The chief buildings of Ramses II. are the Ramesseum or Memnonium; a Temple of Victory at Old Qurnah, dedicated to the god Amon; the rock-temple of Ipsamboul, dedicated to the chief gods of Egypt; the completion of the Temple of Amon at Luxor, which was left unfinished by Amenhotep III.; and the great hall in the Temple of Karnak. He erected two giant statues of himself and two beautiful obelisks, one of which is in Paris.
The king enjoyed a reign of sixty-seven years; part of which time he was associated with his father. He must have been nearly one hundred years old when he died; and from the temple walls at Abydos we learn that he had sixty sons and fifty-nine daughters. This is the merest outline of Ramses II., one of the greatest of the Egyptian kings; an essentially successful man, bold, enterprising, ambitious, and vain.
Now for his personal appearance, in so far as we can judge of it after its long repose in spices and linen bandages. For the sake of those whose faith may not be very strong, let us add that the mummy was opened by Maspéro and Brügsch—two of our greatest Egyptologists—in presence of a large number of people, English as well as Egyptian, who verified the official statement made by the high-priest Pinotem on the coffin lid, and on the outer winding-sheet of the mummy, that this was in truth the body of Ramses II. The head is long, and small in proportion to the size of the body; the top of it is bald, but otherwise the hair is thick. At the time of death it was probably white; but the spices used in the embalmment have turned it a yellowish colour. The eyebrows, too, are white and thick; the eyes small and close together; the temples are sunken; and the nose, long, thin, and hooked, is also depressed at the tip. The tightness of the bandaging probably accounts for this. The chin is prominent, and the jawbone massive, giving a look of determination to the face, which is covered with a thin beard and moustache. The skin is of a brown hue, with black marks on it, possibly owing to the bituminous matter used in embalming. The hands, which are crossed over the breast, are small, and dyed with henna; the legs and thighs fleshless; the feet long, slender, and although somewhat flat-soled, are well shaped. They also are stained with henna. The body is in a good state of preservation; and the corpse, which is that of a very old man, is also that of a strongly built and vigorous old man. The examination over, Professor Maspéro returned the mummy to its glass case, where, with face uncovered, it may be seen, with the mummies of Pinotem and the priest Nebsouni.
Ramses III.—surnamed Haq-On—Prince of Heliopolis, was not the immediate successor of Ramses II., although he appears to have taken him for his model. When he came to the throne, Egypt had degenerated to a miserable condition, and he first turned his attention to the internal affairs of the kingdom, rearranging the different castes and fixing their lines very firmly. He also started a navy, to trade with the countries near to Egypt. Many of the trees and shrubs in the valley of the Nile were planted by him, to encourage moisture in the atmosphere and give shade to the people. His buildings were not nearly so grand or so numerous as those of Ramses II. He erected several Ramessea and a new temple at Thebes. He also converted the treasure-house at Medinet-Abou into a Temple of Victory, bringing all that was most precious into it. From some of the papyri, we find that he was to have been the victim of a plot hatched in the harem; but it was discovered, and the conspirators punished. Ramses III. reigned more than twenty-seven years, and had eighteen sons and fourteen daughters, to the former of whom he gave the names of the sons of Ramses II. In his reign, the art of inlaying glass in alabaster was at its height.
Ramses III. was altogether an inferior man to his predecessor of the same name, although probably more intelligent; and from the shape of the forehead, we might judge him to have had the intellectual capacities largely developed. But he was eaten up with vanity, and a desire to imitate in everything Ramses II. His buildings are less numerous than that monarch’s; in style they are far inferior, and the construction is poor. His wars were chiefly fought close at home, either with the neighbouring Philistines or the tribes in the frontier of his country. This, condensed into a few sentences, is the outline of his life. In appearance, as seen at Boulak, when the mummy was uncased, he was a small man, much inferior in size and build to Ramses II, although his forehead is of better proportions. No hair is visible on either face or head; the cheek-bones are not so high, the nose not so hooked, the chin and jaw less massive. Professor Maspéro thinks that the eyes were larger than those of Ramses II., which were small; but it is difficult to be certain about this, as they have been extracted, and the lids even removed. The mouth is horribly large, and out of proportion to the rest of the face; the lips are thin; and many of the teeth are in a perfect state of preservation. The displaying of the features of Ramses III. was indeed a proof of great skill and patience on the part of the operators, for when the last coverings were removed, the face was found to be completely hidden by a coating of bitumen, which had to be taken away piecemeal with the utmost care. The mummy, face uncovered, stands now in a glass case by the side of Ramses II.; and the lid of the sarcophagus in which he was buried is in the Museum at Cambridge.
The mummy of Queen Nofre-tari was found with those of Ramses II. and III. in the hiding-place at Dayr-el-Bahari; but it became in such a bad condition, and smelt so horribly, that it was necessary to get rid of it. Accordingly, Professor Maspéro decided to open it; and by doing so, settled a knotty historical question. Was Nofre-tari, the popular and deeply revered queen of king Aahmes I. of the eighteenth dynasty, a negress? On some of the monuments, she is represented with fine hair and yellow skin; on others, with a distinctly negro type of face. Truly, she was worshipped at Thebes under the form of Hathor, the black goddess of Death and the nether world. Did, then, the story of her belonging to one of the black races of mankind originate in this, or was there real ground for depicting her with a black complexion? The investigation of the mummy answered the question; for although, on being opened, it began to crumble away and dissolve into black matter, it was quite possible to ascertain that she was a woman of full age and middle height, and that she belonged to the white races of mankind.
The opening of these mummies was the last official work of Professor Maspéro, and the description of them is gathered from his Report. Unfortunately for all Egyptologists, he has been obliged to resign his post of Director of the Excavations and Antiquities in Egypt.
We must now pass on from the interesting Hall of Mummies, and convey ourselves in thought to a dismal, dreary corner of the north-eastern Delta, where, in the neighbourhood of the mounds of Tell-el-Defenneh, Mr Flinders Petrie has discovered the remains of the ancient palace in which Apries Hophra gave shelter to the fugitive daughters of Zedekiah. This ‘Castle of the Jew’s Daughter,’ as it is called by the Arabs to-day—the ‘Pharaoh’s house in Tahpanhes’ of the Bible, was built by Psammetichus I. Under the corners of the building, Mr Petrie has dug out the foundation deposits, consisting of seals, small tablets, engraved with the king’s name and royal titles, bricks, &c. It was probably the stronghold of those Carian and Ionian mercenaries to whom Psammetichus granted a permanent settlement at Daphnæ of Pelusium. The building itself was square, lofty, and of massive structure. It stands in the remains of a quadrangular courtyard, the whole covering an area of two thousand feet in length by one thousand feet in breadth. Originally, it must have been walled in, the great boundary wall being fifty feet in thickness. A gate on the north side opened towards the canal; another on the south, to the military road between Egypt, through Palestine, into Syria. The ‘Kasr’ also possessed a tower which has probably served at different times as an outlook, general’s headquarters, and a royal palace. Nor can we assign one date only to it; it has been added to at various times, and to meet the requirements of the different owners. It is hopeless to conjecture in how many stories it was originally built; but the main part of the building contained sixteen square rooms on each floor, with walls, both outside and partition, of immense strength. Now, the basements, which are all that is left, were the offices of the royal palace, and very interesting are the discoveries which Mr Petrie has made there. First of all, there is the kitchen, a big room with deep recesses in the sides, and containing a dozen or more large jars, which somehow have managed to escape the general destruction; also two flat dishes, three small flat iron pokers, two corn-rubbers, some weights, and a large knife made of iron. Then there is a room which we may suppose to have answered to the butler’s pantry, for it was evidently the room where the wine-jars were brought to be opened; but although there was not one amphora to be found, there were scores of lids lying scattered about, many of them stamped with the cartouches of Psammetichus I., and Necho, his successor. On a rubbish-heap outside were found the broken amphoræ, some of them having the lute-shaped ‘nefer’ written on them in ink, a mark signifying ‘good.’ There is a tiny chamber containing a sink; and from the contents of that sink, it can only have served one purpose, and that the scullery. Mr Petrie describes it as being ‘formed of a large jar with the bottom knocked out, and filled with broken potsherds placed on edge. The water ran through this, and thence into more broken pots below, placed one in another, all bottomless, going down to the clean sand four or five feet below.’ These sherds were literally clogged with fish-bones and animal matter.
Some small tablets engraved with the name of Aahmes II., and a bronze seal of Apries, were also found; and in some of the other rooms were seen lying about several Greek vases, many of them well painted with representations of sphinxes, dancers, chariot-races, harpies, &c. Amongst the débris, have been picked up amulets, two rings, a sword handle with wide curved guard, some scale-armour, beads, seals, &c.; and several large amphoræ, quite perfect, and a great many broken ones, although not so badly broken but that they can be mended. The once stately building is now a heap of blackened, flame-scorched ruins, while the ground all round it is thickly strewn with the débris of its past treasures. It must have fallen into very revengeful hands before even it was set on fire, for it has evidently been ruthlessly knocked to pieces and dismantled, besides being burnt. Did the king of Babylon, as is indicated in the book of Jeremiah, indeed spread his tent on the hard mud pavement in the square courtyard, and after giving over ‘such as were for death to death, and such as were for captivity to captivity, and such as were for the sword to the sword,’ commence the work of destruction? We cannot tell: we know that he did come, and that, according to Babylonian accounts, he conquered. The Egyptians admit that he came, but say he was defeated. Anyway, there are three steles in the Boulak Museum inscribed with his names, titles, and parentage, which there is every reason to believe were picked up by the Arabs near this place. Whether Nebuchadnezzar conquered or not, ‘Pharaoh’s house at Tahpanhes’ is now but the wreck of a departed glory.
The recent meeting of the Egyptian Exploration Fund was particularly interesting. At it, Mr Ernest Gardner gave a vivid account of Naukratis, for the excavation of which we are indebted to Mr Petrie and himself. Naukratis was an ancient Greek settlement in Lower Egypt, whose site, until lately, was lost in obscurity. We know that it contained five celebrated temples—the Pan-Hellenion, and the temples of Zeus, Hera, Apollo, and Aphrodite; of these, four are now discovered. During this present year, Mr Gardner has found the cemetery of Naukratis. It is a little distance from the town itself, and, unfortunately, cannot be wholly excavated, as there is a modern Arab cemetery exactly over it. The part already dug out is evidently the more modern of the two, as it only contains graves subsequent to the sixth century B.C. From a strictly antiquarian point of view, it is therefore the less interesting, although that date gives the most flourishing period of the history of Naukratis. There was not one single mummified body found; the funerals were evidently conducted strictly after the manner of the Greeks. Coffins of tile and wood, the latter adorned with terra-cotta ornaments, were found in the graves; articles both of use and beauty were found buried with the dead. In one case, alongside of the deceased lady’s jewellery, was found her rouge-pot, still half full of rouge, and beautifully painted on the outside. Among the many things found in the town itself is a portrait head of the time of Berenike II., made in blue porcelain; a fine archaic statue of Apollo as a hunter, laden with spoils; and two very fine vases of large size. The ruins of the Temple of Aphrodite, built upon the foundations of two earlier ones, consist of little else than mud walls. In front of it is the altar, made of the ashes of the victims, bound together with a mud casing. Thus, after centuries of burial, has the excavator’s spade brought us face to face with Naukratis, once the most flourishing Greek settlement and trading-port in Lower Egypt.