We arrive at the Memnonion. This temple was raised by Rameses the Great. In the colossal Caryatides we recognise the same genius that excavated the rocks of Ipsambul, and supported a cavern temple upon the heads of giants. From the Memnonion came the statue that is now in the British Museum. But this figure, though a fine specimen of Egyptian sculpture, sinks, so far as magnitude is concerned, into insignificance when compared with the statue of Rameses himself, which, broken off at the waist, now lies prostrate in the precincts of the sanctuary. This is probably the most huge colossus that the Egyptians ever constructed. The fragment is of red granite, and of admirable workmanship. Unfortunately the face is entirely obliterated. The statue lies upon its back, and in its fall has destroyed all the temple within reach. It measures more than sixty feet round the shoulders, the breadth of the instep is nearly seven feet, and the hieroglyphical figures engraven on the arm are large enough for a man to walk in.
Perhaps the most interesting group of ruins at Thebes is the quarter of Medcenet Habu. Most of the buildings are of the time of Rameses the Third.
The sculptured walls of the great temples, covered with battles, chariots, captives, and slaves, have been worthily described by the vivid pen of Mr. Hamilton. They celebrate the victorious campaigns of the monarch. Here also the Third Rameses raised his palace. And it is curious, among other domestic subjects, that we find represented on the walls, in a very admirable style, Rameses playing chess with his Queen. Chess is, probably, a most ancient Oriental game. Rameses the Third lived before the Trojan war, to which the Greeks, as usual, ascribe the invention of chess.
The sepulchres of Thebes still remain to be described, a theme more fertile in interest and instruction than even its palaces and temples. The arts of the Egyptians must be studied in their tombs, and to learn how this remarkable people lived, we must even go where they were buried. To cite no other instances in a sketch which is already too long, it is from a painting in a tomb near Beni-hassan that we learn how the Egyptians procured from the distant quarries of Nubia those masses of stone and granite with which they raised the columns of Karnak and the obelisks of Luxor.
But we must conclude. We have touched a virgin subject rich with delightful knowledge, and if our readers be not wearied with wandering on the banks of the Nile, we may perhaps again introduce them to the company of the Pharaohs.
SHOUBRA
ORIENTAL palaces, except perhaps in the great Indian peninsula, do not realise the dreams and glittering visions of the Arabian Nights, or indeed the authentic histories written in the flush and fullness of the success of the children of the desert, the Tartar and the Saracen. Commerce once followed in the train of the conquerors of Asia, and the vast buildings which they hastily threw up of slight and perishing materials, were filled, not only with the plunder of the East, but furnished with all the productions of art and curious luxury, which the adventurous spirit of man brought from every quarter of the globe to Samarcand and Bagdad. The site of these mighty capitals is almost erased from the map of the modern traveller; but tribute and traffic have also ceased to sustain even the dilapidated serail of the once omnipotent Stamboul, and, until very recently, all that remained of the splendour of the Caliphs of Egypt was the vast Necropolis, which still contains their palatial sepulchres.
How the bold Roumelian peasant who in our days has placed himself on the ancient throne of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies, as Napoleon on the seat of the Merovingian kings, usurping political power by military prowess, lodged and contented himself in the valley of the Nile, was not altogether an uninteresting speculation; and it was with no common curiosity that some fifteen years ago, before he had conquered Syria and scared Constantinople, I made one morning a visit to Shoubra, the palace of Mehemet Ali.
Nothing can be conceived more animated and picturesque than Cairo during the early morning or at night. It seems the most bustling and populous city in the world. The narrow streets, abounding with bazaars, present the appearance of a mob, through which troops of richly dressed cavaliers force with difficulty their prancing way, arrested often in their course by the procession of a harem returning from the bath, the women enveloped in inscrutable black garments, and veils and masks of white linen, and borne along by the prettiest donkeys in the world. The attendant eunuchs beat back the multitude; even the swaggering horsemen, with their golden and scarlet jackets, rich shawls and scarfs, and shining arms, trampling on those around, succeed in drawing aside; but all efforts are vain, for at the turning of the street appears the first still solemn visage of a long string of tall camels bearing provisions to the citadel, a Nubian astride on the neck of the leader, and beating a wild drum, to apprise the people of his approach. The streets, too, in which these scenes occur are in themselves full of variety and architectural beauty. The houses are lofty and latticed, abounding in balconies; fountains are frequent and vast and as richly adorned as Gothic shrines; sometimes the fortified palace of one of the old Mamlouks, now inhabited by a pasha, still oftener the exquisite shape of an Arabian mosque. The temples of Stamboul cannot vie with the fanes of Cairo. Their delicate domes and airy cupolas, their lofty minarets covered with tracery, and the flowing fancy of their arabesques recalled to me the glories of the Alhambra, the fantastic grace of the Alcazars and the shrines of Seville and Cordova.