Chapter XXXI: Letter XXVIII: Thebes, Qurna, 24th November, 1844

On the 4th of November we reached this last great station of our journey, and feel that we have again reached much nearer home. We have selected a charming castle on a rock for our residence here, which will certainly be protracted for several months. It is situated on a hill called ABD EL QURNA, and is an ancient tomb enlarged by brick buildings, from which we overlook the whole Theban plain at one view. I should be afraid of being almost oppressed by the overwhelming number of monuments, if the mighty character of the ruins of this most royal city of all antiquity did not maintain, and daily renew, our interest to the highest possible degree. While our investigations of the numerous temples, from the Ptolemaic and the Roman period, immediately preceding that, had in fact become almost fatiguing, here, where the Homeric forms of the mighty Pharaohs of the 18th and 19th Dynasties stand out before me in their dignity and splendour, I feel as fresh again as at the commencement of our journey.

I first had excavations made in the renowned temple of Ramses Miamun, lying at our feet, which have led to unexpected results. Erbkam has superintended the work with the greatest care, and his ground plan which is now finished of this most beautiful building of the Pharaonic times, described by Diodorus as the tomb of Osymandyas, is the first which can be called perfect, as it no longer rests on arbitrary restorations, which are too long in the French descriptions and too short in those of Wilkinson.

I have also had excavations made in the rock-tomb of the same RAMSES in Bab el Meluk, which was covered over with rubbish, and which Rosellini was mistaken in thinking unfinished; several chambers have already been opened, and if fortune favours us we shall also still find the sarcophagus, not indeed unopened—the Persians had already taken care of that—but perhaps less mutilated than others, as the tomb has been closed up by the river mud from very ancient times.

On our journey from Korusko hither, besides our antiquarian labours, I was engaged with the languages of the southern countries, still so little known. Amidst these, three may be selected as being the most widely-distributed; the NUBA language, that of the Nuba or Berber nation; the KUNGARA language, of the negroes of DAR FÛR; and the BEGA language, that of the BISCHARÎBAS inhabiting the eastern portion of the Sudan. I have prepared the grammar and vocabulary of all three, so fully, that whenever they are published some notion of these languages may be obtained. The most important of them is the one last mentioned, because, both with reference to its grammatical construction and by its position in the development of languages, it proves itself to be a very remarkable member of the _Caucasian_ stock. It is spoken by the people, for which reason I think I can perceive that they were once the inhabitants of the flourishing city of Meröe, and thus have a peculiar claim, to be called in a more exact sense the ETHIOPIAN people.

It has furthermore been proved, that nothing can be discovered of a primitive Ethiopian civilisation, or indeed of an ancient Ethiopian national civilisation, which is so much held up by modern erudition; indeed, we have every reason to deny this completely. Whatever in the accounts of the ancients does not rest on total misapprehension, only refers to _Egyptian_ civilisation and art, which had fled in the time of the Hyksos rule to ETHIOPIA. The irruption of Egyptian power from Ethiopia, at the foundation of the new Egyptian Monarchy, and its progress even far into Asia, was mentioned in the Asiatic, and afterwards in the Greek traditions, as an event which was transferred from the Ethiopian _country_ to the Ethiopian _nation_, for no knowledge of a still older Egyptian Monarchy, and of its high but peaceful state of civilisation, had penetrated to the northern nations. I have sent an account of the results of our Ethiopian journey to the Academy, and in it I give a cursory survey of the history of Ethiopia from the first conquest of the country by Sesurtesen III. in the 12th Manethonic Dynasty down to the most flourishing period of the Meröitic Monarchy in the first centuries of our era, and then through the middle ages down to the Bischarîbas of the present day, whose Sheikhs we saw in chains marching over the ruins of what was once their capital, and passing in front of the Pyramids of their ancient kings.