A journey to Central Africa

by Bayard Taylor

These distances convey an idea of the extent of the ancient city, but fail to represent the grand proportions of the landscape, so well fitted, in its simple and majestic outlines, to inclose the most wonderful structures the world has ever seen. The green expanse of the plain; the airy coloring of the mountains; the mild, solemn blue of the cloudless Egyptian sky;—these are a part of Thebes, and inseparable from the remembrance of its ruins.

At sunrise we crossed to the western bank and moored our boat opposite Goorneh. It is advisable to commence with the Tombs, and close the inspection of that side with Medeenet Abou, reserving Karnak, the grandest of all, for the last. The most unimportant objects in Thebes are full of interest when seen first, whereas Karnak, once seen, fills one’s thoughts to the exclusion of every thing else. There are Arab guides for each bank, who are quite familiar with all the principal points, and who have a quiet and unobtrusive way of directing the traveller, which I should be glad to see introduced into England and Italy. Our guide, old Achmet Gourgàr, was a tall, lean gray-beard, who wore a white turban and long brown robe, and was most conscientious in his endeavors to satisfy us; We found several horses on the bank, ready saddled, and choosing two of the most promising, set off on a stirring gallop for the temple of Goorneh and the Valley of the Kings’ Tombs, leaving Achmet to follow with our breakfast, and the Arab boys with their water bottles.

The temple of Goorneh was built for the worship of Amun, the Theban Jupiter, by Osirei and his son, Remeses the Great, the supposed Sesostris, nearly fourteen hundred years before the Christian era. It is small, compared with the other ruins, but interesting from its rude and massive style, a remnant of the early period of Egyptian architecture. The two pylons in front of it are shattered down, and the dromos of sphinxes has entirely disappeared. The portico is supported by a single row of ten columns, which neither resemble each other, nor are separated by equal spaces. What is most singular, is the fact that notwithstanding this disproportion, which is also observable in the doorways, the general effect is harmonious. We tried to fathom the secret of this, and found no other explanation than in the lowness of the building, and the rough granite blocks of which it is built. One seeks no proportion in a natural temple of rock, or a cirque of Druid stones. All that the eye requires is rude strength, with a certain approach to order. The effect produced by this temple is of a similar character, barring its historical interest. Its dimensions are too small to be imposing, and I found, after passing it several times, that I valued it more as a feature in the landscape, than for its own sake.

The sand and pebbles clattered under the hoofs of our horses, as we galloped up the gorge of Biban el Molook, the “Gates of the Kings.” The sides are perpendicular cliffs of yellow rock, which increased in height, the further we advanced, and at last terminated in a sort of basin, shut in by precipices several hundred feet in height and broken into fantastic turrets, gables and pinnacles. The bottom is filled with huge heaps of sand and broken stones, left from the excavation of the tombs in the solid rock. There are twenty-one tombs in this valley, more than half of which are of great extent and richly adorned with paintings and sculptures. Some have been filled with sand or otherwise injured by the occasional rains which visit this region, while a few are too small and plain to need visiting. Sir Gardner Wilkinson has numbered them all in red chalk at the entrances, which is very convenient to those who use his work on Egypt as a guide. I visited ten of the principal tombs, to the great delight of the old guide, who complained that travellers are frequently satisfied with four or five. The general arrangement is the same in all, but they differ greatly in extent and in the character of their decoration.

The first we entered was the celebrated tomb of Remeses I., discovered by Belzoni. From the narrow entrance, a precipitous staircase, the walls of which are covered with columns of hieroglyphics, descends to a depth of forty feet, where it strikes a horizontal passage leading to an oblong chamber, in which was formerly a deep pit, which Belzoni filled. This pit protected the entrance to the royal chamber, which was also carefully walled up. In the grace and freedom of the drawings, and the richness of their coloring, this tomb surpasses all others. The subjects represented are the victories of the monarch, while in the sepulchral chamber he is received into the presence of the gods. The limestone rock is covered with a fine coating of plaster, on which the figures were first drawn with red chalk, and afterwards carefully finished in colors. The reds, yellows, greens and blues are very brilliant, but seem to have been employed at random, the gods having faces sometimes of one color, sometimes of another. In the furthest chamber, which was left unfinished, the subjects are only sketched in red chalk. Some of them have the loose and uncertain lines of a pupil’s hand, over which one sees the bold and rapid corrections of the master. Many of the figures are remarkable for their strength and freedom of outline. I was greatly interested in a procession of men, representing the different nations of the earth. The physical peculiarities of the Persian, the Jew and the Ethiopian are therein as distinctly marked as at the present day. The blacks are perfect counterparts of those I saw daily upon the Nile, and the noses of the Jews seem newly painted from originals in New York. So little diversity in the distinguishing features of the race, after the lapse of more than three thousand years, is a strong argument in favor of the new ethnological theory of the separate origin of different races. Whatever objections may be urged against this theory, the fact that the races have not materially changed since the earliest historic times, is established by these Egyptian records, and we must either place the first appearance of Man upon the earth many thousands of years in advance of Bishop Usher’s chronology, or adopt the conclusion of Morton and Agassiz.

The burial-vault, where Belzoni found the alabaster sarcophagus of the monarch, is a noble hall, thirty feet long by nearly twenty in breadth and height, with four massive pillars forming a corridor on one side. In addition to the light of our torches, the Arabs kindled a large bonfire in the centre, which brought out in strong relief the sepulchral figures on the ceiling, painted in white on a ground of dark indigo hue. The pillars and walls of the vault glowed with the vivid variety of their colors, and the general effect was unspeakably rich and gorgeous. This tomb has already fallen a prey to worse plunderers than the Medes and Persians. Belzoni carried off the sarcophagus, Champollion cut away the splendid jambs and architrave of the entrance to the lower chambers, and Lepsius has finished by splitting the pillars and appropriating their beautiful paintings for the Museum at Berlin. At one spot, where the latter has totally ruined a fine doorway, some indignant Frenchman has written in red chalk: “Meurtre commis par Lepsius.” In all the tombs of Thebes, wherever you see the most flagrant and shameless spoliations, the guide says, “Lepsius.” Who can blame the Arabs for wantonly defacing these precious monuments, when such an example is set them by the vanity of European antiquarians?

Bruce’s Tomb, which extends for four hundred and twenty feet into the rock, is larger than Belzoni’s, but not so fresh and brilliant. The main entrance slopes with a very gradual descent, and has on each side a number of small chambers and niches, apparently for mummies. The illustrations in these chambers are somewhat defaced, but very curious, on account of the light which they throw upon the domestic life of the Ancient Egyptians. They represent the slaughtering of oxen, the preparation of fowls for the table, the kneading and baking of bread and cakes, as well as the implements and utensils of the kitchen. In other places the field laborers are employed in leading the water of the Nile into canals, cutting dourra, threshing and carrying the grain into magazines. One room is filled with furniture, and the row of chairs around the base of the walls would not be out of place in the most elegant modern drawing-room. The Illustrated Catalogue of the London Exhibition contains few richer and more graceful patterns. In a chamber nearer the royal vault, two old, blind minstrels are seen, playing the harp in the presence of the King, whence this is sometimes called the Harper’s Tomb. The pillars of the grand hall, like those of all the other tombs we visited, represent the monarch, after death, received into the presence of the gods—stately figures, with a calm and serious aspect, and lips, which, like those of the Sphinx, seemed closed upon some awful mystery. The absurdity of the coloring does not destroy this effect, and a blue-faced Isis, whose hard, black eyeball stares from a brilliant white socket, is not less impressive than the same figure, cut in sandstone or granite.

The delicacy and precision of the hieroglyphics, sculptured in intaglio, filled me with astonishment. In the tomb of Amunoph III., which I visited the next day, they resembled the ciphers engraved upon seals in their exquisite sharpness and regularity. Only the principal tombs, however, are thus beautified. In others the figures are either simply painted, or apparently sunken in the plaster, while it was yet fresh, by prepared patterns. The latter method accounts for the exact resemblance of long processions of figures, which would otherwise require a most marvellous skill on the part of the artist. In some unfinished chambers I detected plainly the traces of these patterns, where the outlines of the figures were blunt and the grain of the plaster bent, and not cut. The family likeness in the faces of the monarchs is also too striking, unfortunately, for us to accept them all as faithful portraits. They are all apparently of the same age, and their attributes do not materially differ. This was probably a flattery on the part of the artists, or the effect of a royal vanity, which required to be portrayed in the freshness of youth and the full vigor of body and mind. The first faces I learned to recognize were those of Remeses II., the supposed Sesostris, and Amunoph III.

The tomb of Memnon, as it was called by the Romans, is the most elegant of all, in its proportions, and is as symmetrical as a Grecian temple. On the walls of the entrance are several inscriptions of Greek tourists, who visited it in the era of the Ptolemies, and spent their time in carving their names, like Americans nowadays. The huge granite sarcophagus in which the monarch’s mummy was deposited, is broken, as are those of the other tombs, with a single exception. This is the tomb of Osirei I., the grandfather of Sesostris, and the oldest in the valley. I visited it by crawling through a hole barely large enough to admit my body, after which I slid on my back down a passage nearly choked with sand, to another hole, opening into the burial chamber. Here no impious hand had defaced the walls, but the figures were as perfect and the coloring as brilliant as when first executed. In the centre stood an immense sarcophagus, of a single block of red granite, and the massive lid, which had been thrown off, lay beside it. The dust in the bottom gave out that peculiar mummy odor perceptible in all the tombs, and in fact long after one has left them, for the clothes become saturated with it. The guide, delighted with having dragged me into that chamber, buried deep in the dumb heart of the mountain, said not a word, and from the awful stillness of the place and the phantasmagoric gleam of the wonderful figures on the walls, I could have imagined myself a neophyte, on the threshold of the Osirian mysteries.