Chapter VI: Letter IV: At the foot of the largest Pyramid, the 2nd Jan., 1843

Still always here! in full activity since the 9th November, and perhaps for several weeks longer in the new year. But yet, how could I suspect from the accounts that have hitherto been given by travellers what a harvest we had to gather on this spot; here, on the oldest scene of all determinable chronological human history. It is strange how little this spot has been examined, though it has been the most frequently visited in Egypt. I will not, however, quarrel with our predecessors, as we reap the fruits of their neglect. I have rather been compelled to restrain our desire to see more of this land of wonders, as we shall perhaps have to discharge half of our whole task on this spot. Two tombs, besides the Pyramids, are conspicuously marked on the best of the earlier maps. Rosellini has only accurately examined one tomb; and Champollion says, in his letters: “Il y a peu à faire ici, et lorsqu’on aura copié des scènes de la vie domestique, sculptées dans un tombeau, je regagnerai nos embarcations.” We have given forty-five tombs on our accurate topographical plan of the whole necropolis, whose occupants have become known to me by their inscriptions, and altogether I have recorded eighty-two, which seemed worthy of notice, by their inscriptions or by other peculiarities.[7] Few of them belong to later times; almost all of them were built during, or shortly after, the erection of the great Pyramids, and therefore afford us an invaluable series of dates for the knowledge of the oldest determinable civilisation of the human race. The architecture of that period, about which I formerly could only offer conjectures,[8] is now clearly developed before me. We have thus early presented to us almost all the different component parts of architecture; sculptures of entire figures, of all sizes, in alto-relievo and basso-relievo, are presented in astonishing numbers. The style is very marked, and beautifully executed, but it is evident that the Egyptians of that time did not yet possess that canon of proportions which we find prevailing at a later period.[9]

The painting on a very fine coating of lime is often beautiful beyond conception, and is sometimes preserved as fresh and perfect as if it had been done yesterday. The representations on the walls chiefly contain scenes from the life of the deceased, and appear especially intended to place before the eyes of the spectator his wealth in cattle, fish, game, boats, domestics, &c. We thus become familiar with all the details of his private life. The numerous inscriptions describe or designate these scenes, or they exhibit the often widely-branching family of the deceased, and all his titles and offices, so that I could almost compose a court and state calendar of King Cheops, or Chephren. The most splendid tombs or rock-sepulchres belonged principally to the princes, their relatives, or the highest official persons under the kings beside whose Pyramids they are laid; and not unfrequently, I have found the tombs of father, son, and grandson, even great grandson, so that whole pedigrees of those distinguished families, who, above 5000 years ago, formed the nobility of the land, are brought to light. The most beautiful of the tombs, which, with many others, I myself discovered beneath the sand, which here buries all things, belongs to a prince of the family of King Cheops.

I am now employing daily from forty to sixty people in excavations and similar works. I have also made them dig in front of the great Sphinx, to disclose the small temple which is situated between its paws, and to expose the colossal stele of a single block of granite, eleven feet high and seven feet broad, which forms the back wall of the little temple, and which is still covered up with sand to nearly its entire height. It is one of the few monuments here from the times of the great Pharaohs of the New Monarchy, after the expulsion of the Hyksos; I have had a plaster cast taken of it.

The Egyptian winter is not always so spring-like as is sometimes imagined in Europe. About sunrise, when all hasten to their work, we have already had it +5° R. (43¼ Fahr.), so that the sketchers could hardly use their fingers.

The winter season began here with a scene which will always be vividly remembered by me. I had ridden out to the excavations, when seeing a large black cloud approaching, I sent a servant to the tents, to take care of them, but as it began to rain slightly, I soon rode after him myself. Shortly after my arrival a storm of wind began; I therefore ordered the cords of the tents to be secured, but soon a violent shower of rain came in addition, which alarmed all our Arabs, and drove them into the rock-tomb, in which is our kitchen. Erbkam and Franke were the only ones of our own party here. Suddenly the storm became a regular hurricane, such as I had never witnessed in Europe, and a hailstorm came down on us, which almost turned the day into night. I had the greatest trouble to drive our Arabs out of the grotto, that they might bring our things to the rock-tombs, where it was dry, as every moment we might expect the overthrow of the tents. And it was not long before first our common tent fell down, and when I had hastened from that into my own, in order to hold it from the inside, this also broke down above me. After I had crawled out, I found that my things were tolerably well covered by the tent, so that for the present I might leave them alone, to prevent a still greater danger. Our tents, protected from the worst winds, the north and west, lay in a depression of the valley, towards which the plateau of the Pyramids inclines. From that place I suddenly saw a rapid mountain torrent precipitating, like a gigantic serpent on its certain prey, upon our encampment, already half destroyed and beaten into the sand. The principal stream first dashed towards the great tent; another arm threatened mine, but did not however quite reach it. Everything, however, which had been floated out of our tents by the heavy rain was carried off by both streams, which united below the tents, and was borne a hundred steps farther into a deep hollow behind the Sphinx, where a great lake, which fortunately had no outlet, formed itself in a moment.

Now picture to yourself this scene! Our tents shattered to the ground by the storms of rain and hail, between two mountain torrents, which at once dug out a channel for themselves in the sandy ground, in several places six feet deep, and carried down with them into the muddy, foam-covered, slimy lake, our books, drawings, sketches, linen, instruments of all kinds, even our levers and iron crows, in short everything they laid hold on. In addition to this, we ourselves, with dripping clothes, without hats, securing the heavier articles, pursuing the lighter ones, wading up to the waist in the stream or lake, to fish out what the sand had not yet swallowed, and all this the work of a quarter of an hour, at whose expiration the sun forthwith shone again, and proclaimed the end of this deluge scene by a splendid and brilliant rainbow.

It was difficult to see at once what we had lost, and where we had to begin, to bring things again into some order. Both the Weidenbachs and Frey had gazed, from the tombs where they were working, upon the whole scene, as a magnificent natural spectacle, not suspecting what we had experienced here, till I sent for them to assist us immediately in preparing for the approaching night. For several days we continued to fish and dig for our things. Many were lost, much had become useless; the greater part of what was not enclosed in chests and trunks bore more or less traces of this flood. After all, however, nothing essential was destroyed. I had first placed in safety the great portfolios, with my manuscripts and books; in short, a few days afterwards, the whole affair only seemed to me a remarkable picture, which I should be sorry to forget, without leaving any disagreeable consequences behind it.

Since then, we have often had to suffer from violent winds, which sometimes fill the air for several days together with sand, to such a degree, as to be annoying to the lungs; it entirely prevents painting with colours, and covers the drawing and writing-paper incessantly with a most disagreeable and constantly renewed coat of dust. This fine sand penetrates all our clothes, enters every box, even those which close most perfectly, fills nose, ears, and hair, and is the unavoidable ingredient of all food, solid and liquid.

_5th January._—On the evening of the first Christmas holiday, I surprised my companions by a great fire, which I had caused to be lighted on the summit of the highest Pyramid. The flame illuminated both the other Pyramids splendidly, as well as the whole field of tombs, and shone quite across the valley as far as Cairo. That was indeed a Christmas Pyramid! I only let Abeken into the secret, who, with his constantly cheerful temper, and his intellectual and instructive conversation, had happily joined us on the 10th December. With his assistance I then prepared a special Christmas-tree for the following day, in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid. We planted a young palm-tree in the sarcophagus of the ancient king, and adorned it with lights, and small presents, which I had ordered from the town for us children of the desert. St. Sylvester must have his share of honours also. At twelve o’clock on New-year’s Eve immense flames rose simultaneously at midnight from the three great Pyramids, and proclaimed the changes of the Christian year, far and wide, to the Islamite provinces at their base.

I consider it to be a useful mental regimen to our party that their tedious and monotonous labours, more especially those of our artists, should be relieved not by the weekly holiday of Sunday only, but also as often as there are opportunities, by cheerful festivities and agreeable diversions. Nor has the slightest discord hitherto disturbed the happy disposition and the good-humour of our confederation, which daily acquires fresh elasticity, both from the abundance of new impressions that we receive, and from the mutual reciprocation of the different natures and talents, as by overcoming the manifold difficulties and hardships of this Bedouin life itself.

You may judge of the variety of the elements of which our assembled party is composed, by the Babel of languages in which we continually move; the English language is competently represented by our companions, Wild and Bonomi; French and Italian serve for our intercourse with the authorities, with strangers and Levantine interpreters. We give orders, eat, and travel, in Arabic, and we reflect, talk, sing, and live, in good German. But during the day we usually all live separate, and uninterruptedly each at his own work. We take our coffee before sunrise, and our dinner after sunset; and breakfast during work. Thus our draughtsmen have already been enabled to supply our swelling portfolios with a hundred great folio sheets, cleanly executed, partly in pencil, partly in colours.