One of the monoliths erected by Queen Hatshepsut, at Karnak, is 109 feet high, and she records that at her bidding this mighty stone, weighing hundreds of tons, was hewn out of the quarry, the sides were properly shaped, and the stone conveyed to the site, all within seven months. The Queen gave her orders, and the people obeyed.
Such methods, if they were followed to-day, would be so expensive as to be prohibitive. In those days there were no unions, and no union rates of wages. The overseer of the works could have all the labour he needed. If he could not manage with a thousand labourers, then he could have ten thousand. The king was the lord and master of his people, as well as of his slaves. The overseer had only to say that he wanted more men, and the king would give orders for the men to be procured. If they did not come willingly, they would be seized and pressed into the service of the king. So long as they were doing the king’s work they would be fed, but wages in the present sense were unknown.
THE BEAUTIFUL TEMPLE KNOWN AS PHARAOH’S BED, CRADLED IN THE WATERS OF THE NILE, WHICH HAVE COVERED THE ISLAND OF PHILÆ AND PARTLY SUBMERGED THE NOBLE RUINS SINCE THE BUILDING OF THE ASSOUAN DAM
Those noble ruins on the island of Philæ higher up the Nile above Assouan may no more be seen in all their glory. They have been sacrificed to the Nile god and to modern necessities. Realizing that the building of the great dam at Assouan would raise the level of the river and submerge the island, the builders went to enormous trouble to underpin the ruins and make them secure against the flood. This work was carried out with great difficulty, and in a masterly manner. The completion of the Assouan dam saw the waters of the Nile slowly creep over the ruined temples, and there may now be seen peeping above the surface of the water the tops of a few columns which, owing to their peculiar resemblance to a fourpost bed, are generally known as Pharaoh’s Bed.
A wonderful work in a land of wonders is the barrage of Assouan, but the benefits that would accrue to the land by holding up and deflecting the waters of the Nile were not unrealized by the ancients. Thousands of years ago the problems of controlling the Nile were studied as carefully as they have been studied in our own time. One Pharaoh, known as Amenhotep III, ordered his engineers to work out a scheme for controlling the inundation. He desired to store up some of the Nile water when there was an excess, and draw on these surplus supplies when the river was low.
The work he undertook was in its way as wonderful as that at Assouan, but when we consider that it was started nearly four thousand years ago it appears even more marvellous. Labourers swarmed over the land, cutting channels in the rock, and driving canals connected with the great expanse of water near Fayoum known as Lake Moeris, a natural reservoir which served to store the water just as the barrage at Assouan stores the water to-day. The Pharaoh had the foresight to tap this huge supply of water to irrigate the surrounding country, and the land, no longer at the mercy of the Nile floods, prospered accordingly.
Amenhotep, like all the other Pharaohs, was anxious to protect his treasure from thieves, and he commanded his cleverest architects to design a palace in which people who went inside without permission might wander for ever without finding their way out again. The whole of the interior of the palace was composed of small rooms, in number three thousand, leading by narrow passages one into the other. The way in and out was a strict secret, and those who broke in might wander round and in and out of the chambers until they died of starvation. This palace was the famous Labyrinth, a maze in stone to defeat thieves and robbers. No trace of it now remains.
The kings of Egypt and the chief men were obsessed with the idea that their tombs would be plundered, and that the robbers would deprive their doubles of all chance of future life. It must be admitted that they had good cause for their obsession. They knew that the same subjects who had buried previous kings and lamented their deaths, had seized the first opportunity of rifling the tombs of their treasures, and the Pharaohs were well aware that their own subjects would not be above doing the same thing.
To rifle a tomb was one of the greatest crimes that could be committed, but the thieves were quite prepared to sacrifice their chances in the next life for the prospect of gaining something in this.