Part 4

Lady Duff Gordon, who had a warm heart for every living thing, tells us a story which is worthy of reflected thought even in the sunny atmosphere of the mysterious obelisk. She had a Nubian child offered her as a slave: when she went to look after the gift, she found it among the pots and kettles, cuffed and ill-treated by every one, saving perhaps only the dog. She brought it to her room, warmed it in her bosom, dressed it, and made it comfortable; nay, indulged it, and won its confidence—in the world’s language, its love. The child wept sorely when its good and kind mistress returned home to England; but the mistress provided tenderly for her adopted, and secured its comforts during her absence. When Lady Duff Gordon returned to Egypt, the little negress held a prominent place in her thoughts: she took it again into her guardianship; but the child was no longer the same; she was self-willed, she was disobedient; the slave had learnt—alas! too readily—to despise her mistress! holding her to be an accursed Christian, a giaour. Verily the father of all evil is ignorance, which for ever stands sentry over the tree of knowledge. Need we not all—charity?

On our right hand, as we look forward into the south, is the site of ancient Memphis, founded by Menes, first of the kings of Egypt. Here stood once a magnificent temple, dedicated to the god Ptah, the representative of “Creation;” but at present, a collection of ruinous tombs, together with some broken colossal statues, partly engulphed in sand, are all that remains of its original greatness. One of these relics, a colossal statue of Rameses the Great, is believed to belong to England, and only awaits removal to a fitting resting-place. It has the reputation of being beautifully carved in fine sandstone, but is corroded and blackened by the action of water, in which it lies immersed at every rising of the Nile. Dean Stanley, in allusion to this same locality, observes:—

“One other trace remains of the old Memphis. It had its own great temple, as magnificent as that of Ammon at Karnak, dedicated to the Egyptian Vulcan, Ptah. Of this not a vestige remains. But Herodotus describes that Sesostris—that is, Rameses—built a colossal statue of himself in front of the great gateway. And there, accordingly, as it is usually seen by travellers, is the last memorial of that wonderful king, to be borne away in their recollections of Egypt. Deep in the forest of palms before described, in a little pool of water left by the inundations, which year by year always cover the spot, lies a gigantic trunk, its back upwards. The name of Rameses is on the belt. The face lies downwards, but is visible in profile and quite perfect, and the very same as at Ipsambul, with the only exception that the features are more feminine and more beautiful, and the peculiar hang of the lip is not there.” Of the immediate neighbourhood he says:—“For miles you walk through layers of bones and skulls, and mummy swathings, extruding from the sand, or deep down in shaft-like mummy-pits; and amongst these mummy-pits are vast galleries filled with mummies of ibises in red jars, once filled, but now gradually despoiled.”

Mr. Bayle St. John, who, for his heresies in Egyptology and floutings of obelisks, almost puts himself out of the pale of quotation, has a word to say about the colossal statue at Memphis, which is worth noting as expressing the views of the tranquil lounger rather than those of the hurried traveller. In his “Village Life in Egypt” (1852), he says:—“After a long ride, a reedy pond covered with wild ducks, a stone bridge, and some sluice-gates, warned us that we were approaching the buried skeleton of Memphis. Vast mounds rose on all hands among the palm-trees, evidently the remains of a continuous wall of unburnt bricks, and we were soon moving along the sward-covered sloping banks of the lake, in which the palm-groves that cover the site of the ancient city, admire their graceful forms. Behind, in a hollow in the ground, was the colossal statue which we had come to see. It lay on its face, its pensive brow buried in mud, and part of the features concealed by some still-lingering water. The Arabs call it Abu-l-Hôn, and say it is a giant king, turned by God, ‘in ancient times and seasons past,’ into stone for some great crime. They are not at all astonished at the interest felt by infidels in this petrified sinner, because we come of the same accursed stock, and feel deserving of the same punishment. A few hovels rising amidst the palm-trees near the statue, bear the name of Mitraheny, formerly a place of some importance, but now not even wearing the appearance of having seen better days. Here dwelt old Fatmeh, the guardian of the fallen monarch, who could have told strange things of his history, had any been curious enough to question her.” On another occasion he says: “The following morning I went to visit my old friend Abu-l-Hôn, the father of terror, who still lies nose down in the hollow at Mitraheny, as he has lain for thousands of years. It is a pretty long walk, first through the grove to Bedreshein, and then along the winding gisr to the great grove of Mitraheny. The place is a beautiful one. A small lake in the cooler time of the year, before the thirsty sun comes and drinks up every scrap of moisture except the river, spreads in the centre of the grove, dotted with little islands, that multiply as the season advances. A close greensward, from which thousands of palms spring at regular intervals, creeps down on all sides after the receding water * * * immense numbers of aquatic birds make it their resort. About sunrise it is perfectly covered with wild ducks, which come back regularly at evening after dark. Herons dot its shores all day, admiring, it seems, their ungainly forms, which it reflects; and a variety of little birds, peculiar to the country, flutter with dancing flight about its archipelago of sedgy islands. * * * The statue was near the southern extremity of the lake. During many years it was under the protection of an old dame, who entirely devoted herself to its custody. Formerly, various consuls gave her a little pension; but this gratuity was at length withdrawn, and she subsisted on the voluntary gifts of travellers, always believing, however, that the English nation would at length hear of the care she took of their property, and reward her by a pension of £5 a year. Such was the extent of her ambition. In this hope she lived and died. I found her son occupying the same post, and indulging in the same expectations. He had inherited her little house and some sheep, and professed to do nothing but watch over the comfort of the petrified king in the hole. * * * It would be good, instead of spending a great deal of money in carrying _an ugly obelisk_[15] to England, to devote a little to raising this extraordinary statue on its old base, otherwise, some fine day we shall hear of its being broken up to be burnt for lime.”

[15] And this to your friend, Bayle? Hast forgotten thy school lessons:—Quot homines tot sententiæ.

This colossal statue is recognised as an authentic portrait of Rameses II., “the celebrated conqueror, of the nineteenth dynasty.” It was discovered, says Mariette, by Captain Caviglia, about the year 1820, and was presented to the British nation by Mehemet Ali. For three parts of the year it lies under water. There is reason to believe that it stood originally against the pylon of the Temple of Vulcan (Ptah), its face turned to the north; but of the temple itself not a vestige remains. According to custom, as evinced at Luxor and Karnak, there ought to have been another similar statue for the opposite side of the doorway, but we have searched for it in vain. Beyond the fact of correct portraiture it possesses no scientific value. According to Sharpe, the statue is forty-five feet in height.

Further on is Geezeh, with its magnificent group of pyramids, which are regarded, with much reason, as among the seven wonders of the world; and skirting the western bank of the river for, may be, fifty miles are other pyramids of inferior dimensions, amounting in the whole to close upon a hundred; one while in groups, as at Abooseer, Sakkarah, and Dashoor, another while in single file. The largest of the three great pyramids of Egypt was built by King Suphis, better known by the name of Cheops, as a resting-place for his embalmed body; the next in size was erected by his brother Susuphis or Chephren; and the third, which was cased in the red granite of Syené, is that of the son of Cheops—Menkara, also called Mycerinus. Besides these three, which are the _great_[16] pyramids, there are six smaller ones in this group: and, fifteen miles further on, at the village of Sakkarah, is a pyramid built in steps, or platforms, which is said to be the oldest in the world;[17] older, by 500 or 700 years, than those of Cheops and Chephren; although these latter were erected 2,120 years before the birth of Christ, and, therefore, date back to a period of nearly 5,000 years.

[16] The base of the great pyramid has been stated to be equal in size to the area of Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields; but a “plan showing the comparative areas of the great pyramid and Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields,” drawn by Mr. Bonomi, of the Soane Museum, proves that this statement is correct only in respect of the long diameter of the square; for whilst one side of the base of the pyramid would extend westward from the wall of Lincoln’s Inn (along the face of the houses on the _north_ side of the square) to the middle of Gate Street, the southern boundary would overlap the buildings on the south side of the square, and take in the houses for some distance behind them, in the direction of the New Law Courts. A magnificent mausoleum! It is said that 100,000 men were employed for thirty years in its construction.

[17] Built by Ouenephes, the fourth king of the first dynasty. Mr. Bayle St. John says of it:—“This structure has a very peculiar form, and as it rises on its vast pedestal of rocky desert, seems totally distinct in character from all the other pyramids that break the horizon to the north and south. It has five steps only, five vast steps, that together rise to the height of nearly 300 feet. It looks like a citadel with a quintuple wall, five towers of gradually increasing elevation, one within the other.”

A quarter of a mile to the south and east of the great pyramid is the colossal statue of the Sphynx, carved out of the summit of a rock, which crops up like an island in the midst of the sandy desert. The statue represents the couching body of a lion, with the head of a man, the union of power with intelligence, and is typical of royalty. The face, thirty feet in length by fourteen in breadth, has been much mutilated; its entire height is 100 feet, and its paws, which are fifty feet long, embrace a considerable area, having in its centre a sacrificial altar, and a space for religious worship. This huge memento of the past dates back to a period antecedent to the pyramids themselves, and marks the spot where two ancient temples formerly stood, one dedicated to Isis, the other to Osiris; both of which Cheops declares, on a tablet preserved in the museum at Boulak, were purified and restored by himself; whilst a neighbouring site was selected for the foundation of his own pyramid. The paws of the Sphynx are covered with inscriptions, among which is the following very interesting one, transcribed and translated by the distinguished Egyptologist, Dr. Thomas Young:—

“Thy form stupendous here the gods have placed, Sparing each spot of harvest-bearing land; And with this mighty work of art have graced A rocky isle encumbered once with sand; And near the pyramids have bid thee stand: Not that fierce Sphynx that Thebes erewhile laid waste, But great Latona’s servant, mild and bland; Watching that prince beloved who fills the throne Of Egypt’s plains, and calls the Nile his own: That heavenly monarch (who his foes defies), Like Vulcan powerful, and like Pallas wise.”—_Arrian._

“Even now,” writes Dean Stanley, “after all that we have seen of colossal statues, there was something stupendous in the sight of that enormous head, * * * its vast projecting wig, its great ears, its open eyes, the red colour still visible on its cheek, the immense projection of the lower part of its face. Yet what must it have been when on its head there was the royal helmet of Egypt; on its chin the royal beard; when the stone pavement, by which men approached the pyramids, ran up between its paws; when, immediately under its breast an altar stood, from which the smoke went up into the gigantic nostrils of that nose now vanished from the face, never to be conceived again.”[18]

[18] “Sinai and Palestine in connection with their History.” By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., F.R.S.

On our left hand, as we still stand gazing forward into the south, in the direction of the coming wavelets of the tawny Nile, is a desert plain, afore-time called the “Land of Goshen,” lying between Cairo and the Suez Canal. It was here that Abraham found an abiding-place 1,920 years before the birth of Christ, when, driven out of Syria by the floods, he sought in Egypt herbage for his flocks and herds, and sustenance for his retainers. Here, in various stages of decay, are the ancient cities of the Hebrews, where Hebrew, until very recently, was the prevailing language of the people. Here we find On, or Onion, still bearing its Hebrew appellation, and Rameses and Pithom, and Succoth and Hieropolis. Nearer the Mediterranean Sea is “the field of Zoan” (Psalms, chap. lxxviii. ver. 12, 43), with the ruins of the ancient city of San, or Tanis, remarkable for the vast extent of the foundation of a once magnificent temple, teeming with monuments and obelisks. Here, says Mr. Macgregor, “you see about a dozen obelisks, all fallen, all broken; twenty or thirty great statues, all monoliths of porphyry and granite, red and grey.” Isaiah had afore-time levelled his reproaches against San:—“The princes of Zoan are become fools, the princes of Nopth (Memphis) are deceived; they have also seduced Egypt, even they that are the stay of the tribes thereof.” (Chap. xix. ver. 13.) And here was the gap through which the nations of Arabia, Syria, and Persia maintained intercourse with Egypt, one while as peaceful traders, another while as fugitives and outlaws, and again as enemies in arms. Here the shepherds or pastors made their predatory incursions, and conquered and subjected Lower Egypt; here the children of Israel began their exodus; and here, also, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans found an easy portal for their hostile invasion.

Eight miles away from Cairo, in the midst of a plot of sugar-cane, verdant with the luxuriance of its foliage, there stands forth against the sky a magnificent obelisk, the first that we have yet seen implanted on the spot where it was erected by its artificers. This obelisk bears the cartouche of Usertesen I.[19] (a Pharaoh of the twelfth dynasty, who ascended the throne 1,740 years before the Christian era), engraven on its face. It is not only the earliest and most ancient of all known obelisks, but it may be said to be the first page of the monumental history of Egypt: antecedent to it there is no record of monuments, save the pyramids and some ruined temples and tombs; but coeval with it, and illustrating the reign and acts of Usertesen, are the tombs of Beni Hassan, and the sanctuary, with its beautiful polygonal columns at Karnak, built by Usertesen himself.

[19] In hieroglyphic writing the vowels are generally omitted, and a license is thereby given to insert them according to the taste or judgment of the translator: thus, if we assume the consonants s, r, ts, n, to represent a name, that name may be variously written, Usertesen, Ousertesen, Osertesen, Osirtasen, Osortasen, and so forth; and so much difference of opinion on this matter would seem to prevail among Egyptologists, that scarcely two can be found to precisely agree; and the same remark applies to other proper names:—for example, Thothmes, Thoutmes, Thothmosis; and Rameses, Ramses, Remeses, Ramisis, &c. Under these circumstances we have thought well to adopt the names sanctioned by the great British authority on Egyptology, Dr. Birch, of the British Museum.

The cartouches of Usertesen, as seen on the obelisk, represent his first and second names: the former, which implies divinity, consists of the sun’s disk, a scarabæus, and a pair of human arms; and the oval is surmounted with two figures—a shoot of a plant and a bee, each supported on a hemisphere. These latter are royal titles, and imply the dominion of the king, or sun, over the south and the north, in addition to that part of the globe which is embraced by his own proper path, from east to west. The second oval contains the letters which constitute the word “Usertesen,” and is surmounted by a disk representing the sun and a goose, the latter being the hieroglyph for “son,” therefore, “son of the sun.” So that the entire emblem may be supposed to read thus:—“The king; born and being of the sun; son of the sun; Usertesen.”

On the spot occupied by this obelisk there formerly stood a temple dedicated to the sun—to Ra, the rising sun; and to Toum or Tum, the setting sun. It is uncertain whether Usertesen founded the temple himself, or whether, as was the custom among the Pharaohs of Egypt, he simply contributed to its decoration and completion. But his name being sculptured on the face of the obelisk, serves to identify it with him. The temple of the sun was surrounded with habitations and temples of inferior mark, and became a city which, in their language, the Greeks named Heliopolis. Originally, there were two of these obelisks, as was lately corroborated by the discovery of the foundation of its fellow; but the shaft itself has long since disappeared, and nothing, save this one solitary obelisk, remains of the important city, in which Egyptians and Hebrews were united for many centuries in holy brotherhood. This monument, like the rest of the great obelisks of Egypt, was hewn in the quarries of rose-red granite of Syené. It is 67 feet 4 inches in height, and its pyramidion, now bare and without carving, was originally capped with gilt-bronze or some other metallic covering. Its hieroglyphs form a single central column, boldly and clearly carved, surmounted with the tutelar emblem and the standard of the king, and followed by the proper name and family name of Usertesen. The obelisk is stained for some distance up its shaft by the waters of the Nile, and, with its pedestal, is buried six or seven feet deep in the alluvium deposited by the stream.

While we credit Usertesen with these two obelisks, we have also to mention that portions of a broken shaft, engraven with hieroglyphs, which record his name, are to be met with at Biggig, in the Fyoom. These have been described as parts of a broken obelisk, but of an obelisk uncouth in its proportions, and terminated by a rounded point pierced with an opening as if for the purpose of receiving some ornament or finial. These characteristics of figure have led certain Egyptologists to treat of it as a monumental stone or tablet rather than as an obelisk, and the more so as it is situated on the western bank of the Nile; and supposing it to be an obelisk, is presumed to be the only monument of that kind met with on the western shore. A certain poetical hypothesis is also opposed to the belief; for the obelisk is the emblem of the _rising_ sun and of life, and is therefore found only on the eastern bank of the Nile; whereas the western bank is presided over by the _setting_ sun, and is therefore allied to the pyramids and tombs of the dead. The mounds of Memphis have not as yet been explored; but if an obelisk should be met with there at some future time, our dream of the privileges of the living and of the dead (already disturbed by Mariette’s discovery of the pedestals of two obelisks, in front of the temple of Queen Hatasou, in Western Thebes), must share the fate of other pretty but illusory dreams. It seems hardly fair that the eastern bank should enjoy a monopoly of the sun’s beaming rays, considering that tombs are also abundant along its rocky bounds.

But besides the ancient obelisks of Usertesen, there were four or more other obelisks at Heliopolis: two, which had received the name of Pharaoh’s Needles, and were removed by Constantine—both of the period of Thothmes III.; and the two Thothmes-Rameses obelisks, or Cleopatra’s Needles, which were set up at Alexandria.

When Napoleon, addressing his army in the desert of Libya, and pointing to the Pyramids, exclaimed, “Four thousand years look down upon you,” his words had a deeper signification than the mere wakening up of a soldier’s vanity. What, besides, have those Pyramids witnessed in that vast space of time? We now, in our turn, are called upon to ask the same question with reference to the obelisks of Heliopolis. The most ancient of those obelisks bears a date of seventeen centuries before the Christian era; not far short of the four thousand years of the Great Pyramids. The Thothmes obelisks date back about fourteen centuries before Christ, or more than three thousand years from the present time; and those of Rameses about twelve centuries, or 3,100 years.

The Heliopolis obelisk, it is true, was not erected until two hundred years after the arrival of Abraham in the land of Goshen; but it must have “looked down” on the caravan of Ishmaelite traders who brought Joseph a prisoner into Egypt, and sold him to Potiphar as a slave; on his sufferings and adventures in prison; on his skill in the interpretation of dreams; on his elevation to power by the Pharaoh of the day; and on that gratifying ceremony, when “Pharaoh called Joseph’s name Zaphnath-paaneah,” literally, revealer of secrets, “and when he gave him to wife Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah, priest of On.” And no less does the obelisk point to that moment of filial devotion when “Joseph made ready his chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen; and presented himself unto him; and he fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while.”

In the way from Cairo to Heliopolis, and near to the ruins of the latter, is a village called Matareeah, which has a similar signification to the word Heliopolis—namely, “town or place belonging to the sun.” “Just before reaching the village of Matareeah, at a little distance from the road, on the right, is the garden in which is shown the sycamore tree,[20] beneath whose shade the Holy Family are said to have reposed alter the flight into Egypt. It is a splendid old tree, still showing signs of life, but terribly mauled alike by the devout and the profane, who, respectively, have forgotten their piety and their scepticism in the egotistical eagerness to carry away and to leave a record of their visit. The present proprietor, a Copt, fearing lest their united efforts should result in the total disappearance and destruction of the tree, has put a fence round it, which, while it prevents the ruthless tearing off of twigs and branches, affords those who are anxious to commemorate their visit, a smooth and even surface, on which, with the help of a knife obligingly kept in readiness by the gardener, they may make their mark.”[21]