Chapter XXXIII: Letter XXX: Thebes, the 25th February, 1845

We have now been inhabiting our Theban Acropolis, on the hill of Qurna, above a quarter of a year, every one busily employed in his own way from morning to evening, in investigating, describing, and drawing the most valuable monuments, taking paper impressions of the inscriptions, and in making plans of the buildings; we have not yet been able to complete the Libyan side alone, where there are at least twelve temples, five-and-twenty tombs of kings, fifteen belonging to the royal wives or daughters, and a countless number belonging to private persons, still to be examined. The eastern side, with its six-and-twenty sanctuaries, in a certain degree of preservation, will however demand no less time, and yet, more has been done by previous travellers and expeditions in Thebes itself, especially by the French-Tuscan expedition, than in any other spot, and we have everywhere only compared and completed their labours, and not repeated them. We are also far from imagining that we have now by any means exhausted the infinite number of monuments; whoever follows us with new information, and with the results of more advanced science, will also find fresh treasures, and gain fresh instruction from the same monuments. I have always had a historical aim in view, and this has especially determined my selection of the monuments. Whenever I believed that I had attained what was most essential for this end I was satisfied.

The river here divides the broad valley into two unequal halves. On the west side it approaches close to the precipitous Libyan range, which there projects; on the eastern side it bounds a wide fruitful plain, extending as far as Medamôt, a spot situated on the border of the Arabian desert, several hours distant. On this side stood the actual town of THEBES, which seems to have been chiefly grouped round the two great temples of KARNAK and LUQSOR, situated above half an hour apart. Karnak lies more to the north, and farther removed from the Nile; Luqsor is now actually washed by the waves of the river, and may even formerly have been the harbour of the city. The west side of the river contained the necropolis of Thebes, and all the temples which stood here referred more or less to the worship of the dead; indeed, all the inhabitants of this part, which was afterwards comprehended by the Greeks under the name of MEMNONIA, seem to have been principally occupied with the care of the dead and their tombs. The former extent of the Memnonia may be now distinguished by Qurna and Medînet Hâbu, places situated at the northern and southern extremities.

A survey of the Theban monuments naturally begins with the ruins of KARNAK. Here stood the great royal temple of the hundred-gated Thebes, which was dedicated to Ammon-Ra, the King of the Gods, and to the peculiar local god of the city of Ammon, so called after him (No-Ammon, Diospolis). AP, along with the feminine article TAP, from which the Greeks made THEBE, was the name of one particular sanctuary of Ammon. It is also often employed in hieroglyphics in the singular, or still more frequently in the plural (Napu), as the name of the town; for which reason the Greeks naturally, without changing the article along with it, generally used the plural Θῆβαι. The whole history of the Egyptian Monarchy, after the city of Ammon was raised to be one of the two royal residences in the land, is connected with this temple. All Dynasties emulated in the glory of having contributed their share to the enlargement, embellishment, or restoration of this national sanctuary.

It was founded by their first king, the mighty SESURTESEN I., under the 1st Theban Royal Dynasty, the 12th of Manetho, between 2600 and 2700 B.C., and even now exhibits some ruins in the centre of the building from that period, bearing the name of this king. During the Dynasties immediately succeeding, which for several centuries groaned under the yoke of the victorious hereditary enemy, this sanctuary no doubt was also deserted, and nothing has been preserved which belonged to that period. But after the first king of the 17th Dynasty, Amosis, in the 17th century B.C., had succeeded in his first war against the Hyksos, his two successors, AMENOPHIS I. and TUTHMOSIS I., built round the remains of the most ancient sanctuary a magnificent temple, with a great many chambers round the cella, and with a broad court, and pylones appertaining to it, in front of which Tutmosis I. erected two obelisks. Two other pylones, with contiguous court-walls, were built by the same king, at a right angle with the temple in the direction of Luqsor. Tutmosis III. and his sister enlarged this temple to the back by a hall resting on fifty-six columns, besides many other chambers, which surrounded it on three sides, and were encircled by one common outer wall. The succeeding kings partly closed the temple more perfectly in front, partly built new independent temples near it, and also placed two more large pylones towards the south-west, in front of those erected by Tuthmosis I., so that now four lofty pylones formed the magnificent entrance to the principal temple on this side.

But a far more splendid enlargement of the temple was executed in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C. by the great Pharaohs of the 19th Dynasty; for SETHÔS I., the father of Ramses Miamun, added in the original axis of the temple the most magnificent hall of pillars that was ever seen in Egypt or elsewhere. The stone roof, supported by 134 columns, covers a space of 164 feet in depth, and 320 feet in breadth. Each of the twelve central columns is 36 feet in circumference, and 66 feet high beneath the architrave; the other columns, 40 feet high, are 27 feet in circumference. It is impossible to describe the overwhelming impression which is experienced upon entering for the first time into this forest of columns, and wandering from one range into the other, between the lofty figures of gods and kings on every side represented on them, projecting sometimes entirely, sometimes only in part. Every surface is covered with various sculptures, now in relief, now sunk, which were, however, only completed under the successors of the builder; most of them, indeed, by his son RAMSES MIAMUN. In front of this hypostyle hall was placed, at a later period, a great hypæthral court, 270 by 320 feet in extent, decorated on the sides only with colonnades, and entered by a magnificent pylon.

The principal part of the temple terminated here, comprising a length of 1170 feet, not including the row of Sphinxes in front of its external pylon, nor the peculiar sanctuary which was placed by Ramses Miamun directly beside the wall farthest back in the temple, and with the same axis, but turned in such a manner that its entrance was on the opposite side. Including these enlargements, the entire length must have amounted to nearly 2000 feet, reckoning to the most southern gate of the external wall, which surrounded the whole space, which was of nearly equal breadth. The later Dynasties, who now found the principal temples completed on all sides, but who also were desirous of contributing their share to the embellishment of this centre of the Theban worship, began partly to erect separate small temples on the large level space which was surrounded by the above-mentioned enclosure-wall, partly to extend these temples also externally.

The head of the 20th Dynasty, RAMSES III., whose campaigns in Asia, in the fifteenth century before Christ, were scarcely inferior to those of his renowned ancestors, Sethôs I. and Ramses II., built a special temple, with a court of columns and a hypostyle hall, above 200 feet long, which now intersects, in a rather unsymmetrical manner, the enclosure-wall of the external court in front; and he founded, at a little distance from it, a still larger sanctuary for the third person of the Theban Triad, Chensu, the son of Ammon. This last was completed by the succeeding kings of his Dynasty, and the priest-kings of the 21st Dynasty, who added to it a magnificent court of columns, with a pylon in front. In the 22nd Dynasty we recognise SCHESCHENK I., the warlike King Shishak of the Bible, who, about 970 B.C., conquered Jerusalem. His Asiatic campaigns are celebrated on the southern external wall of the great temple, where, in the symbolic form of prisoners, he leads 140 vanquished towns and countries before Ammon. Among their names there is one which, not without reason, is considered to be a designation for the kingdom of Judæa, as well as the names of several well-known towns in Palestine.

The two priests’ Dynasties mentioned above, which followed immediately after the Ramessides, were no longer of the Theban race, but proceeded from towns in Lower Egypt. The power of the Monarchy sank with this change; and after the short 23rd Dynasty, from which period there are still some remains in Karnak, a revolution seems to have occurred. The present lists of authors name only _one_ king of the 24th Dynasty, who has not yet been re-discovered on the Egyptian monuments. In his reign the invasion of the Ethiopians occurred, who, from the 25th Dynasty, SCHABAK and TAHRAKA (the So and Tirhaka of the Bible), reigned in Egypt at the commencement of the seventh century B.C. These kings came, indeed, from Ethiopia, but governed completely in the Egyptian manner, and they did not neglect to worship the Egyptian god-kings. Their names are found on several smaller temples of Karnak, and on a splendid colonnade in the great court in front, which seems to have been first placed there by Tahraka. According to historical accounts, this last king returned of his own accord to Ethiopia, and left the Egyptian kingdom to its native rulers.

The dispossessed Saitic Dynasty now returned to the throne, and once more, in the seventh and sixth centuries, developed all the splendour of which this country, as rich in internal resources as in external power, was capable of producing under a powerful and wise sceptre. It opened for the first time a peaceful intercourse between foreign countries and Egypt; Greeks settled amongst them, commerce flourished, and a new and enormous amount of wealth was accumulated, such as before had only been attained by the spoils of war and tribute. But this was only an artificial height of glory; for the pristine vigour of the nation had long been broken, and even art gave more signs of luxury than of intrinsic value. The last flourishing period of the nation soon passed away. The country could not withstand the advancing storm of the Persians. In the year 525 it was conquered by CAMBYSES, and trodden down with barbaric fanaticism. Many monuments were destroyed, and not a single sanctuary nor wall was erected during this period; nothing at least has been preserved to our time, not even from the long and milder government of DARIUS; one temple only in the Oasis of Kargeh, or at least sculptures with his name, having been discovered from that period. Under Darius II., exactly one hundred years after the commencement of the Persian rule, Egypt became, indeed, once more independent, and we then again find the names of the native kings in the temples of Karnak; but after three Dynasties had succeeded each other in rapid succession, during the space of sixty-four years, it fell a second time under the dominion of the Persians, who soon afterwards, in the year 332, lost it by the conquest of Alexander of Macedon. Since then the country was reduced to the necessity of getting habituated to foreign rulers, it had lost its independence for ever, and passed from one hand to another, the succeeding ruler always worse than the preceding, down to the present day.

Under the Macedonians and Greeks, Egypt still possessed sufficient vigour to retain its religion and institutions in the manner that had been carried down from ancient times. The foreign princes in all respects took the place, and followed in the footsteps of the ancient Pharaohs. Karnak bears testimony to this. We here find the names of ALEXANDER and PHILIP ARIDÆUS, who preceded the Ptolemies in restoring that which had been destroyed by the Persians. Alexander rebuilt the sanctuary behind the great temple; Philip that to the front; the Ptolemies added sculptures to it—restored other parts, and even erected entirely new sanctuaries, at no inconsiderable expense, though no longer, indeed, on the grand scale of the Egyptian classic style of the olden times. Even the last epoch of declining Egypt, that of the Roman dominion, is still represented in Karnak by a series of representations which were executed under CÆSAR AUGUSTUS.

Thus this remarkable spot, which, in the course of twenty-five hundred years, had increased from the small sanctuary in the centre of the large temple to a complete city of temples, situated on a level space a quarter of a geographical mile in length, and above 2000 feet in breadth, presents both an almost uninterrupted thread of events, and an interesting scale of measurement for the history of the whole of the New Egyptian Monarchy, from its origin in the Old Monarchy down to its decline under the Roman dominion. The appearance or non-appearance of the Dynasties and individual kings in Egyptian history is almost uniform with the representation of them in and round the temple of Karnak.

Higher up the river than Karnak, where the stream, which has been divided by the fertile island of Gedîdeh, reunites, rises even now to view a second bright point of the ancient city, the temple of LUQSOR. One of the most powerful Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty, AMENOPHIS III., who had only built a side temple in Karnak, and had added but very little to the principal temple, here erected a so much the more splendid sanctuary to Ammon, which the great Ramses enlarged still more by a second magnificent court in front, in the direction of Karnak. For, although a good half hour distant from it, this temple must also be regarded as belonging to the space dedicated, from ancient times, to the great national sanctuary. This is proved by a circumstance which otherwise would be difficult to explain: that the temple, though situated close to the bank, has its entrance, contrary to custom, away from the river, and directed towards Karnak, with which it was, besides, immediately connected by colonnades, series of rams, and artificially-constructed roads.

The ruins on the eastern bank terminate with Luqsor. The monuments of _western_ Thebes offer still greater variety, as here the subterranean dwellings and palaces of the dead are added to those above ground. At one time an uninterrupted series of the most splendid temples extended from Qurna as far as Medînet Hâbu, which nearly occupied the whole of the narrow strip of desert between the cultivated land watered by the Nile and the foot of the mountain range. The immense field of the dead spreads out immediately behind these temples, where the sepulchral caves, like the cells of bees, close beside each other, are either dug in the rock of the plain, or hewn in the adjacent hills.

Qurna is situated on the angle of the Lybian range, projecting farther forward towards the river. As the mountains here suddenly retreat towards the west, they form a great mountain cauldron, the front part of which, where it is separated by low hills from the valley, is called EL ASASIF. Behind, it is closed in by lofty, steep escarpments of rock, which display their beautiful stone to the mid-day and morning sun. These precipitous declivities of the limestone range, which, owing to their solid and uniform texture, are particularly adapted for the finest sculptures of the rock-tombs, seem to have been produced by the gradual removal of a bed of clay beneath them, from the wearing effects of exposure to the weather, and thus the overhanging masses are deprived of their foundation.

In this rock-creek are situated the _most ancient_ tombs, and they belong to the Old Monarchy. Their entrances may be seen from a distance, high up in the rocks lying to the north, exactly beneath the vertical precipice which rises from the steep hills of rubbish to the summit of the mountain ridge. Their external site, and the road up, bounded by low stone walls leading to the entrances in a steep and straight line of several hundred feet from the valley, reminded me directly of the tombs of Benihassan, which belong to the same period. They date from between 2500 and 3000 B.C., under the kings of the 11th and 12th Manethonic Dynasties, the first of which laid the foundation of the mighty power of Thebes, and made the town the seat of the government they had rendered independent of Memphis; the second elevated it to be the capital of the Monarchy of the whole country.

These grottoes, of which there are some of a similar age in the adjacent hills in the foreground, generally descend, in an oblique angle, deep into the rock, but they have neither paintings nor inscriptions; it was only the stone sarcophagi on which peculiar diligence was bestowed. These are usually formed of the finest limestone, and are sometimes above nine feet long; they have inscriptions, and are decorated with colours, both internally and externally, in the elaborate and pure style of that period, very elegantly, though with a certain degree of parsimony. We are bringing away with us one of these sarcophagi, as I mentioned once before. A few days ago it was safely carried down into the plain, after the pit, which had long been completely filled with rubbish, had been cleared, and part of the solid rock itself had been cut through, to obtain a shorter exit for it. The occupant of the tomb was the son of a prince, and himself bore the dynastic appellation of the 11th Royal Dynasty, namely, NENTEF.

In the outermost angle of this rock-cove is situated the most ancient temple-building of Western Thebes, which belongs to the period of the New Egyptian Monarchy, at the commencement of its glory. One street, above 1600 feet long, adorned on either side with colossal rams and sphinxes, led from the valley in a straight line to an outer court, then, by means of a flight of steps to another, whose front wall was adorned with sculpture, and had a colonnade before it, and finally, beyond, by a second flight of steps to a granite gate in good preservation, and to the last temple court, which was surrounded on both sides with beautifully decorated halls and chambers, and terminated behind with a broad façade, placed along the precipitous rock. Another granite gate, in the centre of this façade, leads at length to the innermost temple-chamber, which was hewn into the rock, and had a lofty, stone-vaulted roof, out of which again opened several smaller niches and chambers, at the sides and the back. All these chambers were covered with the most beautiful sculptures, with variegated colours on a grey ground, executed in the finished style of that period. This grand structure, beside which stood other series of buildings, now destroyed, seems to have been originally connected with the river, by a street intersecting the whole valley, and beyond, with the great temple of Karnak, which lies exactly in the same direction; I have no doubt that it was with this object that the narrow rock-gate was first artificially cut through the hills in front, across which the temple-street enters into the lower plain. It was a Queen, NUMT AMEN, the elder sister of Tuthmosis III., who accomplished this bold plan of a structural connection between the two sides of the valley, the same who had erected the two greatest obelisks in front of the temple of Karnak. She never appears on her monuments as a woman, but in male attire; we only find out her sex by the inscriptions. No doubt at that period it was illegal for a woman to govern; for that reason, also, her brother, probably still a minor, appears at a later period as ruler along with her. After her death, her Shields were everywhere converted into Tuthmosis Shields, the feminine forms of speech in the inscription were changed, and her names were never adopted in the later lists along with the legitimate kings.

There are two peculiar temples, both erected on the border of the desert by TUTHMOSIS III., who completed the work of his royal sister during the long period that he sat alone upon the throne. Of these, the northern one can now only be recognised by its ground plan, and by the remains of its brick pylon; the southern one, on the other hand, at Medînet Hâbu, is still in good preservation; and judging by some sculptures, the oldest part of the building might perhaps have belonged to an earlier Tuthmosis, and have only been completed by him. His second successor, TUTHMOSIS IV., also built a temple, which has now almost disappeared.

He was followed by AMENOPHIS III., in whose brilliant and long reign the temple of Luqsor was built. To him are inscribed the two giant Colossi, far out in the fertile plain, near Medînet Hâbu, which once stood at the gates of a great temple-building, but whose remains are now for the most part buried beneath the crops of the annually accumulating soil of the valley. Perhaps, also, a connecting street, corresponding with that to the north, once led from this point across the valley to Luqsor, on the opposite side. Of the two Colossi, the one situated to the north-east was the celebrated sounding statue, which the Greeks connected with their charming legend of the beautiful Memnon, who every morning at sunrise greeted his mother, Aurora, while she moistened him with her tears of dew for his early heroic death. This myth, as Letronne has shown, was only composed at a late period; because the actual phenomenon of clear tremulous tones produced by the springing of small particles of the stone when it became rapidly warm after being cooled during the night, did not become strikingly evident till fragments of the statue had partly fallen inwards upon itself, having been previously split by an earthquake which happened in the year B.C. 27. The phenomenon of cracking and sounding stones in the desert and among great fields of ruins, is not unfrequent in Egypt; but the nature of the hard flinty conglomerate of which this statue is composed, is peculiarly favourable to it, as is further proved by the innumerable large and small cracks now penetrating in all directions portions of the statue, which were described even as late as the Greek period, and consequently were then uninjured. It is also remarkable how, even now, several of the pieces that have split off, and are only hanging loose, sound as clear as metal if they are struck, while others beside them remain perfectly dumb and without sound, according as they are more or less moistened by their reciprocal positions. The numerous Greek and Roman inscriptions which are engraved upon the statue, and which intimate the visits of strangers, especially if they have been so fortunate as to hear the morning greeting, first commence in the time of Nero, and extend down to the time of Septimius Severus, from which period we may probably date the restoration of the original monolithic statue. Since this restoration of the upper portion in single blocks, the phenomenon of the sounding stones seems, if not to have entirely ceased, yet to have become less frequent and less striking. The change of Amenophis (who even then, as the inscriptions inform us, was not forgotten) into Memnon was probably chiefly occasioned by the name of this entire western portion of Thebes, MEMNONIA, which the Greeks seem to have explained by the “palaces of Memnon,” while the name in hieroglyphics, _Mennu_, meant, speaking generally, “splendid buildings, palaces.” At the present day the statues are called by the Arabs Schama and Tama, or, both together, the Sanamât, _i. e._ the “idols” (not Salamât).[54]

When we came here in the beginning of November, the whole plain, as far as the eye could reach, was overflowed, and formed one entire sea, from which the Sanamât rose up still more strangely and more solitary than from the green but yet accessible corn-fields. A few days ago I measured the Colossi and the elevation to which the soil of the Nile had risen upon their thrones. The height of the Memnon statue, calculated from head to foot, not including the tall ornament on the head which it once bore, amounted to about 14 metres 28′, or 45 feet and a half, in addition to which the base separated from it, a block by itself, measured 4 metres 25′, or 13′ 7″, of which 3 feet were covered by steps placed round. Thus the statues were originally nearly 60 feet in height, including the Pschent, perhaps 70 feet above the ground on which the temple stood. Now the surface of the valley is already 8 feet above that level, and the inundation sometimes rises as far as the upper edge of the base, therefore 14 feet higher than it could ever have risen, at the period of their erection, without reaching the temple itself. Now, if we compare this fact with our discovery at Semneh, where the surface of the Nile during historical times has sunk above 23 feet, it is proved, by simple addition, that the Nile at the Cataracts fell from a greater height by at least 37 feet between this and Semneh than it does at present.[55]

Horus, the last King of that great 18th Dynasty, had also erected a temple near Medînet Hâbu, which has now, however, disappeared in rubbish. The fragment of a colossal statue of the King, of hard limestone, almost like marble, seems to point out the position of what was once the entrance to the temple, the bust carved in the most finished style, weighing several hundred-weight, is intended for our Museum.

A large portion of two temples still exist from the succeeding Dynasty; they were built by the two greatest and most renowned of all the Pharaohs—SETHÔS I. and his son RAMSES II. The temple belonging to the first is the most northern in the series, and is usually called the temple of QURNA, because the old village of Qurna was grouped round a Coptic church at this spot, and was principally situated in the interior of the great outer courts of the temple, but which was afterwards deserted by the inhabitants, and exchanged for the rock-tombs in the angle of the mountain situated very near at hand.

Farther towards the south, between the temples of TUTHMOSIS III. and IV., now totally destroyed, stands the temple of RAMSES II. (MIAMUN), in its structural arrangement, and in all its parts, perhaps the most beautiful in Egypt, though inferior in grandeur of scale, and in variety of interest, to the temple of Karnak. That portion of the temple to the back as well as the lateral halls, belonging to the hypostyle hall, have disappeared, and their original plan could only be explained by the aid of careful, protracted excavations, under the direction of Erbkam. All round this destroyed portion of the temple the extensive brick halls are visible, which are everywhere covered with regular and neatly-built waggon-vaulted roofs, some of them 12 feet wide, which belong to the period of the erection of the temple itself. This is indisputably proved by the stamps, which were impressed on every brick in the royal factory, and which contain the Name-Shields of King Ramses. That this temple, even in ancient times, attracted much notice, we learn from the particular description of it, under the name of the TOMB OF OSYMANDYAS, given by Diodorus Siculus, according to Hecataeus.

Directly to the right of the temple, one of the few industrious Fellahs has laid out a small vegetable garden, which affords us some variety for our table, and for that reason, yielding to the intercessions of our good-natured dark-skinned gardener, as was but just, it was spared in our excavations, which threatened to extend towards that side, although it is over the foundations of a side temple hitherto unnoticed, whose entrance I found opening into the outer court of the temple of Ramses.

The southernmost, and best preserved of all the splendid buildings in the long series, is situated in the midst of the ruins of the houses of MEDÎNET HÂBU, a Coptic town, now totally forsaken, but once of no small importance. It was founded by RAMSES III., the first King of the 20th Dynasty, the rich Rhampsinitus of Herodotus, in the thirteenth century before Christ, and on its walls extols the great campaigns of this King, by land and by sea, which might rival those of the great Ramses. In the interior of the second outer court a great church was built by the Copts, the monolithic granite columns of which are still scattered about. The chambers to the back are for the most part in a heap of rubbish. But the far projecting sort of pylon building, in front of the temple, is of peculiar interest; it contained the private apartments of the King, in four stories, placed one above the other. The Prince is represented on the walls, in the midst of his family, conversing with his daughters, who are recognised to be Princesses by the side-plait of their hair; he is playing at drafts, and receiving fruits and flowers from them.

This building terminates the series of large splendid temples known under the peculiar appellation of MEMNONIA. They comprise the really flourishing period of the New Monarchy, for after Ramses III., the external power, as well as the internal greatness of the Monarchy again declined. It is only from this, and the immediately succeeding period, that we find the tombs of the Kings in the rock-valleys of the mountain range.

The entrance to these is situated on the farther side of the promontory of Qurna. The escarpments of the rock there rise rugged and barren on either side, rounding off above to bare summits, and their golden brows are partly covered with coal black stones, as if they had been burnt by the sun. The peculiarly solemn and gloomy character of this country always struck me most vividly when I was riding back after sunset over the endless heaps of stony rubbish covering the bottom of the valley to a considerable height, and only furrowed by broad chasms, formed in the course of thousands of years, by sudden torrents of rain, which, though of rare occurrence, are not entirely unknown, as we ourselves have witnessed. All is mute and dead around; the rapid tramps of my little ass being only interrupted occasionally by the dull barks of the jackals, or the gloomy hooting of the night-owls.

After long windings, which lead by circuitous paths almost immediately behind the lofty mountain sides of the Asasif valley described above, the valley divides into two branches, the one on the right hand conducting to the most ancient of those tombs. Only two of these are opened, both belonging to the 18th Dynasty: the one dedicated to AMENOPHIS III., the Memnon of the Greeks, the other to a rival King AI, coming very soon after him, who was not admitted into the monumental lists of the legitimate kings.[56]

The last is situated at the extreme end of the slowly-ascending cleft in the rock; the granite sarcophagus of the King, in the small sepulchral chamber, has been destroyed, and his name is everywhere studiously erased, with the exception of a few traces on the walls, as well as upon the sarcophagus. The other lies farther forward in the valley, is of greater extent, and covered with beautiful sculptures, though, alas! much mutilated by time and human hands. Besides these two tombs, there are several more here incomplete, without sculptures; others, no doubt, are concealed beneath the high mounds of rubbish, which to clear away would have occupied more of our time and means than, after mature consideration, we thought right to bestow on it. In one place where I made them dig, following tolerably certain signs, we found, indeed, about ten feet beneath the rubbish, a door and chamber, but these also without sculpture. Some remains of earthen vases were, however, brought to light at the same time, which contained the name of a king hitherto unknown.

The left branch of the principal valley, which contains the tombs of almost all the Kings of the 19th and 20th Dynasties, seems to have been originally closed by an elevation of the bottom of the valley, and to have been first opened artificially, by a paved ascent to the spot.

Here we find pits with wide openings not far above the bottom of the valley, on the descending slope of the mountain, which pass downwards at a somewhat oblique angle. Where the overhanging rock has a perpendicular height of 12 to 15 feet, the sharply-carved door-posts of the first entrance appear, which was once provided with one or two great folding-doors to close it. There also the painted sculptures generally commence, which, on suddenly approaching, strike one by the wonderful contrast between their sharp lines, brilliant surfaces, and fresh vivid colours, and the jagged rock and rugged rolled stones scattered around, among which they are placed. Long corridors of imposing height and width now lead always deeper into the rocky mountain range; the sculptures on the sides, and the ceiling also, continue in single subdivisions, which are formed by the contraction of the passages and by additional doors. The King is represented worshipping before different gods, and directs his prayers and justifications for his earthly life to them; the peaceful occupations of the justified spirits are represented on one side, the punishments of Hell for the wicked on the other; the Goddess of Heaven is represented extended lengthways on the ceiling, as well as the hours of the day and night, with their influences on mankind, and their astrological signification, all accompanied by explanatory inscriptions. Lastly, we arrive at a great vaulted hall of pillars, whose walls generally exhibit the representations on a golden yellow ground, for which reason it also bore the name of the Golden Hall. This was intended for the royal sarcophagus, which stood in the centre, and was from six to ten feet high. But often if the King, after the completion of the tomb, in its first and most necessary extent, felt his vigour still unimpaired, and promised himself a prolonged life, the central passage of this hall of pillars was cut out in a still more steep descent, for the commencement of a new hall; new corridors and lateral chambers were attached, sometimes they deviated from the first direction into another, till the King, for the second time, fixed upon a goal, and terminated the building with a second hall of pillars, almost more spacious and splendid than the first; smaller chambers on both sides were then added to this, if the time still allowed, destined for particular sacrifices for the dead, till at length the last hour struck, and the royal corpse, having undergone the process of embalming for seventy days, was entombed in the sarcophagus. It was then closed up, in such an artificial manner that the colossal granite tomb, as the cover could not be raised, was always obliged to be destroyed by the plunderers of the corpses, who, at a later period, penetrated into every spot.

The tombs of the PRINCESSES also, which are collected together in a smaller valley behind Medînet Hâbu, at the southern end of the Memnonia, belong exclusively to the period from the 18th to the 20th Dynasties, as well as the most important of the innumerable tombs of private individuals, which extend over hill and valley, from beyond Medînet Hâbu to the entrance of the King’s valley. The priests of rank, and the great officers, liked to have represented on the walls of their tombs their whole wealth in horses and carriages, herds, boats, and implements, as well as their hunting-ground and fish-ponds, their gardens and hall, for company, even the artists and artisans they employed, actively engaged in various ways; all this renders these tombs much more interesting than those of the Kings, where the representations almost exclusively refer to the life after death.

Among the later monuments, the tombs from the 26th Dynasty of the seventh and sixth centuries before Christ are especially worthy of notice. The greatest proportion of these are dug in the flat ground, in the front part of the rocky creek between Qurna and the hill of Abd el Qurna, where we reside, and they are called specially EL ASASIF. The rocky plain alone afforded room at that time for sepulchral buildings of any considerable size, and was therefore employed for that purpose on a vast scale. Even in the distance a number of lofty gates and walls built of black bricks are seen. These enclosed great sunken courts within an oblong, to which the entrance led by immense arched pylon gates, resembling at a little distance Roman triumphal arches. Stepping through this within the enclosure wall, we look directly into a court cut 12 or 15 feet deep into the rock, into which we descended by a staircase. This uncovered court belongs to the largest sepulchral building now accessible; it was built for a royal scribe, Petamenap; is 100 feet long, and 74 broad. From this we stepped through an outer hall into a great rock-chamber, having an extent of from 65 to 52 feet, supported by two rows of pillars, with some lateral chambers and corridors on either side; then through an arched entrance into a second hall, from 52 to 36 feet large, with eight pillars; and into a third, 31 feet both ways, with four pillars; and lastly, into a chamber from 20 to 12 feet large, terminating with a niche. From this chamber, at the head of the first series of rooms, a door on the left hand leads into an immense chamber; and on the right, another to a continuous series of six corridors, with two staircases of nine to twenty-three steps, and a chamber in which a perpendicular pit, 44 feet deep, led at the bottom to a small lateral chamber. This second range of chambers and passages which run at right angles with the first, amounted in its whole length to 172 feet, while the first, including the external court, amounted to 311 feet. Finally, from the chamber with the well, a corridor turns off again to the right, which leads to a diagonal chamber, extending altogether 58 feet in this third direction. But before arriving at the two staircases in the second range, a fourth line of passages again opened to the right, running on 122 feet in one and the same direction, to which, on the left hand, is attached a great passage running round in a square 60 feet long on every side, along with other lateral chambers; the central part of which is decorated on its four sides like a huge sarcophagus. The sarcophagus of the deceased rests also, in fact, in the centre beneath the great square, which, however, can only be reached by means of a vertical pit 18 feet deep, opening into a fourth range, which conducts to a horizontal passage 58 feet long; then to a third pit, through this to more chambers; and lastly, through the ceiling of the last to a chamber placed above it, which contains the sarcophagus, and which is situated exactly beneath the centre of the above-mentioned square. The whole of the ground covered by this tomb, that of a private individual, amounts accordingly to 21,600 square feet, and calculated with the pit chambers, to 23,148 square feet.[57] This enormous work appears still more colossal if we consider that all the surface of the walls, the pillars, and the doors are covered from above downwards with innumerable representations and inscriptions, which astonish us still more by the care, sharpness, and elegance with which they are executed.

The few remains which are found from the period of the later foreign dominion are far less important. We can only mention two small temples near Medînet Hâbu among those erected under the Ptolemies, and a third at the end of the great Lake circumvallation, which extends from Medînet Hâbu towards the south. The oldest sculptures in this last are from the time of CÆSAR AUGUSTUS, yet the Cella, now the only part in good preservation, was built by Antoninus Pius. The outermost gate of the temple district contains the only representations found in Egypt of the Emperor OTHO, the discovery of which was once a most joyful event to Champollion and Rosellini. They had, however, overlooked the circumstance that on the opposite side the name of the Emperor GALBA, hitherto equally unknown in Egypt, was also to be found.

Even in Strabo’s time ancient Thebes had crumbled into several villages, and Germanicus visited it, as we are doing, from a thirst for knowledge, and with reverence for the great antiquity of its monuments, _cognoscendæ antiquitatis_, as Tacitus informs us. The latest hieroglyphic imperial name that I have found in all Egypt, is that of DECIUS (A.D. 250); it appears in a representation on the temple of Esneh. A hundred years later the holy ATHANASIUS retires to the Theban desert among the Christian hermits there resident. The edict of THEODOSIUS against Paganism (391) divested the Egyptian temples of their last authority, and greatly favoured the development of monkish and recluse habits, to which Egyptian Christianity was always peculiarly inclined.

After that period numerous churches and convents spring up throughout the country, even in the upper districts of the Nile; and the sepulchral caves of the desert become troglodytic habitations for an ascetic hermit population. The Thebaic necropolis, above all other places, presented the greatest variety of means to satisfy these new wants. Both the kings’ tombs, as well as the tombs of private individuals, were very much employed for Christian cells, and still bear traces on their walls of this new purpose to which they were applied. A letter of the holy Athanasius, the archbishop of Alexandria, to the orthodox monks of Thebes, still exists in a tomb at Qurna, in beautiful untial characters on the white stucco, but unfortunately in a very fragmentary condition. It was a favourite practice to convert ancient temples into Coptic churches or convents.

The largest church seems to have been erected in the temple of Medînet Hâbu (town of Hâbu). Monolithic granite columns of considerable size still cover the ground in great numbers, in the second outer court at this spot; in order to obtain room for the niches in the choir, an ancient Egyptian pillar was taken away on the northern side, and a series of doors from the chambers which were arranged for the priests’ cells were broken through the external wall of the temple to the back. The convent appertaining to it, called the DER EL MEDÎNET—“belonging to a town”—was placed in the Ptolemaic temple behind the hill of Qurnet Murrâi, situated close at hand. Another church stood in the temple of Old Qurna, and the convent of DER EL BACHÎT, situated on the heights of Qurna, probably belonged to it. The ruins of a third convent occupy the chambers of the temple of the Queen Numtamen, in the angle of the Asasif valley, and bear the name of DER EL BAHRI, the northern convent.

Such transformations of the ancient magnificent buildings were partly against, and partly in favour of, their preservation. Single walls were frequently demolished, or broken through, to enable them to make new arrangements; upon others the heathen images were destroyed to obtain bare walls, or at least, the human figures and even those of animals in the inscriptions, especially the heads, were studiously picked out, and mutilated, as high up as the loftiest ceilings. Not unfrequently, however, the same zealous, pious hands also served to preserve the ancient splendour in a most successful manner, for sometimes, instead of laboriously destroying the representations with a hammer, they preferred covering them over from the top to the bottom with Nile mud, which had generally afterwards an additional white coating, in order to receive the Christian paintings. In time this Coptic loam again fell off, and the ancient paintings came out once more, with a brilliancy and surprising freshness, which they could hardly have retained on uncovered walls, exposed to the air and sun. In the niche of an ancient cella I found St. Peter, in the ancient Byzantine style, holding the key, and raising his finger, but beneath the half-decayed Christian casing, the cow’s horns of the goddess Hathor, the Egyptian Venus, peeped forth from behind the glory; to her, originally was given the incense and sacrifice of the king who is standing by her side, which now are offered to the venerable apostle. I have often with my own hands assisted time in the work of restoration, and still further loosened the stucco, which is generally covered over with totally uninteresting Coptic paintings, that I might restore the splendid sculptures of the Egyptian gods and kings concealed beneath them once more to their older and greater claims on our attention.

A great part of the population of Thebes on both sides of the Nile is still Coptic; our Christian cook Siriân was born here, and a Coptic woman of good means, Mustafîeh, who lives at a short distance from us, supplies us daily with excellent wheaten bread. For a long time past, however, the Arabic Mohammedan population has gained the upper hand here, as throughout the country, and the Copts can only oppose this by the influence derived from ancient days, by their knowledge of arithmetic, and their privilege of filling the most important financial offices in the country.

The small church in which the Theban Christians are now in the habit of assembling every Sunday, is situated alone in the great gravelly plain to the south of Medînet Hâbu. It has an Arabic cupola, and is surrounded by the wall of a court. I entered it a few days ago from noticing that the black turbans, which are only worn by Copts, were proceeding in greater numbers than usual to the chapel. It was the feast of the holy Donadeos, who had founded the church. The service was over. I only found the old priest, who inhabits and takes charge of the church, inside with his numerous family. The compartments were covered with mats; I was shown the division for the men and women, the small chapels decorated with variegated carved work attached to it, the square cistern for baptisms and holy water. A large old Coptic book still lay open on the reading-desk, with extracts from the Psalms and Gospels, and an Arabic translation beside it. I asked the old man whether he could read Coptic; he answered in the affirmative, but thought that his children could read better than himself; his eyes had already become feeble. I sat myself down upon the mat, and the whole troop of great and small yellow-brown children and grandchildren of the old priest squatted down around me. I asked the eldest lad to read a little, and he immediately began not to read, but to sing with the greatest fluency—that is to say, to chant in rough grumbling tones. I interrupted him, and asked him now to read slowly in his usual voice; he did it with far greater difficulty, and with many mistakes, which his younger brother sometimes corrected over his shoulder; but when I went so far as to inquire the meaning of the individual words, he pointed coolly to the Arabic translation, and thought it was explained there, and wanted to read this aloud to me; he could tell me nothing as to the single words, not even about the value of the single letters over the paragraphs, nor, indeed, could the old man have done that at any time. Afterwards I made them show me the other treasures in the way of books belonging to the church, which were immediately brought in a great cloth tied together at the four corners, containing some prayer-books very much worn, some of them in Coptic, some in Arabic. I left a small present behind for the good of the church, and had rode on a little farther, when one of the boys overtook me, bringing me breathless a small consecrated kind of biscuit cake, stamped with a Coptic cross and a Greek inscription, which gift I was obliged to repay by a second bakschisch. These are the Epigoni, the most genuine, unmixed descendants of the old Pharaonic nation that once conquered Asia and Ethiopia, and led its prisoners from the north and south into the great hall of Karnak before Ammon; in whose wisdom Moses was educated, and with whose priesthood the Greek sages went to school.

_O Aegypte, Aegypte! religionum tuarum solæ supererunt fabulæ, æque incredibiles posteris; solaque supererunt verba lapidibus incisa tua pia facta narrantibus, et inhabitabit Aegyptum, Scythes, aut Indus, aut aliquis talis, id est vicina barbaria._[58]

We now know the meaning of this _aliquis_ which Hermes Trismegistus then knew not how to explain; it is the Turks, who at present dwell in the fields of Osiris.

At the foot of our hill, in the direction of the green plain, stands a single group of Sont-trees, which overshadow a pleasant reservoir nicely lined with stones; here the sheep and goats are daily brought to water, and every evening and morning the dark girls and veiled women descend from their rock-caves, returning afterwards with a slow step, their tall water-jugs on their heads; a lovely picture from the patriarchal times. But close to where the refreshing element is found there is a bare white spot in the middle of the fertile plain: on this, two lime-kilns are erected, in which, as often as they are wanted, the very best blocks of the ancient temples and rock-grottoes, with their images and inscriptions, are pounded and burnt into lime, that they may again cement together other blocks, which are extracted from these convenient and inexhaustible stone-quarries, for some cattle-stall or other structure for government purposes.

The same day that I visited the Coptic church, I was desirous of riding from that spot to the village of KÔM EL BIRÂT, which is situated on the other side of the great lake of Hâbu, now dry. To my no small surprise, my guide, the excellent old ʾAuad, who I have engaged to be my servant while here, on account of his great knowledge of the locality, informed me that he could not accompany me thither, he even almost shrank from pronouncing the name of the village, and could not be persuaded to give me any information about it, and about his strange behaviour. It was only when I got home that I learnt the ground of his refusal from others, and afterwards also from himself. Above seven or eight years ago a man was killed in the house of the Sheikh of Qurna, to whose household ʾAuad then belonged; how it happened is not yet made out. In consequence of this circumstance, the whole family of the murdered man emigrated from this place, and settled in Kôm el Birât. Ever since the law of vengeance for blood has hung over the two families. Not a single member of that family has from that time trod the ground of Qurna; and if ʾAuad, or any other individual from the Sheikh’s house were to be seen in that village, any one of the injured family would be justified in killing him openly. This is the ancient Arabic custom.[59]

I turn from my wanderings through the ruins of the great royal city, and through the changes of thousands of years which have passed over them, to our castle on the detached hill of Abd el Qurna. Wilkinson and Hay have rendered an essential service to later travellers by building up the habitable rooms, which, from our being desirous of spending a long time in Thebes, we have profited by. A broad, convenient road leads by windings from the plain to a spacious court, the left side of which (the mountain side) is formed by a long shady colonnade; beyond this there are several habitable rooms. At the end of the court stands a single watch-tower, on which the Prussian flag waves, and beside it a small house with two rooms, one above the other, the lowest of which I occupy myself. There is no want of accommodation either for the kitchen department, the servants, and the asses.

The wide, boundless prospect across the Theban plain over the wall of the court, low on the inner side, but with a deep fall externally, is most beautiful and enchanting. The eye from this point, and still more perfectly from the summit of the tower, or from the top of the hill rising directly behind our dwelling, commands all, that still remains of Ancient Thebes. In front of us the splendid ruins of the Memnonia, from the angle of the hills at Qurna on our left, to the lofty Pylones, which tower up above the mounds of ruins of Medînet Hâbu on our right; then the green meadow encircled by the broad Nile, from which the solitary Colossi of Amenophis rise on the right hand, and beyond the river the groups of temples at Karnak and Luqsor, behind which the lower plain extends several hours farther to the clear outline of the slightly undulating Arabic ranges, which every morning were lit up by the first rays of the sun casting a wonderful richness of colouring over the valley and rocky desert all around us. There is no other spectacle in the world that I can compare with this, a scene which daily impresses us with fresh wonders and delight; but it reminds me perhaps of the view, for two years before my window, looking down from the Tarpeian Rock, which comprised the whole of Ancient Rome from the Aventine, with the Tiber at its foot, to the Quirinal, and beyond that the undulating Campagna, with the beautiful profile of the Alban hills (strikingly like those we now behold) in the background.

We never, however, look out into the distant country without being peculiarly attracted to the silvery water-highway, and without our eyes following the pointed sails, which may bring us letters or travellers from the North. Winter here, as in all other places, is the season of sociability. Not a week passes that we do not see several guests among us. A stranger’s book, which I have placed here for future travellers, and furnished with an introduction, was inaugurated on New Year’s Day by our own signatures. Since then above thirty names have been added, although the book has hitherto been kept exclusively in our castle, and will only be handed over to our faithful castellan ʾAuad on our departure.

On Christmas Eve we for the third time selected a palm for our Christmas-tree. This symbol, still more beautiful than our fir-tree, was decorated with lights and small gifts. Our artists celebrated the cheerful festival in other imaginative ways, and an illuminated Christmas crib, executed in the typical manner, and placed at the end of the long rock-passage, was most successful.

As it is natural to expect, England is by far the most numerously represented among travellers; the French are more rarely seen, but among their numbers I must mention the well-known and amiable savant Ampère, who, as he told me, intends to spend several months in this country, in order to make some solid progress in his Egyptian studies.[60] We are not, however, without some of our German countrymen, and one beautiful Sunday morning, at the close of the year, we had the pleasure of seeing Lic. Strauss, the son of the court chaplain in Berlin, and his cousin Dr. Krafft. We were just about to begin our simple Sunday service, which ever since Abeken, our dear friend and former preacher of the desert, has quitted us, I have been in the habit of conducting myself. I therefore immediately resigned my place to one of these two rev. gentlemen, which more befitted them than me; and as it happened that we had with us the very sermons written by the two fathers of our dear guests, one of these was selected for a discourse.

Messrs. SEUFFERHELD and Dr. BAGGE, from Frankfort, visited us almost simultaneously with them, and soon afterwards our friend Dr. SCHLEDEHAUS from Alexandria, with the Austrian painter SATTLER, and when Messrs. Strauss and Krafft called on us a second time, on their journey back, they met some other guests here, Messrs. TAMM, STAMM, SCHWAB, and the Assessor von ROHR, from Berlin. This very day twelve Germans (nine of them Prussians) sat down to dinner with us.