THE DELTA: DISAPPEARANCE OF ITS MONUMENTS.
Seest thou these great buildings? There shall not be left one
stone upon another that shall not be cast down.—_St. Mark._
The respective fortunes of the monuments of Upper Egypt and of the Delta
have been very different.
In the Delta there was a large number of populous and wealthy cities.
Five of them—Tanis, Bubastis, Sais, Mendes, and Sebennytus—were of
sufficient importance to have given rise to dynasties; and, therefore,
each had, in turn, become the capital. So many great cities were probably
never before arrayed on so small an area. The duster of flourishing
commercial and manufacturing towns in the Low Countries, offers the
nearest approach to it in modern times. These, however, were supported
primarily by manufactures and trade, while those of the Delta were
supported primarily by agriculture. The base of the Delta along the air
line, from Canopus to Pelusium, was not 140 miles, while its two sides,
from its apex to those cities, were only about 100 miles in length.
Every one of these numerous cities of the Delta had its grand temple—some
more than one. Many were, even for Egypt, of unusual extent and
massiveness. They were generally built of the finest granite. At Tanis
there was a temple of this kind. It had been erected by the great
Rameses. In one respect, at all events, more had been done for it than
for any other temple in Egypt, for it was enriched by at least ten
obelisks. In its construction granite had been largely used. As Rameses
built with sandstone at Karnak, Luxor, and Thebes, which were different
quarters of his great capital, and where he must have wished to make the
chief display of his magnificence, why was he not content with it in the
Delta? We here find him using a far more costly material, and one which
he had to fetch from a greater distance than the sandstone quarries of
Silsiléh. The only imaginable reason is, that he desired to build for
eternity, and that he was afraid that the sandstone he was employing in
Upper Egypt might, in a long series of years, feel the effects of the
damp in the Delta, at all events to such an extent as that the sculptures
might suffer. The sandstone is remarkably hard and compact, and he
was satisfied with it in the dry climate of Upper Egypt; but he had
misgivings as to its power of resistance to the climate of Lower Egypt;
and therefore, that he might not incur any avoidable risk, he went, in
the Delta, to the additional expense of employing granite from Assouan.
And now a word or two about the city itself. This Tanis had from very
early days, as we now know, been conspicuously connected with the history
of Egypt. The importance of the place had been recognized in the days of
the old primæval Monarchy, for we find in it traces of Sesortesen III.,
a mighty Pharaoh of the XIIth Dynasty, and whose name is found at the
other extremity of the land on the Theban temples. Its position it was
that gave it this importance, for it was on the flank of all invaders
from the North or East; and, too, on the very spot where there were more
facilities for establishing a stronghold than anywhere else in Egypt.
Being on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, and not far from its mouth, it
could receive supplies and reinforcements both by the river, and by sea;
and being behind the Pelusiac branch, it could make that its first line
of defence against an enemy coming across the desert, who as he would be
without boats, and would find no materials for constructing them in such
a district, would have but a very slight chance of effecting the passage
of the river. As the city was also placed in the low district which now
forms Lake Menzaléh, it, doubtless, was in the power of its defenders at
any time to lay the surrounding country under water. The forces collected
in this strong position, would, if themselves strong enough, be able to
attack an invader, while yet in the desert; or, if this were thought more
advisable, to fall either on his flank or rear, as he advanced along the
Pelusiac branch.
In the Hebrew Scriptures the place is called ‘the Field of Zoan.’ Sân
is its present name, and Zoan is probably a nearer approach to the
old Egyptian form than the Greek Tanis. The expression of ‘the Field
of Zoan’ was, of course, meant to be descriptive of the character of
the surrounding country. There would have been nothing appropriate in
speaking of the Field of Memphis, or of Thebes. It indicated that the
district had been originally, as it is again at the present day, composed
of pools and marshes, just what our fens once were, but that by a system
of dykes and drains it had been reclaimed. And so, just as we might talk
of the Fen of Boston, they talked of the Field, we should say the Fen, of
Zoan.
Such having been the character and position of Tanis, it does not
surprise us that it was made the royal residence, and in some respect,
the capital, in the time of the Hyksos. Not only was it the nearest point
to their old home, from which they might at times be glad to receive some
assistance, but as it commanded the road into Egypt they had themselves
so successfully traversed, they would naturally wish by strengthening
the defences of the place, and residing there themselves, to use it as a
bar against any who might make a similar attempt. More traces of these
conquerors are found here than anywhere else in the land. And it is very
interesting to see in these traces that they adopted, just as we might
have expected, the religion of Egypt; and yet that they did not, in so
doing, abandon that of their old home. For there is evidence that they
placed by the side of the temples of the gods of Egypt, temples to Set
or Soutekh, the Egyptian name of the Assyrian Baal. This was the obvious
compromise of the opposing difficulties that beset them in this matter.
They could not abandon their own morality; and, on the other hand, the
conquerors and the conquered could never become one people as long as
their moral ideas and sentiments were different. Of course the Gods, and
the services of religion, were the external embodiment and representation
of these ideas and sentiments.
On the expulsion of the Hyksos we find the history of the Great Pharaohs
of the XIXth Dynasty closely connected with Tanis. Its magnificent
temple, as we have already mentioned, was built by Rameses the Great.
Meneptha, his son, was holding his court here at the time of the Exodus;
and it must have been with the militia of the neighbourhood, where a
considerable force of the military caste was settled, that he pursued the
fugitive Israelites. We are, therefore, prepared to find that at last it
became the actual recognized capital of Egypt. This was brought about
under the XXIst Dynasty. It had come to be seen that under existing
circumstances Thebes was no longer the best position from which the
country could be guarded and governed. It was now the opposite extremity
of the country that needed all the vigilance that could be exercised, and
where should be placed the head quarters of the military power of the
Empire.
We now come to Bubastis. The great temple of this famous city, of which
Herodotus gives a minute account, and which appeared to him more finished
and beautiful than any other structure in Egypt, was nearly a furlong in
length, and of the same width. It was built throughout of granite. Its
sculptures also bear the name of the great Rameses. It was placed on a
peninsula, formed in an artificial lake in the middle of the city. The
isthmus leading to the sacred enclosure was a strip of land between two
parallel canals from the Nile. Each of them was 100 feet wide. They fed
the lake which completely surrounded the temple, with the exception of
the isthmic entrance. The width of the lake was 1,400 feet. Along the
sides of the isthmus were rows of lofty evergreen trees. As the ground on
which the city stood had been raised by the earth excavated from the bed
of the lake, and by other accumulations, to a considerable height above
the temple enclosure, the spectator looked down on the temple of red
granite, the green trees, and the water from all sides. We can understand
Herodotus’s preference for this temple. Most of the particulars of his
description and measurements can still be traced out. Of the temple
itself, however, only a few scattered stones remain, but these are
sufficient to show of what materials, and by whom, it was built.
It was to Bubastis that the XXIInd Dynasty transferred the seat of
Government. Almost all the names of this Dynasty are Assyrian. The
strange apparition of these names is accounted for by the probable
supposition that its founder was a military adventurer, who, while
stationed in this city, had become connected by marriage with the Royal
Family. This semi-foreign House occupied the throne for a little more
than a century and a half, when Tanis again became the capital under the
XXIIIrd Dynasty.
The temple of Sais could not have been inferior, in extent, or in
costliness, to those either of Tanis, or of Bubastis. It was built partly
of limestone and partly of granite. Here were buried all the kings of
the Saite Dynasty. Herodotus dwells upon its magnificence. Its propylæa
exceeded all others in dimensions. It, too, had its lake, on which were
celebrated the mysteries of the sufferings of the martyred Osiris.
Like the temple of Tanis, it had its obelisks, and, besides, several
colossi and androsphinxes. The margin of its sacred lake was cased with
stone; but its chief ornament was a shrine composed of a single block
of granite, in the transport of which, from Elephantiné to Sais, two
thousand boatmen had been employed for three years. This shrine was 31
feet long, 22 broad, and 12 high. The lake, but without the stone casing
of its margin, and the site of the temple remain, but every other trace
of all this magnificence has almost entirely disappeared.
The last Capital of Egypt, in which the wealth, culture, and glory of
the old Pharaohnic Empire were completely revived, and exhibited to
the world, was Sais. This revival took place under the XXVIth Dynasty;
and, fortunately for us, was witnessed and described by the Greeks.
Absolutely, and in itself, the country, probably, was then quite as great
in all the elements of power as it ever had been in the palmiest days of
the famous times of old; but, relatively, the sceptre had departed from
Egypt. The arts which minister to and maintain civilization, and endow
it with the ability to organize, wield, and support large armies, had
travelled to the banks of the Euphrates, and from thence were spreading
over the highlands of Media and Persia. By a law of nature civilization
first germinated, and bore its precious fruit, in the teeming South, but
by a right of nature Empire belongs to the enduring and thoughtful North.
History contains the oft-repeated narrative of the fashion in which
those, who have successively received the gift, have successively repaid
it by subjugating the donors. The Assyrians had already, taking advantage
of the disturbed state of the country during the XXVth Dynasty, looted
all the great cities of Egypt, from Migdol to Syené. But where prosperity
does not depend on the use and profits of accumulated capital, but on
the annual bounty of Nature, recovery is very rapid. And to this bounty,
which was larger and more varied in Egypt than anywhere else in the
world, by reason of its winter as well as summer harvest, there had now
been superadded the unbought gains resulting from her having been allowed
to become what nature had intended her to be, that is, the centre for the
interchange of the commodities of Asia, including India, of Africa, and
of Europe.
Sais was placed on the Canopic, the most westerly branch of the river, at
a distance of about forty miles from the sea; between which and it was
Naucratis, where the Greeks had been allowed to establish a factory and
emporium. In the city also of Sais itself a quarter was assigned to them,
where they were governed by their own laws, administered by magistrates
selected from among their own body. As Psammetichus, the founder of the
Saite Dynasty, had been raised to the throne, and was maintained upon
it, mainly by the aid of Greek mercenaries, we can hardly suppose that
this contiguity of the city he made his Capital to the source from which
so much of his support was derived, was accidental. It was in accordance
with his policy towards the Greeks that he granted a Factory to every
other nation which was desirous of maintaining one, giving to all equal
liberty to trade in the land. From the same motive he had his children
taught Greek.
Facts of this kind imply the complete reversal of the old national policy
of seclusion. The Government, and it must have been seconded by the
general approval of the people, saw that seclusion could no longer be
maintained, while at the same time the opposite system was offering to
the country very great advantages; and so, just as is the case at the
present day with the Japanese, the requirements of the new conditions
were speedily and unreservedly accepted. The military caste, however,
whose susceptibility was offended at the employment of, and still more
at the preference which was shown to, a large body of Greek mercenaries,
was an exception to the general acquiescence. To the number of 240,000
they seceded from Egypt; and, having been well received in the now rival
country of Ethiopia, were settled in a fertile tract of land which was
bestowed upon them in the neighbourhood of Meroé.
Necho, the son and successor of Psammetichus, was desirous of pushing
the new commercial policy of his Father to its utmost limits. With this
view, he undertook to adapt for navigation, and to prolong to the head
of the Arabian Gulf, an old canal, that had for many centuries connected
Bubastis with Lake Timsah, in order that every impediment to the traffic
of the Indian Ocean with the Mediterranean might be removed. He had
carried this great work as far as the Bitter Lakes, when, from some
military, or perhaps for an agricultural, reason, he abandoned the work,
after having expended upon it the lives of 120,000 of the Fellahs of
those times. Herodotus saw the Docks which, as a part of this plan, he
had constructed on the Red Sea.
The only incident in the History of Geographical Discovery which can be
set by the side of the great achievement of Columbus, is this Necho’s
circumnavigation of Africa. These two enterprises resemble each other
not only in hardihood, grandeur, and success, but also in being equally
instances of the happy way in which the scientific, and even the
semi-scientific, imagination at times divines the truth, or the real
nature of things. The truth, indeed, appears to possess not only some
power of suggesting itself, but also of compelling the mind, to which it
has suggested itself, to undertake the demonstration of its being the
truth.
It would be unfair to the Father of History to make mention of this
famous undertaking in any words but his. “Libya itself,” he says,
“enables us to ascertain that it is everywhere surrounded by water,
except so far as it is conterminous with Asia. The Egyptian King, Necho,
was the first we know of who demonstrated this. He did it in this
wise: when he had abandoned the attempt to dig the Canal from the Nile
to the Arabian Gulf, he despatched a squadron manned by Phœnicians,
with instructions to sail on till they got back into the Northern
(Mediterranean) Sea, through the Pillars of Hercules; and in this way
to return to Egypt. These Phœnicians, then, having set sail from the
Erythrœan (Red) Sea, entered on the navigation of the Southern Sea (the
Indian Ocean). When the autumn came, they would draw up their vessels on
the beach, and sow what land was required, wherever they might happen to
be at that point of the voyage. They would then wait for the harvest, and
when they had got it in, would again set sail. In this way two years were
spent; and, in the third year, having doubled the Pillars of Hercules,
they returned to Egypt. They said what I cannot believe, though some,
perhaps, may, that while they were sailing round Libya, they had the sun
on their right hand. So was first acquired a knowledge of the contour of
Libya.”
Necho also pursued the policy of his Father in attempting to recover
for the Double Crown of the then reunited Upper and Lower Egypt, the
Asiatic dependencies, of which the Assyrians had despoiled it. For
nine and twenty years had Psammetichus been barred in the first step
of this enterprise by the obstinate resistance of Ashdod, which had
thus sustained, as Herodotus observes, the longest siege then known to
History. At last, however, it had succumbed; and being now, again, in the
hands of the Egyptians, the old line of march into, and through, Syria
was open, and Necho set out for the re-conquest of the old provinces. He
could not deem that his Egypt was the Egypt of Tuthmosis and Rameses,
unless what they had held along the maritime plain of Syria, and
back to Carchemish on the Euphrates, and which had been—more or less
completely—in subjection to Egypt during the intervening nine centuries,
with the exception of the short period of Assyrian supremacy, had been
recovered. As might have been expected, he could not see that, though
Nineveh had fallen, its power had only been transferred to Babylon; and
that behind Babylon was being organized the Empire of the still more
energetic Persians, which was soon to overshadow all that part of the
world. It was, in truth, only wasting his resources to retake Carchemish:
he should have attacked Babylon itself. Nothing was gained if its power
was not destroyed. But, however, as he advanced along the maritime plain,
with which the Egyptians had been familiar from time out of mind, Josiah,
we know, attempted to stop him at Megiddo, where he was defeated and
slain.
The Hebrew Prophets of these times saw as clearly, as we do now, that the
course of events had transferred the constituents of power from the Nile
to the Euphrates; and so they became the uncompromising instigators of
this anti-Egyptian policy. Of course it would have been wise in Josiah to
have remained quiet: his best policy would have been that of “masterly
inactivity.” Necho, however, as it happened, having easily crushed him,
did not allow himself to be diverted from his main object by the tempting
facility thus offered to him for at once taking possession of the Kingdom
of Judah, but continued, as rapidly as he could, his advance to the
Euphrates. Having reached Carchemish, and provided sufficiently, as he
thought, for the permanent re-occupation of all that had thereabouts
“pertained to Egypt,” he returned home; and, by the way, settled,
without any resistance having been offered to him, the conditions of the
subjection of the Kingdom of Judah.
At this juncture Egypt must have deemed that all was recovered, and
that everything was again, and would continue to be, as of old. Isaiah,
however, and Jeremiah, and the other Prophets of the time were right; for
the Babylonians were not long in expelling the Egyptians from Asia.
Necho was succeeded by his son Psammis; and he by the Apries of
Herodotus, the Pharaoh Hophra of the Hebrew Scriptures. Egypt is still
very rich and prosperous, and so he makes another attempt for the
recovery of the dominion of Western Asia. In this effort he attacked
Phœnicia both by sea and land. Still no change, or vacillation, is
perceptible in the utterances of the Hebrew Prophets. They at all events
are not misled, or dazzled, by the riches and greatness of Egypt. Ezekiel
sees, just as Isaiah and Jeremiah had seen, that the valley of the Nile
can no longer be the seat of Empire; and that the capacity for acquiring
it had passed into the hands of their North-Eastern neighbours.
In the reign of Amasis, the successor of Apries, “Egypt,” as Herodotus
tells us, “reached the very acmé of its prosperity. Never before had the
river been more bountiful to the land, or the land to those who dwelt
in it. It contained 20,000 inhabited cities.” Such was the Egypt Amasis
marshalled against this invading host of Persia. But to no purpose:
the single and signal defeat his son sustained at Pelusium, the very
threshold of the land, gave to Cambyses the whole country. From that day
to this Power has continued the Northward course it had then commenced;
and, consequently, there has been no resurrection for the first-born of
civilization, the inventress of Letters, and of Political Organization,
and of so many of the arts that better man’s Estate, and embellish life.
This, to some extent, hides from our view the fact that we are, greatly,
what we are at this day, because Egypt had been what she was in the
prehistoric times.
At Sais and Bubastis were held two of the great annual religious
Assemblies and Festivals of the Egyptians. It naturally occurs to us to
ask, why at these two cities of the Delta, and not at primæval This,
royal Memphis, or imperial Thebes? The answer that first occurs is that
these two then modern Capitals may have been selected in order to bring
them into repute, and invest them with an importance, they would not
otherwise have possessed. This supposition, however, is, to some extent,
negatived by the known antiquity, at all events, of Bubastis, and by
the remark of Herodotus that the Egyptians were the first of mankind
to institute these religious gatherings and fêtes: we are, therefore,
precluded from imagining that their chief celebrations of this kind dated
only from the Bubastic or Saite Dynasties. We can also see that the
people of Upper Egypt, all of whom dwelt on the actual bank of the river,
would be more disposed to come down the stream to the Delta, than the
people of the broad Delta would be to ascend the stream to This or Thebes.
These great annual Feasts answered several important purposes. They
impressed the same religious ideas on all who participated in them; and
this contributed much to national, as well as to religious, unity and
amalgamation. By their tone also of gladness, festivity, and licence
they temporarily lightened the yoke of an austere religion, and provided
a recognized vent for some very natural, and not unhealthy, impulses
of our common humanity. Just what the Saturnalia were to the ancient
Roman, and what the Carnival is to his modern representative, the Feast
of Bubastis was to the old Egyptian for some thousands of years before
the name of Rome had been heard on the seven Hills. The reader may form
his own opinion on this point by turning to the account of the Festival
given by one who four centuries and a half before our era was travelling
through Egypt, and who we may be pretty sure himself witnessed what he
thus describes. “While those, who are about to keep the Feast, are on the
way to Bubastis, this is what they do. The men and women go together;
and there is a large number of both sexes in each boat. Some of the women
are provided with castanets, and some of the men with pipes, upon which
they perform throughout the whole of the voyage. The rest of the men,
and of the women, accompany them with singing, and with clapping their
hands. When, as they sail along, they have reached any city, having made
fast their boat to the bank, some of the women do what has been already
mentioned, while of the rest some assail the women of the city with
loud cries and scurrilous jibes, others dance, and others stand up, and
make immodest exhibitions. They go through these performances at every
river-side city. When they have reached Bubastis they keep the feast
with unusually large offerings, and there is a greater consumption of
grape wine at this feast than in the remainder of the whole of the twelve
months. The number of men and women who are brought together on this
occasion, for the children are not reckoned, reaches, as the Egyptians
themselves say, to 700,000 souls.”
I will append his account of the Feast at Sais. “When the people are
assembled at Sais for the solemnity, on a certain night everybody lights
a great number of lamps, in the open air, in a circle round his house.
The lamps are cups full of oil mixed with salt. The wick rests on the
surface, and burns all night. This is called the Feast of Lamps. All
Egyptians who happen not to be present at the gathering, wherever they
may be, light lamps; and thus there is an illumination not only in
Sais, but throughout the whole of the country. A religious reason is
given to account for this particular night having been thus honoured
by illumination.” He does not give the reason; but as we know that the
Festival was in honour of Neith, the Egyptian Athena or Minerva, or of
Osiris, we may suppose that the old Egyptians were the first to use light
shining in darkness as the symbol of the mind-illuminating power of the
Divine Spirit.
A few fragments of granite, in the mounds of the old city, are all the
remains of the former greatness of Sebennytus.
Only six miles, however, from Sebennytus are the rubbish-heaps of Iseum.
Here are the ruins of a most stately temple, every stone in the walls and
roof of which was an enormous block of granite. No other material had
been used. So regardless had been its builders of cost, that throughout
the greater part of the structure they had sculptured this intractable
adamant in unusually high relief. But though it had been thus massively
constructed of imperishable materials, and decorated with such lavish
expenditure, it was so completely wrecked, that now the traveller finds
in its place merely a heap of stones. What had been the temple is there,
but not one stone has been left standing on another.
And so we might go on throughout the whole Delta. Every few miles would
bring us to the site of a city that once was great—the distinguishing
feature of the greatness of which had been its temple. The peculiarity
of them all was that the material chiefly used in their construction was
granite. In most cases, the very materials of which the temples were
constructed have utterly disappeared, though the spot on which each
stood is still easily distinguishable. In some few cases, where the
temple was of unusual extent—Iseum is the most conspicuous instance of
this—considerable proportions of the materials remain, but even there
everything has been thrown down, and, as far as possible, destroyed.
The reason generally given for this, in every case, utter ruin, and
in most cases complete disappearance of the monuments of antiquity
throughout the Delta is, that the climate being rendered comparatively
moist by the contiguity of the sea, has not been so favourable to their
preservation as the drier climate of Upper Egypt has proved to the
monuments of that district. The difference in the hygrometrical condition
of the air, and the rain that falls occasionally in the Delta, will not
account, I think, for the effect that has been produced. The climate of
Gizeh is not very different from that of the actual Delta, and here five
or six thousand years have not in the least affected the original casing
at the top of the Second Pyramid. The obelisk that had been standing
for very nearly two thousand years on the very beach at Alexandria, and
which for the previous two thousand years had stood at the apex of the
Delta, has not been affected to such an extent as would contribute, in
any appreciable degree, I will not say to the overthrow, but to the
injury, of any building ever raised by an Egyptian architect. And yet at
Alexandria these supposed disintegrating influences are at their maximum,
and are aided by the salt-impregnated drift from the sea in the case of
this obelisk, which has, notwithstanding, outlived for so long a period
every temple and palace throughout the Delta, after having witnessed the
erection of every one of them. If it had a tongue, it would, I think,
tell us that it was not the climate that had been the destroyer, but man.
The decree which the Emperor Theodosius issued at the instance of the
Archbishop and Christians of Alexandria, to authorize the destruction
of the great temple of Serapis in that city, shows what was probably
the cause of the first overthrow of the temples of the Delta. As long
as they stood, it was thought there would be priests to minister in
them, and worshippers to frequent them. And in those days of religious
faction-fights, we know that they were frequently used as fortresses.
We might say that the way to meet these difficulties was to trust to
the imperishableness of truth, and to the sure decay of falsehood; but
whatever we might do, we certainly should not destroy the historic
monuments of a glorious antiquity. They, however, had not our ideas on
these subjects; and, moreover, were blinded by the dust and smoke of the
battle that was raging around them; and so they acted on the principle
that was afterwards formulated to the north of the Tweed, that the way to
get rid of the rooks is to pull down the nests.
When the overthrow of a temple had been once effected, we may be quite
sure that all the limestone that could be found in it would be very soon
sent to the kiln. A great deal of lime is used in Egypt for walls, and
for plastering; and everywhere throughout the country, even in places
where the stone might be had for the quarrying, the Arab has preferred
the stones of old tombs and temples to the somewhat more costly process
of cutting what he wanted from the living rock. Mehemet Ali, while
constructing his paltry nitre-works at Karnak, although the mountain on
the opposite bank was of limestone, to get what of this material was
requisite for his purpose, destroyed one of the historic propylons within
the sacred enclosure. In the pyramid district, often with the limestone
under their feet and all around them, it has been the common practice
to calcine the, to us, precious sculptured and painted stones from the
tombs. And in this the modern Arab is only following the example of
the old Egyptian, and of all other people who wanted the materials of
unused buildings close at hand. We may, therefore, be sure that, a few
centuries after the overthrow of these temples of the Delta, all the
limestone that could be picked out of their ruins was consumed in this
way.
We have seen, however, that the chief material employed in the
construction of the grandest of them was not limestone, but granite. This
was utterly indestructible by the climate; and yet, in some places, it
has entirely vanished as completely as the limestone; and has in the rest
been much diminished. The same cause, I believe, has brought about the
disappearance of both. As was done with the limestone, so has it happened
to the granite: it has been used for whatever purposes it was adapted.
The smaller pieces, as may frequently be seen, have been carried off for
building material; and the larger pieces have been turned to account
in the way in which we find that fragments of the granite colossus of
Rameses the Great at Thebes have been employed, that is to say, as
millstones for grinding, and mortars for pounding corn. In the alluvial
Delta the old buildings were the only quarries.
All the phenomena of the case are thus accounted for. Every one must wish
that these imposing historic monuments of a great past had been preserved
to our times. We feel as if those who threw them down, and those who
afterwards employed their displaced, but still sacred, stones for their
own petty purposes, had done to ourselves, and to the civilized world,
an irreparable wrong. It may, however, mitigate our indignation, to
remember that the former acted under a misapprehension of the nature and
requirements of their cause; and that we ought not to be hard upon the
poor Arab for having done what popes and cardinals did, when, to build
palaces for themselves, they pulled down, with sacrilegious hands, the
monuments of old Rome.
This destruction of tombs and temples has in Egypt been going on always.
Of late years, indeed, there has been an increased demand for building
materials, in consequence of some portion of the Khedivé’s numerous loans
having been spent in public works, and in giving employment to a great
many people who have had to build houses for themselves: the work of
destruction, therefore, is now advancing at a greater rate than it ever
did before. Many can confirm this from their own observation. Every one
who revisits the country sees how rapidly and completely the stones of
newly-opened tombs have disappeared. He saw them a few years ago: now he
hears that they have been sent to the kiln.