[Musical Notation][30]
Makûl, in the first line, is more properly only“food,” but it has generally become an expression for dates, as they are the principal food in the hut of the Fellah, and for some indeed is the only food. Another melody, a little more animated, is as follows:—
[Musical Notation.]
where the chorus exceptionally sings two notes and not one. But I hardly believe that even these chords are intentional; they run down without knowing it, for it often occurs that single voices sing the same note in different keys without in the least observing the continual discord. The power of joining voices together, in even the simplest harmony, seems to be wholly wanting in the Arab. The artistical music of the most celebrated singers and players, which inexpressibly delights even the most educated Mussulman, consists only of a hundred-wise screaming, restlessly-hurrying melody, the connecting idea of which is utterly untenable to an European ear.[31]And just as little are the musicalinstruments, when sounding together, used for any other harmonious variations than rhythm produces.
In the night we have eight watchmen, who really do watch, as I often prove to myself by going a nightly round; one of them is always walking up and down upon the walls about our camp, with his gun on his shoulder; for if we have to anticipate an attack at any place, it is here; not on the part of the Arabs, but of the yet more dangerous Bedouins, who inhabit the borders of the desert in many single hordes, not living under great sheîkhs, who might be secured to our interests. On the way from Illahûn hither, we came through a Bedouin camp, the sheîkh of which must have been aware of our approach, as he mounted his horse, rode to meet us, and offered us his services in case we might require them. Some distance further, we met an old man and a girl crying aloud in despair; they threw dust into the air and heaped it upon their heads; when we had come up to them they complained bitterly to us, that just then two Bedouins had robbed them of their only buffalo; indeed, we could see the thieves on horseback in the distance, driving the animal before them into the desert. I was alone with my dragoman and my little donkey groom, ’Auad, an active, dark-brown Berber, and could render them no assistance. Such robberies are not at all rare here. A short time since, one tribe drove away one hundred and twenty camels from another, and not a single one of them has come back yet.
However, we shall probably not be molested, for the judgment of Saqâra is not forgotten, and it is known that we are particularly recommended to the authorities. They were also aware that we carried no gold and silver with us in our heavy trunks, as the Arabs had universally imagined. We are also prepared for every other attack. The most important chests are all together in my tent, and beside my bed at night I always keep a double-barrelled English gun and a brace of pistols. Every evening I clear all away, in order to be prepared for anything, and storms in particular, from which we have suffered much lately, and the violence of which cannot be conceived in Europe. Abeken’s tent fell down upon him three times in the course of one day, and the last time disturbed him from sleep in a rather disagreeable manner. Thus, we are often in continual expectation for whole days and nights that the airy dwelling will fall down upon us at the next gust, and one must be accustomed to this feeling in order to go on quietly working or sleeping.
It would seem as if we were to taste of all the plagues of Egypt; our acquaintance with a flood was made at the great pyramid; then came the locusts, the young broods of which are numberless as the sands of the sea, eating up the green meadows and trees again, and, together with the passing cattle murrain, are almost enough to bring on a famine; after that came the attack, with a daring robbery at the beginning. The plague of fire has not quite failed. By a careless salute, Wild’s tent was set on fire in Saqâra, andwas partially burnt while we stood around in the bright sunlight that concealed the conflagration. Now comes the plague of mice, with which we were not formerly acquainted; in my tent they gnaw, play, and whistle, as if they had been at home here all their lives, and quite regardless of my presence. At night they have already run across my bed and face, and yesterday I started terrified from my slumbers, as I suddenly felt the sharp tooth of such a daring guest at my foot. I jumped up angrily and got a light, knocked at every chest and tent-peg, but was only hissed and whistled at anew on my lying down again. Notwithstanding all these annoyances, however, we are in good spirits, and, thank God, they have only threatened us as yet, made us aware of their existence, and not harmed us much.
I have now much lightened the labours of inspecting the attendants and administering many outward labours by having brought an excellentkhawassfrom Cairo. Thesekhawasses, who form a peculiar corps of officers of the Pasha, are in this country a very exclusive and important class of people. Only Turks are admitted into it, and these, by their nationality, have an inborn preponderance over every Arab. There are few nations that possess so much talent for governing as the Turks, whom we often picture to ourselves as half-barbarians, rough and uncultivated in the highest degree. On the contrary, they, nationally, have a species of aristocratic feeling. A most imperturbable quiet, cold bloodedness, reservedness, and energy of will, seem to bepeculiar to every Turk, down to the lowest soldier, and they do not fail at first to make a certain impression upon the European. Among the noble Turks, who have all been subject to the most rigid etiquette from childhood, this outward carriage of apparently pre-conceived firmness, this reserved and proud politeness, moving lightly, as it were, in strict forms, is only present in the refined degree. They have an inborn contempt for everything that does not belong to their nation, and seem not to possess any feeling for the natural weight of higher mental culture and civilization which generally makes the most every-day European respected among other nations. Nothing is to be won from the Turk by kindness, consideration, demonstration, or even by irritation; he only looks upon it as weakness. The greatest reserve alone, and the most scrupulous and proud politeness toward the great, or aristocratic usage and categorical commands toward the little, succeed. A Turkishkhawasshunts a whole village of Fellahs or Arabs before him, and makes a decided impression upon the yet prouder Bedouins. The Pasha employs this body in delicate missions and trusts throughout the country. They are the principal acting servants of the Pasha and of the governors of the provinces. Every foreign consul also has such akhawass, without whom he scarcely moves a step, because he is his guard of honour, the token and executive of his incontestible authority. When he rides out, thekhawassprecedes him on horseback, with a great silver staff, and drives the people and animals out of the way with wordsand blows, and woe be to him that assumes a gesture or even a look of opposition. The Pasha occasionally gives peculiarly-recommended strangers such a guard, with equal authority, and thus we, on our arrival, immediately received akhawass, who was, however, duly troublesome to us during our long stay at Gizeh, and was at last very ungraciously dismissed by me on account of his improper pretensions. On the occasion of the attack at Saqâra, I had another given me by Sherif Pasha; but still he was not the sort of man we wanted, so I have brought a third with us from Cairo, who has answered excellently till now. He takes the whole responsibility of the attendants off me, and manages admirably everything that I have to negotiate with the people and officials. In Europe I judged myself perfectly strong enough to conduct the whole outward affairs of the Expedition; but in this climate one must take another standard of measure. Patience and rest are here as necessary elements of existence as meat and drink.
Labyrinth.June 25, 1843.
Fromthe Labyrinth these lines come to you; not from the doubtful, or, at least, always disputed one, of which I could form no idea from the previous and more than meagre descriptions of those who placed the Labyrinth here, but the clearly-identified Labyrinth of Mœris and the Dodecarchs. There is a mighty knot of chambers still in existence, and in the midst is the great square, where the Aulæ stood, covered with the remains of great monolithic pillars of granite, and others of white, hard limestone, gleaming almost like marble.
I came near to the spot with a certain fear that we should have to seek to confirm the account of the ancients by the geographical position of the place, that every form of its architectural disposition would be wiped away, and that a shapeless heap of ruins would frighten us from every attempt at investigation; instead of this, there were immediately found, on a cursory view of the districts, a number of confused spaces, as well super as subterranean, and the principal mass of the building, which occupied more than a stadium (Strabo),[32]was distinctly to be seen. Wherethe French expedition had fruitlessly sought for chambers, we find literally hundreds, by and over each other, little, often very small, by larger and great, supported by diminutive pillars, with thresholds and niches, with remains of pillars and single wall slabs, connected together by corridors, so that the descriptions of Herodotus and Strabo are quite confirmed in this respect; at the same time, the idea, never coincided in by myself, ofserpentine, cave-like windings, instead of square rooms, is definitely contradicted.
The disposition of the whole is, that three mighty blocks of buildings, of the breadth of 300 feet, surround a square 600 feet in length and 500 in width; the fourth side is bounded by the pyramid lying behind, which is 300 feet square, and therefore does not quite come up to the side wings of the great buildings. A rather modern canal, which may be jumped over, at least at this season of the year, is diagonally drawn through the ruins, cutting right through the most perfectly-preserved of the Labyrinthic rooms, and a part of the square in the centre, which was once divided into courts. Travellers have not wished to wet their feet, and so remained on this side, where the continuation of the wings of the buildings is certainly much concealed by the rubbish mounds; but even from this, the eastern bank, the chambers on the opposite side, and particularly at the southern point, where the walls rise almost 10 feet above the rubbish, and 20 above the level of the ruins, are very easy to be seen, and whenviewed from the heights of the pyramid, the regular plan of the whole lies before one like a map. Erbkam has been employed since our arrival in surveying the place, and inserting in the plan every room and wall, however small; the ruins on the other side are therefore much more difficult in the execution of the plan; here it is easier, as there are fewer chambers, but therefore more difficult to be understood with respect to the original structure. The labyrinth of chambers runs along here to the south. The Aulæ lay between this and the northerly pyramid opposite, but almost all traces of them have disappeared. The dimensions of the place alone allow us to suspect that it was divided into two parts by a wall, to which the twelve Aulæ, no longer to be distinguished with certainty, adjoined on both sides, so that their entrances were turned in opposite directions, and had close before them the innumerable chambers of the Labyrinth. Who was, however, the Maros, Mendes, Imandes, who, according to the reports of the Greeks, erected the labyrinth, or rather the pyramid belonging to it, as his monument? In the Royal Lists of Manetho,[33]we find the builder of the labyrinth towards the end of thetwelfthdynasty, the last of the Old Empire shortly before the irruption of the Hyksos. The fragments of the mighty pillars and architraves, that we have dug out in the great square of theAulæ, give us the cartouches of the sixth king of this twelfth dynasty, Amenemha III.; thus is this important question answered in its historical portion.[34]We have also made excavations on the north side of the pyramid, because we may expect to discover the entrance there; that is, however, not yet done. We have obtained an entry into a chamber covered with piles of rubbish that lay before the pyramid, and here we have also found the name of Amenemha several times. The builder and possessor of the pyramid is therefore determined. But the account of Herodotus, that the construction of the Labyrinth was commenced two hundred years before his time by the Dodecarchs, is not yet confuted. In the ruins of the great masses of chambers surrounding the great square, we have discovered no inscriptions. Later excavations may very probably certify to us that this whole building, and also the arrangement of the twelve courts, really fall in the twenty-sixth dynasty of Manetho, so that the original temple of Amenemha was only included in this mighty erection.[35]
So much for the Labyrinth and its Pyramid. The historical determination of the builder of this structure is by far the most important result that we can expect here. Now something about the other wonder of this province, Lake Mœris.
The obscurity in which it was previously involved seems to be removed by a happy discovery that theexcellent Linant, the Pasha’s hydraulic engineer, has lately made. Up to this time it was only agreed that the lake lay somewhere in the Faiûm. As there is at the present time in this remarkable half-oasis only a single lake, the Birqet el Qorn, lying in its most distant part, this was of course taken to be Lake Mœris; there appeared to be no other solution to the question. Now its great fame was expressly founded upon the fact that it was artificial (Herodotus says that it was excavated), and of immense utility, filled at the time of the overflow of the Nile, and at low water running off again by the canal, on one side toward the lands of the Faiûm, on the other, in its backward course, it waters the region of Memphis, and yielding a most lucrative fishery at the double sluices near the end of the Faiûm. Of all these qualities, however, to the annoyance of antiquarians and philologers, the Birqet el Qorn did not possess a single one. It is not artificial, but a natural lake, that is partly fed by the water of the Jussuf canal; its utility is as good as non-existent; no fishing-boat enlivens the hard and desert-circled water mirror, as the brackish water contains scarcely any fish, and is not even favourable to the vegetation at the shores; when the Nile is high and there is plenty of water flowing in, it does swell, but it is by far too deep to allow a drop of the water that flows into it to flow out again; the whole province must be buried beneath the floods ere this could find a passage back again to the valley, as the artificially-deepened rock gorge by the Bahr Jussuf, branching from the Nile at a distance offorty miles to the south, lies higher than the whole oase. Theniveauof the Birqet el Qorn now lies seventy feet below the point at which the canal flows in, and can never have risen much higher.[36]This is proved by the ruins of ancient temples lying upon its shores. Just as little do the statements tally that inform us that on its shores were situated the Labyrinth and the metropolis Arsinoë, now Medînet el Faiûm. Linant has discovered mighty mile-long dams, of ancient solid construction, which form the boundary between the upper part of the shell-formed convex basin of the Faiûm, and the more remote and less elevated portion. According to him, these could only be intended to restrain an artificially-constructed lake, which, however, since the dams have long since been broken through, lies perfectly dry; this lake he considers to be Mœris. I must confess that the whole, after his personal information, impressed me with the idea that it was a most fortunate discovery, and one that would save us many fruitless researches; and the examination of the region has now quite solved every doubt of mine as to the accuracy of this judgment; I consider it an immoveable fact, Linant’s essay is now being printed, and I will send it as soon as it is to be got.[37]
Should you, however, ask me what then the name of Mœris has to do with that of Amenemha, I can only reply, nothing. The name Mœris occurs in the monuments or in Manetho; I rather imagine that here again is one of the numerous Greek misunderstandings. The Egyptians called the lakePhiom en mere, “the Lake of the Nile flood (Koptic,[Koptic],inundatio).” The Greeks made out ofmere, the water that formed the lake, a King Mœris, who laid out the lake, and troubled themselves no more about the real originator of it, Amenemha. At a later period, the whole province obtained the name of[Koptic],Phiom, the Lake, from which arises the present nameFaiûm.
Labyrinth.July 18, 1843.
Ourtour in the Faiûm, this remarkable province so seldom visited by Europeans, which may be called the garden of Egypt by reason of its fertility, is now ended; and as these regions are almost as unknown as the distant Libyan oases, it may be pleasing to you to hear something more about this from me.
I set out on the 3rd of July, in company with Erbkam, Ernst Weidenbach, and Abeken; from the Labyrinth we followed the Bahr Wardâni, which traverses the eastern boundary of the desert, and marks the frontier to which the shores of Lake Mœris once extended. Now the canal is dry, and its place is taken by the still more modern Bahr Sherkîeh, which, it is said, was the work of Sultan Barquq, and leads through the middle of the Labyrinth, crosses and recrosses the Wardâni, but then keeps more inland. In three hours we arrived at the place where the monster dam of Mœris, from the middle of the Faiûm, touches the desert. It runs from there in a direct line for one and a half geographical miles to El Elâm; in the middle of this course it is interrupted by the Bahr bela-mâ, a deep river bed, which now passes through the old lake bottom, and is generally dry, but is used ata great inundation to draw off the surplus toward Tamîeh and into the Birqet el Qorn. This gave us the advantage of being able to examine more closely the dyke itself. The occasionally high-swelling and tearing stream has not only penetrated the disturbed bed of the lake, but also several other strata, and even the lowest, crumbling limestone, so that the water now flows during the dryest season of the year, at sixty feet below the now dry surface. I measured the single strata carefully, and brought away a specimen of each. The breadth of the embankment cannot be exactly given, but was probably 150 feet. Its height has probably decreased in the lapse of time. I found 1 m. 90. above the present basin, and 5 m. 60. above the opposite surface. If we take that to be of an equal height with the original lake bottom (which, however, appears to have been deeper, because the outer region was watered, and was therefore made higher), the former height of the embankment, its gradual declension not being considered, would have been 5 m. 60.,i. e.17 feet, and the bottom of the lake would thus have been raised by the sediment about 11 feet in its existence of 2,000 years. But if we take for granted that the 11 or 12 feet of black earth were deposited in historical times, the above amounts would be almost double. Thus it may be understood how it is that its usefulness is so much, diminished, for, by the deposit of 11 feet, the lake lost (if we accept Linant’s statement as to its circumference) about 13,000,000,000 square feet of water, which it could formerly contain.Raising the dykes would not, it may be readily understood, have counteracted it, because they had already been put into the proper connection with the point of entrance of the Bahr Jussuf into the Faiûm. This may have been one of the most cogent reasons for the neglect into which Lake Mœris had been permitted to fall, and even if Linant had the Bahr Jussuf turned off much higher from the Nile than the ancient Pharaohs found it good, his daring project of restoring the lake again would not completely succeed.
In two hours and a half from this breach, we arrived by El Elâm, where the dam ends, at the remarkable ruins of the two monuments of Biahmu, which Linant considers to be the two pyramids of Mœris and his wife, mentioned by Herodotus as seen in the lake. They are built up of massive blocks; there is yet a heart existing of each of them, but not in the middle of the square rectangles, which appear as if they had been originally quite filled by them. They rose in an angle of 64°, therefore much more steeply than pyramids usually do. Their present height is only twenty-three feet, to which must be added, however, a protruding base of seven feet. A slight excavation convinced me, that the undermost layer of stone, which only reaches four feet below the present surface of the ground, is neither founded upon sand or rock, but upon Nile-earth, by which the high antiquity of this structure is much to be doubted. At least this proved that they did not stand in the Lake, which must havehad a considerable bend to the north-west if it included them.
Up to this time we had ridden along the boundary of the ancient lake, and the adjoining region. This was bare and unfruitful, because the land now lies so high, that it cannot be inundated. The land, however, immediately enclosing the old lake, forms by far the most beautiful and fertile part of the Faiûm. This we now traversed, leaving the metropolis of the province, Medînet el Faiûm, with the hills of ancient Crocodilopolis, to our left, and riding by Selajîn and Fidimîn to Agamîeh, where we staid for the night. Next morning we arrived by way of Bisheh on the frontier of the uninterrupted garden land. Here we entered a new region, particularly striking by its unfertility and desolateness, which lies round the other like a girdle, and separates it from the deepest, and most distant, crescent-shaped Birqet el Qorn. About noon we reached the lake. The only bark we could possibly find here, carried us in an hour and a half over the waters, surrounded on all sides by desert, to an island in the middle of the lake, called Gezîret el Qorn. However, we found nothing remarkable upon it, not a single trace of building: towards evening we returned back again.
On the following morning, we cruized in a more northerly direction across the lake, and landed on a little peninsula on the opposite side, that rises immediately to aplateauof the Libyan desert, one hundred and fifty feet high, commanding the whole oasis. Thither we ascended and found, about an hour distant from the shores, in the middle of the inhospitable water and barren desert, the extended ruins of an ancient city, which is called in earlier maps Medînet Nimrud. Of this name no one knew anything; the place was known as Diméh. Next morning, the 7th of July, the regular plan of these ruins, with the remains of their temple was made by Erbkam, who had stopped the night here with Abeken. The temple bears no inscription, and what we found of sculptures point to the late origin of this remarkable site. Its purpose can only have been a military station against Libyan incursions into the rich Faiûm.
On the 8th of July we went in our boat to Qasr Qerûn, an old city at the southern end of the lake, with a temple, in excellent preservation, but bearing no inscriptions of recent date, the plan of which was taken next day. Hence we pursued the southern boundary of the oasis by Neslet, to the ruins of Medînet Mâdi at lake Gharaq, in the neighbourhood of which the old embankments of Lake Mœris run down from the north, and we arrived in our camp at the ruins of the labyrinth, on the 11th of July. We found all well except our Frey, whom we had left indisposed, and whose recurring, seemingly climatic, illness gives me some pain.
To-morrow I am thinking of going to Cairo, with Abeken and Bonomi, to hire a bark for our journey to the south, and to prepare everything required by our final departure from the neighbourhood of the metropolis. We shall take fourcamels with us, for the transport of the monuments gathered in the Faiûm, and go the shortest way, by Tamiêh, which we did not touch on our tour, and thence over the desert heights, which divide this part of the Faiûm from the valley of the Nile. We shall enter this by the pyramids of Dahshur. Thus we expect to reach Cairo in two days and a half.
Cairo.August 14, 1843.
Unfortunately, I received, soon after our return to Cairo, such very questionable news of Frey’s health, that Abeken and Bonomi have determined to go to the camp and bring him, in a litter they took with them, from the Labyrinth to Zani, on the Nile, and thence by water hither. As soon as Dr. Pruner had seen him, he declared that the only advisable course was to let him depart immediately for Europe. Disease of the liver, in the way it developed itself in him, is incurable in Egypt. So he left us yesterday at noon. May the climate of his native land soon restore the powers of a friend, equally talented as estimable, in whom we all lose much.
A few days ago I purchased from a Basque named Domingo Lorda, who has stayed a long time in Abyssinia, and has since accompanied d’Abadie in several journeys, some Ethiopic Manuscripts for the Berlin Museum. He bought them, probably at an inconsiderable price, in a convent on the island of Thâna, near Gorata, a day’s journey from the sources of the Blue Nile, where the inhabitants had been put to fearful distress by the locusts. One contains the history of Abyssinia from Solomon to Christ, is reported to come from Axum, and to be 500 or 600 years old! Thisfirst portion of Abyssinian history, namedKebre Negesty, “The Fame of the Kings,” is said to be far rarer than the second,Tarik Negest, “The History of the Kings;” but this manuscript contains at the end a list of the Ethiopian kings since Christ. The largest manuscript, with many pictures ornamented in the Byzantine style, and, according to what Lieder tells me, almost unique in its kind, contains mostly lives of Saints. In the third, the yet validCanonesof the church are completely preserved. I hope the purchase will be welcome to our library.[38]
Now, too, are our purchases for the voyage ended; a comfortable bark is hired, and will save us the great difficulties of a land journey, which is scarcely possible during the coming season of inundation.
Thebes.October 13, 1843.
Onthe 16th of August, I went from Cairo to the Faiûm, where our camp was broken up on the 21st. Two days later we sailed from Benisuef, sent the camels back to Cairo, and only took the donkeys with us, as it was found, upon careful consideration, that the originally-intended land journey by the foot of the mountains, far away from the river, was altogether impossible during the season of the inundation, and, on the eastern side, it was not only too difficult, but perfectly useless for us, by reason of the proximity of the desert, towards which there is nothing more to be found for our purposes. We have therefore made excursions from our bark, on foot, and with donkeys, principally to the east and some attainable mountains, though we have also visited the most important spots on the western shore.
Even on the day of our departure from Benisuef, we found, in the neighbourhood of the village of Surarîeh, a small rock temple, not mentioned by former travellers, indeed, not even by Wilkinson, which was dedicated already in the nineteenth dynasty of Menephthes, the son of Ramses Miamun,[39]to Hathor, the Egyptian Venus.[40]Fartheron, lie several groups of graves, which have scarcely received any attention, although they are of peculiar interest by reason of their great antiquity. The whole of middle Egypt, to judge from the tombs preserved, flourished during the Old Empire, before the irruption of the Hyksos, not only under the twelfth dynasty,[41]to which period the famous tombs of Benihassan suit, and Bersheh belong, but even under the sixth dynasty[42]we have found extensive series of tombs, belonging to these early times, and attached to cities, of which the later Egyptian geography does not even know the names, as they were probably already destroyed by the Hyksos. In Benihassan we stayed the longest time—sixteen days; through this, the season is far advanced, and it must not be lost in our journey southward. At the next places, therefore, only notes were taken, and the most important forms in paper, so also at El Amarna, Siut, at the reverend Abydos, and in the younger, but not less magnificent, almost intactly preserved, temple of Dendera. At Siut, we visited the governor of Upper Egypt, Selim Pasha, who is working an ancient alabaster quarry between Bersheh and Gauâta, discovered by the Bedouins some months ago.
The town of Siut is well built and charmingly situated, particularly if it be looked upon from the steep rocks of the western shore. Theprospect of the inundated Nile valley from these heights is the most beautiful that we have yet seen, and is very peculiar in these times of inundation in which we travel. From the foot of the abrupt rock, a small dyke, overgrown with vines, and a bridge leads to the town, which lies like an island in the boundless ocean of inundation. The gardens, of Ibrahim Pasha, to the left, form another island, green and fresh with trees and bushes. The city, with its fifteen minarets, rises high upon the ruined mounds of ancient Lycopolis; from it a great embankment reaches to the Nile; toward the south may be seen other long dykes stretching through the waters like threads; on the other side, the Arabian mountains come on closely, by which the valley is bounded, and formed into an easily-overlooked picture.
Since the 6th of October we have been in Royal Thebes. Our bark touched the shore first beneath the wall of Luqsor, at the southerly point of the Thebaïc ruins. The strong current of the river has thrust itself so near to the old temple, that it is in great danger. I endeavoured to obtain a general view of the ruins of Thebes from the heights of the temple, in order to compare it with the picture I had idealised to myself, from plans and descriptions.
But the distances are too great to give a complete view. One looks into a wide landscape, in which the temple groups are distinguishable only to those who are acquainted with the neighbourhood. To the north, at a short hour’s distancestand the mighty pylones of Karnak, forming a temple city in itself, gigantic and astounding in all its proportions. We spent the next days in a cursory examination of it. Across the river, at the foot of the Libyan mountains, lie the Memnonia, once an unbroken series of palaces, which probably found their equal nowhere in antiquity. Even now, the temples of Medînet Hâbu, at the southern end of this row, show themselves, with their high rubbish-mounds at a distance, and at the northern end, an hour away down the river, is the well-preserved temple of Qurnah; between both lies the temple of Ramses Miamun,[43](Sesostris), already most celebrated by the description of Diodorus. Thus the four Arab villages, Karnak and Luqsor on the east, Qurnah and Medînet Hâbu on the west of the river, form a great quadrangle, each side of which measures about half a geographical mile, and gives us some idea of the dimensions of the most magnificent part of ancient Thebes. How far the remainder of the inhabited portion of the hundred-gated city extended beyond these limits to the east, north, and south, is difficult to be discovered now, because everything that did not remain upright in the lapse of ages gradually disappeared under the annually rising soil of the valley, induced by the alluvial deposit.
No one ever asks after the weather here; for every day is pleasant, clear, and up to the presenttime not too hot. We have no red either in the morning or at night, as clouds and mists fail. But every first beam of the day calls a thousand colours forth from the naked and precipitate limestone rocks, and the brown shining desert, in opposition to the black or green-clad plain of the valley. A dawn scarcely exists, as the sun sinks directly down. The boundary between day and night is as sudden as that between meadow and desert; one step, one moment, parts the one from the other. The more refreshing, therefore, is the darkly sheen of the moon and star-bright night to the eye, dazzled by the light ocean of the day. The air is so pure and dry, that no dew falls, except in the immediate vicinity of the river, notwithstanding the sudden change at sundown. We have almost forgotten what rain is, for, as far as we are concerned, it is six months since it last rained at Saqâra. A few days ago, we were rejoicing at having discovered toward evening some light clouds in the south-western part of the sky, which reminded us of Europe. However, we are not in want of cooling, for a light wind is almost always blowing, which does not allow the heat to become too oppressive. Besides this, the water of the Nile is of a sweet taste, and can be taken in great quantities without danger.
An inestimable benefit are the earthenware water-vessels (Qulleh), which, formed of a fine, porous Nile earth, allow the water to continually filter through. This evaporates as soon as it comes out to the warm surface, the evaporation produces cold, as is well known, and, by this simpleprocess, the bottles are kept constantly cool, even in the warmest days. The water is therefore generally cooler than it is to be had in Europe during summer. Our food usually consists mostly of fowls; as a change, we kill a sheep from time to time. There is but little vegetable. Every meal is ended with a dish of rice, and as a desert, we have the most excellent yellow melons, or juicy red water-melons. The dates are also excellent, but are, however, not always to be obtained. I have at length agreed, to the great joy of my companions, to smoke a Turkish pipe; this keeps me for a quarter of an hour in perfectkêf(so the Arabs call their state of perfect rest), for as long as one “drinks” from the blue pipe with the long, easily-spilt bowl, it is impossible to leave one’s place, and begin any other business. Our costume is comfortable: full trowsers of light cotton, and a wide, long blouse, with short falling sleeves. I wear, also, a broad-brimmed, grey felt hat, as a European symbol, which keeps the Arabs in proper respect. We eat, according to the custom of the country, sitting with crossed legs on cushions, round a low, round table, not a foot high. This position has become so comfortable to me, that I even write in it, sitting on my bed, with my letter case upon my knees. Above me a canopy of gauze is spread, in order to keep off the flies, these most shameless of the plagues of Egypt, during the day, and the mosquitos at night. For the rest, one does not suffer so much from insects here as in Italy. Scorpions and serpents have not bitten us yet, but there arevery malicious wasps, which have often stung us.
We shall only stop here till the day after to-morrow, and then journey away to the southward without stopping. On our return, we shall give the treasures here as much time and exertion as they require. At Assuan, on the Egyptian frontier, we must unload for the first time, and send back our large bark, in which we have become quite homeish. On the other side of the cataracts we shall take two smaller barks for the continuation of our journey.
Korusko.November 20, 1843.[44]
Our journey from the Faiûm through Egypt was obliged to be much hastened on account of the advanced season of the year; we have, therefore, seldom stopped at any place longer than was necessary to make a hasty survey of it, and have confined ourselves in the last three months to a careful examination of what we have, and to extending our important collection of paper impressions of the most interesting inscriptions.
We have obtained, in our rapid journey to Wadi Halfa, three or four hundred Greek inscriptions, in impressions or careful transcripts. They often confirm Letronne’s acute conjectures, but not seldom correct the unavoidable mistakes incident to such an investigation as his. In the inscription from which it was, without reason, attempted to settle the situation of the city of Akoris, his conjecture ΙΣΙΔΙ ΛΟΧΙΑΔΙ is not corroborated; L’Hote has read ΜΟΧΙΑΔΙ but ΜΩΧΙΑΔΙ is to be found there, and previously ΕΡΩΕΩΕ not ΕΡΕΕΩΕ.
The dedicatory inscription of the temple of Pselchis (as the inscriptions give with Strabo,instead of Pselcis) is almost as long again as Letronne considers it, and the first line does not end with KΛEOPATPAΣ, but with AΔEΛΦHΣ, so that it should probably be supplied—
Ὑπὲρ βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου καὶ βασιλίσσηςΚλεοπάτρας τῆς ἀδελφῆςθεῶν Εὐεργετῶν ...;[45]
Ὑπὲρ βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου καὶ βασιλίσσηςΚλεοπάτρας τῆς ἀδελφῆςθεῶν Εὐεργετῶν ...;[45]
Ὑπὲρ βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου καὶ βασιλίσσηςΚλεοπάτρας τῆς ἀδελφῆςθεῶν Εὐεργετῶν ...;[45]
At the end of the second line ΤΩΙΚΑΙ is confirmed; the title of Hermes, following in the third line, was, however, ΠΑΟΤΠΝΟΥΦΙ(ΔΙ), varying from the spelling in other subsequent inscriptions, where he is called ΠΑΥΤΝΟΥΦΙΣ. The same name is found not unfrequently hieroglyphically, and is thenTut en Pnubs,i. e.Thoth of, or lord of Πνούψ[46], a city, the position of which is yet obscure. I have already encountered this Thoth in earlier temples, where he often appears besides the Thoth of Shonun,i. e.Heliopolis magna. In the language of the people it was pronounced Pet-Pnubs, whence Paot-Pnuphis.
The interesting problem concerning the owner of the name Εὐπάτωρ, which Letronne endeavoured to solve in a new way in connection with the inscriptions of the obelisk of Philae, seems to be determined by the hieroglyphical inscriptions, where the same circumstances occur, but lead to other conclusions.[47]I have discovered several very perfect series of Ptolemies, the longest coming down to Neos Dionysos and his wife Cleopatra, whowas surnamed Tryphæna by the Egyptians, according to the hieroglyphic inscriptions.[48]A fact of some importance is also that in this Egyptian list of Ptolemies, the first King is never Ptolemæus Soter I. but Philadelphus. In Qurna, where Euergetes II. is adoring his ancestors, not only Philometor, the brother of Euergetes, iswanting, which may easily be accounted for, but also Soter I., and it is an error of Rosselini, if he look upon the king beneath Philadelphus as Soter I. instead of Euergetes I. It seems that the son of Lagus, although he assumed the title of King from 305 B.C., was not recognized by the Egyptians as such, as his cartouches do not appear upon any monument erected by him. The rather, therefore, do I rejoice, that I have not yet found his name once upon an inscription of Philadelphus, as the father of Arsinoe II. But here, it must be observed, Soter certainly has the Royal Kings about his names, and a peculiar cartouche; but before both cartouches, contrary to the usual Egyptian custom, there stands no royal title, although his daughter is called “royal daughter,” and “Queen.”[49]
It is remarkable how little Champollion seems to have attended to the monuments of the OldEmpire. In his whole journey through Middle Egypt up to Dendera, he only found the rock graves of Benihassan worthy of remark, and these, too, he assigns to the sixteenth and seventeenth dynasty, therefore to the New Empire. He mentions Zauiet el Meitîn and Siut, but scarcely makes any remark about them.
So little has been said by others of most of the monuments of Middle Egypt, that almost everything was new to me that we found here. My astonishment was not small, when we found a series of nineteen rock tombs at Zauiet el Meitîn, which were all inscribed, gave the names of the departed, and belong to the old time of the sixth dynasty, thus almost as far back as the pyramid builders.[50]Five of them contain, several times repeated, the cartouche of the Macrobiote Apappus-Pepi, who is reported to have lived one hundred and six years, and reigned one hundred; in another, Cheops is mentioned. On one side is a single tomb, of the time of Ramses.
At Benihassan I have had a complete rocktomb perfectly copied; it will serve as a specimen of the grandiose style of architecture and art of the second flourishing time of the Old Empire, during the mighty twelfth dynasty.[51]I think it will causesome surprise among Egyptologers, when they learn from Bunsen’s work,[52]why I have divided the tablet of Abydos, and have referred Sesurtesen and Amenemha, these Pharaohs, well known through Heliopolis, the Faiûm, Benihassan, Thebes, and up to Wadi Halfa, from the New Empire into the Old. It must then have been a proud period for Egypt—that is proved by these mighty tombs alone. It is interesting, likewise, to trace in the rich representations on the walls, which put before our eyes the high advance of the peaceful arts, as well as the refined luxury of the great of that period; also the foreboding of that great misfortune which brought Egypt, for several centuries, under the rule of its northern enemies. In the representations of the warlike games, which form a characteristically recurring feature, and take up whole sides in some tombs, which leads to a conclusion of their general use at that period afterwards disappearing, we often find among the red or dark-brown men, of the Egyptian and southern races, very light-coloured people, who have, for the most part, a totally different costume, and generally red-coloured hair on the head and beard, and blue eyes, sometimes appearing alone, sometimes in small divisions. They also appear in the trains of the nobles, and are evidently of northern, probably Semitic, origin. We find victories over the Ethiopians and negroes on the monuments of those times, and therefore need not be surprised at the recurrence of black slaves and servants. Of wars against the northern neighbours we learn nothing; but itseems that the immigration from the north-east was already beginning, and that many foreigners sought an asylum in fertile Egypt in return for service and other useful employments.
I have more in mind the remarkable scene in the tomb of the royal relation, Nehera-si-Numhotep, the second from the north, which places the immigration of Jacob and his family before our eyes in a most lively manner, and which would almost induce us to connect the two, if Jacob had not really entered at a far later period, and if we were not aware that such immigrations of single families could not be unfrequent. These, however, were the precursors of the Hyksos, and prepared the way for them in more than one respect. I have traced the whole representation, which is about eight feet long, and one-and-a-half high, and is very well preserved through, as it is only painted. The Royal Scribe, Nefruhotep, who conducts the company into the presence of the high officer to whom the grave belongs, is presenting him a leaf of papyrus. Upon this the sixth year of King Sesurtesen II. is mentioned, in which that family of thirty-seven persons came to Egypt. Their chief and lord was named Absha, they themselves Aama, a national designation, recurring with the light-complexioned race, often represented in the royal tombs of the nineteenth dynasty, together with three other races, and forming the four principal divisions of mankind, with which the Egyptians were acquainted. Champollion took them for Greeks when he was in Benihassan, but he was not then aware of the extreme antiquity of the monuments before him.Wilkinson considers them prisoners, but this is confuted by their appearance with arms and lyres, with wives, children, donkeys and luggage; I hold them to be an immigrating Hyksos-family, which begs for a reception into the favoured land, and whose posterity perhaps opened the gates of Egypt to the conquering tribes of their Semetic relations.
The city to which the rich rock-Necropolis of Benihassan belonged, and which is named Nus in the hieroglyphic inscriptions, must have been very considerable, and without doubt lay opposite on the left bank of the Nile, where old mounds are still existing, and were marked on the French maps. That the geography of the Greeks and Romans knows nothing of this city, Nus, as indeed was true of many other cities of the Old Empire, is not very astonishing, if it be considered that the five hundred years of Hyksos dominion intervened. The sudden fall of the Empire and of this flourishing city, at the end of the twelfth dynasty, is recognised by some in the circumstance, that of the numerous rock-tombs, only eleven bear inscriptions, and of these but three are completely finished. To these last, broad pathways led directly up from the banks of the river, which, at the steep upper end, were changed into steps.
Benihassan is, however, not the only place where works of the twelfth dynasty were found. Near Bersheh, somewhat to the south of the great plain, in which the Emperor Hadrian built, to the honour of his drowned favourite, the city of Antinoe, with its magnificently and even now partially passable streets, with hundreds of pillars, a small valley opens to the east, where we again found a series of splendidly-made rock-tombs of the twelfth dynasty,of which the greater portion are unfortunately injured. In the tomb of Ki-si-Tuthotep the transportation of the great colossus is represented, which was already published by Rosellini, but without the accompanying inscriptions; from the latter it is certain that it was formed of limestone (the hieroglyphic word for which I first ascertained here), and was about thirteen Egyptian ells, that is circa twenty-one feet, in height.[53]In the same valley, on the southern rock wall, there is hewn a series of still older, but very little inscribed tombs, which, to judge from the style of the hieroglyphics, and the titles of the deceased, belong to the sixth dynasty.
A few hours more to the southward comes another group of graves, also belonging to the sixth dynasty; here King Cheops is incidentally mentioned, whose name already appeared several times in an hieratic inscription at Benihassan. At two other places, between the valley of El Amarna, where the very remarkable rock-tombs of King Bech-en-Aten is situated, and Siut, we found graves of the sixth dynasty, but presenting few inscriptions. Perring, the pyramid measurer, has, in a recent publication, attempted to establish the strange notion, which I found also existed in Cairo, that the monuments of El Amarna were the work of the Hyksos: others wished to refer them to a period anterior to that of Menes, by reason of their certainly, but not inexplicable, peculiarities; I had already explained them in Europe as contemporaneous kings[54]of the eighteenth dynasty.
In the rock wall behind Siut, mighty tombs are gaping, in which we could recognize the grand style of the twelfth dynasty already from a distance. Here too, unfortunately, much has been lately destroyed of these precious remnants, as it was found easier to break down the walls and pillars of the grottoes, than to hew out the stones from the mass.
I learnt from Selim Pasha, the Governor of Upper Egypt, who received us at Siut in the most friendly manner, that the Bedouins had some time since discovered quarries of alabaster two or three hours’ journey into the eastern mountains, the proceeds of which Mahommed Ali had presented him, and from his dragoman I ascertained that there was an inscription on the rocks. I therefore determined to undertake the hot ride upon the Pasha’s horses, which he had sent to El Bosra for this purpose, from El Bosra thither, in company with the two Weidenbachs, our dragoman and thekhawass. There we found a little colony of eighteen workmen, with their families, altogether thirty-one persons, in the lonely, wild, hot rock gorge, employed in the excavation of the alabaster. Behind the tent of the overseer there were preserved, in legible, sharply-cut hieroglyphics, the names and titles of the wife, so much revered by the Egyptians, of the first Amasis, the head of the eighteenth dynasty, who expelled the Hyksos, the remains of a formerly much larger inscription. These are the first alabaster quarries, the age of which is certified by an inscription. Not far from the place were others, which were already exhausted in antiquity; from those now reopened they have extracted within the last four months more thanthree hundred blocks, of which the larger ones are eighty feet long and two feet thick. The Pasha informed me, through his dragoman, that on our return I should find a piece, the size and form of which I was myself to determine, of the best quality the quarry afforded, which he desired me to accept as a testimonial of his joy at our visit. The alabaster quarries discovered in this region are all situated between Bersheh and Gauâta; one would be inclined, therefore, to consider El Bosra as the ancient Alabastron, if its position could be reconciled with the account of Ptolemæus; at any rate, Alabastron has certainly nothing to do with the ruins in the valley of El Amarna, as hitherto thought, to which also the relation of Ptolemæus does not answer, and which seems to be quite different. The hieroglyphical name of these ruins recurs continually in the inscriptions.
In the rock chains of Gebel Selîn there are again very early, but little inscribed, graves of the Old Empire, apparently of the sixth dynasty.
Opposite ancient Panopolis, or Chemmis, we climbed the remarkable rock cave of the ithyphallic Pan (Chem).[55]It is dedicated by another contemporaneous king of the eighteenth dynasty, whose grave we have since visited in Thebes. The holy name of the city often occurs in the inscriptions,—“Dwelling-place of Chem,”i. e.Panopolis. Whether this, however, was the origin of the popular name, Chemmis, now Echmîn, is much to be doubted. I have always found at Siut, Dendera, Abydos, and otherhave cities, two distinct names, the sacred one and the popular name; the first is taken from the principal god of the local temple, the other has nothing to do with it.[56]My hieroglyphical geography is extended almost with every new monument.
At Abydos we came to the first greater temple building. The last interesting tombs of the Old Empire we found at Qasr e’ Saiât; they belong to the sixth dynasty. At Dendera we visited the imposing temple of Hathor, the best preserved perhaps in all Egypt.[57]
In Thebes we stayed for twelve over-rich, astonishing days, which were hardly sufficient to learn to find our way among the palaces, temples, and tombs, whose royal giant magnificence fills this spacious plain. In the jewel of all Egyptian buildings, in the palace of Ramses Sesostris, which this greatest of the Pharaohs erected in a manner worthy of himself and the god, to “Ammon-Ra, King of the Gods,” the guardian of the royal city of Ammon, on a gently-rising terrace, calculated to overlook the wide plain on this side, and on the other side of the majestic river, we kept our beloved King’s birthday with salutes and flags, with chorus singing, and with hearty toasts, that we proclaimed over a glass of pure German Rhine wine. That we thought of you with full hearts on this occasion I need not say.When night came we first lighted a pitch kettle, over the outer entrances between the pylones, on both sides of which our flags were planted; then we let a green fire flame up from the roof of the Pronaos, which threw out the beautiful proportions of the pillared halls, now first restored to their original destination by us, as festal halls; “Hall of the Panegyries,” ever since thousands of years; and even magically animated the two mighty peace thrones of the colossi of the Memnon.
We have put off more extensive research till our return; but to select from the inexhaustible matter for our end, and with relation to what has already been given in other works, will be difficult. On the 18th of October we quitted Thebes. Hermonthis we sawen passant. The great hall of Esneh was some years ago excavated by command of the Pasha, and presented a magnificent appearance. At El Kab, the ancient Eileithyia, we remained three days. Still more remarkable than the different temples of this once mighty place are its rock-tombs, which belong chiefly to the beginning of the War of Liberation against the Hyksos, and throw much light upon the relation of the several dynasties of that period. Several persons of consideration buried there bear the curious title of a male nurse of a royal prince, expressed by the well known group ofmena, with the determinative of the female breast in Coptic,[Koptic];[58]the deceased is represented with the prince in his lap.
The temple of Edfu is also among the best preserved of them; it was dedicated to Horus and Hathor, the Egyptian Venus, who is once named here “Queen of men and women.” Horus, as a child, is represented, as all children are on the monuments, as naked, with his finger to his lips; I had already explained from it the name of Harpocrates, which I have now found completely represented and written as Harpe-chroti,i. e.“Horus the Child.”[59]The Romans misunderstood the Egyptian gesture of the finger, and made of thechildthatcannot speak, the God of Silence, thatwillnot speak. The most interesting inscription, unremarked and unmentioned as yet by any one, is found on the eastern outer wall of the temple, built by Ptolemaeus Alexander I. It contains several dates of King Darius, of Nectanebus, and the falsely named Amyrtæus, and has reference to the lands belonging to the temple. The glowing heat of that day caused me to postpone the more careful examination and the paper impression of this inscription till our return.[60]Gebel Silsilis is one of the richest places in historical inscriptions, which generally bear some reference to the ancient working of the sandstone quarries.
At Ombos, I was greatly rejoiced to discover athird canon of proportions of the human body, which is very different to the two older Egyptian canons that I had found in many examples before. The second canon is intimately connected with the first and oldest of the pyramid period, of which it is only a farther completion and different application. The foot is the unit of both of them, which, taken six times, makes the height of the upright body; but it must be remarked, not from the sole to the crown, but only as far as the forehead. The piece from the roots of the hair, or the forehead to the crown, did not come into the calculation at all, and occupies sometimes three-quarters, sometimes half, sometimes less of another square. The difference between the first and second canons concerns mostly the position of the knees. In the Ptolemaic canon, however, the division itself is altered. The body was not divided into 18 parts, as in the second canon, but into 21¼ parts to the forehead, or into 23 to the crown. This is the division which Diodorus gives us in the last chapter of his first book. The middle, between forehead and sole, falls beneath the hips in all the three divisions. Thence downward, the proportions of the second and third canons remain the same, but those of the upper part of the body differ exceedingly; the head is larger, the breast falls deeper, the abdomen higher; on the whole, the contour becomes more licentious, and loses the earlier simplicity and modesty of form, in which the grand and peculiar Egyptian character consisted, for the imperfect imitation of a misunderstood foreign style of art. The proportion of the foot to the length of the body remains,but it is no longer the unit on which the whole calculation is based.
We were obliged to change boat at Assuan, on account of the Cataracts, and had, for the first time for six months or more, the homeish greeting of a violent shower and blustering storm, that gathered beyond the Cataracts, surmounted the granite girdle, and burst with the most thundering explosions into the valley down to Cairo, which (as we have since learnt) it deluged with water in a manner scarcely recollected before. Thus we too may say with Strabo and Champollion:—“In our time it rained in Upper Egypt.” Rain is, in fact, so unusual here, that our guards remembered no similar scene, and our TurkishKhawass, who is intimately acquainted with the land in every respect, when we had long had our packages brought into the tents and fastened up, never laid a hand to his own things, but quietly repeated,abaden moie, “never rain,” a word, that he had since been often obliged to hear, as he was thoroughly drenched, and got a tremendous fever, that he was obliged to suffer patiently at Philae.
Philae is as charmingly situated as it is interesting for its monuments. The week spent on this holy island belongs to the most delightful reminiscences of our journey. We were accustomed to assemble before dinner, when our scattered work was done, on the elevated terrace of the temple, which rises steeply above the river on the eastern shore of the island, to observe the shades of the well-preserved temple, built of sharply-cut, dark-glowing blocks of sandstone, which grow across the river and minglewith the black volcanic masses of rock, piled wildly one upon another, and between which the golden-hued sand pours into the valley like fire-floods. The island appears to have become sacred at a late period among the Egyptians, under the Ptolemies. Herodotus, who went up to the Cataracts in the time of the Persians, does not mention Philae at all; it was then inhabited by Ethiopians, who had also half Elephantine in their possession. The oldest buildings, now to be found on the island, were erected nearly a hundred years subsequent to the journey of Herodotus, by King Nectanebus, the last but three of the kings of Egyptian descent, upon the southern point of the island. There is no trace of any earlier buildings, not even of destroyed or built-up remains. Inscriptions of much older date are to be found on the great island of Bigeh close by, called hieroglyphically Senmut. It was already adorned with Egyptian monuments during the Old Empire; for we found there a granite statue of King Sesurtesem III., of the twelfth dynasty. The little rock-islet Konossa, hieroglyphically Kenes, has also very ancient inscriptions on the rocks, in which a new, and hitherto quite unknown, king of the Hyksos period is named. The hieroglyphical name of the island of Philae has generally been read Manlak. I have found it several times undoubtedly written Ilak. This, with the article, becomes Philak, in the mouths of the Greeks Philai. The sign read “man” by Champollion also interchanges in other groups with “i,” thus the pronunciation I-lak, P-i-lak, Memphitic Ph-i-lak is confirmed.
We have made a precious discovery in the courtof the great temple of Isis, two somewhat word-rich bilingual,i. e.hieroglyphical and Demotic decrees of the Egyptian priests, of which one contains the same text as the decree of the Rosetta stone. At least, I have till now compared the seven last lines, which not only correspond with the Rosetta in the contents but in the length of each individual line; the inscription must first be copied, ere I can say more about it; in any case the gain for Egyptian philology is not inconsiderable, if only a portion of the broken decree of Rosetta can be restored by it. The whole of the first part of the inscription of Rosetta, which precedes the decree, is wanting here. Instead of it, a second decree is there, which relates to the same Ptolemæus Epiphanes; in the beginning the “fortress of Alexander,”i. e.the city of Alexandria, is mentioned, for the first time, upon any of the monuments hitherto made known. Both decrees close, like the inscription of Rosetta, with the determination to set up the inscription in hieroglyphical, Demotic, and Greek writing. But the Greek inscription is wanting, if it were not written in red and rubbed out when Ptolemy Lathyrus engraved his hieroglyphic inscriptions over earlier ones.[61]
The hieroglyphic series of Ptolemies, which occurs here, again begins with Philadelphus, while it begins with Soter in the Greek text of the Rosetta inscription. Another very remarkable circumstance is, that Epiphanes is here called the son of Philopator Ptolemæus, and Cleopatra is mentioned, while according to the historical accounts the only wife of Philopator was named Arsinoe, and is so named in the Rosetta inscription and on other monuments. She is certainly also named Cleopatra in one passage of Pliny; this would have been taken for an error of the author or a mistake of the manuscripts, if a hieroglyphic and indeed official document did not present the interchange of names. There is consequently no farther reason to place, as Champollion-Figeac does, the embassy of Marcus Atilius and Marcus Acilius from the Roman Senate to Egypt to settle a new treaty concerning the Queen Cleopatra mentioned by Livy, in the time of Ptolemæus Epiphanes, instead of under Ptolemæus Philopator, as other authors inform us. We must rather conceive, either that the wife and sister of Philopator had both names, which would not obviate all the difficulties, or that the project which Appian mentions of a marriage of Philopator withthe Syrian Cleopatra, who afterwards became the wife of Epiphanes, was carried out after the murder of Arsinoe, without mention of it by the historians. Here naturally means are wanting to me in order to bring this point clearly out.[62]
The quantity of Greek inscriptions at Philae is innumerable, and Letronne will be interested to hear that I have found on the base of the second obelisk, still in its own place, of which a portion only went to England with the other obelisk, the remains of a Greek inscription written in red, and perhaps once gilt, like those lately discovered on the base in England, but which is, of course, extremely difficult to decipher. That the hieroglyphical inscriptions of the obelisks, which I myself copied in Dorsetshire, besides the Greek on the base, and subsequently published in my Egyptian Atlas, have nothing to do with the Greek inscriptions, and were also not contemporaneously set up, I have already stated in a letter to Letronne; but whether the inscription on the second base had notsome connection with that of the first is still a question; the correspondence of the three known inscriptions seems certainly to be settled.
The principal temple of the island was dedicated to Isis. She alone is named “Lady of Philek;” Osiris was only Θεὸς σύνναος, which is peculiarly expressed in the hieroglyphics, and is only exceptionally called “Lord of Philek;” but he was “Lord of Ph-i-uêb,”i. e.Abaton, and Isis, who was σύνναος there, is only occasionally called “Lady of Ph-i-uêb.” From this it is evident that the famous grave of Osiris was upon his own island of Phiuêb, and not on Philek. Both places are distinctly indicated as islands by their determinations. It is therefore not to be thought that the Abaton of the inscriptions and historians was a particular place on the island of Philae; it was an island in itself. So also do Diodorus and Plutarch intimate by their expression πρὸς Φίλαις. Diodorus decidedly refers to the island with the grave of Osiris as a distinct island, which was named ἱερὸν πεδίον, “the holy field,” by reason of this grave. This is a translation of Ph-i-uêb, or Ph-ih-uêb (for the h is also found expressed hieroglyphically), Koptic[Koptic], Ph-iah-uêb, “the sacred field.”[63]This consecrated place was an Abaton, and unapproachable except for the priests.
On the sixth of November we quitted the charming island, and commenced our Ethiopian journey. Already at Debôd, the next temple lying to the south, hieroglyphically Tabet (in Koptic perhaps[Koptic]), we found the sculptures of an Ethiopian King Arkamen, the Ergamenes of the historians, who reigned at the time of Ptolemæus Philadelphus, and stood probably in very friendly relations with Egypt. In the French work on Champollion’s Expedition (I have not Rosellini’s work with me) there is great confusion here. Several plates, belonging to Dakkeh, are ascribed to Debôd, andvice versâ. At Gertassi we collected nearly sixty Greek inscriptions. Letronne, who knew them through Gau, has perhaps already published them; I am anxious to know what he had made of the γόμοι, the priests of whom play a conspicuous part in these inscriptions, and of the new Gods Σρούπτιχις and Πουρεποῦνις.
With what inaccuracy the Greeks often caught up the Egyptian names is again shown by the inscriptions of Talmis, which call the same god Mandulis, which is distinctly enough in the hieroglyphic Meruli, and was the local deity of Talmis. It is remarkable that the name of Talmis, so frequently occurring in this temple, nowhere appears in the neighbouring, though certainly much more ancient, the rock temple of Bet el Ualli. Dendûr, also, had a peculiar patron, the God Petisi, who appears nowhere else, and is usually named Peshir Tenthur; Champollion’s plates are here again in strange disorder, the representations and the inscriptions being wrongly put together.
The temples of Gerf Hussên and Sebûa are peculiarly remarkable, because Ramses-Sesostris, who built them, here appears as a deity, and is adorning himself, beside Phtha and Ammon, the two chief deities of this temple. In the first, he is even once called “Ruler of the Gods.”