THEBES, AS SEEN IN HISTORY.
All the mere ruins of Thebes, however, immense and magnificent as they are, fail to give us true views of her greatness, till we go back to her origin, and trace up her history; and this is so graphically done by Thompson, in his “Egypt, Past and Present,” that we quote from it, what he so appropriately calls “Dissolving Views: Panorama of Karnak.” “In order,” he says, “to a complete view of Thebes, past and present, one should reproduce its sculptured story, and make it witness for itself. The temple of Karnak, in its several parts, marks the rise, the growth, the decline, and the fall of Egypt. This temple had a growth of twenty-five hundred years, from a small sanctuary to ‘a city of temples.’ Every principal era of the national history is represented in this stupendous pile; and as we go leisurely around it, and translate into our own language, or vivify into present actual scenes, the processions, the battles, the ceremonies, the religious offerings, and the state displays, sculptured on its walls and columns, and for the most part still legible, we behold all Egypt move before us as in a panorama, whose scenes and actors are instinct with life. This animated reproduction of the sculptures, which I attempted when on the ground, I would hope to convey to the reader by following in course the histories here written on the stone.
“I stood in Karnak, under the light of the full moon. It was an hour for silence, and we enjoined this upon each other, and gave ourselves to solitary musing. The cuckoo, that had wooed us with his note as we reposed under the great pillars in the sultry noon, had gone to nestle with his mate; and the myriad birds that by day had fluttered along the corridors, had hid themselves in the crevices of the capitals. Even the owl that hooted as we entered, was still. Only the moon was there, threading the avenues with silver footsteps, and holding her clear light that we might read the sculptured chronicles of kings. We sat down in the center of the grand avenue. Twelve majestic pillars, on either hand, towered along its length, and seemed, as of old, to support an arch of azure studded with stars. The dismantled towers of the grand entrance, whose bases stand like pyramids truncated to sustain the firmament, grew more gigantic in the shadow of the columns, while their once massive gates, uncovered by the hand of time, seemed only to have lifted up their heads to let the King of Glory in. In the avenue that crossed beside our seat, (one of twelve, having each ten columns of huge dimensions,) at either extremity, a column had fallen crosswise against its neighbor, carrying with it its fragment of the stone roof, and there it hung almost ethereal in the still moonlight, a symbol of the struggle between man and time. Under the corridors, darkness brooded over the fragments of sculptured stone; but beyond the other portal, the yet perfect obelisk stood in pensive majesty among its fallen mates, and from its clear, hard face projected in the moonbeams the symbols of the power that built these halls, and of the worship that sustained them. The spell of Egypt was complete. For two months I had lived under its deepening power. At length, in the sepulchers of its kings, and on the walls and pillars of its temples, I had seen the Egypt of forty centuries revived as in a panorama fresh from the artist’s pencil, and had lived in the Egypt that the Nile then watered, as in the so-called Egypt that it waters now. And here I had come to bid it farewell, to take a last look at its grave; and yet the witching moonlight made it live again. The breath of the south fanning the columns that in their fourth decade of centuries wear no ivied wreath of age, warmed their still grandeur into life, and with Memnon’s charm they sang to the moon the great epic of the past. As I listened, all art, all learning, all religion, all poetry, all history, all empire, and all time, swept through my wondering soul. Leaving my companions, I wandered over the fragments of columns and sphinxes and colossi, till, gaining a mound that half buries the front area of the temple, I clambered up the steps worn by age in its stupendous wall, and standing in their foremost tower, looked back on Karnak. But no change of place, nor sight of fallen columns and decaying walls, could break the spell. I had walked over the grave of Egypt, I had stumbled against the fragments of its sepulcher, yet Egypt stood before me.
“First came the second son of Ham, with a long retinue of camels and of servants, lured southward by the fertile valley of the Nile, till, where the mountains widen their embrace around the well-watered plain, he pitches his tent, and founds an infant city. Generations pass, and the son who in this plain inherits the patriarchal wealth and power, greedy of the patrimony of his brethren to the north, wages a fratricidal war, and seizing upon all Mizr or ‘the land of Ham,’ effaces from it the name of his ancestors, and, investing it with his own, gives Egypt (Copt or Gurt) a name and a power in the newly divided earth. Other generations pass, and the first king of Egypt comes with barbaric pomp, from the capital he has founded at the north, to visit his native Theba, the real ‘head’ or capital, and here offers to its divinity the rude shrine whose traces linger behind yonder obelisk. Ages roll on. The swelling Nile pours out increasing fatness on the land. The earth brings forth by handfuls. Fat-fleshed, well-favored cattle come up out of the river and feed in the meadow. There is great plenteousness for man and beast. But with all the plenty there is no waste. In every city huge granaries are built, and in these the grain is piled, as the sand of the sea, without measure. There is a strange wisdom near the throne of Pharaoh. Again, the east wind blows, and the scorching sands of the Arabian desert are heaped upon the fertile Nile. In the mountains of Ethiopia there is no rain. The river shrinks away. The plain of Thebes is dry. The people cry for bread, but the keys of the great storehouses are in the hand of the ruler of the land. They bring to him their money; they bring to him their cattle; they sell to him their land: they sell to him their very selves for bread. Again, the east wind ceases; the rains fall, the river rises; the desert retreats; the land revives. And now the great Pharaoh, whom the counsel of a captive Jew has made possessor of all the treasure and all the land of Egypt, moved by a religious sentiment but half enlightened, would make a votive offering to his god. A fleet of barges covers the bosom of the Nile, which with waving banners and gorgeous emblems and increasing music, have borne the monarch from his northern to his southern capital. With solemn pomp the procession of priests and soldiers and chief officers of state, with the uplifted monarch in the midst, files from the river to the rude sanctuary of Menes, which the skill of masons and of sculptors has already surrounded with columns of rich red granite, and chambers of polished stone, and with colossal statues of the king—the offering he brings to the divinity, whom he adores as the preserver of the land; and while the monarch bows before the god, the sound of trumpets, and the fragrance of incense, and the chanting of the priests, announce to the multitude that Amun accepts the gift, and will be henceforth worshiped in their temple. Osirtasen the Great passes away.
“The ages roll. A native Theban usurps the throne of the northern Pharaohs, and succeeds to the power they had consolidated through the counsel of the Hebrew, vouchsafed to them through fourscore years. But Joseph is dead; embalmed and coffined in a royal sarcophagus; and Amosis the usurper knows him not. Oppression fills the land, and falls most heavily upon the seed of Joseph. Another Theban Pharaoh mounts the throne, and to preserve the power that the wisdom of a Hebrew gave, determines to cut off the issue of the Hebrews from the land. Yet in his own house, even as a son, in all the learning of his schools, amid all the splendors of his court, is nurtured a young Hebrew who yet shall desolate the land that Joseph blessed. But just now this rising terror has fled into the desert, and the first Thothmes comes in peaceful pomp to offer to the divinity of Thebes the gigantic obelisks that bear his name. He plants them yonder in the area before the sanctuary of Osirtasen. The third Thothmes is on the throne. There is groaning throughout the land of Egypt; there is deep sorrow in the land of Goshen. The monarch would make his name immortal by the temples, the palaces, and the monuments he rears in every city, from the great sea to the cataracts of Nubia. He adorns his native capital upon its western bank with a new sanctuary added to the temple of his father, and with another temple inclosed with brick, that bear in hieroglyphics his own initials; and here at Karnak, he builds behind the sanctuary, a thousand feet from where I stand, the grand edifice of fifty columns that surpasses all the royal architecture yet seen in Thebes. In its adytum he enshrines a colossal figure of the deified hawk that he worships. He is the great architect of Egypt, and he will fill the land with the memorials of his reign. Heliopolis and Noph, Zoan and Sin, attest his grandeur. But the voice of another God now thunders in his ear. The exiled Hebrew has returned. The land is filled with plagues, frogs, lice, flies, blood, murrain, hail, locusts, darkness, death. The king has gone from Thebes to Zoan, his most northern seat, where these judgments overtake him. The land of Goshen, that had sweltered under his exactions, breathes more freely, and he lets the people go. But gathering his chariots of war in mad haste, he pursues them, and hems them in between the mountains and the sea. Eager for his prey, he plunges into the channel God has made for them, and the proud architect of Egypt returns not, even to occupy the gorgeous tomb he had prepared for himself at Thebes.
“The ages roll on, and a mighty conqueror sits on the throne of Egypt. With his myriad chariots he sweeps Ethiopia on the south, and Canaan on the north, and gathering all the forces of the Nile, he shakes Lebanon with his tread, and scatters the hosts of Syria on the plains of the Euphrates. And now there is an unwonted stir in Thebes. From all Egypt the priests and the great men are gathered to greet the conqueror’s return. In the distance, amid clouds of infantry, is seen the chariot of the king. Bound to his chariot wheels are the captive princes he has taken in his wars. Behind him are his son, and the royal scribe who bears the record of his victories. A long line of captives, bound about the necks with cords, follow in his train. The cortege moves from temple to temple through the city, till it reaches that of Karnak. Here, alighting from his chariot, the monarch enters the temple of Amunre, to present his captives and booty to the protecting deity of Thebes; then laying his captives on the block, with a ponderous club he dashes out their brains as a sacrifice to the god, and amid the acclamations of the people, is borne like a god to his own palace. And now the conqueror, reposing on his laurels, gives himself to the work of enriching the capital with new and more splendid edifices for the honor of its divinities, and the commemoration of his reign. From all Egypt are summoned the masons and sculptors, the painters and artificers and ‘cunning workmen;’ and the army that had stormed the hights of Lebanon now levies from the mountains of the Arabian desert their tribute of limestone and sandstone and granite of various hues, of syenite and porphyry and alabaster, to construct these temples, and to adorn these avenues. The grand hall of Karnak rises in its majestic proportions, a fit approach to the sanctuary of Amun. Its gates lift up their heads. Its tenfold avenues rear their massive, lofty, graceful pillars—each a single stone hewn into a rounded, swelling shaft, with a wreathed or flowered capital—and with their roof of solid stone, compose the portico that there in the moonlight, restored to its original perfection, stands confessed the wonder of the world. The chisel sculptures on its walls and columns the battle scenes of the king and his offerings to the god, and the name of Osirei passes into history. His son succeeds to his victories and to his glory. For, on the far off plains of Asia, the great Sesostris breaks the power of the Assyrian hosts, and leads their captive chiefs in chains. Babylon bows to Egypt. There is another day of exultation in the capital; but the pomp of the returning Osirei pales before the national ovation to his son. The priests, in their sacred vestments, go forth to meet him, bearing aloft the figures of his illustrious ancestors, from Menes to Osirei. The king, alighting from his chariot, mounts the triumphal car prepared for his reception, whose fiery steeds are led by liveried grooms. His fan-bearers wave the flabella over his head, and the priests and the chief men of the nation kneel in homage at his throne. And now the grand procession forms to enter the city. Trumpeters herald its approach, and bands of music, with choristers, form the van. In long line the priests and officers of state precede the monarch, bearing scepters, arms, and other insignia, and the cushioned steps of the throne. The statues of his ancestors head the royal column, and after these is borne a statue of the god upon men’s shoulders under a gilded canopy. The sacred bull, adorned with garlands, is led by members of the sacerdotal order. The monarch is attended by his scribes, who exhibit proudly the scroll of his achievements. Behind his car are dragged the captives, their chained hands uplifted for mercy, and their cries and lamentations mingling wildly with the bursts of music and the shouts of the multitude. These are followed by the spoils of war—oxen, chariots, horses, and sacks of gold; and beyond, a corps of infantry in close array, flanked by numerous chariots, bring up the rear. The vast throng sweep from temple to temple, and rend the air with acclamations. At length the divinity, that had been taken from its shrine to welcome the victor, is brought before its own adytum. Here the high-priest offers incense to the monarch, who, in turn, alights from his throne and burns incense to the god. And now the horrid sacrifice of war is made to the patron deity. The wretched captives are beaten in the presence of the king; their right hands are cut off, and being counted by the scribes, are retained as trophies: their persons are horribly mutilated; their heads are severed by the sword or mangled by the mace, and the gorgeous, barbarous scene is closed.
“There is peace in Egypt; and the king builds, on yonder western bank, the majestic and beautiful Memnonium, covers its walls with the story of his victories, and sets before its gate the stupendous statue of himself, the symbol of the grandeur and the power of Egypt, enthroned in a sublime and an immortal repose. He builds the vast area of Luxor, with its massive gates and towers, and before these plants colossal statues of himself and lofty obelisks, and lines with huge symbolic sculptures the avenue to Karnak. Here he lays up before the shrine of Amun, as depicted on the walls, a gorgeous barge overlaid with gold without, and with silver within, a tribute from the spoils of war. He enriches the walls of the grand hall by adding to the sculptured story of his father’s reign the battle scenes of his own, and before the portico constructs this area of a hundred thousand square feet, surrounded with its covered corridor, and adorned with sphinxes and a central avenue of tufted columns, and faced with these stupendous towers. He throws around the whole a massive wall, and Karnak stands complete in the glory of the great Remeses. Then follows the resplendent dynasty of all the Osirei and the Remeses, and Egypt culminates to its meridian splendor. Her schools rise with her temples, and the epic bard of Scio sings the ‘hundred gates of Thebes,’ while the priests and the philosophers of young Greece resort to the mother of mythology and of letters, and Grecian sculptors come to study the forms and creations of the mother of art. The king of Israel, whose fame for wisdom and for wealth is known in all the earth, wooes the daughter of the king of Egypt, and she whom ‘the sun had looked upon’ on the confines of Ethiopia, shines in the golden palace at Jerusalem, ‘beautiful as Tirzeh, and comely as the tents of Kedar.’
“But again the hosts of Egypt are marshaled for battle; again they sweep the borders of the north; again is heard the shout of victory; again Thebes is astir for the conqueror’s return. Now Shishak brings to the temple of Amun the treasures of the house of Jehovah at Jerusalem; the golden shields of Solomon, and the treasures of the palace he had built. Twelve hundred chariots, and sixty thousand horsemen, and footmen without number, swell the train of the victorious king. Nailing the heads of his wretched captives to the block of the executioner, he whets his sword to sacrifice them to the god; and the blood of Israel once more cries to God from the land of Egypt. From afar the voice of the prophet speaks the answer of Jehovah to that cry: ‘Behold, I am against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and will break his arms; and I will cause the sword to fall out of his hand. Howl ye; woe, woe the day! For the day is near, even the day of the Lord is near, a cloudy day. The sword shall come upon Egypt; and the pride of her power shall come down.’ Again a mighty host, sweeping from the north, hovers upon the plain of Thebes. The idols are moved in their temples, the cry of the people is in the streets. But it is not now the return of her victorious king that stirs the royal city. The great ram from the plains of Persia, pushing westward and southward, gores Egypt with his horns, overthrows her temples and her statues, treads Memnon and Remeses in the dust, drinks up the river and devours the valley. There is sorrow and groaning in the land of Egypt for a hundred years, when lo! again the dust of mighty hosts sweeps from the north. The he-goat from the west, moved with choler at the ram, that drinks up the great rivers, rushes upon him in the fury of his power, and casts him down and stamps upon him. The Persian conqueror of Thebes retires before the Macedonian conqueror of Persia. Greece, though a conqueror, pays homage to Egypt as her mistress. New cities are built; temples and monuments are restored. Upon the plain of Thebes, new works of art unite the sculptured records of the Ptolemies with the broken tablets of the Pharaohs. Karnak itself opens new portals, and revives its ancient splendor. Again the schools of Egypt are visited from Greece. And where Homer drank his inspiration, and Herodotus pored over the hieroglyphics, and the papyrus records, and the dim traditions of the then old world, Plato comes to ponder the great mysteries of the soul’s existence, and its relations to the infinite.
“But the doom of Egypt is not yet fulfilled. Her resurrection can not now come. The gigantic horn that sweeps the stars, trails the young Egypt of Alexander in the dust. Again she lifts her head and wooes her conqueror to repose awhile in the lap of luxury. Beauty usurps the dominion of power; and the golden barge of Cleopatra sweeps up the Nile with silken sails perfumed with sweetest odors, or moves with silver oars attuned to the soft melody of lutes. Rome adds her tamer art to the great majesty of Egypt, and restores yet further what the Persian had destroyed. Yet Egypt may not rise. A new power enters to possess the land. Under the Roman name, the religion that had visited the land with Abraham, with Joseph, and with Moses, comes to enshrine itself in these old temples, emptied of their gods and broken in their forms. The voice of prayer and praise to the God of Israel is heard in the temple built by their oppressor, and the name of the infant whom Egypt sheltered, is spoken with reverence and adoration in all her holy places. Yonder, in the furthest temple of this mighty pile, a Christian church assembles; there, in the court of Luxor, stands another Christian altar, while, across the river, the colonnade of Medeenet Abou encompasses the lesser columns of a Christian temple built within its folds. But the spirit of the old temple lingers in its form, and with it embraces the new. Again the liveried priests march through the corridors, bearing mysterious symbols, and chanting unknown strains. Again the pomp of state is blended with the pomp of worship, and the pictured saint but plasters over the sculptured deity. The religion and the empire of Rome are alike effete, and can give no life to Egypt. And now barbaric hordes from the east pour in upon the land, and sweep these both away. The sword of the Moslem, hacking the plastered walls, writes there in blood the forgotten truth, there is one God, though it add thereto the stupendous lie, that makes the other cardinal of his religion. The wild man of the desert pitches his tent upon the plain where Mizraim halted centuries before, or hides himself under the cover of broken tombs and temples. He hardly moves from his retreat, when the imperious Turk, his brother Moslem, proclaims himself master of Egypt and Arabia by the will of God. And now here sits the Arab on this luxurious plain, among these crumbling giants of the past, startled at his own shadow, without the spirit to fight either for himself against his tyrant, or for his country in that tyrant’s service. Here he sits, where Osirei and Remeses and Shishak have chronicled their names and deeds beside their own gigantic portraits. Here he sits, where moved in royal state the conqueror of Ethiopia, of Judah, of Syria, and of Babylon. Here he sits, where the fierce Cambyses dealt his retribution; where Alexander moved with a pomp that none but he could boast; where Cæsar followed in the train of mighty men—yet owned the greater might of woman. Here he sits—‘Il faut descendre,’ said my guide, who had tortured his Arabic gutturals into a rude French; ‘il faut descendre,’ (it is necessary to go down.) Il faut descendre, repeated I, as I looked over upon the tombs of the kings, all drear and ghostly in the moonlight; and looked where Memnon stood, and all was desolate; and looked toward Luxor, where the moonlight stole faintly through its broken towers; and turned and looked at Karnak, as the meridian moon now shone upon heaps of rubbish, and broken columns, and crumbling walls. Il faut descendre, IT MUST GO DOWN; and, turning to descend, I stumbled over an Arab hovel, plastered upon the very top of the tower of Sesostris, and heard the yelping of the dogs from the huts that bury the side temple of the conqueror of Babylon. The spell was broken; and Egypt was a dream. Riding back, amid barking dogs and shivering, shrinking Arabs, over the dusty plain to Luxor, I lay down upon the divan where, two months before, I had dreamed of Egypt, when, entering the Nile, I felt her resistless spell. But no dream of Egypt came. Egypt herself had vanished. As a dream when one awaketh, so, O Lord, when thou awakedst, thou didst despise her image.”
OTHER RUINS IN EGYPT, &C.
There are in Egypt and the valley of the Nile, numerous other ruins, relics and monuments of the mighty past, on which it would be most interesting and instructive to dwell, were they not overshadowed by the wonderful structures we have been considering. Some of these, however, ought not to be passed without notice.