It is difficult to admit that such a building as this was never utilized. We may well believe that it was never built for permanent occupation, but we must not therefore conclude that chambers so well lighted and so richly decorated were without their proper and well-defined uses. The floors of the first and second stories have disappeared, but that they once existed is proved by the staircase, part of which is still in place. The floors were of wood; the stairs of stone. The general economy of the building shows that it was intended that every room, from the ground-floor to the topmost story, should be used when occasion arose. It is possible that they were employed as reception rooms for the princes and vassal chiefs who came together several times a year for the celebration of funerary rites. In chambers richly decorated like these, and, doubtless, richly furnished also, people of rank could meet together and await at their ease their turn to take part in the ceremonies.[10]
Although the pavilion of Medinet-Abou may, then, have no right to the name of palace, the foregoing observations have justified their position in this chapter by helping us to understand some of the conditions imposed upon the Egyptian architect when he had to meet civil wants. Some of our readers may have expected to find, in this chapter, a description of a more famous monument, of that Labyrinth of which Herodotus, Diodorus, and Strabo wrote in such enthusiastic terms.[11]
THEBES
THE PAVILION OF MEDINET-ABOU
Restored by Ch Chipiez
But we are by no means sure that the ruins in the Fayoum are those of the Labyrinth. These ruins, which were first discovered and described by Jomard and Caristie,[12] and afterwards in greater detail by Lepsius,[13] are upon the western slope of the Libyan chain, about four miles and a half east-by-south from Medinet-el-Fayoum, at a point which must have been on the borders of Lake Mœris, if the position of that lake as defined by Linant de Bellefonds be accepted.[14] Mariette did not admit that the ruins in question were those of the vast building which was counted among the seven wonders of the world. "I know," he once said to us, "where the Labyrinth is: it is under the crops of the Fayoum. I shall dig it up some day if Heaven gives me a long enough life."
However this may be, the ruins are at present in such a state of confusion that every traveller who visits the place comes away disappointed. "If," says Ebers, "we climb the pyramid of powdery grey bricks—once however coated with polished granite—which, as Strabo tells us, stood at one extremity of the Labyrinth, we shall see that the immense palace in which the chiefs of the Egyptian nomes assembled at certain dates to meet the king was shaped like a horse shoe. But that is all that can be seen. The middle of the building and the whole of the left wing are entirely destroyed, while the confused mass of ruined halls and chambers on the right—which the natives of El-Howara think to be the bazaar of some vanished city—are composed of wretched blocks of dry grey mud. The granite walls of a few chambers and the fragments of a few inscribed columns form the only remains of any importance. From these we learn that the structure dates from the reign of Amenemhat III., of the twelfth dynasty."[15]
The plan and description of the building discovered by Lepsius hardly correspond with the account of Strabo and with what we learn from other antique sources as to the magnificence of the Labyrinth and the vast bulk of the materials of which it was composed. We shall, therefore, reproduce neither the plan of Lepsius nor the text of the Greek geographer. The latter gives no measurements either of height or length, and under such circumstances any attempt to restore the building, from an architectural point of view would be futile.
§ 3.—The Egyptian House.
The palace in Egypt was but a house larger and richer in its decorations than the others. The observations which we have made upon it may be applied to the dwelling-places of private individuals, who enjoyed, in proportion to their resources, the same comforts and conveniences as the sovereign or the hereditary princes of the nomes. The house was a palace in small, its arrangements and construction were inspired by the same wants, by the same national habits, by the same climatic and other natural conditions.
Diodorus and Josephus tell us that the population of Egypt proper, from Alexandria to Philæ, was 7,000,000 at the time of the Roman Empire, and there is reason to believe that it was still larger at the time of the nation's greatest prosperity under the princes of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties.[16] A large proportion of the Egyptian people lived in small towns and open villages, besides which there were a few very large towns. That Sais, Memphis, and Thebes were great cities we know from the words of the ancient historians, from the vast spaces covered by their ruins, and from the extent of their cemeteries.