After-reflection convinced us that we had stumbled upon a chance Nubian grave, and that the bowls (which at first we absurdly dignified with the name of cinerary urns) were but the usual water-bowls placed at the heads of the dead. But we were in no mood for reflection at the time. We made sure that the speos was a mortuary chapel; that the vault was a vertical pit leading to a sepulchral chamber; and that at the bottom of it we should find—who could tell what? Mummies, perhaps, and sarcophagi, and funerary statuettes, and jewels, and papyri and wonders without end! That these uncared-for bones should be laid in the mouth of such a pit, scarcely occurred to us as an incongruity. Supposing them to be Nubian remains, what then? If a modern Nubian at the top, why not an ancient Egyptian at the bottom?

As the work of excavation went on, however, the vault was found to be entered by a steep inclined plane. Then the inclined plane turned out to be a flight of much worn and very shallow stairs. These led down to a small square landing, some twelve feet below the surface, from which landing an arched doorway[128] and passage opened into the fore-court of the speos. Our sailors had great difficulty in excavating this part, in consequence of the weight of superincumbent sand and débris on the side next the speos. By shoring up the ground, however, they were enabled completely to clear the landing, which was curiously paved with cones of rude pottery like the bottoms of amphoræ. These cones, of which we took out some twenty eight or thirty, were not in the least like the celebrated funerary cones found so abundantly at Thebes. They bore no stamp, and were much shorter and more lumpy in shape. Finally, the cones being all removed, we came to a compact and solid floor of baked clay.

The painter, meanwhile, had also been at work. Having traced the circuit and drawn out a ground-plan, he came to the conclusion that the whole mass adjoining the southern wall of the speos was in fact composed of the ruins of a pylon, the walls of which were seven feet in thickness, built in regular string-courses of molded brick, and finished at the angles with the usual torus, or round molding. The superstructure, with its chambers, passages, and top cornice, was gone; and this part with which we were now concerned was merely the basement, and included the bottom of the staircase.

The painter’s ground-plan demolished all our hopes at one fell swoop. The vault was a vault no longer. The staircase led to no sepulchral chamber. The brick floor had no secret entrance. Our mummies melted into thin air, and we were left with no excuse for carrying on the excavations. We were mortally disappointed. In vain we told ourselves that the discovery of a large brick pylon, the existence of which had been unsuspected by preceding travelers, was an event of greater importance than the finding of a tomb. We had set our hearts on the tomb; and I am afraid we cared less than we ought for the pylon.

Having traced thus far the course of the excavations and the way in which one discovery led step by step to another, I must now return to the speos, and, as accurately as I can, describe it, not only from my notes made on the spot, but by the light of such observations as I afterward made among structures of the same style and period. I must, however, premise that, not being able to go inside while the excavators were in occupation, and remaining but one whole day at Abou Simbel after the work was ended, I had but a short time at my disposal. I would gladly have made colored copies of all the wall-paintings; but this was impossible. I therefore was obliged to be content with transcribing the inscriptions and sketching a few of the more important subjects.

The rock-cut chamber which I have hitherto described as a speos, and which we at first believed to be a tomb, was in fact neither the one or the other. It was the adytum of a partly built, partly excavated monument coeval in date with the great temple. In certain points of design this monument resembles the contemporary speos of Bayt-el-Welly. It is evident, for instance, that the outer halls of both were originally vaulted; and the much mutilated sculptures over the doorway of the excavated chamber at Abou Simbel are almost identical in subject and treatment with those over the entrance to the excavated parts of Bayt-el-Welly. As regards general conception, the Abou Simbel monument comes under the same head with the contemporary Temples of Derr, Gerf Hossayn, and Wady Sabooah; being in a mixed style which combines excavation with construction. This style seems to have been peculiarly in favor during the reign of Rameses II.

Situated at the southeastern angle of the rock, a little way beyond the façade of the great temple, this rock-cut adytum and hall of entrance face southeast by east, and command much the same view that is commanded higher up by the Temple of Hathor. The adytum, or excavated speos, measures twenty-one feet two and one-half inches in breadth by fourteen feet eight inches in length. The height from floor to ceiling is about twelve feet. The doorway measures four feet three and one-half inches in width; and the outer recess for the door-frame, five feet. Two large circle holes, one in the threshold and the other in the lintel, mark the place of the pivot on which the door once swung.

It is not very easy to measure the outer hall in its present ruined and encumbered state; but as nearly as we could judge, its dimensions are as follows: Length, twenty-five feet; width, twenty-two and one-half feet; width of principal entrance facing the Nile, six feet; width of two side entrances, four feet and six feet respectively; thickness of crude-brick walls, three feet. Engaged in the brickwork on either side of the principal entrance to this hall are two stone door-jambs; and some six or eight feet in front of these there originally stood two stone hawks on hieroglyphed pedestals. One of these hawks we found in situ, the other lay some little distance off, and the painter (suspecting nothing of these after-revelations) had used it as a post to which to tie one of the main ropes of his sketching-tent. A large hieroglyphed slab, which I take to have formed part of the door, lay overturned against the side of the pylon some few yards nearer the river.

1.Wall of pylon.
2.Square landing.
3.Arched doorway and passage leading to vaulted hall.
4.Walls of outer hall or pronaos.
5.Door-jambs.
6.Stone hawks on pedestals.
7.Torus of pylon.
8.Arched entrances in north wall of pronaos.