THE WEATHER is almost unsettled. There was actually a dash of rain
against the cabin window last night—over before you could prepare an
affidavit to the fact—and today is cold, more or less cloudy with a
drop, only a drop, of rain occasionally. Besides, the wind is in the
south-west and the sand flies. We cannot sail, and decide to visit
Karnak, in spite of the entreaty of the hand-book to leave this, as the
crown of all sight-seeing, until we have climbed up to its greatness
over all the lesser ruins.
Perhaps this is wise; but I think I should advise a friend to go at once
to Karnak and outrageously astonish himself, while his mind is fresh,
and before he becomes at all sated with ruins or familiar with other
vast and exceedingly impressive edifices. They are certain to dull a
little his impression of Karnak even “Madam—” it is Abd-el-Atti who
comes in, rubbing his hands—“your carriage stops the way.”
“Carriage?”
“Yes, ma'am, I just make him.”
The carriage was an arm-chair slung between two pushing-poles; between
each end of them was harnessed a surly diminutive donkey who seemed to
feel his degradation. Each donkey required a driver; Ahmed, with his
sleeves rolled up and armed with a big club, walked beside, to steady
the swaying chair, and to beat the boys when their donkeys took a fancy
to lie down; and a cloud of interested Arabs hovered about it,
running with it, adding to the noise, dust, and picturesqueness of our
cavalcade.
On the outskirts of the mud-cabins we pass through the weekly market,
a motley assemblage of country-folks and produce, camels, donkeys,
and sheep. It is close by the Ghawazee quarter, where is a colony of
a hundred or more of these dancing-girls. They are always conspicuous
among Egyptian women by their greater comeliness and gay apparel. They
wear red and yellow gowns, many tinkling ornaments of silver and gold,
and their eyes are heavily darkened with kohl. I don't know what it is
in this kohl, that it gives woman such a wicked and dangerous aspect.
They come out to ask for backsheesh in a brazen but probably intended
to be a seductive manner; they are bold, but some of them rather
well-looking. They claim to be an unmixed race of ancient lineage; but I
suspect their blood is no purer than their morals. There is not much in
Egypt that is not hopelessly mixed.
Of the mile-and-a-half avenue of Sphinxes that once connected Luxor with
Karnak, we see no trace until we are near the latter. The country is
open and beautiful with green wheat, palms, and sycamores. Great Karnak
does not show itself until we are close upon it; its vast extent is
hidden by the remains of the wall of circuit, by the exterior temples
and pylons. It is not until we have passed beyond the great—but called
small—temple of Rameses III., at the north entrance, and climbed
the pyramidal tower to the west of the Great Hall, that we begin to
comprehend the magnitude of these ruins, and that only days of wandering
over them and of study would give us their gigantic plan.
Karnak is not a temple, but a city rather; a city of temples, palaces,
obelisks, colossal statues, It is, like a city, a growth of many
centuries. It is not a conception or the execution of a purpose; it is
the not always harmonious accretion of time and wealth and vanity. Of
the slowness of its growth some idea may be gained from the fact that
the hieroglyphics on one face of one of its obelisks were cut two
hundred and fifty years after those on the opposite face. So long ago
were both chiseled, however, they are alike venerable to us. I shouldn't
lose my temper with a man who differed with me only a thousand years
about the date of any event in Egypt.
They were working at this mass of edifices, sacred or profane, all the
way from Osirtasen I. down to Alexander II.; that is from about 3064
B. c. according to Mariette (Bunsen, 2781, Wilkinson, 2080,—it doesn't
matter) to only a short time before our era. There was a modest
beginning in the plain but chaste temple of Osirtasen; but each king
sought to outdo his predecessor until Sethi I. forever distanced rivalry
in building the Great Hall. And after him it is useless for anyone else
to attempt greatness by piling up stones. The length of the temples,
pylons, and obelisks, en suite from west to east, is 1180 feet; but
there are other outlying and gigantic ruins; I suppose it is fully a
mile and a half round the wall of circuit.
There is nothing in the world of architecture like the Great Hall;
nothing so massive, so surprising, and, for me, at least, so crushingly
oppressive. What monstrous columns! And how thickly they are crowded
together! Their array is always compared to a forest. The comparison
is apt in some respects; but how free, uplifting is a forest, how
it expands into the blue air, and lifts the soul with it. A piece of
architecture is to be judged, I suppose, by the effect it produces. It
is not simply that this hall is pagan in its impression; it misses the
highest architectural effect by reason of its unrelieved heaviness.
It is wonderful; it was a prodigious achievement to build so many big
columns.
The setting of enormous columns so close together that you can only
see a few of them at one point of view is the architecture of the Great
Hall. Upon these, big stones are put for a roof. There is no reason why
this might not have been repeated over an acre of ground. Neither from
within nor from without can you see the extent of the hall. * The best
view of it is down the center aisle, formed by the largest columns;
and as these have height as well as bulk, and the sky is now seen above
them, the effect is of the highest majesty. This hall was dimly lighted
by windows in the clerestory, the frames of which exhibit a freedom of
device and grace of carving worthy of a Gothic cathedral. These columns,
all richly sculptured, are laid up in blocks of stone of half the
diameter, the joints broken. If the Egyptians had dared to use the arch,
the principle of which they knew, in this building, so that the columns
could have stood wide apart and still upheld the roof, the sight of
the interior would have been almost too much for the human mind. The
spectator would have been exalted, not crushed by it.
* The Great Hall measures one hundred and seventy feet by three hundred
and twenty-nine; in this space stand one hundred and thirty-four
columns; twelve of these, forming the central avenue of one hundred and
seventy feet, are sixty-two feet high, without plinth and abacus, and
eleven feet six inches in diameter; the other one hundred and twenty-two
columns are forty-two feet five inches in height and about nine feet in
diameter. The great columns stand only fifteen or sixteen feet apart.
Not far off is the obelisk which Amunoo-het erected to the memory of her
father. I am not sure but it will stand long after The Hall of Sethi is
a mass of ruins; for already is the water sapping the foundations of the
latter, some of the columns lean like reeling drunken men, and one day,
with crash after crash, these giants will totter, and the blocks of
stone of which they are built will make another of those shapeless heaps
to which sooner or later our solidest works come. The red granite shaft
of the faithful daughter lifts itself ninety-two feet into the air, and
is the most beautiful as it is the largest obelisk ever raised.
The sanctuary of red granite was once very rich and beautiful; the high
polish of its walls and the remains of its exquisite carving, no less
than the colors that still remain, attest that. The sanctuary is a heap
of ruins, thanks to that ancient Shaker, Cambyses, but the sculptures
in one of the chambers are the most beautiful we have seen; the colors,
red, blue, and green are still brilliant, the ceiling is spangled with
stars on a blue firmament. Considering the hardness of this beautiful
syenite and the difficulty of working it, I think this is the most
admirable piece of work in Thebes.
It may be said of some of the sculptures here, especially of the very
spirited designs and intelligent execution of those of the Great Hall,
that they are superior to those on the other side of the river. And yet
there is endless theological reiteration here; there are dreary miles
of the same gods in the same attitudes; and you cannot call all of them
respectable gods. The longer the religion endured the more conventional
and repetitious its representations became. The sculptors came to have
a traditional habit of doing certain scenes and groups in a certain
way; and the want of life and faith in them becomes very evident in the
sculptures of the Ptolemaic period.
In this vast area you may spend days and not exhaust the objects worth
examination. On one of our last visits we found near the sacred lake
very striking colossal statues which we had never seen before.
When this city of temples and palaces, the favorite royal residence, was
entire and connected with Luxor by the avenue of sphinxes, and the great
edifices and statues on the west side of the river were standing,
this broad basin of the Nile, enclosed by the circle of rose-colored
limestone mountains, which were themselves perforated with vast tombs,
must have been what its splendid fame reports, when it could send to war
twenty thousand chariots. But, I wonder whether the city, aside from its
conspicuous temples and attached palaces, was one of mud-hovels, like
those of most peoples of antiquity, and of the modern Egyptians.
0227