SILSILIS AND EDFU.
Going, it cost us four days to struggle up from Assûan to Mahatta;
returning, we slid down--thanks to our old friend the sheik of the
cataract--in one short, sensational half-hour. He came--flat-faced,
fishy-eyed, fatuous as ever--with his head tied up in the same old
yellow handkerchief, and with the same chibouque in his mouth. He
brought with him a following of fifty stalwart shellalees; and under his
arm he carried a tattered red flag. This flag, on which were embroidered
the crescent and star, he hoisted with much solemnity at the prow.
Consigned thus to the protection of the prophet; windows and
tambooshy[174] shuttered up; doors closed; breakables removed to a place
of safety, and everything made snug, as if for a storm at sea, we put
off from Mahatta at seven A.M. on a lovely morning in the middle of
March. The Philæ, instead of threading her way back through the old
channels, strikes across to the Libyan side, making straight for the Big
Bab--that formidable rapid which as yet we have not seen. All last night
we heard its voice in the distance; now, at every stroke of the oars,
that rushing sound draws nearer.
The sheik of the cataract is our captain, and his men are our sailors
to-day; Reïs Hassan and the crew having only to sit still and look on.
The shellalees, meanwhile, row swiftly and steadily. Already the river
seems to be running faster than usual; already the current feels
stronger under our keel. And now, suddenly, there is sparkle and foam on
the surface yonder--there are rocks ahead; rocks to right and left;
eddies everywhere. The sheik lays down his pipe, kicks off his shoes,
and goes himself to the prow. His second in command is stationed at the
top of the stairs leading to the upper deck. Six men take the tiller.
The rowers are re-enforced, and sit two to each oar.
In the midst of these preparations, when everybody looks grave and even
the Arabs are silent, we all at once find ourselves at the mouth of a
long and narrow strait--a kind of ravine between two walls of
rock--through which, at a steep incline, there rushes a roaring mass of
waters. The whole Nile, in fact, seems to be thundering in wild waves
down that terrible channel.
It seems, at first sight, impossible that any dahabeeyah should venture
that way and not be dashed to pieces. Neither does there seem room for
boats and oars to pass. The sheik, however, gives the word--his second
echoes it--the men at the helm obey. They put the dahabeeyah straight at
that monster mill-race. For one breathless second we seem to tremble on
the edge of the fall. Then the Philæ plunges in headlong!
We see the whole boat slope down bodily under our feet. We feel the
leap--the dead fall--the staggering rush forward. Instantly the waves
are foaming and boiling up on all sides, flooding the lower deck and
covering the upper deck with spray. The men ship their oars, leaving all
to helm and current; and, despite the hoarse tumult, we distinctly hear
those oars scrape the rocks on either side.
Now the sheik, looking for the moment quite majestic, stands motionless
with uplifted arm; for at the end of the pass there is a sharp turn to
the right--as sharp as a street corner in a narrow London thoroughfare.
Can the Philæ, measuring one hundred feet from stem to stern, ever round
that angle in safety? Suddenly, the uplifted arm is waved--the sheik
thunders “Daffet!” (“helm”)--the men, steady and prompt, put the helm
about--the boat, answering splendidly to the word of command, begins to
turn before we are out of the rocks; then, shooting round the corner at
exactly the right moment, comes out safe and sound, with only an oar
broken!
Great is the rejoicing. Reïs Hassan, in the joy of his heart, runs to
shake hands all round; the Arabs burst into a chorus of “Taibs” and
“Salames;” and Talhamy, coming up all smiles, is set upon by half a
dozen playful shellalees, who snatch his keffîyeh from his head and
carry it off as a trophy. The only one unmoved is the sheik of the
cataract. His momentary flash of energy over, he slouches back with the
old stolid face; slips on his shoes; drops on his heels; lights his
pipe; and looks more like an owl than ever.
We had fancied till now that the cataract Arabs for their own profit and
travelers for their own glory had grossly exaggerated the dangers of the
Big Bab. But such is not the case. The Big Bab is in truth a serious
undertaking; so serious that I doubt whether any English boatman would
venture to take such a boat down such a rapid and between such rocks as
the shellalee Arabs took the Philæ that day.
All dahabeeyahs, however, are not so lucky. Of thirty-four that shot the
fall this season, several had been slightly damaged and one was so
disabled that she had to lie up at Assûan for a fortnight to be mended.
Of actual shipwreck, or injury to life and limb, I do not suppose there
is any real danger. The shellalees are wonderfully cool and skillful and
have abundant practice. Our painter, it is true, preferred rolling up
his canvases and carrying them round on dry land by way of the desert;
but this was a precaution that neither he nor any of us would have
dreamed of taking on account of our own personal safety. There is, in
fact, little, if anything, to fear; and the traveler who foregoes the
descent of the cataract foregoes a very curious sight and a very
exciting adventure.
At Assûan we bade farewell to Nubia and the blameless Ethiopians and
found ourselves once more traversing the Nile of Egypt. If instead of
five miles of cataract we had crossed five hundred miles of sea or
desert, the change could not have been more complete. We left behind us
a dreamy river, a silent shore, an ever-present desert. Returning, we
plunged back at once into the midst of a fertile and populous region.
All day long, now, we see boats on the river; villages on the banks;
birds on the wing; husbandmen on the land; men and women, horses, camels
and asses, passing perpetually to and fro on the towing-path. There is
always something moving, something doing. The Nile is running low and
the shâdûfs--three deep, now--are in full swing from morning till night.
Again the smoke goes up from clusters of unseen huts at close of day.
Again we hear the dogs barking from hamlet to hamlet in the still hours
of the night. Again, toward sunset, we see troops of girls coming clown
to the river side with their water-jars on their heads. Those Arab
maidens, when they stand with garments tightly tucked up and just their
feet in the water, dipping the goolah at arm’s length in the fresher
gush of the current, almost tempt one’s pencil into the forbidden paths
of caricature.
Kom Ombo is a magnificent torso. It was as large once as
Denderah--perhaps larger; for, being on the same grand scale, it was a
double temple and dedicated to two gods, Horus and Sebek;[175] the hawk
and the crocodile. Now there remain only a few giant columns, buried to
within eight or ten feet of their gorgeous capitals; a superb fragment
of architrave; one broken wave of sculptured cornice and some fallen
blocks graven with the names of Ptolemies and Cleopatras.
A great double doorway, a hall of columns and a double sanctuary are
said to be yet perfect, though no longer accessible. The roofing-blocks
of three halls, one behind the other, and a few capitals are yet visible
behind the portico.
What more may lie buried below the surface none can tell. We only know
that an ancient city and a mediæval hamlet have been slowly engulfed;
and that an early temple, contemporary with the Temple of Amada, once
stood within the sacred inclosure. The sand here has been accumulating
for two thousand years. It lies forty feet deep, and has never been
excavated. It will never be excavated now, for the Nile is gradually
sapping the bank and carrying away piecemeal from below what the desert
has buried from above. Half of one noble pylon--a cataract of sculptured
blocks--strews the steep slope from top to bottom. The other half hangs
suspended on the brink of the precipice. It cannot hang so much longer.
A day must soon come when it will collapse with a crash and thunder down
like its fellow.
Between Kom Ombo and Silsilis, we lost our painter. Not that he either
strayed or was stolen; but that, having accomplished the main object of
his journey, he was glad to seize the first opportunity of getting back
quickly to Cairo. That opportunity--represented by a noble duke
honeymooning with a steam-tug--happened half-way between Kom Ombo and
Silsilis. Painter and duke being acquaintances of old, the matter was
soon settled. In less than a quarter of an hour, the big picture and all
the paraphernalia of the studio were transported from the stern-cabin of
the Philæ to the stern-cabin of the steam-tug; and our painter--fitted
out with an extempore canteen, a cook-boy, a waiter, and his fair share
of the necessaries of life--was soon disappearing gayly in the distance
at the rate of twenty miles an hour. If the happy couple, so weary of
head-winds, so satiated with temples, followed that vanishing steam-tug
with eyes of melancholy longing, the writer at least asked nothing
better than to drift on with the Philæ.
Still, the Nile is long, and life is short; and the tale told by our
log-book was certainly not encouraging. When we reached Silsilis on the
morning of the 17th of March the north wind had been blowing with only
one day’s intermission since the 1st of February.
At Silsilis, one looks in vain for traces of that great barrier which
once blocked the Nile at this point. The stream is narrow here, and the
sand-stone cliffs come down on both sides to the water’s edge. In some
places there is space for a footpath; in others, none. There are also
some sunken rocks in the bed of the river--upon one of which, by the
way, a Cook’s steamer had struck two days before. But of such a mass as
could have dammed the Nile, and, by its disruption, not only have caused
the river to desert its bed at Philæ,[176] but have changed the whole
physical and climatic conditions of Lower Nubia, there is no sign
whatever.
The Arabs here show a rock fantastically quarried in the shape of a
gigantic umbrella, to which they pretend some king of old attached one
end of a chain with which he barred the Nile. It may be that in this
apocryphal legend there survives some memory of the ancient barrier.
The cliffs of the western bank are rich in memorial niches, votive
shrines, tombs, historical stela, and inscriptions. These last date from
the sixth to the twenty-second dynasties. Some of the tombs and alcoves
are very curious. Ranged side by side in a long row close above the
river, and revealing glimpses of seated figures and gaudy decorations
within, they look like private boxes with their occupants. In most of
these we found mutilated triads of gods,[177] sculptured and painted;
and in one larger than the rest were three niches, each containing three
deities.
The great speos of Horemheb, the last Pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty,
lies farthest north, and the memorial shrines of the Rameses family lie
farthest south of the series. The first is a long gallery, like a
cloister supported on four square columns; and is excavated parallel
with the river. The walls inside and out are covered with delicately
executed sculptures in low relief, some of which yet retain traces of
color. The triumph of Horemheb returning from conquest in the land of
Kush, and the famous subject on the south wall described by
Mariette[178] as one of the few really lovely things in Egyptian art
have been too often engraved to need description. The votive shrines of
the Rameses family are grouped altogether in a picturesque nook green
with bushes to the water’s edge. There are three, the work of Seti I,
Rameses II, and Menepthah--lofty alcoves, each like a little proscenium,
with painted cornices and side pillars, and groups of kings and gods
still bright with color. In most of the votive sculptures of Silsilis
there figure two deities but rarely seen elsewhere; namely Sebek, the
crocodile god, and Hapi-Mu, the lotus-crowned god of the Nile. This last
was the tutelary deity of the spot, and was worshiped at Silsilis with
special rites. Hymns, in his honor are found carved here and there upon
the rocks.[179] Most curious of all, however, is a goddess named
Ta-ur-t,[180] represented in one of the side subjects of the shrine of
Rameses II. This charming person, who has the body of a hippopotamus and
the face of a woman, wears a tie-wig and a robe of state with five
capes, and looks like a cross between a lord chancellor and a coachman.
Behind her stand Thoth and Nut; all three receiving the homage of Queen
Nefertari, who advances with an offering of two sistrums. As a
hippopotamus crowned with the disk and plumes, we had met with this
goddess before. She is not uncommon as an amulet; and the writer had
already sketched her at Philæ, where she occupies a prominent place in
the façade of the Mammisi. But the grotesque elegance of her attire at
Silsilis is, I imagine, quite unique.
[Illustration: TA-UR-T (SILSILIS).]
[Illustration: TA-UR-T (PHILÆ).]
The interest of the western bank centers in its sculptures and
inscriptions; the interest of the eastern bank in its quarries. We rowed
over to a point nearly opposite the shrines of the Ramessides, and,
climbing a steep verge of débris, came to the mouth of a narrow cutting
between walls of solid rock from forty to fifty feet in height. These
walls are smooth, clean-cut, and faultlessly perpendicular. The color of
the sand-stone is rich amber. The passage is about ten feet in width and
perhaps four hundred in length. Seen at a little after midday, with one
side in shadow, the other in sunlight, and a narrow ribbon of blue sky
overhead, it is like nothing else in the world; unless, perhaps, the
entrance to Petra.
Following this passage we came presently to an immense area, at least as
large as Belgrave Square; beyond which, separated by a thin partition of
rock, opened a second and somewhat smaller area. On the walls of these
huge amphitheaters, the chisel-marks and wedge-holes were as fresh as if
the last blocks had been taken hence but yesterday; yet it is some two
thousand years since the place last rang to the blows of the mallet, and
echoed back the voices of the workmen. From the days of the Theban
Pharaohs to the days of the Ptolemies and Cæsars, those echoes can never
have been silent. The temples of Karnak and Luxor, of Gournah, of
Medinet Habu, of Esneh and Edfu and Hermonthis, all came from here and
from the quarries on the opposite side of the river.[181]
Returning, we climbed long hills of chips; looked down into valleys of
débris; and came back at last to the river side by way of an ancient
inclined plane, along which the blocks were slid down to the transport
boats below. But the most wonderful thing about Silsilis is the way in
which the quarrying has been done. In all these halls and passages and
amphitheaters the sandstone has been sliced out smooth and straight,
like hay from a hay-rick. Everywhere the blocks have been taken out
square; and everywhere the best of the stone has been extracted and the
worst left. Where it was fine in grain and even in color it has been cut
with the nicest economy. Where it was whitish, or brownish, or
traversed by veins of violet, it has been left standing. Here and there
we saw places where the lower part had been removed and the upper part
left projecting, like the overhanging stories of our old mediæval timber
houses. Compared with this pussiant and perfect quarrying, our
rough-and-ready blasting looks like the work of savages.
Struggling hard against the wind, we left Silsilis that same afternoon.
The wrecked steamer was now more than half under water. She had broken
her back and begun filling immediately, with all Cook’s party on board.
Being rowed ashore with what necessaries they could gather together
these unfortunates had been obliged to encamp in tents borrowed from the
mudîr of the district. Luckily for them, a couple of homeward-bound
dahabeeyahs came by next morning, and took off as many as they could
accommodate. The duke’s steam-tug received the rest. The tents were
still there, and a gang of natives, under the superintendence of the
mudîr, were busy getting off all that could be saved from the wreck.
As evening drew on, our head-wind became a hurricane; and that hurricane
lasted day and night for thirty-six hours. All this time the Nile was
driving up against the current in great rollers, like rollers on the
Cornish coast when tide and wind set together from the west. To hear
them roaring past in the darkness of the night--to feel the Philæ
rocking, shivering, straining at her mooring-ropes and bumping
perpetually against the bank, was far from pleasant. By day the scene
was extraordinary. There were no clouds, but the air was thick with
sand, through which the sun glimmered feebly. Some palms, looking gray
and ghostlike on the bank above, bent as if they must break before the
blast. The Nile was yeasty and flecked with brown foam, large lumps of
which came swirling every now and then against our cabin windows. The
opposite bank was simply nowhere. Judging only by what was visible from
the deck one would have vowed that the dahabeeyah was moored against an
open coast with an angry sea coming in.
The wind fell about five A.M. the second day; when the men at once took
to their oars and by breakfast-time brought us to Edfu. Nothing now
could be more delicious than the weather. It was a cool, silvery, misty
morning--such a morning as one never knows in Nubia, where the sun is
no sooner up than one is plunged at once into the full blaze and stress
of day. There were donkeys waiting for us on the bank and our way lay
for about a mile through barley flats and cotton plantations. The
country looked rich; the people smiling and well conditioned. We met a
troop of them going down to the dahabeeyah with sheep, pigeons, poultry
and a young ox for sale. Crossing a back-water, bridged by a few rickety
palm-trunks, we now approached the village, which is perched, as usual,
on the mounds of the ancient city. Meanwhile the great pylons--seeming
to grow larger every moment--rose, creamy in light, against a soft-blue
sky.
Riding through lanes of huts we came presently to an open space and a
long flight of roughly built steps in front of the temple. At the top of
these steps we were standing on the level of the modern village. At the
bottom we saw the massive pavement that marked the level of the ancient
city. From that level rose the pylons which even from afar off had
looked so large. We now found that those stupendous towers not only
soared to a height of about seventy-five feet above our heads, but
plunged down to a depth of at least forty more beneath our feet.
Ten years ago nothing was visible of the great Temple of Edfu save the
tops of these pylons. The rest of the building was as much lost to sight
as if the earth had opened and swallowed it. Its court-yards were choked
with foul débris. Its sculptured chambers were buried under forty feet
of soil. Its terraced roof was a maze of closely packed huts, swarming
with human beings, poultry, dogs, kine, asses and vermin. Thanks to the
indefatigable energy of Mariette, these Augean stables were cleansed
some thirty years ago. Writing himself of this tremendous task, he says:
“I caused to be demolished the sixty-four houses which encumbered the
roof, as well as twenty-eight more which approached too near the outer
wall of the temple. When the whole shall be isolated from its present
surroundings by a massive wall, the work of restoration at Edfu will be
accomplished.”[182]
That wall has not yet been built; but the encroaching mound has been
cut clean away all round the building, now standing free in a deep open
space, the sides of which are in some places as perpendicular as the
quarried cliffs of Silsilis. In the midst of this pit, like a risen god
issuing from the grave, the huge building stands before us in the
sunshine, erect and perfect. The effect at first sight is overwhelming.
Through the great doorway, fifty feet in height, we catch glimpses of a
grand court-yard, and of a vista of doorways, one behind another. Going
slowly down, we see farther into those dark and distant halls at every
step. At the same time the pylons, covered with gigantic sculptures,
tower higher and higher, and seem to shut out the sky. The custode--a
pigmy of six foot two, in semi-European dress--looks up grinning,
expectant of backshîsh. For there is actually a custode here, and, which
is more to the purpose, a good strong gate, through which neither
pilfering visitors nor pilfering Arabs can pass unnoticed.
Who enters that gate crosses the threshold of the past, and leaves two
thousand years behind him. In these vast courts and storied halls all is
unchanged. Every pavement, every column, every stair, is in its place.
The roof, but for a few roofing-stones missing just over the sanctuary,
is not only uninjured, but in good repair. The hieroglyphic inscriptions
are as sharp and legible as the day they were cut. If here and there a
capital, or the face of a human-headed deity, has been mutilated, these
are blemishes which at first one scarcely observes, and which in no wise
mar the wonderful effect of the whole. We cross that great court-yard in
the full blaze of the morning sunlight. In the colonnades on either side
there is shade, and in the pillared portico beyond, a darkness as of
night; save where a patch of deep-blue sky burns through a square
opening in the roof, and is matched by a corresponding patch of blinding
light on the pavement below. Hence we pass on through a hall of columns,
two transverse corridors, a side chapel, a series of pitch-dark side
chambers, and a sanctuary. Outside all these, surrounding the actual
temple on three sides, runs an external corridor open to the sky, and
bounded by a superb wall full forty feet in height. When I have said
that the entrance-front, with its twin pylons and central doorway,
measures two hundred and fifty feet in width by one hundred and
twenty-five feet in height; that the first court-yard measures more than
one hundred and sixty feet in length by one hundred and forty in width;
that the entire length of the building is four hundred and fifty feet,
and that it covers an area of eighty thousand square feet, I have stated
facts of a kind which convey no more than a general idea of largeness to
the ordinary reader. Of the harmony of the proportions, of the amazing
size and strength of the individual parts, of the perfect workmanship,
of the fine grain and creamy amber of the stone, no description can do
more than suggest an indefinite notion.
Edfu and Denderah may almost be called twin temples. They belong to the
same period. They are built very nearly after the same plan.[183] They
are even allied in a religious sense; for the myths of Horus[184] and
Hathor[185] are interdependent; the one being the complement of the
other. Thus, in the inscriptions of Edfu we find perpetual allusion to
the cultus of Denderah, and vice versa. Both Edfu and Denderah are rich
in inscriptions; but as the extent of wall-space is greater at Edfu, so
is the literary wealth of this temple greater than the literary wealth
of Denderah. It also seemed to me that the surface was more closely
filled in at Edfu than at Denderah. Every wall, every ceiling, every
pillar, every architrave, every passage and side-chamber, however dark,
every staircase, every doorway, the outer wall of the temple, the inner
side of the great wall of circuit, the huge pylons from top to bottom,
are not only covered, but crowded, with figures and hieroglyphs. Among
these we find no enormous battle-subjects as at Abou Simbel--no heroic
recitals, like the poem of Pentaur. Those went out with the Pharaohs
and were succeeded by tableaux of religious rites and dialogues of gods
and kings. Such are the stock subjects of Ptolemaic edifices. They
abound at Denderah and Esneh, as well as at Edfu. But at Edfu there are
more inscriptions of a miscellaneous character than in any temple of
Egypt; and it is precisely this secular information which is so
priceless. Here are geographical lists of Nubian and Egyptian gnomes,
with their principal cities, their products and their tutelary gods;
lists of tributary provinces and princes; lists of temples and of lands
pertaining thereunto; lists of canals, of ports, of lakes; calendars of
feasts and fasts; astronomical tables; genealogies and chronicles of the
gods; lists of the priests and priestesses of both Edfu and Denderah,
with their names; lists also of singers and assistant functionaries;
lists of offerings, hymns, invocations; and such a profusion of
religious legends as make of the walls of Edfu alone a complete
text-book of Egyptian mythology.[186]
No great collection of these inscriptions, like the “Denderah” of
Mariette, has yet been published; but every now and then some
enterprising Egyptologist, such as M. Naville or M. Jacques de Rougé,
plunges for awhile into the depths of the Edfu mine and brings back as
much precious ore as he can carry. Some most singular and interesting
details have thus been brought to light. One inscription, for instance,
records exactly in what month and on what day and at what hour Isis gave
birth to Horus. Another tells all about the sacred boats. We know now
that Edfu possessed at least two; and that one was called Hor-Hat, or
The First Horus and the other Aa-Mafek, or Great of Turquoise. These
boats, it would appear, were not merely for carrying in procession, but
for actual use upon the water. Another text--one of the most
curious--informs us that Hathor of Denderah paid an annual visit to
Horus (or Hor-Hat) of Edfu and spent some days with him in his temple.
The whole ceremonial of this fantastic trip is given in detail. The
goddess traveled in her boat called Neb-Mer-t, or Lady of the Lake.
Horus, like a polite host, went out in his boat Hor-Hat, to meet her.
The two deities with their attendants then formed one procession and so
came to Edfu, where the goddess was entertained with a succession of
festivals.[187]
One would like to know whether Horus duly returned all these visits; and
if the gods, like modern emperors, had a gay time among themselves.
Other questions inevitably suggest themselves, sometimes painfully,
sometimes ludicrously, as one paces chamber after chamber, corridor
after corridor, sculptured all over with strange forms and stranger
legends. What about these gods whose genealogies are so intricate; whose
mutual relations are so complicated; who wedded and became parents; who
exchanged visits and who even traveled[188] at times to distant
countries? What about those who served them in the temples; who robed
and unrobed them; who celebrated their birthdays and paraded them in
stately processions and consumed the lives of millions in erecting these
mountains of masonry and sculpture to their honor? We know now with what
elaborate rites the gods were adored; what jewels they wore; what hymns
were sung in their praise. We know from what a subtle and philosophical
core of solar myths their curious personal adventures were evolved. We
may also be quite sure that the hidden meaning of these legends was
almost wholly lost sight of in the later days of the religion,[189] and
that the gods were accepted for what they seemed to be and not for what
they were symbolized. What, then, of their worshipers? Did they really
believe all these things, or were any among them tormented with doubts
of the gods? Were there skeptics in those days, who wondered how two
hierogrammates could look each other in the face without laughing?
The custode told us that there were two hundred and forty-two steps to
the top of each tower of the propylon. We counted two hundred and
twenty-four, and dispensed willingly with the remainder. It was a long
pull; but had the steps been four times as many, the sight from the top
would have been worth the climb. The chambers in the pylons are on a
grand scale, with wide beveled windows like the mouths of monster letter
boxes, placed at regular intervals all the way up. Through these windows
the great flagstaffs and pennons were regulated from within. The two
pylons communicate by a terrace over the central doorway. The parapet of
this terrace and the parapets of the pylons above are plentifully
scrawled with names, many of which were left there by the French
soldiers of 1799.
The cornices of these two magnificent towers are unfortunately gone; but
the total height without them is one hundred and twenty-five feet. From
the top, as from the minaret of the great mosque at Damascus, one looks
down into the heart of the town. Hundreds of mud huts thatched with
palm-leaves, hundreds of little court-yards, lie mapped out beneath
one’s feet; and as the fellah lives in his yard by day, using his hut
merely as a sleeping-place at night, one looks down, like the Diable
Boiteux, upon the domestic doings of a roofless world. We see people
moving to and fro, unconscious of strange eyes watching them from
above--men lounging, smoking, sleeping in shady corners--children
playing--infants crawling on all fours--women cooking at clay ovens in
the open air--cows and sheep feeding--poultry scratching and
pecking--dogs basking in the sun. The huts look more like the lairs of
prairie-dogs than the dwellings of human beings. The little mosque with
its one dome and stunted minaret, so small, so far below, looks like a
clay toy. Beyond the village, which reaches far and wide, lie barley
fields, and cotton patches, and palm-groves, bounded on one side by the
river, and on the other by the desert. A broad road, dotted over with
moving specks of men and cattle, cleaves its way straight through the
cultivated land and out across the sandy plain beyond. We can trace its
course for miles where it is only a trodden track in the desert. It
goes, they tell us, direct to Cairo. On the opposite bank glares a
hideous white sugar factory, and, bowered in greenery, a country villa
of the khedive. The broad Nile flows between. The sweet Theban hills
gleam through a pearly haze on the horizon.
All at once a fitful breeze springs up, blowing in little gusts and
swirling the dust in circles round our feet. At the same moment, like a
beautiful specter, there rises from the desert close by an undulating
semi-transparent stalk of yellow sand, which grows higher every moment,
and begins moving northward across the plain. Almost at the same
instant, another appears a long way off toward the south, and a third
comes gliding mysteriously along the opposite bank. While we are
watching the third, the first begins throwing off a wonderful kind of
plume, which follows it, waving and melting in the air. And now the
stranger from the south comes up at a smooth, tremendous pace, towering
at least five hundred feet above the desert, till, meeting some
cross-current, it is snapped suddenly in twain. The lower half instantly
collapses; the upper, after hanging suspended for a moment, spreads and
floats slowly, like a cloud. In the meanwhile, other and smaller columns
form here and there--stalk a little way--waver--disperse--form
again--and again drop away in dust. Then the breeze falls, and puts an
abrupt end to this extraordinary spectacle. In less than two minutes
there is not a sand-column left. As they came, they vanish--suddenly.
Such is the landscape that frames the temple; and the temple, after all,
is the sight that one comes up here to see. There it lies far below our
feet, the court-yard with its almost perfect pavement; the flat roof
compact of gigantic monoliths; the wall of circuit with its panoramic
sculptures; the portico, with its screen and pillars distinct in
brilliant light against inner depths of dark; each pillar a shaft of
ivory, each square of dark a block of ebony. So perfect, so solid, so
splendid is the whole structure; so simple in unity of plan; so complex
in ornament; so majestic in completeness, that one feels as if it solved
the whole problem of religious architecture.
Take it for what it is--a Ptolemaic structure preserved in all its
integrity of strength and finish--it is certainly the finest temple in
Egypt. It brings before us, with even more completeness than Denderah,
the purposes of its various parts and the kind of ceremonial for which
it was designed. Every corridor and chamber tells its own story. Even
the names of the different chambers are graven upon them in such wise
that nothing[190] would be easier than to reconstruct the ground-plan
of the whole building in hieroglyphic nomenclature. That neither the
Ptolemaic building nor the Ptolemaic mythus can be accepted as strictly
representative of either pure Egyptian art or pure Egyptian thought,
must of course be conceded. Both are modified by Greek influences, and
have so far departed from the Pharaonic model. But then we have no
equally perfect specimen of the Pharaonic model. The Ramesseum is but a
grand fragment. Karnak and Medinet Hadu are aggregates of many temples
and many styles. Abydos is still half-buried. Amid so much that is
fragmentary, amid so much that is ruined, the one absolutely perfect
structure--Ptolemaic though it be--is of incalculable interest, and
equally incalculable value.
While we are dreaming over these things, trying to fancy how it all
looked when the sacred flotilla came sweeping up the river yonder and
the procession of Hor-Hat issued forth to meet the goddess-guest--while
we are half-expecting to see the whole brilliant concourse pour out,
priests in their robes of panther-skin, priestesses with the tinkling
sistrum, singers and harpists, and bearers of gifts and emblems, and
high functionaries rearing aloft the sacred boat of the god--in this
moment a turbaned Muëddin comes out upon the rickety wooden gallery of
the little minaret below, and intones the call to midday prayer. That
plaintive cry has hardly died away before we see men here and there
among the huts turning toward the east and assuming the first posture of
devotion. The women go on cooking and nursing their babies. I have seen
Moslem women at prayer in the mosques of Constantinople, but never in
Egypt.
Meanwhile, some children catch sight of us, and, notwithstanding that we
are one hundred and twenty-five feet above their heads, burst into a
frantic chorus of “backshîsh!”
And now, with a last long look at the temple and the wide landscape
beyond, we come down, and go to see a dismal little Mammesi three-parts
buried among a wilderness of mounds close by. These mounds, which
consist almost entirely of crude-brick debris with imbedded fragments of
stone and pottery, are built up like coral-reefs, and represent the
dwellings of some sixty generations. When they are cut straight through,
as here round about the great temple, the substance of them looks like
rich plum-cake.