EDFU AND THE QUARRIES OF GEBEL SILSILEH
The few incidents which occurred during the following six months,
after I was reinstalled in my hut at Der el-Bahri, have been related
in previous chapters. During the short season at Luxor friends and
acquaintances often paid me a visit when going the rounds on the Theban
side of the Nile. Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Parker induced me to leave my
camp to spend Christmastide with them in the delightful house they had
lately built at Assuan. It is one of the few new houses in Upper Egypt
which in aspect fits in exactly with its surroundings. Situated as it
is on the western bank of the Nile, it commands a beautiful view both
up and down the river, and Elephantine Island, the only green spot near
Assuan, lies just opposite. A more ideal residence in which to pass the
winter months would be hard to conceive. Would that he who built it had
been spared to enjoy it for more than a few short seasons! Two years
previously I had spent three months with them on their _dahabieh_.
Henry Simpson, the artist, was of our company. We visited everything
worth visiting between the first and second cataracts, mooring the
ship wherever we found a subject we wished to paint. This is the
ideal way of seeing the Nile, and when, as in this case, congenial
companionship is added to the comforts of a well-equipped dahabieh, no
more delightful way of tiding over the winter months is imaginable.
A diary in the form of caricatures of the daily events, which Mr.
Simpson had left with the Parkers, brought those pleasant times vividly
back to us.
Mrs. Parker and I made several excursions to Philae while there was
still a chance of recording some of its beauty before it would be
entirely submerged by the raising of the Assuan dam. As it is proposed
that I should treat of Nubia in another volume, I shall defer what I
may have to say on Assuan and of the country south of it.
Towards the end of my season at Der el-Bahri, which as usual was two
months after the hotels at Luxor had put up the shutters, Mr. Weigall
suggested my spending June with him in the tombs and temples south of
Thebes. The valley in which I camped had become a veritable oven, and
my hut was untenable till the sun sank behind the cliffs which form the
amphitheatre behind Hatshepsu’s shrine. Some work I wished to do in the
temple of Edfu, as well as to get shelter from the burning sun, tempted
me to accept this kind invitation. The quarries and shrines at Gebel
Silsileh, the tombs of Assuan and the courts and colonnades at Philae,
all held out hopes of shady places in which I should find plenty of
subjects to paint.
Our preparations were soon made. On the first day of June we took the
train from Luxor to Edfu, and were encamped that afternoon in the dark
shades of the great temple of Horus.
The thermometer fell to 100° Fahrenheit in the hypostyle hall, and we
were grateful for this comparative coolness. Our attire could safely be
of the scantiest, as there was no fear of a party of trippers arriving
at this time of the year. Shoes were advisable till the pavements
had been examined, for in some seasons the temple is infested with
scorpions. Happily this was a poor scorpion season, and barely a dozen
were killed during the eight days we spent there.
We decided on the hypostyle hall as our dining-room, unless the open
court should cool down sufficiently after sundown; our beds were to
be made on the roof of the great vestibule, and no cooler spot could
be apportioned for our midday siesta than in one of the corridors
which run round the sanctuary. What earthly potentate could claim so
majestic a dwelling-place? If an apology for its modernity be needed to
those whose interests lie in the earlier dynastic remains, we at all
events had a roof over our heads, and Edfu temple, though shorn of its
furniture, is not a ruin. Going back to pre-Ptolemaic times, no temple
in Egypt exists where imagination has not to fill in great portions
which are not in the places which the builders designed for them. Edfu
temple is doubtless the grandest preserved edifice in the world which
can date back rather more than two thousand years.
Some portions are out of repair; but let us hope that no more attempts
at restoration may be made, more than to tie or buttress such places
that may be in danger of falling. All credit is due to Mariette, who,
under the auspices of Saîd Pasha, cleared the temple of the rubbish
which in places filled it to the roofing slabs; a part of the town
actually stood on the roof. The rubbish hills which surround it are
gradually lessening, for the septic material of which they are composed
serves as a valuable manure to the fields around.
The entire building took 187 years to complete, its progress going
on more or less uninterruptedly during the rule of eleven of the
Ptolemies. The design is so complete that it is hard to believe that
one architect did not draw up all the plans. I do not purpose to give
the details of this vast building, as this has been so adequately done
by Baedeker and in other guide-books. Curiously enough the Baedeker,
which so accurately describes the most interesting details to be
observed, makes no mention of the dimensions, though the first thing
which impresses the visitor is the vastness of the building. Actual
measurements are liable to do little more than give an impression of
size, but a comparison with well-known structures often conveys a truer
conception. The area of St. Paul’s, in square feet measurement, is
28,050, that of St. Peter’s at Rome is 54,000, while the temple at Edfu
covers an area of 80,000 square feet. There is but one other temple in
Egypt with which we can compare it, and that is the temple of Denderah.
But in every way it is Denderah’s superior. The great temple of Ammon
at Karnak was raised when Egyptian art was at a higher level than at
the time of the Ptolemies, and, grand as that ruin may be, it fails to
impress one as much as the almost intact structure here at Edfu.
The temples of Edfu, of Denderah, and of Esneh, though all three
were raised during a debased period of Egyptian art, owe their
impressiveness chiefly to the fact that they still have a roof above
them. The subdued light of the vestibule, the dimmer light of the
hypostyle hall, and the increasing darkness as one passes through the
next two chambers till the blackness of the sanctuary is reached,
strikes the imagination to a degree which no sunlit ruins can do, be
they ever so fine. The reliefs which cover every wall space and column
are not to be compared with the refined work in Hatshepsu’s shrine;
but in this dim religious light they serve their purpose, and the
general effect is in no wise diminished. The sculptured reliefs, on the
girdle-wall and the pylons, which are seen in broad daylight, suffer
greatly in comparison with the eighteenth dynasty work. But taken as a
whole, the design of these temples is probably more beautiful than was
that of the earlier structures, of which only fragments now remain.
A Greek most likely furnished the design, the detail being left to
Egyptians who had lost much of their artistry.
We ascended to the roof by a long inclined plane in the thickness
of one of the walls, and in the comparative coolness of the evening
we watched the sun dip into the coloured mists which hung over the
cultivation between us and the Libyan desert. Edfu spreads round three
sides of the temple, and we got a bird’s-eye view of the medley of
mud huts, little courtyards, and modest places of worship which go to
make up a small Nilotic town. Children were at play amidst the cattle
and fowls in the yards, while their elders were attending to their
household duties on the roof. The houses were on a higher level as they
neared the temple, and the piles of débris on which they stood were
sharply cut away a few yards from the girdle-wall, forming a second
enclosure on that side of us. It was easily seen that before the temple
was cleared the incline of the rubbish mounds would have reached to the
roof we stood on.
In a letter which Mariette wrote in 1860 to the _Révue Archéologique_,
he says: ‘I caused to be demolished the sixty-four houses which
encumbered the roof, as well as twenty-eight more which approached too
near the outer wall of the temple. When the whole shall be isolated
from its present surroundings by a massive wall, the work of Edfu will
be accomplished.’
Something similar to what Mariette found here fifty years ago may
still be seen at the north end of the Luxor temple, where a mosque and
a cluster of houses still remain on the top, on the yet unexcavated
portions. The apertures in the roofing slabs (which now at midday allow
of some rays of sunlight to lighten the interior) served as drains to
carry off the filth from the houses on the roof. No wonder that the
fellaheen gladly now fatten their land with the scourings from the
temple enclosure. Many of the smaller objects now seen in the Antika
shops are found by the peasants while they load their asses with this
septic rubbish. Sub-inspectors and guards are told off to watch these
operations; but it is seldom that anything which is not too heavy to
carry off can be saved to the Antiquities Department.
It is no sinecure being Chief Inspector over as extended an area as
that which is in Mr. Weigall’s charge.
By the light of a couple of candles we dined in the courtyard. The
afterglow caught the top of the propylon as we sat down--from a deep
rose it sank to a slaty grey, and then slowly darkened to a black mass
against the starlit sky.
The two guardians preceded us with candles, so that we could find
our way to the stairway entrance at the further end of the temple.
Thousands of bats squeaked and fluttered above, disturbed by these
unwonted lights; and from the rounded columns, whose summits were
lost in the darkness, beast and bird headed gods seemed to resent our
intrusion into the sacred precincts. When we ascended the inclined
stairway we rubbed shoulders with the divinities and the Ptolemies
which lined the wall surfaces of the narrow passage to the roof.
Selim had fixed up our camp beds above the great vestibule, which is
considerably higher than the inner precincts of the temple; and here we
slept well above the gods, but beneath the canopy of the heavens.
We arose with the first glimmer of light in the eastern sky and
found Selim preparing our bath on the roof. When we descended to the
interior of the temple we found that the thermometer had only fallen
three degrees. The courtyard was again our coolest breakfasting place,
besides being more or less free from the smell of bats, which is a
distinctive feature of all enclosed temples.
[Illustration: POTTERY BAZAAR IN A NILE VILLAGE]
The town is as unspoilt as any on the banks of the Nile, and the
early morning and evening are the only times when it is possible to
explore it in comfort at this time of the year. I found some delightful
subjects in the little bazaar, and could paint here till the sun drove
me from where I had set up my easel. The temple interior, even at a
hundred degrees of Fahrenheit, then became a welcome shelter from the
burning sun.
My companion was engaged on some literary work and never stirred out of
the temple till dusk. After lunch we would retire to improvised beds
near the sanctuary, and a ray of sunlight descending through a slit in
the roof gave us light by which we could read till we fell asleep.
We spent eight days in the shades of this majestic shrine, and though
Weigall had brought quite a library of books on things Egyptological
and was also able fluently to read the inscriptions with which the
walls are covered, we could only cull a fraction of the flowery
descriptions of the deeds that were done while this temple of Horus was
being raised. I made a careful study of a fine panel on the inner side
of the western girdle-wall. It represents a ship with expanded sail,
with Isis kneeling at the prow and Horus astride on the deck launching
a javelin into a minute hippopotamus near the edge of the river; both
he and the goddess hold a cord which is attached to the beast. The
king stands on the bank and is also driving a spear into the victim.
The figures are so beautifully drawn and the panel is so decoratively
filled, that when we speak of the debased art of the Ptolemies, it must
be understood as being so only in comparison with the superlatively
fine work of some of the earlier dynasties.
We left Edfu in the early morning to step on to a steam-launch which
would run us up to Gebel Silsileh in six hours. I seemed awakened from
a sleep gently disturbed with dreams in which the great, of an age long
past, and their strange divinities had slowly filed before me, to be
lost in the darkness of Edfu’s sanctuary.
The steam-launch seemed an anachronism after the eight days during
which we had been transported back to times before the dawn of
Christianity. Running against the current our progress was slow;
but it was a giddy speed compared with that of the Nile boats we
overtook, though their great sails were swelled with the wind blowing
up the river. Lying on a mattress in the shade of an extemporised
awning and enjoying the breeze which overtook us, we could thoroughly
enjoy some hours of complete laziness which we glorified by the name
of well-deserved rest. It seemed a pity to fall asleep and to lose
consciousness for a moment of this delicious feeling of fresh air and
pleasant coolness. Objects we passed were just of sufficient interest
not to over-excite us, but just to prevent any feeling of monotony.
The remains of a Byzantine fortified town with the ruins of a convent
spread picturesquely over the crest of the hill es-Serâg. I should like
to have made a sketch of this, though I soon found consolation in the
thought that I might pass here again and catch it in a more pictorial
lighting. Consolation for most ills comes easily while afloat on the
Nile.
The character of the landscape changes considerably here. The nummulite
limestone hills, with their pretty crag and cliff drawing, give place
to the sandstone rocks. Ancient quarries with inscriptions abound, and
had we not been making for the far-famed quarries of Silsileh, we might
have felt inclined to stop and examine some.
We reached our destination in the early afternoon, and moored on the
west bank of the river. Gebel Silsileh (the Mountain of the Chain) is
so called on account of a tradition that ancient kings here blocked
the river with a chain stretched across it from the cliffs on either
side. The Nile contracts to within a couple of hundred yards, and
the rocks rise, in most places, sheer out of the water. That a more
natural barrier than this chain once blocked the river is evident, and
also that it held up the waters in Lower Nubia sufficiently to force a
second arm of the river to flow along the low-lying land between the
first cataract, and on the western side of Assuan. A great disruption
of the barrier is said to have taken place towards the end of the
Hyksos period, when until then it was probably a rushing cataract.
But in prehistoric times, when the course of the Nile was completely
blocked at this gorge, the river must have flowed through other
channels for a hundred miles or more.
We fixed on a tomb recess, cut out of a rock facing north, as our
living-room, and put off deciding where we should sleep till we found
which place might be the coolest after the sun had gone down. Selim
improvised a kitchen in a disused tomb nearer the edge of the river.
These arrangements being completed, we visited the numerous objects of
interest on our side of the Nile.
The rock chapel, known as the Speos of Haremheb, lies furthest north,
and it contains some very beautiful late eighteenth dynasty work. A
relief of the young king taking the divine milk at the breast of a
goddess can be compared in beauty with the similar subject in the Seti
temple at Abydos. The workmanship appearing coarser here is owing to
the sandstone not having the marble-like surface of the nummulite
limestone in the latter temple. The relief of King Haremheb returning
in triumph from Cush (generally supposed to be the district between
the first two cataracts, which we now know as Nubia) is also very
beautiful, and reminds one strongly of some of the Der el-Bahri work.
The Speos itself is very interesting, being a form of shrine of a
plan different to any I had so far seen. It is a long narrow chamber
parallel with the rock-face, and entered by five doorways which are
separated from each other by four square pillars hewn out of the rock.
In the centre of the back wall is an entrance to an inner chamber also
covered with reliefs, except the end which faces the doorway where
damaged statues of the Pharaoh and of six gods occupy each a recess.
For the best part of half a mile we scrambled over the rocks and
through disused quarries, examining a number of little shrines, tomb
recesses and _stele_, all of which are more or less ornamented with
reliefs while some show traces of colour.
Three imposing chapels hewn out of the solid rock are at the south end
of the quarries. These are votive shrines to Seti I., Rameses II.,
and to the son of the latter, Merenptah--proscenium-shaped alcoves
supported by columns of the clustered papyrus type, and surmounted with
bold cornices. A rank growth of scrub on the strip of land between the
shrines and the river relieved the amber hues of the sandstone, and
some touches of pure colour in the shrines themselves helped to make
this a promising subject for a picture.
Our camp was about midway between the Speos and these votive shrines.
Selim was preparing our dinner when we returned, and during these odd
moments we enjoyed a swim in the Nile. As usual we cut our evenings
short by retiring early to bed, and we began our days with the first
glimmer of light.
We spent four delightful days here, Weigall collecting Egyptological
facts, and I increasing my number of drawings. We should have stayed
here longer; but how this sojourn, as well as the remainder of our
expedition, came to an end, will form the subject of another chapter.