twin temples. They belong to the
same period. They are built very nearly after the same plan.[183] They
are even allied in a religious sense; for the myths of Horus[184] and
Hathor[185] are interdependent; the one being the complement of the
other. Thus, in the inscriptions of Edfu we find perpetual allusion to
the cultus of Denderah, and vice versa. Both Edfu and Denderah are rich
in inscriptions; but as the extent of wall-space is greater at Edfu, so
is the literary wealth of this temple greater than the literary wealth
of Denderah. It also seemed to me that the surface was more closely
filled in at Edfu than at Denderah. Every wall, every ceiling, every
pillar, every architrave, every passage and side-chamber, however dark,
every staircase, every doorway, the outer wall of the temple, the inner
side of the great wall of circuit, the huge pylons from top to bottom,
are not only covered, but crowded, with figures and hieroglyphs. Among
these we find no enormous battle-subjects as at Abou Simbel--no heroic
recitals, like the poem of Pentaur. Those went out with the Pharaohs
and were succeeded by tableaux of religious rites and dialogues of gods
and kings. Such are the stock subjects of Ptolemaic edifices. They
abound at Denderah and Esneh, as well as at Edfu. But at Edfu there are
more inscriptions of a miscellaneous character than in any temple of
Egypt; and it is precisely this secular information which is so
priceless. Here are geographical lists of Nubian and Egyptian gnomes,
with their principal cities, their products and their tutelary gods;
lists of tributary provinces and princes; lists of temples and of lands
pertaining thereunto; lists of canals, of ports, of lakes; calendars of
feasts and fasts; astronomical tables; genealogies and chronicles of the
gods; lists of the priests and priestesses of both Edfu and Denderah,
with their names; lists also of singers and assistant functionaries;
lists of offerings, hymns, invocations; and such a profusion of
religious legends as make of the walls of Edfu alone a complete
text-book of Egyptian mythology.[186]
No great collection of these inscriptions, like the “Denderah” of
Mariette, has yet been published; but every now and then some
enterprising Egyptologist, such as M. Naville or M. Jacques de Rougé,
plunges for awhile into the depths of the Edfu mine and brings back as
much precious ore as he can carry. Some most singular and interesting
details have thus been brought to light. One inscription, for instance,
records exactly in what month and on what day and at what hour Isis gave
birth to Horus. Another tells all about the sacred boats. We know now
that Edfu possessed at least two; and that one was called Hor-Hat, or
The First Horus and the other Aa-Mafek, or Great of Turquoise. These
boats, it would appear, were not merely for carrying in procession, but
for actual use upon the water. Another text--one of the most
curious--informs us that Hathor of Denderah paid an annual visit to
Horus (or Hor-Hat) of Edfu and spent some days with him in his temple.
The whole ceremonial of this fantastic trip is given in detail. The
goddess traveled in her boat called Neb-Mer-t, or Lady of the Lake.
Horus, like a polite host, went out in his boat Hor-Hat, to meet her.
The two deities with their attendants then formed one procession and so
came to Edfu, where the goddess was entertained with a succession of
festivals.[187]
One would like to know whether Horus duly returned all these visits; and
if the gods, like modern emperors, had a gay time among themselves.
Other questions inevitably suggest themselves, sometimes painfully,
sometimes ludicrously, as one paces chamber after chamber, corridor
after corridor, sculptured all over with strange forms and stranger
legends. What about these gods whose genealogies are so intricate; whose
mutual relations are so complicated; who wedded and became parents; who
exchanged visits and who even traveled[188] at times to distant
countries? What about those who served them in the temples; who robed
and unrobed them; who celebrated their birthdays and paraded them in
stately processions and consumed the lives of millions in erecting these
mountains of masonry and sculpture to their honor? We know now with what
elaborate rites the gods were adored; what jewels they wore; what hymns
were sung in their praise. We know from what a subtle and philosophical
core of solar myths their curious personal adventures were evolved. We
may also be quite sure that the hidden meaning of these legends was
almost wholly lost sight of in the later days of the religion,[189] and
that the gods were accepted for what they seemed to be and not for what
they were symbolized. What, then, of their worshipers? Did they really
believe all these things, or were any among them tormented with doubts
of the gods? Were there skeptics in those days, who wondered how two
hierogrammates could look each other in the face without laughing?
The custode told us that there were two hundred and forty-two steps to
the top of each tower of the propylon. We counted two hundred and
twenty-four, and dispensed willingly with the remainder. It was a long
pull; but had the steps been four times as many, the sight from the top
would have been worth the climb. The chambers in the pylons are on a
grand scale, with wide beveled windows like the mouths of monster letter
boxes, placed at regular intervals all the way up. Through these windows
the great flagstaffs and pennons were regulated from within. The two
pylons communicate by a terrace over the central doorway. The parapet of
this terrace and the parapets of the pylons above are plentifully
scrawled with names, many of which were left there by the French
soldiers of 1799.
The cornices of these two magnificent towers are unfortunately gone; but
the total height without them is one hundred and twenty-five feet. From
the top, as from the minaret of the great mosque at Damascus, one looks
down into the heart of the town. Hundreds of mud huts thatched with
palm-leaves, hundreds of little court-yards, lie mapped out beneath
one’s feet; and as the fellah lives in his yard by day, using his hut
merely as a sleeping-place at night, one looks down, like the Diable
Boiteux, upon the domestic doings of a roofless world. We see people
moving to and fro, unconscious of strange eyes watching them from
above--men lounging, smoking, sleeping in shady corners--children
playing--infants crawling on all fours--women cooking at clay ovens in
the open air--cows and sheep feeding--poultry scratching and
pecking--dogs basking in the sun. The huts look more like the lairs of
prairie-dogs than the dwellings of human beings. The little mosque with
its one dome and stunted minaret, so small, so far below, looks like a
clay toy. Beyond the village, which reaches far and wide, lie barley
fields, and cotton patches, and palm-groves, bounded on one side by the
river, and on the other by the desert. A broad road, dotted over with
moving specks of men and cattle, cleaves its way straight through the
cultivated land and out across the sandy plain beyond. We can trace its
course for miles where it is only a trodden track in the desert. It
goes, they tell us, direct to Cairo. On the opposite bank glares a
hideous white sugar factory, and, bowered in greenery, a country villa
of the khedive. The broad Nile flows between. The sweet Theban hills
gleam through a pearly haze on the horizon.
All at once a fitful breeze springs up, blowing in little gusts and
swirling the dust in circles round our feet. At the same moment, like a
beautiful specter, there rises from the desert close by an undulating
semi-transparent stalk of yellow sand, which grows higher every moment,
and begins moving northward across the plain. Almost at the same
instant, another appears a long way off toward the south, and a third
comes gliding mysteriously along the opposite bank. While we are
watching the third, the first begins throwing off a wonderful kind of
plume, which follows it, waving and melting in the air. And now the
stranger from the south comes up at a smooth, tremendous pace, towering
at least five hundred feet above the desert, till, meeting some
cross-current, it is snapped suddenly in twain. The lower half instantly
collapses; the upper, after hanging suspended for a moment, spreads and
floats slowly, like a cloud. In the meanwhile, other and smaller columns
form here and there--stalk a little way--waver--disperse--form
again--and again drop away in dust. Then the breeze falls, and puts an
abrupt end to this extraordinary spectacle. In less than two minutes
there is not a sand-column left. As they came, they vanish--suddenly.
Such is the landscape that frames the temple; and the temple, after all,
is the sight that one comes up here to see. There it lies far below our
feet, the court-yard with its almost perfect pavement; the flat roof
compact of gigantic monoliths; the wall of circuit with its panoramic
sculptures; the portico, with its screen and pillars distinct in
brilliant light against inner depths of dark; each pillar a shaft of
ivory, each square of dark a block of ebony. So perfect, so solid, so
splendid is the whole structure; so simple in unity of plan; so complex
in ornament; so majestic in completeness, that one feels as if it solved
the whole problem of religious architecture.
Take it for what it is--a Ptolemaic structure preserved in all its
integrity of strength and finish--it is certainly the finest temple in
Egypt. It brings before us, with even more completeness than Denderah,
the purposes of its various parts and the kind of ceremonial for which
it was designed. Every corridor and chamber tells its own story. Even
the names of the different chambers are graven upon them in such wise
that nothing[190] would be easier than to reconstruct the ground-plan
of the whole building in hieroglyphic nomenclature. That neither the
Ptolemaic building nor the Ptolemaic mythus can be accepted as strictly
representative of either pure Egyptian art or pure Egyptian thought,
must of course be conceded. Both are modified by Greek influences, and
have so far departed from the Pharaonic model. But then we have no
equally perfect specimen of the Pharaonic model. The Ramesseum is but a
grand fragment. Karnak and Medinet Hadu are aggregates of many temples
and many styles. Abydos is still half-buried. Amid so much that is
fragmentary, amid so much that is ruined, the one absolutely perfect
structure--Ptolemaic though it be--is of incalculable interest, and
equally incalculable value.
While we are dreaming over these things, trying to fancy how it all
looked when the sacred flotilla came sweeping up the river yonder and
the procession of Hor-Hat issued forth to meet the goddess-guest--while
we are half-expecting to see the whole brilliant concourse pour out,
priests in their robes of panther-skin, priestesses with the tinkling
sistrum, singers and harpists, and bearers of gifts and emblems, and
high functionaries rearing aloft the sacred boat of the god--in this
moment a turbaned Muëddin comes out upon the rickety wooden gallery of
the little minaret below, and intones the call to midday prayer. That
plaintive cry has hardly died away before we see men here and there
among the huts turning toward the east and assuming the first posture of
devotion. The women go on cooking and nursing their babies. I have seen
Moslem women at prayer in the mosques of Constantinople, but never in
Egypt.
Meanwhile, some children catch sight of us, and, notwithstanding that we
are one hundred and twenty-five feet above their heads, burst into a
frantic chorus of “backshîsh!”
And now, with a last long look at the temple and the wide landscape
beyond, we come down, and go to see a dismal little Mammesi three-parts
buried among a wilderness of mounds close by. These mounds, which
consist almost entirely of crude-brick debris with imbedded fragments of
stone and pottery, are built up like coral-reefs, and represent the
dwellings of some sixty generations. When they are cut straight through,
as here round about the great temple, the substance of them looks like
rich plum-cake.
CHAPTER XXI.
THEBES.
We had so long been the sport of destiny that we hardly knew what to
make of our good fortune when two days of sweet south wind carried us
from Edfu to Luxor. We came back to find the old mooring-place alive
with dahabeeyahs and gay with English and American colors. These two
flags well-nigh divide the river. In every twenty-five boats one may
fairly calculate upon an average of twelve English, nine American, two
German, one Belgian and one French. Of all these, our American cousins,
ever helpful, ever cordial, are pleasantest to meet. Their flag stands
to me for a host of brave and generous and kindly associations. It
brings back memories of many lands and many faces. It calls up echoes of
friendly voices, some far distant; some, alas! silent. Wherefore--be it
on the Nile, or the Thames, or the high seas, or among Syrian
camping-grounds, or drooping listlessly from the balconies of gloomy
diplomatic haunts in continental cities--my heart warms to the stars and
stripes whenever I see them.
Our arrival brought all the dealers in Luxor to the surface. They
waylaid and followed us wherever we went; while some of the better
sort--grave men in long black robes and ample turbans--installed
themselves on our lower deck and lived there for a fortnight. Go
up-stairs when one would, whether before breakfast in the morning, or
after dinner in the evening, there we always found them, patient,
imperturbable, ready to rise up and salaam, and produce from some hidden
pocket a purseful of scarabs or a bundle of funerary statuettes. Some of
these gentlemen were Arabs, some Copts--all polite, plausible and
mendacious.
Where Copt and Arab drive the same doubtful trade it is not easy to
define the shades of difference in their dealings. As workmen the Copts
are perhaps the most artistic. As salesmen the Arabs are perhaps the
less dishonest. Both sell more forgeries than genuine antiquities. Be
the demand what it may, they are prepared to meet it. Thothmes is not
too heavy, nor Cleopatra too light, for them. Their carvings in old
sycamore wood, their porcelain statuettes, their hieroglyphed limestone
tablets, are executed with a skill that almost defies detection. As for
genuine scarabs of the highest antiquity, they are turned out by the
gross every season. Engraved, glazed and administered to the turkeys in
the form of boluses, they acquire, by the simple process of digestion, a
degree of venerableness that is really charming.
Side by side with the work of production goes on the work of excavation.
The professed diggers colonize the western bank. They live rent free
among the tombs; drive donkeys or work shâdûfs by day and spend their
nights searching for treasure. Some hundreds of families live in this
grim way, spoiling the dead-and-gone Egyptians for a livelihood.
Forgers, diggers and dealers play, meanwhile, into one another’s hands
and drive a roaring trade. Your dahabeeyah, as I have just shown, is
beset from the moment you moor till the moment you pole off again from
shore. The boy who drives your donkey, the guide who pilots you among
the tombs, the half-naked fellah who flings down his hoe as you pass and
runs beside you for half a mile across the plain, have one and all an
“anteekah” to dispose of. The turbaned official who comes, attended by
his secretary and pipe-bearer, to pay you a visit of ceremony, warns you
against imposition, and hints at genuine treasures to which he alone
possesses the key. The gentlemanly native who sits next to you at dinner
has a wonderful scarab in his pocket. In short, every man, woman and
child about the place is bent on selling a bargain; and the bargain, in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, is valuable in so far as it
represents the industry of Luxor--but no farther. A good thing, of
course, is to be had occasionally; but the good thing never comes to the
surface as long as a market can be found for the bad one. It is only
when the dealer finds he has to do with an experienced customer that he
produces the best he has.
Flourishing as it is, the trade of Luxor labors, however, under some
uncomfortable restrictions. Private excavation being prohibited, the
digger lives in dread of being found out by the governor. The forger,
who has nothing to fear from the governor, lives in dread of being found
out by the tourist. As for the dealer, whether he sells an antique or an
imitation, he is equally liable to punishment. In the one case he
commits an offense against the state; and in the other, he obtains money
under false pretenses. Meanwhile, the governor deals out such
even-handed justice as he can, and does his best to enforce the law on
both sides of the river.
By a curious accident, L---- and the writer once actually penetrated
into a forger’s workshop. Not knowing that it had been abolished, we
went to a certain house in which a certain consulate had once upon a
time been located and there knocked for admission. An old deaf fellâha
opened the door and after some hesitation showed us into a large
unfurnished room with three windows. In each window there stood a
workman’s bench strewn with scarabs, amulets and funerary statuettes in
every stage of progress. We examined these specimens with no little
curiosity. Some were of wood; some were of limestone; some were partly
colored. The colors and brushes were there; to say nothing of files,
gravers and little pointed tools like gimlets. A magnifying glass of the
kind used by engravers lay in one of the window recesses. We also
observed a small grindstone screwed to one of the benches and worked by
a treadle; while a massive fragment of mummy-case in a corner behind the
door showed whence came the old sycamore wood for the wooden specimens.
That three skilled workmen furnished with European tools had been busy
in this room shortly before we were shown into it was perfectly clear.
We concluded that they had just gone away to breakfast.
Meanwhile we waited, expecting to be ushered into the presence of the
consul. In about ten minutes, however, breathless with hurrying, arrived
a well-dressed Arab whom we had never seen before. Distracted between
his oriental politeness and his desire to get rid of us, he bowed us out
precipitately, explaining that the house had changed owners and that the
power in question had ceased to be represented at Luxor. We heard him
rating the old woman savagely, as soon as the door had closed behind us.
I met that well-dressed Arab a day or two after, near the governor’s
house, and he immediately vanished round the nearest corner.
The Boulak authorities keep a small gang of trained excavators always at
work in the Necropolis of Thebes. These men are superintended by the
governor and every mummy-case discovered is forwarded to Boulak
unopened. Thanks to the courtesy of the governor, we had the good
fortune to be present one morning at the opening of a tomb. He sent to
summon us, just as we were going to breakfast. With what alacrity we
manned the felucca and how we ate our bread and butter half in the boat
and half on donkey-back, may easily be imagined. How well I remember
that early-morning ride across the western plain of Thebes--the young
barley rippling for miles in the sun; the little water-channel running
beside the path; the white butterflies circling in couples; the wayside
grave with its tiny dome and prayer-mat, its well and broken kulleh,
inviting the passer-by to drink and pray; the wild vine that trailed
along the wall; the vivid violet of the vetches that blossomed unbidden
in the barley. We had the mounds and pylons of Medinet Habu to the
left--the ruins of the Ramesseum to the right--the colossi of the plain
and the rosy western mountains before us all the way. How the great
statues glistened in the morning light! How they towered up against the
soft blue sky! Battered and featureless, they sat in the old patient
attitude, looking as if they mourned the vanished springs.
We found the new tomb a few hundred yards in the rear of the Ramesseum.
The diggers were in the pit; the governor and a few Arabs were looking
on. The vault was lined with brick-work above and cut square in the
living rock below. We were just in time; for already, through the sand
and rubble with which the grave had been filled in, there appeared an
outline of something buried. The men, throwing spades and picks aside,
now began scraping up the dust with their hands, and a mummy-case came
gradually to light. It was shaped to represent a body lying at length
with the hands crossed upon the breast. Both hands and face were carved
in high relief. The ground-color of the sarcophagus was white;[191] the
surface covered with hieroglyphed legends and somewhat coarsely painted
figures of four lesser gods of the dead. The face, like the hands, was
colored a brownish-yellow and highly varnished. But for a little dimness
of the gaudy hues, and a little flaking off of the surface here and
there, the thing was as perfect as when it was placed in the ground. A
small wooden box roughly put together lay at the feet of the mummy. This
was taken out first, and handed to the governor, who put it aside
without opening it. The mummy-case was then raised upright, hoisted to
the brink of the pit, and laid upon the ground.
It gave one a kind of shock to see it first of all lying just as it had
been left by the mourners; then hauled out by rude hands, to be
searched, unrolled, perhaps broken up as unworthy to occupy a corner of
the Boulak collection. Once they are lodged and catalogued in a museum,
one comes to look upon these things as “specimens,” and forgets that
they once were living beings like ourselves. But this poor mummy looked
startlingly human and pathetic lying at the bottom of its grave in the
morning sunlight.
After the sarcophagus had been lifted out, a small blue porcelain cup, a
ball of the same material, and another little object shaped like a
cherry, were found in the débris. The last was hollow, and contained
something that rattled when shaken. The mummy, the wooden box, and these
porcelain toys, were then removed to a stable close by; and the
excavators, having laid bare what looked like the mouth of a bricked-up
tunnel in the side of the tomb, fell to work again immediately. A second
vault--perhaps a chain of vaults--it was thought would now be
discovered.
* * * * *
We went away, meanwhile, for a few hours, and saw some of the famous
painted tombs in that part of the mountain side just above, which goes
by the name of Sheik Abd-el-Koorneh.
It was a hot climb; the sun blazing overhead; the cliffs reflecting
light and heat; the white débris glaring under foot. Some of the tombs
up here are excavated in terraces, and look from a distance like rows of
pigeon-holes; others are pierced in solitary ledges of rock; many are
difficult of access; all are intolerably hot and oppressive. They were
numbered half a century ago by the late Sir Gardner Wilkinson, and the
numbers are there still. We went that morning into fourteen, sixteen,
seventeen, and thirty-five.
As a child “The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians” had shared
my affections with “The Arabian Nights.” I had read every line of the
old six-volume edition over and over again. I knew every one of the six
hundred illustrations by heart. Now I suddenly found myself in the midst
of old and half-forgotten friends. Every subject on these wonderful
walls was already familiar to me. Only the framework, only the coloring,
only the sand under foot, only the mountain slope outside, were new and
strange. It seemed to me that I had met all these kindly brown people
years and years ago--perhaps in some previous stage of existence; that I
had walked with them in their gardens; listened to the music of their
lutes and tambourines; pledged them at their feasts. Here is the funeral
procession that I know so well; and the trial scene after death, where
the mummy stands upright in the presence of Osiris, and sees his heart
weighed in the balance. Here is that well-remembered old fowler
crouching in the rushes with his basket of decoys. One withered hand is
lifted to his mouth; his lips frame the call; his thin hair blows in the
breeze. I see now that he has placed himself to the leeward of the game;
but that subtlety escaped me in the reading days of my youth. Yonder I
recognize a sculptor’s studio into which I frequently peeped at that
time. His men are at work as actively as ever; but I marvel that they
have not yet finished polishing the surface of that red-granite
colossus. This patient angler, still waiting for a bite, is another old
acquaintance; and yonder, I declare, is that evening party at which I
was so often an imaginary guest! Is the feast not yet over? Has that
late-comer whom we saw hurrying along just now in a neighboring corridor
not yet arrived? Will the musicians never play to the end of their
concerto? Are those ladies still so deeply interested in the patterns
of one another’s ear-rings? It seems to me that the world has been
standing still in here for these last five-and-thirty years.
Did I say five-and-thirty? Ah, me! I think we must multiply it by ten,
and then by ten again, ere we come to the right figure. These people
lived in the time of the Thothmes and the Amenhoteps--a time upon which
Rameses the Great looked back as we look back to the days of the Tudors
and the Stuarts.
From the tombs above we went back to the excavations below. The
bricked-up opening had led, as the diggers expected, into a second
vault; and another mummy-case, half-crushed by a fall of débris, had
just been taken out. A third was found later in the afternoon. Curiously
enough, they were all three mummies of women.
The governor was taking his luncheon with the first mummy in the
recesses of the stable, which had been a fine tomb once, but reeked now
with manure. He sat on a rug, cross-legged, with a bowl of sour milk
before him and a tray of most uninviting little cakes. He invited me to
a seat on his rug, handed me his own spoon, and did the honors of the
stable as pleasantly as if it had been a palace.
I asked him why the excavators, instead of working among these
second-class graves, were not set to search for the tombs of the kings
of the eighteenth dynasty, supposed to be waiting discovery in a certain
valley called the Valley of the West. He shook his head. The way to the
Valley of the West, he said, was long and difficult. Men working there
must encamp upon the spot; and merely to supply them with water would be
no easy matter. He was allowed, in fact, only a sum sufficient for the
wages of fifty excavators; and to attack the Valley of the West with
less than two hundred would be useless.
We had luncheon that morning, I remember, with the M. B.’s in the second
hall of the Ramesseum. It was but one occasion among many; for the
writer was constantly at work on that side of the river, and we had
luncheon in one or other of the western temples every day. Yet that
particular meeting stands out in my memory apart from the rest. I see
the joyous party gathered together in the shade of the great
columns--the Persian rugs spread on the uneven ground--the dragoman in
his picturesque dress going to and fro--the brown and tattered Arabs,
squatting a little way off, silent and hungry-eyed, each with his string
of forged scarabs, his imitation gods, or his bits of mummy-case and
painted cartonnage for sale--the glowing peeps of landscape framed in
here and there through vistas of columns--the emblazoned architraves
laid along from capital to capital overhead, each block sculptured with
enormous cartouches yet brilliant with vermilion and ultramarine--the
patient donkeys munching all together at a little heap of vetches in one
corner--the intense depths of cloudless blue above. Of all Theban ruins,
the Ramesseum is the most cheerful. Drenched in sunshine, the warm
limestone of which it is built seems to have mellowed and turned golden
with time. No walls inclose it. No towering pylons overshadow it. It
stands high, and the air circulates freely among those simple and
beautiful columns. There are not many Egyptian ruins in which one can
talk and be merry; but in the Ramesseum one may thoroughly enjoy the
passing hour.
Whether Rameses the Great was ever actually buried in this place is a
problem which future discoveries may possibly solve; but that the
Ramesseum and the tomb of Osymandias were one and the same building is a
point upon which I never entertained a moment’s doubt. Spending day
after day among these ruins; sketching now here, now there; going over
the ground bit by bit, and comparing every detail, I came at last to
wonder how an identity so obvious could ever have been doubted. Diodorus
was of course inaccurate; but then one as little looks for accuracy in
Diodorus as in Homer. Compared with some of his topographical
descriptions, the account he gives of the Ramesseum is a marvel of
exactness. He describes[192] a building approached by two vast
court-yards; a hall of pillars opening by way of three entrances from
the second court-yard; a succession of chambers, including a sacred
library; ceilings of azure “bespangled with stars;” walls covered with
sculptures representing the deeds and triumphs of the king whom he calls
Osymandias,[193] among which are particularly noticed the assault of a
fortress “environed by a river,” a procession of captives without hands,
and a series of all the gods of Egypt, to whom the king was represented
in the act of making offerings; finally, against the entrance to the
second court-yard, three statues of the king, one of which, being of
Syenite granite and made “in a sitting posture,” is stated to be not
only “the greatest in all Egypt,” but admirable above all others “for
its workmanship and the excellence of the stone.”
Bearing in mind that what is left of the Ramesseum is, as it were, only
the backbone of the entire structure, one can still walk from end to end
of the building, and still recognize every feature of this description.
We turn our backs on the wrecked towers of the first propylon; crossing
what was once the first court-yard, we leave to the left the fallen
colossus; we enter the second court-yard, and see before us the three
entrances to the hall of pillars and the remains of two other statues;
we walk up the central avenue of the great hall, and see above our heads
architraves studded with yellow stars upon a ground color so luminously
blue that it almost matches the sky; thence, passing through a chamber
lined with sculptures, we come to the library, upon the door-jambs of
which Champollion found the figures of Thoth and Saf, the lord of
letters and the lady of the sacred books;[194] finally, among such
fragments of sculptured decoration as yet remain, we find the king
making offerings to a hieroglyphed list of gods as well as to his
deified ancestors; we see the train of captives, and the piles of
severed hands;[195] and we discover an immense battle-piece, which is in
fact a replica of the famous battle-piece at Abou Simbel. This subject,
like its Nubian prototype, yet preserves some of its color. The enemy
are shown to be fair-skinned and light-haired, and wear the same Syrian
robes; and the river, more green than that at Abou Simbel, is painted in
zigzags in the same manner. The king, alone in his chariot, sends arrow
after arrow against the flying foe. They leap into the river and swim
for their lives. Some are drowned; some cross in safety, and are helped
out by their friends on the opposite bank. A red-haired chief, thus
rescued, is suspended head downward by his soldiers, in order to let the
water that he has swallowed run out of his mouth. The river is once more
the Orontes; the city is once more Kadesh; the king is once more Rameses
II; and the incidents are again the incidents of the poem of Pentaur.
The one wholly unmistakable point in the narrative is, however, the
colossal statue of Syenite, the largest in Egypt.”[196] The siege and
the river, the troops of captives are to be found elsewhere; but
nowhere, save here, a colossus which answers to that description. This
statue was larger than even the twin colossi of the plain. They measure
eighteen feet three inches across the shoulders; this measures
twenty-two feet four inches. They sit about fifty feet high, without
their pedestals; this one must have lifted his head some ten feet higher
still. “The measure of his foot,” says Diodorus, “exceeded seven
cubits;” the Greek cubit being a little over eighteen inches in length.
The foot of the fallen Rameses measures nearly eleven feet in length by
four feet ten inches in breadth. This, also, is the only very large
Theban colossus sculptured in the red syenite of Assûan.[197]
Ruined almost beyond recognition as it is, one never doubts for a moment
that this statue was one of the wonders of Egyptian workmanship. It most
probably repeated in every detail the colossi of Abou Simbel; but it
surpassed them as much in finish of carving as in perfection of
material. The stone is even more beautiful in color than that of the
famous obelisks of Karnak; and is so close and hard in grain that the
scarab-cutters of Luxor are said to use splinters of it, as our
engravers use diamonds, for the points of their graving, tools. The
solid contents of the whole, when entire, are calculated at eight
hundred and eighty-seven tons. How this astounding mass was transported
from Assûan, how it was raised, how it was overthrown, are problems upon
which a great deal of ingenious conjecture has been wasted. One traveler
affirms that the wedge-marks of the destroyer are distinctly visible.
Another, having carefully examined the fractured edges, declares that
the keenest eye can detect neither wedge-marks nor any other evidences
of violence. We looked for none of these signs and tokens. We never
asked ourselves how or when the ruin had been done. It was enough that
the mighty had fallen.
Inasmuch as one can clamber upon and measure these stupendous fragments,
the fallen colossus is more astonishing, perhaps, as a wreck than it
would have been as a whole. Here, snapped across at the waist and flung
helplessly back, lie a huge head and shoulders, to climb which is like
climbing a rock. Yonder, amid piles of unintelligible débris, we see a
great foot, and, nearer the head, part of an enormous trunk, together
with the upper halves of two huge thighs clothed in the usual shenti or
striped tunic. The klaft or head-dress is also striped, and these
stripes, in both instances, retain the delicate yellow color with which
they were originally filled in. To judge from the way in which this
color was applied, one would say that the statue was tinted rather than
painted. The surface-work, wherever it remains, is as smooth and highly
finished as the cutting of the finest gem. Even the ground of the superb
cartouche, on the upper half of the arm, is elaborately polished.
Finally, in the pit which it plowed out in falling, lies the great
pedestal, hieroglyphed with the usual pompous titles of Rameses
Mer-Amen. Diodorus, knowing nothing of Rameses or his style, interprets
the inscription after his own fanciful fashion: “I am Osymandias, king
of kings. If any would know how great I am and where I lie let him excel
me in any of my works.”
The fragments of wall and shattered pylon that yet remain standing at
the Ramesseum face northwest and southwest. Hence, it follows that some
of the most interesting of the surface sculpture (being cut in very low
relief) is so placed with regard to the light as to be actually
invisible after midday. It was not till the occasion of my last visit,
when I came early in the morning to make a certain sketch by a certain
light, that I succeeded in distinguishing a single figure of that
celebrated tableau,[198] on the south wall of the great hall, in which
the Egyptians are seen to be making use of the testudo and
scaling-ladder to assault a Syrian fortress. The wall sculptures of the
second hall are on a bolder scale and can be seen at any hour. Here
Thoth writes the name of Rameses on the egg-shaped fruit of the persea
tree and processions of shaven priests carry on their shoulders the
sacred boats of various gods. In the center of each boat is a shrine
supported by winged genii, or cherubim. The veils over these shrines,
the rings through which the bearing-poles were passed and all the
appointments and ornaments of the _bari_ are distinctly shown. One seems
here, indeed, to be admitted to a glimpse of those original shrines upon
which Moses--learned in the sacred lore of the Egyptians--modeled, with
but little alteration, his ark of the covenant.
Next in importance to Karnak, and second in interest to none of the
Theban ruins, is the vast group of buildings known by the collective
name of Medinet Habu. To attempt to describe these would be to undertake
a task as hopeless as the description of Karnak. Such an attempt lies,
at all events, beyond the compass of these pages, so many of which have
already been given to similar subjects. For it is of the temples as of
the mountains--no two are alike, yet all sound so much alike when
described that it is scarcely possible to write about them without
becoming monotonous. In the present instance, therefore, I will note
only a few points of special interest, referring those who wish for
fuller particulars to the elaborate account of Medinet Habu in Murray’s
“Hand-book of Egypt.”
In the second name of Medinet Habu--Medinet being the common Arabic for
city, and Habu, Aboo, or Taboo being variously spelled--there survives
almost beyond doubt the ancient name of that famous city which the
Greeks called Thebes. It is the name for which many derivations[199]
have been suggested, but upon which the learned are not yet agreed.
The ruins of Medinet Habu consist of a smaller temple founded by Queen
Hatohepsu of the eighteenth dynasty, a large and magnificent temple
entirely built by Rameses III of the twentieth dynasty, and an extremely
curious and interesting building, part palace, part fortress, which is
popularly known as the pavilion.
The walls of this pavilion, the walls of the great forecourt leading to
the smaller temple, and a corner of the original wall of circuit, are
crowned in the Egyptian style with shield-shaped battlements, precisely
as the Khetan and Amorite fortresses are battlemented in the sculptured
tableaux at Abou Simbel and elsewhere. From whichever side one
approaches Medinet Habu these stone shields strike the eye as a new and
interesting feature. They are, moreover, so far as I know, the only
specimens of Egyptian battlementing which have survived destruction.
Those of the wall of circuit are of the time of Rameses V; those of the
pavilion, of the time of Rameses III; and the latest, which are those of
the forecourt, are of the period of Roman occupation.
As biographical material, the temple and pavilion at Medinet Habu and
the great Harris papyrus,[200] are to the life of Rameses III precisely
what Abou Simbel, the Ramesseum, and the poem of Pentaur are to the life
of Rameses II. Great wars, great victories, magnificent praises of the
prowess of the king, pompous lists of enemies slain and captured,
inventories of booty and of precious gifts offered by the victor to the
gods of Egypt, in both instances cover the sculptured walls and fill the
written pages. A comparison of the two masses of evidence--due allowance
being made both ways for oriental fervor of diction--shows that in
Rameses III we have to do with a king as brilliant, as valorous, and as
successful as Rameses II.[201]
It may be that before the time of this Pharaoh certain temples were used
also as royal residences. It is possible to believe this of temples such
as Gournah and Abydus, the plan of which includes, besides the usual
halls, side-chambers and sanctuary, a number of other apartments, the
uses of which are unknown. It may also be that former kings dwelt in
houses of brick and carved woodwork, such as we see represented in the
wall-paintings of various tombs.
It is, at all events, a fact that the only building which we can assume
to have been a royal palace and of which any vestiges have come down to
the present day, was erected by Rameses III, namely, this little
pavilion at Medinet Habu.
It may not have been a palace. It may have been only a fortified gate;
but, though the chambers are small, they are well lighted and the plan
of the whole is certainly domestic in character. It consists, as we now
see it, of two lodges connected by zigzag wings with a central tower.
The lodges and tower stand to each other as the three points of an acute
angle. These structures inclose an oblong court-yard leading by a
passage under the central tower to the inclosure beyond. So far as its
present condition enables us to judge, this building contained only
eight rooms; namely, three--one above the other in each of the lodges
and two above the gateway.[202] These three towers communicate by means
of devious passages in the connecting wings. Two of the windows in the
wings are adorned with balconies supported on brackets; each bracket
representing the head and shoulders of a crouching captive in
the attitude of a gargoyle. The heads and dresses of these
captives--conceived as they are in a vein of gothic barbarism--are still
bright with color.
[Illustration]
The central or gateway tower is substantially perfect. The writer, with
help, got as high as the first chamber; the ceiling of which is painted
in a rich and intricate pattern, as in imitation of mosaic. The top room
is difficult of access, but can be reached by a good climber. Our
friend F. W. S., who made his way up there a year or two before, found
upon the walls some interesting sculptures of cups and vases, apparently
part of an illustrated inventory of domestic utensils. Three of these
(unlike any engraved in the works of Wilkinson or Rosellini) are here
reproduced from his sketch made upon the spot. The lid of the smaller
vase, it will be observed, opens by means of a lever spooned out for the
thumb to rest in, just like the lid of a German beer-mug of the present
day.
The external decorations of the two lodges are of especial interest. The
lower subjects are historical. Those upon the upper stories are domestic
or symbolical, and are among the most celebrated of Egyptian
bas-reliefs. They have long been supposed to represent Rameses III in
his hareem, entertained and waited upon by female slaves. In one group
the king, distinguished always by his cartouches, sits at ease in a kind
of folding-chair, his helmet on his head, his sandaled feet upon a
footstool, as one returned and resting after battle. In his left hand he
holds a round object like a fruit. With the right he chucks under the
chin an ear-ringed and necklaced damsel, who presents a lotus-blossom at
his nose. In another much mutilated subject they are represented playing
a game at draughts. This famous subject--which can only be seen when the
light strikes sidewise--would scarcely be intelligible save for the help
one derives from the cuts in Wilkinson and the plates in Rosellini. It
is not that the sculptures are effaced, but that the great blocks which
bore them are gone from their places, having probably been hurled down
bodily upon the heads of the enemy during a certain siege of which the
ruins bear evident traces.[203] Of the lady there remains little besides
the arm and the hand that holds the pawn. The table has disappeared.
The king has lost his legs. It happens, however, though the table is
missing, that the block next above it contained the pawns, which can
still be discerned from below by the help of a glass. Rosellini mentions
three or four more subjects of a similar character, including a second
group of draught-players, all visible in his time. The writer, however,
looked for them in vain.
These tableaux are supposed to illustrate the home-life of Rameses III,
and to confirm the domestic character of the pavilion. Even the
scarab-selling Arabs that haunt the ruins, even the donkey boys of
Luxor, call it the hareem of the sultan. Modern science, however,
threatens to dispel one at least of these pleasant fancies.
The king, it seems, under the name of Rhampsinitus, is the hero of a
very ancient legend related by Herodotus. While he yet lived, runs the
story, he descended into hades, and there played a game at draughts with
the Goddess Demeter, from whom he won a golden napkin; in memory of
which adventure, and of his return to earth, “the Egyptians,” says
Herodotus, “instituted a festival which they certainly celebrated in my
day.”[204] In another version as told by Plutarch, Isis is substituted
for Demeter. Viewing these tales by the light of a certain passage of
the ritual, in which the happy dead is promised “power to transform
himself at will, to play at draughts, to repose in a pavilion,” Dr.
Birch has suggested that the whole of this scene may be of a memorial
character, and represent an incident in the land of shades.[205]
Below these “hareem” groups come colossal bas-reliefs of a religious
and military character. The king, as usual, smites his prisoners in
presence of the gods. A slender and spirited figure in act to slay, the
fiery hero strides across the wall “like Baal[206] descended from the
heights of heaven. His limbs are indued with the force of victory. With
his right hand he seizes the multitudes; his left reaches like an arrow
after those who fly before him. His sword is sharp as that of his father
Mentu.”[207]
Below these great groups run friezes sculptured with kneeling figures of
vanquished chiefs, among whom are Libyan, Sicilian, Sardinian, and
Etruscan leaders. Every head in these friezes is a portrait. The Libyan
is beardless; his lips are thin; his nose is hooked; his forehead
retreats; he wears a close-fitting cap with a pendant hanging in front
of the ear. The features of the Sardinian chief[208] are no less
Asiatic. He wears the usual Sardinian helmet surmounted by a ball and
two spikes. The profile of the Sicilian closely resembles that of the
Sardinian. He wears a head-dress like the modern Persian cap. As
ethnological types, these heads are extremely valuable. Colonists not
long since departed from the western coasts of Asia Minor, these early
European settlers are seen with the Asiatic stamp of features; a stamp
which has now entirely disappeared.
Other European nations are depicted elsewhere in these Medinet Habu
sculptures. Pelasgians from the Greek isles; Oscans perhaps from
Pompeii; Daunians from the districts between Tarentum and Brundusium,
figure here, each in their national costume. Of these, the Pelasgian
alone resembles the modern European. On the left wall of the pavilion
gateway, going up toward the temple, there is a large bas-relief of
Rameses III leading a string of captives into the presence of Amen-Ra.
Among these, the sculptures being in a high state of preservation, there
are a number of Pelasgians, some of whom have features of the classical
Greek type, and are strikingly handsome. The Pelasgic head-dress
resembles our old infantry shako; and some of the men wear disk-shaped
amulets pierced with a hole in the center through which is passed the
chain that suspends it round the neck.
Leaving to the left a fine sitting statue of Khons in green basalt and
to the right his prostrate fellow, we pass under the gateway, cross a
space of desolate crude-brick mounds, and see before us the ruins of the
first pylon of the great Temple of Khem. Once past the threshold of this
pylon we enter upon a succession of magnificent court-yards. The
hieroglyphs here are on a colossal scale, and are cut deeper than any
others in Egypt. They are also colored with a more subtle eye to effect.
Struck by the unusual splendor of some of the blues and by a peculiar
look of scintillation which they assumed in certain lights, I examined
them particularly and found that the effect had been produced by very
subtle shades of gradation in what appeared at first sight to be simple
flat tints. In some of the reeds, for instance, the ground-color begins
at the top of the leaf in pure cobalt, and passes imperceptibly down to
a tint that is almost emerald green at the bottom.[209]
The inner walls of this great court-yard and the outer face of the
northeast wall, are covered with sculptures outlined, so to say, in
intaglio, and relieved in the hollow, so that the forms, though rounded,
remain level with the general surface. In these tableaux the old world
lives again. Rameses III, his sons and nobles, his armies, his foes,
play once more the brief drama of life and death. Great battles are
fought; great victories are won; the slain are counted; the captured
drag their chains behind the victor’s chariot; the king triumphs, is
crowned and sacrifices to the gods. Elsewhere more wars, more slaughter.
There is revolt in Libya; there are raids on the Asiatic border; there
are invaders coming in ships from the islands of the Great Sea. The
royal standard is raised; troops assemble; arms are distributed. Again
the king goes forth in his might, followed by the flower of Egyptian
chivalry. “His horsemen are heroes; his foot-soldiers are as lions that
roar in the mountains.” The king himself flames “like Mentu in his hour
of wrath.” He falls upon the foe “with the swiftness of a meteor.” Here,
crowded in rude bullock-trucks, they seek safety in flight. Yonder,
their galleys are sunk; their warriors are slain, drowned, captured,
scathed, as it were, in a devouring fire. “Never again will they sow
seed or reap harvest on the fair face of the earth.”
“Behold!” says the Pharaoh, “Behold! I have taken their frontiers for my
frontiers! I have devastated their towns, burned their crops, trampled
their people under foot. Rejoice, O Egypt! Exalt thy voice to the
heavens; for behold! I reign over all the lands of the barbarians! I,
king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Rameses III!”[210]
Such, linked each to each, by a running commentary of text, are the
illustrations. The story is written elsewhere. Elaborately hieroglyphed
in upward of seventy closely packed columns, it covers the whole eastern
face of the great north tower of the second propylon. This propylon
divides the Osiride and Hypæthral courts, so that the inscription faces
those entering the temple and precedes the tableaux. Not even the poem
of Pentaur is more picturesque, not even the psalms of David are more
fervid, than the style of this great chronicle.[211]
The writer pitched her tent in the doorway of the first propylon, and
thence sketched the northwest corner of the court-yard, including the
tower with the inscription and the Osiride colossi. The roof of the
colonnade to the right is cumbered with crude-brick ruins of mediæval
date. The hieroglyphs, sculptured along the architrave and down the
sides of the pillars, are still bright with color. The colossi are all
the worse for three thousand years of ill-usage. Through the sculptured
doorway opposite, one looks across the hypæthral court, and catches a
glimpse of the ruined hall of pillars beyond.
While the writer was at work in the shade of the first pylon, an Arab
story-teller took possession of the opposite doorway, and entertained
the donkey boys and sailors. Well paid with a little tobacco and a few
copper piasters, he went on for hours, his shrill chant rising every now
and then to a quavering scream. He was a wizened, grizzled old fellow,
miserably poor and tattered; but he had the “Arabian Nights” and
hundreds of other tales by heart.
Mariette was of opinion that the temple of Medinet Habu, erected as it
is on the side of the great Theban necropolis, is like the Ramesseum, a
funerary monument erected by Rameses III in his own lifetime to his own
memory. These battered colossi represent the king in the character of
Osiris, and are in fact on a huge scale precisely what the ordinary
funerary statuettes are upon a small scale. They would be out of place
in any but a monumental edifice; and they alone suffice to determine the
character of the building.
And such, no doubt, was the character of the Amenophium; of the little
temple called Dayr el Medinet; of the temple of Queen Hatshepsu, known
as Dayr el Bahari; of the temple of Gournah; of almost every important
structure erected upon this side of the river. Of the Amenophium there
remain only a few sculptured blocks, a few confused foundations,
and--last representatives of an avenue of statues of various sizes--the
famous colossi of the plain.[212] The temple of Dayr el Bahari--built
in terraces up the mountain side, and approached once upon a time by a
magnificent avenue of sphinxes, the course of which is yet
visible--would probably be, if less ruined, the most interesting temple
on the western side of the river. The monumental intention of this
building is shown by its dedication to Hathor, the Lady of Amenti; and
by the fact that the tomb of Queen Hatshepsu was identified by Rhind
some twenty-five years ago as one of the excavated sepulchers in the
cliff-side, close to where the temple ends by abutting against the rock.
As for the Temple of Gournah, it is, at least in part, as distinctly a
memorial edifice as the Medici Chapel at Florence or the Superga at
Turin. It was begun by Seti I in memory of his father Rameses I, the
founder of the nineteenth dynasty. Seti, however, died before the work
was completed. Hereupon Rameses II, his son and successor, extended the
general plan, finished the part dedicated to his grandfather, and added
sculptures to the memory of Seti I. Later still, Menepthah, the son and
successor of Rameses II, left his cartouches upon one of the doorways.
The whole building, in short, is a family monument, and contains a
family portrait gallery. Here all the personages whose names figure in
the shrines of the Ramessides at Silsilis are depicted in their proper
persons. In one tableau, Rameses I, defunct, deified,[213] swathed,
enshrined, and crowned like Osiris, is worshiped by Seti I. Behind Seti
stands his Queen Tuaa, the mother of Rameses II. Elsewhere Seti I, being
now dead, is deified and worshiped by Rameses II, who pours a libation
to his father’s statue. Through all these handsome heads there runs a
striking family likeness. All more or less partake of that Dantesque
type which characterizes the portraits of Rameses II in his youth. The
features of Rameses I and Seti I are somewhat pinched and stern, like
the Dante of elder days. The delicate profile of Queen Tuaa, which is
curiously like some portraits of Queen Elizabeth, is perhaps too angular
to be altogether pleasing. But in the well-known face of Rameses II
these harsher details vanish, and the beauty of the race culminates. The
artists of Egyptian renaissance, always great in profile-portraiture,
are nowhere seen to better advantage than in this interesting series.
Adjoining what may be called the monumental part of the building, we
find a number of halls and chambers, the uses of which are unknown. Most
writers assume that they were the private apartments of the king. Some
go so far as to give the name of temple-palaces to all these great
funerary structures. It is, however, far more probable that these
western temples were erected in connection, though not in direct
communication, with the royal tombs in the adjacent valley of
Bab-el-Molûk.
Now every Egyptian tomb of importance has its outer chamber or votive
oratory, the walls of which are covered with paintings descriptive, in
some instances, of the occupations of the deceased upon earth, and in
others of the adventures of his soul after death. Here at stated
seasons the survivors repaired with offerings. No priest, it would seem,
of necessity officiated at these little services. A whole family would
come, bringing the first fruits of their garden, the best of their
poultry, cakes of home-made bread, bouquets of lotus blossoms. With
their own hands they piled the altar; and the eldest son, as
representative of the rest, burned the incense and poured the libations.
It is a scene constantly reproduced upon monuments[214] of every epoch.
These votive oratories, however, are wholly absent in the valley of
Bab-el-Molûk. The royal tombs consist of only tunneled passages and
sepulchral vaults, the entrances to which were closed forever as soon as
the sarcophagus was occupied; hence, it may be concluded that each
memorial temple played to the tomb of its tutelary saint and sovereign
that part which is played by the external oratory attached to the tomb
of a private individual. Nor must it be forgotten that as early as the
time of the pyramid kings, there was a votive chapel attached to every
pyramid, the remains of which are traceable in almost every instance, on
the east side. There were also priests of the pyramids, as we learn from
innumerable funerary inscriptions.
An oratory on so grand a scale would imply an elaborate ceremonial. A
dead and deified king would doubtless have his train of priests, his
daily liturgies, processions, and sacrifices. All this again implies
additional accommodation, and accounts, I venture to think, for any
number of extra halls and chambers. Such sculptures as yet remain on the
walls of these ruined apartments are, in fact, wholly funereal and
sacrificial in character. It is also to be remembered that we have here
a temple dedicated to two kings, and served most likely by a twofold
college of priests.[215]
The wall-sculptures at Gournah are extremely beautiful, especially those
erected by Seti I. Where it has been accidentally preserved, the surface
is as smooth, the execution as brilliant, as the finest mediæval ivory
carving. Behind a broken column, for instance, that leans against the
southwest wall of the sanctuary,[216] one may see, by peeping this way
and that, the ram’s-head prow of a sacred boat, quite unharmed, and of
surpassing delicacy. The modeling of the ram’s head is simply faultless.
It would indeed be scarcely too much to say that this one fragment, if
all the rest had perished, would alone place the decorative sculpture of
ancient Egypt in a rank second only to that of Greece.
The Temple of Gournah--northernmost of the Theban group--stands at the
mouth of that famous valley called by the Arabs Bab-el-Molûk,[217] and
by travelers, the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. This valley may be
described as a bifurcated ravine, ending in two _culs de sac_, and
hemmed in on all sides by limestone precipices. It winds round behind
the cliffs which face Luxor and Karnak, and runs almost parallel with
the Nile. This range of cliffs is perforated on both sides with tombs.
The priests and nobles of many dynasties were buried terrace above
terrace on the side next the river. Back to back with them, in the
silent and secret valley beyond, slept the kings in their everlasting
sepulchers.
Most travelers moor for a day or two at Karnak, and thence make their
excursion to Bab-el-Molûk. By so doing they lose one of the most
interesting rides in the neighborhood of Thebes. L---- and the writer
started from Luxor one morning about an hour after daybreak, crossing
the river at the usual point and thence riding northward along the
bank, with the Nile on the one hand, and the corn-lands on the other. In
the course of such rides one discovers the almost incredible fertility
of the Thebaid. Every inch of arable ground is turned to account. All
that grows, grows lustily. The barley ripples in one uninterrupted sweep
from Medinet Habu to a point half-way between the Ramesseum and Gournah.
Next come plantations of tobacco, cotton, hemp, linseed, maize and
lentils, so closely set, so rich in promise, that the country looks as
if it were laid out in allotment grounds for miles together. Where the
rice crop has been gathered, clusters of temporary huts have sprung up
in the clearings; for the fellahîn come out from their crowded villages
in “the sweet o’ the year,” and live in the midst of the crops which now
they guard, and which presently they will reap. The walls of these
summer huts are mere wattled fences of Indian corn straw, with bundles
of the same laid lightly across the top by way of roofing. This pastoral
world is everywhere up and doing. Here are men plying the shâdûf by the
river’s brink; women spinning in the sun; children playing; dogs
barking; larks soaring and singing overhead. Against the foot of the
cliffs yonder, where the vegetation ends and the tombs begin, there
flows a calm river edged with palms. A few months ago, we should have
been deceived by that fairy water. We know now that it is the mirage.
Striking off by and by toward the left, we make for a point where the
mountains recede and run low, and a wedge-like “spit” of sandy desert
encroaches upon the plain. On the verge of this spit stands a clump of
sycamores and palms. A row of old yellow columns supporting a sculptured
architrave gleams through the boughs; a little village nestles close by;
and on the desert slope beyond, in the midst of the desolate Arab
burial-ground, we see a tiny mosque with one small cupola, dazzling
white in the sunshine. This is Gournah. There is a spring here, and some
girls are drawing water from the well near the temple. Our donkeys slake
their thirst from the cattle-trough--a broken sarcophagus that may once
have held the mummy of a king. A creaking sakkieh is at work yonder,
turned by a couple of red cows with mild Hathor-like faces. The old man
who drives them sits in the middle of the cog-wheel, and goes slowly
round as if he was being roasted.
We now leave behind us the well, and the trees, and the old
Greek-looking temple, and turn our faces westward, bound for an opening
yonder among cliffs pitted with the mouths of empty tombs. It is plain
to see that we are now entering upon what was once a torrent-bed.
Rushing down from the hills, the pent-up waters have here spread
fan-like over the slope of the desert, strewing the ground with
bowlders, and plowing it into hundreds of tortuous channels. Up that
torrent-bed lies our road to-day.
The weird rocks stand like sentinels to right and left as one enters the
mouth of the valley, and take strange shapes as of obelisks and
sphinxes. Some, worn at the base, and towering like ruined pyramids
above, remind us of tombs on the Appian Way. As the ravine narrows, the
limestone walls rise higher. The chalky track glares under foot. Piles
of shivered chips sparkle and scintillate at the foot of the rocks. The
cliffs burn at a white heat. The atmosphere palpitates like gaseous
vapor. The sun blazes overhead. Not a breath stirs; neither is there a
finger’s breadth of shade on either side. It is like riding into the
mouth of a furnace. Meanwhile, one looks in vain for any sign of life.
No blade of green has grown here since the world began. No breathing
creature makes these rocks its home. All is desolation--such desolation
as one dreams of in a world scathed by fire from heaven.
When we have gone a long way, always tracking up the bed of the torrent,
we come to a place where our donkeys turn off from the main course and
make for what is evidently a forced passage cut clean through a wall of
solid limestone. The place was once a mere recess in the cliffs; but on
the farther side, masked by a natural barrier of rocks, there lay
another valley leading to a secluded amphitheater among the mountains.
The first Pharaoh who chose his place of burial among those hidden ways,
must have been he who cut the pass and leveled the road by which we now
travel. This cutting is Bab-el-Molûk--the gate of the king; a name which
doubtless perpetuates that by which the place was known to the old
Egyptians. Once through the gate, a grand mountain rises into view.
Egypt is the land of strange mountains; and here is one which reproduces
on a giant scale every feature of the pyramid of Ouenephes at Sakkarah.
It is square; it rises stage above stage in ranges of columnar cliffs
with slopes of débris between; and it terminates in a blunt four-sided
peak nearly eighteen hundred feet above the level of the plain.
Keeping this mountain always before us, we now follow the windings of
the second valley, which is even more narrow, parched and glaring than
the first. Perhaps the intense heat makes the road appear longer than it
really is, but it seems to us like several miles. At length the
uniformity of the way is broken. Two small ravines branch off, one to
the right, one to the left, and in both, at the foot of the rocks, there
are here and there to be seen square openings like cellar-doors,
half-sunk below the surface, and seeming to shoot downward into the
bowels of the earth. In another moment or so, our road ends suddenly in
a wild, tumbled waste like tin exhausted quarry, shut in all round by
impending precipices, at the base of which more rock-cut portals peep
out at different points.
From the moment when it first came into sight I had made certain that in
that pyramidal mountain we should find the tombs of the kings--so
certain, that I can scarcely believe our guide when he assures us that
these cellars are the places we have come to see, and that the mountain
contains not a single tomb. We alight, however, climb a steep slope, and
find ourselves on the threshold of number seventeen.
“Belzoni-tomb,” says our guide; and Belzoni’s tomb, as we know, is the
tomb of Seti I.
I am almost ashamed to remember now that we took our lunches in the
shade of that solemn vestibule, and rested and made merry before going
down into the great gloomy sepulcher, whose staircases and corridors
plunged away into the darkness below as if they led straight to the land
of Amenti.
The tombs in the Valley of Bab-el-Molûk are as unlike tombs in the
cliffs opposite Luxor as if the Theban kings and the Theban nobles were
of different races and creeds. Those sacred scribes and dignitaries,
with their wives and families and their numerous friends and dependents,
were a joyous set. They loved the things of this life, and would fain
have carried their pursuits and pleasures with them into the land beyond
the grave. So they decorated the walls of their tombs with pictures of
the way in which their lives were spent, and hoped perhaps that the
mummy, dreaming away its long term of solitary waiting, might take
comfort in those shadowy reminiscences. The kings, on the contrary,
covered every foot of their last palaces with scenes from the life to
come. The wanderings of the soul after its separation from the body, the
terrors and dangers that beset it during its journey through hades, the
demons it must fight, the accusers to whom it must answer, the
transformations it must undergo, afforded subjects for endless
illustration. Of the fishing and fowling and feasting and junketing that
we saw the other day in those terraces behind the Ramesseum, we discover
no trace in the tombs of Bab-el-Molûk. In place of singing and
lute-playing we find here prayers and invocations; for the pleasant Nile
boat and the water parties and the chase of the gazelle and the ibex, we
now have the bark of Charon and the basin of purgatorial fire and the
strife with the infernal deities. The contrast is sharp and strange. It
is as if an epicurean aristocracy had been ruled by a line of Puritan
kings. The tombs of the subjects are Anacreontics. The tombs of their
sovereigns are penitential psalms.
To go down into one of those great sepulchers is to descend one’s self
into the lower world and to tread the path of the shades. Crossing the
threshold we look up--half expecting to read those terrible words in
which all who enter are warned to leave hope behind them. The passage
slopes before our feet; the daylight fades behind us. At the end of the
passage comes a flight of steps, and from the bottom of that flight of
steps we see another corridor slanting down into depths of utter
darkness. The walls on both sides are covered with close-cut columns of
hieroglyphic text, interspersed with ominous shapes, half-deity,
half-demon. Huge serpents writhe beside us along the walls. Guardian
spirits of threatening aspect advance, brandishing swords of flame. A
strange heaven opens overhead--a heaven where the stars travel in boats
across the seas of space; and the sun, escorted by the hours, the months
and the signs of the zodiac, issues from the east, sets in the west and
traverses the hemisphere of everlasting night. We go on and the last
gleam of daylight vanishes in the distance. Another flight of steps
leads now to a succession of passages and halls, some smaller, some
larger, some vaulted, some supported on pillars. Here yawns a great pit
half-full of débris. Yonder opens a suite of unfinished chambers
abandoned by the workmen. The farther we go the more weird become our
surroundings. The walls swarm with ugly and evil things. Serpents, bats
and crocodiles, some with human heads and legs, some vomiting fire, some
armed with spears and darts, pursue and torture the wicked. These
unfortunates have their hearts torn out; are boiled in caldrons; are
suspended, head downward, over seas of flame; are speared, decapitated
and driven in headless gangs to scenes of further torment. Beheld by the
dim and shifting light of a few candles, these painted horrors assume an
aspect of ghastly reality. They start into life as we pass, then drop
behind us into darkness. That darkness alone is awful. The atmosphere is
suffocating. The place is ghostly and peopled with nightmares.
Elsewhere we come upon scenes less painful. The sun emerges from the
lower hemisphere. The justified dead sow and reap in the Elysian fields,
gather celestial fruits, and bathe in the waters of truth. The royal
mummy reposes in its shrine. Funerary statues of the king are worshiped
with incense and offerings of meat and libations of wine.[218] Finally
the king arrives, purified and justified, at the last stage of his
spiritual journey. He is welcomed by the gods, ushered into the presence
of Osiris, and received into the abode of the blest.[219]
Coming out for a moment into blinding daylight, we drink a long draught
of pure air, cross a few yards of uneven ground, arrive at the month of
another excavation, and plunge again into underground darkness. A third
and a fourth time we repeat this strange experience. It is like a
feverish sleep, troubled by gruesome dreams and broken by momentary
wakings. These tombs in a general way are very much alike. Some are
longer than others;[220] some loftier. In some the descent is gradual;
in others it is steep and sudden. Certain leading features are common to
all. The great serpent,[221] the scarab,[222] the bat,[223] the
crocodile,[224] are always conspicuous on the walls. The judgment-scene,
and the well-known typical picture of the four races of mankind, are
continually reproduced. Some tombs,[225] however, vary both in plan and
decoration. That of Rameses III, though not nearly so beautiful as the
tomb of Seti I, is perhaps the most curious of all. The paintings here
are for the most part designed on an unsculptured surface coated with
white stucco. The drawing is often indifferent, and the coloring is
uniformly coarse and gaudy. Yellow abounds; and crude reds and blues
remind us of the colored picture-books of our childhood. It is difficult
to understand, indeed, how the builder of Medinet Habu, with the best
Egyptian art of the day at his command, should have been content with
such wall-paintings as these.
Still Rameses III seems to have had a grand idea of going in state to
the next world, with his retainers around him. In a series of small
ante-chambers opening off from the first corridor we see depicted all
the household furniture, all the plate, the weapons, the wealth and
treasure of the king. Upon the walls of one the cooks and bakers are
seen preparing the royal dinner. In the others are depicted magnificent
thrones; gilded galleys with party-colored sails; gold and silver vases;
rich stores of arms and armor; piles of precious woods, of panther
skins, of fruits and birds and curious baskets, and all such articles of
personal luxury as a palace-building Pharaoh might delight in. Here,
also, are the two famous harpers; cruelly defaced, but still sweeping
the strings with the old powerful touch that erewhile soothed the king
in his hours of melancholy. These two spirited figures--which are
undoubtedly portraits[226]--almost redeem the poverty of the rest of the
paintings.
In many tombs the empty sarcophagus yet occupies its ancient place.[227]
We saw one in No. 2 (Rameses IV), and another in No. 9 (Rameses VI);
the first, a grand monolith of dark granite, overturned and but little
injured; the second, shattered by early treasure-seekers.
Most of the tombs at Bab-el-Molûk were open in Ptolemaic times. Being
then, as now, among the stock sights and wonders of Thebes, they were
visited by crowds of early travelers, who have, as usual, left their
neatly scribbled graffiti on the walls. When and by whom the sepulchers
were originally violated is of course unknown. Some, doubtless, were
sacked by the Persians; others were plundered by the Egyptians
themselves, long enough before Cambyses. Not even in the days of the
Ramessides, though a special service of guards was told off for duty in
“the great valley,” were the kings safe in their tombs. During the reign
of Rameses IX--whose own tomb is here and known as No. 6--there seems to
have been an organized band, not only of robbers, but of receivers, who
lived by depredations of the kind. A contemporary papyrus[228] tells
how, in one instance, the royal mummies were found lying in the dust,
their gold and silver ornaments and the treasures of their tombs all
stolen. In another instance, a king and his queen were carried away
bodily, to be unrolled and rifled at leisure. This curious information
is all recorded in the form of a report, drawn up by the commandant of
Western Thebes, who, with certain other officers and magistrates,
officially inspected the tombs of the “royal ancestor,” during the reign
of Rameses IX.
No royal tomb has been found absolutely intact in the valley of
Bab-el-Molûk. Even that of Seti I had been secretly entered ages before
ever Belzoni discovered it. He found in it statues of wood and
porcelain, and the mummy of a bull; but nothing of value save the
sarcophagus, which was empty. There can be no doubt that the priesthood
were largely implicated in these contemporary sacrileges. Of thirty-nine
persons accused by name in the papyrus just quoted, seven are priests
and eight are sacred scribes.
To rob the dead was always a lucrative trade at Thebes; and we may be
certain that the splendid Pharaohs who slept in the valley of the tombs
of the kings,[229] went to their dark palaces magnificently equipped
for the life to come.[230] When, indeed, one thinks of the jewels,
furniture, vases, ointments, clothing, arms, and precious documents
which were as certainly buried in those tombs as the royal mummies for
whom they were excavated, it seems far more wonderful that the parure of
one queen should have escaped, rather than that all the rest of these
dead and gone royalties should have fallen among thieves.
Of all tombs in the valley of Bab-el-Molûk, one would rather, I think,
have discovered that of Rameses III. As he was one of the richest of the
Pharaohs[231] and an undoubted virtuoso in his tastes, so we may be sure
that his tomb was furnished with all kinds of beautiful and precious
things. What would we not give now to find some of those elaborate gold
and silver vases, those cushioned thrones and sofas, those bows and
quivers and shirts of mail so carefully catalogued on the walls of the
side-chambers in the first corridor! I do not doubt that specimens of
all these things were buried with the king and left ready for his use.
He died, believing that his Ka would enjoy and make use of these
treasures, and that his soul would come back after long cycles of
probation, and make its home once more in the mummied body. He thought
he should rise as from sleep; cast off his bandages; eat and be
refreshed, and put on sandals and scented vestments, and take his staff
in his hand, and go forth again into the light of everlasting day. Poor
ghost, wandering bodiless through space! where now are thy funeral-baked
meats, thy changes of raiment, thy perfumes and precious ointments?
Where is that body for which thou wert once so solicitous, and without
which resurrection[232] is impossible? One fancies thee sighing forlorn
through these desolate halls when all is silent and the moon shines down
the valley. Life at Thebes is made up of incongruities. A morning among
temples is followed by an afternoon of antiquity-hunting; and a day of
meditation among tombs winds up with a dinner-party on board some
friend’s dahabeeyah, or a fantasia at the British consulate. L---- and
the writer did their fair share of antiquity-hunting both at Luxor and
elsewhere; but chiefly at Luxor. I may say, indeed, that our life here
was one long pursuit of the pleasures of the chase. The game it is true
was prohibited; but we enjoyed it none the less because it was illegal.
Perhaps we enjoyed it the more.
There were whispers about this time of a tomb that had been discovered
on the western side--a wonderful tomb, rich in all kinds of treasures.
No one, of course, had seen these things. No one knew who had found
them. No one knew where they were hidden. But there was a solemn
secrecy about certain of the Arabs, and a conscious look about some of
the visitors, and an air of awakened vigilance about the government
officials, which savored of mystery. These rumors by and by assumed more
definite proportions. Dark hints were dropped of a possible papyrus; the
M. B.’s babbled of mummies; and an American dahabeeyah, lying innocently
off Karnak, was reported to have a mummy on board. Now, neither L----
nor the writer desired to become the happy proprietor of an ancient
Egyptian; but the papyrus was a thing to be thought of. In a fatal hour
we expressed a wish to see it. From that moment every mummy-snatcher in
the place regarded us as his lawful prey. Beguiled into one den after
another, we were shown all the stolen goods in Thebes. Some of the
things were very curious and interesting. In one house we were offered
two bronze vases, each with a band of delicately engraved hieroglyphs
running round the lip; also a square stand of basket-work in two colors,
precisely like that engraved in Sir G. Wilkinson’s first volume,[233]
after the original in the Berlin museum. Pieces of mummy-case and
wall-sculpture and sepulchral tablets abounded; and on one occasion we
were introduced into the presence of--a mummy!
All these houses were tombs, and in this one the mummy was stowed away
in a kind of recess at the end of a long rock-cut passage; probably the
very place once occupied by the original tenant. It was a mummy of the
same period as that which we saw disentombed under the auspices of the
governor, and was inclosed in the same kind of cartonnage, patterned in
many colors on a white ground. I shall never forget that curious
scene--the dark and dusty vault; the Arabs with their lanterns; the
mummy in its gaudy cerements lying on an old mat at our feet.
Meanwhile we tried in vain to get sight of the coveted papyrus. A grave
Arab dropped in once or twice after nightfall and talked it over vaguely
with the dragoman; but never came to the point. He offered it first,
with a mummy, for £100. Finding, however, that we would neither buy his
papyrus unseen, nor his mummy at any price, he haggled and hesitated for
a day or two, evidently trying to play us off against some rival or
rivals unknown, and then finally disappeared. These rivals, we afterward
found, were the M. B.’s. They bought both mummy and papyrus at an
enormous price; and then, unable to endure the perfume of their ancient
Egyptian, drowned the dear departed at the end of a week.
Other purchasers are possibly less sensitive. We heard, at all events,
of fifteen mummies successfully insinuated through the Alexandrian
custom-house by a single agent that winter. There is, in fact, a growing
passion for mummies among Nile travelers. Unfortunately, the prices rise
with the demand; and although the mine is practically inexhaustible, a
mummy nowadays becomes not only a prohibited but a costly luxury.
At Luxor the British, American and French consuls are Arabs. The
Prussian consul is a Copt. The Austrian consul is, or was, an American.
The French consul showed us over the old tumble-down building called
“The French House,”[234] which, though but a rude structure of
palm-timbers and sun-dried clay, built partly against and partly over
the temple of Luxor, has its place in history. For there, in 1829,
Champollion and Rosellini lived and worked together during part of their
long sojourn at Thebes. Rosellini tells how they used to sit up at
night, dividing the fruits of the day’s labor; Champollion copying
whatever might be useful for his Egyptian grammar, and Rosellini, the
new words that furnished material for his dictionary. There, too, lodged
the naval officers sent out by the French in 1831 to remove the obelisk
which now stands in the Place de la Concorde. And there, writing those
charming letters that delight the world, Lady Duff Gordon lingered
through the last few winters of her life. The rooms in which she lived
first, and the balcony in which she took such pleasure, were no longer
accessible, owing to the ruinous state of one of the staircases; but we
saw the rooms she last inhabited. Her couch, her rug, her folding chair
were there still. The walls were furnished with a few cheap prints and a
pair of tin sconces. All was very bare and comfortless.
We asked if it was just like this when the sittèh lived here. The Arab
consul replied that she had “a table and some books.” He looked himself
in the last stage of consumption, and spoke and moved like one that had
done with life.
We were shocked at the dreariness of the place--till we went to the
window. That window, which commanded the Nile and the western plain of
Thebes, furnished the room and made its poverty splendid.
The sun was near setting. We could distinguish the mounds and pylons of
Medinet Habu and the side of the Ramesseum. The terraced cliffs,
overtopped by the pyramidal mountain of Bab-el-Molûk, burned crimson
against a sky of stainless blue. The foot-path leading to the valley of
the tombs of the kings showed like a hot white scar winding along the
face of the rocks. The river gave back the sapphire tones of the sky. I
thought I could be well content to spend many a winter in no matter how
comfortless a lodging, if only I had that wonderful view, with its
infinite beauty of light and color and space, and its history and its
mystery always before my windows.[235]
Another historical house is that built by Sir G. Wilkinson, among the
tombs of Sheik Abd-el-Koorneh. Here he lived while amassing the
materials for his “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians;” and
here Lepsius and his company of artists put up while at work on the
western bank. Science makes little impression on the native mind. No one
now remembers Champollion, or Rosellini, or Sir G. Wilkinson; but every
Arab in Luxor cherishes the memory of Lady Duff Gordon in his heart of
hearts, and speaks of her with blessings.
The French house was built over the roof of the sanctuary, at the
southern end of the temple. At the northern end, built up between the
enormous sandstone columns of the great colonnade, was the house of
Mustapha Aga, most hospitable and kindly of British consuls. Mustapha
Aga had traveled in Europe, and spoke fluent Italian, English, and
French. His eldest son was Governor of Luxor; his younger--the “little
Ahmed” whom Lady Duff Gordon delighted to educate--having spent two
years in England as the guest of Lord D----, had become an accomplished
Englishman.
In the round of gayety that goes on at Luxor the British consulate
played the leading part. Mustapha Aga entertained all the English
dahabeeyahs, and all the English dahabeeyahs entertained Mustapha Aga.
We were invited to several fantasias at the consulate, and dined with
Mustapha Aga at his suburban house the evening before we left Luxor.
The appointed hour was 8.30 P.M. We arrived amid much barking of dogs,
and were received by our host in a large empty hall surrounded by a
divan. Here we remained till dinner was announced. We were next ushered
through an ante-room where two turbaned and barefooted servants were in
waiting; the one with a brass basin and ewer, the other with an armful
of Turkish towels. We then, each in turn, held our hands over the basin;
had water poured on them; and received a towel apiece. These towels we
were told to keep; and they served for dinner-napkins. The ante-room
opened into a brilliantly lighted dining-room of moderate size, having
in the center a round brass table with an upright fluted rim, like a big
tray. For each person were placed a chair, a huge block of bread, a
wooden spoon, two tumblers, and a bouquet. Plates, knives, forks, there
were none.
The party consisted of the happy couple, the director of the Luxor
telegraph office, L----, the writer, Ahmed, and our host.
“To-night we are all Arabs,” said Mustapha Aga, as he showed us where to
sit. “We drink Nile water and we eat with our fingers.”
So we drank Nile water; and for the first time in our lives we ate with
our fingers. In fact, we found them exceedingly useful.
The dinner was excellent. Without disrespect to our own accomplished
chef, or to the accomplished chefs of our various friends upon the
river, I am bound to say that it was the very best dinner I ever eat out
of Europe. Everything was hot, quickly served, admirably dressed, and
the best of its kind. Here is the _menu_:
MENU. MARCH 31, 1874.
White soup:--(Turkey).
FISH.
Fried Samak.[236]
ENTRÉES.
Stewed pigeons. Spinach and rice.
ROAST.
Dall.[237]
ENTRÉES.
Kebobs[238] of mutton.
Tomatoes with rice.
Kebobs of lambs’ kidneys.
Kuftah.[239]
ROAST.
Turkey, with cucumber sauce.
ENTRÉE.
Pilaff[240] of rice.
SECOND COURSE.
Mish-mish.[241]
Kunáfah.[242]
Rus Blebban.[243]
Totleh.[244]
These dishes were placed one at a time in the middle of the table and
rapidly changed. Each dipped his own spoon into the soup, dived into the
stew and pulled off pieces of fish or lamb with his fingers. Having no
plates, we made plates of our bread. Meanwhile, Mustapha Aga, like an
attentive host, tore off an especially choice morsel now and then and
handed it to one or other of his guests.
To eat gracefully with one’s fingers is a fine art; to carve with them
skillfully is a science. None of us, I think, will soon forget the
wonderful way in which our host attacked and vanquished the turkey--a
solid colossus weighing twenty pounds, and roasted to perfection. Half
rising, he turned back his cuff, poised his wrist, and driving his
forefinger and thumb deep into the breast, brought out a long, stringy
smoking fragment, which he deposited on the plate of the writer. Thus
begun, the turkey went round the table amid peals of laughter and was
punished by each in turn. The pilaff which followed is always the last
dish served at an Egyptian or Turkish dinner. After this our spoons were
changed and the sweets were put upon the table. The drinks throughout
were plain water, rice-water and lemonade. Some native musicians played
in the ante-room during dinner; and when we rose from the table we
washed our hands as before.
We now returned to the large hall, and, not being accomplished in the
art and mystery of sitting crossed-legged, curled ourselves up on the
divans as best we could. The writer was conducted by Mustapha Aga to the
corner seat at the upper end of the room, where he said the Princess of
Wales had sat when their royal highnesses dined with him the year
before. We were then served with pipes and coffee. The gentlemen smoked
chibouques and cigarettes, while for us there were gorgeous rose-water
narghilehs with long flexible tubes and amber mouthpieces. L---- had the
princess’ pipe and smoked it very cleverly all the evening.
By and by came the governor, the Kadî of Luxor, the Prussian consul and
his son and some three or four grave-looking merchants in rich silk
robes and ample turbans. Meanwhile the band--two fiddles, a tambourine
and a darabukkeh--played at intervals at the lower end of the hall;
pipes, coffee and lemonade went continually round; and the entertainment
wound up, as native entertainments always do wind up at Luxor, with a
performance of Ghawâzi.
We had already seen these dancers at two previous fantasias and we
admired them no more the third time than the first. They wore baggy
Turkish trousers, loose gowns of gaudy pattern and a profusion of
jewelry. The _première danseuse_ was a fine woman and rather handsome;
but in the “belle” of the company, a thick-lipped Nubian, we could
discover no charm whatever. The performances of the Ghawâzi--which are
very ungraceful and almost wholly pantomimic--have been too often
described to need description here. Only once, indeed, did we see them
perform an actual dance; and then they swam lightly to and fro,
clattering their castanets, crossing and re-crossing and bounding every
now and then down the whole length of the room. This dance, we were
told, was of unknown antiquity. They sang occasionally; but their voices
were harsh and their melodies inharmonious.
There was present, however, one native performer whom we had already
heard many times and of whose skill we never tired. This was the leader
of the little band--an old man who played the kemengeh,[245] or cocoanut
fiddle. A more unpromising instrument than the kemengeh it would be
difficult to conceive; yet our old Arab contrived to make it discourse
most eloquent music. His solos consisted of plaintive airs and
extemporized variations, embroidered with difficult and sometimes
extravagant cadenzas. He always began sedately, but warmed to his work
as he went on; seeming at last to forget everything but his own delight
in his own music. At such times one could see that he was weaving some
romance in his thoughts and translating it into sounds. As the strings
throbbed under his fingers, the whole man became inspired; and more than
once when, in shower after shower of keen, despairing notes, he had
described the wildest anguish of passion, I have observed his color
change and his hand tremble.
Although we heard him repeatedly, and engaged him more than once when we
had friends to dinner, I am sorry to say that I forget the name of this
really great artist. He is, however, celebrated throughout the Thebaid,
and is constantly summoned to Erment, Esneh, Keneh, Girgeh, and other
large towns, to perform at private entertainments.
While at Luxor, we went one Sunday morning to the Coptic church--a large
building at the northern extremity of the village. Church, schools, and
bishop’s house, are here grouped under one roof and inclosed in a
court-yard; for Luxor is the center of one of the twelve sees into which
Coptic Egypt is divided.
The church, which has been rebuilt of late years, is constructed of
sun-dried brick, having a small apse toward the east, and at the lower
or western end a screened atrium for the women. The center aisle is
perhaps thirty feet in width; the side-aisles, if aisles they can be
called, being thickly planted with stone pillars supporting round
arches. These pillars came from Karnak, and were the gift of the
khedive. They have lotus-bud capitals, and measure about fifteen feet
high in the shaft. At the upper end of the nave, some eighteen or twenty
feet in advance of the apse, there stands a very beautiful screen inlaid
in the old Coptic style with cedar, ebony, rosewood, ivory and
mother-of-pearl. This screen is the pride of the church. Through the
opening in the center one looks straight into the little wagon-roofed
apse, which contains a small table and a suspended lamp, and is as dark
as the sanctuary of an Egyptian temple. The reading-desk, like a rickety
office stool, faces the congregation; and just inside the screen stands
the bishop’s chair. Upon this plan, which closely resembles the plan of
the first cathedral of St. Peter at Rome, most Coptic churches are
built. They vary chiefly in the number of apses, some having as many as
five. The atrium generally contains a large tank, called the Epiphany
tank, into which, in memory of the baptism of our Lord, the men plunge
at their festivals of El Ghitâs.
Young Todroos, the son of the Prussian consul, conducted us to the
church. We went in at about eleven o’clock and witnessed the end of the
service, which had then been going on since daybreak. The atrium was
crowded with women and children, and the side-aisles with men of the
poorer sort. A few groups of better dressed Copts were gathered near the
screen listening to a black-robed deacon, who stood reading at the
reading desk with a lighted taper in his left hand. A priest in a white
vestment embroidered on the breast and hood with a red Maltese cross,
was squatting on his heels at the entrance to the adytum. The bishop,
all in black, with a black turban, sat with his back to the
congregation.
Every face was turned upon us when we came in. The reader paused. The
white-robed priest got up. Even the bishop looked round. Presently a
couple of acolytes, each carrying two cane-bottomed chairs, came
bustling down the nave; and, unceremoniously driving away all who were
standing near, placed us in a row across the middle of the church. This
interruption over, the reading was resumed.
We now observed with some surprise that every word of the lessons as
they were read in Coptic was translated, _viva voce_, into Arabic by a
youth in a surplice, who stood against the screen facing the
congregation. He had no book, but went on fluently enough, following
close upon the voice of the reader. This, we were told, was done only
during the reading of the lessons, the Gospel, and the Lord’s prayer.
The rest of the service is performed without translation; and, the
Coptic being a dead language, is consequently unintelligible to the
people.
When the reading of the Gospel was over, the deacon retired. The priest
then came forward and made a sign to the school-children, who ran up
noisily from all parts of the church, and joined with the choristers in
a wild kind of chant. It seemed to us that this chant concluded the
first part of the service.
The second part closely resembled the celebration of mass. The priest
came to the door of the screen; looked at the congregation; folded his
hands palm to palm; went up to the threshold of the apse, and began
reciting what sounded like a litany. He then uncovered the sacred
vessels, which till now had been concealed under two blue cotton
handkerchiefs, and, turning, shook the handkerchief toward the people.
He then consecrated the wine and wafer; elevated the host; and himself
partook of the Eucharist in both elements. A little bell was rung during
the consecration and again at the elevation. The people, meanwhile,
stood very reverently, with their heads bent; but no one knelt during
any part of the service. After this, the officiating priest washed his
hands in a brass basin; and the deacon--who was also the
schoolmaster--came round the church holding up his scarf, which was
heaped full of little cakes of unleavened bread. These he distributed to
all present. An acolyte followed with a plate, and collected the
offerings of the congregation.
We now thought the service was over; but there remained four wee,
crumpled, brown mites of babies to be christened. These small Copts were
carried up the church by four acolytes, followed by four anxious
fathers. The priest then muttered a short prayer; crossed the babies
with water from the basin in which he had washed his hands; drank the
water; wiped the basin out with a piece of bread; ate the bread; and
dismissed the little newly made Christians with a hasty blessing.
Finally, the bishop--who had taken no part in the service, nor even
partaken of the Eucharist--came down from his chair, and stood before
the altar to bless the congregation. Hereupon all the men and boys
ranged themselves in single file and trooped through between the screen
and the apse, crowding in at one side and out at the other; each being
touched by the bishop on his cheek, as he went by. If they lagged, the
bishop clapped his hands impatiently, and the schoolmaster drove them
through faster. When there were no more to come (the women and little
girls, be it observed, coming in for no share of this benediction), the
priest took off his vestments and laid them in a heap on the altar; the
deacon distributed a basketful of blessed cakes among the poor of the
congregation; and the bishop walked down the nave, eating a cake and
giving a bit here and there to the best dressed Copts as he went along.
So ended this interesting and curious service, which I have described
thus minutely for the reason that it represents, with probably but
little change, the earliest ceremonial of Christian worship in
Egypt.[246]
Before leaving, we asked permission to look at the books from which the
service had been read. They were all very old and dilapidated. The new
testament, however, was in better condition than the rest, and was
beautifully written upon vellum, in red and black ink. The Coptic, of
course, looks like Greek to the eyes of the uninitiated; but some of the
illuminated capitals struck us as bearing a marked resemblance to
certain of the more familiar hieroglyphic characters.
While we were examining the books, the bishop sent his servant to invite
us to pay him a visit. We accordingly followed the man up an outer
flight of wooden steps at one corner of the court-yard, and were shown
into a large room built partly over the church. Here we found the
bishop--handsome, plump, dignified, with soft brown eyes, and a slightly
grizzled beard--seated cross-legged on a divan, and smoking his
chibouque. On a table in the middle of the room stood two or three blue
and white bottles of oriental porcelain. The windows, which were
sashless and very large, looked over to Karnak. The sparrows flew in and
out as they listed.
The bishop received us very amiably, and the proceedings opened as usual
with pipes and coffee. The conversation which followed consisted chiefly
of questions on our part, and of answers on his. We asked the extent of
his diocese, and learned that it reached from Assûan on the south to
Keneh on the north. The revenue of the see, he said, was wholly derived
from endowments in land. He estimated the number of Copts in Luxor at
two thousand, being two-thirds of the entire population. The church was
built and decorated in the time of his predecessor. He had himself been
bishop here for rather more than four years. We then spoke of the
service we had just witnessed, and of the books we had seen. I showed
him my prayer-book, which he examined with much curiosity. I explained
the differences indicated by the black and the rubricated matter, and
pointed out the parts that were sung. He was, however, more interested
in the outside than in the contents, and tapped the binding once or
twice, to see if it were leather or wood. As for the gilt corners and
clasp, he undoubtedly took them for solid gold.
The conversation next turned upon Coptic; the idle man asking him if he
believed it to be the tongue actually spoken by the ancient Egyptians.
To this he replied:
“Yes, undoubtedly. What else should it be?”
The idle man hereupon suggested that it seemed to him, from what he had
just seen of the church books, as if it might be a corrupt form of
Byzantine Greek.
The bishop shook his head.
“The Coptic is a distinct language,” he said. “Eight Greek letters were
added to the Coptic alphabet upon the introduction of Christianity into
Egypt; and since that time many Greek words have been imported into the
Coptic vocabulary; but the main body of the tongue is Coptic, purely;
and it has no radical affinity whatever with the Greek.”[247]
This was the longest speech we heard him make, and he delivered it with
some emphasis.
I then asked him if the Coptic was in all respects a dead language; to
which he replied that many Coptic words, such as the names of the months
and of certain festivals, were still in daily use. This, however, was
not quite what I meant; so I put the question in another form, and asked
if he thought any fragments of the tongue yet survived among the
peasantry.
He pondered a moment before replying.
“That,” he said, “is a question to which it is difficult to give a
precise answer, but I think you might yet find in some of the remoter
villages an old man, here and there, who would understand it a little.”
I thought this a very interesting reply to a very interesting question.
After sitting about half an hour we rose and took leave. The bishop
shook hands with us all round, and, but that we protested against it,
would have accompanied us to the head of the stairs.
This interview was altogether very pleasant. The Copts are said to be
sullen in manner and so bigoted that even a Moslem is less an object of
dislike to them than a Christian of any other denomination. However this
may be, we saw nothing of it. We experienced, on the contrary, many acts
of civility from the Copts with whom we were brought into communication.
No traveler in Egypt should, I think, omit being present at a service in
a Coptic church. For a Coptic church is now the only place in which one
may hear the last utterances of that far-off race with whose pursuits
and pleasures the tomb paintings make us so familiar. We know that great
changes have come over the language since it was spoken by Rameses the
Great and written by Pentaur. We know that the Coptic of to-day bears to
the Egyptian of the Pharaohs some such resemblance, perhaps, as the
English of Macaulay bears to the English of Chaucer. Yet it is at bottom
the tongue of old Egypt, and it is something to hear the last lingering
echoes of that ancient speech read by the undoubted descendants of the
Egyptian people. In another fifty years or so, the Coptic will, in all
probability, be superseded by the Arabic in the services of this church;
and then the very tradition of its pronunciation will be lost. The Copts
themselves, it is said, are fast going over to the dominant faith.
Perhaps by the time our own descendants are counting the two thousandth
anniversary of the Christian era, both Copts and Coptic will be extinct
in Egypt.
* * * * *
A day or two after this we dropped down to Karnak, where we remained
till the end of the week, and on the following Sunday we resumed our
downward voyage.
If the universe of literature was unconditioned and the present book was
independent of time and space, I would write another chapter here about
Karnak. But Karnak, to be fairly dealt by, would ask, not a chapter, but
a volume. So, having already told something of the impression first made
upon us by that wilderness of wonders, I will say no more.
CHAPTER XXII.
ABYDUS AND CAIRO.
Our last weeks on the Nile went by like one long, lazy, summer’s day.
Events now were few. We had out-stayed all our fellow-travelers. Even
the faithful Bagstones had long since vanished northward; and the Philæ
was the last dahabeeyah of the year. Of the great sights of the river,
we had only Abydus and Beni Hassan left to see; while for minor
excursions, daily walks and explorations by the way, we had little
energy left. For the thermometer was rising higher and the Nile was
falling lower every day; and we should have been more than mortal if we
had not felt the languid influences of the glowing Egyptian spring.
The natives call it spring; but to our northern fancy it is spring,
summer and autumn in one. Of the splendor of the skies, of the lavish
bounty of the soil at this season, only those who have lingered late in
the land can form any conception. There is a breadth of repose now about
the landscape which it has never worn before. The winter green of the
palms is fading fast. The harvests are ripening; the pigeons are
pairing; the time of the singing of birds is come. There is just enough
south wind most days to keep the boat straight and the sail from
flapping. The heat is great; yet it is a heat which, up to a certain
point, one can enjoy. The men ply their oars by night and sleep under
their benches or croon old songs and tell stories among themselves by
day. But for the thin canopy of smoke that hangs over the villages one
would fancy now that those clusters of mud huts were all deserted. Not a
human being is to be seen on the banks when the sun is high. The
buffaloes stand up to their necks in the shallows. The donkeys huddle
together wherever there is shade. The very dogs have given up barking
and lie asleep under the walls.
The whole face of the country, and even of the Nile, is wonderfully
changed since we first passed this way. The land, then newly squared off
like a gigantic chess-board and intersected by thousands of little
channels, is now one sea of yellowing grain. The river is become a
labyrinth of sand-banks, some large, some small; some just beginning to
thrust their heads above water; others so long that they divide the
river for a mile or more at a stretch. Reïs Hassan spends half his life
at the prow, poling for shallows; and when we thread our way down one of
these sandy straits, it is for all the world like a bit of the Suez
canal. The banks, too, are twice as steep as they were when we went up.
The lentil patches, which then blossomed on the slope next the water’s
edge, now lie far back on the top of a steep brown ridge, at the foot of
which stretches a moist flat planted with watermelons. Each melon-plant
is protected from the sun by a tiny gable-roof of palm-thatch.
Meanwhile, the river being low and the banks high, we unfortunates
benefit scarcely at all by the faint breezes that now and then ruffle
the barley. Day by day, the thermometer (which hangs in the coolest
corner of the saloon) creeps up higher and higher, working its way by
degrees to above 99°; but never succeeding in getting up quite to 100°.
We, however, living in semi-darkness, with closed jalousies, and wet
sails hung round the sides of the dahabeeyah, and wet towels hung up in
our cabins, find 99° quite warm enough to be pleasant. The upper deck
is, of course, well deluged several times a day; but even so, it is
difficult to keep the timbers from starting. Meanwhile L---- and the
idle man devote their leisure to killing flies, keeping the towels wet,
and sprinkling the floors.
Our progress all this time is of the slowest. The men cannot row by day;
and at night the sand-banks so hedge us in with dangers that the only
possible way by which we can make a few miles between sunset and sunrise
is by sheer hard punting. Now and then we come to a clear channel, and
sometimes we get an hour or two of sweet south breeze; but these flashes
of good luck are few and far between.
In such wise, and in such a temperature, we found ourselves becalmed one
morning within six miles of Denderah. Not even L---- could be induced to
take a six-mile donkey-ride that day in the sun. The writer, however,
ordered out her sketching-tent and paid a last visit to the temple;
which, seen amid the ripening splendor of miles of barley, looked
gloomier and grander and more solitary than ever.
Two or three days later we came within reach of Abydus. Our proper
course would have been to push on to Bellianeh, which is one of the
recognized starting-points for Abydus. But an unlucky sand-bank barred
the way; so we moored instead at Samata, a village about two miles
nearer to the southward. Here our dragoman requisitioned the inhabitants
for donkeys. As it happened, the harvest had begun in the neighborhood
and all the beasts of burden were at work, so that it was near midday
before we succeeded in getting together the three or four wretched
little brutes with which we finally started. Not one of these steeds had
ever before carried a rider. We had a frightful time with them. My
donkey bolted about every five minutes. L----’s snarled like a camel
and showed its teeth like a dog. The idle man’s, bent on flattening its
rider, lay down and rolled at short intervals. In this exciting fashion
we somehow or other accomplished the seven miles that separate Samata
from Abydus. Skirting some palm-groves and crossing the dry bed of a
canal, we came out upon a vast plain, level as a lake, islanded here and
there with villages, and presenting one undulating surface of bearded
corn. This plain--the plain of ancient Thinis--runs parallel with the
Nile, like the plain of Thebes, and is bounded to the westward by a
range of flat-topped mountains. The distance between the river and the
mountains, however, is here much greater than at Thebes, being full six
miles; while to north and south the view ends only with the horizon.
Our way lies at first by a bridle-track through the thick of the barley;
then falls into the Bellianeh road--a raised causeway, embanked some
twenty feet above the plain. Along this road the country folk are coming
and going. In the cleared spaces where the maize has been cut, little
encampments of straw huts have sprung up. Yonder, steering their way by
unseen paths, go strings of camels; their gawky necks and humped backs
undulating above the surface of the corn, like galleys with fantastic
prows upon a sea of rippling green. The pigeons fly in great clouds from
village to village. The larks are singing and circling madly in the
clear depths overhead. The bee-eaters flash like live emeralds across
our path. The hoopoes strut by the wayside. At rather more than half-way
across the plain we come into the midst of the harvest. Here the brown
reapers, barelegged and naked to the waist, are at work with their
sickles, just as they are pictured in the tomb of Tih. The women and
children follow, gleaning, at the heels of those who bind the sheaves.
The sheik in his black robe and scarlet slippers rides to and fro upon
his ass, like Boaz among his people. As the sheaves are bound up the
camels carry them homeward. A camel-load is fourteen sheaves; seven to
each side of the hump. A little farther and the oxen, yoked two and two,
are plowing up the stubble. In a day or two the land will be sown with
millet, indigo, or cotton, to be gathered in once more before the coming
of the inundation.
Meanwhile, as the plain lengthens behind us and the distance grows less
between ourselves and the mountains, we see a line of huge irregular
mounds reaching for apparently a couple of miles or more along the foot
of the cliffs. From afar off the mounds look as if crowned by majestic
ruins, but as we draw nearer these outlines resolve themselves into the
village of Arabát-el-Madfûneh, which stands upon part of the mounds of
Abydus. And now we come to the end of the cultivated plain--that strange
line of demarcation where the inundation stops and the desert begins. Of
actual desert, however, there is here but a narrow strip, forming a
first step, as it were, above the alluvial plain. Next comes the
artificial platform, about a quarter of a mile in depth, on which stands
the modern village; and next again, towering up sheer and steep, the
great wall of limestone precipice. The village is extensive and the
houses, built in a rustic arabesque, tell of a well-to-do population.
Arched gateways ornamented with black, white and red bricks, windows of
turned lattice-work and pigeon-towers in courses of pots and bricks,
give a singular picturesqueness to the place; while the slope down to
the desert is covered with shrubberies and palms. Below these hanging
gardens, on the edge of the desert, lies the cut corn in piles of
sheaves. Here the camels are lying down to be unladen. Yonder the oxen
are already treading out the grain, or chopping the straw by means of a
curious sledge-like machine set with rows of revolving circular
knives.[248] Meanwhile, fluttering from heap to heap, settling on the
sheaves, feeding unmolested in the very midst of the threshing-floors,
strutting all over the margin of the desert, trailing their wings,
ruffling their plumes, cooing, courtesying, kissing, courting, filling
the air with sweet sounds and setting the whole lovely idyl to a
pastoral symphony of their own composing, are thousands and tens of
thousands of pigeons.[249]
Now our path turns aside and we thread our way among the houses,
noticing here a sculptured block built into a mud wall--yonder, beside a
dried-up well, a broken alabaster sarcophagus--farther on, a granite
column, still erect, in the midst of a palm-garden. And now, the village
being left behind, we find ourselves at the foot of a great hill of
newly excavated rubbish, from the top of which we presently look down
into a kind of crater, and see the great Temple of Abydus at our feet.
It was now nearly three o’clock; so, having seen what we could in the
time and having before us a long ride through a strange country, we left
again at six. I will not presume to describe the temples of Abydus--one
of which is so ruined as to be almost unintelligible, and the other so
singularly planned and so obscure in its general purport as to be a
standing puzzle to archæologists--after a short visit of three hours.
Enough if I sketch briefly what I saw but cursorily.
Buried as it, Abydus,[250] even under its mounds, is a place of profound
historical interest. At a time so remote that it precedes all written
record of Egyptian story, there existed a little way to the northward of
this site a city called Teni.[251] We know not to what aboriginal
community of prehistoric Egypt this city belonged; but here, presumedly,
the men of Kem[252] built their first temple, evolved their first
notions of art and groped their way to an alphabet which, in its origin,
was probably a mere picture-writing, like the picture-writing of Mexico.
Hence, too, came a man named Mena, whose cartouche from immemorial time
has stood first in the long list of Egyptian Pharaohs. Of Mena,[253] a
shadowy figure hovering on the border-land of history and tradition, we
know only that he was the first primitive chieftain who took the title
of king of Upper and Lower Egypt and that he went northward and founded
Memphis. Not, however, till after some centuries was the seat of
government removed to the new city. Teni--the supposed burial-place of
Osiris--then lost its political importance; but continued to be for long
ages the holy city of Egypt.
In the meanwhile, Abydus had sprung up close to Teni. Abydus, however,
though an important city, was never the capital of Egypt. The seat of
power shifted strangely with different dynasties, being established now
in the delta, now at Thebes, now at Elephantine; but having once
departed from the site which, by reason of its central position and the
unbounded fertility of its neighborhood, was above all others best
fitted to play this great part in the history of the country, it never
again returned to the point from which it had started. That point,
however, was unquestionably the center from which the great Egyptian
people departed upon its wonderful career. Here was the nursery of its
strength. Hence it derived its proud title to an unmixed autochthonous
descent. For no greater proof of the native origin of the race can be
adduced than the position which their first city occupies upon the map
of Egypt. That any tribe of colonists should have made straight for the
heart of the country and there have established themselves in the midst
of barbarous and probably hostile aborigines is evidently out of the
question. It is, on the other hand, equally clear that if Egypt had been
colonized from Asia or Ethiopia, the strangers would, on the one hand,
have founded their earliest settlement in the neighborhood of the
isthmus; or, on the other, have halted first among the then well-watered
plains of Nubia.[254] But the Egyptians started from the fertile heart
of their own mother country and began by being great at home.
Abydus and Teni, planted on the same platform of desert, were probably
united at one time by a straggling suburb inhabited by the embalmers and
other tradesfolk concerned in the business of death and burial. A chain
of mounds, excavated only where the temples were situated, now stand to
us for the famous city of Abydus. An ancient crude-brick inclosure and
an artificial tumulus mark the site of Teni. The temples and the
tumulus, divided by the now exhausted necropolis, and about as distant
from one another as Medinet Habu and the Ramesseum.
There must have been many older temples at Abydus than these which we
now see, one of which was built by Seti I, and the other by Rameses II.
Or possibly, as in so many instances, the more ancient buildings were
pulled down and rebuilt. Be this as it may, the temple of Seti, as
regards its sculptured decorations, is one of the most beautiful of
Egyptian ruins; and as regards its plan, is one of the most singular. A
row of square limestone piers, which must once have supported an
architrave, are now all that remains of the façade. Immediately behind
these comes a portico of twenty-four columns leading by seven entrances
to a hall of thirty-six columns. This hall again opens into seven
parallel sanctuaries, behind which lie another hall of columns and a
number of small chambers. So much of the building seems to be
homogeneous. Adjoining this block, however, and leading from it by
doorways at the southern end of the great hall, come several more halls
and chambers connected by corridors, and conducting apparently to more
chambers not yet excavated. All these piers, columns, halls, and
passages, and all the seven sanctuaries,[255] are most delicately
sculptured and brilliantly colored.
There is so far a family resemblance between temples of the same style
and period that, after a little experience, one can generally guess
before crossing the threshold of a fresh building what one is likely to
see in the way of sculptures within. But almost every subject in the
temple of Seti at Abydus is new and strange. All the gods of the
Egyptian pantheon seem to have been worshiped here and to have had each
his separate shrine. The walls are covered with paintings of these
shrines and their occupants; while before each the king is represented
performing some act of adoration. A huge blue frog, a greyhound, a
double-headed goose, a human-bodied creature with a Nilometer for its
head,[256] and many more than I can now remember, are thus depicted. The
royal offerings, too, though incense and necklaces and pectoral
ornaments abound, are for the most part of a kind that we have not seen
before. In one place the king presents to Isis a column with four
capitals, having on the top capital a globe and two asps surmounted by a
pair of ostrich feathers.
The center sanctuary of the seven appears to be dedicated to Khem, who
seems to be here, as in the great temple of Seti at Karnak, the
presiding divinity. In this principal sanctuary, which is resplendent
with color and in marvelous preservation, we especially observed a
portrait of Rameses II[257] in the act of opening the door of a shrine
by means of a golden key formed like a human hand and arm. The lock
seems to consist of a number of bolts of unequal length, each of which
is pushed back in turn by means of the forefinger of the little hand.
This, doubtless, gives a correct representation of the kind of locks in
use at that time.
It was in a corridor opening out from the great hall in this temple that
Mariette discovered that precious sculpture known as the new tablet of
Abydus. In this tableau, Seti I and Rameses II are seen, the one
offering incense, the other reciting a hymn of praise, to the manes of
seventy-six Pharaohs,[258] beginning with Mena, and ending with Seti
himself. To our great disappointment--though one cannot but acquiesce in
the necessity for precaution--we found the entrance to this corridor
closed and mounded up. A ragged old Arab who haunts the temple in the
character of custode, told us that the tablet could now only be seen by
special permission.
We seemed to have been here about half an hour when the guide came to
warn us of approaching evening. We had yet the site of the great Tumulus
of Teni to see; the tumulus being distant about twenty minutes’ ride.
The guide shook his head; but we insisted on going. The afternoon had
darkened over; and for the first time in many months a gathering canopy
of cloud shut out the glory of sunset. We, however, mounted our donkeys
and rode northward. With better beasts we might perhaps have gained our
end; as it was, seeing that it grew darker every moment, we presently
gave in, and instead of trying to push on farther, contented ourselves
with climbing a high mound which commanded the view toward Teni.
The clouds by this time were fast closing round, and waves of shadows
were creeping over the plain. To our left rose the near
mountain-barrier, dusk and lowering; to our right stretched the misty
corn-flats; at our feet, all hillocks and open graves, lay the desolate
necropolis. Beyond the palms that fringed the edge of the desert--beyond
a dark streak that marked the site of Teni--rose, purple in shadow
against the twilight, a steep and solitary hill. This hill, called by
the natives Kom-es-Sultan, or the Mound of the King, was the tumulus we
so desired to see. Viewed from a distance and by so uncertain a light,
it looked exactly like a volcanic cone of perhaps a couple of hundred
feet in height. It is, however, wholly artificial, and consists of a
mass of graves heaped one above another in historic strata; each layer,
as it were, the record of an era; the whole, a kind of human coral reef
built up from age to age with the ashes of generations.
For some years past, the Egyptian government had been gradually
excavating this extraordinary mound. The lower it was opened the more
ancient were its contents. So steadily retrogressive, indeed, were the
interments, that it seemed as if the spade of the digger might possibly
strike tombs of the first dynasty, and so restore to light relics of men
who lived in the age of Mena. “According to Plutarch,” wrote
Mariette,[259] “wealthy Egyptians came from all parts of Egypt to be
buried at Abydus, in order that their bones might rest near Osiris. Very
probably the tombs of Kom-es-Sultan belong to those personages mentioned
by Plutarch. Nor is this the only interest attaching to the mound of
Kom-es-Sultan. The famous tomb of Osiris cannot be far distant; and
certain indications lead us to think that it is excavated in precisely
that foundation of rock which serves as the nucleus of this mound. Thus
the persons buried in Kom-es-Sultan lay as near as possible to the
divine tomb. The works now in progress at this point have, therefore, a
twofold interest. They may yield tombs yet more and more ancient--tombs
even of the first dynasty; and some day or another they may discover to
us the hitherto unknown and hidden entrance to the tomb of the
god.”[260]
I bitterly regretted at the time that I could not at least ride to the
foot of Kom-es-Sultan; but I think now that I prefer to remember it as I
saw it from afar off, clothed in mystery, in the gloom of that dusky
evening.
There was a heavy silence in the air, and a melancholy as of the burden
of ages. The tumbled hillocks looked like a ghastly sea, and beyond the
verge of the desert it was already night. Presently, from among the
grave-pits, there crept toward us a slowly moving cloud. As it drew
nearer--soft, filmy, shifting, unreal--it proved to be the dust raised
by an immense flock of sheep. On they came, a brown compact mass, their
shepherd showing dimly now and then through openings in the cloud. The
last pale gleam from above caught them for a moment ere they melted,
ghostlike, into the murky plain. Then we went down ourselves, and
threaded the track between the mounds and the valley. Palms and houses
loomed vaguely out of the dusk; and a caravan of camels, stalking by
with swift and noiseless footfall, looked like shadows projected on a
background of mist. As the night deepened the air became stifling. There
were no stars and we could scarcely see a yard before us. Crawling
slowly along the steep causeway, we felt, but could distinguish nothing
of the plain stretching away on either side. Meanwhile the frogs croaked
furiously, and our donkeys stumbled at every step. When at length we
drew near Samata, it was close upon ten o’clock, and Reïs Hassan had
just started with men and torches to meet us.
Next morning early we once again passed Girgeh, with its ruined mosque
and still unfallen column; and about noonday moored at a place called
Ayserat, where we paid a visit to a native gentleman, one Ahmed Abû
Ratab Aga, to whom we carried letters of introduction. Ratab Aga owns
large estates in this province; is great in horseflesh; and lives in
patriarchal fashion surrounded by a numerous clan of kinsfolk and
dependents. His residence as Ayserat consists of a cluster of three or
four large houses, a score or so of pigeon-towers, an extensive garden,
stabling, exercising ground, and a large court-yard; the whole inclosed
by a wall of circuit and entered by a fine arabesque gateway. He
received us in a loggia of lattice-work overlooking the court-yard, and
had three of his finest horses--a gray, a bay, and a chestnut--brought
out for us to admire. They were just such horses as Velasquez loved to
paint--thick in the neck, small in the head, solid in the barrel, with
wavy manes, and long silky tails set high and standing off straight in
true Arab fashion. We doubted, however, that they were altogether _pur
sang_. They looked wonderfully picturesque with their gold embroidered
saddle-cloths, peaked saddles covered with crimson, green, and blue
velvet, long shovel stirrups and tasseled head-gear. The Aga’s brother
and nephews put them through their paces. They knelt to be mounted; lay
down and died at the word of command; dashed from perfect immobility
into a furious gallop; and when at fullest speed, stopped short, flung
themselves back upon their haunches, and stood like horses of stone. We
were told that our host had a hundred such standing in his stables.
Pipes, coffee, and an endless succession of different kinds of sherbets
went round all the time our visit lasted; and in the course of
conversation, we learned that not only the wages of agricultural
laborers, but even part of the taxes to the khedive, are here paid in
corn.
Before leaving, L----, the little lady and the writer were conducted to
the hareem and introduced to the ladies of the establishment. We found
them in a separate building, with a separate court-yard, living after
the usual dreary way of eastern women, with apparently no kind of
occupation and not even a garden to walk in. The Aga’s principal wife (I
believe he had but two), was a beautiful woman, with auburn hair, soft
brown eyes, and a lovely complexion. She received us on the threshold,
led us into a saloon surrounded by a divan and with some pride showed us
her five children. The eldest was a graceful girl of thirteen; the
youngest a little fellow of four. Mother and daughter were dressed alike
in black robes embroidered with silver, pink velvet slippers on bare
feet, silver bracelets and anklets and full pink Turkish trousers. They
wore their hair cut straight across the brow, plaited in long tails
behind and dressed with coins and pendants; while from the back of the
head there hung a veil of thin black gauze, also embroidered with
silver. Another lady, whom we took for the second wife and who was
extremely plain, had still richer and more massive ornaments, but seemed
to hold an inferior position in the hareem. There were perhaps a dozen
women and girls in all, two of whom were black.
One of the little boys had been ill all his short life and looked as if
he could not last many more months. The poor mother implored us to
prescribe for him. It was in vain to tell her that we knew nothing of
the nature of his disease and had no skill to cure it. She still
entreated and would take no refusal; so in pity we sent her some
harmless medicines.
We had little opportunity of observing domestic life in Egypt. L----
visited some of the vice-regal hareems at Cairo and brought away on each
occasion the same impression of dreariness. A little embroidery, a few
musical toys of Geneva manufacture, a daily drive on the Shubra road,
pipes, cigarettes, sweetmeats, jewelry and gossip, fill up the aimless
days of most Egyptian ladies of rank. There are, however, some who take
an active interest in politics; and in Cairo and Alexandria the
opera-boxes of the khedive and the great pashas are nightly occupied by
ladies. But it is not by the daily life of the wives of princes and
nobles, but by the life of the lesser gentry and upper middle-class,
that a domestic system should be judged. These ladies of Ayserat had no
London-built brougham, no Shuba road, no opera. They were absolutely
without mental resources; and they were even without the means of taking
air and exercise. One could see that time hung heavy on their hands, and
that they took but a feeble interest in the things around them. The
hareem stairs were dirty; the rooms were untidy; the general aspect of
the place was slatternly and neglected. As for the inmates, though all
good-nature and gentleness, their faces bore the expression of people
who are habitually bored. At Luxor, L---- and the writer paid a visit to
the wife of an intelligent and gentlemanly Arab, son of the late
governor of that place. This was a middle-class hareem. The couple were
young and not rich. They occupied a small house which commanded no view
and had no garden. Their little court-yard was given up to the poultry;
their tiny terrace above was less than twelve feet square; and they
were surrounded on all sides by houses. Yet in this stifling prison the
young wife lived, apparently contented, from year’s end to year’s end.
She literally never went out. As a child, she had no doubt enjoyed some
kind of liberty; but as a marriageable girl, and as a bride, she was as
much a prisoner as a bird in a cage. Born and bred in Luxor, she had
never seen Karnak; yet Karnak is only two miles distant. We asked her if
she would like to go there with us; but she laughed and shook her head.
She was incapable even of curiosity.
It seemed to us that the wives of the fellahîn were in truth the
happiest women in Egypt. They work hard and are bitterly poor; but they
have the free use of their limbs and they at least know the fresh air,
the sunshine and the open fields.
When we left Ayserat, there still lay three hundred and thirty-five
miles between us and Cairo. From this time the navigation of the Nile
became every day more difficult. The dahabeeyah, too, got heated through
and through, so that not even sluicing and swabbing availed to keep down
the temperature. At night when we went to our sleeping-cabins, the
timbers alongside of our berths were as hot to the hand as a screen in
front of a great fire. Our crew, though to the manner born, suffered
even more than ourselves; and L---- at this time had generally a case of
sunstroke on her hands. One by one, we passed the places we had seen on
our way up--Siût, Manfalût, Gebel Abufayda, Roda, Minieh. After all, we
did not see Beni Hassan. The day we reached that part of the river, a
furious sandstorm was raging; such a storm that even the writer was
daunted. Three days later, we took the rail at Bibbeh and went on to
Cairo, leaving the Philæ to follow as fast as wind and weather might
permit.
We were so wedded by this time to dahabeeyah life, that we felt lost at
first in the big rooms at Shepheard’s hotel, and altogether bewildered
in the crowded streets. Yet here was Cairo, more picturesque, more
beautiful than ever. Here were the same merchants squatting on the same
carpets and smoking the same pipes, in the Tunis bazaar; here was the
same old cake seller still ensconced in the same doorway in the Muski;
here were the same jewelers selling bracelets in the Khan-Khalîli; the
same money-changers sitting behind their little tables at the corners
of the streets; the same veiled ladies riding on donkeys and driving in
carriages; the same hurrying funerals and noisy weddings; the same odd
cries and motley costumes and unaccustomed trades. Nothing was changed.
We soon dropped back into the old life of sight-seeing and
shopping--buying rugs and silks and silver ornaments and old
embroideries and Turkish slippers and all sorts of antique and pretty
trifles; going from Mohammedan mosques to rare old Coptic churches;
dropping in for an hour or two most afternoons at the Boulak museum; and
generally ending the day’s work with a drive on the Shubra road, or a
stroll round the Esbekiyeh gardens.
The Môlid-en-Nebi, or festival of the birth of the prophet, was being
held at this time in a tract of waste ground on the road to old Cairo.
Here, in some twenty or thirty large open tents ranged in a circle,
there were readings of the Koran and meetings of dervishes going on by
day and night, without intermission, for nearly a fortnight. After dark,
when the tents were all ablaze with lighted chandeliers, and the
dervishes were howling and leaping, and fire-works were being let off
from an illuminated platform in the middle of the area, the scene was
extraordinary. All Cairo used to be there, on foot or in carriages,
between eight o’clock and midnight every evening; the veiled ladies of
the khedive’s hareem in their miniature broughams being foremost among
the spectators.
The Môlid-en-Nebi ends with the performance of the Dóseh, when the sheik
of the Saädîyeh dervishes rides over a road of prostrate fanatics. L----
and the writer witnessed this sight from the tent of the Governor of
Cairo. Drunk with opium, fasting and praying, rolling their heads and
foaming at the mouth, some hundreds of wretched creatures lay down in
the road packed as close as paving-stones, and were walked and ridden
over before our eyes. The standard-bearers came first; then a priest
reading the Koran aloud; then the sheik on his white Arab, supported on
either side by barefooted priests. The beautiful horse trod with evident
reluctance and as lightly and swiftly as possible on the human causeway
under his hoofs. The Mohammedans aver that no one is injured or even
bruised[261] on this holy occasion; but I saw some men carried away in
convulsions, who looked as if they would never walk again.[262]
It is difficult to say but a few inadequate words of a place about which
an instructive volume might be written; yet to pass the Boulak Museum in
silence is impossible. This famous collection is due, in the first
instance, to the liberality of the late khedive and the labors of
Mariette. With the exception of Mehemet Ali, who excavated the Temple of
Denderah, no previous viceroy of Egypt had ever interested himself in
the archæology of the country. Those who cared for such rubbish as
encumbered the soil or lay hidden beneath the sands of the desert, were
free to take it; and no favor was more frequently asked or more readily
granted than permission to dig for “anteekahs.” Hence the Egyptian
wealth of our museums. Hence the numerous private collections dispersed
throughout Europe. Ismail Pasha, however, put an end to that wholesale
pillage; and for the first time since ever “mummy was sold for balsam,”
or for bric-à-brac, it became illegal to transport antiquities. Thus,
for the first time, Egypt began to possess a national collection.
Youngest of great museums, the Boulak collection is the wealthiest in
the world in portrait-statues of private individuals, in funerary
tablets, in amulets and in personal relics of the ancient inhabitants of
the Nile valley. It is necessarily less rich in such colossal statues as
fill the great galleries of the British Museum, the Turin Museum and the
Louvre. These, being above ground and comparatively few in number, were
for the most part seized upon long since and transported to Europe. The
Boulak statues are the product of the tombs. The famous wooden “sheik,”
about which so much has been written,[263] the magnificent diorite
statue of Khafra (Chephren), the builder of the second pyramid, the two
marvelous sitting statues of Prince Ra-hotep and Princess Nefer-t, are
all portraits; and, like their tombs, were executed during the lifetime
of the persons represented. Crossing the threshold of the great
vestibule,[264] one is surrounded by a host of these extraordinary
figures, erect, colored, clothed, all but in motion. It is like entering
the crowded ante-room of a royal palace in the time of the ancient
empire.
The greater number of the Boulak portrait statues are sculptured in what
is called the hieratic attitude; that is, with the left arm down and
pressed close to the body, the left hand holding a roll of papyrus, the
right leg advanced and the right hand raised, as grasping the
walking-staff. It occurred to me that there might be a deeper
significance than at first sight appears in this conventional attitude,
and that it perhaps suggests the moment of resurrection, when the
deceased, holding fast by his copy of the book of the dead, walks forth
from his tomb into the light of life eternal.
Of all the statues here--one may say, indeed, of all known Egyptian
statues--those of Prince Ra-hotep and Princess Nefer-t are the most
wonderful. They are probably the oldest portrait-statues in the
world.[265] They come from a tomb of the third dynasty, and are
contemporary with Snefru, a king who reigned before the time of Khufu
and Khafra. That is to say, these people who sit before us side by side,
colored to the life, fresh and glowing as the day when they gave the
artist his last sitting, lived at a time when the great pyramids of
Ghîzeh were not yet built, and at a date which is variously calculated
as from about six thousand three hundred to four thousand years before
the present day. The princess wears her hair precisely as it is still
worn in Nubia, and her necklace of cabochon drops is of a pattern much
favored by the modern Ghawâzi. The eyes of both statues are inserted.
The eyeball, which is set in an eyelid of bronze, is made of opaque
white quartz, with an iris of rock-crystal inclosing a pupil of some
kind of brilliant metal. This treatment--of which there are one or two
other instances extant--gives to the eyes a look of intelligence that is
almost appalling. There is a play of light within the orb, and
apparently a living moisture upon the surface, which has never been
approached by the most skillfully made glass eyes of modern
manufacture.[266]
[Illustration]
Of the jewels of Queen Aah-hotep, of the superb series of engraved
scarabæi, of the rings, amulets, and toilette ornaments, of the vases in
bronze, silver, alabaster, and porcelain, of the libation-tables, the
woven stuffs, the terra-cottas, the artists’ models, the lamps, the
silver boats, the weapons, the papyri, the thousand-and-one curious
personal relics and articles of domestic use which are brought together
within these walls, I have no space to tell. Except the collection of
Pompeiian relics in Naples, there is nothing elsewhere to compare with
the collection at Boulak; and the villas of Pompeii have yielded no such
gems and jewels as the tombs of ancient Egypt. It is not too much to say
that if these dead and mummied people could come back to earth, the
priest would here find all the gods of his Pantheon; the king his
scepter; the queen her crown-jewels; the scribe his palette; the soldier
his arms; the workman his tools; the barber his razor; the husbandman
his hoe; the housewife her broom; the child his toys; the beauty her
combs and kohl bottles and mirrors. The furniture of the house is here,
as well as the furniture of the tomb. Here, too, is the broken sistrum
buried with the dead in token of the grief of the living.
Waiting the construction of a more suitable edifice, the present
building gives temporary shelter to the collection. In the meanwhile, if
there was nothing else to tempt the traveler to Cairo, the Boulak museum
would alone be worth the journey from Europe.
The first excursion one makes on returning to Cairo, the last one makes
before leaving, is to Ghîzeh. It is impossible to get tired of the
pyramids. Here L---- and the writer spent their last day with the happy
couple.
We left Cairo early, and met all the market-folk coming in from the
country--donkeys and carts laden with green stuff, and veiled women with
towers of baskets on their heads. The khedive’s new palace was swarming
already with masons, and files of camels were bringing limestone blocks
for the builders. Next comes the open corn-plain, part yellow, part
green--the long straight road bordered with acacias--beyond all, the
desert-platform, and the pyramids, half in light, half in greenish-gray
shadow, against the horizon. I never could understand why it is that the
second pyramid, though it is smaller and farther off, looks from this
point of view bigger than the first. Farther on, the brown fellahîn,
knee-deep in purple blossom, are cutting the clover. The camels carry it
away. The goats and buffaloes feed in the clearings. Then comes the
half-way tomb nestled in greenery, where men and horses stay to drink;
and soon we are skirting a great backwater which reflects the pyramids
like a mirror. Villages, shâdûfs, herds and flocks, tracts of palms,
corn-flats, and spaces of rich, dark fallow, now succeed each other; and
then once more comes the sandy slope, and the cavernous ridge of ancient
yellow rock, and the great pyramid with its shadow-side toward us,
darkening the light of day.
Neither L---- nor the writer went inside the great pyramid. The idle man
did so this day, and L----’s maid on another occasion; and both
reported of the place as so stifling within, so foul underfoot, and so
fatiguing, that, somehow, we each time put it off, and ended by missing
it. The ascent is extremely easy. Rugged and huge as are the blocks,
there is scarcely one upon which it is not possible to find a half-way
rest for the toe of one’s boot, so as to divide the distance. With the
help of three Arabs, nothing can well be less fatiguing. As for the men,
they are helpful and courteous, and as clever as possible; and coax one
on from block to block in all the languages of Europe.
“Pazienza, signora! Allez doucement--all serene! We half-way now--dem
halben-weg, fräulein. Ne vous pressez pas, mademoiselle. Chi va sano, va
lontano. Six step more, and ecco la cima!”
“You should add the other half of the proverb, amici,” said I. “Chi va
forte, va alla morte.”
My Arabs had never heard this before, and were delighted with it. They
repeated it again and again, and committed it to memory with great
satisfaction. I asked them why they did not cut steps in the blocks, so
as to make the ascent easier for ladies. The answer was ready and
honest.
“No, no, mademoiselle! Arab very stupid to do that. If Arab makes steps,
howadji goes up alone. No more want Arab man to help him up, and Arab
man earn no more dollars!”
They offered to sing “Yankee Doodle” when we reached the top; then,
finding we were English, shouted “God save the queen!” and told us that
the Prince of Wales had given £40 to the pyramid Arabs when he came here
with the princess two years before; which, however, we took the liberty
to doubt.
The space on the top of the great pyramid is said to be thirty feet
square. It is not, as I had expected, a level platform. Some blocks of
the next tier remain, and two or three of the tier next above that; so
making pleasant seats and shady corners. What struck us most on reaching
the top was the startling nearness, to all appearance, of the second
pyramid. It seemed to rise up beside us like a mountain; yet so close,
that I fancied I could almost touch it by putting out my hand. Every
detail of the surface, every crack and party-colored stain in the
shining stucco that yet clings about the apex, was distinctly visible.
The view from this place is immense. The country is so flat, the
atmosphere so clear, the standpoint so isolated, that one really sees
more and sees farther than from many a mountain summit of ten or twelve
thousand feet. The ground lies, as it were, immediately under one; and
the great Necropolis is seen as in a ground-plan. The effect must, I
imagine, be exactly like the effect of a landscape seen from a balloon.
Without ascending the pyramid, it is certainly not possible to form a
clear notion of the way in which this great burial-field is laid out. We
see from this point how each royal pyramid is surrounded by its
quadrangle of lesser tombs, some in the form of small pyramids, others
partly rock-cut, partly built of massive slabs, like the roofing-stones
of the temples. We see how Khufu and Khafra and Menkara lay, each under
his mountain of stone, with his family and his nobles around him. We see
the great causeways which moved Herodotus to such wonder, and along
which the giant stones were brought. Recognizing how clearly the place
is a great cemetery, one marvels at the ingenious theories which turn
the pyramids into astronomical observatories, and abstruse standards of
measurement. They are the grandest graves[267] in all the world--and
they are nothing more.
The little way to the southward, from the midst of a sandy hollow, rises
the head of the sphinx. Older than the pyramids, older than history, the
monster lies couchant like a watch-dog, looking ever to the east, as if
for some dawn that has not yet risen.[268] A depression in the sand
close by marks the site of that strange monument miscalled the Temple of
the Sphinx.[269] Farther away to the west on the highest slope of this
part of the desert platform, stands the Pyramid of Menkara (Mycerinus).
It has lost but five feet of its original height, and from this distance
it looks quite perfect.
Such--set in a waste of desert--are the main objects, and the nearest
objects, on which our eyes first rest. As a whole, the view is more long
than wide, being bounded to the westward by the Libyan range, and to the
eastward by the Mokattam hills. At the foot of those yellow hills,
divided from us by the cultivated plain across which we have just
driven, lies Cairo, all glittering domes half seen through a sunlit
haze. Overlooking the fairy city stands the mosque of the citadel, its
mast-like minarets piercing the clearer atmosphere. Far to the
northward, traversing reach after reach of shadowy palm-groves, the eye
loses itself in the dim and fertile distances of the delta. To the west
and south all is desert. It begins here at our feet--a rolling
wilderness of valleys and slopes and rivers and seas of sand, broken
here and there by abrupt ridges of rock and mounds of ruined masonry and
open graves. A silver line skirts the edge of this dead world, and
vanishes southward in the sun-mist that shimmers on the farthest
horizon. To the left of that silver line we see the quarried cliffs of
Turra, marble-white; opposite Turra, the plumy palms of Memphis. On the
desert platform above, clear, though faint, the pyramids of Abusîr and
Sakkârah, and Dahshûr. Every stage of the Pyramid of Ouenephes, banded
in light and shade, is plain to see. So is the dome-like summit of the
great pyramid of Dahshûr. Even the brick ruin beside it which we took
for a black rock as we went up the river, and which looks like a black
rock still, is perfectly visible. Farthest of them all, showing pale and
sharp amid the palpitating blaze of noon, stands, like an unfinished
tower of Babel, the pyramid of Meydûm. It is in this direction that our
eyes turn oftenest--to the measureless desert in its mystery of light
and silence; to the Nile where it gleams out again and again, till it
melts at last into that faint, far distance beyond which lie Thebes and
Philæ and Abou Simbel.
APPENDIX I.
A. M’CALLUM, ESQ., TO THE EDITOR OF “THE TIMES.”[270]
SIR:--It may interest your readers to learn that at the south side of
the great Temple of Abou Simbel, I found the entrance to a painted
chamber rock-cut, and measuring twenty-one feet two and one-half inches
by fourteen feet eight inches, and twelve feet high to the spring of the
arch, elaborately sculptured and painted in the best style of the best
period of Égyptian art, bearing the portraits of Rameses the Great and
his cartouches, and in a state of the highest preservation. This chamber
is preceded by the ruins of a vaulted atrium, in sundried brickwork, and
adjoins the remains of what would appear to be a massive wall or pylon,
which contains a staircase terminating in an arched doorway leading to
the vaulted atrium before mentioned.
The doorway of the painted chamber, the staircase and the arch, were all
buried in sand and débris. The chamber appears to have been covered and
lost sight of since a very early period, being wholly free from
mutilation, and from the scribbling of travelers, ancient and modern.
The staircase was not opened until the 18th, and the bones of a woman
and child, with two small cinerary urns, were there discovered by a
gentleman of our party, buried in the sand. This was doubtless a
subsequent interment. Whether this painted chamber is the inner
sanctuary of a small temple, or part of a tomb, or only a speos, like
the well-known grottos at Ibrim, is a question for future excavators to
determine. I have the honor to be, sir, yours, etc.,
ANDREW MCCALLUM.
KOROSKO, NUBIA, Feb. 16, 1874.
APPENDIX II.
THE EGYPTIAN PANTHEON.
“The deities of ancient Egypt consist of celestial, terrestrial and
infernal gods, and of many inferior personages, either representatives
of the greater gods or else attendants upon them. Most of the gods were
connected with the sun, and represented that luminary in its passage
through the upper hemisphere or Heaven and the lower hemisphere or
Hades. To the deities of the solar cycle belonged the great gods of
Thebes and Heliopolis. In the local worship of Egypt the deities were
arranged in local triads; thus, at Memphis, Ptah, his wife Merienptah,
and their son Nefer Atum, formed a triad, to which was sometimes added
the goddess Bast or Bubastis. At Abydus the local triad was Osiris, Isis
and Horus, with Nephthys; at Thebes, Amen-Ra or Ammon, Mut and Chons,
with Neith; at Elephantine, Kneph, Anuka, Seti and Hak. In most
instances the names of the gods are Egyptian; thus, Ptah meant ‘the
opener;’ Amen, ‘the concealed;’ Ra, ‘the sun’ or ‘day;’ Athor, ‘the
house of Horus;’ but some few, especially of later times, were
introduced from Semitic sources, as Bal or Baal, Astaruta or Astarte,
Khen or Kium, Respu or Reseph. Besides the principal gods, several or
parhedral gods, sometimes personifications of the faculties, senses, and
other objects, are introduced into the religious system, and genii,
spirits, or personified souls of deities formed part of the same. At a
period subsequent to their first introduction the gods were divided into
three orders. The first or highest comprised eight deities, who were
different in the Memphian and Theban systems. They were supposed to have
reigned over Egypt before the time of mortals. The eight gods of the
first order at Memphis were: 1, Ptah; 2, Shu; 3, Tefnu; 4, Seb; 5, Nut;
6, Osiris; 7, Isis and Horus; 8, Athor. Those of Thebes were: 1,
Amen-Ra; 2, Mentu; 3, Atum; 4, Shu and Tefnu; 5, Seb; 6, Osiris; 7, Set
and Nephthys; 8, Horus and Athor. The gods of the second order were
twelve in number, but the name of one only, an Egyptian Hercules, has
been preserved. The third order is stated to have comprised Osiris, who,
it will be seen, belonged to the first order.”--“Guide to the First and
Second Egyptian Rooms; Brit. Musæ.” S. Birch, 1874.
The gods most commonly represented upon the monuments are Phtah, Knum,
Ra, Amen-Ra, Khem, Osiris, Nefer Atum or Tum, Thoth, Seb, Set, Khons,
Horus, Maut, Neith, Isis, Nut, Hathor and Bast. They are distinguished
by the following attributes:
_Phtah_ or _Ptah_--In form a mummy, holding the emblem called by some
the Nilometer, by others the emblem of stability. Called “the Father of
the Beginning, the Creator of the Egg of the Sun and Moon.” Chief deity
of Memphis.
_Kneph_, _Knum_ or _Knouphis_--Ram-headed. Called the maker of gods and
men; the soul of the gods. Chief deity of Elephantine and the cataracts.
_Ra_--Hawk-headed, and crowned with the sun-disk encircled by an asp.
The divine disposer and organizer of the world. Adored throughout Egypt.
_Amen-Ra_--Of human form, crowned with a flat-topped cap and two long
straight plumes; clothed in the schenti; his flesh sometimes painted
blue. There are various forms of this god (see foot note p. 310), but he
is most generally described as King of the Gods. Chief deity of Thebes.
_Khem_--Of human form, mummified; wears head-dress of Amen-Ra; his
right hand uplifted, holding the flail. The god of productiveness and
generation. Chief deity of Khemmis, or Ekhmeen. Is identified in later
times with Amen, and called Amen-Khem.
_Osiris_--Of human form, mummified, crowned with a miter, and holding
the flail and crook. Called the Good Being; the Lord above all; the One
Lord. Was the god of the lower world; judge of the dead; and
representative of the sun below the horizon. Adored throughout Egypt.
Local deity of Abydus.
_Nefer Atum_--Human-headed, and crowned with the pschent. This god
represented the setting sun, or the sun descending to light the lower
world. Local deity of Heliopolis.
_Thoth_--In form a man, ibis-headed, generally depicted with the pen and
palette of a scribe. Was the god of the moon, and of letters. Local
deity of Sesoon, or Hermopolis.
_Seb_--The “Father of the Gods,” and deity of terrestrial vegetation. In
form a man with a goose upon his head.
_Set_--Represented by a symbolic animal, with a muzzle and ears like a
jackal, the body of an ass, and an upright tail, like the tail of a
lion. Was originally a warlike god, and became in later times the symbol
of evil and the enemy of Osiris.
_Khons_--Hawk-headed, crowned with the sun disk and horns. Is
represented sometimes as a youth with the side-lock, standing on a
crocodile.
_Horus_--Horus appears variously as Horus, Horus Aroëris, and Horus
Harpakhrat (Harpocrates), or Horus the child. Is represented under the
first two forms as a man, hawk headed, wearing the double crown of
Egypt; in the latter as a child with the side-lock. Local deity of Edfu
(Apollinopolis Magna).
_Maut_--A woman draped and crowned with the pschent; generally with a
cap below the pschent representing a vulture. Adored at Thebes.
_Neith_--A woman draped, holding sometimes a bow and arrows, crowned
with the crown of Lower Egypt. She presided over war and the loom.
Worshiped at Thebes.
_Isis_--A woman crowned with the sun-disk surmounted by a throne, and
sometimes inclosed between horns. Adored at Abydus and Philæ. Her soul
resided in Sothis, or the Dog-star.
_Nut_--A woman curved so as to touch the ground with her fingers. She
represents the vault of Heaven, and is the mother of the gods.
_Hathor_--Cow-headed, and crowned with the disk and plumes. Deity of
Amenti, or the Egyptian Hades. Worshiped at Denderah.
_Bast_ and _Sekhet_--Bast and Sekhet appear to be two forms of the same
goddess. As Sekhet she is represented as a woman, lion-headed, with the
disk and uræus; as Bast, she is cat-headed, and holds a sistrum. Adored
at Bubastis.
APPENDIX III.
THE RELIGIOUS BELIEF OF THE EGYPTIANS.
Did the Egyptians believe in one eternal god whose attributes were
merely symbolized by their numerous deities; or must the whole structure
of their faith be resolved into a solar myth, with its various and
inevitable ramifications? This is the great problem of Egyptology, and
it is a problem that has not yet been solved. Egyptologists differ so
widely on the subject that it is impossible to reconcile their opinions.
As not even the description of a temple is complete without some
reference to this important question, and as the question itself
underlies every notion we may form of ancient Egypt, and ancient
Egyptians, I have thought it well to group here a few representative
extracts from the works of one or two of the greatest authorities upon
the subject.
“The religion of the Egyptians consisted of an extended polytheism
represented by a series of local groups. The idea of a single deity
self-existing or produced was involved in the conception of some of the
principal gods, who are said to have given birth to or produced gods,
men, all beings and things. Other deities were considered to be
self-produced. The sun was the older object of worship, and in his
various forms, as the rising, midday and setting sun, was adored under
different names, and was often united, especially at Thebes, to the
types of other deities, as Amen and Mentu. The oldest of all the local
deities, Ptah, who was worshiped at Memphis, was a demiurgos or creator
of Heaven, earth, gods and men, and not identified with the sun. Besides
the worship of the solar gods, that of Osiris extensively prevailed, and
with it the antagonism of Set, the Egyptian devil, the metempsychosis or
transmigration of the soul, the future judgment, the purgatory or Hades,
the _Karneter_, the _Aahlu_ or Elysium, and final union of the soul to
the body after the lapse of several centuries. Besides the deities of
Heaven, the light, and the lower world, others personified the elements
or presided over the operations of nature, the seasons and
events.”--“Guide to the First and Second Egyption Rooms: Brit. Mus.” S.
Birch, 1874.
“This religion, obscured as it is by complex mythology, has lent itself
to many interpretations of a contradictory nature, none of which have
been unanimously adopted. But that which is beyond doubt, and which
shines forth from the texts for the whole world’s acceptance, is the
belief in one God. The polytheism of the monuments is but an outward
show. The innumerable gods of the Pantheon are but manifestations of the
one being in his various capacities. That taste for allegory which
created the hieroglyphic writing, found vent likewise in the expression
of the religious idea; that idea being, as it were, stifled in the later
periods by a too-abundant symbolism.”--P. Pierret, “Dictionaire d’Arch.
Égyptienne,” 1875. Translated from an article on “_Réligion_.”
“This god of the Egyptians was unique, perfect, endued with knowledge
and intelligence, and so far incomprehensible that one can scarcely say
in what respects he is incomprehensible. He is the one who exists by
essence; the one sole life of all substance; the one single generator in
heaven and earth who is not himself engendered; the father of fathers;
the mother of mothers; always the same, immutable in immutable
perfection; existing equally in the past, the present and the future. He
fills the universe in such wise that no earthly image can give the
feeblest notion of his immensity. He is felt everywhere; he is tangible
nowhere.”--G. Maspero. Translated from “Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de
l’Orient.” Paris, 1876, chap, i, p. 26.
“Unfortunately, the more we study the religion of ancient Egypt the more
our doubts accumulate with regard to the character which must finally be
attributed to it. The excavations carried on of late at Denderah and
Edfu have opened up to us an extraordinary fertile source of material.
These temples are covered with texts, and present precisely the
appearance of two books which authoritatively treat not only of the gods
to which these two temples are dedicated, but of the religion under its
more general aspects. But neither in these temples, nor in those which
have been long known to us, appears the one god of Jamblichus. If Ammon
is ‘The First of the First’ at Thebes, if Phtah is at Memphis ‘The
Father of all Beings, without Beginning or End,’ so also is every other
Egyptian god separately endowed with these attributes of the Divine
Being. In other words, we everywhere find gods who are uncreate and
immortal; but nowhere that unique, invisible deity, without name and
without form, who was supposed to hover above the highest summit of the
Egyptian pantheon. The Temple of Denderah, now explored to the end of
its most hidden inscriptions, of a certainty furnishes no trace of this
deity. The one result which above all others seems to be educed from the
study of this temple, is that (according to the Egyptians) the universe
was god himself, and that Pantheism formed the foundation of their
religion.”--A. Mariette Bey. Translated from “Itinéraire de la Haute
Égypte.” Alexandria, 1872, p. 54.
“The sun is the most ancient object of Egyptian worship found upon the
monuments. His birth each day when he springs from the bosom of the
nocturnal Heaven is the natural emblem of the eternal generation of the
divinity. Hence the celestial space became identified with the divine
mother. It was particularly the nocturnal Heaven which was represented
by this personage. The rays of the sun, as they awakened all nature,
seemed to give life to animated beings. Hence that which doubtless was
originally a symbol became the foundation of the religion. It is the sun
himself whom we find habitually invoked as the supreme being. The
addition of his Egyptian name, Ra, to the names of certain local
divinities, would seem to show that this identification constituted a
second epoch in the history of the religions of the Valley of the
Nile.”--Viscount E. de Rougé. Translated from “Notice Sommaire des
Monuments Égyptiens du Louvre.” Paris, 1873, p. 120.
That the religion, whether based on a solar myth or upon a genuine
belief in a spiritual god, became grossly material in its later
developments, is apparent to every student of the monuments. M. Maspero
has the following remarks on the degeneration of the old faith:
“In the course of ages, the sense of the religion became obscured. In
the texts of Greek and Roman date, that lofty conception of the divinity
which had been cherished by the early theologians of Egypt still peeps
out here and there. Fragmentary phrases and epithets yet prove that the
fundamental principles of the religion are not quite forgotten. For the
most part, however, we find that we no longer have to do with the
infinite and intangible god of ancient days; but rather with a god of
flesh and blood who lives upon earth, and has so abased himself as to be
no more than a human king. It is no longer this god of whom no man knew
either the form or the substance--it is Kneph at Esneh; Hathor at
Denderah; Horus, king of the divine dynasty at Edfu. This king has a
court, ministers, an army, a fleet. His eldest son, Horhat, Prince of
Cush and heir presumptive to the throne, commands the troops. His first
minister, Thoth, the inventor of letters, has geography and rhetoric at
his fingers’ ends; is historiographer-royal; and is entrusted with the
duty of recording the victories of the king and of celebrating them in
high-sounding phraseology. When this god makes war upon his neighbor
Typhon he makes no use of the divine weapons of which we should take it
for granted that he could dispose at will. He calls out his archers and
his chariots; descends the Nile in his galley, as might the last new
Pharaoh; directs marches and counter-marches; fights planned battles;
carries cities by storm, and brings all Egypt in submission to his feet.
We see here that the Egyptians of Ptolemaic times had substituted for
the one god of their ancestors a line of god-kings, and had embroidered
these modern legends with a host of fantastic details.”--G. Maspero.
Translated from “Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient.” Paris,
1876, chap, i, pp. 50-51.
APPENDIX IV.
EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY.
“The chronology of Egypt has been a disputed point for centuries. The
Egyptians had no cycle, and only dated in the regnal years of their
monarchs. The principal Greek sources have been the canon of Ptolemy,
drawn up in the second century A.D., and the lists of the dynasties
extracted from the historical work of Manetho, an Egyptian priest, who
lived in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, B.C. 285-247. The
discrepancies between these lists and the monuments have given rise to
many schemes and rectifications of the chronology. The principal
chronological points of information obtained from the monument are the
conquest of Egypt by Cambyses, B.C. 527, the commencement of the reign
of Psammetichus I, B.C. 665, the reign of Tirhaka, about B.C. 693, and
that of Bocchoris, about B.C. 720, the synchronism of the reign of
Shishak I with the capture of Jerusalem, about B.C. 970. The principal
monuments throwing light on other parts of the chronology are the
recorded heliacal risings of Sothis, or the Dog-star, in the reigns of
Thothmes III and Rameses II, III, VI, IX, the date of four hundred years
from the time of Rameses II to the shepherd kings, the dated sepulchral
tablets of the bull Apis at the serapeum, the lists of kings at
Sakkarah, Thebes and Abydus, the chronological canon of the Turin
papyrus, and other incidental notices. But of the anterior dynasties no
certain chronological dates are afforded by the monuments, those
hitherto proposed not having stood the test of historical or
philological criticism.”--S. Birch, LL.D.: “Guide to the First and
Second Egyptian Rooms at the Brit. Museum.” 1874, p. 10.
As some indication of the wide divergence of opinion upon this subject,
it is enough to point out that the German Egyptologists alone differ as
to the date of Menes or Mena (the first authentic king of the ancient
empire), to the following extent:
B. C.
BOECKH places Mena in 5702
UNGER places Mena in 5613
BRUGSCH places Mena in 4455
LAUTH places Mena in 4157
LEPSIUS places Mena in 3892
BUNSEN places Mena in 3623
Mariette, though recognizing the need for extreme caution in the
acceptance or rejection of any of these calculations, inclined on the
whole to abide by the lists of Manetho; according to which the
thirty-four recorded dynasties would stand as follows:
ANCIENT EMPIRE. | NEW EMPIRE.
|
DYNASTIES. CAPITALS. B. C. | DYNASTIES. CAPITALS. B. C.
I. } This { 5004 | XVIII. } { 1703
II. } { 4751 | XIX. } Thebes { 1462
III. } { 4449 | XX. } { 1288
IV. } Memphis { 4235 | XXI. Tanis 1100
V. } { 3951 | XXII. Bubastis 980
VI. Elephantine 3703 | XXIII. Tanis 810
VII.v } | XXIV. Saïs 721
VIII.v } Memphis 3500 | XXV. (Ethiopians) 715
IX. } { 3358 | XXVI. Saïs 665
X. } Heracleopolis { 3240 | XXVII. (Persians) 527
| XXVIII. Saïs 405
MIDDLE EMPIRE. | XXIX. Mendes 399
XI.} { 3064 | XXX. Sebennytis 378
XII.} Thebes { 3064 | XXXI. (Persians) 340
XIII.} { 2851 |
XIV. Xoïs 2398 | LOWER EMPIRE.
XV.} | XXXII. Macedonians 332
XVI.} Shepherd Kings 2214 | XXXII. (Greeks) 305
XVII.} | XXXIV. (Romans) 30
To this chronology may be opposed the brief table of dates compiled by
M. Chabas. This table represents what may be called the medium school of
Egyptian chronology, and is offered by M. Chabas, “not as an attempt to
reconcile systems,” but as an aid to the classification of certain
broadly indicated epochs.
B. C.
Mena and the commencement of the ancient empire 4000
Construction of the great pyramids 3300
Sixth dynasty 2800
Twelfth dynasty { 2400
{ 2000
Shepherd invasion ?
Expulsion of Shepherds and commencement of the
new empire 1800
Thothmes III 1700
Seti I and Rameses II { 1500
{ 1400
Sheshonk (Shishak), the conqueror of Jerusalem 1000
Saïtic dynasties { 700
{ 600
Cambyses and the Persians 500
Second Persian conquest 400
{ 300
Ptolemies { 200
{ 100
APPENDIX V.
CONTEMPORARY CHRONOLOGY OF EGYPT, MESOPOTAMIA, AND BABYLON.
A very important addition to our chronological information with regard
to the synchronous history of Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia and
Babylonia has been brought to light during this present year (1888) by
the great discovery of cuneiform tablets at Tel-el-Amarna in Upper
Egypt. These tablets consist for the most part of letters and dispatches
sent to Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV by the kings of Babylonia and the
princes and governors of Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia; some being
addressed to Amenhotep IV (Khu-en-Aten) by Burna-Buryas, King of
Babylonia, who lived about B.C. 1430. This gives us the date of the life
and reign of Amenhotep IV, and consequently the approximate date of the
foundation of the city known to us as Tel-el-Amarna, and of the
establishment of the new religion of the Disk-worship; and it is the
earliest synchronism yet established between the history of ancient
Egypt and that of her contemporaries.
From these tablets we also learn that the consort of Amenhotep IV was a
Syrian princess and daughter of Duschratta, King of Naharina (called in
the tablets “the land of Mitanni”) on the Upper Euphrates. For a full
and learned description of some of the most interesting of these newly
discovered documents, see Dr. Erman’s paper, entitled _Der Thontafelfund
von Tell Amarna_, read before the Berlin Academy on 3d May, 1888.
THE END.
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] For the benefit of any who desire more exact information, I may add
that a table of average temperatures, carefully registered day by day
and week by week, is to be found at the end of Mr. H. Villiers Stuart’s
“Nile Gleanings.” [Note to second edition.]
[2] These dates, it is to be remembered, refer to the year 1877, when
the first edition of this book was published. [Note to second edition.]
[3] Since the first edition of this book was issued, the publication of
Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie’s standard work, entitled “The Pyramids and
Temples of Gizeh,” has for the first time placed a thoroughly accurate
and scientific description of the great pyramid at the disposal of
students. Calculating from the rock-cut sockets at the four corners,
and from the true level of the pavement, Mr. Petrie finds that the
square of the original base of the structure, in inches, is of these
dimensions:
-------------------------------------------------------
| Length. | Difference | Azimuth. | Difference
| | from Mean. | | from Mean.
-------|----------|------------|----------|------------
N. | 9069.4 | + .6 | - 3’ 20” | + 23”
E. | 9067.7 | - 1.1 | - 3’ 57” | - 14”
S. | 9069.5 | + .7 | - 3’ 41” | + 2”
W. | 9068.6 | - .2 | - 3’ 54” | - 11”
-------|----------|------------|----------|------------
Mean. | 9068.8 | .65 | - 3’ 43” | 12”
-------------------------------------------------------
For the height, Mr. Petrie, after duly weighing all data, such as the
thickness of the three casing-stones yet _in situ_, and the presumed
thickness of those which formerly faced the upper courses of the
masonry, gives from his observations of the mean angle of the pyramid,
a height from base to apex of 5776.0 ± 7.0 inches. See “The Pyramids
and Temples of Gizeh,” chap. vi. pp. 37-43. [Note to the second
edition.]
[4] Now, seventy-seven years ago; the first edition of this book having
been published thirteen years ago. [Note to second edition.]
[5] One only is said to have escaped--a certain Emin Bey, who leaped
his horse over a gap in the wall, alighted safely in the piazza below,
and galloped away into the desert. The place of this famous leap
continued to be shown for many years, but there are no gaps in the
wall now, the citadel being the only place in Cairo which is kept in
thorough repair.
[6] “It is related that the Sultan Ez-Zahir Beybars, King of Egypt,
was the first who sent a mahmal with the caravan of pilgrims to
Mecca, in the year of the flight 670 (A.D. 1272) or 675; but
this custom, it is generally said, had its origin a few years before
his accession to the throne. Shegered-Durr, a beautiul Turkish female
slave who became the favorite wife of the Sultan Es-Sáleh Negm-ed-Deen,
and on the death of his son (with whom terminated the dynasty of the
house of the Eiyoob) caused herself to be acknowledged as Queen of
Egypt, performed the pilgrimage in a magnificent ‘hódag,’ or covered
litter, borne by a camel; and for several successive years her empty
‘hódag’ was sent with the caravan, merely for the sake of state. Hence,
succeeding princes of Egypt sent with each year’s caravan of pilgrims
a kind of ‘hódag’ (which received the name of mahmal) as an emblem of
royalty.”--“The Modern Egyptians,” by E. W. Lane, chap. xxiv, London,
1860.
[7] The hereditary prince, it need scarcely be said, is the present
khedive, Tewfik Pasha. [Note to second edition.]
[8] Arabic--_Kemengeh_.
[9] The goolah, or kulleh, is a porous water-jar of sun-dried Nile
mud. These jars are made of all sizes and in a variety of remarkably
graceful forms, and cost from about one farthing to two-pence apiece.
[10] Some of these tiles are to be seen in the Egyptian department of
the British Museum. They are not blue, but of a bluish green. For a
view of the sepulchral chamber, see Maspero’s “Archéologie Egyptienne,”
fig. 230, p. 256. [Note to second edition.]
[11] Nectanebo I and Nectanebo II were the last native Pharaohs of
ancient Egypt, and flourished between B.C. 378 and B.C. 340. An earlier
temple must have preceded the Serapeum built by Nectanebo I.
[12] For an excellent and exact account of the Serapeum and the
monuments there discovered, see M. Arthur Rhoné’s “L’Egypte en Petites
Journées.” [Note to second edition.]
[13] These objects, known as “The Miramar Collection,” and catalogued
by Professor Reinisch, are now removed to Vienna. [Note to second
edition.]
[14] A more exhaustive study of the funerary texts has of late
revolutionized our interpretation of these and similar sepulchral
tableaux. The scenes they represent are not, as was supposed when
this book was first written, mere episodes in the daily life of the
deceased; but are links in the elaborate story of his burial and his
ghostly existence after death. The corn is sown, reaped, and gathered
in order that it may be ground and made into funerary cakes; the
oxen, goats, gazelles, geese and other live stock are destined for
sacrificial offerings; the pots, and furniture, and household goods are
for burying with the mummy in his tomb; and it is his “Ka,” or ghostly
double, that takes part in these various scenes, and not the living
man. [Note to second edition.]
[15] These statues were not mere portrait-statues; but were designed
as bodily habitations for the incorporeal ghost, or “Ka,” which it was
supposed needed a body, food and drink, and must perish everlastingly
if not duly supplied with these necessaries. Hence the whole system of
burying food-offerings, furniture, stuffs, etc., in ancient Egyptian
sepulchers. [Note to second edition.]
[16] The actual tomb of Prince Kha-em-nas has been found at Memphis
by M. Maspero within the last three or four years. [Note to second
edition.]
[17] The date is Mariette’s.
[18] There was no worship of Apis in the days of King Ouenephes, nor,
indeed, until the reign of Kaiechos, more than one hundred and twenty
years after his time. But at some subsequent period of the ancient
empire his pyramid was appropriated by the priests of Memphis for the
mummies of the sacred bulls. This, of course, was done before any of
the known Apis catacombs were excavated. There are doubtless many more
of these catacombs yet undiscovered, nothing prior to the eighteenth
dynasty having yet been found.
[19] This colossus is now raised upon a brick pedestal. [Note to second
edition.]
[20] _Tell_: Arabic for mound. Many of the mounds preserve the ancient
names of the cities they entomb; as Tell Basta (Bubastis); Kóm Ombo
(Ombos); etc., etc. _Tell_ and _Kóm_ are synonymous terms.
[21] _Sorghum vulgare._
[22] The shâdûf has been so well described by the Rev. F. B. Zincke
that I cannot do better than quote him verbatim: “Mechanically, the
shadoof is an application of the lever. In no machine which the wit of
man, aided by the accumulation of science, has since invented, is the
result produced so great in proportion to the degree of power employed.
The level of the shadoof is a long stout pole poised on a prop. The
pole is at right angles to the river. A large lump of clay from the
spot is appended to the inland end. To the river end is suspended a
goat-skin bucket. This is the whole apparatus. The man who is working
it stands on the edge of the river. Before him is a hole full of water
fed from the passing stream. When working the machine he takes hold of
the cord by which the empty bucket is suspended, and, bending down,
by the mere weight of his shoulders dips it in the water. His effort
to rise gives the bucket full of water an upward cant, which, with
the aid of the equipoising lump of clay at the other end of the pole,
lifts it to a trough into which, as it tilts on one side, it empties
its contents. What he has done has raised the water six or seven feet
above the level of the river. But if the river has subsided twelve or
fourteen feet, it will require another shadoof to be worked in the
trough into which the water of the first has been brought. If the river
has sunk still more, a third will be required before it can be lifted
to the top of the bank, so as to enable it to flow off to the fields
that require irrigation.”--“Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Khedive,” p.
445 _et seq._
[23] _Beled_--village.
[24] Miss Whately, whose evidence on this subject is peculiarly
valuable, states that the majority of native children die off at, or
under, two years of age (“Among the Huts,” p. 29); while M. About,
who enjoyed unusual opportunities of inquiring into facts connected
with the population and resources of the country, says that the nation
loses three children out of every five. “L’ignorance publique, l’oubli
des premiers éléments d’hygiène, la mauvaise alimentation, l’absence
presque totale des soins médicaux, tarissent la nation dans sa source.
Un peuple qui perd régulièrement trois enfants sur cinq ne saurait
croître sans miracle.”--“Le Fellah,” p. 165.
[25] Arabic--_shoghool_: a rope by which the mainsail is regulated.
[26] The known inscriptions in the tomb of Haptefa have recently been
recopied, and another long inscription, not previously transcribed,
has been copied and translated, by Mr. F. Llewellyn Griffith, acting
for the Egypt exploration fund. Mr. Griffith has for the first time
fixed the date of this famous tomb, which was made during the reign of
Usertesen I, of the twelfth dynasty. [Note to second edition.]
[27] See “Recueil des Monuments Egyptiens,” Brugsch. Part I. Planche
xi. Published 1862.
[28] Some famous tombs of very early date, enriched with the same kind
of inlaid decoration, are to be seen at Meydûm, near the base of Meydûm
pyramid.
[29] “Voyage en Egypte et en Nubie,” by J. J. Ampère. The cartouche
may perhaps be that of _Rakameri_, mentioned by Brugsch; “Histoire
d’Egypte,” chap. vi., first edition.
[30] The Greeks translated the sacred names of Egyptian places; the
Copts adopted the civil names.
[31] According to the account given in her letters by Lady Duff Gordon,
this dervish, who had acquired a reputation for unusual sanctity by
repeating the name of Allah three thousand times every night for
three years, believed that he had by these means rendered himself
invulnerable; and so, proclaiming himself the appointed slayer of
Antichrist, he stirred up a revolt among the villages bordering Gebel
Sheik Hereedee, instigated an attack on an English dahabeeyah, and
brought down upon himself and all that country-side the swift and
summary vengeance of the government. Steamers with troops commanded by
Fadl Pasha were dispatched up the river; rebels were shot; villages
sacked; crops and cattle confiscated. The women and children of the
place were then distributed among the neighboring hamlets; and Gow,
which was as large a village as Luxor, ceased to exist. The dervish’s
fate remained uncertain. He was shot, according to some; and by others
it was said that he had escaped into the desert under the protection of
a tribe of Bedouins.
[32] Sir G. Wilkinson states the total length of the temple to be
ninety three paces, or two hundred and twenty feet; and the width of
the portico fifty paces. Murray gives no measurements; neither does
Mariette Bey in his delightful little “Itineraire;” neither does
Furgusson, nor Champollion, nor any other writer to whose works I have
had access.
[33] The names of Augustus, Caligula, Tiberius, Domitian, Claudius, and
Nero are found in the royal ovals; the oldest being those of Ptolemy
XI, the founder of the present edifice, which was, however, rebuilt
upon the site of a succession of older buildings, of which the most
ancient dated back as far as the reign of Khufu, the builder of the
great pyramid. This fact, and the still more interesting fact that the
oldest structure of all was believed to belong to the inconceivably
remote period of the _Horshesu_, or “followers of Horus” (_i. e._ the
petty chiefs, or princes, who ruled in Egypt before the foundation
of the first monarchy), is recorded in the following remarkable
inscription discovered by Mariette in one of the crypts constructed
in the thickness of the walls of the present temple. The first text
relates to certain festivals to be celebrated in honor of Hathor, and
states that all the ordained ceremonies had been performed by King
Thothmes III (eighteenth dynasty) “in memory of his mother, Hathor of
Denderah. And they found the great fundamental rules of Denderah in
ancient writing, written on goat-skin in the time of the followers of
Horus. This was found in the inside of a brick wall during the reign
of King Pepi (sixth dynasty).” In the same crypt, another and a more
brief inscription runs thus: “Great fundamental rule of Denderah.
Restorations done by Thothmes III, according to what was found in
ancient writing of the time of King Khufu.” Hereupon Mariette remarks:
“The temple of Denderah is not, then, one of the most modern in Egypt,
except in so far as it was constructed by one of the later Lagidæ.
Its origin is literally lost in the night of time.” See “Dendérah,
Description Générale,” chap. i. pp. 55, 56.
[34] See Mariette’s “Denderah,” which contains the whole of these
multitudinous inscriptions in one hundred and sixty-six plates; also
a selection of some of the most interesting in Brugsch and Dümichen’s
“Recueil de Monuments Egyptiens” and “Geographische Inschriften,” 1862,
1863, 1865 and 1866.
[35] Hathor (or more correctly Hat-hor, _i. e._ the abode of Horus),
is not merely the Aphrodite of ancient Egypt; she is the pupil of
the eye of the sun; she is goddess of that beneficent planet whose
rising heralds the waters of the inundation; she represents the
eternal youth of nature, and is the direct personification of the
beautiful. She is also goddess of truth. “I offer the truth to thee,
O Goddess of Denderah!” says the king, in one of the inscriptions of
the sanctuary of the sistrum; “for truth is thy work, and thou thyself
art truth.” Lastly, her emblem is the sistrum, and the sound of the
sistrum, according to Plutarch, was supposed to terrify and expel
Typhon (the evil principle); just as in mediæval times the ringing of
church-bells was supposed to scare Beelzebub and his crew. From this
point of view, the sistrum becomes typical of the triumph of good over
evil. Mariette, in his analysis of the decorations and inscriptions
of this temple, points out how the builders were influenced by the
prevailing philosophy of the age, and how they veiled the Platonism of
Alexandria beneath the symbolism of the ancient religion. The Hat-hor
of Denderah was in fact worshiped in a sense unknown to the Egyptians
of pre-Ptolemaic times.
[36] Arabic, “_kharûf_,” pronounced “_haroof_”--English, _sheep_.
[37] This famous building is supposed by some to be identical both
with the Memnonium of Strabo and the tomb of Osymandias as described
by Diodorus Siculus. Champollion, however, following the sense of the
hieroglyphed legends, in which it is styled “The House of Rameses”
(II), has given to it the more appropriate name of the Ramesseum.
[38] Translated into French by the late Vicomte de Rougé under the
title of “Le Poëme de Pentaour,” 1856; into English by Mr. Goodwin,
1858; and again by Professor Lushington in 1874. See “Records of the
Past,” vol. ii.
[39] According to the great inscription of Abydos translated by
Professor Maspero, Rameses II would seem to have been in some sense
king from his birth, as if the throne of Egypt came to him through his
mother, and as if his father, Seti I, had reigned for him during his
infancy as king-regent. Some inscriptions, indeed, show him to have
received homage even _before_ his birth.
[40] The ruins of the great Temple of Luxor have undergone a complete
transformation since the above description was written; Professor
Maspero, during the two last years of his official rule as successor
to the late Mariette Pasha, having done for this magnificent relic of
Pharaonic times what his predecessor did for the more recent temple of
Edfoo. The difficulties of carrying out this great undertaking were
so great as to appear at the first sight almost insurmountable. The
fellâheen refused at first to sell their houses; Mustapha Aga asked
the exorbitant price of £3,000 for his consular residence, built as
it was between the columns of Horemheb, facing the river; and for
no pecuniary consideration whatever was it possible to purchase the
right of pulling down the mosque in the first great court-yard of the
temple. After twelve months of negotiation, the fellâheen were at last
bought out on the fair terms, each proprietor receiving a stated price
for his dwelling and a piece of land elsewhere upon which to build
another. Some thirty families were thus got rid of, about eight or
ten only refusing to leave at any price. The work of demolition was
begun in 1885. In 1886, the few families yet lingering in the ruins
followed the example of the rest; and in the course of that season the
temple was cleared from end to end, only the little native mosque being
left standing within the precincts, and Mustapha Aga’s house on the
side next the landing-place. Professor Maspero’s resignation followed
in 1887, since when the work has been carried on by his successor,
M. Grébaut, with the result that in place of a crowded, sordid,
unintelligible labyrinth of mud huts, yards, stables, alleys and
dung-heaps, a noble temple, second only to that of Karnak for grandeur
of design and beauty of proportion, now marshals its avenues of
columns and uplifts its sculptured architraves along the crest of the
ridge which here rises high above the eastern bank of the Nile. Some
of those columns, now that they are cleared down to the level of the
original pavement, measure fifty-seven feet in the shaft; and in the
court-yard built by Rameses II, which measures one hundred and ninety
feet by one hundred and seventy, a series of beautiful colossal statues
of that Pharaoh in highly polished red granite have been discovered,
some yet standing in situ, having been built into the walls of the mud
structures and imbedded (for who shall say how many centuries?) in a
sepulcher of ignoble clay. Last of all, Mustapha Aga, the kindly and
popular old British consul, whose hospitality will long be remembered
by English travelers, died about twelve months since, and the house in
which he entertained so many English visitors, and upon which he set so
high a value, is even now in course of demolition.
[41] The size of these stones not being given in any of our books,
I paced the length of one of the shadows, and (allowing for so much
more at each end as would be needed to reach to the centers of the
two capitals on which it rested) found the block above must measure
at least twenty five feet in length. The measurements of the great
hall are, in plain figures, one hundred and seventy feet in length
by three hundred and twenty-nine in breadth. It contains one hundred
and thirty-four columns, of which the central twelve stand sixty-two
feet high in the shaft (or about seventy with the plinth and abacus),
and measure thirty-four feet six inches in circumference. The smaller
columns stand forty-two feet five inches in the shaft, and measure
twenty-eight feet in circumference. All are buried to a depth of
between six and seven feet in the alluvial deposits of between three
and four thousand annual inundations.
[42] It has been calculated that every stone of these huge Pharaonic
temples cost at least one human life.
[43] _i. e._ _Per Amen_, or _Pa-Amen_; one of the ancient names of
Thebes, which was the city especially dedicated to Amen. Also _Apt_,
or _Abot_, or _Apetou_, by some ascribed to an Indo-Germanic root
signifying abode. Another name for Thebes, and probably the one most in
use, was _Uas_.
[44] Knum was one of the primordial gods of the Egyptian cosmogony;
the divine potter; he who fashioned man from the clay and breathed
into him the breath of life. He is sometimes represented in the act
of fashioning the first man, or that mysterious egg from which not
only man but the universe proceeded, by means of the ordinary potter’s
wheel. Sometimes also he is depicted in his boat, moving upon the face
of the waters at the dawn of creation. About the time of the twentieth
dynasty, Knum became identified with Ra. He also was identified with
Amen, and was worshiped in the great oasis in the Greek period as
Amen-Knum. He is likewise known as “The Soul of the Gods,” and in this
character, as well as in his solar character, he is represented with
the head of a ram, or in the form of a ram. Another of his titles
is “The Maker of Gods and Men.” Knum was also one of the gods of
the cataract, and chief of the Triad worshipped at Elephantine. An
inscription at Philæ styles him “Maker of all that is, Creator of all
beings, First existent, the Father of fathers, the Mother of mothers.”
[45] _Bes._ “La culte de Bes parait être une importation Asiatique.
Quelquefois le dieu est armé d’une épée qu’il brandit au-dessus de sa
tête; dans ce rôle, il semble le dieu des combats. Plus souvent c’est
le dieu ce la danse, de la musique, des plaisirs.”--_Mariette Bey._
[46] “At the cataracts of the great rivers Orinoco, Nile and Congo,
the syenitic rocks are coated by a black substance, appearing as
if they had been polished with plumbago. The layer is of extreme
thinness; and on analysis by Berzelius it was found to consist of
the oxides of manganese and iron.... The origin, however, of these
coatings of metallic oxides, which seem as if cemented to the rocks,
is not understood; and no reason, I believe, can be assigned for their
thickness remaining the same.”--“Journal of Researches,” by Charles
Darwin, chap. i, p. 12, ed. 1845.
[47] _Keffiyeh_: A square head-shawl, made of silk or wollen. European
travelers wear them as puggarees.
[48] _Mudîr_: Chief magistrate.
[49] _Kadi_: Judge.
[50] The results of Dr. Birch’s labors were given to the public in his
“Guide to the First and Second Egyptian Rooms,” published by order of
the trustees of the British Museum in May, 1874. Of the contents of
case ninety-nine in the “second room,” he says: “The use of potsherds
for documents received a great extension at the time of the Roman
empire, when receipts for the taxes were given on these fragments by
the collectors of revenue at Elephantine or Syene, on the frontier of
Egypt. These receipts commenced in the reign of Vespasian, A.D. 77,
and are found as late asM. Aurelius and L. Verus, A.D. 165. It appears
from them that the capitation and trades tax, which was sixteen drams
in A.D. 77, rose to twenty in A.D. 165, having steadily increased. The
dues were paid in installments called _merismoi_, at three periods of
the year. The taxes were farmed out to publicans (_misthotai_), who
appear from their names to have been Greeks. At Elephantine the taxes
were received by tax-gatherers (_prakteres_), who seem to have been
appointed as early as the Ptolemies. Their clerks were Egyptians, and
they had a chest and treasure (_phylax_).” See p. 109, _as above_; also
Birch’s “History of Ancient Pottery,” chap. 1, p. 45.
These barren memoranda are not the only literary curiosities found at
Elephantine. Among the Egyptian manuscripts of the Louvre may be seen
some fragments of the eighteenth book of the “Iliad,” discovered in a
tomb upon the island. How they came to be buried there no one knows. A
lover of poetry would like to think, however, that some Greek or Roman
officer, dying at his post upon this distant station, desired, perhaps,
to have his Homer laid with him in his grave.
NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.--Other fragments of “Iliad” have been found
from time to time in various parts of Egypt; some (now in the Louvre)
being scrawled, like the above-mentioned tax-receipts, on mere
potsherds. The finest specimen ever found in Egypt or elsewhere, and
the earliest, has, however, been discovered this year, 1888, by Mr.
Flinders Petrie in the grave of a woman at Hawara, in the Fayûm.
[51] These are the measurements given in Murray’s hand-book. The new
English translation of Mariette’s “Itinéraire de la Haute Egypte”
gives the obelisk of Hatshepsu one hundred and eight feet ten inches
in height. See “The Monuments of Upper Egypt,” translated by Alphonse
Marietta, London, 1877.
[52] For an account of the discovery of this enormous statue and the
measurements of its various parts, see “Tanis,” Part I, by W. M.
Flinders Petrie, chap, ii, pp. 22 _et seq._, published by the Egypt
Exploration Fund, 1885. [Note to second edition.]
[53] The increase of steamer traffic has considerably altered the
conditions of Nile traveling since this was written, and fewer
dahabeeyahs are consequently employed. By those who can afford it, and
who really desire to get the utmost pleasure, instruction, and interest
from the trip, the dahabeeyah will, however, always be preferred. [Note
to second edition.]
[54] “The most important discovery which we have made here, and which
I shall only mention briefly, is a series of short rock inscriptions,
which mark the highest rises of the Nile during a series of years under
the government of Amenemhat III and of his immediate successors....
They proved that the river, above four thousand years ago, rose more
than twenty-four feet higher than now, and thereby must have produced
totally different conditions in the inundation and in the whole surface
of the ground, both above and below this spot.”--_Lepsius’ Letters from
Egypt, etc._ Letter xxvi.
“The highest rise of the Nile in each year at Semneh was registered by
a mark indicating the year of the king’s reign, cut in the granite,
either on one of the blocks forming the foundation of the fortress
or on the cliff, and particularly on the east or right bank, as best
adapted for the purpose. Of these markings eighteen still remain,
thirteen of them having been made in the reign of Mœris (Amenemhat
III) and five in the time of his next two successors.... We have
here presented to us the remarkable facts that the highest of the
records now legible, viz: that of the thirtieth year of the reign
of Amenemhat, according to exact measurements which I made, is 8.17
meters (twenty-six feet eight inches) higher than the highest level to
which the Nile rises in years of the greatest floods; and, further,
that the lowest mark, which is on the east bank, and indicated the
fifteenth year of the same king, is still 4.14 meters (thirteen
feet six and a half inches); and the single mark on the west bank,
indicating the ninth year, is 2.77 meters (nine feet) above the highest
level.”--_Lepsius’ Letter to Professor Ehrenburg._ See Appendix to the
above.
[55] For copies and translations of a large number of the graffiti
of Assûan, see Lepsius’ “Denkmäler;” also, for the most recent and
the fullest collection of the rock-cut inscriptions of Assûan and its
neighborhood, including the hitherto uncopied inscriptions of the
Saba Rigaleh Valley, of Elephantine, of the rocks above Silsileh,
etc., etc., see Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie’s latest volume, entitled “A
Season’s Work in Egypt, 1877,” published by Field & Tuer, 1888. [Note
to second edition.]
[56] Mariette, at the end of his “Aperçu de l’histoire d’Egypte,” give
the following succinct account of the Rosetta stone and the discovery
of Champollion:
“Découverte, il y a 65 ans environ, par des soldats français qui
creusaient un retranchement près d’une redoute située à Rosette, la
pierre qui porte ce nom a joué le plus grand rôle dans l’archéologie
Égyptienne. Sur la face principale sont gravées _trois_ inscriptions.
Les deux premières sont en langue Égyptienne et écrites dans les deux
écritures qui avaient cours à cette époque. L’une est en écriture
hiéroglyphique réservée aux prêtres: elle ne compte plus que 14 lignes
tronquées par la brisure de la pierre. L’autre est en une écriture
cursive appliquée principalement aux usges du peuple et comprise par
lui: celle-ci offre 32 lignes de texte. Enfin, la troisième inscription
de la stèle est en langue grecque et comprend 54 lignes. C’est dans
cette dernière partie que réside l’intérêt du monument trouvé à
Rosette. Il résulte, en effet, de l’interprétation du texte grec de
la stèle que ce texte n’est qu’une version de l’original transcrit
plus haut dans les deux écritures Égyptiennes. La Pierre de Rosette
nous donne donc, dans une langue parfaitement connue (le grec) la
traduction d’un texte conçu dans une autre langue encore ignorée au
moment où la stèle a été découverte. Qui ne voit l’utilité de cette
mention? Remonter du connu à l’inconnu n’est pas une opération en
dehors des moyens d’une critique prudente, et déjà l’on devine que
si la Pierre de Rosette a acquis dans la science la célébrité dont
elle jouit aujourd’hui, c’est qu’elle a fourni la vraie clef de cette
mystérieuse écriture dont l’Egypté a si longtemps gardé le secret. Il
ne faudrait pas croire cependant que le déchiffrement des hiéroglyphes
au moyen de la Pierre de Rosette ait été obtenu du premier coup et
sans tâtonnements. Bien au contraire, les savants s’y essayèrent sans
succès pendant 20 ans. Entin, Champollion parut. Jusqu’à lui, on avait
cru que chacune des lettres qui composent l’écriture hiéroglyphique
etait un _symbole_: c’est à dire, que dans une seule de ces lettres
était exprimée une _idée_ complète. Le mérite de Champollion été de
prouver qu’au contraire l’écriture Égyptienne contient des signes
qui expriment véritablement des _sons_. En d’autres termes qu’elle
est _Alphabétique_. II remarqua, par exemple, que partout où dans le
texte grec de Rosette se trouve le nom propre _Ptolémée_, on recontre
à l’endroit correspondant du texte Égyptien un certain nombre de
signes enfermés dans un encadrement elliptique. Il en conclut: 1, que
les noms des rois étaient dans le systeme hiéroglyphique signalés
à l’attention par une sorte d’écusson qu’il appela _cartouche_: 2,
que les signes contenus dans cet écusson devaient être lettre pour
lettre le nom de Ptolémée. Déjà donc en supposant les voyelles omises,
Champollion était en possession de cinq lettres--P, T, L, M, S. D’un
autre côté, Champollion savait, d’après une seconde inscription
grecque gravée sur une obélisque de Philæ, que sur cet obélisque un
cartouche hiéroglyphique qu’on y voit devait être celui de Cléopâtre.
Si sa première lecture était juste, le P, le L, et le T, de Ptolémée
devaient se retrouver dans le second nom propre; mais en même temps
ce second nom propre fournissait un K et un R nouveaux. Enfin,
appliqué à d’autres cartouches, l’alpbabet encore très imparfait
révélé a Champollion par les noms de Cléopâtre et de Ptolémée le
mit en possession d’à peu près toutes les autres consonnes. Comme
_pronunciation_ des signes, Champollion n’avait donc pas à hésiter,
et dès le jour où cette constatation eut lieu, il put certifier qu’il
était en possession de l’alpbabet Égyptien. Mais restait la langue;
car prononcer des mots n’est rien si l’on ne sait pas ce que ces mots
veulent dire. Ici le génie de Champollion se donna libre cours. Il
s’aperçut en effet que son alphabet tiré des noms propres et appliqué
aux mots de la langue donnait tout simplement du _Copte_. Or, le
Copte à son tour est une langue qui, sans être aussi explorée que le
grec, n’en était pas moins depuis longtemps accessible. Cette fois
le voileétait donc complétement levé. La langue Égyptienne n’est que
du Copte écrit en hiéroglyphes; ou, pour parler plus exactement, le
Copte n’est que la langue des anciens Pharaons, écrite, comme nous
l’avons dit plus haut, en lettres grecques. Le reste se Devine.
D’indices en indices, Champollion procéda véritablement du connu à
l’inconnu, et bientôt l’illustre fondateur de l’Égyptologie put poser
les fondements de cette belle science qui a pour objet l’interprétation
des hiéroglyphes. Tel est la Pierre de Rosette.”--“Aperçu de l’Histoire
d’Egypte:” Mariette Bey, p. 189 _et seq._: 1872.
In order to have done with this subject, it may be as well to mention
that another trilingual tablet was found by Mariette while conducting
his excavations at Sân (Tanis) in 1865. It dates from the ninth year of
Ptolemy Euergetes, and the text ordains the deification of Berenice, a
daughter of the king, then just dead (B.C. 254). This stone, preserved
in the museum at Boulak, is known as the stone of Sân, or the decree
of Canopus. Had the Rosetta stone never been discovered, we may fairly
conclude that the Canopic degree would have furnished some later
Champollion with the necessary key to hieroglyphic literature, and that
the great discovery would only have been deferred till the present time.
NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.--A third copy of the decree of Canopus, the
text engraved in hieroglyphs only, was found at Tell Nebireh in 1885,
and conveyed to the Boulak Museum. The discoverer of this tablet,
however, missed a much greater discovery, reserved, as it happened,
for Mr. W. M. F. Petrie, who came to the spot a month or two later,
and found that the mounds of Tell Nebireh entombed the remains of the
famous and long-lost Greek city of Naukratis. See “Naukratis,” Part I.
by W. M. F. Petrie, published by the Egypt Exploration Fund, 1886.
[57] The famous capitals are not the only specimens of admirable
coloring in Philæ. Among the battered bas-reliefs of the great
colonnade at the south end of the island there yet remain some isolated
patches of uninjured and very lovely ornament. See, more particularly,
the mosaic pattern upon the throne of a divinity just over the second
doorway in the western wall; and the designs upon a series of other
thrones a little farther along toward the north, all most delicately
drawn in uniform compartments, picked out in the three primary colors,
and laid on in flat tints of wonderful purity and delicacy. Among these
a lotus between two buds, an exquisite little sphinx on a pale-red
ground, and a series of sacred hawks, white upon red, alternating with
white upon blue, all most exquisitely conventionalized, may be cited
as examples of absolutely perfect treatment and design in polychrome
decoration. A more instructive and delightful task than the copying
of these precious fragments can hardly be commended to students and
sketchers on the Nile.
[58] It has since been pointed out by a writer in _The Saturday Review_
that this credence-table was fashioned with part of a shrine destined
for one of the captive hawks sacred to Horus. [Note to second edition.]
[59] In the time of Strabo, the Island of Philæ, as has been recently
shown by Professor Revillout in his “Seconde Mémoire sur les Blemmys,”
was the common property of the Egyptians and Nubians, or rather of that
obscure nation called the Blemmys, who, with the Nobades and Megabares,
were collectively classed at that time as “Ethiopians.” The Blemmys
(ancestors of the present Barabras) were a stalwart and valiant race,
powerful enough to treat on equal terms with the Roman rulers of Egypt.
They were devout adorers of Isis, and it is interesting to learn that
in the treaty of Maximin with this nation, it is expressly provided
that, “according to the old law,” the Blemmys were entitled to take
the statue of Isis every year from the sanctuary of Philæ to their own
country for a visit of a stated period. A graffito at Philæ, published
by Letronne, states that the writer was at Philæ when the image of the
goddess was brought back from one of these periodical excursions, and
that he beheld the arrival of the sacred boats “containing the shrines
of the divine statues.” From this it would appear that other images
than that of Isis had been taken to Ethiopia; probably those of Osiris
and Horus, and possibly also that of Hathor, the divine nurse. [Note to
second edition.]
[60] The Emperor Justinian is credited with the mutilation of the
sculptures of the large temple; but the ancient worship was probably
only temporarily suspended in his time.
[61] These and the following particulars about the Christians of
Nubia are found in the famous work of Makrizi, an Arab historian of
the fifteenth century, who quotes largely from earlier writers. See
Burckhardt’s “Travels in Nubia,” 4to, 1819, Appendix iii. Although
Belak is distinctly described as an island in the neighborhood of the
cataract, distant four miles from Assûan, Burckhardt persisted in
looking for it among the islets below Mahatta, and believed Philæ to be
the first Nubian town beyond the frontier. The hieroglyphic alphabet,
however, had not then been deciphered. Burckhardt died at Cairo in
1817, and Champollion’s discovery was not given to the world till 1822.
[62] This inscription, which M. About considers the most interesting
thing in Philæ, runs as follows: “A’ An VI de la République, le 15
Messidor, une Armée Française commandée par Bonaparte est descendue
a Alexandrie. L’Armée ayant mis, vingt jours après, les Mamelouks en
fuite aux Pyramides, Desaix, commandant la première division, les a
poursuivis au dela des Cataractes, ou il est arrivé le 18 Ventôse de
l’an VII.”
[63] About two-and-sixpence English.
[64] See previous note, p. 181.
[65] The story of Osiris--the beneficent god, the friend of man, slain
and dismembered by Typhon, buried in a score of graves: sought by
Isis; recovered limb by limb; resuscitated in the flesh; transferred
from earth to reign over the dead in the world of shades--is one of
the most complex of Egyptian legends. Osiris under some aspects is the
Nile. He personifies abstract good, and is entitled Unnefer, or “The
Good Being.” He appears as a myth of the solar year. He bears a notable
likeness to Prometheus and to the Indian Bacchus.
“Osiris, dit-on, était autrefois descendu sur la terre. Étre
bon par excellence, il avait adouci les mœurs des hommes par la
persuasion et la bienfaisance. Mais il avait succombé sous les
embûches de Typhon, son frère, le génie du mal, et pendant que ses
deux sœurs, Isis et Nephthys, recueillaient son corps qui avait
été jeté dans le fleuve, le dieu ressuscitait d’entre les morts
et apparaissait à son fils Horus, qu’il instituait son vengeur.
C’est ce sacrifice qu’il avait autrefois accompli en faveur des
hommes qu’ Osiris renouvelle ici eu faveur de l’âme dégagée de
ses liens terrestres. Non seulement il devient son guide, mais
il s’identifie à elle; il l’absorbe en son propre sein. C’est
lui alors qui, devenu le défunt lui même, se soumet à toutes les
épreuves que celui-ci doit subir avant d’être proclamé juste; c’est
lui qui, à chaque âme qu’il doit sauver, fléchit les gardiens des
demeures infernales et combat les monstres compagnons de la nuit
et de la mort; c’est lui enfin qui, vainqueur des ténèbres, avec
l’assistance d’Horus, s’assied au tribunal de la suprême justice et
ouvre à l’âme déclarée pure les portes du séjour éternel. L’image
de la mort aura été empruntée au soleil qui disparait à l’horizon
du soir: le soleil resplendissant du matin sera la symbole de cette
seconde naissance à une vie qui, cette fois, ne connaîtra pas la
mort.
“Osiris est donc le principe du bien.... Chargé de sauver les
âmes de la mort définitive, il est l’intermédiaire entre l’homme
et Dieu; il est le type et le sauveur de l’homme.”--“Notice des
Monuments à Boulaq”--Aug. Mariette Bey, 1872, pp. 105 _et seq._
[It has always been taken for granted by Egyptologists that Osiris was
originally a local god of Abydos, and that Abydos was the cradle of
the Osirian myth. Professor Maspero, however, in some of his recent
lectures at the Collége de France, has shown that the Osirian cult
took its rise in the Delta; and, in point of fact, Osiris, in certain
ancient inscriptions, is styled the King Osiris, “Lord of Tattu”
(Busiris), and has his name inclosed in a royal oval. Up to the time
of the Græco-Roman rule the only two cities of Egypt in which Osiris
reigned as the principal god were Busiris and Mendes.]
“Le centre terrestre du culte d’Osiris, était dans les cantons
nord-est du Delta, situés entre la branche Sébennytique et la
branche Pélusiaque, comme le centre terrestre du culte de Sit, le
frère et le meurtrier d’Osiris: les deux dieux étaient limitrophes
l’un de l’autre, et des rivalités de voisinage expliquent peut-être
en partie leurs querelles.... Tous les traits de la tradition
Osirienne ne sont pas également anciens: le fond me parait être
d’une antiquité incontestable. Osiris y réunit les caractères
des deux divinités qui se partageaient chaque nome: il est le
dieu des vivants et le dieu des morts en même temps; le dieu qui
nourrit et le dieu qui détruit. Probablement, les temps où, saisi
de pitié pour les mortels, il leur ouvrit l’accès de son royaume,
avaient été précédés d’autres temps où il était impitoyable et
ne songeait qu’à les anéantir. Je crois trouver un souvenir de
ce rôle destructeur d’Osiris dans plusieurs passages des textes
des Pyramides, où l’on promet au mort que Harkhouti viendra vers
lui, ‘déliant ses liens, brisant ses chaines pour le délivrer de
la ruine; _il ne le livrera pas à Osiris, si bien qu’il ne mourra
pas_, mais il sera glorieux dans l’horizon, solide comme le Did
dans la ville de Didou.’ L’Osiris farouche et cruel fut absorbé
promptement par l’Osiris doux et bienveillant. L’Osiris qui domine
toute la religion Égyptienne dès le début, c’est l’Osiris Onnofris,
l’Osiris Éntre bon, que les Grecs ont connu. Commes ses parents,
Sibou et Nouit, Osiris Onnofris appartient à la classe des dieux
généraux qui ne sont pas confinés en un seul canton, mais qui sont
adorés par un pays entier.” See “Les Hypogées Royaux de Thèbes”
(Bulletin critique de la religion Égyptienne) par Professeur G.
Maspero, “Revue de l’Histoire des Religions,” 1888. [Note to second
edition.]
“The astronomical and physical elements are too obvious to be mistaken.
Osiris and Isis are the Nile and Egypt. The myth of Osiris typifies the
solar year--the power of Osiris is the sun in the lower hemisphere, the
winter solstice. The birth of Horus typifies the vernal equinox--the
victory of Horus, the summer solstice--the inundation of the Nile.
Typhon is the autumnal equinox.”--“Egypt’s Place in Universal History,”
Bunsen, 1st ed., vol. i, p. 437.
“The Egyptians do not all worship the same gods, excepting Isis and
Osiris.”--Herodotus, book ii.
[66] “These vases, made of alabaster, calcareous stone, porcelain,
terra-cotta, and even wood, were destined to hold the soft part or
viscera of the body, embalmed separately and deposited in them. They
were four in number, and were made in the shape of the four genii of
the Karneter, or Hades, to whom were assigned the four cardinal points
of the compass.” Birch’s “Guide to the First and Second Egyptian
Rooms,” 1874, p. 89. See also Birch’s “History of Ancient Pottery,”
1873, p. 23 _et seq._
[67] Thus depicted, he is called “the germinating Osiris.” [Note to
second edition.]
[68] See M. P. J. de Horrack’s translation of “The Lamentations of Isis
and Nephthys. Records of the Past,” vol. ii, p. 117 _et seq._
[69] “Operations Carried On at the Pyramids of Ghizeh.”--Col. Howard
Vyse, London, 1840, vol. i, p. 63.
[70] A city of Ethiopia, identified with the ruins at Gebel Barkel.
The worship of Amen was established at Napata toward the end of
the twentieth dynasty, and it was from the priests of Thebes who
settled at that time in Napata that the Ethiopian conquerors of Egypt
(twenty-third dynasty) were descended.
[71] The men hereabout can nearly all speak Arabic; but the women of
Nubia know only the Kensee and Berberee tongues, the first of which is
spoken as far as Korosko.
[72] _Lepsius’ Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia_, etc. Letter xviii, p.
184. Bohn’s ed., A.D. 1853.
[73] See the interesting account of funereal rites and ceremonies in
Sir G. Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians,” vol. ii, ch. x, Lond., 1871.
Also wood-cuts Nos. 493 and 494 in the same chapter of the same work.
[74] _Abshek_: The hieroglyphic name of Abou Simbel. _Gr._ Aboccis.
[75] In the present state of Egyptian chronology it is hazardous to
assign even an approximate date to events which happened before the
conquest of Cambyses. The Egyptians, in fact, had no chronology in the
strict sense of the word. Being without any fixed point of departure,
such as the birth of Christ, they counted the events of each reign from
the accession of the sovereign. Under such a system error and confusion
were inevitable. To say when Rameses II was born and when he died is
impossible. The very century in which he flourished is uncertain.
Mariette, taking the historical lists of Manetho for his basis,
supposes the nineteenth dynasty to have occupied the interval comprised
within B.C. 1462 and 1288; according to which computation (allowing
fifty-seven years for the reigns of Rameses I and Seti I) the reign
of Rameses II would date from B.C. 1405. Brugsch gives him from B.C.
1407 to B.C. 1341; and Lepsius places his reign in the sixty-six years
lying between B.C. 1388 and B.C. 1322; these calculations being both
made before the discovery of the stella of Abydos. Bunsen dates his
accession from B.C. 1352. Between the highest and the lowest of these
calculations there is, as shown by the following table, a difference of
fifty-five years:
Rameses II began to reign B.C.
{ Brugsch 1407
According { Mariette 1405
to { Lepsius 1388
{ Bunsen 1352
[76] See chap. viii, foot note, p. 126.
[77] See “Essai sur l’Inscription Dédicatoire du Temple d’Abydos et la
Jeunesse de Sesotris.”--G. Maspero, Paris, 1867.
[78] See chap, viii, p. 125.
[79] _i. e._ Prince of the Hittites; the Kheta being now identified
with that people.
[80] This invaluable record is sculptured on a piece of wall built
out, apparently, for the purpose, at right angles to the south wall
of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak. The treaty faces to the west, and is
situated about half-way between the famous bas-relief of Sheshonk and
his captives and the Karnak version of the poem of Pentaur. The former
lies to the west of the southern portal; the latter to the east. The
wall of the treaty juts out about sixty feet to the east of the portal.
This south wall and its adjunct, a length of about two hundred feet in
all, is perhaps the most precious and interesting piece of sculptured
surface in the world.
[81] See “Treaty of Peace Between Rameses II and the Hittites,”
translated by C. W. Goodwin, M. A. “ Records of the Past,” vol. iv, p.
25.
[82] Since this book was written, a further study of the subject has
led me to conjecture that not Seti I, but Queen Hatshepsu (Hatasu) of
the eighteenth dynasty, was the actual originator of the canal which
connected the Nile with the Red Sea. The inscriptions engraved upon the
walls of her great temple at Dayr-el-Baharî expressly state that her
squadron sailed from Thebes to the land of Punt and returned from Punt
to Thebes, laden with the products of that mysterious country which
Mariette and Maspero have conclusively shown to have been situated on
the Somali coast-line between Bab-el-Mandeb and Cape Guardafui. Unless,
therefore, some water-way existed at that time between the Nile and
the Red Sea, it follows that Queen Hatshepsu’s squadron of discovery
must have sailed northward from Thebes, descended the Nile to one of
its mouths, traversed the whole length of the Mediterranean sea, gone
out through the pillars of Hercules, doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and
arrived at the Somali coast by way of the Mozambique Channel and the
shores of Zanzibar. In other words, the Egyptian galleys would twice
have made the almost complete circuit of the African continent. This
is obviously an untenable hypothesis; and there remains no alternative
route except that of a canal, or chain of canals, connecting the
Nile with the Red Sea. The old Wady Tûmilât canal has hitherto been
universally ascribed to Seti I, for no other reason than that a canal
leading from the Nile to the ocean is represented on a bas-relief
of his reign on the north outer wall of the great temple of Karnak;
but this canal may undoubtedly have been made under the preceding
dynasty, and it is not only probable, but most likely, that the
great woman-Pharaoh, who first conceived the notion of venturing her
ships upon an unknown sea, may also have organized the channel of
communication by which those ships went forth. According to the second
edition of Sir J. W. Dawson’s “Egypt and Syria,” the recent surveys
conducted by Lieut.-Col. Ardagh, Maj. Spaight and Lieut. Burton, all of
the royal engineers, “render it certain that this valley [_i. e._ the
Wady Tûmilât] once carried a branch up the Nile which discharged its
waters into the Red Sea” (see chap. iii. p. 55); and in such case, if
that branch were not already navigable, Queen Hatshepsu would only have
needed to canalize it, which is what she probably did. [Note to second
edition.]
[83] “Les circonstances de l’histoire hebraïque s’appliquent ici d’une
manière on ne peut plus satisfaisante. Les Hébreux opprimés batissaient
une ville du nom de Ramsès. Ce récit ne peut donc s’appliquer qu’à
l’époque où la famille de Ramsès était sur le trône. Moïse, contraint
de fuir la colère du rois après le meurtre d’un Égyptien, subit un
long exil, parceque le roi ne mourut _qu’après un temps fort long_;
Ramsès II regna en effet plus de 67 ans. Aussitôt après le retour de
Moïse commença la lutte qui se termina par le célèbre passage de la
Mer Rouge. Cet événement eut donc lieu sous le fils de Ramsès II, ou
tout au plus tard pendant l’époque de troubles quit suivit son règne.
Ajoutons que la rapidité des derniers événements ne permet pas de
supposer que le roi eût sa résidence à Thèbes dans cet instant. Or,
Merenptah a précisément laissé dans la Basse-Egypte, et spécialement à
Tanis, des preuves importantes de son séjour.”--De Rougé, “Notice des
Monuments Égyptiennes du Rez de Chaussée du Musée du Louvre,” Paris,
1857, p. 22.
“Il est impossible d’attribuer ni à Meneptah I, ni à Seti II, ni à
Siptah, ni à Amonmesès, un règne même de vingt années; à plus forte
raison de cinquante ou soixante Seul le règne de Ramsès II remplit les
conditions indispensables. Lors même que nous ne saurions pas que ce
souverain a occupé les Hébreux à la construction de la ville de Ramsès,
nous serions dans l’impossibilité de placer Moïse à une autre époque, à
moins de faire table rase des renseignements bibliques.”--“Recherches
pour servir à l’Histoire de la XIX dynastie.” F. Chabas, Paris, 1873,
p. 148.
[84] The Bible narrative, it has often been observed, invariably
designates the king by this title, than which none, unfortunately, can
be more vague for purposes of identification. “Plus généralement,”
says Brugsch, writing of the royal titles, “sa personne se cache sous
une série d’expressions qui toutes ont le sens de la ‘_grande maison_’
ou du ‘_grand_ palais,’ quelquefois au duel, des ‘_deux grandes
maisons_,’ par rapport à la division de l’Égypte en deux parties. C’est
du titre très frequent Per-aa, ‘la grande maison,’ ‘la haute porte,’
qu’on a heureusement dérivé le nom biblique _Pharao_ donné aux rois
d’Égypte.”--“Histoire d’Égypte,” Brugsch, second edition, Part I, p.
35; Leipzig, 1875.
* * * * *
This probably is the only title under which it was permissible for the
plebeian class to speak or write of the sovereign. It can scarcely have
escaped Herr Brugsch’s notice that we even find it literally translated
in Genesis, 1. 4, where it is said that “when the days of his mourning
were past, Joseph spake _unto the house_ of Pharaoh, saying: ‘If now
I have found grace in your eyes,’” etc. etc. If Moses, however, had
but once recorded the cartouche name of either of his three Pharaohs,
archæologists and commentators would have been spared a great deal of
trouble.
[85] This remarkable manuscript relates the journey made by a
female pilgrim of French birth, _circa_ A.D. 370, to Egypt,
Mesopotamia and the holy land. The manuscript is copied from an older
original and dates from the tenth or eleventh century. Much of the
work is lost, but those parts are yet perfect which describe the
pilgrim’s progress through Goshen to Tanis and thence to Jerusalem,
Edessa and the Haran. Of Pithom it is said: “Pithona etiam civitas
quam œdificaverunt filii Israel ostensa est nubis in ipso itinere;
in eo tamen loco ubi jam fines Egypti intravimus, religentes jam
terras Saracenorum. Nam et ipsud nunc Pithona castrum est. Heroun
autem civitas quæ fuit illo tempere, id est ubi occurit Joseph patri
suo venienti, sicut scriptum est in libro Genesis nunc est comes sed
grandis quod nos dicimus vicus ... nam ipse vicus nunc appellatur
Hero.” See a letter on “Pithom-Heroöpolis” communicated to “The
Academy” by M. Naville, March 22, 1884. See also M. Naville’s memoir,
entitled “The Store-City of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus” (third
edition); published by order of the committee of the Egypt Exploration
Fund, 1888.
[86] See M. Naville’s memoir, entitled “Goshen and the Shrine of
Saft-el-Henneh,” published by order of the committee of the Egypt
Exploration Fund, 1887.
[87] Kadesh, otherwise Katesh or Kades. A town on the Orontes. See a
paper entitled “The Campaign of Ramesis II in His Fifth Year Against
Kadesh on the Orontes,” by the Rev. G. H. Tomkins, in the “Proceedings
of the Society of Biblical Archæology,” 1881, 1882; also in the
“Transactions” of the society, vol. viii.
[88] Anastasi Papyri, No. III, Brit. Mus.
[89] See “Mélanges Égyptologiques,” by F. Chabas, 1 Série, 1862.
There has been much discussion among Egyptologists on the subject of
M. Chabas’ identification of the Hebrews. The name by which they are
mentioned in the papyri here quoted, as well as in an inscription
in the quarries of Hamamat, is _Aperi-u_. A learned critic in the
“Revue Archéologique” (vol. v, 2d series, 1862) writes as follows: “La
découverte du nom des Hébreux dans les hiéroglyphes serait un fait
de la dernière importance; mais comme aucun autre point historique
n’offre peut-être une pareille séduction, il faut aussi se méfier des
illusions avec un soin méticuleux. La confusion des sons R et L dans
la langue Égyptienne, et le voisinage des articulations B et P nuisent
un peu, dans le cas particular, à la rigueur des conclusions quon
peut tirér de la transcription. Néanmoins, il y a lieu de prendre en
considération ce fait que les _Aperiu_, dans les trois documents qui
nous parlent d’eux, sent montrés employés à des travaux de même espèce
que ceux auxquels, selon l’Ecriture, les Hébreux furent assujettis
par les Égyptiens. La circonstance que les papyrus mentionnant ce nom
ont été trouvés à Memphis, plaide encore en faveur de l’assimilation
proposée--découverte importante qu’il est à désirer de voir confirmée
dar d’autres monuments.” It should be added that the Aperiu also
appear in the inscription of Thothmes III at Karnak and were supposed
by Mariette to be the people of Ephon. It is, however, to be noted
that the inscriptions mention two tribes of Aperiu--a greater and a
lesser, or an upper and a lower tribe. This might perhaps consist with
the establishment of Hebrew settlers in the delta and others in the
neighborhood of Memphis. The Aperiu, according to other inscriptions,
appear to have been horsemen, or horse-trainers, which certainly tells
against the probability of their identity with the Hebrews.
[90] See the famous wall painting of the Colossus on the Sledge
engraved in Sir G. Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians;” frontispiece to
vol. ii, ed. 1871.
[91] In a letter written by a priest who lived during this reign
(Rameses II), we find an interesting account of the disadvantages and
hardships attending various trades and pursuits, as opposed to the ease
and dignity of the sacerdotal office. Of the mason he says: “It is the
climax of his misery to have to remove a block of ten cubits by six,
a block which it takes a month to drag by the private ways among the
houses.”--Sallier Pap. No. II, Brit. Musæ.
[92] “Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as
heretofore; let them go and gather straw for themselves.”
“And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall
lay upon them; ye shall not diminish ought thereof.--Exodus, chap. v,
7, 8.
M. Chabas says: “Cese détails sont complètement conformes aux
habitudes Égyptiennes. Le mélange de paille et d’argile dans les
briques antiques a été parfaitement reconnu. D’un autre côté, le
travail à la tâche est mentionne dans un texte écrit an revers d’un
papyrus célébrant la splendeur de la ville de Ramsès, et datant,
selon toute vraisemblance, du règne de Meneptah I. En voici la
transcription: ‘Compte des maçons, 12; en outre des hommes à mouler
la brique dans leurs villes, amenés aux travaux de la maison. Eux
à faire leur nombre de briques journellesment; non ils sont à se
relâcher des travaux dans la maison neuve; c’est ainsi que j’ai
obéi au mandat donné par mon maître.’” See “Recherches pour servir
à l’Histoire de la XIX Dynastie,” par F. Chabas. Paris: 1873, p.
149.
The curious text thus translated into French by M. Chabas is written
on the back of the papyrus already quoted (_i. e._ Letter of Panbesa,
Anastasi Papyri, No. III), and is preserved in the British Museum. The
wall-painting in a tomb of the eighteenth dynasty at Thebes, which
represents foreign captives mixing clay, molding, drying, and placing
bricks, is well known from the illustration in Sir G. Wilkinson’s
“Ancient Egyptians,” ed. of 1871, vol. ii, p. 196. Cases sixty-one and
sixty-two in the first Egyptian room, British Museum, contain bricks of
mixed clay and straw stamped with the name of Rameses II.
[93] “Les affaires de la cour et de l’administration du pays sont
expédiées par les ‘chefs’ ou les ‘intendants,’ par les ‘secretaires’
et par la nombreuse classe des scribes.... Le trésor rempli d’or et
d’argent, et le divan des depenses et des recettes avaient leurs
intendants à eux. La chambre des comptes ne manque pas. Les domaines,
les propriétés, les palais, et même les lacs du roi sont mis sous
la garde d’inspecteurs. Les architectes du Pharaon s’occupent de
bâtisses d’après l’ordre du Pharaon. Les carrières, à partir de celles
du Mokattam (le Toora de nos jours) jusqu’à celles d’Assouan, se
trouvent exploitées par des chefs qui surveillent le transport des
pierres taillés a la place de deur destination. Finalement la corvée
est dirigée par les chefs des travaux publics.”--“Histoire d’Égypte,”
Brugsch; second edition, 1875; chap, v, pp. 34 and 35.
[94] The Pa-Rameses of the Bible narrative was not the only Egyptian
city of that name. There was a Pa-Rameses near Memphis, and another
Pa-Remeses at Abou Simbel; and there may probably have been many more.
[95] “The remains were apparently those of a large hall paved with
white alabaster slabs. The walls were covered with a variety of
bricks and encaustic tiles; many of the bricks were of most beautiful
workmanship, the hieroglyphs in some being inlaid in glass. The
capitals of the columns were inlaid with brilliant colored mosaics,
and a pattern in mosaics ran round the cornice. Some of the bricks
are inlaid with the oval of Rameses III.” See “Murray’s Hand-book for
Egypt,” route 7, p. 217.
Case D, in the second Egyptian room at the British Museum, contains
several of these tiles and terra-cottas, some of which are painted
with figures of Asiatic and negro captives, birds serpents, etc.; and
are extremely beautiful both as regards design and execution. Murray
is wrong, however, in attibuting the building to Rameses II. The
cartouches are those of Rameses III. The discovery was made by some
laborers in 1870.
NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.--This mound was excavated last year (1887)
by M. Naville, acting as before for the Egypt Exploration Fund.
See supplementary sheet to _The Illustrated London News_, 17th
September, 1887, containing a complete account of the excavations at
Tel-el-Yahoodeh, etc., with illustrations.
[96] This tablet is votive, and contains in fact a long Pharisaic
prayer offered to Osiris by Rameses IV in the fourth year of his reign.
The king enumerates his own virtues and deeds of piety, and implores
the god to grant him length of days. See “Sur une Stèle inédite
d’Abydos,” par P. Pierret. “Revue Archéologique, vol. xix, p. 273.
[97] M. Mariette, in his great work on Abydos, has argued that Rameses
II was designated during the lifetime of his father by a cartouche
signifying only _Ra-User-Ma_; and that he did not take the additional
_Setp-en-Ra_ till after the death of Seti I. The Louvre, however,
contains a fragment of bas-relief representing the infant Rameses with
the full title of his later years. This important fragment is thus
described by M. Paul Pierret: “Ramesés II enfant, représenté assis
sur le signe des montagnes _du_: c’est une assimilation au soleil
levant lorsqu’il émerge à l’horizon céleste. Il porte la main gauche
à sa bouche, en signe d’enfance. La main droite pend sur les genoux.
Il est vétu d’une longue robe. La tresse de l’enfance pend sur son
épaule. Un diadème relie ses cheveux, et un uræus se dresse sur son
front. Voici la traduction de la courte légende qui accompagne cette
représentation. ‘Le roi de la Haute et de la Basse Égypte, maitre des
deux pays, _Ra-User-Ma Setp-en-Ra_, vivificateur, éternel comme le
soleil.’”--“Catalogue de la Salle Historique.” P. Pierret. Paris, 1873,
p. 8.
* * * * *
M. Maspero is of opinion that this one fragment establishes the
disputed fact of his actual sovereignty from early childhood, and so
disposes of the entire question. See “L’Inscription dédicatoire du
Temple d’Abydos, suivi d’un Essai Sur la jeunesse de Sesostris.” G.
Maspero. 4º Paris, 1867. See also chap. viii (foot note), p. 126.
[98] “Le métier d’architecte se trouvait confié aux plus hauts
dignitaires de la cour Pharaonique. Les architectes du roi,
les _Murket_, se recrutaient assez souvent parmi le nombre des
princes.”--“Histoire d’Egypte:” Brugsch, second edition, 1875, chap. v,
p. 34.
[99] See “L’Inscription dédicatoire du Temple d’Abydos,” etc., by G.
Maspero.
[100] See Rosellini, _Monumenti Storici_, pl. lxxi.
[101] “A la nouvelle de la mort de son père, Ramsès II désormais seul
roi, quitta l’Éthiopie et ceignit la couronne à Thebes. Il était alors
dans la plénitude de ses forces, et avait autour de lui un grand nombre
d’enfants, dont quelques-uns étaient assez âgés pour combattre sous ses
ordres.”--“Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient,” par G. Maspero,
chap. v, p. 220. 4th edition, 1886.
[102] “Comme Ramsès II regna 66 ans, le règne de son successeur sous
lequel la sortie des Juifs eut lieu, embrassa la durée de 20 ans; et
comme Moïse avait l’age de 80 ans au temps de la sortie, il en résulte
évidemment que les enfants d’Israël quittèrent l’Égypte une des ces
dernèires six années du règne de Menepthah; c’est à dire entre 1327 et
1331 avant l’ère chrétienne. Si nous admettons que ce Pharaon périt
dans la mer, selon le rapport biblique, Moïse sera né 80 ans avant
1321, ou 1401 avant J. Chr., la _sixième_ année de règne de Ramsès
II.”--“Histoire d’Égypte,” Brugsch, chap. viii, p. 157. First edition,
Leipzig, 1859.
[103] If the exodus took place, however, during the opening years of
the reign of Menepthah, it becomes necessary either to remove the birth
of Moses to a correspondingly earlier date, or to accept the amendment
of Bunsen, who says “we can hardly take literally the statement as to
the age of Moses at the exodus, _twice over_ forty years.” Forty years
is the mode of expressing a generation, from thirty to thirty-three
years. “Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” Bunsen, London, 1859,
vol. iii, p. 184. That Meneptah did not himself perish with his host,
seems certain. The final oppression of the Hebrews and the miracles
of Moses, as narrated in the Bible, give one the impression of having
all happened within a comparatively short space of time; and cannot
have extended over a period of twenty years. Neither is it stated that
Pharaoh perished. The tomb of Menepthah, in fact, is found in the
valley of the tombs of the kings (tomb No. 8).
[104] Herodotus, book ii.
[105] Rosellini, for instance, carries hero-worship to its extreme
limit when he not only states that Rameses the Great had, by his
conquests, filled Egypt with luxuries that contributed alike to the
graces of every-day life and the security of the state, but (accepting
as sober fact the complimentary language of a triumphal tablet) adds,
that “universal peace even secured to him the love of the vanquished”
(l’universal pace assicurata dall’ amore dei vinti stessi pel
Faraone).--“Mon. Storici,” vol. iii, part ii, p. 294. Bunsen, equally
prejudiced in the opposite direction, can see no trait of magnanimity
or goodness in one whom he loves to depict as “an unbridled despot, who
took advantage of a reign of almost unparalleled length, and of the
acquisitions of his father and ancestors, in order to torment his own
subjects and strangers to the utmost of his power, and to employ them
as instruments of his passion for war and building.”--“Egypt’s Place in
Universal History,” Bunsen, vol. iii, book iv, part ii, p. 184.
[106] “Souvent il s’introduit lui-même dans les triades divines
auxquelles il dédie les temples. _Le soleil de Ramsès Meïamoun_ qu’on
aperçoit sur leur murailles, n’est autre chose que le roi lui-même
déifié de son vivant.”--“Notice des Monuments Égyptiennes au Musée du
Louvre.” De Rougé, Paris, 1875, p. 20.
[107] See _Hymn to Pharaoh_ (Menepthah), translated by C. W. Goodwin,
M. A. “Records of the Past,” vol. vi, p. 101.
[108] The late Vicomte E. de Rougé, in a letter to M. Guigniaut on
the discoveries at Tanis, believes that he detects the Semitic type
in the portraits of Rameses II and Seti I; and even conjectures that
the Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty may have descended from Hyksos
ancestors: “L’origine de la famille des Ramsès nous est jusqu’ ici
complétement inconnue; sa prédilection pour le dieu _Set_ ou _Sutech_,
qui éclate des l’abord par le nom de Seti I (_Sethos_), ainsi que
d’autres indices, pouvaient déjà engager à la reporter vers la Basse
Égypte. Nous savions même que Ramsès II avait épousé une fille du
Prince de Khet, quand le traité de l’an 22 eut ramené la paix entre les
deux pays. Le profil très-décidément sémitique de Séti et de Ramsès
se distinguait nettement des figures ordinal res de nos Pharaons
Thébains.” (See “Revue Archéologique”, vol. ix, A.D.
1864.) In the course of the same letter, M. de Rougé adverts to the
magnificent restoration of the temple of Sutech at Tanis (San), by
Rameses II and to the curious fact that the god is there represented
with the peculiar head-dress worn elsewhere by the Prince of Kheta.
It is to be remembered, however, that the patron deity of Rameses II
was Amen-Ra. His homage of Sutech (which might possibly have been a
concession to his Khetan wife) seems to have been confined almost
exclusively to Tanis, where Ma-at-iri-neferu-Ra may be supposed to have
resided.
[109] “_L’absence de points fouillés_, la simplification voulue, la
restriction desdétails et des ornements à quelques sillons plus ou
moins hardis, l’engorgement de toutes les parties délicates, démontrent
que les Égyptiens étaient loin d’avoir des procédés et des facilités
inconnus.”--“La Scripture Égyptienne,” par Emile Soldi, p. 48.
“Un fait qui nous parait avoir dû entraver les progrès de la
sculpture, c’est l’habitude probable des sculpteurs ou entrepreneurs
Égyptiens d’entre prendre le travail à même sur la pierre, sans avoir
préalablement cherché le modèle en terre glaise, comme on le fait de
nos jours. Une fois le modèle fini, on le moule et on le reproduit
mathematiquement définitive. Ce procédé a toujours été employé dans les
grandes époques de l’art; et il ne nous a pas semblé qu’il ait jamais
été en usage en Egypte.”--Ibid, p. 82.
M. Soldi is also of opinion that the Egyptian sculptors were ignorant
of many of the most useful tools known to the Greek, Roman, and modern
sculptors, such as the emery-tube, the diamond-point, etc.
[110] On the left leg of this colossus is the famous Greek inscription
discovered by Messrs. Bankes and Salt. It dates from the reign of
Psamatichus I, and purports to have been cut by a certain Damearchon,
one of the two hundred and forty thousand Egyptian troops of whom
it is related by Herodotus (book ii, chaps. xxix and xxx) that they
deserted because they were kept in garrison at Syene for three years
without being relieved. The inscription, as translated by Colonel
Leake, is thus given in Rawlingson’s “Herodotus” (vol. ii, p. 37);
“King Psamatichus having come to Elephantine, those who were with
Psamatichus, the son of Theocles, wrote this: ‘They sailed, and came
to above Kerkis, to where the river rises ... the Egyptian Amasis....’
The writer is Damearchon, the son of Amœbichus, and Pelephus (Pelekos),
the son of Udamus.” The king Psamatichus here named has been identified
with the Psamtik I of the inscriptions. It was in his reign, and not as
it has sometimes been supposed, in the reign of Psamatichus II, that
the great military defection took place.
[111] _Ra_, the principal solar divinity, generally represented with
the head of a hawk and the sun-disk on his head. “_Ra_ vent dire
_faire_, _disposer_; c’est, en effet, le dieu Ra qui a disposié organsé
le monde, dont la matière lui a été donnée par Ptah.”--P. Pierret:
“Dictionaire d’Archéologie Égyptienne.”
“Ra est une autre des intelligence démiurgiques. Ptah avait créé le
soleil; le soleil, a son tour, est _le créateur des êtres, animaux
et hommes_. Il est à l’hémisphère supérieure ce qu’Osiris est à
l’hémisphère inferieure. Ra s’incarne à Heliopis.”--A. Mariette:
“Notice des Monuments à Boulak,” p. 123.
[112] An instance occurs, however, in a small inscription sculptured on
the rocks of the Island of Sehayl in the first cataract, which records
the second panegyry of the reign of Rameses II.--See “Récuil des
Monuments, etc.:” Brugsch, vol. ii, Planche lxxxii, Inscription No. 6.
[113] Though dedicated by Rameses to Nefertari, and by Nefertari to
Rameses, this temple was placed, primarily, under the patronage of
Hathor, the supreme type of divine maternity. She is represented
by Queen Nefertari, who appears on the façade as the mother of six
children and adorned with the attributes of the goddess. A temple to
Hathor would also be, from a religious point of view, the fitting
pendant to a temple of Ra. M. Mariette, in his “Notice des Monuments à
Boulak,” remarks of Hathor that her functions are still but imperfectly
known to us. “Peutêtre était-elle à Ra ce que Maut est à Ammon, le
récipient où le dieu s’engendre lui-même pour l’éternité.”
[114] It is not often that one can say of a female head in an Egyptian
wall painting that it is beautiful; but in these portraits of the
queen, many times repeated upon the walls of the first hall of the
Temple of Hathor, there is, if not positive beauty according to our
western notions, much sweetness and much grace. The name of Nefertari
means perfect, good, or beautiful companion. That the word “Nefer”
should mean both good and beautiful--in fact, that beauty and goodness
should be synonymous terms--is not merely interesting as it indicates
a lofty philosophical standpoint, but as it reveals, perhaps, the
latent germ of that doctrine which was hereafter to be taught with such
brilliant results in the Alexandrian schools. It is remarkable that the
word for truth and justice (_Ma_) was also one and the same.
There is often a quaint significance about Egyptian proper names which
reminds one of the names that came into favor in England under the
commonwealth. Take, for instance, _Bak-en-Khonsu_, Servant-of-Khons;
_Pa-ta-Amen_, the Gift of Ammon; _Renpitnefer_, Good-year;
_Nub-en Tekh_, Worth-Her-Weight-in-Gold (both women’s names); and
_Hor-mes-out’-a-Shu_, Horus Son-of-the-Eye-of Shu--which last, as
a tolerably long compound, may claim relationship with Praise-God
Barebones, Hew-Agag-in-Pieces-before-the-Lord, etc.
[115] Ra Harmachis, in Egyptian Har-em-Khou-ti, personifies the sun
rising upon the eastern horizon.
[116] See chap. viii, p. 126, also chap. xxi.
[117] In Egyptian, _Aaranatu_.
[118] In Egyptian, _Kateshu_. “Aujourdhui encore il existe une ville
de Kades près d’une courbe de l’Oronte dans le voisinage de Homs.”
_Leçons de M. de Rougé, Professées au Collége de France_. See “Mélanges
d’Archéologie,” Egyp. and Assyr., vol. ii, p. 269. Also a valuable
paper, entitled “The Campaign of Rameses II Against Kadesh,” by the
Rev. G. H. Tomkins, “Trans. of the Soc. of Bib. Arch., vol. viii, part
3, 1882. The bend of the river is actually given in the bas-reliefs.
[119] “La légion _S’ardana_ de l’armée de Ramsès II provenait d’une
premiére descente de ces peuples en Égypte. ‘Les _S’ardana_, qui
étaient des prisonniers de sa majesté,’ dit expressément le texte
de Karnak, au commencement du poëme de _Pentaur_. Les archéologues
ont remarqué la richesse de leur costume et de leurs armures. Les
principales pièces de leur vêtements semblent couvertes de broderies.
Leur bouchier est une rondache: ils portent une longue et large
épée de forme ordinaire, mais on remarque aussi dans leurs mains
une épée d’une longueur démesurée. Le casque des S’ardana est très
caracterisque; sa forme est arrondie, mais il est surmonté d’une tige
qui supporte une boule de métal. Cet ornament est accompagné de deux
cornes en forme de croissant.... Les S’ardana de l’armée Égyptienne ont
seulement des favoris et des moustaches coupés très courts.”--“Memoire
sur les Attaques Dirigées contre l’Égypte,” etc. E. de Rougé. “Revue
Archéologique,” vol. xvi, pp. 90, 91.
[120] A rich treasure of gold and silver rings was found by Ferlini,
in 1834, immured in the wall of one of the pyramids of Meröe, in Upper
Nubia. See _Lepsius’ Letters_, translated by L. and J. Horner, Bohn,
1858, p. 151.
[121] This cast, the property of the British Museum, is placed over
a door leading to the library at the end of the northern vestibule,
opposite the staircase. I was informed by the late Mr. Bonomi that the
mold was made by Mr. Hay, who had with him an Italian assistant picked
up in Cairo. They took with them some barrels of plaster and a couple
of ladders, and contrived, with such spars and poles as belonged to
the dahabeeyah, to erect a scaffolding and a matted shelter for the
plasterman. The colossus was at this time buried up to its chin in
sand, which made the task so much the easier. When the mold of the head
was brought to England, it was sent to Mr. Bonomi’s studio, together
with a mold of the head of the colossus at Mitrahenny, a mold of the
apex of the fallen obelisk at Karnak, and molds of the wall-sculptures
at Bayt-et-Welly. Mr. Bonomi superintended the casting and placing
of all these in the museum about three years after the molds were
made. This was at the time when Mr. Hawkins held the post of keeper
of antiquities. I mention these details, not simply because they have
a special interest for all who are acquainted with Abou Simbel, but
because a good deal of misapprehension has prevailed on the subject,
some travelers attributing the disfigurement of the head to Lepsius,
others to the Crystal Palace Company, and so forth. Even so careful
a writer as the late Miss Martineau ascribes it, on hearsay, to
Champollion.
[122] “A castle, resembling in size and form that of Ibrim; it bears
the name of Kalat Adda; it has been abandoned many years, being
entirely surrounded by barren rocks. Part of its ancient wall, similar
in construction to that of Ibrim, still remains. The habitations are
built partly of stone and partly of brick. On the most elevated spot in
the small town, eight or ten gray granite columns of small dimensions
lie on the ground, with a few capitals near them of clumsy Greek
architecture.”--Burckhardt’s “Travels in Nubia,” 1819, p. 38.
In a curious Arabic history of Nubia written in the tenth century A.D.
by one Abdallah Ben Ahmed Ben Solaïm of Assûan, fragments of which
are preserved in the great work of Makrizy, quoted by Burckhardt and
E. Quatremere (see foot note, p. 202), there occurs the following
remarkable passage: “In this province (Nubia) is situated the city of
Bedjrasch, capital of Maris, the fortress of Ibrim, and another place
called Adwa, which has a port, and is, they say, the birthplace of the
sage Lokman and of Dhoul Noun. There is to be seen there a magnificent
Birbeh.” (“On y voit un _Berba_ magnifique.”)--“Mémoires Géographiques
sur l’Égypte,” etc. E. Quatremere, Paris, 1811; vol. ii, p. 8.
If Adwa and Adda are one and the same, it is possible that in this
passage we find preserved the only comparatively modern indication
of some great rock-cut temple, the entrance to which is now entirely
covered by the sand. It is clear that neither Abou Simbel (which is
on the opposite bank, and some three or four miles north of Adda)
nor Ferayg (which is also some way off, and quite a small place) can
here be intended. That another temple exists somewhere between Abou
Simbel and Wady Halfeh, and is yet to be discovered, seems absolutely
certain from the tenor of a large stela sculptured on the rock a few
paces north of the smaller temple at Abou Simbel. This stela, which is
one of the most striking and elaborate there, represents an Egyptian
gateway surmounted by the winged globe, and shows Rameses II enthroned
and receiving the homage of a certain prince whose name, as translated
by Rosellini, is Rameses-Neniseti-Habai. The inscription, which is in
sixteen columns and perfectly preserved, records the titles and praises
of the king, and states how “he had made a monumental abode for Horus,
his father, Lord of Ha’m, excavating in the bowels of the Rock of Ha’m
to make him a habitation of many ages.” We know nothing of the Rock of
Ha’m (rendered Sciam by Rosellini), but it should no doubt be sought
somewhere between Abou Simbel and Wady Halfeh. “Qual sito precisamente
dinotisi in questo nome di Sciam, io non saprei nel presente stato
delle cose determinare: credo peraltro secondo varie loughi delle
iscrizioni che lo ricordano, che fosse situato sull’ una o l’altra
sponda del Nilo, nel paese compreso tra Wadi-halfa e Ibsambul, o poco
oltre. E qui dovrebbe trovarsi il nominato speco di Horus, fino al
presente occulto a noi.”--Rosellini Letterpress to “Monumenti Storici,”
vol. iii, part ii, p. 184. It would hence appear that the Rock of Ha’m
is mentioned in other inscriptions.
The distance between Abou Simbel and Wady Halfeh is only forty miles,
and the likely places along the banks are but few. Would not the
discovery of this lost temple be an enterprise worthier the ambition of
tourists, than the extermination of such few crocodiles as yet linger
north of the second cataract
[123] See foot note page 265.
[124] “Un second temple, plus grand, mais tout aussi détruit que le
précédent, existe un peu plus au sud, c’était le grand temple de la
villa Égyptienne de _Béhéni_, qui exista sur cet emplacement, et
qui d’après l’étendu des débris de poteries répandus sur la plaine
aujourdhui déserte, parait avoir été assez grande.”--Champollion,
_Lettres écrites d’Égypte_, etc., ed. 1868; Letter ix.
[125] Mount Fogo, as shown upon Keith Johnston’s map of Egypt and
Nubia, would seem to be identical with the Ali Bersi of Lepsius.
[126] On referring to Col. H. Vyse’s “Voyage into Upper Egypt,” etc. I
see that he also opened one of these tumuli, but “found no indication
of an artificial construction.” I can only conclude that he did not
carry his excavation low enough. As it is difficult to suppose the
tumuli made for nothing, I cannot help believing that they would repay
a more systematic investigation.
[127] The inclosure-wall of the great Temple of Tanis is eighty feet
thick. See “Tanis,” Part 1, by W. M. F. Petrie; published by the
Committee of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 1885. [Note to second edition.]
[128] It was long believed that the Egyptians were ignorant of the
principle of the arch. This, however, was not the case. There are brick
arches of the time of Rameses II behind the Ramesseum at Thebes and
elsewhere. Still, arches are rare in Egypt. We filled in and covered
the arch again, and the greater part of the staircase in order to
preserve the former.
[129] Commonly known as Belzoni’s tomb.
[130] I write of these walls, for convenience, as north, south, east
and west, as one is so accustomed to regard the position of buildings
parallel with the river; but the present monument, as it is turned
slightly southward round the angle of the rock, really stands southeast
by east, instead of east and west like the large temple.
[131] Horus Aroëris.--“Celui-ci, qui semble avoir été frère d’Osiris,
porte une tête d’épervier coiffée du pschent. Il est presque
complètement identifié avec le soleil dans la plupart des lieux où
il était adoré, et il en est de même très souvent pour Horus, fils
d’Isis.”--“Notice Sommaire des Monuments du Louvre,” 1873. De Rougé. In
the present instance, this god seems to have been identified with Ra.
[132] “Le sceptre à tête de lévier, nommé à tort sceptre à tête de
concoupha, était porté par les dieux.”--“Dic. d’Arch. Égyptienne:” P.
Pierret; Paris, 1875.
[133] Amen of the blue complexion is the most ancient type of this god.
Here he represents divine royalty, in which character his title is:
“Lord of the Heaven, of the earth, of the waters and of the mountains.”
“Dans ce rôle de roi du monde, Amon a les chairs peintes en bleu pour
indiquer sa nature céleste; et lorsqu’il porte le titre de Seigneur
des Trônes, il est représenté assis, la couronne en tête: d’ordinaire
il est debout.”--“Étude des Monuments de Karnak.” De Rougé. “Mélanges
d’Archeologie,” vol. i, 1873.
There were almost as many varieties of Amen in Egypt as there are
varieties of the Madonna in Italy or Spain. There was an Amen of
Thebes, an Amen of Elephantine, an Amen of Coptos, an Amen of Chemmis
(Panopolis), an Amen of the Resurrection, Amen of the Dew, Amen of the
Sun (Amen-Ra), Amen Self-created, etc. Amen and Khem were doubtless
identical. It is an interesting fact that our English words, chemical,
chemist, chemistry, etc., which the dictionaries derive from the Arabic
_al-kimia_, may be traced back a step farther to the Panopolitan name
of this most ancient god of the Egyptians, Khem (Gr. Pan; Latin,
Priapus), the deity of plants and herbs and of the creative principle.
A cultivated Egyptian would, doubtless, have regarded all these Amens
as merely local or symbolical types of a single deity.
[134] The material of this blue helmet, so frequently depicted on
the monuments, _may_ have been the Homeric Kuanos, about which so
much doubt and conjecture have gathered, and which Mr. Gladstone
supposes to have been a metal. (See “Juventus Mundi,” chap. xv, p.
532.) A paragraph in _The Academy_ (June 8, 1876) gives the following
particulars of certain perforated lamps of a “blue metallic substance,”
discovered at Hissarlik by Dr. Schliemann, and there found lying under
the copper shields to which they had probably been attached. “An
analytical examination by Landerer (Berg., _Hüttenm. Zeitung_, xxxix,
430) has shown them to be sulphide of copper. The art of coloring
the metal was known to the coppersmiths of Corinth, who plunged the
heated copper into the fountain of Peirene. It appears not impossible
that this was a sulphur spring, and that the blue color may have been
given to the metal by plunging it in a heated state into the water and
converting the surface into copper sulphide.”
It is to be observed that the Pharaohs are almost always represented
wearing this blue helmet in the battle pieces and that it is frequently
studded with gold rings. It must, therefore, have been of metal. If
not of sulphureted copper, it may have been made of steel, which, in
the well known instance of the butcher’s sharpener, as well as in
representations of certain weapons, is always painted blue upon the
monuments.
[135] “This eye, called _uta_, was extensively used by the Egyptians
both as an ornament and amulet during life, and as a sepulchral
amulet. They are found in the form of right eyes and left eyes, and
they symbolize the eyes of Horus, as he looks to the north and south
horizons in his passage from east to west, _i. e._, from sunrise to
sunset.”
M. Grebaut, in his translation of a hymn to Amen-Ra, observes: “Le
soleil marchant d’Orient en Occident éclaire de ses deux yeux les deux
régions du Nord et du Midi.”--“Révue Arch.,” vol. xxv, 1873; p. 387.
[136] This inscription was translated for the first edition of this
book by the late Dr. Birch; for the present translation I am indebted
to the courtesy of E. A. Wallis Budge, Esq.
[137] _Sesennu_--Eshmoon or Hermopolis.
[138] _Amenheri_--Gebel Addeh.
[139] These jubilees, or festivals of thirty years, were religious
jubilees in celebration of each _thirtieth_ anniversary of the
accession of the reigning Pharaoh.
[140] There are, in the British Museum, some bottles and vases of this
description, dating from the eighteenth dynasty; see Case E, Second
Egyptian Room. They are of dark-blue translucent glass, veined with
waving lines of opaque white and yellow.
[141] _Kenus_--Nubia.
[142] Governors of Ethiopia bore this title, even though they did not
themselves belong to the family of Pharaoh.
It is a curious fact that one of the governors of Ethiopia during the
reign of Rameses II was called Mes, or Messou, signifying son, or
child--which is in fact _Moses_. Now the Moses of the Bible was adopted
by Pharaoh’s daughter, “became to her as a son,” was instructed in the
wisdom of the Egyptians, and married a Kushite woman, black but comely.
It would perhaps be too much to speculate on the possibility of his
having held the office of Governor, or Royal Son of Kush.
[143] _i. e._ Ammon Ra, the sun god, in conjunction or identification
with Har-em-a x u, of Horus-on-the-Horizon, another solar deity.
[144] The primæval god.
[145] Inner place, or sanctuary.
[146] Ethiopia.
[147] At about an equal distance to the north of the great temple, on
the verge of the bank, is a shapeless block of brick ruin, which might
possibly, if investigated, turn out to be the remains of a second pylon
corresponding to this which we partially uncovered to the south.
[148] He may, however, be represented on the north wall, where it is
covered by the sand-heap.
[149] Letter xiv, p. 235. “Nouvelle Ed.,” Paris, 1868.
[150] That this shock of earthquake occurred during the lifetime of
Rameses II seems to be proved by the fact that, where the Osiride
column is cracked across, a wall has been built up to support the
two last pillars to the left at the upper end of the great hall, on
which wall is a large stela covered with an elaborate hieroglyphic
inscription, dating from the thirty-fifth year, and the thirteenth
day of the month of Tybi, _of the reign of Rameses II_. The right arm
of the external colossus, to the right of the great doorway, has also
been supported by the introduction of an arm to his throne, built
up of square blocks; this being the only arm to any of the thrones.
Miss Martineau detected a restoration of part of the lower jaw of the
northernmost colossus, and also a part of the dress of one of the
Osiride statues in the great hall. I have in my possession a photograph
taken at a time when the sand was several feet lower than at present,
which shows that the right leg of the northernmost colossus is also a
restoration on a gigantic scale, being built up, like the throne-arm,
in great blocks, and finished, most probably, afterward.
[151] This refers to the ex-khedive, Ismail Pasha, who ruled Egypt at
the time when this book was written and published. [Note to second
edition.]
[152] There are tombs in some of the ravines behind the temples, which,
however, we did not see.
[153] Tosko is on the eastern bank, and not, as in Keith Johnston’s
map, on the west.
[154] This is one of the temples erected by Rameses the Great, and,
I believe, not added to by any of his successors. The colossi, the
Osiride columns, the sphinxes (now battered out of all human semblance)
were originally made in his image. The cartouches are all his, and in
one of the inner chambers there is a list of his little family. All
these chambers were accessible till three or four years ago, when a
party of German travelers carried off some sculptured tablets of great
archæological interest; after which act of spoliation the entrance
was sanded up by order of Mariette Bey. See, also, with regard to the
probable date of the earthquake at this place, chap. xviii, p. 321.
[155] Not only near this nameless town, but in many other parts between
Abou Simbel and Philæ, we found the old alluvial soil lying as high as
from twenty to thirty feet above the level of the present inundations.
[156] Ar. _Birbeh_, temple.
[157] “The Nile receives its last tributary, the Atbara, in Lat. 17°
42’ north, at the northern extremity of the peninsular tract anciently
called the Island of Meröe, and thence flows north (a single stream
without the least accession) through twelve degrees of latitude; or,
following its winding course, at least twelve hundred miles to the
sea.”--“Blackie’s Imperial Gazetteer,” 1861. A careful survey of the
country would probably bring to light the dry beds of many more such
tributaries as the one described above.
[158] Of this wall, Burckhardt notices that “it has fallen down,
apparently from some sudden and violent concussion, as the stones are
lying on the ground in layers, as when placed in the wall; a proof that
they must have fallen all at once.”--“Travels in Nubia:” Ed. 1819,
p. 100. But he has not observed the inscription which is in large
characters, and consists of three lines on three separate layers, of
stones. The idle man copied the original upon the spot, which copy has
since been identified with an ex-voto of a Roman soldier published in
Boeckh’s “Corpus Inscr. Græc.,” of which the following is a translation:
“The vow of Verecundus the soldier, and his most pious parents, and
Gaius his little brother, and the rest of his brethren.”
[159] A clew, however, might possibly be found to the date. There is a
rudely sculptured tableau--the only piece of sculpture in the place--on
a detached wall near the standing columns. It represents Isis worshiped
by a youth in a short toga. Both figures are lumpish and ill-modeled;
and Isis, seated under a conventional fig-tree, wears her hair erected
in stiff rolls over her forehead, like a diadem. It is the face and
stiffly dressed hair of Marciana, the sister of Trajan, as shown upon
the well-known coin engraved in Smith’s “Dic. of Greek and Roman
Biography,” vol. ii, p. 939. Maharrakeh is the Hiera Sycaminos, or
place of the sacred fig-tree, where ends the Itinerary of Antoninus.
[160] _See The Scarabæus Sacer_, by C. Woodrooffe, B. A.--a paper
(based on notes by the late Rev. C. Johns) read before the Winchester
and Hampshire Scientific and Literary Society, Nov. 8, 1875. _Privately
printed._
[161] See chap. x, p. 163. Dakkeh (the Pselcis of the Greeks and
Romans, the Pselk of the Egyptians) was at one time regarded as the
confine of Egypt and Ethiopia, and would seem to have been a great
military station. The inscribed potsherds here are chiefly receipts and
accounts of soldiers’ pay. The walls of the temple outside, and of the
chambers within, abound also in free-hand graffiti, most of which are
written in red ink. We observed some that appeared to be trilingual.
[162] “Less than a quarter of a mile to the south are the ruins of a
small sandstone temple with clustered columns; and on the way, near
the village, you pass a stone stela of Amenemhat III, mentioning his
eleventh year.”--“Murray’s Hand-book for Egypt,” p. 481. M. Maspero,
writing of Thothmes III, says: “Sons fils et successeur, Amenhotep III,
fit construire en face de Pselkis une forteresse importante.”--“Hist.
Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient,” chap, iii, p. 113.
At Kobban also was found the famous stela of Rameses II, called the
Stela of Dakkeh; see chap. xv, p. 238. In this inscription, a cast from
which is at the Louvre, Rameses II is stated to have caused an artesian
well to be made in the desert between this place and Gebel Oellaky, in
order to facilitate the working of the gold mines of those parts.
[163] “According to Ptolemy, Metachompso should be opposite Pselcis,
where there are extensive brick ruins. If so, Metachompso and Contra
Pselcis must be the same town.”--“Topography of Thebes,” etc.; Sir
G. Wilkinson. Ed. 1835, p. 488. M. Vivien de St. Martin is, however,
of opinion that the Island of Derar, near Maharrakeh, is the true
Metachompso. See “Le Nord de l’Afrique,” section vi, p. 161. Be this
as it may, we at all events know of one great siege that this fortress
sustained, and of one great battle fought beneath its walls. “The
Ethiopians,” says Strabo, “having taking advantage of the withdrawal
of part of the Roman forces, surprised and took Syene, Elephantine and
Philæ, enslaved the inhabitants, and threw down the statues of Cæsar.
But Petronius, marching with less than ten thousand infantry and eight
hundred horse against an army of thirty thousand men, compelled them to
retreat to Pselcis. He then sent deputies to demand restitution of what
they had taken and the reason which had induced them to begin the war.
On their alleging that they had been ill treated by the monarchs, he
answered that these were not the sovereigns of the country--but Cæsar.
When they desired three days for consideration and did nothing which
they were bound to do, Petronius attacked and compelled them to fight.
They soon fled, being badly commanded and badly armed, for they carried
large shields made of raw hides, and hatchets for offensive weapons.
Part of the insurgents were driven to the city, others fled into the
uninhabited country, and such as ventured upon the passage of the river
escaped to a neighboring island, where there were not many crocodiles,
on account of the current.... Petronius then attacked Pselcis, and took
it.”--Strabo’s “Geography,” Bohn’s translation, 1857, vol. iii, pp.
267-268. This island to which the insurgents fled may have been the
large sand island which here still occupies the middle of the river and
obstructs the approach to Dakkeh. Or they may have fled to the Island
of Derar, seven miles higher up. Strabo does not give the name of the
island.
[164] “C’est un ouvrage non achevé du temps de l’Empereur Auguste.
Quoique peu important par son étendue, ce monument m’a beaucoup
interessé, puisqu’il est entièrement relatif à l’incarnation d’Osiris
sous forme humaine, sur la terre.”--_Lettres écrites d’Égypte_, etc.:
Champollion. Paris, 1868; p. 126.
[165] I observed mauve here, for the first and only time, and very
brilliant ultramarine. There are also traces of gilding on many of the
figures.
[166] See chap. xii, p. 199.
[167] Talmis: (_Kalabsheh_).
[168] Taphis: (_Tafah_).
[169] Blemyes: The Blemeys were a nomadic race of Berbers, supposed to
be originally of the tribe of Bilmas of Tibbous in the central desert,
and settled as early as the time of Eratosthenes in that part of the
Valley of the Nile which lies between the first and second cataracts.
See “Le Nord de l’Afrique,” by M. V. de St. Martin. Paris, 1863,
section iii, p. 73.
[170] See “The Habitations of Man in All Ages.” V. le Duc. Chap. ix, p.
93.
[171] They probably mark the site of a certain Coptic monastery
described in an ancient Arabic manuscript quoted by E. Quatremere,
which says that “in the town of Tafah there is a fine monastery called
the monastery of Ansoun. It is very ancient; but so solidly built,
that after so great a number of years it still stands uninjured. Near
this monastery, facing the mountain, are situated fifteen villages.”
See “Mémoires Hist. et Géographiques sur l’Égypte et le Nubia,” par E.
Quatremere. Paris, 1811, vol. ii, p. 55.
The monastery and the villages were, doubtless, of Romano-Egyptian
construction in the first instance, and may originally have been a
sacred college, like the sacred college of Philæ.
[172] “The peasants of Tafah relate that they are the descendants of
the few Christian inhabitants of the city who embraced the Mohammadan
faith when the country was conquered by the followers of the prophet;
the greater part of the brethren having either fled or been put to
death on the event taking place. They are still called Oulad el Nusara,
or the Christian progeny.”--“Travels in Nubia:” Burckhardt. London,
1819, p. 121.
[173] In these secret chambers (the entrance to which was closed by a
block of masonry so perfectly fitted as to defy detection) were kept
the images of gold and silver and lapis lazuli, the precious vases, the
sistrums, the jeweled collars, and all the portable treasures of the
temples. We saw a somewhat similar pit and small chamber in a corner of
the Temple of Dakkeh, and some very curious crypts and hiding-places
under the floor of the dark chamber to the east of the sanctuary at
Philæ, all of course long since broken open and rifled. But we had
strong reason to believe that the painter discovered the whereabouts of
a hidden chamber or passage to the west of the sanctuary, yet closed,
with all its treasures probably intact. We had, however, no means of
opening the wall, which is of solid masonry.
[174] Ar. _Tambooshy_--_i. e._, saloon skylight.
[175] “Sebek est un dieu solaire. Dans un papyrus de boulak, il est
appelé fils d’Isis, et il combat les enemis d’Osiris; c’est une
assimilation complète à Horus, et c’est à ce titre qu’il était adoré à
Ombos.”--“Dic. Arch.” P. Pierret. Paris, 1875.
[176] See chap. xi, p. 184.
[177] “Le point de départ de la mythologie Égyptienne est une Triade.”
Champollion, _Letters d’Égypte_, etc., XI Lettre. Paris, 1868. These
Triads are best studied at Gerf Hossayn and Kalabsheh.
[178] “L’un (paroi du sud) représente une déesse nourissant de son lait
divin le roi Horus, encore enfant. L’Égypte n’a jamais, comme la Grèce,
atteint l’idéal du beau ... mais en tant qu’art Égyptien, le bas-relief
du Spéos de Gebel-Silsileh est une des plus belles œuvres que l’on
puisse voir. Nulle part, en effet, la ligne n’est plus pure, et il
règne dans ce tableau une certaine douceur tranquille qui charme et
étonne à la fois.”--“Itinéraire de la Haut Égypte.” A Mariette: 1872,
p. 246.
[179] See “Sallier Papyrus No. 2.” Hymn to the Nile--translation by C.
Maspero. 4to Paris, 1868.
[180] _Ta-ur-t_, or Apet the Great. “Cette Déesse à corps d’hippopotame
debout et à mamelles pendantes, paraît être une sorte de déesse
nourrice. Elle semble, dans le bas temps, je ne dirai pas se substituer
à Maut, mais compléter le rôle de cette déesse. Elle est nommée la
grande nourrice; et présidait aux chambres où étaient représentées les
naissances des jeunes divinités.”--“Dict. Arch. P. Pierret. Paris, 1875.
“In the Heavens, this goddess personified the constellation Ursa Major,
or the Great Bear.”--“Guide to the First and Second Egyptian Rooms.” S.
Birch. London, 1874.
[181] For a highly interesting account of the rock-cut inscriptions,
graffiti, and quarry-marks at Silsilis, in the desert between Assûan
and Philæ, and in the valley called Soba Rigolah, see Mr. W. M. F.
Petrie’s recent volume entitled “A Season’s Work in Egypt,” 1877.
[182] Letter of M. Mariette to Vicomte E. de Rougé: “Révue
Archéologique,” vol. ii, p. 33, 1860.
[183] Edfu is the elder temple; Denderah the copy. Where the architect
of Denderah has departed from his model it has invariably been for the
worse.
[184] _Horus_:--“Dieu adoré dans plusieurs nomes de la basse Égypte.
Le personnage d’Horus se rattache sous des noms différents, à deux
generations divines. Sous le nom de Haroëris il est né de Seb et Nout,
et par consequent frère d’Osiris, dont il est le fils sous un autre
nom.... Horus, armé d’un dard avec lequel il transperce les ennemis
d’Osiris, est appelé Horus le Justicier.”--“Dict. Arch.,” P. Pierret,
article “_Horus_.”
[185] _Hathor_:--“Elle est, comme Neith, Naut, et Nout, la
personnification de l’espace dans lequel se meut le soleil, dont
Horus symbolize le lever: aussi son nom, Hat-hor, signifie-t-il
litteralement, _l’habitation d’Horus_.”--“Ibid.,” article “Hathor.”
[186] “Rapport sur line Mission en Égypte.” Vicomte E. de Rougé. See
“Révue Arch. Nouvelle Série,” vol. x, p. 63.
[187] “Textes Géographiques du Temple d’Edfou,” by M. J. de Rougé.
“Révue Arch.,” vol. xii, p. 209.
[188] See Professor Revillout’s “Seconde Mémoire sur les Blemmyes,”
1888, for an account of how the statues of Isis and other deities were
taken once a year from the temples of Philæ for a trip into Ethiopia.
[189] See Appendix III, “Religious Belief of the Ancient Egyptians.”
[190] Not only the names of the chambers, but their dimensions in
cubits and subdivisions of cubits are given. See “Itinéraire de la
Haute Égypte.” A. Marietta Bey. 1872, p. 241.
[191] This was, no doubt, an interment of the period of the
twenty-third or twenty-fourth dynasty, the style of which is thus
described by Marietta: “Succèdent les caisses à fond blanc. Autour de
celles çi court une légende en hiéroglyphes de toutes couleurs. Le
devant du couvercle est divisé horizontalement en tableaux où alternent
les représentations et les textes tracés en hiéroglyphes verdâtres. La
momie elle-même est hermétiquement enfermée dans un cartonnage cousu
par derrière et peint de couleurs tranchantes.”--“Notice des Monuments
à Boulak. p. 46. Paris, 1872.
[192] Diodorus, “Biblioth Hist.,” Bk. i, chap. iv. The fault of
inaccuracy ought, however, to be charged to Hecatæus, who was the
authority followed here by Diodorus.
[193] Possibly the Smendes of Manetho, and the Ba-en-Ded whose
cartouche is found by Brugsch on a sarcophagus in the museum at Vienna;
see “Hist. d’Égypte,” chap, x, p. 213, ed. 1859. Another claimant to
this identification is found in a king named Se-Mentu, whose cartouches
were found by Mariette on some small gold tablets at Tanis.
[194] Letter xiv, p. 235, _Lettres d’Égypte_; Paris, 1868. See also
chap. xviii, of the present work; p. 319.
[195] See Champollion, Letter xiv, foot note, p. 418.
[196] The sitting colossus of the Ramesseum was certainly the largest
perfect statue in Egypt when Diodorus visited the Valley of the Nile,
for the great standing colossus of Tanis had long before his time been
cut up by Sheshonk III for building purposes; but that the Tanite
colossus much exceeded the colossus of Ramesseum in height and bulk is
placed beyond doubt by the scale of the fragments discovered by Mr.
Petrie in the course of his excavations in 1884. According to his very
cautious calculations, the figure alone of the Tanite was nine hundred
inches, or seventy-five feet, high; or somewhere between seventy and
eighty feet. “To this,” says Mr. Petrie, “we must add the height of the
crown, which would proportionately be some fourteen and one-half feet.
To this again must be added the base of the figure, which was thinner
than the usual scale, being only twenty-seven inches thick. Thus the
whole block appears to have been about one thousand one hundred inches,
or say ninety-two feet, high. This was, so far as is known, the largest
statue ever executed.” The weight of the figure is calculated by Mr.
Petrie at about nine hundred tons; _i. e._, one hundred tons more than
the colossus of the Ramesseum. That it stood upon a suitable pedestal
cannot be doubted; and with the pedestal, which can scarcely have been
less than eighteen or twenty feet in height, the statue must have
towered some one hundred and twenty feet above the level of the plain.
See “Tanis,” part i, pp. 22, 23. [Note to second edition.]
[197] The syenite colossus, of which the British Museum possesses
the head, and which is popularly known as the Young Memnon, measured
twenty-four feet in height before it was broken up by the French.
[198] See wood-cut No. 340 in Sir G. Wilkinson’s “Manners and Custums
of the Ancient Egyptians,” vol. i, ed. 1871.
[199] Among these are _Abot_, or abode; meaning the abode of Amen;
_Ta-Uaboo_, the mound; _Ta-Api_, the head or capital, etc. See
“Recherches sur le nom Égyptien de Thèbes.” Chabas: 1863; “Textes
Géographiques d’Edfoo,” J. de Rougé: “Revue Arch. Nouvelle Série,” vol.
xii, 1865; etc.
[200] The “Great Harris Papyrus” is described by Dr. Birch as “one of
the finest, best written and best preserved that has been discovered in
Egypt. It measures one hundred and thirty-three feet long by sixteen
and three-quarter inches broad, and was found with several others in
a tomb behind Medinet Habu. Purchased soon after by the late A. C.
Harris of Alexandria, it was subsequently unrolled and divided into
seventy-nine leaves and laid down on cardboard. With the exception of
some small portions which are wanting in the first leaf, the text is
complete throughout.” The papyrus purports to be a post mortem address
of the king, Rameses III, recounting the benefits he had conferred
upon Egypt by his administration, and by his delivery of the country
from foreign subjection. It also records the immense gifts which he
had conferred on the temples of Egypt, of Amen at Thebes, Tum at
Heliopolis, and Ptah at Memphis, etc. “The last part is addressed to
the officers of the army, consisting partly of Sardinian and Libyan
mercenaries, and to the people of Egypt, in the thirty-second year
of his reign, and is a kind of posthumous panegyrical discourse, or
political will, like that of Augustus discovered by Ancyra. The papyrus
itself consists of the following divisions, three of which are preceded
by large colored plates or vignettes: Introduction; donations to the
Thebau deities; donations to the gods of Heliopolis; donations to the
gods of Memphis; donations to the gods of the north and south; summary
of donations; historical speech and conclusion. Throughout the monarch
speaks in the first person, the list excepted.” Introduction to “Annals
of Rameses III;” S. Birch. “Records of the Past,” vol. vi, p. 21; 1876.
[201] “Rameses III was one of the most remarkable monarchs in the
annals of Egypt. A period of political confusion and foreign conquest
of the country preceded his advent to the throne. His father,
Setnecht, had indeed succeeded in driving out the foreign invaders and
re-establishing the native dynasty of the Theban kings, the twentieth
of the list of Manetho. But Rameses had a great task before him, called
to the throne at a youthful age.... The first task of Rameses was to
restore the civil government and military discipline. In the fifth
year he defeated the Maxyes and Libyans with great slaughter when they
invaded Egypt, led by five chiefs; and in the same year he had also to
repulse the Satu, or eastern foreigners who had attacked Egypt. The
maritime nations of the west, it appears, had invaded Palestine and
the Syrian coast in his eighth year, and, after taking Carchemish, a
confederation of the _Pulusata_, supposed by some to be the Pelasgi,
_Tekkaru_ or Teucri, _Sakalusa_ or Siculi, _Tanau_ or Daunians, if not
Danai, and Uasasa or Osci, marched to the conquest of Egypt. It is
possible that they reached the mouth of the eastern branch of the Nile.
But Rameses concentrated an army at Taha, in Northern Palestine, and
marched back to defend the Nile. Assisted by his mercenary forces, he
inflicted a severe defeat on the confederated west, and returned with
his prisoners to Thebes. In his eleventh year the Mashuasha or Maxyes,
assisted by the Tahennu or Libyans, again invaded Egypt, to suffer a
fresh defeat, and the country seems from this period to have remained
in a state of tranquillity.... The vast temple at Medinet Habu, his
palaces and treasury, still remain to attest his magnificence and
grandeur; and if his domestic life was that of an ordinary Egyptian
monarch, he was as distinguished in the battlefield as the palace.
Treason, no doubt, disturbed his latter days, and it is not known
how he died; but he expired after a reign of thirty-one years and
some months, and left the throne to his son, it is supposed, about
B.C. 1200.” See “Remarks Upon the Cover of the Granite
Sarcophagus of Rameses III:” S. Birch, LL.D., Cambridge, 1876.
[202] “There is reason to believe that this is only a fragment of the
building, and foundations exist which render it probable that the
whole was originally a square of the width of the front, and had other
chambers, probably in wood or brick, besides those we now find. This
would hardly detract from the playful character of the design, and when
colored, as it originally was, and with its battlements or ornaments
complete, it must have formed a composition as pleasing as it is unlike
our usual conceptions of Egyptian art.”--“Hist. of Architecture,” by J.
Fergusson, Bk. i, ch. iv, p. 118, Lond., 1865.
[203] Medinet Habu continued, up to the period of the Arab invasion, to
be inhabited by the Coptic descendants of its ancient builders. They
fled, however, before Amr and his army, since which time the place has
been deserted. It is not known whether the siege took place at the time
of the Arab invasion, or during the raid of Cambyses; but, whenever it
was, the place was evidently forced by the besiegers. The author of
Murray’s “Hand-book” draws attention to the fact that the granite jambs
of the doorway leading to the smaller temple are cut through exactly at
the place where the bar was placed across the door.
[204] Herodotus, Bk. ii, chap. 122.
[205] “A Medinet Habou, dans son palais, il s’est fait représenter
jouant aux dames avec des femmes qui, d’après certaines copies,
semblent porter sur la tête les fleurs symboliques de l’Égypte
supérieure et inférieure, comme les deésses du monde supérieur et
inférieur, ou du ciel et de la terre. Cette dualité des deésses, qui
est indiquée dans les scènes religieuses et les textes sacrés par
la réunion de Satis et Anoucis, Pasht et Bast, Isis et Nephthys,
etc., me fait penser que les tableaux de Medinet Habou peuvent avoir
été considérés dans les légendes populaires comme offrant aux yeux
l’allégorie de la scène du jeu de dames entre le roi et la deésse Isis,
dont Hérodote a fait la Déméter Égyptienne, comme il a fait d’Osiris le
Dionysus du même peuple.”--“Le Roi Rhampsinite et le Jeu des Dames,”
par S. Birch. “Revue Arch: Nouvelle Série,” vol. xii, p. 58, Paris:
1865.
[206] Baal, written sometimes Bar, was, like Sutekh, a god borrowed
from the Phœnician mythology. The worship of Baal seems to have been
introduced into Egypt during the nineteenth dynasty. The other god here
mentioned, Mentu or Month, was a solar deity adored in the Thebaid,
and especially worshiped at Hermonthis, now Erment; a modern town of
some importance, the name of which is still almost identical with
the Per-Mentu of ancient days. Mentu was the Egyptian, and Baal the
Phœnician, god of war.
[207] From one of the inscriptions at Medinet Habu, quoted by Chabas.
See “Antiquité Historique,” ch. iv, p. 238. Ed. 1873.
[208] It is a noteworthy fact (and one which has not, so far as I
know, been previously noticed) that while the Asiatic and African
chiefs represented in these friezes are insolently described in the
accompanying hieroglyphic inscriptions as “the vile Libyan,” “the vile
Kushite,” “the vile Mashuasha,” and so forth, the European leaders,
though likewise prostrate and bound, are more respectfully designated
as “the Great of Sardinia,” “the Great of Sicily,” “the Great of
Etruria,” etc. May this be taken as an indication that their strength
as military powers was already more formidable than that of the
Egyptians’ nearer neighbors?
[209] The grand blue of the ceiling of the colonnade of the Great
Hypæthral Court is also very remarkable for brilliancy and purity of
tone; while to those interested in decoration the capital and abacus
of the second column to the right on entering this court-yard, offers
an interesting specimen of polychrome ornamentation on a gold-colored
ground.
[210] Inscriptions at Medinet Habu. See Chabas’ “Antiquité Historique,”
chap. iv. Paris: 1876.
[211] The whole of this chronicle is translated by M. Chabas in
“L’Antiquité Historique,” chap. iv, p. 246 _et seq._ It is also
engraved in full in Rosellini (“Monumenti Storici”); and has been
admirably photographed by both M. Hammerschmidt and Signor Beata.
[212] These two statues--the best-known, probably, of all Egyptian
monuments--have been too often described, painted, engraved and
photographed, to need more than a passing reference. Their featureless
faces, their attitude, their surroundings, are familiar as the
pyramids, even to those who know not Egypt. We all know that they
represent Amenhotep, or Amunoph III; and that the northernmost
was shattered to the waist by the earthquake of B.C. 27.
Being heard to give out a musical sound during the first hour of the
day, the statue was supposed by the ancients to be endowed with a
miraculous voice. The Greeks, believing it to represent the fabled son
of Tithonus and Aurora, gave it the name of Memnon; notwithstanding
that the Egyptians themselves claimed the statues as portraits of
Amenhotep III. Prefects, consuls, emperors and empresses, came “to hear
Memnon,” as the phrase then ran. Among the famous visitors who traveled
thither on this errand, we find Strabo, Germanicus, Hadrian and the
Empress Sabina. Opinion is divided as to the cause of this sound. There
is undoubtedly a hollow space inside the throne of this statue, as
may be seen by all who examine it from behind; and Sir G. Wilkinson,
in expressing his conviction that the musical sound was a piece of
priestly jugglery, represents the opinion of the majority. The author
of a carefully considered article in the _Quarterly Review_, No. 276,
April, 1875, coincides with Sir D. Brewster in attributing the sound
to a transmission of rarefied air through the crevices of the stone,
caused by the sudden change of temperature consequent on the rising
of the sun. The statue, which, like its companion, was originally one
solid monolith of gritstone, was repaired with sandstone during the
reign of Septimius Severus.
[213] This deification of the dead was not deification in the Roman
sense; neither was it canonization in the modern sense. The Egyptians
believed the justified dead to be assimilated, or rather identified, in
the spirit with Osiris, the beneficient judge and deity of the lower
world. Thus, in their worship of ancestry, they adored not mortals
immortalized, but the dead in Osiris, and Osiris in the dead.
It is worth noting, by the way, that notwithstanding the subsequent
deification of Seti I, Rameses I remained, so to say, the tutelary
saint of the temple. He alone is represented with the curious pointed
and upturned beard, like a chamois horn reversed, which is the peculiar
attribute of deity.
[214] There is among the funereal tablets of the Boulak collection
a small bas-relief sculpture representing the arrival of a family
of mourners at the tomb of a deceased ancestor. The statue of the
defunct sits at the upper end. The mourners are laden with offerings.
One little child carries a lamb; another a goose. A scribe stands
by, waiting to register the gifts. The tablet commemorates one
Psamtik-nefar-Sam, a hierogrammate under some king of the twenty-sixth
dynasty. The natural grace and simple pathos with which this little
frieze is treated lift it far above the level of ordinary Egyptian art,
and bear comparison with the class of monuments lately discovered on
the Eleusinian road at Athens.
[215] “Une dignité tout à fait particulier est celle que les
inscriptions hiéroglyphiques désignent par le titre ‘prophète de la
pyramide, de tel Pharaon.’ Il parait qu’après sa mort chaque roi était
vénéré par un culte spécial.” “Histoire d’Egypte:” Brugsch. 2d ed.,
chap, v., p. 35. Leipzig: 1875.
[216] There is a very curious window at the end of this sanctuary, with
grooves for the shutter, and holes in which to slip and drop the bar by
which it was fastened.
[217] The Gate of the King.
[218] These funerary statues are represented each on a stand or
platform, erect, with one foot advanced, as if walking, the right hand
holding the ankh, or symbol of life, the left hand grasping a staff.
The attitude is that of the wooden statue at Boulak; and it is worth
remark that the figures stand detached, with no support at the back,
which was never the case with those carved in stone or granite. There
can be no doubt that this curious series of funerary statues represent
those which were actually placed in the tomb; and that the ceremonies
here represented were actually performed before them, previous to
closing the mouth of the sepulcher. One of these very wooden statues,
from this very tomb, was brought to England by Belzoni, and is now in
the British Museum (No. 854, Central Saloon). The wood is much decayed,
and the statue ought undoubtedly to be placed under glass. The tableaux
representing the above ceremonies are well copied in Rosellini, “Mon.
del Culto,” plates 60-63.
[219] A remarkable inscription in this tomb, relating the wrath of Ra
and the destruction of mankind, is translated by M. Naville, vol. iv,
Pt. i, “Translations of the Biblical Arch. Society.” In this singular
myth, which bears a family resemblance to the Chaldæan record of the
flood, the deluge is a deluge of human blood. The inscription covers
the walls of a small chamber known as the Chamber of the Cow.
[220] The longest tomb in the valley, which is that of Seti I, measures
four hundred and seventy feet in length to the point where it is closed
by the falling in of the rock; and the total depth of its descent
is about one hundred and eighty feet. The tomb of Rameses III (No.
11) measures in length four hundred and five feet, and descends only
thirty-one feet. The rest average from about three hundred and fifty to
one hundred and fifty feet in length, and the shortest is excavated to
a distance of only sixty-five feet.
We visited, however, one tomb in the Assaseef, which in extent far
exceeds any of the tombs of the kings. This astonishing excavation,
which consists of a bewildering labyrinth of halls, passages,
staircases, pits and chambers, is calculated at twenty-three thousand
eight hundred and nine square feet. The name of the occupant was
Petamunap, a priest of uncertain date.
[221] Apophis, in Egyptian _Apap_; the great serpent of darkness, over
whom Ra must triumph after he sets in the west, and before he again
rises in the east.
[222] Kheper, the scarab deity. See chap. vi, p. 90.
[223] Symbolical of darkness.
[224] The crocodile represents Sebek. In one of the Boulak papyri, this
god is called the son Isis, and combats the enemies of Osiris. Here he
combats Apophis in behalf of Ra.
[225] The tomb numbered three in the first small ravine to the left as
one rides up the valley bears the cartouches of Rameses II. The writer
crawled in as far as the choked condition of the tomb permitted, but
the passage becomes quite impassable after the first thirty or forty
yards.
[226] When first seen by Sir G. Wilkinson, these harpers were still
in such good preservation that he reported of one, at least, if not
both, as obviously blind. The harps are magnificent, richly inlaid and
gilded, and adorned with busts of the king. One has eleven strings, the
other fourteen.
[227] The sarcophagus of Seti I, which was brought to England by
Belzoni, is in Sir J. Soane’s Museum. It is carved from a single block
of the finest alabaster, and is covered with incised hieroglyphic
texts and several hundred figures, descriptive of the passage of the
sun through the hours of the night. See “Le Sarcophage de Seti I.”
P. Pierret. “Révue Arch.,” vol. xxi, p. 285: 1870. The sarcophagus
of Rameses III is in the Fitz-William Museum, Cambridge, and the lid
thereof is in the Egyptian collection of the Louvre. See “Remarks on
the Sarcophagus of Rameses III.” S. Birch, LL.D.; Cambridge, 1876. Also
“Notice Sommaire des Monuments Égyptiens du Louvre.” E. De Rougé, p.
51: Paris, 1873.
[228] Abbot Papyrus, British Museum. This papyrus, which has been
translated by M. Chabas (“Mélanges Égyptologiques,” 3d Serie: Paris and
Chalon, 1870), gives a list of royal tombs inspected by an Egyptian
Commission in the month of Athyr (year unknown) during the reign
of Rameses IX. Among the tombs visited on this occasion mention is
especially made of “the funeral monument of the king En-Aa, which is
at the north of the Amenophium of the terrace. The monument is broken
into from the back, at the place where the stela is placed before the
monument, and having the statue of the king upon the front of the
stela, with his hound, named Bahuka, between his legs. Verified this
day, and found intact.” Such was the report of the writer of this
papyrus of 3000 years ago. And now comes one of the wonders of modern
discovery. It was but a few years ago that Mariette, excavating in that
part of the Necropolis called the Assaseef, which lies to the north of
the ruins of the Amenophium, discovered the remains of the tomb of this
very king, and the broken stela bearing upon its face a full-length
bas-relief of King En-Aa (or Entef-Aa), with three dogs before him and
one between his legs; the dog Bahuka having his name engraved over his
back in hieroglyphic characters. See “Tablet of Antefaa II.” S. Birch,
LL.D. “Transactions of the Biblical Arch. Society.” vol. iv, part i, p.
172.
[229] The beautiful jewels found upon the mummy of Queen Aah-Hotep show
how richly the royal dead were adorned, and how well worth plundering
their sepulchers must have been. These jewels have been so often
photographed, engraved and described, that they are familiar to even
those who have not seen them in the Boulak Museum. The circumstances
of the discovery were suspicious, the mummy (in its inner mummy-case
only) having been found by Marietta’s diggers in the loose sand but
a few feet below the surface, near the foot of the hillside known as
Drah Abu’l Neggah, between Gournah and the opening to the Valley of
the Tombs of the Kings. When it is remembered that the great outer
sarcophagus of this queen was found in 1881 in the famous vault
at Dayr-el-Bahari, where so many royal personages and relics were
discovered “at one fell swoop;” and when to this is added the curious
fact that the state ax of Prince Kames, and a variety of beautiful
poniards and other miscellaneous objects of value were found laid
in the loose folds of this queen’s outer wrappings, it seems to me
that the mystery of her unsepulchered burial is susceptible of a very
simple explanation. My own conviction is that Queen Aah-Hotep’s mummy
had simply been brought thither from the depths of the said vault
by the Arabs who had for so many years possessed the secret of that
famous hidding-place, and that it was temporarily buried in the sand
till a convenient opportunity should occur for transporting to Luxor.
Moreover, it is significant that no jewels were found upon the royal
mummies in the Dayr-el-Bahari vault, for the reason, no doubt, that
they had long since been taken out and sold. The jewels found with
Aah-Hotep may, therefore, have represented the final clearance, and
have been collected from a variety of other royal mummy-cases. That
the state ax of Prince Kames was among them does not, I imagine, prove
that Prince Kames was the husband of Queen Aah-Hotep, but only that he
himself was also a tenant of that historic vault. The actual proof that
he was her husband lies in the fact that the bracelets on her wrists,
the diadem on her head, and the pectoral ornament on her breast, were
engraved, or inlaid, with the cartouches of that prince. [Note to
second edition.]
[230] There is in one of the papyri of the Louvre a very curious
illustration, representing--first, the funeral procession of one
Neb-Set, deceased; second, the interior of the sepulcher, with the
mummy, the offerings, and the furniture of the tomb, elaborately drawn
and colored. Among the objects here shown are two torches, three vases,
a coffer, a mirror, a Kohl bottle, a pair of sandals, a staff, a vase
for ointment, a perfume bottle and an ablution jar. “These objects,
all belonging to the toilette (for the coffer would have contained
clothing), were placed in the tomb for that day of waking which the
popular belief promised to the dead. The tomb was, therefore, furnished
like the abodes of the living.”--Translated from T. Devéria, “Catalogue
des Manuscrits Égyptiens du Louvre:” Paris, 1875, p. 80. The plan of
the sepulcher of Neb-Set is also drawn upon this papyrus; and the soul
of the deceased, represented as a human-headed bird, is shown flying
down toward the mummy. A fine sarcophagus in the Boulak Museum (No. 84)
is decorated in like manner with a representation of the mummy on its
bier being visited, or finally rejoined, by the soul. I have also in my
own collection a funeral papyrus vignetted on one side with this same
subject; and bearing on the reverse side an architectural elevation of
the monument erected over the sepulcher of the deceased.
[231] “King Rhampsinitus (Rameses III) was possessed, they said,
of great riches in silver, indeed, to such an amount that none
of the princes, his successors, surpassed or even equaled his
wealth.”--Herodotus, Book ii, chap. 121.
[232] Impossible from the Egyptian point of view. “That the body should
not waste or decay was an object of anxious solicitude; and for this
purpose various bandlets and amulets, prepared with certain magical
preparations, and sanctified with certain spells or prayers, of even
offerings and small sacrifices, were distributed over various parts of
the mummy. In some mysterious manner the immortality of the body was
deemed as important as the passage of the soul; and at a later period
the growth or natural reparation of the body was invoked as earnestly
as the life or passage of the soul to the upper regions.”--See
“Introduction to the Funereal Ritual,” S. Birch, LL.D., in vol. v, of
Bunsen’s “Egypt:” Lond. 1867.
[233] “The Ancient Egyptians,” Sir G. Wilkinson; vol. i, chap. ii,
wood-cut No. 92. Lond., 1871.
[234] The old French House is now swept away, with the rest of the
modern Arab buildings which encumbered the ruins of the Temple of Luxor
(see foot note, pp. 130, 131).
[235] Mehemet Ali gave this house to the French, and to the French it
belonged till pulled down three years ago by Professor Maspero. [Note
to second edition.]
[236] _Samak_: a large flat fish, rather like a brill.
[237] _Dall_: roast shoulder of lamb.
[238] _Kebobs_: small lumps of meat grilled on skewers.
[239] _Kuftah_: broiled mutton.
[240] _Pilaff_: boiled rice, mixed with a little butter, and seasoned
with salt and pepper.
[241] _Mish-mish_: apricots (preserved).
[242] _Kunáfah_: a rich pudding made of rice, almonds, cream, cinnamon,
etc.
[243] _Rus Blebban_: rice cream.
[244] _Totleh_: sweet jelly, incrusted with blanched almonds.
[245] The kemengeh is a kind of small two-stringed fiddle, the body of
which is made of half a cocoanut shell. It has a very long neck, and a
long foot that rests upon the ground, like the foot of a violoncello;
and it is played with a bow about a yard in length. The strings are of
twisted horsehair.
[246] “The Copts are Christians of the sect called Jacobites,
Eutychians, Monophysites and Monothelites, whose creed was condemned
by the Council of Chalcedon in the reign of the Emperor Marcian. They
received the appellation of ‘Jacobites,’ by which they are generally
known, from Jacobus Baradæus, a Syrian, who was a chief propagator of
the Eutychian doctrines.... The religious orders of the Coptic church
consist of a patriarch, a metropolitan of the Abyssinians, bishops,
arch-priests, priests, deacons and monks. In Abyssinia, Jacobite
Christianity is still the prevailing religion.” See “The Modern
Egyptians,” by E. W. Lane. Supplement 1, p. 531, London: 1860.
[247] The bishop was for the most part right. The Coptic _is_
the ancient Egyptian language (that is to say, it is late and
somewhat corrupt Egyptian) written in Greek characters instead of
in hieroglyphs. For the abolition of the ancient writing was, next
to the abolition of the images of the gods, one of the first great
objects of the early church in Egypt. Unable to uproot and destroy
the language of a great nation, the Christian fathers took care so to
reclothe it that every trace of the old symbolism should disappear
and be forgotten. Already, in the time of Clement of Alexandria (A.D.
211), the hieroglyphic style had become obsolete. The secret of reading
hieroglyphs, however, was not lost till the time of the fall of the
Eastern empire. How the lost key was recovered by Champollion is told
in a quotation from Mariette Bey, in the foot note to p. 191, chapter
xii, of this book. Of the relation of Coptic to Egyptian, Champollion
says: “La Lange Égyptienne antique ne différait en rien de la langue
appelée vulgairement Copte ou Cophte.... Les mots Égyptiens écrits
en caractères hieroglyphiques sur les monuments les plus anciens de
Thèbes, et en caractères Grecs dans les livres Coptes, ne différent
en général que par l’absence de certaines voyelles médiales omises,
selon la méthode orientale, dans l’orthographe primitive.”--“Grammaire
Égyptiene,” p. 18.
The bishop, though perfectly right in stating that Coptic and Egyptian
were one, and that the Coptic was a distinct language having no
affinity with the Greek, was, however, entirely wrong in that part
of his explanation which related to the alphabet. So far from eight
Greek letters having been added to the Coptic alphabet upon the
introduction of Christianity into Egypt, there was no such thing as
a Coptic alphabet previous to that time. The Coptic alphabet is the
Greek alphabet as imposed upon Egypt by the fathers of the early Greek
church; and that alphabet being found insufficient to convey all the
sounds of the Egyptian tongue, eight new characters were borrowed from
the demotic to supplement the deficiency.
[248] This machine is called the Nóreg.
[249] The number of pigeons kept by the Egyptian fellahin is
incredible. Mr. Zincke says on this subject that “the number of
domestic pigeons in Egypt must be several times as great as the
population,” and suggests that if the people kept pigs they would
keep less pigeons. But it is not as food chiefly that the pigeons are
encouraged. They are bred and let live in such ruinous numbers for the
sake of the manure they deposit on the land. M. About has forcibly
demonstrated the error of this calculation. He shows that the pigeons
do thirty million francs’ worth of damage to the crop in excess of any
benefit they may confer upon the soil.
[250] The Arabic name of the modern village, Arabát-el-Madfûneh, means
literally Arabat the Buried.
[251] _Teni_, or more probably Tini, called by the Greeks This or
Thinis. It was the capital of the Eighth Nome. “Quoique nous ayons
très-peu de chose à rapporter sur l’histoire de la ville de Teni qui
à la basse époque sous la domination romaine, n’était connue que
parses teinturiers en pourpre, elle doit avoir jouri d’une très grande
renommée chez les anciens Égyptiens. Encore an temps du XIX dynastie
les plus hauts fonctionnaires de sang royal étaient distingués par le
titre de ‘Princes de Teni.’”--“Hist. d’Égypte. Brugsch, vol. i. chap.
v, p. 29; Leipzig, 1874.
NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.--“Des monuments trouvés il y a deux ans, me
portent a croire que Thini était située assez loin a l’Est au village
actuel de Aoulad-Yahia.” Letter of Prof. G. Maspero to the author,
April, 1878.
[252] The ancient name of Egypt was _Kem_, _Khem_, or _Kam_, signifying
Black, or the Black Land; in allusion to the color of the soil.
[253] “Mena, tel que nous le presente la tradition, est le type le
plus complet du monarque Égyptian. Il est à la fois constructeur et
législateur; il fonde le grande temple de Phtah à Memphis et régle le
culte des dieux. Il est guerrier, et conduit les expéditions hors de
ses frontières.”--“Hist. Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient.” G. Maspero.
Chap. ii, p. 55: Paris, 1876.
“N’oublions pas qu’avant Ménès l’Égypte était divisée en petits
royaumes indépendants que Ménès réunit le premier sous un sceptre
unique. Il n’est pas impossible que des monuments de cette antique
période de l’histoire Égyptienne subsistent encore.”--“Itinéraire de la
Haute Égypte.” A Mariette Bey. Avant Propos, p. 40. Alexandrie, 1872.
[254] See opening address of Professor R. Owen, C. B., etc., “Report
of Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Orientalists,
Ethnological Section;” London, 1874. Also a paper on “The Ethnology of
Egypt,” by the same, published in the “Journal of the Anthropological
Institute,” vol. iv, No. 1, p. 246: Lond., 1874.
[255] M. Mariette, in his great work on the excavations at Abydus,
observes that these seven vaulted sanctuaries resemble sarcophagi of
the form most commonly in use; namely, oblong boxes with vaulted lids.
Two sarcophagi of this shape are shown in cut 496 of Sir G. Wilkinson’s
second volume (see figures 1 and 6), “A Popular Account of the Ancient
Egyptians,” vol. ii, chap. x; Lond., 1871. Of the uses and purport
of the temple, he also says: “What do we know of the _dée mère_ that
presided at its construction? What was done in it? Is it consecrated
to a single divinity, who would be Osiris; or to seven gods, who
would be the seven gods of the seven vaulted chambers; or to the nine
divinities enumerated in the lists of deities dispersed in various
parts of the temple?... One leaves the temple in despair, not at being
unable to make out its secret from the inscriptions, but on finding
that its secret has been kept for itself alone, and not trusted to the
inscriptions.”--“Description des Fouilles d’Abydos.” Mariette Bey.
Paris, 1869. “Les sept chambres voûtées du grand temple d’Abydos sont
relatifs aux cérémonies que le roi devait y célébrer successivement.
Le roi se présentait au côté droit de la porte, parcourait la salle
dans tout son pourtour et sortait par le côté gauche. Des statues
étaient disposées dans la chambre. Le roi ouvrait la porte ou naos où
elles étaient enfermées. Dès que la statue apparaissait è ses yeux
il lui offrait l’encens, il enlevait le vêtement qui la couvrait,
il lui imposait les mains, il la parfumait, il la recouvrait de son
vêtement,” etc. Mariette Bey. “Itinéraire de la Haute Égypte: Avant
Propos, p. 62. Alex. 1872. There is at the upper end of each of these
seven sanctuaries a singular kind of false door, or recess, conceived
in a style of ornament more Indian than Egyptian, the cutting being
curiously square, deep, and massive, the surface of the relief-work
flattened, and the whole evidently intended to produce its effect by
depths of shadow in the incised portions rather than by sculpturesque
relief. These recesses, or imitation doors, may have been designed to
serve as backgrounds to statues, but are not deep enough for niches.
There is a precisely similar recess sculptured on one of the walls of
the westernmost chamber in the Temple of Gournah.
[256] These are all representations of minor gods commonly figured in
the funereal papyri, but very rarely seen in the temple sculptures.
The frog Goddess, for instance, is Hek, and symbolizes eternity. She
is a very ancient divinity, traces of her being found in monuments
of the fifth dynasty. The goose-headed god is Seb, another very old
god. The object called the Nilometer was a religious emblem signifying
stability, and probably stands in this connection as only a deified
symbol.
[257] Rameses II is here shown with the side-lock of youth. This
temple, founded by Seti I, was carried on through the time when Rameses
the Prince was associated with his father upon the throne, and was
completed by Rameses the King, after the death of Seti I. The building
is strictly coeval in date and parallel in style with the Temple of
Gournah and the Specs of Bayt-el-Welly.
[258] These seventy-six Pharaohs (represented by their cartouches)
were probably either princes born of families originally from Abydus,
or were sovereigns who had acquired a special title to veneration at
this place on account of monuments or pious foundations presented by
them to the holy city. A similar tablet, erected apparently on the
same principles though not altogether to the same kings, was placed by
Thothmes III in a side chamber of the Great Temple at Karnak, and is
now in the Louvre.
The great value of the present monument consists in its chronological
arrangement. It is also of the most beautiful execution, and in perfect
preservation. “Comme perfection de gravure, comme conservation, comme
étendue, il est peu de monuments qui la depassent.” See “La Nouvelle
Table d’Abydos,” par A. Mariette Bey: “Révue Arch.,” vol. vii.
“Nouvelle Série,” p. 98. This volume of the “Review” also contains an
engraving in outline of the tablet.
[259] See “Itinéraire de la Haute Égypte:” A. Mariette Bey: p. 147.
Alex. 1872.
[260] “Ibid,” p. 148. The hope here expressed was, however, not
fulfilled; tombs of the fourth or fifth dynasties being, I believe, the
earliest discovered. [Note to second edition.]
[261] “It is said that these persons, as well as the sheik, make use
of certain words (that is, repeat prayers and invocations) on the day
preceding this performance, to enable them to endure without injury the
tread of the horse; and that some not thus prepared, having ventured
to lie down to be ridden over, have, on more than one occasion, been
either killed or severely injured. The performance is considered as
a miracle vouchsafed through supernatural power, and which has been
granted to every successive sheik of the Saädiyeh.” See Lane’s “Modern
Egyptians,” chap. xxiv, p. 453. Lond., 1860.
[262] This barbarous rite has been abolished by the present khedive.
[Note to second edition.]
[263] See “Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Khedive,” J. B. Zincke, chap.
ix, p. 72. Lond., 1873. Also “La Sculpture Égyptienne,” par E. Soldi,
p. 57. Paris, 1876. Also “The Ethnology of Egypt,” by Professor Owen,
C. B. “Journal of Anthropological Institute,” vol. iv, 1874, p. 227.
The name of this personage was Ra-em-ka.
[264] It is in the great vestibule that we find the statue of Ti. See
chap. iv, p. 55.
[265] There is no evidence to show that the statues of Sepa and Nesa in
the Louvre are older than the fourth dynasty.
[266] “Enfin nous signalerons l’importance des statues de Meydoum au
point de vue ethnographique. Si la race Égyptienne était à cette époque
celle dout les deux statues nous offrent le type, il faut convenir
qu’elle ne ressemblait en rien à la race qui habitait le nord de
l’Égypte quelques années seulement après Snefrou.”--“Cat. du Musée de
Boulaq.” A. Mariette Bey. P. 277; Paris. 1872.
Of the heads of these two statues Professor Owen remarks that “the
brain-case of the male is a full oval, the parietal bosses feebly
indicated; in vertical contour the fronto parietal part is little
elevated, rather flattened than convex; the frontal sinuses are
slightly indicated; the forehead is fairly developed but not prominent.
The lips are fuller than in the majority of Europeans; but the mouth
is not prognathic.... The features of the female conform in type to
those of the male, but show more delicacy and finish.... The statue
of the female is colored of a lighter tint than that of the male,
indicating the effects of better clothing and less exposure to the sun.
And here it may be remarked that the racial character of complexion is
significantly manifested by such evidences of the degree of tint due
to individual exposure.... The primitive race-tint of the Egyptians
is perhaps more truly indicated by the color of the princes in these
painted portrait-statues than by that of her more scantily clad husband
or male relative.”--“The Ethnology of Egypt,” by Sir Richard Owen, K.
C. B. “Journal of Anthropological Institute,” vol. iv, Lond., 1874; p.
225 _et seq._
[267] The word _pyramid_, for which so many derivations have been
suggested, is shown in the geometrical papyrus of the British Museum to
be distinctly Egyptian, and is written _Per-em-us_.
[268] “On sait par une stèle du musée de Boulaq, que le grand
Sphinx antérieur au Rois Chéops de la IV Dynastie.”--“Dic. d’Arch.
Égyptienne:” Article _Sphinx_. P. Pierret. Paris, 1875.
[It was the opinion of Mariette, and it is the opinion of Professor
Mapero, that the sphinx dates from the inconceivable remote period of
the _Horshesu_, or “followers of Horus;” that is to say, from those
prehistoric times when Egypt was ruled by a number of petty chieftains,
before Mena welded the ancient principalities into a united kingdom.
Those principalities then became the nomes, or provinces, of historic
times; and the former local chieftains became semi-independent
feudatories, such as we find surviving with undiminished authority and
importance during the twelfth dynasty.--[Note to second edition.]
A long-disputed question as to the meaning of the sphinx has of
late been finally solved. The sphinx is shown by M. J. de Rougé,
according to an inscription at Edfu, to represent a transformation
of Horus, who in order to vanquish Set (Typhon) took the shape of a
human-headed lion. It was under this form that Horus was adored in the
Nome Leontopolites. In the above-mentioned stela of Boulak, known as
the stone of Cheops, the Great Sphinx is especially designated as the
Sphinx of Hor-em-Khou, or Horus-on-the-Horizon. This is evidently in
reference to the orientation of the figure. It has often been asked
why the sphinx is turned to the east. I presume the answer would be,
because Horus, avenger of Osiris, looks to the east, awaiting the
return of his father from the lower world. As Horus was supposed to
have reigned over Egypt, every Pharaoh took the title of Living Horus,
Golden Hawk, etc. Hence the features of the reigning king were always
given to the sphinx form when architecturally employed, as at Karnak,
Wady Sabooah, Tanis, etc.
[269] It is certainly not a temple. It may be a mastaba, or votive
chapel. It looks most like a tomb. It is entirely built of plain and
highly polished monoliths of alabaster and red granite, laid square
and simply, like a sort of costly and magnificent Stonehenge; and it
consists of a forecourt, a hall of pillars, three principal chambers,
some smaller chambers, a secret recess, and a well. The chambers
contain horizontal niches which it is difficult to suppose could have
been intended for anything but the reception of mummies; and at the
bottom of the well were found three statues of King Khafra (Chephren);
one of which is the famous diorite portrait-statue of the Boulak
Museum. In an interesting article contributed to the “Révue Arch.”
(vol. xxvi. Paris, 1873), M. du Barry-Merval has shown, as it seems,
quite clearly, that the Temple of the Sphinx is in fact a dependency
of the second pyramid. It is possible that the niches may have been
designed for the queen and family of Khafra, whose own mummy would of
course be buried in his pyramid.
[270] This letter appeared in _The Times_ of March 18, 1874.
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
AMELIA BLANDFORD EDWARDS.=> AMELIA BLANFORD EDWARDS. {pg}
Shegered-Durr, a beautiul Turkish=> Shegered-Durr, a beautiful Turkish
{fn 6}
cut a sorroy figure=> cut a sorry figure {pg 46}
But the must amazing=> But the most amazing {pg 46}
low perdendicular cliffs=> low perpendicular cliffs {pg 46}
This colussus is now raised=> This colossus is now raised {fn 19}
it place in history=> its place in history {pg 62}
and murmnr’d “bakhshîsh!”=> and murmur’d “bakhshîsh!” {pg 63}
certain amount of insistance=> certain amount of insistence {pg 66}
is supended a goat-skin bucket=> is suspended a goat-skin bucket {fn 22}
a shoal of medicant monks=> a shoal of mendicant monks {pg 75}
and most suble gradations=> and most subtle gradations {pg 77}
régulièrement trios enfants sur cinq=> régulièrement troos enfants sur
cinq {fn 24}
to downs-tairs=> to down-stairs {pg 83}
fifty colored lanters outlined=> fifty colored lanterns outlined {pg 84}
for contemplatation=> for contemplation {pg 91}
nomarch of the Lycopolite nome=> monarch of the Lycopolite nome {pg 95}
the twelth dynasty=> the twelfth dynasty {pg 26}
reputation for unusal sanctity=> reputation for unusual sanctity {fn 31}
effect of afterg-low=> effect of after-glow {pg 105}
towed by goverment=> towed by government {pg 106}
the precints=> the precincts {pg 111}
these gloomy threshelds=> these gloomy thresholds {pg 118}
the Triad worshiped=> the Triad worshipped {fn 44}
La culta de Bes parait=> La culte de Bes parait {fn 45}
but quite preceptibly=> but quite perceptibly {pg 147}
for which purpuse=> for which purpose {pg 147}
expressive pantomine=> expressive pantomime {pg 148 x 2}
of more that doubtful=> of more than doubtful {pg 148}
incapable of oevenge=> incapable of revenge {pg 150}
his bad cnes=> his bad ones {pg 150}
much better rharacter=> much better character {pg 150}
the usual attemps=> the usual attempts {pg 160}
the judical susceptibilities=> the judicial susceptibilities {pg 161}
we found ourselvelves=> we found ourselves {pg 170}
his next two successsors=> his next two successors {fn 54}
following succint account=> following succinct account {fn 56}
on the righ road to Thebes=> on the high road to Thebes {pg 197}
in the precints=> in the precincts {pg 199}
supended in his time=> suspended in his time {fn 60}
and believd Philæ to=> and believed Philæ to {fn 61}
when Burkhardt went up=> when Burckhardt went up {pg 202}
their tale intelligbly=> their tale intelligibly {pg 208}
is as audidle=> is as audible {pg 209}
ancient blue porcelian=> ancient blue porcelain {pg 216}
but found them to much defaced=> but found them too much defaced {pg
233}
But with he second Rameses=> But with the second Rameses {pg 236}
through Westminister Abbey=> through Westminster Abbey {pg 237}
sharer of the thorne=> sharer of the throne {pg 238}
it has often deen observed=> it has often been observed {fn 84}
A similiar document=> A similar document {pg 247}
colored mosaice=> colored mosaics {pg 95}
Marray is wrong=> Murray is wrong {pg 95}
almost unparalelled length=> almost unparalleled length {pg 105}
the ninteenth dynasty=> the nineteenth dynasty {fn 108}
were wont to speak of them as=> were wont to speak of them as as {pg
181}
size or of portaiture=> size or of portraiture {pg 260}
From the southermost colossus=> From the southernmost colossus {pg 261}
the hieroglypic character=> the hieroglyphic character {pg 266}
gloomy magnificance=> gloomy magnificence {pg 271}
the besigers’ camp=> the besiegers’ camp {pg 272}
to represents water=> to represent water {pg 274}
is almst Panathenaic=> is almost Panathenaic {pg 274}
the city of the beseiged=> the city of the besieged {pg 274}
a sort of Egyption Iliad=> a sort of Egyptian Iliad {pg 274}
Archilles is left out=> Achilles is left out {pg 275}
there is no vendure=> there is no verdure {pg 284}
north of the second contract=> north of the second cataract {pg 284}
jewels, and papiry=> jewels, and papyri {pg 304}
at once fell swoop=> at one fell swoop {pg 305}
Governor of Ethiopia=> Govornor of Ethiopia {pg 316}
in conjuction or identification=> in conjunction or identification {fn
143}
ordrer of Mariette Bey=> order of Mariette Bey {pg 154}
towered, loop-hooled=> towered, loop-holed {pg 334}
little flanking off=> little flaking off {pg 374}
The wall scuptures=> The wall sculptures {pg 381}
and more respectfully designated=> are more respectfully designated {fn
208}
wholly pontomimic=> wholly pantomimic {pg 413}
schoolmaster--come round=> schoolmaster--came round {pg 416}
were introdouced from=> were introduced from {pg 448}
is appearent to every=> is apparent to every {pg 451}
been cherised by=> been cherished by {pg 452}
The decrepancies between these=> The discrepancies between these {pg
452}
Twefth dynasty=> Twelfth dynasty {pg 454}
some being addressed=> some beng addressed {pg 454}
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