[33] The names of Augustus, Caligula, Tiberius, Domitian, Claudius, and Nero are found in the royal ovals; the oldest being those of Ptolemy XI, the founder of the present edifice, which was, however, rebuilt upon the site of a succession of older buildings, of which the most ancient dated back as far as the reign of Khufu, the builder of the great pyramid. This fact, and the still more interesting fact that the oldest structure of all was believed to belong to the inconceivably remote period of the Horshesu, or “followers of Horus” (i. e. the petty chiefs, or princes, who ruled in Egypt before the foundation of the first monarchy), is recorded in the following remarkable inscription discovered by Mariette in one of the crypts constructed in the thickness of the walls of the present temple. The first text relates to certain festivals to be celebrated in honor of Hathor, and states that all the ordained ceremonies had been performed by King Thothmes III (eighteenth dynasty) “in memory of his mother, Hathor of Denderah. And they found the great fundamental rules of Denderah in ancient writing, written on goat-skin in the time of the followers of Horus. This was found in the inside of a brick wall during the reign of King Pepi (sixth dynasty).” In the same crypt, another and a more brief inscription runs thus: “Great fundamental rule of Denderah. Restorations done by Thothmes III, according to what was found in ancient writing of the time of King Khufu.” Hereupon Mariette remarks: “The temple of Denderah is not, then, one of the most modern in Egypt, except in so far as it was constructed by one of the later Lagidæ. Its origin is literally lost in the night of time.” See “Dendérah, Description Générale,” chap. i. pp. 55, 56.
[34] See Mariette’s “Denderah,” which contains the whole of these multitudinous inscriptions in one hundred and sixty-six plates; also a selection of some of the most interesting in Brugsch and Dümichen’s “Recueil de Monuments Egyptiens” and “Geographische Inschriften,” 1862, 1863, 1865 and 1866.
[35] Hathor (or more correctly Hat-hor, i. e. the abode of Horus), is not merely the Aphrodite of ancient Egypt; she is the pupil of the eye of the sun; she is goddess of that beneficent planet whose rising heralds the waters of the inundation; she represents the eternal youth of nature, and is the direct personification of the beautiful. She is also goddess of truth. “I offer the truth to thee, O Goddess of Denderah!” says the king, in one of the inscriptions of the sanctuary of the sistrum; “for truth is thy work, and thou thyself art truth.” Lastly, her emblem is the sistrum, and the sound of the sistrum, according to Plutarch, was supposed to terrify and expel Typhon (the evil principle); just as in mediæval times the ringing of church-bells was supposed to scare Beelzebub and his crew. From this point of view, the sistrum becomes typical of the triumph of good over evil. Mariette, in his analysis of the decorations and inscriptions of this temple, points out how the builders were influenced by the prevailing philosophy of the age, and how they veiled the Platonism of Alexandria beneath the symbolism of the ancient religion. The Hat-hor of Denderah was in fact worshiped in a sense unknown to the Egyptians of pre-Ptolemaic times.
[36] Arabic, “kharûf,” pronounced “haroof”—English, sheep.
[37] This famous building is supposed by some to be identical both with the Memnonium of Strabo and the tomb of Osymandias as described by Diodorus Siculus. Champollion, however, following the sense of the hieroglyphed legends, in which it is styled “The House of Rameses” (II), has given to it the more appropriate name of the Ramesseum.
[38] Translated into French by the late Vicomte de Rougé under the title of “Le Poëme de Pentaour,” 1856; into English by Mr. Goodwin, 1858; and again by Professor Lushington in 1874. See “Records of the Past,” vol. ii.
[39] According to the great inscription of Abydos translated by Professor Maspero, Rameses II would seem to have been in some sense king from his birth, as if the throne of Egypt came to him through his mother, and as if his father, Seti I, had reigned for him during his infancy as king-regent. Some inscriptions, indeed, show him to have received homage even before his birth.
[40] The ruins of the great Temple of Luxor have undergone a complete transformation since the above description was written; Professor Maspero, during the two last years of his official rule as successor to the late Mariette Pasha, having done for this magnificent relic of Pharaonic times what his predecessor did for the more recent temple of Edfoo. The difficulties of carrying out this great undertaking were so great as to appear at the first sight almost insurmountable. The fellâheen refused at first to sell their houses; Mustapha Aga asked the exorbitant price of £3,000 for his consular residence, built as it was between the columns of Horemheb, facing the river; and for no pecuniary consideration whatever was it possible to purchase the right of pulling down the mosque in the first great court-yard of the temple. After twelve months of negotiation, the fellâheen were at last bought out on the fair terms, each proprietor receiving a stated price for his dwelling and a piece of land elsewhere upon which to build another. Some thirty families were thus got rid of, about eight or ten only refusing to leave at any price. The work of demolition was begun in 1885. In 1886, the few families yet lingering in the ruins followed the example of the rest; and in the course of that season the temple was cleared from end to end, only the little native mosque being left standing within the precincts, and Mustapha Aga’s house on the side next the landing-place. Professor Maspero’s resignation followed in 1887, since when the work has been carried on by his successor, M. Grébaut, with the result that in place of a crowded, sordid, unintelligible labyrinth of mud huts, yards, stables, alleys and dung-heaps, a noble temple, second only to that of Karnak for grandeur of design and beauty of proportion, now marshals its avenues of columns and uplifts its sculptured architraves along the crest of the ridge which here rises high above the eastern bank of the Nile. Some of those columns, now that they are cleared down to the level of the original pavement, measure fifty-seven feet in the shaft; and in the court-yard built by Rameses II, which measures one hundred and ninety feet by one hundred and seventy, a series of beautiful colossal statues of that Pharaoh in highly polished red granite have been discovered, some yet standing in situ, having been built into the walls of the mud structures and imbedded (for who shall say how many centuries?) in a sepulcher of ignoble clay. Last of all, Mustapha Aga, the kindly and popular old British consul, whose hospitality will long be remembered by English travelers, died about twelve months since, and the house in which he entertained so many English visitors, and upon which he set so high a value, is even now in course of demolition.
[41] The size of these stones not being given in any of our books, I paced the length of one of the shadows, and (allowing for so much more at each end as would be needed to reach to the centers of the two capitals on which it rested) found the block above must measure at least twenty five feet in length. The measurements of the great hall are, in plain figures, one hundred and seventy feet in length by three hundred and twenty-nine in breadth. It contains one hundred and thirty-four columns, of which the central twelve stand sixty-two feet high in the shaft (or about seventy with the plinth and abacus), and measure thirty-four feet six inches in circumference. The smaller columns stand forty-two feet five inches in the shaft, and measure twenty-eight feet in circumference. All are buried to a depth of between six and seven feet in the alluvial deposits of between three and four thousand annual inundations.
[42] It has been calculated that every stone of these huge Pharaonic temples cost at least one human life.