On 7 June, 1831, Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards was born to an army officer and an Irish woman noted for her confidence and determination. Early on, Edwards began to show a talent for writing ,art, and music. She was expected to become an opera singer,but instead she decided to spend her life writing, publishing novels, poetry collections, and travel accounts illustrated with her own sketches. At age 42, Edwards arrived in Cairo and was commissioned to write a book about travel on the Nile.Her famous book, 'A Thousand Miles up the Nile', was the result of a trip that left her distraught at the condition of the Egyptian monuments. Her concern led her to begin an organisation dedicated to the documentation and preservation of the monuments of Egypt's past: the Egypt Exploration Fund (later the Egyptian Exploration Society) was founded in 1882 with Edwards herself as its first secretary. She abandoned all her other writing and devoted herself fully to the Fund. She contributed to many journals, studied hieroglyphs, and raised funds. In 1889-1890 she travelled to America for a lecture tour that gained American interest and support for the Egypt Exploration Fund. These lectures were later published in 1891 under the title 'Pharaohs, Fellahs, and Explorers'.
During her trip to America, Amelia Edwards broke her arm, but kept on with the tour, weakening her health and on 15 April, 1892, she died of influenza in England. She had donated a large sum of money to the University College, London, for the purpose of setting up a professorship of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology, and had asked that Flinders Petrie be the chair of the Egyptology Department, the first in any British University. Amelia Edwards never married and was said to be a difficult woman. She was very independent and had few close friends, but her contributions to Egyptology cannot be measured. She was whole-heartedly dedicated to promoting an awareness of the splendours of Egypt: their preservation was her life mission.
THE FOLLOWING CHAPTERS ARE EXCERPTS ONLY TO GIVE AN IMPRESSION OF AMELIA EDWARDS' NARRATIVE. FURTHER IMAGES HAVE BEEN ADDED FROM OTHER SOURCES TO AUGMENT THE TEXT, MAINLY FROM MY COLLECTION OF EARLY POSTCARDS OF EGYPT.
A THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE by Amelia B. Edwards
Chapter 1 Cairo and the Great Pyramid.
Arrival at Cairo - Shepheard's Hotel - The Moskee - The Khan Khaleel - The Bazaars - Dahabeeyahs - Ghizeh - The Pyramids
Shepheard's Hotel View of Cairo Sphinx and Pyramid
Now in a place like Shepheard's, where every fresh arrival has the honour of contributing, for at least a few minutes, to the general entertainment, the first appearance of the Writer and friend, tired, dusty, and considerably sunburnt, may well have given rise to some of the comments in usual circulation at those crowded tables. People asked each other, most likely, where these two wandering Englishwomen had come from; why they had not dressed for dinner; what brought them to Egypt; and if they also were going up the Nile - to which questions it would have been easy to give satisfactory answers.
Carpet Bazaar Cairo Donkey Tunis Market
In order thoroughly to enjoy an overwhelming, ineffaceable first impression of Oriental out-of-doors life, one should begin in Cairo with a day in the native bazaars; neither buying, nor sketching, nor seeking information, but just taking in scene after scene, with its manifold combinations of light and shade, colour, costume, and architectural detail.Every shop front, every street corner, every turbaned group is a ready-made picture. Nor is the background less picturesque than the figures......Meanwhile the crowd ebbs and flows unceasingly - a noisy, changing, restless, parti-coloured tide, half European, half Oriental, on foot, on horseback, and in carriages. Here are Syrian dragomans in baggy trousers and braided jackets; barefooted Egyptian fellaheen in ragged blue shirts and felt skull-caps; Greeks in absurdly stiff white tunics, Persians with high mitre-like caps of dark woven stuff; swarthy Bedouins in flowing garments; Englishmen in palm-leaf hats and knickerbockers, dangling their long legs across almost invisible donkeys ; native women of the poorer class, in black veils that leave only the eyes uncovered; dervishes in patchwork coats; blue-black Abyssinians; Armenian priests; majestic ghosts of Algerine Arabs, all in white.
In the Khan Khaleel, the place of the gold and silver smiths' bazaar, there is found scarcely any display of goods for sale. The alleys are so narrow in this part that two persons can with difficulty walk in them abreast; and the shops, tinier than ever, are mere cupboards with about three foot of frontage. There are many other special bazaars in Cairo, as the Sweetmeat Bazaar; the Hardware Bazaar; the Tobacco Bazaar; the Moorish Bazaar; the Sword-mounter's and Coppersmith's Bazaars; the Moorish Bazaar, where fez caps, burnouses and Barbary goods are sold; and some extensive bazaars for the sale of English and French muslims, and cotton goods.
Sultan-Hassan, Er-Rifai Zuwela Gate Tombs of the Caliphs
There are mosques a plenty; grand old Saracenic gates; ancient Coptic churches; the museum of Egyptian antiquities; and within driving distance, the tombs of the Caliphs, Heliopolis, the Pyramids and the Sphinx. When at last the edge of the desert is reached, and the long sand-slope climbed, and the rocky platform gained, and the Great Pyramid in all its unexpected bulk and majesty towers close above one's head, the effect is as sudden as it is overwhelming. It shuts out the sky and the horizon. It shuts out all the other Pyramids. It shuts out everything but the sense of awe and wonder.......The colour again is a surprise. Few persons can be aware beforehand of the rich tawny hue that Egyptian limestone assumes after ages of exposure to the blaze of an Egyptian sky. Seen in certain lights, the Pyramids look like piles of massy gold......More impressive by far than the weightiest array of figures or the most striking comparisons, was the shadow cast by the Great Pyramid as the sun went down. That mighty Shadow, sharp and distinct, stretched across the stony platform of the desert and over full three quarters of a mile of the green plain below. It divided the sunlight where it fell, just as its great original divided the sunlight in the upper air; and it darkened the space it covered, like an eclipse.
Chapter 11 Cairo and the Mecca Pilgrimage
The Mosque of Sultan Hassan - Moslems at prayer - Mosque of Mehemet Ali - View from the Platform - Departure of the Caravan for Mecca - The Bab en-Nasr - The Procession - The Mahmal - Howling Dervishes - The Mosque of Amr - The Shubra Road
Mosque of Ibn-Tuloon Citadel Mosque Mohammed Ali
The mosque of Sultan Hassan, confessedly the most beautiful in Cairo, is also perhaps the most beautiful in the Moslem world. It was built at just that happy moment when Arabian art in Egypt, having ceased merely to appropriate or imitate, had at length evolved an original architectural style out of the heterogeneous elements of Roman and early Christian edifices. It may justly be regarded as the highest point reached by Saracenic art in Egypt after it had used up the Greek and Roman material of Memphis, and before its new born originality became modified by influences from beyond the Bosphorus.
The mosque of Mehemet Ali, built within the precincts of the citadel on a spur of the Mokattam Hills overlooking the city, is the most conspicuous object in Cairo. Its attenuated minarets and clustered domes show from every point of view for miles around, and remain longer in sight, as one leaves, or returns to, Cairo than any other landmark. It is a spacious, costly, gaudy, commonplace building, with nothing really beautiful about it, except the great marble courtyard and fountain. The inside, which is entirely built of Oriental alabaster, is carpeted with magnificent Turkey carpets and hung with innumerable cut-glass chandeliers, so that it looks like a huge vulgar drawing room from which the furniture has been cleared for dancing.
The mosque of Amr is interesting as a point of departure in the history of Saracenic architecture. It was built by Amr Ebn el As, the Arab conqueror of Egypt, in the twenty-first year of the Hegira (A.D. 642) and is the earliest Saracenic edifice in Egypt. We were glad, therefore, to have seen it for this reason, if for no other. But it is a barren, dreary place; and the glare reflected from all sides of the quadrangle was so intense that we were thankful to get away again into the narrow streets beside the river.
It was a brilliant afternoon , and we ended our day's work with a drive on the Shubra road and glance at the gardens of the Khedive's summer palace. The Shubra road is the Champs Elysees of Cairo, and is thronged every day from four to half-past six. Here little sheds of roadside cafes alternate with smart modern villas; ragged fellaheen on jaded donkeys trot side by side with elegant attaches. The sons of the Khedive drive here daily, always in separate carriages and preceded by four Saises and four guards. On Saturday the 13th December (1873) we were to go on board a certain dahabeeyah now lying off the iron bridge at Boulak, therein to begin that strange aquatic life to which we had been looking forward with so many hopes and fears, and towards which we had been steering through so many preliminary difficulties.
Chapter 111 Cairo to Bedreshayn
Departure for the Nile Voyage - Farewell to Cairo - Turra - The Philae and crew - The Dahabeeyah and the Nile sailor - Native music - Bedreshayn
Towing Dahabeeyah Bedreshayn Fellah's Hut
A dahabeeyah is shallow and flat-bottomed, and is adapted for either sailing or rowing. It carries two masts; a big one near the prow, and a smaller one at the stern. The cabins are on deck, and occupy the after-part of the vessel; and the roof of the cabins forms the raised deck, or open-air drawing room. The hold, however, is under the lower deck, and so counterbalances the weight at the other end. For the crew there was no sleeping accommodation whatever, unless they chose to creep into the hold among the luggage and packing-cases. But this they never did. They just rolled themselves up at night, heads and all, in rough brown blankets, and lay about the lower decks. The Reis, or captain, the steersman, and twelve sailors, the dragoman, head cook, two waiters, and the boy who cooked for the crew, completed our equipment.
The Nile season is the Nile sailors' harvest-time. When the warm weather sets in and the travellers migrate with the swallows, these poor fellows disperse in all directions; some to seek a living as porters in Cairo; others to their homes in Middle and Upper Egypt where, for about four pence a day, they take hire as labourers, or work at Shaduf irrigation till the Nile again overspreads the land. A Nile sailor's service expires with the season, so that he is generally a landsman for about half a year; but the captain's appointment is permanent. He is expected to live in Cairo, and is responsible for his dahabeeyah during the summer months, while it lies up at Boulak.Our Reis, Hassan, had a wife and a comfortable little home on the outskirts of Old Cairo, and was looked upon as a well-to-do personage among his fellows.
Our men treated us to a concert that first night, as we lay moored under the bank near Bedreshayn. Being told that it was customary to provide musical instruments, we had given them leave to buy a tar and darabukkeh before starting.These were perhaps better suited to their strange singing than more tuneful instruments. As a night scene, nothing could be more picturesque than this group of turbaned Arabs sitting in a circle, cross legged, with a lantern in the midst. The singer quavered; the musicians thrummed; the rest softly clapped their hands to time, and waited their turn to chime in with the chorus. Meanwhile the lantern lit up their swarthy faces and their glittering teeth. The great mast towered up into the darkness. The river gleamed below. The stars shone overhead. We felt we were indeed strangers in a strange land.
Chapter IV Sakkarah and Memphis
The palms of Memphis - Three groups of Pyramids - The M.B's and their groom - Relic hunting - The Pyramid of Quenephes - The Serapeum - A royal raid - The Tomb of Ti - The Fallen Colossus - Memphis
Tomb of Ti Sakkarah Sphinx, Memphis
Notwithstanding that I had first seen the Pyramids of Ghizeh, the size of the Sakkarah group - especially of the Pyramid in platforms - took me by surprise. They are all smaller than the Pyramids of Khufu and Khafra, and would no doubt look sufficiently insignificant if seen with them in close juxtaposition; but taken by themselves they are quite vast enough for grandeur. As for the Pyramid in platforms (which is the largest at Sakkarah, and next largest to the Pyramid of Khafra) its position is so fine, its architectural style so exceptional, its age so immense, that one altogether loses sight of these questions of relative magnitude. If Egyptologists are right in ascribing the royal title hieroglyphed on the inner door of this pyramid to Ouenephes, the fourth king of the First Dynasty, then it is the most ancient building in the world. The door of this pyramid was carried off, with other precious spoils, by Lepsius, and is now in the museum at Berlin. The evidence that identifies the inscription is tolerably direct. According to Manetho, an Egyptian historian who wrote in Greek and lived in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, King Ouenephes built for himself a pyramid at a place called Kokhome. Now a tablet discovered in the Serapeum by Mariette gives the name of Ka-kem to the necropolis of Sakkarah; and as the pyramid in stages is not only the largest on this platform,but is also the only one in which a royal cartouche has been found, the conclusion seems obvious. Wilkinson describes the interior as 'a hollow dome supported here and there by wooden rafters' and states that the sepulchral chamber was lined with blue porcelain tiles. We would have liked to go inside, but this is no longer possible, the entrance being blocked by a recent fall of masonry.
Temple of Zoser Step Pyramid Apis Tombs
The Serapeum, it need hardly be said, is the famous and long-lost sepulchral temple of the sacred bulls. These bulls ( honoured by the Egyptians as successive incarnations of Osiris) inhabited the temple of Apis at Memphis while they lived; and, being mummified after death, were buried in catacombs prepared for them in the desert. A descending passage opening from a chamber in the great Temple led to the catacombs - vast labyrinths of vaults and passages hewn out of the solid rock on which the Temples were built. These three groups of excavations represent three epochs of Egyptian history, dating from the XVIIIth to the XXIInd ; XXII to the XXVth dynasty; XXVIth to the latest Ptolemies.
Bas-relief, tomb Ti Ti, of Fifth Dyn Bas-relief, tomb Ti
The tomb of Ti, a priest and commoner of the Fifth Dynasty, who married with a lady named Neferhotep-s, the granddaughter of a Pharaoh, built himself a magnificent tomb in the desert. Of the facade of this tomb, which must have originally looked like a little temple, only two large pillars remain. Next comes a square courtyard surrounded by a roofless colonnade, from one corner of which a covered passage leads to two chambers.......... We find a succession of bas-reliefs so numerous and so closely packed that it would take half a day to see them properly. Here, as in an open book, we have the biography of Ti. His whole life, his pleasures, his business, his domestic relations, are brought before us with just that faithful simplicity.
The Colossal Statue of Ramses 11 at Memphis
And now the desert is left behind, and we are nearing the palms that lead to Memphis. Presently those in front strike away from the beaten road across a grassy flat to the right; and the next moment we are all gathered round the brink of a muddy pool in the midst of which lies a shapeless block of blackened and corroded limestone. This, it seems, is the famous prostrate colossus of Ramses the Great. Here it lies, face downward; drowned once a year by the Nile; visible only when the pools left by the inundation have evaporated, and all the muddy hollows are dried up. It is one of two which stood at the entrance to the great Temple of Ptah; and by those who have gone down into the hollow and seen it from below in the dry season, it is reported of as a noble and very beautiful specimen of one of the best periods of Egyptian art. Where, however, is the companion colossus? Where is the Temple itself? Where are the pylons, the obelisks, the avenue of sphinxes? Where, in short, is Memphis?
All that remains of Memphis, eldest of cities, is a few huge rubbish-heaps, a dozen or so of broken statues, and a name! One looks round, and tries in vain to realise the lost splendours of the place. One can hardly believe that a great city ever flourished on this spot, or understand how it should have been effaced so utterly.Yet here it stood - here where the grass is green, and the palms are growing. The great colossus lies where it fell and no man has moved it. That tranquil sheet of palm-fringed back-water, beyond which we see the village of Matrahineh and catch a glimpse of the pyramids of Ghizeh, occupies the basin of a vast artificial lake excavated by Mena. The very name of Memphis survives in the dialect of the fellah, who calls the place of the mounds Tell Monf - just as Sakkarah fossilises the name of Sokari, one of the special denominations of the Memphite Osiris.
Chapter V Bedreshayn to Minieh
The rule of the Nile - The Shaduf - Beni Suef - Thieves by night - The Chief of the Guards - A sand storm - 'Holy Sheykh Cotton' - The Convent of the Pulley
A Copt - The Shadow of the world - Minieh - A native market - Prices of Provisions - The Dom palm - Fortune telling - Ophthalmia
The Shaduf Holy Sheykh Cotton Market Boat, Minieh
That morning, still tracking, we pass the Pyramids of Dahshur. A dilapidated brick building standing in the midst of them looks like an aiguille of black rock thrusting itself up through the limestone bed of the desert. Palms line the bank and intercept the view; but we catch flitting glimpses here and there, looking out especially for that dome-like pyramid which we observed the other day from Sakkarah. Seen in the full sunlight, it looks larger and whiter.
At length, on the morning of the fourth day after our first appearance at Beni Suef and the seventh since leaving Cairo, the wind veered round again to the north and we got under way, but we were still one hundred and nine miles from Rhoda, and we knew that nothing but an extraordinary run of luck could possibly get us there by the 23rd of the month, with time to see Beni Hassan on the way. Meanwhile, however, we make fair progress, mooring at sunset when the winds fall, about three miles north of Bibbeh. The following day we reach Bibbeh perched high along the edge of the precipitous bank, its odd-looking Coptic Convent roofed all over with little mud domes, like a cluster of earth bubbles. At night, we moor within sight of the factory chimneys and hydraulic tubes of Magagha, and next day get on nearly to Golosaneh, which is the last station-town before Minieh.It is now only too clear that we must give up all thought of pushing on to Beni Hassan before the rest of the party shall come on board.
We are by this time drawing towards a range of yellow cliffs that have long been visible on the horizon, and which figure in the maps as Gebel et Tayr.And now, a long way ahead, where the river bends and the level cliffs lead on into the far distance, a little brown speck is pointed out as the Convent of the Pulley........And now the Convent with its clustered domes is passed and left behind.
At Minieh we found ourselves moored close under the Khedive's summer palace - so close that one could have tossed a pebble against the lattice windows of his Highness's harem.It happened to be market day; so we saw Minieh under its best aspect, than which nothing could well be more squalid, dreary, and depressing. It was like a town dropped unexpectedly into the midst of a ploughed field; the streets being mere trodden lanes of mud dust, and the houses a succession of windowless mud prisons with their backs to the thoroughfare. The Bazaar, which consists Of two or three lanes a little wider than the rest, is roofed over here and there with rotting palmrafters and bits of tattered matting; while the market is held in a space of waste ground outside the town.
Chapter VI Minieh to Siut
Christmas Day - The Party completed - Christmas Dinner on the Nile - A Fanstasia - Noah's Ark - Birds of Egypt - Gebel Abufayda - Unknown Stelae - Imprisoned - The Scarab Beetle - Manafalut - Siut - Red and black pottery - Ancient tombs - View over the plain - Biblical legend
Gebel Abufayda Siut Tombs near Siut
And now, sometimes sailing, sometimes tracking, sometimes punting, we go on day by day, making what speed we can. Things do not, of course always fall out exactly as one would have them. The wind too often fails when we most need it, and gets up when there is something to see on shore. Thus, after a whole morning of tracking, we reach Beni Hassan at the moment when a good breeze has suddenly filled our sails for the first time in forty eight hours; and so, yielding to counsels which we afterwards deplored, we pass on with many a longing look at the terraced doorways pierced along the cliffs. At Rhoda, in the same way, we touch for only a few minutes to post and inquire for letters.
The scenery is for the most part of the ordinary Nile pattern; and for many a mile we see the same things over and over again :- the level bank shelving down steeply to the river; the strip of cultivated soil, green with maize or tawny with dura; the frequent mud village and palm grove; the deserted sugar factory ; the water wheel slowly revolving with its necklace of pots; the shaduf worked by two brown athletes; the file of ladencamels; the desert, all sand-hills and sand-plains, with its background of mountains; the long reach, and the gleaming sail ahead.
As for the rock-cut tombs of Gebel Abufayda, they must number many hundreds. For nearly twelve miles, the range runs parallel to the river, and throughout that distance the face of the cliffs is pierced with innumerable doorways......... The Nile takes an abrupt bend to the eastward, and thence flows through many miles of cultivated flat. Between Gebel Abufayda and Siut, the Nile makes four or five great bends........Like a mirage, too, that fairy town of Siut seemed always to hover at the same unattainable distance, and after hours of tracking to be no nearer than at first. Suit is the capital of middle Egypt, and has the best bazaars of any town up the Nile.Its red and black pottery is famous throughout the country and there is a whole street of such pottery in the town.
A lofty embanked road planted with fine sycamore-figs leads from Hamra to Suit; and another embanked road leads from Suit to the mountain of tombs. Of the Ancient Egyptian city no vestige remains, the modern town being builtupon the mounds of the earlier settlement; but the City of the Dead - so much of it, at least, as was excavated in the living rock - survives, as at Memphis, to commemorate the departed splendour of the place. we took donkeys next day to the edge of the desert, and went up to the sepulchres on foot. The first tomb we came to was the so-called Stabl Antar - a magnificent but cruelly mutilated excavation, consisting of a grand entrance, a vaulted corridor, a great hall, two side chambers and a sanctuary. The ceiling of the corridor, now smoke-blackened and defaced, had been richly decorated with intricate patterns of light green, white and buff, upon a ground of dark bluish-green stucco. The wall to the right on entering is covered with a long hieroglyphic inscription. In the sanctuary, vague traces of seated figures, male and female, with lotus blossoms in their hands, are dimly visible. The wall sculptures are chipped and defaced - the massive pillars that once supported the superincumbent rock have been quarried away - the interior is heaped high with debris. Enough is left, however, to attest the antique stateliness of the tomb; and the hieroglyphic inscription remains almost intact to tell its age and history.
Chapter VII Siut to Denderah
An 'Experienced Surgeon' - Passing scenery - Girgeh - Sheykh Selim - Kasr es Syad - Kasr es Syad - Forced labour - Temple of Denderah - Cleopatra - Benighted
Girgeh Denderah Denderah
Above Siut, the picturesqueness of the river is confined for the most part to the eastern bank. We have almost always a near range of mountains on the Arabian side, and a more distant chain on the Libyan horizon. Gebel Sheykh el Raaineh succeeds to Gebel Abufayda, and is followed in close succession by the cliffs of Gow, of Gebel Sheykh el Hereedee, of Gebel Ayserat and Gebel Tukh - all alike rigid in strongly marked beds of level limestone strata; flat topped and even, like lines of giant ramparts; and more or less pierced with orifices which we know to be tombs, but which look like loopholes from a distance.
We regarded it, I think, as an especial piece of good fortune, when we found ourselves becalmed next day within three or four miles of Denderah. Abydos comes first in order according to the map; but then the Temples lie seven or eight miles from the river, and as we happened to be making some ten miles an hour, we put off the excursion till our return.
The way was long,the day was hot, and we had only the map to go by. Having climbed the steep bank and skirted an extensive palm grove, we found ourselves in a country without paths or roads of any kind. Then as we drew nearer to the Temple details gradually emerged into distinctness. We could now see the curve and under-shadow of the cornice; and a small object in front of the facade which looked at first sight like a monolithic altar, resolved itself into a massive gateway of the kind known as a single pylon. Nearer still, among some low outlying mounds, we came upon fragments of sculptured capitals and mutilated statues half-buried in rank grass - upon a series of stagnant nitre-tanks and deserted workshops - upon the telegraph poles and wires which here come striding along the edge of the desert and vanish southward with messages for Nubia and the Soudan.
We were by this time near enough to see that the square piers of the facade were neither square nor piers, but huge round columns with human headed capitals; and that the walls, instead of being plain and tomb-like, were covered with an infinite multitude of sculptured figures. The pylon - rich with inscriptions and bas-reliefs, but disfigured by myriads of tiny wasps' nests, like clustered mud-bubbles now towered high above our heads, and led to a walled avenue cut direct through the mounds, and sloping downwards to the main entrance of the Temple.
Not, however, till we stood immediately under those ponderous columns, looking down upon the paved floor below and up to the huge cornice that projected overhead like the crest of an impending wave, did we realise the immense proportions of the building. Lofty as it looked from a distance, we now found that it was only the interior that had been excavated, and that not more than two thirds of its actual height were visible above the mounds. The level of the avenue was, indeed, at its lowest part full twenty feet above that of the first great hall; and we had still a steep temporary staircase to go down before reaching the original pavement.The effect of the portico as one stands at the top of the staircase is one of overwhelming majesty. Its breadth, its height, the massiveness of its parts, exceed in grandeur all that one has been anticipating throughout the long two miles of approach. The immense girth of the columns, the huge screens which connect them, the ponderous cornice jutting overhead, confuse the imagination, and in the absence of given measurements appear, perhaps, even more enormous than they are. Looking up to the architrave , we see a kind of Egyptian Panathenaic procession of carven priests and warriors, some with standards and some with musical instruments. The winged globe, depicted upon a gigantic scale in the curve of the cornice, seems to hover above the central doorway. Hieroglyphs, emblems, strange forms of Kings and Gods, cover every foot of wall space, frieze and pillar. Nor does this wealth of surface-sculpture tend in any way to diminish the general effect of size.It would seem, on the contrary, as if complex decoration were in this instance the natural complement to simplicity of form. Every group, every inscription, appears to be necessary and in its place; an essential part of the building it helps to adorn.
Such injury as they have sustained is from the hand of man.One can easily imagine how these spoilers sacked and ravaged all before them; how they desecrated the sacred places, and cast down the statues of the Goddess, and divided the treasures of the sanctuary. Among the reliefs which escaped, however, is the famous external bas-relief of Cleopatra on the back of the Temple. this curious sculpture is now banked up with rubbish for its better preservation, and can no longer be seen by travellers. Cleopatra is represented with a headdress combining the attributes of three goddesses; namely the Vulture of Maut, the horned disc of Hathor, and the throne of Isis.The falling mass below the headdress is intended to represent hair dressed according to the Egyptian fashion, in an infinite number of small plaits, each finished off with an ornamental tag.
It is not without something like a shock that one first sees the unsightly havoc wrought upon the Hathor-headed columns of the facade at Denderah. The massive folds of the head-gear are there; the ears, erect and pointed like those of a heifer, are there but of the benignant face of the goddess not a feature remains. Seen from within, the portico shows as a vast hall, fifty feet in height and supported on twenty four Hathor headed columns. Six of these, being engaged in the screen, form part of the facade, and are the same upon which we have been looking from without. By degrees, as our eyes become used to the twilight, we see here and there a capital which still preserves the vague likeness of a gigantic female face; while, dimly visible on every wall, pillar, and doorway, a multitude of fantastic forms - hawk headed, ibis headed cow headed, mitred, plumed, holding aloft strange emblems, seated on thrones, performing mysterious rites - seem to emerge from their places, like things of life. Looking up to the ceiling, now smoke-blackened and defaced, we discover elaborate paintings of scarabei, winged globes, and zodiacal emblems divided by borders of intricate Greek patterns, the prevailing colours of which are verditer and chocolate. Bands of hieroglyphic inscriptions, of royal ovals, of Hathor heads, of mitred hawks, of lion headed chimeras, of divinities and kings in bas-relief, cover the shafts of the great columns from top to bottom; and even here, every accessible human face, however small, has been laboriously mutilated.
Bewildered at first sight of these profuse and mysterious decorations, we wander round and round; going on from the first hall to the second, from the second to the third; and plunging into deeper darkness at every step.We have been reading about these gods and emblems for weeks past - we have studied the plan of the Temple beforehand; yet now that we are actually here, our book knowledge goes for nothing, and we feel hopelessly ignorant as if we had been suddenly landed in a new world. Not till we have got over this first feeling of confusion - not till resting awhile on the base of one of the columns, we again open out the plan of the building, do we begin to realise the purport of the sculptures by which we are surrounded.
Chapter VIII Thebes and Karnak
Luxor - Donkey boys - Topography of Ancient Thebes - Pylons of Luxor - Poem of Pentaur - The solitary Obelisk - Interior of the Temple of Luxor - Polite postmaster - Ride to Karnak - Great Temple of Karnak - The Hypostyle Hall - A world of ruins
Karnak Karnak Karnak
Coming on deck the third morning after leaving Denderah, we found the dahabeeyah decorated with palm-branches, our sailors in their holiday turbans, and Reis Hassan 'en grande tenue'; that is to say in shoes and stockings, which he only wore on very great occasions. "Neharak-sa-id - good morning - Luxor!" said he, all in one breath. It was a hot, hazy morning, with dim ghosts of mountains glowing through the mist , and a warm wind blowing.
Luxor is a large village inhabited by a mixed population of Copts and Arabs, and doing a smart trade in antiquities. The temple has here formed the nucleus of the village, the older part of which has grown up in and about the ruins. The grand entrance faces north, looking down towards Karnak.The twin towers of the great propylon, dilapidated as they are,, stripped of their cornices, encumbered with debris, are magnificent still.In front of them, one on each side of the central gateway, sit two helmeted colossi, battered, and featureless, and buried to the chin. A few yards in front of these again stands a solitary obelisk, also half-buried. The colossi are of black granite; the obelisk is of red, highly polished, and covered on all four sides with superb hieroglyphs in three vertical columns. Its companion obelisk, already scaling away by imperceptible degrees under the skyey influences of an alien climate, looks down with melancholy indifference upon the petty revolutions and counter revolutions of the Place de la Concorde.
As I have already said, these half-buried pylons, this solitary obelisk, those giant heads rising in ghastly resurrection before the gates of the Temple, were magnificent still. But it was as the magnificent of a splendid prologue to a poem of which garbled fragments remain. Beyond that entrance lay a smoky, filthy, intricate labyrinth of lanes and passages. Mud hovels, mud pigeon-towers, mud yards, and a mud mosque, clustered like wasps' nests in and about the ruins. Architraves sculptured with royal titles supported the roofs of squalid cabins. Stately capitals peeped out from the midst of sheds in which buffaloes, camels, donkeys, dogs, and human beings were seen herding together in unsavoury fellowship. Cocks crew, hens cackled, pigeons cooed, turkeys cobbled, children swarmed, women were baking and gossiping, and all the routine of Arab life was going on, amid winding alleys that masked the colonnades and defaced the inscriptions of the Pharaohs. To trace the plan of this part of the building was impossible.
Luxor Karnak Luxor
In the afternoon we took donkeys, and rode out to Karnak. Our way lay through the bazaar, which was the poorest we had yet seen. Next came the straggling suburb where the dancing girls do congregate. We now left the village behind, and rode out across a wide plain, barren and hillocky in some parts; overgrown in others with coarse halfeh grass; and dotted here and there with clumps of palms. At every rise in the ground we saw the huge propylons of Karnak towering higher above the palms...... We approached the Great temple by way of its main entrance. Here we entered upon what had once been another great avenue of sphinxes, ram-headed, couchant on plinths deep cut with hieroglyphic legends, and leading up from some grand landing place beside the Nile. And now the towers that we had first seen as we sailed by in the morning rose straight before us, magnificent in ruin, glittering to the sun, and relieved in creamy light against blue depths of sky. One was nearly perfect; the other, shattered as if by the shock of an earthquake, was still so lofty that an Arab clambering from block to block midway if its vast height looked no bigger than a squirrel.
Crossing the First Court in the glowing sunlight, we came to mighty doorway between two propylons - the doorway splendid with coloured bas-reliefs; the propylons mere cataracts of fallen blocks piled up to the right and left in grand confusion. The cornice of the doorway is gone. Only a jutting fragment of the lintel stone remains.We went on. Leaving to the right a mutilated colossus engraven on arm and breast with the cartouche of Ramses 11, we crossed the shade upon the threshold, and passed into the famous Hypostyle Hall of set the First. The scale is vast; the effect too tremendous; the sense of one's own dumbness, and littleness, and incapacity too complete and crushing to put into words. It is a place that strikes you into silence; that empties you, as it were, of words and of ideas.
Looking up and down the central avenue, we see at the one end a flame-like obelisk; at the other, a solitary palm against a background of glowing mountain. To right, to left, showing transversely through long files of columns, we catch glimpses of colossal bas-reliefs lining the roofless walls in every direction. The king, as usual, figures in every group and performs the customary acts of worship. The Gods receive and approve him.
The great central avenue was sufficiently lighted by means of clerestory windows, some of which are yet still standing.Certain writers have suggested they have been glazed; but this seems improbable for two reasons. Firstly, because one or two of these huge window-frames yet contain the solid stone gratings which in the present instance seem to have done duty for a translucent material : and,secondly, because we have no evidence to show that the early Egyptians, though familiar since the days of Cheops with the use of the blow-pipe, ever made glass in sheets, or introduced it in this way into their buildings.
The Hypostyle Hall, though built by Seti, the father of Ramses 11, is supposed by some Egyptologists to have been planned, if not begun, by that same Amenhotep 111 who founded the Temple of Luxor and set up the famous Colossi of the Plain. However this may be, the cartouches so lavishly sculptured on pillar and architrave contain no names but those of Seti, who undoubtedly executed the work 'en bloc' , and of Ramses, who completed it.
For Chapters IX to XV see Amelia Edwards 2
For Chapters XVI to XIX see Amelia Edwards 3
For Chapters XX to XXII see Amelia Edwards 4
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