serve as a specimen of the grandiose style of architecture and art of
the second flourishing time of the Old Empire, during the mighty twelfth
dynasty.[51] I think it will cause some surprise among Egyptologers,
when they learn from Bunsen’s work,[52] why I have divided the tablet of
Abydos, and have referred Sesurtesen and Amenemha, these Pharaohs, well
known through Heliopolis, the Faiûm, Benihassan, Thebes, and up to Wadi
Halfa, from the New Empire into the Old. It must then have been a proud
period for Egypt--that is proved by these mighty tombs alone. It is
interesting, likewise, to trace in the rich representations on the
walls, which put before our eyes the high advance of the peaceful arts,
as well as the refined luxury of the great of that period; also the
foreboding of that great misfortune which brought Egypt, for several
centuries, under the rule of its northern enemies. In the
representations of the warlike games, which form a characteristically
recurring feature, and take up whole sides in some tombs, which leads to
a conclusion of their general use at that period afterwards
disappearing, we often find among the red or dark-brown men, of the
Egyptian and southern races, very light-coloured people, who have, for
the most part, a totally different costume, and generally red-coloured
hair on the head and beard, and blue eyes, sometimes appearing alone,
sometimes in small divisions. They also appear in the trains of the
nobles, and are evidently of northern, probably Semitic, origin. We find
victories over the Ethiopians and negroes on the monuments of those
times, and therefore need not be surprised at the recurrence of black
slaves and servants. Of wars against the northern neighbours we learn
nothing; but it seems that the immigration from the north-east was
already beginning, and that many foreigners sought an asylum in fertile
Egypt in return for service and other useful employments.
I have more in mind the remarkable scene in the tomb of the royal
relation, Nehera-si-Numhotep, the second from the north, which places
the immigration of Jacob and his family before our eyes in a most lively
manner, and which would almost induce us to connect the two, if Jacob
had not really entered at a far later period, and if we were not aware
that such immigrations of single families could not be unfrequent.
These, however, were the precursors of the Hyksos, and prepared the way
for them in more than one respect. I have traced the whole
representation, which is about eight feet long, and one-and-a-half high,
and is very well preserved through, as it is only painted. The Royal
Scribe, Nefruhotep, who conducts the company into the presence of the
high officer to whom the grave belongs, is presenting him a leaf of
papyrus. Upon this the sixth year of King Sesurtesen II. is mentioned,
in which that family of thirty-seven persons came to Egypt. Their chief
and lord was named Absha, they themselves Aama, a national designation,
recurring with the light-complexioned race, often represented in the
royal tombs of the nineteenth dynasty, together with three other races,
and forming the four principal divisions of mankind, with which the
Egyptians were acquainted. Champollion took them for Greeks when he was
in Benihassan, but he was not then aware of the extreme antiquity of the
monuments before him. Wilkinson considers them prisoners, but this is
confuted by their appearance with arms and lyres, with wives, children,
donkeys and luggage; I hold them to be an immigrating Hyksos-family,
which begs for a reception into the favoured land, and whose posterity
perhaps opened the gates of Egypt to the conquering tribes of their
Semetic relations.
The city to which the rich rock-Necropolis of Benihassan belonged, and
which is named Nus in the hieroglyphic inscriptions, must have been very
considerable, and without doubt lay opposite on the left bank of the
Nile, where old mounds are still existing, and were marked on the French
maps. That the geography of the Greeks and Romans knows nothing of this
city, Nus, as indeed was true of many other cities of the Old Empire, is
not very astonishing, if it be considered that the five hundred years of
Hyksos dominion intervened. The sudden fall of the Empire and of this
flourishing city, at the end of the twelfth dynasty, is recognised by
some in the circumstance, that of the numerous rock-tombs, only eleven
bear inscriptions, and of these but three are completely finished. To
these last, broad pathways led directly up from the banks of the river,
which, at the steep upper end, were changed into steps.
Benihassan is, however, not the only place where works of the twelfth
dynasty were found. Near Bersheh, somewhat to the south of the great
plain, in which the Emperor Hadrian built, to the honour of his drowned
favourite, the city of Antinoe, with its magnificently and even now
partially passable streets, with hundreds of pillars, a small valley
opens to the east, where we again found a series of splendidly-made
rock-tombs of the twelfth dynasty, of which the greater portion are
unfortunately injured. In the tomb of Ki-si-Tuthotep the transportation
of the great colossus is represented, which was already published by
Rosellini, but without the accompanying inscriptions; from the latter it
is certain that it was formed of limestone (the hieroglyphic word for
which I first ascertained here), and was about thirteen Egyptian ells,
that is circa twenty-one feet, in height.[53] In the same valley, on the
southern rock wall, there is hewn a series of still older, but very
little inscribed tombs, which, to judge from the style of the
hieroglyphics, and the titles of the deceased, belong to the sixth
dynasty.
A few hours more to the southward comes another group of graves, also
belonging to the sixth dynasty; here King Cheops is incidentally
mentioned, whose name already appeared several times in an hieratic
inscription at Benihassan. At two other places, between the valley of El
Amarna, where the very remarkable rock-tombs of King Bech-en-Aten is
situated, and Siut, we found graves of the sixth dynasty, but presenting
few inscriptions. Perring, the pyramid measurer, has, in a recent
publication, attempted to establish the strange notion, which I found
also existed in Cairo, that the monuments of El Amarna were the work of
the Hyksos: others wished to refer them to a period anterior to that of
Menes, by reason of their certainly, but not inexplicable,
peculiarities; I had already explained them in Europe as contemporaneous
kings[54] of the eighteenth dynasty.
In the rock wall behind Siut, mighty tombs are gaping, in which we could
recognize the grand style of the twelfth dynasty already from a
distance. Here too, unfortunately, much has been lately destroyed of
these precious remnants, as it was found easier to break down the walls
and pillars of the grottoes, than to hew out the stones from the mass.
I learnt from Selim Pasha, the Governor of Upper Egypt, who received us
at Siut in the most friendly manner, that the Bedouins had some time
since discovered quarries of alabaster two or three hours’ journey into
the eastern mountains, the proceeds of which Mahommed Ali had presented
him, and from his dragoman I ascertained that there was an inscription
on the rocks. I therefore determined to undertake the hot ride upon the
Pasha’s horses, which he had sent to El Bosra for this purpose, from El
Bosra thither, in company with the two Weidenbachs, our dragoman and the
_khawass_. There we found a little colony of eighteen workmen, with
their families, altogether thirty-one persons, in the lonely, wild, hot
rock gorge, employed in the excavation of the alabaster. Behind the tent
of the overseer there were preserved, in legible, sharply-cut
hieroglyphics, the names and titles of the wife, so much revered by the
Egyptians, of the first Amasis, the head of the eighteenth dynasty, who
expelled the Hyksos, the remains of a formerly much larger inscription.
These are the first alabaster quarries, the age of which is certified by
an inscription. Not far from the place were others, which were already
exhausted in antiquity; from those now reopened they have extracted
within the last four months more than three hundred blocks, of which
the larger ones are eighty feet long and two feet thick. The Pasha
informed me, through his dragoman, that on our return I should find a
piece, the size and form of which I was myself to determine, of the best
quality the quarry afforded, which he desired me to accept as a
testimonial of his joy at our visit. The alabaster quarries discovered
in this region are all situated between Bersheh and Gauâta; one would be
inclined, therefore, to consider El Bosra as the ancient Alabastron, if
its position could be reconciled with the account of Ptolemæus; at any
rate, Alabastron has certainly nothing to do with the ruins in the
valley of El Amarna, as hitherto thought, to which also the relation of
Ptolemæus does not answer, and which seems to be quite different. The
hieroglyphical name of these ruins recurs continually in the
inscriptions.
In the rock chains of Gebel Selîn there are again very early, but little
inscribed, graves of the Old Empire, apparently of the sixth dynasty.
Opposite ancient Panopolis, or Chemmis, we climbed the remarkable rock
cave of the ithyphallic Pan (Chem).[55] It is dedicated by another
contemporaneous king of the eighteenth dynasty, whose grave we have
since visited in Thebes. The holy name of the city often occurs in the
inscriptions,--“Dwelling-place of Chem,” _i. e._ Panopolis. Whether
this, however, was the origin of the popular name, Chemmis, now Echmîn,
is much to be doubted. I have always found at Siut, Dendera, Abydos, and
other have cities, two distinct names, the sacred one and the popular
name; the first is taken from the principal god of the local temple, the
other has nothing to do with it.[56] My hieroglyphical geography is
extended almost with every new monument.
At Abydos we came to the first greater temple building. The last
interesting tombs of the Old Empire we found at Qasr e’ Saiât; they
belong to the sixth dynasty. At Dendera we visited the imposing temple
of Hathor, the best preserved perhaps in all Egypt.[57]
In Thebes we stayed for twelve over-rich, astonishing days, which were
hardly sufficient to learn to find our way among the palaces, temples,
and tombs, whose royal giant magnificence fills this spacious plain. In
the jewel of all Egyptian buildings, in the palace of Ramses Sesostris,
which this greatest of the Pharaohs erected in a manner worthy of
himself and the god, to “Ammon-Ra, King of the Gods,” the guardian of
the royal city of Ammon, on a gently-rising terrace, calculated to
overlook the wide plain on this side, and on the other side of the
majestic river, we kept our beloved King’s birthday with salutes and
flags, with chorus singing, and with hearty toasts, that we proclaimed
over a glass of pure German Rhine wine. That we thought of you with full
hearts on this occasion I need not say. When night came we first
lighted a pitch kettle, over the outer entrances between the pylones, on
both sides of which our flags were planted; then we let a green fire
flame up from the roof of the Pronaos, which threw out the beautiful
proportions of the pillared halls, now first restored to their original
destination by us, as festal halls; “Hall of the Panegyries,” ever since
thousands of years; and even magically animated the two mighty peace
thrones of the colossi of the Memnon.
We have put off more extensive research till our return; but to select
from the inexhaustible matter for our end, and with relation to what has
already been given in other works, will be difficult. On the 18th of
October we quitted Thebes. Hermonthis we saw _en passant_. The great
hall of Esneh was some years ago excavated by command of the Pasha, and
presented a magnificent appearance. At El Kab, the ancient Eileithyia,
we remained three days. Still more remarkable than the different temples
of this once mighty place are its rock-tombs, which belong chiefly to
the beginning of the War of Liberation against the Hyksos, and throw
much light upon the relation of the several dynasties of that period.
Several persons of consideration buried there bear the curious title of
a male nurse of a royal prince, expressed by the well known group of
_mena_, with the determinative of the female breast in Coptic,
[Illustration: Koptic];[58] the deceased is represented with the prince
in his lap.
The temple of Edfu is also among the best preserved of them; it was
dedicated to Horus and Hathor, the Egyptian Venus, who is once named
here “Queen of men and women.” Horus, as a child, is represented, as all
children are on the monuments, as naked, with his finger to his lips; I
had already explained from it the name of Harpocrates, which I have now
found completely represented and written as Harpe-chroti, _i. e._ “Horus
the Child.”[59] The Romans misunderstood the Egyptian gesture of the
finger, and made of the _child_ that _can_ not speak, the God of
Silence, that _will_ not speak. The most interesting inscription,
unremarked and unmentioned as yet by any one, is found on the eastern
outer wall of the temple, built by Ptolemaeus Alexander I. It contains
several dates of King Darius, of Nectanebus, and the falsely named
Amyrtæus, and has reference to the lands belonging to the temple. The
glowing heat of that day caused me to postpone the more careful
examination and the paper impression of this inscription till our
return.[60] Gebel Silsilis is one of the richest places in historical
inscriptions, which generally bear some reference to the ancient working
of the sandstone quarries.
At Ombos, I was greatly rejoiced to discover a third canon of
proportions of the human body, which is very different to the two older
Egyptian canons that I had found in many examples before. The second
canon is intimately connected with the first and oldest of the pyramid
period, of which it is only a farther completion and different
application. The foot is the unit of both of them, which, taken six
times, makes the height of the upright body; but it must be remarked,
not from the sole to the crown, but only as far as the forehead. The
piece from the roots of the hair, or the forehead to the crown, did not
come into the calculation at all, and occupies sometimes three-quarters,
sometimes half, sometimes less of another square. The difference between
the first and second canons concerns mostly the position of the knees.
In the Ptolemaic canon, however, the division itself is altered. The
body was not divided into 18 parts, as in the second canon, but into 21¼
parts to the forehead, or into 23 to the crown. This is the division
which Diodorus gives us in the last chapter of his first book. The
middle, between forehead and sole, falls beneath the hips in all the
three divisions. Thence downward, the proportions of the second and
third canons remain the same, but those of the upper part of the body
differ exceedingly; the head is larger, the breast falls deeper, the
abdomen higher; on the whole, the contour becomes more licentious, and
loses the earlier simplicity and modesty of form, in which the grand and
peculiar Egyptian character consisted, for the imperfect imitation of a
misunderstood foreign style of art. The proportion of the foot to the
length of the body remains, but it is no longer the unit on which the
whole calculation is based.
We were obliged to change boat at Assuan, on account of the Cataracts,
and had, for the first time for six months or more, the homeish greeting
of a violent shower and blustering storm, that gathered beyond the
Cataracts, surmounted the granite girdle, and burst with the most
thundering explosions into the valley down to Cairo, which (as we have
since learnt) it deluged with water in a manner scarcely recollected
before. Thus we too may say with Strabo and Champollion:--“In our time
it rained in Upper Egypt.” Rain is, in fact, so unusual here, that our
guards remembered no similar scene, and our Turkish _Khawass_, who is
intimately acquainted with the land in every respect, when we had long
had our packages brought into the tents and fastened up, never laid a
hand to his own things, but quietly repeated, _abaden moie_, “never
rain,” a word, that he had since been often obliged to hear, as he was
thoroughly drenched, and got a tremendous fever, that he was obliged to
suffer patiently at Philae.
Philae is as charmingly situated as it is interesting for its monuments.
The week spent on this holy island belongs to the most delightful
reminiscences of our journey. We were accustomed to assemble before
dinner, when our scattered work was done, on the elevated terrace of the
temple, which rises steeply above the river on the eastern shore of the
island, to observe the shades of the well-preserved temple, built of
sharply-cut, dark-glowing blocks of sandstone, which grow across the
river and mingle with the black volcanic masses of rock, piled wildly
one upon another, and between which the golden-hued sand pours into the
valley like fire-floods. The island appears to have become sacred at a
late period among the Egyptians, under the Ptolemies. Herodotus, who
went up to the Cataracts in the time of the Persians, does not mention
Philae at all; it was then inhabited by Ethiopians, who had also half
Elephantine in their possession. The oldest buildings, now to be found
on the island, were erected nearly a hundred years subsequent to the
journey of Herodotus, by King Nectanebus, the last but three of the
kings of Egyptian descent, upon the southern point of the island. There
is no trace of any earlier buildings, not even of destroyed or built-up
remains. Inscriptions of much older date are to be found on the great
island of Bigeh close by, called hieroglyphically Senmut. It was already
adorned with Egyptian monuments during the Old Empire; for we found
there a granite statue of King Sesurtesem III., of the twelfth dynasty.
The little rock-islet Konossa, hieroglyphically Kenes, has also very
ancient inscriptions on the rocks, in which a new, and hitherto quite
unknown, king of the Hyksos period is named. The hieroglyphical name of
the island of Philae has generally been read Manlak. I have found it
several times undoubtedly written Ilak. This, with the article, becomes
Philak, in the mouths of the Greeks Philai. The sign read “man” by
Champollion also interchanges in other groups with “i,” thus the
pronunciation I-lak, P-i-lak, Memphitic Ph-i-lak is confirmed.
We have made a precious discovery in the court of the great temple of
Isis, two somewhat word-rich bilingual, _i. e._ hieroglyphical and
Demotic decrees of the Egyptian priests, of which one contains the same
text as the decree of the Rosetta stone. At least, I have till now
compared the seven last lines, which not only correspond with the
Rosetta in the contents but in the length of each individual line; the
inscription must first be copied, ere I can say more about it; in any
case the gain for Egyptian philology is not inconsiderable, if only a
portion of the broken decree of Rosetta can be restored by it. The whole
of the first part of the inscription of Rosetta, which precedes the
decree, is wanting here. Instead of it, a second decree is there, which
relates to the same Ptolemæus Epiphanes; in the beginning the “fortress
of Alexander,” _i. e._ the city of Alexandria, is mentioned, for the
first time, upon any of the monuments hitherto made known. Both decrees
close, like the inscription of Rosetta, with the determination to set up
the inscription in hieroglyphical, Demotic, and Greek writing. But the
Greek inscription is wanting, if it were not written in red and rubbed
out when Ptolemy Lathyrus engraved his hieroglyphic inscriptions over
earlier ones.[61]
The hieroglyphic series of Ptolemies, which occurs here, again begins
with Philadelphus, while it begins with Soter in the Greek text of the
Rosetta inscription. Another very remarkable circumstance is, that
Epiphanes is here called the son of Philopator Ptolemæus, and Cleopatra
is mentioned, while according to the historical accounts the only wife
of Philopator was named Arsinoe, and is so named in the Rosetta
inscription and on other monuments. She is certainly also named
Cleopatra in one passage of Pliny; this would have been taken for an
error of the author or a mistake of the manuscripts, if a hieroglyphic
and indeed official document did not present the interchange of names.
There is consequently no farther reason to place, as Champollion-Figeac
does, the embassy of Marcus Atilius and Marcus Acilius from the Roman
Senate to Egypt to settle a new treaty concerning the Queen Cleopatra
mentioned by Livy, in the time of Ptolemæus Epiphanes, instead of under
Ptolemæus Philopator, as other authors inform us. We must rather
conceive, either that the wife and sister of Philopator had both names,
which would not obviate all the difficulties, or that the project which
Appian mentions of a marriage of Philopator with the Syrian Cleopatra,
who afterwards became the wife of Epiphanes, was carried out after the
murder of Arsinoe, without mention of it by the historians. Here
naturally means are wanting to me in order to bring this point clearly
out.[62]
The quantity of Greek inscriptions at Philae is innumerable, and
Letronne will be interested to hear that I have found on the base of the
second obelisk, still in its own place, of which a portion only went to
England with the other obelisk, the remains of a Greek inscription
written in red, and perhaps once gilt, like those lately discovered on
the base in England, but which is, of course, extremely difficult to
decipher. That the hieroglyphical inscriptions of the obelisks, which I
myself copied in Dorsetshire, besides the Greek on the base, and
subsequently published in my Egyptian Atlas, have nothing to do with the
Greek inscriptions, and were also not contemporaneously set up, I have
already stated in a letter to Letronne; but whether the inscription on
the second base had not some connection with that of the first is still
a question; the correspondence of the three known inscriptions seems
certainly to be settled.
The principal temple of the island was dedicated to Isis. She alone is
named “Lady of Philek;” Osiris was only Θεὸς σύνναος, which is
peculiarly expressed in the hieroglyphics, and is only exceptionally
called “Lord of Philek;” but he was “Lord of Ph-i-uêb,” _i. e._ Abaton,
and Isis, who was σύνναος there, is only occasionally called “Lady of
Ph-i-uêb.” From this it is evident that the famous grave of Osiris was
upon his own island of Phiuêb, and not on Philek. Both places are
distinctly indicated as islands by their determinations. It is therefore
not to be thought that the Abaton of the inscriptions and historians was
a particular place on the island of Philae; it was an island in itself.
So also do Diodorus and Plutarch intimate by their expression πρὸς
Φίλαις. Diodorus decidedly refers to the island with the grave of Osiris
as a distinct island, which was named ἱερὸν πεδίον, “the holy field,” by
reason of this grave. This is a translation of Ph-i-uêb, or Ph-ih-uêb
(for the h is also found expressed hieroglyphically), Koptic
[Illustration: Koptic] Ph-iah-uêb, “the sacred field.”[63] This
consecrated place was an Abaton, and unapproachable except for the
priests.
On the sixth of November we quitted the charming island, and commenced
our Ethiopian journey. Already at Debôd, the next temple lying to the
south, hieroglyphically Tabet (in Koptic perhaps [Illustration:
Koptic]), we found the sculptures of an Ethiopian King Arkamen, the
Ergamenes of the historians, who reigned at the time of Ptolemæus
Philadelphus, and stood probably in very friendly relations with Egypt.
In the French work on Champollion’s Expedition (I have not Rosellini’s
work with me) there is great confusion here. Several plates, belonging
to Dakkeh, are ascribed to Debôd, and _vice versâ_. At Gertassi we
collected nearly sixty Greek inscriptions. Letronne, who knew them
through Gau, has perhaps already published them; I am anxious to know
what he had made of the γόμοι, the priests of whom play a conspicuous
part in these inscriptions, and of the new Gods Σρούπτιχις and
Πουρεποῦνις.
With what inaccuracy the Greeks often caught up the Egyptian names is
again shown by the inscriptions of Talmis, which call the same god
Mandulis, which is distinctly enough in the hieroglyphic Meruli, and was
the local deity of Talmis. It is remarkable that the name of Talmis, so
frequently occurring in this temple, nowhere appears in the
neighbouring, though certainly much more ancient, the rock temple of Bet
el Ualli. Dendûr, also, had a peculiar patron, the God Petisi, who
appears nowhere else, and is usually named Peshir Tenthur; Champollion’s
plates are here again in strange disorder, the representations and the
inscriptions being wrongly put together.
The temples of Gerf Hussên and Sebûa are peculiarly remarkable, because
Ramses-Sesostris, who built them, here appears as a deity, and is
adorning himself, beside Phtha and Ammon, the two chief deities of this
temple. In the first, he is even once called “Ruler of the Gods.”