In the first week of December they arrived at Dendera, where stands in majestic completeness one of the most ancient temples of Egypt. It has for thousands of years been half buried in the earth, and at one time must have been nearly hid by the shifting sands of the desert which once surrounded the pile. The impression which the gigantic columns, sixty feet high, and the enormous blocks of stone, eight feet thick, gave to them, is doubtless shared in some degree by all travellers. As he walked through the shadowy recesses, each aperture seeming like a deep cave in a rocky mountain, he was filled with a solemn sense of awe and sadness, which so overwhelmed him that he peered about the avenues in silence, and involuntarily stood on tip-toe. The sombre grandeur of the massive masonry, the sacred associations connected with the ancient worship of Osiris and Isis, the wonderful tales of wars, tyrannies, famines, plagues, Rameses, Moses, Pharaoh, Alexander, Ptolemy, Cambyses, and Napoleon, which those lofty statues could tell if their symmetrical lips could speak, awaken indescribable emotions, deep, thrilling, and permanent. Mr. Taylor saw a grace and an artistic merit in the stone figures, and in the hieroglyphics that adorned the temple, which few travellers detect or admit. To many travellers the figures on those old porches and halls seem rude and often out of proportion, and the writer confesses to having been one of the latter class. But Mr. Taylor’s appreciating scrutiny may be accounted for on the basis that with his poetical instincts and thorough culture in art, there were beauties in those works of ancient sculptors, latent to others, but apparent and striking to him. But there is no disagreement as to the unspeakable solemnity of the place and the gloom of its lonely halls.
The next night they reached Luxor, and caught the first glimpse of those interesting ruins by moonlight. There, silent and stately, arose the great Colonnade. There, quietly recalling the ancients, stood the twin Obelisk to the one at which Mr. Taylor had often looked in the Place de la Concorde in Paris, when as a boy he dreamed of distant Egypt. For seven miles around the Temple of Luxor are the ruins of ancient Thebes, within which were once the temples of Karnak, Luxor, Goorneh, Memnonium, and hundreds more, which now cumber the otherwise fertile plains. Thebes, with its hundred gates, with its countless armies, with its wise men, its Colossus that sang in the morning sunlight, its avenues of sphinxes and gods in stone, lay broken, spurned, and dead before them. The same moon looked down on them that gazed on the priests of Isis and the palace of its Cæsars. No one can imagine anything so solemn and grand as to stand in the moonlight on the haunted plains of ancient Thebes! One may have thought the Coliseum at Rome impressive beyond description when seen in the favorable light of an autumn moon, but when compared with Thebes it is tame and insignificant. Ages and ages before the rape of the Sabines, these temples had been constructed. They saw the morning of civilization; but now they are ruined and useless, the night seems best fitted for an appreciative view of them. Among the mighty colonnades whose columns are broken and falling, and around gigantic remains of ancient statues carved from a mountain of stone, Mr. Taylor wandered for two whole days. He scrutinized closely the long rows of ancient tombs, and stood in the rocky grave of Rameses I. The pictures on the walls of the tombs, the kind of rock, the original shape of the temples, the employments of the ancient races, the blue sky overhead, the clear atmosphere around, together with sketches of history and poetical allusions, shared in the interesting letters which Mr. Taylor wrote from Thebes. Such scenes contain an inspiration and an education which make scholars and statesmen of such as love history and appreciate the lessons those ruins teach. To one of Mr. Taylor’s disposition, a visit to such a place was a privilege not to be lightly thrown away. He investigated everything, and in a manner bordering on recklessness he descended through small holes into dark subterranean tombs, and with equal hardihood walked the crumbling roofs and cornices of the lofty ruins. He looked with disgust on the evidences of spoliations which were to be seen in splintered columns and fragments of ancient frescoes, and which were the work of scientific explorers. He regarded with a jealous anxiety the evidences of vandalism and decay, and wished sincerely that time and man would allow those precious relics of the old régime to remain forever intact. He appears to have regarded those massive wrecks as half-human, and sympathized with their forsaken and friendless condition.
But in all this antiquarian excitement, which usually occupies the undivided attention of less enthusiastic travellers, Mr. Taylor neglected not the living. He witnessed with interest the graces of the Arabian dancing-girls, noticed the features of the beggar-boys, the methods of teaching children the Koran, and the worn appearance of the water-carriers.
Leaving Luxor, they spent three or four days ascending the river to Assouan, and in visiting the villages, old temples, half-buried cities, and gorgeously decorated tombs in the mountain-sides, which are almost numberless in the valley of Upper Egypt. At Assouan, he was most cordially received by the Governor and was given a friendly greeting by all the officials he met. From that town he made several excursions with his German friend, the most interesting of which was that to the cataract of the Nile and the island of Philæ. There he saw the celebrated temple of the time of the Ptolemies, which he looked upon as modern, because it was not over twenty-two hundred years old. But he felt sufficient interest in the ruins of the old city to describe that marvellous colonnade which has astonished so many visitors to the island of Philæ. The reader of his letters can detect, however, in Mr. Taylor’s description of columns, aisles, roofs, walls, capitals, sculptures, monoliths, and colossi, a vein of sadness which may have colored his views. At all events the ruins of Philæ did not impress him as they seem to have affected other visitors. The fact that he was so soon to part with a companion for whom he felt a love like that of Jonathan for David, may have had more or less influence upon his capacity to enjoy scenery or the remains of antiquity: for the writer looked upon Philæ as one of the most interesting localities of the lower Nile, and cannot but regard the ruined temple as one of the grandest in Egypt. They visited the fields, villages, the tombs, the ancient quarry, wherein half-sculptured statues and columns still remain unmoved, and after a day of antiquarian research they rode back to their boat, as he said “with heavy hearts.” The next day came the hour of parting; and these two men, one a young man, the other an elderly gentleman, who had been utter strangers forty days before, now clung to each other with the sincerest brotherly love and parted in tears. How little did Mr. Taylor think, as he saw the boat sailing away for Cairo with the Saxe-Coburg colors at the peak, where he had so long kept the Stars and Stripes, that they would meet again in the sunny southern lands of Europe, and that another person would join their company for life and make up what he termed “a sacred triad.” He thought then that the parting might be for all time. He was going into an unknown wilderness, while his friend sought again the lands of civilization: it was a long time before either could dispel the gloom which their separation left about them.
PHILÆ COLONNADE.
Mr. Taylor took another boat at Assouan and proceeded to Korosko, where, with the assistance of the Governor and a wild Arab chieftain, whose friendship was purchased by presents and sociability, he secured the necessary camels and outfit for a trip across the desert. It was a hazardous undertaking for a stranger, alone, unknown, to traverse the desert. If he was murdered, none of the authorities would care, nor would his death become known. He might contract the terrible fever. He was liable to be eaten by wild beasts, and he ran great risk of dying of thirst or hunger on the hot sands of a trackless desert. The way had been travelled many times before, but was all the more dangerous because of the opportunity it gave robbers to lie in wait for tourists. But he unhesitatingly entered upon the journey, trusting in the friendship of his Nubian and Arabian servants, and in his own ability to withstand the heat of the sands and the attacks of African fever. Camping in the desert sands, riding a dromedary in the scorching sun, living upon rudely prepared food, drinking lukewarm water, with the sight of bones and carcasses by the way to warn him, and the occasional appearance of sickly returning caravans to dishearten him, he passed that arm of the desert between the first cataract of the Nile and Abou-Hammed. Thence his little caravan of six camels followed the winding river to a small town, El Mekheyref, where he dismissed his friendly companions, excepting one, who had accompanied him from Cairo, and set sail again on the Nile. Everywhere he was received with kindness and hospitality by the natives and by the Governors. His servants were so much interested in his welfare that they told the natives that he was a high official in the country from which he came, and he was treated with the respect the Eastern people think is due to persons of high rank. All disclaimers from him were considered to be actuated by feelings of modesty and elevated him in the estimation of his entertainers.
His visit to Meroe was an interesting episode in his long pilgrimage, although he did not make such diligent search as an antiquarian among its crumbling walls as he had done in some of the other ancient cities. Yet his descriptions of that place are most vivid pictures and convey an idea of the topography of the capital of that ancient kingdom in a manner most readable to the stranger and very important to students of history.