Part 7
Beyond the Hall of Osiris we reach the original temple and sanctuary containing the tomb and funereal chambers founded by Usertesen; and further on still, and forming the end of the pile, a temple erected by Thothmes III. Here, therefore, we observe a striking illustration of the combination of many potentates in the construction of these wonderful examples of architectural skill. The first stone of this temple was laid, probably, 3064 B.C., and the building was scarcely completed in the year 1288 B.C.; a period embracing 1,776, or nearly 2,000 years, being devoted to its construction.
In the neighbourhood of the great temple of Karnak are the ruins of a smaller temple appertaining to Amenophis III. “It was once adorned with elegant sculptures and two granite obelisks; but is now a confused heap of ruins, whose plan is with difficulty traced beneath its fallen walls.”[29] Of course, the obelisks are lost. The Temple of Luxor likewise owes its origin to Amenophis III.; and was extended, a century and a-half later, by Rameses II.; the latter monarch adding a magnificent hall, a propylon of vast dimensions, two colossal sitting statues of himself, a pair of beautiful obelisks, and an avenue of sphynxes nearly two miles in length, stretching away from Luxor to Karnak. Approaching the temple by the avenue of sphynxes, about 500 in number, we meet with the now solitary obelisk, its consort having been removed to Paris; next comes the majestic propylon, its entrance guarded by two helmeted colossal sitting statues of Rameses II., carved out of black granite, and half buried in the earth. Passing the portal, we enter the great Hall of Rameses, and, beyond that, reach the sanctuary of Amenophis. The obelisk bears the name of Rameses, and is remarkable for the beauty and depth of its carving—a circumstance which may possibly have influenced the French in their selection. Sir Gardner Wilkinson made a curious discovery with regard to the Paris obelisk, which he narrates as follows:—
“Being at Luxor when it was taken down, I observed beneath the lower end on which it stood the nomen and prenomen of Rameses II., and a slight fissure extending some distance up it; and what is very remarkable, the obelisk was cracked previous to its erection, and was secured by two wooden dove-tailed cramps. These, however, were destroyed by the moisture of the ground, in which the base had become accidentally buried.”
[29] Murray’s “Hand-book.”
The hieroglyphs on its face, announce that “the lord of the world, guardian-sun of truth, approved of Phra; has built this edifice in honour of his father, Ammon-Ra, and has erected to him these two great obelisks of stone, in face of the House of Rameses, in the city of Ammon.”[30]
[30] Miss Edwards.
Besides the Luxor obelisks, numerous others are ascribed to Rameses II.—namely, the two small monoliths at Rome, one in the Piazza Rotunda in front of the Pantheon, the other at the Villa Mattei; as also the ten broken obelisks at San, on the field of Zoan: while two more bear the joint names of his father Seti and himself; for example, the beautiful column of the Piazza del Popolo, known as the Flaminian Obelisk, and that of the Trinita de Monti at Rome.
It is a curious fact in connexion with the history of obelisks, that two of the most stately—indeed, the next in height to that of St. John Lateran—should have been the work of a woman, Queen Hatasou, daughter of Thothmes I., and guardian for a while of Thothmes III. But when the reins of power fell into the hands of the latter, he seems to have treated his sister as an usurper, and to have obliterated her name from the monuments, while he substituted in its place the cartouche of his own; so that the work of Hatasou is usually ascribed to Thothmes III. We find a similar illustration in the relation between Rameses II. and his father, Seti I. Seti was distinguished in his early life as a warrior, but, unfortunately, was stricken with blindness; he thereupon resigned the throne to his son, and retired into solitude. By degrees he recovered his sight, and devoted the rest of his life to architecture and building. His cartouche is to be found amongst the magnificent ruins at Thebes; and he was the author of several obelisks: in the latter instance his name is associated with, and occasionally replaced by, that of his son. The son of the blind man, the great Sesostris, Rameses II., must be supposed to have encouraged this substitution, for he has obtained credit for much that was not really his own; and to such an extent has misconception been carried, that Rameses and Seti have been identified as one and the same person; while a younger son of Rameses, Menephtah, has been described as the son of the king who went blind. Another element of confusion is the Greek name—Sesostris, given to Rameses II. Rameses was celebrated as a victorious soldier; as also was his distinguished predecessor, Thothmes III. Sesostris is described by Herodotus as a great conqueror; and as this character applies equally to Thothmes and Rameses, these two kings, although 200 years apart in point of time, become awkwardly confounded with each other. It would be ungenerous to suppose that such a state of confusion was acceptable to Rameses and favoured his designs; or that it could have led him to adopt that association with the memory of Thothmes which is implied by the sculptures on the Thothmic obelisks: although it must be admitted that there certainly exist grounds for the suspicion. In this respect Rameses would almost seem to have been the victim of an idiosyncrasy. In fact, Rameses II. is accused of monopolising the reputation of all the great deeds enacted during more than 600 years, from the time of Thothmes II. to that of Shishonk, or, as he is named in the Bible, Shishak, the conqueror of Jerusalem.
We have compared the village of Luxor to a crop of mushrooms overgrowing a mountain of architectural ruins; and so it would seem to be: the mud huts of the Arabs and Copts at first sheltered themselves under the massive walls, then crept up to the cornices and roofs, and in time, like swallows’ nests, stuccoed every hollow and niche where sufficient space could be obtained for a resting-place. Only that they were forbidden, they would have occupied the whole of the temples and their halls, hypostyle and hypæthral, and have left nothing visible but themselves. The inhabitants of these huts are poor and ragged; but, according to Lady Duff Gordon (who lived amongst them for a long time, and between whom and them a warm attachment subsisted, fostered by her own humanity and kindness), they are remarkable for cleanliness, both in their persons and in their huts. Luxor, however, is the great emporium of antiques, and an active manufacture of scarabæi or sacred beetles, of statuettes, and even of tablets, is carried on by the Arab traders. “It is the centre,” says M. Mariette, “of a commerce more or less legal, inasmuch as the rummaging of tombs is now prohibited by law. Nevertheless, it requires much judgment, and often that of the expert, to distinguish with certainty between the genuine and the fictitious.” Miss Edwards relates that she was once accidentally ushered into the workshop of a dealer, where she saw tools and appliances in number for the fabrication of these objects, so eagerly sought after by the traveller. On the arrival of the proprietor she was speedily shown out, but overheard the scoldings which were administered to the unfortunate help who had allowed her to enter. She illustrates the simplicity of these people by the following anecdote:—One day, being more than usually pestered by an Arab trader to buy his genuine antiques, she sharply replied, “I don’t like them: I prefer the modern ones.” “Bisallah!” exclaimed the pedlar, “then you will like these; for they were all manufactured by myself.”—“As for genuine scarabs of the highest antiquity,” says Miss Edwards, “they are turned out by the gross every season. Engraved, glazed, and administered to the turkeys in the form of boluses, they acquire, by the simple process of digestion, a degree of venerableness that is really charming.”
_Apropos_ of scarabs, the toleration by Egyptians of all living creatures, from the crocodile to the fly, exhibits, in a high degree, the gentleness and amiability of character of the people. It was not always love—often it was superstition, or fear, that made them so lenient; but, nevertheless, we cannot fail to perceive, in their treatment of animals, a recognition of the rights of all created beings, as well as of themselves. Lady Duff Gordon looked warily around her, lest there should be witnesses, when her prejudices led her to kill a serpent that had intruded itself into her apartment; and she was unable to induce the Arab mothers to kill the gorged flies which hung from the inflamed eyelids of their children afflicted with ophthalmia. The Fellaheen look doubtfully at the sportsman as he fills his bag with the superfluous pigeons, although to themselves they are almost a scourge. Different parts of Egypt preferred different animals, and held them sacred; so that we find a Leontopolis, or city of lions; a Lycopolis, or city of the wolf; a Crocodilopolis, or city of the crocodile; a Bubastis, where the cat was held in veneration; and so forth.
But what shall we say of the venerable scarab, the sacred scarabæus. Those who are sufficiently acquainted with the natural history of certain beetles, are aware that they propel, with their hind-legs, objects of domestic use which they are desirous of storing away in their caves. Now, on the banks of the Nile, the object of greatest importance and anxiety to the scarab is its egg. She lays it near the stream; and, to protect it from injury, she plasters it over with mud, enclosing it like a kernel in its shell; and, instinctively mindful of the rise of the Nile, which would wash it away, she sets herself diligently to work to roll it upward from the river’s brink. It has to be propelled often to a considerable distance: she must drive it across the arable belt; for the sepulchre of the scarab, like that of the Egyptian, is the desert; and the male oftentimes helps her in her labour. Arrived at the sandy border of the desert, they dig their well; the precious mummy is deposited therein, to await the return of the spirit of life, and, at the appointed hour, to rise from the tomb into renewed existence. Does not the Egyptian see, in the scarab, the pioneer of his own religious belief?—and hence is led to regard it as the emblem of the divine spirit—the future “to be,” or “to transform.” Too frequently this labour of love, on the part of the scarab, concludes in sacrifice: the exhausted labourer sinks wearily by the side of the finished tomb, and dies.
Another pleasant sail of 133 miles carries us from Luxor to Syené, or As-souan (Coptic, _souan_, the opening), Egypt’s extremest boundary, where Juvenal pined in exile, where the first cataracts burst through the gates of Egypt, and where those grand quarries are stationed which have supplied the whole of the roseate granite obelisks of Egypt. We have already had occasion to mention the existence, in these quarries, of an unfinished obelisk not yet reft from the parent rock, but bearing the traces of the artificers’ hands, as though they had unexpectedly been summoned from their work. The dimensions of the Syené obelisk have been variously stated: for example, 100 feet by 11 feet 2 inches; and 95 feet by 11 feet: and a flaw was discovered in the shaft, which has suggested an excuse for its abandonment; while others are of opinion that the flaw is an accident of subsequent occurrence.
The excellence of the quality of the granite of Syené, and its property of splitting under the application of suitable force, permitted the separation from the native rock of a single piece of sixty, seventy, and sometimes more than a hundred feet in length. The unfinished obelisk exhibits the contrivance by which these immense stones were severed from the solid rock. In the course of the line which marks the boundary of the obelisk, is a sharply cut groove; and all along this groove, at short intervals, are holes which are intended for the reception of wedges or plugs of dry wood; when the wedges were driven firmly into the holes, the groove was filled with water; the dry wedges gradually imbibed the water and swelled, and the force created by their swelling along a line of considerable length, was sufficient to crack the granite throughout the whole extent of the groove. We are but too familiar with this force in the instance of water congealed into ice; a small fissure or opening of any kind becomes filled with water in the winter-time; the water freezes; frozen water expands, and under the force of that expansion the fissure is doubled in extent. It is this process which is so destructive to the face of buildings constructed of laminated stone; it is this which produces the slide of mountains and the fall of cliffs; and the same force the agriculturist utilises by ploughing, for the purpose of breaking up the clods of his land and pulverising the soil. It has been supposed that the Egyptians sometimes had recourse to another method, which is thus described by our old friend, Charles Knight, in the “Pictorial Gallery of Arts.”
“One of the modes in which large blocks of granite may be severed from a rock, is exemplified by what takes place in some parts of India at the present day. The quarryman, having found a portion of the rock sufficiently extensive, and situated near the edge of the part already quarried, lays bare the upper surface, and marks on it a line in the direction of the intended separation, along which a groove is cut with a chisel about a couple of inches in depth. Above this groove a narrow line of fire is kindled, and maintained till the rock below is thoroughly heated; immediately on which a number of men and women, each provided with a vessel of cold water, suddenly sweep off the ashes, and pour the water into the heated groove, which causes the rock to split with a clear fracture. Blocks of granite eighty feet in length are severed by these means.”[31]
[31] Sir J. F. Herschel’s discourse; quoted in Long’s “Egyptians,” referring to an obelisk erected at Seringapatam.
From Syené by the cataract or by the road, a short journey of five miles brings us to the lovely island of Philæ reposing in the midst of the placid stream of the Nile, in the golden land of Nubia.[32] “The approach to the island by water is very striking. The stream winds in and out among gigantic black rocks of the most fantastic form and shape, and then unexpectedly, after a sharp turn or two, Philæ comes suddenly in sight. ‘Beautiful’ is the epithet commonly applied to this spot, justly considered to present the finest bit of scenery on the Nile; but the beauty, or rather grandeur, is more in the framework of the picture than in the picture itself. The view from the top of the propylon tower at Philæ, of all beyond the island, is far finer than the view of Philæ itself from any point.”[33] Philæ is outside the natural boundary and proper frontier of Egypt;[34] and although enriched with a temple dedicated to Isis, its ruins date back no further than the last of the Pharaohs. The Temple of Isis was founded by Ptolemy Philadelphus, and bears the cartouche of Cleopatra; whilst its completion is due to the Roman emperors. Here also may be seen an elegant and picturesque hypæthral, or roofless temple, open, as were many of the temples of Egypt, to the blue vault of the firmament. This temple is called “Pharaoh’s bed;” but appears to have been the work of the Ptolemies and of the Cæsars.
[32] The word _noub_ signifies gold.
[33] Murray’s Hand-book.
[34] The learned editor of “Murray’s Hand-book” observes, that in the Egyptian language the island was called Pilak or Ailak, _the place of the frontier_,—a word perverted by the Greeks into Philæ.
At the landing-place in front of the chief temple at Philæ, a broad flight of steps, leading upwards from the river’s edge, is crowned at the summit by a solitary obelisk, one alone remaining; next follows an avenue of Isis-headed columns, and then the majestic propylon of the temple. The obelisk is of fine sandstone, without sculpture, broken at the summit, and about thirty feet in height. At no great distance is the pedestal, cupped at the top, which formerly supported its companion.
Another obelisk wrought out of red granite is now at Kingston-Lacy, in Dorsetshire, and was brought to England by Mr. William Bankes. It is said to have been carved with the cartouche of Cleopatra, made famous from its furnishing Champollion with two important letters of the hieroglyphic alphabet—namely, K and T—after he had previously gained possession, from the cartouche of Ptolemy, of the five letters P T L M S. These obelisks are not Pharaonic, but were probably erected by Ptolemy Philadelphus, or by one of his successors. We presume that this latter is the obelisk referred to by Sharpe in the following quotation:—
“We possess a curious inscription upon an obelisk that once stood in the island of Philæ, recording, as one of the grievances that the villagers smarted under, the necessity of finding supplies for the troops on their marches, and also for all the government messengers and public servants, or those who claimed to travel as such. The cost of this grievance was probably greater at Philæ than in other places, because the traveller was there stopped in his voyage by the cataracts on the Nile, and he had to be supplied with labourers to carry his luggage where the navigation was interrupted. Accordingly the priests at Philæ petitioned the king that their temple might be relieved from this heavy and vexatious charge, which they said lessened their power of rightly performing their appointed sacrifices; and they further begged to be allowed to set up a monument to record the grant which they hoped for. Euergetes granted the priest’s prayer, and accordingly set up a small obelisk; and the petition and the king’s answer were carved on the base.”
Mr. Walter Ralph Bankes, of Kingston-Lacy Hall, Wimborne, Dorsetshire, has very kindly furnished us with the following information with regard to the Philæ obelisk, which was brought to England by his relative, Mr. William Bankes:—“The height of the three plinths in one block, on which the pedestal rests, is 2 feet 2 inches; that of the lower member of the pedestal, 3 feet 4 inches; and of the upper member, 2 feet 5 inches; the whole pedestal being one block: the height of the shaft, a monolith, 22 feet 1½ inch; making the entire monument 30 feet 8½ inches. The material of the whole is red Egyptian granite.
“On the foot of the obelisk is inscribed:—‘The granite used in the reparation of this monument was brought from the ruins of Leptis Magna in Africa, and was given for that purpose by His Majesty King George IV.’
“William John Bankes, Esq., M.P., eldest son of Henry Bankes, Esq., M.P., caused this obelisk, and the pedestal from which it had fallen, to be removed, under the direction of G. Belzoni, in 1819, from the Island of Philæ, beyond the first cataract; and brought this platform from the ruins of Hierosyesimnon in Nubia.
“The inscription on this obelisk and pedestal records their dedication to King Ptolemy Euergetes II., and two Cleopatras his queens, who authorised the priests of Isis, in the Isle of Philæ, to erect them about 150 years B.C., as a perpetual memorial of exemption from taxation.
“This spot was chosen, and the first stone of the foundation laid by Arthur, Duke of Wellington, August 17, 1827.”
The following is a translation of the three Greek inscriptions on the pedestal of the Egyptian obelisk.
The first two are painted in red letters upon the surface; the lowest is cut into the stone.
_Upper Inscription_ ... “of the gods Euergetes ... gods Epiphanes ... of the gods Eupator, and of the god Philometor, and of the gods Euergetes, greeting. We have submitted to you the copy of the letter written to Lochus, our cousin and general, and we permit to you the setting up of the monument which you apply for ... Pacon 22.”
_Second Inscription._—“King Ptolemy, and Queen Cleopatra the sister, and Queen Cleopatra the wife; to Lochus their brother, greeting ... to us ... from the ... a copy ... you shall make ... not to trouble them”....
_Third Inscription._—“To King Ptolemy, and Queen Cleopatra the sister, and Queen Cleopatra the wife, beneficent deities; the priests of the great goddess Isis in Abatus and Philæ, greeting. Whereas those frequenting Philæ as generals and prefects and governors of Thebes, and royal scribes, and prefects of the frontier guard, and all other functionaries and constituted authorities, and the rest who are in office, compel us to make contributions to them against our will; and out of this it results that the Temple is deteriorated, and that we are in danger of not having what is appointed for the sacrifices and libations to be made for you and your children.
“We request of you, great deities as you are, if it shall seem good, to order Noumenius, your cousin and secretary for correspondence, to write to Lochus, your cousin and general of the Thebaid, not to trouble us in these things, nor to suffer any other to do the same, and to give us the necessary decrees to that effect; and in them to permit us to set up a monument, on which we may inscribe your kindness to us upon these points, that your favour may be perpetuated upon it to all time. When this shall be done, we and the Temple of Isis shall hold ourselves obliged. Fare ye well.”