the long series, is situated in the midst of the ruins of the houses of
MEDÎNET HÂBU, a Coptic town, now totally forsaken, but once of no small
importance. It was founded by RAMSES III., the first King of the 20th
Dynasty, the rich Rhampsinitus of Herodotus, in the thirteenth century
before Christ, and on its walls extols the great campaigns of this King,
by land and by sea, which might rival those of the great Ramses. In the
interior of the second outer court a great church was built by the Copts,
the monolithic granite columns of which are still scattered about. The
chambers to the back are for the most part in a heap of rubbish. But the
far projecting sort of pylon building, in front of the temple, is of
peculiar interest; it contained the private apartments of the King, in
four stories, placed one above the other. The Prince is represented on
the walls, in the midst of his family, conversing with his daughters, who
are recognised to be Princesses by the side-plait of their hair; he is
playing at drafts, and receiving fruits and flowers from them.
This building terminates the series of large splendid temples known
under the peculiar appellation of MEMNONIA. They comprise the really
flourishing period of the New Monarchy, for after Ramses III., the
external power, as well as the internal greatness of the Monarchy again
declined. It is only from this, and the immediately succeeding period,
that we find the tombs of the Kings in the rock-valleys of the mountain
range.
The entrance to these is situated on the farther side of the promontory
of Qurna. The escarpments of the rock there rise rugged and barren on
either side, rounding off above to bare summits, and their golden brows
are partly covered with coal black stones, as if they had been burnt
by the sun. The peculiarly solemn and gloomy character of this country
always struck me most vividly when I was riding back after sunset over
the endless heaps of stony rubbish covering the bottom of the valley
to a considerable height, and only furrowed by broad chasms, formed in
the course of thousands of years, by sudden torrents of rain, which,
though of rare occurrence, are not entirely unknown, as we ourselves have
witnessed. All is mute and dead around; the rapid tramps of my little ass
being only interrupted occasionally by the dull barks of the jackals, or
the gloomy hooting of the night-owls.
After long windings, which lead by circuitous paths almost immediately
behind the lofty mountain sides of the Asasif valley described above, the
valley divides into two branches, the one on the right hand conducting
to the most ancient of those tombs. Only two of these are opened, both
belonging to the 18th Dynasty: the one dedicated to AMENOPHIS III.,
the Memnon of the Greeks, the other to a rival King AI, coming very
soon after him, who was not admitted into the monumental lists of the
legitimate kings.[56]
The last is situated at the extreme end of the slowly-ascending cleft in
the rock; the granite sarcophagus of the King, in the small sepulchral
chamber, has been destroyed, and his name is everywhere studiously
erased, with the exception of a few traces on the walls, as well as
upon the sarcophagus. The other lies farther forward in the valley,
is of greater extent, and covered with beautiful sculptures, though,
alas! much mutilated by time and human hands. Besides these two tombs,
there are several more here incomplete, without sculptures; others, no
doubt, are concealed beneath the high mounds of rubbish, which to clear
away would have occupied more of our time and means than, after mature
consideration, we thought right to bestow on it. In one place where I
made them dig, following tolerably certain signs, we found, indeed, about
ten feet beneath the rubbish, a door and chamber, but these also without
sculpture. Some remains of earthen vases were, however, brought to light
at the same time, which contained the name of a king hitherto unknown.
The left branch of the principal valley, which contains the tombs of
almost all the Kings of the 19th and 20th Dynasties, seems to have been
originally closed by an elevation of the bottom of the valley, and to
have been first opened artificially, by a paved ascent to the spot.
Here we find pits with wide openings not far above the bottom of the
valley, on the descending slope of the mountain, which pass downwards at
a somewhat oblique angle. Where the overhanging rock has a perpendicular
height of 12 to 15 feet, the sharply-carved door-posts of the first
entrance appear, which was once provided with one or two great
folding-doors to close it. There also the painted sculptures generally
commence, which, on suddenly approaching, strike one by the wonderful
contrast between their sharp lines, brilliant surfaces, and fresh vivid
colours, and the jagged rock and rugged rolled stones scattered around,
among which they are placed. Long corridors of imposing height and width
now lead always deeper into the rocky mountain range; the sculptures
on the sides, and the ceiling also, continue in single subdivisions,
which are formed by the contraction of the passages and by additional
doors. The King is represented worshipping before different gods, and
directs his prayers and justifications for his earthly life to them; the
peaceful occupations of the justified spirits are represented on one
side, the punishments of Hell for the wicked on the other; the Goddess
of Heaven is represented extended lengthways on the ceiling, as well
as the hours of the day and night, with their influences on mankind,
and their astrological signification, all accompanied by explanatory
inscriptions. Lastly, we arrive at a great vaulted hall of pillars, whose
walls generally exhibit the representations on a golden yellow ground,
for which reason it also bore the name of the Golden Hall. This was
intended for the royal sarcophagus, which stood in the centre, and was
from six to ten feet high. But often if the King, after the completion of
the tomb, in its first and most necessary extent, felt his vigour still
unimpaired, and promised himself a prolonged life, the central passage
of this hall of pillars was cut out in a still more steep descent, for
the commencement of a new hall; new corridors and lateral chambers were
attached, sometimes they deviated from the first direction into another,
till the King, for the second time, fixed upon a goal, and terminated the
building with a second hall of pillars, almost more spacious and splendid
than the first; smaller chambers on both sides were then added to this,
if the time still allowed, destined for particular sacrifices for the
dead, till at length the last hour struck, and the royal corpse, having
undergone the process of embalming for seventy days, was entombed in the
sarcophagus. It was then closed up, in such an artificial manner that
the colossal granite tomb, as the cover could not be raised, was always
obliged to be destroyed by the plunderers of the corpses, who, at a
later period, penetrated into every spot.
The tombs of the PRINCESSES also, which are collected together in a
smaller valley behind Medînet Hâbu, at the southern end of the Memnonia,
belong exclusively to the period from the 18th to the 20th Dynasties,
as well as the most important of the innumerable tombs of private
individuals, which extend over hill and valley, from beyond Medînet Hâbu
to the entrance of the King’s valley. The priests of rank, and the great
officers, liked to have represented on the walls of their tombs their
whole wealth in horses and carriages, herds, boats, and implements, as
well as their hunting-ground and fish-ponds, their gardens and hall, for
company, even the artists and artisans they employed, actively engaged
in various ways; all this renders these tombs much more interesting than
those of the Kings, where the representations almost exclusively refer to
the life after death.
Among the later monuments, the tombs from the 26th Dynasty of the seventh
and sixth centuries before Christ are especially worthy of notice. The
greatest proportion of these are dug in the flat ground, in the front
part of the rocky creek between Qurna and the hill of Abd el Qurna, where
we reside, and they are called specially EL ASASIF. The rocky plain alone
afforded room at that time for sepulchral buildings of any considerable
size, and was therefore employed for that purpose on a vast scale.
Even in the distance a number of lofty gates and walls built of black
bricks are seen. These enclosed great sunken courts within an oblong,
to which the entrance led by immense arched pylon gates, resembling at
a little distance Roman triumphal arches. Stepping through this within
the enclosure wall, we look directly into a court cut 12 or 15 feet deep
into the rock, into which we descended by a staircase. This uncovered
court belongs to the largest sepulchral building now accessible; it was
built for a royal scribe, Petamenap; is 100 feet long, and 74 broad.
From this we stepped through an outer hall into a great rock-chamber,
having an extent of from 65 to 52 feet, supported by two rows of pillars,
with some lateral chambers and corridors on either side; then through
an arched entrance into a second hall, from 52 to 36 feet large, with
eight pillars; and into a third, 31 feet both ways, with four pillars;
and lastly, into a chamber from 20 to 12 feet large, terminating with a
niche. From this chamber, at the head of the first series of rooms, a
door on the left hand leads into an immense chamber; and on the right,
another to a continuous series of six corridors, with two staircases of
nine to twenty-three steps, and a chamber in which a perpendicular pit,
44 feet deep, led at the bottom to a small lateral chamber. This second
range of chambers and passages which run at right angles with the first,
amounted in its whole length to 172 feet, while the first, including the
external court, amounted to 311 feet. Finally, from the chamber with the
well, a corridor turns off again to the right, which leads to a diagonal
chamber, extending altogether 58 feet in this third direction. But before
arriving at the two staircases in the second range, a fourth line of
passages again opened to the right, running on 122 feet in one and the
same direction, to which, on the left hand, is attached a great passage
running round in a square 60 feet long on every side, along with other
lateral chambers; the central part of which is decorated on its four
sides like a huge sarcophagus. The sarcophagus of the deceased rests
also, in fact, in the centre beneath the great square, which, however,
can only be reached by means of a vertical pit 18 feet deep, opening into
a fourth range, which conducts to a horizontal passage 58 feet long;
then to a third pit, through this to more chambers; and lastly, through
the ceiling of the last to a chamber placed above it, which contains
the sarcophagus, and which is situated exactly beneath the centre of
the above-mentioned square. The whole of the ground covered by this
tomb, that of a private individual, amounts accordingly to 21,600 square
feet, and calculated with the pit chambers, to 23,148 square feet.[57]
This enormous work appears still more colossal if we consider that all
the surface of the walls, the pillars, and the doors are covered from
above downwards with innumerable representations and inscriptions, which
astonish us still more by the care, sharpness, and elegance with which
they are executed.
The few remains which are found from the period of the later foreign
dominion are far less important. We can only mention two small temples
near Medînet Hâbu among those erected under the Ptolemies, and a third
at the end of the great Lake circumvallation, which extends from Medînet
Hâbu towards the south. The oldest sculptures in this last are from
the time of CÆSAR AUGUSTUS, yet the Cella, now the only part in good
preservation, was built by Antoninus Pius. The outermost gate of the
temple district contains the only representations found in Egypt of the
Emperor OTHO, the discovery of which was once a most joyful event to
Champollion and Rosellini. They had, however, overlooked the circumstance
that on the opposite side the name of the Emperor GALBA, hitherto equally
unknown in Egypt, was also to be found.
Even in Strabo’s time ancient Thebes had crumbled into several villages,
and Germanicus visited it, as we are doing, from a thirst for knowledge,
and with reverence for the great antiquity of its monuments, _cognoscendæ
antiquitatis_, as Tacitus informs us. The latest hieroglyphic imperial
name that I have found in all Egypt, is that of DECIUS (A.D. 250); it
appears in a representation on the temple of Esneh. A hundred years later
the holy ATHANASIUS retires to the Theban desert among the Christian
hermits there resident. The edict of THEODOSIUS against Paganism (391)
divested the Egyptian temples of their last authority, and greatly
favoured the development of monkish and recluse habits, to which Egyptian
Christianity was always peculiarly inclined.
After that period numerous churches and convents spring up throughout
the country, even in the upper districts of the Nile; and the sepulchral
caves of the desert become troglodytic habitations for an ascetic hermit
population. The Thebaic necropolis, above all other places, presented
the greatest variety of means to satisfy these new wants. Both the
kings’ tombs, as well as the tombs of private individuals, were very
much employed for Christian cells, and still bear traces on their walls
of this new purpose to which they were applied. A letter of the holy
Athanasius, the archbishop of Alexandria, to the orthodox monks of
Thebes, still exists in a tomb at Qurna, in beautiful untial characters
on the white stucco, but unfortunately in a very fragmentary condition.
It was a favourite practice to convert ancient temples into Coptic
churches or convents.
The largest church seems to have been erected in the temple of Medînet
Hâbu (town of Hâbu). Monolithic granite columns of considerable size
still cover the ground in great numbers, in the second outer court at
this spot; in order to obtain room for the niches in the choir, an
ancient Egyptian pillar was taken away on the northern side, and a
series of doors from the chambers which were arranged for the priests’
cells were broken through the external wall of the temple to the back.
The convent appertaining to it, called the DER EL MEDÎNET—“belonging to
a town”—was placed in the Ptolemaic temple behind the hill of Qurnet
Murrâi, situated close at hand. Another church stood in the temple of
Old Qurna, and the convent of DER EL BACHÎT, situated on the heights of
Qurna, probably belonged to it. The ruins of a third convent occupy the
chambers of the temple of the Queen Numtamen, in the angle of the Asasif
valley, and bear the name of DER EL BAHRI, the northern convent.
Such transformations of the ancient magnificent buildings were partly
against, and partly in favour of, their preservation. Single walls were
frequently demolished, or broken through, to enable them to make new
arrangements; upon others the heathen images were destroyed to obtain
bare walls, or at least, the human figures and even those of animals
in the inscriptions, especially the heads, were studiously picked out,
and mutilated, as high up as the loftiest ceilings. Not unfrequently,
however, the same zealous, pious hands also served to preserve the
ancient splendour in a most successful manner, for sometimes, instead of
laboriously destroying the representations with a hammer, they preferred
covering them over from the top to the bottom with Nile mud, which had
generally afterwards an additional white coating, in order to receive the
Christian paintings. In time this Coptic loam again fell off, and the
ancient paintings came out once more, with a brilliancy and surprising
freshness, which they could hardly have retained on uncovered walls,
exposed to the air and sun. In the niche of an ancient cella I found St.
Peter, in the ancient Byzantine style, holding the key, and raising his
finger, but beneath the half-decayed Christian casing, the cow’s horns
of the goddess Hathor, the Egyptian Venus, peeped forth from behind the
glory; to her, originally was given the incense and sacrifice of the
king who is standing by her side, which now are offered to the venerable
apostle. I have often with my own hands assisted time in the work of
restoration, and still further loosened the stucco, which is generally
covered over with totally uninteresting Coptic paintings, that I might
restore the splendid sculptures of the Egyptian gods and kings concealed
beneath them once more to their older and greater claims on our attention.
A great part of the population of Thebes on both sides of the Nile is
still Coptic; our Christian cook Siriân was born here, and a Coptic
woman of good means, Mustafîeh, who lives at a short distance from us,
supplies us daily with excellent wheaten bread. For a long time past,
however, the Arabic Mohammedan population has gained the upper hand here,
as throughout the country, and the Copts can only oppose this by the
influence derived from ancient days, by their knowledge of arithmetic,
and their privilege of filling the most important financial offices in
the country.
The small church in which the Theban Christians are now in the habit of
assembling every Sunday, is situated alone in the great gravelly plain
to the south of Medînet Hâbu. It has an Arabic cupola, and is surrounded
by the wall of a court. I entered it a few days ago from noticing that
the black turbans, which are only worn by Copts, were proceeding in
greater numbers than usual to the chapel. It was the feast of the holy
Donadeos, who had founded the church. The service was over. I only found
the old priest, who inhabits and takes charge of the church, inside with
his numerous family. The compartments were covered with mats; I was
shown the division for the men and women, the small chapels decorated
with variegated carved work attached to it, the square cistern for
baptisms and holy water. A large old Coptic book still lay open on the
reading-desk, with extracts from the Psalms and Gospels, and an Arabic
translation beside it. I asked the old man whether he could read Coptic;
he answered in the affirmative, but thought that his children could read
better than himself; his eyes had already become feeble. I sat myself
down upon the mat, and the whole troop of great and small yellow-brown
children and grandchildren of the old priest squatted down around me.
I asked the eldest lad to read a little, and he immediately began not
to read, but to sing with the greatest fluency—that is to say, to chant
in rough grumbling tones. I interrupted him, and asked him now to read
slowly in his usual voice; he did it with far greater difficulty, and
with many mistakes, which his younger brother sometimes corrected over
his shoulder; but when I went so far as to inquire the meaning of the
individual words, he pointed coolly to the Arabic translation, and
thought it was explained there, and wanted to read this aloud to me;
he could tell me nothing as to the single words, not even about the
value of the single letters over the paragraphs, nor, indeed, could the
old man have done that at any time. Afterwards I made them show me the
other treasures in the way of books belonging to the church, which were
immediately brought in a great cloth tied together at the four corners,
containing some prayer-books very much worn, some of them in Coptic,
some in Arabic. I left a small present behind for the good of the church,
and had rode on a little farther, when one of the boys overtook me,
bringing me breathless a small consecrated kind of biscuit cake, stamped
with a Coptic cross and a Greek inscription, which gift I was obliged to
repay by a second bakschisch. These are the Epigoni, the most genuine,
unmixed descendants of the old Pharaonic nation that once conquered Asia
and Ethiopia, and led its prisoners from the north and south into the
great hall of Karnak before Ammon; in whose wisdom Moses was educated,
and with whose priesthood the Greek sages went to school.
_O Aegypte, Aegypte! religionum tuarum solæ supererunt fabulæ, æque
incredibiles posteris; solaque supererunt verba lapidibus incisa tua
pia facta narrantibus, et inhabitabit Aegyptum, Scythes, aut Indus, aut
aliquis talis, id est vicina barbaria._[58]
We now know the meaning of this _aliquis_ which Hermes Trismegistus then
knew not how to explain; it is the Turks, who at present dwell in the
fields of Osiris.
At the foot of our hill, in the direction of the green plain, stands
a single group of Sont-trees, which overshadow a pleasant reservoir
nicely lined with stones; here the sheep and goats are daily brought
to water, and every evening and morning the dark girls and veiled
women descend from their rock-caves, returning afterwards with a slow
step, their tall water-jugs on their heads; a lovely picture from the
patriarchal times. But close to where the refreshing element is found
there is a bare white spot in the middle of the fertile plain: on this,
two lime-kilns are erected, in which, as often as they are wanted, the
very best blocks of the ancient temples and rock-grottoes, with their
images and inscriptions, are pounded and burnt into lime, that they
may again cement together other blocks, which are extracted from these
convenient and inexhaustible stone-quarries, for some cattle-stall or
other structure for government purposes.
The same day that I visited the Coptic church, I was desirous of riding
from that spot to the village of KÔM EL BIRÂT, which is situated on the
other side of the great lake of Hâbu, now dry. To my no small surprise,
my guide, the excellent old ʾAuad, who I have engaged to be my servant
while here, on account of his great knowledge of the locality, informed
me that he could not accompany me thither, he even almost shrank from
pronouncing the name of the village, and could not be persuaded to give
me any information about it, and about his strange behaviour. It was only
when I got home that I learnt the ground of his refusal from others, and
afterwards also from himself. Above seven or eight years ago a man was
killed in the house of the Sheikh of Qurna, to whose household ʾAuad then
belonged; how it happened is not yet made out. In consequence of this
circumstance, the whole family of the murdered man emigrated from this
place, and settled in Kôm el Birât. Ever since the law of vengeance for
blood has hung over the two families. Not a single member of that family
has from that time trod the ground of Qurna; and if ʾAuad, or any other
individual from the Sheikh’s house were to be seen in that village, any
one of the injured family would be justified in killing him openly. This
is the ancient Arabic custom.[59]
I turn from my wanderings through the ruins of the great royal city, and
through the changes of thousands of years which have passed over them,
to our castle on the detached hill of Abd el Qurna. Wilkinson and Hay
have rendered an essential service to later travellers by building up
the habitable rooms, which, from our being desirous of spending a long
time in Thebes, we have profited by. A broad, convenient road leads by
windings from the plain to a spacious court, the left side of which
(the mountain side) is formed by a long shady colonnade; beyond this
there are several habitable rooms. At the end of the court stands a
single watch-tower, on which the Prussian flag waves, and beside it a
small house with two rooms, one above the other, the lowest of which I
occupy myself. There is no want of accommodation either for the kitchen
department, the servants, and the asses.