ROSETTA STONE.
In going from Europe across the Mediterranean to Egypt, youmay think you can sail directly into one of the mouths of the Nile, and ascend that stream till the first cataract calls a halt. But neither of the great mouths of the Nile give good harbors. Like those of our own Mississippi, they are narrow and exposed by reason of the deposits they continually carry to the sea. The two main mouths of the Nile—it has had several outlets in the course of time—are over a hundred miles apart. TheWestern, or Rosetta, mouth was once the seat of a famed city from whose ruins were exhumed (1799) the historic “Rosetta Stone,” now in the British Museum. It was found on the site of a temple dedicated by Necho II. to Tum, “The Setting Sun;” and the inscription itself, written in three kinds of writing, Greek, hieroglyphic, and enchorial, or running hand, was a decree of the Egyptian Priests assembled in synod at Memphis in favor of Ptolomy Epiphanes, who had granted them some special favor. Its great value consisted in the fact that it afforded a safe key to the reading of the hieroglyphical writings found on all Egyptian monuments.
M. DE LESSEPS.
The Eastern, or Damietta, mouth of the Nile gives a better harbor, but the boats are slow. Beyond this is Port Said, where you can enter the ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez and pass to the Red Sea. But you are not now in the Egyptyou seek. There are no verdant meadows and forests of date palms and mulberry, which give to the interior of Lower Egypt—covered with numerous villages and intersected by thousands of canals—the picturesque character of a real garden of God. You only see a vast sandy plain, stretching on either side of the canal. It is a sea of sand with here and there little islands of reeds or thorny plants, white with salty deposits. In spite of the blue sky, the angel of death has spread his wings over this vast solitude where the least sign of life is an event.
CLEOPATRA.
Speaking of canals, reminds one that this Suez Canal, 100 miles long, and built by M. de Lesseps, 1858-1869, was not the first to connect the waters of the Red Sea with the Mediterranean. One was projected B.C. 610 by Pharaoh Necho, but not finished till the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, which ran from the Red Sea to one of the arms of the Nile. It was practically out of use in the time of Cleopatra.
The best Mediterranean port of Egypt is Alexandria, the glory of which has sadly departed. It is far to the west of the Rosetta mouth of the Nile, but is connected by rail with Cairo. Though founded 330 B.C., by Alexander the Great, conqueror of Egypt, as a commercial outlet, and raised to a population, splendor and wealth unexcelled by any ancient city, it is now a modern place in the midst of impressive ruins. Its mixed and unthrifty population is about 165,000.
As you approach it you are guided by the modern light house, 180 feet high, which stands on the site of the Great Light of Pharos, built by Ptolemy II., 280 B.C., and whichweathered the storms of sixteen centuries, lighting the sea for forty miles around. It was of white marble and reckoned as one of the “Seven Wonders of the World.”
Standing in the streets of Alexandria, what a crowd of historic memories rush upon you. You are in Lower Egypt, the Delta of the Nile, the country of the old Pharaohs whose power was felt from the Mediterranean to the Mountains of the Moon, whose land was the “black land,” symbol of plenty among the tribes of Arabia and throughout all Syria, land where the Hebrews wrought and whence they fled back to their home on the Jordan, land of the Grecian Alexander, the Roman Cæsar, the Mohammedan Califf.
PHAROS LIGHT.
No earthly dynasty ever lasted longer than that of the Pharaohs. We hardly know when time began it, but Brugsch dates it from Menes, B.C. 4400. It fell permanently with Alexander’s Conquest, 330 B.C., and was held by his successors, the Greek Ptolemeys, for three hundred years, or until the Romans took it from Cleopatra, whose name is perpetuated in the famous Cleopatra’s Needles, which for nearly 2000 years stood as companion pieces to Pompey’s Pillar.
The Pillar of Pompey, 195 feet high, still stands on high ground southeast of the city, near the Moslem burial place. But the Needles of Cleopatra are gone. Late investigations have thrown new light on these wonders. They were not made nor erected in honor of Cleopatra at all, but were historic monuments erected by the Pharaoh, Thutmes III., 1600 B.C., at Heliopolis, “City of the Sun.” The two largest pair were, centuries ago, transported, one to Constantinople, the other to Rome. The two smaller pair were taken to Alexandria by Tiberius and set up in front of Cæsar’s Temple, where they obtained the well known name of “Cleopatra’s Needles.” One fell down and, after lying prostrate in the sand for centuries, was taken to London in 1878 and set up on the banks of the Thames. It is 68 feet high, and was cut out of a single stone from the quarries of Syene. The other was taken down and transported to New York, where it is a conspicuous object in Central Park. They bear nearly similar inscriptions, of the time of Thutmes III. and Rameses II.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
Egypt fell into the hands of the Saracen invaders in A.D. 625, and has ever since been under Mohammedan or Turkish rule. The Alexandria of the Ptolemeys with its half million people, its magnificent temples, its libraries and museums, its learning and art, its commerce for all the world, has lost all its former importance, and is to-day a dirty trading town filled with a mixed and indolent people.
A CLEOPATRA NEEDLE IN ALEXANDRIA.
There is no chapter in history so sweeping and interesting as that which closed the career of Alexandria to the Christian world. It was the real centre of Christian light and influence. Its bishops were the most learned and potential, its schools of Christian thought the most renowned. It was in commerce with all the world and could scatter influences wider than any other city. It had given the Septuagint version of the Bible to the nations. All around, it had made converts of theCoptic elements, which were native, and Egypt’s natural defenders in case of war. But these it had estranged. Therefore the Saracen conquest was easy. Pelusium and Memphis fell. Alexandria was surrounded, and fell A.D. 640. “I have taken,” says Amrou, “the great city of the west with its 4000 palaces,4000 baths, 400 theatres, 12,000 shops, and 40,000 Jews.” Amrou would have spared the great library of 700,000 volumes. But the Califf’s (Omar’s) answer came, “These books are useless if they contain only the word of God; they are pernicious if they contain anything else. Therefore destroy them.”
Aside from the monuments above mentioned, there is little else to connect it with a glorious past except the catacombs on the outskirts, which are of the same general character as those at Rome. These catacombs possess a weird interest wherever they exist. They abound in one form or another in Egypt, and are found in many other countries where, for their extent and curious architecture, they rank as wonders.
IN THE SERAPEION.
Those lately unearthed in the vast Necropolis of Memphis, and called the Serapeion, were the burial place of the Egyptian God Apis, or Serapis, the supreme deity represented by the bull Apis. This sacred bull was not allowed to live longer than twenty-five years. If he died before that age, and of naturalcauses, he was embalmed as a mummy and interred in the Serapeion with great pomp. Otherwise, he was secretly put to death and buried by the priests in a well. In the Serapeion are some magnificent sarcophagi in granite, and inscriptions which preserve the Egyptian chronology from 1400 B.C. to 177 B.C.
BRONZES OF THE EGYPTIAN GOD APIS.
ROMAN CATACOMBS.
The great catacombs at Rome were the burial places of the early Christians. It was supposed they were originally the quarries from which the building stone of the city had been taken. But while this is true of the catacombs of Paris, it is now conceded that those of Rome were cut out for burial purposes only, less perhaps to escape from the watchfulness of despotic power, than in obedience to a wish to remain faithful to the traditions of the early church which preserved the Jewish custom of rock or cave sepulture. These catacombs are of immense and bewildering proportions. Their leading feature is long galleries, the sides of which are filled with niches to receive the remains. At first these galleries were on a certain level, twenty to thirty feet below the surface. But as space was required, they were cut out on other levels, till some of the galleries got to be as much as three hundred feet below the surface. There are some attempts at carving and statue work about the remains of illustrious persons, and many inscriptions of great historic value, but in general they have been much abused and desecrated, and we are sorry to say chiefly by Christian peoples, mostly of the time of the Crusades, who found, or supposed theywould find, rich booty, in the shape of finger rings and other precious things laid away with the dead. MacFarlane, in his book upon the catacombs, tells of a company of gay young officers of the French army who entered them on a tour of inspection. They had plenty of lights, provisions, wine and brandy, and their exploration became a revel. They finally began to banter one anotherabout venturing furthest into the dark labyrinthine recesses. One, as impious as he was daring, refused to leave the crypts till he had visited all. Darting away, torch in hand, he plunged into gallery after gallery, until his torch began to burn low and the excitement of intoxication left him. With great difficulty he found his way back to the chapel where he had left his companions. They were gone. With still greater difficulty he reached the entrance to the catacomb. It was closed. He shouted frantically, and madly beat upon the railings with a piece of tombstone. But it was night and no one could hear. In desperation he started back for the chapel. He fell through a chasm upon crackling, crumbling bones. The shock to his nerves was terrible. Crawling out, he reached the chapel, amid intolerable fear. He who had many a time marched undauntedly on gleaming lines of bayonets and had schooled himself to look upon death without fear, was not equal to the trials of a night in a charnel house. His thirst became intolerable. He stumbled upon a bottle left by his companions and, supposing it contained water, drank eagerly of its contents. In a few moments the drink acted with violence and, in his delirium, he became the victim of wild visions. Spectres gathered around him. The bones of the dead rose and clattered before him. Fire gleamed in eyeless skulls. Fleshless lips chattered and shrieked till the caves echoed. Death must soon have been the result of this fearful experience had not morning come and brought fresh visitors to the catacombs, who discovered the young officer in a state of stupor and took him to the hospital. For months he lay prostrate with brain fever. He had been taught the weakness of man in that valley of the shadow of death, and ever after gave over his atheistic notions, and lived and died a christian.
You may leave Alexandria by canal for the Nile, and then sail to Cairo. You will thus see the smaller canals, the villages, the peasantry, the dykes of the Nile, the mounds denoting ruins of ancient cities. You will see the wheels for raising water from the Nile by foot power, and will learn that the lands which are not subject to annual overflow must be irrigated bycanals or by these wheels. You will see at the point where the Nile separates into its Damietta and Rosetta branches, the wonderful Barrage, or double bridge, intended to hold back the Nile waters for the supply of Lower Egypt without the need of water wheels. It is a mighty but faulty piece of engineering and does not answer its purpose. From this to Cairo the country gets more bluffy and, ere you enter the city, you may catch glimpses of the Pyramids off to the right.
THE MASSACRE OF THE MAMELUKES.
But the speediest route from Alexandria is by rail. You are soon whirled into the Moslem city. Cairo is not an ancient city, though founded almost on the site of old Egyptian Memphis. It is Saracen, and was thenKahira(Cairo) “City of Victory,” for it was their first conquest under Omar, after they landed and took Pelusium. It was greatly enlarged and beautified by Saladin after the overthrow of the Califfs of Bagdad. It dates from about A.D. 640.
It is a thickly built, populous (population 327,000) dirty, noisy, narrow streeted, city on the east bank of the Nile. Its mosques,houses, gardens, business, people, burial places, manners and customs, tell at a glance of its Mohammedan origin. Its mosques are its chief attraction. They are everywhere, and some of them are of vast proportions and great architectural beauty. The transfer of the Mameluke power in Egypt to the present Khedives was brought about by Mohammed Ali, an Albanian. The Mamelukes were decoyed into the citadel at Cairo and nearly all murdered. One named Emim Bey escaped by leaping on horseback from the citadel. He spurred his charger over a pile of his dead and dying comrades; sprang upon the battlements; the next moment he was in the air; another, and he released himself from his crushed and bleeding horse amid a shower of bullets. He fled; took refuge in the sanctuary of a mosque; and finally escaped into the deserts of the Thebaid. The scene of this event is always pointed out to travelers.
VEILED BEAUTY.
It is a city divided into quarters—the European quarter, Coptic quarter, Jewish quarter, water carriers’ quarters, and so on. The narrow streets are lined with bazaars—little stores or markets, and thronged by a mixed populace—veiled ladies, priests in robes, citizens with turbaned heads, peddlers with trays on their heads, beggars without number, desert Bedouins, dervishes, soldiers, boatmen and laborers.
Abraham sent Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac. Matrimonial agents still exist in Cairo in the shape of Khatibehs, or betrothers. They are women, and generally sellers of cosmetics, which business gives them opportunity to get acquainted with both marriageable sons and daughters. They get to be rare matchmakers, and profit by their business in a country where a man may have as many wives as he can support.
Your sleep will be disturbed by the Mesahhar who goesabout the city every morning to announce the sunrise, in order that every good Moslem may say his prayers before the luminary passes the horizon.
There is no end to the drinking troughs and fountains. Joseph’s well, discovered and cleaned out by Saladin, is one of the leading curiosities. It is 300 feet deep, cut out of the solid rock, with a winding staircase to the bottom.
West of the Nile and nearly opposite Cairo, is the village of Ghiseh, on the direct road to the pyramids, mention of which introduces us to ancient Egypt and the most wonderful monuments in the world.
Menes, “the constant,” reigned at Tini. He built Memphis, on part of whose site Cairo now stands, but whose centre was further up the Nile. The Egyptian name was Mennofer, “the good place.” The ruins of Memphis were well preserved down to the thirteenth century, and were then glowingly described by an Arab physician, Latif. But the stones were gradually transported to Cairo, and its ruins reappeared in the mosques and palaces of that place.
Westward of the Nile, and some distance from it, was the Necropolis of Memphis—its common and royal burying ground, with its wealth of tombs, overlooked by the stupendous buildings of the pyramids which rose high above the monuments of the noblest among the noble families who, even after life was done, reposed in deep pits at the feet of their lords and masters. The contemporaries of the third (3966 B.C. to 3766 B.C.), fourth (3733 B.C. to 3600 B.C.) and fifth (3566 B.C. to 3333 B.C.) dynasties are here buried and their memories preserved by pictures and writings on the walls of their chambers above their tombs. This is the fountain of that stream of traditions which carries us back to the oldest dynasty of that oldest country. If those countless tombs had been preserved entire to us, we could, in the light of modern interpretation, read with accuracy the genealogies of the kings and the noble lines that erected them. A few remaining heaps enable us to know what they mean and to appreciate the loss to history occasioned by their destruction.
They have served to rescue from oblivion the fact that the Pharaohs of Memphis had a title which was “King of Upper and Lower Egypt.” At the same time he was “Peras,” “of the great house”—written Pharaoh in the Bible. He was a god for his subjects, a lord par excellence, in whose sight there should be prostration and a rubbing of the ground with noses. They saluted him with the words “his holiness.” The royal court was composed of the nobility of the country and servants of inferior rank. The former added to dignity of origin the graces of wisdom, good manners, and virtue. Chiefs, or scribes carried on the affairs of the court.
The monuments clearly speak of Senoferu, of the third dynasty, B.C. 3766. A ravine in the Memphian Necropolis, where are many ancient caverns, contains a stone picture of Senoferu, who appears as a warrior striking an enemy to the ground with a mighty club. The rock inscriptions mention his name, with the title of “vanquisher of foreign peoples” who in his time inhabited the cavernous valleys in the mountains round Sinai.
The Pharaohs of the fourth dynasty were the builders of the hugest of the pyramids. The tables discovered at Abydos make Khufu the successor of Senoferu. Khufu is the Cheops of the historian Herodotus. His date was 3733 B.C.
No spirited traveler ever sets foot on the black soil of Egypt, without gazing on that wonder of antiquity, the threefold mass of the pyramids on the steep edge of the desert, an hour’s ride over the long causeway extending out from Ghiseh. The desert’s boundless sea of yellow sand, whose billows are piled up around the gigantic pyramids, deeply entombing the tomb, surges hot and dry far up the green meadows and mingles with the growing grass and corn. From the far distance you see the giant forms of the pyramids, as if they were regularly crystalized mountains, which the ever-creating nature has called forth from the mother soil of rock, to lift themselves up towards the blue vault of heaven. And yet they are but tombs, built by the hands of men, raised by King Khufu (Cheops) and two other Pharaohs of the same family and dynasty, to be the admiration and astonishment of the ancient and modern world.
PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT.
We speak now of the three largest—there are six others in this group, and twenty-seven more throughout the Nile valley. They are perfectly adjusted to points of the compass—north, south, east and west. Modern investigators have found in the construction, proportions and position of the “Great Pyramid” especially, many things which point to a marvellous knowledge of science on the part of their builders. If the half they say is true of them, there are a vast number of lost arts to discredit modern genius. Some go so far as to trace in their measurements and construction, not only prophecy of the coming of Christ, but chart of the events which have signalized the world’s history and are yet to make it memorable. They base their reasoning on the fact that there was no architectural model for them and no books extant to teach the science requisite for their construction, that their height and bases bear certain proportions to each other, and to the diameter of a great circle, that they are on the line of a true meridian, that certain openings point to certain stars, and so on till ingenuity is exhausted.
SECTION OF THE GREAT PYRAMID, SHOWING ITS INTERIOR.
The three large pyramids measure thus
PyramidHeight,feetBreadth ofbase, feetKhufu (Cheops),Great450.75746Khafra,Second447.5690.75Menkara,Third203.352.88
As soon as a Pharaoh mounted the throne he gave orders to a nobleman, master of all the buildings, to plan the work and cut the stone. The kernel of the future edifice was raised on the limestone rock of the desert in the form of a small pyramid built in steps. Its well constructed and finished interior formed the king’s eternal dwelling, with his stone sarcophagus lying on the stone floor. Let us suppose this first building finished while the king still lived. A second covering was added on the outside of the first; then a third; then a fourth; and so the mass of the giant building grew greater the longer the king lived. Then at last, when it became almost impossible to extend the area of the pyramid further, a casing of hard stone, polished like glass, and fitted accurately into the angles of the steps, covered the vast mass of the king’s sepulchre, presenting a gigantic triangle on each of its four faces. More than seventy of such pyramids once rose on the margin of the desert, each telling of a king, of whom it was at once the tomb and the monument.
At present the Great Pyramid is, externally, a rough, huge mass of limestone blocks, regularly worked and cemented. The top is flattened. The outside polished casing, as well as the top, has been removed by the builders of Cairo, for mosques and palaces, as have many of the finest ruins on the Nile.
The Sphinx was sculptured at some time not far removed from the building of the three great pyramids. Recent discoveries have increased the astonishment of mankind at the bulk of this monstrous figure and at the vast and unknown buildings that stood around it and, as it were, lay between its paws. It is within a few years that the sand has been blown away and revealed these incomprehensible structures. In a well near by was found a finely executed statue of Khafra, builder of the second pyramid.
There are other sphinxes, but this at the base of the Great Pyramid is the largest. It has a man’s head and a lion’s body, and is supposed to represent the kingly power of the sun god. Its length is 140 feet, and height 30 feet. Between its paws is an altar, to which you ascend by a long flight of steps. The Arabs call it “the fatherly terror.”
In the middle “chamber of the dead” of Menkara’s pyramid was found his stone sarcophagus and its wooden cover, both beautifully adorned in the style of a temple. They were taken out and shipped for England, but the vessel was wrecked, and the sarcophagus now lies at the bottom of the Mediterranean. The lid was saved and is now in the British Museum. On it is carved a text or prayer to Osiris, king of the gods: “O Osiris, who hast become king of Egypt, Menkara living eternally, child of heaven, son of the divine mother, heir of time, over thee may she stretch herself and cover thee, thy divine mother, in her name as mystery of heaven. May she grant that thou shouldst be like god, free from all evils, king Menkara, living eternally.”
SPHINX.
The prayer is not uncommon, for parts of it have been found on other monuments. Its sense is, “Delivered from mortal matter, the soul of the dead king passes through the immense spaces of heaven to unite itself with god, after having overcome the evil which opposed it on its journey through earth.”
The entrance to the great pyramid was formerly quite concealed, only the priests knowing where to find the movable stone that would admit them. But now the opening is plain, and is about forty-five feet from the ground on the north side. Thence there is a descent through a narrow passage for 320 feet into the sepulchral chamber. The passage is much blocked and difficult. The great red granite sarcophagus is there, empty and broken, mute receptacle of departed greatness, for which the relic hunter has had quite too little respect.
With the end of the fifth dynasty pyramid building ceased. The glory of Memphis departed and went to Thebes, where kingly vanity seems to have sought outlet in the temple architecture whose ruins are the wonder of the world.
Above the old site of Memphis, is Toora, and out on its desert side are the pyramids of Sakkarah, eleven in number. The most remarkable is the Step Pyramid, believed to be more ancient than those of Ghiseh. But there is something even more wonderful here—the Temple of Serapis, which it took four years to disengage from the sands of the desert after its site was discovered. It seems to have been dedicated to Serapis, the sacred bull of Egypt. Beneath it is a great catacomb where once laid the remains of thousands of sacred bulls. Their stone coffins are still there, cut out of solid blocks of granite, and measuring fourteen feet long by eleven feet high.
Further up the Nile are the high limestone cliffs of Gebel-et-Teyr, on which perches the Coptic “Convent of the Pulley.” The monks who live here are great beggars. They let themselves down from the cliff and swim off to a passing boat to ask alms in the name of their Christianity.
The next town of moment is Siout, capital of Upper Egypt. It stands on the site of ancient Lycopolis, “wolf city,” and is backed in by lofty cliffs, from which the views are very fine. Further up is Girgeh, whence you must take journey on the back of donkeys to Abydos, off eastward on the edge of the desert. Here was the most ancient city of This, or Tini, where Mena reigned, on whose ruins Abydos was built, itself an antiquity and wonder. Here is the great temple begun by Seti I.and completed by his son Rameses II., 1333 B.C. Rameses II., was the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Its roof, pillars and walls are all preserved and the chiselling on the latter is something marvellous. What renders it doubly interesting is, the name of the sculptor is preserved. His name was Hi, and he must have been a man of decided genius, for his picture of the king and son taming the bull is quite spirited. In this temple is also the celebrated sculpture called the “Table of Abydos,” which gives a list of sixty-five kings, from Menes down to the last king of the twelfth dynasty, a period of 2166 years. It is a most invaluable record and has done much to throw light on Egyptian history. It was discovered in 1865. Abydos then, or Tini, was the starting point of Egyptian power and civilization, as we now know it. Here was the first dynasty of the Pharaohs, transferred afterwards to Memphis where the pyramids became their monuments, re-transferred to Thebes where the temples chronicled their greatness and grandeur. Old as Thebes is, Abydos is older, and Tini older still. Most carefully has the temple at Abydos been exhumed from the sand which has preserved it for three thousand years, most of the time against the hands of those who, knowing better, would have spoiled its fair proportions and its great historic value. Abydos seems to have been a city of tombs, and it is possible that the greatness of all Egypt sought it as a burial place.
The most powerful of these Theban Kings, were those of the twelfth dynasty and on, beginning 2466 B.C., though Thebes can be traced back to the sixth dynasty as a city. It was a period in which strong monarchs ruled, and the arts were cultivated with magnificent results. Thebes was the capital, and on its temples and palaces the most enormous labor and expense were lavishly bestowed. And this not in Thebes alone, but in all the cities of Egypt; and they all make history too, impressive, invaluable history.
Siout owes its present importance to the caravan trade with Darfur and Nubia. Passing on toward Thebes, the river banks get more and more bluffy. You soon come to Dendera on the west bank. Its ruins are magnificent, and by many regardedas the finest in Egypt. The portico of its ancient temple is inconceivably grand. Its length is 265 feet and height 60 feet. It is entirely covered with mystic, varied and fantastic sculptures, hieroglyphics, groups, figures of deities, sacred animals, processions of soldiers—in short the manners and mythology of all Egypt. The workmanship is elaborate and finished. The interior is no less beautiful. The roof contained a sculptured representation of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. It has been taken down and is now in the museum at Paris.
A few miles further on in this bewildering region of solid rock bluffs, immense quarries, deep sculptured caverns, you come to Thebes itself, “City of the hundred gates,” lying on both sides of the Nile, the reports of whose power and splendor we would regard as fabulous, were its majestic ruins not there still to corroborate every glowing account. Whatever of Egyptian art is older than that of the Theban era lacked the beauty which moves to admiration. Beginning with the Theban kings of the twelfth dynasty, the harmonious form of beauty united with truth and nobleness meets the eye of the beholder as well in buildings as in statues. The great labyrinth and the excavation for the artificial lake Mœris, at Alexandria, were made during this period. In Tanis, at the mouth of the Nile, was erected a temple whose inscriptions show not only the manners of the country with great historic accuracy, but tell the tale of frequent trade with the people from Arabia and Canaan.
The site of Thebes is an immense amphitheatre with the Nile in the centre. At first you see only a confusion of portals, obelisks and columns peeping through or towering above the palm trees. Gradually you are able to distinguish objects, and the first that strikes you is the ruins of Luxor on the eastern bank. They overlook the Arab village at their base, and consist of a long row of columns and the huge gateway of the Temple of Luxor. The columns are those of an immense portico, and by them stood two beautiful obelisks, one of which is now in the Place de la Concorde, Paris. The columns are monoliths, fully ten feet in diameter, and many of them in a perfect state. All are covered with inscriptions of varioussignification. This temple was built by Rameses II., and is therefore not one of the oldest in Egypt, though not the least interesting. On the westward or opposite side of the Nile is Memnon and the temple home of Rameses II. There is little or nothing of the temple there, but twin colossal statues stand in lonely desolation on the plain, and these once guarded the temple entrance. One is perfect, the other broken. Both measured sixty-four feet in height. They are sitting giants carved from solid stone. They represented King Amenhotep, in whose honor the temple was built. At their feet are small sitting statues, one of his wife Thi, the other of his mother Mutem-ua, each carved out of red sandstone mixed with white quartz, and each a marvellous exhibition of skill in treating the hardest and most brittle materials. They stand twenty-two feet apart. The northern, or broken one, is that which the Greeks and Romans celebrated in poetry and prose as the “vocal statue of Memnon.” Its legs are covered with inscriptions of Greek, Roman, Phœnician and Egyptian travelers, written to assure the reader that they had really visited the place or had heard the musical tones of Memnon at the rising of the sun.
THE COLOSSI.
In the year 27 B.C. the upper part of this statue was removed from its place and thrown down by an earthquake. From that time on, tourists began to mutilate it by cutting into it their befitting or unbefitting remarks. The assurances that they had heard Memnon sing or ring ceased under the reign of Septimius Severus who completed the wanting upper part of the body as well as he could with blocks of stone piled up and fastenedtogether. It is a well known fact that split or cracked rocks, after cooling during the night, at the rising of the sun or as soon as the stone becomes warm, may emit a prolonged ringing note. After the statue was restored in the manner above described, the sound, if ever it emitted any, naturally ceased. The crack was covered by the masonry.
THE RAMESEION OF THEBES AND COLOSSAL STATUE OF RAMESES.
The story of the architect of this temple is told in the hieroglyphics. That part which relates to these two memorable statues tells how he conceived them without any order from the king, cut them out of solid rock, and employed eight ships to move them from the quarries down the Nile to Memphis. Even in our highly cultivated age, with all its inventions and machines which enable us by the help of steam to raise and transport the heaviest weights, the shipment and erection of the mammoth statues of Memnon remain an insoluble riddle. Verily the architect, Amenhotep the son ofHapoo, must have been not only a wise but a specially ingenious man of his time.
Back of the Memnon Statues and the ruins of the “Palace Temple,” which they guarded, and 500 yards nearer the Lybian desert, stood the Rameseion. It was both palace and temple. It is finely situated on the lowest grade of the hills as they begin to ascend from the plain, and its various parts occupy a series of terraces, one rising above the other in a singularly impressive and majestic fashion. Its outer gateway is grandly massive. Sculptures embellish it, very quaint and vivid. It formed the entrance to the first court, whose walls are destroyed. Some picturesque Ramessid columns remain, however; and at their foot lie the fragments of the hugest statue that was ever fashioned by Egyptian sculptor. It was a fitting ornament for a city of giants; such an effigy as might have embellished a palace built and inhabited by Titans. Unhappily, it is broken from the middle; but when entire it must have weighed about 887 tons, and measured 22 feet 4 inches across the shoulders, and 14 feet 4 inches from the neck to the elbow. The toes are from 2 to 3 feet long. The whole mass is composed of Syene granite; and it is offered as a problem to engineers and contractors of the present day,—How were nearly 900 tons of granite conveyed some hundreds of miles from Syene to Thebes? It is equally difficult to imagine how, in a country not afflicted by earthquakes, so colossal a monument was overthrown.
Such was the Rameseion. It looked towards the east, facing the magnificent temple at Karnak. Its propylon, or gateway, in the days of its glory, was in itself a structure of the highest architectural grandeur, and the portion still extant measures 234 feet in length. The principal edifice was about 600 feet in length and 200 feet in breadth, with upwards of 160 columns, each 30 feet in height. A wall of brick enclosed it; and a dromos, fully 1600 feet long, and composed of two hundred sphinxes, led in a northwesterly direction to a temple or fortress, sheltered among the Libyan hills.
This period of temple building and ornamentation which makes Thebes as conspicuous in Egyptian history as pyramidbuilding had made Memphis, extended over several dynasties, and practically ended with the twentieth (1200 B.C. to 1133 B.C.) which embraced the long line of Rameses, except Rameses I. and II. This was the time of the Hebrew captivity and of the Exodus.
THE GREAT COURT AND OBELISK OF KARNAK.
The most illustrious of all these kings—the Alexander the Great of Egyptian history—was Thutmes III., who reigned for 53 years, and carried Egyptian power into the heart of Africa as well as Asia. Countless memorials of his reign exist in papyrus rolls, on temple walls, in tombs and even on beetles and other ornaments. These conquests of his brought to Egypt countless prisoners of every race who, according to the old custom, found employment in the public works. It was principally to the great public edifices, and among those especially to the enlarged buildings of the temple at Amon (Ape) near Karnak, that these foreigners were forced to devote their time.
Though Karnak is several miles further up the Nile, and onthe same side as Luxor, it is in the same splendid natural amphitheatre, and is a part of the grand temple system of Thebes and its suburbs. Let us visit its magnificent ruins before stopping to look in upon Thebes proper.
SPHINX OF KARNAK.
The Karnak ruins surpass in imposing grandeur all others in Egypt and the world. The central hall of the Grand Temple is a nearly complete ruin, but a room has been found which contained a stone tablet on which Thutmes III. is represented as giving recognition to his fifty-six royal predecessors. This valuable historic tablet has been carried away and is now in Paris. This temple was 1108 feet long and 300 wide. But this temple was only a part of the gorgeous edifice. On three sides were other temples, a long way off, yet connected with the central one by avenues whose sides were lined with statuary, mostly sphinxes. Many of the latter are yet in place, and are slowly crumbling to ruin. Two colossal statues at the door of the temple now lie prostrate. Across the entire ruins appear fragments of architecture, trunks of broken columns, mutilated statues, obelisks, some fallen others majestically erect, immense halls whose roofs are supported by forests of columns, and portals, surpassing all former or later structures. Yet when the plan is studied and understood, its regularity appears wonderful and the beholder is lost in admiration. Here are two obelisks, one 69 feet high, the other 91 feet, the latter the highest in Egypt, and adorned with sculptures of perfect execution. One hundred andthirty-four columns of solid stone, each seventy feet high and eleven in diameter, supported the main hall of the temple which was 329 feet by 170 feet. The steps to the door are 40 feet long and 10 wide. The sculptures were adorned with colors, which have withstood the ravages of time. Fifty of the sphinxes remain, and there is evidence that the original number was six hundred.
GATEWAY AT KARNAK.
All who have visited this scene describe the impression as superior to that made by any earthly object. Says Denon, “The whole French army, on coming in sight of it, stood still, struck as it were with an electric shock.” Belzoni says: “The sublimest ideas derived from the most magnificent specimens of modern architecture, cannot equal those imparted by a sight of these ruins. I appeared to be entering a city of departed giants, and I seemed alone in the midst of all that was most sacred in the world. The forest of enormous columns adorned all round with beautiful figures and various ornaments, the high portals seen at a distance from the openings to this vast labyrinthof edifices, the various groups of ruins in the adjoining temples—these had such an effect as to separate me in imagination from the rest of mortals, and make me seem unconscious whether I was on earth or some other planet.”
And Karnak, like all Nile scenes, is said to be finer by moonlight than sunlight. But you must go protected, for the wild beast does not hesitate to make a lair of the caverns amid these ruins. Human vanity needs no sadder commentary.
This temple was the acme of old Egyptian art. Its mass was not the work of one king, but of many. It therefore measures taste, wealth and architectural vigor better than a book. But its founder, Thutmes III., left similar monuments to his power. They have been traced in Nubia, in the island of Elephantine, in various cities of northern Egypt, and even in Mesopotamia.
A MUMMY.
In Central Thebes you meet with ruins of the home palace or dwelling place of Rameses III. The king’s chamber can be traced by the character of the sculptures. You see in these the king attended by the ladies of his harem. They are giving him lotus flowers and waving fans before him. In one picture he sits with a favorite at a game of draughts. His arm is extended holding a piece in the act of moving. And so the various domestic scenes of the old monarch appear, reproducing for us, after a period of 3500 years, quite a history of how things went on in the palaces of royalty upon the Nile.
The tombs of Thebes surpass all others in number, extent and splendor. They are back toward the desert in the rocky chain which bounds it. Here are subterranean works whichalmost rival the pyramids in wonder. Entrance galleries cut into the solid rock lead to distant central chambers where are deposited the sarcophagi which contained the bodies of the dead. The walls everywhere, and the sarcophagi, or stone coffins, are elaborately sculptured with family histories, prayers, and all the ornaments which formed the pride of the living. Festivals, agricultural operations, commercial transactions, hunts, bullfights, fishing and fowling scenes, vineyards, ornamental grounds, form the subject of these varied, interesting and truly historic sketches. The chambers and passages which run in various directions contain mummies in that wonderful state of preservation which the Egyptians alone had the art of securing. They are found wrapped in successive folds of linen, saturated with bitumen, so as to preserve to the present the form and even the features of the dead. Alas! how these sacred resting places have been desecrated. The sarcophagi have been broken and carried away, and the mummified remains that rested securely in their niches for thousands of years have been dragged out to gratify the curiosity of sight seers in all quarters of the globe.