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]
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.
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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}