the temple of Luqsor was built. He is represented by the two giant
colossi, near Medînet Habu, pushed far forward into the fertile plain,
once standing at the gate of a mighty temple, the remains of which,
however, principally lie buried under the harvests of the annually
rising soil of the valley. Perhaps a roadway, like that to the north,
led hence through the valley to the opposite Luqsor. The north-eastern
of the two colossi was the celebrated vocal statue, to which the Greeks
attached the pleasant legend of the handsome Memnon, who greeted his
mother Aurora every morn at sunrise, while she, because of his early
hero-death, watered him with her dewy tears. This mythos, as Letronne
has proved, was formed at a very late period; as the peculiar phenomena
of the trembling tone, the consequence of the cracking of little
particles by the sudden warming of the cold stone, took its rise when
the statue, already cracked, was more shattered by an earthquake in the
year 27 B.C. The occurrence of cracking and sounding stones in the
desert and in great fields of ruins is not unfrequent in Egypt; the
nature of the flint conglomerate of which the statue is composed is
particularly inclined to it, as the innumerable cracks, great and
small, which pass in every direction through those portions of the
statue inscribed at the Greek period, at that time therefore unharmed,
show. It is also remarkable how many of the cracked and loose pieces
sound bell-like on being struck, while others remain dead and toneless,
according as their respective positions make them more or less damped.
The numerous Greek and Roman inscriptions which are graven on the
statue, and announce the visit of foreigners, particularly if they had
been so fortunate as to hear the morning greeting, begin first under
Nero, and only go down to the time of Septimius Severus, to whom is due
the restoration of the originally monolithic statue. Since this
re-erection of the upper portion in single block, the phenomenon of the
sounding stone appears to have become less frequent and less apparent,
if had not quite stopped. The mutation of the name of the still
remembered Amenophis (as the inscriptions testify) into Memnon seems to
have been principally induced by the name of this western side of
Thebes, Memnonia, which the Greeks seem to have explained to themselves
as “Palaces of Memnon,” while the name, hieroglyphically _mennu_,
signified “palaces” in general. At the present day the statues are,
called Shama and Tama by the Arabs, or together the Sanamât (not
Salamât), _i. e._ “the idols.”[95]
When we arrived here at the beginning of November, the whole plain, as
far as we could see, was inundated, and formed a single ocean, from
which the Sanamât arose more strange and lonely than from the green and
accessible fields. I have a few days since measured the colossi, as also
the rise of the Nile deposit on the bases of their thrones. The height
of the Memnon statue, reckoned from head to foot, but without the tall
headdress they once wore, was 14·28 metres, or 45½ feet, and to this the
base, another block, 4·25 metres, or 13 feet 7 inches, of which about
three feet was hidden by a surrounding step. Thus the statues originally
stood nearly sixty feet (perhaps nearly seventy feet with the pshent)
above the level of the temple. Now the level of the valley is eight feet
above this soil, and the inundation sometimes rises to the upper edge of
the bases, therefore fourteen feet higher than it could have done at
this time of its erection, if the water was not to reach the temple. If
this fact be added to our discovery at Semneh, where the mirror of the
Nile had sunk above twenty-three feet in historical times, it is plain
from that simple addition, that the Nile in the cataracts, between here
and Semneh, fell at least thirty-seven feet deeper then than now.
The last king, too, of that great eighteenth dynasty, Horus, had erected
a temple in the neighbourhood of Medînet Habu, which, however, is now
buried in the rubbish. The fragments of a colossal statue of the king in
hard, almost marble, limestone, the bust of which formed in the most
perfect style, weighing several hundred centenaries, is intended for our
museum, seem to indicate the position of the former temple entrance.
Two temples of the next dynasty are preserved, which were built by the
two mightiest and most celebrated of all the Pharaohs, Sethos I., and
his son Ramses II. The temple of the former is the northernmost in
position, and is usually denominated the temple of Qurna, as the old
village of Qurna here grew up round a Koptic church, lying principally
within the great temple courts, but was subsequently abandoned by the
inhabitants, and changed for the rock tombs of the neighbouring mountain
spur.
Farther south, between the now quite destroyed temples of Tuthmosis III.
and IV., lies the temple of Ramses (II.) Miamun, the most beautiful,
probably, in Egypt, as to architectural design and proportions, though
behind that of Karnak in grandeur and various interest. The back part of
the temple, as also the halls of the hypostole, have disappeared, and
their original plan could only be ascertained by long and continued
excavations carefully superintended by Erbkam. Round about this
destroyed part of the temples, the spacious brick saloons are visible,
which are all covered by regularly well built cylindrical vaults, and
belong to the period of the erection of the temple. For this is
unmistakeably proved by the stamps, which were imprinted on each brick
in the royal factory, and contain the cartouches of King Ramses. That
this temple had already attracted great attention in antiquity, is
evident from the particular description which Diodorus Siculus gives of
it after Hecatæus, under the name of the Tomb of Osymandyas.
Immediately to the right of the temple, one of the few industrious
Fellahs has planted a little kitchen garden, which gives us some change
at our table, and was therefore spared, as it should be, with respect,
in our excavations, which threatened to extend thither, at the entreaty
of the friendly brown gardener, although it covers the foundation of a
small temple not previously seen, the entrance of which I found in the
first court of the Ramses temple.
The most southern and best preserved of the temple palaces, lies amid
the ruined houses of Medînet Habu, a Koptic city, now quite deserted,
but once not inconsiderable. It was founded by Ramses III. the first
king of the twentieth dynasty, the wealthy Rhampsinitus of
Herodotus,[96] in the thirteenth century B.C., and it celebrates on its
walls the tremendous wars of this king by land and sea, which might vie
with those of the great Ramses. Within the second court a great church
was founded by the Kopts, the monolithic columns of which still lie
scattered around. The back places are mostly buried in rubbish. But of
very peculiar interest is the far-projected pylon-like fore-building of
the temple, which contained, in four stories, one above another, the
private rooms of the king. On its wall, the prince is represented in the
midst of his family; however, he caresses his daughters, known as
princesses by their side-locks, plays draughts with them, and receives
fruits and flowers from them.
With this building closes the great series of palace-temples, known by
the particular designation of Memnonia. They embrace the actual prime of
the New Empire, for after Ramses III. the outward might, as well as the
inward greatness of the empire declined. Of this period only, and that
immediately following, do we find the tombs of the kings in the rock
valleys of the mountains.
To these the entrance lies on the other side of the promontory of Qurna.
Wild and desolate, the rock walls, which round themselves off to bald
peaks, rise on both sides, and have their golden tops covered with
coal-black stones, burnt, as it were, by the sun. The peculiarly solemn
and dull character of this region always struck me the most when I rode
after sunset over the unmeasureable rock rubbish which covers the earth
to a great height, and is only interrupted by broad water-streams, which
have formed themselves in the course of thousands of years, by the
unfrequent, though not unknown storms, as experience has shown. All
around, everything is dumb and dead; only now and then the hollow bark
of the jackal, or the ominous cries of the night owl, varies the sound
of the active hoof of my little donkey.
After many windings, which lead by great circuits almost immediately
behind the high mountain wall of the already described valley of Asasif,
the dale parts into two arms, of which the right one leads up to the
oldest of the tombs. Two only of these are opened, both of the
eighteenth dynasty, the one belonging to the time of Amenophis IV. the
Memnon of the Greeks, the other to king Ai, a contemporaneous monarch
soon succeeding him, who is not included in the monumental lists of the
legitimate kings.[97] The latter lies at the outer end of the slowly
rising rock ravine; the granite sarcophagus of the king has been
shattered in the little tomb-chamber, and his name is everywhere
carefully erased, to the least line, on the walls as well as on the
sarcophagus. The other lies far forward in the vale, is of great extent,
and with handsome, but unfortunately much mutilated sculptures, through
the hands of time and mankind. Besides these two graves, there are
several others incomplete without sculpture; others, without doubt, are
hidden under the high mounds of rubbish, the removal of which would take
more time and means than we thought proper to give to it after severe
trials. On one place, where I had excavations made after tolerably
certain proofs, a door and chamber were certainly discovered about ten
feet below the rubbish, but without sculptures. Yet some remains of
bases were brought to light, containing a yet unknown royal title.
The left branch of the principal valley, which was originally closed by
an elevation of the soil, and was first opened artificially by a
prepared pathway, at this place contains the graves of almost all the
kings of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties.
Here usually there sinks a wide-mouthed shaft, on one of the declivities
of the hills, not very high over the level of the valley, descending in
an oblique angle. As soon as the overhanging rock has reached a
perpendicular height of twelve to fifteen feet, the sharply-cut
door-posts at the first entrance appear at once, provided with one or
two great doors for closing. There too, the painted sculptures usually
begin, forming a strange contrast to the sudden visitor between the
craggy rocks, and the wild stones, by their sharp lines, shining
surfaces, and fresh living colours. Long corridors of imposing height
and width lead one still farther into the rock mountains. In single
divisions, formed by the narrowing of the passage, and by new doors, the
paintings continue on the walls and ceiling. The king appears adoring
several gods, and addressing to them his prayers and his excuses for his
earthly career. The peaceful employed of the beatified spirits are
portrayed on one wall, and the torments of the wicked on the other; on
the ceiling, the goddess is depicted lying along, as well as the hours
of the day and night with the influences which they exercise on
mankind, and the astrological meanings, all accompanied with explanatory
inscriptions. At length we arrive in a great vaulted pillared saloon,
the walls of which generally show the representations on a golden yellow
ground, from which it has received the name of the Golden Saloon. This
was intended for the royal sarcophagus, which stood in the middle from
six to ten feet in height. But often when the king, after the tomb was
completed, felt himself yet unweakened in his powers, and expected
another series of years, the middle passage of this saloon was hewn in a
steeper manner, as the beginning of a new one; new corridors and
chambers were produced; sometimes the direction of the excavation was
altered, until the king put a second period to the work, and the series
was closed with a second hall, generally more spacious and magnificent
than the first; to this were added, if time permitted, smaller spaces at
both sides, destined for particular offerings to the dead, until the
last hour sounded, and the royal corpse, after its seventy days of
embalment, was laid in the sarcophagus. This was then so cunningly
closed, that the granite colossus had always to be broken in pieces by
the later violators of the graves, as the cover could not be lifted off.
The tombs of the princesses also, which lie altogether in a little
valley behind Medînet Habu, at the southern end of Memnonia, belong
without doubt to the eighteenth and twentieth dynasties, as also the
most important of the numerous private tombs, which extend from the
other side of Medînet Habu, over mountain and valley to the entrance of
the Valley of Kings. The priests of rank, and high officers, were fond
of representing in their tombs all their wealth in horses, carriages,
herds, boats, and household goods, as well as their hunting-grounds,
fish-ponds, gardens, and halls; even the artificer and mechanic, busied
in their different employments, are to be found on many of the walls; on
which account many of these are of higher interest to us than even the
king’s tombs, the representations on which are almost always carried
through the whole life to the death.
Of later monuments, those of the twenty-sixth dynasty, in the seventh
and sixth century before Christ, are the most remarkable. The greater
number of these are in the rocky cove between Qurna and the hill Abd el
Qurna, hewn out of flat surfaces, and are, for distinction, called el
Asasif. The rocky plains here alone offered room for inscriptions, and
these have been largely used. Already, from here, may be perceived a
multitude of high gates and walls built of black bricks; these enclose,
in long squares, sunken courts, the entrances to which are high arched
pylon-doors, which, from a distance, look like large Roman triumphal
arches. When you enter within the walls, you look directly into the
court, dug down into the rock from twelve to fifteen feet deep, which
you can descend by a staircase. This uncovered court is now the largest
accessible tomb, one hundred feet long and seventy-four broad; it was
excavated for a royal writer, named Petamenap. From this you go through
an antechamber into a large rock-hall, with two rows of pillars, of an
extent of sixty-five feet by fifty-two feet, with rooms and corridors
on both sides; then through an arched entrance into a second hall with
eight pillars, of about fifty-two feet by thirty-six feet; and then into
a third hall with four pillars, thirty-one feet long and broad; and at
last into a chamber twenty feet by twelve feet, which ends in a niche.
Out of this chamber, at the end of the first row of rooms, a door leads
into a very large room, and to the right into another, to a continuation
of six corridors, with two stair-cases of nine steps and one of
twenty-three steps, into a chamber, in which a pit forty-four feet deep,
leads to another small room. This second course of rooms and passages,
which run at a right angle to the first, are 172 feet long, but the
first, reckoning the outer court with them, is 311 feet. From the
fountain-room, another corridor leads to the right into a diagonal room,
together measuring fifty-eight feet in this direction. Before the two
stair-cases, in the second suite of rooms, there opens a fourth line of
passages to the right, running in the same direction for 122 feet, in
which, to the left, is a large square space sixty feet each way, with
other rooms adjoining, the interior of which, on the four sides, is
ornamented like a monstrous sarcophagus. In the middle, under this great
square, rests the sarcophagus of the dead, which one, however, can only
reach by means of a sunken pit of eighteen feet deep, which reaches to
the fourth suite, by a horizontal passage of fifty-eight feet, to a
third pit; through this to new rooms, and at last through the roof of
the last to another room, containing the sarcophagus, which really lies
exactly under the centre of the above described square. The whole
surface of this private tomb is reckoned at 21,600 feet, and with the
pit-room 23,148 square feet.[98] This immense work appears much more
colossal when one recollects that all the walls, pillars, and doors from
top to bottom are covered with innumerable inscriptions and
representations, which, from the carefulness, exactitude, and elegance
of the execution, throw one into ever-increasing astonishment.
Much less important are the few remains to be found of the later foreign
dominion. Of these there are only two small temples in the neighbourhood
of Medînet Habu, erected under the Ptolemies, and a third may be
mentioned, which lies to the south, at the end of the great lake of
Medînet Habu. The oldest sculptures in this last temple are of the time
of Cæsar Augustus; but the well-preserved cell of Antoninus Pius was
already built at that time. The outer door of this temple contains the
only representation yet found of the Emperor Otho, the discovery of
which afforded an immense pleasure to Champollion and Rosellini. They,
however, overlooked the circumstance that on the opposite side the name
of the Emperor Galba was to be found, till then unknown in Egypt.
So soon as the time of Strabo, ancient Thebes was already divided into
several villages, and Germanicus visited it as we do, out of a desire
for knowledge, and respect for the great antiquity of its monuments,
“cognoscendæ antiquitatis,” as Tacitus informs us. Decius, A.D. 250, is
the Emperor’s name, which I have found mentioned in hieroglyphics in all
Egypt; it appears in a representation in the temple of Esneh. A century
later the holy Athanasius retired into the Theban desert, among the
Christian Hermits. The edict of Theodosius against heathendom, A.D. 391,
deprived the Egyptian temples of their last authority, and favoured that
of the monks and hermits, before whom, from that time, Egyptian
Christendom bowed down.
From that time there arose in the whole country, and soon after in the
neighbourhood of the Upper Nile, innumerable churches and convents, and
the caverns of the desert were turned into troglodyte dwellings, for an
ascetic hermit population.[99] The Theban Necropolis afforded above all
places convenience for this new requisition. The tombs of the kings, as
well as the private ones, were used as Christian cells, and soon bore on
their walls traces of their new destination. In a tomb at Qurna, there
is still a letter from St. Athanasius, archbishop of Alexandria, to the
orthodox monks of Thebes, preserved on the white stucco in handsome
uncials, but unfortunately in a very fragmentary state. They were
particularly fond of turning ancient temples into Koptic churches or
convents.
In the temple of Medînet Habu (city of Habu). the largest church appears
to have been erected. Immense monolithic, granite columns, cover the
floor of the second court in great numbers; in order to make room for
the choir, an old Egyptian column, on the north side, has been removed;
and from the rooms transformed into priests’ cells there has been a row
of doors broken in the outer wall. The adjoining convent, Dêr el
Medînet, surnamed “the townley,” was erected near the Ptolemic temple,
behind the hill of Qurnet Murrâi. Another church stood in the temple of
Old Qurna, and to it belonged most probably the convent Dêr el Bachît,
which lies on the hill of Qurna. The ruins of a third convent cover the
space of the temple of the Queen Numt-amen, in the corner of the valley
of Asasif, and bear the name of Dêr el Bahri, the northern convent.
Such changes in these ancient palace structures ensured their being
upheld, sometimes to their advantage, and sometimes to their
disadvantage. Numbers of walls were either removed or broken through, in
order to make room for new arrangements; on others, the heathen
representations were destroyed, in order to make naked walls, or the
human figures, and even the figures of animals in the inscriptions,
particularly the heads, even up to the roofs were violently hacked and
disfigured. Sometimes, however, the same pious, busy hands served us by
preserving the ancient glory in the most complete manner; instead of
tiring themselves with the hammer, they plastered them over from top to
bottom with Nile earth, which afterwards was generally covered with
white, in order to receive Christian pictures. In the course of time,
however, this Koptic plaster crumbled away, and the ancient painting
appeared again, with a brilliancy and astonishing freshness, which they
would have hardly retained had they been left uncovered, and exposed to
the sun and air. In the niche of an old cell I found St. Peter in
old-Byzantine style, holding the keys, and pointing upwards with his
finger; out of his nimbus peeped, however, from his half-fallen
Christian mantle the cow-horns of the goddess Hathor, the Egyptian
Venus; to her was brought originally the incense and the sacrifices of
the neighbouring kings, which were now offered to the reverend apostle.
Often have I assisted time with my own hand, to loosen the generally
uninteresting Koptic representation on the plaster, in order to bring
out the hidden magnificent sculptures of the Egyptian gods and kings, to
their ancient and greater right upon our studies.
A great part of the Theban population is still Koptic on both sides of
the Nile; our Christian cook Siriân was born here, and a rich Kopt,
Mustafieh, who does not live far from us, brings us daily most excellent
wheaten bread. But for a long time the Arabian Mahommedan population has
taken the lead here, as well as in the whole country, against which the
Kopts have only ancient customs to bring forward, and their knowledge of
calculation, and the right of settlement in the most important financial
places.