Cleopatra's needle

by Sir Erasmus Wilson

The Memnonian Colossi; one of the two being the “Vocal Memnon.” They are sitting statues of the Pharaoh, Amenophis III.

Once upon a time there existed on this spot a temple of calcareous stone; the temple was named Memnonium, from being situated in a part of the city called Memnonia; and the trumpet of fame has ascribed it to a mythical king, Memnon: it was, however, erected by Amenophis or Amunoph III., who, for no better reason, has likewise been termed Memnon. Egyptologists deplore the loss of this temple, as it no doubt contained the historical record of the reign of Amenophis; but of its pylons, its walls, and its columns, nothing now remains save their foundations; its stones have been broken into bits, and the bits have been carried away and burnt into lime. Nevertheless, a memorial of its former existence happily remains in the two gigantic colossal statues of Amenophis, which were carved out of breccia, a transition rock, that could yield no lime by the burning. These are the two huge Colossi, still grand, but much defaced and injured, which sat at their ease in front of the pylon of Amunoph’s temple, and will sit on, perhaps, for centuries, although the sanctuary which they once guarded and adorned is no more. Of another temple near at hand, M. Mariette says:—“The lime-burners have luckily not yet found their way here. But why? Simply because there is already so much limestone among the ruins on the plain, which is, therefore, more easy of acquisition;” but when this shall have been exhausted, then looms another invasion of those industrious shepherds, the lime-burners.

No doubt, a good deal of the destruction which we see around was the handiwork of man, perhaps of the baffled Cambyses; perhaps of Ptolemy Lathyrus, those two great destroyers; but history reminds us, that in the twenty-seventh year before the birth of Christ, an earthquake visited Egypt, and shook it to its very foundations. This earthquake seriously damaged the Colossi, and more especially the northernmost one, which had its upper part shaken completely off. But a curious phenomenon succeeded. Of a morning, when the sun first rose and warmed the statue, it gave forth a plaintive wail, resembling the sound of the human voice. This, apparently, resulted from some contraction or expansion of the material of the broken stump: it has been supposed that the fractured stone, moistened by the dew of night, crackled under the drying influence of the warm rays of the rising sun. But whatever the physical cause may have been, the sound attracted the notice of travellers; and visitors came from all parts of the surrounding countries to witness the phenomenon. It would seem that the event was a little fickle; it did not always manifest itself, nor precisely at the same time; but it was only at or about the time of the rising of the sun that it was evoked. To the multitude, this sound was the voice of Memnon lamenting to his divine mother, Aurora, the injuries his statue had sustained; and in this wise he sighed forth his lament for 250 years, when Septimus Severus stretched forth his hand to heal his wounds, and perchance to elicit a happier, cheerfuller note. The statue was repaired by means of blocks of stone, as in ordinary masonry; the voice of lamentation ceased, and with it every vestige of sound. Memnon wailed and sighed no more, neither did his voice come more melodiously forth as his restorer hoped. The vocal Memnon sunk at once, from an object of wonder, to the simple rank of the northern colossus of Amenophis. But the term Colossus is well-earned when we reflect that the statue itself was fifty feet in height; while its pedestal of ten feet gave it an altitude of sixty feet. Two figures standing against the arms of the throne on which the giant sits, are those of his mother and sister.

Not far away from the ruin of the Memnonium and the Memnonian Colossi are the fragments of a temple, erected by Rameses II., and dedicated to himself, the Ramesseum; it has likewise been named the Palace of Memnon and the Tomb of Osymandias. But the object of chief interest for us, at the present time, in connection with this ruin, is the broken Colossus, which formerly stood within the entrance-court of the temple. The statue is wrought out of Syenite granite; it was brought from Syené, and is one of the most gigantic monoliths carved by the Egyptians. It is a statue of Rameses the Great, seated on his throne, in the attitude of repose, and was originally nearly forty feet high; whilst its estimated weight was very little short of 900 tons. It is now broken across at the waist; the lower part is shattered into fragments; whilst the upper portion is reduced in size by the cutting out of mill-stones by the Arabs. “It is difficult,” says Mariette, “at what most to wonder, the patience and labour of the sculptor, or the pains and force employed by the destroyer.” Miss Edwards, speaking of this Colossus, remarks, that “the stone is so hard, that when small fragments are mounted on a handle, they are used as a substitute for the diamond by engravers of antiques.”

But we must confess to a little, a very little, malice when we turn the attention of our readers to Deir-el-Bahari, a temple erected to the honour of Hatasou, also on the western and sepulchral side of Thebes. “Here,” says Mariette, “we find a temple mounting the rock behind it by regular steps or platforms, and built of a beautiful white and marble-like calcareous stone. It was formerly approached by a long avenue of sphinxes, and heralded by two obelisks, of which the bases alone are now traceable.”

But how, may we venture to enquire, came obelisks, the offspring of the rising sun, on the Hades side of the Nile? Can the river have changed its course? Alas! no. It is the whim of woman. Hatasou erected the grandest obelisks in existence; she covered the whole shaft, with the exception of the carvings, with gold. She erected a temple that stepped up the side of a mountain, as if it were a flight of stairs. She governed Egypt, the two worlds, and maintained the dignity of the diadems of the upper and lower country during one of the most brilliant periods of Egypt’s greatness; and now we find her imparting sunshine to the dead, and by exception proving the rule, that no obelisks are to be found on the western bank of the Nile, saving her own, and the flouted fragments of Fyoom. “She hath made this work for her father Amun-re, lord of the regions; she hath erected to him this handsome gateway * * * Amun protects the work * * * she hath done this to whom life is given for ever.”[27] So says the Pharaoh Amun-noo-het, or Hatasou. Turn we now to the eastern bank of the Nile, and we find the Arab village of Luxor grown up like a parasitic fungus over the ruins of once stately edifices, the grand temple of Amenophis III., where the Colossi of Rameses guard the entrance; and two miles away, the still more magnificent ruin of the temple of Usertesen and his successors: but of these anon.

The inscription on the paw of the sphynx, already noted, has reminded us how precious to the Egyptian is every “spot of harvest-bearing land,” so precious that not a tittle could be spared for the interment of the dead; the sands were too shifting, and the sandstone rock alone remained for the purposes of burial. The sandstone rock forms a broad shelf at the border of the desert, and thence mounts up in terraces to the summit of the mountain-range. Cheops and Chephren, and the kings of the early dynasties, had the power and the means of raising mountains over their embalmed and mummified remains; but for the people, must suffice a more humble resting-place;—for them a hole was scooped out on the platform of rock, to be built up at its entrance until the day of resurrection should arrive. In the neighbourhood of the Pyramids, the cemetery of kings, the sandstone rock is honeycombed with tombs, in which the population of every degree have their appropriate sepulchral niche. In later times these tombs have been ransacked for antiquarian relics and for the riches they contained; and the desert around is still thickly carpeted with a profuse accumulation of fragments of mummies and mummy-cases, and vestments of every kind.

The word mummy is said to be derived from “mourn,” a kind of wax used in the process of embalming. This process would seem to have been first employed during the eleventh dynasty, about 3,000 years before the Christian era, and to have been practised until the 6th century a.d. Mariette notes differences in the appearance and qualities of the mummies in accordance with their source—from Memphis or Thebes, or their preparation in more recent times. The Memphite mummies are extremely dry, break easily, and are black in colour; those of Thebes are tightly bandaged, yellow and flexible, bending easily, and sometimes preserving so much softness as to admit of being indented by pressure: whereas, in later times, the bodies were saturated with a kind of turpentine from Judea, and became heavy, compact, the bandages seemingly identified with the flesh, and so hard as only to be broken with violence. The Memphite mummies were often filled with amulets and scarabæi, and by their sides, or between their legs, was placed a papyrus, a copy of the Book of the Dead. On the Theban mummies were scarabæi and rings, which were worn on the fingers of the left hand.

A pylon or doorway of a house or temple.