The Overland Monthly/Volume 1/Eight Days at Thebes
EIGHT DAYS AT THEBES.
TO the student of archeology Egypt is perhaps the most interesting country in the world. Its recorded history dates back almost to the genesis of therace. Its hieroglyphics rehearse the annals of a mighty empire that flourished two thousand years before the Star of Bethlehem had arisen. When Syria was a waste, and Greece slept the sleep of barbarism, the Nile reflected the splendors of a civilization hardly inferior to our own. Long before Plato dreamed, or Homer sang, the Priests of Isis unveiled the mysteries of science, and told the story of the immortality of the soul. Before the Parthenon was conceived, before the temple of Solomon was reared, the sculptors and painters of Thebes and Beni Hassan had taught the rudiments of plastic art.
No other country has such a wealth
of ruins. The traveler is overwhelmed by their number and magnitude. The Pyramids of Gezeh are only types of a vast system of colossal remains stretching from Alexandria to Wady Halfa. The banks of the river are literally strewn for hundreds of miles with the debris of the civilization of the Pharaohs. The sides of the mountains are honeycombed with tombs; forests of obelisks glitter in the mellow sunlight; calm-eyed sphynxes greet the wanderer from a hundred storied sites; broken arches and crumbling columns crown innumerable eminences on the river's shores. Ruins everywhere: at every curve and bend of the Nile; on every plain and rocky height; on the Delta and the desert; from the shores of the sounding sea to the cataracts. The spirit of the dead past haunts the mysterious river. It carries us back to the infancy of man. We are brought face to face with the people who built the Pyramids—who
founded Thebes and Memphis. We walk the sacred corridors of the temples of the Pharaohs; we visit the burial places of extinct races; we behold the products of their genius, the very implements with which they wrought.
Philz is beautiful; Memphis is sadly picturesque; Dendra is a memory to cling to the soul forever; the grottoes of Beni Hassan well repay the toils of travel; the Pyramids are at once sublime and awe-inspiring; but the crowning glory of Egypt is Thebes. Shall I ever forget the eight days spent among its ruins? The approach to it coming up the Nile is one of the most striking in the East. The valley widens, the desert recedes, the mountains form themselves into a mighty amphitheatre opening toward the north. As we near the site of the "hundred-gated" city, the majestic propylon of the Temple of Karnak is darkly outlined against the sky. Nearer still, and groups of sphynxes appear through a grove of palms. A slight bend of the river, and Luxor with its obelisks, and columns, and statues of gods, and ruined temples, bursts upon the view. To the right are seen the Vocal Memnon, the palace and temples of the Pharaohs; while on every side, for miles and miles, stretches the broad plain that enshrines the dust of Thebes. We leave our Nile boat, and under the escort of an army of donkey-boys, pay a hurried visit to the Temple of Luxor. Time has cruelly played the vandal with it. Of all the grandeur of the once glorious edifice only a few pillars and scarred walls remain. Near by stands a solitary obelisk, its brother having been sacrilegiously carried off to adorn a European capital. At the entrance of the temple are a couple of colossal statues of Kamases the Second—broad-breasted fellows, meas
1868.]
uring some ten feet from shoulder to shoulder. They are buried up to the bosom in sand, and the scars of over thirty centuries are written on their stony brows. Passing through the propylon, with its massive walls completely covered with hieroglyphics, we enter the portico with its fourteen lofty pillars looking down on heaps of ruins and Arab huts. Scattered about are several statues of cat-headed deities, fragments of walls and columns, and the remains of the body of the temple. Luxor was the fourth in size of the temples of Thebes, and was probably connected by an avenue of sphynxes with the temple of Karnac, two miles distant.
From Luxor to the Tombs of the Kings. A sailacross the river, we land on the western shore, under the shadow of the Memnonium in the gray of the early dawn. We are in our saddles before sunrise, and canter briskly, donkey-back, under the inspiration of the cool morning air. For some two miles we pass over a level and fertile plain, the supposed site of the western section of the great city. Then we come upon a barren waste thickly strewn with mummy-pits, which continue to the base of the mountain, running parallel with the river. Here we enter a deep and narrow defile, surrounded by high and overhanging cliffs of calcareous rock. The road is narrow, and frequently interrupted by immense boulders. Nothing can exceed the barrenness of the scenery. Not a speck of green—not a blade of grass, or shrub, or wild flower relieves the dreary waste. After traversing this road for five or six miles—the same road over which a long line of Pharaohs were borne to their last abode—we enter a secluded valley in the mountains—a veritable "Valley of Death." Our guide suddenly pauses, and gives the signal to dismount. At first we can discern nothing, but a closer scrutiny reveals a small excavation in the side of the hill. This we enter, and in ten seconds find ourselves
in the tomb of one of the earliest and greatest of the Pharaohs—that discovered by Belzoni. Our guide lights his torches, and we grope our way down a flight of steps, with a perpendicular descent of twenty-four feet to the first landing. The great tomb is three hundred and twenty feet long, with a perpendicular depth of one hundred and eighty feet. It contains fourteen chambers, all inscribed with hieroglyphics and sculptures. The entrance hall is twentyseven feet long and twenty feet broad, richly decorated with images of gods and goddesses, and sacred fish, and birds, and reptiles. It opens into another chamber twenty-eight by twenty-five feet, with figures in outline looking as fresh and vivid as if executed but yesterday. The touch of the painter's brush, the mark of the sculptor's chisel, are still there. Another long descent—a magnificent corridor—another long staircase, and we are ushered into an apartment twenty-four by thirteen feet. Here, as in the preceding one, the walls and ceilings are covered with paintings and sculpture—the colors growing brighter and fresher as we advance. The artist inducts us to the mysteries of the nether world. Now the deceased king is ushered into the presence of Osiris, the "judge of the dead;"" now immense serpents, with human legs and celestial crowns on their heads, are receiving the homage of devoted worshippers; now troops of genii are flitting about the Elysian abodes; now owl and cat, and hawk and crocodile, and ape-headed gods are sitting in all the dignity of fullfledged divinities. Farther onstill, and we come to a hall twenty-seven by twenty-six feet, supported by two rows of pillars terminated by a large saloon with vaulted roof. This latter is thirty-two feet in length by twenty-seven feet in breadth, from which open several other chambers. In the centre of the great saloon Belzoni found the beautiful Sarcophagus of King Osiris. And this im mense tomb, which it takes hours to explore, was wrought out of the solid rock.
I cannot pause to give the details of the wonderful sculptures and still more wonderful paintings of this tomb. In one of the rooms is a representation of four different peoples contrasting widely in dress and color and cast of countenance. These are supposed to represent the great divisions of mankind, among them the negro. So little has the latter changed during a period of over 3,000 years, that an "American citizen of African descent" might recognize his portrait among the figures of this group. What, then, becomes of the pretty theory of those ethnologists who insist that the difference in color and feature between the white and blackis referable to the influence of time and climate? If the lapse of over 3,200 years (for the occupant of this tomb ascended the throne 1,385 years before Christ) has sufficed to effect no perceptible physical difference in the Ethiop, surely the remaining less than 3,000 years of man's biblically-recorded history cannot have produced so great disparity between white and black. One of the chambers of the great tomb is unfinished. The positions of the figures are given by the artist, but the coloring is not put on. What great event—what sudden calamity—prevented the completion of the task? You have entered the studio of an artist during his temporary absence from his work. Half-finished sketches are lying about; rough designs are scattered hither and thither; the paint is hardly dry upon the canvas at which he wrought; a multitude of outlines and shadows—of faintly dawning perspective and sombre background are visible. So here: the artist seems to have just left his work. Profiles of gods and goddesses—sketches of kings, and apes, and owls, and hawks, and genii, are seen on walls and ceilings. You cannot realize that these profiles
were drawn—that these _half-filled sketches were executed —that these brilliantly tinted figures were wrought, over thirty centuries ago.
The next tomb we visit—that of Rameses the Third (called the "Harper's Tomb ")—is equally interesting, though not so rich in painting and sculpture. Its total length is four hundred and five feet, with a perpendicular descent of thirty-one feet. Here the wondering traveler obtains a glimpse of the manners and customs of the ancient Thebans, We enter a small room on whose walls the mysteries of the Egyptian kitchen are revealed. An ox is being slain; aman is filling a cauldron with the joints of the slaughtered beast; another is blowing the fire with the bellows; another is pounding something with a mortar; another is chopping meat into mince; another is making pastry; anotheris kneading dough. Farther on is a room whose walls are covered with paintings of furniture. There are chairs and sofas of elegant forms and richly ornamented; couches of seductive pattern, porcelain pottery, copper utensils, baskets of graceful shapes, mirrors and toilet articles, basins and ewers, and all the paraphernalia of stylish household furniture. Nothing I have seen in this strange land amazed me more than these latter. They prove the old Egyptians to have been versed in the elegant arts—to have known a degree of refinement in their private life indicating a high type of civilization. No dealer in "fancy wares" on Broadway or Montgomery street could present a more brilliant "assortment" than are displayed upon these time-honored walls.
Is there any thing "new under the sun?" How much have we advanced in the practical or elegant arts beyond the busy-bodies of ancient Thebes? Glass-blowing was practiced in the reign of Osirtasen over 3,800 years ago, and the form of the blow-pipe and the bottle differed little from that of our
own day. The same kind of plow was used in Egypt thirty centuries ago as is used to-day. The bastinado was the mode of punishment for minor offences in the time of Joseph as it is in this year of grace 1868; while then as now, hanging was the penalty for capital crimes. There is good reason to believe that the use of gunpowder was known in the days of the earlier Pharaohs. Anvils and blacksmiths' bellows, almost precisely like those seen in an American country smithy, are depicted on the walls of the grottoes of Beni Hassan. The germ of the Doric Column may be traced among the oldest relics of Egyptian art, and the Arch is older than Sesostris. The Thebans amused themselves with the game of draughts, and their athletes and jugglers performed some of the same feats with which the Buisleys and Hellers of our day astonish metropolitan audiences. The harp, guitar, lyre, drum and bugle are as old as the Pyramids; Theban artisans knew how to anneal and solder metals; and Theban poulterers understood the art of hatching eggs by artificial means. Looking-glasses adorned ladies' boudoirs long before Moses was found among the bulrushes, and pins and needles, and combs and fancy jewelry were as indispensable to the dear sex in the days of Rameses as in the days of Victoria.
I visited in succession twelve of these wonderful tombs. The same sculptures —the same rich paintings—the same splendid halls—the same vaulted roof— the same interminable processions of gods and goddesses, sacred animals and brute-headed, divinities characterize each. The eye wearies and the brain reels with the succession of strange scenes. You feel as-if you were in a new world—a _ wierd, subterranean world. Were these tombs intended only for the receptacles of the dead Pharaohs? Was all this lavishment of means—all this struggling for brilliant
effects—for xo other purpose than that of enshrining a mummy? Was this rich product of Art, which it took the life-time of a monarch to rear, to be ignobly sealed the moment he closed his puny eyes in death? I cannot believe it. I must believe, rather, that the tombs had other purposes—purposes connected in some manner with religious rites—perhaps with the horrid "mysteries "which form so essential a part of the Egyptian religion. I recall the description of them given by Ezekiel: "Then said he unto me: 'Son of man dig in the wail;' and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door. And he said unto me: 'Go in and see the abominable things that they do there. And so I went in, and saw and beheld every form of creeping thing and abominable beasts and all the idols of the house of Israel portrayed upon the walls around about."
Our next visit is to the tombs of the Priests and People, on the western side of the desert mountain. Like those of the kings, they are cut out of the solid rock. The largest, that of Asseseef, covers an area of over one acre. The sculptures and paintings of many of them are of absorbing interest. In one we find cabinetmakers and carpenters at work. One person is hewing a piece of timber; another is working on a sofa; another is chiseling out a sphynx; another is putting a piece of furniture together; another is engaged in manufacturing glassware; while a group of swarthy workmen are making bricks. Here is the interior of the house of a wealthy Egyptian. A lady is making a call. A servant offers her some wine; a black slave stands near with a plate in her hand; while several musicians are entertaining her with what were, doubtless, airs from the last opera. Let me give you an idea of how a Theban woman of fashion dressed. She wore a petticoat or gown, secured at the waist by a colored sash, or by straps over the
shoulders. Above this was a large loose robe, made of the finest linen, with full sleeves, tied in front, below the breast. The gown was of richly colored stuff, presenting a variety of patterns. Her dainty feet were encased in sandals, prettily worked, and turning up at the toes. Occcasionally she indulged in the extravagance of shoes or béots. Her hair was worn long and plaited; the back part consisted of a number of strings of hair, reaching to the bottom of the shoulder blades, while on each side other strings descended over the breast. An ornamented fillet encircled the head, and the strings of hair at the sides were separated and secured with a comb. From her ears hung large round single hoops of gold; sometimes an asp, whose body was of gold, set with precious stones, was worn. She had all the passion for finger jewelry of her modern sister. Sometimes two or three
rings were worn on the same finger,
while occasionally she indulged in the superfluous feminine extravagance of a ring on the thumb! So you see the sex is much the same, past and present, the world over.
The tombs. upon which the "first families" of Thebes so much prided themselves are now occupied as cow and donkey stables, and huts, by the miserable Arabs with which the neighborhood is infested. As the traveler wanders about from sepulchre to sepulchre, he is dogged by a squad of vagabonds, with arms and hands and feet and heads of mummies, whom they have sacrilegiously "unearthed," imploring him to buy these grim relics. I purchased a head of a "prominent citizen " for three piastres, while the delicate hands of a Theban belle were offered me for an equal sum. Our cook bought a whole mummy, coffin and all, for six piastres, to be taken to Alexandria as a present to his children. The reader must do his own moralizing.
After spending three days among the
tombs of the great, I was desirous of looking in upon the "pits" of the more ignoble dead. My guide led me bya narrow path, thickly strewn with fragments of mummies—hands, feet, legs, arms, trunks, scattered about in charming confusion—to a small opening in the side of the mountain. Through this I was compelled to crawl, some fifteen or twenty feet, to a larger opening. Lighting a torch, we continued our way until we came toa chamber filled with human mummies, piled one upon the other, to a depth of, I know not how many feet. Walking remorselessly over this horrid pavement, we came to another chamber, similarly filled; then another and another, tenanted by the same ghastly denizens. Sometimes I would sink to my knees into this mass of withered human carrion; sometimes my cruel heel would unwittingly crush in a grining face, or "go through" a mass of blackened bowels. There they lay, pellmell, a dozen deep, some headless, some sitting half upright, leering at vacancy, some lying helplessly with face downward, some with feet uppermost. There was one huge fellow, looking as if he might have been an extinct prize-fighter, minus a head, who measured over six feet from neck to heel. We turned him over, laid open his poor chest, and left him to his fate. I did not take the census of this motley congregation, but there must have been several hundred in a single "pit." Sir Gardener Wilkinson estimates that there are nine millions of mummies in the mountains about Thebes.
"To this complexion hath it come at last."" This reeking mass was once warm with life. Each had its little world in which it hoped and wrestled. Each strutted its brief-hour upon the great stage, and thought that hour /he pivotpoint upon which the world's destiny would turn evermore. There were strifes and bickerings and heartaches; there were rivalries and cliques and cabals
and petty warfares then. - Demagogues and knaves flourished then as now. Noisy patriots harangued from the stump, fanatics howled from the rostrum, and office seekers wandered up and down the earth.
From the mummy-pits to the Memnonium, the temple-palace of Sesostris. It is imposing even in its wreck. I ts lofty columns, crowned with capital and cornice, stand erect as in the days of its prime. It is approached by an avenue of sphynxes, terminating in a splendid propylon, richly covered with sculptures, commemorative of the triumph of the monarch whose name it bears. Near its entrance are the remains of a colossal statue of Sesostris, hewn out of a single block of granite, measuring twentythree feet across the breast, and weighing eight hundred and eighty-seven tons! This enormous colossus was
'hurled from his pedestal by the fury of Cambyses, and broken into fragments.
But splendid as is this temple, it is puny in comparison with that of Medeenet Habou, half a mile to the south. I cannot describe it at length. Passing the pylon, you enter a court, one hundred and ten by one hundred and thirteen feet, having on the one side a row of Osiride pillars, and on the other, eight similar columns, with bell-formed capitals, representing the full-blown lotus. Then follows the principal pylon, or gateway, surmounted by a row of sitting apes, the emblems of the god Thoth, which leads into the grand court. It measures one hundred and twenty-three by one hundred and thirty-three feet, and is surrounded by a peristyle, whose east and west sides are supported by five massive columns, the south by a row of eight pillars, and the north by a similar number. Behind is a superb corridor of circular columns, each with a circumference of twenty-three feet, and a height of twenty-four feet. These pillars are richly colored, and present
an appearance the most magnificent of which the imagination can conceive. The walls of this court are covered with sculpture, illustrating the Pharoah to whom the temple was dedicated. In one place he is represented as sitting in his car, while a heap of hands (those of his vanquished enemies) are placed before him, which an officer counts, while a scribe notes down in numbers. In another place he is returning from the wars. A long procession of captives, with pinioned arms, are marching beside and before him, while three of the number are bound to the axle of his chariot.
There are three other smaller temples on the western side of the river, two of which I visited, but which I cannot stop to describe. Indeed, the whole vast plain is one field of ruin. Columns and colossii, sphynxes and towers, rear their giant forms above the waste of sand as far as the eye can see. Wherever the traveler wanders, the same wrecks of the past arrest his progress. Some are barely visible above the sand, while others stand out clear and dauntless, as if defying the might of Time.
A short ride across the plain brings us vis-a-vis with the Vocal Memnon. There he sits, calm and stoical, as he sat when the sages of Greece and Rome came to do him homage, and listen to his greetings of the morning sun. He has long since, however, given up singing as a profession, and sends forth no welcome to the blushing Aurora as she kisses his weather-beaten brow. This modest veteran is hewn out of a single block of granite, and measures in his sitting posture some forty-seven feet in height. His face is sadly battered; he has lost his nose and left ear; his chest is quite gone, and the poor fellow looks shabby and woe-begone generally. An Arab boy climbed up his back and tried to imitate his "tricks upon travelers" by striking a "musical stone." But it was a poor imitation, and I left him with a strong conviciion that his talents as an artist had been slightly exaggerated by Herodotus and his wonder-loving fellow historians. Near by sits his "big brother" equally herculean, equally storm-beaten, but not distinguished in the musical line.
But the greatest marvel of ancient Thebes is yet to be seen. Of all the ruined temples of Egypt—of all the ruined , wonders of the earth—Karnak on the east side of the river is the most impressive. No description, no plan, no diagram, can give expression to its vastness. It is approached from Luxor by an avenue of two hundred sphynxes, terminating at the outer gate-way of the temple. They are all headless now, but the pedestals remain to tell the glory of the past. There are three other approaches, all by similar lines of sphynxes, all with immense propylii, all terminated by vast courts and colonnades. The walls of the principal gate-way are twenty-seven feet thick, while the towers have almost the proportions of pyramids. A forest of towers and pillars and crumbling walls darken the heavens on every side. Entering the great hall the traveler is lost in wonder. This edifice measures one hundred and seventy-six by three hundred and twenty-nine feet, and is supported by a central avenue of twelve massive columns sixty-six feet high without the pedestal and abacus, and twelve feet in diameter. To this are added one hundred and twenty-two columns, each forty-one feet high and
twenty-seven and a-half feet in circumference. Beyond this are four lofty obelisks; then the sanctuary of polished granite, the walls richly sculptured and the ceiling studded with stars. Farther on another colonnade—another portico, another avenue of sphynxes—another magnificent propylon.
The body of the temple proper was twelve hundred feet long, and four hundred and twenty feet broad, while the entire field of ruins comprises a mile in diameter. Imagine a space equal to that occupied by one-third of the city of San Francisco, all devoted to a single temple and its approaches; imagine two lines of colossal sphynxes extending half a mile from each of its four sides; imagine each of these lines terminating in immense towers; imagine endless groupes of sculptured gods and godesses, lining every avenue and approach; imagine colossii of pure marble and polished granite, guarding every gateway—obelisks shooting upwards into the blue sky, towers rising in every direction; imagine the stately processions of priests, the myriads of devout worshipers that thronged its courts—the imposing pageants without, the darker mysteries within; imagine the great city in the days of its glory—its streets thronged with gay denizens—the river swarming with busy life—the whole world looking on with awe and wonder; imagine all this, and you will have some faint conception of Karnak—and of Thebes.