All the mere ruins of Thebes, however, immense and magnificent as they
are, fail to give us true views of her greatness, till we go back to her
origin, and trace up her history; and this is so graphically done by
Thompson, in his “Egypt, Past and Present,” that we quote from it, what
he so appropriately calls “_Dissolving Views: Panorama of Karnak._” “In
order,” he says, “to a complete view of Thebes, past and present, one
should reproduce its sculptured story, and make it witness for itself.
The temple of Karnak, in its several parts, marks the rise, the growth,
the decline, and the fall of Egypt. This temple had a growth of
twenty-five hundred years, from a small sanctuary to ‘a city of
temples.’ Every principal era of the national history is represented in
this stupendous pile; and as we go leisurely around it, and translate
into our own language, or vivify into present actual scenes, the
processions, the battles, the ceremonies, the religious offerings, and
the state displays, sculptured on its walls and columns, and for the
most part still legible, we behold all Egypt move before us _as in a
panorama_, whose scenes and actors are instinct with life. This animated
reproduction of the sculptures, which I attempted when on the ground, I
would hope to convey to the reader by following in course the histories
here written on the stone.
“I stood in Karnak, under the light of the full moon. It was an hour for
silence, and we enjoined this upon each other, and gave ourselves to
solitary musing. The cuckoo, that had wooed us with his note as we
reposed under the great pillars in the sultry noon, had gone to nestle
with his mate; and the myriad birds that by day had fluttered along the
corridors, had hid themselves in the crevices of the capitals. Even the
owl that hooted as we entered, was still. Only the moon was there,
threading the avenues with silver footsteps, and holding her clear light
that we might read the sculptured chronicles of kings. We sat down in
the center of the grand avenue. Twelve majestic pillars, on either hand,
towered along its length, and seemed, as of old, to support an arch of
azure studded with stars. The dismantled towers of the grand entrance,
whose bases stand like pyramids truncated to sustain the firmament, grew
more gigantic in the shadow of the columns, while their once massive
gates, uncovered by the hand of time, seemed only to have lifted up
their heads to let the King of Glory in. In the avenue that crossed
beside our seat, (one of twelve, having each ten columns of huge
dimensions,) at either extremity, a column had fallen crosswise against
its neighbor, carrying with it its fragment of the stone roof, and there
it hung almost ethereal in the still moonlight, a symbol of the struggle
between man and time. Under the corridors, darkness brooded over the
fragments of sculptured stone; but beyond the other portal, the yet
perfect obelisk stood in pensive majesty among its fallen mates, and
from its clear, hard face projected in the moonbeams the symbols of the
power that built these halls, and of the worship that sustained them.
The spell of Egypt was complete. For two months I had lived under its
deepening power. At length, in the sepulchers of its kings, and on the
walls and pillars of its temples, I had seen the Egypt of forty
centuries revived as in a panorama fresh from the artist’s pencil, and
had lived in the Egypt that the Nile _then_ watered, as in the so-called
Egypt that it waters now. And here I had come to bid it farewell, to
take a last look at its grave; and yet the witching moonlight made it
_live_ again. The breath of the south fanning the columns that in their
fourth decade of centuries wear no ivied wreath of age, warmed their
still grandeur into life, and with Memnon’s charm they sang to the moon
the great epic of the past. As I listened, all art, all learning, all
religion, all poetry, all history, all empire, and all time, swept
through my wondering soul. Leaving my companions, I wandered over the
fragments of columns and sphinxes and colossi, till, gaining a mound
that half buries the front area of the temple, I clambered up the steps
worn by age in its stupendous wall, and standing in their foremost
tower, looked back on Karnak. But no change of place, nor sight of
fallen columns and decaying walls, could break the spell. I had walked
over the grave of Egypt, I had stumbled against the fragments of its
sepulcher, yet Egypt stood before me.
“First came the second son of Ham, with a long retinue of camels and of
servants, lured southward by the fertile valley of the Nile, till, where
the mountains widen their embrace around the well-watered plain, he
pitches his tent, and founds an infant city. Generations pass, and the
son who in this plain inherits the patriarchal wealth and power, greedy
of the patrimony of his brethren to the north, wages a fratricidal war,
and seizing upon all Mizr or ‘the land of Ham,’ effaces from it the name
of his ancestors, and, investing it with his own, gives _Egypt_ (Copt or
Gurt) a name and a power in the newly divided earth. Other generations
pass, and the first _king_ of Egypt comes with barbaric pomp, from the
capital he has founded at the north, to visit his native _Theba_, the
real ‘_head_’ or capital, and here offers to its divinity the rude
shrine whose traces linger behind yonder obelisk. Ages roll on. The
swelling Nile pours out increasing fatness on the land. The earth brings
forth by handfuls. Fat-fleshed, well-favored cattle come up out of the
river and feed in the meadow. There is great plenteousness for man and
beast. But with all the plenty there is no waste. In every city huge
granaries are built, and in these the grain is piled, as the sand of the
sea, without measure. There is a strange wisdom near the throne of
Pharaoh. Again, the east wind blows, and the scorching sands of the
Arabian desert are heaped upon the fertile Nile. In the mountains of
Ethiopia there is no rain. The river shrinks away. The plain of Thebes
is dry. The people cry for bread, but the keys of the great storehouses
are in the hand of the ruler of the land. They bring to him their money;
they bring to him their cattle; they sell to him their land: they sell
to him their very selves for bread. Again, the east wind ceases; the
rains fall, the river rises; the desert retreats; the land revives. And
now the great Pharaoh, whom the counsel of a captive Jew has made
possessor of all the treasure and all the land of Egypt, moved by a
religious sentiment but half enlightened, would make a votive offering
to his god. A fleet of barges covers the bosom of the Nile, which with
waving banners and gorgeous emblems and increasing music, have borne the
monarch from his northern to his southern capital. With solemn pomp the
procession of priests and soldiers and chief officers of state, with the
uplifted monarch in the midst, files from the river to the rude
sanctuary of _Menes_, which the skill of masons and of sculptors has
already surrounded with columns of rich red granite, and chambers of
polished stone, and with colossal statues of the king—the offering he
brings to the divinity, whom he adores as the preserver of the land; and
while the monarch bows before the god, the sound of trumpets, and the
fragrance of incense, and the chanting of the priests, announce to the
multitude that _Amun_ accepts the gift, and will be henceforth worshiped
in their temple. _Osirtasen_ the Great passes away.
“The ages roll. A native Theban usurps the throne of the northern
Pharaohs, and succeeds to the power they had consolidated through the
counsel of the Hebrew, vouchsafed to them through fourscore years. But
Joseph is dead; embalmed and coffined in a royal sarcophagus; and Amosis
the usurper knows him not. Oppression fills the land, and falls most
heavily upon the seed of Joseph. Another Theban Pharaoh mounts the
throne, and to preserve the power that the wisdom of a Hebrew gave,
determines to cut off the issue of the Hebrews from the land. Yet in his
own house, even as a son, in all the learning of his schools, amid all
the splendors of his court, is nurtured a young Hebrew who yet shall
desolate the land that Joseph blessed. But just now this rising terror
has fled into the desert, and the first _Thothmes_ comes in peaceful
pomp to offer to the divinity of Thebes the gigantic obelisks that bear
his name. He plants them yonder in the area before the sanctuary of
Osirtasen. The third Thothmes is on the throne. There is groaning
throughout the land of Egypt; there is deep sorrow in the land of
Goshen. The monarch would make his name immortal by the temples, the
palaces, and the monuments he rears in every city, from the great sea to
the cataracts of Nubia. He adorns his native capital upon its western
bank with a new sanctuary added to the temple of his father, and with
another temple inclosed with brick, that bear in hieroglyphics his own
initials; and here at Karnak, he builds behind the sanctuary, a thousand
feet from where I stand, the grand edifice of fifty columns that
surpasses all the royal architecture yet seen in Thebes. In its adytum
he enshrines a colossal figure of the deified hawk that he worships. He
is the great architect of Egypt, and he will fill the land with the
memorials of his reign. Heliopolis and Noph, Zoan and Sin, attest his
grandeur. But the voice of another God now thunders in his ear. The
exiled Hebrew has returned. The land is filled with plagues, frogs,
lice, flies, blood, murrain, hail, locusts, darkness, death. The king
has gone from Thebes to Zoan, his most northern seat, where these
judgments overtake him. The land of Goshen, that had sweltered under his
exactions, breathes more freely, and he lets the people go. But
gathering his chariots of war in mad haste, he pursues them, and hems
them in between the mountains and the sea. Eager for his prey, he
plunges into the channel God has made for them, and the proud architect
of Egypt returns not, even to occupy the gorgeous tomb he had prepared
for himself at Thebes.
“The ages roll on, and a mighty conqueror sits on the throne of Egypt.
With his myriad chariots he sweeps Ethiopia on the south, and Canaan on
the north, and gathering all the forces of the Nile, he shakes Lebanon
with his tread, and scatters the hosts of Syria on the plains of the
Euphrates. And now there is an unwonted stir in Thebes. From all Egypt
the priests and the great men are gathered to greet the conqueror’s
return. In the distance, amid clouds of infantry, is seen the chariot of
the king. Bound to his chariot wheels are the captive princes he has
taken in his wars. Behind him are his son, and the royal scribe who
bears the record of his victories. A long line of captives, bound about
the necks with cords, follow in his train. The cortege moves from temple
to temple through the city, till it reaches that of Karnak. Here,
alighting from his chariot, the monarch enters the temple of Amunre, to
present his captives and booty to the protecting deity of Thebes; then
laying his captives on the block, with a ponderous club he dashes out
their brains as a sacrifice to the god, and amid the acclamations of the
people, is borne like a god to his own palace. And now the conqueror,
reposing on his laurels, gives himself to the work of enriching the
capital with new and more splendid edifices for the honor of its
divinities, and the commemoration of his reign. From all Egypt are
summoned the masons and sculptors, the painters and artificers and
‘cunning workmen;’ and the army that had stormed the hights of Lebanon
now levies from the mountains of the Arabian desert their tribute of
limestone and sandstone and granite of various hues, of syenite and
porphyry and alabaster, to construct these temples, and to adorn these
avenues. The grand hall of Karnak rises in its majestic proportions, a
fit approach to the sanctuary of Amun. Its gates lift up their heads.
Its tenfold avenues rear their massive, lofty, graceful pillars—each a
single stone hewn into a rounded, swelling shaft, with a wreathed or
flowered capital—and with their roof of solid stone, compose the portico
that there in the moonlight, restored to its original perfection, stands
confessed the wonder of the world. The chisel sculptures on its walls
and columns the battle scenes of the king and his offerings to the god,
and the name of _Osirei_ passes into history. His son succeeds to his
victories and to his glory. For, on the far off plains of Asia, the
great Sesostris breaks the power of the Assyrian hosts, and leads their
captive chiefs in chains. Babylon bows to Egypt. There is another day of
exultation in the capital; but the pomp of the returning Osirei pales
before the national ovation to his son. The priests, in their sacred
vestments, go forth to meet him, bearing aloft the figures of his
illustrious ancestors, from Menes to Osirei. The king, alighting from
his chariot, mounts the triumphal car prepared for his reception, whose
fiery steeds are led by liveried grooms. His fan-bearers wave the
flabella over his head, and the priests and the chief men of the nation
kneel in homage at his throne. And now the grand procession forms to
enter the city. Trumpeters herald its approach, and bands of music, with
choristers, form the van. In long line the priests and officers of state
precede the monarch, bearing scepters, arms, and other insignia, and the
cushioned steps of the throne. The statues of his ancestors head the
royal column, and after these is borne a statue of the god upon men’s
shoulders under a gilded canopy. The sacred bull, adorned with garlands,
is led by members of the sacerdotal order. The monarch is attended by
his scribes, who exhibit proudly the scroll of his achievements. Behind
his car are dragged the captives, their chained hands uplifted for
mercy, and their cries and lamentations mingling wildly with the bursts
of music and the shouts of the multitude. These are followed by the
spoils of war—oxen, chariots, horses, and sacks of gold; and beyond, a
corps of infantry in close array, flanked by numerous chariots, bring up
the rear. The vast throng sweep from temple to temple, and rend the air
with acclamations. At length the divinity, that had been taken from its
shrine to welcome the victor, is brought before its own adytum. Here the
high-priest offers incense to the monarch, who, in turn, alights from
his throne and burns incense to the god. And now the horrid sacrifice of
war is made to the patron deity. The wretched captives are beaten in the
presence of the king; their right hands are cut off, and being counted
by the scribes, are retained as trophies: their persons are horribly
mutilated; their heads are severed by the sword or mangled by the mace,
and the gorgeous, barbarous scene is closed.
“There is peace in Egypt; and the king builds, on yonder western bank,
the majestic and beautiful Memnonium, covers its walls with the story of
his victories, and sets before its gate the stupendous statue of
himself, the symbol of the grandeur and the power of Egypt, enthroned in
a sublime and an immortal repose. He builds the vast area of Luxor, with
its massive gates and towers, and before these plants colossal statues
of himself and lofty obelisks, and lines with huge symbolic sculptures
the avenue to Karnak. Here he lays up before the shrine of Amun, as
depicted on the walls, a gorgeous barge overlaid with gold without, and
with silver within, a tribute from the spoils of war. He enriches the
walls of the grand hall by adding to the sculptured story of his
father’s reign the battle scenes of his own, and before the portico
constructs this area of a hundred thousand square feet, surrounded with
its covered corridor, and adorned with sphinxes and a central avenue of
tufted columns, and faced with these stupendous towers. He throws around
the whole a massive wall, and Karnak stands complete in the glory of the
great Remeses. Then follows the resplendent dynasty of all the Osirei
and the Remeses, and Egypt culminates to its meridian splendor. Her
schools rise with her temples, and the epic bard of Scio sings the
‘hundred gates of Thebes,’ while the priests and the philosophers of
young Greece resort to the mother of mythology and of letters, and
Grecian sculptors come to study the forms and creations of the mother of
art. The king of Israel, whose fame for wisdom and for wealth is known
in all the earth, wooes the daughter of the king of Egypt, and she whom
‘the sun had looked upon’ on the confines of Ethiopia, shines in the
golden palace at Jerusalem, ‘beautiful as Tirzeh, and comely as the
tents of Kedar.’
“But again the hosts of Egypt are marshaled for battle; again they sweep
the borders of the north; again is heard the shout of victory; again
Thebes is astir for the conqueror’s return. Now _Shishak_ brings to the
temple of Amun the treasures of the house of Jehovah at Jerusalem; the
golden shields of Solomon, and the treasures of the palace he had built.
Twelve hundred chariots, and sixty thousand horsemen, and footmen
without number, swell the train of the victorious king. Nailing the
heads of his wretched captives to the block of the executioner, he whets
his sword to sacrifice them to the god; and the blood of Israel once
more cries to God from the land of Egypt. From afar the voice of the
prophet speaks the answer of Jehovah to that cry: ‘Behold, I am against
Pharaoh king of Egypt, and will break his arms; and I will cause the
sword to fall out of his hand. Howl ye; woe, woe the day! For the day is
near, even the day of the Lord is near, a cloudy day. The sword shall
come upon Egypt; and the pride of her power shall come down.’ Again a
mighty host, sweeping from the north, hovers upon the plain of Thebes.
The idols are moved in their temples, the cry of the people is in the
streets. But it is not now the return of her victorious king that stirs
the royal city. The great _ram_ from the plains of Persia, pushing
westward and southward, gores Egypt with his horns, overthrows her
temples and her statues, treads Memnon and Remeses in the dust, drinks
up the river and devours the valley. There is sorrow and groaning in the
land of Egypt for a hundred years, when lo! again the dust of mighty
hosts sweeps from the north. The _he-goat_ from the west, moved with
choler at the ram, that drinks up the great rivers, rushes upon him in
the fury of his power, and casts him down and stamps upon him. The
Persian conqueror of Thebes retires before the Macedonian conqueror of
Persia. Greece, though a conqueror, pays homage to Egypt as her
mistress. New cities are built; temples and monuments are restored. Upon
the plain of Thebes, new works of art unite the sculptured records of
the Ptolemies with the broken tablets of the Pharaohs. Karnak itself
opens new portals, and revives its ancient splendor. Again the schools
of Egypt are visited from Greece. And where Homer drank his inspiration,
and Herodotus pored over the hieroglyphics, and the papyrus records, and
the dim traditions of the _then_ old world, Plato comes to ponder the
great mysteries of the soul’s existence, and its relations to the
infinite.
“But the doom of Egypt is not yet fulfilled. Her resurrection can not
now come. The gigantic _horn_ that sweeps the stars, trails the young
Egypt of Alexander in the dust. Again she lifts her head and wooes her
conqueror to repose awhile in the lap of luxury. Beauty usurps the
dominion of power; and the golden barge of Cleopatra sweeps up the Nile
with silken sails perfumed with sweetest odors, or moves with silver
oars attuned to the soft melody of lutes. Rome adds her tamer art to the
great majesty of Egypt, and restores yet further what the Persian had
destroyed. Yet Egypt may not rise. A new power enters to possess the
land. Under the Roman name, the religion that had visited the land with
Abraham, with Joseph, and with Moses, comes to enshrine itself in these
old temples, emptied of their gods and broken in their forms. The voice
of prayer and praise to the God of Israel is heard in the temple built
by their oppressor, and the name of the infant whom Egypt sheltered, is
spoken with reverence and adoration in all her holy places. Yonder, in
the furthest temple of this mighty pile, a Christian church assembles;
there, in the court of Luxor, stands another Christian altar, while,
across the river, the colonnade of Medeenet Abou encompasses the lesser
columns of a Christian temple built within its folds. But the spirit of
the old temple lingers in its form, and with it embraces the new. Again
the liveried priests march through the corridors, bearing mysterious
symbols, and chanting unknown strains. Again the pomp of state is
blended with the pomp of worship, and the pictured saint but plasters
over the sculptured deity. The religion and the empire of Rome are alike
_effete_, and can give no life to Egypt. And now barbaric hordes from
the east pour in upon the land, and sweep these both away. The sword of
the Moslem, hacking the plastered walls, writes there in blood the
forgotten truth, _there is one God_, though it add thereto the
stupendous lie, that makes the other cardinal of his religion. The wild
man of the desert pitches his tent upon the plain where Mizraim halted
centuries before, or hides himself under the cover of broken tombs and
temples. He hardly moves from his retreat, when the imperious Turk, his
brother Moslem, proclaims himself master of Egypt and Arabia by the will
of God. And now here sits the Arab on this luxurious plain, among these
crumbling giants of the past, startled at his own shadow, without the
spirit to fight either for himself against his tyrant, or for his
country in that tyrant’s service. Here he sits, where Osirei and Remeses
and Shishak have chronicled their names and deeds beside their own
gigantic portraits. Here he sits, where moved in royal state the
conqueror of Ethiopia, of Judah, of Syria, and of Babylon. Here he sits,
where the fierce Cambyses dealt his retribution; where Alexander moved
with a pomp that none but he could boast; where Cæsar followed in the
train of mighty men—yet owned the greater might of woman. Here he
sits—‘_Il faut descendre_,’ said my guide, who had tortured his Arabic
gutturals into a rude French; ‘_il faut descendre_,’ (it is necessary to
go down.) _Il faut descendre_, repeated I, as I looked over upon the
tombs of the kings, all drear and ghostly in the moonlight; and looked
where Memnon stood, and all was desolate; and looked toward Luxor, where
the moonlight stole faintly through its broken towers; and turned and
looked at Karnak, as the meridian moon now shone upon heaps of rubbish,
and broken columns, and crumbling walls. _Il faut descendre_, IT MUST GO
DOWN; and, turning to descend, I stumbled over an Arab hovel, plastered
upon the very top of the tower of Sesostris, and heard the yelping of
the dogs from the huts that bury the side temple of the conqueror of
Babylon. The spell was broken; and Egypt was a dream. Riding back, amid
barking dogs and shivering, shrinking Arabs, over the dusty plain to
Luxor, I lay down upon the divan where, two months before, I had dreamed
of Egypt, when, entering the Nile, I felt her resistless spell. But no
dream of Egypt came. Egypt herself had vanished. _As a dream when one
awaketh, so, O Lord, when thou awakedst, thou didst despise her image._”