These grottos, of which some are found on the neighbouring hills of the same, mostly descend deep into the rock in an obtuse angle, but are not painted or written; on the stone sarcophagi only were there any particular pains bestowed; these consist usually of the finest limestone, and are occasionally more than nine feet long, and are decorated and written in the careful and pure style of that period, but with a certain degree of sparingness. One of these sarcophagi we shall bring with us, as I have already once stated. It has, a few days since, been safely transported into the plain, after the long totally choked-up shaft had been excavated, and the living rock itself broken through, to obtain a shorter way out. The person to whom the grave belonged was the son of a prince, and himself bore the dynastic name Nentef, of the eleventh royal dynasty.
In the outermost corner of the same rock-creek is situated the oldest temple structure of western Thebes, which belongs to the period of the first mighty regeneration of the New Egyptian Empire. A street, above 1,600 feet long, ornamented on both sides by colossal rams and sphinxes, led from the valley in a straight line to a court, then by a flight of steps to another, the front wall of which was adorned with representations, and a colonnade, and at last by a second stair to a well-preserved granite portal, and the last temple court surrounded on both sides by decorated halls and chambers, and ended behind by a broad façade built on to the steep rock-wall. By another granite portal in the middle of this façade, we come at last into the innermost space of the temple, hewn in the rock and vaulted with stone, whence again several little niches and spaces opened to the sides and back. All these places were covered with the most beautiful paintings, gaily coloured on a grey ground, and executed in the most finished style of the period. This grand structure, beside which other now destroyed buildings once stood, seems originally to have been connected with the river by a street traversing the whole valley, and reaching the great temple of Karnak on the other side; and I doubt not that for this behoof the narrow, rock-gate was artificially broken through, by which the temple road leads on its entrance into the valley. It was a Queen Numt Amen, the elder sister of Tuthmosis III., who carried out this daring design of an architectural communication between both the sides of the valley, the same who erected the largest obelisks before the temple of Karnak. She is never represented on her monuments as a woman, but in male attire; the inscriptions alone inform us of her sex. Without doubt it was then against the legitimate rule that a woman should hold the government; for that reason probably her brother, who was still a minor, appears as a co-regent. After her death, all her cartouches were turned into Tuthmosis-cartouches, the feminine expressions of the inscriptions changed, and her name was never mentioned in the later lists of the legitimate kings.
Of Tuthmosis III., who completed the work of his royal sister during his long reign, two temples still exist, both erected at the edge of the desert. The northernmost one of these is now only recognisable in its foundations and in the remains of its brick pylones; the southern one, however, near Medînet Habu is yet well preserved, and, to judge from some sculptures, might belong in its first planning to an earlier Tuthmosis, and was only completed by the other. His second successor, Tuthmosis IV., also erected a temple, now almost disappeared.
He was followed by Amenophis III., under whose long and glorious reign the temple of Luqsor was built. He is represented by the two giant colossi, near Medînet Habu, pushed far forward into the fertile plain, once standing at the gate of a mighty temple, the remains of which, however, principally lie buried under the harvests of the annually rising soil of the valley. Perhaps a roadway, like that to the north, led hence through the valley to the opposite Luqsor. The north-eastern of the two colossi was the celebrated vocal statue, to which the Greeks attached the pleasant legend of the handsome Memnon, who greeted his mother Aurora every morn at sunrise, while she, because of his early hero-death, watered him with her dewy tears. This mythos, as Letronne has proved, was formed at a very late period; as the peculiar phenomena of the trembling tone, the consequence of the cracking of little particles by the sudden warming of the cold stone, took its rise when the statue, already cracked, was more shattered by an earthquake in the year 27 B.C. The occurrence of cracking and sounding stones in the desert and in great fields of ruins is not unfrequent in Egypt; the nature of the flint conglomerate of which the statue is composed is particularly inclined to it, as the innumerable cracks, great and small, which pass in every direction through those portions of the statue inscribed at the Greek period, at that time therefore unharmed, show. It is also remarkable how many of the cracked and loose pieces sound bell-like on being struck, while others remain dead and toneless, according as their respective positions make them more or less damped. The numerous Greek and Roman inscriptions which are graven on the statue, and announce the visit of foreigners, particularly if they had been so fortunate as to hear the morning greeting, begin first under Nero, and only go down to the time of Septimius Severus, to whom is due the restoration of the originally monolithic statue. Since this re-erection of the upper portion in single block, the phenomenon of the sounding stone appears to have become less frequent and less apparent, if had not quite stopped. The mutation of the name of the still remembered Amenophis (as the inscriptions testify) into Memnon seems to have been principally induced by the name of this western side of Thebes, Memnonia, which the Greeks seem to have explained to themselves as “Palaces of Memnon,” while the name, hieroglyphically mennu, signified “palaces” in general. At the present day the statues are, called Shama and Tama by the Arabs, or together the Sanamât (not Salamât), i. e. “the idols.”[95]
When we arrived here at the beginning of November, the whole plain, as far as we could see, was inundated, and formed a single ocean, from which the Sanamât arose more strange and lonely than from the green and accessible fields. I have a few days since measured the colossi, as also the rise of the Nile deposit on the bases of their thrones. The height of the Memnon statue, reckoned from head to foot, but without the tall headdress they once wore, was 14·28 metres, or 45½ feet, and to this the base, another block, 4·25 metres, or 13 feet 7 inches, of which about three feet was hidden by a surrounding step. Thus the statues originally stood nearly sixty feet (perhaps nearly seventy feet with the pshent) above the level of the temple. Now the level of the valley is eight feet above this soil, and the inundation sometimes rises to the upper edge of the bases, therefore fourteen feet higher than it could have done at this time of its erection, if the water was not to reach the temple. If this fact be added to our discovery at Semneh, where the mirror of the Nile had sunk above twenty-three feet in historical times, it is plain from that simple addition, that the Nile in the cataracts, between here and Semneh, fell at least thirty-seven feet deeper then than now.
The last king, too, of that great eighteenth dynasty, Horus, had erected a temple in the neighbourhood of Medînet Habu, which, however, is now buried in the rubbish. The fragments of a colossal statue of the king in hard, almost marble, limestone, the bust of which formed in the most perfect style, weighing several hundred centenaries, is intended for our museum, seem to indicate the position of the former temple entrance.
Two temples of the next dynasty are preserved, which were built by the two mightiest and most celebrated of all the Pharaohs, Sethos I., and his son Ramses II. The temple of the former is the northernmost in position, and is usually denominated the temple of Qurna, as the old village of Qurna here grew up round a Koptic church, lying principally within the great temple courts, but was subsequently abandoned by the inhabitants, and changed for the rock tombs of the neighbouring mountain spur.
Farther south, between the now quite destroyed temples of Tuthmosis III. and IV., lies the temple of Ramses (II.) Miamun, the most beautiful, probably, in Egypt, as to architectural design and proportions, though behind that of Karnak in grandeur and various interest. The back part of the temple, as also the halls of the hypostole, have disappeared, and their original plan could only be ascertained by long and continued excavations carefully superintended by Erbkam. Round about this destroyed part of the temples, the spacious brick saloons are visible, which are all covered by regularly well built cylindrical vaults, and belong to the period of the erection of the temple. For this is unmistakeably proved by the stamps, which were imprinted on each brick in the royal factory, and contain the cartouches of King Ramses. That this temple had already attracted great attention in antiquity, is evident from the particular description which Diodorus Siculus gives of it after Hecatæus, under the name of the Tomb of Osymandyas.
Immediately to the right of the temple, one of the few industrious Fellahs has planted a little kitchen garden, which gives us some change at our table, and was therefore spared, as it should be, with respect, in our excavations, which threatened to extend thither, at the entreaty of the friendly brown gardener, although it covers the foundation of a small temple not previously seen, the entrance of which I found in the first court of the Ramses temple.
The most southern and best preserved of the temple palaces, lies amid the ruined houses of Medînet Habu, a Koptic city, now quite deserted, but once not inconsiderable. It was founded by Ramses III. the first king of the twentieth dynasty, the wealthy Rhampsinitus of Herodotus,[96] in the thirteenth century B.C., and it celebrates on its walls the tremendous wars of this king by land and sea, which might vie with those of the great Ramses. Within the second court a great church was founded by the Kopts, the monolithic columns of which still lie scattered around. The back places are mostly buried in rubbish. But of very peculiar interest is the far-projected pylon-like fore-building of the temple, which contained, in four stories, one above another, the private rooms of the king. On its wall, the prince is represented in the midst of his family; however, he caresses his daughters, known as princesses by their side-locks, plays draughts with them, and receives fruits and flowers from them.