EGYPTIAN PRINCE CARRIED IN A PALANQUIN.
Frank and Fred were impatient to get away from Keneh, as their next halt was to be at Luxor, the ancient Thebes, where the steamer would remain three days, to enable them to see the monuments of ancient Egypt in that vicinity.
As the boat wound along the river in the direction of Thebes, the youths were watching from the deck for the first indications of their proximity to that wonderful city. Suddenly the sharp eyes of Fred caught sight of a sort of tower in the distance, and he at once called his cousin's attention to his discovery.
"Yes, and there's another, and another!" shouted Frank; "and the walls of a great building, too."
"That must be Karnak," said Fred. "You know they told us Karnak was a mile or more below Thebes, and its ruins were the first we would see."
"You are quite right," said the Doctor, who just then came up. "That is Karnak, or rather it is what remains of the great temple which, even in its ruin, is one of the wonders of the world."
"What a pity it is in ruins," one of the youths remarked. "Wouldn't it be nice if some rich man would amuse himself and spend his money by building a temple like what this once was? It would be so interesting and instructive."
"I'm afraid you are not likely to find the rich man who will do it," said the Doctor, with a smile. "It would take a vast amount of money, and he would be open to the charge of trying to revive the heathenism of the ancient Egyptians, and instructing the people of our time in idolatrous practices."
"I never thought of that," was the reply; "but any way I would like to see an Egyptian temple just as it was finished, and before it began to go to ruin."
"If a picture will satisfy you," the Doctor answered, "you have onlyto refer to Sir Gardner Wilkinson. He has made a drawing of an ancient temple, and reproduced it as exactly as he could from the materials in his possession, and from a personal visit to the best preserved temples to be found in the country."
A COMPLETE EGYPTIAN TEMPLE.
Frank ran below for a copy of the book, and soon returned with it. As they neared the ruins of Karnak the youths compared the scene before them with the printed picture, and tried to imagine themselves carried back to the time of Rameses and Sethi, when the temple was perfect, and not a stone of the vast mass had been displaced from its proper position.
A "BARIS," OR FUNERAL-BOAT.
"A procession is approaching the temple," said the Doctor, "in one of the celebrations for which the ancient Egyptians were famous. You see it passing along a raised causeway to the gate which admits to the grand enclosure; it carries banners with the devices of the King, and midway between the gate and the building at the end of the causeway you see one of the sacred boats in which the souls of the dead are ferried over the lake that separates this world from the next. This lake is symbolized by a small lake, or basin, in the enclosure of the temple; you see it in the fore-ground of the picture, and if it had not usually become filled with sand you would find it in all our visits to the ruins of these temples. A part of the funeral ceremony consisted of ferrying the mummy over the sacred lake in abaris, or funeral-boat; there were generally several boats in a procession, and that containing the mummy was usually towed by one of the others.
"The wall of the enclosure was made high enough to prevent those on the outside from seeing what went on within. It is supposed that the priests wished to keep their rites and ceremonials to themselves, and were only willing to be seen when they had made proper preparations. Sometimes there were two and sometimes four gates, but generally there was only one point of entrance, which was always carefully guarded.
"The procession is just passing the outer gate-way, and leaving the paved road which leads to it. The gate-way consists of two massive towers, orpropylæconnected at the top by a broad platform, and the passagebeneath is amply large enough for all the wants of the processions that enter the place. Beyond the gate-way is another paved road, guarded on each side by a row of sphinxes, with their faces turned toward the causeway, and never deserting it for an instant, with their solemn stare. Sometimes the outer causeway was protected by sphinxes the same as the inner one, but this was the case only with the most important temples. At the end of this road we generally find a couple of obelisks, and close beyond them is a second propylon, more massive and much taller than the one at the entrance. Passing this propylon we enter an open court surrounded with a columned portico, and having a third propylon extending across its centre. Passing this court-yard we reach the great hall, whose roof, supported by many columns hewn from solid stone, admits only a dim and sombre light. Here the procession halts while the ceremonies for which it came are completed.
"Bear in mind," the Doctor continued, "that the temple among the ancient Egyptians was not strictly a place of religious worship, like the temples of the Greeks and Romans and the churches of modern days; it was a building erected by a king in honor of the divinities who were believed to have brought him prosperity in conquering his enemies or whose favor he sought. For this reason we always know by what king a temple was built, as he is always represented in the first place in the processions, and all the sacrifices and other ceremonies are in his name.
"You observe that there is a grove on both sides of the temple; the Egyptians always surrounded their temples with groves, and generally the trees were set out in rows. The divinities were supposed to linger about the trees, and certain deities were believed to shun a treeless spot. Perhaps some of the respect for trees was due to the difficulty of keeping them alive. Egypt is not a land of forests, and trees do not flourish here except with much care and attention."
During this conversation about Egyptian temples the steamer steadily made her way toward Karnak and Luxor; she passed the ruins of Karnak, and soon drew up to the landing at the modern town. Luxor is a wretched place of about four thousand inhabitants, and if it were not for the reputation of the spot, and the number of strangers visiting it every winter, the town would soon cease to exist. The inhabitants live almost entirely on what they obtain from visitors, and they drive quite a prosperous trade in mummies and other antiquities, besides finding a good market for the few things raised in their gardens.
As soon as the boat was made fast to the bank the passengers hurried to land. The natives met them with donkeys for hire, and with all sortsof antiquities for sale. Frank and Fred were rather puzzled with the way in which the natives pressed their wares upon the strangers, and Frank made an entry in his note-book as follows:
"They are a silent people here, and when they have anything to sell they come in front of you, without saying a word, and hold the article directly before your eyes. If you wish to examine it you do so, and if desirous of buying you ask the price.
AN EGYPTIAN WAR-CHARIOT OF ANCIENT TIMES.
"The figure named is in no way a criterion of the value of the goods; a native will ask fifty dollars for something he would gladly sell for as many cents; you must judge for yourself how much you are willing to pay, and then make your offer. Most likely it will be refused, and the refusal is almost as silent as was the exhibition of the article. The man lowers it and walks away, but in five minutes he will come around again and repeat his performance. He asks less this time, perhaps, and you offer a little more, and he again goes away. You may come to terms after a time, but it seems to make no difference to him whether you do or not."
LUXOR FROM THE WATER.
Doctor Bronson said that possibly the silence of the natives was due to the fact that nearly all their antiquities were false, and they wanted the articles to do as much of the lying as they could. "There are," he remarked, "very few chances of getting anything genuine at Luxor; at present no excavations are in progress, and even if there were any, everything they bring to light should go to the government. They do a large business here in antiquities, and there certainly is no way of supplying the demand except by manufacture. It is currently reported that many of these things are made in England and France, and sent out here for sale; and it is also believed that there are factories here where false scarabæi are manufactured. Let me tell you something that happened when I was here some years ago:
"A man offered some scarabæi for sale, and declared they were genuine; to satisfy any doubts on that point, he offered to bring the certificate of the English consul, or we might go with him to the Consulate and hear for ourselves. But it was whispered that the consul and the native were in partnership, and when we became satisfied that such was the case we suspended negotiations.
"Next it was whispered that the native had a factory where he manufactured the articles he offered for sale; we had a curiosity to see theinside of a factory of antiquities, and, on the theory that backsheesh will do anything in this country, we offered the man five francs to show it to us.
"He denied having any factory, and we increased our offer; he still denied, and we increased again till we reached twenty francs, where we stopped.
"He again denied having a factory, and we made him a last offer of twenty-five francs, and then walked away.
"He became indignant, and as we retreated he said to us, with great emphasis, 'Not for ten napoleons will I let you see it.'
"He thus virtually admitted the existence of the factory, but of course it was not policy for him to allow foreigners to enter it. The story would be sure to leak out and ruin his business.
"The fabrications are very cleverly executed, and sometimes the experts are deceived by them. The consuls are safer to deal with than the ordinary peddlers, but even they are frequently as bad as the rest. The best rule is to buy nothing, except at a very low price, or wait till your return to Cairo, where you can purchase in the shops, and have the opinion of the experts."
The Doctor called on the American vice-consul, as he had been told that that worthy had some superior donkeys which he kept for hire; the rumor proved correct, and for a price a little above that demanded by the owners of ordinary beasts, the Doctor and his young companions were provided with "consular donkeys" during their stay at Luxor.
An hour or two were devoted to an inspection of Luxor and its temple, and then the party set out for Karnak. The Temple of Luxor is greatly dilapidated; much of the building is in ruins, and portions of it are covered with the wretched huts of the Arabs. The English Consulate is built in one part of it, and the rubbish and sand around the rest are greatly to its detriment. At the side of the principal entrance there are two statues of enormous size, but only a small part of them can be seen, as the most of the figures are buried in the sand.
We will read the account of the visit to Karnak as it was given by Frank and Fred in their letters and journals. Lest they should forget something, they wrote until a late hour in the evening, and declined the invitation of one of the consuls to attend a native dance at his house. They had quite enough of the dance at Keneh.
"We rode from Luxor to Karnak along a path through fields and across open spaces of uncultivated ground. There did not seem to be much of a road, and we were rather taken aback when told that therewas once an avenue of sphinxes, six thousand feet long (the avenue, not the sphinxes), all the way from Luxor to Karnak. What a magnificent avenue it must have been, and wouldn't it have been fun to ride along it from one end to the other! As we approached Karnak we came upon a few of the sphinxes still in their places; there were just enough of them to show what the avenue might have been in the days of its glory, and we wondered if the like would ever be seen again. All the sphinxes are much broken, and those that we saw had the heads of rams. Frank suggests that you could hardly expect anything else when the temple was built to celebrate the exploits of Rameses the Great. (He worked hard on that joke, although it is so poor.)
ENTRANCE TO THE TEMPLE OF LUXOR.
"We came to the propylon, or gate-way, which consisted of two enormous towers, each of them large enough to make a temple. There were six of these entrances; and to show you on what a scale this temple was, please look at the figures. One of the peristyles was 370 feet long, 50 feet deep, and 140 feet high. Some of them have partly fallen, but the others are very well preserved.
"As we have said, when talking of the Pyramids and other things,if you don't like figures you can look them over, and then skip. We are going to pelt you with a few handfuls of them, as it is impossible to give even a faint idea of the extent of this Temple of Karnak without them.
APPROACH TO KARNAK FROM LUXOR.
"Here are the dimensions of this enormous work: From one end of the space where the temple stands to the other is 1180 feet, and it is about 600 feet from one side to the other. The enclosing wall is 25 feet thick and from 60 to 100 feet high, so that it formed quite a fortification in the days before the invention of gunpowder. A small army could find plenty of room inside the walls of Karnak, and be able to repel a force of ten times its strength.
"All the space included within the walls is covered with ruins of a most magnificent architecture, and it is not difficult to imagine that you are in the heart of a great city of past ages, rather than in the ruins of a single building. In one place there are the fragments of a fallen obelisk, and close by it is an obelisk, upright and uninjured, 92 feet high and 8 feet square at the base. It is said to be the largest existing obelisk, and the inscriptions show that it was made and set up in its place inside of seven months. Remember that it was hewn from the quarries at Assouan,and brought here in a single block. If you want to know how the ancient Egyptians did it, we give up the conundrum at once.
"Never mind the obelisk just now; we want to show you into the great hall of the temple. And such a hall as it is!
"Stop and think of it as you read the figures, and see if they don't take away your breath.
THE GREAT HALL OF KARNAK.
"It is the grandest hall in the world! It is 329 feet long and 170 feet broad, and down its centre there are two rows of columns, twelve in all, each of them 60 feet high, without counting capital and pedestal, and 12 feet in diameter. Then there are one hundred and twenty-two other columns arranged in fourteen rows, seven on each side of the two central rows, so that the whole room seems to consist of little else than columns. What a capital place for a game of hide-and-seek! How the Egyptian children must have enjoyed it if they were permitted to play here, which we very much doubt!
GRAND COURT-YARD OF THE TEMPLE.
"These one hundred and twenty-two columns are each 42 feet high and 9 feet in diameter. Altogether there are one hundred and thirty-four columns in the hall of the temple, and they are all closely covered with sculptures. They once supported a roof, but it is nearly all gone now, and some of the columns have fallen. The stones used in building the temple were of great size, and they lie around us in all directions; they do not appear very large till you come close up to them, and then you seem dwarfed into nothing by their greatness. Everything is on so grand a scale that you forget the dimensions of individual things until you are side by side with them.
"Some writers have said that there is as much stone here as in the Great Pyramid at Gizeh. Certainly there is a vast amount; but it is so scattered, and in such irregular masses, that you cannot easily make an estimate of it. At any rate, it is a much finer work than that of building the Great Pyramid, as the whole of the walls, the columns, the sides of all the rooms, in fact everywhere that a plain surface was presented, is covered with sculpture or painting. The pyramid impresses you with its vastness, and so does Karnak; but the latter has another impression—thatof beauty and artistic effect—which the pyramid has not. The stones used in the construction of Karnak are many of them much larger than those in the pyramids; they show that the builders must have been very skilful engineers, and that their work covered a long period of years.
A BODY OF ARCHERS.
"We looked at the sculptures till our eyes were weary. At every step something new was revealed, and we seemed to be living in the days of the great kings of Egypt. The most of the sculptures represent battle scenes and kindred subjects; and the deeds of the kings are so well illustrated that anybody who has time and patience to study them can easily make out the whole history of a campaign. Here the king is marching out with his army, some on foot, and others on horseback or in chariots, and bearing the swords, spears, and other weapons in use at that time. Next we see him attacking a fortress or crossing a river; next he is putting the enemy to flight and securing the captives; and, finally, he is returning in triumph, and coming to the temple to offer thanks to the divinity who has protected and favored him.
MAKING A LIST OF CAPTIVES.
"The sculptures here, and at other temples in the vicinity of Thebes, show pretty certainly that the ancient Egyptians were accustomed to make human sacrifices. There is a large picture representing the kingstriking off the heads of a group of captives, and sometimes the hands and feet of slain enemies are cut off and piled before the king, to show how great the slaughter has been. Frequently the king is represented much larger than those that surround him, and the artists took the precaution to label each king with his name, so that there could be no mistake as to his identity. They also put labels on most of the battle scenes, and thus greatly assisted our study of Egyptian history.
OBELISK AND PART OF GRAND HALL AT KARNAK.
"Who built the great Temple of Karnak?
"There has been and still is much dispute among Egyptian scholars on this subject: it is now generally agreed that it was the work of no one king, but rather of several. There is a difference of two hundred and fifty years between the earliest and latest sculptures, and it is believed that from the beginning to the completion of the temple was nearly three centuries. On the walls, columns, and obelisks are the names of kings of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, and they are so conspicuous that it is pretty certain the building of the temple covered these two periods in Egyptian history. Thothmes III. and Rameses II. and III. are prominently represented, and some of the inscriptions showthat portions were added to the temple much later than any of the rulers mentioned.
"It is supposed that the present temple is on the site of an older one, and that four thousand years at least must be given for its antiquity. The Arabs have a tradition that Noah visited the temple after the Flood, and we may fairly believe that portions of it were finished before Jacob went to Egypt with his family. It was an old structure when Moses led the Israelites out of captivity, and its decay had begun when Christ was born at Bethlehem. Shishak, or Sheshonk, who plundered Jerusalem and led the King of Judea captive, is represented on its walls, and there is a picture showing his return with his train of unhappy prisoners. Do you wonder that we stand astonished amid the ruins of Karnak, which are older than the Bible, and older than any of the histories that have come down to our hands?
"We spent the afternoon among the ruins, and then returned to Luxor. The evening was bright with the growing moon, and so we determined to see Karnak by moonlight. If any reader of these lines should hereafter be at Luxor when the moon favors, we advise him by all means to go there under its light, as he will find an effect that is not visible when the sun is in the sky. It is impossible to describe, and so we will not attempt a description; the play of light and the darkness of the shadows are surpassingly beautiful, and some of the columns and broken walls seem even more gigantic than at other times. There is an Arab village close to the ruins, but not within the temple itself; the only inhabitants are owls and jackals, who resent your intrusion with their peculiar cries, and seem to consider themselves the rightful heirs of the kings so long dead and gone."
EGYPTIAN SOLDIERS.
DRY FOOTING.
The morning after the visit to Karnak an early start was made for the other side of the river. The party was ferried across in a couple of native boats to a sand-bank that pushed out some distance from the shore; the boats grounded in the shallow water, and our friends were carried on the backs of several Arabs, who gladly accepted the chance to earn a few pennies by a temporary conversion into beasts of burden. Everybody landed dry and unharmed with the exception of one unfortunate individual, whose bearer stumbled just before reaching the solid earth. Luckily the accident resulted only in a slight wetting. The Arab carrier demanded a large backsheesh because he waited so long before falling!
There are several temples on the west bank of the Nile, the most prominent of them being the Rameseum, or Memnonium, and Medinet Aboo. These two were on the same general plan as the Temple of Karnak, though less extensive; but, even when compared with Karnak, they are entitled to very high rank as works of Egyptian art and architecture. In the neighborhood there are half a dozen or more smaller temples, each possessing an historical and artistic interest peculiar to itself.
It was a busy time for our friends, as they had a great deal to see in a few hours. What they saw we will learn from their accounts:
"We had a delightful ride on the donkeys that were waiting on the bank as we arrived, our way lying through fields such as we have already described, and afterward passing over a stretch of barren ground—theborder of the Libyan Desert. Doctor Bronson told us while we were riding along that this was formerly the Libyan suburb of Thebes, and that the ancient city stood on both sides of the river. Sir Gardner Wilkinson says it was about five miles long by three in width. It was in its most flourishing condition during the eighteenth dynasty, and it began to decline in the eighth century before the Christian era. There is a great deal of dispute as to its population; but it is said that it could send out twenty thousand horsemen to battle, and its walls were pierced with a hundred gates. Its ruins are scattered over a large area, and its burial-grounds are so enormous that several days would be required for even a slight examination of them.
RUINS IN OLD THEBES.
"According to some writers the greater part of the population was on the eastern or Luxor side, while the western section was the residence of the kings and royal households; and, consequently, many of the temples were built there. For the same reason the tombs of the kings were on the western side, but were placed a considerable distance from the river, where the character of the limestone rock was such that it could be readily excavated. Much of the site of the city is now overflowed every year at the time of the inundation, and in this portion there are only a few traces of the buildings that once stood there.
"We went through some of the small temples, and then came to the Rameseum, or Memnonium. It owes its first name to the fact that it was founded by Rameses the Great, and its second to its dedication to the worship of Memnon. It is grand enough to have half a dozen names instead of two, and the honor can certainly be divided between Rameses and Memnon without any fear that either of them will suffer.
GRAND HALL OF THE MEMNONIUM.
"It was in the usual form of the Egyptian temples, and its grand court was not far from fifty yards square. Many of the columns have disappeared, or lie in ruins, but enough of them remain to show the magnificence of the original structure.
"The great object of curiosity here is the statue of Rameses the Great, which stood in the court-yard, and is now overturned and broken. There are some mysteries about it, and we will try to name them.
"In the first place, no one can guess how the Egyptians managed to take such a huge block of granite from the quarries and convert it into a statue. It was a single piece of stone, and represented the King sitting on his throne (the usual position of Egyptian statues) with his hands resting on his knees, and his face in that calm repose that a great ruler ought to exhibit when he has everything his own way. And how large do you suppose it was?
VIEW IN THE MEMNONIUM, WITH RUINED STATUE OF RAMESES THE GREAT.
"We used a tape-line to be sure we were right in our estimates, and found that the figure was twenty feet across the shoulders and fifteen feet from shoulder to elbow. The foot was eleven feet from toe to heel, and the other parts of the statue were in proportion. The throne and legs are a good deal broken up, but the upper part of the statue down to the waist is in comparatively good condition. Engineers have calculated that the whole statue, when perfect, weighed nearly nine hundred tons, or nearly three times as much as the largest obelisk at Karnak. Commander Gorringe says that the obelisk he transported from Egypt to America, and set up in Central Park, New York, weighs two hundred and twenty-four tons, so you see what a big thing was this statue of Rameses, which the Egyptians brought down the river from Assouan and set up in Thebes thousands of years ago.
"When the Persians conquered Egypt, and destroyed many of its cities, they overturned the statue of Rameses the Great, and proceeded to break it up; and another of the mysteries is how they managed to break it, as gunpowder was not then invented, and there is nothing to showthat they possessed any powerful explosives. But break it they did; and it is only because it was so large, or they were called away on other business, that they left any part of it for us to open our eyes about.
"If possessing the largest statue ever known in ancient or modern times makes one happy, Rameses ought to have been as jolly as he was great. But perhaps he did not enjoy himself much, after all, as he seems to have been a cruel tyrant, who oppressed his people, and compelled his prisoners of war to build the temples that remain to mark his greatness. The inscriptions around this and other temples show him to have been full of cruelty: he sacrificed prisoners with his own hand, or caused them to be put to death in his presence; and there is one picture wherein he is putting out the eyes of several captives, who are held by cords passed through their nostrils. On the whole, though we should have liked to look upon Rameses in his great temple, we are not at all sorry that he belonged to an age long past. If he was a good man for his time, it was certainly not a good time to live in.
"We have wished ever so much that we could read the inscriptions on the walls of the temple; but, after all, we need not feel so badly thatwe cannot do so, because many learned men have made translations for us. The pictures tell us a great deal, even without the hieroglyphics; they make it certain that the King was the most important personage at the time he lived, and if we believed what they represent, we should conclude that he did all the fighting, and his army only stood and looked on. One picture shows him sending a shower of arrows among the enemy and putting them to flight; and in another he is pulling down the walls of a fort, as though it was nothing but a toy house built of corn-cobs.
THE PHALANX OF THE SHETA.
"There is a picture which is called 'The Phalanx of the Sheta,' which we could not make much of till it was explained to us, and then we saw there was a good deal in it. We enclose a drawing of it, so that you can see how the Egyptians represented things on a plain surface without perspective.
"The phalanx is represented as a reserve corps close by a fortified town, which is surrounded by double ditches for protection against an enemy. On each side of the town there is a bridge over the ditches, and there are men in the towers of the fort, as if they were expecting to be attacked. The soldiers in the phalanx are armed with short swords or knives, and with spears. Doctor Bronson says the swords have a very close resemblance to the famous bowie-knife of the South-western States of North America, and it is possible that the inventor of that weapon got his idea from the ancient Egyptians. Only the front and rear ranks have weapons, and what the men in the middle are holding out their hands for we cannot guess.
MEDINET ABOO.
"We stayed at the Rameseum as long as possible, and would gladly have ignored the whistle of the conductor summoning us to move on, had we not feared missing other important sights. We went next to the Temple of Medinet Aboo, or rather to the temples, as there are two of them together, one much smaller than the other. The small temple was the work of several kings, and some of the later ones altered the plans of their predecessors, so that the architecture is not altogether harmonious.
"Heaps of ruins lie all around, and there is a broken statue of Rameses II. much smaller than the one we saw at the first temple we visited. The sculptures on the walls are less interesting than in the Memnonium, and we did not spend much time over them.
"The great Temple of Medinet Aboo has a raised platform in front, and we were quite interested in the view from this platform of the plain where Thebes once stood, and the various objects scattered over it. From the platform we passed into the temple through a wide gate-way, and found ourselves in a large court-yard enclosed by broken walls. From the court-yard we went into what is said to have been the palace of the king. The conductor called our attention to the sculptures on the walls, which are quite peaceful in their character, and show that the place was more a private residence than a temple.
"The pictures represent the great ruler in his retirement; in some of them he is playing a game of draughts, similar to those at Beni-Hassan and other places; he is receiving garlands of flowers from the hands of the ladies of his court, or they are cooling him with fans; and in nearly every instance he is represented seated in a chair while all around him are standing. Nobody was allowed to sit in the presence of the king, if we may believe these pictures, and it is quite probable that he required all the rules of etiquette to be rigidly observed.
"In the front of the temple there are pictures of a different sort, where the king is represented sacrificing prisoners or making war on his enemies. In the large halls of the temple there is a series of battle pictures which reminded us of those at Karnak, and they show the captivesbrought from various countries so clearly that the conquests of the kings may be readily traced. In one of the pictures the right hands of the slain are cut off and piled up in order that the king may see them, and an officer counts them while a scribe notes down their number. Other pictures show the captured horses, and spears and other weapons piled up and counted, and we may believe the Egyptians were quite systematic in their mode of keeping accounts.
AN EGYPTIAN WAR-BOAT.
"On one of the walls there is a picture of a fight in galleys or war-boats, and it is said to be the only one of the kind in Egypt. There are plenty of boats in their paintings and sculpture, but with this exception they are all engaged in peaceful pursuits. In spite of their cutting off the hands of the slain for the purpose of arithmetic, the Egyptians seem to have had some humanity about them after all. The picture of the naval engagement shows them to have been victorious, and they are doing all they can to save the men in the sinking ships of their enemies. Then the king distributes rewards to his officers and soldiers, and the army marches back to Thebes.
"Perhaps you have had enough of the achievements of the kings who lived three thousand years ago, and the monuments they left behind them. Well, there's the whistle, and we'll say good-bye to Medinet Aboo.
"What school-boy has not read about the Vocal Memnon at Thebes—the sitting statue that greeted the morning sun with its voice? Here it is, on the plain, some distance in front of the Rameseum, and it is supposed that an avenue of similar figures once led from the position of the Vocal Memnon up to the temple. There are two statues side by side, and they are known as 'the Sitting Colossi,' or simply 'the Colossi,' and are sufficiently large to be seen at a long distance.
THE COLOSSI DURING AN INUNDATION.
"Each statue rises about fifty feet from a pedestal at least ten feet high, so that when they were erected they were doubtless more than sixty feet above the ground; but the inundations of the Nile have deposited the earth around them, and the pedestals are completely surrounded. When the river is at its height the two figures seem to be sitting in a lake. They were hewn from single blocks of sandstone; but one of them was injured, either by an earthquake or by the Persian invaders, and was reconstructed with blocks of stone of the same character as the original.
"They were made to represent Amunoph III., and were not, as many suppose, intended for divinities. The one nearest the north was known as the Vocal Memnon, that uttered a sound every morning when the rays of the sun fell upon it.
"Sometimes it was obstinate, and for several days refused to speak. Kings, and princes, and other great men made long journeys to see, and especially to hear it, and they waited patiently day after day, too, for its utterance.
"Sometimes, when a very great personage like the Emperor Hadrian came, it gave forth its utterance twice on the same morning. Then the whole of Thebes talked of the wonder, and the Emperor was regarded with special reverence.
"We went to see and hear it, and we did not go at sunrise, as was necessary to do three thousand years ago.
"We went in the afternoon, and for half a franc an Arab climbed up the statue and struck a stone that lies in the lap of the figure. We beat the Emperor Hadrian completely, as we heard the sound a dozen times instead of twice, and if we had given the Arab a franc he would have been delighted to pound the stone for half an hour.
EGYPTIAN PRIESTS CLAD IN LEOPARD-SKINS.
"The sound is what we call a metallic one, like that of a poorly tuned bell. The whole trick is clearly apparent. A priest was concealed in a niche behind the stone, where nobody could see him from the ground, and he could strike the stone at the proper moment without fear of discovery. Perhaps he went to sleep occasionally, and then the sound was not heard; or it is possible he was in league with the hotel-keepers of Thebes, and wished people to stay in town a week or two, instead of finishing their visit in a day and taking the train to the next place. At any rate, the Colossi have ceased to be among the wonders of the world. For thirty centuries they have looked out on the plain of Thebes. What a pity it is they cannot open their stony lips and tell us what has passed around them during all that period of time—what changes they have witnessed, and what generations have come and gone since they first began their long vigil!"
REAR VIEW OF THE COLOSSI, WITH LUXOR IN THE DISTANCE.
"From temples to tombs," wrote one of the boys in his journal, "the transition is a natural one. The kings built the temples, and recorded their exploits on the walls. When they were done with temples and all other earthly things, they were carried to their tombs and laid away to rest. We saw their temples yesterday, and to-day we have made an excursion to their tombs.
SACRED MUSICIANS, AND A PRIEST OFFERING INCENSE.
"The tombs of the kings are about three miles from the river, and the road to them is along a valley as barren as any part of the desert can possibly be. It must have been a weary route for the funeral processions from Thebes to this desolate spot, and it is probable that the kings deferred their journeys there as long as possible. The way is impassable for carriages, and so we rode on donkeys, as we have done in most of our Egyptian excursions.
VALLEY OF THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS.
"The tombs are scattered along a narrow valley of barren mountains at the edge of the Libyan Desert, or, rather, just within its borders; theyare excavated in the solid rock, and some of them are very large. Every few years a new discovery is made, and the government allows any explorer to search for tombs under certain conditions: the conditions are now so onerous that few private researches have been undertaken for some time, and none are likely to be till the laws are changed. In the early part of the century several English, French, German, and other explorers were on the ground, and some of their discoveries were of great interest. The tombs they opened are generally known by the names of those who found them, though several have lost that distinction through a system of numbering adopted by Sir Gardner Wilkinson. The guides usually point them out by their numbers. About thirty tombs in all have been opened, and it is certain there are ten or twelve more that have not been discovered. Strabo, the Greek historian, who came here about the beginning of the Christian era, says he saw forty tombs; but some have conjectured that he included those in another valley, and known as the Tombs of the Queens.
VIEW IN BELZONI'S TOMB.
"We didn't have time to see the whole twenty-five, and it would nothave been worth while for us to do so, as several of them have no particular interest. We went first to number seventeen, which is also known as Belzoni's tomb; it was discovered by Belzoni, an Italian traveller, and the most of its contents were carried to England, and are now in the British Museum. Perhaps you may wonder why these tombs are so difficult to find, but the reason is this:
"When a king died, and had been properly turned into a mummy, the funeral rites were performed, and he was taken to the excavation in the rock prepared for him. When he was packed away in his stone coffin the entrance to the tomb was sealed up, and the side of the mountain broken away; all trace of the tomb or the entrance of it was destroyed; and there is a rumor that the men who performed the work were killed, in order to prevent any revelations. Doubtless the locality of the tombs was known to a good many people; but the knowledge of it would be gradually lost, especially when the country was devastated by wars, and the whole population, in some instances, swept away. Certainly the most of these tombs were unknown for a thousand years or so previous to the present century, with a few exceptions where the Arabs had accidentally hit upon them, though many of them had been plundered and againclosed during the Greek and Roman period. Belzoni was guided in his search by an incident which the Arabs had told him of the sinking of the earth in consequence of a rain, and the disappearance of water at a certain point. This led him to suspect that there might be a tomb there, and by digging away the fallen fragments of rock on the side of the mountain he came upon the entrance.
"There is a general similarity in these tombs, and so we will not weary you with repetitions by describing them all.
"The tomb has a narrow entrance, from which there is a descending passage-way, and sometimes a staircase. There are long halls and lateral chambers, and now and then the real resting-place of the king is beneath the main hall, which contained a bogus mummy intended to mislead any unauthorized visitor. The Egyptians exhausted their brains in devices to conceal the royal mummies, and it is quite possible that in some cases they have succeeded. When Belzoni opened the tomb that bears his name he came upon a staircase at the end of the passage, which he descended; there he found a horizontal chamber terminating in another staircase, and at its foot was an oblong chamber, or pit, of considerable depth.
"This appeared to be the end of the tomb, and it was, as an Hibernian might say, full of emptiness.
"Belzoni was disappointed, as his search had been fruitless. While wondering what to do next, he struck his hammer against the wall at the top of the pit, and found that it gave forth a hollow sound. He reasoned that the sound indicated a chamber beyond, and that the apparently solid rock was only a wall of masonry, carefully covered with stucco and hieroglyphics.
"He sent out for the best battering-ram that could be procured, and it soon came in the shape of a log cut from a palm-tree. With this log he knocked down the wall and opened a way into the actual tomb. The inscriptions on the walls were found quite unharmed, and so was the alabaster coffin, which is now in London, but contained nothing of consequence when discovered. The tomb appears to be one of those that was partially plundered within a few hundred years of its occupation by the royal mummy, and again closed up.
"The total distance from the entrance to the farthest point in Belzoni's tomb is four hundred and seventy feet, and the perpendicular descent of the various stairways and inclines is one hundred and eighty feet. We had a fatiguing walk through it, in consequence of the unevenness of the way and the fragments of broken and fallen rock. The airwas somewhat stifling, partly owing to its confined character, and partly from the effect of our torches and candles. We burnt a good deal of magnesium wire to light up the halls, and reveal the beautiful inscriptions that were around us in all directions except beneath our feet. Remember that there was hardly a foot of space without inscriptions. The walls of this tomb afford material for a year's study, and hard study at that.
"Some of the inscriptions refer to the daily occupations of the Egyptians, others to the deeds of the kings of Egypt, and others to the funeral ceremonies attending the death of a king. These last are by far the most numerous, and there are long extracts from the 'Book of the Dead,' showing the progress of the soul after it leaves the body.
"One inscription shows the soul passing to Amenthes, where, after a short halt, it was ordered to the Hall of Justice. On its way to this hall it was attacked by demons and wild beasts, but all these were driven away if the body had been properly provided with prayers written on the rolls of papyrus and the scarabæi that are always found with the mummies.
"Another picture represents the soul in the Hall of Justice, where its heart is placed in one scale and the Goddess of Truth in the other. Two of the gods superintend the weighing, and a third makes a note of the result. The god Osiris (with forty-two councillors) pronounces sentence. The heart was found heavy, and therefore the spirit was ordered to the regions of the blessed, where it was to pass through centuries of happiness and then return to the mummy, which would be restored to life. Of course they always found that the heart of the king was of the proper weight; it would have been dangerous for the artist to discover it too light, and thereby condemn it to suffer long tortures as a punishment for its sins before it could pass to a state of rest, and get ready to return to the mummy that waited for it.
"Belzoni's tomb was made for King Sethi I., whose temple we visited from Girgeh. Portions of it were left unfinished, and some of the drawings are incomplete. This condition of the wall is to be regretted for some reasons, but is very fortunate in other respects, as it shows how the Egyptian artists performed their work. The draughtsman made the outlines in red chalk, and they were then inspected by the chief artist, who corrected any errors or made alterations with a black crayon; the marks were then followed by the sculptor, and were afterward colored with the proper pigments. In some cases the wall was laid out in squares before the figures were drawn, but this does not seem to have been the universalrule, and there is abundant evidence that the Egyptian artists were accomplished in what we call 'free-hand' drawing.