ABYDUS AND CAIRO.
Our last weeks on the Nile went by like one long, lazy, summer’s day.
Events now were few. We had out-stayed all our fellow-travelers. Even
the faithful Bagstones had long since vanished northward; and the Philæ
was the last dahabeeyah of the year. Of the great sights of the river,
we had only Abydus and Beni Hassan left to see; while for minor
excursions, daily walks and explorations by the way, we had little
energy left. For the thermometer was rising higher and the Nile was
falling lower every day; and we should have been more than mortal if we
had not felt the languid influences of the glowing Egyptian spring.
The natives call it spring; but to our northern fancy it is spring,
summer and autumn in one. Of the splendor of the skies, of the lavish
bounty of the soil at this season, only those who have lingered late in
the land can form any conception. There is a breadth of repose now about
the landscape which it has never worn before. The winter green of the
palms is fading fast. The harvests are ripening; the pigeons are
pairing; the time of the singing of birds is come. There is just enough
south wind most days to keep the boat straight and the sail from
flapping. The heat is great; yet it is a heat which, up to a certain
point, one can enjoy. The men ply their oars by night and sleep under
their benches or croon old songs and tell stories among themselves by
day. But for the thin canopy of smoke that hangs over the villages one
would fancy now that those clusters of mud huts were all deserted. Not a
human being is to be seen on the banks when the sun is high. The
buffaloes stand up to their necks in the shallows. The donkeys huddle
together wherever there is shade. The very dogs have given up barking
and lie asleep under the walls.
The whole face of the country, and even of the Nile, is wonderfully
changed since we first passed this way. The land, then newly squared off
like a gigantic chess-board and intersected by thousands of little
channels, is now one sea of yellowing grain. The river is become a
labyrinth of sand-banks, some large, some small; some just beginning to
thrust their heads above water; others so long that they divide the
river for a mile or more at a stretch. Reïs Hassan spends half his life
at the prow, poling for shallows; and when we thread our way down one of
these sandy straits, it is for all the world like a bit of the Suez
canal. The banks, too, are twice as steep as they were when we went up.
The lentil patches, which then blossomed on the slope next the water’s
edge, now lie far back on the top of a steep brown ridge, at the foot of
which stretches a moist flat planted with watermelons. Each melon-plant
is protected from the sun by a tiny gable-roof of palm-thatch.
Meanwhile, the river being low and the banks high, we unfortunates
benefit scarcely at all by the faint breezes that now and then ruffle
the barley. Day by day, the thermometer (which hangs in the coolest
corner of the saloon) creeps up higher and higher, working its way by
degrees to above 99°; but never succeeding in getting up quite to 100°.
We, however, living in semi-darkness, with closed jalousies, and wet
sails hung round the sides of the dahabeeyah, and wet towels hung up in
our cabins, find 99° quite warm enough to be pleasant. The upper deck
is, of course, well deluged several times a day; but even so, it is
difficult to keep the timbers from starting. Meanwhile L---- and the
idle man devote their leisure to killing flies, keeping the towels wet,
and sprinkling the floors.
Our progress all this time is of the slowest. The men cannot row by day;
and at night the sand-banks so hedge us in with dangers that the only
possible way by which we can make a few miles between sunset and sunrise
is by sheer hard punting. Now and then we come to a clear channel, and
sometimes we get an hour or two of sweet south breeze; but these flashes
of good luck are few and far between.
In such wise, and in such a temperature, we found ourselves becalmed one
morning within six miles of Denderah. Not even L---- could be induced to
take a six-mile donkey-ride that day in the sun. The writer, however,
ordered out her sketching-tent and paid a last visit to the temple;
which, seen amid the ripening splendor of miles of barley, looked
gloomier and grander and more solitary than ever.
Two or three days later we came within reach of Abydus. Our proper
course would have been to push on to Bellianeh, which is one of the
recognized starting-points for Abydus. But an unlucky sand-bank barred
the way; so we moored instead at Samata, a village about two miles
nearer to the southward. Here our dragoman requisitioned the inhabitants
for donkeys. As it happened, the harvest had begun in the neighborhood
and all the beasts of burden were at work, so that it was near midday
before we succeeded in getting together the three or four wretched
little brutes with which we finally started. Not one of these steeds had
ever before carried a rider. We had a frightful time with them. My
donkey bolted about every five minutes. L----’s snarled like a camel
and showed its teeth like a dog. The idle man’s, bent on flattening its
rider, lay down and rolled at short intervals. In this exciting fashion
we somehow or other accomplished the seven miles that separate Samata
from Abydus. Skirting some palm-groves and crossing the dry bed of a
canal, we came out upon a vast plain, level as a lake, islanded here and
there with villages, and presenting one undulating surface of bearded
corn. This plain--the plain of ancient Thinis--runs parallel with the
Nile, like the plain of Thebes, and is bounded to the westward by a
range of flat-topped mountains. The distance between the river and the
mountains, however, is here much greater than at Thebes, being full six
miles; while to north and south the view ends only with the horizon.
Our way lies at first by a bridle-track through the thick of the barley;
then falls into the Bellianeh road--a raised causeway, embanked some
twenty feet above the plain. Along this road the country folk are coming
and going. In the cleared spaces where the maize has been cut, little
encampments of straw huts have sprung up. Yonder, steering their way by
unseen paths, go strings of camels; their gawky necks and humped backs
undulating above the surface of the corn, like galleys with fantastic
prows upon a sea of rippling green. The pigeons fly in great clouds from
village to village. The larks are singing and circling madly in the
clear depths overhead. The bee-eaters flash like live emeralds across
our path. The hoopoes strut by the wayside. At rather more than half-way
across the plain we come into the midst of the harvest. Here the brown
reapers, barelegged and naked to the waist, are at work with their
sickles, just as they are pictured in the tomb of Tih. The women and
children follow, gleaning, at the heels of those who bind the sheaves.
The sheik in his black robe and scarlet slippers rides to and fro upon
his ass, like Boaz among his people. As the sheaves are bound up the
camels carry them homeward. A camel-load is fourteen sheaves; seven to
each side of the hump. A little farther and the oxen, yoked two and two,
are plowing up the stubble. In a day or two the land will be sown with
millet, indigo, or cotton, to be gathered in once more before the coming
of the inundation.
Meanwhile, as the plain lengthens behind us and the distance grows less
between ourselves and the mountains, we see a line of huge irregular
mounds reaching for apparently a couple of miles or more along the foot
of the cliffs. From afar off the mounds look as if crowned by majestic
ruins, but as we draw nearer these outlines resolve themselves into the
village of Arabát-el-Madfûneh, which stands upon part of the mounds of
Abydus. And now we come to the end of the cultivated plain--that strange
line of demarcation where the inundation stops and the desert begins. Of
actual desert, however, there is here but a narrow strip, forming a
first step, as it were, above the alluvial plain. Next comes the
artificial platform, about a quarter of a mile in depth, on which stands
the modern village; and next again, towering up sheer and steep, the
great wall of limestone precipice. The village is extensive and the
houses, built in a rustic arabesque, tell of a well-to-do population.
Arched gateways ornamented with black, white and red bricks, windows of
turned lattice-work and pigeon-towers in courses of pots and bricks,
give a singular picturesqueness to the place; while the slope down to
the desert is covered with shrubberies and palms. Below these hanging
gardens, on the edge of the desert, lies the cut corn in piles of
sheaves. Here the camels are lying down to be unladen. Yonder the oxen
are already treading out the grain, or chopping the straw by means of a
curious sledge-like machine set with rows of revolving circular
knives.[248] Meanwhile, fluttering from heap to heap, settling on the
sheaves, feeding unmolested in the very midst of the threshing-floors,
strutting all over the margin of the desert, trailing their wings,
ruffling their plumes, cooing, courtesying, kissing, courting, filling
the air with sweet sounds and setting the whole lovely idyl to a
pastoral symphony of their own composing, are thousands and tens of
thousands of pigeons.[249]
Now our path turns aside and we thread our way among the houses,
noticing here a sculptured block built into a mud wall--yonder, beside a
dried-up well, a broken alabaster sarcophagus--farther on, a granite
column, still erect, in the midst of a palm-garden. And now, the village
being left behind, we find ourselves at the foot of a great hill of
newly excavated rubbish, from the top of which we presently look down
into a kind of crater, and see the great Temple of Abydus at our feet.
It was now nearly three o’clock; so, having seen what we could in the
time and having before us a long ride through a strange country, we left
again at six. I will not presume to describe the temples of Abydus--one
of which is so ruined as to be almost unintelligible, and the other so
singularly planned and so obscure in its general purport as to be a
standing puzzle to archæologists--after a short visit of three hours.
Enough if I sketch briefly what I saw but cursorily.
Buried as it, Abydus,[250] even under its mounds, is a place of profound
historical interest. At a time so remote that it precedes all written
record of Egyptian story, there existed a little way to the northward of
this site a city called Teni.[251] We know not to what aboriginal
community of prehistoric Egypt this city belonged; but here, presumedly,
the men of Kem[252] built their first temple, evolved their first
notions of art and groped their way to an alphabet which, in its origin,
was probably a mere picture-writing, like the picture-writing of Mexico.
Hence, too, came a man named Mena, whose cartouche from immemorial time
has stood first in the long list of Egyptian Pharaohs. Of Mena,[253] a
shadowy figure hovering on the border-land of history and tradition, we
know only that he was the first primitive chieftain who took the title
of king of Upper and Lower Egypt and that he went northward and founded
Memphis. Not, however, till after some centuries was the seat of
government removed to the new city. Teni--the supposed burial-place of
Osiris--then lost its political importance; but continued to be for long
ages the holy city of Egypt.
In the meanwhile, Abydus had sprung up close to Teni. Abydus, however,
though an important city, was never the capital of Egypt. The seat of
power shifted strangely with different dynasties, being established now
in the delta, now at Thebes, now at Elephantine; but having once
departed from the site which, by reason of its central position and the
unbounded fertility of its neighborhood, was above all others best
fitted to play this great part in the history of the country, it never
again returned to the point from which it had started. That point,
however, was unquestionably the center from which the great Egyptian
people departed upon its wonderful career. Here was the nursery of its
strength. Hence it derived its proud title to an unmixed autochthonous
descent. For no greater proof of the native origin of the race can be
adduced than the position which their first city occupies upon the map
of Egypt. That any tribe of colonists should have made straight for the
heart of the country and there have established themselves in the midst
of barbarous and probably hostile aborigines is evidently out of the
question. It is, on the other hand, equally clear that if Egypt had been
colonized from Asia or Ethiopia, the strangers would, on the one hand,
have founded their earliest settlement in the neighborhood of the
isthmus; or, on the other, have halted first among the then well-watered
plains of Nubia.[254] But the Egyptians started from the fertile heart
of their own mother country and began by being great at home.
Abydus and Teni, planted on the same platform of desert, were probably
united at one time by a straggling suburb inhabited by the embalmers and
other tradesfolk concerned in the business of death and burial. A chain
of mounds, excavated only where the temples were situated, now stand to
us for the famous city of Abydus. An ancient crude-brick inclosure and
an artificial tumulus mark the site of Teni. The temples and the
tumulus, divided by the now exhausted necropolis, and about as distant
from one another as Medinet Habu and the Ramesseum.
There must have been many older temples at Abydus than these which we
now see, one of which was built by Seti I, and the other by Rameses II.
Or possibly, as in so many instances, the more ancient buildings were
pulled down and rebuilt. Be this as it may, the temple of Seti, as
regards its sculptured decorations, is one of the most beautiful of
Egyptian ruins; and as regards its plan, is one of the most singular. A
row of square limestone piers, which must once have supported an
architrave, are now all that remains of the façade. Immediately behind
these comes a portico of twenty-four columns leading by seven entrances
to a hall of thirty-six columns. This hall again opens into seven
parallel sanctuaries, behind which lie another hall of columns and a
number of small chambers. So much of the building seems to be
homogeneous. Adjoining this block, however, and leading from it by
doorways at the southern end of the great hall, come several more halls
and chambers connected by corridors, and conducting apparently to more
chambers not yet excavated. All these piers, columns, halls, and
passages, and all the seven sanctuaries,[255] are most delicately
sculptured and brilliantly colored.
There is so far a family resemblance between temples of the same style
and period that, after a little experience, one can generally guess
before crossing the threshold of a fresh building what one is likely to
see in the way of sculptures within. But almost every subject in the
temple of Seti at Abydus is new and strange. All the gods of the
Egyptian pantheon seem to have been worshiped here and to have had each
his separate shrine. The walls are covered with paintings of these
shrines and their occupants; while before each the king is represented
performing some act of adoration. A huge blue frog, a greyhound, a
double-headed goose, a human-bodied creature with a Nilometer for its
head,[256] and many more than I can now remember, are thus depicted. The
royal offerings, too, though incense and necklaces and pectoral
ornaments abound, are for the most part of a kind that we have not seen
before. In one place the king presents to Isis a column with four
capitals, having on the top capital a globe and two asps surmounted by a
pair of ostrich feathers.
The center sanctuary of the seven appears to be dedicated to Khem, who
seems to be here, as in the great temple of Seti at Karnak, the
presiding divinity. In this principal sanctuary, which is resplendent
with color and in marvelous preservation, we especially observed a
portrait of Rameses II[257] in the act of opening the door of a shrine
by means of a golden key formed like a human hand and arm. The lock
seems to consist of a number of bolts of unequal length, each of which
is pushed back in turn by means of the forefinger of the little hand.
This, doubtless, gives a correct representation of the kind of locks in
use at that time.
It was in a corridor opening out from the great hall in this temple that
Mariette discovered that precious sculpture known as the new tablet of
Abydus. In this tableau, Seti I and Rameses II are seen, the one
offering incense, the other reciting a hymn of praise, to the manes of
seventy-six Pharaohs,[258] beginning with Mena, and ending with Seti
himself. To our great disappointment--though one cannot but acquiesce in
the necessity for precaution--we found the entrance to this corridor
closed and mounded up. A ragged old Arab who haunts the temple in the
character of custode, told us that the tablet could now only be seen by
special permission.
We seemed to have been here about half an hour when the guide came to
warn us of approaching evening. We had yet the site of the great Tumulus
of Teni to see; the tumulus being distant about twenty minutes’ ride.
The guide shook his head; but we insisted on going. The afternoon had
darkened over; and for the first time in many months a gathering canopy
of cloud shut out the glory of sunset. We, however, mounted our donkeys
and rode northward. With better beasts we might perhaps have gained our
end; as it was, seeing that it grew darker every moment, we presently
gave in, and instead of trying to push on farther, contented ourselves
with climbing a high mound which commanded the view toward Teni.
The clouds by this time were fast closing round, and waves of shadows
were creeping over the plain. To our left rose the near
mountain-barrier, dusk and lowering; to our right stretched the misty
corn-flats; at our feet, all hillocks and open graves, lay the desolate
necropolis. Beyond the palms that fringed the edge of the desert--beyond
a dark streak that marked the site of Teni--rose, purple in shadow
against the twilight, a steep and solitary hill. This hill, called by
the natives Kom-es-Sultan, or the Mound of the King, was the tumulus we
so desired to see. Viewed from a distance and by so uncertain a light,
it looked exactly like a volcanic cone of perhaps a couple of hundred
feet in height. It is, however, wholly artificial, and consists of a
mass of graves heaped one above another in historic strata; each layer,
as it were, the record of an era; the whole, a kind of human coral reef
built up from age to age with the ashes of generations.
For some years past, the Egyptian government had been gradually
excavating this extraordinary mound. The lower it was opened the more
ancient were its contents. So steadily retrogressive, indeed, were the
interments, that it seemed as if the spade of the digger might possibly
strike tombs of the first dynasty, and so restore to light relics of men
who lived in the age of Mena. “According to Plutarch,” wrote
Mariette,[259] “wealthy Egyptians came from all parts of Egypt to be
buried at Abydus, in order that their bones might rest near Osiris. Very
probably the tombs of Kom-es-Sultan belong to those personages mentioned
by Plutarch. Nor is this the only interest attaching to the mound of
Kom-es-Sultan. The famous tomb of Osiris cannot be far distant; and
certain indications lead us to think that it is excavated in precisely
that foundation of rock which serves as the nucleus of this mound. Thus
the persons buried in Kom-es-Sultan lay as near as possible to the
divine tomb. The works now in progress at this point have, therefore, a
twofold interest. They may yield tombs yet more and more ancient--tombs
even of the first dynasty; and some day or another they may discover to
us the hitherto unknown and hidden entrance to the tomb of the
god.”[260]
I bitterly regretted at the time that I could not at least ride to the
foot of Kom-es-Sultan; but I think now that I prefer to remember it as I
saw it from afar off, clothed in mystery, in the gloom of that dusky
evening.
There was a heavy silence in the air, and a melancholy as of the burden
of ages. The tumbled hillocks looked like a ghastly sea, and beyond the
verge of the desert it was already night. Presently, from among the
grave-pits, there crept toward us a slowly moving cloud. As it drew
nearer--soft, filmy, shifting, unreal--it proved to be the dust raised
by an immense flock of sheep. On they came, a brown compact mass, their
shepherd showing dimly now and then through openings in the cloud. The
last pale gleam from above caught them for a moment ere they melted,
ghostlike, into the murky plain. Then we went down ourselves, and
threaded the track between the mounds and the valley. Palms and houses
loomed vaguely out of the dusk; and a caravan of camels, stalking by
with swift and noiseless footfall, looked like shadows projected on a
background of mist. As the night deepened the air became stifling. There
were no stars and we could scarcely see a yard before us. Crawling
slowly along the steep causeway, we felt, but could distinguish nothing
of the plain stretching away on either side. Meanwhile the frogs croaked
furiously, and our donkeys stumbled at every step. When at length we
drew near Samata, it was close upon ten o’clock, and Reïs Hassan had
just started with men and torches to meet us.
Next morning early we once again passed Girgeh, with its ruined mosque
and still unfallen column; and about noonday moored at a place called
Ayserat, where we paid a visit to a native gentleman, one Ahmed Abû
Ratab Aga, to whom we carried letters of introduction. Ratab Aga owns
large estates in this province; is great in horseflesh; and lives in
patriarchal fashion surrounded by a numerous clan of kinsfolk and
dependents. His residence as Ayserat consists of a cluster of three or
four large houses, a score or so of pigeon-towers, an extensive garden,
stabling, exercising ground, and a large court-yard; the whole inclosed
by a wall of circuit and entered by a fine arabesque gateway. He
received us in a loggia of lattice-work overlooking the court-yard, and
had three of his finest horses--a gray, a bay, and a chestnut--brought
out for us to admire. They were just such horses as Velasquez loved to
paint--thick in the neck, small in the head, solid in the barrel, with
wavy manes, and long silky tails set high and standing off straight in
true Arab fashion. We doubted, however, that they were altogether _pur
sang_. They looked wonderfully picturesque with their gold embroidered
saddle-cloths, peaked saddles covered with crimson, green, and blue
velvet, long shovel stirrups and tasseled head-gear. The Aga’s brother
and nephews put them through their paces. They knelt to be mounted; lay
down and died at the word of command; dashed from perfect immobility
into a furious gallop; and when at fullest speed, stopped short, flung
themselves back upon their haunches, and stood like horses of stone. We
were told that our host had a hundred such standing in his stables.
Pipes, coffee, and an endless succession of different kinds of sherbets
went round all the time our visit lasted; and in the course of
conversation, we learned that not only the wages of agricultural
laborers, but even part of the taxes to the khedive, are here paid in
corn.
Before leaving, L----, the little lady and the writer were conducted to
the hareem and introduced to the ladies of the establishment. We found
them in a separate building, with a separate court-yard, living after
the usual dreary way of eastern women, with apparently no kind of
occupation and not even a garden to walk in. The Aga’s principal wife (I
believe he had but two), was a beautiful woman, with auburn hair, soft
brown eyes, and a lovely complexion. She received us on the threshold,
led us into a saloon surrounded by a divan and with some pride showed us
her five children. The eldest was a graceful girl of thirteen; the
youngest a little fellow of four. Mother and daughter were dressed alike
in black robes embroidered with silver, pink velvet slippers on bare
feet, silver bracelets and anklets and full pink Turkish trousers. They
wore their hair cut straight across the brow, plaited in long tails
behind and dressed with coins and pendants; while from the back of the
head there hung a veil of thin black gauze, also embroidered with
silver. Another lady, whom we took for the second wife and who was
extremely plain, had still richer and more massive ornaments, but seemed
to hold an inferior position in the hareem. There were perhaps a dozen
women and girls in all, two of whom were black.
One of the little boys had been ill all his short life and looked as if
he could not last many more months. The poor mother implored us to
prescribe for him. It was in vain to tell her that we knew nothing of
the nature of his disease and had no skill to cure it. She still
entreated and would take no refusal; so in pity we sent her some
harmless medicines.
We had little opportunity of observing domestic life in Egypt. L----
visited some of the vice-regal hareems at Cairo and brought away on each
occasion the same impression of dreariness. A little embroidery, a few
musical toys of Geneva manufacture, a daily drive on the Shubra road,
pipes, cigarettes, sweetmeats, jewelry and gossip, fill up the aimless
days of most Egyptian ladies of rank. There are, however, some who take
an active interest in politics; and in Cairo and Alexandria the
opera-boxes of the khedive and the great pashas are nightly occupied by
ladies. But it is not by the daily life of the wives of princes and
nobles, but by the life of the lesser gentry and upper middle-class,
that a domestic system should be judged. These ladies of Ayserat had no
London-built brougham, no Shuba road, no opera. They were absolutely
without mental resources; and they were even without the means of taking
air and exercise. One could see that time hung heavy on their hands, and
that they took but a feeble interest in the things around them. The
hareem stairs were dirty; the rooms were untidy; the general aspect of
the place was slatternly and neglected. As for the inmates, though all
good-nature and gentleness, their faces bore the expression of people
who are habitually bored. At Luxor, L---- and the writer paid a visit to
the wife of an intelligent and gentlemanly Arab, son of the late
governor of that place. This was a middle-class hareem. The couple were
young and not rich. They occupied a small house which commanded no view
and had no garden. Their little court-yard was given up to the poultry;
their tiny terrace above was less than twelve feet square; and they
were surrounded on all sides by houses. Yet in this stifling prison the
young wife lived, apparently contented, from year’s end to year’s end.
She literally never went out. As a child, she had no doubt enjoyed some
kind of liberty; but as a marriageable girl, and as a bride, she was as
much a prisoner as a bird in a cage. Born and bred in Luxor, she had
never seen Karnak; yet Karnak is only two miles distant. We asked her if
she would like to go there with us; but she laughed and shook her head.
She was incapable even of curiosity.
It seemed to us that the wives of the fellahîn were in truth the
happiest women in Egypt. They work hard and are bitterly poor; but they
have the free use of their limbs and they at least know the fresh air,
the sunshine and the open fields.
When we left Ayserat, there still lay three hundred and thirty-five
miles between us and Cairo. From this time the navigation of the Nile
became every day more difficult. The dahabeeyah, too, got heated through
and through, so that not even sluicing and swabbing availed to keep down
the temperature. At night when we went to our sleeping-cabins, the
timbers alongside of our berths were as hot to the hand as a screen in
front of a great fire. Our crew, though to the manner born, suffered
even more than ourselves; and L---- at this time had generally a case of
sunstroke on her hands. One by one, we passed the places we had seen on
our way up--Siût, Manfalût, Gebel Abufayda, Roda, Minieh. After all, we
did not see Beni Hassan. The day we reached that part of the river, a
furious sandstorm was raging; such a storm that even the writer was
daunted. Three days later, we took the rail at Bibbeh and went on to
Cairo, leaving the Philæ to follow as fast as wind and weather might
permit.
We were so wedded by this time to dahabeeyah life, that we felt lost at
first in the big rooms at Shepheard’s hotel, and altogether bewildered
in the crowded streets. Yet here was Cairo, more picturesque, more
beautiful than ever. Here were the same merchants squatting on the same
carpets and smoking the same pipes, in the Tunis bazaar; here was the
same old cake seller still ensconced in the same doorway in the Muski;
here were the same jewelers selling bracelets in the Khan-Khalîli; the
same money-changers sitting behind their little tables at the corners
of the streets; the same veiled ladies riding on donkeys and driving in
carriages; the same hurrying funerals and noisy weddings; the same odd
cries and motley costumes and unaccustomed trades. Nothing was changed.
We soon dropped back into the old life of sight-seeing and
shopping--buying rugs and silks and silver ornaments and old
embroideries and Turkish slippers and all sorts of antique and pretty
trifles; going from Mohammedan mosques to rare old Coptic churches;
dropping in for an hour or two most afternoons at the Boulak museum; and
generally ending the day’s work with a drive on the Shubra road, or a
stroll round the Esbekiyeh gardens.
The Môlid-en-Nebi, or festival of the birth of the prophet, was being
held at this time in a tract of waste ground on the road to old Cairo.
Here, in some twenty or thirty large open tents ranged in a circle,
there were readings of the Koran and meetings of dervishes going on by
day and night, without intermission, for nearly a fortnight. After dark,
when the tents were all ablaze with lighted chandeliers, and the
dervishes were howling and leaping, and fire-works were being let off
from an illuminated platform in the middle of the area, the scene was
extraordinary. All Cairo used to be there, on foot or in carriages,
between eight o’clock and midnight every evening; the veiled ladies of
the khedive’s hareem in their miniature broughams being foremost among
the spectators.
The Môlid-en-Nebi ends with the performance of the Dóseh, when the sheik
of the Saädîyeh dervishes rides over a road of prostrate fanatics. L----
and the writer witnessed this sight from the tent of the Governor of
Cairo. Drunk with opium, fasting and praying, rolling their heads and
foaming at the mouth, some hundreds of wretched creatures lay down in
the road packed as close as paving-stones, and were walked and ridden
over before our eyes. The standard-bearers came first; then a priest
reading the Koran aloud; then the sheik on his white Arab, supported on
either side by barefooted priests. The beautiful horse trod with evident
reluctance and as lightly and swiftly as possible on the human causeway
under his hoofs. The Mohammedans aver that no one is injured or even
bruised[261] on this holy occasion; but I saw some men carried away in
convulsions, who looked as if they would never walk again.[262]
It is difficult to say but a few inadequate words of a place about which
an instructive volume might be written; yet to pass the Boulak Museum in
silence is impossible. This famous collection is due, in the first
instance, to the liberality of the late khedive and the labors of
Mariette. With the exception of Mehemet Ali, who excavated the Temple of
Denderah, no previous viceroy of Egypt had ever interested himself in
the archæology of the country. Those who cared for such rubbish as
encumbered the soil or lay hidden beneath the sands of the desert, were
free to take it; and no favor was more frequently asked or more readily
granted than permission to dig for “anteekahs.” Hence the Egyptian
wealth of our museums. Hence the numerous private collections dispersed
throughout Europe. Ismail Pasha, however, put an end to that wholesale
pillage; and for the first time since ever “mummy was sold for balsam,”
or for bric-à-brac, it became illegal to transport antiquities. Thus,
for the first time, Egypt began to possess a national collection.
Youngest of great museums, the Boulak collection is the wealthiest in
the world in portrait-statues of private individuals, in funerary
tablets, in amulets and in personal relics of the ancient inhabitants of
the Nile valley. It is necessarily less rich in such colossal statues as
fill the great galleries of the British Museum, the Turin Museum and the
Louvre. These, being above ground and comparatively few in number, were
for the most part seized upon long since and transported to Europe. The
Boulak statues are the product of the tombs. The famous wooden “sheik,”
about which so much has been written,[263] the magnificent diorite
statue of Khafra (Chephren), the builder of the second pyramid, the two
marvelous sitting statues of Prince Ra-hotep and Princess Nefer-t, are
all portraits; and, like their tombs, were executed during the lifetime
of the persons represented. Crossing the threshold of the great
vestibule,[264] one is surrounded by a host of these extraordinary
figures, erect, colored, clothed, all but in motion. It is like entering
the crowded ante-room of a royal palace in the time of the ancient
empire.
The greater number of the Boulak portrait statues are sculptured in what
is called the hieratic attitude; that is, with the left arm down and
pressed close to the body, the left hand holding a roll of papyrus, the
right leg advanced and the right hand raised, as grasping the
walking-staff. It occurred to me that there might be a deeper
significance than at first sight appears in this conventional attitude,
and that it perhaps suggests the moment of resurrection, when the
deceased, holding fast by his copy of the book of the dead, walks forth
from his tomb into the light of life eternal.
Of all the statues here--one may say, indeed, of all known Egyptian
statues--those of Prince Ra-hotep and Princess Nefer-t are the most
wonderful. They are probably the oldest portrait-statues in the
world.[265] They come from a tomb of the third dynasty, and are
contemporary with Snefru, a king who reigned before the time of Khufu
and Khafra. That is to say, these people who sit before us side by side,
colored to the life, fresh and glowing as the day when they gave the
artist his last sitting, lived at a time when the great pyramids of
Ghîzeh were not yet built, and at a date which is variously calculated
as from about six thousand three hundred to four thousand years before
the present day. The princess wears her hair precisely as it is still
worn in Nubia, and her necklace of cabochon drops is of a pattern much
favored by the modern Ghawâzi. The eyes of both statues are inserted.
The eyeball, which is set in an eyelid of bronze, is made of opaque
white quartz, with an iris of rock-crystal inclosing a pupil of some
kind of brilliant metal. This treatment--of which there are one or two
other instances extant--gives to the eyes a look of intelligence that is
almost appalling. There is a play of light within the orb, and
apparently a living moisture upon the surface, which has never been
approached by the most skillfully made glass eyes of modern
manufacture.[266]
[Illustration]
Of the jewels of Queen Aah-hotep, of the superb series of engraved
scarabæi, of the rings, amulets, and toilette ornaments, of the vases in
bronze, silver, alabaster, and porcelain, of the libation-tables, the
woven stuffs, the terra-cottas, the artists’ models, the lamps, the
silver boats, the weapons, the papyri, the thousand-and-one curious
personal relics and articles of domestic use which are brought together
within these walls, I have no space to tell. Except the collection of
Pompeiian relics in Naples, there is nothing elsewhere to compare with
the collection at Boulak; and the villas of Pompeii have yielded no such
gems and jewels as the tombs of ancient Egypt. It is not too much to say
that if these dead and mummied people could come back to earth, the
priest would here find all the gods of his Pantheon; the king his
scepter; the queen her crown-jewels; the scribe his palette; the soldier
his arms; the workman his tools; the barber his razor; the husbandman
his hoe; the housewife her broom; the child his toys; the beauty her
combs and kohl bottles and mirrors. The furniture of the house is here,
as well as the furniture of the tomb. Here, too, is the broken sistrum
buried with the dead in token of the grief of the living.
Waiting the construction of a more suitable edifice, the present
building gives temporary shelter to the collection. In the meanwhile, if
there was nothing else to tempt the traveler to Cairo, the Boulak museum
would alone be worth the journey from Europe.
The first excursion one makes on returning to Cairo, the last one makes
before leaving, is to Ghîzeh. It is impossible to get tired of the
pyramids. Here L---- and the writer spent their last day with the happy
couple.
We left Cairo early, and met all the market-folk coming in from the
country--donkeys and carts laden with green stuff, and veiled women with
towers of baskets on their heads. The khedive’s new palace was swarming
already with masons, and files of camels were bringing limestone blocks
for the builders. Next comes the open corn-plain, part yellow, part
green--the long straight road bordered with acacias--beyond all, the
desert-platform, and the pyramids, half in light, half in greenish-gray
shadow, against the horizon. I never could understand why it is that the
second pyramid, though it is smaller and farther off, looks from this
point of view bigger than the first. Farther on, the brown fellahîn,
knee-deep in purple blossom, are cutting the clover. The camels carry it
away. The goats and buffaloes feed in the clearings. Then comes the
half-way tomb nestled in greenery, where men and horses stay to drink;
and soon we are skirting a great backwater which reflects the pyramids
like a mirror. Villages, shâdûfs, herds and flocks, tracts of palms,
corn-flats, and spaces of rich, dark fallow, now succeed each other; and
then once more comes the sandy slope, and the cavernous ridge of ancient
yellow rock, and the great pyramid with its shadow-side toward us,
darkening the light of day.
Neither L---- nor the writer went inside the great pyramid. The idle man
did so this day, and L----’s maid on another occasion; and both
reported of the place as so stifling within, so foul underfoot, and so
fatiguing, that, somehow, we each time put it off, and ended by missing
it. The ascent is extremely easy. Rugged and huge as are the blocks,
there is scarcely one upon which it is not possible to find a half-way
rest for the toe of one’s boot, so as to divide the distance. With the
help of three Arabs, nothing can well be less fatiguing. As for the men,
they are helpful and courteous, and as clever as possible; and coax one
on from block to block in all the languages of Europe.
“Pazienza, signora! Allez doucement--all serene! We half-way now--dem
halben-weg, fräulein. Ne vous pressez pas, mademoiselle. Chi va sano, va
lontano. Six step more, and ecco la cima!”
“You should add the other half of the proverb, amici,” said I. “Chi va
forte, va alla morte.”
My Arabs had never heard this before, and were delighted with it. They
repeated it again and again, and committed it to memory with great
satisfaction. I asked them why they did not cut steps in the blocks, so
as to make the ascent easier for ladies. The answer was ready and
honest.
“No, no, mademoiselle! Arab very stupid to do that. If Arab makes steps,
howadji goes up alone. No more want Arab man to help him up, and Arab
man earn no more dollars!”
They offered to sing “Yankee Doodle” when we reached the top; then,
finding we were English, shouted “God save the queen!” and told us that
the Prince of Wales had given £40 to the pyramid Arabs when he came here
with the princess two years before; which, however, we took the liberty
to doubt.
The space on the top of the great pyramid is said to be thirty feet
square. It is not, as I had expected, a level platform. Some blocks of
the next tier remain, and two or three of the tier next above that; so
making pleasant seats and shady corners. What struck us most on reaching
the top was the startling nearness, to all appearance, of the second
pyramid. It seemed to rise up beside us like a mountain; yet so close,
that I fancied I could almost touch it by putting out my hand. Every
detail of the surface, every crack and party-colored stain in the
shining stucco that yet clings about the apex, was distinctly visible.
The view from this place is immense. The country is so flat, the
atmosphere so clear, the standpoint so isolated, that one really sees
more and sees farther than from many a mountain summit of ten or twelve
thousand feet. The ground lies, as it were, immediately under one; and
the great Necropolis is seen as in a ground-plan. The effect must, I
imagine, be exactly like the effect of a landscape seen from a balloon.
Without ascending the pyramid, it is certainly not possible to form a
clear notion of the way in which this great burial-field is laid out. We
see from this point how each royal pyramid is surrounded by its
quadrangle of lesser tombs, some in the form of small pyramids, others
partly rock-cut, partly built of massive slabs, like the roofing-stones
of the temples. We see how Khufu and Khafra and Menkara lay, each under
his mountain of stone, with his family and his nobles around him. We see
the great causeways which moved Herodotus to such wonder, and along
which the giant stones were brought. Recognizing how clearly the place
is a great cemetery, one marvels at the ingenious theories which turn
the pyramids into astronomical observatories, and abstruse standards of
measurement. They are the grandest graves[267] in all the world--and
they are nothing more.
The little way to the southward, from the midst of a sandy hollow, rises
the head of the sphinx. Older than the pyramids, older than history, the
monster lies couchant like a watch-dog, looking ever to the east, as if
for some dawn that has not yet risen.[268] A depression in the sand
close by marks the site of that strange monument miscalled the Temple of
the Sphinx.[269] Farther away to the west on the highest slope of this
part of the desert platform, stands the Pyramid of Menkara (Mycerinus).
It has lost but five feet of its original height, and from this distance
it looks quite perfect.
Such--set in a waste of desert--are the main objects, and the nearest
objects, on which our eyes first rest. As a whole, the view is more long
than wide, being bounded to the westward by the Libyan range, and to the
eastward by the Mokattam hills. At the foot of those yellow hills,
divided from us by the cultivated plain across which we have just
driven, lies Cairo, all glittering domes half seen through a sunlit
haze. Overlooking the fairy city stands the mosque of the citadel, its
mast-like minarets piercing the clearer atmosphere. Far to the
northward, traversing reach after reach of shadowy palm-groves, the eye
loses itself in the dim and fertile distances of the delta. To the west
and south all is desert. It begins here at our feet--a rolling
wilderness of valleys and slopes and rivers and seas of sand, broken
here and there by abrupt ridges of rock and mounds of ruined masonry and
open graves. A silver line skirts the edge of this dead world, and
vanishes southward in the sun-mist that shimmers on the farthest
horizon. To the left of that silver line we see the quarried cliffs of
Turra, marble-white; opposite Turra, the plumy palms of Memphis. On the
desert platform above, clear, though faint, the pyramids of Abusîr and
Sakkârah, and Dahshûr. Every stage of the Pyramid of Ouenephes, banded
in light and shade, is plain to see. So is the dome-like summit of the
great pyramid of Dahshûr. Even the brick ruin beside it which we took
for a black rock as we went up the river, and which looks like a black
rock still, is perfectly visible. Farthest of them all, showing pale and
sharp amid the palpitating blaze of noon, stands, like an unfinished
tower of Babel, the pyramid of Meydûm. It is in this direction that our
eyes turn oftenest--to the measureless desert in its mystery of light
and silence; to the Nile where it gleams out again and again, till it
melts at last into that faint, far distance beyond which lie Thebes and
Philæ and Abou Simbel.
APPENDIX I.
A. M’CALLUM, ESQ., TO THE EDITOR OF “THE TIMES.”[270]
SIR:--It may interest your readers to learn that at the south side of
the great Temple of Abou Simbel, I found the entrance to a painted
chamber rock-cut, and measuring twenty-one feet two and one-half inches
by fourteen feet eight inches, and twelve feet high to the spring of the
arch, elaborately sculptured and painted in the best style of the best
period of Égyptian art, bearing the portraits of Rameses the Great and
his cartouches, and in a state of the highest preservation. This chamber
is preceded by the ruins of a vaulted atrium, in sundried brickwork, and
adjoins the remains of what would appear to be a massive wall or pylon,
which contains a staircase terminating in an arched doorway leading to
the vaulted atrium before mentioned.
The doorway of the painted chamber, the staircase and the arch, were all
buried in sand and débris. The chamber appears to have been covered and
lost sight of since a very early period, being wholly free from
mutilation, and from the scribbling of travelers, ancient and modern.
The staircase was not opened until the 18th, and the bones of a woman
and child, with two small cinerary urns, were there discovered by a
gentleman of our party, buried in the sand. This was doubtless a
subsequent interment. Whether this painted chamber is the inner
sanctuary of a small temple, or part of a tomb, or only a speos, like
the well-known grottos at Ibrim, is a question for future excavators to
determine. I have the honor to be, sir, yours, etc.,
ANDREW MCCALLUM.
KOROSKO, NUBIA, Feb. 16, 1874.
APPENDIX II.
THE EGYPTIAN PANTHEON.
“The deities of ancient Egypt consist of celestial, terrestrial and
infernal gods, and of many inferior personages, either representatives
of the greater gods or else attendants upon them. Most of the gods were
connected with the sun, and represented that luminary in its passage
through the upper hemisphere or Heaven and the lower hemisphere or
Hades. To the deities of the solar cycle belonged the great gods of
Thebes and Heliopolis. In the local worship of Egypt the deities were
arranged in local triads; thus, at Memphis, Ptah, his wife Merienptah,
and their son Nefer Atum, formed a triad, to which was sometimes added
the goddess Bast or Bubastis. At Abydus the local triad was Osiris, Isis
and Horus, with Nephthys; at Thebes, Amen-Ra or Ammon, Mut and Chons,
with Neith; at Elephantine, Kneph, Anuka, Seti and Hak. In most
instances the names of the gods are Egyptian; thus, Ptah meant ‘the
opener;’ Amen, ‘the concealed;’ Ra, ‘the sun’ or ‘day;’ Athor, ‘the
house of Horus;’ but some few, especially of later times, were
introduced from Semitic sources, as Bal or Baal, Astaruta or Astarte,
Khen or Kium, Respu or Reseph. Besides the principal gods, several or
parhedral gods, sometimes personifications of the faculties, senses, and
other objects, are introduced into the religious system, and genii,
spirits, or personified souls of deities formed part of the same. At a
period subsequent to their first introduction the gods were divided into
three orders. The first or highest comprised eight deities, who were
different in the Memphian and Theban systems. They were supposed to have
reigned over Egypt before the time of mortals. The eight gods of the
first order at Memphis were: 1, Ptah; 2, Shu; 3, Tefnu; 4, Seb; 5, Nut;
6, Osiris; 7, Isis and Horus; 8, Athor. Those of Thebes were: 1,
Amen-Ra; 2, Mentu; 3, Atum; 4, Shu and Tefnu; 5, Seb; 6, Osiris; 7, Set
and Nephthys; 8, Horus and Athor. The gods of the second order were
twelve in number, but the name of one only, an Egyptian Hercules, has
been preserved. The third order is stated to have comprised Osiris, who,
it will be seen, belonged to the first order.”--“Guide to the First and
Second Egyptian Rooms; Brit. Musæ.” S. Birch, 1874.
The gods most commonly represented upon the monuments are Phtah, Knum,
Ra, Amen-Ra, Khem, Osiris, Nefer Atum or Tum, Thoth, Seb, Set, Khons,
Horus, Maut, Neith, Isis, Nut, Hathor and Bast. They are distinguished
by the following attributes:
_Phtah_ or _Ptah_--In form a mummy, holding the emblem called by some
the Nilometer, by others the emblem of stability. Called “the Father of
the Beginning, the Creator of the Egg of the Sun and Moon.” Chief deity
of Memphis.
_Kneph_, _Knum_ or _Knouphis_--Ram-headed. Called the maker of gods and
men; the soul of the gods. Chief deity of Elephantine and the cataracts.
_Ra_--Hawk-headed, and crowned with the sun-disk encircled by an asp.
The divine disposer and organizer of the world. Adored throughout Egypt.
_Amen-Ra_--Of human form, crowned with a flat-topped cap and two long
straight plumes; clothed in the schenti; his flesh sometimes painted
blue. There are various forms of this god (see foot note p. 310), but he
is most generally described as King of the Gods. Chief deity of Thebes.
_Khem_--Of human form, mummified; wears head-dress of Amen-Ra; his
right hand uplifted, holding the flail. The god of productiveness and
generation. Chief deity of Khemmis, or Ekhmeen. Is identified in later
times with Amen, and called Amen-Khem.
_Osiris_--Of human form, mummified, crowned with a miter, and holding
the flail and crook. Called the Good Being; the Lord above all; the One
Lord. Was the god of the lower world; judge of the dead; and
representative of the sun below the horizon. Adored throughout Egypt.
Local deity of Abydus.
_Nefer Atum_--Human-headed, and crowned with the pschent. This god
represented the setting sun, or the sun descending to light the lower
world. Local deity of Heliopolis.
_Thoth_--In form a man, ibis-headed, generally depicted with the pen and
palette of a scribe. Was the god of the moon, and of letters. Local
deity of Sesoon, or Hermopolis.
_Seb_--The “Father of the Gods,” and deity of terrestrial vegetation. In
form a man with a goose upon his head.
_Set_--Represented by a symbolic animal, with a muzzle and ears like a
jackal, the body of an ass, and an upright tail, like the tail of a
lion. Was originally a warlike god, and became in later times the symbol
of evil and the enemy of Osiris.
_Khons_--Hawk-headed, crowned with the sun disk and horns. Is
represented sometimes as a youth with the side-lock, standing on a
crocodile.
_Horus_--Horus appears variously as Horus, Horus Aroëris, and Horus
Harpakhrat (Harpocrates), or Horus the child. Is represented under the
first two forms as a man, hawk headed, wearing the double crown of
Egypt; in the latter as a child with the side-lock. Local deity of Edfu
(Apollinopolis Magna).
_Maut_--A woman draped and crowned with the pschent; generally with a
cap below the pschent representing a vulture. Adored at Thebes.
_Neith_--A woman draped, holding sometimes a bow and arrows, crowned
with the crown of Lower Egypt. She presided over war and the loom.
Worshiped at Thebes.
_Isis_--A woman crowned with the sun-disk surmounted by a throne, and
sometimes inclosed between horns. Adored at Abydus and Philæ. Her soul
resided in Sothis, or the Dog-star.
_Nut_--A woman curved so as to touch the ground with her fingers. She
represents the vault of Heaven, and is the mother of the gods.
_Hathor_--Cow-headed, and crowned with the disk and plumes. Deity of
Amenti, or the Egyptian Hades. Worshiped at Denderah.
_Bast_ and _Sekhet_--Bast and Sekhet appear to be two forms of the same
goddess. As Sekhet she is represented as a woman, lion-headed, with the
disk and uræus; as Bast, she is cat-headed, and holds a sistrum. Adored
at Bubastis.
APPENDIX III.
THE RELIGIOUS BELIEF OF THE EGYPTIANS.
Did the Egyptians believe in one eternal god whose attributes were
merely symbolized by their numerous deities; or must the whole structure
of their faith be resolved into a solar myth, with its various and
inevitable ramifications? This is the great problem of Egyptology, and
it is a problem that has not yet been solved. Egyptologists differ so
widely on the subject that it is impossible to reconcile their opinions.
As not even the description of a temple is complete without some
reference to this important question, and as the question itself
underlies every notion we may form of ancient Egypt, and ancient
Egyptians, I have thought it well to group here a few representative
extracts from the works of one or two of the greatest authorities upon
the subject.
“The religion of the Egyptians consisted of an extended polytheism
represented by a series of local groups. The idea of a single deity
self-existing or produced was involved in the conception of some of the
principal gods, who are said to have given birth to or produced gods,
men, all beings and things. Other deities were considered to be
self-produced. The sun was the older object of worship, and in his
various forms, as the rising, midday and setting sun, was adored under
different names, and was often united, especially at Thebes, to the
types of other deities, as Amen and Mentu. The oldest of all the local
deities, Ptah, who was worshiped at Memphis, was a demiurgos or creator
of Heaven, earth, gods and men, and not identified with the sun. Besides
the worship of the solar gods, that of Osiris extensively prevailed, and
with it the antagonism of Set, the Egyptian devil, the metempsychosis or
transmigration of the soul, the future judgment, the purgatory or Hades,
the _Karneter_, the _Aahlu_ or Elysium, and final union of the soul to
the body after the lapse of several centuries. Besides the deities of
Heaven, the light, and the lower world, others personified the elements
or presided over the operations of nature, the seasons and
events.”--“Guide to the First and Second Egyption Rooms: Brit. Mus.” S.
Birch, 1874.
“This religion, obscured as it is by complex mythology, has lent itself
to many interpretations of a contradictory nature, none of which have
been unanimously adopted. But that which is beyond doubt, and which
shines forth from the texts for the whole world’s acceptance, is the
belief in one God. The polytheism of the monuments is but an outward
show. The innumerable gods of the Pantheon are but manifestations of the
one being in his various capacities. That taste for allegory which
created the hieroglyphic writing, found vent likewise in the expression
of the religious idea; that idea being, as it were, stifled in the later
periods by a too-abundant symbolism.”--P. Pierret, “Dictionaire d’Arch.
Égyptienne,” 1875. Translated from an article on “_Réligion_.”
“This god of the Egyptians was unique, perfect, endued with knowledge
and intelligence, and so far incomprehensible that one can scarcely say
in what respects he is incomprehensible. He is the one who exists by
essence; the one sole life of all substance; the one single generator in
heaven and earth who is not himself engendered; the father of fathers;
the mother of mothers; always the same, immutable in immutable
perfection; existing equally in the past, the present and the future. He
fills the universe in such wise that no earthly image can give the
feeblest notion of his immensity. He is felt everywhere; he is tangible
nowhere.”--G. Maspero. Translated from “Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de
l’Orient.” Paris, 1876, chap, i, p. 26.
“Unfortunately, the more we study the religion of ancient Egypt the more
our doubts accumulate with regard to the character which must finally be
attributed to it. The excavations carried on of late at Denderah and
Edfu have opened up to us an extraordinary fertile source of material.
These temples are covered with texts, and present precisely the
appearance of two books which authoritatively treat not only of the gods
to which these two temples are dedicated, but of the religion under its
more general aspects. But neither in these temples, nor in those which
have been long known to us, appears the one god of Jamblichus. If Ammon
is ‘The First of the First’ at Thebes, if Phtah is at Memphis ‘The
Father of all Beings, without Beginning or End,’ so also is every other
Egyptian god separately endowed with these attributes of the Divine
Being. In other words, we everywhere find gods who are uncreate and
immortal; but nowhere that unique, invisible deity, without name and
without form, who was supposed to hover above the highest summit of the
Egyptian pantheon. The Temple of Denderah, now explored to the end of
its most hidden inscriptions, of a certainty furnishes no trace of this
deity. The one result which above all others seems to be educed from the
study of this temple, is that (according to the Egyptians) the universe
was god himself, and that Pantheism formed the foundation of their
religion.”--A. Mariette Bey. Translated from “Itinéraire de la Haute
Égypte.” Alexandria, 1872, p. 54.
“The sun is the most ancient object of Egyptian worship found upon the
monuments. His birth each day when he springs from the bosom of the
nocturnal Heaven is the natural emblem of the eternal generation of the
divinity. Hence the celestial space became identified with the divine
mother. It was particularly the nocturnal Heaven which was represented
by this personage. The rays of the sun, as they awakened all nature,
seemed to give life to animated beings. Hence that which doubtless was
originally a symbol became the foundation of the religion. It is the sun
himself whom we find habitually invoked as the supreme being. The
addition of his Egyptian name, Ra, to the names of certain local
divinities, would seem to show that this identification constituted a
second epoch in the history of the religions of the Valley of the
Nile.”--Viscount E. de Rougé. Translated from “Notice Sommaire des
Monuments Égyptiens du Louvre.” Paris, 1873, p. 120.
That the religion, whether based on a solar myth or upon a genuine
belief in a spiritual god, became grossly material in its later
developments, is apparent to every student of the monuments. M. Maspero
has the following remarks on the degeneration of the old faith:
“In the course of ages, the sense of the religion became obscured. In
the texts of Greek and Roman date, that lofty conception of the divinity
which had been cherished by the early theologians of Egypt still peeps
out here and there. Fragmentary phrases and epithets yet prove that the
fundamental principles of the religion are not quite forgotten. For the
most part, however, we find that we no longer have to do with the
infinite and intangible god of ancient days; but rather with a god of
flesh and blood who lives upon earth, and has so abased himself as to be
no more than a human king. It is no longer this god of whom no man knew
either the form or the substance--it is Kneph at Esneh; Hathor at
Denderah; Horus, king of the divine dynasty at Edfu. This king has a
court, ministers, an army, a fleet. His eldest son, Horhat, Prince of
Cush and heir presumptive to the throne, commands the troops. His first
minister, Thoth, the inventor of letters, has geography and rhetoric at
his fingers’ ends; is historiographer-royal; and is entrusted with the
duty of recording the victories of the king and of celebrating them in
high-sounding phraseology. When this god makes war upon his neighbor
Typhon he makes no use of the divine weapons of which we should take it
for granted that he could dispose at will. He calls out his archers and
his chariots; descends the Nile in his galley, as might the last new
Pharaoh; directs marches and counter-marches; fights planned battles;
carries cities by storm, and brings all Egypt in submission to his feet.
We see here that the Egyptians of Ptolemaic times had substituted for
the one god of their ancestors a line of god-kings, and had embroidered
these modern legends with a host of fantastic details.”--G. Maspero.
Translated from “Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient.” Paris,
1876, chap, i, pp. 50-51.
APPENDIX IV.
EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY.
“The chronology of Egypt has been a disputed point for centuries. The
Egyptians had no cycle, and only dated in the regnal years of their
monarchs. The principal Greek sources have been the canon of Ptolemy,
drawn up in the second century A.D., and the lists of the dynasties
extracted from the historical work of Manetho, an Egyptian priest, who
lived in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, B.C. 285-247. The
discrepancies between these lists and the monuments have given rise to
many schemes and rectifications of the chronology. The principal
chronological points of information obtained from the monument are the
conquest of Egypt by Cambyses, B.C. 527, the commencement of the reign
of Psammetichus I, B.C. 665, the reign of Tirhaka, about B.C. 693, and
that of Bocchoris, about B.C. 720, the synchronism of the reign of
Shishak I with the capture of Jerusalem, about B.C. 970. The principal
monuments throwing light on other parts of the chronology are the
recorded heliacal risings of Sothis, or the Dog-star, in the reigns of
Thothmes III and Rameses II, III, VI, IX, the date of four hundred years
from the time of Rameses II to the shepherd kings, the dated sepulchral
tablets of the bull Apis at the serapeum, the lists of kings at
Sakkarah, Thebes and Abydus, the chronological canon of the Turin
papyrus, and other incidental notices. But of the anterior dynasties no
certain chronological dates are afforded by the monuments, those
hitherto proposed not having stood the test of historical or
philological criticism.”--S. Birch, LL.D.: “Guide to the First and
Second Egyptian Rooms at the Brit. Museum.” 1874, p. 10.
As some indication of the wide divergence of opinion upon this subject,
it is enough to point out that the German Egyptologists alone differ as
to the date of Menes or Mena (the first authentic king of the ancient
empire), to the following extent:
B. C.
BOECKH places Mena in 5702
UNGER places Mena in 5613
BRUGSCH places Mena in 4455
LAUTH places Mena in 4157
LEPSIUS places Mena in 3892
BUNSEN places Mena in 3623
Mariette, though recognizing the need for extreme caution in the
acceptance or rejection of any of these calculations, inclined on the
whole to abide by the lists of Manetho; according to which the
thirty-four recorded dynasties would stand as follows:
ANCIENT EMPIRE. | NEW EMPIRE.
|
DYNASTIES. CAPITALS. B. C. | DYNASTIES. CAPITALS. B. C.
I. } This { 5004 | XVIII. } { 1703
II. } { 4751 | XIX. } Thebes { 1462
III. } { 4449 | XX. } { 1288
IV. } Memphis { 4235 | XXI. Tanis 1100
V. } { 3951 | XXII. Bubastis 980
VI. Elephantine 3703 | XXIII. Tanis 810
VII.v } | XXIV. Saïs 721
VIII.v } Memphis 3500 | XXV. (Ethiopians) 715
IX. } { 3358 | XXVI. Saïs 665
X. } Heracleopolis { 3240 | XXVII. (Persians) 527
| XXVIII. Saïs 405
MIDDLE EMPIRE. | XXIX. Mendes 399
XI.} { 3064 | XXX. Sebennytis 378
XII.} Thebes { 3064 | XXXI. (Persians) 340
XIII.} { 2851 |
XIV. Xoïs 2398 | LOWER EMPIRE.
XV.} | XXXII. Macedonians 332
XVI.} Shepherd Kings 2214 | XXXII. (Greeks) 305
XVII.} | XXXIV. (Romans) 30
To this chronology may be opposed the brief table of dates compiled by
M. Chabas. This table represents what may be called the medium school of
Egyptian chronology, and is offered by M. Chabas, “not as an attempt to
reconcile systems,” but as an aid to the classification of certain
broadly indicated epochs.
B. C.
Mena and the commencement of the ancient empire 4000
Construction of the great pyramids 3300
Sixth dynasty 2800
Twelfth dynasty { 2400
{ 2000
Shepherd invasion ?
Expulsion of Shepherds and commencement of the
new empire 1800
Thothmes III 1700
Seti I and Rameses II { 1500
{ 1400
Sheshonk (Shishak), the conqueror of Jerusalem 1000
Saïtic dynasties { 700
{ 600
Cambyses and the Persians 500
Second Persian conquest 400
{ 300
Ptolemies { 200
{ 100
APPENDIX V.
CONTEMPORARY CHRONOLOGY OF EGYPT, MESOPOTAMIA, AND BABYLON.
A very important addition to our chronological information with regard
to the synchronous history of Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia and
Babylonia has been brought to light during this present year (1888) by
the great discovery of cuneiform tablets at Tel-el-Amarna in Upper
Egypt. These tablets consist for the most part of letters and dispatches
sent to Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV by the kings of Babylonia and the
princes and governors of Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia; some being
addressed to Amenhotep IV (Khu-en-Aten) by Burna-Buryas, King of
Babylonia, who lived about B.C. 1430. This gives us the date of the life
and reign of Amenhotep IV, and consequently the approximate date of the
foundation of the city known to us as Tel-el-Amarna, and of the
establishment of the new religion of the Disk-worship; and it is the
earliest synchronism yet established between the history of ancient
Egypt and that of her contemporaries.
From these tablets we also learn that the consort of Amenhotep IV was a
Syrian princess and daughter of Duschratta, King of Naharina (called in
the tablets “the land of Mitanni”) on the Upper Euphrates. For a full
and learned description of some of the most interesting of these newly
discovered documents, see Dr. Erman’s paper, entitled _Der Thontafelfund
von Tell Amarna_, read before the Berlin Academy on 3d May, 1888.
THE END.
BURT’S LIBRARY
OF THE
WORLD’S BEST BOOKS.
[Illustration]
_A series which will include the standard works of the world’s
literature. The books will be neatly and durably bound, printed on, good
paper, in large, clear type, uniform in all respects with this volume.
The text will be in every case thoroughly reliable and unabridged, hence
meeting equally the needs of the student and general reader. Indexes,
biographical sketches and explanatory notes will be given where these
are likely to prove of value and interest. All who have at heart the
best interests of literature, and welcome further the spread of a taste
for the world’s classics, will welcome the appearance of this series,
which will place a complete, rich and uniform library of the highest
character within the reach of all._
=The Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral of Francis Bacon.= First published
in 1597, and as he left them newly written and published in 1625.
Including also his Apophthegms, Elegant Sentences, and Wisdom of the
Ancients. With an introduction by HENRY MORLEY, LL.D., Professor of
English Literature at University College, London. Portrait. 12mo, cloth,
gilt top, $1.00.
They (Bacon’s Essays) contain the condensed wisdom gathered during
the whole long life-time of one of the mightiest minds of modern
times.--_Frank Parsons._
=Vanity Fair. A Novel Without a Hero.= By WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.
Portrait, 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
As a whole the book is full of quiet sarcasm and severe rebuke. It
is replete with humor and morality, and rivets attention to the end
by the vivid reality of all the persons and scenes.--_From “A
Manual of English Literature” by T. B. Shaw._
=Other Worlds Than Ours.= The plurality of worlds studied under the light
of recent scientific researches. By RICHARD A. PROCTOR. With an
introductory note by FRANK PARSONS. Portrait. Cloth, gilt top. $1.00.
Like Huxley and Tyndall, Mr. Proctor sees the poetry of his subject
and knows how to bring the largest truths within the comprehension
of a child, and make the deepest researches as interesting to the
general reader as a novel.--_Frank Parsons._
=The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, from Marathon to Waterloo.= By
E. S. CREASY, M.A., Professor of Ancient and Modern History in
University College, London; late Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.
With an introductory note by FRANK PARSONS. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt
top, $1.00.
So vivid are his descriptions that one feels as though he were
present at the scene himself, listening to the counsels of the
generals, hearing the tread of marching columns, watching the
gleaming spears and bayonets, armies of infantry, charging cavalry,
breach, rally and retreat, deafened with the roar of batteries,
saddened by the death of friends, and flushed with triumph; and at
last the reader lays the book away exhausted with the rush of
feeling through his heart.--_Frank Parsons._
=The Essays of Elia.= By CHARLES LAMB. With an introduction and notes by
Alfred Ainger, and a Biographical Sketch of Charles Lamb, by Henry
Morley. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
The Essays of Elia have been characterized as the “finest things
for humor, taste, penetration and vivacity which have appeared
since the days of Montaigne.” In his bits of criticism Charles Lamb
shows a most delicate and acute critical faculty; in his few poems,
much grace and sweetness, but first and foremost, he is an essayist
of rare power. The refined wit, genuine pleasantry, deep and tender
pathos, and subtle discrimination of his essays, are unexcelled by
any compositions in the language.--_Robert Thorne._
=Essays.= By RALPH WALDO EMERSON. First and second series. Portrait. 12mo,
cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
He exercised a great power over men; he brought them wide comfort,
and to him more than to any man of his time belongs the glory of
having taught them that life was worth the living.--_From the
“Optimism of Emerson,” by W. F. Dana._
_For sale by all Booksellers, or will be sent post-paid on receipt of
price, by the publisher, =A. L. BURT, 66 Reade Street, New York.=_
=Past and Present.= By THOMAS CARLYLE, with an introductory note by Robert
Thorne, M.A. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
His (Carlyle’s) bidding is to do the allotted work of life silently
and bravely. and there is probably no person who has not gained
strength by the reading of his strong and earnest
writings.--_Robert Thorne._
=The History of Civilization in Europe.= By FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME
GUIZOT. Translated by William Hazlitt, with a biographical sketch of the
author. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
These lectures made a profound impression at the time they were
delivered and published, and indeed marked an epoch in the history
of education, raising the reputation of their author at once to the
highest point of fame, and placing him among the best writers of
France and of Europe.--_Robert Thorne._
=Ivanhoe. A Romance.= By SIR WALTER SCOTT, Bart. Reprinted from the
author’s edition, unaltered and unabridged. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt
top, $1.00.
Ivanhoe is one of the most famous and brilliant of all the master
romances of Sir Walter Scott, who is placed by many at the head of
modern novelists.... The breadth and power of Scott’s style and his
charm as a story-teller are too well known to need comment, and in
this volume we have him at his best.--_Robert Thorne._
=The Vicar of Wakefield, The Traveller, and The Deserted Village.= By
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. With a Life of Goldsmith by WILLIAM BLACK. Portrait.
12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1 00.
The style is easy and delightful. The humor is delicate and all
good humor; there is hardly a trace of satire or ill-nature in the
whole book, which is a true expression of the spirit of Goldsmith
himself, one of the most lovable personalities in the world of
letters.--_Robert Thorne._
=The Discourses of Epictetus, with the Encheiridion and Fragments.=
Translated with notes, a life of Epictetus, a view of his philosophy,
and index. By GEORGE LONG, M.A. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
Great purity, sustained reflection, wealth of illustration and
allusion, vivid revelations of character and brilliant bursts of
eloquence, mark the utterances of this great teacher and insure
their immortality.--_Frank Parsons._
=The Crown of Wild Olive and Sesame and Lilies.= By JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.
Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
As a great and fearless leader of thought and antagonistic to many
features of our social order, he is naturally the object of much
violent criticism, but is warmly admired and loved by a great part
of the reading world, and coming ages will accord him his due. He
has told the world new truth and the world will grow up to his
majestic stature.--_Robert Thorne._
=The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.= Translated by
GEORGE LONG, M.A., with a biographical sketch and a view of the
philosophy of Antoninus by the translator. Including also an essay on
Marcus Aurelius by Canon Farrar. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
“The noblest book of antiquity” is Canon Farrar’s estimate of the
“Meditations of Marcus Aurelius;” and his regard is shared by
thousands who have been made better and truer men by the ennobling
influence of the great soul and lofty character of this pagan
emperor.--_Robert Thorne._
_For sale by all Booksellers, or will be sent post-paid on receipt of
price, by the publisher, =A. L. BURT, 66 Reade Street, New York.=_
=Faust.= By JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE. Complete in two parts. Translated
by Anna Swanwick. Portrait. Cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
Deeper meanings are discovered with every reading, and familiarity
does not cause it to grow trite, but ever the more strongly to lay
hold on the soul with the irresistible fascination of an eternal
problem and the charm of an endless variety.--_Robert Thorne._
=The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.= By WASHINGTON IRVING. With an
introductory note by FRANK PARSONS. Portrait. Cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
The book is refined, poetical and picturesque, full of quaint
humor, exquisite feeling, and a thorough knowledge of human
nature.--_Frank Parsons._
=Lorna Doone. A Romance of Exmoor.= By R. D. BLACKMORE. 12mo, cloth, gilt
top, $1.00.
These wonderfully reproduced scenes, and the men and women with
whom they are peopled, and finally the beautiful language in which
the narrative is set forth, unite to make a delightful, and, what
is more, a wholesome, invigorating, inspiring book.--_E. S. Hawes._
=Hypatia, or New Foes with an Old Face.= By CHARLES KINGSLEY, F.S.A.,
F.L.S. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
The plot is well developed, the characters are vigorously drawn,
and the scenes and incidents show great dramatic power, while the
language and word-painting are exquisite. The book holds
throughout, with a firm grasp, our sympathy and interest, Kingsley
being one of the very few who have succeeded in throwing a strong
human interest into a historical novel.--_Robert Thorne._
=Romola.= By GEORGE ELIOT. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
George Eliot is admitted by thoughtful persons to have been endowed
with one of the greatest minds of this century.... Romola, which is
one of her earlier works, is also one of the most popular. The
movement is so rapid, and the situations are so dramatic, that the
interest never flags; ... the book has nowhere the air of tiresome
preaching, but it stands the test of a great novel--it may be read
again and again with pleasure.--_E. S. Hawes._
=The Data of Ethics.= By HERBERT SPENCER. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt top,
$1.00.
Herbert Spencer is the foremost name in the philosophic literature
of the world. He is the Shakespeare of science. He has a grander
grasp of knowledge and more perfect conscious correspondence with
the external universe than any other human being who ever looked
wonderingly out into the starry depths; and his few errors flow
from an over-anxiety to exert his splendid power of making
beautiful generalizations. Plato and Spencer are brothers. Plato
would have done what Spencer has had he lived in the nineteenth
century.--_From “The World’s Best Books,” by Frank Parsons._
=The Origin of Species, by Means of Natural Selection, or the
Preservation of a Favored Race in the Struggle for Life.= By CHARLES
DARWIN, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
This book is the grandest achievement of modern scientific thought
and research. It has passed through many editions in English, has
been translated into almost all the languages of Europe, and has
been the subject of more reviews, pamphlets and separate books than
any other volume of the age.--_Robert Thorne._
_For sale by all Booksellers, or will be sent post-paid on receipt of
price, by the publisher, =A. L. BURT, 66 Reade Street, New York.=_
=John Halifax, Gentleman.= A Novel. By MISS MULOCK. Portrait. 12mo, cloth,
gilt top, $1.00.
The book is from the pen of one who combines a careful study of
life with a rare genius in depicting its real experiences, and who
renders charming even a simple story of actual life, by the glow of
a warm and loving heart with which she transfuses it.--_Frederick
Mynon Cooper._
=Undine and Other Tales.= By DE LA MOTTE FOUQUE. Translated from the
German by F. E. BUNNETT. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
Undine has become a household book for old and young in Germany,
and has been translated into almost every European language. There
is in it a simplicity of style unsurpassed, and plenty of sweet
pathos which wets the eye but never wrings the heart.--_Henry
Prentice._
=Uarda, A Romance of Ancient Egypt.= By GEORGE EBERS. Translated from the
German by CLARA BELL. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
Amid all the tempest of passion and expectation incidental to such
a tale the novelist evolves a charming story of love and constancy
rising superior to class prejudices, and of the sweet amenities of
social ties and family affection.--_Frederick Mynon Cooper._
=Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Selected Essays.= By THOMAS DE
QUINCEY. Edited with notes by DAVID MASSON, Professor of English
Literature in the University of Edinburgh. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt
top, $1.00.
De Quincey’s skill in narration, his rare pathos, his wide
sympathies, the pomp of his dream-descriptions, his abounding
though subtle humor, commend him to a large class of
readers.--_Encyclopedia Britannica._
=On the Heights.= By BERTHOLD AUERBACH. Translated from the German by F.
E. BUNNETT. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
Auerbach has been called the Charles Dickens of Germany. He is not
only a brilliant writer of fiction, but is at the same time a
profound thinker and elevated moralist. In “On the Heights,” his
most powerful work, education, labor, wealth, poverty, and the
relations of rich and poor; aristocracy, religion and philosophy,
the rights of the individual, and their various applications to our
daily life, are illumed and illustrated by its progress and
development. It is a beautiful story, sad in its ending, but free
from any tinge of coarseness or sensationalism; pure, sweet, warm
with human love and tenderness.--_Frederick Mynon Cooper._
=The Last Days of Pompeii.= By SIR EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON, BART. Portrait.
12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
The fate of the rich Campanian city, the most awful catastrophe
which history records, supplies a superb climax to the story. This
is dramatic and powerful throughout, and of absorbing interest. The
characters arise naturally from the scene of the story, and they
move and speak in perfect accord with their surroundings; with a
human sympathy which easily bridges the eighteen centuries which
have rolled over the buried city, we follow with eager interest
this tale of the men and women of ancient Pompeii.--_Robert
Thorne._
_For sale by all Booksellers, or will be sent post-paid on receipt of
price, by the publisher, =A. L. BURT, 66 Reade Street, New York.=_
=Westward Ho! or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight.=
By CHARLES KINGSLEY. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
“Westward Ho!” is one of the most vigorous, powerful, and
fascinating of novels. It is strong and graphic in its portraiture,
intense and dramatic in its diversified coloring. The nervous and
effective style, the skillful blending of the manifold portraits
into one comprehensive picture, are among the merits which have
made this Kingsley’s greatest work.--_Frederic Mynon Cooper._
=The Pilgrim’s Progress.= By JOHN BUNYAN, with a life of Bunyan by James
Anthony Froude. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
No other book except the Bible has gone through so many editions
and attained to so wide a popularity in all languages as “The
Pilgrim’s Progress.” ... It narrates the struggles, the
experiences, and the trials of a Christian in his passage from a
life of sin to everlasting felicity: and it abounds with those
little inimitable touches of natural feeling and description which
have placed its author among the most picturesque of writers....
Bunyan may truly be called the prince of allegorists, and he is
also the most perfect representative of the plain, vigorous,
idiomatic, and sometimes picturesque and poetical language of the
common people.--_Taken from “A Manual of English Literature,” by T.
B. Shaw._
=Self-Help, with Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance.=
By SAMUEL SMILES. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
“Self-Help” is a book which helps and stimulates men to elevate and
improve themselves. It teaches them that the humblest person who
sets before his fellows an example of industry, sobriety, and
upright honesty of purpose in life, has a present as well as a
future influence upon the well-being of his country.... Hundreds of
its terse and happy phrases have become the common property of
mankind, and it has been already translated into four or five of
the European languages.--_Frederic Mynon Cooper._
=Jane Eyre.= By CHARLOTTE BRONTÉ. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00.
Few novels have gained such immediate popularity as was accorded to
“Jane Eyre.” This was doubtless due in part to the freshness and
vigor of mind it evinced; but it was obtained not so much by these
qualities as by the frequent dealings in moral paradox, and by the
hardihood of its assaults upon the prejudices of proper people.
Throughout the tale the author exhibits a perception of character
and the power of delineating it, which is, considering her youth,
remarkable.--_Frederic Mynon Cooper._
=The Moonstone.= A Novel. By WILKIE COLLINS. Portrait. 12mo, cloth, gilt
top, $1.00.
Like the generality of his romances, the interest of “The
Moonstone” depends chiefly upon the development of a plot whose
systematic intricacies pique the curiosity until the last moment,
and upon the concealment of a mystery which baffles and defies
solution until it shall have contributed to no end of cross
purposes and caused a prodigious amount of incertitude and
wretchedness.--_Frederic Mynon Cooper._
_For sale by all Booksellers, or will be sent post-paid on receipt of
juice, by the publisher, =A. L. BURT, 66 Reade Street, New York.=_
FOOTNOTES:
[1] For the benefit of any who desire more exact information, I may add
that a table of average temperatures, carefully registered day by day
and week by week, is to be found at the end of Mr. H. Villiers Stuart’s
“Nile Gleanings.” [Note to second edition.]
[2] These dates, it is to be remembered, refer to the year 1877, when
the first edition of this book was published. [Note to second edition.]
[3] Since the first edition of this book was issued, the publication of
Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie’s standard work, entitled “The Pyramids and
Temples of Gizeh,” has for the first time placed a thoroughly accurate
and scientific description of the great pyramid at the disposal of
students. Calculating from the rock-cut sockets at the four corners,
and from the true level of the pavement, Mr. Petrie finds that the
square of the original base of the structure, in inches, is of these
dimensions:
-------------------------------------------------------
| Length. | Difference | Azimuth. | Difference
| | from Mean. | | from Mean.
-------|----------|------------|----------|------------
N. | 9069.4 | + .6 | - 3’ 20” | + 23”
E. | 9067.7 | - 1.1 | - 3’ 57” | - 14”
S. | 9069.5 | + .7 | - 3’ 41” | + 2”
W. | 9068.6 | - .2 | - 3’ 54” | - 11”
-------|----------|------------|----------|------------
Mean. | 9068.8 | .65 | - 3’ 43” | 12”
-------------------------------------------------------
For the height, Mr. Petrie, after duly weighing all data, such as the
thickness of the three casing-stones yet _in situ_, and the presumed
thickness of those which formerly faced the upper courses of the
masonry, gives from his observations of the mean angle of the pyramid,
a height from base to apex of 5776.0 ± 7.0 inches. See “The Pyramids
and Temples of Gizeh,” chap. vi. pp. 37-43. [Note to the second
edition.]
[4] Now, seventy-seven years ago; the first edition of this book having
been published thirteen years ago. [Note to second edition.]
[5] One only is said to have escaped--a certain Emin Bey, who leaped
his horse over a gap in the wall, alighted safely in the piazza below,
and galloped away into the desert. The place of this famous leap
continued to be shown for many years, but there are no gaps in the
wall now, the citadel being the only place in Cairo which is kept in
thorough repair.
[6] “It is related that the Sultan Ez-Zahir Beybars, King of Egypt,
was the first who sent a mahmal with the caravan of pilgrims to
Mecca, in the year of the flight 670 (A.D. 1272) or 675; but
this custom, it is generally said, had its origin a few years before
his accession to the throne. Shegered-Durr, a beautiul Turkish female
slave who became the favorite wife of the Sultan Es-Sáleh Negm-ed-Deen,
and on the death of his son (with whom terminated the dynasty of the
house of the Eiyoob) caused herself to be acknowledged as Queen of
Egypt, performed the pilgrimage in a magnificent ‘hódag,’ or covered
litter, borne by a camel; and for several successive years her empty
‘hódag’ was sent with the caravan, merely for the sake of state. Hence,
succeeding princes of Egypt sent with each year’s caravan of pilgrims
a kind of ‘hódag’ (which received the name of mahmal) as an emblem of
royalty.”--“The Modern Egyptians,” by E. W. Lane, chap. xxiv, London,
1860.
[7] The hereditary prince, it need scarcely be said, is the present
khedive, Tewfik Pasha. [Note to second edition.]
[8] Arabic--_Kemengeh_.
[9] The goolah, or kulleh, is a porous water-jar of sun-dried Nile
mud. These jars are made of all sizes and in a variety of remarkably
graceful forms, and cost from about one farthing to two-pence apiece.
[10] Some of these tiles are to be seen in the Egyptian department of
the British Museum. They are not blue, but of a bluish green. For a
view of the sepulchral chamber, see Maspero’s “Archéologie Egyptienne,”
fig. 230, p. 256. [Note to second edition.]
[11] Nectanebo I and Nectanebo II were the last native Pharaohs of
ancient Egypt, and flourished between B.C. 378 and B.C. 340. An earlier
temple must have preceded the Serapeum built by Nectanebo I.
[12] For an excellent and exact account of the Serapeum and the
monuments there discovered, see M. Arthur Rhoné’s “L’Egypte en Petites
Journées.” [Note to second edition.]
[13] These objects, known as “The Miramar Collection,” and catalogued
by Professor Reinisch, are now removed to Vienna. [Note to second
edition.]
[14] A more exhaustive study of the funerary texts has of late
revolutionized our interpretation of these and similar sepulchral
tableaux. The scenes they represent are not, as was supposed when
this book was first written, mere episodes in the daily life of the
deceased; but are links in the elaborate story of his burial and his
ghostly existence after death. The corn is sown, reaped, and gathered
in order that it may be ground and made into funerary cakes; the
oxen, goats, gazelles, geese and other live stock are destined for
sacrificial offerings; the pots, and furniture, and household goods are
for burying with the mummy in his tomb; and it is his “Ka,” or ghostly
double, that takes part in these various scenes, and not the living
man. [Note to second edition.]
[15] These statues were not mere portrait-statues; but were designed
as bodily habitations for the incorporeal ghost, or “Ka,” which it was
supposed needed a body, food and drink, and must perish everlastingly
if not duly supplied with these necessaries. Hence the whole system of
burying food-offerings, furniture, stuffs, etc., in ancient Egyptian
sepulchers. [Note to second edition.]
[16] The actual tomb of Prince Kha-em-nas has been found at Memphis
by M. Maspero within the last three or four years. [Note to second
edition.]
[17] The date is Mariette’s.
[18] There was no worship of Apis in the days of King Ouenephes, nor,
indeed, until the reign of Kaiechos, more than one hundred and twenty
years after his time. But at some subsequent period of the ancient
empire his pyramid was appropriated by the priests of Memphis for the
mummies of the sacred bulls. This, of course, was done before any of
the known Apis catacombs were excavated. There are doubtless many more
of these catacombs yet undiscovered, nothing prior to the eighteenth
dynasty having yet been found.
[19] This colossus is now raised upon a brick pedestal. [Note to second
edition.]
[20] _Tell_: Arabic for mound. Many of the mounds preserve the ancient
names of the cities they entomb; as Tell Basta (Bubastis); Kóm Ombo
(Ombos); etc., etc. _Tell_ and _Kóm_ are synonymous terms.
[21] _Sorghum vulgare._
[22] The shâdûf has been so well described by the Rev. F. B. Zincke
that I cannot do better than quote him verbatim: “Mechanically, the
shadoof is an application of the lever. In no machine which the wit of
man, aided by the accumulation of science, has since invented, is the
result produced so great in proportion to the degree of power employed.
The level of the shadoof is a long stout pole poised on a prop. The
pole is at right angles to the river. A large lump of clay from the
spot is appended to the inland end. To the river end is suspended a
goat-skin bucket. This is the whole apparatus. The man who is working
it stands on the edge of the river. Before him is a hole full of water
fed from the passing stream. When working the machine he takes hold of
the cord by which the empty bucket is suspended, and, bending down,
by the mere weight of his shoulders dips it in the water. His effort
to rise gives the bucket full of water an upward cant, which, with
the aid of the equipoising lump of clay at the other end of the pole,
lifts it to a trough into which, as it tilts on one side, it empties
its contents. What he has done has raised the water six or seven feet
above the level of the river. But if the river has subsided twelve or
fourteen feet, it will require another shadoof to be worked in the
trough into which the water of the first has been brought. If the river
has sunk still more, a third will be required before it can be lifted
to the top of the bank, so as to enable it to flow off to the fields
that require irrigation.”--“Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Khedive,” p.
445 _et seq._
[23] _Beled_--village.
[24] Miss Whately, whose evidence on this subject is peculiarly
valuable, states that the majority of native children die off at, or
under, two years of age (“Among the Huts,” p. 29); while M. About,
who enjoyed unusual opportunities of inquiring into facts connected
with the population and resources of the country, says that the nation
loses three children out of every five. “L’ignorance publique, l’oubli
des premiers éléments d’hygiène, la mauvaise alimentation, l’absence
presque totale des soins médicaux, tarissent la nation dans sa source.
Un peuple qui perd régulièrement trois enfants sur cinq ne saurait
croître sans miracle.”--“Le Fellah,” p. 165.
[25] Arabic--_shoghool_: a rope by which the mainsail is regulated.
[26] The known inscriptions in the tomb of Haptefa have recently been
recopied, and another long inscription, not previously transcribed,
has been copied and translated, by Mr. F. Llewellyn Griffith, acting
for the Egypt exploration fund. Mr. Griffith has for the first time
fixed the date of this famous tomb, which was made during the reign of
Usertesen I, of the twelfth dynasty. [Note to second edition.]
[27] See “Recueil des Monuments Egyptiens,” Brugsch. Part I. Planche
xi. Published 1862.
[28] Some famous tombs of very early date, enriched with the same kind
of inlaid decoration, are to be seen at Meydûm, near the base of Meydûm
pyramid.
[29] “Voyage en Egypte et en Nubie,” by J. J. Ampère. The cartouche
may perhaps be that of _Rakameri_, mentioned by Brugsch; “Histoire
d’Egypte,” chap. vi., first edition.
[30] The Greeks translated the sacred names of Egyptian places; the
Copts adopted the civil names.
[31] According to the account given in her letters by Lady Duff Gordon,
this dervish, who had acquired a reputation for unusual sanctity by
repeating the name of Allah three thousand times every night for
three years, believed that he had by these means rendered himself
invulnerable; and so, proclaiming himself the appointed slayer of
Antichrist, he stirred up a revolt among the villages bordering Gebel
Sheik Hereedee, instigated an attack on an English dahabeeyah, and
brought down upon himself and all that country-side the swift and
summary vengeance of the government. Steamers with troops commanded by
Fadl Pasha were dispatched up the river; rebels were shot; villages
sacked; crops and cattle confiscated. The women and children of the
place were then distributed among the neighboring hamlets; and Gow,
which was as large a village as Luxor, ceased to exist. The dervish’s
fate remained uncertain. He was shot, according to some; and by others
it was said that he had escaped into the desert under the protection of
a tribe of Bedouins.
[32] Sir G. Wilkinson states the total length of the temple to be
ninety three paces, or two hundred and twenty feet; and the width of
the portico fifty paces. Murray gives no measurements; neither does
Mariette Bey in his delightful little “Itineraire;” neither does
Furgusson, nor Champollion, nor any other writer to whose works I have
had access.
[33] The names of Augustus, Caligula, Tiberius, Domitian, Claudius, and
Nero are found in the royal ovals; the oldest being those of Ptolemy
XI, the founder of the present edifice, which was, however, rebuilt
upon the site of a succession of older buildings, of which the most
ancient dated back as far as the reign of Khufu, the builder of the
great pyramid. This fact, and the still more interesting fact that the
oldest structure of all was believed to belong to the inconceivably
remote period of the _Horshesu_, or “followers of Horus” (_i. e._ the
petty chiefs, or princes, who ruled in Egypt before the foundation
of the first monarchy), is recorded in the following remarkable
inscription discovered by Mariette in one of the crypts constructed
in the thickness of the walls of the present temple. The first text
relates to certain festivals to be celebrated in honor of Hathor, and
states that all the ordained ceremonies had been performed by King
Thothmes III (eighteenth dynasty) “in memory of his mother, Hathor of
Denderah. And they found the great fundamental rules of Denderah in
ancient writing, written on goat-skin in the time of the followers of
Horus. This was found in the inside of a brick wall during the reign
of King Pepi (sixth dynasty).” In the same crypt, another and a more
brief inscription runs thus: “Great fundamental rule of Denderah.
Restorations done by Thothmes III, according to what was found in
ancient writing of the time of King Khufu.” Hereupon Mariette remarks:
“The temple of Denderah is not, then, one of the most modern in Egypt,
except in so far as it was constructed by one of the later Lagidæ.
Its origin is literally lost in the night of time.” See “Dendérah,
Description Générale,” chap. i. pp. 55, 56.
[34] See Mariette’s “Denderah,” which contains the whole of these
multitudinous inscriptions in one hundred and sixty-six plates; also
a selection of some of the most interesting in Brugsch and Dümichen’s
“Recueil de Monuments Egyptiens” and “Geographische Inschriften,” 1862,
1863, 1865 and 1866.
[35] Hathor (or more correctly Hat-hor, _i. e._ the abode of Horus),
is not merely the Aphrodite of ancient Egypt; she is the pupil of
the eye of the sun; she is goddess of that beneficent planet whose
rising heralds the waters of the inundation; she represents the
eternal youth of nature, and is the direct personification of the
beautiful. She is also goddess of truth. “I offer the truth to thee,
O Goddess of Denderah!” says the king, in one of the inscriptions of
the sanctuary of the sistrum; “for truth is thy work, and thou thyself
art truth.” Lastly, her emblem is the sistrum, and the sound of the
sistrum, according to Plutarch, was supposed to terrify and expel
Typhon (the evil principle); just as in mediæval times the ringing of
church-bells was supposed to scare Beelzebub and his crew. From this
point of view, the sistrum becomes typical of the triumph of good over
evil. Mariette, in his analysis of the decorations and inscriptions
of this temple, points out how the builders were influenced by the
prevailing philosophy of the age, and how they veiled the Platonism of
Alexandria beneath the symbolism of the ancient religion. The Hat-hor
of Denderah was in fact worshiped in a sense unknown to the Egyptians
of pre-Ptolemaic times.
[36] Arabic, “_kharûf_,” pronounced “_haroof_”--English, _sheep_.
[37] This famous building is supposed by some to be identical both
with the Memnonium of Strabo and the tomb of Osymandias as described
by Diodorus Siculus. Champollion, however, following the sense of the
hieroglyphed legends, in which it is styled “The House of Rameses”
(II), has given to it the more appropriate name of the Ramesseum.
[38] Translated into French by the late Vicomte de Rougé under the
title of “Le Poëme de Pentaour,” 1856; into English by Mr. Goodwin,
1858; and again by Professor Lushington in 1874. See “Records of the
Past,” vol. ii.
[39] According to the great inscription of Abydos translated by
Professor Maspero, Rameses II would seem to have been in some sense
king from his birth, as if the throne of Egypt came to him through his
mother, and as if his father, Seti I, had reigned for him during his
infancy as king-regent. Some inscriptions, indeed, show him to have
received homage even _before_ his birth.
[40] The ruins of the great Temple of Luxor have undergone a complete
transformation since the above description was written; Professor
Maspero, during the two last years of his official rule as successor
to the late Mariette Pasha, having done for this magnificent relic of
Pharaonic times what his predecessor did for the more recent temple of
Edfoo. The difficulties of carrying out this great undertaking were
so great as to appear at the first sight almost insurmountable. The
fellâheen refused at first to sell their houses; Mustapha Aga asked
the exorbitant price of £3,000 for his consular residence, built as
it was between the columns of Horemheb, facing the river; and for
no pecuniary consideration whatever was it possible to purchase the
right of pulling down the mosque in the first great court-yard of the
temple. After twelve months of negotiation, the fellâheen were at last
bought out on the fair terms, each proprietor receiving a stated price
for his dwelling and a piece of land elsewhere upon which to build
another. Some thirty families were thus got rid of, about eight or
ten only refusing to leave at any price. The work of demolition was
begun in 1885. In 1886, the few families yet lingering in the ruins
followed the example of the rest; and in the course of that season the
temple was cleared from end to end, only the little native mosque being
left standing within the precincts, and Mustapha Aga’s house on the
side next the landing-place. Professor Maspero’s resignation followed
in 1887, since when the work has been carried on by his successor,
M. Grébaut, with the result that in place of a crowded, sordid,
unintelligible labyrinth of mud huts, yards, stables, alleys and
dung-heaps, a noble temple, second only to that of Karnak for grandeur
of design and beauty of proportion, now marshals its avenues of
columns and uplifts its sculptured architraves along the crest of the
ridge which here rises high above the eastern bank of the Nile. Some
of those columns, now that they are cleared down to the level of the
original pavement, measure fifty-seven feet in the shaft; and in the
court-yard built by Rameses II, which measures one hundred and ninety
feet by one hundred and seventy, a series of beautiful colossal statues
of that Pharaoh in highly polished red granite have been discovered,
some yet standing in situ, having been built into the walls of the mud
structures and imbedded (for who shall say how many centuries?) in a
sepulcher of ignoble clay. Last of all, Mustapha Aga, the kindly and
popular old British consul, whose hospitality will long be remembered
by English travelers, died about twelve months since, and the house in
which he entertained so many English visitors, and upon which he set so
high a value, is even now in course of demolition.
[41] The size of these stones not being given in any of our books,
I paced the length of one of the shadows, and (allowing for so much
more at each end as would be needed to reach to the centers of the
two capitals on which it rested) found the block above must measure
at least twenty five feet in length. The measurements of the great
hall are, in plain figures, one hundred and seventy feet in length
by three hundred and twenty-nine in breadth. It contains one hundred
and thirty-four columns, of which the central twelve stand sixty-two
feet high in the shaft (or about seventy with the plinth and abacus),
and measure thirty-four feet six inches in circumference. The smaller
columns stand forty-two feet five inches in the shaft, and measure
twenty-eight feet in circumference. All are buried to a depth of
between six and seven feet in the alluvial deposits of between three
and four thousand annual inundations.
[42] It has been calculated that every stone of these huge Pharaonic
temples cost at least one human life.
[43] _i. e._ _Per Amen_, or _Pa-Amen_; one of the ancient names of
Thebes, which was the city especially dedicated to Amen. Also _Apt_,
or _Abot_, or _Apetou_, by some ascribed to an Indo-Germanic root
signifying abode. Another name for Thebes, and probably the one most in
use, was _Uas_.
[44] Knum was one of the primordial gods of the Egyptian cosmogony;
the divine potter; he who fashioned man from the clay and breathed
into him the breath of life. He is sometimes represented in the act
of fashioning the first man, or that mysterious egg from which not
only man but the universe proceeded, by means of the ordinary potter’s
wheel. Sometimes also he is depicted in his boat, moving upon the face
of the waters at the dawn of creation. About the time of the twentieth
dynasty, Knum became identified with Ra. He also was identified with
Amen, and was worshiped in the great oasis in the Greek period as
Amen-Knum. He is likewise known as “The Soul of the Gods,” and in this
character, as well as in his solar character, he is represented with
the head of a ram, or in the form of a ram. Another of his titles
is “The Maker of Gods and Men.” Knum was also one of the gods of
the cataract, and chief of the Triad worshipped at Elephantine. An
inscription at Philæ styles him “Maker of all that is, Creator of all
beings, First existent, the Father of fathers, the Mother of mothers.”
[45] _Bes._ “La culte de Bes parait être une importation Asiatique.
Quelquefois le dieu est armé d’une épée qu’il brandit au-dessus de sa
tête; dans ce rôle, il semble le dieu des combats. Plus souvent c’est
le dieu ce la danse, de la musique, des plaisirs.”--_Mariette Bey._
[46] “At the cataracts of the great rivers Orinoco, Nile and Congo,
the syenitic rocks are coated by a black substance, appearing as
if they had been polished with plumbago. The layer is of extreme
thinness; and on analysis by Berzelius it was found to consist of
the oxides of manganese and iron.... The origin, however, of these
coatings of metallic oxides, which seem as if cemented to the rocks,
is not understood; and no reason, I believe, can be assigned for their
thickness remaining the same.”--“Journal of Researches,” by Charles
Darwin, chap. i, p. 12, ed. 1845.
[47] _Keffiyeh_: A square head-shawl, made of silk or wollen. European
travelers wear them as puggarees.
[48] _Mudîr_: Chief magistrate.
[49] _Kadi_: Judge.
[50] The results of Dr. Birch’s labors were given to the public in his
“Guide to the First and Second Egyptian Rooms,” published by order of
the trustees of the British Museum in May, 1874. Of the contents of
case ninety-nine in the “second room,” he says: “The use of potsherds
for documents received a great extension at the time of the Roman
empire, when receipts for the taxes were given on these fragments by
the collectors of revenue at Elephantine or Syene, on the frontier of
Egypt. These receipts commenced in the reign of Vespasian, A.D. 77,
and are found as late asM. Aurelius and L. Verus, A.D. 165. It appears
from them that the capitation and trades tax, which was sixteen drams
in A.D. 77, rose to twenty in A.D. 165, having steadily increased. The
dues were paid in installments called _merismoi_, at three periods of
the year. The taxes were farmed out to publicans (_misthotai_), who
appear from their names to have been Greeks. At Elephantine the taxes
were received by tax-gatherers (_prakteres_), who seem to have been
appointed as early as the Ptolemies. Their clerks were Egyptians, and
they had a chest and treasure (_phylax_).” See p. 109, _as above_; also
Birch’s “History of Ancient Pottery,” chap. 1, p. 45.
These barren memoranda are not the only literary curiosities found at
Elephantine. Among the Egyptian manuscripts of the Louvre may be seen
some fragments of the eighteenth book of the “Iliad,” discovered in a
tomb upon the island. How they came to be buried there no one knows. A
lover of poetry would like to think, however, that some Greek or Roman
officer, dying at his post upon this distant station, desired, perhaps,
to have his Homer laid with him in his grave.
NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.--Other fragments of “Iliad” have been found
from time to time in various parts of Egypt; some (now in the Louvre)
being scrawled, like the above-mentioned tax-receipts, on mere
potsherds. The finest specimen ever found in Egypt or elsewhere, and
the earliest, has, however, been discovered this year, 1888, by Mr.
Flinders Petrie in the grave of a woman at Hawara, in the Fayûm.
[51] These are the measurements given in Murray’s hand-book. The new
English translation of Mariette’s “Itinéraire de la Haute Egypte”
gives the obelisk of Hatshepsu one hundred and eight feet ten inches
in height. See “The Monuments of Upper Egypt,” translated by Alphonse
Marietta, London, 1877.
[52] For an account of the discovery of this enormous statue and the
measurements of its various parts, see “Tanis,” Part I, by W. M.
Flinders Petrie, chap, ii, pp. 22 _et seq._, published by the Egypt
Exploration Fund, 1885. [Note to second edition.]
[53] The increase of steamer traffic has considerably altered the
conditions of Nile traveling since this was written, and fewer
dahabeeyahs are consequently employed. By those who can afford it, and
who really desire to get the utmost pleasure, instruction, and interest
from the trip, the dahabeeyah will, however, always be preferred. [Note
to second edition.]
[54] “The most important discovery which we have made here, and which
I shall only mention briefly, is a series of short rock inscriptions,
which mark the highest rises of the Nile during a series of years under
the government of Amenemhat III and of his immediate successors....
They proved that the river, above four thousand years ago, rose more
than twenty-four feet higher than now, and thereby must have produced
totally different conditions in the inundation and in the whole surface
of the ground, both above and below this spot.”--_Lepsius’ Letters from
Egypt, etc._ Letter xxvi.
“The highest rise of the Nile in each year at Semneh was registered by
a mark indicating the year of the king’s reign, cut in the granite,
either on one of the blocks forming the foundation of the fortress
or on the cliff, and particularly on the east or right bank, as best
adapted for the purpose. Of these markings eighteen still remain,
thirteen of them having been made in the reign of Mœris (Amenemhat
III) and five in the time of his next two successors.... We have
here presented to us the remarkable facts that the highest of the
records now legible, viz: that of the thirtieth year of the reign
of Amenemhat, according to exact measurements which I made, is 8.17
meters (twenty-six feet eight inches) higher than the highest level to
which the Nile rises in years of the greatest floods; and, further,
that the lowest mark, which is on the east bank, and indicated the
fifteenth year of the same king, is still 4.14 meters (thirteen
feet six and a half inches); and the single mark on the west bank,
indicating the ninth year, is 2.77 meters (nine feet) above the highest
level.”--_Lepsius’ Letter to Professor Ehrenburg._ See Appendix to the
above.
[55] For copies and translations of a large number of the graffiti
of Assûan, see Lepsius’ “Denkmäler;” also, for the most recent and
the fullest collection of the rock-cut inscriptions of Assûan and its
neighborhood, including the hitherto uncopied inscriptions of the
Saba Rigaleh Valley, of Elephantine, of the rocks above Silsileh,
etc., etc., see Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie’s latest volume, entitled “A
Season’s Work in Egypt, 1877,” published by Field & Tuer, 1888. [Note
to second edition.]
[56] Mariette, at the end of his “Aperçu de l’histoire d’Egypte,” give
the following succinct account of the Rosetta stone and the discovery
of Champollion:
“Découverte, il y a 65 ans environ, par des soldats français qui
creusaient un retranchement près d’une redoute située à Rosette, la
pierre qui porte ce nom a joué le plus grand rôle dans l’archéologie
Égyptienne. Sur la face principale sont gravées _trois_ inscriptions.
Les deux premières sont en langue Égyptienne et écrites dans les deux
écritures qui avaient cours à cette époque. L’une est en écriture
hiéroglyphique réservée aux prêtres: elle ne compte plus que 14 lignes
tronquées par la brisure de la pierre. L’autre est en une écriture
cursive appliquée principalement aux usges du peuple et comprise par
lui: celle-ci offre 32 lignes de texte. Enfin, la troisième inscription
de la stèle est en langue grecque et comprend 54 lignes. C’est dans
cette dernière partie que réside l’intérêt du monument trouvé à
Rosette. Il résulte, en effet, de l’interprétation du texte grec de
la stèle que ce texte n’est qu’une version de l’original transcrit
plus haut dans les deux écritures Égyptiennes. La Pierre de Rosette
nous donne donc, dans une langue parfaitement connue (le grec) la
traduction d’un texte conçu dans une autre langue encore ignorée au
moment où la stèle a été découverte. Qui ne voit l’utilité de cette
mention? Remonter du connu à l’inconnu n’est pas une opération en
dehors des moyens d’une critique prudente, et déjà l’on devine que
si la Pierre de Rosette a acquis dans la science la célébrité dont
elle jouit aujourd’hui, c’est qu’elle a fourni la vraie clef de cette
mystérieuse écriture dont l’Egypté a si longtemps gardé le secret. Il
ne faudrait pas croire cependant que le déchiffrement des hiéroglyphes
au moyen de la Pierre de Rosette ait été obtenu du premier coup et
sans tâtonnements. Bien au contraire, les savants s’y essayèrent sans
succès pendant 20 ans. Entin, Champollion parut. Jusqu’à lui, on avait
cru que chacune des lettres qui composent l’écriture hiéroglyphique
etait un _symbole_: c’est à dire, que dans une seule de ces lettres
était exprimée une _idée_ complète. Le mérite de Champollion été de
prouver qu’au contraire l’écriture Égyptienne contient des signes
qui expriment véritablement des _sons_. En d’autres termes qu’elle
est _Alphabétique_. II remarqua, par exemple, que partout où dans le
texte grec de Rosette se trouve le nom propre _Ptolémée_, on recontre
à l’endroit correspondant du texte Égyptien un certain nombre de
signes enfermés dans un encadrement elliptique. Il en conclut: 1, que
les noms des rois étaient dans le systeme hiéroglyphique signalés
à l’attention par une sorte d’écusson qu’il appela _cartouche_: 2,
que les signes contenus dans cet écusson devaient être lettre pour
lettre le nom de Ptolémée. Déjà donc en supposant les voyelles omises,
Champollion était en possession de cinq lettres--P, T, L, M, S. D’un
autre côté, Champollion savait, d’après une seconde inscription
grecque gravée sur une obélisque de Philæ, que sur cet obélisque un
cartouche hiéroglyphique qu’on y voit devait être celui de Cléopâtre.
Si sa première lecture était juste, le P, le L, et le T, de Ptolémée
devaient se retrouver dans le second nom propre; mais en même temps
ce second nom propre fournissait un K et un R nouveaux. Enfin,
appliqué à d’autres cartouches, l’alpbabet encore très imparfait
révélé a Champollion par les noms de Cléopâtre et de Ptolémée le
mit en possession d’à peu près toutes les autres consonnes. Comme
_pronunciation_ des signes, Champollion n’avait donc pas à hésiter,
et dès le jour où cette constatation eut lieu, il put certifier qu’il
était en possession de l’alpbabet Égyptien. Mais restait la langue;
car prononcer des mots n’est rien si l’on ne sait pas ce que ces mots
veulent dire. Ici le génie de Champollion se donna libre cours. Il
s’aperçut en effet que son alphabet tiré des noms propres et appliqué
aux mots de la langue donnait tout simplement du _Copte_. Or, le
Copte à son tour est une langue qui, sans être aussi explorée que le
grec, n’en était pas moins depuis longtemps accessible. Cette fois
le voileétait donc complétement levé. La langue Égyptienne n’est que
du Copte écrit en hiéroglyphes; ou, pour parler plus exactement, le
Copte n’est que la langue des anciens Pharaons, écrite, comme nous
l’avons dit plus haut, en lettres grecques. Le reste se Devine.
D’indices en indices, Champollion procéda véritablement du connu à
l’inconnu, et bientôt l’illustre fondateur de l’Égyptologie put poser
les fondements de cette belle science qui a pour objet l’interprétation
des hiéroglyphes. Tel est la Pierre de Rosette.”--“Aperçu de l’Histoire
d’Egypte:” Mariette Bey, p. 189 _et seq._: 1872.
In order to have done with this subject, it may be as well to mention
that another trilingual tablet was found by Mariette while conducting
his excavations at Sân (Tanis) in 1865. It dates from the ninth year of
Ptolemy Euergetes, and the text ordains the deification of Berenice, a
daughter of the king, then just dead (B.C. 254). This stone, preserved
in the museum at Boulak, is known as the stone of Sân, or the decree
of Canopus. Had the Rosetta stone never been discovered, we may fairly
conclude that the Canopic degree would have furnished some later
Champollion with the necessary key to hieroglyphic literature, and that
the great discovery would only have been deferred till the present time.
NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.--A third copy of the decree of Canopus, the
text engraved in hieroglyphs only, was found at Tell Nebireh in 1885,
and conveyed to the Boulak Museum. The discoverer of this tablet,
however, missed a much greater discovery, reserved, as it happened,
for Mr. W. M. F. Petrie, who came to the spot a month or two later,
and found that the mounds of Tell Nebireh entombed the remains of the
famous and long-lost Greek city of Naukratis. See “Naukratis,” Part I.
by W. M. F. Petrie, published by the Egypt Exploration Fund, 1886.
[57] The famous capitals are not the only specimens of admirable
coloring in Philæ. Among the battered bas-reliefs of the great
colonnade at the south end of the island there yet remain some isolated
patches of uninjured and very lovely ornament. See, more particularly,
the mosaic pattern upon the throne of a divinity just over the second
doorway in the western wall; and the designs upon a series of other
thrones a little farther along toward the north, all most delicately
drawn in uniform compartments, picked out in the three primary colors,
and laid on in flat tints of wonderful purity and delicacy. Among these
a lotus between two buds, an exquisite little sphinx on a pale-red
ground, and a series of sacred hawks, white upon red, alternating with
white upon blue, all most exquisitely conventionalized, may be cited
as examples of absolutely perfect treatment and design in polychrome
decoration. A more instructive and delightful task than the copying
of these precious fragments can hardly be commended to students and
sketchers on the Nile.
[58] It has since been pointed out by a writer in _The Saturday Review_
that this credence-table was fashioned with part of a shrine destined
for one of the captive hawks sacred to Horus. [Note to second edition.]