Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

The question they proposed to themselves was—How the memory of their greatness, and of their achievements, might be preserved eternally. There was the method we know was practised by the Assyrians, the Persians, and the Hebrews. They might have caused to be recorded what they pleased in chronicles of their reigns, written in whatever was the ordinary character, and on whatever were the ordinary materials. There can be little doubt but that this was done. Such records, however, did not give sufficient promise of the eternity they desired. All materials for writing were perishable. Great national overthrows might occur, and all written documents might be destroyed. The language in which they were written might change, and even the memory of it die out. Written documents, too, in order that the record might be preserved, must be transcribed. Here were opportunities for omissions and alterations. These objections were conclusive against trusting exclusively to written documents. We can now see that if the old Pharaohs had relied only on such records as these, very little would at this day be known about them, or ancient Egypt. What we now know would have occurred, fully justifies their prescience: just as well as we know now, after the event, what would have been, they knew, before the event, what would be.

They, therefore, devised another method—that both of inscribing, and of sculpturing, on stone what they had to record. This was a material which might be so used as to be practically imperishable. What was written on this would not require to be rewritten from time to time. The work might be so done as to bid fair to survive national overthrows. It might be read by any man’s eyes, although the language of Egypt might be lost. The sculptures, at all events, would be partially understood.

But in order to secure the advantages which might be found in the adoption of this method, certain conditions were necessary, a want of foresight, or neglect of which would render the attempt futile. The building on which the records were to be engraved, and sculptured, must be of such a size as to supply sufficient wall-space for the whole of the chronicles of the king’s reign, and for all the scenes, religious or secular, he might wish, from their connexion with himself, to depict and perpetuate. This, it is obvious, would necessitate very large buildings. They must, also, be so constructed as to be able to withstand all the accidents, and adverse circumstances, to which they might, in the course of ages, be exposed. No buildings that men had hitherto considered most solid and magnificent would fulfil these conditions. They all in time, from one cause or another, had become dilapidated. A double problem was thus presented to them: first, how to get sufficient wall-space, and then to get this sufficiency on buildings exempt from all the ordinary, and even most of the extraordinary, chances of destruction. The first was easily answered. The building—or if it be a tomb, the excavation—must be enlarged to the required dimensions. The second was more difficult. They answered it by the character they gave to the architecture. The smaller the stones of which a building is constructed, the smaller its chances of longevity: the larger its stones, the greater its chances. The stones, for instance, might be so small, that any one who, in times when the building might be deprived of all natural guardians, happened to want such pieces, might carry them off on his donkey, or, if larger, on his camel, to burn for lime, or to use for the walls of a house or enclosure. Stones, even of considerable size, might easily be thrown down, and cut up, to serve the purposes of those who could command the amount of labour always at the disposal of any well-to-do person; but it was possible to imagine stones used of so great a size that it would require such expensive tackle, and so many hands, to throw them down, that it would be as cheap, in most instances, to go directly to the quarry, and cut out for one’s self what was wanted. It was, too, hoped that there would be some indisposition to destroy such grand structures, for massiveness appeals to the thought of even the most uninstructed. Now, this was just what the Pharaohs of old Egypt foresaw, and acted on. They built with stones, which could not be removed, except by those who could command something like the amount of labour, machinery, and funds they themselves employed in raising them, and who might find it profitable to employ their resources in this way. The wisdom of the prevision was proved when the Persians were in complete possession of the land, and in their iconoclastic zeal, and hatred of the religion of Egypt, would, if they could have readily managed it, not have left one stone upon another in any temple throughout the Valley of the Nile.

This method of building also reduced to a minimum the number of joints. This was, in more ways than one, a great gain. Many joints would have interfered very materially with the sculptures and wall-writing; and to have these in as perfect a form as possible was the great object. That the masonry had many joints would also, sooner or later, have led to the displacement of stones, which would have mutilated the record; and eventually have brought about the ruin both of it, and of the building itself. When we see how careful Egyptian architects were in making the joints as fine as possible, so that the stones of a building are often found to be as accurately fitted together as if it were jewellers’ work, and not masonry; and when we observe that the further precaution is sometimes taken of covering the joints of the roof with stone splines, in order to minimize the corroding effects of air and wet, we may be sure that they would be predisposed to adopt a style of building, which would very much reduce the number of joints.

The thoughts and motives I have been attributing to these old builders will account for another fact, that needs explanation. The ancient Egyptians were familiar with the principle, and use of the arch. We find in the temple-palace of the great Rameses a crude brick arch, every brick of which contains his name. On the same grounds we must assign another brick arch in this neighbourhood to Amunoph, one of the great builders of the preceding dynasty. There are, too, frequent instances of it in tombs of a still earlier date; but we do not find it in their grand structures. There is no difficulty in divining the reason. It was unsuitable to the purpose they had in view. For the reasons I have given they had decided on using enormous blocks of stone. Arches thus heavily loaded would have been subject to unequal subsidence, which would have been derangement—probably, destruction—to them; and they knew that the arch, in consequence of the lateral thrust, is a form of construction that never sleeps. Hence their conception and formation of a style—for they did not borrow it—which was confined to horizontal and perpendicular lines.

That it was their intention to use their walls for historical and descriptive sculptures and writing, precisely in the same way in which we use a canvas for a picture, or a sheet of paper for writing, or printing, is undoubted, because every square foot of space of this kind they had created, in the great buildings they erected, is invariably used in this way. And that this, and the other motives I have assigned, decided them in employing such enormous blocks of stone, is equally undoubted, because they are obvious reasons, and no other reason can be imagined for inducing them to go to so much expense. The size of the building was decided by the amount of wall-space they required for the records they wished to place upon it; and the size of the stones by their estimate of what would be sufficient to ensure their record against the destroying hand, both of time and of man. Had the arts of printing, and of making cheap durable materials to print upon, been known in those days, these monuments would never have been constructed: the motive would have been wanting.

Two methods were used for presenting the record to the eye, hieroglyphical writing and sculpture. Here, again, the idea that originated the monument is manifested. Those who could not understand the writing would be able to understand, at all events, the sculptures. The time might come when none would understand the writing, then the sculptures might still be depended on confidently for supplying the desired record. If the object was any other than that of securing an eternal record, why adopt these two methods? If it had been merely decoration that was in their thoughts, the sculptures would have been enough.

The question has often been asked—Why the rock tombs of the kings, and of others, were excavated to such a surprising extent? Their extent presents so much difficulty to some minds, that one of our best known engineers, who is also quite familiar with them, tells me that he cannot believe but that they were originally merely stone quarries; and that the kings, and sometimes wealthy subjects, finding them ready made, converted them into tombs. We may, however, be quite sure that the Egyptians never would have gone up into the mountains to the valley of the kings, to quarry limestone in descending galleries, two or three hundred feet long, when every step that they had taken for the previous two or three miles had been over limestone equally good. Nor would they have made such multitudes of quarries subterranean, and of precisely the dimensions and character that fitted them for tombs. What, indeed, was the fashion in which they worked their quarries, we see at Silsiléh, and elsewhere. The true answer is that they made these sepulchral excavations of such enormous extent for just the same reason that they constructed their temples and palaces of such vast dimensions. They would not have answered the purpose for which they were wanted had they been less. Wall-space was required for recording all that an active prince in a long and eventful, or prosperous, reign had done; and all that he wished to be known about himself, his pursuits, his amusements, and his relations to the gods. And just as, if it had been possible to put it all in print, a great deal of paper would have been needed, so, when put in hieroglyphics and sculptures, there was required a proportionate amount of wall-space. So also with private individuals. If Petamenap could have written memoirs of himself, and had a thousand copies struck off, and sent one to be deposited in each of several great public libraries, he would have been content with less than three-quarters of a mile of wall-space in his tomb. Under the circumstances, then, what we find is just what we might have expected. There is nothing wonderful, considering the motive, in the extent of these excavations. The excavated tombs of Jews, Edomites, Greeks, Etruscans, and many other people were not larger than was necessary for the becoming interment of the corpse. If the Egyptians had had only the same object, and no other, their excavations would have been of the same size.

Of course the idea of suggesting the greatness of the gods by the greatness of the houses that had been built for them, and of regarding the temple as an offering, which became worthy of its object in proportion to its vastness and costliness, could not have been wanting in Egypt. Nor could there have been wanting among the priest class the additional idea that the greatness of the temple is reflected on those who minister in, and direct its services. All this may be readily acknowledged; still such ideas will not justify, or account for the unusual dimensions of these temples, or for the still more unusual dimensions of the stones of which they are constructed. Everything has a reason. And in an especial degree must particulars of this kind, which involved so great an expenditure of time and labour, have had a distinct and sufficient reason; and that could have been no other than the one I have assigned for them. Of course, the vast dimensions of the rock-tombs must be considered in conjunction with the vast dimensions of the temples. What made the rock-tombs of Egypt larger than other rock-tombs made the temples of Egypt larger than other temples: and that was the desire of their excavators and builders to secure a vast expanse of wall-space fit for such mural sculptures, paintings, and inscriptions as we now find upon them.