The central or gateway tower is substantially perfect. The writer, with help, got as high as the first chamber; the ceiling of which is painted in a rich and intricate pattern, as in imitation of mosaic. The top room is difficult of access, but can be reached by a good climber. Our friend F. W. S., who made his way up there a year or two before, found upon the walls some interesting sculptures of cups and vases, apparently part of an illustrated inventory of domestic utensils. Three of these (unlike any engraved in the works of Wilkinson or Rosellini) are here reproduced from his sketch made upon the spot. The lid of the smaller vase, it will be observed, opens by means of a lever spooned out for the thumb to rest in, just like the lid of a German beer-mug of the present day.
The external decorations of the two lodges are of especial interest. The lower subjects are historical. Those upon the upper stories are domestic or symbolical, and are among the most celebrated of Egyptian bas-reliefs. They have long been supposed to represent Rameses III in his hareem, entertained and waited upon by female slaves. In one group the king, distinguished always by his cartouches, sits at ease in a kind of folding-chair, his helmet on his head, his sandaled feet upon a footstool, as one returned and resting after battle. In his left hand he holds a round object like a fruit. With the right he chucks under the chin an ear-ringed and necklaced damsel, who presents a lotus-blossom at his nose. In another much mutilated subject they are represented playing a game at draughts. This famous subject—which can only be seen when the light strikes sidewise—would scarcely be intelligible save for the help one derives from the cuts in Wilkinson and the plates in Rosellini. It is not that the sculptures are effaced, but that the great blocks which bore them are gone from their places, having probably been hurled down bodily upon the heads of the enemy during a certain siege of which the ruins bear evident traces.[203]Of the lady there remains little besides the arm and the hand that holds thepawn. The table has disappeared. The king has lost his legs. It happens, however, though the table is missing, that the block next above it contained the pawns, which can still be discerned from below by the help of a glass. Rosellini mentions three or four more subjects of a similar character, including a second group of draught-players, all visible in his time. The writer, however, looked for them in vain.
These tableaux are supposed to illustrate the home-life of Rameses III, and to confirm the domestic character of the pavilion. Even the scarab-selling Arabs that haunt the ruins, even the donkey boys of Luxor, call it the hareem of the sultan. Modern science, however, threatens to dispel one at least of these pleasant fancies.
The king, it seems, under the name of Rhampsinitus, is the hero of a very ancient legend related by Herodotus. While he yet lived, runs the story, he descended into hades, and there played a game at draughts with the Goddess Demeter, from whom he won a golden napkin; in memory of which adventure, and of his return to earth, “the Egyptians,” says Herodotus, “instituted a festival which they certainly celebrated in my day.”[204]In another version as told by Plutarch, Isis is substituted for Demeter. Viewing these tales by the light of a certain passage of the ritual, in which the happy dead is promised “power to transform himself at will, to play at draughts, to repose in a pavilion,” Dr. Birch has suggested that the whole of this scene may be of a memorial character, and represent an incident in the land of shades.[205]
Below these “hareem” groups come colossal bas-reliefsof a religious and military character. The king, as usual, smites his prisoners in presence of the gods. A slender and spirited figure in act to slay, the fiery hero strides across the wall “like Baal[206]descended from the heights of heaven. His limbs are indued with the force of victory. With his right hand he seizes the multitudes; his left reaches like an arrow after those who fly before him. His sword is sharp as that of his father Mentu.”[207]
Below these great groups run friezes sculptured with kneeling figures of vanquished chiefs, among whom are Libyan, Sicilian, Sardinian, and Etruscan leaders. Every head in these friezes is a portrait. The Libyan is beardless; his lips are thin; his nose is hooked; his forehead retreats; he wears a close-fitting cap with a pendant hanging in front of the ear. The features of the Sardinian chief[208]are no less Asiatic. He wears the usual Sardinian helmet surmounted by a ball and two spikes. The profile of the Sicilian closely resembles that of the Sardinian. He wears a head-dress like the modern Persian cap. As ethnological types, these heads are extremely valuable. Colonists not long since departed from the western coasts of Asia Minor, these early European settlers are seen with the Asiatic stamp of features; a stamp which has now entirely disappeared.
Other European nations are depicted elsewhere in theseMedinet Habu sculptures. Pelasgians from the Greek isles; Oscans perhaps from Pompeii; Daunians from the districts between Tarentum and Brundusium, figure here, each in their national costume. Of these, the Pelasgian alone resembles the modern European. On the left wall of the pavilion gateway, going up toward the temple, there is a large bas-relief of Rameses III leading a string of captives into the presence of Amen-Ra. Among these, the sculptures being in a high state of preservation, there are a number of Pelasgians, some of whom have features of the classical Greek type, and are strikingly handsome. The Pelasgic head-dress resembles our old infantry shako; and some of the men wear disk-shaped amulets pierced with a hole in the center through which is passed the chain that suspends it round the neck.
Leaving to the left a fine sitting statue of Khons in green basalt and to the right his prostrate fellow, we pass under the gateway, cross a space of desolate crude-brick mounds, and see before us the ruins of the first pylon of the great Temple of Khem. Once past the threshold of this pylon we enter upon a succession of magnificent court-yards. The hieroglyphs here are on a colossal scale, and are cut deeper than any others in Egypt. They are also colored with a more subtle eye to effect. Struck by the unusual splendor of some of the blues and by a peculiar look of scintillation which they assumed in certain lights, I examined them particularly and found that the effect had been produced by very subtle shades of gradation in what appeared at first sight to be simple flat tints. In some of the reeds, for instance, the ground-color begins at the top of the leaf in pure cobalt, and passes imperceptibly down to a tint that is almost emerald green at the bottom.[209]
The inner walls of this great court-yard and the outer face of the northeast wall, are covered with sculptures outlined, so to say, in intaglio, and relieved in the hollow, so that the forms, though rounded, remain level with the general surface. In these tableaux the old world livesagain. Rameses III, his sons and nobles, his armies, his foes, play once more the brief drama of life and death. Great battles are fought; great victories are won; the slain are counted; the captured drag their chains behind the victor’s chariot; the king triumphs, is crowned and sacrifices to the gods. Elsewhere more wars, more slaughter. There is revolt in Libya; there are raids on the Asiatic border; there are invaders coming in ships from the islands of the Great Sea. The royal standard is raised; troops assemble; arms are distributed. Again the king goes forth in his might, followed by the flower of Egyptian chivalry. “His horsemen are heroes; his foot-soldiers are as lions that roar in the mountains.” The king himself flames “like Mentu in his hour of wrath.” He falls upon the foe “with the swiftness of a meteor.” Here, crowded in rude bullock-trucks, they seek safety in flight. Yonder, their galleys are sunk; their warriors are slain, drowned, captured, scathed, as it were, in a devouring fire. “Never again will they sow seed or reap harvest on the fair face of the earth.”
“Behold!” says the Pharaoh, “Behold! I have taken their frontiers for my frontiers! I have devastated their towns, burned their crops, trampled their people under foot. Rejoice, O Egypt! Exalt thy voice to the heavens; for behold! I reign over all the lands of the barbarians! I, king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Rameses III!”[210]
Such, linked each to each, by a running commentary of text, are the illustrations. The story is written elsewhere. Elaborately hieroglyphed in upward of seventy closely packed columns, it covers the whole eastern face of the great north tower of the second propylon. This propylon divides the Osiride and Hypæthral courts, so that the inscription faces those entering the temple and precedes the tableaux. Not even the poem of Pentaur is more picturesque, not even the psalms of David are more fervid, than the style of this great chronicle.[211]
The writer pitched her tent in the doorway of the first propylon, and thence sketched the northwest corner of the court-yard, including the tower with the inscription and the Osiride colossi. The roof of the colonnade to the right is cumbered with crude-brick ruins of mediæval date. The hieroglyphs, sculptured along the architrave and down the sides of the pillars, are still bright with color. The colossi are all the worse for three thousand years of ill-usage. Through the sculptured doorway opposite, one looks across the hypæthral court, and catches a glimpse of the ruined hall of pillars beyond.
While the writer was at work in the shade of the first pylon, an Arab story-teller took possession of the opposite doorway, and entertained the donkey boys and sailors. Well paid with a little tobacco and a few copper piasters, he went on for hours, his shrill chant rising every now and then to a quavering scream. He was a wizened, grizzled old fellow, miserably poor and tattered; but he had the “Arabian Nights” and hundreds of other tales by heart.
Mariette was of opinion that the temple of Medinet Habu, erected as it is on the side of the great Theban necropolis, is like the Ramesseum, a funerary monument erected by Rameses III in his own lifetime to his own memory. These battered colossi represent the king in the character of Osiris, and are in fact on a huge scale precisely what the ordinary funerary statuettes are upon a small scale. They would be out of place in any but a monumental edifice; and they alone suffice to determine the character of the building.
And such, no doubt, was the character of the Amenophium; of the little temple called Dayr el Medinet; of the temple of Queen Hatshepsu, known as Dayr el Bahari; of the temple of Gournah; of almost every important structure erected upon this side of the river. Of the Amenophium there remain only a few sculptured blocks, a few confused foundations, and—last representatives of an avenue of statues of various sizes—the famous colossi of the plain.[212]The temple of Dayr el Bahari—built interraces up the mountain side, and approached once upon a time by a magnificent avenue of sphinxes, the course of which is yet visible—would probably be, if less ruined, the most interesting temple on the western side of the river. The monumental intention of this building is shown by its dedication to Hathor, the Lady of Amenti; and by the fact that the tomb of Queen Hatshepsu was identified by Rhind some twenty-five years ago as one of the excavated sepulchers in the cliff-side, close to where the temple ends by abutting against the rock.
As for the Temple of Gournah, it is, at least in part, as distinctly a memorial edifice as the Medici Chapel at Florence or the Superga at Turin. It was begun by Seti I in memory of his father Rameses I, the founder of the nineteenth dynasty. Seti, however, died before the work was completed. Hereupon Rameses II, his son and successor, extended the general plan, finished the part dedicated to his grandfather, and added sculptures to the memory of Seti I. Later still, Menepthah, the son and successor of Rameses II, left his cartouches upon one of the doorways. The whole building, in short, is a family monument, and contains a family portrait gallery. Here all the personageswhose names figure in the shrines of the Ramessides at Silsilis are depicted in their proper persons. In one tableau, Rameses I, defunct, deified,[213]swathed, enshrined, and crowned like Osiris, is worshiped by Seti I. Behind Seti stands his Queen Tuaa, the mother of Rameses II. Elsewhere Seti I, being now dead, is deified and worshiped by Rameses II, who pours a libation to his father’s statue. Through all these handsome heads there runs a striking family likeness. All more or less partake of that Dantesque type which characterizes the portraits of Rameses II in his youth. The features of Rameses I and Seti I are somewhat pinched and stern, like the Dante of elder days. The delicate profile of Queen Tuaa, which is curiously like some portraits of Queen Elizabeth, is perhaps too angular to be altogether pleasing. But in the well-known face of Rameses II these harsher details vanish, and the beauty of the race culminates. The artists of Egyptian renaissance, always great in profile-portraiture, are nowhere seen to better advantage than in this interesting series.
Adjoining what may be called the monumental part of the building, we find a number of halls and chambers, the uses of which are unknown. Most writers assume that they were the private apartments of the king. Some go so far as to give the name of temple-palaces to all these great funerary structures. It is, however, far more probable that these western temples were erected in connection, though not in direct communication, with the royal tombs in the adjacent valley of Bab-el-Molûk.
Now every Egyptian tomb of importance has its outer chamber or votive oratory, the walls of which are covered with paintings descriptive, in some instances, of the occupations of the deceased upon earth, and in others ofthe adventures of his soul after death. Here at stated seasons the survivors repaired with offerings. No priest, it would seem, of necessity officiated at these little services. A whole family would come, bringing the first fruits of their garden, the best of their poultry, cakes of home-made bread, bouquets of lotus blossoms. With their own hands they piled the altar; and the eldest son, as representative of the rest, burned the incense and poured the libations. It is a scene constantly reproduced upon monuments[214]of every epoch. These votive oratories, however, are wholly absent in the valley of Bab-el-Molûk. The royal tombs consist of only tunneled passages and sepulchral vaults, the entrances to which were closed forever as soon as the sarcophagus was occupied; hence, it may be concluded that each memorial temple played to the tomb of its tutelary saint and sovereign that part which is played by the external oratory attached to the tomb of a private individual. Nor must it be forgotten that as early as the time of the pyramid kings, there was a votive chapel attached to every pyramid, the remains of which are traceable in almost every instance, on the east side. There were also priests of the pyramids, as we learn from innumerable funerary inscriptions.
An oratory on so grand a scale would imply an elaborate ceremonial. A dead and deified king would doubtless have his train of priests, his daily liturgies, processions, and sacrifices. All this again implies additional accommodation, and accounts, I venture to think, for any number of extra halls and chambers. Such sculptures as yet remain on the walls of these ruined apartments are, in fact, wholly funereal and sacrificial in character. It is also to be remembered that we have here a temple dedicated totwo kings, and served most likely by a twofold college of priests.[215]
The wall-sculptures at Gournah are extremely beautiful, especially those erected by Seti I. Where it has been accidentally preserved, the surface is as smooth, the execution as brilliant, as the finest mediæval ivory carving. Behind a broken column, for instance, that leans against the southwest wall of the sanctuary,[216]one may see, by peeping this way and that, the ram’s-head prow of a sacred boat, quite unharmed, and of surpassing delicacy. The modeling of the ram’s head is simply faultless. It would indeed be scarcely too much to say that this one fragment, if all the rest had perished, would alone place the decorative sculpture of ancient Egypt in a rank second only to that of Greece.
The Temple of Gournah—northernmost of the Theban group—stands at the mouth of that famous valley called by the Arabs Bab-el-Molûk,[217]and by travelers, the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. This valley may be described as a bifurcated ravine, ending in twoculs de sac, and hemmed in on all sides by limestone precipices. It winds round behind the cliffs which face Luxor and Karnak, and runs almost parallel with the Nile. This range of cliffs is perforated on both sides with tombs. The priests and nobles of many dynasties were buried terrace above terrace on the side next the river. Back to back with them, in the silent and secret valley beyond, slept the kings in their everlasting sepulchers.
Most travelers moor for a day or two at Karnak, and thence make their excursion to Bab-el-Molûk. By so doing they lose one of the most interesting rides in the neighborhood of Thebes. L—— and the writer started from Luxor one morning about an hour after daybreak, crossing the river at the usual point and thence riding northward along thebank, with the Nile on the one hand, and the corn-lands on the other. In the course of such rides one discovers the almost incredible fertility of the Thebaid. Every inch of arable ground is turned to account. All that grows, grows lustily. The barley ripples in one uninterrupted sweep from Medinet Habu to a point half-way between the Ramesseum and Gournah. Next come plantations of tobacco, cotton, hemp, linseed, maize and lentils, so closely set, so rich in promise, that the country looks as if it were laid out in allotment grounds for miles together. Where the rice crop has been gathered, clusters of temporary huts have sprung up in the clearings; for the fellahîn come out from their crowded villages in “the sweet o’ the year,” and live in the midst of the crops which now they guard, and which presently they will reap. The walls of these summer huts are mere wattled fences of Indian corn straw, with bundles of the same laid lightly across the top by way of roofing. This pastoral world is everywhere up and doing. Here are men plying the shâdûf by the river’s brink; women spinning in the sun; children playing; dogs barking; larks soaring and singing overhead. Against the foot of the cliffs yonder, where the vegetation ends and the tombs begin, there flows a calm river edged with palms. A few months ago, we should have been deceived by that fairy water. We know now that it is the mirage.
Striking off by and by toward the left, we make for a point where the mountains recede and run low, and a wedge-like “spit” of sandy desert encroaches upon the plain. On the verge of this spit stands a clump of sycamores and palms. A row of old yellow columns supporting a sculptured architrave gleams through the boughs; a little village nestles close by; and on the desert slope beyond, in the midst of the desolate Arab burial-ground, we see a tiny mosque with one small cupola, dazzling white in the sunshine. This is Gournah. There is a spring here, and some girls are drawing water from the well near the temple. Our donkeys slake their thirst from the cattle-trough—a broken sarcophagus that may once have held the mummy of a king. A creaking sakkieh is at work yonder, turned by a couple of red cows with mild Hathor-like faces. The old man who drives them sits in the middle of the cog-wheel, and goes slowly round as if he was being roasted.
We now leave behind us the well, and the trees, and the old Greek-looking temple, and turn our faces westward, bound for an opening yonder among cliffs pitted with the mouths of empty tombs. It is plain to see that we are now entering upon what was once a torrent-bed. Rushing down from the hills, the pent-up waters have here spread fan-like over the slope of the desert, strewing the ground with bowlders, and plowing it into hundreds of tortuous channels. Up that torrent-bed lies our road to-day.
The weird rocks stand like sentinels to right and left as one enters the mouth of the valley, and take strange shapes as of obelisks and sphinxes. Some, worn at the base, and towering like ruined pyramids above, remind us of tombs on the Appian Way. As the ravine narrows, the limestone walls rise higher. The chalky track glares under foot. Piles of shivered chips sparkle and scintillate at the foot of the rocks. The cliffs burn at a white heat. The atmosphere palpitates like gaseous vapor. The sun blazes overhead. Not a breath stirs; neither is there a finger’s breadth of shade on either side. It is like riding into the mouth of a furnace. Meanwhile, one looks in vain for any sign of life. No blade of green has grown here since the world began. No breathing creature makes these rocks its home. All is desolation—such desolation as one dreams of in a world scathed by fire from heaven.
When we have gone a long way, always tracking up the bed of the torrent, we come to a place where our donkeys turn off from the main course and make for what is evidently a forced passage cut clean through a wall of solid limestone. The place was once a mere recess in the cliffs; but on the farther side, masked by a natural barrier of rocks, there lay another valley leading to a secluded amphitheater among the mountains. The first Pharaoh who chose his place of burial among those hidden ways, must have been he who cut the pass and leveled the road by which we now travel. This cutting is Bab-el-Molûk—the gate of the king; a name which doubtless perpetuates that by which the place was known to the old Egyptians. Once through the gate, a grand mountain rises into view. Egypt is the land of strange mountains; and here is one which reproduces on a giant scale every feature of the pyramid of Ouenephes at Sakkarah. It is square; it rises stage above stage in ranges of columnar cliffs with slopesof débris between; and it terminates in a blunt four-sided peak nearly eighteen hundred feet above the level of the plain.
Keeping this mountain always before us, we now follow the windings of the second valley, which is even more narrow, parched and glaring than the first. Perhaps the intense heat makes the road appear longer than it really is, but it seems to us like several miles. At length the uniformity of the way is broken. Two small ravines branch off, one to the right, one to the left, and in both, at the foot of the rocks, there are here and there to be seen square openings like cellar-doors, half-sunk below the surface, and seeming to shoot downward into the bowels of the earth. In another moment or so, our road ends suddenly in a wild, tumbled waste like tin exhausted quarry, shut in all round by impending precipices, at the base of which more rock-cut portals peep out at different points.
From the moment when it first came into sight I had made certain that in that pyramidal mountain we should find the tombs of the kings—so certain, that I can scarcely believe our guide when he assures us that these cellars are the places we have come to see, and that the mountain contains not a single tomb. We alight, however, climb a steep slope, and find ourselves on the threshold of number seventeen.
“Belzoni-tomb,” says our guide; and Belzoni’s tomb, as we know, is the tomb of Seti I.
I am almost ashamed to remember now that we took our lunches in the shade of that solemn vestibule, and rested and made merry before going down into the great gloomy sepulcher, whose staircases and corridors plunged away into the darkness below as if they led straight to the land of Amenti.
The tombs in the Valley of Bab-el-Molûk are as unlike tombs in the cliffs opposite Luxor as if the Theban kings and the Theban nobles were of different races and creeds. Those sacred scribes and dignitaries, with their wives and families and their numerous friends and dependents, were a joyous set. They loved the things of this life, and would fain have carried their pursuits and pleasures with them into the land beyond the grave. So they decorated the walls of their tombs with pictures of the way in which their lives were spent, and hoped perhaps that the mummy,dreaming away its long term of solitary waiting, might take comfort in those shadowy reminiscences. The kings, on the contrary, covered every foot of their last palaces with scenes from the life to come. The wanderings of the soul after its separation from the body, the terrors and dangers that beset it during its journey through hades, the demons it must fight, the accusers to whom it must answer, the transformations it must undergo, afforded subjects for endless illustration. Of the fishing and fowling and feasting and junketing that we saw the other day in those terraces behind the Ramesseum, we discover no trace in the tombs of Bab-el-Molûk. In place of singing and lute-playing we find here prayers and invocations; for the pleasant Nile boat and the water parties and the chase of the gazelle and the ibex, we now have the bark of Charon and the basin of purgatorial fire and the strife with the infernal deities. The contrast is sharp and strange. It is as if an epicurean aristocracy had been ruled by a line of Puritan kings. The tombs of the subjects are Anacreontics. The tombs of their sovereigns are penitential psalms.
To go down into one of those great sepulchers is to descend one’s self into the lower world and to tread the path of the shades. Crossing the threshold we look up—half expecting to read those terrible words in which all who enter are warned to leave hope behind them. The passage slopes before our feet; the daylight fades behind us. At the end of the passage comes a flight of steps, and from the bottom of that flight of steps we see another corridor slanting down into depths of utter darkness. The walls on both sides are covered with close-cut columns of hieroglyphic text, interspersed with ominous shapes, half-deity, half-demon. Huge serpents writhe beside us along the walls. Guardian spirits of threatening aspect advance, brandishing swords of flame. A strange heaven opens overhead—a heaven where the stars travel in boats across the seas of space; and the sun, escorted by the hours, the months and the signs of the zodiac, issues from the east, sets in the west and traverses the hemisphere of everlasting night. We go on and the last gleam of daylight vanishes in the distance. Another flight of steps leads now to a succession of passages and halls, some smaller, some larger, some vaulted, some supported onpillars. Here yawns a great pit half-full of débris. Yonder opens a suite of unfinished chambers abandoned by the workmen. The farther we go the more weird become our surroundings. The walls swarm with ugly and evil things. Serpents, bats and crocodiles, some with human heads and legs, some vomiting fire, some armed with spears and darts, pursue and torture the wicked. These unfortunates have their hearts torn out; are boiled in caldrons; are suspended, head downward, over seas of flame; are speared, decapitated and driven in headless gangs to scenes of further torment. Beheld by the dim and shifting light of a few candles, these painted horrors assume an aspect of ghastly reality. They start into life as we pass, then drop behind us into darkness. That darkness alone is awful. The atmosphere is suffocating. The place is ghostly and peopled with nightmares.
Elsewhere we come upon scenes less painful. The sun emerges from the lower hemisphere. The justified dead sow and reap in the Elysian fields, gather celestial fruits, and bathe in the waters of truth. The royal mummy reposes in its shrine. Funerary statues of the king are worshiped with incense and offerings of meat and libations of wine.[218]Finally the king arrives, purified and justified, at the last stage of his spiritual journey. He is welcomed by the gods, ushered into the presence of Osiris, and received into the abode of the blest.[219]
Coming out for a moment into blinding daylight, we drink a long draught of pure air, cross a few yards of uneven ground, arrive at the month of another excavation, and plunge again into underground darkness. A third and a fourth time we repeat this strange experience. It is like a feverish sleep, troubled by gruesome dreams and broken by momentary wakings. These tombs in a general way are very much alike. Some are longer than others;[220]some loftier. In some the descent is gradual; in others it is steep and sudden. Certain leading features are common to all. The great serpent,[221]the scarab,[222]the bat,[223]the crocodile,[224]are always conspicuous on the walls. The judgment-scene, and the well-known typical picture of the four races of mankind, are continually reproduced. Some tombs,[225]however, vary both in plan and decoration. Thatof Rameses III, though not nearly so beautiful as the tomb of Seti I, is perhaps the most curious of all. The paintings here are for the most part designed on an unsculptured surface coated with white stucco. The drawing is often indifferent, and the coloring is uniformly coarse and gaudy. Yellow abounds; and crude reds and blues remind us of the colored picture-books of our childhood. It is difficult to understand, indeed, how the builder of Medinet Habu, with the best Egyptian art of the day at his command, should have been content with such wall-paintings as these.
Still Rameses III seems to have had a grand idea of going in state to the next world, with his retainers around him. In a series of small ante-chambers opening off from the first corridor we see depicted all the household furniture, all the plate, the weapons, the wealth and treasure of the king. Upon the walls of one the cooks and bakers are seen preparing the royal dinner. In the others are depicted magnificent thrones; gilded galleys with party-colored sails; gold and silver vases; rich stores of arms and armor; piles of precious woods, of panther skins, of fruits and birds and curious baskets, and all such articles of personal luxury as a palace-building Pharaoh might delight in. Here, also, are the two famous harpers; cruelly defaced, but still sweeping the strings with the old powerful touch that erewhile soothed the king in his hours of melancholy. These two spirited figures—which are undoubtedly portraits[226]—almost redeem the poverty of the rest of the paintings.
In many tombs the empty sarcophagus yet occupies its ancient place.[227]We saw one in No. 2 (Rameses IV), andanother in No. 9 (Rameses VI); the first, a grand monolith of dark granite, overturned and but little injured; the second, shattered by early treasure-seekers.
Most of the tombs at Bab-el-Molûk were open in Ptolemaic times. Being then, as now, among the stock sights and wonders of Thebes, they were visited by crowds of early travelers, who have, as usual, left their neatly scribbled graffiti on the walls. When and by whom the sepulchers were originally violated is of course unknown. Some, doubtless, were sacked by the Persians; others were plundered by the Egyptians themselves, long enough before Cambyses. Not even in the days of the Ramessides, though a special service of guards was told off for duty in “the great valley,” were the kings safe in their tombs. During the reign of Rameses IX—whose own tomb is here and known as No. 6—there seems to have been an organized band, not only of robbers, but of receivers, who lived by depredations of the kind. A contemporary papyrus[228]tells how, in one instance, the royal mummies were found lying in the dust, their gold and silver ornaments and the treasures of their tombs all stolen.In another instance, a king and his queen were carried away bodily, to be unrolled and rifled at leisure. This curious information is all recorded in the form of a report, drawn up by the commandant of Western Thebes, who, with certain other officers and magistrates, officially inspected the tombs of the “royal ancestor,” during the reign of Rameses IX.
No royal tomb has been found absolutely intact in the valley of Bab-el-Molûk. Even that of Seti I had been secretly entered ages before ever Belzoni discovered it. He found in it statues of wood and porcelain, and the mummy of a bull; but nothing of value save the sarcophagus, which was empty. There can be no doubt that the priesthood were largely implicated in these contemporary sacrileges. Of thirty-nine persons accused by name in the papyrus just quoted, seven are priests and eight are sacred scribes.
To rob the dead was always a lucrative trade at Thebes; and we may be certain that the splendid Pharaohs who slept in the valley of the tombs of the kings,[229]went totheir dark palaces magnificently equipped for the life to come.[230]When, indeed, one thinks of the jewels, furniture, vases, ointments, clothing, arms, and precious documents which were as certainly buried in those tombs as the royal mummies for whom they were excavated, it seems far more wonderful that the parure of one queen should have escaped, rather than that all the rest of these dead and gone royalties should have fallen among thieves.
Of all tombs in the valley of Bab-el-Molûk, one would rather, I think, have discovered that of Rameses III. As he was one of the richest of the Pharaohs[231]and an undoubted virtuoso in his tastes, so we may be sure that his tomb was furnished with all kinds of beautiful and precious things. What would we not give now to find some of those elaborategold and silver vases, those cushioned thrones and sofas, those bows and quivers and shirts of mail so carefully catalogued on the walls of the side-chambers in the first corridor! I do not doubt that specimens of all these things were buried with the king and left ready for his use. He died, believing that his Ka would enjoy and make use of these treasures, and that his soul would come back after long cycles of probation, and make its home once more in the mummied body. He thought he should rise as from sleep; cast off his bandages; eat and be refreshed, and put on sandals and scented vestments, and take his staff in his hand, and go forth again into the light of everlasting day. Poor ghost, wandering bodiless through space! where now are thy funeral-baked meats, thy changes of raiment, thy perfumes and precious ointments? Where is that body for which thou wert once so solicitous, and without which resurrection[232]is impossible? One fancies thee sighing forlorn through these desolate halls when all is silent and the moon shines down the valley. Life at Thebes is made up of incongruities. A morning among temples is followed by an afternoon of antiquity-hunting; and a day of meditation among tombs winds up with a dinner-party on board some friend’s dahabeeyah, or a fantasia at the British consulate. L—— and the writer did their fair share of antiquity-hunting both at Luxor and elsewhere; but chiefly at Luxor. I may say, indeed, that our life here was one long pursuit of the pleasures of the chase. The game it is true was prohibited; but we enjoyed it none the less because it was illegal. Perhaps we enjoyed it the more.
There were whispers about this time of a tomb that had been discovered on the western side—a wonderful tomb, rich in all kinds of treasures. No one, of course, had seen these things. No one knew who had found them. No oneknew where they were hidden. But there was a solemn secrecy about certain of the Arabs, and a conscious look about some of the visitors, and an air of awakened vigilance about the government officials, which savored of mystery. These rumors by and by assumed more definite proportions. Dark hints were dropped of a possible papyrus; the M. B.’s babbled of mummies; and an American dahabeeyah, lying innocently off Karnak, was reported to have a mummy on board. Now, neither L—— nor the writer desired to become the happy proprietor of an ancient Egyptian; but the papyrus was a thing to be thought of. In a fatal hour we expressed a wish to see it. From that moment every mummy-snatcher in the place regarded us as his lawful prey. Beguiled into one den after another, we were shown all the stolen goods in Thebes. Some of the things were very curious and interesting. In one house we were offered two bronze vases, each with a band of delicately engraved hieroglyphs running round the lip; also a square stand of basket-work in two colors, precisely like that engraved in Sir G. Wilkinson’s first volume,[233]after the original in the Berlin museum. Pieces of mummy-case and wall-sculpture and sepulchral tablets abounded; and on one occasion we were introduced into the presence of—a mummy!
All these houses were tombs, and in this one the mummy was stowed away in a kind of recess at the end of a long rock-cut passage; probably the very place once occupied by the original tenant. It was a mummy of the same period as that which we saw disentombed under the auspices of the governor, and was inclosed in the same kind of cartonnage, patterned in many colors on a white ground. I shall never forget that curious scene—the dark and dusty vault; the Arabs with their lanterns; the mummy in its gaudy cerements lying on an old mat at our feet.
Meanwhile we tried in vain to get sight of the coveted papyrus. A grave Arab dropped in once or twice after nightfall and talked it over vaguely with the dragoman; but never came to the point. He offered it first, with a mummy, for £100. Finding, however, that we would neither buy his papyrus unseen, nor his mummy at any price, he haggled and hesitated for a day or two, evidently trying to play us off against some rival or rivals unknown, and then finally disappeared. These rivals, we afterward found, were the M. B.’s. They bought both mummy and papyrus at an enormous price; and then, unable to endure the perfume of their ancient Egyptian, drowned the dear departed at the end of a week.
Other purchasers are possibly less sensitive. We heard, at all events, of fifteen mummies successfully insinuated through the Alexandrian custom-house by a single agent that winter. There is, in fact, a growing passion for mummies among Nile travelers. Unfortunately, the prices rise with the demand; and although the mine is practically inexhaustible, a mummy nowadays becomes not only a prohibited but a costly luxury.
At Luxor the British, American and French consuls are Arabs. The Prussian consul is a Copt. The Austrian consul is, or was, an American. The French consul showed us over the old tumble-down building called “The French House,”[234]which, though but a rude structure of palm-timbers and sun-dried clay, built partly against and partly over the temple of Luxor, has its place in history. For there, in 1829, Champollion and Rosellini lived and worked together during part of their long sojourn at Thebes. Rosellini tells how they used to sit up at night, dividing the fruits of the day’s labor; Champollion copying whatever might be useful for his Egyptian grammar, and Rosellini, the new words that furnished material for his dictionary. There, too, lodged the naval officers sent out by the French in 1831 to remove the obelisk which now stands in the Place de la Concorde. And there, writing those charming letters that delight the world, Lady Duff Gordon lingered through the last few winters of her life. The rooms in which she lived first, and the balcony in which she took such pleasure, were no longer accessible, owing to the ruinous state of one of the staircases; but we saw the rooms she last inhabited. Her couch, her rug, her folding chair were there still. The walls were furnished with a few cheap prints and a pair of tin sconces. All was very bare and comfortless.
We asked if it was just like this when the sittèh lived here. The Arab consul replied that she had “a table and some books.” He looked himself in the last stage of consumption, and spoke and moved like one that had done with life.
We were shocked at the dreariness of the place—till we went to the window. That window, which commanded the Nile and the western plain of Thebes, furnished the room and made its poverty splendid.
The sun was near setting. We could distinguish the mounds and pylons of Medinet Habu and the side of the Ramesseum. The terraced cliffs, overtopped by the pyramidal mountain of Bab-el-Molûk, burned crimson against a sky of stainless blue. The foot-path leading to the valley of the tombs of the kings showed like a hot white scar winding along the face of the rocks. The river gave back the sapphire tones of the sky. I thought I could be well content to spend many a winter in no matter how comfortless a lodging, if only I had that wonderful view, with its infinite beauty of light and color and space, and its history and its mystery always before my windows.[235]
Another historical house is that built by Sir G. Wilkinson, among the tombs of Sheik Abd-el-Koorneh. Here he lived while amassing the materials for his “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians;” and here Lepsius and his company of artists put up while at work on the western bank. Science makes little impression on the native mind. No one now remembers Champollion, or Rosellini, or Sir G. Wilkinson; but every Arab in Luxor cherishes the memory of Lady Duff Gordon in his heart of hearts, and speaks of her with blessings.
The French house was built over the roof of the sanctuary, at the southern end of the temple. At the northern end, built up between the enormous sandstone columns of the great colonnade, was the house of Mustapha Aga, most hospitable and kindly of British consuls. Mustapha Aga had traveled in Europe, and spoke fluent Italian, English, and French. His eldest son was Governor of Luxor; his younger—the “little Ahmed” whom Lady Duff Gordondelighted to educate—having spent two years in England as the guest of Lord D——, had become an accomplished Englishman.
In the round of gayety that goes on at Luxor the British consulate played the leading part. Mustapha Aga entertained all the English dahabeeyahs, and all the English dahabeeyahs entertained Mustapha Aga. We were invited to several fantasias at the consulate, and dined with Mustapha Aga at his suburban house the evening before we left Luxor.
The appointed hour was 8.30P.M.We arrived amid much barking of dogs, and were received by our host in a large empty hall surrounded by a divan. Here we remained till dinner was announced. We were next ushered through an ante-room where two turbaned and barefooted servants were in waiting; the one with a brass basin and ewer, the other with an armful of Turkish towels. We then, each in turn, held our hands over the basin; had water poured on them; and received a towel apiece. These towels we were told to keep; and they served for dinner-napkins. The ante-room opened into a brilliantly lighted dining-room of moderate size, having in the center a round brass table with an upright fluted rim, like a big tray. For each person were placed a chair, a huge block of bread, a wooden spoon, two tumblers, and a bouquet. Plates, knives, forks, there were none.
The party consisted of the happy couple, the director of the Luxor telegraph office, L——, the writer, Ahmed, and our host.
“To-night we are all Arabs,” said Mustapha Aga, as he showed us where to sit. “We drink Nile water and we eat with our fingers.”
So we drank Nile water; and for the first time in our lives we ate with our fingers. In fact, we found them exceedingly useful.
The dinner was excellent. Without disrespect to our own accomplished chef, or to the accomplished chefs of our various friends upon the river, I am bound to say that it was the very best dinner I ever eat out of Europe. Everything was hot, quickly served, admirably dressed, and the best of its kind. Here is themenu: