Chapter XXIX: Part 29

All the mere ruins of Thebes, however, immense and magnificent as they are, fail to give us true views of her greatness, till we go back to her origin, and trace up her history; and this is so graphically done by Thompson, in his “Egypt, Past and Present,” that we quote from it, what he so appropriately calls “_Dissolving Views: Panorama of Karnak._” “In order,” he says, “to a complete view of Thebes, past and present, one should reproduce its sculptured story, and make it witness for itself. The temple of Karnak, in its several parts, marks the rise, the growth, the decline, and the fall of Egypt. This temple had a growth of twenty-five hundred years, from a small sanctuary to ‘a city of temples.’ Every principal era of the national history is represented in this stupendous pile; and as we go leisurely around it, and translate into our own language, or vivify into present actual scenes, the processions, the battles, the ceremonies, the religious offerings, and the state displays, sculptured on its walls and columns, and for the most part still legible, we behold all Egypt move before us _as in a panorama_, whose scenes and actors are instinct with life. This animated reproduction of the sculptures, which I attempted when on the ground, I would hope to convey to the reader by following in course the histories here written on the stone.

“I stood in Karnak, under the light of the full moon. It was an hour for silence, and we enjoined this upon each other, and gave ourselves to solitary musing. The cuckoo, that had wooed us with his note as we reposed under the great pillars in the sultry noon, had gone to nestle with his mate; and the myriad birds that by day had fluttered along the corridors, had hid themselves in the crevices of the capitals. Even the owl that hooted as we entered, was still. Only the moon was there, threading the avenues with silver footsteps, and holding her clear light that we might read the sculptured chronicles of kings. We sat down in the center of the grand avenue. Twelve majestic pillars, on either hand, towered along its length, and seemed, as of old, to support an arch of azure studded with stars. The dismantled towers of the grand entrance, whose bases stand like pyramids truncated to sustain the firmament, grew more gigantic in the shadow of the columns, while their once massive gates, uncovered by the hand of time, seemed only to have lifted up their heads to let the King of Glory in. In the avenue that crossed beside our seat, (one of twelve, having each ten columns of huge dimensions,) at either extremity, a column had fallen crosswise against its neighbor, carrying with it its fragment of the stone roof, and there it hung almost ethereal in the still moonlight, a symbol of the struggle between man and time. Under the corridors, darkness brooded over the fragments of sculptured stone; but beyond the other portal, the yet perfect obelisk stood in pensive majesty among its fallen mates, and from its clear, hard face projected in the moonbeams the symbols of the power that built these halls, and of the worship that sustained them. The spell of Egypt was complete. For two months I had lived under its deepening power. At length, in the sepulchers of its kings, and on the walls and pillars of its temples, I had seen the Egypt of forty centuries revived as in a panorama fresh from the artist’s pencil, and had lived in the Egypt that the Nile _then_ watered, as in the so-called Egypt that it waters now. And here I had come to bid it farewell, to take a last look at its grave; and yet the witching moonlight made it _live_ again. The breath of the south fanning the columns that in their fourth decade of centuries wear no ivied wreath of age, warmed their still grandeur into life, and with Memnon’s charm they sang to the moon the great epic of the past. As I listened, all art, all learning, all religion, all poetry, all history, all empire, and all time, swept through my wondering soul. Leaving my companions, I wandered over the fragments of columns and sphinxes and colossi, till, gaining a mound that half buries the front area of the temple, I clambered up the steps worn by age in its stupendous wall, and standing in their foremost tower, looked back on Karnak. But no change of place, nor sight of fallen columns and decaying walls, could break the spell. I had walked over the grave of Egypt, I had stumbled against the fragments of its sepulcher, yet Egypt stood before me.

“First came the second son of Ham, with a long retinue of camels and of servants, lured southward by the fertile valley of the Nile, till, where the mountains widen their embrace around the well-watered plain, he pitches his tent, and founds an infant city. Generations pass, and the son who in this plain inherits the patriarchal wealth and power, greedy of the patrimony of his brethren to the north, wages a fratricidal war, and seizing upon all Mizr or ‘the land of Ham,’ effaces from it the name of his ancestors, and, investing it with his own, gives _Egypt_ (Copt or Gurt) a name and a power in the newly divided earth. Other generations pass, and the first _king_ of Egypt comes with barbaric pomp, from the capital he has founded at the north, to visit his native _Theba_, the real ‘_head_’ or capital, and here offers to its divinity the rude shrine whose traces linger behind yonder obelisk. Ages roll on. The swelling Nile pours out increasing fatness on the land. The earth brings forth by handfuls. Fat-fleshed, well-favored cattle come up out of the river and feed in the meadow. There is great plenteousness for man and beast. But with all the plenty there is no waste. In every city huge granaries are built, and in these the grain is piled, as the sand of the sea, without measure. There is a strange wisdom near the throne of Pharaoh. Again, the east wind blows, and the scorching sands of the Arabian desert are heaped upon the fertile Nile. In the mountains of Ethiopia there is no rain. The river shrinks away. The plain of Thebes is dry. The people cry for bread, but the keys of the great storehouses are in the hand of the ruler of the land. They bring to him their money; they bring to him their cattle; they sell to him their land: they sell to him their very selves for bread. Again, the east wind ceases; the rains fall, the river rises; the desert retreats; the land revives. And now the great Pharaoh, whom the counsel of a captive Jew has made possessor of all the treasure and all the land of Egypt, moved by a religious sentiment but half enlightened, would make a votive offering to his god. A fleet of barges covers the bosom of the Nile, which with waving banners and gorgeous emblems and increasing music, have borne the monarch from his northern to his southern capital. With solemn pomp the procession of priests and soldiers and chief officers of state, with the uplifted monarch in the midst, files from the river to the rude sanctuary of _Menes_, which the skill of masons and of sculptors has already surrounded with columns of rich red granite, and chambers of polished stone, and with colossal statues of the king—the offering he brings to the divinity, whom he adores as the preserver of the land; and while the monarch bows before the god, the sound of trumpets, and the fragrance of incense, and the chanting of the priests, announce to the multitude that _Amun_ accepts the gift, and will be henceforth worshiped in their temple. _Osirtasen_ the Great passes away.

“The ages roll. A native Theban usurps the throne of the northern Pharaohs, and succeeds to the power they had consolidated through the counsel of the Hebrew, vouchsafed to them through fourscore years. But Joseph is dead; embalmed and coffined in a royal sarcophagus; and Amosis the usurper knows him not. Oppression fills the land, and falls most heavily upon the seed of Joseph. Another Theban Pharaoh mounts the throne, and to preserve the power that the wisdom of a Hebrew gave, determines to cut off the issue of the Hebrews from the land. Yet in his own house, even as a son, in all the learning of his schools, amid all the splendors of his court, is nurtured a young Hebrew who yet shall desolate the land that Joseph blessed. But just now this rising terror has fled into the desert, and the first _Thothmes_ comes in peaceful pomp to offer to the divinity of Thebes the gigantic obelisks that bear his name. He plants them yonder in the area before the sanctuary of Osirtasen. The third Thothmes is on the throne. There is groaning throughout the land of Egypt; there is deep sorrow in the land of Goshen. The monarch would make his name immortal by the temples, the palaces, and the monuments he rears in every city, from the great sea to the cataracts of Nubia. He adorns his native capital upon its western bank with a new sanctuary added to the temple of his father, and with another temple inclosed with brick, that bear in hieroglyphics his own initials; and here at Karnak, he builds behind the sanctuary, a thousand feet from where I stand, the grand edifice of fifty columns that surpasses all the royal architecture yet seen in Thebes. In its adytum he enshrines a colossal figure of the deified hawk that he worships. He is the great architect of Egypt, and he will fill the land with the memorials of his reign. Heliopolis and Noph, Zoan and Sin, attest his grandeur. But the voice of another God now thunders in his ear. The exiled Hebrew has returned. The land is filled with plagues, frogs, lice, flies, blood, murrain, hail, locusts, darkness, death. The king has gone from Thebes to Zoan, his most northern seat, where these judgments overtake him. The land of Goshen, that had sweltered under his exactions, breathes more freely, and he lets the people go. But gathering his chariots of war in mad haste, he pursues them, and hems them in between the mountains and the sea. Eager for his prey, he plunges into the channel God has made for them, and the proud architect of Egypt returns not, even to occupy the gorgeous tomb he had prepared for himself at Thebes.

“The ages roll on, and a mighty conqueror sits on the throne of Egypt. With his myriad chariots he sweeps Ethiopia on the south, and Canaan on the north, and gathering all the forces of the Nile, he shakes Lebanon with his tread, and scatters the hosts of Syria on the plains of the Euphrates. And now there is an unwonted stir in Thebes. From all Egypt the priests and the great men are gathered to greet the conqueror’s return. In the distance, amid clouds of infantry, is seen the chariot of the king. Bound to his chariot wheels are the captive princes he has taken in his wars. Behind him are his son, and the royal scribe who bears the record of his victories. A long line of captives, bound about the necks with cords, follow in his train. The cortege moves from temple to temple through the city, till it reaches that of Karnak. Here, alighting from his chariot, the monarch enters the temple of Amunre, to present his captives and booty to the protecting deity of Thebes; then laying his captives on the block, with a ponderous club he dashes out their brains as a sacrifice to the god, and amid the acclamations of the people, is borne like a god to his own palace. And now the conqueror, reposing on his laurels, gives himself to the work of enriching the capital with new and more splendid edifices for the honor of its divinities, and the commemoration of his reign. From all Egypt are summoned the masons and sculptors, the painters and artificers and ‘cunning workmen;’ and the army that had stormed the hights of Lebanon now levies from the mountains of the Arabian desert their tribute of limestone and sandstone and granite of various hues, of syenite and porphyry and alabaster, to construct these temples, and to adorn these avenues. The grand hall of Karnak rises in its majestic proportions, a fit approach to the sanctuary of Amun. Its gates lift up their heads. Its tenfold avenues rear their massive, lofty, graceful pillars—each a single stone hewn into a rounded, swelling shaft, with a wreathed or flowered capital—and with their roof of solid stone, compose the portico that there in the moonlight, restored to its original perfection, stands confessed the wonder of the world. The chisel sculptures on its walls and columns the battle scenes of the king and his offerings to the god, and the name of _Osirei_ passes into history. His son succeeds to his victories and to his glory. For, on the far off plains of Asia, the great Sesostris breaks the power of the Assyrian hosts, and leads their captive chiefs in chains. Babylon bows to Egypt. There is another day of exultation in the capital; but the pomp of the returning Osirei pales before the national ovation to his son. The priests, in their sacred vestments, go forth to meet him, bearing aloft the figures of his illustrious ancestors, from Menes to Osirei. The king, alighting from his chariot, mounts the triumphal car prepared for his reception, whose fiery steeds are led by liveried grooms. His fan-bearers wave the flabella over his head, and the priests and the chief men of the nation kneel in homage at his throne. And now the grand procession forms to enter the city. Trumpeters herald its approach, and bands of music, with choristers, form the van. In long line the priests and officers of state precede the monarch, bearing scepters, arms, and other insignia, and the cushioned steps of the throne. The statues of his ancestors head the royal column, and after these is borne a statue of the god upon men’s shoulders under a gilded canopy. The sacred bull, adorned with garlands, is led by members of the sacerdotal order. The monarch is attended by his scribes, who exhibit proudly the scroll of his achievements. Behind his car are dragged the captives, their chained hands uplifted for mercy, and their cries and lamentations mingling wildly with the bursts of music and the shouts of the multitude. These are followed by the spoils of war—oxen, chariots, horses, and sacks of gold; and beyond, a corps of infantry in close array, flanked by numerous chariots, bring up the rear. The vast throng sweep from temple to temple, and rend the air with acclamations. At length the divinity, that had been taken from its shrine to welcome the victor, is brought before its own adytum. Here the high-priest offers incense to the monarch, who, in turn, alights from his throne and burns incense to the god. And now the horrid sacrifice of war is made to the patron deity. The wretched captives are beaten in the presence of the king; their right hands are cut off, and being counted by the scribes, are retained as trophies: their persons are horribly mutilated; their heads are severed by the sword or mangled by the mace, and the gorgeous, barbarous scene is closed.

“There is peace in Egypt; and the king builds, on yonder western bank, the majestic and beautiful Memnonium, covers its walls with the story of his victories, and sets before its gate the stupendous statue of himself, the symbol of the grandeur and the power of Egypt, enthroned in a sublime and an immortal repose. He builds the vast area of Luxor, with its massive gates and towers, and before these plants colossal statues of himself and lofty obelisks, and lines with huge symbolic sculptures the avenue to Karnak. Here he lays up before the shrine of Amun, as depicted on the walls, a gorgeous barge overlaid with gold without, and with silver within, a tribute from the spoils of war. He enriches the walls of the grand hall by adding to the sculptured story of his father’s reign the battle scenes of his own, and before the portico constructs this area of a hundred thousand square feet, surrounded with its covered corridor, and adorned with sphinxes and a central avenue of tufted columns, and faced with these stupendous towers. He throws around the whole a massive wall, and Karnak stands complete in the glory of the great Remeses. Then follows the resplendent dynasty of all the Osirei and the Remeses, and Egypt culminates to its meridian splendor. Her schools rise with her temples, and the epic bard of Scio sings the ‘hundred gates of Thebes,’ while the priests and the philosophers of young Greece resort to the mother of mythology and of letters, and Grecian sculptors come to study the forms and creations of the mother of art. The king of Israel, whose fame for wisdom and for wealth is known in all the earth, wooes the daughter of the king of Egypt, and she whom ‘the sun had looked upon’ on the confines of Ethiopia, shines in the golden palace at Jerusalem, ‘beautiful as Tirzeh, and comely as the tents of Kedar.’

“But again the hosts of Egypt are marshaled for battle; again they sweep the borders of the north; again is heard the shout of victory; again Thebes is astir for the conqueror’s return. Now _Shishak_ brings to the temple of Amun the treasures of the house of Jehovah at Jerusalem; the golden shields of Solomon, and the treasures of the palace he had built. Twelve hundred chariots, and sixty thousand horsemen, and footmen without number, swell the train of the victorious king. Nailing the heads of his wretched captives to the block of the executioner, he whets his sword to sacrifice them to the god; and the blood of Israel once more cries to God from the land of Egypt. From afar the voice of the prophet speaks the answer of Jehovah to that cry: ‘Behold, I am against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and will break his arms; and I will cause the sword to fall out of his hand. Howl ye; woe, woe the day! For the day is near, even the day of the Lord is near, a cloudy day. The sword shall come upon Egypt; and the pride of her power shall come down.’ Again a mighty host, sweeping from the north, hovers upon the plain of Thebes. The idols are moved in their temples, the cry of the people is in the streets. But it is not now the return of her victorious king that stirs the royal city. The great _ram_ from the plains of Persia, pushing westward and southward, gores Egypt with his horns, overthrows her temples and her statues, treads Memnon and Remeses in the dust, drinks up the river and devours the valley. There is sorrow and groaning in the land of Egypt for a hundred years, when lo! again the dust of mighty hosts sweeps from the north. The _he-goat_ from the west, moved with choler at the ram, that drinks up the great rivers, rushes upon him in the fury of his power, and casts him down and stamps upon him. The Persian conqueror of Thebes retires before the Macedonian conqueror of Persia. Greece, though a conqueror, pays homage to Egypt as her mistress. New cities are built; temples and monuments are restored. Upon the plain of Thebes, new works of art unite the sculptured records of the Ptolemies with the broken tablets of the Pharaohs. Karnak itself opens new portals, and revives its ancient splendor. Again the schools of Egypt are visited from Greece. And where Homer drank his inspiration, and Herodotus pored over the hieroglyphics, and the papyrus records, and the dim traditions of the _then_ old world, Plato comes to ponder the great mysteries of the soul’s existence, and its relations to the infinite.

“But the doom of Egypt is not yet fulfilled. Her resurrection can not now come. The gigantic _horn_ that sweeps the stars, trails the young Egypt of Alexander in the dust. Again she lifts her head and wooes her conqueror to repose awhile in the lap of luxury. Beauty usurps the dominion of power; and the golden barge of Cleopatra sweeps up the Nile with silken sails perfumed with sweetest odors, or moves with silver oars attuned to the soft melody of lutes. Rome adds her tamer art to the great majesty of Egypt, and restores yet further what the Persian had destroyed. Yet Egypt may not rise. A new power enters to possess the land. Under the Roman name, the religion that had visited the land with Abraham, with Joseph, and with Moses, comes to enshrine itself in these old temples, emptied of their gods and broken in their forms. The voice of prayer and praise to the God of Israel is heard in the temple built by their oppressor, and the name of the infant whom Egypt sheltered, is spoken with reverence and adoration in all her holy places. Yonder, in the furthest temple of this mighty pile, a Christian church assembles; there, in the court of Luxor, stands another Christian altar, while, across the river, the colonnade of Medeenet Abou encompasses the lesser columns of a Christian temple built within its folds. But the spirit of the old temple lingers in its form, and with it embraces the new. Again the liveried priests march through the corridors, bearing mysterious symbols, and chanting unknown strains. Again the pomp of state is blended with the pomp of worship, and the pictured saint but plasters over the sculptured deity. The religion and the empire of Rome are alike _effete_, and can give no life to Egypt. And now barbaric hordes from the east pour in upon the land, and sweep these both away. The sword of the Moslem, hacking the plastered walls, writes there in blood the forgotten truth, _there is one God_, though it add thereto the stupendous lie, that makes the other cardinal of his religion. The wild man of the desert pitches his tent upon the plain where Mizraim halted centuries before, or hides himself under the cover of broken tombs and temples. He hardly moves from his retreat, when the imperious Turk, his brother Moslem, proclaims himself master of Egypt and Arabia by the will of God. And now here sits the Arab on this luxurious plain, among these crumbling giants of the past, startled at his own shadow, without the spirit to fight either for himself against his tyrant, or for his country in that tyrant’s service. Here he sits, where Osirei and Remeses and Shishak have chronicled their names and deeds beside their own gigantic portraits. Here he sits, where moved in royal state the conqueror of Ethiopia, of Judah, of Syria, and of Babylon. Here he sits, where the fierce Cambyses dealt his retribution; where Alexander moved with a pomp that none but he could boast; where Cæsar followed in the train of mighty men—yet owned the greater might of woman. Here he sits—‘_Il faut descendre_,’ said my guide, who had tortured his Arabic gutturals into a rude French; ‘_il faut descendre_,’ (it is necessary to go down.) _Il faut descendre_, repeated I, as I looked over upon the tombs of the kings, all drear and ghostly in the moonlight; and looked where Memnon stood, and all was desolate; and looked toward Luxor, where the moonlight stole faintly through its broken towers; and turned and looked at Karnak, as the meridian moon now shone upon heaps of rubbish, and broken columns, and crumbling walls. _Il faut descendre_, IT MUST GO DOWN; and, turning to descend, I stumbled over an Arab hovel, plastered upon the very top of the tower of Sesostris, and heard the yelping of the dogs from the huts that bury the side temple of the conqueror of Babylon. The spell was broken; and Egypt was a dream. Riding back, amid barking dogs and shivering, shrinking Arabs, over the dusty plain to Luxor, I lay down upon the divan where, two months before, I had dreamed of Egypt, when, entering the Nile, I felt her resistless spell. But no dream of Egypt came. Egypt herself had vanished. _As a dream when one awaketh, so, O Lord, when thou awakedst, thou didst despise her image._”

OTHER RUINS IN EGYPT, &C.

There are in Egypt and the valley of the Nile, numerous other ruins, relics and monuments of the mighty past, on which it would be most interesting and instructive to dwell, were they not overshadowed by the wonderful structures we have been considering. Some of these, however, ought not to be passed without notice.

THE TEMPLE OF DENDERA.

The temple of Dendera (formerly Tentyra) is on the western bank of the Nile, nearly opposite Kenneh. Passing from the latter place, the path of the traveler leads through a palm grove, where the lofty shafts of the date and the vaulted foliage of the doum-palm, blend in the most picturesque groupage, and in contrast with the lace-like texture of the flowering mimosa, and the cloudy boughs of a kind of gray cypress. Crossing the meadows to Dendera, leagues of rank grass roll away toward the desert in shining billows, while the wind wafts the rich and mingled odors of the various flowers on the traveler’s course. In the midst of this beautiful plain, rise the earthy mounds of Dendera; and the portico of the temple, almost buried beneath them, stands like a beacon, marking the boundary of the desert. “We galloped our animals along the dike,” says a late traveler, “and dismounted at a small pylon, which stands two or three hundred paces in front of the temple. The huge jambs of sandstone, covered with sharply cut hieroglyphics and figures of the Egyptian gods, and surmounted by a single block, bearing the mysterious winged globe and serpent, detained us but a moment, and we hurried down what was once the dromos of the temple, now represented by a double wall of unburnt bricks. The portico, more than a hundred feet in length, and supported by six columns, united by screens of masonry, no stone of which, or of the columns themselves, is unsculptured, is massive and imposing, but struck me as being too depressed to produce a very grand effect. What was my astonishment, on arriving at the entrance, to find that I had approached the temple on a level with half its hight, and that the pavement of the portico was as far below as the scrolls of its cornice were above me. The six columns I had seen, covered three other rows, of six each, all adorned with the most elaborate sculpture and exhibiting traces of the brilliant coloring which they once possessed. The entire temple, which is in an excellent state of preservation, except where the hand of the Coptic Christian has defaced its sculptures, was cleaned out by order of Mohammed Ali, and as all its chambers, as well as the roof of enormous sandstone blocks, are entire, it is considered one of the most complete relics of Egyptian art. I find my pen at fault, when I attempt to describe the impression produced by the splendid portico. The twenty-four columns, each of which is sixty feet in hight, and eight feet in diameter, crowded upon a surface of one hundred feet by seventy, are oppressive in their grandeur. The dim light, admitted through the half closed front, which faces the north, spreads a mysterious gloom around these mighty shafts, crowned with the fourfold visage of Athor, still rebuking the impious hands that have marred her solemn beauty. On the walls, between columns of hieroglyphics, and the cartouches of the Cæsars and the Ptolemies, appear the principal Egyptian deities, the rigid Osiris, the stately Isis and the hawk-headed Orus. Around the bases of the columns spring the leaves of the sacred lotus, and the dark-blue ceiling is spangled with stars, between the wings of the divine emblem. The sculptures are all in raised relief, and there is no stone in the temple without them. I can not explain to myself the unusual emotion I felt while contemplating this wonderful combination of a simple and sublime architectural style with the utmost elaboration of ornament. My blood pulsed fast and warm on my first view of the Roman forum, but in Dendera I was so saddened and oppressed, that I scarcely dared speak for fear of betraying an unmanly weakness. The portico opens into a hall, supported by six beautiful columns, of smaller proportions, and lighted by a square aperture in the solid roof. On either side are chambers connected with dim and lofty passages, and beyond is the sanctuary and various other apartments, which receive no light from without. We examined their sculptures by the aid of torches, and our Arab attendants kindled large fires of dry corn-stalks, which cast a strong red light on the walls. The temple is devoted to Athor, the Egyptian Venus, and her image is everywhere seen, receiving the homage of her worshipers. Even the dark staircase, leading to the roof, up which we climbed over heaps of sand and rubbish, is decorated throughout with processions of symbolical figures. The drawing has little of that grotesque stiffness which I expected to find in Egyptian sculptures, and the execution is so admirable in its gradations of light and shade, as to resemble, at a little distance, a monochromatic painting. The antiquarians view these remains with little interest, as they date from the comparatively recent era of the Ptolemies, at which time sculpture and architecture were on the decline. We, who had seen nothing else of the kind, were charmed with the grace and elegance of this sumptuous mode of decoration. Part of the temple was built by Cleopatra, whose portrait, with that of her son Cæsarion, may still be seen on the exterior wall. The face of the colossal figure has been nearly destroyed, but there is a smaller one, whose soft, voluptuous outline is still sufficient evidence of the justness of her renown. The profile is exquisitely beautiful. The forehead and nose approach the Greek standard, but the mouth is more roundly and delicately curved, and the chin and cheek are fuller. Were such an outline made plastic, were the blank face colored with a pale olive hue, through which should blush a faint, rosy tinge, lighted with bold black eyes and irradiated with the lightning of a passionate nature, it would even now ‘move the mighty hearts of captains and of kings.’ Besides the temple, there are also the remains of a chapel of Isis, with a pylon, erected by Augustus Cæsar, and a small temple, nearly whelmed in the sand, supposed to be one of the _mammeisi_, or lying-in houses of the goddess Athor, who was honored in this form, on account of having given birth to the third member of the divine triad.”

THE TEMPLES OF HERMONTIS AND OF ESNEH.

Passing up the Nile, on the same side of it, and nearly opposite Luxor and Karnak, is the village of Erment, the ancient _Hermontis_, which is still graced with a small temple to the goddess Reto. “The group of pillars in the outer court,” says Taylor, “charmed us by the richness and variety of their designs. No two capitals are of similar pattern, while in their combinations of the papyrus, the lotus and the palm-leaf, they harmonize one with another and as a whole. The abacus, between the capital and the architrave, is so high as almost to resemble a second shaft. In Karnak and the Memnonium it is narrow, and lifts the ponderous beam just enough to prevent its oppressing the lightness of the capital. I was so delighted with the pillars of Hermontis that I scarcely knew whether to call this peculiarity a grace or a defect. I have never seen it employed in modern architecture, and judge therefore that it has either been condemned by our rules or that our architects have not the skill and daring of the Egyptians. We reached Esneh the same night, but were obliged to remain all the next day in order to allow our sailors to bake their bread. We employed the time in visiting the temple, the only remnant of the ancient Latopolis, and the palace of Abbas Pasha, on the bank of the Nile. The portico of the temple, half buried in rubbish, like that of Dendera, which it resembles in design, is exceedingly beautiful. Each of its twenty-four columns is crowned with a different capital, so chaste and elegant in their execution that it is impossible to give any one the preference. The designs are mostly copied from the doum-palm, the date-palm, and the lotus, but the cane, the vine, and various water-plants are also introduced. The building dates from the time of the Ptolemies, and its sculptures are uninteresting. We devoted all our time to the study of the capitals, a labyrinth of beauty, in which we were soon entangled. The governor of Esneh, a most friendly and agreeable Arab, accompanied us through the temple, and pointed out all the fishes, birds and crocodiles he could find, to him the most interesting things in it.” The same day they also visited the rock tombs of El-Kab, the ancient Eleuthyas, which are among the most curious in Egypt. “There are a large number of these, but only two are worth visiting, on account of the light which they throw on the social life of the Egyptians. The owner of the tomb and his wife, a red man and a yellow woman, are here seen, receiving the delighted guests. Seats are given them, and each is presented with an aromatic flower, while the servants in the kitchen hasten to prepare savory dishes. In other compartments, all the most minute processes of agriculture are represented with wonderful fidelity. So little change has taken place in three thousand years, that they would answer, with scarcely a correction, as illustrations of the Fellah agriculture of modern Egypt.”

The northern part of Nubia abounds in Egyptian remains, such, for example, as the temples of Dabod, Kalabshee, Dakkeh, Dendoor, Sebooa, &c., &c.; and the whole valley of the Nile is filled with the ruins of cities whose names have hardly survived their overthrow. Noticing but two or three more of these ruins, we will then pass on to other themes.

ABYDOS, AND THE TEMPLE OF MEMNON.

Abydos was the reputed burial-place of Osiris, one of the most sacred gods of ancient Egypt. According to Strabo, it formerly held the next rank to Thebes, and judging from its ruins, Wilkinson thinks it yielded to few cities in upper Egypt in size and magnificence. Going toward it from Girgeh, says Thompson, “we came upon a mound of sand and dust, and broken bricks and pottery, strewed over with bleaching human bones, and ascending this for several rods, and to an elevation of about sixty feet, we came out upon the massive blocks of stone that form the _roof_ of the old temple-palace of Memnon. Here, crawling upon our hands and knees, we got under the roof far enough to see that it covers two large halls supported by rows of massive columns, whose capitals are in the form of the lotus bud, still distinctly preserved. The walls, as far as could be seen, are covered with sculptures, among which the ibis frequently recurs; there are also ceremonial processions and battle scenes, such as are usually depicted in the sculptures of Egyptian temples. No doubt, if this temple should be excavated, it would be one of the most remarkable monuments in Egypt. It dates back nearly fourteen hundred years before Christ. The formation of the roof was peculiar. Large blocks of stone were laid endwise from one row of columns to the other, and then an arch was hollowed out of this solid masonry, still leaving a roof two feet in thickness at its center. The stones were so nicely adjusted, that they fitted closely without cement. The ceiling was studded with stars, and with sculptures beautifully colored. I have not seen in Egypt more exquisite workmanship. Yet the visitor is doomed to disappointment through the great difficulty of access to the temple, in consequence of the drifting in of the sand from the desert and the neighboring mountains. Near by is another temple, also inaccessible, the temple of Osiris, built by the great Remeses, and enriched with alabaster walls, some fragments of which may yet be found. The neighboring mountains are filled with tombs, some of which are nearly four thousand years old. Everything indicates that here was the site of a great city, a city of wealth, population and power, enriched with trophies of conquest and monuments of religion. But these buried temples alone remain, and the Arabs, who now squat in their rags upon the top of the splendid sanctuary of Osiris, have given to the place the expressive name of ‘_The Buried_.’”

THE TEMPLES OF ABOU SIMBEL.

Passing up the Nile to about latitude twenty-two degrees, on its west side, nearly up to the second cataract, we come to the temples of Abou Simbel. Reaching the bank of the river about midnight, the traveler we have so often quoted tells us: “As I was awakened from a deep sleep by the shock of the boat striking the shore, I saw a huge wall of rock before me, against which six enormous statues leaned as they looked from deep niches cut in its front. Their solemn faces were touched by the moon, which shone full on the cliff, and only their feet were wrapped in shadow. The lines of deep-cut hieroglyphics over the portal of this rocky temple were also filled with shadow, and painted legibly on the gray, moonlit rock. Below them yawned the door, a square of complete darkness. A little to the left, over a long drift of sand that sloped from the summit of the cliff nearly to the water’s edge, peered the mitered head of a statue of still more colossal proportions. I gazed on this broad, dim, and wonderful picture for a moment, so awed by its majesty that I did not ask myself where nor what it was. This is some grand Egyptian dream, was my first thought, and I closed my eyes for a few seconds, to see whether it would vanish. But it stood fast and silent as ever, and I knew it to be _Abou Simbel_. My servants all slept, and the raïs and boys noiselessly moored the boat to the shore, and then lay down and slept also. Still I lay, and the great statues looked solemnly down upon me, and the moon painted their kingly nomens and banners with yet darker distinctness on the gray rock. In the morning, I found that we lay at the foot of the smaller temple. I quietly waited for my cup of coffee, for the morning reality was infinitely less grand than my vision of the night. I then climbed to the door and entered. The interior is not large nor imposing, after one has seen the temples of Egypt. The exterior, however, is on such a colossal scale, that, notwithstanding the want of proportion in the different statues, the effect is very striking. The largest ones are about thirty-five feet high, and not identical, as are those of the great temple. One, who stands with one leg advanced, while he holds a sword with the handle pressed against his breast, is executed with much more spirit than is usually met with in statues of this period. The sculptures of the interior are interesting, and being of the time of Remeses the Great, whose history they illustrate, are executed with much skill and labor. The head of the goddess Athor, on the face of the columns in the hall, is much less beautiful than that of the same goddess at Dendera. It is, in fact, almost broad and distorted enough to represent the genius Typhon.

“The front of the great temple is not parallel to that of the other, nor does it face the river, which here flows in a north-east course. The line of the cliff is broken between the two, so that the figures of the great Remeses, seated on each side of the door, look to the east, the direction of the line of the face being nearly north. Through the gap in front, the sands have poured down from the desert behind, almost wholly filling up the space between the two cliffs; and though since the temple was first opened, in 1817, it has been cleared nearly to the base more than once, the rapid accumulation of sand has again almost closed the entrance. The southern colossus is only buried about half-way to the knee, but of the two northern ones there is little else to be seen except the heads. Obscured as is the effect of this grand front, it is still without parallel in the world. I had not thought it possible that in statues of such enormous magnitude there could be such singular beauty of expression. The face of Remeses, the same in each, is undoubtedly a portrait, as it resembles the faces of the statues in the interior, and those of the king in other places. Besides, there is an individuality in some of the features which is too marked to represent any general type of the Egyptian head. The fullness of the drooping eyelid, which yet does not cover the large, oblong Egyptian eye; the nose, at first slightly inclining to the aquiline, but curving to the round, broad nostrils; the generous breadth of the calm lips, and the placid, serene expression of the face, are worthy of the conqueror of Africa and the builder of Karnak and Medeenet Abou. The statue next the door, on the southern side, has been shivered to the throne on which it is seated, and the fragments are not to be seen, except a few which lie upon the knees. The great doorway of the temple is so choked up with sand, that I was obliged to creep in on my knees. The sun by this time had risen exactly to the only point where it can illumine the interior; and the rays, taking a more yellow hue from the rock and sand on which they fell, shone down the long drift between the double row of colossal statues, and lighted up the entrance to the second hall of the temple. I sat down in the sand, awed and half frightened by the singular appearance of the place. The sunshine, falling obliquely on the sands, struck a dim reflection against the sculptured roof, and even lighted up the furthest recesses of the grand hall sufficiently to show its imposing dimensions. Eight square pillars, four on either side of the central aisle, seem to uphold the roof, and on their inner sides, facing each other, are eight statues of the king. The features of all are preserved, and have something of the grace and serenity, though not the majesty, of the great statues outside. They look into each other’s eyes, with an eternal question on their fixed countenances, but none can give answer. There was something so stern and strange in these eight faces, that I felt a shudder of fear creep over me. The strong arms are all crossed on their breasts, and the hands hold various sacred and regal symbols, conspicuous among which is something resembling a flail, which one sees often in Egyptian sculpture. I thought of a marvelous story I once read, in which a genie, armed with a brazen flail, stands at the entrance of an enchanted castle, crushing with the stroke of his terrible weapon all who come to seek the treasure within. For a moment the childish faith in the supernatural was as strong as ever, and I looked at the gloomy entrance beyond, wishing to enter, but fearing the stony flails of the terrible Remesi on either hand. The faces were once partially colored, and the black eyeball, still remaining on the blank eye of stone, gives them an expression of stupor, of death in life, which accounted to me for the nervous shock I experienced on entering.

“There is nothing in Egypt which can be likened to the great temple of Abou-Simbel. Karnak is grander, but its grandeur is human. This belongs rather to the superhuman fancies of the East—the halls of the Afrites—or to the realm of the dethroned Titans, of early Greek mythology. This impression is not diminished, on passing the second hall and corridor, and entering the adytum, or sacred chamber of the temple. There the granite altar yet stands in the center, before the undestroyed figures of the gods, who, seated side by side, calmly await the offerings of their worshipers. The peculiar individuality of each deity is strikingly shown in these large statues, and their attitude is much less constrained than in the sitting statues in the tombs of Thebes. These look as if they _could_ rise, if they would. The walls are covered with sculptures of them and of the contemplar deities, in the grand, bold style of the age of Remeses. Some visitors had left a supply of dry palm-branches near the entrance, and of these I made torches, which blazed and crackled fiercely, flaring with a rich red light on the sculptured and painted walls. There was sufficient to enable me to examine all the smaller chambers, of which there are eight or nine, cut laterally into the rock, without any attempt at symmetry of form, or regularity of arrangement. Several of them have seats running around three sides, exactly like the divans in modern Egyptian houses. They were probably designed for the apartments of the priests or servants connected with the temple. The sculptures on the walls of the grand hall are, after those of Medeenet Abou, and on the exterior wall of Karnak, the most interesting I have seen in Egypt. On the end wall, on either side of the entrance, is a colossal bass-relief, representing Remeses slaying a group of captive kings, whom he holds by the hair of their heads. There are ten or twelve in each group, and the features, though they are not colored, exhibit the same distinction of race as I had previously remarked in Belzoni’s tomb, at Thebes. There is the negro, the Persian, the Jew, and one other form of countenance which I could not make out, all imploring with uplifted hands the mercy of the conqueror. On the southern wall, the distinction between the negro and the Egyptian is made still more obvious by the coloring of the figures. In fact, I see no reason whatever to doubt that the peculiar characteristics of the different races of men were as strongly marked in the days of Remeses as at present. The sculptures on the side walls of the temple represent the wars of Remeses, who, as at Medeenet Abou, stands in a chariot which two horses at full speed whirl into the ranks of the enemy. The king discharges his arrows against them, and directly in front of him a charioteer, mortally wounded, is hurled from his overthrown chariot. The groups are chiseled with great spirit and boldness; the figures of the king and his horses are full of life. Towering over all, as well by his superior proportions as by the majesty and courage of his attitude, Remeses stands erect and motionless amid the shock and jar and riot of battle. There is no exultation in his face; only the inflexible calmness of destiny. I spent some time contemplating these grand and remarkable memorials of the greatest age of Egypt, and left with my feeling for Egyptian art even stronger than before.”

THE RIVER NILE.

“With annual pomp,
Rich king of floods! o’erflows the swelling Nile!”—THOMPSON.

Though the river Nile is properly to be classified with the wonders of nature, rather than with those of art, yet as it is so intimately and constantly associated with the wonderful ruins that everywhere line its banks, it may be well to notice it before passing from the wonders of Egypt and of the regions south of it. This celebrated river, which divides Egypt into two parts, and passes on south through Nubia, Ethiopia, &c., is formed mainly by two streams, the Blue Nile and the White Nile. The Blue Nile, the sources of which were discovered by Bruce, rises near latitude eleven degrees north, in the mountains of Godjam, on the south-western frontier of Abyssinia, and flows with a winding course some eight hundred miles to Khartoum, where it unites with the western branch of the river, thus forming the main stream. The sources of the White Nile (so called from the light brown, muddy color of its waters, as the Blue is from the dark bluish-green of its stream) are as yet undiscovered. Twelve hundred miles above its junction, and thirty-three hundred above the Mediterranean, it is still a broad and powerful stream, of whose source even the tribes that dwell in those far off regions are ignorant. Taylor is confident, that when its hidden fountains shall at last be reached, and the problem of twenty centuries solved, the entire length of the Nile will be found to be not less than _four thousand miles_, and that it will take rank with the Mississippi and the Amazon, as one of the three great streams of the world. In some respects, he says, “there is a striking resemblance between the Nile and the former river. The Missouri is the true Mississippi, rolling the largest flood, and giving its color to the mingled streams. So the White Nile, which is broad and turbid, pollutes the clear blue flood that has usurped his name and dignity. In spite of what geographers may say, and they are still far from being united on the subject, the Blue Nile is not the true Nile. There, at the point of junction, his volume of water is greater, but he is fresh from the mountains and constantly fed by large, unfailing affluents, while the White Nile has rolled for more than a thousand miles on nearly a dead level, through a porous, alluvial soil, in which he loses more water than he brings with him.” The two rivers meet at right angles, but do not mingle their waters till they have rolled some eight or ten miles in their common bed. Both rivers are of about the same breadth at the point of confluence, but the current of the Blue branch is the strongest. On this account, the native boatmen speak of the Blue river as _he_, and of the White as _she_. And it is remarkable that the name Nile, which is never heard in Egypt, (where the river is called _el-bahr_, “the sea,”) is retained in Ethiopia, and there applied to the Blue Nile, probably for the same reason.