A thousand miles up the Nile

by Amelia B. Edwards

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.