A thousand miles up the Nile

by Amelia B. Edwards

EAST WALL.

If the east wall is decorated like the others (which may be taken for granted), its tableaux and inscriptions are hidden behind the sand which here rises to the ceiling. The doorway also occurs in this wall, occupying a space four feet three and one-half inches in width on the inner side.

One of the most interesting incidents connected with the excavation of this little adytum remains yet to be told.

I have described the female figure at the upper end of the north wall and how she holds in her right hand the ankh and in her left hand the jackal-headed scepter. The hand that holds the ankh hangs by her side; the hand that holds the scepter is half-raised. Close under this upraised hand, at a height of between three and four feet from the actual level of the floor, there were visible upon the un-colored surface of the original stucco several lines of free-hand writing. This writing was laid on, apparently, with the brush, and the ink, if ever it had been black, had now become brown. Five long lines and three shorter lines were uninjured. Below these were traces of other fragmentary lines, almost obliterated by the sand.

We knew at once that this quaint faint writing must be in either the hieratic or demotic hand. We could distinguish, or thought we could distinguish, in its vague outlines of forms already familiar to us in the hieroglyphs—abstracts, as it were, of birds and snakes and boats. There could be no doubt, at all events, that the thing was curious; and we set it down in our own minds as the writing of either the architect or decorator of the place.

Anxious to make, if possible, an exact fac-simile of this inscription, the writer copied it three times. The last and best of these copies is here reproduced in photolithography, with a translation from the pen of the late Dr. Birch. (See p. 317.) We all know how difficult it is to copy correctly in a language of which one is ignorant; and the tiniest curve or dot omitted is fatal to the sense of these ancient characters. In the present instance, notwithstanding the care with which the transcript was made, there must still have been errors; for it has been found undecipherable in places; and in these places there occur inevitable lacunæ.

Enough, however, remains to show that the lines were written, not as we had supposed by the artist, but by a distinguished visitor, whose name unfortunately is illegible. This visitor was a son of the Prince of Kush, or as it is literally written, the Royal Son of Kush; that being the official title of the Governor of Ethiopia.[142] As there were certainly eight governors of Ethiopia during the reign of Rameses II (and perhaps more, whose names have not reached us), it is impossible even to hazard a guess at the parentage of our visitor. We gather, however, that he was sent hither to construct a road; also that he built transport boats; and that he exercised priestly functions in that part of the temple which was inaccessible to all but dignitaries of the sacerdotal order.

HIERATIC INSCRIPTION,
NORTH WALL OF SPEOS.
Translated by S. Birch, Esq., LL.D., etc.

... thy son having ... thou hast conquered the worlds at once Ammon Ra-Harmachis,[143] the god at the first time,[144] who gives life, health, and a time of many praises to the groom ... of the Khen,[145] son of the Royal son of Cush,[146] Opener of the road, Maker of transport boats, Giver of instructions to his lord ... Amenshaa....

Site, inscriptions, and decorations taken into account, there yet remains this question to be answered:

What was the nature and character of the monument just described?

It adjoined a pylon, and, as we have seen, consisted of a vaulted pronaos in crude brick, and an adytum excavated in the rock. On the walls of this adytum are depicted various gods with their attributes, votive offerings, and portraits of the king performing acts of adoration. The bari, or ark, is also represented upon the north and south walls of the adytum. These are unquestionably the ordinary features of a temple, or chapel.

On the other hand, there must be noted certain objections to these premises. It seemed to us that the pylon was built first and that the south boundary wall of the pronaos, being a subsequent erection, was supported against the slope of the pylon as far as where the spring of the vaulting began. Besides which, the pylon would have been a disproportionately large adjunct to a little monument, the entire length of which, from the doorway of the pronaos to the west wall of the adytum, was less than forty-seven feet. We therefore concluded that the pylon belonged to the large temple and was erected at the side instead of in front of the façade, on account of the very narrow space between the mountain and the river.[147]

The pylon at Korn Ombo is, probably for the same reason, placed at the side of the temple and on a lower level. To those who might object that a brick pylon would hardly be attached to a temple of the first class, I would observe that the remains of a similar pylon are still to be seen at the top of what was once the landing-place leading to the great temple at Wady Halfeh. It may, therefore, be assumed that this little monument, although connected with the pylon by means of a doorway and staircase, was an excrescence of later date.

Being an excrescence, however, was it, in the strict sense of the word, a temple?

Even this seems to be doubtful. In the adytum there is no trace of any altar—no fragment of stone dais or sculptured image—no granite shrine, as at Philæ—no sacred recess, as at Denderah. The standard of Horus Aroëris, engraved on page 311, occupies the center place upon the wall facing the entrance, and occupies it, not as a tutelary divinity, but as a decorative device to separate the two large subjects already described. Again, the gods represented in these subjects are Ra and Amen-Ra, the tutelary gods of the great temple; but if we turn to the dedicatory inscription on page 313 we find that Thoth, whose image never occurs at all upon the walls[148] (unless as one of the little gods in the cornice), is really the presiding deity of the place. It is he who welcomes Rameses and his offerings; who acknowledges the “glory” given to him by his beloved son; and who, in return for the great and good monuments erected in his honor, promises the king that he shall be given “an everlasting sovereignty over the two countries.”

Now Thoth was, par excellence, the God of Letters. He is styled the Lord of Divine Words; the Lord of the Sacred Writings; the Spouse of Truth. He personifies the Divine Intelligence. He is the patron of art and science; and he is credited with the invention of the alphabet. In one of the most interesting of Champollion’s letters from Thebes,[149] he relates how, in the fragmentary ruins of the western extremity of the Ramesseum, he found a doorway adorned with the figures of Thoth and Safek; Thoth as the God of Literature, and Safek inscribed with the title of Lady President of the Hall of Books. At Denderah there is a chamber especially set apart for the sacred writings, and its walls are sculptured all over with a catalogue raisonnée of the manuscript treasures of the temple. At Edfu, a kind of closet built up between two of the pillars of the hall of assembly was reserved for the same purpose. Every temple, in short, had its library; and as the Egyptian books—being written on papyrus or leather, rolled up, and stored in coffers—occupied but little space, the rooms appropriated to this purpose were generally small.

It was Dr. Birch’s opinion that our little monument may have been the library of the Great Temple of Abou Simbel. This being the case, the absence of an altar, and the presence of Ra and Amen-Ra in the two principal tableaux, are sufficiently accounted for. The tutelary deity of the great temple and the patron deity of Rameses II would naturally occupy, in this subsidiary structure, the same places that they occupy in the principal one; while the library, though in one sense the domain of Thoth, is still under the protection of the gods of the temple to which it is an adjunct.

I do not believe we once asked ourselves how it came to pass that the place had remained hidden all these ages long; yet its very freshness proved how early it must have been abandoned. If it had been open in the time of the successors of Rameses II, they would probably, as elsewhere, have interpolated inscriptions and cartouches, or have substituted their own cartouches for those of the founder. If it had been open in the time of the Ptolemies and Cæsars, traveling Greeks and learned Romans and strangers from Byzantium and the cities of Asia Minor would have cut their names on the door-jambs and scribbled ex-votos on the walls. If it had been open in the days of Nubian Christianity, the sculptures would have been coated with mud and washed with lime and daubed with pious caricatures of St. George and the holy family. But we found it intact—as perfectly preserved as a tomb that had lain hidden under the rocky bed of the desert. For these reasons I am inclined to think that it became inaccessible shortly after it was completed. There can be little doubt that a wave of earthquake passed, during the reign of Rameses II, along the left bank of the Nile, beginning possibly above Wady Halfeh, and extending at least as far north as Gerf Hossayn. Such a shock might have wrecked the temple at Wady Halfeh, as it dislocated the pylon of Wady Sabooah, and shook the built-out porticoes of Derr and Gerf Hossayn; which last four temples, as they do not, I believe, show signs of having been added to by later Pharaohs, may be supposed to have been abandoned in consequence of the ruin which had befallen them. Here, at all events, it shook the mountain of the great temple, cracked one of the Osiride columns of the first hall,[150] shattered one of the four great colossi, more or less injured the other three, flung down the great brick pylon, reduced the pronaos of the library to a heap of ruin, and not only brought down part of the ceiling of the excavated adytum, but rent open a vertical fissure in the rock some twenty or twenty-five feet in length.

With so much irreparable damage done to the great temple, and with so much that was reparable calling for immediate attention, it is no wonder that these brick buildings were left to their fate. The priests would have rescued the sacred books from among the ruins, and then the place would have been abandoned.

So much by way of conjecture. As hypothesis, a sufficient reason is perhaps suggested for the wonderful state of preservation in which the little chamber had been handed down to the present time. A rational explanation is also offered for the absence of later cartouches, of Greek and Latin ex-votos, of Christian emblems, and of subsequent mutilation of every kind. For, save that one contemporary visitor—the son of the Royal Son of Kush—the place contained, when we opened it, no record of any passing traveler, no defacing autograph of tourist, archæologist, or scientific explorer. Neither Belzoni nor Champollion had found it out. Even Lepsius had passed it by.

It happens sometimes that hidden things, which in themselves are easy to find, escape detection because no one thinks of looking for them. But such was not the case in this present instance. Search had been made here again and again; and even quite recently.

It seems that when the khedive[151] entertains distinguished guests and sends them in gorgeous dahabeeyahs up the Nile, he grants them a virgin mound, or so many square feet of a famous necropolis; lets them dig as deep as they please; and allows them to keep whatever they may find. Sometimes he sends out scouts to beat the ground; and then a tomb is found and left unopened, and the illustrious visitor is allowed to discover it. When the scouts are unlucky, it may even sometimes happen that an old tomb is re-stocked; carefully closed up; and then, with all the charm of unpremeditation, re-opened a day or two after.

Now Sheik Rashwan Ebn Hassan el Kashef told us that in 1869, when the empress of the French was at Abou Simbel, and again when the Prince and Princess of Wales came up in 1872, after the prince’s illness, he received strict orders to find some hitherto undiscovered tomb,[152] in order that the khedive’s guests might have the satisfaction of opening it. But, he added, although he left no likely place untried among the rocks and valleys on both sides of the river, he could find nothing. To have unearthed such a birbeh as this would have done him good service with the government, and have insured him a splendid backshîsh from prince or empress. As it was, he was reprimanded for want of diligence, and he believed himself to have been out of favor ever since.

I may here mention—in order to have done with this subject—that besides being buried outside to a depth of about eight feet, the adytum had been partially filled inside by a gradual infiltration of sand from above. This can only have accumulated at the time when the old sand-drift was at its highest. That drift, sweeping in one unbroken line across the front of the great temple, must at one time have risen here to a height of twenty feet above the present level. From thence the sand had found its way down the perpendicular fissure already mentioned. In the corner behind the door, the sand-pile rose to the ceiling, in shape just like the deposit at the bottom of an hour-glass. I am informed by the painter that when the top of the doorway was found and an opening first effected, the sand poured out from within, like water escaping from an opened sluice.

Here, then, is positive proof (if proof were needed) that we were first to enter the place, at all events since the time when the great sand-drift rose as high as the top of the fissure.

The painter wrote his name and ours, with the date (February 10, 1874), on a space of blank wall over the inside of the doorway; and this was the only occasion upon which any of us left our names upon an Egyptian monument. On arriving at Korosko, where there is a postoffice, he also dispatched a letter to the “Times,” briefly recording the facts here related. That letter, which appeared on the 18th of March following, is reprinted in the appendix at the end of this book.

I am told that our names are partially effaced and that the wall-paintings which we had the happiness of admiring in all their beauty and freshness are already much injured. Such is the fate of every Egyptian monument, great or small. The tourist carves it all over with names and dates and in some instances with caricatures. The student of Egyptology, by taking wet-paper “squeezes,” sponges away every vestige of the original color. The “collector” buys and carries off everything of value that he can get; and the Arab steals for him. The work of destruction, meanwhile, goes on apace. There is no one to prevent it; there is no one to discourage it. Every day, more inscriptions are mutilated—more tombs are rifled—more paintings and sculptures are defaced. The Louvre contains a full-length portrait of Seti I, cut out bodily from the walls of his sepulcher in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. The museums of Berlin, of Turin, of Florence, are rich in spoils which tell their own lamentable tale. When science leads the way, is it wonderful that ignorance should follow?

CHAPTER XIX.
BACK THROUGH NUBIA.

There are fourteen temples between Abou Simbel and Philæ; to say nothing of grottoes, tombs and other ruins. As a rule, people begin to get tired of temples about this time and vote them too plentiful. Meek travelers go through them as a duty; but the greater number rebel. Our happy couple, I grieve to say, went over to the majority. Dead to shame, they openly proclaimed themselves bored. They even skipped several temples.

For myself, I was never bored by them. Though they had been twice as many, I should not have wished them fewer. Miss Martineau tells how, in this part of the river, she was scarcely satisfied to sit down to breakfast without having first explored a temple; but I could have breakfasted, dined, supped on temples. My appetite for them was insatiable and grew with what it fed upon. I went over them all. I took notes of them all. I sketched them every one.

I may as well say at once that I shall reproduce but few of those notes and only some of those sketches in the present volume. If, surrounded by their local associations, these ruins fail to interest many who travel far to see them, it is not to be supposed that they would interest readers at home. Here and there, perhaps, might be one who would care to pore with me over every broken sculpture; to spell out every half-legible cartouche; to trace through Greek and Roman influences (which are nowhere more conspicuous than in these Nubian buildings) the slow deterioration of the Egyptian style. But the world for the most part reserves itself, and rightly, for the great epochs and the great names of the past; and because it has not yet had too much of Karnak, of Abou Simbel, of the pyramids, it sets slight store by those minor monuments which record the periods of foreign rule and the decline of native art. For these reasons, therefore, I propose to dismiss very briefly many places upon which I bestowed hours of delightful labor.

We left Abou Simbel just as the moon was rising on the evening of the 18th of February, and dropped down with the current for three or four miles before mooring for the night. At six next morning the men began rowing; and at half-past eight the heads of the colossi were still looking placidly after us across a ridge of intervening hills. They were then more than five miles distant in a direct line; but every feature was still distinct in the early daylight. One went up again and again, as long as they remained in sight, and bade good-by to them at last with that same heartache which comes of a farewell view of the Alps.

When I say that we were seventeen days getting from Abou Simbel to Philæ, and that we had the wind against us from sunrise till sunset almost every day, it will be seen that our progress was of the slowest. To those who were tired of temples, and to the crew who were running short of bread, these long days of lying up under the bank, or of rocking to and fro in the middle of the river, were dreary enough.

Slowly but surely, however, the hard-won miles go by. Sometimes the barren desert hems us in to right and left, with never a blade of green between the rock and the river. Sometimes, as at Tosko,[153] we come upon an open tract, where there are palms and castor-berry plantations and corn-fields alive with quail. The idle man goes ashore at Tosko with his gun, while the little lady and the writer climb a solitary rock about two hundred feet above the river. The bank shelves here, and a crescent-like wave of inundation, about three miles in length, overflows it every season. From this height one sees exactly how far the wave goes, and how it must make a little bay when it is there. Now it is a bay of barley, full to the brim, and rippling to the breeze. Beyond the green comes the desert; the one defined against the other as sharply as water against land. The desert looks wonderfully old beside the young green of the corn, and the Nile flows wide among sand-banks, like a tidal river near the sea. The village, squared off in parallelograms like a cattle market, lies mapped out below. A field-glass shows that the houses are simply cloistered court-yards roofed with palm-thatch; the sheik’s house being larger than the rest, with the usual open space and spreading sycamore in front. There are women moving to and fro in the court-yards, and husbandmen in the castor-berry patches. A funeral with a train of wailers goes out presently toward the burial-ground on the edge of the desert. The idle man, a slight figure with a veil twisted round his hat, wades, half-hidden, through the barley, signaling his whereabouts every now and then by a puff of white smoke. A cargo-boat, stripped and shorn, comes floating down the river, making no visible progress. A native felucca, carrying one tattered brown sail, goes swiftly up with the wind at a pace that will bring her to Abou Simbel before nightfall. Already she is past the village; and those black specks yonder, which we had never dreamed were crocodiles, have slipped off into the water at her approach. And now she is far in the distance—that glowing, illimitable distance—traversed by long silvery reaches of river, and ending in a vast flat, so blue and aerial that, but for some three or four notches of purple peaks on the horizon, one could scarcely discern the point at which land and sky melt into each other. Ibrim comes next; then Derr; then Wady Sabooyah. At Ibrim, as at Derr, there are “fair” families, whose hideous light hair and blue eyes (grafted on brown-black skins) date back to Bosnian forefathers of three hundred and sixty years ago. These people give themselves airs, and are the haute noblesse of the place. The men are lazy and quarrelsome. The women trail longer robes, wear more beads and rings, and are altogether more unattractive and castor-oily than any we have seen elsewhere. They keep slaves, too. We saw these unfortunates trotting at the heels of their mistresses, like dogs. Knowing slavery to be officially illegal in the dominions of the khedive, the M. B.’s applied to a dealer, who offered them an Abyssinian girl for ten pounds. This useful article—warranted a bargain—was to sweep, wash, milk, and churn; but was not equal to cooking. The M. B.’s, it is needless to add, having verified the facts, retired from the transaction.

At Derr we pay a farewell visit to the temple; and at Amada, arriving toward close of day, see the great view for the last time in the glory of sunset.

And now, though the north wind blows persistently, it gets hotter every day. The crocodiles like it, and come out to bask in the sunshine. Called up one morning in the middle of breakfast we see two—a little one and a big one—on a sand-bank near by. The men rest upon their oars. The boat goes with the stream. No one speaks; no one moves. Breathlessly and in dead silence, we drift on till we are close beside them. The big one is rough and black, like the trunk of a London elm, and measures full eighteen feet in length. The little one is pale and greenish and glistens like glass. All at once the old one starts, doubles itself up for a spring, and disappears with a tremendous splash. But the little one, apparently unconscious of danger, lifts its tortoise-like head and eyes us sidewise. Presently some one whispers; and that whisper breaks the spell. Our little crocodile flings up its tail, plunges clown the bank, and is gone in a moment.

The crew could not understand how the idle man, after lying in wait for crocodiles at Abou Simbel, should let this rare chance pass without a shot. But we had heard since then of so much indiscriminate slaughter at the second cataract, that he was resolved to bear no part in the extermination of those old historic reptiles. That a sportsman should wish for a single trophy is not unreasonable; but that scores of crack shots should go up every winter killing and wounding these wretched brutes at an average rate of from twelve to eighteen per gun, is mere butchery and cannot be too strongly reprehended. Year by year, the creatures become shyer and fewer; and the day is probably not far distant when a crocodile will be as rarely seen below Semneh as it is now rarely seen below Assûan.

The thermometer stands at 85° in the saloon of the Philæ, when we come one afternoon to Wady Sabooah, where there is a solitary temple drowned in sand. It was approached once by an avenue of sphinxes and standing colossi, now shattered and buried. The roof of the pronaos, if ever it was roofed, is gone. The inner halls and the sanctuary—all excavated in the rock—are choked and impassable. Only the propylon stands clear of sand; and that, massive as it is, looks as if one touch of a battering-ram would bring it to the ground. Every huge stone in it is loose, Every block in the cornice seems tottering in its place. In all this we fancy we recognize the work of our Abou Simbel earthquake.[154]

At Wady Sabooah we see a fat native. The fact claims record, because it is so uncommon. A stalwart, middle-aged man, dressed in a tattered kilt and carrying a palm-staff in his hand, he stands before us the living double of the famous wooden statue at Boulak. He is followed by his two wives and three or four children, all bent upon trade. The women have trinkets, the boys a live chameleon and a small stuffed crocodile for sale. While the painter is bargaining for the crocodile and L—— for a nose-ring, the writer makes acquaintance with a pair of self-important hoopoes, who live in the pylon and evidently regard it as a big nest of their own building. They sit observing me curiously while I sketch, nodding their crested polls and chattering disparagingly, like a couple of critics. By and by comes a small black bird with a white breast and sings deliciously. It is like no little bird that I have ever seen before; but the song that it pours so lavishly from its tiny throat is as sweet and brilliant as a canary’s.

Powerless against the wind, the dahabeeyah lies idle day after day in the sun. Sometimes, when we chance to be near a village, the natives squat on the bank and stare at us for hours together. The moment any one appears on deck they burst into a chorus of “Backshîsh!” There is but one way to get rid of them, and that is to sketch them. The effect is instantaneous. With a good-sized block and a pencil, a whole village may be put to flight at a moment’s notice. If, on the other hand, one wishes for a model, the difficulty is insuperable. The painter tried in vain to get some of the women and girls (not a few of whom were really pretty) to sit for their portraits. I well remember one haughty beauty, shaped and draped like a Juno, who stood on the bank one morning, scornfully watching all that was done on deck. She carried a flat basket back-handed; and her arms were covered with bracelets and her fingers with rings. Her little girl, in a Madame Nubia fringe, clung to her skirts, half-wondering, half-frightened. The painter sent out an ambassador plenipotentiary to offer her anything from a sixpence to half a sovereign if she would only stand like that for half an hour. The manner of her refusal was grand. She drew her shawl over her face, took her child’s hand, and stalked away like an offended goddess. The writer, meanwhile, hidden behind a curtain, had snatched a tiny sketch from the cabin-window.

On the western bank, somewhere between Wady Sabooah and Maharrakeh, in a spot quite bare of vegetation, stand the ruins of a fortified town which is neither mentioned by Murray nor entered in the maps. It is built on a base of reddish rock and commands the river and the desert. The painter and writer, explored it one afternoon, in the course of a long ramble. Climbing first a steep slope strewn with masonry, we came to the remains of a stone gateway. Finding this impassable, we made our way through a breach in the battlemented wall, and thence up a narrow road down which had been poured a cataract of débris. Skirting a ruined postern at the top of this road, we found ourselves in a close labyrinth of vaulted arcades built of crude brick and lit at short intervals by openings in the roof. These strange streets—for they were streets—were lined on either side by small dwellings built of crude brick on stone foundations. We went into some of the houses—mere ruined courts and roofless chambers, in which were no indications of hearths or staircases. In one lay a fragment of stone column about fourteen inches in diameter. The air in these ancient streets was foul and stagnant and the ground was everywhere heaped with fragments of black, red and yellowish pottery, like the shards of Elephantine and Philæ. A more desolate place in a more desolate situation I never saw. It looked as if it had been besieged, sacked and abandoned, a thousand years ago; which is probably under the mark, for the character of the pottery would seem to point to the period of Roman occupation. Noting how the brick super-structures were reared on apparently earlier masonry, we concluded that the beginnings of this place were probably Egyptian and the later work Roman. The marvel was that any town should have been built in so barren a spot, there being not so much as an inch-wide border of lentils for a mile or more between the river and the desert.

Having traversed the place from end to end, we came out through another breach on the westward side, and, thinking to find a sketchable point of view inland, struck down toward the plain. In order to reach this, one first must skirt a deep ravine which divides the rock of the citadel from the desert. Following the brink of this ravine to the point at which it falls into the level, we found to our great surprise that we were treading the banks of an extinct river.

It was full of sand now; but beyond all question it had once been full of water. It came, evidently, from the mountains over toward the northwest. We could trace its windings for a long way across the plain, thence through the ravine and on southward in a line parallel with the Nile. Here, beneath our feet, were the water-worn rocks through which it had fretted its way; and yonder, half-buried in sand, were the bowlders it had rounded and polished and borne along in its course. I doubt, however, if when it was a river of water this stream was half as beautiful as now, when it is a river of sand. It was turbid then, no doubt, and charged with sediment. Now it is more golden than Pactolus and covered with ripples more playful and undulating than were ever modeled by Canaletti’s pencil.

Supposing yonder town to have been founded in the days when the river was a river and the plain fertile and well watered, the mystery of its position is explained. It was protected in front by the Nile and in the rear by the ravine and the river. But how long ago was this? Here, apparently, was an independent stream, taking its rise among the Libyan mountains. It dated back, consequently, to a time when those barren hills collected and distributed water—that is to say, to a time when it used to rain in Nubia. And that time must have been before the rocky barrier broke down at Silsilis, in the old days when the land of Kush flowed with milk and honey.[155]

It would rain even now in Nubia, if it could. That same evening, when the sun was setting, we saw a fan-like drift of dappled cloud miles high above our heads, melting, as it seemed, in fringes of iridescent vapor. We could distinctly see those fringes forming, wavering and evaporating; unable to descend as rain, because dispersed at a high altitude by radiated heat from the desert. This, with one exception, was the only occasion on which I saw clouds in Nubia.

Coming back, we met a solitary native, with a string of beads in his hand and a knife up his sleeve. He followed us for a long way, volunteering a but half-intelligible story about some unknown birbeh[156] in the desert. We asked where it was and he pointed up the course of our unknown river.

“You have seen it?” said the painter.

“Marrat ketîr” (“many times”).

“How far is it?”

“One day’s march in the hagar” (“desert”).

“And have no Ingleezeh ever been to look for it?”

He shook his head at first, not understanding the question; then looked grave and held up one finger.

Our stock of Arabic was so small and his so interlarded with Kensee, that we had great difficulty in making out what he said next. We gathered, however, that some howadji, traveling alone and on foot, had once gone in search of this birbeh and never come back. Was he lost? Was he killed? Who could say?

“It was a long time ago,” said the man with the beads. “It was a long time ago and he took no guide with him.”

We would have given much to trace the river to its source and search for this unknown temple in the desert. But it is one of the misfortunes of this kind of traveling that one cannot easily turn aside from the beaten track. The hot season is approaching; the river is running low; the daily cost of the dahabeeyah is exorbitant; and, in Nubia, where little or nothing can be bought in the way of food, the dilatory traveler risks starvation. It was something, however, to have seen with one’s own eyes that the Nile, instead of flowing for a distance of twelve hundred miles unfed by any affluent, had here received the waters of a tributary.[157]

To those who have a south breeze behind them the temples must now follow in quick succession. We, however, achieved them by degrees and rejoiced when our helpless dahabeeyah lay within rowing reach of anything worth seeing. Thus we pull down one day to Maharrakeh—in itself a dull ruin but picturesquely desolate. Seen as one comes up the bank on landing, two parallel rows of columns stand boldly up against the sky, supporting a ruined entablature. In the foreground a few stunted Dôm palms starve in an arid soil. The barren desert closes in the distance.

We are beset here by an insolent crowd of savage-looking men and boys and impudent girls with long frizzy hair and Nubian fringes, who pester us with beads and pebbles; dance, shout, slap their legs and clap their hands in our faces; and pelt us when we go away. One ragged warrior brandishes an antique brass-mounted firelock full six feet long in the barrel; and some of the others carry slender spears.

The temple—a late Roman structure—would seem to have been wrecked by an earthquake before it was completed. The masonry is all in the rough—pillars as they came from the quarry; capitals blocked out, waiting for the carver. These unfinished ruins—of which every stone looks new, as if the work was still in progress—affect one’s imagination strangely. On a fallen wall south of the portico[158] the idle man detected some remains of a Greek inscription; but for hieroglyphic characters or cartouches, by which to date the building, we looked in vain.[159]

Dakkeh comes next in order; then Gerf Hossayn, Dendoor and Kalebsheh. Arriving at Dakkeh soon after sunrise we find the whole population—screaming, pushing, chattering, laden with eggs, pigeons and gourds for sale—drawn up to receive us. There is a large sand island in the way here, so we moor about a mile above the temple.

We first saw the twin pylons of Dakkeh some weeks ago from the deck of the Philæ and we then likened them to the majestic towers of Edfu. Approaching them now by land, we are surprised to find them so small. It is a brilliant, hot morning; and our way lies by the river, between the lentil-slope and the castor-berry patches. There are flocks of pigeons flying low overhead; barking dogs and crowing cocks in the village close by; and all over the path hundreds of beetles—real live scarabs, black as coal and busy as ants—rolling their clay pellets up from the water’s edge to the desert. If we were to examine a score or so of these pellets we should here and there find one that contained no eggs; for it is a curious fact that the scarab-beetle makes and rolls her pellets, whether she has an egg to deposit or not. The female beetle, though assisted by the male, is said to do the heavier share of the pellet-rolling; and if evening comes on before her pellet is safely stowed away, she will sleep, holding it with her feet all night, and resume her labor in the morning.[160]

The temple here—begun by an Ethiopian king named Arkaman (Ergamenes) about whom Diodorus has a long story to tell, and carried on by the Ptolemies and Cæsars—stands in a desolate open space to the north of the village, and is approached by an avenue, the walls of which are constructed with blocks from some earlier building. The whole of this avenue and all the waste ground for three or four hundred yards round about the temple is not merely strewn, but piled, with fragments of pottery, pebbles and large, smooth stones of porphery, alabaster, basalt, and a kind of marble like verde antico. These stones are puzzling. They look as if they might be fragments of statues that had been rolled and polished by ages of friction in the bed of a torrent. Among the potsherds we find some inscribed fragments like those of Elephantine.[161] Of the temple I will only say that, as masonry, it is better put together than any work of the eighteenth or nineteenth dynasties with which I am acquainted. The sculptures, however, are atrocious. Such misshapen hieroglyphs; such dumpy, smirking goddesses; such clownish kings in such preposterous head-dresses, we have never seen till now. The whole thing, in short, as regards sculpturesque style, is the Ptolemaic out-Ptolemied.

Rowing round presently to Kobban—the river running wide with the sand island between—we land under the walls of a huge crude brick structure, black with age, which at first sight looks quite shapeless; but which proves to be an ancient Egyptian fortress, buttressed, towered, loop-holed, finished at the angles with the invariable molded torus, and surrounded by a deep dry moat, which is probably yet filled each summer by the inundation.

Now, of all rare things in the valley of the Nile, a purely secular ruin is the rarest; and this, with the exception of some foundations of dwellings here and there, is the first we have seen. It is probably very, very old; as old as the days of Thothmes III, whose name is found on some scattered blocks about a quarter of a mile away, and who built two similar fortresses at Semneh, thirty-five miles above Wady Halfeh. It may be even a thousand years older still, and date from the time of Amenemhat III, whose name is also found on a stela near Kobban.[162] For here was once an ancient city, when Pselcis (now Dakkeh) was but a new suburb on the opposite bank. The name of this ancient city is lost, but it is by some supposed to be identical with the Metachompso of Ptolemy.[163] As the suburb grew the mother town declined, and in time the suburb became the city and the city became the suburb. The scattered blocks aforesaid, together with the remains of a small temple, yet mark the position of the elder city.

The walls of this most curious and interesting fortress have probably lost much of their original height. They are in some parts thirty feet thick, and nowhere less than twenty. Vertical on the inside, they are built at a buttress-slope outside, with additional shallow buttresses at regular distances. These last, as they can scarcely add to the enormous strength of the original wall, were probably designed for effect. There are two entrances to the fortress; one in the center of the north wall, and one in the south. We enter the inclosure by the last named, and find ourselves in the midst of an immense parallelogram measuring about four hundred and fifty feet from east to west, and perhaps three hundred feet from north to south.

All within these bounds is a wilderness of ruin. The space looks large enough for a city, and contains what might be the débris of a dozen cities. We climb huge mounds of rubbish; skirt cataracts of broken pottery; and stand on the brink of excavated pits honeycombed forty feet below, with brick foundations. Over these mounds and at the bottom of these pits swarm men, women, and children, filling and carrying away basket-loads of rubble. The dust rises in clouds. The noise, the heat, the confusion, are indescribable. One pauses, bewildered, seeking in vain to discover in this mighty maze any indication of a plan. It is only by an effort that one gradually realizes how the place is but a vast shell, and how all these mounds and pits mark the site of what was once a huge edifice rising tower above tower to a central keep, such as we see represented in the battle-subjects of Abou Simbel and Thebes.

That towered edifice and central keep—quarried, broken up, carried away piecemeal, reduced to powder, and spread over the land as manure—has now disappeared almost to its foundations. Only the well in the middle of the inclosure, and the great wall of circuit remain. That wall is doomed, and will by and by share the fate of the rest. The well, which must have been very deep, is choked with rubbish to the brim. Meanwhile, in order to realize what the place in its present condition is like, one need but imagine how the Tower of London would look if the whole of the inner buildings—white tower, chapel, armory, governor’s quarters, and all—were leveled in shapeless ruin, and only the outer walls and moat were left.

Built up against the inner side of the wall of circuit are the remains of a series of massive towers, the tops of which, as they are, strangely enough, shorter than the external structure, can never have communicated with the battlements, unless by ladders. The finest of these towers, together with a magnificent fragment of wall, faces the eastern desert.

Going out by the north entrance, we find the sides of the gateway, and even the steps leading down into the moat, in perfect preservation; while at the base of the great wall, on the outer side facing the river, there yet remains a channel or conduit about two feet square, built and roofed with stone, which in Murray is described as a water-gate.

The sun is high, the heat is overwhelming, the felucca waits; and we turn reluctantly away, knowing that between here and Cairo we shall see no more curious relics of the far-off past than this dismantled stronghold. It is a mere mountain of unburned brick; altogether unlovely: admirable only for the gigantic strength of its proportions; pathetic only in the abjectness of its ruin. Yet it brings the lost ages home to one’s imagination in a way that no temple could ever bring them. It dispels for a moment the historic glamor of the sculptures, and compels us to remember those nameless and forgotten millions, of whom their rulers fashioned soldiers in time of war and builders in time of peace.

Our adventures by the way are few and far between; and we now rarely meet a dahabeeyah. Birds are more plentiful than when we were in this part of the river a few weeks ago. We see immense flights of black and white cranes congregated at night on the sand-banks; and any number of quail may be had for the shooting. It is matter for rejoicing when the idle man goes out with his gun and brings home a full bag; for our last sheep was killed before we started for Wady Halfeh, and our last poultry ceased cackling at Abou Simbel.

One morning early, we see a bride taken across the river in a big boat full of women and girls, who are clapping their hands and shrilling the tremulous zagharett. The bride—a chocolate beauty with magnificent eyes—wears a gold brow-pendant and nose-ring, and has her hair newly plaited in hundreds of tails, finished off at the ends with mud pellets daubed with yellow ocher. She stands surrounded by her companions, proud of her finery, and pleased to be stared at by the Ingleezeh.

About this time, also, we see one night a wild sort of festival going on for some miles along both sides of the river. Watch-fires break out toward twilight, first on this bank, then on that; becoming brighter and more numerous as the darkness deepens. By and by, when we are going to bed, we hear sounds of drumming on the eastern bank, and see from afar a torchlight procession and dance. The effect of this dance of torches—for it is only the torches that are visible—is quite diabolic. The lights flit and leap as if they were alive; circling, clustering, dispersing, bobbing, poussetting, pursuing each other at a gallop, and whirling every now and then through the air, like rockets. Late as it is, we would fain put ashore and see this orgy more nearly; but Reïs Hassan shakes his head. The natives hereabout are said to be quarrelsome; and if, as it is probable, they are celebrating the festival of some local saint, we might be treated as intruders.

Coming at early morning to Gerf Hossayn, we make our way up to the temple, which is excavated in the face of a limestone cliff, a couple of hundred feet, perhaps, above the river. A steep path, glaring hot in the sun, leads to a terrace in the rock; the temple being approached through the ruins of a built-out portico and an avenue of battered colossi. It is a gloomy place within—an inferior edition, so to say, of the Great Temple of Abou Simbel; and of the same date. It consists of a first hall supported by osiride pillars, a second and smaller hall with square columns, a smoke-blackened sanctuary, and two side-chambers. The osiride colossi, which stand twenty feet high without the entablature over their heads or the pedestal under their feet, are thick-set, bow-legged, and misshapen. Their faces would seem to have been painted black originally; while those of the avenue outside have distinctly Ethiopian features. One seems to detect here, as at Derr and Wady Sabooah, the work of provincial sculptors; just as at Abou Simbel one recognizes the master-style of the artists of the Theban Ramesseum.

The side-chambers at Gerf Hossayn are infested with bats. These bats are the great sight of the place and have their appointed showman. We find him waiting for us with an end of tarred rope, which he flings, blazing, into the pitch-dark doorway. For a moment we see the whole ceiling hung, as it were, with a close fringe of white, filmy-looking pendants. But it is only for a moment. The next instant the creatures are all in motion, dashing out madly in our faces like driven snowflakes. We picked up a dead one afterward, when the rush was over, and examined it by the outer daylight—a lovely little creature, white and downy, with fine transparent wings and little pink feet and the prettiest mousey mouth imaginable.

Bordered with dwarf palms, acacias and henna-bushes, the cliffs between Gerf Hossayn and Dendoor stand out in detached masses so like ruins that sometimes we can hardly believe they are rocks. At Dendoor, when the sun is setting and a delicious gloom is stealing up the valley, we visit a tiny temple on the western bank. It stands out above the river surrounded by a wall of inclosure and consists of a single pylon, a portico, two little chambers and a sanctuary. The whole thing is like an exquisite toy, so covered with sculptures, so smooth, so new-looking, so admirably built. Seeing them half by sunset, half by dusk, it matters not that these delicately wrought bas-reliefs are of the decadence school.[164] The rosy half-light of an Egyptian after-glow covers a multitude of sins, and steeps the whole in an atmosphere of romance.

Wondering what has happened to the climate, we wake shivering next morning an hour or so before break of day, and, for the first time in several weeks, taste the old, early chill upon the air. When the sun rises, we find ourselves at Kalabsheh, having passed the limit of the tropic during the night. Henceforth, no matter how great the heat may be by day, this chill invariably comes with the dark hour before dawn.

The usual yelling crowd, with the usual beads, baskets, eggs, and pigeons, for sale, greets us on the shore at Kalabsheh. One of the men has a fine old two-handed sword in a shabby blue velvet sheath, for which he asks five napoleons. It looks as if it might have belonged to a crusader. Some of the women bring buffalo-cream in filthy-looking black skins slung round their waists like girdles. The cream is excellent; but the skins temper one’s enjoyment of the unaccustomed dainty.

There is a magnificent temple here, and close by, excavated in the cliff, a rock-cut speos, the local name of which is Bay-tel-Well. The sculptures of this famous speos have been more frequently described and engraved than almost any sculptures in Egypt. The procession of Ethiopian tribute-bearers, the assault of the Amorite city, the triumph of Rameses, are familiar not only to every reader of Wilkinson, but to every visitor passing through the Egyptian rooms of the British Museum. Notwithstanding the casts that have been taken from them, and the ill-treatment to which they have been subjected by natives and visitors, they are still beautiful. The colour of those in the roofless court-yard, though so perfect when Bonomi executed his admirable fac-similes, has now almost entirely peeled off; but in the portico and inner chambers it is yet brilliant. An emerald-green Osiris, a crimson Anubis, and an Isis of the brightest chrome yellow, are astonishingly pure and forcibly in quality. As for the flesh-tones of the Anubis, this was, I believe, the only instance I observed of a true crimson in Egypt pigments.

Between the speos of Bayt-el-Welly and the neighboring temple of Kalabsheh there lies about half a mile of hilly pathway and a gulf of fourteen hundred years. Rameses ushers us into the presence of Augustus, and we pass, as it were, from an oratory in the great house of Pharaoh to the presence-chambers of the Cæsars.

But if the decorative work in the presence-chamber of the Cæsars was anything like the decorative work in the temple of Kalabsheh, then the taste thereof was of the vilest. Such a masquerade of deities; such striped and spotted and cross-barred robes; such outrageous head-dresses; such crude and violent coloring,[165] we have never seen the like of. As for the goddesses, they are gaudier than the dancing damsels of Luxur; while the kings balance on their heads diadems compounded of horns, moons, birds, balls, beetles, lotus-blossoms, asps, vases, and feathers. The temple, however, is conceived on a grand scale. It is the Karnak of Nubia. But it is a Karnak that has evidently been visited by a shock of earthquake far more severe than that which shook the mighty pillars of the hypostyle hall and flung down the obelisk of Hatasu. From the river it looks like a huge fortress; but, seen from the threshold of the main gateway, it is a wilderness of ruin. Fallen blocks, pillars, capitals, entablatures, lie so extravagantly piled that there is not one spot in all those halls and courtyards upon which it is possible to set one’s foot on the level of the original pavement. Here, again, the earthquake seems to have come before the work was completed. There are figures outlined on the walls, but never sculptured. Others have been begun, but never finished. You can see where the chisel stopped—you can even detect which was the last mark it made on the surface. One traces here, in fact, the four processes of wall decoration. In some places the space is squared off and ruled by the mechanic; in others, the subject is ready drawn within those spaces by the artist. Here the sculptor has carried it a stage farther; yonder the painter has begun to color it.

More interesting, however, than aught else at Kalabsheh is the Greek inscription of Silco of Ethiopia.[166] This inscription—made famous by the commentaries of Niebuhr and Letronne—was discovered by M. Gau in A.D. 1818. It consists of twenty-one lines very neatly written in red ink, and it dates from the sixth century of the Christian era. It commences thus:

I, Silco, puissant king of the Nubians and all the Ethiopians,
I came twice as far as Talmis[167] and Taphis.[168]
I fought against the Blemyes,[169] and God granted me the victory.
I vanquished them a second time; and the first time
I established myself completely with my troops.
I vanquished them, and they supplicated me.
I made peace with them; and they swore to me by their idols.
I trusted them; because they are a people of good faith.
Then I returned to my dominions in the Upper Country.
For I am a king.
Not only am I no follower in the train of other kings,
But I go before them.
As for those who seek strife against me,
I give them no peace in their homes till they entreat my pardon.
For I am a lion on the plains, and a goat upon the mountains.
Etc.

The historical value of this inscription is very great. It shows that in the sixth century, while the native inhabitants of this part of the valley of the Nile yet adhered to the ancient Egyptian faith, the Ethiopians of the south were professedly Christian.

The descendants of the Blemmys are a fine race; tall, strong, and of a rich chocolate complexion. Strolling through the village at sunset, we see the entire population—old men sitting at their doors; young men lounging and smoking; children at play. The women, with glittering white teeth and liquid eyes, and a profusion of gold and silver ornaments on neck and brow, come out with their little brown babies astride on hip or shoulder, to stare as we go by. One sick old woman, lying outside her hut on a palm-wood couch, raises herself for a moment on her elbow—then sinks back with a weary sigh and turns her face to the wall. The mud dwellings here are built in and out of a maze of massive stone foundations, the remains of buildings once magnificent. Some of these walls are built in concave courses; each course of stones, that is to say, being depressed in the center and raised at the angles; which mode of construction was adopted in order to offer less resistance when shaken by earthquake.[170]

We observe more foundations built thus at Tafah, where we arrive next morning. As the mason’s work at Tafah is of late Roman date, it follows that earthquakes were yet frequent in Nubia at a period long subsequent to the great shock of B.C. 27, mentioned by Eusebius. Travelers are too ready to ascribe everything in the way of ruin to the fury of Cambyses and the pious rage of the early Christians. Nothing, however, is easier than to distinguish between the damage done to the monuments by the hand of man and the damage caused by subterraneous upheaval. Mutilation is the rule in the one case; displacement in the other. At Denderah, for example, the injury done is wholly willful; at Abou Simbel it is wholly accidental; at Karnak it is both willful and accidental. As for Kalabsheh, it is clear that no such tremendous havoc could have been effected by human means without the aid of powerful rams, fire, or gunpowder; any of which must have left unmistakable traces.

At Tafah there are two little temples; one in picturesque ruin, one quite perfect, and now used as a stable. There are also a number of stone foundations, separate, quadrangular, subdivided into numerous small chambers, and inclosed in boundary walls, some of which are built in the concave courses just named. These sub-structions, of which the painter counted eighteen, have long been the puzzle of travelers.[171]

Tafah is charmingly placed; and the seven miles which divide it from Kalabsheh—once, no doubt, the scene of a cataract—are perhaps the most picturesque on this side of Wady Halfeh. Rocky islets in the river; palm groves, acacias, carobs, henna and castor-berry bushes and all kinds of flowering shrubs, along the edges of the banks; fantastic precipices riven and pinnacled, here rising abruptly from the water’s edge and there from the sandy plain, make lovely sketches whichever way one turns. There are gazelles, it is said, in the ravines behind Tafah; and one of the natives—a truculent fellow in ragged shirt and dirty white turban—tells how, at a distance of three hours up a certain glen, there is another birbeh, larger than either of these, in the plain and a great standing statue taller than three men. Here, then, if the tale be true, is another ready-made discovery for whoever may care to undertake it.

This same native, having sold a necklace to the idle man and gone away content with his bargain, comes back by and by with half the village at his heels, requiring double price. This modest demand being refused, he rages up and down like a maniac; tears off his turban; goes through a wild manual exercise with his spear; then sits down in stately silence, with his friends and neighbors drawn up in a semicircle behind him.

This, it seems, is Nubian for a challenge. He has thrown down his gantlet in form and demands trial by combat. The noisy crowd, meanwhile, increases every moment. Reïs Hassan looks grave, fearing a possible fracas; and the idle man, who is reading the morning service down below (for it is on a Sunday morning) can scarcely be heard for the clamor outside. In this emergency it occurs to the writer to send a message ashore informing these gentlemen that the howadjis are holding mosque in the dahabeeyah and entreating them to be quiet till the hour of prayer is past. The effect of the message, strange to say, is instantaneous. The angry voices are at once hushed. The challenger puts on his turban. The assembled spectators squat in respectful silence on the bank. A whole hour goes by thus, so giving the storm time to blow over; and when the idle man reappears on deck his would-be adversary comes forward quite pleasantly to discuss the purchase afresh.

It matters little how the affair ended; but I believe he was offered his necklace back in exchange for the money paid and preferred to abide by his bargain. It is as evidence of the sincerity of the religions sentiment in the minds of a semi-savage people,[172] that I have thought the incident worth telling.

We are now less than forty miles from Philæ; but the head wind is always against us and the men’s bread is exhausted and there is no flour to be bought in these Nubian villages. The poor fellows swept out the last crumbs from the bottom of their bread-chest three or four days ago and are now living on quarter-rations of lentil soup and a few dried dates bought at Wady Halfeh. Patient and depressed, they crouch silently beside their oars, or forget their hunger in sleep. For ourselves, it is painful to witness their need and still more painful to be unable to help them. Talhamy, whose own stores are at a low ebb, vows he can do nothing. It would take his few remaining tins of preserved meat to feed fifteen men for two days, and of flour he has barely enough for the howadjis. Hungry? well, yes—no doubt they are hungry. But what of that? They are Arabs; and Arabs bear hunger as camels bear thirst. It is nothing new to them. They have often been hungry before—they will often be hungry again. Enough! It is not for the ladies to trouble themselves about such fellows as these!

Excellent advice, no doubt; but hard to follow. Not to be troubled and not to do what little we can for the poor lads, is impossible. When that little means laying violent hands upon Talhamy’s reserve of eggs and biscuits and getting up lotteries for prizes of chocolate and tobacco, that worthy evidently considers that we have taken leave of our wits.

Under a burning sky we touch for an hour or two at Gertássee and then push on for Dabôd. The limestone quarries at Gertássee are full of votive sculptures and inscriptions; and the little ruin—a mere cluster of graceful columns supporting a fragment of cornice—stands high on the brink of a cliff overhanging the river. Take it as you will, from above or below, looking north or looking south, it makes a charming sketch.

If transported to Dabôd on that magic carpet of the fairy tale, one would take it for a ruin on the “beached margent” of some placid lake in dreamland. It lies between two bends of the river, which here flows wide, showing no outlet and seeming to be girdled by mountains and palm-groves. The temple is small and uninteresting; begun, like Dakkeh, by an Ethiopian king and finished by Ptolemies and Cæsars. The one curious thing about it is a secret cell, most cunningly devised. Adjoining the sanctuary is a dark side-chamber; in the floor of the side-chamber is a pit, once paved over; in one corner of the pit is a man-hole opening into a narrow passage; and in the narrow passage are steps leading up to a secret chamber constructed in the thickness of the wall. We saw other secret chambers in other temples,[173] but not one in which the old approaches were so perfectly preserved.

From Dabôd to Philæ is but ten miles; and we are bound for Torrigûr, which is two miles nearer. Now Torrigûr is that same village at the foot of the beautiful sand-drift, near which we moored on our way up the river; and here we are to stay two days, followed by at least a week at Philæ. No sooner, therefore, have we reached Torrigûr than Reïs Hassan and three sailors start for Assûan to buy flour. Old Ali, Riskalli and Mûsa, whose homes lie in the villages round about, get leave of absence for a week; and we find ourselves reduced all at once to a crew of five, with only Khaleefeh in command. Five, however, are as good as fifty when the dahabeeyah lies moored and there is nothing to do; and our five, having succeeded in buying some flabby Nubian cakes and green lentils, are now quite happy. So the painter pitches his tent on the top of the sand-drift; and the writer sketches the ruined convent opposite; and L—— and the little lady write no end of letters; and the idle man, with Mehemet Ali for a retriever, shoots quail, and everybody is satisfied.

Hapless idle man! hapless but homicidal. If he had been content to shoot only quail, and had not taken to shooting babies! What possessed him to do it? Not—not let us hope—an ill-directed ambition foiled of crocodiles! He went serene and smiling, with his gun under his arm, and Mehemet Ali in his wake. Who so light of heart as that idle man? Who so light of heel as that turbaned retriever? We heard our sportsman popping away presently in the barley. It was a pleasant sound, for we knew his aim was true. “Every shot,” said we, “means a bird.” We little dreamed that one of those shots meant a baby.

All at once a woman screamed. It was a sharp, sudden scream, following a shot—a scream with a ring of horror in it. Instantly it was caught up from point to point, growing in volume and seeming to be echoed from every direction at once. At the same moment the bank became alive with human beings. They seemed to spring from the soil—women shrieking and waving their arms; men running; all making for the same goal. The writer heard the scream, saw the rush, and knew at once that a gun accident had happened.

A few minutes of painful suspense followed. Then Mehemet Ali appeared, tearing back at the top of his speed; and presently—perhaps five minutes later, though it seemed like twenty—came the idle man; walking very slowly and defiantly, with his head up, his arms folded, his gun gone, and an immense rabble at his heels.

Our scanty crew, armed with sticks, flew at once to the rescue, and brought him off in safety. We then learned what had happened.

A flight of quail had risen; and as quail fly low, skimming the surface of the grain and diving down again almost immediately, he had taken a level aim. At the instant that he fired, and in the very path of the quail, a woman and child who had been squatting in the barley, sprang up screaming. He at once saw the coming danger; and, with admirable presence of mind, drew the charge of his second barrel. He then hid his cartridge-box and hugged his gun, determined to hold it as long as possible. The next moment he was surrounded, overpowered, had the gun wrenched from his grasp, and received a blow on the back with a stone. Having captured the gun, one or two of the men let go. It was then that he shook off the rest and came back to the boat. Mehemet Ali at the same time flew to call a rescue. He, too, came in for some hard knocks, besides having his shirt rent and his turban torn off his head.

Here were we, meanwhile, with less than half our crew, a private war on our hands, no captain, and one of our three guns in the hands of the enemy. What a scene it was! A whole village, apparently a very considerable village, swarming on the bank; all hurrying to and fro; all raving, shouting, gesticulating. If we had been on the verge of a fracas at Tafah, here we were threatened with a siege.

Drawing in the plank between the boat and the shore, we held a hasty council of war.

The woman being unhurt, and the child, if hurt at all, hurt very slightly, we felt justified in assuming an injured tone, calling the village to account for a case of cowardly assault, and demanding instant restitution of the gun. We accordingly sent Talhamy to parley with the head man of the place and peremptorily demand the gun. We also bade him add—and this we regarded as a master-stroke of policy—that if due submission was immediately made, the howadji, one of whom was a Hakeem, would permit the father to bring his child on board to have its hurts attended to.

Outwardly indifferent, inwardly not a little anxious, we waited the event. Talhamy’s back being toward the river, we had the whole semicircle of swarthy faces full in view—bent brows, flashing eyes, glittering teeth; all anger, all scorn, all defiance. Suddenly the expression of the faces changed—the change beginning with those nearest the speaker, and spreading gradually outward. It was as if a wave had passed over them. We knew then that our coup was made. Talhamy returned. The villagers crowded round their leaders, deliberating. Numbers now began to sit down; and when a Nubian sits down, you may be sure that he is no longer dangerous.

Presently—after perhaps a quarter of an hour—the gun was brought back uninjured, and an elderly man carrying a blue bundle appeared on the bank. The plank was now put across; the crowd was kept off; and the man with the bundle, and three or four others, were allowed to pass.

The bundle being undone, a little brown imp of about four years of age, with shaven head and shaggy scalp-lock, was produced. He whimpered at first, seeing the strange white faces; but when offered a fig, forgot his terrors, and sat munching it like a monkey. As for his wounds, they were literally skin-deep, the shot having but slightly grazed his shoulders in four or five places. The idle man, however, solemnly sponged the scratches with warm water, and L—— covered them with patches of sticking-plaster. Finally, the father was presented with a napoleon; the patient was wrapped in one of his murderer’s shirts; and the first act of the tragedy ended. The second and third acts were to come.

When the painter and the idle man talked the affair over, they agreed that it was expedient, for the protection of future travelers, to lodge a complaint against the village; and this mainly on account of the treacherous blow dealt from behind, at a time when the idle man (who had not once attempted to defend himself) was powerless in the hands of a mob. They therefore went next day to Assûan; and the governor, charming as ever, promised that justice should be done. Meanwhile we moved the dahabeeyah to Philæ, and there settled down for a week’s sketching.

Next evening came a woful deputation from Torrigûr, entreating forgiveness and stating that fifteen villagers had been swept off to prison.

The idle man explained that he no longer had anything to do with it; that the matter, in short, was in the hands of justice, and would be dealt with according to law. Hereupon the spokesman gathered up a handful of imaginary dust and made believe to scatter it on his head.

“O dragoman!” he said, “tell the howadji that there is no law but his pleasure and no justice but the will of the governor!”

Summoned next morning to give evidence, the idle man went betimes to Assûan, where he was received in private by the governor and mudîr. Pipes and coffee were handed and the usual civilities exchanged. The governor then informed his guest that fifteen men of Torrigûr had been arrested; and that fourteen of them unanimously identified the fifteenth as the one who struck the blow.

“And now,” said the governor, “before we send for the prisoners it will be as well to decide on the sentence. What does his excellency wish done to them?”

The idle man was puzzled. How could he offer an opinion, being ignorant of the Egyptian civil code? and how could the sentence be decided upon before the trial?

The governor smiled serenely.

“But,” he said, “this is the trial.”

Being an Englishman, it necessarily cost the idle man an effort to realize the full force of this explanation—an explanation which, in its sublime simplicity, epitomized the whole system of the judicial administration of Egyptian law. He hastened, however, to explain that he cherished no resentment against the culprit or the villagers, and that his only wish was to frighten them into a due respect for travelers in general.

The governor hereupon invited the mudîr to suggest a sentence; and the mudîr—taking into consideration, as he said, his excellency’s lenient disposition—proposed to award to the fourteen innocent men one month’s imprisonment each; and to the real offender two month’s imprisonment, with a hundred and fifty blows of the bastinado.

Shocked at the mere idea of such a sentence, the idle man declared that he must have the innocent set at liberty; but consented that the culprit, for the sake of example, should be sentenced to the one hundred and fifty blows—the punishment to be remitted after the first few strokes had been dealt. Word was now given for the prisoners to be brought in.

The jailer marched first, followed by two soldiers. Then came the fifteen prisoners—I am ashamed to write it!—chained neck to neck, in single file.

One can imagine how the idle man felt at this moment.

Sentence being pronounced, the fourteen looked as if they could hardly believe their ears; while the fifteenth, though condemned to his one hundred and fifty strokes (“seventy-five to each foot,” specified the governor), was overjoyed to be let off so easily.

He was then flung down; his feet were fastened soles uppermost; and two soldiers proceeded to execute the sentence. As each blow fell, he cried: “God save the governor! God save the mudîr! God save the howadji!”

When the sixth stroke had been dealt the idle man turned to the governor and formally interceded for the remission of the rest of the sentence. The governor as formally granted the request, and the prisoners, weeping with joy, were set at liberty.

The governor, the mudîr, and the idle man then parted with a profusion of compliments; the governor protesting that his only wish was to be agreeable to the English, and that the whole village should have been bastinadoed had his excellency desired it.

We spent eight enchanted days at Philæ, and it so happened, when the afternoon of the eighth came round, that for the last few hours the writer was alone on the island. Alone, that is to say, with only a sailor in attendance, which was virtually solitude; and Philæ is a place to which solitude adds an inexpressible touch of pathos and remoteness.

It has been a hot day, and there is dead calm on the river. My last sketch finished, I wander slowly round from spot to spot, saying farewell to Pharaoh’s bed—to the painted columns—to the terrace, and palm, and shrine, and familiar point of view. I peep once again into the mystic chamber of Osiris. I see the sun set for the last time from the roof of the Temple of Isis. Then, when all that wondrous flush of rose and gold has died away, comes the warm after-glow. No words can paint the melancholy beauty of Philæ at this hour. The surrounding mountains stand out jagged and purple against a pale amber sky. The Nile is glassy. Not a breath, not a bubble, troubles the inverted landscape. Every palm is twofold; every stone is doubled. The big bowlders in mid-stream are reflected so perfectly that it is impossible to tell where the rock ends and the water begins. The temples, meanwhile, have turned to a subdued golden bronze; and the pylons are peopled with shapes that glow with fantastic life, and look ready to step down from their places.

The solitude is perfect, and there is a magical stillness in the air. I hear a mother crooning to her baby on the neighboring island—a sparrow twittering in its little nest in the capital of a column below my feet—a vulture screaming plaintively among the rocks in the far distance.

I look; I listen; I promise myself that I will remember it all in years to come—all the solemn hills, these silent colonnades, these deep, quiet spaces of shadow, these sleeping palms. Lingering till it is all but dark, I at last bid them farewell, fearing lest I may behold them no more.

CHAPTER XX.
SILSILIS AND EDFU.

Going, it cost us four days to struggle up from Assûan to Mahatta; returning, we slid down—thanks to our old friend the sheik of the cataract—in one short, sensational half-hour. He came—flat-faced, fishy-eyed, fatuous as ever—with his head tied up in the same old yellow handkerchief, and with the same chibouque in his mouth. He brought with him a following of fifty stalwart shellalees; and under his arm he carried a tattered red flag. This flag, on which were embroidered the crescent and star, he hoisted with much solemnity at the prow.

Consigned thus to the protection of the prophet; windows and tambooshy[174] shuttered up; doors closed; breakables removed to a place of safety, and everything made snug, as if for a storm at sea, we put off from Mahatta at seven A.M. on a lovely morning in the middle of March. The Philæ, instead of threading her way back through the old channels, strikes across to the Libyan side, making straight for the Big Bab—that formidable rapid which as yet we have not seen. All last night we heard its voice in the distance; now, at every stroke of the oars, that rushing sound draws nearer.

The sheik of the cataract is our captain, and his men are our sailors to-day; Reïs Hassan and the crew having only to sit still and look on. The shellalees, meanwhile, row swiftly and steadily. Already the river seems to be running faster than usual; already the current feels stronger under our keel. And now, suddenly, there is sparkle and foam on the surface yonder—there are rocks ahead; rocks to right and left; eddies everywhere. The sheik lays down his pipe, kicks off his shoes, and goes himself to the prow. His second in command is stationed at the top of the stairs leading to the upper deck. Six men take the tiller. The rowers are re-enforced, and sit two to each oar.

In the midst of these preparations, when everybody looks grave and even the Arabs are silent, we all at once find ourselves at the mouth of a long and narrow strait—a kind of ravine between two walls of rock—through which, at a steep incline, there rushes a roaring mass of waters. The whole Nile, in fact, seems to be thundering in wild waves down that terrible channel.

It seems, at first sight, impossible that any dahabeeyah should venture that way and not be dashed to pieces. Neither does there seem room for boats and oars to pass. The sheik, however, gives the word—his second echoes it—the men at the helm obey. They put the dahabeeyah straight at that monster mill-race. For one breathless second we seem to tremble on the edge of the fall. Then the Philæ plunges in headlong!

We see the whole boat slope down bodily under our feet. We feel the leap—the dead fall—the staggering rush forward. Instantly the waves are foaming and boiling up on all sides, flooding the lower deck and covering the upper deck with spray. The men ship their oars, leaving all to helm and current; and, despite the hoarse tumult, we distinctly hear those oars scrape the rocks on either side.

Now the sheik, looking for the moment quite majestic, stands motionless with uplifted arm; for at the end of the pass there is a sharp turn to the right—as sharp as a street corner in a narrow London thoroughfare. Can the Philæ, measuring one hundred feet from stem to stern, ever round that angle in safety? Suddenly, the uplifted arm is waved—the sheik thunders “Daffet!” (“helm”)—the men, steady and prompt, put the helm about—the boat, answering splendidly to the word of command, begins to turn before we are out of the rocks; then, shooting round the corner at exactly the right moment, comes out safe and sound, with only an oar broken!

Great is the rejoicing. Reïs Hassan, in the joy of his heart, runs to shake hands all round; the Arabs burst into a chorus of “Taibs” and “Salames;” and Talhamy, coming up all smiles, is set upon by half a dozen playful shellalees, who snatch his keffîyeh from his head and carry it off as a trophy. The only one unmoved is the sheik of the cataract. His momentary flash of energy over, he slouches back with the old stolid face; slips on his shoes; drops on his heels; lights his pipe; and looks more like an owl than ever.

We had fancied till now that the cataract Arabs for their own profit and travelers for their own glory had grossly exaggerated the dangers of the Big Bab. But such is not the case. The Big Bab is in truth a serious undertaking; so serious that I doubt whether any English boatman would venture to take such a boat down such a rapid and between such rocks as the shellalee Arabs took the Philæ that day.

All dahabeeyahs, however, are not so lucky. Of thirty-four that shot the fall this season, several had been slightly damaged and one was so disabled that she had to lie up at Assûan for a fortnight to be mended. Of actual shipwreck, or injury to life and limb, I do not suppose there is any real danger. The shellalees are wonderfully cool and skillful and have abundant practice. Our painter, it is true, preferred rolling up his canvases and carrying them round on dry land by way of the desert; but this was a precaution that neither he nor any of us would have dreamed of taking on account of our own personal safety. There is, in fact, little, if anything, to fear; and the traveler who foregoes the descent of the cataract foregoes a very curious sight and a very exciting adventure.

At Assûan we bade farewell to Nubia and the blameless Ethiopians and found ourselves once more traversing the Nile of Egypt. If instead of five miles of cataract we had crossed five hundred miles of sea or desert, the change could not have been more complete. We left behind us a dreamy river, a silent shore, an ever-present desert. Returning, we plunged back at once into the midst of a fertile and populous region. All day long, now, we see boats on the river; villages on the banks; birds on the wing; husbandmen on the land; men and women, horses, camels and asses, passing perpetually to and fro on the towing-path. There is always something moving, something doing. The Nile is running low and the shâdûfs—three deep, now—are in full swing from morning till night. Again the smoke goes up from clusters of unseen huts at close of day. Again we hear the dogs barking from hamlet to hamlet in the still hours of the night. Again, toward sunset, we see troops of girls coming clown to the river side with their water-jars on their heads. Those Arab maidens, when they stand with garments tightly tucked up and just their feet in the water, dipping the goolah at arm’s length in the fresher gush of the current, almost tempt one’s pencil into the forbidden paths of caricature.

Kom Ombo is a magnificent torso. It was as large once as Denderah—perhaps larger; for, being on the same grand scale, it was a double temple and dedicated to two gods, Horus and Sebek;[175] the hawk and the crocodile. Now there remain only a few giant columns, buried to within eight or ten feet of their gorgeous capitals; a superb fragment of architrave; one broken wave of sculptured cornice and some fallen blocks graven with the names of Ptolemies and Cleopatras.

A great double doorway, a hall of columns and a double sanctuary are said to be yet perfect, though no longer accessible. The roofing-blocks of three halls, one behind the other, and a few capitals are yet visible behind the portico.

What more may lie buried below the surface none can tell. We only know that an ancient city and a mediæval hamlet have been slowly engulfed; and that an early temple, contemporary with the Temple of Amada, once stood within the sacred inclosure. The sand here has been accumulating for two thousand years. It lies forty feet deep, and has never been excavated. It will never be excavated now, for the Nile is gradually sapping the bank and carrying away piecemeal from below what the desert has buried from above. Half of one noble pylon—a cataract of sculptured blocks—strews the steep slope from top to bottom. The other half hangs suspended on the brink of the precipice. It cannot hang so much longer. A day must soon come when it will collapse with a crash and thunder down like its fellow.

Between Kom Ombo and Silsilis, we lost our painter. Not that he either strayed or was stolen; but that, having accomplished the main object of his journey, he was glad to seize the first opportunity of getting back quickly to Cairo. That opportunity—represented by a noble duke honeymooning with a steam-tug—happened half-way between Kom Ombo and Silsilis. Painter and duke being acquaintances of old, the matter was soon settled. In less than a quarter of an hour, the big picture and all the paraphernalia of the studio were transported from the stern-cabin of the Philæ to the stern-cabin of the steam-tug; and our painter—fitted out with an extempore canteen, a cook-boy, a waiter, and his fair share of the necessaries of life—was soon disappearing gayly in the distance at the rate of twenty miles an hour. If the happy couple, so weary of head-winds, so satiated with temples, followed that vanishing steam-tug with eyes of melancholy longing, the writer at least asked nothing better than to drift on with the Philæ.

Still, the Nile is long, and life is short; and the tale told by our log-book was certainly not encouraging. When we reached Silsilis on the morning of the 17th of March the north wind had been blowing with only one day’s intermission since the 1st of February.

At Silsilis, one looks in vain for traces of that great barrier which once blocked the Nile at this point. The stream is narrow here, and the sand-stone cliffs come down on both sides to the water’s edge. In some places there is space for a footpath; in others, none. There are also some sunken rocks in the bed of the river—upon one of which, by the way, a Cook’s steamer had struck two days before. But of such a mass as could have dammed the Nile, and, by its disruption, not only have caused the river to desert its bed at Philæ,[176] but have changed the whole physical and climatic conditions of Lower Nubia, there is no sign whatever.

The Arabs here show a rock fantastically quarried in the shape of a gigantic umbrella, to which they pretend some king of old attached one end of a chain with which he barred the Nile. It may be that in this apocryphal legend there survives some memory of the ancient barrier.

The cliffs of the western bank are rich in memorial niches, votive shrines, tombs, historical stela, and inscriptions. These last date from the sixth to the twenty-second dynasties. Some of the tombs and alcoves are very curious. Ranged side by side in a long row close above the river, and revealing glimpses of seated figures and gaudy decorations within, they look like private boxes with their occupants. In most of these we found mutilated triads of gods,[177] sculptured and painted; and in one larger than the rest were three niches, each containing three deities.

The great speos of Horemheb, the last Pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty, lies farthest north, and the memorial shrines of the Rameses family lie farthest south of the series. The first is a long gallery, like a cloister supported on four square columns; and is excavated parallel with the river. The walls inside and out are covered with delicately executed sculptures in low relief, some of which yet retain traces of color. The triumph of Horemheb returning from conquest in the land of Kush, and the famous subject on the south wall described by Mariette[178] as one of the few really lovely things in Egyptian art have been too often engraved to need description. The votive shrines of the Rameses family are grouped altogether in a picturesque nook green with bushes to the water’s edge. There are three, the work of Seti I, Rameses II, and Menepthah—lofty alcoves, each like a little proscenium, with painted cornices and side pillars, and groups of kings and gods still bright with color. In most of the votive sculptures of Silsilis there figure two deities but rarely seen elsewhere; namely Sebek, the crocodile god, and Hapi-Mu, the lotus-crowned god of the Nile. This last was the tutelary deity of the spot, and was worshiped at Silsilis with special rites. Hymns, in his honor are found carved here and there upon the rocks.[179] Most curious of all, however, is a goddess named Ta-ur-t,[180] represented in one of the side subjects of the shrine of Rameses II. This charming person, who has the body of a hippopotamus and the face of a woman, wears a tie-wig and a robe of state with five capes, and looks like a cross between a lord chancellor and a coachman. Behind her stand Thoth and Nut; all three receiving the homage of Queen Nefertari, who advances with an offering of two sistrums. As a hippopotamus crowned with the disk and plumes, we had met with this goddess before. She is not uncommon as an amulet; and the writer had already sketched her at Philæ, where she occupies a prominent place in the façade of the Mammisi. But the grotesque elegance of her attire at Silsilis is, I imagine, quite unique.

TA-UR-T (SILSILIS). TA-UR-T (PHILÆ).

The interest of the western bank centers in its sculptures and inscriptions; the interest of the eastern bank in its quarries. We rowed over to a point nearly opposite the shrines of the Ramessides, and, climbing a steep verge of débris, came to the mouth of a narrow cutting between walls of solid rock from forty to fifty feet in height. These walls are smooth, clean-cut, and faultlessly perpendicular. The color of the sand-stone is rich amber. The passage is about ten feet in width and perhaps four hundred in length. Seen at a little after midday, with one side in shadow, the other in sunlight, and a narrow ribbon of blue sky overhead, it is like nothing else in the world; unless, perhaps, the entrance to Petra.

Following this passage we came presently to an immense area, at least as large as Belgrave Square; beyond which, separated by a thin partition of rock, opened a second and somewhat smaller area. On the walls of these huge amphitheaters, the chisel-marks and wedge-holes were as fresh as if the last blocks had been taken hence but yesterday; yet it is some two thousand years since the place last rang to the blows of the mallet, and echoed back the voices of the workmen. From the days of the Theban Pharaohs to the days of the Ptolemies and Cæsars, those echoes can never have been silent. The temples of Karnak and Luxor, of Gournah, of Medinet Habu, of Esneh and Edfu and Hermonthis, all came from here and from the quarries on the opposite side of the river.[181]

Returning, we climbed long hills of chips; looked down into valleys of débris; and came back at last to the river side by way of an ancient inclined plane, along which the blocks were slid down to the transport boats below. But the most wonderful thing about Silsilis is the way in which the quarrying has been done. In all these halls and passages and amphitheaters the sandstone has been sliced out smooth and straight, like hay from a hay-rick. Everywhere the blocks have been taken out square; and everywhere the best of the stone has been extracted and the worst left. Where it was fine in grain and even in color it has been cut with the nicest economy. Where it was whitish, or brownish, or traversed by veins of violet, it has been left standing. Here and there we saw places where the lower part had been removed and the upper part left projecting, like the overhanging stories of our old mediæval timber houses. Compared with this pussiant and perfect quarrying, our rough-and-ready blasting looks like the work of savages.

Struggling hard against the wind, we left Silsilis that same afternoon. The wrecked steamer was now more than half under water. She had broken her back and begun filling immediately, with all Cook’s party on board. Being rowed ashore with what necessaries they could gather together these unfortunates had been obliged to encamp in tents borrowed from the mudîr of the district. Luckily for them, a couple of homeward-bound dahabeeyahs came by next morning, and took off as many as they could accommodate. The duke’s steam-tug received the rest. The tents were still there, and a gang of natives, under the superintendence of the mudîr, were busy getting off all that could be saved from the wreck.

As evening drew on, our head-wind became a hurricane; and that hurricane lasted day and night for thirty-six hours. All this time the Nile was driving up against the current in great rollers, like rollers on the Cornish coast when tide and wind set together from the west. To hear them roaring past in the darkness of the night—to feel the Philæ rocking, shivering, straining at her mooring-ropes and bumping perpetually against the bank, was far from pleasant. By day the scene was extraordinary. There were no clouds, but the air was thick with sand, through which the sun glimmered feebly. Some palms, looking gray and ghostlike on the bank above, bent as if they must break before the blast. The Nile was yeasty and flecked with brown foam, large lumps of which came swirling every now and then against our cabin windows. The opposite bank was simply nowhere. Judging only by what was visible from the deck one would have vowed that the dahabeeyah was moored against an open coast with an angry sea coming in.

The wind fell about five A.M. the second day; when the men at once took to their oars and by breakfast-time brought us to Edfu. Nothing now could be more delicious than the weather. It was a cool, silvery, misty morning—such a morning as one never knows in Nubia, where the sun is no sooner up than one is plunged at once into the full blaze and stress of day. There were donkeys waiting for us on the bank and our way lay for about a mile through barley flats and cotton plantations. The country looked rich; the people smiling and well conditioned. We met a troop of them going down to the dahabeeyah with sheep, pigeons, poultry and a young ox for sale. Crossing a back-water, bridged by a few rickety palm-trunks, we now approached the village, which is perched, as usual, on the mounds of the ancient city. Meanwhile the great pylons—seeming to grow larger every moment—rose, creamy in light, against a soft-blue sky.

Riding through lanes of huts we came presently to an open space and a long flight of roughly built steps in front of the temple. At the top of these steps we were standing on the level of the modern village. At the bottom we saw the massive pavement that marked the level of the ancient city. From that level rose the pylons which even from afar off had looked so large. We now found that those stupendous towers not only soared to a height of about seventy-five feet above our heads, but plunged down to a depth of at least forty more beneath our feet.

Ten years ago nothing was visible of the great Temple of Edfu save the tops of these pylons. The rest of the building was as much lost to sight as if the earth had opened and swallowed it. Its court-yards were choked with foul débris. Its sculptured chambers were buried under forty feet of soil. Its terraced roof was a maze of closely packed huts, swarming with human beings, poultry, dogs, kine, asses and vermin. Thanks to the indefatigable energy of Mariette, these Augean stables were cleansed some thirty years ago. Writing himself of this tremendous task, he says: “I caused to be demolished the sixty-four houses which encumbered the roof, as well as twenty-eight more which approached too near the outer wall of the temple. When the whole shall be isolated from its present surroundings by a massive wall, the work of restoration at Edfu will be accomplished.”[182]

That wall has not yet been built; but the encroaching mound has been cut clean away all round the building, now standing free in a deep open space, the sides of which are in some places as perpendicular as the quarried cliffs of Silsilis. In the midst of this pit, like a risen god issuing from the grave, the huge building stands before us in the sunshine, erect and perfect. The effect at first sight is overwhelming.

Through the great doorway, fifty feet in height, we catch glimpses of a grand court-yard, and of a vista of doorways, one behind another. Going slowly down, we see farther into those dark and distant halls at every step. At the same time the pylons, covered with gigantic sculptures, tower higher and higher, and seem to shut out the sky. The custode—a pigmy of six foot two, in semi-European dress—looks up grinning, expectant of backshîsh. For there is actually a custode here, and, which is more to the purpose, a good strong gate, through which neither pilfering visitors nor pilfering Arabs can pass unnoticed.

Who enters that gate crosses the threshold of the past, and leaves two thousand years behind him. In these vast courts and storied halls all is unchanged. Every pavement, every column, every stair, is in its place. The roof, but for a few roofing-stones missing just over the sanctuary, is not only uninjured, but in good repair. The hieroglyphic inscriptions are as sharp and legible as the day they were cut. If here and there a capital, or the face of a human-headed deity, has been mutilated, these are blemishes which at first one scarcely observes, and which in no wise mar the wonderful effect of the whole. We cross that great court-yard in the full blaze of the morning sunlight. In the colonnades on either side there is shade, and in the pillared portico beyond, a darkness as of night; save where a patch of deep-blue sky burns through a square opening in the roof, and is matched by a corresponding patch of blinding light on the pavement below. Hence we pass on through a hall of columns, two transverse corridors, a side chapel, a series of pitch-dark side chambers, and a sanctuary. Outside all these, surrounding the actual temple on three sides, runs an external corridor open to the sky, and bounded by a superb wall full forty feet in height. When I have said that the entrance-front, with its twin pylons and central doorway, measures two hundred and fifty feet in width by one hundred and twenty-five feet in height; that the first court-yard measures more than one hundred and sixty feet in length by one hundred and forty in width; that the entire length of the building is four hundred and fifty feet, and that it covers an area of eighty thousand square feet, I have stated facts of a kind which convey no more than a general idea of largeness to the ordinary reader. Of the harmony of the proportions, of the amazing size and strength of the individual parts, of the perfect workmanship, of the fine grain and creamy amber of the stone, no description can do more than suggest an indefinite notion.

Edfu and Denderah may almost be called twin temples. They belong to the same period. They are built very nearly after the same plan.[183] They are even allied in a religious sense; for the myths of Horus[184] and Hathor[185] are interdependent; the one being the complement of the other. Thus, in the inscriptions of Edfu we find perpetual allusion to the cultus of Denderah, and vice versa. Both Edfu and Denderah are rich in inscriptions; but as the extent of wall-space is greater at Edfu, so is the literary wealth of this temple greater than the literary wealth of Denderah. It also seemed to me that the surface was more closely filled in at Edfu than at Denderah. Every wall, every ceiling, every pillar, every architrave, every passage and side-chamber, however dark, every staircase, every doorway, the outer wall of the temple, the inner side of the great wall of circuit, the huge pylons from top to bottom, are not only covered, but crowded, with figures and hieroglyphs. Among these we find no enormous battle-subjects as at Abou Simbel—no heroic recitals, like the poem of Pentaur. Those went out with the Pharaohs and were succeeded by tableaux of religious rites and dialogues of gods and kings. Such are the stock subjects of Ptolemaic edifices. They abound at Denderah and Esneh, as well as at Edfu. But at Edfu there are more inscriptions of a miscellaneous character than in any temple of Egypt; and it is precisely this secular information which is so priceless. Here are geographical lists of Nubian and Egyptian gnomes, with their principal cities, their products and their tutelary gods; lists of tributary provinces and princes; lists of temples and of lands pertaining thereunto; lists of canals, of ports, of lakes; calendars of feasts and fasts; astronomical tables; genealogies and chronicles of the gods; lists of the priests and priestesses of both Edfu and Denderah, with their names; lists also of singers and assistant functionaries; lists of offerings, hymns, invocations; and such a profusion of religious legends as make of the walls of Edfu alone a complete text-book of Egyptian mythology.[186]

No great collection of these inscriptions, like the “Denderah” of Mariette, has yet been published; but every now and then some enterprising Egyptologist, such as M. Naville or M. Jacques de Rougé, plunges for awhile into the depths of the Edfu mine and brings back as much precious ore as he can carry. Some most singular and interesting details have thus been brought to light. One inscription, for instance, records exactly in what month and on what day and at what hour Isis gave birth to Horus. Another tells all about the sacred boats. We know now that Edfu possessed at least two; and that one was called Hor-Hat, or The First Horus and the other Aa-Mafek, or Great of Turquoise. These boats, it would appear, were not merely for carrying in procession, but for actual use upon the water. Another text—one of the most curious—informs us that Hathor of Denderah paid an annual visit to Horus (or Hor-Hat) of Edfu and spent some days with him in his temple. The whole ceremonial of this fantastic trip is given in detail. The goddess traveled in her boat called Neb-Mer-t, or Lady of the Lake. Horus, like a polite host, went out in his boat Hor-Hat, to meet her. The two deities with their attendants then formed one procession and so came to Edfu, where the goddess was entertained with a succession of festivals.[187]

One would like to know whether Horus duly returned all these visits; and if the gods, like modern emperors, had a gay time among themselves.

Other questions inevitably suggest themselves, sometimes painfully, sometimes ludicrously, as one paces chamber after chamber, corridor after corridor, sculptured all over with strange forms and stranger legends. What about these gods whose genealogies are so intricate; whose mutual relations are so complicated; who wedded and became parents; who exchanged visits and who even traveled[188] at times to distant countries? What about those who served them in the temples; who robed and unrobed them; who celebrated their birthdays and paraded them in stately processions and consumed the lives of millions in erecting these mountains of masonry and sculpture to their honor? We know now with what elaborate rites the gods were adored; what jewels they wore; what hymns were sung in their praise. We know from what a subtle and philosophical core of solar myths their curious personal adventures were evolved. We may also be quite sure that the hidden meaning of these legends was almost wholly lost sight of in the later days of the religion,[189] and that the gods were accepted for what they seemed to be and not for what they were symbolized. What, then, of their worshipers? Did they really believe all these things, or were any among them tormented with doubts of the gods? Were there skeptics in those days, who wondered how two hierogrammates could look each other in the face without laughing?

The custode told us that there were two hundred and forty-two steps to the top of each tower of the propylon. We counted two hundred and twenty-four, and dispensed willingly with the remainder. It was a long pull; but had the steps been four times as many, the sight from the top would have been worth the climb. The chambers in the pylons are on a grand scale, with wide beveled windows like the mouths of monster letter boxes, placed at regular intervals all the way up. Through these windows the great flagstaffs and pennons were regulated from within. The two pylons communicate by a terrace over the central doorway. The parapet of this terrace and the parapets of the pylons above are plentifully scrawled with names, many of which were left there by the French soldiers of 1799.

The cornices of these two magnificent towers are unfortunately gone; but the total height without them is one hundred and twenty-five feet. From the top, as from the minaret of the great mosque at Damascus, one looks down into the heart of the town. Hundreds of mud huts thatched with palm-leaves, hundreds of little court-yards, lie mapped out beneath one’s feet; and as the fellah lives in his yard by day, using his hut merely as a sleeping-place at night, one looks down, like the Diable Boiteux, upon the domestic doings of a roofless world. We see people moving to and fro, unconscious of strange eyes watching them from above—men lounging, smoking, sleeping in shady corners—children playing—infants crawling on all fours—women cooking at clay ovens in the open air—cows and sheep feeding—poultry scratching and pecking—dogs basking in the sun. The huts look more like the lairs of prairie-dogs than the dwellings of human beings. The little mosque with its one dome and stunted minaret, so small, so far below, looks like a clay toy. Beyond the village, which reaches far and wide, lie barley fields, and cotton patches, and palm-groves, bounded on one side by the river, and on the other by the desert. A broad road, dotted over with moving specks of men and cattle, cleaves its way straight through the cultivated land and out across the sandy plain beyond. We can trace its course for miles where it is only a trodden track in the desert. It goes, they tell us, direct to Cairo. On the opposite bank glares a hideous white sugar factory, and, bowered in greenery, a country villa of the khedive. The broad Nile flows between. The sweet Theban hills gleam through a pearly haze on the horizon.

All at once a fitful breeze springs up, blowing in little gusts and swirling the dust in circles round our feet. At the same moment, like a beautiful specter, there rises from the desert close by an undulating semi-transparent stalk of yellow sand, which grows higher every moment, and begins moving northward across the plain. Almost at the same instant, another appears a long way off toward the south, and a third comes gliding mysteriously along the opposite bank. While we are watching the third, the first begins throwing off a wonderful kind of plume, which follows it, waving and melting in the air. And now the stranger from the south comes up at a smooth, tremendous pace, towering at least five hundred feet above the desert, till, meeting some cross-current, it is snapped suddenly in twain. The lower half instantly collapses; the upper, after hanging suspended for a moment, spreads and floats slowly, like a cloud. In the meanwhile, other and smaller columns form here and there—stalk a little way—waver—disperse—form again—and again drop away in dust. Then the breeze falls, and puts an abrupt end to this extraordinary spectacle. In less than two minutes there is not a sand-column left. As they came, they vanish—suddenly.

Such is the landscape that frames the temple; and the temple, after all, is the sight that one comes up here to see. There it lies far below our feet, the court-yard with its almost perfect pavement; the flat roof compact of gigantic monoliths; the wall of circuit with its panoramic sculptures; the portico, with its screen and pillars distinct in brilliant light against inner depths of dark; each pillar a shaft of ivory, each square of dark a block of ebony. So perfect, so solid, so splendid is the whole structure; so simple in unity of plan; so complex in ornament; so majestic in completeness, that one feels as if it solved the whole problem of religious architecture.

Take it for what it is—a Ptolemaic structure preserved in all its integrity of strength and finish—it is certainly the finest temple in Egypt. It brings before us, with even more completeness than Denderah, the purposes of its various parts and the kind of ceremonial for which it was designed. Every corridor and chamber tells its own story. Even the names of the different chambers are graven upon them in such wise that nothing[190] would be easier than to reconstruct the ground-plan of the whole building in hieroglyphic nomenclature. That neither the Ptolemaic building nor the Ptolemaic mythus can be accepted as strictly representative of either pure Egyptian art or pure Egyptian thought, must of course be conceded. Both are modified by Greek influences, and have so far departed from the Pharaonic model. But then we have no equally perfect specimen of the Pharaonic model. The Ramesseum is but a grand fragment. Karnak and Medinet Hadu are aggregates of many temples and many styles. Abydos is still half-buried. Amid so much that is fragmentary, amid so much that is ruined, the one absolutely perfect structure—Ptolemaic though it be—is of incalculable interest, and equally incalculable value.

While we are dreaming over these things, trying to fancy how it all looked when the sacred flotilla came sweeping up the river yonder and the procession of Hor-Hat issued forth to meet the goddess-guest—while we are half-expecting to see the whole brilliant concourse pour out, priests in their robes of panther-skin, priestesses with the tinkling sistrum, singers and harpists, and bearers of gifts and emblems, and high functionaries rearing aloft the sacred boat of the god—in this moment a turbaned Muëddin comes out upon the rickety wooden gallery of the little minaret below, and intones the call to midday prayer. That plaintive cry has hardly died away before we see men here and there among the huts turning toward the east and assuming the first posture of devotion. The women go on cooking and nursing their babies. I have seen Moslem women at prayer in the mosques of Constantinople, but never in Egypt.

Meanwhile, some children catch sight of us, and, notwithstanding that we are one hundred and twenty-five feet above their heads, burst into a frantic chorus of “backshîsh!”

And now, with a last long look at the temple and the wide landscape beyond, we come down, and go to see a dismal little Mammesi three-parts buried among a wilderness of mounds close by. These mounds, which consist almost entirely of crude-brick debris with imbedded fragments of stone and pottery, are built up like coral-reefs, and represent the dwellings of some sixty generations. When they are cut straight through, as here round about the great temple, the substance of them looks like rich plum-cake.

CHAPTER XXI.
THEBES.

We had so long been the sport of destiny that we hardly knew what to make of our good fortune when two days of sweet south wind carried us from Edfu to Luxor. We came back to find the old mooring-place alive with dahabeeyahs and gay with English and American colors. These two flags well-nigh divide the river. In every twenty-five boats one may fairly calculate upon an average of twelve English, nine American, two German, one Belgian and one French. Of all these, our American cousins, ever helpful, ever cordial, are pleasantest to meet. Their flag stands to me for a host of brave and generous and kindly associations. It brings back memories of many lands and many faces. It calls up echoes of friendly voices, some far distant; some, alas! silent. Wherefore—be it on the Nile, or the Thames, or the high seas, or among Syrian camping-grounds, or drooping listlessly from the balconies of gloomy diplomatic haunts in continental cities—my heart warms to the stars and stripes whenever I see them.

Our arrival brought all the dealers in Luxor to the surface. They waylaid and followed us wherever we went; while some of the better sort—grave men in long black robes and ample turbans—installed themselves on our lower deck and lived there for a fortnight. Go up-stairs when one would, whether before breakfast in the morning, or after dinner in the evening, there we always found them, patient, imperturbable, ready to rise up and salaam, and produce from some hidden pocket a purseful of scarabs or a bundle of funerary statuettes. Some of these gentlemen were Arabs, some Copts—all polite, plausible and mendacious.

Where Copt and Arab drive the same doubtful trade it is not easy to define the shades of difference in their dealings. As workmen the Copts are perhaps the most artistic. As salesmen the Arabs are perhaps the less dishonest. Both sell more forgeries than genuine antiquities. Be the demand what it may, they are prepared to meet it. Thothmes is not too heavy, nor Cleopatra too light, for them. Their carvings in old sycamore wood, their porcelain statuettes, their hieroglyphed limestone tablets, are executed with a skill that almost defies detection. As for genuine scarabs of the highest antiquity, they are turned out by the gross every season. Engraved, glazed and administered to the turkeys in the form of boluses, they acquire, by the simple process of digestion, a degree of venerableness that is really charming.

Side by side with the work of production goes on the work of excavation. The professed diggers colonize the western bank. They live rent free among the tombs; drive donkeys or work shâdûfs by day and spend their nights searching for treasure. Some hundreds of families live in this grim way, spoiling the dead-and-gone Egyptians for a livelihood.

Forgers, diggers and dealers play, meanwhile, into one another’s hands and drive a roaring trade. Your dahabeeyah, as I have just shown, is beset from the moment you moor till the moment you pole off again from shore. The boy who drives your donkey, the guide who pilots you among the tombs, the half-naked fellah who flings down his hoe as you pass and runs beside you for half a mile across the plain, have one and all an “anteekah” to dispose of. The turbaned official who comes, attended by his secretary and pipe-bearer, to pay you a visit of ceremony, warns you against imposition, and hints at genuine treasures to which he alone possesses the key. The gentlemanly native who sits next to you at dinner has a wonderful scarab in his pocket. In short, every man, woman and child about the place is bent on selling a bargain; and the bargain, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, is valuable in so far as it represents the industry of Luxor—but no farther. A good thing, of course, is to be had occasionally; but the good thing never comes to the surface as long as a market can be found for the bad one. It is only when the dealer finds he has to do with an experienced customer that he produces the best he has.

Flourishing as it is, the trade of Luxor labors, however, under some uncomfortable restrictions. Private excavation being prohibited, the digger lives in dread of being found out by the governor. The forger, who has nothing to fear from the governor, lives in dread of being found out by the tourist. As for the dealer, whether he sells an antique or an imitation, he is equally liable to punishment. In the one case he commits an offense against the state; and in the other, he obtains money under false pretenses. Meanwhile, the governor deals out such even-handed justice as he can, and does his best to enforce the law on both sides of the river.

By a curious accident, L—— and the writer once actually penetrated into a forger’s workshop. Not knowing that it had been abolished, we went to a certain house in which a certain consulate had once upon a time been located and there knocked for admission. An old deaf fellâha opened the door and after some hesitation showed us into a large unfurnished room with three windows. In each window there stood a workman’s bench strewn with scarabs, amulets and funerary statuettes in every stage of progress. We examined these specimens with no little curiosity. Some were of wood; some were of limestone; some were partly colored. The colors and brushes were there; to say nothing of files, gravers and little pointed tools like gimlets. A magnifying glass of the kind used by engravers lay in one of the window recesses. We also observed a small grindstone screwed to one of the benches and worked by a treadle; while a massive fragment of mummy-case in a corner behind the door showed whence came the old sycamore wood for the wooden specimens. That three skilled workmen furnished with European tools had been busy in this room shortly before we were shown into it was perfectly clear. We concluded that they had just gone away to breakfast.

Meanwhile we waited, expecting to be ushered into the presence of the consul. In about ten minutes, however, breathless with hurrying, arrived a well-dressed Arab whom we had never seen before. Distracted between his oriental politeness and his desire to get rid of us, he bowed us out precipitately, explaining that the house had changed owners and that the power in question had ceased to be represented at Luxor. We heard him rating the old woman savagely, as soon as the door had closed behind us. I met that well-dressed Arab a day or two after, near the governor’s house, and he immediately vanished round the nearest corner.

The Boulak authorities keep a small gang of trained excavators always at work in the Necropolis of Thebes. These men are superintended by the governor and every mummy-case discovered is forwarded to Boulak unopened. Thanks to the courtesy of the governor, we had the good fortune to be present one morning at the opening of a tomb. He sent to summon us, just as we were going to breakfast. With what alacrity we manned the felucca and how we ate our bread and butter half in the boat and half on donkey-back, may easily be imagined. How well I remember that early-morning ride across the western plain of Thebes—the young barley rippling for miles in the sun; the little water-channel running beside the path; the white butterflies circling in couples; the wayside grave with its tiny dome and prayer-mat, its well and broken kulleh, inviting the passer-by to drink and pray; the wild vine that trailed along the wall; the vivid violet of the vetches that blossomed unbidden in the barley. We had the mounds and pylons of Medinet Habu to the left—the ruins of the Ramesseum to the right—the colossi of the plain and the rosy western mountains before us all the way. How the great statues glistened in the morning light! How they towered up against the soft blue sky! Battered and featureless, they sat in the old patient attitude, looking as if they mourned the vanished springs.

We found the new tomb a few hundred yards in the rear of the Ramesseum. The diggers were in the pit; the governor and a few Arabs were looking on. The vault was lined with brick-work above and cut square in the living rock below. We were just in time; for already, through the sand and rubble with which the grave had been filled in, there appeared an outline of something buried. The men, throwing spades and picks aside, now began scraping up the dust with their hands, and a mummy-case came gradually to light. It was shaped to represent a body lying at length with the hands crossed upon the breast. Both hands and face were carved in high relief. The ground-color of the sarcophagus was white;[191] the surface covered with hieroglyphed legends and somewhat coarsely painted figures of four lesser gods of the dead. The face, like the hands, was colored a brownish-yellow and highly varnished. But for a little dimness of the gaudy hues, and a little flaking off of the surface here and there, the thing was as perfect as when it was placed in the ground. A small wooden box roughly put together lay at the feet of the mummy. This was taken out first, and handed to the governor, who put it aside without opening it. The mummy-case was then raised upright, hoisted to the brink of the pit, and laid upon the ground.

It gave one a kind of shock to see it first of all lying just as it had been left by the mourners; then hauled out by rude hands, to be searched, unrolled, perhaps broken up as unworthy to occupy a corner of the Boulak collection. Once they are lodged and catalogued in a museum, one comes to look upon these things as “specimens,” and forgets that they once were living beings like ourselves. But this poor mummy looked startlingly human and pathetic lying at the bottom of its grave in the morning sunlight.

After the sarcophagus had been lifted out, a small blue porcelain cup, a ball of the same material, and another little object shaped like a cherry, were found in the débris. The last was hollow, and contained something that rattled when shaken. The mummy, the wooden box, and these porcelain toys, were then removed to a stable close by; and the excavators, having laid bare what looked like the mouth of a bricked-up tunnel in the side of the tomb, fell to work again immediately. A second vault—perhaps a chain of vaults—it was thought would now be discovered.

We went away, meanwhile, for a few hours, and saw some of the famous painted tombs in that part of the mountain side just above, which goes by the name of Sheik Abd-el-Koorneh.

It was a hot climb; the sun blazing overhead; the cliffs reflecting light and heat; the white débris glaring under foot. Some of the tombs up here are excavated in terraces, and look from a distance like rows of pigeon-holes; others are pierced in solitary ledges of rock; many are difficult of access; all are intolerably hot and oppressive. They were numbered half a century ago by the late Sir Gardner Wilkinson, and the numbers are there still. We went that morning into fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, and thirty-five.

As a child “The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians” had shared my affections with “The Arabian Nights.” I had read every line of the old six-volume edition over and over again. I knew every one of the six hundred illustrations by heart. Now I suddenly found myself in the midst of old and half-forgotten friends. Every subject on these wonderful walls was already familiar to me. Only the framework, only the coloring, only the sand under foot, only the mountain slope outside, were new and strange. It seemed to me that I had met all these kindly brown people years and years ago—perhaps in some previous stage of existence; that I had walked with them in their gardens; listened to the music of their lutes and tambourines; pledged them at their feasts. Here is the funeral procession that I know so well; and the trial scene after death, where the mummy stands upright in the presence of Osiris, and sees his heart weighed in the balance. Here is that well-remembered old fowler crouching in the rushes with his basket of decoys. One withered hand is lifted to his mouth; his lips frame the call; his thin hair blows in the breeze. I see now that he has placed himself to the leeward of the game; but that subtlety escaped me in the reading days of my youth. Yonder I recognize a sculptor’s studio into which I frequently peeped at that time. His men are at work as actively as ever; but I marvel that they have not yet finished polishing the surface of that red-granite colossus. This patient angler, still waiting for a bite, is another old acquaintance; and yonder, I declare, is that evening party at which I was so often an imaginary guest! Is the feast not yet over? Has that late-comer whom we saw hurrying along just now in a neighboring corridor not yet arrived? Will the musicians never play to the end of their concerto? Are those ladies still so deeply interested in the patterns of one another’s ear-rings? It seems to me that the world has been standing still in here for these last five-and-thirty years.

Did I say five-and-thirty? Ah, me! I think we must multiply it by ten, and then by ten again, ere we come to the right figure. These people lived in the time of the Thothmes and the Amenhoteps—a time upon which Rameses the Great looked back as we look back to the days of the Tudors and the Stuarts.

From the tombs above we went back to the excavations below. The bricked-up opening had led, as the diggers expected, into a second vault; and another mummy-case, half-crushed by a fall of débris, had just been taken out. A third was found later in the afternoon. Curiously enough, they were all three mummies of women.

The governor was taking his luncheon with the first mummy in the recesses of the stable, which had been a fine tomb once, but reeked now with manure. He sat on a rug, cross-legged, with a bowl of sour milk before him and a tray of most uninviting little cakes. He invited me to a seat on his rug, handed me his own spoon, and did the honors of the stable as pleasantly as if it had been a palace.

I asked him why the excavators, instead of working among these second-class graves, were not set to search for the tombs of the kings of the eighteenth dynasty, supposed to be waiting discovery in a certain valley called the Valley of the West. He shook his head. The way to the Valley of the West, he said, was long and difficult. Men working there must encamp upon the spot; and merely to supply them with water would be no easy matter. He was allowed, in fact, only a sum sufficient for the wages of fifty excavators; and to attack the Valley of the West with less than two hundred would be useless.

We had luncheon that morning, I remember, with the M. B.’s in the second hall of the Ramesseum. It was but one occasion among many; for the writer was constantly at work on that side of the river, and we had luncheon in one or other of the western temples every day. Yet that particular meeting stands out in my memory apart from the rest. I see the joyous party gathered together in the shade of the great columns—the Persian rugs spread on the uneven ground—the dragoman in his picturesque dress going to and fro—the brown and tattered Arabs, squatting a little way off, silent and hungry-eyed, each with his string of forged scarabs, his imitation gods, or his bits of mummy-case and painted cartonnage for sale—the glowing peeps of landscape framed in here and there through vistas of columns—the emblazoned architraves laid along from capital to capital overhead, each block sculptured with enormous cartouches yet brilliant with vermilion and ultramarine—the patient donkeys munching all together at a little heap of vetches in one corner—the intense depths of cloudless blue above. Of all Theban ruins, the Ramesseum is the most cheerful. Drenched in sunshine, the warm limestone of which it is built seems to have mellowed and turned golden with time. No walls inclose it. No towering pylons overshadow it. It stands high, and the air circulates freely among those simple and beautiful columns. There are not many Egyptian ruins in which one can talk and be merry; but in the Ramesseum one may thoroughly enjoy the passing hour.

Whether Rameses the Great was ever actually buried in this place is a problem which future discoveries may possibly solve; but that the Ramesseum and the tomb of Osymandias were one and the same building is a point upon which I never entertained a moment’s doubt. Spending day after day among these ruins; sketching now here, now there; going over the ground bit by bit, and comparing every detail, I came at last to wonder how an identity so obvious could ever have been doubted. Diodorus was of course inaccurate; but then one as little looks for accuracy in Diodorus as in Homer. Compared with some of his topographical descriptions, the account he gives of the Ramesseum is a marvel of exactness. He describes[192] a building approached by two vast court-yards; a hall of pillars opening by way of three entrances from the second court-yard; a succession of chambers, including a sacred library; ceilings of azure “bespangled with stars;” walls covered with sculptures representing the deeds and triumphs of the king whom he calls Osymandias,[193] among which are particularly noticed the assault of a fortress “environed by a river,” a procession of captives without hands, and a series of all the gods of Egypt, to whom the king was represented in the act of making offerings; finally, against the entrance to the second court-yard, three statues of the king, one of which, being of Syenite granite and made “in a sitting posture,” is stated to be not only “the greatest in all Egypt,” but admirable above all others “for its workmanship and the excellence of the stone.”

Bearing in mind that what is left of the Ramesseum is, as it were, only the backbone of the entire structure, one can still walk from end to end of the building, and still recognize every feature of this description. We turn our backs on the wrecked towers of the first propylon; crossing what was once the first court-yard, we leave to the left the fallen colossus; we enter the second court-yard, and see before us the three entrances to the hall of pillars and the remains of two other statues; we walk up the central avenue of the great hall, and see above our heads architraves studded with yellow stars upon a ground color so luminously blue that it almost matches the sky; thence, passing through a chamber lined with sculptures, we come to the library, upon the door-jambs of which Champollion found the figures of Thoth and Saf, the lord of letters and the lady of the sacred books;[194] finally, among such fragments of sculptured decoration as yet remain, we find the king making offerings to a hieroglyphed list of gods as well as to his deified ancestors; we see the train of captives, and the piles of severed hands;[195] and we discover an immense battle-piece, which is in fact a replica of the famous battle-piece at Abou Simbel. This subject, like its Nubian prototype, yet preserves some of its color. The enemy are shown to be fair-skinned and light-haired, and wear the same Syrian robes; and the river, more green than that at Abou Simbel, is painted in zigzags in the same manner. The king, alone in his chariot, sends arrow after arrow against the flying foe. They leap into the river and swim for their lives. Some are drowned; some cross in safety, and are helped out by their friends on the opposite bank. A red-haired chief, thus rescued, is suspended head downward by his soldiers, in order to let the water that he has swallowed run out of his mouth. The river is once more the Orontes; the city is once more Kadesh; the king is once more Rameses II; and the incidents are again the incidents of the poem of Pentaur.

The one wholly unmistakable point in the narrative is, however, the colossal statue of Syenite, the largest in Egypt.”[196] The siege and the river, the troops of captives are to be found elsewhere; but nowhere, save here, a colossus which answers to that description. This statue was larger than even the twin colossi of the plain. They measure eighteen feet three inches across the shoulders; this measures twenty-two feet four inches. They sit about fifty feet high, without their pedestals; this one must have lifted his head some ten feet higher still. “The measure of his foot,” says Diodorus, “exceeded seven cubits;” the Greek cubit being a little over eighteen inches in length. The foot of the fallen Rameses measures nearly eleven feet in length by four feet ten inches in breadth. This, also, is the only very large Theban colossus sculptured in the red syenite of Assûan.[197]

Ruined almost beyond recognition as it is, one never doubts for a moment that this statue was one of the wonders of Egyptian workmanship. It most probably repeated in every detail the colossi of Abou Simbel; but it surpassed them as much in finish of carving as in perfection of material. The stone is even more beautiful in color than that of the famous obelisks of Karnak; and is so close and hard in grain that the scarab-cutters of Luxor are said to use splinters of it, as our engravers use diamonds, for the points of their graving, tools. The solid contents of the whole, when entire, are calculated at eight hundred and eighty-seven tons. How this astounding mass was transported from Assûan, how it was raised, how it was overthrown, are problems upon which a great deal of ingenious conjecture has been wasted. One traveler affirms that the wedge-marks of the destroyer are distinctly visible. Another, having carefully examined the fractured edges, declares that the keenest eye can detect neither wedge-marks nor any other evidences of violence. We looked for none of these signs and tokens. We never asked ourselves how or when the ruin had been done. It was enough that the mighty had fallen.

Inasmuch as one can clamber upon and measure these stupendous fragments, the fallen colossus is more astonishing, perhaps, as a wreck than it would have been as a whole. Here, snapped across at the waist and flung helplessly back, lie a huge head and shoulders, to climb which is like climbing a rock. Yonder, amid piles of unintelligible débris, we see a great foot, and, nearer the head, part of an enormous trunk, together with the upper halves of two huge thighs clothed in the usual shenti or striped tunic. The klaft or head-dress is also striped, and these stripes, in both instances, retain the delicate yellow color with which they were originally filled in. To judge from the way in which this color was applied, one would say that the statue was tinted rather than painted. The surface-work, wherever it remains, is as smooth and highly finished as the cutting of the finest gem. Even the ground of the superb cartouche, on the upper half of the arm, is elaborately polished. Finally, in the pit which it plowed out in falling, lies the great pedestal, hieroglyphed with the usual pompous titles of Rameses Mer-Amen. Diodorus, knowing nothing of Rameses or his style, interprets the inscription after his own fanciful fashion: “I am Osymandias, king of kings. If any would know how great I am and where I lie let him excel me in any of my works.”

The fragments of wall and shattered pylon that yet remain standing at the Ramesseum face northwest and southwest. Hence, it follows that some of the most interesting of the surface sculpture (being cut in very low relief) is so placed with regard to the light as to be actually invisible after midday. It was not till the occasion of my last visit, when I came early in the morning to make a certain sketch by a certain light, that I succeeded in distinguishing a single figure of that celebrated tableau,[198] on the south wall of the great hall, in which the Egyptians are seen to be making use of the testudo and scaling-ladder to assault a Syrian fortress. The wall sculptures of the second hall are on a bolder scale and can be seen at any hour. Here Thoth writes the name of Rameses on the egg-shaped fruit of the persea tree and processions of shaven priests carry on their shoulders the sacred boats of various gods. In the center of each boat is a shrine supported by winged genii, or cherubim. The veils over these shrines, the rings through which the bearing-poles were passed and all the appointments and ornaments of the bari are distinctly shown. One seems here, indeed, to be admitted to a glimpse of those original shrines upon which Moses—learned in the sacred lore of the Egyptians—modeled, with but little alteration, his ark of the covenant.

Next in importance to Karnak, and second in interest to none of the Theban ruins, is the vast group of buildings known by the collective name of Medinet Habu. To attempt to describe these would be to undertake a task as hopeless as the description of Karnak. Such an attempt lies, at all events, beyond the compass of these pages, so many of which have already been given to similar subjects. For it is of the temples as of the mountains—no two are alike, yet all sound so much alike when described that it is scarcely possible to write about them without becoming monotonous. In the present instance, therefore, I will note only a few points of special interest, referring those who wish for fuller particulars to the elaborate account of Medinet Habu in Murray’s “Hand-book of Egypt.”

In the second name of Medinet Habu—Medinet being the common Arabic for city, and Habu, Aboo, or Taboo being variously spelled—there survives almost beyond doubt the ancient name of that famous city which the Greeks called Thebes. It is the name for which many derivations[199] have been suggested, but upon which the learned are not yet agreed.

The ruins of Medinet Habu consist of a smaller temple founded by Queen Hatohepsu of the eighteenth dynasty, a large and magnificent temple entirely built by Rameses III of the twentieth dynasty, and an extremely curious and interesting building, part palace, part fortress, which is popularly known as the pavilion.

The walls of this pavilion, the walls of the great forecourt leading to the smaller temple, and a corner of the original wall of circuit, are crowned in the Egyptian style with shield-shaped battlements, precisely as the Khetan and Amorite fortresses are battlemented in the sculptured tableaux at Abou Simbel and elsewhere. From whichever side one approaches Medinet Habu these stone shields strike the eye as a new and interesting feature. They are, moreover, so far as I know, the only specimens of Egyptian battlementing which have survived destruction. Those of the wall of circuit are of the time of Rameses V; those of the pavilion, of the time of Rameses III; and the latest, which are those of the forecourt, are of the period of Roman occupation.

As biographical material, the temple and pavilion at Medinet Habu and the great Harris papyrus,[200] are to the life of Rameses III precisely what Abou Simbel, the Ramesseum, and the poem of Pentaur are to the life of Rameses II. Great wars, great victories, magnificent praises of the prowess of the king, pompous lists of enemies slain and captured, inventories of booty and of precious gifts offered by the victor to the gods of Egypt, in both instances cover the sculptured walls and fill the written pages. A comparison of the two masses of evidence—due allowance being made both ways for oriental fervor of diction—shows that in Rameses III we have to do with a king as brilliant, as valorous, and as successful as Rameses II.[201]

It may be that before the time of this Pharaoh certain temples were used also as royal residences. It is possible to believe this of temples such as Gournah and Abydus, the plan of which includes, besides the usual halls, side-chambers and sanctuary, a number of other apartments, the uses of which are unknown. It may also be that former kings dwelt in houses of brick and carved woodwork, such as we see represented in the wall-paintings of various tombs.

It is, at all events, a fact that the only building which we can assume to have been a royal palace and of which any vestiges have come down to the present day, was erected by Rameses III, namely, this little pavilion at Medinet Habu.

It may not have been a palace. It may have been only a fortified gate; but, though the chambers are small, they are well lighted and the plan of the whole is certainly domestic in character. It consists, as we now see it, of two lodges connected by zigzag wings with a central tower. The lodges and tower stand to each other as the three points of an acute angle. These structures inclose an oblong court-yard leading by a passage under the central tower to the inclosure beyond. So far as its present condition enables us to judge, this building contained only eight rooms; namely, three—one above the other in each of the lodges and two above the gateway.[202] These three towers communicate by means of devious passages in the connecting wings. Two of the windows in the wings are adorned with balconies supported on brackets; each bracket representing the head and shoulders of a crouching captive in the attitude of a gargoyle. The heads and dresses of these captives—conceived as they are in a vein of gothic barbarism—are still bright with color.

The central or gateway tower is substantially perfect. The writer, with help, got as high as the first chamber; the ceiling of which is painted in a rich and intricate pattern, as in imitation of mosaic. The top room is difficult of access, but can be reached by a good climber. Our friend F. W. S., who made his way up there a year or two before, found upon the walls some interesting sculptures of cups and vases, apparently part of an illustrated inventory of domestic utensils. Three of these (unlike any engraved in the works of Wilkinson or Rosellini) are here reproduced from his sketch made upon the spot. The lid of the smaller vase, it will be observed, opens by means of a lever spooned out for the thumb to rest in, just like the lid of a German beer-mug of the present day.

The external decorations of the two lodges are of especial interest. The lower subjects are historical. Those upon the upper stories are domestic or symbolical, and are among the most celebrated of Egyptian bas-reliefs. They have long been supposed to represent Rameses III in his hareem, entertained and waited upon by female slaves. In one group the king, distinguished always by his cartouches, sits at ease in a kind of folding-chair, his helmet on his head, his sandaled feet upon a footstool, as one returned and resting after battle. In his left hand he holds a round object like a fruit. With the right he chucks under the chin an ear-ringed and necklaced damsel, who presents a lotus-blossom at his nose. In another much mutilated subject they are represented playing a game at draughts. This famous subject—which can only be seen when the light strikes sidewise—would scarcely be intelligible save for the help one derives from the cuts in Wilkinson and the plates in Rosellini. It is not that the sculptures are effaced, but that the great blocks which bore them are gone from their places, having probably been hurled down bodily upon the heads of the enemy during a certain siege of which the ruins bear evident traces.[203] Of the lady there remains little besides the arm and the hand that holds the pawn. The table has disappeared. The king has lost his legs. It happens, however, though the table is missing, that the block next above it contained the pawns, which can still be discerned from below by the help of a glass. Rosellini mentions three or four more subjects of a similar character, including a second group of draught-players, all visible in his time. The writer, however, looked for them in vain.

These tableaux are supposed to illustrate the home-life of Rameses III, and to confirm the domestic character of the pavilion. Even the scarab-selling Arabs that haunt the ruins, even the donkey boys of Luxor, call it the hareem of the sultan. Modern science, however, threatens to dispel one at least of these pleasant fancies.

The king, it seems, under the name of Rhampsinitus, is the hero of a very ancient legend related by Herodotus. While he yet lived, runs the story, he descended into hades, and there played a game at draughts with the Goddess Demeter, from whom he won a golden napkin; in memory of which adventure, and of his return to earth, “the Egyptians,” says Herodotus, “instituted a festival which they certainly celebrated in my day.”[204] In another version as told by Plutarch, Isis is substituted for Demeter. Viewing these tales by the light of a certain passage of the ritual, in which the happy dead is promised “power to transform himself at will, to play at draughts, to repose in a pavilion,” Dr. Birch has suggested that the whole of this scene may be of a memorial character, and represent an incident in the land of shades.[205]

Below these “hareem” groups come colossal bas-reliefs of a religious and military character. The king, as usual, smites his prisoners in presence of the gods. A slender and spirited figure in act to slay, the fiery hero strides across the wall “like Baal[206] descended from the heights of heaven. His limbs are indued with the force of victory. With his right hand he seizes the multitudes; his left reaches like an arrow after those who fly before him. His sword is sharp as that of his father Mentu.”[207]

Below these great groups run friezes sculptured with kneeling figures of vanquished chiefs, among whom are Libyan, Sicilian, Sardinian, and Etruscan leaders. Every head in these friezes is a portrait. The Libyan is beardless; his lips are thin; his nose is hooked; his forehead retreats; he wears a close-fitting cap with a pendant hanging in front of the ear. The features of the Sardinian chief[208] are no less Asiatic. He wears the usual Sardinian helmet surmounted by a ball and two spikes. The profile of the Sicilian closely resembles that of the Sardinian. He wears a head-dress like the modern Persian cap. As ethnological types, these heads are extremely valuable. Colonists not long since departed from the western coasts of Asia Minor, these early European settlers are seen with the Asiatic stamp of features; a stamp which has now entirely disappeared.

Other European nations are depicted elsewhere in these Medinet Habu sculptures. Pelasgians from the Greek isles; Oscans perhaps from Pompeii; Daunians from the districts between Tarentum and Brundusium, figure here, each in their national costume. Of these, the Pelasgian alone resembles the modern European. On the left wall of the pavilion gateway, going up toward the temple, there is a large bas-relief of Rameses III leading a string of captives into the presence of Amen-Ra. Among these, the sculptures being in a high state of preservation, there are a number of Pelasgians, some of whom have features of the classical Greek type, and are strikingly handsome. The Pelasgic head-dress resembles our old infantry shako; and some of the men wear disk-shaped amulets pierced with a hole in the center through which is passed the chain that suspends it round the neck.

Leaving to the left a fine sitting statue of Khons in green basalt and to the right his prostrate fellow, we pass under the gateway, cross a space of desolate crude-brick mounds, and see before us the ruins of the first pylon of the great Temple of Khem. Once past the threshold of this pylon we enter upon a succession of magnificent court-yards. The hieroglyphs here are on a colossal scale, and are cut deeper than any others in Egypt. They are also colored with a more subtle eye to effect. Struck by the unusual splendor of some of the blues and by a peculiar look of scintillation which they assumed in certain lights, I examined them particularly and found that the effect had been produced by very subtle shades of gradation in what appeared at first sight to be simple flat tints. In some of the reeds, for instance, the ground-color begins at the top of the leaf in pure cobalt, and passes imperceptibly down to a tint that is almost emerald green at the bottom.[209]

The inner walls of this great court-yard and the outer face of the northeast wall, are covered with sculptures outlined, so to say, in intaglio, and relieved in the hollow, so that the forms, though rounded, remain level with the general surface. In these tableaux the old world lives again. Rameses III, his sons and nobles, his armies, his foes, play once more the brief drama of life and death. Great battles are fought; great victories are won; the slain are counted; the captured drag their chains behind the victor’s chariot; the king triumphs, is crowned and sacrifices to the gods. Elsewhere more wars, more slaughter. There is revolt in Libya; there are raids on the Asiatic border; there are invaders coming in ships from the islands of the Great Sea. The royal standard is raised; troops assemble; arms are distributed. Again the king goes forth in his might, followed by the flower of Egyptian chivalry. “His horsemen are heroes; his foot-soldiers are as lions that roar in the mountains.” The king himself flames “like Mentu in his hour of wrath.” He falls upon the foe “with the swiftness of a meteor.” Here, crowded in rude bullock-trucks, they seek safety in flight. Yonder, their galleys are sunk; their warriors are slain, drowned, captured, scathed, as it were, in a devouring fire. “Never again will they sow seed or reap harvest on the fair face of the earth.”

“Behold!” says the Pharaoh, “Behold! I have taken their frontiers for my frontiers! I have devastated their towns, burned their crops, trampled their people under foot. Rejoice, O Egypt! Exalt thy voice to the heavens; for behold! I reign over all the lands of the barbarians! I, king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Rameses III!”[210]

Such, linked each to each, by a running commentary of text, are the illustrations. The story is written elsewhere. Elaborately hieroglyphed in upward of seventy closely packed columns, it covers the whole eastern face of the great north tower of the second propylon. This propylon divides the Osiride and Hypæthral courts, so that the inscription faces those entering the temple and precedes the tableaux. Not even the poem of Pentaur is more picturesque, not even the psalms of David are more fervid, than the style of this great chronicle.[211]

The writer pitched her tent in the doorway of the first propylon, and thence sketched the northwest corner of the court-yard, including the tower with the inscription and the Osiride colossi. The roof of the colonnade to the right is cumbered with crude-brick ruins of mediæval date. The hieroglyphs, sculptured along the architrave and down the sides of the pillars, are still bright with color. The colossi are all the worse for three thousand years of ill-usage. Through the sculptured doorway opposite, one looks across the hypæthral court, and catches a glimpse of the ruined hall of pillars beyond.

While the writer was at work in the shade of the first pylon, an Arab story-teller took possession of the opposite doorway, and entertained the donkey boys and sailors. Well paid with a little tobacco and a few copper piasters, he went on for hours, his shrill chant rising every now and then to a quavering scream. He was a wizened, grizzled old fellow, miserably poor and tattered; but he had the “Arabian Nights” and hundreds of other tales by heart.

Mariette was of opinion that the temple of Medinet Habu, erected as it is on the side of the great Theban necropolis, is like the Ramesseum, a funerary monument erected by Rameses III in his own lifetime to his own memory. These battered colossi represent the king in the character of Osiris, and are in fact on a huge scale precisely what the ordinary funerary statuettes are upon a small scale. They would be out of place in any but a monumental edifice; and they alone suffice to determine the character of the building.

And such, no doubt, was the character of the Amenophium; of the little temple called Dayr el Medinet; of the temple of Queen Hatshepsu, known as Dayr el Bahari; of the temple of Gournah; of almost every important structure erected upon this side of the river. Of the Amenophium there remain only a few sculptured blocks, a few confused foundations, and—last representatives of an avenue of statues of various sizes—the famous colossi of the plain.[212] The temple of Dayr el Bahari—built in terraces up the mountain side, and approached once upon a time by a magnificent avenue of sphinxes, the course of which is yet visible—would probably be, if less ruined, the most interesting temple on the western side of the river. The monumental intention of this building is shown by its dedication to Hathor, the Lady of Amenti; and by the fact that the tomb of Queen Hatshepsu was identified by Rhind some twenty-five years ago as one of the excavated sepulchers in the cliff-side, close to where the temple ends by abutting against the rock.

As for the Temple of Gournah, it is, at least in part, as distinctly a memorial edifice as the Medici Chapel at Florence or the Superga at Turin. It was begun by Seti I in memory of his father Rameses I, the founder of the nineteenth dynasty. Seti, however, died before the work was completed. Hereupon Rameses II, his son and successor, extended the general plan, finished the part dedicated to his grandfather, and added sculptures to the memory of Seti I. Later still, Menepthah, the son and successor of Rameses II, left his cartouches upon one of the doorways. The whole building, in short, is a family monument, and contains a family portrait gallery. Here all the personages whose names figure in the shrines of the Ramessides at Silsilis are depicted in their proper persons. In one tableau, Rameses I, defunct, deified,[213] swathed, enshrined, and crowned like Osiris, is worshiped by Seti I. Behind Seti stands his Queen Tuaa, the mother of Rameses II. Elsewhere Seti I, being now dead, is deified and worshiped by Rameses II, who pours a libation to his father’s statue. Through all these handsome heads there runs a striking family likeness. All more or less partake of that Dantesque type which characterizes the portraits of Rameses II in his youth. The features of Rameses I and Seti I are somewhat pinched and stern, like the Dante of elder days. The delicate profile of Queen Tuaa, which is curiously like some portraits of Queen Elizabeth, is perhaps too angular to be altogether pleasing. But in the well-known face of Rameses II these harsher details vanish, and the beauty of the race culminates. The artists of Egyptian renaissance, always great in profile-portraiture, are nowhere seen to better advantage than in this interesting series.

Adjoining what may be called the monumental part of the building, we find a number of halls and chambers, the uses of which are unknown. Most writers assume that they were the private apartments of the king. Some go so far as to give the name of temple-palaces to all these great funerary structures. It is, however, far more probable that these western temples were erected in connection, though not in direct communication, with the royal tombs in the adjacent valley of Bab-el-Molûk.

Now every Egyptian tomb of importance has its outer chamber or votive oratory, the walls of which are covered with paintings descriptive, in some instances, of the occupations of the deceased upon earth, and in others of the adventures of his soul after death. Here at stated seasons the survivors repaired with offerings. No priest, it would seem, of necessity officiated at these little services. A whole family would come, bringing the first fruits of their garden, the best of their poultry, cakes of home-made bread, bouquets of lotus blossoms. With their own hands they piled the altar; and the eldest son, as representative of the rest, burned the incense and poured the libations. It is a scene constantly reproduced upon monuments[214] of every epoch. These votive oratories, however, are wholly absent in the valley of Bab-el-Molûk. The royal tombs consist of only tunneled passages and sepulchral vaults, the entrances to which were closed forever as soon as the sarcophagus was occupied; hence, it may be concluded that each memorial temple played to the tomb of its tutelary saint and sovereign that part which is played by the external oratory attached to the tomb of a private individual. Nor must it be forgotten that as early as the time of the pyramid kings, there was a votive chapel attached to every pyramid, the remains of which are traceable in almost every instance, on the east side. There were also priests of the pyramids, as we learn from innumerable funerary inscriptions.

An oratory on so grand a scale would imply an elaborate ceremonial. A dead and deified king would doubtless have his train of priests, his daily liturgies, processions, and sacrifices. All this again implies additional accommodation, and accounts, I venture to think, for any number of extra halls and chambers. Such sculptures as yet remain on the walls of these ruined apartments are, in fact, wholly funereal and sacrificial in character. It is also to be remembered that we have here a temple dedicated to two kings, and served most likely by a twofold college of priests.[215]

The wall-sculptures at Gournah are extremely beautiful, especially those erected by Seti I. Where it has been accidentally preserved, the surface is as smooth, the execution as brilliant, as the finest mediæval ivory carving. Behind a broken column, for instance, that leans against the southwest wall of the sanctuary,[216] one may see, by peeping this way and that, the ram’s-head prow of a sacred boat, quite unharmed, and of surpassing delicacy. The modeling of the ram’s head is simply faultless. It would indeed be scarcely too much to say that this one fragment, if all the rest had perished, would alone place the decorative sculpture of ancient Egypt in a rank second only to that of Greece.

The Temple of Gournah—northernmost of the Theban group—stands at the mouth of that famous valley called by the Arabs Bab-el-Molûk,[217] and by travelers, the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. This valley may be described as a bifurcated ravine, ending in two culs de sac, and hemmed in on all sides by limestone precipices. It winds round behind the cliffs which face Luxor and Karnak, and runs almost parallel with the Nile. This range of cliffs is perforated on both sides with tombs. The priests and nobles of many dynasties were buried terrace above terrace on the side next the river. Back to back with them, in the silent and secret valley beyond, slept the kings in their everlasting sepulchers.

Most travelers moor for a day or two at Karnak, and thence make their excursion to Bab-el-Molûk. By so doing they lose one of the most interesting rides in the neighborhood of Thebes. L—— and the writer started from Luxor one morning about an hour after daybreak, crossing the river at the usual point and thence riding northward along the bank, with the Nile on the one hand, and the corn-lands on the other. In the course of such rides one discovers the almost incredible fertility of the Thebaid. Every inch of arable ground is turned to account. All that grows, grows lustily. The barley ripples in one uninterrupted sweep from Medinet Habu to a point half-way between the Ramesseum and Gournah. Next come plantations of tobacco, cotton, hemp, linseed, maize and lentils, so closely set, so rich in promise, that the country looks as if it were laid out in allotment grounds for miles together. Where the rice crop has been gathered, clusters of temporary huts have sprung up in the clearings; for the fellahîn come out from their crowded villages in “the sweet o’ the year,” and live in the midst of the crops which now they guard, and which presently they will reap. The walls of these summer huts are mere wattled fences of Indian corn straw, with bundles of the same laid lightly across the top by way of roofing. This pastoral world is everywhere up and doing. Here are men plying the shâdûf by the river’s brink; women spinning in the sun; children playing; dogs barking; larks soaring and singing overhead. Against the foot of the cliffs yonder, where the vegetation ends and the tombs begin, there flows a calm river edged with palms. A few months ago, we should have been deceived by that fairy water. We know now that it is the mirage.

Striking off by and by toward the left, we make for a point where the mountains recede and run low, and a wedge-like “spit” of sandy desert encroaches upon the plain. On the verge of this spit stands a clump of sycamores and palms. A row of old yellow columns supporting a sculptured architrave gleams through the boughs; a little village nestles close by; and on the desert slope beyond, in the midst of the desolate Arab burial-ground, we see a tiny mosque with one small cupola, dazzling white in the sunshine. This is Gournah. There is a spring here, and some girls are drawing water from the well near the temple. Our donkeys slake their thirst from the cattle-trough—a broken sarcophagus that may once have held the mummy of a king. A creaking sakkieh is at work yonder, turned by a couple of red cows with mild Hathor-like faces. The old man who drives them sits in the middle of the cog-wheel, and goes slowly round as if he was being roasted.

We now leave behind us the well, and the trees, and the old Greek-looking temple, and turn our faces westward, bound for an opening yonder among cliffs pitted with the mouths of empty tombs. It is plain to see that we are now entering upon what was once a torrent-bed. Rushing down from the hills, the pent-up waters have here spread fan-like over the slope of the desert, strewing the ground with bowlders, and plowing it into hundreds of tortuous channels. Up that torrent-bed lies our road to-day.

The weird rocks stand like sentinels to right and left as one enters the mouth of the valley, and take strange shapes as of obelisks and sphinxes. Some, worn at the base, and towering like ruined pyramids above, remind us of tombs on the Appian Way. As the ravine narrows, the limestone walls rise higher. The chalky track glares under foot. Piles of shivered chips sparkle and scintillate at the foot of the rocks. The cliffs burn at a white heat. The atmosphere palpitates like gaseous vapor. The sun blazes overhead. Not a breath stirs; neither is there a finger’s breadth of shade on either side. It is like riding into the mouth of a furnace. Meanwhile, one looks in vain for any sign of life. No blade of green has grown here since the world began. No breathing creature makes these rocks its home. All is desolation—such desolation as one dreams of in a world scathed by fire from heaven.

When we have gone a long way, always tracking up the bed of the torrent, we come to a place where our donkeys turn off from the main course and make for what is evidently a forced passage cut clean through a wall of solid limestone. The place was once a mere recess in the cliffs; but on the farther side, masked by a natural barrier of rocks, there lay another valley leading to a secluded amphitheater among the mountains. The first Pharaoh who chose his place of burial among those hidden ways, must have been he who cut the pass and leveled the road by which we now travel. This cutting is Bab-el-Molûk—the gate of the king; a name which doubtless perpetuates that by which the place was known to the old Egyptians. Once through the gate, a grand mountain rises into view. Egypt is the land of strange mountains; and here is one which reproduces on a giant scale every feature of the pyramid of Ouenephes at Sakkarah. It is square; it rises stage above stage in ranges of columnar cliffs with slopes of débris between; and it terminates in a blunt four-sided peak nearly eighteen hundred feet above the level of the plain.

Keeping this mountain always before us, we now follow the windings of the second valley, which is even more narrow, parched and glaring than the first. Perhaps the intense heat makes the road appear longer than it really is, but it seems to us like several miles. At length the uniformity of the way is broken. Two small ravines branch off, one to the right, one to the left, and in both, at the foot of the rocks, there are here and there to be seen square openings like cellar-doors, half-sunk below the surface, and seeming to shoot downward into the bowels of the earth. In another moment or so, our road ends suddenly in a wild, tumbled waste like tin exhausted quarry, shut in all round by impending precipices, at the base of which more rock-cut portals peep out at different points.

From the moment when it first came into sight I had made certain that in that pyramidal mountain we should find the tombs of the kings—so certain, that I can scarcely believe our guide when he assures us that these cellars are the places we have come to see, and that the mountain contains not a single tomb. We alight, however, climb a steep slope, and find ourselves on the threshold of number seventeen.

“Belzoni-tomb,” says our guide; and Belzoni’s tomb, as we know, is the tomb of Seti I.

I am almost ashamed to remember now that we took our lunches in the shade of that solemn vestibule, and rested and made merry before going down into the great gloomy sepulcher, whose staircases and corridors plunged away into the darkness below as if they led straight to the land of Amenti.

The tombs in the Valley of Bab-el-Molûk are as unlike tombs in the cliffs opposite Luxor as if the Theban kings and the Theban nobles were of different races and creeds. Those sacred scribes and dignitaries, with their wives and families and their numerous friends and dependents, were a joyous set. They loved the things of this life, and would fain have carried their pursuits and pleasures with them into the land beyond the grave. So they decorated the walls of their tombs with pictures of the way in which their lives were spent, and hoped perhaps that the mummy, dreaming away its long term of solitary waiting, might take comfort in those shadowy reminiscences. The kings, on the contrary, covered every foot of their last palaces with scenes from the life to come. The wanderings of the soul after its separation from the body, the terrors and dangers that beset it during its journey through hades, the demons it must fight, the accusers to whom it must answer, the transformations it must undergo, afforded subjects for endless illustration. Of the fishing and fowling and feasting and junketing that we saw the other day in those terraces behind the Ramesseum, we discover no trace in the tombs of Bab-el-Molûk. In place of singing and lute-playing we find here prayers and invocations; for the pleasant Nile boat and the water parties and the chase of the gazelle and the ibex, we now have the bark of Charon and the basin of purgatorial fire and the strife with the infernal deities. The contrast is sharp and strange. It is as if an epicurean aristocracy had been ruled by a line of Puritan kings. The tombs of the subjects are Anacreontics. The tombs of their sovereigns are penitential psalms.

To go down into one of those great sepulchers is to descend one’s self into the lower world and to tread the path of the shades. Crossing the threshold we look up—half expecting to read those terrible words in which all who enter are warned to leave hope behind them. The passage slopes before our feet; the daylight fades behind us. At the end of the passage comes a flight of steps, and from the bottom of that flight of steps we see another corridor slanting down into depths of utter darkness. The walls on both sides are covered with close-cut columns of hieroglyphic text, interspersed with ominous shapes, half-deity, half-demon. Huge serpents writhe beside us along the walls. Guardian spirits of threatening aspect advance, brandishing swords of flame. A strange heaven opens overhead—a heaven where the stars travel in boats across the seas of space; and the sun, escorted by the hours, the months and the signs of the zodiac, issues from the east, sets in the west and traverses the hemisphere of everlasting night. We go on and the last gleam of daylight vanishes in the distance. Another flight of steps leads now to a succession of passages and halls, some smaller, some larger, some vaulted, some supported on pillars. Here yawns a great pit half-full of débris. Yonder opens a suite of unfinished chambers abandoned by the workmen. The farther we go the more weird become our surroundings. The walls swarm with ugly and evil things. Serpents, bats and crocodiles, some with human heads and legs, some vomiting fire, some armed with spears and darts, pursue and torture the wicked. These unfortunates have their hearts torn out; are boiled in caldrons; are suspended, head downward, over seas of flame; are speared, decapitated and driven in headless gangs to scenes of further torment. Beheld by the dim and shifting light of a few candles, these painted horrors assume an aspect of ghastly reality. They start into life as we pass, then drop behind us into darkness. That darkness alone is awful. The atmosphere is suffocating. The place is ghostly and peopled with nightmares.

Elsewhere we come upon scenes less painful. The sun emerges from the lower hemisphere. The justified dead sow and reap in the Elysian fields, gather celestial fruits, and bathe in the waters of truth. The royal mummy reposes in its shrine. Funerary statues of the king are worshiped with incense and offerings of meat and libations of wine.[218] Finally the king arrives, purified and justified, at the last stage of his spiritual journey. He is welcomed by the gods, ushered into the presence of Osiris, and received into the abode of the blest.[219]

Coming out for a moment into blinding daylight, we drink a long draught of pure air, cross a few yards of uneven ground, arrive at the month of another excavation, and plunge again into underground darkness. A third and a fourth time we repeat this strange experience. It is like a feverish sleep, troubled by gruesome dreams and broken by momentary wakings. These tombs in a general way are very much alike. Some are longer than others;[220] some loftier. In some the descent is gradual; in others it is steep and sudden. Certain leading features are common to all. The great serpent,[221] the scarab,[222] the bat,[223] the crocodile,[224] are always conspicuous on the walls. The judgment-scene, and the well-known typical picture of the four races of mankind, are continually reproduced. Some tombs,[225] however, vary both in plan and decoration. That of Rameses III, though not nearly so beautiful as the tomb of Seti I, is perhaps the most curious of all. The paintings here are for the most part designed on an unsculptured surface coated with white stucco. The drawing is often indifferent, and the coloring is uniformly coarse and gaudy. Yellow abounds; and crude reds and blues remind us of the colored picture-books of our childhood. It is difficult to understand, indeed, how the builder of Medinet Habu, with the best Egyptian art of the day at his command, should have been content with such wall-paintings as these.

Still Rameses III seems to have had a grand idea of going in state to the next world, with his retainers around him. In a series of small ante-chambers opening off from the first corridor we see depicted all the household furniture, all the plate, the weapons, the wealth and treasure of the king. Upon the walls of one the cooks and bakers are seen preparing the royal dinner. In the others are depicted magnificent thrones; gilded galleys with party-colored sails; gold and silver vases; rich stores of arms and armor; piles of precious woods, of panther skins, of fruits and birds and curious baskets, and all such articles of personal luxury as a palace-building Pharaoh might delight in. Here, also, are the two famous harpers; cruelly defaced, but still sweeping the strings with the old powerful touch that erewhile soothed the king in his hours of melancholy. These two spirited figures—which are undoubtedly portraits[226]—almost redeem the poverty of the rest of the paintings.

In many tombs the empty sarcophagus yet occupies its ancient place.[227] We saw one in No. 2 (Rameses IV), and another in No. 9 (Rameses VI); the first, a grand monolith of dark granite, overturned and but little injured; the second, shattered by early treasure-seekers.

Most of the tombs at Bab-el-Molûk were open in Ptolemaic times. Being then, as now, among the stock sights and wonders of Thebes, they were visited by crowds of early travelers, who have, as usual, left their neatly scribbled graffiti on the walls. When and by whom the sepulchers were originally violated is of course unknown. Some, doubtless, were sacked by the Persians; others were plundered by the Egyptians themselves, long enough before Cambyses. Not even in the days of the Ramessides, though a special service of guards was told off for duty in “the great valley,” were the kings safe in their tombs. During the reign of Rameses IX—whose own tomb is here and known as No. 6—there seems to have been an organized band, not only of robbers, but of receivers, who lived by depredations of the kind. A contemporary papyrus[228] tells how, in one instance, the royal mummies were found lying in the dust, their gold and silver ornaments and the treasures of their tombs all stolen. In another instance, a king and his queen were carried away bodily, to be unrolled and rifled at leisure. This curious information is all recorded in the form of a report, drawn up by the commandant of Western Thebes, who, with certain other officers and magistrates, officially inspected the tombs of the “royal ancestor,” during the reign of Rameses IX.

No royal tomb has been found absolutely intact in the valley of Bab-el-Molûk. Even that of Seti I had been secretly entered ages before ever Belzoni discovered it. He found in it statues of wood and porcelain, and the mummy of a bull; but nothing of value save the sarcophagus, which was empty. There can be no doubt that the priesthood were largely implicated in these contemporary sacrileges. Of thirty-nine persons accused by name in the papyrus just quoted, seven are priests and eight are sacred scribes.

To rob the dead was always a lucrative trade at Thebes; and we may be certain that the splendid Pharaohs who slept in the valley of the tombs of the kings,[229] went to their dark palaces magnificently equipped for the life to come.[230] When, indeed, one thinks of the jewels, furniture, vases, ointments, clothing, arms, and precious documents which were as certainly buried in those tombs as the royal mummies for whom they were excavated, it seems far more wonderful that the parure of one queen should have escaped, rather than that all the rest of these dead and gone royalties should have fallen among thieves.

Of all tombs in the valley of Bab-el-Molûk, one would rather, I think, have discovered that of Rameses III. As he was one of the richest of the Pharaohs[231] and an undoubted virtuoso in his tastes, so we may be sure that his tomb was furnished with all kinds of beautiful and precious things. What would we not give now to find some of those elaborate gold and silver vases, those cushioned thrones and sofas, those bows and quivers and shirts of mail so carefully catalogued on the walls of the side-chambers in the first corridor! I do not doubt that specimens of all these things were buried with the king and left ready for his use. He died, believing that his Ka would enjoy and make use of these treasures, and that his soul would come back after long cycles of probation, and make its home once more in the mummied body. He thought he should rise as from sleep; cast off his bandages; eat and be refreshed, and put on sandals and scented vestments, and take his staff in his hand, and go forth again into the light of everlasting day. Poor ghost, wandering bodiless through space! where now are thy funeral-baked meats, thy changes of raiment, thy perfumes and precious ointments? Where is that body for which thou wert once so solicitous, and without which resurrection[232] is impossible? One fancies thee sighing forlorn through these desolate halls when all is silent and the moon shines down the valley. Life at Thebes is made up of incongruities. A morning among temples is followed by an afternoon of antiquity-hunting; and a day of meditation among tombs winds up with a dinner-party on board some friend’s dahabeeyah, or a fantasia at the British consulate. L—— and the writer did their fair share of antiquity-hunting both at Luxor and elsewhere; but chiefly at Luxor. I may say, indeed, that our life here was one long pursuit of the pleasures of the chase. The game it is true was prohibited; but we enjoyed it none the less because it was illegal. Perhaps we enjoyed it the more.

There were whispers about this time of a tomb that had been discovered on the western side—a wonderful tomb, rich in all kinds of treasures. No one, of course, had seen these things. No one knew who had found them. No one knew where they were hidden. But there was a solemn secrecy about certain of the Arabs, and a conscious look about some of the visitors, and an air of awakened vigilance about the government officials, which savored of mystery. These rumors by and by assumed more definite proportions. Dark hints were dropped of a possible papyrus; the M. B.’s babbled of mummies; and an American dahabeeyah, lying innocently off Karnak, was reported to have a mummy on board. Now, neither L—— nor the writer desired to become the happy proprietor of an ancient Egyptian; but the papyrus was a thing to be thought of. In a fatal hour we expressed a wish to see it. From that moment every mummy-snatcher in the place regarded us as his lawful prey. Beguiled into one den after another, we were shown all the stolen goods in Thebes. Some of the things were very curious and interesting. In one house we were offered two bronze vases, each with a band of delicately engraved hieroglyphs running round the lip; also a square stand of basket-work in two colors, precisely like that engraved in Sir G. Wilkinson’s first volume,[233] after the original in the Berlin museum. Pieces of mummy-case and wall-sculpture and sepulchral tablets abounded; and on one occasion we were introduced into the presence of—a mummy!

All these houses were tombs, and in this one the mummy was stowed away in a kind of recess at the end of a long rock-cut passage; probably the very place once occupied by the original tenant. It was a mummy of the same period as that which we saw disentombed under the auspices of the governor, and was inclosed in the same kind of cartonnage, patterned in many colors on a white ground. I shall never forget that curious scene—the dark and dusty vault; the Arabs with their lanterns; the mummy in its gaudy cerements lying on an old mat at our feet.

Meanwhile we tried in vain to get sight of the coveted papyrus. A grave Arab dropped in once or twice after nightfall and talked it over vaguely with the dragoman; but never came to the point. He offered it first, with a mummy, for £100. Finding, however, that we would neither buy his papyrus unseen, nor his mummy at any price, he haggled and hesitated for a day or two, evidently trying to play us off against some rival or rivals unknown, and then finally disappeared. These rivals, we afterward found, were the M. B.’s. They bought both mummy and papyrus at an enormous price; and then, unable to endure the perfume of their ancient Egyptian, drowned the dear departed at the end of a week.

Other purchasers are possibly less sensitive. We heard, at all events, of fifteen mummies successfully insinuated through the Alexandrian custom-house by a single agent that winter. There is, in fact, a growing passion for mummies among Nile travelers. Unfortunately, the prices rise with the demand; and although the mine is practically inexhaustible, a mummy nowadays becomes not only a prohibited but a costly luxury.

At Luxor the British, American and French consuls are Arabs. The Prussian consul is a Copt. The Austrian consul is, or was, an American. The French consul showed us over the old tumble-down building called “The French House,”[234] which, though but a rude structure of palm-timbers and sun-dried clay, built partly against and partly over the temple of Luxor, has its place in history. For there, in 1829, Champollion and Rosellini lived and worked together during part of their long sojourn at Thebes. Rosellini tells how they used to sit up at night, dividing the fruits of the day’s labor; Champollion copying whatever might be useful for his Egyptian grammar, and Rosellini, the new words that furnished material for his dictionary. There, too, lodged the naval officers sent out by the French in 1831 to remove the obelisk which now stands in the Place de la Concorde. And there, writing those charming letters that delight the world, Lady Duff Gordon lingered through the last few winters of her life. The rooms in which she lived first, and the balcony in which she took such pleasure, were no longer accessible, owing to the ruinous state of one of the staircases; but we saw the rooms she last inhabited. Her couch, her rug, her folding chair were there still. The walls were furnished with a few cheap prints and a pair of tin sconces. All was very bare and comfortless.

We asked if it was just like this when the sittèh lived here. The Arab consul replied that she had “a table and some books.” He looked himself in the last stage of consumption, and spoke and moved like one that had done with life.

We were shocked at the dreariness of the place—till we went to the window. That window, which commanded the Nile and the western plain of Thebes, furnished the room and made its poverty splendid.

The sun was near setting. We could distinguish the mounds and pylons of Medinet Habu and the side of the Ramesseum. The terraced cliffs, overtopped by the pyramidal mountain of Bab-el-Molûk, burned crimson against a sky of stainless blue. The foot-path leading to the valley of the tombs of the kings showed like a hot white scar winding along the face of the rocks. The river gave back the sapphire tones of the sky. I thought I could be well content to spend many a winter in no matter how comfortless a lodging, if only I had that wonderful view, with its infinite beauty of light and color and space, and its history and its mystery always before my windows.[235]

Another historical house is that built by Sir G. Wilkinson, among the tombs of Sheik Abd-el-Koorneh. Here he lived while amassing the materials for his “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians;” and here Lepsius and his company of artists put up while at work on the western bank. Science makes little impression on the native mind. No one now remembers Champollion, or Rosellini, or Sir G. Wilkinson; but every Arab in Luxor cherishes the memory of Lady Duff Gordon in his heart of hearts, and speaks of her with blessings.

The French house was built over the roof of the sanctuary, at the southern end of the temple. At the northern end, built up between the enormous sandstone columns of the great colonnade, was the house of Mustapha Aga, most hospitable and kindly of British consuls. Mustapha Aga had traveled in Europe, and spoke fluent Italian, English, and French. His eldest son was Governor of Luxor; his younger—the “little Ahmed” whom Lady Duff Gordon delighted to educate—having spent two years in England as the guest of Lord D——, had become an accomplished Englishman.

In the round of gayety that goes on at Luxor the British consulate played the leading part. Mustapha Aga entertained all the English dahabeeyahs, and all the English dahabeeyahs entertained Mustapha Aga. We were invited to several fantasias at the consulate, and dined with Mustapha Aga at his suburban house the evening before we left Luxor.

The appointed hour was 8.30 P.M. We arrived amid much barking of dogs, and were received by our host in a large empty hall surrounded by a divan. Here we remained till dinner was announced. We were next ushered through an ante-room where two turbaned and barefooted servants were in waiting; the one with a brass basin and ewer, the other with an armful of Turkish towels. We then, each in turn, held our hands over the basin; had water poured on them; and received a towel apiece. These towels we were told to keep; and they served for dinner-napkins. The ante-room opened into a brilliantly lighted dining-room of moderate size, having in the center a round brass table with an upright fluted rim, like a big tray. For each person were placed a chair, a huge block of bread, a wooden spoon, two tumblers, and a bouquet. Plates, knives, forks, there were none.

The party consisted of the happy couple, the director of the Luxor telegraph office, L——, the writer, Ahmed, and our host.

“To-night we are all Arabs,” said Mustapha Aga, as he showed us where to sit. “We drink Nile water and we eat with our fingers.”

So we drank Nile water; and for the first time in our lives we ate with our fingers. In fact, we found them exceedingly useful.

The dinner was excellent. Without disrespect to our own accomplished chef, or to the accomplished chefs of our various friends upon the river, I am bound to say that it was the very best dinner I ever eat out of Europe. Everything was hot, quickly served, admirably dressed, and the best of its kind. Here is the menu:

MENU. MARCH 31, 1874.

White soup:—(Turkey).
FISH.
Fried Samak.[236]
ENTRÉES.
Stewed pigeons. Spinach and rice.
ROAST.
Dall.[237]
ENTRÉES.
Kebobs[238] of mutton.
Tomatoes with rice.
Kebobs of lambs’ kidneys.
Kuftah.[239]
ROAST.
Turkey, with cucumber sauce.
ENTRÉE.
Pilaff[240] of rice.
SECOND COURSE.
Mish-mish.[241]
Kunáfah.[242]
Rus Blebban.[243]
Totleh.[244]

These dishes were placed one at a time in the middle of the table and rapidly changed. Each dipped his own spoon into the soup, dived into the stew and pulled off pieces of fish or lamb with his fingers. Having no plates, we made plates of our bread. Meanwhile, Mustapha Aga, like an attentive host, tore off an especially choice morsel now and then and handed it to one or other of his guests.

To eat gracefully with one’s fingers is a fine art; to carve with them skillfully is a science. None of us, I think, will soon forget the wonderful way in which our host attacked and vanquished the turkey—a solid colossus weighing twenty pounds, and roasted to perfection. Half rising, he turned back his cuff, poised his wrist, and driving his forefinger and thumb deep into the breast, brought out a long, stringy smoking fragment, which he deposited on the plate of the writer. Thus begun, the turkey went round the table amid peals of laughter and was punished by each in turn. The pilaff which followed is always the last dish served at an Egyptian or Turkish dinner. After this our spoons were changed and the sweets were put upon the table. The drinks throughout were plain water, rice-water and lemonade. Some native musicians played in the ante-room during dinner; and when we rose from the table we washed our hands as before.

We now returned to the large hall, and, not being accomplished in the art and mystery of sitting crossed-legged, curled ourselves up on the divans as best we could. The writer was conducted by Mustapha Aga to the corner seat at the upper end of the room, where he said the Princess of Wales had sat when their royal highnesses dined with him the year before. We were then served with pipes and coffee. The gentlemen smoked chibouques and cigarettes, while for us there were gorgeous rose-water narghilehs with long flexible tubes and amber mouthpieces. L—— had the princess’ pipe and smoked it very cleverly all the evening.

By and by came the governor, the Kadî of Luxor, the Prussian consul and his son and some three or four grave-looking merchants in rich silk robes and ample turbans. Meanwhile the band—two fiddles, a tambourine and a darabukkeh—played at intervals at the lower end of the hall; pipes, coffee and lemonade went continually round; and the entertainment wound up, as native entertainments always do wind up at Luxor, with a performance of Ghawâzi.

We had already seen these dancers at two previous fantasias and we admired them no more the third time than the first. They wore baggy Turkish trousers, loose gowns of gaudy pattern and a profusion of jewelry. The première danseuse was a fine woman and rather handsome; but in the “belle” of the company, a thick-lipped Nubian, we could discover no charm whatever. The performances of the Ghawâzi—which are very ungraceful and almost wholly pantomimic—have been too often described to need description here. Only once, indeed, did we see them perform an actual dance; and then they swam lightly to and fro, clattering their castanets, crossing and re-crossing and bounding every now and then down the whole length of the room. This dance, we were told, was of unknown antiquity. They sang occasionally; but their voices were harsh and their melodies inharmonious.

There was present, however, one native performer whom we had already heard many times and of whose skill we never tired. This was the leader of the little band—an old man who played the kemengeh,[245] or cocoanut fiddle. A more unpromising instrument than the kemengeh it would be difficult to conceive; yet our old Arab contrived to make it discourse most eloquent music. His solos consisted of plaintive airs and extemporized variations, embroidered with difficult and sometimes extravagant cadenzas. He always began sedately, but warmed to his work as he went on; seeming at last to forget everything but his own delight in his own music. At such times one could see that he was weaving some romance in his thoughts and translating it into sounds. As the strings throbbed under his fingers, the whole man became inspired; and more than once when, in shower after shower of keen, despairing notes, he had described the wildest anguish of passion, I have observed his color change and his hand tremble.

Although we heard him repeatedly, and engaged him more than once when we had friends to dinner, I am sorry to say that I forget the name of this really great artist. He is, however, celebrated throughout the Thebaid, and is constantly summoned to Erment, Esneh, Keneh, Girgeh, and other large towns, to perform at private entertainments.

While at Luxor, we went one Sunday morning to the Coptic church—a large building at the northern extremity of the village. Church, schools, and bishop’s house, are here grouped under one roof and inclosed in a court-yard; for Luxor is the center of one of the twelve sees into which Coptic Egypt is divided.

The church, which has been rebuilt of late years, is constructed of sun-dried brick, having a small apse toward the east, and at the lower or western end a screened atrium for the women. The center aisle is perhaps thirty feet in width; the side-aisles, if aisles they can be called, being thickly planted with stone pillars supporting round arches. These pillars came from Karnak, and were the gift of the khedive. They have lotus-bud capitals, and measure about fifteen feet high in the shaft. At the upper end of the nave, some eighteen or twenty feet in advance of the apse, there stands a very beautiful screen inlaid in the old Coptic style with cedar, ebony, rosewood, ivory and mother-of-pearl. This screen is the pride of the church. Through the opening in the center one looks straight into the little wagon-roofed apse, which contains a small table and a suspended lamp, and is as dark as the sanctuary of an Egyptian temple. The reading-desk, like a rickety office stool, faces the congregation; and just inside the screen stands the bishop’s chair. Upon this plan, which closely resembles the plan of the first cathedral of St. Peter at Rome, most Coptic churches are built. They vary chiefly in the number of apses, some having as many as five. The atrium generally contains a large tank, called the Epiphany tank, into which, in memory of the baptism of our Lord, the men plunge at their festivals of El Ghitâs.

Young Todroos, the son of the Prussian consul, conducted us to the church. We went in at about eleven o’clock and witnessed the end of the service, which had then been going on since daybreak. The atrium was crowded with women and children, and the side-aisles with men of the poorer sort. A few groups of better dressed Copts were gathered near the screen listening to a black-robed deacon, who stood reading at the reading desk with a lighted taper in his left hand. A priest in a white vestment embroidered on the breast and hood with a red Maltese cross, was squatting on his heels at the entrance to the adytum. The bishop, all in black, with a black turban, sat with his back to the congregation.

Every face was turned upon us when we came in. The reader paused. The white-robed priest got up. Even the bishop looked round. Presently a couple of acolytes, each carrying two cane-bottomed chairs, came bustling down the nave; and, unceremoniously driving away all who were standing near, placed us in a row across the middle of the church. This interruption over, the reading was resumed.

We now observed with some surprise that every word of the lessons as they were read in Coptic was translated, viva voce, into Arabic by a youth in a surplice, who stood against the screen facing the congregation. He had no book, but went on fluently enough, following close upon the voice of the reader. This, we were told, was done only during the reading of the lessons, the Gospel, and the Lord’s prayer. The rest of the service is performed without translation; and, the Coptic being a dead language, is consequently unintelligible to the people.

When the reading of the Gospel was over, the deacon retired. The priest then came forward and made a sign to the school-children, who ran up noisily from all parts of the church, and joined with the choristers in a wild kind of chant. It seemed to us that this chant concluded the first part of the service.

The second part closely resembled the celebration of mass. The priest came to the door of the screen; looked at the congregation; folded his hands palm to palm; went up to the threshold of the apse, and began reciting what sounded like a litany. He then uncovered the sacred vessels, which till now had been concealed under two blue cotton handkerchiefs, and, turning, shook the handkerchief toward the people. He then consecrated the wine and wafer; elevated the host; and himself partook of the Eucharist in both elements. A little bell was rung during the consecration and again at the elevation. The people, meanwhile, stood very reverently, with their heads bent; but no one knelt during any part of the service. After this, the officiating priest washed his hands in a brass basin; and the deacon—who was also the schoolmaster—came round the church holding up his scarf, which was heaped full of little cakes of unleavened bread. These he distributed to all present. An acolyte followed with a plate, and collected the offerings of the congregation.

We now thought the service was over; but there remained four wee, crumpled, brown mites of babies to be christened. These small Copts were carried up the church by four acolytes, followed by four anxious fathers. The priest then muttered a short prayer; crossed the babies with water from the basin in which he had washed his hands; drank the water; wiped the basin out with a piece of bread; ate the bread; and dismissed the little newly made Christians with a hasty blessing.

Finally, the bishop—who had taken no part in the service, nor even partaken of the Eucharist—came down from his chair, and stood before the altar to bless the congregation. Hereupon all the men and boys ranged themselves in single file and trooped through between the screen and the apse, crowding in at one side and out at the other; each being touched by the bishop on his cheek, as he went by. If they lagged, the bishop clapped his hands impatiently, and the schoolmaster drove them through faster. When there were no more to come (the women and little girls, be it observed, coming in for no share of this benediction), the priest took off his vestments and laid them in a heap on the altar; the deacon distributed a basketful of blessed cakes among the poor of the congregation; and the bishop walked down the nave, eating a cake and giving a bit here and there to the best dressed Copts as he went along. So ended this interesting and curious service, which I have described thus minutely for the reason that it represents, with probably but little change, the earliest ceremonial of Christian worship in Egypt.[246]

Before leaving, we asked permission to look at the books from which the service had been read. They were all very old and dilapidated. The new testament, however, was in better condition than the rest, and was beautifully written upon vellum, in red and black ink. The Coptic, of course, looks like Greek to the eyes of the uninitiated; but some of the illuminated capitals struck us as bearing a marked resemblance to certain of the more familiar hieroglyphic characters.

While we were examining the books, the bishop sent his servant to invite us to pay him a visit. We accordingly followed the man up an outer flight of wooden steps at one corner of the court-yard, and were shown into a large room built partly over the church. Here we found the bishop—handsome, plump, dignified, with soft brown eyes, and a slightly grizzled beard—seated cross-legged on a divan, and smoking his chibouque. On a table in the middle of the room stood two or three blue and white bottles of oriental porcelain. The windows, which were sashless and very large, looked over to Karnak. The sparrows flew in and out as they listed.

The bishop received us very amiably, and the proceedings opened as usual with pipes and coffee. The conversation which followed consisted chiefly of questions on our part, and of answers on his. We asked the extent of his diocese, and learned that it reached from Assûan on the south to Keneh on the north. The revenue of the see, he said, was wholly derived from endowments in land. He estimated the number of Copts in Luxor at two thousand, being two-thirds of the entire population. The church was built and decorated in the time of his predecessor. He had himself been bishop here for rather more than four years. We then spoke of the service we had just witnessed, and of the books we had seen. I showed him my prayer-book, which he examined with much curiosity. I explained the differences indicated by the black and the rubricated matter, and pointed out the parts that were sung. He was, however, more interested in the outside than in the contents, and tapped the binding once or twice, to see if it were leather or wood. As for the gilt corners and clasp, he undoubtedly took them for solid gold.

The conversation next turned upon Coptic; the idle man asking him if he believed it to be the tongue actually spoken by the ancient Egyptians.

To this he replied:

“Yes, undoubtedly. What else should it be?”

The idle man hereupon suggested that it seemed to him, from what he had just seen of the church books, as if it might be a corrupt form of Byzantine Greek.

The bishop shook his head.

“The Coptic is a distinct language,” he said. “Eight Greek letters were added to the Coptic alphabet upon the introduction of Christianity into Egypt; and since that time many Greek words have been imported into the Coptic vocabulary; but the main body of the tongue is Coptic, purely; and it has no radical affinity whatever with the Greek.”[247]

This was the longest speech we heard him make, and he delivered it with some emphasis.

I then asked him if the Coptic was in all respects a dead language; to which he replied that many Coptic words, such as the names of the months and of certain festivals, were still in daily use. This, however, was not quite what I meant; so I put the question in another form, and asked if he thought any fragments of the tongue yet survived among the peasantry.

He pondered a moment before replying.

“That,” he said, “is a question to which it is difficult to give a precise answer, but I think you might yet find in some of the remoter villages an old man, here and there, who would understand it a little.”

I thought this a very interesting reply to a very interesting question.

After sitting about half an hour we rose and took leave. The bishop shook hands with us all round, and, but that we protested against it, would have accompanied us to the head of the stairs.

This interview was altogether very pleasant. The Copts are said to be sullen in manner and so bigoted that even a Moslem is less an object of dislike to them than a Christian of any other denomination. However this may be, we saw nothing of it. We experienced, on the contrary, many acts of civility from the Copts with whom we were brought into communication. No traveler in Egypt should, I think, omit being present at a service in a Coptic church. For a Coptic church is now the only place in which one may hear the last utterances of that far-off race with whose pursuits and pleasures the tomb paintings make us so familiar. We know that great changes have come over the language since it was spoken by Rameses the Great and written by Pentaur. We know that the Coptic of to-day bears to the Egyptian of the Pharaohs some such resemblance, perhaps, as the English of Macaulay bears to the English of Chaucer. Yet it is at bottom the tongue of old Egypt, and it is something to hear the last lingering echoes of that ancient speech read by the undoubted descendants of the Egyptian people. In another fifty years or so, the Coptic will, in all probability, be superseded by the Arabic in the services of this church; and then the very tradition of its pronunciation will be lost. The Copts themselves, it is said, are fast going over to the dominant faith. Perhaps by the time our own descendants are counting the two thousandth anniversary of the Christian era, both Copts and Coptic will be extinct in Egypt.

A day or two after this we dropped down to Karnak, where we remained till the end of the week, and on the following Sunday we resumed our downward voyage.

If the universe of literature was unconditioned and the present book was independent of time and space, I would write another chapter here about Karnak. But Karnak, to be fairly dealt by, would ask, not a chapter, but a volume. So, having already told something of the impression first made upon us by that wilderness of wonders, I will say no more.

CHAPTER XXII.
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]

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.	Thebes	1703
II.	This	4751	XIX.	Thebes	1462
III.	Memphis	4449	XX.	Thebes	1288
IV.	Memphis	4235	XXI.	Tanis	1100
V.	Memphis	3951	XXII.	Bubastis	980
VI.	Elephantine	3703	XXIII.	Tanis	810
VII.	Memphis	3500	XXIV.	Saïs	721
VIII.	Memphis	3500	XXV.	(Ethiopians)	715
IX.	Heracleopolis	3358	XXVI.	Saïs	665
X.	Heracleopolis	3240	XXVII.	(Persians)	527
			XXVIII.	Saïs	405
MIDDLE EMPIRE.			XXIX.	Mendes	399
XI.	Thebes	3064	XXX.	Sebennytis	378
XII.	Thebes	3064	XXXI.	(Persians)	340
XIII.	Thebes	2851
XIV.	Xoïs	2398	LOWER EMPIRE.
XV.	Shepherd Kings	2214	XXXII.	Macedonians	332
XVI.	Shepherd Kings	2214	XXXII.	(Greeks)	305
XVII.	Shepherd Kings	2214	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
Ptolemies	300
	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.

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 from Mean.	Azimuth.	Difference 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 as M. 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.]

[ [59] In the time of Strabo, the Island of Philæ, as has been recently shown by Professor Revillout in his “Seconde Mémoire sur les Blemmys,” was the common property of the Egyptians and Nubians, or rather of that obscure nation called the Blemmys, who, with the Nobades and Megabares, were collectively classed at that time as “Ethiopians.” The Blemmys (ancestors of the present Barabras) were a stalwart and valiant race, powerful enough to treat on equal terms with the Roman rulers of Egypt. They were devout adorers of Isis, and it is interesting to learn that in the treaty of Maximin with this nation, it is expressly provided that, “according to the old law,” the Blemmys were entitled to take the statue of Isis every year from the sanctuary of Philæ to their own country for a visit of a stated period. A graffito at Philæ, published by Letronne, states that the writer was at Philæ when the image of the goddess was brought back from one of these periodical excursions, and that he beheld the arrival of the sacred boats “containing the shrines of the divine statues.” From this it would appear that other images than that of Isis had been taken to Ethiopia; probably those of Osiris and Horus, and possibly also that of Hathor, the divine nurse. [Note to second edition.]

[ [60] The Emperor Justinian is credited with the mutilation of the sculptures of the large temple; but the ancient worship was probably only temporarily suspended in his time.

[ [61] These and the following particulars about the Christians of Nubia are found in the famous work of Makrizi, an Arab historian of the fifteenth century, who quotes largely from earlier writers. See Burckhardt’s “Travels in Nubia,” 4to, 1819, Appendix iii. Although Belak is distinctly described as an island in the neighborhood of the cataract, distant four miles from Assûan, Burckhardt persisted in looking for it among the islets below Mahatta, and believed Philæ to be the first Nubian town beyond the frontier. The hieroglyphic alphabet, however, had not then been deciphered. Burckhardt died at Cairo in 1817, and Champollion’s discovery was not given to the world till 1822.

[ [62] This inscription, which M. About considers the most interesting thing in Philæ, runs as follows: “A’ An VI de la République, le 15 Messidor, une Armée Française commandée par Bonaparte est descendue a Alexandrie. L’Armée ayant mis, vingt jours après, les Mamelouks en fuite aux Pyramides, Desaix, commandant la première division, les a poursuivis au dela des Cataractes, ou il est arrivé le 18 Ventôse de l’an VII.”

[ [63] About two-and-sixpence English.

[ [64] See previous note, p. 181.

[ [65] The story of Osiris—the beneficent god, the friend of man, slain and dismembered by Typhon, buried in a score of graves: sought by Isis; recovered limb by limb; resuscitated in the flesh; transferred from earth to reign over the dead in the world of shades—is one of the most complex of Egyptian legends. Osiris under some aspects is the Nile. He personifies abstract good, and is entitled Unnefer, or “The Good Being.” He appears as a myth of the solar year. He bears a notable likeness to Prometheus and to the Indian Bacchus.

“Osiris, dit-on, était autrefois descendu sur la terre. Étre bon par excellence, il avait adouci les mœurs des hommes par la persuasion et la bienfaisance. Mais il avait succombé sous les embûches de Typhon, son frère, le génie du mal, et pendant que ses deux sœurs, Isis et Nephthys, recueillaient son corps qui avait été jeté dans le fleuve, le dieu ressuscitait d’entre les morts et apparaissait à son fils Horus, qu’il instituait son vengeur. C’est ce sacrifice qu’il avait autrefois accompli en faveur des hommes qu’ Osiris renouvelle ici eu faveur de l’âme dégagée de ses liens terrestres. Non seulement il devient son guide, mais il s’identifie à elle; il l’absorbe en son propre sein. C’est lui alors qui, devenu le défunt lui même, se soumet à toutes les épreuves que celui-ci doit subir avant d’être proclamé juste; c’est lui qui, à chaque âme qu’il doit sauver, fléchit les gardiens des demeures infernales et combat les monstres compagnons de la nuit et de la mort; c’est lui enfin qui, vainqueur des ténèbres, avec l’assistance d’Horus, s’assied au tribunal de la suprême justice et ouvre à l’âme déclarée pure les portes du séjour éternel. L’image de la mort aura été empruntée au soleil qui disparait à l’horizon du soir: le soleil resplendissant du matin sera la symbole de cette seconde naissance à une vie qui, cette fois, ne connaîtra pas la mort.

“Osiris est donc le principe du bien.... Chargé de sauver les âmes de la mort définitive, il est l’intermédiaire entre l’homme et Dieu; il est le type et le sauveur de l’homme.”—“Notice des Monuments à Boulaq”—Aug. Mariette Bey, 1872, pp. 105 et seq.

[It has always been taken for granted by Egyptologists that Osiris was originally a local god of Abydos, and that Abydos was the cradle of the Osirian myth. Professor Maspero, however, in some of his recent lectures at the Collége de France, has shown that the Osirian cult took its rise in the Delta; and, in point of fact, Osiris, in certain ancient inscriptions, is styled the King Osiris, “Lord of Tattu” (Busiris), and has his name inclosed in a royal oval. Up to the time of the Græco-Roman rule the only two cities of Egypt in which Osiris reigned as the principal god were Busiris and Mendes.]

“Le centre terrestre du culte d’Osiris, était dans les cantons nord-est du Delta, situés entre la branche Sébennytique et la branche Pélusiaque, comme le centre terrestre du culte de Sit, le frère et le meurtrier d’Osiris: les deux dieux étaient limitrophes l’un de l’autre, et des rivalités de voisinage expliquent peut-être en partie leurs querelles.... Tous les traits de la tradition Osirienne ne sont pas également anciens: le fond me parait être d’une antiquité incontestable. Osiris y réunit les caractères des deux divinités qui se partageaient chaque nome: il est le dieu des vivants et le dieu des morts en même temps; le dieu qui nourrit et le dieu qui détruit. Probablement, les temps où, saisi de pitié pour les mortels, il leur ouvrit l’accès de son royaume, avaient été précédés d’autres temps où il était impitoyable et ne songeait qu’à les anéantir. Je crois trouver un souvenir de ce rôle destructeur d’Osiris dans plusieurs passages des textes des Pyramides, où l’on promet au mort que Harkhouti viendra vers lui, ‘déliant ses liens, brisant ses chaines pour le délivrer de la ruine; il ne le livrera pas à Osiris, si bien qu’il ne mourra pas, mais il sera glorieux dans l’horizon, solide comme le Did dans la ville de Didou.’ L’Osiris farouche et cruel fut absorbé promptement par l’Osiris doux et bienveillant. L’Osiris qui domine toute la religion Égyptienne dès le début, c’est l’Osiris Onnofris, l’Osiris Éntre bon, que les Grecs ont connu. Commes ses parents, Sibou et Nouit, Osiris Onnofris appartient à la classe des dieux généraux qui ne sont pas confinés en un seul canton, mais qui sont adorés par un pays entier.” See “Les Hypogées Royaux de Thèbes” (Bulletin critique de la religion Égyptienne) par Professeur G. Maspero, “Revue de l’Histoire des Religions,” 1888. [Note to second edition.]

“The astronomical and physical elements are too obvious to be mistaken. Osiris and Isis are the Nile and Egypt. The myth of Osiris typifies the solar year—the power of Osiris is the sun in the lower hemisphere, the winter solstice. The birth of Horus typifies the vernal equinox—the victory of Horus, the summer solstice—the inundation of the Nile. Typhon is the autumnal equinox.”—“Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” Bunsen, 1st ed., vol. i, p. 437.

“The Egyptians do not all worship the same gods, excepting Isis and Osiris.”—Herodotus, book ii.

[66] “These vases, made of alabaster, calcareous stone, porcelain, terra-cotta, and even wood, were destined to hold the soft part or viscera of the body, embalmed separately and deposited in them. They were four in number, and were made in the shape of the four genii of the Karneter, or Hades, to whom were assigned the four cardinal points of the compass.” Birch’s “Guide to the First and Second Egyptian Rooms,” 1874, p. 89. See also Birch’s “History of Ancient Pottery,” 1873, p. 23 et seq.

[67] Thus depicted, he is called “the germinating Osiris.” [Note to second edition.]

[68] See M. P. J. de Horrack’s translation of “The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys. Records of the Past,” vol. ii, p. 117 et seq.

[69] “Operations Carried On at the Pyramids of Ghizeh.”—Col. Howard Vyse, London, 1840, vol. i, p. 63.

[70] A city of Ethiopia, identified with the ruins at Gebel Barkel. The worship of Amen was established at Napata toward the end of the twentieth dynasty, and it was from the priests of Thebes who settled at that time in Napata that the Ethiopian conquerors of Egypt (twenty-third dynasty) were descended.

[71] The men hereabout can nearly all speak Arabic; but the women of Nubia know only the Kensee and Berberee tongues, the first of which is spoken as far as Korosko.

[72] Lepsius’ Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, etc. Letter xviii, p. 184. Bohn’s ed., A.D. 1853.

[73] See the interesting account of funereal rites and ceremonies in Sir G. Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians,” vol. ii, ch. x, Lond., 1871. Also wood-cuts Nos. 493 and 494 in the same chapter of the same work.

[74] Abshek: The hieroglyphic name of Abou Simbel. Gr. Aboccis.

[75] In the present state of Egyptian chronology it is hazardous to assign even an approximate date to events which happened before the conquest of Cambyses. The Egyptians, in fact, had no chronology in the strict sense of the word. Being without any fixed point of departure, such as the birth of Christ, they counted the events of each reign from the accession of the sovereign. Under such a system error and confusion were inevitable. To say when Rameses II was born and when he died is impossible. The very century in which he flourished is uncertain. Mariette, taking the historical lists of Manetho for his basis, supposes the nineteenth dynasty to have occupied the interval comprised within B.C. 1462 and 1288; according to which computation (allowing fifty-seven years for the reigns of Rameses I and Seti I) the reign of Rameses II would date from B.C. 1405. Brugsch gives him from B.C. 1407 to B.C. 1341; and Lepsius places his reign in the sixty-six years lying between B.C. 1388 and B.C. 1322; these calculations being both made before the discovery of the stella of Abydos. Bunsen dates his accession from B.C. 1352. Between the highest and the lowest of these calculations there is, as shown by the following table, a difference of fifty-five years:

Rameses II began to reign		B.C.
	Brugsch	1407
According to	Mariette	1405
	Lepsius	1388
	Bunsen	1352

[76] See chap. viii, foot note, p. 126.

[77] See “Essai sur l’Inscription Dédicatoire du Temple d’Abydos et la Jeunesse de Sesotris.”—G. Maspero, Paris, 1867.

[78] See chap, viii, p. 125.

[79] i. e. Prince of the Hittites; the Kheta being now identified with that people.

[80] This invaluable record is sculptured on a piece of wall built out, apparently, for the purpose, at right angles to the south wall of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak. The treaty faces to the west, and is situated about half-way between the famous bas-relief of Sheshonk and his captives and the Karnak version of the poem of Pentaur. The former lies to the west of the southern portal; the latter to the east. The wall of the treaty juts out about sixty feet to the east of the portal. This south wall and its adjunct, a length of about two hundred feet in all, is perhaps the most precious and interesting piece of sculptured surface in the world.

[81] See “Treaty of Peace Between Rameses II and the Hittites,” translated by C. W. Goodwin, M. A. “ Records of the Past,” vol. iv, p. 25.

[82] Since this book was written, a further study of the subject has led me to conjecture that not Seti I, but Queen Hatshepsu (Hatasu) of the eighteenth dynasty, was the actual originator of the canal which connected the Nile with the Red Sea. The inscriptions engraved upon the walls of her great temple at Dayr-el-Baharî expressly state that her squadron sailed from Thebes to the land of Punt and returned from Punt to Thebes, laden with the products of that mysterious country which Mariette and Maspero have conclusively shown to have been situated on the Somali coast-line between Bab-el-Mandeb and Cape Guardafui. Unless, therefore, some water-way existed at that time between the Nile and the Red Sea, it follows that Queen Hatshepsu’s squadron of discovery must have sailed northward from Thebes, descended the Nile to one of its mouths, traversed the whole length of the Mediterranean sea, gone out through the pillars of Hercules, doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and arrived at the Somali coast by way of the Mozambique Channel and the shores of Zanzibar. In other words, the Egyptian galleys would twice have made the almost complete circuit of the African continent. This is obviously an untenable hypothesis; and there remains no alternative route except that of a canal, or chain of canals, connecting the Nile with the Red Sea. The old Wady Tûmilât canal has hitherto been universally ascribed to Seti I, for no other reason than that a canal leading from the Nile to the ocean is represented on a bas-relief of his reign on the north outer wall of the great temple of Karnak; but this canal may undoubtedly have been made under the preceding dynasty, and it is not only probable, but most likely, that the great woman-Pharaoh, who first conceived the notion of venturing her ships upon an unknown sea, may also have organized the channel of communication by which those ships went forth. According to the second edition of Sir J. W. Dawson’s “Egypt and Syria,” the recent surveys conducted by Lieut.-Col. Ardagh, Maj. Spaight and Lieut. Burton, all of the royal engineers, “render it certain that this valley [i. e. the Wady Tûmilât] once carried a branch up the Nile which discharged its waters into the Red Sea” (see chap. iii. p. 55); and in such case, if that branch were not already navigable, Queen Hatshepsu would only have needed to canalize it, which is what she probably did. [Note to second edition.]

[83] “Les circonstances de l’histoire hebraïque s’appliquent ici d’une manière on ne peut plus satisfaisante. Les Hébreux opprimés batissaient une ville du nom de Ramsès. Ce récit ne peut donc s’appliquer qu’à l’époque où la famille de Ramsès était sur le trône. Moïse, contraint de fuir la colère du rois après le meurtre d’un Égyptien, subit un long exil, parceque le roi ne mourut qu’après un temps fort long; Ramsès II regna en effet plus de 67 ans. Aussitôt après le retour de Moïse commença la lutte qui se termina par le célèbre passage de la Mer Rouge. Cet événement eut donc lieu sous le fils de Ramsès II, ou tout au plus tard pendant l’époque de troubles quit suivit son règne. Ajoutons que la rapidité des derniers événements ne permet pas de supposer que le roi eût sa résidence à Thèbes dans cet instant. Or, Merenptah a précisément laissé dans la Basse-Egypte, et spécialement à Tanis, des preuves importantes de son séjour.”—De Rougé, “Notice des Monuments Égyptiennes du Rez de Chaussée du Musée du Louvre,” Paris, 1857, p. 22.

“Il est impossible d’attribuer ni à Meneptah I, ni à Seti II, ni à Siptah, ni à Amonmesès, un règne même de vingt années; à plus forte raison de cinquante ou soixante Seul le règne de Ramsès II remplit les conditions indispensables. Lors même que nous ne saurions pas que ce souverain a occupé les Hébreux à la construction de la ville de Ramsès, nous serions dans l’impossibilité de placer Moïse à une autre époque, à moins de faire table rase des renseignements bibliques.”—“Recherches pour servir à l’Histoire de la XIX dynastie.” F. Chabas, Paris, 1873, p. 148.

[84] The Bible narrative, it has often been observed, invariably designates the king by this title, than which none, unfortunately, can be more vague for purposes of identification. “Plus généralement,” says Brugsch, writing of the royal titles, “sa personne se cache sous une série d’expressions qui toutes ont le sens de la ‘grande maison’ ou du ‘grand palais,’ quelquefois au duel, des ‘deux grandes maisons,’ par rapport à la division de l’Égypte en deux parties. C’est du titre très frequent Per-aa, ‘la grande maison,’ ‘la haute porte,’ qu’on a heureusement dérivé le nom biblique Pharao donné aux rois d’Égypte.”—“Histoire d’Égypte,” Brugsch, second edition, Part I, p. 35; Leipzig, 1875.

This probably is the only title under which it was permissible for the plebeian class to speak or write of the sovereign. It can scarcely have escaped Herr Brugsch’s notice that we even find it literally translated in Genesis, 1. 4, where it is said that “when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh, saying: ‘If now I have found grace in your eyes,’” etc. etc. If Moses, however, had but once recorded the cartouche name of either of his three Pharaohs, archæologists and commentators would have been spared a great deal of trouble.

[85] This remarkable manuscript relates the journey made by a female pilgrim of French birth, circa A.D. 370, to Egypt, Mesopotamia and the holy land. The manuscript is copied from an older original and dates from the tenth or eleventh century. Much of the work is lost, but those parts are yet perfect which describe the pilgrim’s progress through Goshen to Tanis and thence to Jerusalem, Edessa and the Haran. Of Pithom it is said: “Pithona etiam civitas quam œdificaverunt filii Israel ostensa est nubis in ipso itinere; in eo tamen loco ubi jam fines Egypti intravimus, religentes jam terras Saracenorum. Nam et ipsud nunc Pithona castrum est. Heroun autem civitas quæ fuit illo tempere, id est ubi occurit Joseph patri suo venienti, sicut scriptum est in libro Genesis nunc est comes sed grandis quod nos dicimus vicus ... nam ipse vicus nunc appellatur Hero.” See a letter on “Pithom-Heroöpolis” communicated to “The Academy” by M. Naville, March 22, 1884. See also M. Naville’s memoir, entitled “The Store-City of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus” (third edition); published by order of the committee of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 1888.

[86] See M. Naville’s memoir, entitled “Goshen and the Shrine of Saft-el-Henneh,” published by order of the committee of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 1887.

[87] Kadesh, otherwise Katesh or Kades. A town on the Orontes. See a paper entitled “The Campaign of Ramesis II in His Fifth Year Against Kadesh on the Orontes,” by the Rev. G. H. Tomkins, in the “Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology,” 1881, 1882; also in the “Transactions” of the society, vol. viii.

[88] Anastasi Papyri, No. III, Brit. Mus.

[89] See “Mélanges Égyptologiques,” by F. Chabas, 1 Série, 1862. There has been much discussion among Egyptologists on the subject of M. Chabas’ identification of the Hebrews. The name by which they are mentioned in the papyri here quoted, as well as in an inscription in the quarries of Hamamat, is Aperi-u. A learned critic in the “Revue Archéologique” (vol. v, 2d series, 1862) writes as follows: “La découverte du nom des Hébreux dans les hiéroglyphes serait un fait de la dernière importance; mais comme aucun autre point historique n’offre peut-être une pareille séduction, il faut aussi se méfier des illusions avec un soin méticuleux. La confusion des sons R et L dans la langue Égyptienne, et le voisinage des articulations B et P nuisent un peu, dans le cas particular, à la rigueur des conclusions quon peut tirér de la transcription. Néanmoins, il y a lieu de prendre en considération ce fait que les Aperiu, dans les trois documents qui nous parlent d’eux, sent montrés employés à des travaux de même espèce que ceux auxquels, selon l’Ecriture, les Hébreux furent assujettis par les Égyptiens. La circonstance que les papyrus mentionnant ce nom ont été trouvés à Memphis, plaide encore en faveur de l’assimilation proposée—découverte importante qu’il est à désirer de voir confirmée dar d’autres monuments.” It should be added that the Aperiu also appear in the inscription of Thothmes III at Karnak and were supposed by Mariette to be the people of Ephon. It is, however, to be noted that the inscriptions mention two tribes of Aperiu—a greater and a lesser, or an upper and a lower tribe. This might perhaps consist with the establishment of Hebrew settlers in the delta and others in the neighborhood of Memphis. The Aperiu, according to other inscriptions, appear to have been horsemen, or horse-trainers, which certainly tells against the probability of their identity with the Hebrews.

[90] See the famous wall painting of the Colossus on the Sledge engraved in Sir G. Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians;” frontispiece to vol. ii, ed. 1871.

[91] In a letter written by a priest who lived during this reign (Rameses II), we find an interesting account of the disadvantages and hardships attending various trades and pursuits, as opposed to the ease and dignity of the sacerdotal office. Of the mason he says: “It is the climax of his misery to have to remove a block of ten cubits by six, a block which it takes a month to drag by the private ways among the houses.”—Sallier Pap. No. II, Brit. Musæ.

[92] “Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore; let them go and gather straw for themselves.”

“And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish ought thereof.—Exodus, chap. v, 7, 8.

M. Chabas says: “Cese détails sont complètement conformes aux habitudes Égyptiennes. Le mélange de paille et d’argile dans les briques antiques a été parfaitement reconnu. D’un autre côté, le travail à la tâche est mentionne dans un texte écrit an revers d’un papyrus célébrant la splendeur de la ville de Ramsès, et datant, selon toute vraisemblance, du règne de Meneptah I. En voici la transcription: ‘Compte des maçons, 12; en outre des hommes à mouler la brique dans leurs villes, amenés aux travaux de la maison. Eux à faire leur nombre de briques journellesment; non ils sont à se relâcher des travaux dans la maison neuve; c’est ainsi que j’ai obéi au mandat donné par mon maître.’” See “Recherches pour servir à l’Histoire de la XIX Dynastie,” par F. Chabas. Paris: 1873, p. 149.

The curious text thus translated into French by M. Chabas is written on the back of the papyrus already quoted (i. e. Letter of Panbesa, Anastasi Papyri, No. III), and is preserved in the British Museum. The wall-painting in a tomb of the eighteenth dynasty at Thebes, which represents foreign captives mixing clay, molding, drying, and placing bricks, is well known from the illustration in Sir G. Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians,” ed. of 1871, vol. ii, p. 196. Cases sixty-one and sixty-two in the first Egyptian room, British Museum, contain bricks of mixed clay and straw stamped with the name of Rameses II.

[93] “Les affaires de la cour et de l’administration du pays sont expédiées par les ‘chefs’ ou les ‘intendants,’ par les ‘secretaires’ et par la nombreuse classe des scribes.... Le trésor rempli d’or et d’argent, et le divan des depenses et des recettes avaient leurs intendants à eux. La chambre des comptes ne manque pas. Les domaines, les propriétés, les palais, et même les lacs du roi sont mis sous la garde d’inspecteurs. Les architectes du Pharaon s’occupent de bâtisses d’après l’ordre du Pharaon. Les carrières, à partir de celles du Mokattam (le Toora de nos jours) jusqu’à celles d’Assouan, se trouvent exploitées par des chefs qui surveillent le transport des pierres taillés a la place de deur destination. Finalement la corvée est dirigée par les chefs des travaux publics.”—“Histoire d’Égypte,” Brugsch; second edition, 1875; chap, v, pp. 34 and 35.

[94] The Pa-Rameses of the Bible narrative was not the only Egyptian city of that name. There was a Pa-Rameses near Memphis, and another Pa-Remeses at Abou Simbel; and there may probably have been many more.

[95] “The remains were apparently those of a large hall paved with white alabaster slabs. The walls were covered with a variety of bricks and encaustic tiles; many of the bricks were of most beautiful workmanship, the hieroglyphs in some being inlaid in glass. The capitals of the columns were inlaid with brilliant colored mosaics, and a pattern in mosaics ran round the cornice. Some of the bricks are inlaid with the oval of Rameses III.” See “Murray’s Hand-book for Egypt,” route 7, p. 217.

Case D, in the second Egyptian room at the British Museum, contains several of these tiles and terra-cottas, some of which are painted with figures of Asiatic and negro captives, birds serpents, etc.; and are extremely beautiful both as regards design and execution. Murray is wrong, however, in attibuting the building to Rameses II. The cartouches are those of Rameses III. The discovery was made by some laborers in 1870.

Note to Second Edition.—This mound was excavated last year (1887) by M. Naville, acting as before for the Egypt Exploration Fund. See supplementary sheet to The Illustrated London News, 17th September, 1887, containing a complete account of the excavations at Tel-el-Yahoodeh, etc., with illustrations.

[96] This tablet is votive, and contains in fact a long Pharisaic prayer offered to Osiris by Rameses IV in the fourth year of his reign. The king enumerates his own virtues and deeds of piety, and implores the god to grant him length of days. See “Sur une Stèle inédite d’Abydos,” par P. Pierret. “Revue Archéologique, vol. xix, p. 273.

[97] M. Mariette, in his great work on Abydos, has argued that Rameses II was designated during the lifetime of his father by a cartouche signifying only Ra-User-Ma; and that he did not take the additional Setp-en-Ra till after the death of Seti I. The Louvre, however, contains a fragment of bas-relief representing the infant Rameses with the full title of his later years. This important fragment is thus described by M. Paul Pierret: “Ramesés II enfant, représenté assis sur le signe des montagnes du: c’est une assimilation au soleil levant lorsqu’il émerge à l’horizon céleste. Il porte la main gauche à sa bouche, en signe d’enfance. La main droite pend sur les genoux. Il est vétu d’une longue robe. La tresse de l’enfance pend sur son épaule. Un diadème relie ses cheveux, et un uræus se dresse sur son front. Voici la traduction de la courte légende qui accompagne cette représentation. ‘Le roi de la Haute et de la Basse Égypte, maitre des deux pays, Ra-User-Ma Setp-en-Ra, vivificateur, éternel comme le soleil.’”—“Catalogue de la Salle Historique.” P. Pierret. Paris, 1873, p. 8.

M. Maspero is of opinion that this one fragment establishes the disputed fact of his actual sovereignty from early childhood, and so disposes of the entire question. See “L’Inscription dédicatoire du Temple d’Abydos, suivi d’un Essai Sur la jeunesse de Sesostris.” G. Maspero. 4º Paris, 1867. See also chap. viii (foot note), p. 126.

[98] “Le métier d’architecte se trouvait confié aux plus hauts dignitaires de la cour Pharaonique. Les architectes du roi, les Murket, se recrutaient assez souvent parmi le nombre des princes.”—“Histoire d’Egypte:” Brugsch, second edition, 1875, chap. v, p. 34.

[99] See “L’Inscription dédicatoire du Temple d’Abydos,” etc., by G. Maspero.

[100] See Rosellini, Monumenti Storici, pl. lxxi.

[101] “A la nouvelle de la mort de son père, Ramsès II désormais seul roi, quitta l’Éthiopie et ceignit la couronne à Thebes. Il était alors dans la plénitude de ses forces, et avait autour de lui un grand nombre d’enfants, dont quelques-uns étaient assez âgés pour combattre sous ses ordres.”—“Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient,” par G. Maspero, chap. v, p. 220. 4th edition, 1886.

[102] “Comme Ramsès II regna 66 ans, le règne de son successeur sous lequel la sortie des Juifs eut lieu, embrassa la durée de 20 ans; et comme Moïse avait l’age de 80 ans au temps de la sortie, il en résulte évidemment que les enfants d’Israël quittèrent l’Égypte une des ces dernèires six années du règne de Menepthah; c’est à dire entre 1327 et 1331 avant l’ère chrétienne. Si nous admettons que ce Pharaon périt dans la mer, selon le rapport biblique, Moïse sera né 80 ans avant 1321, ou 1401 avant J. Chr., la sixième année de règne de Ramsès II.”—“Histoire d’Égypte,” Brugsch, chap. viii, p. 157. First edition, Leipzig, 1859.

[103] If the exodus took place, however, during the opening years of the reign of Menepthah, it becomes necessary either to remove the birth of Moses to a correspondingly earlier date, or to accept the amendment of Bunsen, who says “we can hardly take literally the statement as to the age of Moses at the exodus, twice over forty years.” Forty years is the mode of expressing a generation, from thirty to thirty-three years. “Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” Bunsen, London, 1859, vol. iii, p. 184. That Meneptah did not himself perish with his host, seems certain. The final oppression of the Hebrews and the miracles of Moses, as narrated in the Bible, give one the impression of having all happened within a comparatively short space of time; and cannot have extended over a period of twenty years. Neither is it stated that Pharaoh perished. The tomb of Menepthah, in fact, is found in the valley of the tombs of the kings (tomb No. 8).

[104] Herodotus, book ii.

[105] Rosellini, for instance, carries hero-worship to its extreme limit when he not only states that Rameses the Great had, by his conquests, filled Egypt with luxuries that contributed alike to the graces of every-day life and the security of the state, but (accepting as sober fact the complimentary language of a triumphal tablet) adds, that “universal peace even secured to him the love of the vanquished” (l’universal pace assicurata dall’ amore dei vinti stessi pel Faraone).—“Mon. Storici,” vol. iii, part ii, p. 294. Bunsen, equally prejudiced in the opposite direction, can see no trait of magnanimity or goodness in one whom he loves to depict as “an unbridled despot, who took advantage of a reign of almost unparalleled length, and of the acquisitions of his father and ancestors, in order to torment his own subjects and strangers to the utmost of his power, and to employ them as instruments of his passion for war and building.”—“Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” Bunsen, vol. iii, book iv, part ii, p. 184.

[106] “Souvent il s’introduit lui-même dans les triades divines auxquelles il dédie les temples. Le soleil de Ramsès Meïamoun qu’on aperçoit sur leur murailles, n’est autre chose que le roi lui-même déifié de son vivant.”—“Notice des Monuments Égyptiennes au Musée du Louvre.” De Rougé, Paris, 1875, p. 20.

[107] See Hymn to Pharaoh (Menepthah), translated by C. W. Goodwin, M. A. “Records of the Past,” vol. vi, p. 101.

[108] The late Vicomte E. de Rougé, in a letter to M. Guigniaut on the discoveries at Tanis, believes that he detects the Semitic type in the portraits of Rameses II and Seti I; and even conjectures that the Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty may have descended from Hyksos ancestors: “L’origine de la famille des Ramsès nous est jusqu’ ici complétement inconnue; sa prédilection pour le dieu Set ou Sutech, qui éclate des l’abord par le nom de Seti I (Sethos), ainsi que d’autres indices, pouvaient déjà engager à la reporter vers la Basse Égypte. Nous savions même que Ramsès II avait épousé une fille du Prince de Khet, quand le traité de l’an 22 eut ramené la paix entre les deux pays. Le profil très-décidément sémitique de Séti et de Ramsès se distinguait nettement des figures ordinal res de nos Pharaons Thébains.” (See “Revue Archéologique”, vol. ix, A.D. 1864.) In the course of the same letter, M. de Rougé adverts to the magnificent restoration of the temple of Sutech at Tanis (San), by Rameses II and to the curious fact that the god is there represented with the peculiar head-dress worn elsewhere by the Prince of Kheta.

It is to be remembered, however, that the patron deity of Rameses II was Amen-Ra. His homage of Sutech (which might possibly have been a concession to his Khetan wife) seems to have been confined almost exclusively to Tanis, where Ma-at-iri-neferu-Ra may be supposed to have resided.

[109] “L’absence de points fouillés, la simplification voulue, la restriction desdétails et des ornements à quelques sillons plus ou moins hardis, l’engorgement de toutes les parties délicates, démontrent que les Égyptiens étaient loin d’avoir des procédés et des facilités inconnus.”—“La Scripture Égyptienne,” par Emile Soldi, p. 48.

“Un fait qui nous parait avoir dû entraver les progrès de la sculpture, c’est l’habitude probable des sculpteurs ou entrepreneurs Égyptiens d’entre prendre le travail à même sur la pierre, sans avoir préalablement cherché le modèle en terre glaise, comme on le fait de nos jours. Une fois le modèle fini, on le moule et on le reproduit mathematiquement définitive. Ce procédé a toujours été employé dans les grandes époques de l’art; et il ne nous a pas semblé qu’il ait jamais été en usage en Egypte.”—Ibid, p. 82.

M. Soldi is also of opinion that the Egyptian sculptors were ignorant of many of the most useful tools known to the Greek, Roman, and modern sculptors, such as the emery-tube, the diamond-point, etc.

[110] On the left leg of this colossus is the famous Greek inscription discovered by Messrs. Bankes and Salt. It dates from the reign of Psamatichus I, and purports to have been cut by a certain Damearchon, one of the two hundred and forty thousand Egyptian troops of whom it is related by Herodotus (book ii, chaps. xxix and xxx) that they deserted because they were kept in garrison at Syene for three years without being relieved. The inscription, as translated by Colonel Leake, is thus given in Rawlingson’s “Herodotus” (vol. ii, p. 37); “King Psamatichus having come to Elephantine, those who were with Psamatichus, the son of Theocles, wrote this: ‘They sailed, and came to above Kerkis, to where the river rises ... the Egyptian Amasis....’ The writer is Damearchon, the son of Amœbichus, and Pelephus (Pelekos), the son of Udamus.” The king Psamatichus here named has been identified with the Psamtik I of the inscriptions. It was in his reign, and not as it has sometimes been supposed, in the reign of Psamatichus II, that the great military defection took place.

[111] Ra, the principal solar divinity, generally represented with the head of a hawk and the sun-disk on his head. “Ra vent dire faire, disposer; c’est, en effet, le dieu Ra qui a disposié organsé le monde, dont la matière lui a été donnée par Ptah.”—P. Pierret: “Dictionaire d’Archéologie Égyptienne.”

“Ra est une autre des intelligence démiurgiques. Ptah avait créé le soleil; le soleil, a son tour, est le créateur des êtres, animaux et hommes. Il est à l’hémisphère supérieure ce qu’Osiris est à l’hémisphère inferieure. Ra s’incarne à Heliopis.”—A. Mariette: “Notice des Monuments à Boulak,” p. 123.

[112] An instance occurs, however, in a small inscription sculptured on the rocks of the Island of Sehayl in the first cataract, which records the second panegyry of the reign of Rameses II.—See “Récuil des Monuments, etc.:” Brugsch, vol. ii, Planche lxxxii, Inscription No. 6.

[113] Though dedicated by Rameses to Nefertari, and by Nefertari to Rameses, this temple was placed, primarily, under the patronage of Hathor, the supreme type of divine maternity. She is represented by Queen Nefertari, who appears on the façade as the mother of six children and adorned with the attributes of the goddess. A temple to Hathor would also be, from a religious point of view, the fitting pendant to a temple of Ra. M. Mariette, in his “Notice des Monuments à Boulak,” remarks of Hathor that her functions are still but imperfectly known to us. “Peutêtre était-elle à Ra ce que Maut est à Ammon, le récipient où le dieu s’engendre lui-même pour l’éternité.”

[114] It is not often that one can say of a female head in an Egyptian wall painting that it is beautiful; but in these portraits of the queen, many times repeated upon the walls of the first hall of the Temple of Hathor, there is, if not positive beauty according to our western notions, much sweetness and much grace. The name of Nefertari means perfect, good, or beautiful companion. That the word “Nefer” should mean both good and beautiful—in fact, that beauty and goodness should be synonymous terms—is not merely interesting as it indicates a lofty philosophical standpoint, but as it reveals, perhaps, the latent germ of that doctrine which was hereafter to be taught with such brilliant results in the Alexandrian schools. It is remarkable that the word for truth and justice (Ma) was also one and the same.

There is often a quaint significance about Egyptian proper names which reminds one of the names that came into favor in England under the commonwealth. Take, for instance, Bak-en-Khonsu, Servant-of-Khons; Pa-ta-Amen, the Gift of Ammon; Renpitnefer, Good-year; Nub-en Tekh, Worth-Her-Weight-in-Gold (both women’s names); and Hor-mes-out’-a-Shu, Horus Son-of-the-Eye-of Shu—which last, as a tolerably long compound, may claim relationship with Praise-God Barebones, Hew-Agag-in-Pieces-before-the-Lord, etc.

[115] Ra Harmachis, in Egyptian Har-em-Khou-ti, personifies the sun rising upon the eastern horizon.

[116] See chap. viii, p. 126, also chap. xxi.

[117] In Egyptian, Aaranatu.

[118] In Egyptian, Kateshu. “Aujourdhui encore il existe une ville de Kades près d’une courbe de l’Oronte dans le voisinage de Homs.” Leçons de M. de Rougé, Professées au Collége de France. See “Mélanges d’Archéologie,” Egyp. and Assyr., vol. ii, p. 269. Also a valuable paper, entitled “The Campaign of Rameses II Against Kadesh,” by the Rev. G. H. Tomkins, “Trans. of the Soc. of Bib. Arch., vol. viii, part 3, 1882. The bend of the river is actually given in the bas-reliefs.

[119] “La légion S’ardana de l’armée de Ramsès II provenait d’une premiére descente de ces peuples en Égypte. ‘Les S’ardana, qui étaient des prisonniers de sa majesté,’ dit expressément le texte de Karnak, au commencement du poëme de Pentaur. Les archéologues ont remarqué la richesse de leur costume et de leurs armures. Les principales pièces de leur vêtements semblent couvertes de broderies. Leur bouchier est une rondache: ils portent une longue et large épée de forme ordinaire, mais on remarque aussi dans leurs mains une épée d’une longueur démesurée. Le casque des S’ardana est très caracterisque; sa forme est arrondie, mais il est surmonté d’une tige qui supporte une boule de métal. Cet ornament est accompagné de deux cornes en forme de croissant.... Les S’ardana de l’armée Égyptienne ont seulement des favoris et des moustaches coupés très courts.”—“Memoire sur les Attaques Dirigées contre l’Égypte,” etc. E. de Rougé. “Revue Archéologique,” vol. xvi, pp. 90, 91.

[120] A rich treasure of gold and silver rings was found by Ferlini, in 1834, immured in the wall of one of the pyramids of Meröe, in Upper Nubia. See Lepsius’ Letters, translated by L. and J. Horner, Bohn, 1858, p. 151.

[121] This cast, the property of the British Museum, is placed over a door leading to the library at the end of the northern vestibule, opposite the staircase. I was informed by the late Mr. Bonomi that the mold was made by Mr. Hay, who had with him an Italian assistant picked up in Cairo. They took with them some barrels of plaster and a couple of ladders, and contrived, with such spars and poles as belonged to the dahabeeyah, to erect a scaffolding and a matted shelter for the plasterman. The colossus was at this time buried up to its chin in sand, which made the task so much the easier. When the mold of the head was brought to England, it was sent to Mr. Bonomi’s studio, together with a mold of the head of the colossus at Mitrahenny, a mold of the apex of the fallen obelisk at Karnak, and molds of the wall-sculptures at Bayt-et-Welly. Mr. Bonomi superintended the casting and placing of all these in the museum about three years after the molds were made. This was at the time when Mr. Hawkins held the post of keeper of antiquities. I mention these details, not simply because they have a special interest for all who are acquainted with Abou Simbel, but because a good deal of misapprehension has prevailed on the subject, some travelers attributing the disfigurement of the head to Lepsius, others to the Crystal Palace Company, and so forth. Even so careful a writer as the late Miss Martineau ascribes it, on hearsay, to Champollion.

[122] “A castle, resembling in size and form that of Ibrim; it bears the name of Kalat Adda; it has been abandoned many years, being entirely surrounded by barren rocks. Part of its ancient wall, similar in construction to that of Ibrim, still remains. The habitations are built partly of stone and partly of brick. On the most elevated spot in the small town, eight or ten gray granite columns of small dimensions lie on the ground, with a few capitals near them of clumsy Greek architecture.”—Burckhardt’s “Travels in Nubia,” 1819, p. 38.

In a curious Arabic history of Nubia written in the tenth century A.D. by one Abdallah Ben Ahmed Ben Solaïm of Assûan, fragments of which are preserved in the great work of Makrizy, quoted by Burckhardt and E. Quatremere (see foot note, p. 202), there occurs the following remarkable passage: “In this province (Nubia) is situated the city of Bedjrasch, capital of Maris, the fortress of Ibrim, and another place called Adwa, which has a port, and is, they say, the birthplace of the sage Lokman and of Dhoul Noun. There is to be seen there a magnificent Birbeh.” (“On y voit un Berba magnifique.”)—“Mémoires Géographiques sur l’Égypte,” etc. E. Quatremere, Paris, 1811; vol. ii, p. 8.

If Adwa and Adda are one and the same, it is possible that in this passage we find preserved the only comparatively modern indication of some great rock-cut temple, the entrance to which is now entirely covered by the sand. It is clear that neither Abou Simbel (which is on the opposite bank, and some three or four miles north of Adda) nor Ferayg (which is also some way off, and quite a small place) can here be intended. That another temple exists somewhere between Abou Simbel and Wady Halfeh, and is yet to be discovered, seems absolutely certain from the tenor of a large stela sculptured on the rock a few paces north of the smaller temple at Abou Simbel. This stela, which is one of the most striking and elaborate there, represents an Egyptian gateway surmounted by the winged globe, and shows Rameses II enthroned and receiving the homage of a certain prince whose name, as translated by Rosellini, is Rameses-Neniseti-Habai. The inscription, which is in sixteen columns and perfectly preserved, records the titles and praises of the king, and states how “he had made a monumental abode for Horus, his father, Lord of Ha’m, excavating in the bowels of the Rock of Ha’m to make him a habitation of many ages.” We know nothing of the Rock of Ha’m (rendered Sciam by Rosellini), but it should no doubt be sought somewhere between Abou Simbel and Wady Halfeh. “Qual sito precisamente dinotisi in questo nome di Sciam, io non saprei nel presente stato delle cose determinare: credo peraltro secondo varie loughi delle iscrizioni che lo ricordano, che fosse situato sull’ una o l’altra sponda del Nilo, nel paese compreso tra Wadi-halfa e Ibsambul, o poco oltre. E qui dovrebbe trovarsi il nominato speco di Horus, fino al presente occulto a noi.”—Rosellini Letterpress to “Monumenti Storici,” vol. iii, part ii, p. 184. It would hence appear that the Rock of Ha’m is mentioned in other inscriptions.

The distance between Abou Simbel and Wady Halfeh is only forty miles, and the likely places along the banks are but few. Would not the discovery of this lost temple be an enterprise worthier the ambition of tourists, than the extermination of such few crocodiles as yet linger north of the second cataract

[123] See foot note [page 265.]

[124] “Un second temple, plus grand, mais tout aussi détruit que le précédent, existe un peu plus au sud, c’était le grand temple de la villa Égyptienne de Béhéni, qui exista sur cet emplacement, et qui d’après l’étendu des débris de poteries répandus sur la plaine aujourdhui déserte, parait avoir été assez grande.”—Champollion, Lettres écrites d’Égypte, etc., ed. 1868; Letter ix.

[125] Mount Fogo, as shown upon Keith Johnston’s map of Egypt and Nubia, would seem to be identical with the Ali Bersi of Lepsius.

[126] On referring to Col. H. Vyse’s “Voyage into Upper Egypt,” etc. I see that he also opened one of these tumuli, but “found no indication of an artificial construction.” I can only conclude that he did not carry his excavation low enough. As it is difficult to suppose the tumuli made for nothing, I cannot help believing that they would repay a more systematic investigation.

[127] The inclosure-wall of the great Temple of Tanis is eighty feet thick. See “Tanis,” Part 1, by W. M. F. Petrie; published by the Committee of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 1885. [Note to second edition.]

[128] It was long believed that the Egyptians were ignorant of the principle of the arch. This, however, was not the case. There are brick arches of the time of Rameses II behind the Ramesseum at Thebes and elsewhere. Still, arches are rare in Egypt. We filled in and covered the arch again, and the greater part of the staircase in order to preserve the former.

[129] Commonly known as Belzoni’s tomb.

[130] I write of these walls, for convenience, as north, south, east and west, as one is so accustomed to regard the position of buildings parallel with the river; but the present monument, as it is turned slightly southward round the angle of the rock, really stands southeast by east, instead of east and west like the large temple.

[131] Horus Aroëris.—“Celui-ci, qui semble avoir été frère d’Osiris, porte une tête d’épervier coiffée du pschent. Il est presque complètement identifié avec le soleil dans la plupart des lieux où il était adoré, et il en est de même très souvent pour Horus, fils d’Isis.”—“Notice Sommaire des Monuments du Louvre,” 1873. De Rougé. In the present instance, this god seems to have been identified with Ra.

[132] “Le sceptre à tête de lévier, nommé à tort sceptre à tête de concoupha, était porté par les dieux.”—“Dic. d’Arch. Égyptienne:” P. Pierret; Paris, 1875.

[133] Amen of the blue complexion is the most ancient type of this god. Here he represents divine royalty, in which character his title is: “Lord of the Heaven, of the earth, of the waters and of the mountains.” “Dans ce rôle de roi du monde, Amon a les chairs peintes en bleu pour indiquer sa nature céleste; et lorsqu’il porte le titre de Seigneur des Trônes, il est représenté assis, la couronne en tête: d’ordinaire il est debout.”—“Étude des Monuments de Karnak.” De Rougé. “Mélanges d’Archeologie,” vol. i, 1873.

There were almost as many varieties of Amen in Egypt as there are varieties of the Madonna in Italy or Spain. There was an Amen of Thebes, an Amen of Elephantine, an Amen of Coptos, an Amen of Chemmis (Panopolis), an Amen of the Resurrection, Amen of the Dew, Amen of the Sun (Amen-Ra), Amen Self-created, etc. Amen and Khem were doubtless identical. It is an interesting fact that our English words, chemical, chemist, chemistry, etc., which the dictionaries derive from the Arabic al-kimia, may be traced back a step farther to the Panopolitan name of this most ancient god of the Egyptians, Khem (Gr. Pan; Latin, Priapus), the deity of plants and herbs and of the creative principle. A cultivated Egyptian would, doubtless, have regarded all these Amens as merely local or symbolical types of a single deity.

[134] The material of this blue helmet, so frequently depicted on the monuments, may have been the Homeric Kuanos, about which so much doubt and conjecture have gathered, and which Mr. Gladstone supposes to have been a metal. (See “Juventus Mundi,” chap. xv, p. 532.) A paragraph in The Academy (June 8, 1876) gives the following particulars of certain perforated lamps of a “blue metallic substance,” discovered at Hissarlik by Dr. Schliemann, and there found lying under the copper shields to which they had probably been attached. “An analytical examination by Landerer (Berg., Hüttenm. Zeitung, xxxix, 430) has shown them to be sulphide of copper. The art of coloring the metal was known to the coppersmiths of Corinth, who plunged the heated copper into the fountain of Peirene. It appears not impossible that this was a sulphur spring, and that the blue color may have been given to the metal by plunging it in a heated state into the water and converting the surface into copper sulphide.”

It is to be observed that the Pharaohs are almost always represented wearing this blue helmet in the battle pieces and that it is frequently studded with gold rings. It must, therefore, have been of metal. If not of sulphureted copper, it may have been made of steel, which, in the well known instance of the butcher’s sharpener, as well as in representations of certain weapons, is always painted blue upon the monuments.

[135] “This eye, called uta, was extensively used by the Egyptians both as an ornament and amulet during life, and as a sepulchral amulet. They are found in the form of right eyes and left eyes, and they symbolize the eyes of Horus, as he looks to the north and south horizons in his passage from east to west, i. e., from sunrise to sunset.”

M. Grebaut, in his translation of a hymn to Amen-Ra, observes: “Le soleil marchant d’Orient en Occident éclaire de ses deux yeux les deux régions du Nord et du Midi.”—“Révue Arch.,” vol. xxv, 1873; p. 387.

[136] This inscription was translated for the first edition of this book by the late Dr. Birch; for the present translation I am indebted to the courtesy of E. A. Wallis Budge, Esq.

[137] Sesennu—Eshmoon or Hermopolis.

[138] Amenheri—Gebel Addeh.

[139] These jubilees, or festivals of thirty years, were religious jubilees in celebration of each thirtieth anniversary of the accession of the reigning Pharaoh.

[140] There are, in the British Museum, some bottles and vases of this description, dating from the eighteenth dynasty; see Case E, Second Egyptian Room. They are of dark-blue translucent glass, veined with waving lines of opaque white and yellow.

[141] Kenus—Nubia.

[142] Governors of Ethiopia bore this title, even though they did not themselves belong to the family of Pharaoh.

It is a curious fact that one of the governors of Ethiopia during the reign of Rameses II was called Mes, or Messou, signifying son, or child—which is in fact Moses. Now the Moses of the Bible was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, “became to her as a son,” was instructed in the wisdom of the Egyptians, and married a Kushite woman, black but comely. It would perhaps be too much to speculate on the possibility of his having held the office of Governor, or Royal Son of Kush.

[143] i. e. Ammon Ra, the sun god, in conjunction or identification with Har-em-a x u, of Horus-on-the-Horizon, another solar deity.

[144] The primæval god.

[145] Inner place, or sanctuary.

[146] Ethiopia.

[147] At about an equal distance to the north of the great temple, on the verge of the bank, is a shapeless block of brick ruin, which might possibly, if investigated, turn out to be the remains of a second pylon corresponding to this which we partially uncovered to the south.

[148] He may, however, be represented on the north wall, where it is covered by the sand-heap.

[149] Letter xiv, p. 235. “Nouvelle Ed.,” Paris, 1868.

[150] That this shock of earthquake occurred during the lifetime of Rameses II seems to be proved by the fact that, where the Osiride column is cracked across, a wall has been built up to support the two last pillars to the left at the upper end of the great hall, on which wall is a large stela covered with an elaborate hieroglyphic inscription, dating from the thirty-fifth year, and the thirteenth day of the month of Tybi, of the reign of Rameses II. The right arm of the external colossus, to the right of the great doorway, has also been supported by the introduction of an arm to his throne, built up of square blocks; this being the only arm to any of the thrones. Miss Martineau detected a restoration of part of the lower jaw of the northernmost colossus, and also a part of the dress of one of the Osiride statues in the great hall. I have in my possession a photograph taken at a time when the sand was several feet lower than at present, which shows that the right leg of the northernmost colossus is also a restoration on a gigantic scale, being built up, like the throne-arm, in great blocks, and finished, most probably, afterward.

[151] This refers to the ex-khedive, Ismail Pasha, who ruled Egypt at the time when this book was written and published. [Note to second edition.]

[152] There are tombs in some of the ravines behind the temples, which, however, we did not see.

[153] Tosko is on the eastern bank, and not, as in Keith Johnston’s map, on the west.

[154] This is one of the temples erected by Rameses the Great, and, I believe, not added to by any of his successors. The colossi, the Osiride columns, the sphinxes (now battered out of all human semblance) were originally made in his image. The cartouches are all his, and in one of the inner chambers there is a list of his little family. All these chambers were accessible till three or four years ago, when a party of German travelers carried off some sculptured tablets of great archæological interest; after which act of spoliation the entrance was sanded up by order of Mariette Bey. See, also, with regard to the probable date of the earthquake at this place, chap. xviii, p. 321.

[155] Not only near this nameless town, but in many other parts between Abou Simbel and Philæ, we found the old alluvial soil lying as high as from twenty to thirty feet above the level of the present inundations.

[156] Ar. Birbeh, temple.

[157] “The Nile receives its last tributary, the Atbara, in Lat. 17° 42’ north, at the northern extremity of the peninsular tract anciently called the Island of Meröe, and thence flows north (a single stream without the least accession) through twelve degrees of latitude; or, following its winding course, at least twelve hundred miles to the sea.”—“Blackie’s Imperial Gazetteer,” 1861. A careful survey of the country would probably bring to light the dry beds of many more such tributaries as the one described above.

[158] Of this wall, Burckhardt notices that “it has fallen down, apparently from some sudden and violent concussion, as the stones are lying on the ground in layers, as when placed in the wall; a proof that they must have fallen all at once.”—“Travels in Nubia:” Ed. 1819, p. 100. But he has not observed the inscription which is in large characters, and consists of three lines on three separate layers, of stones. The idle man copied the original upon the spot, which copy has since been identified with an ex-voto of a Roman soldier published in Boeckh’s “Corpus Inscr. Græc.,” of which the following is a translation:

“The vow of Verecundus the soldier, and his most pious parents, and Gaius his little brother, and the rest of his brethren.”

[159] A clew, however, might possibly be found to the date. There is a rudely sculptured tableau—the only piece of sculpture in the place—on a detached wall near the standing columns. It represents Isis worshiped by a youth in a short toga. Both figures are lumpish and ill-modeled; and Isis, seated under a conventional fig-tree, wears her hair erected in stiff rolls over her forehead, like a diadem. It is the face and stiffly dressed hair of Marciana, the sister of Trajan, as shown upon the well-known coin engraved in Smith’s “Dic. of Greek and Roman Biography,” vol. ii, p. 939. Maharrakeh is the Hiera Sycaminos, or place of the sacred fig-tree, where ends the Itinerary of Antoninus.

[160] See The Scarabæus Sacer, by C. Woodrooffe, B. A.—a paper (based on notes by the late Rev. C. Johns) read before the Winchester and Hampshire Scientific and Literary Society, Nov. 8, 1875. Privately printed.

[161] See chap. x, p. 163. Dakkeh (the Pselcis of the Greeks and Romans, the Pselk of the Egyptians) was at one time regarded as the confine of Egypt and Ethiopia, and would seem to have been a great military station. The inscribed potsherds here are chiefly receipts and accounts of soldiers’ pay. The walls of the temple outside, and of the chambers within, abound also in free-hand graffiti, most of which are written in red ink. We observed some that appeared to be trilingual.

[162] “Less than a quarter of a mile to the south are the ruins of a small sandstone temple with clustered columns; and on the way, near the village, you pass a stone stela of Amenemhat III, mentioning his eleventh year.”—“Murray’s Hand-book for Egypt,” p. 481. M. Maspero, writing of Thothmes III, says: “Sons fils et successeur, Amenhotep III, fit construire en face de Pselkis une forteresse importante.”—“Hist. Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient,” chap, iii, p. 113.

At Kobban also was found the famous stela of Rameses II, called the Stela of Dakkeh; see chap. xv, p. 238. In this inscription, a cast from which is at the Louvre, Rameses II is stated to have caused an artesian well to be made in the desert between this place and Gebel Oellaky, in order to facilitate the working of the gold mines of those parts.

[163] “According to Ptolemy, Metachompso should be opposite Pselcis, where there are extensive brick ruins. If so, Metachompso and Contra Pselcis must be the same town.”—“Topography of Thebes,” etc.; Sir G. Wilkinson. Ed. 1835, p. 488. M. Vivien de St. Martin is, however, of opinion that the Island of Derar, near Maharrakeh, is the true Metachompso. See “Le Nord de l’Afrique,” section vi, p. 161. Be this as it may, we at all events know of one great siege that this fortress sustained, and of one great battle fought beneath its walls. “The Ethiopians,” says Strabo, “having taking advantage of the withdrawal of part of the Roman forces, surprised and took Syene, Elephantine and Philæ, enslaved the inhabitants, and threw down the statues of Cæsar. But Petronius, marching with less than ten thousand infantry and eight hundred horse against an army of thirty thousand men, compelled them to retreat to Pselcis. He then sent deputies to demand restitution of what they had taken and the reason which had induced them to begin the war. On their alleging that they had been ill treated by the monarchs, he answered that these were not the sovereigns of the country—but Cæsar. When they desired three days for consideration and did nothing which they were bound to do, Petronius attacked and compelled them to fight. They soon fled, being badly commanded and badly armed, for they carried large shields made of raw hides, and hatchets for offensive weapons. Part of the insurgents were driven to the city, others fled into the uninhabited country, and such as ventured upon the passage of the river escaped to a neighboring island, where there were not many crocodiles, on account of the current.... Petronius then attacked Pselcis, and took it.”—Strabo’s “Geography,” Bohn’s translation, 1857, vol. iii, pp. 267-268. This island to which the insurgents fled may have been the large sand island which here still occupies the middle of the river and obstructs the approach to Dakkeh. Or they may have fled to the Island of Derar, seven miles higher up. Strabo does not give the name of the island.

[164] “C’est un ouvrage non achevé du temps de l’Empereur Auguste. Quoique peu important par son étendue, ce monument m’a beaucoup interessé, puisqu’il est entièrement relatif à l’incarnation d’Osiris sous forme humaine, sur la terre.”—Lettres écrites d’Égypte, etc.: Champollion. Paris, 1868; p. 126.

[165] I observed mauve here, for the first and only time, and very brilliant ultramarine. There are also traces of gilding on many of the figures.

[166] See [chap. xii], p. 199.

[167] Talmis: (Kalabsheh).

[168] Taphis: (Tafah).

[169] Blemyes: The Blemeys were a nomadic race of Berbers, supposed to be originally of the tribe of Bilmas of Tibbous in the central desert, and settled as early as the time of Eratosthenes in that part of the Valley of the Nile which lies between the first and second cataracts. See “Le Nord de l’Afrique,” by M. V. de St. Martin. Paris, 1863, section iii, p. 73.

[170] See “The Habitations of Man in All Ages.” V. le Duc. Chap. ix, p. 93.

[171] They probably mark the site of a certain Coptic monastery described in an ancient Arabic manuscript quoted by E. Quatremere, which says that “in the town of Tafah there is a fine monastery called the monastery of Ansoun. It is very ancient; but so solidly built, that after so great a number of years it still stands uninjured. Near this monastery, facing the mountain, are situated fifteen villages.” See “Mémoires Hist. et Géographiques sur l’Égypte et le Nubia,” par E. Quatremere. Paris, 1811, vol. ii, p. 55.

The monastery and the villages were, doubtless, of Romano-Egyptian construction in the first instance, and may originally have been a sacred college, like the sacred college of Philæ.

[172] “The peasants of Tafah relate that they are the descendants of the few Christian inhabitants of the city who embraced the Mohammadan faith when the country was conquered by the followers of the prophet; the greater part of the brethren having either fled or been put to death on the event taking place. They are still called Oulad el Nusara, or the Christian progeny.”—“Travels in Nubia:” Burckhardt. London, 1819, p. 121.

[173] In these secret chambers (the entrance to which was closed by a block of masonry so perfectly fitted as to defy detection) were kept the images of gold and silver and lapis lazuli, the precious vases, the sistrums, the jeweled collars, and all the portable treasures of the temples. We saw a somewhat similar pit and small chamber in a corner of the Temple of Dakkeh, and some very curious crypts and hiding-places under the floor of the dark chamber to the east of the sanctuary at Philæ, all of course long since broken open and rifled. But we had strong reason to believe that the painter discovered the whereabouts of a hidden chamber or passage to the west of the sanctuary, yet closed, with all its treasures probably intact. We had, however, no means of opening the wall, which is of solid masonry.

[174] Ar. Tambooshy—i. e., saloon skylight.

[175] “Sebek est un dieu solaire. Dans un papyrus de boulak, il est appelé fils d’Isis, et il combat les enemis d’Osiris; c’est une assimilation complète à Horus, et c’est à ce titre qu’il était adoré à Ombos.”—“Dic. Arch.” P. Pierret. Paris, 1875.

[176] See [chap. xi], p. 184.

[177] “Le point de départ de la mythologie Égyptienne est une Triade.” Champollion, Letters d’Égypte, etc., XI Lettre. Paris, 1868. These Triads are best studied at Gerf Hossayn and Kalabsheh.

[178] “L’un (paroi du sud) représente une déesse nourissant de son lait divin le roi Horus, encore enfant. L’Égypte n’a jamais, comme la Grèce, atteint l’idéal du beau ... mais en tant qu’art Égyptien, le bas-relief du Spéos de Gebel-Silsileh est une des plus belles œuvres que l’on puisse voir. Nulle part, en effet, la ligne n’est plus pure, et il règne dans ce tableau une certaine douceur tranquille qui charme et étonne à la fois.”—“Itinéraire de la Haut Égypte.” A Mariette: 1872, p. 246.

[179] See “Sallier Papyrus No. 2.” Hymn to the Nile—translation by C. Maspero. 4to Paris, 1868.

[180] Ta-ur-t, or Apet the Great. “Cette Déesse à corps d’hippopotame debout et à mamelles pendantes, paraît être une sorte de déesse nourrice. Elle semble, dans le bas temps, je ne dirai pas se substituer à Maut, mais compléter le rôle de cette déesse. Elle est nommée la grande nourrice; et présidait aux chambres où étaient représentées les naissances des jeunes divinités.”—“Dict. Arch. P. Pierret. Paris, 1875.

“In the Heavens, this goddess personified the constellation Ursa Major, or the Great Bear.”—“Guide to the First and Second Egyptian Rooms.” S. Birch. London, 1874.

[181] For a highly interesting account of the rock-cut inscriptions, graffiti, and quarry-marks at Silsilis, in the desert between Assûan and Philæ, and in the valley called Soba Rigolah, see Mr. W. M. F. Petrie’s recent volume entitled “A Season’s Work in Egypt,” 1877.

[182] Letter of M. Mariette to Vicomte E. de Rougé: “Révue Archéologique,” vol. ii, p. 33, 1860.

[183] Edfu is the elder temple; Denderah the copy. Where the architect of Denderah has departed from his model it has invariably been for the worse.

[184] Horus:—“Dieu adoré dans plusieurs nomes de la basse Égypte. Le personnage d’Horus se rattache sous des noms différents, à deux generations divines. Sous le nom de Haroëris il est né de Seb et Nout, et par consequent frère d’Osiris, dont il est le fils sous un autre nom.... Horus, armé d’un dard avec lequel il transperce les ennemis d’Osiris, est appelé Horus le Justicier.”—“Dict. Arch.,” P. Pierret, article “Horus.”

[185] Hathor:—“Elle est, comme Neith, Naut, et Nout, la personnification de l’espace dans lequel se meut le soleil, dont Horus symbolize le lever: aussi son nom, Hat-hor, signifie-t-il litteralement, l’habitation d’Horus.”—“Ibid.,” article “Hathor.”

[186] “Rapport sur line Mission en Égypte.” Vicomte E. de Rougé. See “Révue Arch. Nouvelle Série,” vol. x, p. 63.

[187] “Textes Géographiques du Temple d’Edfou,” by M. J. de Rougé. “Révue Arch.,” vol. xii, p. 209.

[188] See Professor Revillout’s “Seconde Mémoire sur les Blemmyes,” 1888, for an account of how the statues of Isis and other deities were taken once a year from the temples of Philæ for a trip into Ethiopia.

[189] See Appendix III, “Religious Belief of the Ancient Egyptians.”

[190] Not only the names of the chambers, but their dimensions in cubits and subdivisions of cubits are given. See “Itinéraire de la Haute Égypte.” A. Marietta Bey. 1872, p. 241.

[191] This was, no doubt, an interment of the period of the twenty-third or twenty-fourth dynasty, the style of which is thus described by Marietta: “Succèdent les caisses à fond blanc. Autour de celles çi court une légende en hiéroglyphes de toutes couleurs. Le devant du couvercle est divisé horizontalement en tableaux où alternent les représentations et les textes tracés en hiéroglyphes verdâtres. La momie elle-même est hermétiquement enfermée dans un cartonnage cousu par derrière et peint de couleurs tranchantes.”—“Notice des Monuments à Boulak. p. 46. Paris, 1872.

[192] Diodorus, “Biblioth Hist.,” Bk. i, chap. iv. The fault of inaccuracy ought, however, to be charged to Hecatæus, who was the authority followed here by Diodorus.

[193] Possibly the Smendes of Manetho, and the Ba-en-Ded whose cartouche is found by Brugsch on a sarcophagus in the museum at Vienna; see “Hist. d’Égypte,” chap, x, p. 213, ed. 1859. Another claimant to this identification is found in a king named Se-Mentu, whose cartouches were found by Mariette on some small gold tablets at Tanis.

[194] Letter xiv, p. 235, Lettres d’Égypte; Paris, 1868. See also chap. xviii, of the present work; p. 319.

[195] See Champollion, Letter xiv, foot note, p. 418.

[196] The sitting colossus of the Ramesseum was certainly the largest perfect statue in Egypt when Diodorus visited the Valley of the Nile, for the great standing colossus of Tanis had long before his time been cut up by Sheshonk III for building purposes; but that the Tanite colossus much exceeded the colossus of Ramesseum in height and bulk is placed beyond doubt by the scale of the fragments discovered by Mr. Petrie in the course of his excavations in 1884. According to his very cautious calculations, the figure alone of the Tanite was nine hundred inches, or seventy-five feet, high; or somewhere between seventy and eighty feet. “To this,” says Mr. Petrie, “we must add the height of the crown, which would proportionately be some fourteen and one-half feet. To this again must be added the base of the figure, which was thinner than the usual scale, being only twenty-seven inches thick. Thus the whole block appears to have been about one thousand one hundred inches, or say ninety-two feet, high. This was, so far as is known, the largest statue ever executed.” The weight of the figure is calculated by Mr. Petrie at about nine hundred tons; i. e., one hundred tons more than the colossus of the Ramesseum. That it stood upon a suitable pedestal cannot be doubted; and with the pedestal, which can scarcely have been less than eighteen or twenty feet in height, the statue must have towered some one hundred and twenty feet above the level of the plain. See “Tanis,” part i, pp. 22, 23. [Note to second edition.]

[197] The syenite colossus, of which the British Museum possesses the head, and which is popularly known as the Young Memnon, measured twenty-four feet in height before it was broken up by the French.

[198] See wood-cut No. 340 in Sir G. Wilkinson’s “Manners and Custums of the Ancient Egyptians,” vol. i, ed. 1871.

[199] Among these are Abot, or abode; meaning the abode of Amen; Ta-Uaboo, the mound; Ta-Api, the head or capital, etc. See “Recherches sur le nom Égyptien de Thèbes.” Chabas: 1863; “Textes Géographiques d’Edfoo,” J. de Rougé: “Revue Arch. Nouvelle Série,” vol. xii, 1865; etc.

[200] The “Great Harris Papyrus” is described by Dr. Birch as “one of the finest, best written and best preserved that has been discovered in Egypt. It measures one hundred and thirty-three feet long by sixteen and three-quarter inches broad, and was found with several others in a tomb behind Medinet Habu. Purchased soon after by the late A. C. Harris of Alexandria, it was subsequently unrolled and divided into seventy-nine leaves and laid down on cardboard. With the exception of some small portions which are wanting in the first leaf, the text is complete throughout.” The papyrus purports to be a post mortem address of the king, Rameses III, recounting the benefits he had conferred upon Egypt by his administration, and by his delivery of the country from foreign subjection. It also records the immense gifts which he had conferred on the temples of Egypt, of Amen at Thebes, Tum at Heliopolis, and Ptah at Memphis, etc. “The last part is addressed to the officers of the army, consisting partly of Sardinian and Libyan mercenaries, and to the people of Egypt, in the thirty-second year of his reign, and is a kind of posthumous panegyrical discourse, or political will, like that of Augustus discovered by Ancyra. The papyrus itself consists of the following divisions, three of which are preceded by large colored plates or vignettes: Introduction; donations to the Thebau deities; donations to the gods of Heliopolis; donations to the gods of Memphis; donations to the gods of the north and south; summary of donations; historical speech and conclusion. Throughout the monarch speaks in the first person, the list excepted.” Introduction to “Annals of Rameses III;” S. Birch. “Records of the Past,” vol. vi, p. 21; 1876.

[201] “Rameses III was one of the most remarkable monarchs in the annals of Egypt. A period of political confusion and foreign conquest of the country preceded his advent to the throne. His father, Setnecht, had indeed succeeded in driving out the foreign invaders and re-establishing the native dynasty of the Theban kings, the twentieth of the list of Manetho. But Rameses had a great task before him, called to the throne at a youthful age.... The first task of Rameses was to restore the civil government and military discipline. In the fifth year he defeated the Maxyes and Libyans with great slaughter when they invaded Egypt, led by five chiefs; and in the same year he had also to repulse the Satu, or eastern foreigners who had attacked Egypt. The maritime nations of the west, it appears, had invaded Palestine and the Syrian coast in his eighth year, and, after taking Carchemish, a confederation of the Pulusata, supposed by some to be the Pelasgi, Tekkaru or Teucri, Sakalusa or Siculi, Tanau or Daunians, if not Danai, and Uasasa or Osci, marched to the conquest of Egypt. It is possible that they reached the mouth of the eastern branch of the Nile. But Rameses concentrated an army at Taha, in Northern Palestine, and marched back to defend the Nile. Assisted by his mercenary forces, he inflicted a severe defeat on the confederated west, and returned with his prisoners to Thebes. In his eleventh year the Mashuasha or Maxyes, assisted by the Tahennu or Libyans, again invaded Egypt, to suffer a fresh defeat, and the country seems from this period to have remained in a state of tranquillity.... The vast temple at Medinet Habu, his palaces and treasury, still remain to attest his magnificence and grandeur; and if his domestic life was that of an ordinary Egyptian monarch, he was as distinguished in the battlefield as the palace. Treason, no doubt, disturbed his latter days, and it is not known how he died; but he expired after a reign of thirty-one years and some months, and left the throne to his son, it is supposed, about B.C. 1200.” See “Remarks Upon the Cover of the Granite Sarcophagus of Rameses III:” S. Birch, LL.D., Cambridge, 1876.

[202] “There is reason to believe that this is only a fragment of the building, and foundations exist which render it probable that the whole was originally a square of the width of the front, and had other chambers, probably in wood or brick, besides those we now find. This would hardly detract from the playful character of the design, and when colored, as it originally was, and with its battlements or ornaments complete, it must have formed a composition as pleasing as it is unlike our usual conceptions of Egyptian art.”—“Hist. of Architecture,” by J. Fergusson, Bk. i, ch. iv, p. 118, Lond., 1865.

[203] Medinet Habu continued, up to the period of the Arab invasion, to be inhabited by the Coptic descendants of its ancient builders. They fled, however, before Amr and his army, since which time the place has been deserted. It is not known whether the siege took place at the time of the Arab invasion, or during the raid of Cambyses; but, whenever it was, the place was evidently forced by the besiegers. The author of Murray’s “Hand-book” draws attention to the fact that the granite jambs of the doorway leading to the smaller temple are cut through exactly at the place where the bar was placed across the door.

[204] Herodotus, Bk. ii, chap. 122.

[205] “A Medinet Habou, dans son palais, il s’est fait représenter jouant aux dames avec des femmes qui, d’après certaines copies, semblent porter sur la tête les fleurs symboliques de l’Égypte supérieure et inférieure, comme les deésses du monde supérieur et inférieur, ou du ciel et de la terre. Cette dualité des deésses, qui est indiquée dans les scènes religieuses et les textes sacrés par la réunion de Satis et Anoucis, Pasht et Bast, Isis et Nephthys, etc., me fait penser que les tableaux de Medinet Habou peuvent avoir été considérés dans les légendes populaires comme offrant aux yeux l’allégorie de la scène du jeu de dames entre le roi et la deésse Isis, dont Hérodote a fait la Déméter Égyptienne, comme il a fait d’Osiris le Dionysus du même peuple.”—“Le Roi Rhampsinite et le Jeu des Dames,” par S. Birch. “Revue Arch: Nouvelle Série,” vol. xii, p. 58, Paris: 1865.

[206] Baal, written sometimes Bar, was, like Sutekh, a god borrowed from the Phœnician mythology. The worship of Baal seems to have been introduced into Egypt during the nineteenth dynasty. The other god here mentioned, Mentu or Month, was a solar deity adored in the Thebaid, and especially worshiped at Hermonthis, now Erment; a modern town of some importance, the name of which is still almost identical with the Per-Mentu of ancient days. Mentu was the Egyptian, and Baal the Phœnician, god of war.

[207] From one of the inscriptions at Medinet Habu, quoted by Chabas. See “Antiquité Historique,” ch. iv, p. 238. Ed. 1873.

[208] It is a noteworthy fact (and one which has not, so far as I know, been previously noticed) that while the Asiatic and African chiefs represented in these friezes are insolently described in the accompanying hieroglyphic inscriptions as “the vile Libyan,” “the vile Kushite,” “the vile Mashuasha,” and so forth, the European leaders, though likewise prostrate and bound, are more respectfully designated as “the Great of Sardinia,” “the Great of Sicily,” “the Great of Etruria,” etc. May this be taken as an indication that their strength as military powers was already more formidable than that of the Egyptians’ nearer neighbors?

[209] The grand blue of the ceiling of the colonnade of the Great Hypæthral Court is also very remarkable for brilliancy and purity of tone; while to those interested in decoration the capital and abacus of the second column to the right on entering this court-yard, offers an interesting specimen of polychrome ornamentation on a gold-colored ground.

[210] Inscriptions at Medinet Habu. See Chabas’ “Antiquité Historique,” chap. iv. Paris: 1876.

[211] The whole of this chronicle is translated by M. Chabas in “L’Antiquité Historique,” chap. iv, p. 246 et seq. It is also engraved in full in Rosellini (“Monumenti Storici”); and has been admirably photographed by both M. Hammerschmidt and Signor Beata.

[212] These two statues—the best-known, probably, of all Egyptian monuments—have been too often described, painted, engraved and photographed, to need more than a passing reference. Their featureless faces, their attitude, their surroundings, are familiar as the pyramids, even to those who know not Egypt. We all know that they represent Amenhotep, or Amunoph III; and that the northernmost was shattered to the waist by the earthquake of B.C. 27. Being heard to give out a musical sound during the first hour of the day, the statue was supposed by the ancients to be endowed with a miraculous voice. The Greeks, believing it to represent the fabled son of Tithonus and Aurora, gave it the name of Memnon; notwithstanding that the Egyptians themselves claimed the statues as portraits of Amenhotep III. Prefects, consuls, emperors and empresses, came “to hear Memnon,” as the phrase then ran. Among the famous visitors who traveled thither on this errand, we find Strabo, Germanicus, Hadrian and the Empress Sabina. Opinion is divided as to the cause of this sound. There is undoubtedly a hollow space inside the throne of this statue, as may be seen by all who examine it from behind; and Sir G. Wilkinson, in expressing his conviction that the musical sound was a piece of priestly jugglery, represents the opinion of the majority. The author of a carefully considered article in the Quarterly Review, No. 276, April, 1875, coincides with Sir D. Brewster in attributing the sound to a transmission of rarefied air through the crevices of the stone, caused by the sudden change of temperature consequent on the rising of the sun. The statue, which, like its companion, was originally one solid monolith of gritstone, was repaired with sandstone during the reign of Septimius Severus.

[213] This deification of the dead was not deification in the Roman sense; neither was it canonization in the modern sense. The Egyptians believed the justified dead to be assimilated, or rather identified, in the spirit with Osiris, the beneficient judge and deity of the lower world. Thus, in their worship of ancestry, they adored not mortals immortalized, but the dead in Osiris, and Osiris in the dead.

It is worth noting, by the way, that notwithstanding the subsequent deification of Seti I, Rameses I remained, so to say, the tutelary saint of the temple. He alone is represented with the curious pointed and upturned beard, like a chamois horn reversed, which is the peculiar attribute of deity.

[214] There is among the funereal tablets of the Boulak collection a small bas-relief sculpture representing the arrival of a family of mourners at the tomb of a deceased ancestor. The statue of the defunct sits at the upper end. The mourners are laden with offerings. One little child carries a lamb; another a goose. A scribe stands by, waiting to register the gifts. The tablet commemorates one Psamtik-nefar-Sam, a hierogrammate under some king of the twenty-sixth dynasty. The natural grace and simple pathos with which this little frieze is treated lift it far above the level of ordinary Egyptian art, and bear comparison with the class of monuments lately discovered on the Eleusinian road at Athens.

[215] “Une dignité tout à fait particulier est celle que les inscriptions hiéroglyphiques désignent par le titre ‘prophète de la pyramide, de tel Pharaon.’ Il parait qu’après sa mort chaque roi était vénéré par un culte spécial.” “Histoire d’Egypte:” Brugsch. 2d ed., chap, v., p. 35. Leipzig: 1875.

[216] There is a very curious window at the end of this sanctuary, with grooves for the shutter, and holes in which to slip and drop the bar by which it was fastened.

[217] The Gate of the King.

[218] These funerary statues are represented each on a stand or platform, erect, with one foot advanced, as if walking, the right hand holding the ankh, or symbol of life, the left hand grasping a staff. The attitude is that of the wooden statue at Boulak; and it is worth remark that the figures stand detached, with no support at the back, which was never the case with those carved in stone or granite. There can be no doubt that this curious series of funerary statues represent those which were actually placed in the tomb; and that the ceremonies here represented were actually performed before them, previous to closing the mouth of the sepulcher. One of these very wooden statues, from this very tomb, was brought to England by Belzoni, and is now in the British Museum (No. 854, Central Saloon). The wood is much decayed, and the statue ought undoubtedly to be placed under glass. The tableaux representing the above ceremonies are well copied in Rosellini, “Mon. del Culto,” plates 60-63.

[219] A remarkable inscription in this tomb, relating the wrath of Ra and the destruction of mankind, is translated by M. Naville, vol. iv, Pt. i, “Translations of the Biblical Arch. Society.” In this singular myth, which bears a family resemblance to the Chaldæan record of the flood, the deluge is a deluge of human blood. The inscription covers the walls of a small chamber known as the Chamber of the Cow.

[220] The longest tomb in the valley, which is that of Seti I, measures four hundred and seventy feet in length to the point where it is closed by the falling in of the rock; and the total depth of its descent is about one hundred and eighty feet. The tomb of Rameses III (No. 11) measures in length four hundred and five feet, and descends only thirty-one feet. The rest average from about three hundred and fifty to one hundred and fifty feet in length, and the shortest is excavated to a distance of only sixty-five feet.

We visited, however, one tomb in the Assaseef, which in extent far exceeds any of the tombs of the kings. This astonishing excavation, which consists of a bewildering labyrinth of halls, passages, staircases, pits and chambers, is calculated at twenty-three thousand eight hundred and nine square feet. The name of the occupant was Petamunap, a priest of uncertain date.

[221] Apophis, in Egyptian Apap; the great serpent of darkness, over whom Ra must triumph after he sets in the west, and before he again rises in the east.

[222] Kheper, the scarab deity. See [chap. vi], [p. 90].

[223] Symbolical of darkness.

[224] The crocodile represents Sebek. In one of the Boulak papyri, this god is called the son Isis, and combats the enemies of Osiris. Here he combats Apophis in behalf of Ra.

[225] The tomb numbered three in the first small ravine to the left as one rides up the valley bears the cartouches of Rameses II. The writer crawled in as far as the choked condition of the tomb permitted, but the passage becomes quite impassable after the first thirty or forty yards.

[226] When first seen by Sir G. Wilkinson, these harpers were still in such good preservation that he reported of one, at least, if not both, as obviously blind. The harps are magnificent, richly inlaid and gilded, and adorned with busts of the king. One has eleven strings, the other fourteen.

[227] The sarcophagus of Seti I, which was brought to England by Belzoni, is in Sir J. Soane’s Museum. It is carved from a single block of the finest alabaster, and is covered with incised hieroglyphic texts and several hundred figures, descriptive of the passage of the sun through the hours of the night. See “Le Sarcophage de Seti I.” P. Pierret. “Révue Arch.,” vol. xxi, p. 285: 1870. The sarcophagus of Rameses III is in the Fitz-William Museum, Cambridge, and the lid thereof is in the Egyptian collection of the Louvre. See “Remarks on the Sarcophagus of Rameses III.” S. Birch, LL.D.; Cambridge, 1876. Also “Notice Sommaire des Monuments Égyptiens du Louvre.” E. De Rougé, p. 51: Paris, 1873.

[228] Abbot Papyrus, British Museum. This papyrus, which has been translated by M. Chabas (“Mélanges Égyptologiques,” 3d Serie: Paris and Chalon, 1870), gives a list of royal tombs inspected by an Egyptian Commission in the month of Athyr (year unknown) during the reign of Rameses IX. Among the tombs visited on this occasion mention is especially made of “the funeral monument of the king En-Aa, which is at the north of the Amenophium of the terrace. The monument is broken into from the back, at the place where the stela is placed before the monument, and having the statue of the king upon the front of the stela, with his hound, named Bahuka, between his legs. Verified this day, and found intact.” Such was the report of the writer of this papyrus of 3000 years ago. And now comes one of the wonders of modern discovery. It was but a few years ago that Mariette, excavating in that part of the Necropolis called the Assaseef, which lies to the north of the ruins of the Amenophium, discovered the remains of the tomb of this very king, and the broken stela bearing upon its face a full-length bas-relief of King En-Aa (or Entef-Aa), with three dogs before him and one between his legs; the dog Bahuka having his name engraved over his back in hieroglyphic characters. See “Tablet of Antefaa II.” S. Birch, LL.D. “Transactions of the Biblical Arch. Society.” vol. iv, part i, p. 172.

[229] The beautiful jewels found upon the mummy of Queen Aah-Hotep show how richly the royal dead were adorned, and how well worth plundering their sepulchers must have been. These jewels have been so often photographed, engraved and described, that they are familiar to even those who have not seen them in the Boulak Museum. The circumstances of the discovery were suspicious, the mummy (in its inner mummy-case only) having been found by Marietta’s diggers in the loose sand but a few feet below the surface, near the foot of the hillside known as Drah Abu’l Neggah, between Gournah and the opening to the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. When it is remembered that the great outer sarcophagus of this queen was found in 1881 in the famous vault at Dayr-el-Bahari, where so many royal personages and relics were discovered “at one fell swoop;” and when to this is added the curious fact that the state ax of Prince Kames, and a variety of beautiful poniards and other miscellaneous objects of value were found laid in the loose folds of this queen’s outer wrappings, it seems to me that the mystery of her unsepulchered burial is susceptible of a very simple explanation. My own conviction is that Queen Aah-Hotep’s mummy had simply been brought thither from the depths of the said vault by the Arabs who had for so many years possessed the secret of that famous hidding-place, and that it was temporarily buried in the sand till a convenient opportunity should occur for transporting to Luxor. Moreover, it is significant that no jewels were found upon the royal mummies in the Dayr-el-Bahari vault, for the reason, no doubt, that they had long since been taken out and sold. The jewels found with Aah-Hotep may, therefore, have represented the final clearance, and have been collected from a variety of other royal mummy-cases. That the state ax of Prince Kames was among them does not, I imagine, prove that Prince Kames was the husband of Queen Aah-Hotep, but only that he himself was also a tenant of that historic vault. The actual proof that he was her husband lies in the fact that the bracelets on her wrists, the diadem on her head, and the pectoral ornament on her breast, were engraved, or inlaid, with the cartouches of that prince. [Note to second edition.]

[230] There is in one of the papyri of the Louvre a very curious illustration, representing—first, the funeral procession of one Neb-Set, deceased; second, the interior of the sepulcher, with the mummy, the offerings, and the furniture of the tomb, elaborately drawn and colored. Among the objects here shown are two torches, three vases, a coffer, a mirror, a Kohl bottle, a pair of sandals, a staff, a vase for ointment, a perfume bottle and an ablution jar. “These objects, all belonging to the toilette (for the coffer would have contained clothing), were placed in the tomb for that day of waking which the popular belief promised to the dead. The tomb was, therefore, furnished like the abodes of the living.”—Translated from T. Devéria, “Catalogue des Manuscrits Égyptiens du Louvre:” Paris, 1875, p. 80. The plan of the sepulcher of Neb-Set is also drawn upon this papyrus; and the soul of the deceased, represented as a human-headed bird, is shown flying down toward the mummy. A fine sarcophagus in the Boulak Museum (No. 84) is decorated in like manner with a representation of the mummy on its bier being visited, or finally rejoined, by the soul. I have also in my own collection a funeral papyrus vignetted on one side with this same subject; and bearing on the reverse side an architectural elevation of the monument erected over the sepulcher of the deceased.

[231] “King Rhampsinitus (Rameses III) was possessed, they said, of great riches in silver, indeed, to such an amount that none of the princes, his successors, surpassed or even equaled his wealth.”—Herodotus, Book ii, chap. 121.

[232] Impossible from the Egyptian point of view. “That the body should not waste or decay was an object of anxious solicitude; and for this purpose various bandlets and amulets, prepared with certain magical preparations, and sanctified with certain spells or prayers, of even offerings and small sacrifices, were distributed over various parts of the mummy. In some mysterious manner the immortality of the body was deemed as important as the passage of the soul; and at a later period the growth or natural reparation of the body was invoked as earnestly as the life or passage of the soul to the upper regions.”—See “Introduction to the Funereal Ritual,” S. Birch, LL.D., in vol. v, of Bunsen’s “Egypt:” Lond. 1867.

[233] “The Ancient Egyptians,” Sir G. Wilkinson; vol. i, chap. ii, wood-cut No. 92. Lond., 1871.

[234] The old French House is now swept away, with the rest of the modern Arab buildings which encumbered the ruins of the Temple of Luxor (see foot note, pp. 130, 131).

[235] Mehemet Ali gave this house to the French, and to the French it belonged till pulled down three years ago by Professor Maspero. [Note to second edition.]

[236] Samak: a large flat fish, rather like a brill.

[237] Dall: roast shoulder of lamb.

[238] Kebobs: small lumps of meat grilled on skewers.

[239] Kuftah: broiled mutton.

[240] Pilaff: boiled rice, mixed with a little butter, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

[241] Mish-mish: apricots (preserved).

[242] Kunáfah: a rich pudding made of rice, almonds, cream, cinnamon, etc.

[243] Rus Blebban: rice cream.

[244] Totleh: sweet jelly, incrusted with blanched almonds.

[245] The kemengeh is a kind of small two-stringed fiddle, the body of which is made of half a cocoanut shell. It has a very long neck, and a long foot that rests upon the ground, like the foot of a violoncello; and it is played with a bow about a yard in length. The strings are of twisted horsehair.

[246] “The Copts are Christians of the sect called Jacobites, Eutychians, Monophysites and Monothelites, whose creed was condemned by the Council of Chalcedon in the reign of the Emperor Marcian. They received the appellation of ‘Jacobites,’ by which they are generally known, from Jacobus Baradæus, a Syrian, who was a chief propagator of the Eutychian doctrines.... The religious orders of the Coptic church consist of a patriarch, a metropolitan of the Abyssinians, bishops, arch-priests, priests, deacons and monks. In Abyssinia, Jacobite Christianity is still the prevailing religion.” See “The Modern Egyptians,” by E. W. Lane. Supplement 1, p. 531, London: 1860.

[247] The bishop was for the most part right. The Coptic is the ancient Egyptian language (that is to say, it is late and somewhat corrupt Egyptian) written in Greek characters instead of in hieroglyphs. For the abolition of the ancient writing was, next to the abolition of the images of the gods, one of the first great objects of the early church in Egypt. Unable to uproot and destroy the language of a great nation, the Christian fathers took care so to reclothe it that every trace of the old symbolism should disappear and be forgotten. Already, in the time of Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 211), the hieroglyphic style had become obsolete. The secret of reading hieroglyphs, however, was not lost till the time of the fall of the Eastern empire. How the lost key was recovered by Champollion is told in a quotation from Mariette Bey, in the foot note to p. 191, chapter xii, of this book. Of the relation of Coptic to Egyptian, Champollion says: “La Lange Égyptienne antique ne différait en rien de la langue appelée vulgairement Copte ou Cophte.... Les mots Égyptiens écrits en caractères hieroglyphiques sur les monuments les plus anciens de Thèbes, et en caractères Grecs dans les livres Coptes, ne différent en général que par l’absence de certaines voyelles médiales omises, selon la méthode orientale, dans l’orthographe primitive.”—“Grammaire Égyptiene,” p. 18.

The bishop, though perfectly right in stating that Coptic and Egyptian were one, and that the Coptic was a distinct language having no affinity with the Greek, was, however, entirely wrong in that part of his explanation which related to the alphabet. So far from eight Greek letters having been added to the Coptic alphabet upon the introduction of Christianity into Egypt, there was no such thing as a Coptic alphabet previous to that time. The Coptic alphabet is the Greek alphabet as imposed upon Egypt by the fathers of the early Greek church; and that alphabet being found insufficient to convey all the sounds of the Egyptian tongue, eight new characters were borrowed from the demotic to supplement the deficiency.

[248] This machine is called the Nóreg.

[249] The number of pigeons kept by the Egyptian fellahin is incredible. Mr. Zincke says on this subject that “the number of domestic pigeons in Egypt must be several times as great as the population,” and suggests that if the people kept pigs they would keep less pigeons. But it is not as food chiefly that the pigeons are encouraged. They are bred and let live in such ruinous numbers for the sake of the manure they deposit on the land. M. About has forcibly demonstrated the error of this calculation. He shows that the pigeons do thirty million francs’ worth of damage to the crop in excess of any benefit they may confer upon the soil.

[250] The Arabic name of the modern village, Arabát-el-Madfûneh, means literally Arabat the Buried.

[251] Teni, or more probably Tini, called by the Greeks This or Thinis. It was the capital of the Eighth Nome. “Quoique nous ayons très-peu de chose à rapporter sur l’histoire de la ville de Teni qui à la basse époque sous la domination romaine, n’était connue que parses teinturiers en pourpre, elle doit avoir jouri d’une très grande renommée chez les anciens Égyptiens. Encore an temps du XIX dynastie les plus hauts fonctionnaires de sang royal étaient distingués par le titre de ‘Princes de Teni.’”—“Hist. d’Égypte. Brugsch, vol. i. chap. v, p. 29; Leipzig, 1874.

Note to Second Edition.—“Des monuments trouvés il y a deux ans, me portent a croire que Thini était située assez loin a l’Est au village actuel de Aoulad-Yahia.” Letter of Prof. G. Maspero to the author, April, 1878.

[252] The ancient name of Egypt was Kem, Khem, or Kam, signifying Black, or the Black Land; in allusion to the color of the soil.

[253] “Mena, tel que nous le presente la tradition, est le type le plus complet du monarque Égyptian. Il est à la fois constructeur et législateur; il fonde le grande temple de Phtah à Memphis et régle le culte des dieux. Il est guerrier, et conduit les expéditions hors de ses frontières.”—“Hist. Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient.” G. Maspero. Chap. ii, p. 55: Paris, 1876.

“N’oublions pas qu’avant Ménès l’Égypte était divisée en petits royaumes indépendants que Ménès réunit le premier sous un sceptre unique. Il n’est pas impossible que des monuments de cette antique période de l’histoire Égyptienne subsistent encore.”—“Itinéraire de la Haute Égypte.” A Mariette Bey. Avant Propos, p. 40. Alexandrie, 1872.

[254] See opening address of Professor R. Owen, C. B., etc., “Report of Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Orientalists, Ethnological Section;” London, 1874. Also a paper on “The Ethnology of Egypt,” by the same, published in the “Journal of the Anthropological Institute,” vol. iv, No. 1, p. 246: Lond., 1874.

[255] M. Mariette, in his great work on the excavations at Abydus, observes that these seven vaulted sanctuaries resemble sarcophagi of the form most commonly in use; namely, oblong boxes with vaulted lids. Two sarcophagi of this shape are shown in cut 496 of Sir G. Wilkinson’s second volume (see figures 1 and 6), “A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians,” vol. ii, chap. x; Lond., 1871. Of the uses and purport of the temple, he also says: “What do we know of the dée mère that presided at its construction? What was done in it? Is it consecrated to a single divinity, who would be Osiris; or to seven gods, who would be the seven gods of the seven vaulted chambers; or to the nine divinities enumerated in the lists of deities dispersed in various parts of the temple?... One leaves the temple in despair, not at being unable to make out its secret from the inscriptions, but on finding that its secret has been kept for itself alone, and not trusted to the inscriptions.”—“Description des Fouilles d’Abydos.” Mariette Bey. Paris, 1869. “Les sept chambres voûtées du grand temple d’Abydos sont relatifs aux cérémonies que le roi devait y célébrer successivement. Le roi se présentait au côté droit de la porte, parcourait la salle dans tout son pourtour et sortait par le côté gauche. Des statues étaient disposées dans la chambre. Le roi ouvrait la porte ou naos où elles étaient enfermées. Dès que la statue apparaissait è ses yeux il lui offrait l’encens, il enlevait le vêtement qui la couvrait, il lui imposait les mains, il la parfumait, il la recouvrait de son vêtement,” etc. Mariette Bey. “Itinéraire de la Haute Égypte: Avant Propos, p. 62. Alex. 1872. There is at the upper end of each of these seven sanctuaries a singular kind of false door, or recess, conceived in a style of ornament more Indian than Egyptian, the cutting being curiously square, deep, and massive, the surface of the relief-work flattened, and the whole evidently intended to produce its effect by depths of shadow in the incised portions rather than by sculpturesque relief. These recesses, or imitation doors, may have been designed to serve as backgrounds to statues, but are not deep enough for niches. There is a precisely similar recess sculptured on one of the walls of the westernmost chamber in the Temple of Gournah.

[256] These are all representations of minor gods commonly figured in the funereal papyri, but very rarely seen in the temple sculptures. The frog Goddess, for instance, is Hek, and symbolizes eternity. She is a very ancient divinity, traces of her being found in monuments of the fifth dynasty. The goose-headed god is Seb, another very old god. The object called the Nilometer was a religious emblem signifying stability, and probably stands in this connection as only a deified symbol.

[257] Rameses II is here shown with the side-lock of youth. This temple, founded by Seti I, was carried on through the time when Rameses the Prince was associated with his father upon the throne, and was completed by Rameses the King, after the death of Seti I. The building is strictly coeval in date and parallel in style with the Temple of Gournah and the Specs of Bayt-el-Welly.

[258] These seventy-six Pharaohs (represented by their cartouches) were probably either princes born of families originally from Abydus, or were sovereigns who had acquired a special title to veneration at this place on account of monuments or pious foundations presented by them to the holy city. A similar tablet, erected apparently on the same principles though not altogether to the same kings, was placed by Thothmes III in a side chamber of the Great Temple at Karnak, and is now in the Louvre.

The great value of the present monument consists in its chronological arrangement. It is also of the most beautiful execution, and in perfect preservation. “Comme perfection de gravure, comme conservation, comme étendue, il est peu de monuments qui la depassent.” See “La Nouvelle Table d’Abydos,” par A. Mariette Bey: “Révue Arch.,” vol. vii. “Nouvelle Série,” p. 98. This volume of the “Review” also contains an engraving in outline of the tablet.

[259] See “Itinéraire de la Haute Égypte:” A. Mariette Bey: p. 147. Alex. 1872.

[260] “Ibid,” p. 148. The hope here expressed was, however, not fulfilled; tombs of the fourth or fifth dynasties being, I believe, the earliest discovered. [Note to second edition.]

[261] “It is said that these persons, as well as the sheik, make use of certain words (that is, repeat prayers and invocations) on the day preceding this performance, to enable them to endure without injury the tread of the horse; and that some not thus prepared, having ventured to lie down to be ridden over, have, on more than one occasion, been either killed or severely injured. The performance is considered as a miracle vouchsafed through supernatural power, and which has been granted to every successive sheik of the Saädiyeh.” See Lane’s “Modern Egyptians,” chap. xxiv, p. 453. Lond., 1860.

[262] This barbarous rite has been abolished by the present khedive. [Note to second edition.]

[263] See “Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Khedive,” J. B. Zincke, chap. ix, p. 72. Lond., 1873. Also “La Sculpture Égyptienne,” par E. Soldi, p. 57. Paris, 1876. Also “The Ethnology of Egypt,” by Professor Owen, C. B. “Journal of Anthropological Institute,” vol. iv, 1874, p. 227. The name of this personage was Ra-em-ka.

[264] It is in the great vestibule that we find the statue of Ti. See chap. iv, p. 55.

[265] There is no evidence to show that the statues of Sepa and Nesa in the Louvre are older than the fourth dynasty.

[266] “Enfin nous signalerons l’importance des statues de Meydoum au point de vue ethnographique. Si la race Égyptienne était à cette époque celle dout les deux statues nous offrent le type, il faut convenir qu’elle ne ressemblait en rien à la race qui habitait le nord de l’Égypte quelques années seulement après Snefrou.”—“Cat. du Musée de Boulaq.” A. Mariette Bey. P. 277; Paris. 1872.

Of the heads of these two statues Professor Owen remarks that “the brain-case of the male is a full oval, the parietal bosses feebly indicated; in vertical contour the fronto parietal part is little elevated, rather flattened than convex; the frontal sinuses are slightly indicated; the forehead is fairly developed but not prominent. The lips are fuller than in the majority of Europeans; but the mouth is not prognathic.... The features of the female conform in type to those of the male, but show more delicacy and finish.... The statue of the female is colored of a lighter tint than that of the male, indicating the effects of better clothing and less exposure to the sun. And here it may be remarked that the racial character of complexion is significantly manifested by such evidences of the degree of tint due to individual exposure.... The primitive race-tint of the Egyptians is perhaps more truly indicated by the color of the princes in these painted portrait-statues than by that of her more scantily clad husband or male relative.”—“The Ethnology of Egypt,” by Sir Richard Owen, K. C. B. “Journal of Anthropological Institute,” vol. iv, Lond., 1874; p. 225 et seq.

[267] The word pyramid, for which so many derivations have been suggested, is shown in the geometrical papyrus of the British Museum to be distinctly Egyptian, and is written Per-em-us.

[268] “On sait par une stèle du musée de Boulaq, que le grand Sphinx antérieur au Rois Chéops de la IV Dynastie.”—“Dic. d’Arch. Égyptienne:” Article Sphinx. P. Pierret. Paris, 1875.

[It was the opinion of Mariette, and it is the opinion of Professor Mapero, that the sphinx dates from the inconceivable remote period of the Horshesu, or “followers of Horus;” that is to say, from those prehistoric times when Egypt was ruled by a number of petty chieftains, before Mena welded the ancient principalities into a united kingdom. Those principalities then became the nomes, or provinces, of historic times; and the former local chieftains became semi-independent feudatories, such as we find surviving with undiminished authority and importance during the twelfth dynasty.—[Note to second edition.]

A long-disputed question as to the meaning of the sphinx has of late been finally solved. The sphinx is shown by M. J. de Rougé, according to an inscription at Edfu, to represent a transformation of Horus, who in order to vanquish Set (Typhon) took the shape of a human-headed lion. It was under this form that Horus was adored in the Nome Leontopolites. In the above-mentioned stela of Boulak, known as the stone of Cheops, the Great Sphinx is especially designated as the Sphinx of Hor-em-Khou, or Horus-on-the-Horizon. This is evidently in reference to the orientation of the figure. It has often been asked why the sphinx is turned to the east. I presume the answer would be, because Horus, avenger of Osiris, looks to the east, awaiting the return of his father from the lower world. As Horus was supposed to have reigned over Egypt, every Pharaoh took the title of Living Horus, Golden Hawk, etc. Hence the features of the reigning king were always given to the sphinx form when architecturally employed, as at Karnak, Wady Sabooah, Tanis, etc.

[269] It is certainly not a temple. It may be a mastaba, or votive chapel. It looks most like a tomb. It is entirely built of plain and highly polished monoliths of alabaster and red granite, laid square and simply, like a sort of costly and magnificent Stonehenge; and it consists of a forecourt, a hall of pillars, three principal chambers, some smaller chambers, a secret recess, and a well. The chambers contain horizontal niches which it is difficult to suppose could have been intended for anything but the reception of mummies; and at the bottom of the well were found three statues of King Khafra (Chephren); one of which is the famous diorite portrait-statue of the Boulak Museum. In an interesting article contributed to the “Révue Arch.” (vol. xxvi. Paris, 1873), M. du Barry-Merval has shown, as it seems, quite clearly, that the Temple of the Sphinx is in fact a dependency of the second pyramid. It is possible that the niches may have been designed for the queen and family of Khafra, whose own mummy would of course be buried in his pyramid.

[270] This letter appeared in The Times of March 18, 1874.

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

AMELIA BLANDFORD EDWARDS.=> AMELIA BLANFORD EDWARDS. {Frontispiece} Shegered-Durr, a beautiul Turkish=> Shegered-Durr, a beautiful Turkish {fn 6} cut a sorroy figure=> cut a sorry figure {pg 46} But the must amazing=> But the most amazing {pg 46} low perdendicular cliffs=> low perpendicular cliffs {pg 46} This colussus is now raised=> This colossus is now raised {fn 19} it place in history=> its place in history {pg 62} and murmnr’d “bakhshîsh!”=> and murmur’d “bakhshîsh!” {pg 63} certain amount of insistance=> certain amount of insistence {pg 66} is supended a goat-skin bucket=> is suspended a goat-skin bucket {fn 22} a shoal of medicant monks=> a shoal of mendicant monks {pg 75} and most suble gradations=> and most subtle gradations {pg 77} régulièrement trios enfants sur cinq=> régulièrement troos enfants sur cinq {fn 24} to downs-tairs=> to down-stairs {pg 83} fifty colored lanters outlined=> fifty colored lanterns outlined {pg 84} for contemplatation=> for contemplation {pg 91} nomarch of the Lycopolite nome=> monarch of the Lycopolite nome {pg 95} the twelth dynasty=> the twelfth dynasty {pg 26} reputation for unusal sanctity=> reputation for unusual sanctity {fn 31} effect of afterg-low=> effect of after-glow {pg 105} towed by goverment=> towed by government {pg 106} the precints=> the precincts {pg 111} these gloomy threshelds=> these gloomy thresholds {pg 118} the Triad worshiped=> the Triad worshipped {fn 44} La culta de Bes parait=> La culte de Bes parait {fn 45} but quite preceptibly=> but quite perceptibly {pg 147} for which purpuse=> for which purpose {pg 147} expressive pantomine=> expressive pantomime {pg 148 x 2} of more that doubtful=> of more than doubtful {pg 148} incapable of oevenge=> incapable of revenge {pg 150} his bad cnes=> his bad ones {pg 150} much better rharacter=> much better character {pg 150} the usual attemps=> the usual attempts {pg 160} the judical susceptibilities=> the judicial susceptibilities {pg 161} we found ourselvelves=> we found ourselves {pg 170} his next two successsors=> his next two successors {fn 54} following succint account=> following succinct account {fn 56} on the righ road to Thebes=> on the high road to Thebes {pg 197} in the precints=> in the precincts {pg 199} supended in his time=> suspended in his time {fn 60} and believd Philæ to=> and believed Philæ to {fn 61} when Burkhardt went up=> when Burckhardt went up {pg 202} their tale intelligbly=> their tale intelligibly {pg 208} is as audidle=> is as audible {pg 209} ancient blue porcelian=> ancient blue porcelain {pg 216} but found them to much defaced=> but found them too much defaced {pg 233} But with he second Rameses=> But with the second Rameses {pg 236} through Westminister Abbey=> through Westminster Abbey {pg 237} sharer of the thorne=> sharer of the throne {pg 238} it has often deen observed=> it has often been observed {fn 84} A similiar document=> A similar document {pg 247} colored mosaice=> colored mosaics {pg 95} Marray is wrong=> Murray is wrong {pg 95} almost unparalelled length=> almost unparalleled length {pg 105} the ninteenth dynasty=> the nineteenth dynasty {fn 108} were wont to speak of them as=> were wont to speak of them as as {pg 181} size or of portaiture=> size or of portraiture {pg 260} From the southermost colossus=> From the southernmost colossus {pg 261} the hieroglypic character=> the hieroglyphic character {pg 266} gloomy magnificance=> gloomy magnificence {pg 271} the besigers’ camp=> the besiegers’ camp {pg 272} to represents water=> to represent water {pg 274} is almst Panathenaic=> is almost Panathenaic {pg 274} the city of the beseiged=> the city of the besieged {pg 274} a sort of Egyption Iliad=> a sort of Egyptian Iliad {pg 274} Archilles is left out=> Achilles is left out {pg 275} there is no vendure=> there is no verdure {pg 284} north of the second contract=> north of the second cataract {pg 284} jewels, and papiry=> jewels, and papyri {pg 304} at once fell swoop=> at one fell swoop {pg 305} Governor of Ethiopia=> Govornor of Ethiopia {pg 316} in conjuction or identification=> in conjunction or identification {fn 143} ordrer of Mariette Bey=> order of Mariette Bey {pg 154} towered, loop-hooled=> towered, loop-holed {pg 334} little flanking off=> little flaking off {pg 374} The wall scuptures=> The wall sculptures {pg 381} and more respectfully designated=> are more respectfully designated {fn 208} wholly pontomimic=> wholly pantomimic {pg 413} schoolmaster—come round=> schoolmaster—came round {pg 416} were introdouced from=> were introduced from {pg 448} is appearent to every=> is apparent to every {pg 451} been cherised by=> been cherished by {pg 452} The decrepancies between these=> The discrepancies between these {pg 452} Twefth dynasty=> Twelfth dynasty {pg 454} some being addressed=> some beng addressed {pg 454}

---