I yield myself to, but cannot account for the fascination of this vast field of desolation, this waste of crumbled limestone, gouged into ravines and hills, honeycombed with tombs and mummy-pits, strewn with the bones of ancient temples, brightened by the glow of sunshine on elegant colonnades and sculptured walls, saddened by the mud-hovels of the fellaheen. The dust is abundant, and the glare of the sun reflected from the high, white precipices behind is something unendurable.
Of the tombs of the Assaseef, we went far into none, except that of the priest Petamunoph, the one which occupies, with its many chambers and passages, an acre and a quarter of underground. It was beautifully carved and painted throughout, but the inscriptions are mostly illegible now, and so fouled by bats as to be uninteresting. Our guide said truly, “bats not too much good for 'scriptions.” In truth, the place smells horribly of bats,—an odor that will come back to you with sickening freshness days after,—and a strong stomach is required for the exploration.
Even the chambers of some of the temples here were used in later times as receptacles for mummies. The novel and most interesting temple of Dayr el Bahree did not escape this indignity. It was built by Amun-noo-het, or Hatasoo as we more familiarly call her, and like everything else that this spirited woman did it bears the stamp of originality and genius. The structure rises up the side of the mountain in terraces, temple above temple, and is of a most graceful architecture; its varied and brilliant sculptures must be referred to a good period of art. Walls that have recently been laid bare shine with extraordinary vividness of color. The last chambers in the rock are entered by arched doorways, but the arch is in appearance, not in principle. Its structure is peculiar. Square stones were laid up on each side, the one above lapping over the one beneath until the last two met at the top; the interior corners were then cut away, leaving a perfect round arch; but there is no lateral support or keystone. In these interior rooms were depths on depths of mummy-wrappings and bones, and a sickening odor of dissolution.
There are no tombs better known than those of Sheykh el Koorneh, for it is in them that so much was discovered revealing the private life, the trades, the varied pursuits of the Egyptians. We entered those called the most interesting, but they are so smoked, and the paintings are so defaced, that we had small satisfaction in them. Some of them are full of mummy-cloths and skeletons, and smell of mortality, to that degree that it needs all the wind of the desert to take the scent of death out of our nostrils.
All this plain and its mounds and hills are dug over and pawed out for remnants of the dead, scarabæi, beads, images, trinkets sacred and profane. It is the custom of some travelers to descend into the horrible and common mummy-pits, treading about among the dead, and bring up in their arms the body of some man, or some woman, who may have been, for aught the traveler knows, not a respectable person. I confess to an uncontrollable aversion to all of them, however well preserved they are. The present generation here (I was daily beset by an Arab who wanted always to sell mean arm or a foot, from whose eager, glittering eyes I seemed to see a ghoul looking out,) lives by plundering the dead. A singular comment upon our age and upon the futile hope of security for the body after death, even in the strongest house of rock.
Old Petamunoph, with whom be peace, builded better than he knew; he excavated a vast hotel for bats. Perhaps he changed into bats himself in the course of his transmigrations, and in this state is only able to see dimly, as bats do, and to comprehend only partially, as an old Egyptian might, our modern civilization.
