PHILÆ.
Having been for so many days within easy reach of Philæ, it is not to be
supposed that we were content till now with only an occasional glimpse
of its towers in the distance. On the contrary, we had found our way
thither toward the close of almost every day’s excursion. We had
approached it by land from the desert; by water in the felucca; from
Mahatta by way of the path between the cliffs and the river. When I add
that we moored here for a night and the best part of two days on our way
up the river, and again for a week when we came down, it will be seen
that we had time to learn the lovely island by heart.
The approach by water is quite the most beautiful. Seen from the level
of a small boat, the island, with its palms, its colonnades, its pylons,
seems to rise out of the river like a mirage. Piled rocks frame it in on
either side, and purple mountains close up the distance. As the boat
glides nearer between glistening bowlders, those sculptured towers rise
higher and ever higher against the sky. They show no sign of ruin or of
age. All looks solid, stately, perfect. One forgets for the moment that
anything is changed. If a sound of antique chanting were to be borne
along the quiet air--if a procession of white-robed priests bearing
aloft the veiled ark of the god were to come sweeping round between the
palms and the pylons--we should not think it strange.
Most travelers land at the end nearest the cataract; so coming upon the
principal temple from behind and seeing it in reverse order. We,
however, bid our Arabs row round to the southern end, where was once a
stately landing-place with steps down to the river. We skirt the steep
banks and pass close under the beautiful little roofless temple commonly
known as Pharaoh’s bed--that temple which has been so often painted, so
often photographed, that every stone of it, and the platform on which it
stands, and the tufted palms that cluster round about it, have been
since childhood as familiar to our mind’s eye as the sphinx or the
pyramids. It is larger, but not one jot less beautiful than we had
expected. And it is exactly like the photographs. Still, one is
conscious of perceiving a shade of difference too subtle for analysis;
like the difference between a familiar face and the reflection of it in
a looking-glass. Anyhow, one feels that the real Pharaoh’s bed will
henceforth displace the photographs in that obscure mental pigeon-hole
where till now one has been wont to store the well-known image; and that
even the photographs have undergone some kind of change.
And now the corner is rounded; and the river widens away southward
between mountains and palm-groves; and the prow touches the débris of a
ruined quay. The bank is steep here. We climb, and a wonderful scene
opens before our eyes. We are standing at the lower end of a court-yard
leading up to the propylons of the great temple. The court-yard is
irregular in shape and inclosed on either side by covered colonnades.
The colonnades are of unequal lengths and set at different angles. One
is simply a covered walk; the other opens upon a row of small chambers,
like a monastic cloister opening upon a row of cells. The roofing-stones
of these colonnades are in part displaced, while here and there a pillar
or a capital is missing; but the twin towers of the propylon, standing
out in sharp, unbroken lines against the sky and covered with colossal
sculptures, are as perfect, or very nearly as perfect, as in the days of
the Ptolemies who built them.
The broad area between the colonnades is honeycombed with crude brick
foundations--vestiges of a Coptic village of early Christian time. Among
these we thread our way to the foot of the principal propylon, the
entire width of which is one hundred and twenty feet. The towers measure
sixty feet from base to parapet. These dimensions are insignificant for
Egypt; yet the propylon, which would look small at Luxor or Karnak, does
not look small at Philæ. The key-note here is not magnitude, but beauty.
The island is small--that is to say, it covers an area about equal to
the summit of the Acropolis at Athens; and the scale of the buildings
has been determined by the size of the island. As at Athens, the ground
is occupied by one principal temple of moderate size and several
subordinate chapels. Perfect grace, exquisite proportion, most varied
and capricious grouping, here take the place of massiveness; so lending
to Egyptian forms an irregularity of treatment that is almost gothic and
a lightness that is almost Greek.
And now we catch glimpses of an inner court, of a second propylon, of a
pillared portico beyond; while, looking up to the colossal bas-reliefs
above our heads, we see the usual mystic form of kings and deities,
crowned, enthroned, worshiping and worshiped. These sculptures, which at
first sight looked no less perfect than the towers, prove to be as
laboriously mutilated as those of Denderah. The hawk-head of Horus and
the cow-head of Hathor have here and there escaped destruction; but the
human-faced deities are literally “sans eyes, sans nose, sans ears, sans
everything.”
We enter the inner court--an irregular quadrangle inclosed on the east
by an open colonnade, on the west by a chapel fronted with Hathor-headed
columns, and on the north and south sides by the second and first
propylons. In this quadrangle a cloisteral silence reigns. The blue sky
burns above--the shadows sleep below--a tender twilight lies about our
feet. Inside the chapel there sleeps perpetual gloom. It was built by
Ptolemy Euergetes II, and is one of that order to which Champollion gave
the name of Mammisi. It is a most curious place, dedicated to Hathor and
commemorative of the nurture of Horus. On the blackened walls within,
dimly visible by the faint light which struggles through screen and
doorway, we see Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris, giving birth to
Horus. On the screen panels outside we trace the story of his infancy,
education, and growth. As a babe at the breast, he is nursed in the lap
of Hathor, the divine foster-mother. As a young child, he stands at his
mother’s knee and listens to the playing of a female harpist (we saw a
bare-footed boy the other day in Cairo thrumming upon a harp of just the
same shape and with precisely as many strings); as a youth, he sows
grain in honor of Isis and offers a jeweled collar to Hathor. This Isis,
with her long aquiline nose, thin lips, and haughty aspect, looks like
one of the complimentary portraits so often introduced among the
temple-sculptures of Egypt. It may represent one of the two Cleopatras
wedded to Ptolemy Physcon.
Two greyhounds with collars round their necks are sculptured on the
outer wall of another small chapel adjoining. These also look like
portraits. Perhaps they were the favorite dogs of some high priest of
Philæ.
Close against the greyhounds and upon the same wall-space, is engraven
that famous copy of the inscription of the Rosetta stone first observed
here by Lepsius in A.D. 1843. It neither stands so high nor looks so
illegible as Ampère (with all the jealousy of a Champollionist and a
Frenchman) is at such pains to make out. One would have said that it was
in a state of more than ordinary good preservation.
As a reproduction of the Rosetta decree, however, the Philæ version is
incomplete. The Rosetta text, after setting forth with official
pomposity the victories and munificence of the king--Ptolemy V, the
ever-living, the avenger of Egypt--concludes by ordaining that the
record thereof shall be engraven in hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek
characters, and set up in all temples of the first, second, and third
class throughout the empire. Broken and battered as it is, the precious
black basalt[56] of the British Museum fulfills these conditions. The
three writings are there. But at Philæ, though the original hieroglyphic
and demotic texts are reproduced almost verbatim, the priceless Greek
transcript is wanting. It is provided for, as upon the Rosetta stone, in
the preamble. Space has been left for it at the bottom of the tablet. We
even fancied we could here and there distinguish traces of red ink where
the lines should come. But not one word of it has ever been cut into the
surface of the stone.
Taken by itself, there is nothing strange in this omission; but, taken
in connection with a precisely similar omission in another inscription a
few yards distant, it becomes something more than a coincidence.
This second inscription is cut upon the face of a block of living rock
which forms part of the foundation of the easternmost tower of the
second propylon. Having enumerated certain grants of land made to the
temple by Ptolemies VI and VII, it concludes, like the first, by
decreeing that this record of the royal bounty shall be engraven in the
hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek; that is to say: in the ancient sacred
writing of the priests, the ordinary script of the people, and the
language of the court. But here again the sculptor has left his work
unfinished. Here again the inscription breaks off at the end of the
demotic, leaving a blank space for the third transcript. This second
omission suggests intentional neglect; and the motive for such neglect
would not be far to seek. The tongue of the dominant race is likely
enough to have been unpopular among the old noble and sacerdotal
families; and it may well be that the priesthood of Philæ, secure in
their distant solitary isle, could with impunity evade a clause which
their brethren of the Delta were obliged to obey.
It does not follow that the Greek rule was equally unpopular. We have
reason to believe quite otherwise. The conqueror of the Persian invader
was in truth the deliverer of Egypt. Alexander restored peace to the
country and the Ptolemies identified themselves with the interests of
the people. A dynasty which not only lightened the burdens of the poor,
but respected the privileges of the rich; which honored the priesthood,
endowed the temples, and compelled the Tigris to restore the spoils of
the Nile, could scarcely fail to win the suffrages of all classes. The
priests of Philæ might despise the language of Homer while honoring the
descendants of Philip of Macedon. They could naturalize the king. They
could disguise his name in hieroglyphic spelling. They could depict him
in the traditional dress of the Pharaohs. They could crown him with the
double crown, and represent him in the act of worshiping the gods of his
adopted country. But they could neither naturalize nor disguise his
language. Spoken or written, it was an alien thing. Carven in high
places, it stood for a badge of servitude. What could a conservative
hierarchy do but abhor, and, when possible, ignore it?
There are other sculptures in this quadrangle which one would like to
linger over; as, for instance, the capitals of the eastern colonnade, no
two of which are alike, and the grotesque bas-reliefs of the frieze of
the Mammisi.
Of these, a quasi-heraldic group, representing the sacred
hawk sitting in the center of a fan-shaped persea tree between two
supporters, is one of the most curious; the supporters being on the one
side a maniacal lion, and on the other a Typhonian hippopotamus, each
grasping a pair of shears.
Passing now through the doorway of the second propylon, we find
ourselves facing the portico--the famous painted portico of which we had
seen so many sketches that we fancied we knew it already. That
second-hand knowledge goes for nothing, however, in presence of the
reality; and we are as much taken by surprise as if we were the first
travelers to set foot within these enchanted precincts.
For here is a place in which time seems to have stood as still as in
that immortal palace where everything went to sleep for a hundred
years. The bas-reliefs on the walls, the intricate paintings on the
ceilings, the colors upon the capitals, are incredibly fresh and
perfect. These exquisite capitals have long been the wonder and delight
of travelers in Egypt. They are all studied from natural forms--from the
lotus in bud and blossom, the papyrus, and the palm. Conventionalized
with consummate skill, they are at the same time so justly proportioned
to the height and girth of the columns as to give an air of wonderful
lightness to the whole structure. But above all, it is with the
color--color conceived in the tender and pathetic minor of Watteau and
Lancret and Greuze--that one is most fascinated. Of those delicate
half-tones, the fac-simile in the “Grammar of Ornament” conveys not the
remotest idea. Every tint is softened, intermixed, degraded. The pinks
are coralline; the greens are tempered with verditer; the blues are of a
greenish turquoise, like the western half of an autumnal evening sky.
Later on, when we returned to Philæ from the second cataract, the writer
devoted the best part of three days to making a careful study of a
corner of this portico; patiently matching those subtle variations of
tint and endeavoring to master the secret of their combination.[57]
Architecturally, this court is unlike any we have yet seen, being quite
small, and open to the sky in the center, like the atrium of a Roman
house. The light thus admitted glows overhead, lies in a square patch on
the ground below, and is reflected upon the pictured recesses of the
ceiling. At the upper end, where the pillars stand two deep, there was
originally an intercolumnar screen. The rough sides of the columns show
where the connecting blocks have been torn away. The pavement, too, has
been pulled up by treasure-seekers, and the ground is strewn with broken
slabs and fragments of shattered cornice.
These are the only signs of ruin--signs traced not by the finger of
time, but by the hand of the spoiler. So fresh, so fair is all the rest,
that we are fain to cheat ourselves for a moment into the belief that
what we see is work not marred, but arrested. Those columns, depend on
it, are yet unfinished. That pavement is about to be relaid. It would
not surprise us to find the masons here to-morrow morning, or the
sculptor, with mallet and chisel, carrying on that band of lotus buds
and bees. Far more difficult is it to believe that they all struck work
forever some two-and-twenty centuries ago.
Here and there, where the foundations have been disturbed, one sees that
the columns are constructed of sculptured blocks, the fragments of some
earlier temple; while, at a height of about six feet from the ground, a
Greek cross cut deep into the side of the shaft stamps upon each pillar
the seal of Christian worship.
For the Copts who choked the colonnades and court-yards with their
hovels seized also on the temples. Some they pulled down for building
material; others they appropriated. We can never know how much they
destroyed; but two large convents on the eastern bank a little higher up
the river, and a small basilica at the north end of the island, would
seem to have been built with the magnificent masonry of the southern
quay, as well as with blocks taken from a structure which once occupied
the south-eastern corner of the great colonnade. As for this beautiful
painted portico, they turned it into a chapel. A little rough-hewn niche
in the east wall, and an overturned credence-table fashioned from a
single block of limestone, mark the site of the chancel. The Arabs,
taking this last for a gravestone, have pulled it up, according to their
usual practice, in search of treasure buried with the dead. On the front
of the credence-table,[58] and over the niche which some unskilled but
pious hand has decorated with rude Byzantine carvings, the Greek cross
is again conspicuous.
The religious history of Philæ is so curious that it is a pity it should
not find an historian. It shared with Abydos and some other places the
reputation of being the burial-place of Osiris. It was called the “Holy
Island.” Its very soil was sacred. None might land upon its shores, or
even approach them too nearly, without permission. To obtain that
permission and perform the pilgrimage to the tomb of the god, was to the
pious Egyptian what the Mecca pilgrimage is to the pious Mussulman of
to-day. The most solemn oath to which he could give utterance was “By
him who sleeps in Philæ.”
When and how the island first came to be regarded as the resting-place
of the most beloved of the gods does not appear; but its reputation for
sanctity seems to have been of comparatively modern date. It probably
rose into importance as Abydos declined. Herodotus, who is supposed to
have gone as far as Elephantine, made minute inquiry concerning the
river above that point; and he relates that the cataract was in the
occupation of “Ethiopian nomads.” He, however, makes no mention of Philæ
or its temples. This omission on the part of one who, wherever he went,
sought the society of the priests and paid particular attention to the
religions observances of the country, shows that either Herodotus never
got so far, or that the island had not yet become the home of the
Osirian mysteries. Four hundred years later, Diodorus Siculus describes
it as the holiest of holy places; while Strabo, writing about the same
time, relates that Abydos had then dwindled to a mere village. It seems,
possible, therefore, that at some period subsequent to the time of
Herodotus and prior to that of Diodorus or Strabo, the priests of Isis
may have migrated from Abydos to Philæ; in which case there would have
been a formal transfer not only of the relics of Osiris, but of the
sanctity which had attached for ages to their original resting-place.
Nor is the motive for such an exodus wanting. The ashes of the god were
no longer safe at Abydos. Situated in the midst of a rich corn country
on the high road to Thebes, no city south of Memphis lay more exposed to
the hazards of war. Cambyses had already passed that way. Other invaders
might follow. To seek beyond the frontier that security which might no
longer be found in Egypt, would seem therefore to be the obvious course
of a priestly guild devoted to its trust. This, of course, is mere
conjecture, to be taken for what it may be worth. The decadence of
Abydos coincides, at all events, with the growth of Philæ; and it is
only by help of some such assumption that one can understand how a new
site should have suddenly arisen to such a height of holiness.
The earliest temple here, of which only a small propylon remains, would
seem to have been built by the last of the native Pharaohs (Nectanebo
II, B.C. 361); but the high and palmy days of Philæ belong to the period
of Greek and Roman rule. It was in the time of the Ptolemies that the
holy island became the seat of the sacred college and the stronghold of
a powerful hierarchy. Visitors from all parts of Egypt, travelers from
distant lands, court functionaries from Alexandria charged with royal
gifts, came annually in crowds to offer their vows at the tomb of the
god. They have cut their names by hundreds all over the principal
temple, just like tourists of to-day. Some of these antique autographs
are written upon and across those of preceding visitors; while
others--palimpsests upon stone, so to say--having been scratched on the
yet unsculptured surface of doorway and pylon, are seen to be older than
the hieroglyphic texts which were afterward carved over them. These
inscriptions cover a period of several centuries, during which time
successive Ptolemies and Cæsars continued to endow the island. Rich in
lands, in temples, in the localization of a great national myth, the
sacred college was yet strong enough in A.D. 379 to oppose a practical
insistence to the edict of Theodosius. At a word from Constantinople the
whole land of Egypt was forcibly Christianized. Priests were forbidden
under pain of death to perform the sacred rites. Hundreds of temples
were plundered. Forty thousand statues of divinities were destroyed at
one fell swoop. Meanwhile, the brotherhood of Philæ, intrenched behind
the cataract and the desert, survived the degradation of their order and
the ruin of their immemorial faith. It is not known with certainty for
how long they continued to transmit their hereditary privileges; but two
of the above-mentioned votive inscriptions show that so late as A.D. 453
the priestly families were still in occupation of the island and still
celebrating the mysteries of Osiris and Isis. There even seems reason
for believing that the ancient worship continued to hold its own till
the end of the sixth century, at which time, according to an inscription
at Kalabsheh, of which I shall have more to say hereafter, Silco, “King
of all the Ethiopians,” himself apparently a Christian, twice invaded
Lower Nubia, where God, he says, gave him the victory, and the
vanquished swore to him “_by their idols_” to observe the terms of
peace.[59]
There is nothing in this record to show that the invaders went beyond
Tafa, the ancient Taphis, which is twenty-seven miles above Philæ; but
it seems reasonable to conclude that so long as the old gods yet reigned
in any part of Nubia, the island sacred to Osiris would maintain its
traditional sanctity.
At length, however, there must have come a day when for the last time
the tomb of the god was crowned with flowers and the “Lamentations of
Isis” were recited on the threshold of the sanctuary. And there must
have come another day when the cross was carried in triumph up those
painted colonnades and the first Christian mass was chanted in the
precincts of the heathen. One would like to know how these changes were
brought about; whether the old faith died out for want of worshipers, or
was expelled with clamor and violence. But upon this point history is
vague[60] and the graffiti of the time are silent. We only know for
certain that the old went out and the new came in; and that where the
resurrected Osiris was wont to be worshiped according to the most sacred
mysteries of the Egyptian ritual, the resurrected Christ was now adored
after the simple fashion of the primitive Coptic church.
And now the holy island, near which it was believed no fish had power to
swim or bird to fly and upon whose soil no pilgrim might set foot
without permission, became all at once the common property of a populous
community. Courts, colonnades, even terraced roofs, were overrun with
little crude brick dwellings. A small basilica was built at the lower
end of the island. The portico of the great temple was converted into a
chapel and dedicated to St. Stephen. “This good work,” says a Greek
inscription traced there by some monkish hand of the period, “was done
by the well-beloved of God, the Abbot-Bishop Theodore.” Of this same
Theodore, whom another inscription styles “the very holy father,” we
know nothing but his name.
The walls hereabout are full of these fugitive records. “The cross has
conquered and will ever conquer,” writes one anonymous scribe. Others
have left simple signatures; as, for instance: “I, Joseph,” in one place
and “I, Theodosius of Nubia,” in another. Here and there an added word
or two give a more human interest to the autograph. So, in the pathetic
scrawl of one who writes himself “Johannes, a slave,” we seem to read
the story of a life in a single line. These Coptic signatures are all
followed by the sign of the cross.
The foundation of the little basilica, with its apse toward the east and
its two doorways to the west, are still traceable. We set a couple of
our sailors one day to clear away the rubbish at the lower end of the
nave, and found the font--a rough-stone basin at the foot of a broken
column.
It is not difficult to guess what Philæ must have been like in the days
of Abbot Theodore and his flock. The little basilica, we may be sure,
had a cluster of mud domes upon the roof; and I fancy, somehow, that the
abbot and his monks installed themselves in that row of cells on the
east side of the great colonnade, where the priests of Isis dwelled
before them. As for the village, it must have been just like
Luxor--swarming with dusky life; noisy with the babble of children, the
cackling of poultry and the barking of dogs; sending up thin pillars of
blue smoke at noon; echoing to the measured chimes of the prayer-bell at
morn and even; and sleeping at night as soundly as if no ghostlike,
mutilated gods were looking on mournfully in the moonlight.
The gods are avenged now. The creed which dethroned them is dethroned.
Abbot Theodore and his successors, and the religion they taught, and the
simple folk that listened to their teaching, are gone and forgotten. For
the Church of Christ, which still languishes in Egypt, is extinct in
Nubia. It lingered long; though doubtless in some such degraded and
barbaric form as it wears in Abyssinia to this day. But it was absorbed
by Islamism at last; and only a ruined convent perched here and there
upon some solitary height, or a few crosses rudely carved on the walls
of a Ptolemaic temple, remain to show that Christianity once passed that
way.
The mediæval history of Philæ is almost a blank. The Arabs, having
invaded Egypt toward the middle of the seventh century, were long in the
land before they began to cultivate literature; and for more than three
hundred years history is silent. It is not till the tenth century that
we once again catch a fleeting glimpse of Philæ. The frontier is now
removed to the head of the cataract. The Holy Island has ceased to be
Christian; ceased to be Nubian; contains a mosque and garrison, and is
the last fortified outpost of the Moslems. It still retains, and
apparently will continue to retain for some centuries longer, its
ancient Egyptian name. That is to say (P being as usual converted into
B) the Pilak of the hieroglyphic inscriptions becomes in Arabic
Belak;[61] which is much more like the original than the Philæ of the
Greeks.
The native Christians, meanwhile, would seem to have relapsed
into a state of semi-barbarism. They make perpetual inroads upon the
Arab frontier and suffer perpetual defeat. Battles are fought; tribute
is exacted; treaties are made and broken. Toward the close of the
thirteenth century, their king being slain and their churches plundered,
they lose one-fourth of their territory, including all that part which
borders upon Assûan. Those who remain Christians are also condemned to
pay an annual capitation tax, in addition to the usual tribute of dates,
cotton, slaves and camels. After this we may conclude that they accepted
Islamism from the Arabs, as they had accepted Osiris from the Egyptians
and Christ from the Romans. As Christians, at all events, we hear of
them no more; for Christianity in Nubia perished root and branch, and
not a Copt, it is said, may now be found above the frontier.
Philæ was still inhabited in A.D. 1799, when a detachment of Desaix’s
army under General Beliard took possession of the island and left an
inscription[62] on the soffit of the doorway of the great pylon to
commemorate the passage of the cataract. Denon, describing the scene
with his usual vivacity, relates how the natives first defied and then
fled from the French; flinging themselves into the river, drowning such
of their children as were too young to swim and escaping into the
desert. They appear at this time to have been mere savages--the women
ugly and sullen, the men naked, agile and quarrelsome, and armed not
only with swords and spears, but with matchlock guns, with which they
used to keep up “a brisk and well-directed fire.”
Their abandonment of the island probably dates from this time; for when
Burckhardt went up in A.D. 1813, he found it, as we found it to this
day, deserted and solitary. One poor old man--if indeed he still
lives--is now the one inhabitant of Philæ; and I suspect he only crosses
over from Biggeh in the tourist-season. He calls himself, with or
without authority, the guardian of the island; sleeps in a nest of rags
and straw in a sheltered corner behind the great temple; and is so
wonderfully wizened and bent and knotted up that nothing of him seems
quite alive except his eyes. We gave him fifty copper paras[63] for a
parting present when on our way back to Egypt; and he was so oppressed
by the consciousness of wealth that he immediately buried his treasure
and implored us to tell no one what we had given him.
With the French siege and the flight of the native population closes the
last chapter of the local history of Philæ. The holy island has done
henceforth with wars of creeds or kings. It disappears from the domain
of history and enters the domain of science. To have contributed to the
discovery of the hieroglyphic alphabet is a high distinction; and in no
sketch of Philæ, however slight, should the obelisk[64] that furnished
Champollion with the name of Cleopatra be allowed to pass unnoticed.
This monument, second only to the Rosetta stone in point of philological
interest, was carried off by Mr. W. Bankes, the discoverer of the first
tablet of Abydos, and is now in Dorsetshire. Its empty socket and its
fellow obelisk, mutilated and solitary, remain _in situ_ at the southern
extremity of the island.
And now--for we have lingered over long in the portico--it is time we
glanced at the interior of the temple. So we go in at the central door,
beyond which opens some nine or ten halls and side-chambers leading, as
usual, to the sanctuary. Here all is dark, earthly, oppressive. In rooms
unlighted by the faintest gleam from without, we find smoke-blackened
walls covered with elaborate bas-reliefs. Mysterious passages,
pitch-dark, thread the thickness of the walls and communicate by means
of trap-like openings with vaults below. In the sanctuary lies an
overthrown altar; while in the corner behind it stands the very niche in
which Strabo must have seen that poor, sacred hawk of Ethiopia which he
describes as “sick and nearly dead.”
But in this temple dedicated not only to Isis, but to the memory of
Osiris and the worship of Horus their son, there is one chamber which we
may be quite sure was shown neither to Strabo nor Diodorus, nor to any
stranger of alien faith, be his repute or station what it might; a
chamber holy above all others; holier even than the sanctuary--the
chamber sacred to Osiris. We, however, unrestricted, unforbidden, are
free to go where we list; and our books tell us that this mysterious
chamber is somewhere overhead. So, emerging once again into the
daylight, we go up a well-worn staircase leading out upon the roof.
This roof is an intricate, up-and-down place, and the room is not easy
to find. It lies at the bottom of a little flight of steps--a small
stone cell some twelve feet square, lighted only from the doorway. The
walls are covered with sculptures representing the shrines, the
mummification and the resurrection of Osiris.[65] These shrines,
containing
[Illustration]
some part of his body, are variously fashioned. His head, for instance,
rests on a nilometer; his arm, surmounted by a head, is sculptured on a
stela, in shape resembling a
[Illustration]
high-shouldered bottle, surmounted by one of the head-dresses peculiar to the god; his legs and feet lie in a pylon-shaped mausoleum. Upon another shrine stands the miter-shaped crown which he wears as judge of the lower world. Isis and Nephthys keep guard over each shrine. In a lower frieze we see the mummy of the god laid upon a bier, with the four so-called canopic jars[66] ranged underneath. A little farther on he lies in state, surrounded by
[Illustration: RESURRECTION OF OSIRIS.]
lotus buds on tall stems, figuratively of growth, or returning life.[67]
Finally, he is depicted lying on a couch; his limbs reunited; his head,
left hand, and left foot upraised, as in the act of returning to
consciousness. Nephthys, in the guise of a winged genius, fans him with
the breath of life. Isis, with outstretched arms, stands at his feet and
seems to be calling him back to her embraces. The scene represents, in
fact, that supreme moment when Isis pours forth her passionate
invocations, and Osiris is resuscitated by virtue of the songs of the
divine sisters.[68]
Ill-modeled and ill-cut as they are, there is a clownish naturalness
about these little sculptures which lifts them above the conventional
dead level of ordinary Ptolemaic work. The figures tell their tale
intelligibly. Osiris seems really struggling to rise, and the action of
Isis expresses clearly enough the intention of the artist. Although a
few heads have been mutilated and the surface of the stone is somewhat
degraded, the subjects are by no means in a bad state of preservation.
In the accompanying sketches, nothing has been done to improve the
defective drawing or repair the broken outlines of the originals. Osiris
in one has lost his foot and in another his face; the hands of Isis are
as shapeless as those of a bran doll; and the naïveté of the treatment
verges throughout upon caricature. But the interest attaching to them is
altogether apart from the way in which they are executed. And now,
returning to the roof, it is pleasant to breathe the fresher air that
comes with sunset--to see the island, in shape like an ancient Egyptian
shield, lying mapped out beneath one’s feet. From here, we look back
upon the way we have come, and forward to the way we are going.
Northward lies the cataract--a network of islets with flashes of river
between. Southward, the broad current comes on in one smooth, glassy
sheet, unbroken by a single rapid. How eagerly we turn our eyes that
way; for yonder lie Abou Simbel and all the mysterious lands beyond the
cataracts! But we cannot see far, for the river curves away grandly to
the right and vanishes behind a range of granite hills. A similar chain
hems in the opposite bank; while high above the palm-groves fringing the
edge of the shore stand two ruined convents on two rocky prominences,
like a couple of castles on the Rhine. On the east bank opposite, a few
mud houses and a group of superb carob trees mark the site of a village,
the greater part of which lies hidden among palms. Behind this village
opens a vast sand valley, like an arm of the sea from which the waters
have retreated. The old channel along which we rode the other day went
plowing that way straight across from Philæ. Last of all, forming the
western side of this fourfold view, we have the island of
Biggeh--rugged, mountainous, and divided from Philæ by so narrow a
channel that every sound from the native village on the opposite steep
is as audible as though it came from the court-yard at our feet. That
village is built in and about the ruins of a tiny Ptolemaic temple, of
which only a screen and doorway and part of a small propylon remain. We
can see a woman pounding coffee on the threshold of one of the huts, and
some children scrambling about the rocks in pursuit of a wandering
turkey. Catching sight of us up here on the roof of the temple, they
come whooping and scampering down to the water side and with shrill
cries importune us for backshîsh. Unless the stream is wider than it
looks one might almost pitch a piaster into their outstretched hands.
Mr. Hay, it is said, discovered a secret passage of solid masonry
tunneled under the river from island to island. The entrance on this
side was from a shaft in the Temple of Isis.[69] We are not told how far
Mr. Hay was able to penetrate in the direction of Biggeh; but the
passage would lead up, most probably, to the little temple opposite.
Perhaps the most entirely curious and unaccustomed features in all this
scene are the mountains. They are like none that any of us have seen in
our diverse wanderings. Other mountains are homogeneous and thrust
themselves up from below in masses suggestive of primitive disruption
and upheaval. These seem to lie upon the surface foundationless; rock
loosely piled on rock, bowlder on bowlder; like stupendous cairns, the
work of demigods and giants. Here and there, on shelf or summit, a huge
rounded mass, many tons in weight, hangs poised capriciously. Most of
these blocks, I am persuaded, would “log” if put to the test.
But for a specimen stone commend me to yonder amazing monolith down by
the water’s edge opposite, near the carob trees and the ferry. Though
but a single block of orange-red granite, it looks like three; and the
Arabs, seeing it in some fancied resemblance to an arm-chair, call it
Pharaoh’s throne. Rounded and polished by primeval floods and
emblazoned with royal cartouches of extraordinary size, it seems to have
attracted the attention of pilgrims in all ages. Kings, conquerors,
priests, travelers, have covered it with records of victories, of
religious festivals, of prayers, and offerings, and acts of adoration.
Some of these are older by a thousand years and more than the temples on
the island opposite.
Such, roughly summed up, are the fourfold surroundings of Philæ--the
cataract, the river, the desert, the environing mo
untains. The Holy
Island--beautiful, lifeless, a thing of the far past, with all its
wealth of sculpture, painting, history, poetry, tradition--sleeps, or
seems to sleep, in the midst.
It is one of the world’s famous landscapes, and it deserves its fame.
Every sketcher sketches it; every traveler describes it. Yet it is just
one of those places of which the objective and subjective features are
so equally balanced that it bears putting neither into words nor colors.
The sketcher must perforce leave out the atmosphere of association which
informs his subject; and the writer’s description is at best no better
than a catalogue raisonnée.