Part 6

It may be as well to explain, that the sun being deified by the Egyptians as the symbol of creation, the maker, the disposer; and the Pharaohs being supposed to be sons of the sun, the rising sun Ra, being generated out of Toum, or Tum, the setting sun; the rising sun, therefore, becomes, at one and the same time, both father and son.

One of the inscriptions on Cleopatra’s Needle at Alexandria is as follows:—

“The glorious hero, the mighty warrior, whose actions are great on the banner; the king of an obedient people; a man just and virtuous, beloved by the Almighty Director of the universe; he who conquered all his enemies, created happiness throughout all his dominions, who subdued his adversaries under his sandals.

“During his life he established meetings of wise and virtuous men, in order to introduce happiness and prosperity throughout his empire. His descendants, equal to him in glory and power, followed his example. He was, therefore, exalted by the Almighty-seeing Director of the world. He was the lord of Upper and Lower Egypt; a man most righteous and virtuous, beloved by the All-seeing Director of the world.”

The Thothmes-Rameses obelisks, subsequently called Cleopatra’s Needles; and one of them, now, the British obelisk, were erected by Thothmes III., in front of the portico of the great temple of Heliopolis; where Moses pursued his studies and became skilled in Egyptian learning, and where he afterwards filled the office of professor or priest. Many, many times, no doubt, must Moses have contemplated the pagan proclamations on these obelisks, and have contrasted them, in his own mind, with the simple language of the living God Most High, whom he himself worshipped. Many times he must have shuddered at the pagan oppression of his own people, and felt himself appealed to for their protection. Who shall say that the immolation of the Egyptian who was discovered striking a Hebrew was not a righteous act. Cruelties had been suffered by the Israelites until they could be borne no longer, and this blow from the hand of an Egyptian became the starting-point of the future exodus. Many years later Moses proved his capacity as a leader,[24] and conducted his brethren safely across the Red Sea, pursued by Menephtah III., the Pharaoh of the day, the son and successor of that Rameses whose oval is impressed on the British obelisk. The date of Joseph’s advent in Egypt has latterly been referred to the period of the shepherd kings, who are supposed to have been of Jewish descent, and therefore more likely to be disposed favourably towards Joseph than the Egyptian Pharaohs. The dynasties of the shepherd kings ranged between 2214 and 1703 B.C.

[24] Moses is said to have been eighty years old at the time of the exodus.

A little fusillade of guns reminds us that the time has arrived when we must bid farewell to the Queen of Eastern cities, and embark on the enchanting Nile for the ancient city of Thebes, just 450 miles away. A shriek from the railway-train on the west bank suggests that we may shorten our pilgrimage by nearly 200 miles; a well-known pant from the river tells us that a steam-boat is at hand, destined to carry passengers and scare crocodiles[25] in its journey to the first cataract. But we have dreamed of a Nile voyage in the graceful Nile boat, the “Dahabeeyah,” with its huge lateen sail, for many and many a month; we have enjoyed, by anticipation, the quiet, the repose, and the opportunity for contemplation which the voyage of the Nile for several weeks[26] must afford, and our mind has long since been made up; the guns again fire their parting salute, the anchor is tripped, and we spring away from our moorings like a bird enjoying its first flight on a summer’s morning. Upon either side of the river-stream is the narrow strip of arable earth, green with its luxuriant crops, so peculiar to the land of Egypt; beyond are the yellow sands of the desert; and further off, constituting the frame in which the picture is set, is the range of orange-red sandstone rocks, which shuts in the valley of the Nile on both its sides. As we move onwards we seem to be reviewing a section of the earth—the alluvium of the Delta behind us; the sandstone, the gritstone, the limestone of the secondary rocks, rising into a wall on either side, with the porphyry, the syenite, and the granite of the primary rock awaiting us at the first cataract, the gates of Egypt. The rocks approach nearer to the river as we advance, and keep us company to the end of our journey; sometimes they are so close as to stand up like perpendicular cliffs, and encroach on the tawny stream; and at other times they recede, and encircle an extensive valley, such as that on which the grandest ruins in the world, those of the ancient city of Thebes, are heaped up. This rock-bound valley is bisected by the Nile: on the one side, the west, are the ruins of once magnificent temples and royal tombs; on the other, the east, the up-piled heaps of gigantic _débris_; the Nile dividing the abodes of the living from those of the dead. On the west side are temples dedicated to Rameses I. by his son Seti I.; to Seti I. by Rameses II.; and to Rameses II. by Rameses himself; a temple to Queen Hatasou, and temples to Amenophis III. and Rameses III. Then we have valleys enshrined with tombs of kings and queens, dating from Seti I. downwards to Rameses IV. In the tomb of Seti, Belzoni secured the beautiful sarcophagus of white alabaster, one of the choice relics deposited in the Soane Museum; and from the tomb of Rameses III., discovered by Bruce, was obtained the sarcophagus of red granite, the cyst of which is preserved in the Louvre, and the covercle, or lid, in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge; whilst round and about are necropolises of considerable extent, for the most part appendages of the temples.

[25] It is a curious fact that the crocodile is rarely met with now, even in Upper Egypt, but requires to be sought after higher up the river—namely, in Nubia. It is said to be a timid creature, and the steam-boat and rifle have scared it from its ancient haunts. Mr. A. C. Smith, who is a zealous ornithologist, identifies the bird that ventures into the mouth of the crocodile in search of leeches—the crocodile bird—as the spur-winged plover (charadrius spinosus), the Zic-Zac of the Arabs, which has constituted itself the professional toothpicker of the crocodile.

[26] Professor Flower mentions that the voyage from Cairo and back occupies from eight to ten weeks; while that to and from the second cataract requires a month longer.

Once upon a time there existed on this spot a temple of calcareous stone; the temple was named Memnonium, from being situated in a part of the city called Memnonia; and the trumpet of fame has ascribed it to a mythical king, Memnon: it was, however, erected by Amenophis or Amunoph III., who, for no better reason, has likewise been termed Memnon. Egyptologists deplore the loss of this temple, as it no doubt contained the historical record of the reign of Amenophis; but of its pylons, its walls, and its columns, nothing now remains save their foundations; its stones have been broken into bits, and the bits have been carried away and burnt into lime. Nevertheless, a memorial of its former existence happily remains in the two gigantic colossal statues of Amenophis, which were carved out of breccia, a transition rock, that could yield no lime by the burning. These are the two huge Colossi, still grand, but much defaced and injured, which sat at their ease in front of the pylon of Amunoph’s temple, and will sit on, perhaps, for centuries, although the sanctuary which they once guarded and adorned is no more. Of another temple near at hand, M. Mariette says:—“The lime-burners have luckily not yet found their way here. But why? Simply because there is already so much limestone among the ruins on the plain, which is, therefore, more easy of acquisition;” but when this shall have been exhausted, then looms another invasion of those industrious shepherds, the lime-burners.

No doubt, a good deal of the destruction which we see around was the handiwork of man, perhaps of the baffled Cambyses; perhaps of Ptolemy Lathyrus, those two great destroyers; but history reminds us, that in the twenty-seventh year before the birth of Christ, an earthquake visited Egypt, and shook it to its very foundations. This earthquake seriously damaged the Colossi, and more especially the northernmost one, which had its upper part shaken completely off. But a curious phenomenon succeeded. Of a morning, when the sun first rose and warmed the statue, it gave forth a plaintive wail, resembling the sound of the human voice. This, apparently, resulted from some contraction or expansion of the material of the broken stump: it has been supposed that the fractured stone, moistened by the dew of night, crackled under the drying influence of the warm rays of the rising sun. But whatever the physical cause may have been, the sound attracted the notice of travellers; and visitors came from all parts of the surrounding countries to witness the phenomenon. It would seem that the event was a little fickle; it did not always manifest itself, nor precisely at the same time; but it was only at or about the time of the rising of the sun that it was evoked. To the multitude, this sound was the voice of Memnon lamenting to his divine mother, Aurora, the injuries his statue had sustained; and in this wise he sighed forth his lament for 250 years, when Septimus Severus stretched forth his hand to heal his wounds, and perchance to elicit a happier, cheerfuller note. The statue was repaired by means of blocks of stone, as in ordinary masonry; the voice of lamentation ceased, and with it every vestige of sound. Memnon wailed and sighed no more, neither did his voice come more melodiously forth as his restorer hoped. The vocal Memnon sunk at once, from an object of wonder, to the simple rank of the northern colossus of Amenophis. But the term Colossus is well-earned when we reflect that the statue itself was fifty feet in height; while its pedestal of ten feet gave it an altitude of sixty feet. Two figures standing against the arms of the throne on which the giant sits, are those of his mother and sister.

Not far away from the ruin of the Memnonium and the Memnonian Colossi are the fragments of a temple, erected by Rameses II., and dedicated to himself, the Ramesseum; it has likewise been named the Palace of Memnon and the Tomb of Osymandias. But the object of chief interest for us, at the present time, in connection with this ruin, is the broken Colossus, which formerly stood within the entrance-court of the temple. The statue is wrought out of Syenite granite; it was brought from Syené, and is one of the most gigantic monoliths carved by the Egyptians. It is a statue of Rameses the Great, seated on his throne, in the attitude of repose, and was originally nearly forty feet high; whilst its estimated weight was very little short of 900 tons. It is now broken across at the waist; the lower part is shattered into fragments; whilst the upper portion is reduced in size by the cutting out of mill-stones by the Arabs. “It is difficult,” says Mariette, “at what most to wonder, the patience and labour of the sculptor, or the pains and force employed by the destroyer.” Miss Edwards, speaking of this Colossus, remarks, that “the stone is so hard, that when small fragments are mounted on a handle, they are used as a substitute for the diamond by engravers of antiques.”

But we must confess to a little, a very little, malice when we turn the attention of our readers to Deir-el-Bahari, a temple erected to the honour of Hatasou, also on the western and sepulchral side of Thebes. “Here,” says Mariette, “we find a temple mounting the rock behind it by regular steps or platforms, and built of a beautiful white and marble-like calcareous stone. It was formerly approached by a long avenue of sphinxes, and heralded by _two obelisks_, of which the bases alone are now traceable.”

But how, may we venture to enquire, came obelisks, the offspring of the rising sun, on the Hades side of the Nile? Can the river have changed its course? Alas! no. It is the whim of woman. Hatasou erected the grandest obelisks in existence; she covered the whole shaft, with the exception of the carvings, with gold. She erected a temple that stepped up the side of a mountain, as if it were a flight of stairs. She governed Egypt, the two worlds, and maintained the dignity of the diadems of the upper and lower country during one of the most brilliant periods of Egypt’s greatness; and now we find her imparting sunshine to the dead, and by exception proving the rule, that no obelisks are to be found on the western bank of the Nile, saving her own, and the flouted fragments of Fyoom. “She hath made this work for her father Amun-re, lord of the regions; she hath erected to him this handsome gateway * * * Amun protects the work * * * she hath done this to whom life is given for ever.”[27] So says the Pharaoh Amun-noo-het, or Hatasou. Turn we now to the eastern bank of the Nile, and we find the Arab village of Luxor grown up like a parasitic fungus over the ruins of once stately edifices, the grand temple of Amenophis III., where the Colossi of Rameses guard the entrance; and two miles away, the still more magnificent ruin of the temple of Usertesen and his successors: but of these anon.

[27] Murray.

The inscription on the paw of the sphynx, already noted, has reminded us how precious to the Egyptian is every “spot of harvest-bearing land,” so precious that not a tittle could be spared for the interment of the dead; the sands were too shifting, and the sandstone rock alone remained for the purposes of burial. The sandstone rock forms a broad shelf at the border of the desert, and thence mounts up in terraces to the summit of the mountain-range. Cheops and Chephren, and the kings of the early dynasties, had the power and the means of raising mountains over their embalmed and mummified remains; but for the people, must suffice a more humble resting-place;—for them a hole was scooped out on the platform of rock, to be built up at its entrance until the day of resurrection should arrive. In the neighbourhood of the Pyramids, the cemetery of kings, the sandstone rock is honeycombed with tombs, in which the population of every degree have their appropriate sepulchral niche. In later times these tombs have been ransacked for antiquarian relics and for the riches they contained; and the desert around is still thickly carpeted with a profuse accumulation of fragments of mummies and mummy-cases, and vestments of every kind.

The word mummy is said to be derived from “mourn,” a kind of wax used in the process of embalming. This process would seem to have been first employed during the eleventh dynasty, about 3,000 years before the Christian era, and to have been practised until the 6th century A.D. Mariette notes differences in the appearance and qualities of the mummies in accordance with their source—from Memphis or Thebes, or their preparation in more recent times. The Memphite mummies are extremely dry, break easily, and are black in colour; those of Thebes are tightly bandaged, yellow and flexible, bending easily, and sometimes preserving so much softness as to admit of being indented by pressure: whereas, in later times, the bodies were saturated with a kind of turpentine from Judea, and became heavy, compact, the bandages seemingly identified with the flesh, and so hard as only to be broken with violence. The Memphite mummies were often filled with amulets and scarabæi, and by their sides, or between their legs, was placed a papyrus, a copy of the Book of the Dead. On the Theban mummies were scarabæi and rings, which were worn on the fingers of the left hand.

The essentials of a tomb, for such as could afford the expense, were, a deep quadrangular well in the rock; in the side of this well was a smaller cavity for the deposit of the mummy, or of the mummy-case; after which, the entrance of the cavity, or grave, was carefully walled up; next followed a chamber in which mourners and friends could assemble; and after that a portal, or exterior entrance, by which admission might be obtained. It is easy to understand how this simple design may be amplified until an entire rock of considerable magnitude has been hollowed out into numerous chambers; how these chambers may be ornamented with columns and sculptures; how the portal may assume an architectural form, and become a pylon, and the front of the rock be carved into columns and statues of imposing grandeur and beauty. Indeed, there would seem—as in fact is the case—no bounds to the intricacy and extent of the sanctuary and its chambers, the elegance and decoration of the appurtenant halls, and the magnificence and grandeur of the pylonic front. We should be pleased to imagine that the first efforts of man practised on the rocks, and thence transferred to the plain, were the early origin of Egyptian architecture, were we not aware of the fact, that the work of the mason makes its appearance seemingly contemporaneously with that of the wonderful excavations, of which so many examples are to be met with on the banks of the Nile.

Arrived at Thebes, we find the rock and tomb architecture especially illustrated on the western bank of the Nile; while the masonic element appears in all its grandeur on the eastern bank, in the temples of Karnak and Luxor, magnificent in the midst of overwhelming ruin. At Karnak, the foundation of the principal temple is a mile and a-half in circuit: it was founded by Usertesen, of the twelfth dynasty, and has been enlarged by successive additions of courts and halls, by Thothmes I. and his family, by Seti I. and Rameses II. and their family, and subsequently by a long series of kings, ending with Alexander the Greek.

One of the most interesting features of these magnificent temples is the doorway, or _pylon_, which, from the simplest form, ornamented in the simplest manner, and serving as the humble entrance of the cavern in the rock, has become developed into an architectural structure of surpassing grandeur and importance. When it stands independently, in advance of the proper entrance of the temple, it is termed _propylon_; and the propylon is often a massive structure, which resembles a tower or a fortress rather than a simple gate or portal. It consists usually of a thick wall, pyramidal in its figure, of considerable height, and terminated above by a broad cornice ornamented over the portal with the winged orb, the type of the Eternal and of the sun; the centre of the wall being perforated by the doorway, or entrance. The propylon is generally furnished with two flag-staves fixed to its front, and sometimes divides at the top into a pair of towers.[28] As the propylon is the representative of the ornamented entrance of the temple, the _fore_-gate, or _fore_-tower, it is a necessary appurtenance to the temple, and forms a picturesque object when seen from a distance; whilst its walls are made subservient to the purposes of painting and sculpture, destined to illustrate the history of its founder. The propylon of the most modern portion of the temple at Karnak is 140 feet high, 370 feet in breadth, and 50 feet in thickness; it is approached by an avenue of ram-headed sphynxes, 200 feet long, and the sides of the doorway were formerly ornamented with two granite statues, which are now in a state of ruin.

[28] Miss Edwards remarks, that there is preserved in the Egyptian room of the Glyptothek Museum at Munich, a statue of the chief architect of the Ramessian period, Bak-en-khonzu, who, “having obtained the dignity of High Priest and First Prophet of Ammon, during the reign of Seti I., became chief architect of the Thebaid under Rameses II., and received a royal commission to superintend the embellishment of the temples. When Rameses II. erected a monument to his divine father Ammon-Ra,” Bak-en-khonzu “made the sacred edifice in the upper gate of the abode of Ammon. He erected obelisks of granite. He made golden flag-staffs. He added very, very great colonnades.”

The peculiar characteristics of ancient Egyptian architecture are, its obelisks, its pylons or propylons, its colossal statues, and its superb columns. At the entrance of the temple at Karnak, leading into the Hall of Rameses II., we have the colossal sphynxes and statues and propylon, and passing through the latter we enter a spacious hall decorated with superb columns. At the end of this hall we approach another propylon, its doorway supported on either side by a statue of Rameses III.; and this gives entrance to the great Hall of Seti I. and Amenophis III., enriched with 134 columns, and said to be the largest and most magnificent of ancient Egyptian monuments. Beyond the great hall are a third and a fourth propylon, and between them an obelisk, one of a pair erected by Thothmes I. The obelisk is seventy-five feet high, and is covered on one face with hieroglyphs descriptive of its founder, while the opposite face is occupied with sculptured writing of Rameses II. For the second time we are made aware of this remarkable combination—shall we call it appropriation?—by Rameses. The brother-obelisk has fallen, and is broken into fragments.

Through the entrance of the fourth propylon we are admitted into a hall ornamented with columns whose capitals represent the head of Osiris. This is the Hall of Thothmes I.; and by the side of its doorway stands another obelisk, 92 feet in height, and 8 feet square at the base. There were originally two of these splendid obelisks; but its consort is fallen, and has been dashed into bits. These are the obelisks that bear the legend on their base of having been hewn from the rock, and erected in the short space of seven months; of having been capped with gold taken from the enemies of the country, and of being emblazoned with gold-leaf from bottom to top: they were set up by Hatasou, daughter of Thothmes I., in honour of her father. Hatasou was her father’s favourite; he, no doubt, discovered in her, indications of talent fitting her for the throne, and he appointed her his successor. In this capacity she became the guardian of her brother, Thothmes II., who died at an early age; and, subsequently, of the distinguished potentate, her brother, Thothmes III., who was not admitted to the throne for fifteen years after the death of his brother. Many grand works in architecture owe their origin to Queen Hatasou, and to these her cartouche was affixed; but, in later times, she was treated as an usurper; her name was erased from the monuments, and that of her brother substituted in its place.