and the moon god, were the Theban triad to whom the holy buildings of
Thebes on the two banks of the Nile were dedicated; and this temple of
Luxor, the “House of Amun in the Southern Apt,” was built fifteen
hundred years before Christ by Amenhotep III. Rameses II, that vehement
builder, added to it immensely. One walks among his traces when one
walks in Luxor. And here, as at Denderah, Christians have let loose the
fury that should have had no place in their religion. Churches for their
worship they made in different parts of the temple, and when they were
not praying, they broke in pieces statues, defaced bas-reliefs, and
smashed up shrines with a vigor quite as great as that displayed in
preservation by Christians of to-day. Now time has called a truce. Safe
are the statues that are left. And day by day two great religions,
almost as if in happy brotherly love, send forth their summons by the
temple walls. And just beyond those walls, upon the hill, there is a
Coptic church. Peace reigns in happy Luxor. The lion lies
[Illustration:
From stereograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
IN THE TEMPLE OF LUXOR]
down with the lamb, and the child, if it will, may harmlessly put its
hand into the cockatrice’s den.
Perhaps because it is so surrounded, so haunted by life and familiar
things, because the pigeons fly about it, the buffalo stares into it,
the goats stir up the dust beside its columns, the twittering voices of
women make a music near its courts, many people pay little heed to this
great temple, gain but a small impression from it. It decorates the bank
of the Nile. You can see it from the dahabiyehs. For many that is
enough. Yet the temple is a noble one, and, for me, it gains a definite
attraction all its own from the busy life about it, the cheerful hum and
stir. And if you want fully to realize its dignity, you can always visit
it by night. Then the cries from the village are hushed. The houses show
no lights. Only the voices from the Nile steal up to the obelisk of
Rameses, to the pylon from which the flags of Thebes once flew on festal
days, to the shrine of Alexander the Great, with its vultures and its
stars, and to the red granite statues of Rameses and his wives.
These last are as expressive and of course more definite than my
dancers. They are full of character. They seem to breathe out the
essence of a vanished domesticity. Colossal are the statues of the king,
solid, powerful, and tremendous, boldly facing the world with the calm
of one who was thought, and possibly thought himself, to be not much
less than a deity. And upon each pedestal, shrinking delicately back,
was once a little wife. Some little wives are left. They are delicious
in their modesty. Each stands away from the king, shyly, respectfully.
Each is so small as to be below his down-stretched arm. Each, with a
surely furtive gesture, reaches out her right hand, and attains the
swelling calf of her noble husband’s leg. Plump are their little faces,
but not bad-looking. One cannot pity the king. Nor does one pity them.
For these were not “Les désenchantées,” the restless, sad-hearted women
of an Eastern world that knows too much. Their longings surely cannot
have been very great. Their world was probably bounded by the calf of
Rameses’s leg. That was “the far horizon” of the little plump-faced
wives.
The happy dancers and the humble wives, they always come before me with
the temple of Luxor--joy and discretion side by side. And with them, to
my ears, the two voices seem to come, muezzin and angelus bell, mingling
not in war, but peace. When I think of this temple, I think of its joy
and peace far less than of its majesty.
And yet it is majestic. Look at it, as I have often done, toward sunset
from the western bank of the Nile, or climb the mound beyond its
northern end, where stands the grand entrance, and you realize at once
its nobility and solemn splendor. From the _Loulia’s_ deck it was a
procession of great columns; that was all.
[Illustration:
From a photograph by James S. Lee
OBELISK AND PYLON, LUXOR]
But the decorative effect of these columns, soaring above the river and
its vivid life, is fine.
By day all is turmoil on the river-bank. Barges are unloading, steamers
are arriving, and throngs of donkey-boys and dragomans go down in haste
to meet them. Servants run to and fro on errands from the many
dahabiyehs. Bathers leap into the brown waters. The native craft pass by
with their enormous sails outspread to catch the wind, bearing serried
mobs of men, and black-robed women, and laughing, singing children. The
boatmen of the hotels sing monotonously as they lounge in the big, white
boats waiting for travelers to Medinet-Abu, to the Ramesseum, to Kurna,
and the tombs. And just above them rise the long lines of columns,
ancient, tranquil, and remote--infinitely remote, for all their
nearness, casting down upon the sunlit gaiety the long shadow of the
past.
From the edge of the mound where stands the native village the effect of
the temple is much less decorative, but its detailed grandeur can be
better grasped from there; for from there one sees the great towers of
the propylon, two rows of mighty columns, the red granite Obelisk of
Rameses the Great, and the black granite statues of the king. On the
right of the entrance a giant stands, on the left one is seated, and a
little farther away a third emerges from the ground, which reaches to
its mighty breast.
And there the children play perpetually. And there the Egyptians sing
their serenades, making the pipes wail and striking the derabukkeh; and
there the women gossip and twitter like the birds. And the buffalo comes
to take his sun-bath; and the goats and the curly, brown sheep pass in
sprightly and calm processions. The obelisk there, like its brother in
Paris, presides over a cheerfulness of life; but it is a life that seems
akin to it, not alien from it. And the king watches the simplicity of
this keen existence of Egypt of to-day far up the Nile with a calm that
one does not fear may be broken by unsympathetic outrage, or by any
vision of too perpetual foreign life. For the tourists each year are but
an episode in Upper Egypt. Still the shadoof-man sings his ancient song,
violent and pathetic, bold as the burning sun-rays. Still the fellaheen
plow with the camel yoked with the ox. Still the women are covered with
protective amulets and hold their black draperies in their mouths. The
intimate life of the Nile remains the same. And that life obelisk and
king have known for how many, many years!
And so I love to think of this intimacy of life about the temple of the
happy dancers and the humble little wives, and it seems to me to strike
the keynote of the golden coziness of Luxor.
[Illustration: THE GREAT COLONNADE, TEMPLE OF LUXOR]
IX
COLOSSI OF MEMNON
Nevertheless, sometimes one likes to escape from the thing one loves,
and there are hours when the gay voices of Luxor fatigue the ears, when
one desires a great calm. Then there are silent voices that summon one
across the river, when the dawn is breaking over the hills of the
Arabian desert, or when the sun is declining toward the Libyan
mountains--voices issuing from lips of stone, from the twilight of
sanctuaries, from the depths of rock-hewn tombs.
The peace of the plain of Thebes in the early morning is very rare and
very exquisite. It is not the peace of the desert, but rather, perhaps,
the peace of the prairie--an atmosphere tender, delicately thrilling,
softly bright, hopeful in its gleaming calm. Often and often have I left
the _Loulia_ very early, moored against the long sand islet that faces
Luxor when the Nile has not subsided, I have rowed across the quiet
water that divided me from the western bank, and, with a happy heart, I
have entered into the lovely peace of the great spaces that stretch from
the Colossi of Memnon to the Nile, to the mountains, southward toward
Armant, northward to Kerekten, to Danfik, to Gueziret-Meteira. Think of
the color of young clover, of young barley, of young wheat; think of the
timbre of the reed flute’s voice, thin, clear, and frail with the
frailty of dewdrops; think of the torrents of spring rushing through the
veins of a great, wide land, and growing almost still at last on their
journey. Spring, you will say, perhaps, and high Nile not yet subsided!
But Egypt is the favored land of a spring that is already alert at the
end of November, and in December is pushing forth its green. The Nile
has sunk away from the feet of the Colossi that it has bathed through
many days. It has freed the plain to the fellaheen, though still it
keeps my island in its clasp. And Hapi, or Kam-wra, the “Great
Extender,” and Ra, have made this wonderful spring to bloom on the dark
earth before the Christian’s Christmas.
What a pastoral it is, this plain of Thebes, in the dawn of day! Think
of the reed flute, I have said, not because you will hear it, as you
ride toward the mountains, but because its voice would be utterly in
place here, in this arcady of Egypt, playing no tarantella, but one of
those songs, half bird-like, and half sadly, mysteriously human, which
come from the soul of the East. Instead of it, you may catch distant
cries from the bank of the river, where the shadoof-man toils, lifting
ever the water and his voice, the one to
[Illustration:
From stereograph, copyright, 1908, by Underwood & Underwood, New York
NEAR VIEW OF THE COLOSSI OF MEMNON]
earth, the other, it seems, to sky; and the creaking lay of the
water-wheel, which pervades Upper Egypt like an atmosphere, and which,
though perhaps at first it irritates, at last seems to you the sound of
the soul of the river, of the sunshine, and the soil.
Much of the land looks painted. So flat is it, so young are the growing
crops, that they are like a coating of green paint spread over a mighty
canvas. But the doura rises higher than the heads of the naked children
who stand among it to watch you canter past. And in the far distance you
see dim groups of trees--sycamores and acacias, tamarisks and palms.
Beyond them is the very heart of this “land of sand and ruins and gold”:
Medinet-Abu, the Ramesseum, Deir-el-Medinet, Kurna, Deir-el-Bahari, the
tombs of the kings, the tombs of the queens and of the princes. In the
strip of bare land at the foot of those hard, and yet poetic, mountains,
have been dug up treasures the fame of which has gone to the ends of the
world. But this plain, where the fellaheen are stooping to the soil, and
the women are carrying the water-jars, and the children are playing in
the doura, and the oxen and the camels are working with plows that look
like relics of far-off days, is the possession of the two great
presiding beings whom you see from an enormous distance, the Colossi of
Memnon. Amenhotep III put them where they are. So we are told. But in
this early morning it is not possible to think of them as being brought
to any place. Seated, the one beside the other, facing the Nile and the
home of the rising sun, their immense aspect of patience suggests will,
calmly, steadily exercised, suggests choice; that, for some reason, as
yet unknown, they chose to come to this plain, that they choose solemnly
to remain there, waiting, while the harvests grow and are gathered about
their feet, while the Nile rises and subsides, while the years and the
generations come, like the harvests, and are stored away in the
granaries of the past. Their calm broods over this plain, gives to it a
personal atmosphere which sets it quite apart from every other flat
space of the world. There is no place that I know on the earth which has
the peculiar, bright, ineffable calm of the plain of these Colossi. It
takes you into its breast, and you lie there in the growing sunshine
almost as if you were a child laid in the lap of one of them. That
legend of the singing at dawn of the “vocal Memnon,” how could it have
arisen? How could such calmness sing, such patience ever find a voice?
Unlike the Sphinx, which becomes ever more impressive as you draw near
to it, and is most impressive when you sit almost at its feet, the
Colossi lose in personality as you approach them and can see how they
have been defaced.
From afar one feels their minds, their strange, unearthly temperaments
commanding this pastoral. When you are beside them, this feeling
disappears. Their features are gone, and though in their attitudes there
is
[Illustration: THE COLOSSI OF MEMNON]
power, and there is something that wakens awe, they are more wonderful
as a far-off feature of the plain. They gain in grandeur from the night,
in strangeness from the moonrise, perhaps specially when the Nile comes
to their feet. More than three thousand years old, they look less
eternal than the Sphinx. Like them, the Sphinx is waiting, but with a
greater purpose. The Sphinx reduces man really to nothingness. The
Colossi leave him some remnants of individuality. One can conceive of
Strabo and Ælius Gallus, of Hadrian and Sabina, of others who came over
the sunlit land to hear the unearthly song in the dawn, being of
some--not much, but still of some--importance here. Before the Sphinx no
one is important. But in the distance of the plain the Colossi shed a
real magic of calm and solemn personality, and subtly seem to mingle
their spirit with the flat, green world, so wide, so still, so fecund,
and so peaceful; with the soft airs that are surely scented with an
eternal springtime, and with the light that the morning rains down on
wheat and clover, on Indian corn and barley, and on brown men laboring,
who, perhaps, from the patience of the Colossi in repose have drawn a
patience in labor that has in it something not less sublime.
From the Colossi one goes onward toward the trees and the mountains, and
very soon one comes to the edge of that strange and fascinating strip of
barren land which is strewn with temples and honeycombed with tombs.
The sun burns down on it. The heat seems thrown back upon it by the wall
of tawny mountains that bounds it on the west. It is dusty, it is arid;
it is haunted by swarms of flies, by the guardians of the ruins, and by
men and boys trying to sell enormous scarabs and necklaces and amulets,
made yesterday, and the day before, in the manufactory of Kurna. From
many points it looks not unlike a strangely prolonged rubbish-heap in
which busy giants have been digging with huge spades, making mounds and
pits, caverns and trenches, piling up here a monstrous heap of stones,
casting down there a mighty statue. But how it fascinates! Of course one
knows what it means. One knows that on this strip of land Naville dug
out at Deir-el-Bahari the temple of Mentu-hotep, and discovered later,
in her shrine, Hathor, the cow-goddess, with the lotus-plants streaming
from her sacred forehead to her feet; that long before him Mariette here
brought to the light at Drah-abu’l-Neggah the treasures of kings of the
twelfth and thirteenth dynasties; that at the foot of those
tiger-colored precipices, Theodore M. Davis, the American, found the
sepulcher of Queen Hatshepsu, the Queen Elizabeth of the old Egyptian
world, and, later, the tomb of Yuaa and Thuaa, the parents of Queen
Thiy, containing mummycases covered with gold, jars of oil and wine,
gold, silver, and alabaster boxes, a bed decorated with gilded ivory, a
chair with gilded plaster reliefs, chairs of state, and
[Illustration:
From stereograph, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New York
THE VALLEY OF THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS]
a chariot; that here Maspero, Victor Loret, Brugsch Bey, and other
patient workers gave to the world tombs that had been hidden and unknown
for centuries; that there to the north is the temple of Kurna, and over
there the Ramesseum; that those rows of little pillars close under the
mountain, and looking strangely modern, are the pillars of Hatshepsu’s
temple, which bears upon its walls the pictures of the expedition to the
historic land of Punt; that the kings were buried there, and there the
queens and the princes of the vanished dynasties; that beyond to the
west is the temple of Deir-el-Medinet with its judgment of the dead;
that here by the native village is Medinet-Abu. One knows that, and so
the imagination is awake, ready to paint the lily and to gild the beaten
gold. But even if one did not know, I think one would be fascinated.
This turmoil of sunbaked earth and rock, gray, yellow, pink, orange, and
red, awakens the curiosity, summons the love of the strange, suggests
that it holds secrets to charm the souls of men.
X
MEDINET-ABU
At the entrance to the temple of Medinet-Abu, near the small groups of
palms and the few brown houses, often have I turned and looked back
across the plain before entering through the first beautiful doorway, to
see the patient backs and right sides of the colossi, the far-off,
dreamy mountains beyond Karnak and the Nile. And again, when I have
entered and walked a little distance, I have looked back at the almost
magical picture framed in the doorway; at the bottom of the picture a
layer of brown earth, then a strip of sharp green,--the cultivated
ground,--then a blur of pale yellow, then a darkness of trees, and just
the hint of a hill far, very far away. And always, in looking, I have
thought of the “Sposalizio” of Raphael in the Brera at Milan, of the
tiny dream of blue country framed by his temple doorway beyond the
Virgin and Saint Joseph. The doorways of the temples of Egypt are very
noble, and nowhere have I been more struck by their nobility than in
Medinet-Abu. Set in huge walls of massive masonry, which rise slightly
above them on each side,
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF MEDINET-ABU]
with a projecting cornice, in their simplicity they look extraordinarily
classical, in their sobriety mysterious, and in their great solidity
quite wonderfully elegant. And they always suggest to me that they are
giving access to courts and chambers which still, even in our times, are
dedicated to secret cults--to the cults of Isis, of Hathor, and of
Osiris.
Close to the right of the front of Medinet-Abu there are trees covered
with yellow flowers; beyond are fields of doura. Behind the temple is a
sterility which makes one think of metal. A great calm enfolds this
place. The buildings are of the same color as the colossi. When I speak
of the buildings, I include the great temple, the pavilion of Rameses
III, and the little temple, which together may be said to form
Medinet-Abu. Whereas the temple of Luxor seems to open its arms to life,
and the great fascination of the Ramesseum comes partly from its
invasion by every traveling air and happy sun-ray, its openness and
freedom, Medinet-Abu impresses by its colossal air of secrecy, by its
fortress-like seclusion. Its walls are immensely thick, and are covered
with figures the same color as the walls, some of them very tall. Thick
set, massive, heavy, almost warlike it is. Two seated statues within,
statues with animals’ faces, steel-colored, or perhaps a little darker
than that, look like savage warders ready to repel intrusion.
Passing between them, delicately as Agag, one enters an open space with
ruins, upon the right of which is a low, small temple, gray in hue, and
covered with inscriptions, which looks almost bowed under its tremendous
weight of years. From this dignified, though tiny, veteran there comes a
perpetual sound of birds. The birds in Egypt have no reverence for age.
Never have I seen them more restless, more gay, or more impertinent,
than in the immemorial ruins of this ancient land. Beyond is an enormous
portal, on the lofty ceiling of which still linger traces of faded red
and blue, which gives access to a great hall with rows of mighty
columns, those on the left hand round, those on the right square, and
almost terribly massive. There is in these no grace, as in the giant
lotus columns of Karnak. Prodigious, heavy, barbaric, they are like a
hymn in stone to strength. There is something brutal in their aspect,
which again makes one think of war, of assaults repelled, hordes beaten
back like waves by a sea-wall. And still another great hall, with more
gigantic columns, lies in the sun beyond, and a doorway through which
seems to stare fiercely the edge of a hard and fiery mountain. Although
one is roofed by the sky, there is something oppressive here; an
imprisoned feeling comes over one. I could never be fond of Medinet-Abu,
as I am fond of Luxor, of parts of Karnak, of the whole of delicious,
poetical Philæ. The big pylons, with their great walls sloping inward,
sand-colored, and glowing with very pale yellow in the sun, the
[Illustration:
From a photograph by James S. Lee
CORNER OF SECOND COURT, TEMPLE OF RAMESES III, MEDINET-ABU]
resistant walls, the brutal columns, the huge and almost savage scale of
everything, always remind me of the violence in men, and also--I
scarcely know why--make me think of the North, of sullen Northern
castles by the sea, in places where skies are gray, and the white of
foam and snow is married in angry nights.
And yet in Medinet-Abu there reigns a splendid calm--a calm that
sometimes seems massive, resistant, as the columns and the walls. Peace
is certainly inclosed by the stones that call up thoughts of war, as if,
perhaps, their purpose had been achieved many centuries ago, and they
were quit of enemies forever. Rameses III is connected with Medinet-Abu.
He was one of the greatest of the Egyptian kings, and has been called
the “last of the great sovereigns of Egypt.” He ruled for thirty-one
years, and when, after a first visit to Medinet-Abu, I looked into his
records, I was interested to find that his conquests and his wars had “a
character essentially defensive.” This defensive spirit is incarnated in
the stones of these ruins. One reads in them something of the soul of
this king who lived twelve hundred years before Christ, and who desired
“in remembrance of his Syrian victories” to give to his memorial temple
an outward military aspect. I noticed a military aspect at once inside
this temple; but if you circle the buildings outside it is more
unmistakable. For the east front has a battlemented wall, and the
battlements are shield-shaped. This fortress, or migdol, a name which
the ancient Egyptians borrowed from the nomadic tribes of Syria, is
called the “Pavilion of Rameses III,” and his principal battles are
represented upon its walls. The monarch does not hesitate to speak of
himself in terms of praise, suggesting that he was like the God Mentu,
who was the Egyptian war god, and whose cult at Thebes was at one period
more important even than was the cult of Amun, and also plainly hinting
that he was a brave fellow. “I, Rameses the King,” he murmurs, “behaved
as a hero who knows his worth.” If hieroglyphs are to be trusted,
various Egyptian kings of ancient times seem to have had some vague
suspicion of their own value, and the walls of Medinet-Abu are, to speak
sincerely, one mighty boast. In his later years the king lived in peace
and luxury, surrounded by a vicious and intriguing court haunted by
magicians, hags, and mystery-mongers. Dealers in magic may still be
found on the other side of the river, in happy Luxor. I made the
acquaintance of two when I was there, one of whom offered for a couple
of pounds to provide me with a preservative against all such dangers as
beset the traveler in wild places. In order to prove its efficacy he
asked me to come to his house by night, bringing a dog and my revolver
with me. He would hang the charm about the dog’s neck, and I was then to
put six shots into the animal’s body. He positively assured me that the
dog would be uninjured. I half-promised
[Illustration: THE RAMESSEUM]
to come, and, when night began to fall, looked vaguely about for a dog.
At last I found one, but it howled so dismally, when I asked Ibrahim
Ayyad to take possession of it for experimental purposes, that I weakly
gave up the project, and left the magician clamoring for his hundred and
ninety-five piasters.
Its warlike aspect gives a special personality to Medinet-Abu. The
shield-shaped battlements; the court-yards, with their brutal columns,
narrowing as they recede toward the mountains; the heavy gateways, with
superimposed chambers; the towers; quadrangular bastion to protect,
inclined basement to resist the attacks of sappers and cause projectiles
to rebound--all these things contribute to this very definite effect.
I have heard travelers on the Nile speak piteously of the confusion
wakened in their minds by a hurried survey of many temples, statues,
monuments, and tombs. But if one stays long enough this confusion fades
happily away, and one differentiates between the antique personalities
of ancient Egypt almost as easily as one differentiates between the
personalities of one’s familiar friends. Among these personalities
Medinet-Abu is the warrior, standing like Mentu, with the solar disk,
and the two plumes erect above his head of a hawk, firmly planted at the
foot of the Theban mountains, ready to repel all enemies, to beat back
all assaults, strong and determined, powerful and brutally serene.
XI
THE RAMESSEUM
“This, my lord, is the thinking place of Rameses the Great.”