We have lately received the cheering intelligence that our colossal Ram and the other Ethiopian monuments have arrived safely at Alexandria. From here, too, we shall bring some important monuments; amongst them a beautiful sarcophagus, of fine white limestone, and partially covered with painted inscriptions, belonging to the Old Empire, the earliest era of the growing power of Thebes.[93]
I have succeeded in making another conquest to-day, which causes me double pleasure, as I had inexpressible difficulty in attaining it, and as it has restored a monument to the day in the greatest perfection, and which will scarcely find its equal in any of the museums. In a deep shaft which has lately been excavated, a tomb-chamber has been found, full of interesting representations of kings, which we have drawn; hence a narrow passage leads deeper down into a second chamber, which is completely painted like the first. The spaces are hewn in a most crumbling rock, which falls in great pieces from the ceiling on the slightest touch; the rock-caves were therefore formed into cylindrical arches with Nile bricks, covered with stucco, and painted. On the sides of the inner door King Amenophis I. is represented on the right, and on the left his mother, Aahmes-nufre-ari, highly reverenced even at a much later period. Both of them are painted on the stucco to the height of four feet, and preserved in the freshest colours. These figures, which took up the whole wall, I wished to remove. But for this purpose I was obliged to break through the brick walls around, and then take away the bricks behind the stucco singly with the greatest care. Thus I have to-day succeeded in the laborious work of laying down the whole of the stucco, only of the thickness of a finger, on two slabs made of planks, and cushioned with skins, linen, and paper, and bringing it out of the half-filled narrow tomb-grotto.[94]
Our plaster-casts, to my great joy, are again cared for. Five hundred-weight of gypsum, which M. Clot Bey has granted us from a quantity ordered from France, has lately arrived, and I have found and taken into our service an Arab, who at least knows enough of the manner of using gypsum and taking casts.
LETTER XXX.
Thebes.
February 25, 1845.
We have now dwelt for more than a quarter of a year, in our Thebaïc Acropolis, upon the hill Qurna, each of us busy in his own way, from morning till evening, in examining, describing, and drawing the most important monuments, taking off inscriptions on paper, and making out plans of the architecture, without being able to finish even the Lybian side, where there yet remains twelve temples, twenty-five king’s tombs, fifteen tombs of royal wives or daughters, and a number, not to be counted, of graves belonging to persons of consequence, to be examined. The east side, with its six-and-twenty partly-standing churches, will also require not less time. And yet it is Thebes exactly that has been more explored than any other place by travellers and expeditions, (vide the Franco-Tuscan expedition), and we have only compared and supplied deficiencies in their labours, not done them afresh. We are also very far from imagining that we have exhausted the immense monumental riches to be found here. They who come after us with fresh information, and with the results of science further extended, will find new treasures in the same monuments, and obtain more instruction from them. The great end which I have always had before my eyes, and for which I have principally made my selections, has been history. When I thought I had collected the most essential information on this point, I remained satisfied.
The river here divides the valley into two unequal parts. While on the west side it flows near the steep projecting mountains of Lybia, it bounds on the east side a wide fertile plain, which extends as far as Medamôt, which lies some hours distant on the edge of the Arabian desert. On this side lies the actual city of Thebes, which appears to have formed a connection between the two temples, Karnak and Luqsor, which lie about half an hour’s distance apart. Karnak lies north, and further from the Nile; Luqsor is directly washed by the waters of the river, and has very probably been in former times the harbour-quarter of the town. On the west side of the stream stood the Necropolis of Thebes, and for the preservation of the dead, all the temples, far and near, are employed,—yes, the whole population of these parts, which were later included under the name Memnonia by the Greeks, appear to have employed themselves principally with the care of the dead and their graves. The former extent of Memnonia is ascertained by the two cities, Qurna and Medînet Habu, which lie at the north and south points.
A survey of the Thebaïc monuments begins, most naturally, with the ruins of Karnak. Here lay the great imperial temple of a hundred doors, which was dedicated to Ammon-Ra, the king of the gods, and the particular god of the place, which after him was called the city of Ammon (No-Amon, Diospolis). Ap, and with the feminine article Tap, out of which the Greeks made Thebes, was an isolated temple of Ammon, and is sometimes hieroglyphically used in the singular, or still oftener in the plural (Napu) as the name of the city; from whence the Greeks, naturally, without changing the article, made use of Θῆβαι in the plural. The whole history of the Egyptian kingdom is connected with this temple, since the elevation of the city of Ammon into a metropolis of the kingdom. Every dynasty contended for the glory of having assisted in extending, beautifying, and restoring this national sanctuary.
It was founded under the first Thebaïc Imperial dynasty, the twelfth with Manetho, by its first king, the mighty Sesurtesen I., in the fourth century of the third millenium, B.C., and even now shows some fragments of the time and name of that king. During the succeeding dynasties, who sighed for several centuries under the oppression of their victorious hereditary enemies, the sanctuary doubtless stood unheeded, and nothing remains of what belongs to that period. But after Amosis, the first king of the seventeenth dynasty, had succeeded in his revolt against the Hyksos, about B.C. 1700, his two successors, Amenophis I. and Tuthmosis I., built round the remains of the most ancient sanctuary a stately temple with many chambers round the cella, and with a broad court and the propylæa belonging to it, before which Tuthmosis I. erected two obelisks. Two other pylones, with adjoining walls, were built by the same king, in a right angle with the temple, towards Luqsor. Tuthmosis III. and his sister enlarged this temple behind by a hall resting on fifty-six pillars, beside many other chambers which surrounded it on three sides, and were inclosed by a general outer wall. The next king partly did more toward the completion of the temple in front, and partly erected new independent temples in the vicinity, also built two other great pylones in a south-westerly direction before those of Tuthmosis I., so that from this side four high pylones formed the stately entrance to the principal temple.
A still more brilliant enlargement of the temple was, however, carried out in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries, B.C., by the great Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasties, by Sethos I., the father of Ramses Miamun, who added in the original axis of the temple the mightiest hall of pillars which was ever seen in Egypt, or, indeed, in any country. The stone roof is supported by 134 columns, covering a space of 164 feet in length and 320 in breadth. Each of the twelve middle columns is 36 feet in circumference, and is, up to the architrave, 66 feet high; the other columns, 40 feet high, are 27 feet in circumference. It is impossible to describe the overpowering impression felt on first entering this forest of columns, and on passing from one avenue to another, and between the sometimes half, and sometimes whole-projecting grand gods and kingly statues which are sculptured on the columns. All the surfaces are ornamented with gay sculptures, partly in relief and partly in intaglio, which, however, were only completed under the successors of the founder, and mostly by his son Ramses Miamun. Before this hypostole, a large hypathrale court, of about 270 to 320 feet, was afterwards erected, with a majestic pylon, and ornamented only on the sides by pillars.