The tomb of Hatshepsu was found by Mr. Theodore M. Davis, and the famous Vache of Deir-el-Bahari by Monsieur Naville as lately as 1905. It stands in the museum at Cairo, but for ever it will be connected in the minds of men with the tiger-colored precipices and the Colonnades of Thebes. Behind the ruins of the temple of Mentu-Hotep III., in a chapel of painted rock, the Vache-Hathor was found.
It is not easy to convey by any description the impression this marvellous statue makes. Many of us love our dogs, our horses, some of us adore our cats; but which of us can think, without a smile, of worshipping a cow? Yet the cow was the Egyptian Aphrodite’s sacred animal. Under the form of a cow she was often represented. And in the statue she is presented to us as a limestone cow. And positively this cow is to be worshipped.
She is shown in the act apparently of stepping gravely forward out of a small arched shrine, the walls of which are decorated with brilliant paintings. Her color is red and yellowish red, and is covered with dark blotches of a very dark green, which look almost black. Only one or two are of a bluish color. Her height is moderate. I stand about five foot nine, and I found that on her pedestal the line of her back was about level with my chest. The lower part of the body, much of which is concealed by the under block of limestone, is white, tinged with yellow. The tail is red. Above the head, open and closed lotus-flowers form a head-dress, with the lunar disk and two feathers. And the long lotus-stalks flow down on each side of the neck toward the ground. At the back of this head-dress are a scarab and a cartouche. The goddess is advancing solemnly and gently. A wonderful calm, a matchless, serene dignity, enfold her.
In the body of this cow one is able, indeed one is almost obliged, to feel the soul of a goddess. The incredible is accomplished. The dead Egyptian makes the ironic, the skeptical modern world feel deity in a limestone cow. How is it done? I know not; but it is done. Genius can do nearly everything, it seems. Under the chin of the cow there is a standing statue of the King Mentu-Hotep, and beneath her the king kneels as a boy. Wonderfully expressive and solemnly refined is the cow’s face, which is of dark color, like the color of almost black earth—earth fertilized by the Nile. Dignified, dominating, almost but just not stern, strongly intelligent, and, through its beautiful intelligence, entirely sympathetic (“to understand all, is to pardon all”), this face, once thoroughly seen, completely noticed, can never be forgotten. This is one of the most beautiful statues in the world.
When I was at Deir-el-Bahari I thought of it and wished that it still stood there near the Colonnades of Thebes under the tiger-colored precipices. And then I thought of Hatshepsu. Surely she would not brook a rival to-day near the temple which she made—a rival long lost and long forgotten. Is not her influence still there upon the terraced platforms, among the apricot and the white columns, near the paintings of the land of Punt? Did it not whisper to the antiquaries, even to the soldiers from Cairo, who guarded the Vache-Hathor in the night, to make haste to take her away far from the hills of Thebes and from the Nile’s long southern reaches, that the great queen might once more reign alone? They obeyed. Hatshepsu was appeased. And, like a delicate woman, perfumed and arranged, clothed in a creation of white and blue and orange, standing ever so knowingly against a background of orange and pink, of red and of brown-red, she rules at Deir-el-Bahari.
XIII
THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS
On the way to the tombs of the kings I went to the temple of Kurna, that lonely cenotaph, with its sand-colored massive façade, its heaps of fallen stone, its wide and ruined doorway, its thick, almost rough, columns recalling Medinet-Abu. There is not very much to see, but from there one has a fine view of other temples—of the Ramesseum, looking superb, like a grand skeleton; of Medinet-Abu, distant, very pale gold in the morning sunlight; of little Deir-al-Medinet, the pretty child of the Ptolemies, with the heads of the seven Hathors. And from Kurna the Colossi are exceptionally grand and exceptionally personal, so personal that one imagines one sees the expressions of the faces that they no longer possess.
Even if you do not go into the tombs—but you will go—you must ride to the tombs of the kings; and you must, if you care for the finesse of impressions, ride on a blazing day and toward the hour of noon. Then the ravine is itself, like the great act that demonstrates a temperament. It is the narrow home of fire, hemmed in by brilliant colors, nearly all—perhaps quite all—of which could be found in a glowing furnace. Every shade of yellow is there—lemon yellow, sulphur yellow, the yellow of amber, the yellow of orange with its tendency toward red, the yellow of gold, sand color, sun color. Cannot all these yellows be found in a fire? And there are the reds—pink of the carnation, pink of the coral, red of the little rose that grows in certain places of sands, red of the bright flame’s heart. And all these colors are mingled in complete sterility. And all are fused into a fierce brotherhood by the sun. and like a flood, they seem flowing to the red and the yellow mountains, like a flood that is flowing to its sea. You are taken by them toward the mountains, on and on, till the world is closing in, and you know the way must come to an end. And it comes to an end—in a tomb.