The remains of the Serapeum and the burial-places of the sacred bulls (who, when alive, were worshipped at Memphis), were discovered by M. Mariette in 1860-61. Of the former, sufficient traces were found to show that it resembled in its arrangement the ordinary Egyptian temple, viz., with pylons, preceded by an avenue of sphinxes, and an enclosed space behind, with halls and chambers, in one of which was the opening to the inclined passage leading to the subterranean galleries. The earlier tombs of the 18th, 19th, and 20th dynasties were hewn in the rocky platform. From the 22nd to the 25th dynasty the bulls were buried in a subterranean gallery. The same system was adopted from the 26th dynasty till the time of the later Ptolemies (circa 50 B.C.), but the galleries were of greater size and magnificence, having an extent of 400 yards, and the bulls were interred in immense granite sarcophagi placed in niches, on both sides of the galleries, but never opposite to one another. The chief historical value of the discovery rests in the steles, or inscribed tablets, some 500 in number, placed there as ex-votos by pious visitors, the principal examples of which are now in the Gizeh Museum or in the Louvre.
CHAPTER VI.
ETHIOPIA.
CONTENTS.
Kingdom of Meroë—Pyramids.
It was long a question with the learned whether civilisation ascended or descended the Nile—whether it was a fact, as the Greeks evidently believed, that Meroë was the parent State whence the Egyptians had migrated to the north, bringing with them the religion and the arts which afterwards flourished at Thebes and Memphis—or whether these had been elaborated in the fertile plains of Egypt, and only in later times had extended to the Upper Nile.
Recent discoveries have rendered it nearly certain that the latter is the correct statement of the facts—within historic times at least—that the fertile and easily cultivated Delta was first occupied and civilised; then Thebes, and afterwards Meroë. At the same time it is by no means improbable that the Ethiopians were of the same stock as the Thebans, though differing essentially from the Memphites, and that the former may have regarded these remote kindred with respect, perhaps even with a degree of half-superstitious reverence due to their remote situation in the centre of a thinly-peopled continent, and have in consequence invented those fables which the Greeks interpreted too literally.
If any such earlier civilisation existed in these lands, its records and its monuments have perished. No building is now found in Meroë whose date extends beyond the time of the great king Tirhakah, of the 25th Egyptian dynasty, B.C. 724 to 680, unless it be those bearing the name of one king, Amoum Gori, who was connected with the intruding race of sun-worshippers, which broke in upon the continuous succession of the kings of the 18th dynasty. Their monuments were all purposely destroyed by their successors; and almost the only records we have of them are the grottoes of Tel el Amarna, covered with their sculptures, which bear, it must be confessed, considerable resemblance in style to those found in Ethiopia. Even this indication is too slight to be of much value; and we must wait for some further confirmation before founding any reasoning upon it.
The principal monuments of Tirhakah are two temples at Gibel Barkal, a singular isolated mount near the great southern bend of the river. One is a large first-class temple, of purely Egyptian form and design, about 500 ft. in length by 120 or 140 in width, consisting of two great courts, with their propylons, and with internal halls and sanctuaries arranged much like those of the Rameseum at Thebes (Woodcut No. [19]), and so nearly also on the same scale as to make it probable that the one is a copy of the other.
The other temple placed near this, but as usual unsymmetrically, consists of an outer hall, internally about 50 ft. by 60, the roof of which is supported by four ranges of columns, all with capitals representing figures of Typhon or busts of Isis. This leads to an inner cell or sanctuary, cut in the rock.[[60]]
