Chapters   IX  to XV


Chapter IX                   Thebes to Assuan
A storm on the Nile - Erment - A gentlemanly Bey - Esneh - A buried Temple - A long day's sketching - Salame the chivalrous - Remarkable Coin - Antichi - The Fellah - The pylons of Edfu - An exciting race - The Philae wins by a length
                             
                                                           
                            Esneh                           On Nile boat                  Egyptian village    
                                       
             A light but fitful breeze helped us on the next day as far as Erment, the Ptolemaic Hermonthis, once the site of a goodly temple, now an unimportant sugar factory. Here we moored for the night, and after dinner we received a visit of ceremony from the Bey. The wind rose next morning with the sun , and by breakfast time we had left Erment behind. We were bound for Esneh, which is a large trading town, and lies twenty -six miles south of Erment. The Temple was to be found close against the market place but we had expected to see the pylon or portico tower above the surrounding houses, as at Luxor........ In the midst of the clamour, however,and just as we are about to turn away in despair, the gate creaks open; and we are at last admitted. This is what we see - a little yard surrounded by mud-walls; at the farther end of the yard a dilapidated doorway; beyond the doorway, a strange-looking, stupendous mass of yellow limestone masonry, long, and low, and level, and enormously massive. A few steps farther, and this proves to be the curved cornice of a mighty Temple - a Temple neither ruined  nor defaced, but buried to the chin in the accumulated rubbish of a score of centuries. This part is evidently the portico. We stand close under a row of huge capitals. The columns that support them are buried beneath our feet. The ponderous cornice juts out above our heads. From the level on which we stand to the top of that cornice may measure about twenty five feet. A high mud-wall runs parallel to the whole width of the facade, leaving a passage of about twelve feet in breadth between the two. A low mud-parapet and a hand-rail reach from capital to capital. All beyond is vague, cavernous, mysterious - a great shadowy gulf, in the midst of which dim ghosts of many columns are darkly visible.From an opening between two of the capitals, a flight of brick steps leads down into a vast hall so far below the surface of the outer world, so gloomy, so awful. 
                        Going down these steps we came to the original level of the Temple. We look up to the massive ceiling, recessed, and sculptured, and painted, like the ceiling at Denderah. The columns, though, less massive than those of Denderah, are more elegant, and look loftier. Their shafts are covered with figures of gods, and emblems, and lines of hieroglyphed inscription, all cut in low relief. Their capitals, in place of the huge draped Hathor-heads of Denderah, are studied from natural forms - from the lotus-lily, the papyrus-blossom, the plumy date-palm. The wall sculpture, however, is inferior to that of Denderah, and immeasurably inferior to the wall-sculpture at Karnak. The Temple is dedicated to Knum or Kneph, the Soul of The World.   
                       A dull grey morning, a faint and fitful breeze, carried us slowly on our way from Esneh to Edfu. It was about midday when we passed El Kab, the ancient Eileithyias. A rocky valley narrowing inland; a Sheykhs tomb on the mountain range above; a few clumps of date-palms; some remains of what looked like a long crude-brick wall running at right angles to the river.
                     And now as the languid afternoon wears on, the propylons of Edfu loom out of the misty distance.We have been looking for them for long enough before they came into sight. The breeze has dropped now.The river stretches away before us, smooth and oily as a pond.Nine of the men are tracking. Will they pull us to Edfu in time to see the Temple before nightfall? Reis Hassan looks doubtful; but takes refuge in "Inshallah". The 'Philae' creeps lazily on; the sun declines unseen behind a filmy veil; and those two shadowy towers, rising higher and even higher on the horizon, look grey, and ghostly, and far distant still. Suddenly the trackers stop, look back, shout to those on board, and begin drawing the boat to shore. Reis Hassan points joyously to a white streak breaking across the smooth surface of the river about half-a-mile ahead..... For the capricious wind, that always springs up when we don't want it, is coming!
                     The great towers that showed so far away half and hour ago are now close at hand. There are palm-woods about their feet, and clustered huts,from the midst of which they tower up against the murky sky magnificently. Soon they are passed and left behind, and the grey twilight takes them, and we see them no more. Then night comes on, cold and starless, yet not too dark  for going as fast as wind and canvas will carry us.
                   Towards morning (Silsilis and Kom Ombo are passed and left behind) we have already put forty-six miles between ourselves and Edfu; and the good wind is still blowing.....We are now within fifteen miles of Assuan. The Nile is narrow here, and the character of the scenery has quite changed. Our view is bounded on the Arabian side by a near ranger of black granite mountains; while on the Libyan side lies a chain of lofty sand-hills, each curiously capped by a crown of dark boulders. On both banks the river is thickly fringed with palms.

Chapter X                     Assuan and Elephantine
Assuan - Strange wares for sale - Madame Nubia - Castor oil - The black governor - An enormous blunder - Tannhauser in Egypt - Elephantine - Inscribed potsherds - Bazaar of Assuan - The Camel - A ride in the Desert - The Obelisk of the Quarry - A death in the town

                                                
                          Elephantine                       Assuan                            Assuan   

              The green island of Elephantine, which is about a mile in length, lies opposite Assuan and divides the Nile in two channels. The Libyan and Arabian deserts - smooth amber sand-slopes on the one hand; rugged granite cliffs on the other - come down to the brink on either side. On the Libyan shore a Sheykh's tomb, on the Arabian shore a bold fragment of Moorish architecture with ruined arches open to the sky, crown two opposing heights, and keep watch over the gate of the Cataract. Just under the Moorish ruin, and separated from the river by a slip of sandy beach lies Assuan.The things offered for sale at Assuan are altogether new and strange. Here are no scarabei, no funerary statuettes, no bronze or porcelain goods, no relics of a past civilisation; but on the contrary, such objects as speak only of a rude and barbarous present - ostrich eggs and feathers, silver trinkets of rough Nubian workmanship, spears, bows, arrows, ivory bracelets cut solid from the tusk, porcupine quills, baskets of stained and plaited reeds, gold nose-rings, and the like.  
            We spent part of the day at Elephantine, which in the inscriptions is called Abu, or the Ivory Island. There may perhaps have been a depot, or 'treasure city' here for the precious things of the Upper Nile country; the gold of Nubia and the elephant tusks of Kush. It is a very beautiful island - rugged and lofty to the south; low and fertile to the north; with an exquisitely varied coast-line full of wooded creeks and miniature beaches. It is peopled by Nubians only, containing two villages, and the mounds of a very ancient city which was the capital of all Egypt under the Pharaohs of the VIth Dynasty. Two temples, one of which dated from the reign of Amenhotep 111, were yet standing here some 70 years ago. They were seen by Belzoni in 1815, and had just been destroyed to build a palace and barracks when Champollion went up in 1829. A ruined gateway from the Ptolemaic period and a forlorn-looking sitting statue of Menephtah, the supposed Pharaoh of the Exodus, alone remain to identify the sites on which they stood. The charm of Elephantine is the everlasting charm of natural beauty - of rocks, of palm-woods, of quiet waters.
               The horizon beyond Assuan is bounded on all sides by rocky heights, bold and picturesque in form. Clustered rocks of black and red granite profusely inscribed with hieroglyphed records crop up here and there and serve as landmarks just where landmarks are needed. Winding in and out among undulating hillocks and tracts of rolled boulders, we come at last to a little group of cliffs, at the foot of which our camels halt unbidden. Here we dismount , climb a short slope, and find the huge monolith at our feet.
               Being cut horizontally, it lies half-buried in drifted sand, with nothing to show that is not wholly disengaged and ready for transport.Our books tell us, however that the undercutting has never been done, and that it is yet one with the granite bottom on which it seems to lie.Had it been finished, this would have been the largest obelisk in the world. The great obelisk of Queen Hatshepsu at Karnak, which, as its inscriptions record, came also from Assuan, stands 92 feet high, and measures 8 square feet at the base; but this which lies sleeping in the desert, would have stood 95 feet in the shaft, and have measured over 11 feet square at the base. We can never know why it was left here , nor guess with what royal name it should have been inscribed.The drifted sands, we may be sure, hide more precious things. The great obelisk must have had a fellow, if we only knew how to look for it.

Chapter XI                   The Cataract and the Desert
Scenery of the Cataract - The Sheykh of the Cataract - Vexatious delays - The Painter's vocabulary - Mahatta - Ancient bed of the Nile - Abyssinian Caravan

                                           
                            Cataract                   Village near desert                  Cataract     

              At Assuan, one bids good-bye to Egypt  and enters Nubia through the gates of the Cataract - which is, in truth, no cataract, but a succession of rapids extending over two-thirds of the distance between Elephantine and Philae. The Nile - diverted from its original course by some unrecorded catastrophe, the nature of which has given rise to much scientific conjecture - here spreads itself over a rocky basin bounded by sand slopes on the one side, and by granite cliffs on the other.
            The scenery of the First Cataract is like nothing else in the world - except the scenery of the Second. It is altogether new, and strange, and beautiful. The Nile here widens to a lake.Of the islands, which it would hardly be an exaggeration to describe as some hundreds in number, no two are alike. Some are piled up block by block, column upon column, tower upon tower. Some are green with grass; some golden with slopes of drifted sand; some planted with rows of blossoming lupins, purple and white. Others again are mere cairns of loose blocks, with here and there a perilously balanced top-boulder..... Royal ovals and hieroglyphed inscriptions start out here and there from those glittering surfaces with startling distinctness.
            Having witnessed the passage of the first few rapids, we were glad to escape from the dahabeeyah, and spend our time sketching the borders of the desert, and among the villages and islands round about. In all Egypt and Nubia, there is no scenery richer in picturesque bits than the scenery of the Cataract. An artist might pass a winter there, and not exhaust the pictorial wealth of those 5 miles which divide Assuan from Philae.
            The Nile flowed through the desert in the time of Amenemhat 111 and there must have been a later period when it suddenly ran dry. This catastrophe is supposed to have taken place about the time of the expulsion of the Hyksos when a great disruption of the rocky barrier at Silsilis is thought to have taken place; so draining Nubia, which till now had played the part of a vast reservoir, and dispersing the pent up floods over the plains of Southern Egypt.It would, however, be a mistake to conclude that the Nile was by this catastrophe turned aside in order to be precipitated in the direction of the Cataract. One arm of the river must always have taken the present lower and deeper course; while the other must of necessity have run low - perhaps very nearly dry - as the inundation subsided every spring.     
             The rocks on either side of the ancient river-bed are profusely hieroglyphed. These inscriptions, together with others found in the adjacent quarries, range over a period of between 3 - 4 thousand years, beginning with the early reigns of the Ancient empire, and ending with the Ptolemies and Caesars. Some are mere autographs. Others run to a considerable length. Many are headed with figures of gods and worshippers. These , however are for the most part mere graffiti, ill drawn and carelessly sculptured. The records they illustrate are chiefly votive. The passer-by adores the gods of the Cataract; implores their protection; registers his name, and states the object of his journey. The votaries are of various ranks, periods and nationalities; but the formula in most instances is pretty much the same.... Occasionally we came upon a royal cartouche and a pompous catalogue of titles, setting forth how the Pharaoh himself, the Golden Hawk, the Son of Ra, the Mighty, the Invincible, the Godlike, passed that way.
             Our three days' detention in the Cataract was followed by a fourth of glassy calm. There being no breath of air to fill our sails and no footing for the trackers, we could now get along only by dint of hard punting; so that it was past midday before the 'Philae' lay moored at last in the shadow of the holy island to which she owed her name.

Chapter XII                               Philae
Pharaoh's Bed - The Temples - Champollion's discovery - The Painted Columns - Coptic Philae - Philae and desaix - Chamber of Osiris - Inscribed Rock - View from the roof of the Temple

                                                 
                        Philae  Temple                 Pharaoh's Bed                Columns, Philae

              The approach to Philae by water is quite the most beautiful. seen from the level of a small boat, the island, with its palms, its colonnades, its pylons,seems to rise out of the river like a mirage.Piled rocks frame it on either side, and purple mountains close up the distance.As the boat glides nearer between glistening boulders, those sculptured towers rise higher and ever higher against the sky.They show no sign of ruin or of age. All looks solid, stately, perfect.  We bid our Arabs row round to the southern end, where was once a stately landing place with steps down to the river. We skirt the steep banks, and pass close under the beautiful little roofless Temple commonly known as Pharaoh's Bed - that Temple which has been so often painted, so often photographed, that every stone of it, and the platform on which it stands, and the tufted palms that cluster around it, have been since childhood as familiar to our mind's eye as the Sphinx or the Pyramids.   
             And now the corner is rounded; and the river widens away southwards between mountains and palm-groves; and the prow touches the debris of a ruined quay. The bank is steep here. We climb; and a wonderful scene opens before our eyes. We are standing at the lower end of a courtyard leading up to the propylons of the great Temple. The courtyard is irregular in shape, and enclosed on either side by covered colonnades. The colonnades are of unequal lengths and set at different angles. One is simply a covered walk; the other opens up a row of small chambers, like a monastic cloister opening up a row of cells. The roofing stones of these colonnades are in part displaced, while here and there a pillar or capital is missing; but the twin towers of the propylon, standing out in sharp unbroken lines against the sky and covered with colossal sculptures, are as perfect, or very nearly as perfect, as in the days of the Ptolemies who built them.
            The broad area between the colonnades is honeycombed with crude-brick foundations; vestiges of a Coptic village of early Christian time. Among these we thread our way to the foot of the principal propylon, the entire width of which is 120 feet.The towers measure 60 feet from base to parapet. The key note here is not magnitude, but beauty. Perfect grace, exquisite proportion, most varied and capricious grouping, here take the place of massiveness; so lending to Egyptian forms an irregularity of treatment that is almost Gothic, and a lightness that is almost Greek.                                   And now we catch glimpses of an inner court, of a second propylon, of a pillared portico beyond; while looking up to the colossal bas-reliefs above our heads, we see the usual mystic forms of kings and deities, crowned, enthroned, worshipping and worshipped. These sculptures, which at first sight looked no less perfect than the towers, prove to be as laboriously mutilated as those of Denderah. The hawk-head of Horus and the cow-head of Hathor have here and there escaped destruction; but the human faced deities are literally 'without everything'.
             We enter the inner court - an irregular quadrangle enclosed on the east by an open colonnade, on the west by a chapel fronted with Hathor-headed columns, and on the north and south sides by the second and first propylons. Inside the chapel, built by Ptolemy Euergetes 11, there sleeps perpetual gloom. It is a most curious place, dedicated to Hathor and commemorative of the nurture of Horus.On the blackened walls within, dimly visible by the faint light which struggles through screen and doorway, we see Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris, giving birth to Horus. On the screen panels outside we trace the story of his infancy, education and growth.
            Passing now through the doorway of the second propylon, we find ourselves facing the portico - the famous painted portico of which we had seen so many sketches that we fancied we knew it already. However in the presence of reality we are as much taken by surprise as the first travellers, for here is a place in which time seems to have stood as still as in that immortal palace where everything went to sleep for a hundred years. The bas-reliefs on the walls, the intricate paintings on the ceilings, the colours upon the capitals have long been the wonder and delight of travellers in Egypt.They are all studied from natural forms - from the lotus in bud and blossom, the papyrus and the palm. Conventionalised with consummate skill, they are at the same time so justly proportioned to the height and girth of the columns as to give an air of wonderful lightness to the whole structure. But above all, it is with the colour that one is most fascinated. Of these delicate half-tones, the facsimile in the 'Grammar of Ornament' conveys not the remotest idea, every tint is softened, intermixed, degraded. The pinks are coralline; the greens are tempered with verditer; the blues are of a greenish turquoise, like the western half of an autumnal evening sky.
              Architecturally this court is unlike any we have yet seen, being quite small, and open to the sky in the centre. the light thus admitted glows overhead, lies in a square patch on the ground below, and is reflected upon the pictured recesses of the ceiling. At the upper end, where the pillars stand two deep, there was originally an intercolumnar screen. The rough sides of the columns show where the connecting blocks have been torn away. The pavement, too, has been pulled up by treasure-seekers, and the ground is strewn with broken slabs and fragments of shattered cornice.
                The earliest Temple at Philae, of which only a small propylon remains, would seem to have built by the last of the native Pharaohs (Nectanebo 11, B.C. 361); but the high and palmy days of Philae belong to the period of Greek and Roman rule. It was in the time of the Ptolemies that the Holy Island became the seat of a Sacred College and the stronghold of a powerful hierarchy. Visitors from all parts of Egypt, travellers from distant lands, court functionaries from Alexandria charged with royal gifts, came annually in crowds to offer their vows. They have cut their names by hundreds all over the principal Temple.
                 And now - for we have lingered over long in the portico - it is time we glanced at the interior of the Temple. So we go in at the central door, beyond which open some 9 or 10 halls and side chambers leading, as usual, to the sanctuary. Here all is dark, earthy, oppressive. In rooms unlighted by the faintest gleam from without, we find smoke-blackened walls covered with bas-reliefs. Mysterious passages, pitch dark, thread the thickness of the walls and communicate by means of trap-like openings with vaults below. In the sanctuary lies an overthrown altar. But in this Temple dedicated not only to Isis, but to the memory of Osiris and the worship of Horus their son, there is a chamber sacred to Osiris. Emerging once again into the daylight, we go up a well-worn staircase leading out upon the roof.
                 This roof is an intricate, up and down place; and the room is not easy to find. It lies at the bottom of a little flight of steps - a small stone cell some 12 feet square, lighted only from the doorway. The walls are covered with sculptures representing the shrines, the mummification, and the resurrection of Osiris. These shrines, containing each some part of his body, are variously fashioned. His head, for instance, rests on a Nilometer; his arm, surmounted by a head, is sculptured on a stela, in shape resembling a high-shouldered bottle, surmounted by one of the head-dresses peculiar to the God; his legs and feet lie at full length in a pylon -shaped mausoleum. Upon another shrine stands the mitre-shaped crown which he wears as Judge of the Lower World. Isis and Nephthys keep guard over each shrine. In a lower freeze we see the mummy of the god upon a bier, with the four so-called canopic jars ranged underneath. A little farther on, he lies in state, surrounded by lotus buds on tall stems, figurative of growth, or returning life. Finally he is depicted lying on a couch; his limbs reunited; his head, left hand, and left foot upraised, as in the act of returning to consciousness. Nephthys, in the guise of a winged genius, fans him with the breath of life. Isis, with outstreched arms, stands at his feet and seems to be calling him back to her embraces. The scene represents, in fact, that supreme moment when Isis pours forth her passionate invocations, and Osiris is resuscitated by virtue of the songs of the divine sisters.
                  And now, returning to the roof, it is pleasant to breathe the fresher air that comes with the sunset - to see the island, in shape like an Ancient Egyptian shield, lying mapped out beneath one's feet. From here we look back upon the way we have come, and forward to the way we are going. Northward lies the Cataract - a network of islets with flashes of river between Southward, the broad current comes on in one smooth, glassy sheet, unbroken by a single rapid.How eagerly we turn our eyes that way; for yonder lie Abou Simbel and all the mysterious lands beyong the Cataracts!
                  Such,   roughly summed up, are the fourfold surroundings of Philae - the cataract, the river, the desert, the environing mountains. The Holy Island - beautiful, lifeless, a thing of the far past, with all its wealth of sculpture, painting, history, poetry, tradition - sleeps, or seems to sleep, in the midst. It is one of the world's famous landscapes, and it deserves its fame. Every sketcher sketches it; every traveller describes it. Yet it is just one of those places of which the objective and subjective are so equally balanced that it bears putting neither into words nor colours. The sketcher must perforce leave out the atmosphere of association which informs his subject; and the writer's description is at best no better than a catalogue raisonnee.   

Chapter XIII                        Philae to Korosko
Nubian scenery - A sand slope - Missing Yusef - Trading by the way - Panoramic views - Volcanic cones - Dakkeh - Korosko - Letters from home

                                                                                   
                             Dendur                           Dakkeh                          Kardasseh           

             Sailing gently southward - the river opening wide before us, Philae dwindling in the rear - we feel that we are now fairly over the border; and that if Egypt was strange and far from home, Nubia is stranger and farther still. The Nile here flows deep and broad. The rocky heights that hem it in so close on either side are still black on the one hand, golden on the other. The banks are narrower than ever.  Here, then, one seems to see how entirely these lands which we call Egypt and Nubia are nothing but the banks of one solitary river in the midst of a world of desert.In Egypt, the valley is often so wide that one forgets that stony waste beyond the corn-lands. But in Nubia, the desert is ever present.  But the beauty of the sand more than repays the fatigue of climbing it. Smooth, sheeny, satiny; fine as diamond dust; supple, undulating, luminous, it lies in the most exquisite curves and wreaths, like a snow drift turned to gold. Remodelled by every breath that blows, its ever-varying surface presents an endless play of delicate lights and shadows. There lies not the sculptor who could render those curves; and I doubt whether Turner himself, in his tenderest and subtlest mood, could have done justice to those complex grays and ambers.
               Meanwhile, on we go, starting at sunrise; mooring at sunset; sailing, tracking, punting; never stopping for an hour by day, if we can help it; and pushing straight for Abou Simbel with as little delay as possible. Thus we pass the pylons of Dabod with their background of desert; Gertassee, a miniature Sunium, seen towards evening against the glowing sunset; Tafah, rich in palms, with white columns gleaming through green foliage by the water-side; the cliffs, islands, and rapids of Kalabsheh, and the huge Temple which rises like a fortress in their midst; Dendur, a tiny chapel with a single pylon; and Gerf Hossayn, which from this distance might be taken for the mouth of a rock-cut tomb in the face of the precipice.   
                After Gerf Hossayn, the next place of importance for which our maps bid us look out is Dakkeh. As we draw near, expecting hourly to see something of the Temple, the Nile increases in breadth and beauty. The river, which here takes a sudden bend towards the east, looks like a lake, and seems to be barred ahead by the desert. Going on again presently, our whole attention becomes absorbed by the new and singular geological features of the Libyan desert. A vast plain covered with isolated mountains of volcanic structure, it looks like some strange transformation of the Puy de Dome plateau, with all its wind-swept pastures turned to sand, and its grassy craters stripped to barrenness. The more this plain widens out before our eyes, the more it bristles with peaks. As we round the corner, and Dakkeh, like a smaller Edfu, comes into sight upon the western bank, the whole desert on that side, as far as the eye can see, presents the unmistakable aspect of one vast field of volcanoes.
                 Thanks to a light breeze that sprang up in the afternoon, we were able to hoist our big sail again, and to relieve the men from tracking. Thus we glided past the ruins of Maharrakeh, which, seen from the river, looked like a Greek portico set in a hollow waste of burning desert. Next came Wady Sabooah, a temple half buried in sand, near which we met a tiny dahabeeyah, manned by two Nubians and flying the star and the crescent. A shabby Government Inspector, in European dress and fez, lay smoking on a mat outside his cabin door.
                 Seen in the half-light of a tropical afterglow, the purple mountains coming down in detached masses to the water's edge on the one side; the desert with its volcanic peaks yet rosy upon the other, we thought the approach to Korosko more picturesque than anything we had yet seen south of the Cataract. As the dusk deepened, the moon rose; and the palms that had just room to grow between the mountains and the river turned from bronze to silver. It was half-twilight, half-moonlight, by the time we reached the mooring place where Talhamy, who had been sent forward in the small boat half an hour ago, jumped on board laden with a packet of letters, and a sheaf of newspapers. For here, where the great caravan-route leads off across the desert to Khartum, we touched the first Nubian post-office. It was only ten days since we had received our last budget at Assuan; but it seemed like ten weeks.    

Chapter XIV                  Korosko to Abou Simbel
El id el Kebir - Stalking wild ducks - Temple  of Amada - Fine art of the Thothmes - Derr - A native funeral - Temple of Derr - The 'fair' families - The Sakkieh - arrival at Abou Simbel by moonlight

                                              
                       Temple of Derr                    The Sakkieh                   Temple of Amada

            From Korosko to Derr, the actual distance is about eleven miles and a half; but what with obstructions in the bed of the river, and what with a wind that would have been favourable but for another great bend which the Nile takes towards the east, those eleven miles and a half cost us the best part of two days' hard tracking. Landing from time to time when the boat was close in shore, we found the order of planting everywhere the same, lupins and lentils on the slope against the water-line; an uninterrupted grove of palms on the edge of the bank; in the space beyond, fields of cotton and young corn; and then the desert. The arable soil was divided off, as usual, by hundreds of water channels; and seemed to be excellently farmed as well as abundantly irrigated.Not a weed was to be seen, not an inch of soil wasted.
             Here also, for the first time in Egypt, we observed among the bushes a few hoopoes and other small birds; and on a sand-slope down by the river, a group of wild ducks. Creeping cautiously under the bank, we contrived to get within a few yards of them. All alike had chestnut coloured heads with a narrow buff stripe down the middle, like a parting; maroon backs; wing feathers maroon and grey; and tails tipped with buff.
             High above the Libyan bank on the sloping verge of the desert, stands, half-drowned in the sand, the little Temple of Amada. It was built with squared blocks of sand-stone; and dating back to the very old times of the Usurtesens and thothmes. It consists of a portico, a transverse atrium, and three small chambers. The pillars of the portico are mere square piers. The rooms are small and low. The roof, constructed of oblong blocks, is flat from end to end. A shed without, this little temple is, however, a cameo within. Nowhere, save in the tomb of Ti, had we seen bas-reliefs so delicately modelled, so rich in colour. Here, as elsewhere, the walls are covered with groups of Kings and Gods with hieroglyphic texts. The figures are slender and animated. The head-dresses, jewellery, and patterned robes are elaborately drawn and painted. every head looks like a portrait; every hieroglyphic form is a study in miniature. Apart from its exquisite finish, the wall sculpture of Amada has, however, nothing in common with the wall sculpture of the Ancient Empire. It belongs to the period of Egyptian Renaissance; and, though inferior in power and naturalness to the work of the elder school, it marks just that moment of special development when the art of modelling in low relief had touched the highest level to which it ever again attained. It is for this reason that Amada is so precious. 
             Struggling next morning through a maze of sand-bricks, we reached Derr soon after breakfast. This town - the Nubian capital - lies a little lower than the level of the bank, so that only a few mud walls are visible from the river. Having learned by this time that a capital town is but a bigger village, containing perhaps a mosque and a market place, we were not disappointed by the unimposing aspect of the Nubian metropolis.
              The Temple here, dating from the reign of Ramses 11 is of crude design and indifferent execution. Partly constructed, partly excavated, it is approached by a forecourt, the roof of which was supported by eight square columns. Of these columns only the bases remain. Four massive piers against which stood four colossi, upheld the roof of the portico and gave admission by three entrances to the rock-cut chambers beyond. That portico is now roofless. Nothing is left of the colossi but their feet. All is ruin; and ruin without beauty. Seen from within, however, the place is not without a kind of gloomy grandeur. Two rows of square columns, three at each side, divided the large hall into a nave and two aisles. This hall is about forty feet square, and the pillars have been left standing in the living rock, like those in the early tombs at Siut. The daylight, half-blocked out by the fallen portico, is pleasantly subdued, and finds its way dimly to the sanctuary at the farther end. The sculptures of the interior, though much damaged, are less defaced than those of the outer court. Walls, pillars, doorways, are covered with bas reliefs The King and Ptah, the King and Ra, the King and Amun, stand face to face, hand in hand, on each of the four sides of every column. Scenes of worship, of anointing, cover the walls; and the blank spaces are filled in as usual with hieroglyphic inscriptions. Among these Champollion discovered an imperfect list of the sons and daughters of Ramses the Second. Four gods once sat enthroned at the upper end of the sanctuary; but they have shared the fate of the colossi outside, and only their feet remain. The wall sculptures of this dark little chamber are, however, better preserved, and better worth preservation, than those of the hall. A procession of priests, bearing on their shoulders the bari, or sacred boat, is quite unharmed; and even the colour is yet fresh upon a full-length figure of Hathor close by.
              But more interesting than all these - more interesting because more rare - is a sculptured palm-tree against which the king leans while making an offering to Amen-Ra. The trunk is given with elaborate truthfulness; and the branches, though formalised, are correct and graceful in curvature. The tree is but an accessory. It may have been introduced with reference to the date harvests which are the wealth of the district; but it has no kind of sacred significance, and is noticeable only for the naturalness of the treatment. Such naturalness is unusual in the art of this period, when the conventional persea, and the equally conventional lotus are almost the only vegetable forms which appear on the walls of the Temples. Coming out, we looked in vain along the courtyard walls for the battle-scene in which Champollion was yet able to trace the famous fighting lion of Ramses the second, with the legend describing him as 'the Servant of His Majesty rending his foes in pieces'. But that was forty five years ago. Now it is with difficulty that one detects a few vague outlines of chariot wheels and horses.
                We were now only thirty-four miles from Abou Simbel; but making slow progress. The heat at times was great; frequent and fitful spells of Khamsin wind alternating with a hot calm that tried the trackers sorely. Still we pushed forward, a few miles at a time, till by and by the flat-topped cliffs dropped out of sight and were agai succeeded by volcanic peaks, some of which looked loftier than any those about Dakkeh or Korosko.Then the palms ceased, and the belt of cultivated land narrowed to a thread of green between the rocks and the water's edge; and at last there came an evening when we only wanted breeze enough to double two or three more bends in the river.  None of us, I think, will be likely to forget the sustained excitement of the next three hours. As the moon climbed higher, a light more mysterious and unreal than the light of day filled and overflowed the wide expanse of river and desert. We could see the mountains of Abou Simbel standing as it seemed across our path, in the far distance - a lower one first; then a larger; then a series of receding heights, all close together, yet all distinctly separate. That large one - the mountain of the Great Temple - held us like a spell. For a long time it looked like a mere mountain like the rest. By and by, however, we fancied we detected a something - a shadow - such a shadow as might be cast by a gigantic buttress. Next appeared a black speck no bigger than a porthole. We knew that this black speck must be the doorway. We knew that the great statues were there, though not yet visible; and that we must see them soon. At length the last corner was rounded, and the Great Temple stood straight before us. The facade, sunk in the mountain side like a huge picture in a mighty frame, was now quite plain to see. The black speck was no longer a porthole, but a lofty doorway. Last of all, though it was night and they were still not much less than a mile away, the four colossi came out, ghostlike, vague, and shadowy, in the enchanted moonlight. Even as we watched them, they seemed to grow - to dilate - to be moving towards us out of the silvery distance.

Chapter XV                      Ramses the Great
Youth of Ramses the Great - Treaty with the Kheta - His wives - His great works - The Captivity - Pithom and Ramses - Kauiser and Keniamon - The Birth of Moses - Tomb of Osymandias - Character of Ramses the Great

                                                                              
                        Ramses 11                    Mummy of Ramses                Ramses 11                                     

              The central figure of Egyptian history has always been, probably always will be, Ramses the Second. He holds this place partly by right, partly by accident, He was born to greatness; he achieved greatness; and he had borrowed greatness thrust upon him. It was his singular destiny not only to be made a posthumous usurper of glory, but to be forgotten by his own name and remembered in a variety of aliases. As Sesoosis, as Osymandias, as Sesostris, he became credited in the course of time with all the deeds of all the heroes of the new Empire, beginning with Thothmes 111, who preceded him by 300 years, and ending with Sheshonk, who lived four centuries after him. The interest that one takes in Ramses 11 begins at Memphis, and goes on increasing all the way up the river.
            Ramses the Second was the son of Seti 1, the second Pharaoh of the XIXth Dynasty, and of a certain Princess Tuaa, described on the monuments as 'royal wife, royal mother, and heiress and sharer of the throne'. The great dedicatory inscription of the Temple of Osiris at Abydos, relates how his father took the royal child in his arms, when he was little more than an infant, showed him to the people as their king, and caused him to be invested by the great officers of the palace with the double crown of the two lands. At twelve years of age he was formally associated with his father upon the throne, and by gradual retirement of Seti 1 from the cares of active government, the co-royalty of Ramses became, in the course of the next ten or fifteen years, an individual responsibility. He was probably about thirty when his father died; and it is from this time that the years of his reign are dated.   In the second, fourth and fifth years of his monarchy, he personally conducted campaigns in Syria, more than one of the victories then achieved being commemorated on the rock-cut tablets of Nahr-el-Kelb near Beyrut; and that he was by this time recognised as a mighty warrior is shown by the stela of Dakkeh, which dates from the 'third year'. The events of the campaign of his 'fifth year' ( undertaken in order to reduce to obedience the revolted tribes of Syria and Mesopotamia) are immortalised in the poem of Pentaur. It was on this occasion that he fought his famous single-handed fight, against overwhelming odds, in the sight of both armies under the walls of Kadesh. Three years later, he carried fire and sword into the land of Canaan, and in his eleventh year, according to inscriptions yet extant upon the ruined pylons of the Ramesseum at Thebes, he took, among other strong places on sea and shore, the fortress of Ascalon and Jerusalem.
            The next important record transports us to the twenty first year of his reign. Ten years have now gone by since the fall of Jerusalem, during which time a fluctuating frontier warfare has probably been carried on, to the exhaustion of both armies. Khetasira, Prince of Kheta sues for peace. An elaborate treaty is therupon framed, whereby the said Prince and 'Ramses, Chief of Rulers, who fixes his frontiers where he pleases', pledge themselves to a strict offensive and defensive alliance, and to the maintenance of good will and brotherhood for ever. 
             The peace now concluded would seem to have remained unbroken throughout the rest of the long reign of Ramses the Second. We hear, at all events, of no more wars; and we find the king married presently to a Khetan princess, who in deference to the gods of her adopted country takes the official name of Ma-at-iri-neferu-Ra, or ' Contemplating the Beauties of Ra ' The names of two other queens -  Nefer-t-ari and Ast-nefert  are also found among the monuments.
             These three were probably the only legitimate wives of Ramses 11, though he must also have been the lord of an extensive hareem. His family, at all events, as recorded upon the walls of the Temple at Wady Sabooah, amounted to no less than 170 children, of whom 111 were princes. For forty six years after the making of the Khetan treaty, Ramses the great lived at peace with his neighbours and tributaries. The evening of his life was long and splendid. It became his passionand his pride to found new cities, to raise dykes, to dig canals, to build fortresses, to multiply statutes, obelisks, and inscriptions, and to erect the most gorgeous and costly temples in which man ever worshipped. To the monuments founded by his predecessors he made additions so magnificent that they dwarfed the designs they were intended to complete. He caused artesian wells to be pierced in the stony bed of the desert. He carried on the canal begun by his father, and opened a water-way between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. No enterprise was too difficult, no project too vast, for his ambition.
             That Ramses 11 was the Pharaoh of the captivity, and that Meneptah his son and successor, was the Pharaoh of the Exodus, are now among the accepted presumptions of Egyptological science.The Bible and the monuments confirm each other upon these points, while both are again corroborated by the results of recent geographical and philological research. The 'treasure-cities Pithom and Raamses' which the Israelites built for Pharaoh with bricks of their own making, are the Pa-Tum and Pa-Rameses of the inscriptions, and both have recently been identified by M Naville, in the course of his excavations conducted in 1883 and 1886 for the Egypt Exploration Fund. It was from Pa-Ramses that Ramses 11 set out with his army to attack the confederate princes of Asia Minor then lying in ambush near Kadesh; and it was hither that he returned in triumph after the great victory.    Ramses was the author of temples and the founder of cities. These cities, which would probably be better described as provincial towns, have disappeared; and but for the mention of them in various inscriptions we should not even know that they had existed. Who shall say how many more have vanished, leaving neither trace nor record? A dozen cities of Ramses may yet lie buried under some of those nameless mounds which follow each other in such quick succession along the banks of the Nile in Middle and Lower Egypt. Only yesterday, as it were, the remains of what would seem to have been a magnificent structure decorated in a style absolutely unique, were accidentally discovered under the mounds of Tel-el-Yahoodeh, about twelve miles to the N.E. of Cairo. There are probably fifty such mounds, none of which have been opened, in the Delta alone; and it is no exaggeration to say that there must be some hundreds between the Mediterranean and the First Cataract.
                 The inscription on the stela at Dakkeh, as we have already seen, makes reference to the victorious campaign in the South. Ramses is addressed as 'the bull powerful against Ethiopia', and that the events hereby alluded to must have taken place during the first three years of his sole reign is proved by the date of the tablet. The great dedicatory inscription of Abydos shows, in fact, that Ramses 11 was prosecuting a campaign in Ethiopia at the time when he received intelligence of the death of his father, and that he came down the Nile, northwards, in order, probably to be crowned at Thebes. 
                 Now the famous sculptures of the commemorative chapel at Bayt-el-Welly relate expressly to the events of this expedition; and as they are executed in that refined and delicate style which especially characterises the bas-relief work of Gournah, of Abydos, of all those buildings which were either erected by Seti the First, or begun by Seti and finished during the early years of Ramses 11, I venture to think we may regard them as contemporary, or very nearly, with the scenes they represent. In any case, it is reasonable to conclude that the artists employed on the work would know something about the events and persons delineated, and that they would be guilty of no glaring inaccuracies.
                  All doubt as to whether the dates refer to the associated reigns of Seti and Rameses, or to the sole reign of the latter, vanish, however, when in these same sculptures we find the conqueror accompanied by his son, Prince Amenherkhopeshef, who is of an age not only to bear his part in the field, but afterwards to conduct an important ceremony of state on the occasion of the submission and tribute-offering of the Ethiopian commander. Such is the unmistakable evidence of the bas-reliefs at Bayt-el Welly, as those who cannot go there may see and judge for themselves by means of the admirable casts of these great tableaux which line the walls of the Second Egyptian Room at the British Museum. To explain away Prince Amenherkhopeshef would be difficult. We are accustomed to a certain amount of courtly exaggeration on the part of those who record the great deeds of the Pharaohs. We expect to see the King always young, always beautiful, always victorious. It seems only right and natural that he should never be less than twenty, and sometimes more than sixty feet high. But that any flatterer should go so far as to credit a lad of thirteen with a son at least as old as himself is surely incredible. 
                An inscription found of late years at Abydos shows that Ramses 11 reigned over his great kingdom for the space of sixty-seven years. 'It is thou' says Ramses IV, addressing himself to Osiris, 'it is thou who wilt rejoice me with such length of reign as Ramses 11, the great God, in his sixty-seven years. It is thou who wilt give me the long duration of this great reign'. If only we knew at what age Ramses 11 succeeded to the throne, we should, by help of this inscription, know also the age at which he died. No such record has, however transpired, but a careful comparison of the length of time occupied by the various events of his reign, and above all the evidence of age afforded by the mummy of this great Pharaoh, discovered in 1886, show that he must have been very nearly, if not quite, a centenarian.  

                                         For Chapters      I  to VIII       see Amelia Edwards  I
                                         For Chapters XVI   to XIX       see Amelia Edwards  3
                                         For Chapters  XX   to XX11    see Amelia Edwards  4

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