little known languages of the southern countries, beside my antiquarian
pursuits. Among these three are the most extended: the Nuba language of
the Nuba or Berber nation; the Kung’âra language of the negroes of Dar
Fur; and the Beg’a language of the Bisharîba, inhabiting the eastern
part of the Sudan. Of all three I have so perfectly formed the grammar
and vocabulary, that their publication, at some period, will offer a
complete view of these languages. The most important of them is the last
named, because it proves itself a rich language in a grammatical point
of view, and a very remarkable branch of the Caucasian family by its
position in development. It is spoken by that nation which I believe I
can prove to be the once flourishing one of Meroë, and which therefore
has the most definite right to be called the Ethiopian people in the
most strict sense of the term.
It has also been seen that there was nothing to be found of a primitive
Ethiopian civilisation, or even of an ancient Ethiopian national
culture, of which the new school of learning pretends to know so much;
in fact, that we have every reason to deny its existence. Those accounts
of the ancients which do not rest on totally erroneous information, only
refer to the civilisation and arts of Egypt, which had fled to Ethiopia
during the time of the supremacy of the Hyksos. The return of Egyptian
might from Ethiopia, on the founding of the New Empire of the Egyptians,
and its advance even into the depths of Asia, was transferred to the
Asiatic traditions, and afterwards to the Greek, from the country of
Ethiopia to the nation of Ethiopians; for no rumour of an older Egyptian
empire, and its former peaceful prince had penetrated to the northern
nations. I have transmitted a report to the Academy on the result of our
Ethiopian journey, and I have given in it a sketch of Ethiopian history
since the first conquest of the country by Sesurtesen III., in the
twelfth dynasty of Manetho, till the prince of the Meroitic kingdom in
the first centuries of our era, and then through the middle ages to the
Bisharîba of the present day, whose sheikhs we saw, in chains, pass by
the ruins of their former metropolis, and the pyramids of their ancient
kings.
LETTER XXIX.
THEBES, QURNA.
_January 8, 1845._
We have lately received the cheering intelligence that our colossal Ram
and the other Ethiopian monuments have arrived safely at Alexandria.
From here, too, we shall bring some important monuments; amongst them a
beautiful sarcophagus, of fine white limestone, and partially covered
with painted inscriptions, belonging to the Old Empire, the earliest era
of the growing power of Thebes.[93]
I have succeeded in making another conquest to-day, which causes me
double pleasure, as I had inexpressible difficulty in attaining it, and
as it has restored a monument to the day in the greatest perfection, and
which will scarcely find its equal in any of the museums. In a deep
shaft which has lately been excavated, a tomb-chamber has been found,
full of interesting representations of kings, which we have drawn; hence
a narrow passage leads deeper down into a second chamber, which is
completely painted like the first. The spaces are hewn in a most
crumbling rock, which falls in great pieces from the ceiling on the
slightest touch; the rock-caves were therefore formed into cylindrical
arches with Nile bricks, covered with stucco, and painted. On the sides
of the inner door King Amenophis I. is represented on the right, and on
the left his mother, Aahmes-nufre-ari, highly reverenced even at a much
later period. Both of them are painted on the stucco to the height of
four feet, and preserved in the freshest colours. These figures, which
took up the whole wall, I wished to remove. But for this purpose I was
obliged to break through the brick walls around, and then take away the
bricks behind the stucco singly with the greatest care. Thus I have
to-day succeeded in the laborious work of laying down the whole of the
stucco, only of the thickness of a finger, on two slabs made of planks,
and cushioned with skins, linen, and paper, and bringing it out of the
half-filled narrow tomb-grotto.[94]
Our plaster-casts, to my great joy, are again cared for. Five
hundred-weight of gypsum, which M. Clot Bey has granted us from a
quantity ordered from France, has lately arrived, and I have found and
taken into our service an Arab, who at least knows enough of the manner
of using gypsum and taking casts.
LETTER XXX.
THEBES.
_February 25, 1845._
We have now dwelt for more than a quarter of a year, in our Thebaïc
Acropolis, upon the hill Qurna, each of us busy in his own way, from
morning till evening, in examining, describing, and drawing the most
important monuments, taking off inscriptions on paper, and making out
plans of the architecture, without being able to finish even the Lybian
side, where there yet remains twelve temples, twenty-five king’s tombs,
fifteen tombs of royal wives or daughters, and a number, not to be
counted, of graves belonging to persons of consequence, to be examined.
The east side, with its six-and-twenty partly-standing churches, will
also require not less time. And yet it is Thebes exactly that has been
more explored than any other place by travellers and expeditions,
(_vide_ the Franco-Tuscan expedition), and we have only compared and
supplied deficiencies in their labours, not done them afresh. We are
also very far from imagining that we have exhausted the immense
monumental riches to be found here. They who come after us with fresh
information, and with the results of science further extended, will find
new treasures in the same monuments, and obtain more instruction from
them. The great end which I have always had before my eyes, and for
which I have principally made my selections, has been history. When I
thought I had collected the most essential information on this point, I
remained satisfied.
The river here divides the valley into two unequal parts. While on the
west side it flows near the steep projecting mountains of Lybia, it
bounds on the east side a wide fertile plain, which extends as far as
Medamôt, which lies some hours distant on the edge of the Arabian
desert. On this side lies the actual city of Thebes, which appears to
have formed a connection between the two temples, Karnak and Luqsor,
which lie about half an hour’s distance apart. Karnak lies north, and
further from the Nile; Luqsor is directly washed by the waters of the
river, and has very probably been in former times the harbour-quarter of
the town. On the west side of the stream stood the Necropolis of Thebes,
and for the preservation of the dead, all the temples, far and near, are
employed,--yes, the whole population of these parts, which were later
included under the name Memnonia by the Greeks, appear to have employed
themselves principally with the care of the dead and their graves. The
former extent of Memnonia is ascertained by the two cities, Qurna and
Medînet Habu, which lie at the north and south points.
A survey of the Thebaïc monuments begins, most naturally, with the ruins
of Karnak. Here lay the great imperial temple of a hundred doors, which
was dedicated to Ammon-Ra, the king of the gods, and the particular god
of the place, which after him was called the city of Ammon (No-Amon,
Diospolis). Ap, and with the feminine article Tap, out of which the
Greeks made Thebes, was an isolated temple of Ammon, and is sometimes
hieroglyphically used in the singular, or still oftener in the plural
(Napu) as the name of the city; from whence the Greeks, naturally,
without changing the article, made use of Θῆβαι in the plural. The whole
history of the Egyptian kingdom is connected with this temple, since the
elevation of the city of Ammon into a metropolis of the kingdom. Every
dynasty contended for the glory of having assisted in extending,
beautifying, and restoring this national sanctuary.
It was founded under the first Thebaïc Imperial dynasty, the twelfth
with Manetho, by its first king, the mighty Sesurtesen I., in the fourth
century of the third millenium, B.C., and even now shows some fragments
of the time and name of that king. During the succeeding dynasties, who
sighed for several centuries under the oppression of their victorious
hereditary enemies, the sanctuary doubtless stood unheeded, and nothing
remains of what belongs to that period. But after Amosis, the first king
of the seventeenth dynasty, had succeeded in his revolt against the
Hyksos, about B.C. 1700, his two successors, Amenophis I. and Tuthmosis
I., built round the remains of the most ancient sanctuary a stately
temple with many chambers round the cella, and with a broad court and
the propylæa belonging to it, before which Tuthmosis I. erected two
obelisks. Two other pylones, with adjoining walls, were built by the
same king, in a right angle with the temple, towards Luqsor. Tuthmosis
III. and his sister enlarged this temple behind by a hall resting on
fifty-six pillars, beside many other chambers which surrounded it on
three sides, and were inclosed by a general outer wall. The next king
partly did more toward the completion of the temple in front, and partly
erected new independent temples in the vicinity, also built two other
great pylones in a south-westerly direction before those of Tuthmosis
I., so that from this side four high pylones formed the stately entrance
to the principal temple.
A still more brilliant enlargement of the temple was, however, carried
out in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries, B.C., by the great
Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasties, by Sethos I., the father of Ramses
Miamun, who added in the original axis of the temple the mightiest hall
of pillars which was ever seen in Egypt, or, indeed, in any country. The
stone roof is supported by 134 columns, covering a space of 164 feet in
length and 320 in breadth. Each of the twelve middle columns is 36 feet
in circumference, and is, up to the architrave, 66 feet high; the other
columns, 40 feet high, are 27 feet in circumference. It is impossible to
describe the overpowering impression felt on first entering this forest
of columns, and on passing from one avenue to another, and between the
sometimes half, and sometimes whole-projecting grand gods and kingly
statues which are sculptured on the columns. All the surfaces are
ornamented with gay sculptures, partly in relief and partly in intaglio,
which, however, were only completed under the successors of the founder,
and mostly by his son Ramses Miamun. Before this hypostole, a large
hypathrale court, of about 270 to 320 feet, was afterwards erected,
with a majestic pylon, and ornamented only on the sides by pillars.
Here the great plan of the temple terminated a length of 1,170 feet,
without reckoning the row of sphinxes before its exterior pylon, and
without the private sanctuary which was erected by Ramses Miamun
directly against the furthest wall of the temple, and in the same area,
but in such a manner that the entrance to it was on the opposite side.
This enlargement reckoned with it, would make the whole length nearly
2,000 feet, to the southernmost gate of the outer wall, which makes the
whole place about the same breadth. The later dynasties, who found this
principal temple completed on all sides, and yet could not renounce the
idea of doing honour to this centre of Theban worship, began by erecting
small temples on the great plain surrounded by the outer wall, and
afterwards gradually enlarging these again.
The head of the twentieth dynasty, Ramses III., whose warlike deeds in
Asia in the fifteenth century before Christ, were scarcely inferior to
those of his renowned ancestors, Sethos I. and Ramses II., built a
separate temple with a court of columns, and hypostole above two hundred
feet long, which now destroys the symmetry of the outer wall of the
great court, and founded at a little distance from it, a still larger
sanctuary for the third person of the Theban Triad, Chensu the son of
Ammon. This last was completed by the succeeding kings of his dynasty,
and the priest-kings of the twenty-first dynasty, who added a stately
court of columns and a pylon. Out of the twenty-second dynasty,
Sheshenk I. is known, the warrior king Shishak of the Bible, who
conquered Jerusalem in 970 B.C. His Asiatic campaigns are recorded in
the southern outer wall of the great temple, where, under the symbolical
figures of prisoners, he lays one hundred and forty conquered cities and
countries before Ammon. Among their names there is one, which, not
without foundation, is thought to be the denomination of the kingdom of
Judah, as also the names of several well known cities of Palestine.
The two above-mentioned priest-dynasties, which followed immediately
after the dynasties of the Ramses, were no longer of Theban origin, but
came from the cities of Lower Egypt. The power of the kingdom sank upon
this change, and after the short twenty-three dynasties, of which there
are, nevertheless, some remains yet to be found in Karnak, there appears
to have been a revolution. The present lists of the historians mention
only one king of the twenty-fourth dynasty who has not been discovered
upon the Egyptian monuments. Under him occurred the irruption of the
Ethiopians, who form the twenty-fifth dynasty. Shabak and Tahraka (So
and Tirhaka of the Bible) reigned in Egypt in the beginning of the
seventh century, B.C. These kings came from Ethiopia, but governed quite
in the Egyptian manner. They, too, did not forget to pay their reverence
to the Egyptian divine kings. Their names are found on several little
temples at Karnak, and on a stately colonnade in the great outer court,
which appears to have been first erected by Tahraka. The latter retired,
according to history, voluntarily into Ethiopia, and left the Egyptian
empire to its native rulers.
The supplanted Saitic dynasty now returned to the throne, and again
unfolded in the seventh and eighth centuries the splendour, which in
this country, so rich in resources and in outward might, was able to be
displayed under an energetic and wise sceptre. That dynasty first opened
Egypt for peaceful communication with foreign countries; Greeks settled
among them, commerce flourished and accumulated new and immense riches,
formerly alone obtained by rapine and tribute. But the excitement was
only artificial, for the fresh energy of the nations had long been
broken; art, too, matured luxury rather than practical worth. The last
national glory soon passed away. The country could no longer withstand
the coming storm of the Persians. In the year 525 B.C., it was conquered
by Cambyses, and trodden down by barbarian fanaticism. Many monuments
were destroyed, and no sanctuary, no wall was raised within this period;
at least nothing has been preserved to our times of that era, not even
of the long and mild government of Darius, of whom a temple, or only
sculptures with his name alone, are found in the Oasis of Kargeh. Under
Darius II., just one hundred years after the beginning of the Persian
supremacy, Egypt again became independent, and we immediately find again
the names of the native kings in the temples of Karnak, but after three
dynasties had followed one another in rapid succession within sixty-four
years, it again fell under the dominion of the Persians, who soon
afterward lost it to Alexander of Macedonia, in the year 332 B.C. After
that the land was obliged to accustom itself to foreign rule; it had
lost its national independence, and passed from one hand to another, the
last always worse than the preceding, down to the present day.
Egypt still had vivifying power enough under the Macedonians and Greeks
to keep up its religion and institutions in the ancient way. The foreign
princes occupied in every way the places and footsteps of the ancient
Pharaohs. Karnak also bears testimony to that. We here find the names of
Alexander and Philip Aridæus, who preceded the Ptolemies in the
restoration of that which the Persians had destroyed. Alexander rebuilt
the back, Philip the front sanctuary of the great temple; the Ptolemies
added sculptures to it, restored other parts, and even erected new
sanctuaries at no small cost, but of course no longer in the
magnificent, classic-Egyptian style of ancient times. Even the last
epoch of expiring Egypt, that of the Roman supremacy, is still
represented in Karnak by a number of representations, carried out under
Augustus Cæsar.
Thus this remarkable place, which in the lapse of 3,500 years had grown
from the little sanctuary in the midst of the great temple, into an
entire temple-city covering a surface of a quarter of a geographical
mile in length, and about 2,000 feet in breadth, is also an almost
unbroken thread and an interesting standard for the history of the whole
New Egyptian empire, from its commencement in the Old Empire down to its
fall under the Roman rule. Almost in the same proportion as the
dynasties and kings are portrayed in and about the temple of Karnak,
they stand forth or retire in Egyptian history.
Up the river from Karnak, where the stream, parted by the fertile island
of el Gedîdeh, again unites, a second glorious memorial of the ancient
city arises: the temple of Luqsor. One of the mightiest Pharaohs of the
eighteenth dynasty, Amenophis III., who had only built a side temple at
Karnak, adding little to the principal structure, here erected a
sanctuary, made the more magnificent on account of the little he had
done at Karnak, dedicated to Ammon, which the great Ramses enlarged by a
second stately court toward Karnak. For, although a good half-hour
distant, this temple must yet be looked upon as within the ancient and
sacred bounds of the great national sanctuary. That is proved by the
otherwise difficult, and inexplicable circumstance, that the entrance of
the temple, although hard by the shore, is yet turned away from the
river and toward Karnak, with which it was also architecturally placed
in direct connection by colonnades, series of rams, and roads.
With Luqsor end the ruins on the eastern shore. The monuments of western
Thebes offer a still greater variety, because here the subterranean
dwellings and places of the dead are added to the superterranean
structures for the living. From Qurna there once extended an unbroken
series of the most magnificent temples to Medînet Habu, almost filling
the narrow desert district between the Nile-steeped fertile land and the
foot of the mountains. Immediately behind these temples stretches the
vast Necropolis, the tombs of which lying close together like
bee-cells, are hewn partly in the rock-soil of the plain, partly in the
adjoining hills.
Qurna is situated on that spur of the Libyan mountains nearest to the
river. In suddenly turning to the west, the mountains form a species of
ravine, the outer part of which, where it is separated from the valley
by low ranges of hills, is called El Asasîf. Behind it is bounded by
high, steep crags, which rear their glorious stone in the noon and
morning sun. These sudden precipices of the limestone mountains, so
firmly and equally grown, and therefore so eminently calculated for the
sculptures in the rock-tombs, seem to have arisen on the clay stratum
beneath, which has withdrawn by its gradual disintegration.
In this rock-creek are the oldest graves belonging to the Old Empire.
Their entrances are seen far up in the northern rocks, directly under
the perpendicular wall, which ascends from the suddenly-inclined
rubbish-mounds to the tops of the mountain-ridges. This outer position,
and the paths bordered with low stone walls, leading steeply and
straightly from the valley several hundred feet to their entrances,
reminded me at once of the graves of Benihassan of the same period. They
were made in the second half of the third millenium B.C. under the king
of the eleventh and twelfth dynasties of Manetho, of which the former
founded the might of Thebes, and erected the city into the seat of their
dominion, independent of Memphis, the latter rendered it the imperial
city of the whole country.
These grottos, of which some are found on the neighbouring hills of the
same, mostly descend deep into the rock in an obtuse angle, but are not
painted or written; on the stone sarcophagi only were there any
particular pains bestowed; these consist usually of the finest
limestone, and are occasionally more than nine feet long, and are
decorated and written in the careful and pure style of that period, but
with a certain degree of sparingness. One of these sarcophagi we shall
bring with us, as I have already once stated. It has, a few days since,
been safely transported into the plain, after the long totally choked-up
shaft had been excavated, and the living rock itself broken through, to
obtain a shorter way out. The person to whom the grave belonged was the
son of a prince, and himself bore the dynastic name Nentef, of the
eleventh royal dynasty.
In the outermost corner of the same rock-creek is situated the oldest
temple structure of western Thebes, which belongs to the period of the
first mighty regeneration of the New Egyptian Empire. A street, above
1,600 feet long, ornamented on both sides by colossal rams and sphinxes,
led from the valley in a straight line to a court, then by a flight of
steps to another, the front wall of which was adorned with
representations, and a colonnade, and at last by a second stair to a
well-preserved granite portal, and the last temple court surrounded on
both sides by decorated halls and chambers, and ended behind by a broad
façade built on to the steep rock-wall. By another granite portal in the
middle of this façade, we come at last into the innermost space of the
temple, hewn in the rock and vaulted with stone, whence again several
little niches and spaces opened to the sides and back. All these places
were covered with the most beautiful paintings, gaily coloured on a grey
ground, and executed in the most finished style of the period. This
grand structure, beside which other now destroyed buildings once stood,
seems originally to have been connected with the river by a street
traversing the whole valley, and reaching the great temple of Karnak on
the other side; and I doubt not that for this behoof the narrow,
rock-gate was artificially broken through, by which the temple road
leads on its entrance into the valley. It was a Queen Numt Amen, the
elder sister of Tuthmosis III., who carried out this daring design of an
architectural communication between both the sides of the valley, the
same who erected the largest obelisks before the temple of Karnak. She
is never represented on her monuments as a woman, but in male attire;
the inscriptions alone inform us of her sex. Without doubt it was then
against the legitimate rule that a woman should hold the government; for
that reason probably her brother, who was still a minor, appears as a
co-regent. After her death, all her cartouches were turned into
Tuthmosis-cartouches, the feminine expressions of the inscriptions
changed, and her name was never mentioned in the later lists of the
legitimate kings.
Of Tuthmosis III., who completed the work of his royal sister during his
long reign, two temples still exist, both erected at the edge of the
desert. The northernmost one of these is now only recognisable in its
foundations and in the remains of its brick pylones; the southern one,
however, near Medînet Habu is yet well preserved, and, to judge from
some sculptures, might belong in its first planning to an earlier
Tuthmosis, and was only completed by the other. His second successor,
Tuthmosis IV., also erected a temple, now almost disappeared.