With this building closes the great series of palace-temples, known by the particular designation of Memnonia. They embrace the actual prime of the New Empire, for after Ramses III. the outward might, as well as the inward greatness of the empire declined. Of this period only, and that immediately following, do we find the tombs of the kings in the rock valleys of the mountains.
To these the entrance lies on the other side of the promontory of Qurna. Wild and desolate, the rock walls, which round themselves off to bald peaks, rise on both sides, and have their golden tops covered with coal-black stones, burnt, as it were, by the sun. The peculiarly solemn and dull character of this region always struck me the most when I rode after sunset over the unmeasureable rock rubbish which covers the earth to a great height, and is only interrupted by broad water-streams, which have formed themselves in the course of thousands of years, by the unfrequent, though not unknown storms, as experience has shown. All around, everything is dumb and dead; only now and then the hollow bark of the jackal, or the ominous cries of the night owl, varies the sound of the active hoof of my little donkey.
After many windings, which lead by great circuits almost immediately behind the high mountain wall of the already described valley of Asasif, the dale parts into two arms, of which the right one leads up to the oldest of the tombs. Two only of these are opened, both of the eighteenth dynasty, the one belonging to the time of Amenophis IV. the Memnon of the Greeks, the other to king Ai, a contemporaneous monarch soon succeeding him, who is not included in the monumental lists of the legitimate kings.[97] The latter lies at the outer end of the slowly rising rock ravine; the granite sarcophagus of the king has been shattered in the little tomb-chamber, and his name is everywhere carefully erased, to the least line, on the walls as well as on the sarcophagus. The other lies far forward in the vale, is of great extent, and with handsome, but unfortunately much mutilated sculptures, through the hands of time and mankind. Besides these two graves, there are several others incomplete without sculpture; others, without doubt, are hidden under the high mounds of rubbish, the removal of which would take more time and means than we thought proper to give to it after severe trials. On one place, where I had excavations made after tolerably certain proofs, a door and chamber were certainly discovered about ten feet below the rubbish, but without sculptures. Yet some remains of bases were brought to light, containing a yet unknown royal title.
The left branch of the principal valley, which was originally closed by an elevation of the soil, and was first opened artificially by a prepared pathway, at this place contains the graves of almost all the kings of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties.
Here usually there sinks a wide-mouthed shaft, on one of the declivities of the hills, not very high over the level of the valley, descending in an oblique angle. As soon as the overhanging rock has reached a perpendicular height of twelve to fifteen feet, the sharply-cut door-posts at the first entrance appear at once, provided with one or two great doors for closing. There too, the painted sculptures usually begin, forming a strange contrast to the sudden visitor between the craggy rocks, and the wild stones, by their sharp lines, shining surfaces, and fresh living colours. Long corridors of imposing height and width lead one still farther into the rock mountains. In single divisions, formed by the narrowing of the passage, and by new doors, the paintings continue on the walls and ceiling. The king appears adoring several gods, and addressing to them his prayers and his excuses for his earthly career. The peaceful employed of the beatified spirits are portrayed on one wall, and the torments of the wicked on the other; on the ceiling, the goddess is depicted lying along, as well as the hours of the day and night with the influences which they exercise on mankind, and the astrological meanings, all accompanied with explanatory inscriptions. At length we arrive in a great vaulted pillared saloon, the walls of which generally show the representations on a golden yellow ground, from which it has received the name of the Golden Saloon. This was intended for the royal sarcophagus, which stood in the middle from six to ten feet in height. But often when the king, after the tomb was completed, felt himself yet unweakened in his powers, and expected another series of years, the middle passage of this saloon was hewn in a steeper manner, as the beginning of a new one; new corridors and chambers were produced; sometimes the direction of the excavation was altered, until the king put a second period to the work, and the series was closed with a second hall, generally more spacious and magnificent than the first; to this were added, if time permitted, smaller spaces at both sides, destined for particular offerings to the dead, until the last hour sounded, and the royal corpse, after its seventy days of embalment, was laid in the sarcophagus. This was then so cunningly closed, that the granite colossus had always to be broken in pieces by the later violators of the graves, as the cover could not be lifted off.
The tombs of the princesses also, which lie altogether in a little valley behind Medînet Habu, at the southern end of Memnonia, belong without doubt to the eighteenth and twentieth dynasties, as also the most important of the numerous private tombs, which extend from the other side of Medînet Habu, over mountain and valley to the entrance of the Valley of Kings. The priests of rank, and high officers, were fond of representing in their tombs all their wealth in horses, carriages, herds, boats, and household goods, as well as their hunting-grounds, fish-ponds, gardens, and halls; even the artificer and mechanic, busied in their different employments, are to be found on many of the walls; on which account many of these are of higher interest to us than even the king’s tombs, the representations on which are almost always carried through the whole life to the death.
Of later monuments, those of the twenty-sixth dynasty, in the seventh and sixth century before Christ, are the most remarkable. The greater number of these are in the rocky cove between Qurna and the hill Abd el Qurna, hewn out of flat surfaces, and are, for distinction, called el Asasif. The rocky plains here alone offered room for inscriptions, and these have been largely used. Already, from here, may be perceived a multitude of high gates and walls built of black bricks; these enclose, in long squares, sunken courts, the entrances to which are high arched pylon-doors, which, from a distance, look like large Roman triumphal arches. When you enter within the walls, you look directly into the court, dug down into the rock from twelve to fifteen feet deep, which you can descend by a staircase. This uncovered court is now the largest accessible tomb, one hundred feet long and seventy-four broad; it was excavated for a royal writer, named Petamenap. From this you go through an antechamber into a large rock-hall, with two rows of pillars, of an extent of sixty-five feet by fifty-two feet, with rooms and corridors on both sides; then through an arched entrance into a second hall with eight pillars, of about fifty-two feet by thirty-six feet; and then into a third hall with four pillars, thirty-one feet long and broad; and at last into a chamber twenty feet by twelve feet, which ends in a niche. Out of this chamber, at the end of the first row of rooms, a door leads into a very large room, and to the right into another, to a continuation of six corridors, with two stair-cases of nine steps and one of twenty-three steps, into a chamber, in which a pit forty-four feet deep, leads to another small room. This second course of rooms and passages, which run at a right angle to the first, are 172 feet long, but the first, reckoning the outer court with them, is 311 feet. From the fountain-room, another corridor leads to the right into a diagonal room, together measuring fifty-eight feet in this direction. Before the two stair-cases, in the second suite of rooms, there opens a fourth line of passages to the right, running in the same direction for 122 feet, in which, to the left, is a large square space sixty feet each way, with other rooms adjoining, the interior of which, on the four sides, is ornamented like a monstrous sarcophagus. In the middle, under this great square, rests the sarcophagus of the dead, which one, however, can only reach by means of a sunken pit of eighteen feet deep, which reaches to the fourth suite, by a horizontal passage of fifty-eight feet, to a third pit; through this to new rooms, and at last through the roof of the last to another room, containing the sarcophagus, which really lies exactly under the centre of the above described square. The whole surface of this private tomb is reckoned at 21,600 feet, and with the pit-room 23,148 square feet.[98] This immense work appears much more colossal when one recollects that all the walls, pillars, and doors from top to bottom are covered with innumerable inscriptions and representations, which, from the carefulness, exactitude, and elegance of the execution, throw one into ever-increasing astonishment.
Much less important are the few remains to be found of the later foreign dominion. Of these there are only two small temples in the neighbourhood of Medînet Habu, erected under the Ptolemies, and a third may be mentioned, which lies to the south, at the end of the great lake of Medînet Habu. The oldest sculptures in this last temple are of the time of Cæsar Augustus; but the well-preserved cell of Antoninus Pius was already built at that time. The outer door of this temple contains the only representation yet found of the Emperor Otho, the discovery of which afforded an immense pleasure to Champollion and Rosellini. They, however, overlooked the circumstance that on the opposite side the name of the Emperor Galba was to be found, till then unknown in Egypt.
So soon as the time of Strabo, ancient Thebes was already divided into several villages, and Germanicus visited it as we do, out of a desire for knowledge, and respect for the great antiquity of its monuments, “cognoscendæ antiquitatis,” as Tacitus informs us. Decius, A.D. 250, is the Emperor’s name, which I have found mentioned in hieroglyphics in all Egypt; it appears in a representation in the temple of Esneh. A century later the holy Athanasius retired into the Theban desert, among the Christian Hermits. The edict of Theodosius against heathendom, A.D. 391, deprived the Egyptian temples of their last authority, and favoured that of the monks and hermits, before whom, from that time, Egyptian Christendom bowed down.
From that time there arose in the whole country, and soon after in the neighbourhood of the Upper Nile, innumerable churches and convents, and the caverns of the desert were turned into troglodyte dwellings, for an ascetic hermit population.[99] The Theban Necropolis afforded above all places convenience for this new requisition. The tombs of the kings, as well as the private ones, were used as Christian cells, and soon bore on their walls traces of their new destination. In a tomb at Qurna, there is still a letter from St. Athanasius, archbishop of Alexandria, to the orthodox monks of Thebes, preserved on the white stucco in handsome uncials, but unfortunately in a very fragmentary state. They were particularly fond of turning ancient temples into Koptic churches or convents.