A thousand miles up the Nile

by Amelia B. Edwards

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.