The hieroglyphics upon the walls, the columns, the obelisks and the statues, after remaining a puzzle for ages, have been deciphered and woven into a consecutive history. This was made possible by the discovery, in 1799, of what is known as the "Rosetta stone" (now in the British Museum) at the mouth of the Rosetta arm of the Nile by a French engineer named Bouchard. This stone bears a decree inscribed in three languages—ancient Egyptian, modern Egyptian and Greek, and furnishes the key to unlock the secrets of ancient history.
The pictures represent sacrificial ceremonies, domestic and industrial scenes, battles, triumphal processions—all phases of life, in fact. One wall contains, in hieroglyphics, the treaty of peace which Rameses II concluded with the Hittites, while another wall represents Rameses III holding a group of prisoners by the hair and raising a club as if to strike. Close by, the god Ammon is delivering to him chained representatives of different vanquished nations, the faces being so true to life that the Israelities brought from Palestine can be easily distinguished from the Ethiopians and Nubians of the south. One of the heads seen often in the drawings resembles "the yellow kid," and the donkeys are exactly like those seen to-day.
Luxor and Karnak are on the east bank of the Nile, but Thebes required both sides of the river for her great population, and the west bank is also rich in evidences of ancient civilization. The Rameseum is here and would attract more attention if it were not overshadowed by larger temples; here also are the "Colossi of Memmon," one of them known to literature as the singing statue. This is described by Strabo and Juvenal and bears many inscriptions in Latin and Greek made by those who visited it under the Roman rule. Hadrian looked upon it 150 A. D., and a poetess of his day declares that the statue greeted the emperor. It is supposed that the sound which for many years issued from the head of the statue just after sunrise was caused by the change in temperature, the granite having been cracked; at any rate, the sound ceased when the statue was repaired. It now sits silent, and with its companion gazes upon the barley field that reaches out in every direction from their feet.
But more interesting than the Rameseum or the Colossi are the tombs of the kings, some forty-two of which have already been discovered. At this point the west side of the valley of the Nile is walled in by a range of limestone hills, one of which bears a striking resemblance to a pyramid. (Could it have suggested the idea of a pyramid for a tomb?) Leaving the valley of the Nile about two miles north of this pyramidal hill, there is a small dry valley which wends its way back through the hills and terminates at the foot of steep walls just west of the hill mentioned. Here are the tombs, hewn in the solid rock, the most elaborate of which is the tomb of Sethos, or Seti, the father of Rameses II. This tomb burrows into the hill to the depth of three hundred and thirty feet, a flight of steps leading down through different levels and different chambers to the final vault. The walls are covered with figures in colors representing the king in the act of making offerings to the various gods. There are also drawings illustrating scenes in this world and life as it is supposed to be in the next world. Some of these pictures portray a hell where the wicked are punished with fire, and there are also drawings which have been interpreted to represent the resurrection and judgment.
Not far away is the tomb of "the Pharaoh of the Exodus" which contains a granite image of the king, and close by this tomb is another in which the mummied form of a Pharaoh still reposes. Grave robbing, however, was so popular an amusement in those days that the bodies of nearly all the kings had been removed for safety to a secret vault, which was so carefully concealed that they were not found until the nineteenth century.
At Memphis, which is only about eighteen miles from Cairo, there are tombs of less importance, colossal statues of Rameses II and the sarcophagi of the sacred bulls. In one of the tombs or Mastabas, as tombs of this style are called, are some of the drawings that have been most widely reproduced. In one place a boy is fattening geese by the stuffing process; in another, cranes are being fed; here, rams are treading in the seed, and the cattle, horned and hornless, are being driven through a river. Agriculture, ship-building, carpentering and other industries are minutely pictured. While the human figures are stiff and angular, the birds and beasts are so exactly like what we see to-day that one could easily believe them to have been drawn by a modern artist.
