SAKKARAH AND MEMPHIS.
Having arrived at Bedreshayn after dark and there moored for the night,
we were roused early next morning by the furious squabbling and
chattering of some fifty or sixty men and boys, who, with a score or two
of little rough-coated, depressed-looking donkeys, were assembled on the
high bank above. Seen thus against the sky, their tattered garments
fluttering in the wind, their brown arms and legs in frantic movement,
they looked like a troop of mad monkeys let loose. Every moment the
uproar grew shriller. Every moment more men, more boys, more donkeys
appeared upon the scene. It was as if some new Cadmus had been sowing
boys and donkeys broadcast and they had all come up at once for our
benefit.
Then it appeared that Talhamy, knowing how eight donkeys would be wanted
for our united forces, had sent up to the village for twenty-five,
intending, perhaps with more wisdom than justice, to select the best and
dismiss the others. The result was overwhelming. Misled by the magnitude
of the order and concluding that Cook’s party had arrived, every man,
boy and donkey in Bedreshayn and the neighboring village of Mîtrahîneh
had turned out in hot haste and rushed down to the river; so that by the
time breakfast was over there were steeds enough in readiness for all
the English in Cairo. I pass over the tumult that ensued when our party
at last mounted the eight likeliest beasts and rode away, leaving the
indignant multitude to disperse at leisure.
And now our way lies over a dusty flat, across the railway line, past
the long straggling village, and through the famous plantations known as
the Palms of Memphis. There is a crowd of patient-looking fellaheen at
the little whitewashed station, waiting for the train, and the usual
rabble of clamorous water, bread and fruit sellers. Bedreshayn, though
a collection of mere mud-hovels, looks pretty, nestling in the midst of
stately date-palms. Square pigeon towers, imbedded round the top with
layers of wide-mouthed pots and stuck with rows of leafless acacia
boughs like ragged banner poles, stand up at intervals among the huts.
The pigeons go in and out of the pots, or sit preening their feathers on
the branches. The dogs dash out and bark madly at us as we go by. The
little brown children pursue us with cries of “Bakhshïsh!” The potter,
laying out rows of soft, gray, freshly molded clay bowls and kullehs[9]
to bake in the sun, stops, open-mouthed, and stares as if he had never
seen a European till this moment. His young wife snatches up her baby
and pulls her veil more closely over her face, fearing the evil eye.
The village being left behind, we ride on through one long palm-grove
after another; now skirting the borders of a large sheet of tranquil
back-water; now catching a glimpse of the far-off pyramids of Ghîzeh,
now passing between the huge irregular mounds of crumbled clay which
mark the site of Memphis. Next beyond these we come out upon a high
embanked road some twenty feet above the plain, which here spreads out
like a wide lake and spends its last dark-brown alluvial wave against
the yellow rocks which define the edge of the desert. High on this
barren plateau, seen for the first time in one unbroken panoramic line,
there stand a solemn company of pyramids; those of Sakkârah straight
before us, those of Dahshûr to the left, those of Abusîr to the right
and the great pyramids of Ghîzeh always in the remotest distance.
It might be thought that there would be some monotony in such a scene
and but little beauty. On the contrary, however, there is beauty of a
most subtle and exquisite kind--transcendent beauty of color and
atmosphere and sentiment; and no monotony either in the landscape or in
the forms of the pyramids. One of these which we are now approaching is
built in a succession of platforms gradually decreasing toward the top.
Another down yonder at Dahshûr curves outward at the angles, half dome,
half pyramid, like the roof of the Palais de Justice, in Paris. No two
are of precisely the same size, or built at precisely the same angle;
and each cluster differs somehow in the grouping.
Then again the coloring--coloring not to be matched with any pigments
yet invented. The Libyan rocks, like rusty gold--the paler line of the
driven sand-slopes--the warm maize of the nearer pyramids which, seen
from this distance, takes a tender tint of rose, like the red bloom on
an apricot--the delicate tone of these objects against the sky--the
infinite gradations of that sky, soft and pearly toward the horizon,
blue and burning toward the zenith--the opalescent shadows, pale blue
and violet and greenish-gray, that nestle in the hollows of the rock and
the curves of the sand-drifts--all this is beautiful in a way impossible
to describe, and, alas! impossible to copy. Nor does the lake-like plain
with its palm-groves and corn-flats form too tame a foreground. It is
exactly what is wanted to relieve that glowing distance.
And now, as we follow the zigzags of the road, the new pyramids grow
gradually larger; the sun mounts higher; the heat increases. We meet a
train of camels, buffaloes, shaggy brown sheep, men, women, and children
of all ages. The camels are laden with bedding, rugs, mats, and crates
of poultry, and carry, besides, two women with babies and one very old
man. The younger men drive the tired beasts. The rest follow behind. The
dust rises after them in a cloud. It is evidently the migration of a
family of three, if not four generations. One cannot help being struck
by the patriarchal simplicity of the incident. Just thus, with flocks
and herds and all his clan, went Abraham into the land of Canaan close
upon four thousand years ago; and one at least of these Sakkârah
pyramids was even then the oldest building in the world.
It is a touching and picturesque procession--much more picturesque than
ours and much more numerous; notwithstanding that our united forces,
including donkey boys, porters and miscellaneous hangers-on, number
nearer thirty than twenty persons. For there are the M. B.’s and their
nephew, and L---- and the writer, and L----’s maid, and Talhamy, all on
donkeys; and then there are the owners of the donkeys, also on donkeys;
and then every donkey has a boy; and every boy has a donkey; and every
donkey-boy’s donkey has an inferior boy in attendance. Our style of
dress, too, however convenient, is not exactly in harmony with the
surrounding scenery; and one cannot but feel, as these draped and dusty
pilgrims pass us on the road, that we cut a sorry figure with our
hideous palm-leaf hats, green veils, and white umbrellas.
But the most amazing and incongruous personage in our whole procession
is unquestionably George. Now George is an English north-country groom
whom the M. B.’s have brought out from the wilds of Lancashire, partly
because he is a good shot and may be useful to “Master Alfred” after
birds and crocodiles, and partly from a well-founded belief in his
general abilities. And George, who is a fellow of infinite jest and
infinite resource, takes to eastern life as a duckling to the water. He
picks up Arabic as if it were his mother tongue. He skins birds like a
practiced taxidermist. He can even wash and iron on occasion. He is, in
short, groom, footman, house-maid, laundry-maid, stroke-oar, gamekeeper
and general factotum all in one. And, besides all this, he is gifted
with a comic gravity of countenance that no surprises and no disasters
can upset for a moment. To see this worthy anachronism cantering along
in his groom’s coat and gaiters, livery-buttons, spotted neckcloth, tall
hat, and all the rest of it; his long legs dangling within an inch of
the ground on either side of the most diminutive of donkeys; his
double-barreled fowling-piece under his arm, and that imperturbable look
in his face, one would have sworn that he and Egypt were friends of old,
and that he had been brought up on pyramids from his earliest childhood.
It is a long and shelterless ride from the palms to the desert; but we
come to the end of it at last, mounting just such another sand-slope as
that which leads up from the Ghîzeh road to the foot of the great
pyramid. The edge of the plateau here rises abruptly from the plain in
one long range of low perpendicular cliffs pierced with dark mouths of
rock-cut sepulchers, while the sand-slope by which we are climbing pours
down through a breach in the rock, as an Alpine snow-drift flows through
a mountain gap from the ice-level above.
And now, having dismounted through compassion for our unfortunate little
donkeys, the first thing we observe is the curious mixture of débris
underfoot. At Ghîzeh one treads only sand and pebbles; but here at
Sakkârah the whole plateau is thickly strewn with scraps of broken
pottery, limestone, marble, and alabaster; flakes of green and blue
glaze; bleached bones; shreads of yellow linen, and lumps of some
odd-looking, dark-brown substance, like dried-up sponge. Presently some
one picks up a little noseless head of one of the common blue-ware
funereal statuettes, and immediately we all fall to work, grubbing for
treasure--a pure waste of precious time; for, though the sand is full of
débris, it has been sifted so often and so carefully by the Arabs that
it no longer contains anything worth looking for. Meanwhile, one finds a
fragment of iridescent glass--another, a morsel of shattered vase--a
third, an opaque bead of some kind of yellow paste. And then, with a
shock which the present writer, at all events, will not soon forget, we
suddenly discover that these scattered bones are human--that those linen
shreds are shreds of cerement cloths--that yonder odd-looking brown
lumps are rent fragments of what once was living flesh! And now for the
first time we realize that every inch of this ground on which we are
standing, and all these hillocks and hollows and pits in the sand, are
violated graves.
“Ce n’est que le premier pas que coûte.” We soon became quite hardened
to such sights and learned to rummage among dusty sepulchers with no
more compunction than would have befitted a gang of professional
body-snatchers. These are experiences upon which one looks back
afterward with wonder and something like remorse; but so infectious is
the universal callousness, and so over-mastering is the passion for
relic-hunting, that I do not doubt we should again do the same things
under the same circumstances. Most Egyptian travelers, if questioned,
would have to make a similar confession. Shocked at first, they denounce
with horror the whole system of sepulchral excavation, legal as well as
predatory; acquiring, however, a taste for scarabs and funerary
statuettes, they soon begin to buy with eagerness the spoils of the
dead; finally, they forget all their former scruples and ask no better
fortune than to discover and confiscate a tomb for themselves.
Notwithstanding that I had first seen the pyramids of Ghîzeh, the size
of the Sakkârah group--especially of the pyramid in platforms--took me
by surprise. They are all smaller than the pyramids of Khufu and Khafra
and would no doubt look sufficiently insignificant if seen with them in
close juxtaposition; but taken by themselves they are quite vast enough
for grandeur. As for the pyramid in platforms (which is the largest at
Sakkârah, and next largest to the pyramid of Khafra), its position is so
fine, its architectural style so exceptional, its age so immense that
one altogether loses sight of these questions of relative magnitude. If
Egyptologists are right in ascribing the royal title hieroglyphed on the
inner door of this pyramid to Ouenephes, the fourth king of the first
dynasty, then it is the most ancient building in the world. It had been
standing from five to seven hundred years when King Khufu began his
great pyramid at Ghîzeh. It was over two thousand years old when Abraham
was born. It is now about six thousand eight hundred years old according
to Manetho and Mariette, or about four thousand eight hundred according
to the computation of Bunsen. One’s imagination recoils upon the brink
of such a gulf of time.
The door of this pyramid was carried off with other precious spoils by
Lepsius and is now in the museum at Berlin. The evidence that identifies
the inscription is tolerably direct. According to Manetho, an Egyptian
historian who wrote in Greek and lived in the reign of Ptolemy
Philadelphia, King Ouenephes built for himself a pyramid at a place
called Kokhome. Now a tablet discovered in the Serapeum by Mariette
gives the name of Ka-kem to the necropolis of Sakkârah; and as the
pyramid in stages is not only the largest on this platform, but is also
the only one in which a royal cartouche has been found, the conclusion
seems obvious.
When a building has already stood for five or six thousand years in a
climate where mosses and lichens, and all those natural signs of age to
which we are accustomed in Europe, are unknown, it is not to be supposed
that a few centuries more or less can tell upon its outward appearance;
yet to my thinking the pyramid of Ouenephes looks older than those of
Ghîzeh. If this be only fancy, it gives one, at all events, the
impression of belonging structurally to a ruder architectural period.
The idea of a monument composed of diminishing platforms is in its
nature more primitive than that of a smooth four-sided pyramid. We
remarked that the masonry on one side--I think on the side facing
eastward--was in a much more perfect condition than on either of the
others.
Wilkinson describes the interior as “a hollow dome supported here and
there by wooden rafters,” and states that the sepulchral chamber was
lined with blue porcelain tiles.[10] We would have liked to go inside,
but this is no longer possible, the entrance being blocked by a recent
fall of masonry.
Making up now for lost time, we rode on as far as the house built in
1850 for Mariette’s accommodation during the excavation of the
Serapeum--a labor which extended over a period of more than four years.
The Serapeum, it need hardly be said, is the famous and long-lost
sepulchral temple of the sacred bulls. These bulls (honored by the
Egyptians as successive incarnations of Osiris) inhabited the temple of
Apis at Memphis while they lived; and, being mummied after death, were
buried in catacombs prepared for them in the desert. In 1850, Mariette,
traveling in the interests of the French government, discovered both the
temple and the catacombs, being, according to his own narrative,
indebted for the clew to a certain passage in Strabo, which describes
the Temple of Serapis as being situate in a district where the sand was
so drifted by the wind that the approach to it was in danger of being
overwhelmed; while the sphinxes on either side of the great avenue were
already more or less buried, some having only their heads above the
surface. “If Strabo had not written this passage,” says Mariette, “it is
probable that the Serapeum would still be lost under the sands of the
necropolis of Sakkârah. One day, however (in 1850), being attracted to
Sakkârah by my Egyptological studies, I perceived the head of a sphinx
showing above the surface. It evidently occupied its original position.
Close by lay a libation-table on which was engraved a hieroglyphic
inscription to Apis-Osiris. Then that passage in Strabo came to my
memory, and I knew that beneath my feet lay the avenue leading to the
long and vainly sought Serapeum. Without saying a word to any one I got
some workmen together and we began excavating. The beginning was
difficult; but soon the lions, the peacocks, the Greek statues of the
Dromos, the inscribed tablets of the Temple of Nectanebo[11] rose up
from the sands. Thus was the Serapeum discovered.”
The house--a slight, one-storied building on a space of rocky
platform--looks down upon a sandy hollow which now presents much the
same appearance that it must have presented when Mariette was first
reminded of the fortunate passage in Strabo. One or two heads of
sphinxes peep up here and there in a ghastly way above the sand and mark
the line of the great avenue. The upper half of a boy riding on a
peacock, apparently of rude execution, is also visible. The rest is
already as completely overwhelmed as if it had never been uncovered. One
can scarcely believe that only twenty years ago the whole place was
entirely cleared at so vast an expenditure of time and labor. The work,
as I have already mentioned, took four years to complete. This avenue
alone was six hundred feet in length and bordered by an army of
sphinxes, one hundred and forty-one of which were found _in situ_. As
the excavation neared the end of the avenue, the causeway, which
followed a gradual descent between massive walls, lay seventy feet below
the surface. The labor was immense and the difficulties were
innumerable. The ground had to be contested inch by inch. “In certain
places,” says Mariette, “the sand was fluid, so to speak, and baffled us
like water continually driven back and seeking to regain its level.”[12]
If, however, the toil was great, so also was the reward. A main avenue
terminated by a semicircular platform, around which stood statues of
famous Greek philosophers and poets; a second avenue at right angles to
the first; the remains of the great temple of the Serapeum; three
smaller temples; and three distinct groups of Apis catacombs were
brought to light. A descending passage opening from a chamber in the
great temple led to the catacombs--vast labyrinths of vaults and
passages hewn out of the solid rock on which the temples were built.
These three groups of excavations represent three epochs of Egyptian
history. The first and most ancient series consists of isolated vaults
dating from the eighteenth to the twenty-second dynasty; that is to say,
from about B.C. 1703 to B.C. 980. The second group, which dates from the
reign of Sheshonk I (twenty-second dynasty, B.C. 980) to that of
Tirhakah, the last king of the twenty-fifth dynasty, is more
systematically planned, and consists of one long tunnel bordered on each
side by a row of funereal chambers. The third belongs to the Greek
period, beginning with Psammetichus I (twenty-sixth dynasty, B.C. 665)
and ending with the latest Ptolemies. Of these, the first are again
choked with sand; the second are considered unsafe; and the third only
is accessible to travelers.
After a short but toilsome walk and some delay outside a prison-like
door at the bottom of a steep descent, we were admitted by the
guardian--a gaunt old Arab with a lantern in his hand. It was not an
inviting looking place within. The outer daylight fell upon a rough step
or two, beyond which all was dark. We went in. A hot, heavy atmosphere
met us on the threshold; the door fell to with a dull clang, the echoes
of which went wandering away as if into the central recesses of the
earth; the Arab chattered and gesticulated. He was telling us that we
were now in the great vestibule and that it measured ever so many feet
in this and that direction; but we could see nothing--neither the
vaulted roof overhead, nor the walls on any side, nor even the ground
beneath our feet. It was like the darkness of infinite space.
A lighted candle was then given to each person and the Arab led the way.
He went dreadfully fast and it seemed at every step as if one were on
the brink of some frightful chasm. Gradually, however, our eyes became
accustomed to the gloom, and we found that we had passed out of the
vestibule into the first great corridor. All was vague, mysterious,
shadowy. A dim perspective loomed out of the darkness. The lights
twinkled and flitted like wandering sparks of stars. The Arab held his
lantern to the walls here and there, and showed us some votive tablets
inscribed with records of pious visits paid by devout Egyptians to the
sacred tombs. Of these they found five hundred when the catacombs were
first opened; but Mariette sent nearly all to the Louvre.
A few steps farther and we came to the tombs--a succession of great
vaulted chambers hewn out at irregular distances along both sides of the
central corridor and sunk some six or eight feet below the surface. In
the middle of each chamber stood an enormous sarcophagus of polished
granite. The Arab, flitting on ahead like a black ghost, paused a moment
before each cavernous opening, flashed the light of his lantern on the
sarcophagus and sped away again, leaving us to follow as we could.
So we went on, going every moment deeper into the solid rock and farther
from the open air and the sunshine. Thinking it would be cold
underground, we had brought warm wraps in plenty; but the heat, on the
contrary, was intense, and the atmosphere stifling. We had not
calculated on the dryness of the place, nor had we remembered that
ordinary mines and tunnels are cold because they are damp. But here for
incalculable ages--for thousands of years probably before the Nile had
even cut its path through the rocks of Silsilis--a cloudless African sun
had been pouring its daily floods of light and heat upon the dewless
desert overhead. The place might well be unendurable. It was like a
great oven stored with the slowly accumulated heat of cycles so remote
and so many, that the earliest periods of Egyptian history seem, when
compared with them, to belong to yesterday.
Having gone on thus for a distance of nearly two hundred yards, we came
to a chamber containing the first hieroglyphed sarcophagus we had yet
seen; all the rest being polished, but plain. Here the Arab paused; and,
finding access provided by means of a flight of wooden steps, we went
down into the chamber, walked round the sarcophagus, peeped inside by
the help of a ladder, and examined the hieroglyphs with which it is
covered. Enormous as they look from above, one can form no idea of the
bulk of these huge monolithic masses except from the level on which they
stand. This sarcophagus, which dates from the reign of Amasis, of the
twenty-sixth dynasty, measured fourteen feet in length by eleven in
height, and consisted of a single block of highly wrought black granite.
Four persons might sit in it round a small card-table, and play a rubber
comfortably.
From this point the corridor branches off for another two hundred yards
or so, leading always to more chambers and more sarcophagi, of which
last there are altogether twenty-four. Three only are inscribed; none
measure less than from thirteen to fourteen feet in length; and all are
empty. The lids in every instance have been pushed back a little way,
and some are fractured; but the spoilers have been unable wholly to
remove them. According to Mariette, the place was pillaged by the early
Christians, who, besides carrying off whatever they could find in the
way of gold and jewels, seem to have destroyed the mummies of the bulls
and razed the great temple nearly to the ground. Fortunately, however,
they either overlooked, or left as worthless, some hundreds of exquisite
bronzes and the five hundred votive tablets before mentioned, which, as
they record not only the name and rank of the visitor, but also, with
few exceptions, the name and year of the reigning Pharaoh, afford
invaluable historical data, and are likely to do more than any
previously discovered documents toward clearing up disputed points of
Egyptian chronology.
It is a curious fact that one out of the three inscribed sarcophagi
should bear the oval of Cambyses--that Cambyses of whom it is related
that, having desired the priests of Memphis to bring before him the god
Apis, he drew his dagger in a transport of rage and contempt and stabbed
the animal in the thigh. According to Plutarch, he slew the beast and
cast out its body to the dogs; according to Herodotus, “Apis lay some
time pining in the temple, but at last died of his wound, and the
priests buried him secretly;” but according to one of these precious
Serapeum tablets, the wounded bull did not die till the fourth year of
the reign of Darius. So wonderfully does modern discovery correct and
illustrate tradition.
And now comes the sequel to this ancient story in the shape of an
anecdote related by M. About, who tells how Mariette, being recalled
suddenly to Paris some months after the opening of the Serapeum, found
himself without the means of carrying away all his newly excavated
antiquities, and so buried fourteen cases in the desert, there to await
his return. One of these cases contained an Apis mummy which had escaped
discovery by the early Christians; and this mummy was that of the
identical Apis stabbed by Cambyses. That the creature had actually
survived his wound was proved by the condition of one of the
thigh-bones, which showed unmistakable signs of both injury and healing.
Nor does the story end here. Mariette being gone, and having taken with
him all that was most portable among his treasures, there came to
Memphis one whom M. About indicates as “a young and august stranger”
traveling in Egypt for his pleasure. The Arabs, tempted perhaps by a
princely bakhshîsh, revealed the secret of the hidden cases; whereupon
the archduke swept off the whole fourteen, dispatched them to
Alexandria, and immediately shipped them for Trieste.[13] “Quant au
coupable,” says M. About, who professes to have had the story direct
from Mariette, “il a fini si tragiquement dans un autre hemisphère que,
tout bien pesé, je renonce à publier son nom.” But through so
transparent a disguise it is not difficult to identify the unfortunate
hero of this curious anecdote.
The sarcophagus in which the Apis was found remains in the vaults of the
Serapeum; but we did not see it. Having come more than two hundred yards
already, and being by this time well-nigh suffocated, we did not care to
put two hundred yards more between ourselves and the light of day. So we
turned back at the half distance--having, however, first burned a pan of
magnesian powder, which flared up wildly for a few seconds; lit the huge
gallery and all its cavernous recesses and the wondering faces of the
Arabs, and then went out with a plunge, leaving the darkness denser than
before.
From hence, across a farther space of sand we went in all the blaze of
noon to the tomb of one Ti, a priest and commoner of the fifth dynasty,
who married with a lady named Neferhotep-s, the granddaughter of a
Pharaoh, and here built himself a magnificent tomb in the desert.
On the façade of this tomb, which must originally have looked like a
little temple, only two large pillars remain. Next comes a square
court-yard, surrounded by a roofless colonnade, from one corner of which
a covered passage leads to two chambers. In the center of the
court-yard yawns an open pit some twenty-five feet in depth, with a
shattered sarcophagus just visible in the gloom of the vault below. All
here is limestone--walls, pillars, pavements, even the excavated débris
with which the pit had been filled in when the vault was closed forever.
The quality of this limestone is close and fine like marble, and so
white that, although the walls and columns of the court-yard are covered
with sculptures of most exquisite execution and of the greatest
interest, the reflected light is so intolerable that we find it
impossible to examine them with the interest they deserve. In the
passage, however, where there is shade, and in the large chamber, where
it is so dark that we can see only by the help of lighted candles, we
find a succession of bas-reliefs so numerous and so closely packed that
it would take half a day to see them properly. Ranged in horizontal
parallel lines about a foot and a half in depth, these extraordinary
pictures, row above row, cover every inch of wall-space from floor to
ceiling. The relief is singularly low. I should doubt if it anywhere
exceeds a quarter of an inch. The surface, which is covered with a thin
film of very fine cement, has a quality and polish like ivory. The
figures measure an average height of about twelve inches, and all are
colored.
Here, as in an open book, we have the biography of Ti. His whole life,
his pleasures, his business, his domestic relations, are brought before
us with just that faithful simplicity which makes the charm of Montaigne
and Pepys. A child might read the pictured chronicles which illuminate
these walls and take as keen a pleasure in them as the wisest of
archæologists.
Ti was a wealthy man and his wealth was of the agricultural sort. He
owned flocks and herds and vassals in plenty. He kept many kinds of
birds and beasts--geese, ducks, pigeons, cranes, oxen, goats, asses,
antelopes and gazelles. He was fond of fishing and fowling, and used
sometimes to go after crocodiles and hippopotamuses, which came down as
low as Memphis in his time. He was a kind husband, too, and a good
father, and loved to share his pleasures with his family. Here we see
him sitting in state with his wife and children, while professional
singers and dancers perform before them. Yonder they walk out together
and look on while the farm-servants are at work, and watch the coming in
of the boats that bring home the produce of Ti’s more distant lands.
Here the geese are being driven home; the cows are crossing a ford; the
oxen are plowing; the sower is scattering his seed; the reaper plies his
sickle; the oxen tread the grain; the corn is stored in the granary.
There are evidently no independent tradesfolk in these early days of the
world. Ti has his own artificers on his own estate, and all his goods
and chattels are home-made. Here the carpenters are fashioning new
furniture for the house; the shipwrights are busy on new boats; the
potters mold pots; the metal-workers smelt ingots of red gold. It is
plain to see that Ti lived like a king within his own boundaries. He
makes an imposing figure, too, in all these scenes, and, being
represented about eight times as large as his servants, sits and stands
a giant among pigmies. His wife (we must not forget that she was of the
blood royal) is as big as himself; and the children are depicted about
half the size of their parents. Curiously enough, Egyptian art never
outgrew this early naîveté. The great man remained a big man to the last
days of the Ptolemies, and the fellah was always a dwarf.[14]
Apart from these and one or two other mannerisms, nothing can be more
natural than the drawing, or more spirited than the action, of all these
men and animals. The most difficult and transitory movements are
expressed with masterly certitude. The donkey kicks up his heels and
brays--the crocodile plunges--the wild duck rises on the wing; and the
fleeting action is caught in each instance with a truthfulness that no
landseer could distance. The forms, which have none of the conventional
stiffness of later Egyptian work, are modeled roundly and boldly yet
finished with exquisite precision and delicacy. The coloring, however,
is purely decorative; and, being laid on in single tints, with no
attempt at gradation or shading, conceals rather than enhances the
beauty of the sculptures. These, indeed, are best seen where the color
is entirely rubbed off. The tints are yet quite brilliant in parts of
the larger chamber; but in the passage and court-yard, which have been
excavated only a few years and are with difficulty kept clear from day
to day, there is not a vestige of color left. This is the work of the
sand--that patient laborer whose office it is not only to preserve but
to destroy. The sand secretes and preserves the work of the sculptor,
but it effaces the work of the painter. In sheltered places where it
accumulates passively like a snow-drift, it brings away only the surface
detail, leaving the under colors rubbed and dim. But nothing, as I had
occasion constantly to remark in the course of the journey, removes
color so effectually as sand which is exposed to the shifting action of
the wind.
[Illustration: HEAD OF TI.]
This tomb, as we have seen, consists of a portico, a court-yard, two
chambers, and a sepulchral vault; but it also contains a secret passage
of the kind known as a “serdab.” These “serdabs,” which are constructed
in the thickness of the walls and have no entrances, seem to be peculiar
to tombs of the ancient empire (_i.e._ the period of the pyramid kings);
and they contain statues of the deceased of all sizes, in wood,
lime-stone, and granite. Twenty statues of Ti were here found immured in
the “serdab” of his tomb, all broken save one--a spirited figure in
lime-stone, standing about seven feet high, and now in the museum at
Boulak. This statue represents a fine young man in a white tunic, and is
evidently a portrait. The features are regular; the expression is
good-natured; the whole tournure of the head is more Greek than
Egyptian. The flesh is painted of a yellowish brick tint, and the figure
stands in the usual hieratic attitude, with the left leg advanced, the
hands clenched, and the arms straightened close to the sides. One seems
to know Ti so well after seeing the wonderful pictures in his tomb,
that this charming statue interests one like the portrait of a familiar
friend.[15]
How pleasant it was, after being suffocated in the Serapeum and broiled
in the tomb of Ti, to return to Mariette’s deserted house and eat our
luncheon on the cool stone terrace that looks northward over the desert!
Some wooden tables and benches are hospitably left here for the
accommodation of travelers, and fresh water in ice-cold kullehs is
provided by the old Arab guardian. The yards and offices at the back are
full of broken statues and fragments of inscriptions in red and black
granite. Two sphinxes from the famous avenue adorn the terrace and look
down upon their half-buried companions in the sand-hollow below. The
yellow desert, barren and undulating, with a line of purple peaks on the
horizon, reaches away into the far distance. To the right, under a
jutting ridge of rocky plateau not two hundred yards from the house,
yawns an opened-mouthed black-looking cavern shored up with heavy beams
and approached by a slope of débris. This is the forced entrance to the
earlier vaults of the Serapeum, in one of which was found a mummy
described by Mariette as that of an Apis, but pronounced by Brugsch to
be the body of Prince Kha-em-nas, governor of Memphis and the favorite
son of Rameses the Great.
This remarkable mummy, which looked as much like a bull as a man, was
found covered with jewels and gold chains and precious amulets engraved
with the name of Kha-em-nas, and had on its face a golden mask; all
which treasures are now to be seen in the Louvre. If it was the mummy of
an Apis, then the jewels with which it was adorned were probably the
offering of the prince at that time ruling in Memphis. If, on the
contrary, it was the mummy of a man, then, in order to be buried in a
place of peculiar sanctity, he probably usurped one of the vaults
prepared for the god. The question is a curious one and remains
unsolved to this day; but it could no doubt be settled at a glance by
Professor Owen.[16]
Far more startling, however, than the discovery of either Apis or jewels
was the sight beheld by Mariette on first entering that long-closed
sepulchral chamber. The mine being sprung and the opening cleared he
went in alone; and there, on the thin layer of sand that covered the
floor he found the footprints of the workmen who, three thousand seven
hundred years[17] before, had laid that shapeless mummy in its tomb and
closed the doors upon it, as they believed, forever.
And now--for the afternoon is already waning fast--the donkeys are
brought round and we are told that it is time to move on. We have the
sight of Memphis and the famous prostrate colossus yet to see and the
long road lies all before us. So back we ride across the desolate sands;
and with a last, long, wistful glance at the pyramid in platforms, go
down from the territory of the dead into the land of the living.
There is a wonderful fascination about this pyramid. One is never weary
of looking at it--of repeating to one’s self that it is indeed the
oldest building on the face of the whole earth. The king who erected it
came to the throne, according to Manetho, about eighty years after the
death of Mena, the founder of the Egyptian monarchy. All we have of him
is his pyramid; all we know of him is his name. And these belong, as it
were, to the infancy of the human race. In dealing with Egyptian dates
one is apt to think lightly of periods that count only by centuries; but
it is a habit of mind which leads to error and it should be combated.
The present writer found it useful to be constantly comparing relative
chronological eras; as, for instance, in realizing the immense antiquity
of the Sakkârah pyramid, it is some help to remember that from the time
when it was built by King Ouenephes to the time when King Khufu erected
the great pyramid of Ghizeh, there probably lies a space of years
equivalent to that which, in the history of England, extends from the
date of the conquest to the accession of George II.[18] And yet Khufu
himself--the Cheops of the Greek historians--is but a shadowy figure
hovering upon the threshold of Egyptian history.
And now the desert is left behind and we are nearing the palms that lead
to Memphis. We have, of course, been dipping into Herodotus--every one
takes Herodotus up the Nile--and our heads are full of the ancient
glories of this famous city. We know that Mena turned the course of the
river in order to build it on this very spot, and that all the most
illustrious Pharaohs adorned it with temples, palaces, pylons and
precious sculptures. We had read of the great Temple of Ptah that
Rameses the Great enriched with colossi of himself; and of the sanctuary
where Apis lived in state, taking his exercise in a pillared court-yard
where every column was a statue; and of the artificial lake and the
sacred groves and the obelisks and all the wonders of a city which, even
in its later days, was one of the most populous in Egypt.
Thinking over these things by the way, we agree that it is well to have
left Memphis till the last. We shall appreciate it the better for having
first seen that other city on the edge of the desert to which, for
nearly six thousand years, all Memphis was quietly migrating, generation
after generation. We know now how poor folk labored, and how great
gentlemen amused themselves, in those early days when there were
hundreds of country gentlemen like Ti, with town-houses at Memphis and
villas by the Nile. From the Serapeum, too, buried and ruined as it is,
one cannot but come away with a profound impression of the splendor and
power of a religion which could command for its myths such faith, such
homage, and such public works.
And now we are once more in the midst of the palm-woods, threading our
way among the same mounds that we passed in the morning. Presently those
in front strike away from the beaten road across a grassy flat to the
right; and the next moment we are all gathered round the brink of a
muddy pool, in the midst of which lies a shapeless block of blackened
and corroded limestone. This, it seems, is the famous prostrate colossus
of Rameses the Great, which belongs to the British nation, but which the
British government is too economical to remove.[19] So here it lies,
face downward; drowned once a year by the Nile; visible only when the
pools left by the inundation have evaporated, and all the muddy hollows
are dried up. It is one of two which stood at the entrance to the great
Temple of Ptah; and by those who have gone down into the hollow and seen
it from below in the dry season, it is reported of as a noble and very
beautiful specimen of one of the best periods of Egyptian art.
Where, however, is the companion colossus? Where is the temple itself?
Where are the pylons, the obelisk, the avenues of sphinxes? Where, in
short, is Memphis?
The dragoman shrugs his shoulders and points to the barren mounds among
the palms.
They look like gigantic dust-heaps and stand from thirty to forty feet
above the plain. Nothing grows upon them, save here and there a tuft of
stunted palm; and their substance seems to consist chiefly of crumbled
brick, broken potsherds, and fragments of limestone. Some few traces of
brick foundations and an occasional block or two of shaped stone are to
be seen in places low down against the foot of one or two of the mounds;
but one looks in vain for any sign which might indicate the outline of a
boundary wall or the position of a great public building.
And is this all?
No--not quite all. There are some mud-huts yonder, in among the trees;
and in front of one of these we find a number of sculptured
fragments--battered sphinxes, torsos without legs, sitting figures
without heads--in green, black, and red granite. Ranged in an irregular
semicircle on the sward, they seem to sit in forlorn conclave, half
solemn, half ludicrous, with the goats browsing round, and the little
Arab children hiding behind them.
Near this, in another pool, lies another red-granite colossus--not the
fellow to that which we saw first, but a smaller one--also face
downward.
And this is all that remains of Memphis, eldest of cities--a few huge
rubbish-heaps, a dozen or so of broken statues, and a name! One looks
round and tries in vain to realize the lost splendors of the place.
Where is the Memphis that King Mena came from Thinis to found--the
Memphis of Ouenephes, and Khufa, and Khafra, and all the early kings who
built their pyramid-tombs in the adjacent desert? Where is the Memphis
of Herodotus, of Strabo, of Abd-el-Latîf? Where are those stately ruins
which, even in the middle ages, extended over a space estimated at “half
a day’s journey in every direction”? One can hardly believe that a great
city ever flourished on this spot, or understand how it should have been
effaced so utterly. Yet here it stood--here where the grass is green,
and the palms are growing, and the Arabs build their hovels on the verge
of the inundation. The great colossus marks the site of the main
entrance to the Temple of Ptah. It lies where it fell, and no man has
moved it. That tranquil sheet of palm-fringed back-water, beyond which
we see the village of Mitrâhîneh and catch a distant glimpse of the
pyramids of Ghîzeh, occupies the basin of a vast artificial lake
excavated by Mena. The very name of Memphis survives in the dialect of
the fellah, who calls the place of the mounds Tell Monf[20]--just as
Sakkârah fossilizes the name of Sokari, one of the special denominations
of the Memphite Osiris.
No capital in the world dates so far back as this or kept its place in
history so long. Founded four thousand years before our era, it beheld
the rise and fall of thirty-one dynasties; it survived the rule of the
Persian, the Greek, and the Roman; it was, even in its decadence, second
only to Alexandria in population and extent; and it continued to be
inhabited up to the time of the Arab invasion. It then became the quarry
from which Fostât (old Cairo) was built; and as the new city rose on the
eastern bank the people of Memphis quickly abandoned their ancient
capital to desolation and decay.
Still a vast field of ruins remained. Abd-el-Latîf, writing at the
commencement of the thirteenth century, speaks with enthusiasm of the
colossal statues and lions, the enormous pedestals, the archways formed
of only three stones, the bas-reliefs and other wonders that were yet to
be seen upon the spot. Marco Polo, if his wandering tastes had led him
to the Nile, might have found some of the palaces and temples of Memphis
still standing; and Sandys, who in A.D. 1610 went at least as far south
of Cairo as Kafr el Iyat, says that “up the river for twenty miles space
there was nothing but ruines.” Since then, however, the very “ruines”
have vanished; the palms have had time to grow; and modern Cairo has
doubtless absorbed all the building material that remained from the
middle ages.
Memphis is a place to read about, and think about, and remember; but it
is a disappointing place to see. To miss it, however, would be to miss
the first link in the whole chain of monumental history which unites the
Egypt of antiquity with the world of to-day. Those melancholy mounds and
that heron-haunted lake must be seen, if only that they may take their
due place in the picture-gallery of one’s memory.
It had been a long day’s work, but it came to an end at last; and as we
trotted our donkeys back toward the river a gorgeous sunset was
crimsoning the palms and pigeon-towers of Bedreshayn. Everything seemed
now to be at rest. A buffalo, contemplatively chewing the cud, lay close
against the path and looked at us without moving. The children and
pigeons were gone to bed. The pots had baked in the sun and been taken
in long since. A tiny column of smoke went up here and there from amid
the clustered huts; but there was scarcely a moving creature to be seen.
Presently we passed a tall, beautiful fellah woman standing grandly by
the wayside, with her veil thrown back and falling in long folds to her
feet. She smiled, put out her hand, and murmur’d “bakhshîsh!” Her
fingers were covered with rings and her arms with silver bracelets. She
begged because to beg is honorable, and customary, and a master of
inveterate habit; but she evidently neither expected nor needed the
bakhshîsh she condescended to ask for.
A few moments more and the sunset has faded, the village is left behind,
the last half-mile of plain is trotted over. And now--hungry, thirsty,
dusty, worn out with new knowledge, new impressions, new ideas--we are
once more at home and at rest.