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.