In the temple of Medînet Habu (city of Habu). the largest church appears to have been erected. Immense monolithic, granite columns, cover the floor of the second court in great numbers; in order to make room for the choir, an old Egyptian column, on the north side, has been removed; and from the rooms transformed into priests’ cells there has been a row of doors broken in the outer wall. The adjoining convent, Dêr el Medînet, surnamed “the townley,” was erected near the Ptolemic temple, behind the hill of Qurnet Murrâi. Another church stood in the temple of Old Qurna, and to it belonged most probably the convent Dêr el Bachît, which lies on the hill of Qurna. The ruins of a third convent cover the space of the temple of the Queen Numt-amen, in the corner of the valley of Asasif, and bear the name of Dêr el Bahri, the northern convent.
Such changes in these ancient palace structures ensured their being upheld, sometimes to their advantage, and sometimes to their disadvantage. Numbers of walls were either removed or broken through, in order to make room for new arrangements; on others, the heathen representations were destroyed, in order to make naked walls, or the human figures, and even the figures of animals in the inscriptions, particularly the heads, even up to the roofs were violently hacked and disfigured. Sometimes, however, the same pious, busy hands served us by preserving the ancient glory in the most complete manner; instead of tiring themselves with the hammer, they plastered them over from top to bottom with Nile earth, which afterwards was generally covered with white, in order to receive Christian pictures. In the course of time, however, this Koptic plaster crumbled away, and the ancient painting appeared again, with a brilliancy and astonishing freshness, which they would have hardly retained had they been left uncovered, and exposed to the sun and air. In the niche of an old cell I found St. Peter in old-Byzantine style, holding the keys, and pointing upwards with his finger; out of his nimbus peeped, however, from his half-fallen Christian mantle the cow-horns of the goddess Hathor, the Egyptian Venus; to her was brought originally the incense and the sacrifices of the neighbouring kings, which were now offered to the reverend apostle. Often have I assisted time with my own hand, to loosen the generally uninteresting Koptic representation on the plaster, in order to bring out the hidden magnificent sculptures of the Egyptian gods and kings, to their ancient and greater right upon our studies.
A great part of the Theban population is still Koptic on both sides of the Nile; our Christian cook Siriân was born here, and a rich Kopt, Mustafieh, who does not live far from us, brings us daily most excellent wheaten bread. But for a long time the Arabian Mahommedan population has taken the lead here, as well as in the whole country, against which the Kopts have only ancient customs to bring forward, and their knowledge of calculation, and the right of settlement in the most important financial places.
The little church in which now every Sunday the Theban Christians assemble, lies isolated in the great stony plain south of Medînet Habu. It has an Arabic cupola, and is surrounded by a court and wall. A few days since I went there, as I observed that the black turbans, which are only worn by the Kopts, were going to the chapel in greater number than usual. They were celebrating the feast of St. Donadeos, who founded the church. The service was over; I met the old priest (who lived in, and took care of the church), together with his numerous family. The spaces were covered with mats; they showed me the divisions for the men and the women, the little chapels ornamented with gay carvings, the square fonts for christening, and holy water. Upon the reading-desk lay a large old Koptic book, with sections of the Psalms and the Gospels, and Arabic translations of them; I asked the old man if he could read Koptic; he answered in the affirmative, but said his little boy could do it better than he; his eyes had already become weak. I now seated myself upon the mat, and the whole swarm of big and little yellow-brown children and grandchildren of the old priest squatted round me. I asked the eldest boy to read to me, and he immediately, with great fluency, began, not to read, but to sing, i. e. to chaunt in an awkward, grumbling tone. I interrupted him, and requested him to read slowly in his usual voice; this he did with great difficulty and making many mistakes, which his younger brother sometimes corrected over his shoulder; but when I went so far as to ask the meaning of the separate words, he pointed coolly to the Arabic translation, and told me that it was all there, and wanted to read it to me; as to the single words, or the value of the single letters over the sections, he could give no account, and the old man also had doubtless never understood them. I then asked them to show me the rest of the book-treasures belonging to the church, they were immediately brought to me, in a large cloth, tied up by the four corners; it contained some much-read Koptic and Arabic prayer-books. I left a small present for the benefit of the church, and I had already ridden some distance, when one of the boys overtook me, and out of breath, brought me a small holy cake of biscuit, stamped with Koptic crosses and Greek inscriptions, which had to be paid for by a second bakshish. These are the Epigoni, the purest, unmixed successors of that ancient Pharoah-people, who formerly conquered Asia and Ethiopia, and led their prisoners from the north and south, into the great hall of Ammon, at Karnak, in whose wisdom Moses was educated, and to whose priesthood the Greek sages went to school.
“O Aegypte, Aegypte! religionum tuarum solae supererunt fabulæ, aeque, incredibiles posteris, solaque supererunt verba lapidibus incisa tua pia facta narrantibus, et inhabitabit Aegyptum Scythes aut Indus aut aliquis talis, id est vicina barbaria.”[100]
Now we know this aliquis, whom Hermes Trismegistos could not name; it is the Turk, housing now in the regions of Osiris.
At the foot of our hill towards the green plain there stands a fine clump of sont-trees, overshadowing a friendly well-built cistern; here the sheep and goats are daily watered, and every evening and morning the brown maidens and the veiled matrons, in their blue draped garments, come down from their rock-caves, and then return with a solemn step, with their water-jugs on their heads; a lovely picture from the patriarchal times. But hard by this place of the refreshing element there lies in the middle of the fruitful field a white barren spot; on it two kilns are erected, on which, whenever there is any want of material, the next blocks of the old temples and rock-caves, with their paintings and inscriptions, are crushed and burnt into lime for mortar to join other blocks drawn from these handy and inexhaustible quarries, into a stable or some other government buildings.
On the same day on which I had visited the Koptic church, I desired to ride thence to the village of Kôm el Birât, on the opposite side of the great lake of Habu, now dried up. To my no small astonishment my guide, the excellent old ’Auad, whom I have taken into my service on account of his immense acquaintance with the locality, declared to me that he could not accompany me; indeed, he almost dreaded to mention the name of the village, and could not be induced to tell me anything about it, or about his strange behaviour. At home, I first learnt through others, at a later time too from himself, the reason of his refusal. Seven or eight years before, a man was killed in the house of the sheîkh of Qurna, to whose household Ἀuad then belonged, though for what cause does not appear. In consequence of this event, the whole family of the murdered man emigrated hence, and settled in Kôm el Birât. Since that time the law of blood-vengeance exists between the two houses. No member of that family has since set foot on the soil of Qurna, and if Ἀuad, or any one else from the house of the sheikh were to show himself in that village, any member of the injured family would be quite right in killing him in open day.[101] Such is the ancient Arab custom.
I return from my wandering through the ruins of the royal city, and through the changing thousands of years, which have passed over them, to our fort on the exposed hill of Abd el Qurna. Wilkinson and Hay have done an eminent service to later travellers, who, like ourselves, purpose remaining a long time in Thebes, by the restoration of these inhabitable places. An easy broad way leads windingly from the plain to a spacious court, the left side of which towards the mountain is formed by a long shadowy pillared row; behind this are several inhabitable rooms. At the extremity of the court there is still a single watch-tower, whence the Prussian flag is streaming, and close by it a little house of two stories, the lower of which I myself inhabit. Space, too, is there for the kitchen, the servants, and the donkeys.
Incomparably beautiful and attractive is the boundless prospect over the Thebaic plain from the wall of the court, low towards the inside and deep on the outside. Here all that remains of ancient Thebes may be seen, or still better from the battlements of the tower or from the hills immediately behind our house. Before us the magnificent ruins of the Memnonia, from the hill of Qurna on the left, to the high pylones towering over the black ruins of Medînet Habu to the right, then the green region surrounded by the broad Nile, whence on the right the lonely colossi of Amenophis rise; and on the other side of the river the temple groups of Karnak and Luqsor, behind the plain, stretches for several hours to the sharp little undulating outline of the Arabian mountains, over which we see the first rays of the sun gleaming, and pouring a wonderful flood of colours over the valley and rocky desert. I cannot compare this ever-existing prospect with any other in the world; but it reminds me forcibly of the picture, which I had for two years, from the top of the Tarpeian rock, and which comprehended the whole extent of ancient Rome, from the Aventine and the Tiber beneath it to the Quirinal, and thence over the hill to the undulating Campagna, with the beautiful profile, so strikingly like the one here, of the Alvan mount in the back ground.