The ruins of the ancient city of Thebes, which Homer has characterized
by the single expression of _the city with a hundred gates_, are of so
immense an extent as to convince the spectator that fame has not
exaggerated its size. For, as if the diameter of old Egypt was not
sufficient to contain it, its monuments rest on two chains of contiguous
mountains, while its tombs occupy the valleys toward the west,
stretching off into the desert. The large temple on the eastern side is
between two and three leagues distant from Medeenet Abou, where the most
western temple is situated; and the modern village of Karnak is built on
a small part of the site of a single temple, which is half a mile in
circumference. Of the remains of this temple, Denon tells us, that “of
the hundred columns of the portico alone, the smallest are seven feet
and a half in diameter, and the largest twelve. The space occupied by
the circumvallation of the temple contains lakes and mountains. In
short, to be enabled to form a competent idea of so much magnificence,
the reader ought to fancy what is before him to be a dream, as he who
views the objects themselves rubs his eyes to know whether he is awake.
The avenue leading from Karnak to Luxor, a space nearly half a league in
extent, contains a constant succession of sphinxes and other chimerical
figures to the right and left, together with fragments of stone walls,
of small columns, and of statues.”
The village of Luxor, Denon describes “as also built on the side of the
ruins of a temple, not so large as that of Karnak, but in a better state
of preservation, the masses not having as yet fallen through time, and
by the pressure of their own weight. The most colossal parts consist of
fourteen columns of nearly eleven feet in diameter, and of two statues
in granite, at the outer gate, buried up to the middle of the arms, and
having in front of them the two largest and best preserved obelisks
known. The French, when in Egypt, deemed their means insufficient, not
to hew out, but merely to transport these two monuments, which are not
more than a fragment of one of the numerous edifices of the astonishing
city of Thebes. They are of rose-color granite, are still seventy feet
above the ground, and to judge by the depth to which they are supposed
to be covered with sand, are believed to be at least one hundred feet in
hight. Their preservation is perfect, and the hieroglyphics with which
they are covered being cut deep, and in relief at the bottom, show the
bold hand of a master, and a beautiful finish. The chisels which could
cut such hard materials must have been of an admirable temper; and the
machines to drag such enormous blocks from the quarries, to transport
them thither, and to set them upright, together with the time required
for the labor, surpass all conception!” In speaking of the gate of the
temple, which is now that of the village of Luxor, Denon remarks as
follows. “Nothing can be more grand, and at the same time more simple,
than the small number of objects of which this entrance is composed. No
city whatever makes so proud a display at its approach as this wretched
village, the population of which consists of two or three thousand
souls, who have taken up their abode on the roofs and beneath the
galleries of this temple, which has, nevertheless, the air of being in a
manner uninhabited.”
The tombs of the kings of Thebes are grottos consisting of a regular
double gallery supported by pillars, behind which is a row of chambers,
often double. In proportion as the hight of these grottos increases,
they become more richly decorated; and the spectator is soon convinced,
by the magnificence both of the paintings and sculptures, and of the
subjects they represent, that he is among the tombs of great men or
heroes. Those which appear to have belonged to the ancient kings, are
only distinguished from the others by the magnificence of the
sarcophagi, and the mysterious solitude of their situation; the others
immediately overlooking the great buildings in the city. The sculpture
in all is incomparably more labored and more highly finished than that
of the temples, and displays a high perfection of the art. The lines of
the hieroglyphics have been cut with a firmness of touch, and a
precision, of which marbles offer but few examples; and the figures have
a particular elegance and correctness of contour. Small subjects taken
from nature are introduced; and in these the groups of persons are given
in perspective; and cut in deep relief, in simple and natural attitudes.
Several of these subjects bear but little analogy to the spot in which
they are immured; for bass-reliefs are seen representing games, such as
rope-dancing, and asses taught to play tricks and rear on their hind
legs, sculptured with all the traits of genuine nature and simplicity.
The plan of these excavations is singular; and many are so vast and
complicated, that they might be mistaken for labyrinths, or
subterraneous temples. After passing the elegant apartments described
above, long and gloomy galleries present themselves, winding backward
and forward in numerous angles, and seeming to occupy a great extent of
ground. They are melancholy, repulsive, and without any decoration; but
open from time to time into other chambers covered with hieroglyphics,
and branch out into narrow paths, leading to deep perpendicular pits. At
the bottom of these pits are other adorned chambers; and lower still a
new series of perpendicular pits and horizontal chambers, until at
length, ascending a long flight of steps, the visitor reaches an open
place on a level with the chambers he first entered.
Thus far we have followed the brief outline given by Denon, and the
earlier travelers. But our ideas of these wonderful ruins will become
much more enlarged, as well as accurate, by perusing the descriptions of
more recent tourists and explorers; such for example as Taylor and
Thompson. The former, before beginning the recital of his visit, gives
an outline of the topography of Thebes. “The course of the Nile,” he
says, “is here nearly north, dividing the site of the ancient city into
two almost equal parts. On approaching it from Kenneh, the mountain of
Goorneh which abuts on the river, marks the commencement of the western
division. This mountain, a range of naked limestone crags, terminating
in a pyramidal peak, gradually recedes to the distance of three miles
from the Nile, which it again approaches further south. Nearly the whole
of the curve, which might be called the western wall of the city, is
pierced with tombs, among which are those of the queens, and the grand
priestly vaults of the Assasseef. The valley of the kings’ tombs lies
deep in the heart of the range, seven or eight miles from the river.
After passing the corner of the mountain, the first ruin on the western
bank is that of the temple-palace of Goorneh. More than a mile further,
at the base of the mountain, is the Memnonium, or temple of Remeses the
Great, between which and the Nile the two Memnonian colossi are seated
on the plain. Nearly two miles to the south of this is the great temple
of Medeenet Abou, and the fragments of other edifices are met with,
still further beyond. On the eastern bank, nearly opposite Goorneh,
stands the temple of Karnak, about half a mile from the river. Eight
miles eastward, at the foot of the Arabian mountains, is the small
temple of Medamot, which, however, does not appear to have been included
in the limits of Thebes. Luxor is directly on the bank of the Nile, a
mile and a half south of Karnak, and the plain extends several miles
beyond it, before reaching the isolated range, whose three conical peaks
are the landmarks of Thebes to voyagers on the river. These distances
convey an idea of the extent of the ancient city, but fail to represent
the grand proportions of the landscape, so well fitted, in its simple
and majestic outlines, to inclose the most wonderful structures the
world has ever seen. The green expanse of the plain; the airy coloring
of the mountains; the mild, solemn blue of the cloudless Egyptian sky:
these are a part of Thebes, and inseparable from the remembrance of its
ruins.
“At sunrise we crossed to the western bank and moored our boat opposite
Goorneh. It is advisable to commence with the tombs, and close the
inspection of that side with Medeenet Abou, reserving Karnak, the
grandest of all for the last. The most unimportant objects in Thebes are
full of interest when seen first, whereas Karnak, once seen, fills one’s
thoughts to the exclusion of everything else. There are Arab guides for
each bank, who are quite familiar with all the principal points, and who
have a quiet and unobtrusive way of directing the traveler; and with one
of them, we set off on a stirring gallop for the temple of Goorneh and
the valley of the kings’ tombs, leaving Achmet to follow with our
breakfast, and the Arab boys with their water bottles. The temple of
Goorneh was built for the worship of Amun, the Theban Jupiter, by Osirei
and his son, Remeses the Great, the supposed Sesostris, nearly fourteen
hundred years before the Christian era. It is small, compared with the
other ruins, but interesting from its rude and massive style, a remnant
of the early period of Egyptian architecture. The two pylons in front of
it are shattered down, and the dromos of sphinxes has entirely
disappeared. The portico is supported by a single row of ten columns,
which neither resemble each other, nor are separated by equal spaces.
What is most singular, is the fact that notwithstanding this
disproportion, which is also observable in the doorways, the general
effect is harmonious. We tried to fathom the secret of this, and found
no other explanation than in the lowness of the building, and the rough
granite blocks of which it is built. One seeks no proportion in a
natural temple of rock, or a cirque of Druid stones. All that the eye
requires is rude strength, with a certain approach to order. The effect
produced by this temple is of a similar character, barring its
historical interest. Its dimensions are too small to be imposing, and I
found, after passing it several times, that I valued it more as a
feature in the landscape, than for its own sake.
“The sand and pebbles clattered under the hoofs of our horses, as we
galloped up the gorge of _Biban el Molook_, the ‘gates of the kings.’
The sides are perpendicular cliffs of yellow rock, which increased in
hight, the further we advanced, and at last terminated in a sort of
basin, shut in by precipices several hundred feet in hight and broken
into fantastic turrets, gables and pinnacles. The bottom is filled with
huge heaps of sand and broken stones, left from the excavation of the
tombs in the solid rock. There are twenty-one tombs in this valley, more
than half of which are of great extent and richly adorned with paintings
and sculptures. Some have been filled with sand or otherwise injured by
the occasional rains which visit this region, while a few are too small
and plain to need visiting. Sir Gardner Wilkinson has numbered them all
in red chalk at the entrances, which is very convenient to those who use
his work on Egypt as a guide. I visited ten of the principal tombs, to
the great delight of the old guide, who complained that travelers are
frequently satisfied with four or five. The general arrangement is the
same in all, but they differ greatly in extent and in the character of
their decoration.
“The first we entered was the celebrated tomb of Remeses I., discovered
by Belzoni. From the narrow entrance, a precipitous staircase, the walls
of which are covered with columns of hieroglyphics, descends to a depth
of forty feet, where it strikes a horizontal passage leading to an
oblong chamber, in which was formerly a deep pit, which Belzoni filled.
This pit protected the entrance to the royal chamber, which was also
carefully walled up. In the grace and freedom of the drawings, and the
richness of their coloring, this tomb surpasses all others. The subjects
represented are the victories of the monarch, while in the sepulchral
chamber he is received into the presence of the gods. The limestone rock
is covered with a fine coating of plaster, on which the figures were
first drawn with red chalk, and afterward carefully finished in colors.
The reds, yellows, greens and blues are very brilliant, but seem to have
been employed at random, the gods having faces sometimes of one color,
sometimes of another. In the furthest chamber, which was left
unfinished, the subjects are only sketched in red chalk. Some of them
have the loose and uncertain lines of a pupil’s hand, over which one
sees the bold and rapid corrections of the master. Many of the figures
are remarkable for their strength and freedom of outline. I was greatly
interested in a procession of men, representing the different nations of
the earth. The physical peculiarities of the Persian, the Jew and the
Ethiopian are therein as distinctly marked as at the present day. The
blacks are perfect counterparts of those I saw daily upon the Nile, and
the noses of the Jews seem newly painted from originals in New York. The
burial-vault, where Belzoni found the alabaster sarcophagus of the
monarch, is a noble hall, thirty feet long by nearly twenty in breadth
and hight, with four massive pillars forming a corridor on one side. In
addition to the light of our torches, the Arabs kindled a large bonfire
in the center, which brought out in strong relief the sepulchral figures
on the ceiling, painted in white on a ground of dark indigo hue. The
pillars and walls of the vault glowed with the vivid variety of their
colors, and the general effect was unspeakably rich and gorgeous. This
tomb has already fallen a prey to worse plunderers than the Medes and
Persians. Belzoni carried off the sarcophagus, Champollion cut away the
splendid jambs and architrave of the entrance to the lower chambers, and
Lepsius has finished by splitting the pillars and appropriating their
beautiful paintings for the museum at Berlin. At one spot, where the
latter has totally ruined a fine doorway, some indignant Frenchman has
written in red chalk, ‘_Meurtre commis par Lepsius._’ In all the tombs
of Thebes, wherever you see the most flagrant and shameless spoliations,
the guide says, ‘Lepsius.’ Who can blame the Arabs for wantonly defacing
these precious monuments, when such an example is set them by the vanity
of European antiquarians?
“Bruce’s tomb, which extends for four hundred and twenty feet into the
rock, is larger than Belzoni’s, but not so fresh and brilliant. The main
entrance slopes with a very gradual descent, and has on each side a
number of small chambers and niches, apparently for mummies. The
illustrations in these chambers are somewhat defaced, but very curious,
on account of the light which they throw upon the domestic life of the
ancient Egyptians. They represent the slaughtering of oxen, the
preparation of fowls for the table, the kneading and baking of bread and
cakes, as well as the implements and utensils of the kitchen. In other
places the field laborers are employed in leading the water of the Nile
into canals, cutting dourra, threshing and carrying the grain into
magazines. One room is filled with furniture, and the row of chairs
around the base of the walls would not be out of place in the most
elegant modern drawing-room. The illustrated catalogue of the London
exhibition contains few richer and more graceful patterns. In a chamber
nearer the royal vault, two old, blind minstrels are seen, playing the
harp in the presence of the king, whence this is sometimes called the
harper’s tomb. The pillars of the grand hall, like those of all the
other tombs we visited, represent the monarch, after death, received
into the presence of the gods, stately figures, with a calm and serious
aspect, and lips, which, like those of the Sphinx, seemed closed upon
some awful mystery. The absurdity of the coloring does not destroy this
effect, and a blue-faced Isis, whose hard, black eyeball stares from a
brilliant white socket, is not less impressive than the same figure, cut
in sandstone or granite. The delicacy and precision of the
hieroglyphics, sculptured in intaglio, filled me with astonishment. In
the tomb of Amunoph III., which I visited the next day, they resembled
the ciphers engraved upon seals in their exquisite sharpness and
regularity. Only the principal tombs, however, are thus beautified. In
others the figures are either simply painted, or apparently sunken in
the plaster, while it was yet fresh, by prepared patterns. The latter
method accounts for the exact resemblance of long processions of
figures, which would otherwise require a most marvelous skill on the
part of the artist. In some unfinished chambers I detected plainly the
traces of these patterns, where the outlines of the figures were blunt,
and the grain of the plaster bent, and not cut. The family likeness in
the faces of the monarchs is also too striking, unfortunately, for us to
accept them all as faithful portraits. They are all apparently of the
same age, and their attributes do not materially differ. This was
probably a flattery on the part of the artists, or the effect of a royal
vanity, which required to be portrayed in the freshness of youth and the
full vigor of body and mind. The first faces I learned to recognize were
those of Remeses II., the supposed Sesostris, and Amunoph III.
“The tomb of Memnon, as it was called by the Romans, is the most elegant
of all, in its proportions, and is as symmetrical as a Grecian temple.
On the walls of the entrance are several inscriptions of Greek tourists,
who visited it in the era of the Ptolemies, and spent their time in
carving their names, like Americans nowadays. The huge granite
sarcophagus in which the monarch’s mummy was deposited, is broken, as
are those of the other tombs, with a single exception. This is the tomb
of Osirei I., the grandfather of Sesostris, and the oldest in the
valley. I visited it by crawling through a hole barely large enough to
admit my body, after which I slid on my back down a passage nearly
choked with sand, to another hole, opening into the burial chamber. Here
no impious hand had defaced the walls, but the figures were as perfect
and the coloring as brilliant as when first executed. In the center
stood an immense sarcophagus, of a single block of red granite, and the
massive lid, which had been thrown off, lay beside it. The dust in the
bottom gave out that peculiar mummy odor perceptible in all the tombs,
and in fact long after one has left them, for the clothes become
saturated with it. The guide, delighted with having dragged me into that
chamber, buried deep in the dumb heart of the mountain, said not a word,
and from the awful stillness of the place and the phantasmagoric gleam
of the wonderful figures on the walls, I could have imagined myself a
neophyte, on the threshold of the Osirian mysteries. We then rode to the
western valley, a still deeper and wider glen, containing tombs of the
kings of the foreign dynasty of Atin-Re. We entered the two principal
ones, but found the paintings rude and insignificant. There are many
lateral passages and chambers, and in some places deep pits, along the
edge of which we were obliged to crawl. In the last tomb a very long and
steep staircase descends into the rock. As we were groping after the
guide, I called to my friend to take care, as there was but a single
step, after making a slip. The words were scarcely out of my mouth
before I felt a tremendous thump, followed by a number of smaller ones,
and found myself sitting in a heap of sand, at the bottom, some twenty
or thirty feet below. Fortunately, I came off with but a few slight
bruises.
[Illustration: THE TWO COLOSSI.]
“Returning to the temple of Goorneh, we took a path over the plain,
through fields of wheat, lupines and lentils, to _the two colossi_,
which we had already seen from a distance. These immense sitting
figures, fifty-three feet above the plain, which has buried their
pedestals, overlook the site of vanished Thebes and assert the grandeur
of which they and Karnak are the most striking remains. They were
erected by Amunoph III., and though the faces are totally disfigured,
the full, round, beautiful proportions of the colossal arms, shoulders
and thighs do not belie the marvelous sweetness of the features which we
still see in his tomb. Except the head of Antinous, I know of no ancient
portrait so beautiful as Amunoph. The long and luxuriant hair, flowing
in a hundred ringlets, the soft grace of the forehead, the mild serenity
of the eye, the fine thin lines of the nostrils, and the feminine
tenderness of the full lips, triumph over the cramped rigidity of
Egyptian sculpture, and charm you with the lightness and harmony of
Greek art. In looking on that head, I can not help thinking that the
subject overpowered the artist, and led him to the threshold of a truer
art. Amunoph, or Memnon, was a poet in soul, and it was meet that his
statue should salute the rising sun with a sound like that of a
harp-string. Modern research has wholly annihilated this beautiful
fable. Memnon now sounds at all hours of the day, and at the command of
all travelers who will pay an Arab five piasters to climb up into his
lap. We engaged one, who threw off his garments, hooked his fingers and
toes into the cracks of the polished granite, and soon hailed us with
‘salaam’ from the knee of the statue. There is a certain stone on
Memnon’s lap, which, when sharply struck, gives out a clear, metallic
ring. Behind it is a small square aperture, invisible from below, where
one of the priests no doubt stationed himself to perform the daily
miracle. Our Arab rapped on the arms and body of the statue, which had
the usual dead sound of stone, and rendered the musical ring of the
sun-smitten block the more striking.” And Thompson tells us, that while
he and his associates sat before it on their donkeys, they saw “a boy of
fifteen, with a solitary rag round his waist, scrambling up the side of
the statue, and presently he was completely hidden in its lap, just
where the sly priest used to hide himself over night. Then striking with
a hammer the hollow, sonorous stone, it emitted a sharp, clear sound,
like the striking of brass,” though it was “not sunrise, but the middle
of a scorching afternoon.” “An avenue of sphinxes,” continues Taylor,
“once led from these colossi to a grand temple, the foundations of which
we found about a quarter of a mile distant. On the way are the fragments
of two other colossi, one of black granite. The enormous substructions
of the temple and the pedestals of its columns, have been sufficiently
excavated to show what a superb edifice has been lost to the world. A
crowd of troublesome Arabs, thrusting upon our attention newly baked
cinerary urns, newly roasted antique wheat, and images of all kinds
fresh from the maker’s hand, disturbed our quiet examination of the
ruins, and in order to escape their importunities, we rode to the
Memnonium. This edifice, the temple-palace of Remeses the Great, is
supposed to be the Memnonium, described by Strabo. It is built on a
gentle rise of land at the foot of the mountain, and looks eastward to
the Nile and Luxor. The grand stone pylon which stands at the entrance
of its former avenue of sphinxes, has been half leveled by the fury of
the Persian conquerors; and the colossal granite statue of Remeses, in
the first court of the temple, now lies in enormous fragments around its
pedestal. Mere dimensions give no idea of this immense mass, the weight
of which, when entire, was nearly nine hundred tuns. How poor and
trifling appear the modern statues which we call colossal, when measured
with this, one of whose toes is a yard in length; and how futile the
appliances of modern art, when directed to its transportation for a
distance of one hundred and fifty miles! The architrave at each end of
the court was upheld by four caryatides, thirty feet in hight. Though
much defaced, they are still standing, but are dwarfed by the mighty
limbs of Remeses. It is difficult to account for the means by which the
colossus was broken. There are no marks of any instruments which could
have forced such a mass asunder, and the only plausible conjecture I
have heard is, that the stone must have been subjected to an intense
heat and afterward to the action of water. The statue, in its sitting
position, must have been nearly sixty feet in hight, and is the largest
in the world, though not so high as the rock-hewn monoliths of
Aboo-Simbel. The Turks and Arabs have cut several mill-stones out of its
head, without any apparent diminution of its size. The Memnonium differs
from the other temples of Egypt in being almost faultless in its
symmetry, even when measured by the strictest rules of art. I know of
nothing so exquisite as the central colonnade of its grand hall—a double
row of pillars, forty-five feet in hight and twenty-three in
circumference, crowned with capitals resembling the bell-shaped blossoms
of the lotus. One must see them to comprehend how this simple form,
whose expression is all sweetness and tenderness in the flower, softens
and beautifies the solid majesty of the shaft. In spite of their
colossal proportions, there is nothing massive or heavy in their aspect.
The cup of the capital curves gently outward from the abacus on which
the architrave rests, and seems the natural blossom of the columnar
stem. On either side of this perfect colonnade are four rows of Osiride
pillars, of smaller size, yet the variety of their form and proportions
only enhances the harmony of the whole. This is one of those enigmas in
architecture which puzzle one on his first acquaintance with Egyptian
temples, and which he is often forced blindly to accept as new laws of
art, because his feeling tells him they are true, and his reason can not
satisfactorily demonstrate that they are false.
“We waited till the yellow rays of sunset fell on the capitals of the
Memnonium, and they seemed, like the lotus flowers, to exhale a vapory
light, before we rode home. All night we wandered in dreams through
kingly vaults, with starry ceilings and illuminated walls; but on
looking out of our windows at dawn, we saw the red saddle-cloths of our
horses against the dark background of the palm grove, as they came down
to the boat. No second nap was possible, after such a sight, and many
minutes had not elapsed before we were tasting the cool morning air in
the delight of a race up and down the shore. Our old guide, however, was
on his donkey betimes, and called us off to our duty. We passed Goorneh,
and ascended the eastern face of the mountain to the tombs of the
priests and private citizens of Thebes. For miles along the mountain
side, one sees nothing but heaps of sand and rubbish, with here and
there an Arab hut, built against the face of a tomb, whose chambers
serve as pigeon-houses and stalls for asses. The earth is filled with
fragments of mummies, and the bandages in which they were wrapped; for
even the sanctity of death itself, is here neither respected by the
Arabs nor the Europeans whom they imitate. The first tomb we entered
almost cured us of the desire to visit another. It was that called the
Assasseef, built by a wealthy priest, and it is the largest in Thebes.
Its outer court measures one hundred and three by seventy-six feet, and
its passages extend between eight and nine hundred feet into the
mountain. We groped our way between walls as black as ink, through long,
labyrinthine suites of chambers, breathing a deathlike and oppressive
odor. The stairways seemed to lead into the bowels of the earth, and on
either hand yawned pits of uncertain depth. As we advanced, the ghostly
vaults rumbled with a sound like thunder, and hundreds of noisome bats,
scared by the light, dashed against the walls and dropped at our feet.
We endured this for a little while, but on reaching the entrance to some
darker and deeper mystery, were so surrounded by the animals, who struck
their filthy wings against our faces, that not for ten kings’ tombs
would we have gone a step further. My friend was on the point of vowing
never to set his foot in another tomb, but I persuaded him to wait until
we had seen that of Amunoph. I followed the guide, who enticed me by
flattering promises into a great many snakelike holes, and when he was
tired with crawling in the dust, sent one of our water-carriers in
advance, who dragged me in and out by the heels.
“The temple of Medeenet Abou is almost concealed by the ruins of a
Coptic village, among which it stands, and by which it is partially
buried. The outer court, pylon, and main hall of the smaller temple,
rise above the mounds and overlook the plain of Thebes, but scarcely
satisfy the expectation of the traveler, as he approaches. You first
enter an inclosure surrounded by a low stone wall, and standing in
advance of the pylon. The rear wall, facing the entrance, contains two
single pillars, with bell-shaped capitals, which rise above it and stand
like guards before the doorway of the pylon. Here was another enigma for
us. Who among modern architects would dare to plant two single pillars
before a pyramidal gateway of solid masonry, and then inclose them in a
plain wall, rising to half their hight? Yet here the symmetry of the
shafts is not injured by the wall in which they stand, nor oppressed by
the ponderous bulk of the pylon. On the contrary, the light columns and
spreading capitals, like a tuft of wild roses hanging from the crevice
of a rock, brighten the rude strength of the masses of stone with a
gleam of singular loveliness. What would otherwise only impress you by
its size, now endears itself to you by its beauty. Is this the effect of
chance, or the result of a finer art than that which flourishes in our
day? I will not pretend to determine, but I must confess that Egypt, in
whose ruins I had expected to find only a sort of barbaric grandeur, has
given me a new insight into that vital beauty which is the soul of true
art. We devoted little time to the ruined court and sanctuaries which
follow the pylon, and to the lodges of the main temple, standing beside
them like watch-towers, three stories in hight. The majestic pylon of
the great temple of Remeses III. rose behind them, out of heaps of
pottery and unburnt bricks, and the colossal figure of the monarch in
his car, borne by two horses into the midst of the routed enemy,
attracted us from a distance. We followed the exterior wall of the
temple, for its whole length of more than six hundred feet, reading the
sculptured history of his conquests. The entire outer wall of the temple
presents a series of gigantic cartoons, cut in the blocks of sandstone,
of which it is built. Remeses is always the central figure,
distinguished from subjects and foes, no less by his superior stature,
than by the royal emblems which accompany him. Here we see heralds
sounding the trumpet in advance of his car, while his troops pass in
review before him; there, with a lion walking by his side, he sets out
on his work of conquest. His soldiers storm a town, and we see them
climbing the wall with ladders, while a desperate hand-to-hand conflict
is going on below. In another place, he has alighted from his chariot
and stands with his foot on the neck of a slaughtered king. Again, his
vessels attack a hostile navy on the sea. One of the foreign craft
becomes entangled and is capsized, yet while his spearmen hurl their
weapons among the dismayed enemy, the sailors rescue those who are
struggling in the flood. After we have passed through these strange and
stirring pictures, we find the monarch reposing on his throne, while his
soldiers deposit before him the hands of the slaughtered, and his
scribes present to him lists of their numbers, and his generals lead to
him long processions of fettered captives. Again, he is represented as
offering a group of subject kings to Amun, the Theban Jupiter, who says
to him: ‘Go, my cherished and chosen, make war on foreign nations,
besiege their forts and carry off their people to live as captives.’ On
the front wall, he holds in his grasp the hands of a dozen monarchs,
while with the other hand he raises his sword to destroy them. Their
faces express the very extreme of grief and misery, but he is cold and
calm as fate itself. We slid down the piles of sand and entered by a
side-door into the grand hall of the temple. Here, as at Dendera, a
surprise awaited us. We stood on the pavement of a magnificent court,
about one hundred and thirty feet square, around which ran a colonnade
of pillars, eight feet square and forty feet high. On the western side
is an inner row of circular columns, twenty-four feet in circumference,
with capitals representing the papyrus blossom. The entire court, with
its walls, pillars and doorways, is covered with splendid sculptures and
traces of paint, and the ceiling is blue as the noonday sky, and studded
with stars. Against each of the square columns facing the court once
stood a colossal caryatid, upholding the architrave of another colonnade
of granite shafts, nearly all of which have been thrown from their bases
and lie shivered on the pavement. This court opens toward the pylon into
another of similar dimensions, but buried almost to the capitals of its
columns in heaps of rubbish. The character of the temple is totally
different from that of every other in Egypt. Its hight is small in
proportion to its great extent, and it therefore loses the airy
lightness of the Memnonium and the impressive grandeur of Dendera. Its
expression is that of a massive magnificence, if I may use such a
doubtful compound: no single epithet suffices to describe it.”
The visit to this temple ended our traveler’s survey of the western
division of Thebes, “two long days of such experience,” he remarks, “as
the contemplation of a lifetime can not exhaust;” and at sunset they
crossed over the Nile, to