DISCOVERIES AT ABOU SIMBEL.
We came back to find a fleet of dahabeeyahs ranged along the shore at
Abou Simbel and no less than three sketching-tents in occupation of the
ground. One of these, which happened to be pitched on the precise spot
vacated by our painter, was courteously shifted to make way for the
original tenant; and in the course of a couple of hours we were all as
much at home as if we had not been away for half a day.
Here, meanwhile, was our old acquaintance--the Fostât, with her party of
gentlemen; yonder the Zenobia, all ladies; the little Alice, with Sir J.
C---- and Mr. W---- on board; the Sirena, flying with stars and stripes;
the Mansoorah, bound presently for the Fayûm. To these were next day
added the Ebers, with a couple of German savants; and the Bagstones,
welcome back from Wady Halfeh.
What with arrivals and departures, exchange of visits, exhibitions of
sketches and sociabilities of various kinds, we had now quite a gay
time. The Philæ gave a dinner-party and fantasia under the very noses of
the colossi and every evening there was drumming and howling enough
among the assembled crews to raise the ghosts of Rameses and all his
queens. This was pleasant enough while it lasted; but when the strangers
dropped off one by one and at the end of three days we were once more
alone, I think we were not sorry. The place was, somehow, too solemn for
“Singing, laughing, ogling and all that.”
It was by comparing our watches with those of the travelers whom we met
at Abou Simbel, that we now found out how hopelessly our timekeepers and
theirs had gone astray. We had been altering ours continually ever
since leaving Cairo; but the sun was as continually putting them wrong
again, so that we had lost all count of the true time. The first words
with which we now greeted a new-comer were: “Do you know what o’clock it
is?” To which the stranger as invariably replied that it was the very
question he was himself about to ask. The confusion became at last so
great that, finding that we had about eleven hours of day to thirteen of
night, we decided to establish an arbitrary canon; so we called it seven
when the sun rose and six when it set, which answered every purpose.
It was between two and four o’clock, according to this time of ours,
that the southern cross was now visible every morning. It is undoubtedly
best seen at Abou Simbel. The river is here very wide and just where the
constellation rises there is an opening in the mountains on the eastern
bank, so that these four fine stars, though still low in the heavens,
are seen in a free space of sky. If they make, even so, a less
magnificent appearance than one has been led to expect, it is probably
because we see them from too low a point of view. To say that a
constellation is foreshortened sounds absurd; yet that is just what is
the matter with the Southern Cross at Abou Simbel. Viewed at an angle of
about thirty degrees, it necessarily looks distort and dim. If seen
burning in the zenith, it would no doubt come up to the level of its
reputation.
It was now the fifth day after our return from Wady Halfeh, when an
event occurred that roused us to an unwonted pitch of excitement and
kept us at high pressure throughout the rest of our time.
The day was Sunday; the date February 16, 1874; the time, according to
Philæ reckoning, about eleven A.M., when the painter, enjoying his
seventh day’s holiday after his own fashion, went strolling about among
the rocks. He happened to turn his steps southward and, passing the
front of the great temple, climbed to the top of a little shapeless
mound of fallen cliff and sand and crude-brick wall, just against the
corner where the mountain slopes down to the river. Immediately round
this corner, looking almost due south, and approachable only by a narrow
ledge of rock, are two votive tablets, sculptured and painted, both of
the thirty-eighth year of Rameses II. We had seen these from the river
as we came back from Wady Halfeh, and had remarked how fine the view
must be from that point. Beyond the fact that they are colored and that
the color upon them is still bright, there is nothing remarkable about
these inscriptions. There are many such at Abou Simbel. Our painter did
not, therefore, come here to examine the tablets; he was attracted
solely by the view.
Turning back presently his attention was arrested by some much mutilated
sculptures on the face of the rock, a few yards nearer the south
buttress of the temple, he had seen these sculptures before--so, indeed,
had I, when wandering about that first day in search of a point of
view--without especially remarking them. The relief was low, the
execution slight; and the surface so broken away that only a few
confused outlines remained.
The thing that now caught the painter’s eye, however, was a long crack
running transversely down the face of the rock. It was such a crack as
might have been caused, one would say, by blasting.
He stooped--cleared the sand away a little with his hand--observed that
the crack widened--poked in the point of his stick and found that it
penetrated to a depth of two or three feet. Even then it seemed to him
to stop, not because it encountered any obstacle, but because the crack
was not wide enough to admit the thick end of the stick.
This surprised him. No mere fault in the natural rock, he thought, would
go so deep. He scooped away a little more sand; and still the cleft
widened. He introduced the stick a second time. It was a long
palm-stick, like an alpenstock, and it measured about five feet in
length. When he probed the cleft with it this second time it went in
freely up to where he held it in his hand--that is to say, to a depth of
quite four feet.
Convinced now that there was some hidden cavity in the rock, he
carefully examined the surface. There were yet visible a few
hieroglyphic characters and part of two cartouches, as well as some
battered outlines of what had once been figures. The heads of these
figures were gone (the face of the rock, with whatever may have been
sculptured upon it, having come away bodily at this point), while from
the waist downward they were hidden under the sand. Only some hands and
arms, in short, could be made out.
They were the hands and arms, apparently, of four figures; two in the
center of the composition and two at the extremities. The two center
ones, which seemed to be back to back, probably represented gods; the
outer ones, worshipers.
All at once it flashed upon the painter that he had seen this kind of a
group many a time before--_and generally over a doorway_.
Feeling sure now that he was on the brink of a discovery he came back,
fetched away Salame and Mehemet Ali, and, without saying a syllable to
any one, set to work with these two to scrape away the sand at the spot
where the crack widened.
Meanwhile, the luncheon-bell having rung thrice, we concluded that the
painter had rambled off somewhere into the desert, and so sat down
without him. Toward the close of the meal, however, came a penciled
note, the contents of which ran as follows:
“Pray come immediately--I have found the entrance to a tomb. Please
send some sandwiches. A. M’C----.”
To follow the messenger at once to the scene of action was the general
impulse. In less than ten minutes we were there, asking breathless
questions, peeping in through the fast-widening aperture and helping to
clear away the sand.
All that Sunday afternoon, heedless of possible sunstroke, unconscious
of fatigue, we toiled upon our hands and knees, as for bare life, under
the burning sun. We had all the crew up, working like tigers. Every one
helped; even the dragoman and the two maids. More than once, when we
paused for a moment’s breathing-space, we said to each other: “If those
at home could see us what would they say?”
And now, more than ever, we felt the need of implements. With a spade or
two and a wheelbarrow we could have done wonders; but with only one
small fire-shovel, a birch broom, a couple of charcoal baskets, and
about twenty pairs of hands, we were poor indeed. What was wanted in
means, however, was made up in method. Some scraped away the sand; some
gathered it into baskets; some carried the baskets to the edge of the
cliff and emptied them into the river. The idle man distinguished
himself by scooping out a channel where the slope was steepest; which
greatly facilitated the work. Emptied down this chute and kept
continually going, the sand poured off in a steady stream like water.
Meanwhile the opening grew rapidly larger. When we first came up--that
is, when the painter and the two sailors had been working on it for
about an hour--we found a hole scarcely as large as one’s hand, through
which it was just possible to catch a dim glimpse of painted walls
within. By sunset the top of the doorway was laid bare, and where the
crack ended in a large triangular fracture there was an aperture about a
foot and a half square, into which Mehemet Ali was the first to squeeze
his way. We passed him in a candle and a box of matches; but he came out
again directly, saying that it was a most beautiful _birbeh_, and quite
light within.
The writer wriggled in next. She found herself looking down from the top
of a sand-slope into a small square chamber. This sand-drift, which here
rose to within a foot and a half of the top of the doorway, was heaped
to the ceiling in the corner behind the door, and thence sloped steeply
down, completely covering the floor. There was light enough to see every
detail distinctly--the painted frieze running round just under the
ceiling; the bas-relief sculptures on the walls, gorgeous with unfaded
color; the smooth sand, pitted near the top, where Mehemet Ali had
trodden, but undisturbed elsewhere by human foot; the great gap in the
middle of the ceiling, where the rock had given way; the fallen
fragments on the floor, now almost buried in sand.
Satisfied that the place was absolutely fresh and untouched, the writer
crawled out, and the others, one by by one, crawled in. When each had
seen it in turn the opening was barricaded for the night; the sailors
being forbidden to enter it lest they should injure the decorations.
That evening was held a solemn council, whereat it was decided that
Talhamy and Reïs Hassan should go to-morrow to the nearest village,
there to engage the services of fifty able-bodied natives. With such
help, we calculated that the place might easily be cleared in two days.
If it was a tomb we hoped to discover the entrance to the mummy pit
below; if but a small chapel, or speos, like those at Ibrim, we should
at least have the satisfaction of seeing all that it contained in the
way of sculptures and inscriptions.
This was accordingly done; but we worked again next morning just the
same, till midday. Our native contingent, numbering about forty men,
then made their appearance in a rickety old boat, the bottom of which
was half-full of water.
They had been told to bring implements; and they did bring such as they
had--two broken oars to dig with, some baskets, and a number of little
slips of planking which, being tied between two pieces of rope and drawn
along the surface, acted as scrapers and were useful as far as they
went. Squatting in double file from the entrance of the speos to the
edge of the cliff, and to the burden of a rude chant propelling these
improvised scrapers, the men began by clearing a path to the doorway.
This gave them work enough for the afternoon. At sunset, when they
dispersed, the path was scooped out to a depth of four feet, like a
miniature railway cutting between embankments of sand.
Next morning came the sheik in person with his two sons and a following
of a hundred men. This was so many more than we had bargained for that
we at once foresaw a scheme to extort money. The sheik, however, proved
to be that same Rashwan Ebn Hassan el Kashef, by whom the happy couple
had been so hospitably entertained about a fortnight before; we
therefore received him with honor, invited him to luncheon, and, hoping
to get the work done quickly, set the men on in gangs under the
superintendence of Reïs Hassan and the head sailor.
By noon the door was cleared down to the threshold, and the whole south
and west walls were laid bare to the floor.
We now found that the débris which blocked the north wall and the center
of the floor was not, as we had at first supposed, a pile of fallen
fragments, but one solid bowlder which had come down bodily from above.
To remove this was impossible. We had no tools to cut or break it and it
was both wider and higher than the doorway. Even to clear away the sand
which rose behind it to the ceiling would have taken a long time and
have caused inevitable injury to the paintings around. Already the
brilliancy of the color was marred where the men had leaned their
backs, all wet with perspiration, against the walls.
Seeing, therefore, that three-fourths of the decorations were now
uncovered, and that behind the fallen block there appeared to be no
subject of great size or importance, we made up our minds to carry the
work no further.
Meanwhile, we had great fun at luncheon with our Nubian sheik--a tall,
well-featured man with much natural dignity of manner. He was well
dressed, too, and wore a white turban most symmetrically folded; a white
vest buttoned to the throat; a long, loose robe of black serge; an outer
robe of fine black cloth with hanging sleeves and a hood; and on his
feet, white stockings and scarlet morocco shoes. When brought face to
face with a knife and fork his embarrassment was great. He was, it
seemed, too grand a personage to feed himself. He must have a “feeder;”
as the great men of the middle ages had a “taster.” Talhamy accordingly,
being promoted to this office, picked out choice bits of mutton and
chicken with his fingers, dipped pieces of bread in gravy and put every
morsel into our guest’s august mouth, as if the said guest were a baby.
The sweets being served, the little lady, L---- and the writer took him
in hand and fed him with all kinds of jams and preserved fruits.
Enchanted with these attentions, the poor man eat till he could eat no
longer; then laid his hand pathetically over the region next his heart
and cried for mercy. After luncheon he smoked his chibouque and coffee
was served. Our coffee did not please him. He tasted it, but immediately
returned the cup, telling the waiter with a grimace, that the berries
were burned and the coffee weak. When, however, we apologized for it, he
protested with oriental insincerity that it was excellent.
To amuse him was easy, for he was interested in everything; in L----’s
field-glass, in the painter’s accordion, in the piano, and the lever
corkscrew. With some eau-de-cologne he was also greatly charmed, rubbing
it on his beard and inhaling it with closed eyes, in a kind of rapture.
To make talk was, as usual, the great difficulty. When he had told us
that his eldest son was Governor of Derr; that his youngest was five
years of age; that the dates of Derr were better than the dates of Wady
Halfeh; and that the Nubian people were very poor, he was at the end of
his topics. Finally, he requested us to convey a letter from him to Lord
D----, who had entertained him on board his dahabeeyah the year before.
Being asked if he had brought his letter with him, he shook his head,
saying: “Your dragoman shall write it.”
So paper and a reed pen were produced and Talhamy wrote to dictation as
follows:
“God have care of you. I hope you are well. I am sorry not to have
had a letter from you since you were here. Your brother and friend,
“RASHWAN EBN HASSAN EL KASHEF.”
A model letter this; brief and to the point.
Our urbane and gentlemanly sheik was, however, not quite so charming
when it came to settling time. We had sent at first for fifty men, and
the price agreed upon was five piasters, or about a shilling English,
for each man per day. In answer to this call, there first came forty men
for half a day; then a hundred men for a whole day, or what was called a
whole day; so making a total of six pounds due for wages. But the
descendants of the Kashefs would hear of nothing so commonplace as the
simple fulfillment of a straightforward contract. he demanded full pay
for a hundred men for two whole days, a gun for himself, and a liberal
backshîsh in cash. Finding he had asked more than he had any chance of
getting, he conceded the question of wages, but stood out for a game-bag
and a pair of pistols. Finally, he was obliged to be content with the
six pounds for his men, and for himself two pots of jam, two boxes of
sardines, a bottle of eau-de-cologne, a box of pills, and half a
sovereign.
By four o’clock he and his followers were gone, and we once more had the
place to ourselves. So long as they were there it was impossible to do
anything, but now, for the first time, we fairly entered into possession
of our newly found treasure.
All the rest of that day, and all the next day, we spent at work in and
about the speos. L---- and the little lady took their books and knitting
there, and made a little drawing-room of it. The writer copied paintings
and inscriptions. The idle man and the painter took measurements and
surveyed the ground round about, especially endeavoring to make out the
plan of certain fragments of wall, the foundations of which were yet
traceable.
A careful examination of these ruins, and a little clearing of the sand
here and there, led to further discoveries. They found that the speos
had been approached by a large outer hall built of sun-dried brick, with
one principal entrance facing the Nile, and two side entrances facing
northward. The floor was buried deep in sand and débris, but enough of
the walls remained above the surface to show that the ceiling had been
vaulted and the side entrances arched.
The southern boundary wall of this hall, when the surface sand was
removed, appeared to be no less than twenty feet in thickness. This was
not in itself so wonderful, there being instances of ancient Egyptian
crude-brick walls which measure eighty feet in thickness;[127] but it
was astounding as compared with the north, east, and west walls, which
measured only three feet. Deeming it impossible that this mass could be
solid throughout, the idle man set to work with a couple of sailors to
probe the center part of it, and it soon became evident that there was a
hollow space about three feet in width running due east and west down
not quite exactly the middle of the structure.
All at once the idle man thrust his fingers into a skull!
This was such an amazing and unexpected incident that for the moment he
said nothing, but went on quietly displacing the sand and feeling his
way under the surface. The next instant his hand came in contact with
the edge of a clay bowl, which he carefully withdrew. It measured about
four inches in diameter, was hand-molded, and full of caked sand. He now
proclaimed his discoveries and all ran to help in the work. Soon a
second and smaller skull was turned up, then another bowl, and then,
just under the place from which the bowls were taken, the bones of two
skeletons, all detached, perfectly desiccated, and apparently complete.
The remains were those of a child and a small grown person--probably a
woman. The teeth were sound; the bones wonderfully delicate and brittle.
As for the little skull (which had fallen apart at the sutures), it was
pure and fragile in texture as the cup of a water-lily.
We laid the bones aside as we found them, examining every handful of
sand, in the hope of discovering something that might throw light upon
the burial. But in vain. We found not a shred of clothing, not a bead,
not a coin, not the smallest vestige of anything that might help one to
judge whether the interment had taken place a hundred years ago or a
thousand.
We now called up all the crew, and went on excavating downward into what
seemed to be a long and narrow vault measuring some fifteen feet by
three.
After-reflection convinced us that we had stumbled upon a chance Nubian
grave, and that the bowls (which at first we absurdly dignified with the
name of cinerary urns) were but the usual water-bowls placed at the
heads of the dead. But we were in no mood for reflection at the time. We
made sure that the speos was a mortuary chapel; that the vault was a
vertical pit leading to a sepulchral chamber; and that at the bottom of
it we should find--who could tell what? Mummies, perhaps, and
sarcophagi, and funerary statuettes, and jewels, and papyri and wonders
without end! That these uncared-for bones should be laid in the mouth of
such a pit, scarcely occurred to us as an incongruity. Supposing them to
be Nubian remains, what then? If a modern Nubian at the top, why not an
ancient Egyptian at the bottom?
As the work of excavation went on, however, the vault was found to be
entered by a steep inclined plane. Then the inclined plane turned out to
be a flight of much worn and very shallow stairs. These led down to a
small square landing, some twelve feet below the surface, from which
landing an arched doorway[128] and passage opened into the fore-court of
the speos. Our sailors had great difficulty in excavating this part, in
consequence of the weight of superincumbent sand and débris on the side
next the speos. By shoring up the ground, however, they were enabled
completely to clear the landing, which was curiously paved with cones of
rude pottery like the bottoms of amphoræ. These cones, of which we took
out some twenty eight or thirty, were not in the least like the
celebrated funerary cones found so abundantly at Thebes. They bore no
stamp, and were much shorter and more lumpy in shape. Finally, the cones
being all removed, we came to a compact and solid floor of baked clay.
The painter, meanwhile, had also been at work. Having traced the circuit
and drawn out a ground-plan, he came to the conclusion that the whole
mass adjoining the southern wall of the speos was in fact composed of
the ruins of a pylon, the walls of which were seven feet in thickness,
built in regular string-courses of molded brick, and finished at the
angles with the usual _torus_, or round molding. The superstructure,
with its chambers, passages, and top cornice, was gone; and this part
with which we were now concerned was merely the basement, and included
the bottom of the staircase.
The painter’s ground-plan demolished all our hopes at one fell swoop.
The vault was a vault no longer. The staircase led to no sepulchral
chamber. The brick floor had no secret entrance. Our mummies melted into
thin air, and we were left with no excuse for carrying on the
excavations. We were mortally disappointed. In vain we told ourselves
that the discovery of a large brick pylon, the existence of which had
been unsuspected by preceding travelers, was an event of greater
importance than the finding of a tomb. We had set our hearts on the
tomb; and I am afraid we cared less than we ought for the pylon.
Having traced thus far the course of the excavations and the way in
which one discovery led step by step to another, I must now return to
the speos, and, as accurately as I can, describe it, not only from my
notes made on the spot, but by the light of such observations as I
afterward made among structures of the same style and period. I must,
however, premise that, not being able to go inside while the excavators
were in occupation, and remaining but one whole day at Abou Simbel after
the work was ended, I had but a short time at my disposal. I would
gladly have made colored copies of all the wall-paintings; but this was
impossible. I therefore was obliged to be content with transcribing the
inscriptions and sketching a few of the more important subjects.
The rock-cut chamber which I have hitherto described as a speos, and
which we at first believed to be a tomb, was in fact neither the one or
the other. It was the adytum of a partly built, partly excavated
monument coeval in date with the great temple. In certain points of
design this monument resembles the contemporary speos of Bayt-el-Welly.
It is evident, for instance, that the outer halls of both were
originally vaulted; and the much mutilated sculptures over the doorway
of the excavated chamber at Abou Simbel are almost identical in subject
and treatment with those over the entrance to the excavated parts of
Bayt-el-Welly. As regards general conception, the Abou Simbel monument
comes under the same head with the contemporary Temples of Derr, Gerf
Hossayn, and Wady Sabooah; being in a mixed style which combines
excavation with construction. This style seems to have been peculiarly
in favor during the reign of Rameses II.
Situated at the southeastern angle of the rock, a little way beyond the
façade of the great temple, this rock-cut adytum and hall of entrance
face southeast by east, and command much the same view that is commanded
higher up by the Temple of Hathor. The adytum, or excavated speos,
measures twenty-one feet two and one-half inches in breadth by fourteen
feet eight inches in length. The height from floor to ceiling is about
twelve feet. The doorway measures four feet three and one-half inches in
width; and the outer recess for the door-frame, five feet. Two large
circle holes, one in the threshold and the other in the lintel, mark the
place of the pivot on which the door once swung.
It is not very easy to measure the outer hall in its present ruined and
encumbered state; but as nearly as we could judge, its dimensions are as
follows: Length, twenty-five feet; width, twenty-two and one-half feet;
width of principal entrance facing the Nile, six feet; width of two side
entrances, four feet and six feet respectively; thickness of crude-brick
walls, three feet. Engaged in the brickwork on either side of the
principal entrance to this hall are two stone door-jambs; and some six
or eight feet in front of these there originally stood two stone hawks
on hieroglyphed pedestals. One of these hawks we found _in situ_, the
other lay some little distance off, and the painter (suspecting nothing
of these after-revelations) had used it as a post to which to tie one
of the main ropes of his sketching-tent. A large hieroglyphed slab,
which I take to have formed part of the door, lay overturned against the
side of the pylon some few yards nearer the river.
[Illustration:
1. Wall of pylon.
2. Square landing.
3. Arched doorway and passage leading to vaulted hall.
4. Walls of outer hall or pronaos.
5. Door-jambs.
6. Stone hawks on pedestals.
7. Torus of pylon.
8. Arched entrances in north wall of pronaos.
]
As far as the adytum and outer hall are concerned, the accompanying
ground-plan--which is in part founded on my own measurements, and in
part borrowed from the ground-plan drawn out by the painter--may be
accepted as tolerably correct. But with regard to the pylon, I can only
say with certainty that the central staircase is three feet in width,
and that the walls on each side of it are seven feet in thickness. So
buried is it in débris and sand, that even to indicate where the
building ends and the rubbish begins at the end next the Nile, is
impossible. This part is, therefore, left indefinite in the ground-plan.
[Illustration: PATTERN OF CORNICE.]
So far as we could see, there was no stone revêtement upon the inner
side of the walls of the pronaos. If anything of the kind ever existed,
some remains of it would probably be found by thoroughly clearing the
area; an interesting enterprise for any who may have leisure to
undertake it.
I have now to speak of the decorations of the adytum, the walls of
which, from immediately under the ceiling to within three feet of the
floor, are covered with religious subjects elaborately sculptured in
bas-relief, coated as usual with a thin film of stucco and colored with
a richness for which I know no parallel, except in the tomb of Seti
I[129] at Thebes. Above the level of the drifted sand this color was as
brilliant in tone and as fresh in surface as on the day when it was
transferred to those walls from the palette of the painter. All below
that level, however, was dimmed and deranged.
The ceiling is surrounded by a frieze of cartouches supported by sacred
asps; each cartouche, with its supporters, being divided from the next
by a small sitting figure. These figures, in other respects uniform,
wear the symbolic heads of various gods--the cow-head of Hathor, the
ibis-head of Thoth, the hawk-head of Horus, the jackal-head of Anubis,
etc. The cartouches contain the ordinary style and title of Rameses II
(Ra-user-ma Sotep-en-Ra Rameses Mer-Amen), and are surmounted by a row
of sundisks. Under each sitting god is depicted the phonetic hieroglyph
signifying _Mer_, or beloved. By means of this device, the whole frieze
assumes the character of a connected legend and describes the king not
only as beloved of Amen, but as Rameses beloved of Hathor, of Thoth, of
Horus--in short, of each god depicted in the series.
These gods excepted, the frieze is almost identical in design with the
frieze in the first hall of the great temple.
WEST WALL.[130]
[Illustration: STANDARD OF HORUS
AROERIS.]
The west, or principal wall, facing the entrance, is divided into two
large subjects, each containing two figures the size of life. In the
division to the right, Rameses II worships Ra; in the division to the
left, he worships Amen-Ra; thus following the order observed in the
other two temples, where the subjects relating to Amen-Ra occupy the
left half and the subjects relating to Ra occupy the right half of each
structure. An upright ensign surmounted by an exquisitely drawn and
colored head of Horus Aroëris separates these two subjects.[131] In the
subject to the right, Rameses, wearing the red and white pschent,
presents an offering of two small aryballos vases without handles. The
vases are painted blue and are probably intended to represent lapis
lazuli; a substance much prized by the ancient Egyptians and known to
them by the name of _khesbet_. The king’s necklace, armlets and
bracelets are also blue. Ra sits enthroned, holding in one hand the
“ankh,” or crux ansata, emblem of life, and in the other the
greyhound-headed[132] scepter of the [Illustration: anch] gods. He is
hawk-headed and crowned with the sun-disk and asp. His flesh is painted
bright Venetian red. He wears a pectoral ornament; a rich necklace of
alternate vermilion and black drops; and a golden-yellow belt studded
with red and black stones. The throne, which stands on a blue platform,
is painted in stripes of red, blue and white. The platform is decorated
with a row of gold-colored stars and “ankh” emblems picked out with red.
At the foot of this platform, between the god and the king, stands a
small altar, on which are placed the usual blue lotus with red stalk and
a spouted libation vessel.
To the left of the Horus ensign, seated back to back with Ra upon a
similar throne, sits Amen-Ra--of all Egyptian gods the most terrible to
look upon--with his blue-black complexion, his corselet of golden
chain-armor, and his head-dress of towering plumes.[133] Here the
wonderful preservation of the surface enabled one to see by what means
the ancient artists were wont to produce this singular blue-black effect
of color. It was evident that the flesh of the god had first been laid
in with dead black, and then colored over with a dry, powdery
cobalt-blue, through which the black remained partially visible. He
carries in one hand the ankh, and in the other the greyhound-headed
scepter. To him advances the king, his right hand uplifted, and in his
left a small basket containing a votive statuette of Ma, the goddess of
truth and justice. Ma is, however, shorn of her distinctive feather, and
holds the jackal-headed staff instead of the customary crux ansata.
As portraiture, there is not much to be said for any of these heads of
Rameses II; but the features bear a certain resemblance to the
well-known profile of the king; the action of the figure is graceful and
animated; and the drawing displays in all its purity the firm and
flowing line of Egyptian draughtsmanship.
[Illustration: RAMESES II OF SPEOS.]
The dress of the king is very rich in color; the mitershaped casque
being of a vivid cobalt-blue[134] picked out with gold color; the belt,
necklace, armlets, and bracelets, of gold, studded apparently with
precious stones; the apron, green and gold. Over the king’s head hovers
the sacred vulture, emblem of Maut, holding in her claws a kind of
scutcheon upon which is depicted the crux ansata.
SOUTH WALL.
The subjects represented on this wall are as follows:
1. Rameses, life-size, presiding over a table of offerings. The king
wears upon his head the _klaft_, or head-cloth, striped gold and white
and decorated with the uræus. The table is piled in the usual way with
flesh, fowl and flowers. The surface being here quite perfect, the
details of these objects are seen to be rendered with surprising
minuteness. Even the tiny black feather-stumps of the plucked geese are
given with the fidelity of Chinese art; while a red gash in the breast
of each shows in what way it was slain for the sacrifice. The loaves are
shaped precisely like the so-called “cottage loaves” of to-day and have
the same little depression in the top, made by the baker’s finger.
Lotus and papyrus blossoms in elaborate bouquet-holders crown the pile.
2. Two tripods of light and elegant design, containing flowers.
3. The bari, or sacred boat, painted gold-color, with the usual veil
half-drawn across the naos, or shrine; the prow of the boat being richly
carved, decorated with the uta[135] or symbolic eye and preceded by a
large fan of ostrich feathers. The boat is peopled with small black
figures, one of which kneels at the stern; while a sphinx couchant, with
black body and human head, keeps watch at the prow. The sphinx
symbolizes the king.
On this wall, in a space between the sacred boat and the figure of
Rameses occurs the following inscription, sculptured in high relief and
elaborately colored:
[Illustration: heiroglphics]
NOTE.--This inscription reads according to the numbering of the columns,
beginning at 1 and reading to the right; then resuming at 7 and reading
to the left. The spaces lettered A B in the lowest figure of column 5
are filled in with the two cartouches of Rameses II.
[Illustration]
TRANSLATION.[136]
Said by Thoth, the Lord of Sesennu,[137] [residing] in Amenheri:[138] “I
give to thee an everlasting sovereignty over the two countries, O son of
[my] body, beloved, Ra-user-ma Sotep-en-Ra, acting as propitiator of thy
_Ka_. I give to thee myriads of festivals of Rameses, beloved of Amen,
Ra-user-ma Sotep-en-Ra, as prince of every place where the sun-disk
revolves. The beautiful living god, maker of beautiful things for [his]
father Thoth, Lord of Sesennu [residing] in Amenheri. He made mighty and
beautiful monuments forever facing the eastern horizon of heaven.”
* * * * *
The meaning of which is that Thoth, addressing Rameses II, then living
and reigning, promises him a long life and many anniversaries of his
jubilee,[139] in return for the works made in his (Thoth’s) honor at
Abou Simbel and elsewhere.
NORTH WALL.
At the upper end of this wall is depicted a life-size female figure
wearing an elaborate blue head-dress surmounted by a disk and two
ostrich feathers. She holds in her right hand the ankh, and in her left
the jackal-headed scepter. This not being the scepter of a goddess and
the head-dress resembling that of the queen as represented on the façade
of the Temple of Hathor, I conclude we have here a portrait of
Nefertari corresponding to the portrait of Rameses on the opposite wall.
Near her stands a table of offerings, on which, among other objects, are
placed four vases of a rich blue color traversed by bands of yellow.
They perhaps represent the kind of glass known as the false
murrhine.[140] Each of these vases contains an object like a pine, the
ground-color of which is deep yellow, patterned over with scale-like
subdivisions in vermilion. We took them to represent grains of maize
pyramidially piled.
Lastly, a pendant to that on the opposite wall, comes the sacred bari.
It is, however, turned the reverse way, with its prow toward the east;
and it rests upon an altar, in the center of which are the cartouches of
Rameses II and a small hieroglyphic inscription signifying: “Beloved by
Amen-Ra, king of the gods, resident in the land of Kenus.”[141]
Beyond this point, at the end nearest the northeast corner of the
chamber, the piled sand conceals whatever else the wall may contain in
the way of decoration.
EAST WALL.
If the east wall is decorated like the others (which may be taken for
granted), its tableaux and inscriptions are hidden behind the sand which
here rises to the ceiling. The doorway also occurs in this wall,
occupying a space four feet three and one-half inches in width on the
inner side.
One of the most interesting incidents connected with the excavation of
this little adytum remains yet to be told.
I have described the female figure at the upper end of the north wall
and how she holds in her right hand the ankh and in her left hand the
jackal-headed scepter. The hand that holds the ankh hangs by her side;
the hand that holds the scepter is half-raised. Close under this
upraised hand, at a height of between three and four feet from the
actual level of the floor, there were visible upon the un-colored
surface of the original stucco several lines of free-hand writing. This
writing was laid on, apparently, with the brush, and the ink, if ever it
had been black, had now become brown. Five long lines and three shorter
lines were uninjured. Below these were traces of other fragmentary
lines, almost obliterated by the sand.
We knew at once that this quaint faint writing must be in either the
hieratic or demotic hand. We could distinguish, or thought we could
distinguish, in its vague outlines of forms already familiar to us in
the hieroglyphs--abstracts, as it were, of birds and snakes and boats.
There could be no doubt, at all events, that the thing was curious; and
we set it down in our own minds as the writing of either the architect
or decorator of the place.
Anxious to make, if possible, an exact fac-simile of this inscription,
the writer copied it three times. The last and best of these copies is
here reproduced in photolithography, with a translation from the pen of
the late Dr. Birch. (See p. 317.) We all know how difficult it is to
copy correctly in a language of which one is ignorant; and the tiniest
curve or dot omitted is fatal to the sense of these ancient characters.
In the present instance, notwithstanding the care with which the
transcript was made, there must still have been errors; for it has been
found undecipherable in places; and in these places there occur
inevitable lacunæ.
Enough, however, remains to show that the lines were written, not as we
had supposed by the artist, but by a distinguished visitor, whose name
unfortunately is illegible. This visitor was a son of the Prince of
Kush, or as it is literally written, the Royal Son of Kush; that being
the official title of the Governor of Ethiopia.[142] As there were
certainly eight governors of Ethiopia during the reign of Rameses II
(and perhaps more, whose names have not reached us), it is impossible
even to hazard a guess at the parentage of our visitor. We gather,
however, that he was sent hither to construct a road; also that he built
transport boats; and that he exercised priestly functions in that part
of the temple which was inaccessible to all but dignitaries of the
sacerdotal order.
[Illustration]
HIERATIC INSCRIPTION,
NORTH WALL OF SPEOS.
_Translated by S. Birch, Esq., LL.D., etc._
... thy son having ... thou hast conquered the worlds at once Ammon
Ra-Harmachis,[143] the god at the first time,[144] who gives life,
health, and a time of many praises to the groom ... of the Khen,[145]
son of the Royal son of Cush,[146] Opener of the road, Maker of
transport boats, Giver of instructions to his lord ... Amenshaa....
Site, inscriptions, and decorations taken into account, there yet
remains this question to be answered:
What was the nature and character of the monument just described?
It adjoined a pylon, and, as we have seen, consisted of a vaulted
pronaos in crude brick, and an adytum excavated in the rock. On the
walls of this adytum are depicted various gods with their attributes,
votive offerings, and portraits of the king performing acts of
adoration. The bari, or ark, is also represented upon the north and
south walls of the adytum. These are unquestionably the ordinary
features of a temple, or chapel.
On the other hand, there must be noted certain objections to these
premises. It seemed to us that the pylon was built first and that the
south boundary wall of the pronaos, being a subsequent erection, was
supported against the slope of the pylon as far as where the spring of
the vaulting began. Besides which, the pylon would have been a
disproportionately large adjunct to a little monument, the entire length
of which, from the doorway of the pronaos to the west wall of the
adytum, was less than forty-seven feet. We therefore concluded that the
pylon belonged to the large temple and was erected at the side instead
of in front of the façade, on account of the very narrow space between
the mountain and the river.[147]
The pylon at Korn Ombo is, probably for the same reason, placed at the
side of the temple and on a lower level. To those who might object that
a brick pylon would hardly be attached to a temple of the first class, I
would observe that the remains of a similar pylon are still to be seen
at the top of what was once the landing-place leading to the great
temple at Wady Halfeh. It may, therefore, be assumed that this little
monument, although connected with the pylon by means of a doorway and
staircase, was an excrescence of later date.
Being an excrescence, however, was it, in the strict sense of the word,
a temple?
Even this seems to be doubtful. In the adytum there is no trace of any
altar--no fragment of stone dais or sculptured image--no granite shrine,
as at Philæ--no sacred recess, as at Denderah. The standard of Horus
Aroëris, engraved on page 311, occupies the center place upon the wall
facing the entrance, and occupies it, not as a tutelary divinity, but as
a decorative device to separate the two large subjects already
described. Again, the gods represented in these subjects are Ra and
Amen-Ra, the tutelary gods of the great temple; but if we turn to the
dedicatory inscription on page 313 we find that Thoth, whose image never
occurs at all upon the walls[148] (unless as one of the little gods in
the cornice), is really the presiding deity of the place. It is he who
welcomes Rameses and his offerings; who acknowledges the “glory” given
to him by his beloved son; and who, in return for the great and good
monuments erected in his honor, promises the king that he shall be given
“an everlasting sovereignty over the two countries.”
Now Thoth was, _par excellence_, the God of Letters. He is styled the
Lord of Divine Words; the Lord of the Sacred Writings; the Spouse of
Truth. He personifies the Divine Intelligence. He is the patron of art
and science; and he is credited with the invention of the alphabet. In
one of the most interesting of Champollion’s letters from Thebes,[149]
he relates how, in the fragmentary ruins of the western extremity of the
Ramesseum, he found a doorway adorned with the figures of Thoth and
Safek; Thoth as the God of Literature, and Safek inscribed with the
title of Lady President of the Hall of Books. At Denderah there is a
chamber especially set apart for the sacred writings, and its walls are
sculptured all over with a catalogue raisonnée of the manuscript
treasures of the temple. At Edfu, a kind of closet built up between two
of the pillars of the hall of assembly was reserved for the same
purpose. Every temple, in short, had its library; and as the Egyptian
books--being written on papyrus or leather, rolled up, and stored in
coffers--occupied but little space, the rooms appropriated to this
purpose were generally small.
It was Dr. Birch’s opinion that our little monument may have been the
library of the Great Temple of Abou Simbel. This being the case, the
absence of an altar, and the presence of Ra and Amen-Ra in the two
principal tableaux, are sufficiently accounted for. The tutelary deity
of the great temple and the patron deity of Rameses II would naturally
occupy, in this subsidiary structure, the same places that they occupy
in the principal one; while the library, though in one sense the domain
of Thoth, is still under the protection of the gods of the temple to
which it is an adjunct.
I do not believe we once asked ourselves how it came to pass that the
place had remained hidden all these ages long; yet its very freshness
proved how early it must have been abandoned. If it had been open in the
time of the successors of Rameses II, they would probably, as elsewhere,
have interpolated inscriptions and cartouches, or have substituted their
own cartouches for those of the founder. If it had been open in the time
of the Ptolemies and Cæsars, traveling Greeks and learned Romans and
strangers from Byzantium and the cities of Asia Minor would have cut
their names on the door-jambs and scribbled ex-votos on the walls. If it
had been open in the days of Nubian Christianity, the sculptures would
have been coated with mud and washed with lime and daubed with pious
caricatures of St. George and the holy family. But we found it
intact--as perfectly preserved as a tomb that had lain hidden under the
rocky bed of the desert. For these reasons I am inclined to think that
it became inaccessible shortly after it was completed. There can be
little doubt that a wave of earthquake passed, during the reign of
Rameses II, along the left bank of the Nile, beginning possibly above
Wady Halfeh, and extending at least as far north as Gerf Hossayn. Such a
shock might have wrecked the temple at Wady Halfeh, as it dislocated the
pylon of Wady Sabooah, and shook the built-out porticoes of Derr and
Gerf Hossayn; which last four temples, as they do not, I believe, show
signs of having been added to by later Pharaohs, may be supposed to have
been abandoned in consequence of the ruin which had befallen them. Here,
at all events, it shook the mountain of the great temple, cracked one of
the Osiride columns of the first hall,[150] shattered one of the four
great colossi, more or less injured the other three, flung down the
great brick pylon, reduced the pronaos of the library to a heap of ruin,
and not only brought down part of the ceiling of the excavated adytum,
but rent open a vertical fissure in the rock some twenty or twenty-five
feet in length.
With so much irreparable damage done to the great temple, and with so
much that was reparable calling for immediate attention, it is no wonder
that these brick buildings were left to their fate. The priests would
have rescued the sacred books from among the ruins, and then the place
would have been abandoned.
So much by way of conjecture. As hypothesis, a sufficient reason is
perhaps suggested for the wonderful state of preservation in which the
little chamber had been handed down to the present time. A rational
explanation is also offered for the absence of later cartouches, of
Greek and Latin ex-votos, of Christian emblems, and of subsequent
mutilation of every kind. For, save that one contemporary visitor--the
son of the Royal Son of Kush--the place contained, when we opened it, no
record of any passing traveler, no defacing autograph of tourist,
archæologist, or scientific explorer. Neither Belzoni nor Champollion
had found it out. Even Lepsius had passed it by.
It happens sometimes that hidden things, which in themselves are easy to
find, escape detection because no one thinks of looking for them. But
such was not the case in this present instance. Search had been made
here again and again; and even quite recently.
It seems that when the khedive[151] entertains distinguished guests and
sends them in gorgeous dahabeeyahs up the Nile, he grants them a virgin
mound, or so many square feet of a famous necropolis; lets them dig as
deep as they please; and allows them to keep whatever they may find.
Sometimes he sends out scouts to beat the ground; and then a tomb is
found and left unopened, and the illustrious visitor is allowed to
discover it. When the scouts are unlucky, it may even sometimes happen
that an old tomb is re-stocked; carefully closed up; and then, with all
the charm of unpremeditation, re-opened a day or two after.
Now Sheik Rashwan Ebn Hassan el Kashef told us that in 1869, when the
empress of the French was at Abou Simbel, and again when the Prince and
Princess of Wales came up in 1872, after the prince’s illness, he
received strict orders to find some hitherto undiscovered tomb,[152] in
order that the khedive’s guests might have the satisfaction of opening
it. But, he added, although he left no likely place untried among the
rocks and valleys on both sides of the river, he could find nothing. To
have unearthed such a birbeh as this would have done him good service
with the government, and have insured him a splendid backshîsh from
prince or empress. As it was, he was reprimanded for want of diligence,
and he believed himself to have been out of favor ever since.
I may here mention--in order to have done with this subject--that
besides being buried outside to a depth of about eight feet, the adytum
had been partially filled inside by a gradual infiltration of sand from
above. This can only have accumulated at the time when the old
sand-drift was at its highest. That drift, sweeping in one unbroken line
across the front of the great temple, must at one time have risen here
to a height of twenty feet above the present level. From thence the sand
had found its way down the perpendicular fissure already mentioned. In
the corner behind the door, the sand-pile rose to the ceiling, in shape
just like the deposit at the bottom of an hour-glass. I am informed by
the painter that when the top of the doorway was found and an opening
first effected, the sand poured out _from within_, like water escaping
from an opened sluice.
Here, then, is positive proof (if proof were needed) that we were first
to enter the place, at all events since the time when the great
sand-drift rose as high as the top of the fissure.
The painter wrote his name and ours, with the date (February 10, 1874),
on a space of blank wall over the inside of the doorway; and this was
the only occasion upon which any of us left our names upon an Egyptian
monument. On arriving at Korosko, where there is a postoffice, he also
dispatched a letter to the “Times,” briefly recording the facts here
related. That letter, which appeared on the 18th of March following, is
reprinted in the appendix at the end of this book.
I am told that our names are partially effaced and that the
wall-paintings which we had the happiness of admiring in all their
beauty and freshness are already much injured. Such is the fate of every
Egyptian monument, great or small. The tourist carves it all over with
names and dates and in some instances with caricatures. The student of
Egyptology, by taking wet-paper “squeezes,” sponges away every vestige
of the original color. The “collector” buys and carries off everything
of value that he can get; and the Arab steals for him. The work of
destruction, meanwhile, goes on apace. There is no one to prevent it;
there is no one to discourage it. Every day, more inscriptions are
mutilated--more tombs are rifled--more paintings and sculptures are
defaced. The Louvre contains a full-length portrait of Seti I, cut out
bodily from the walls of his sepulcher in the Valley of the Tombs of the
Kings. The museums of Berlin, of Turin, of Florence, are rich in spoils
which tell their own lamentable tale. When science leads the way, is it
wonderful that ignorance should follow?