Chapters XVI to X1X
Chapter XVI Abou Simbel
The Colossi - Portraits of Ramses the Great - The Great Sand Drift - The smaller Temples - 'Ramses and Nefertari' - The Great Temple - A monster tableau - Alone in the Great Temple - Trail of a crocodile - Cleaning the Colossus - The sufferings of the sketcher
Great Temple Inside Great Temple Smaller Temple
We came to Abou Simbel on the night of the 31st of January, and we left at sunset on the 18th February. Of these eighteen clear days, we spent fourteen at the foot of the rock of the Great Temple, called in the old Egyptian tongue the Rock of Abshek. The remaining four ( taken at the end of the first week and the beginning of the second ) were passed in the excursion to Wady-Halfeh and back. By thus dividing our time, our long sojourn was made less monotonous for those who had no especial work.
Meanwhile, it was wonderful to wake every morning close under the steep bank, and, without lifting one's head from the pillow, to see that row of giant faces so close against the sky. They showed unearthly enough by moonlight; but not half so unearthly as in the grey of dawn. At that hour, they wore a fixed and flat look that was little less than appalling. As the sky warmed, this awful look was succeeded by a flush that mounted and deepened like the rising flush of life. For a moment they seemed to glow - to smile - to be transfigured. Then came a flash, as of thought itself. It was the first instantaneous flash of the risen sun. It lasted less than a second. It was gone almost before one could say it was there. The next moment, mountain, river, and sky, were distinct in the steady light of day; and the colossi - mere colossi now - sat serene and stony in the open sunshine.
Nothing in Egyptian sculpture is perhaps quite so wonderful as the way in which these Abou Simbel artists dealt with the thousands of tons of material to which they here gave human form. Consummate masters of effect, they knew precisely what to do, and what to leave undone. These were portrait statues; therefore they finished the heads up to the highest point consistent with their size. But the trunk and lower limbs they regarded from a decorative rather than a statuesque point of view. As decoration, it was necessary that they should give size and dignity to the facade. Everything, consequently, was here subordinated to the general effect of breadth , of massiveness, of repose. Considered thus, the colossi are a triumph of treatment. Side by side they sit, placid and majestic, their feet a little apart, their hands resting on their knees. Shapely though they are, those huge legs look scarcely inferior in girth to the great columns of Karnak. The articulations of the knee joint, the swell of the calf, the outline of the 'peroneous longus' are indicated rather than developed. The toe-nails and toe-joints are given in the same bold and general way; but the fingers, because only the tips of them could be seen from below, are treated 'en bloc' .
The faces show the same largeness of style. The little dimple which gives such sweetness to the corners of the mouth, and the tiny depression in the lobe of the ear, are in fact circular cavities as large as saucers. Such an effect does the size of these four figures produce on the mind of the spectator, that he scarcely observes the fractures they have sustained. I do not remember to have even missed the head and body of the shattered one, although nothing is left of it above the knees. Those huge legs and feet covered with ancient inscriptions, some of Greek, some of Phoenician origin, tower so high above the heads of those who look at them from below, that one scarcely thinks of looking higher still.
The figures are naked to the waist, and clothed in the usual striped tunic. On their heads they wear the double-crown, and on their necks rich collars of cabochon drops cut in very low relief. The feet are bare of sandals, and the arms of bracelets; but in the front of the body, just where the customary belt and buckle would come, are deep holes in the stone, such as might have been made to receive rivets, supposing the belts to have been made of bronze or gold. On the breast, just below the necklace, and on the upper part of each arm, are cut in magnificent ovals, between four and five feet in length, the ordinary cartouches of the king. These were probably tattooed upon his person in the flesh.
Some have supposed that these statues were originally coloured, and that the colour may have been effaced by the ceaseless shifting and blowing of the sand. Yet the drift was probably at its highest when Burckhardt discovered the place in 1813; and on the two heads that were still above the surface, he seems to have observed no traces of colour. Neither can the keenest eye detect any vestige of that delicate film of stucco with which the Egyptians invariably prepared their surfaces for painting. Perhaps the architects were for once content with the natural colour of the sandstone, which is here very rich and varied. It happens that the colossi come in a light-coloured vein of the rock, and so sit relieved against a darker background. Towards noon, when the level of the facade has just passed into shade and the sunlight still strikes upon the statues, the effect is quite startling. The whole thing, which is then best seen from the island, looks like a huge onyx-cameo cut in high relief.
A statue of Ra, to whom the temple is dedicated, stands some twenty feet high in a niche over the doorway, and is supported on either side by a bas-relief portrait of the king in an attitude of worship. Next above these comes a superb hieroglyphic inscription reaching across the whole front; above the inscription, a band of royal cartouches; above the cartouches, a frieze of sitting apes; above the apes, last and highest, some fragments of a cornice. The height of the whole may have been somewhat over 100 feet. Wherever it has been possible to introduce them as decoration, we see the ovals of the king. Under those sculptured on the platforms and over the door I observed a hieroglyphic character which, in conjunction with the sign known as the determinative of metals, signifies gold ( Nub ); but when represented as here without the determinative, stands for Nubia, the Land of Gold. This addition, which I do not remember to have seen elsewhere in connection with the cartouches of Ramses 11, is here used in a heraldic sense, as signifying the sovereignty of Nubia.
The relative position of the two Temples has already been described - how they are excavated in two adjacent mountains and divided by a cataract of sand. The front of the smaller Temple lies parallel to the course of the Nile, here flowing in a north-easterly direction. The facade of the Great Temple is cut in the flank of the mountain, and faces due east. Thus the colossi, towering above the shoulder of the sand-drift, catch, as it were, a side view of the small Temple and confront vessels coming up the river. As for the sand-drift, it curiously resembles the glacier of the Rhone. In size,in shape, in position, in all but colour and substance, it is the same. Pent in between the rocks at the top, it opens like a fan at bottom. In this its inevitable course, it slants downward across the facade of the Great Temple.
The smaller Temple, though it comes first in order of sailing, is generally seen last; and seen therefore to disadvantage. To eyes fresh from the 'Abode of Ra', the 'Abode of Hathor' looks less than its actual size; which is in fact but little inferior to that of the Temple of Derr. A first hall, measuring some 40 feet in length by 21 in width, leads to a transverse corridor, two side chambers, and a sanctuary 7 feet square, at the upper end of which are the shattered remains of a cow-headed statue of Hathor. Six square pillars, as at Derr, support the ceiling of the hall, which is in truth the superincumbent mountain. In this arrangement, as in the general character of the bas-reliefs sculptures which cover the walls and pillars, there is much simplicity, much grace, but nothing particularly new. The facade, on the contrary, is a daring innovation. Here the whole front is but a frame for six recesses, from each of which a colossal statue, erect and life-like, seems to be walking straight out from the heart of the mountain. These statues, three to the right and three to the left of the doorway, stand thirty feet high, and represent Ramses 11 and Nefertari, his queen. Mutilated as they are, the male figures are full of spirit, and the female figures full of grace. The Queen wears on her head the plumes and disk of Hathor. The King is crowned with the [schent, and with a fantastic helmet adorned with plumes and horns. They have their children with them; the Queen her daughters, the King his sons - infants of ten feet high, whose heads just reach to the parental knee.
The walls of these six recesses, as they follow the slope of the mountain, form massive buttresses, the effect of which is wonderfully bold in light and shadow. The doorway gives the only instance of a porch that we saw in either Egypt or Nubia. The superb hieroglyphics which cover the faces of these buttresses and the front of this porch are cut half-a-foot deep into the rock. and are so large that they can be read from the island in the middle of the river. The tale they tell - a tale retold, in many varied turns of old Egyptian style upon the architraves within - is singular and interesting.
'Ramses, the Strong in Truth, the Beloved of Amun' says the outer legend, 'made this divine Abode for his royal wife, Nefertari, whom he loves' The legend within, after enumerating the titles of the King, records that ' his royal wife who loves him, Nefertari the Beloved of Maut, constructed for him this Abode in the mountain of the Pure Waters'. On every pillar, in every act of worship pictured on the walls, even in the sanctuary, we find the names of Ramses and Nefertari ' coupled and inseparable '. In this double dedication, and in the unwonted tenderness of the style, one seems to detect traces of some event, perhaps of some anniversary, the particulars of which are lost forever. We see, at all events, that Ramses and Nefertari desired to leave behind them an imperishable record of the affection which united them on earth, and which they hoped would reunite them in Amenti.
We hurried on to the Great Temple, without waiting to examine the lesser one in detail. A solemn twilight reigned in the first hall, beyond which all was dark. Eight colossi, four to the right and four to the left, stand ranged down the centre, bearing the mountain on their heads. Their height is 25 feet. With hands crossed on their breasts, they clasp the flail and crook; emblems of majesty and dominion. It is the attitude of Osiris, but the face is the of Rameses 11. Seen by this dim light, shadowy, mournful, majestic, they look as if they remembered the past.
Beyond the first hall lies a second hall supported on four square pillars; beyond this again, a transverse chamber, the walls of which are covered with coloured bas-reliefs of various Gods; last of all the sanctuary. Here, side by side, sit four figures larger than life - Ptah, Amen-Ra, Ra, and Rameses deified. Before them stands an altar, in shape a truncated pryamid, cut from the solid rock. Traces of colour yet linger on the garments of the statues; while in the walls on either side are holes and grooves such as might have been made to receive a screen of metal-work.
Wandering from hall to hall, from chamber to chamber we received those first impressions of vastness, of mystery, of gloomy magnificence. Scenes of war, of triumph, of worship, passed before our eyes like the incidents of a panorama. Here the King, borne along at full gallop by plumed steeds gorgeously caparisoned, draws his mighty bow and attacks a battlemented fortress. The besieged, some of whom are transfixed by his tremendous arrows, supplicate for mercy. They are a Syrian people, and are by some identified with the Northern Hittites. Their skin is yellow; and they wear the long hair and beard, the fillet, the rich robe, fringed cape, and embroidered baldric with which we are familiar in the Nineveh sculptures. A man driving off cattle in the foreground looks as if he had stepped out of one of the tablets in the British Museum. Rameses meanwhile towers, swift and godlike, above the crowd. His sons, his whole army, chariot and horse, follow headlong at his heels. All is movement and the splendour of battle.
Farther on, we see the King returning in state, preceded by his prisoners of war. Tied together in gangs, they stagger as they go, with heads thrown back and hands uplifted. These, however, are not Assyrians, but Abyssinians and Nubians, so true to the type. A little farther still, and we find Rameses leading a string of these captives into the presence of Amen-Ra, Maut, and Khons - Amen-Ra weird and unearthly, with his blue complexion and towering plumes; Maut wearing the crown of Upper Egypt; Khons by a subtle touch of flattery depicted with the features of the King. Again, to the right and left of the entrance, Rameses, thrice the size of life, slays a group of captives of various nations. To the left Amen-Ra, to the right Ra Harmachis, approve and accept the sacrifice. In the second hall we see, as usual, the procession of the sacred bark. Ptah, Khem, and Bast, gorgeous in many coloured garments, gleam dimly, like figures in faded tapestry, from the walls of the transverse corridor.
But the wonder of Abou Simbel is the huge subject on the north side of the Great Hall. This a monster battle-piece which covers an area of 57 feet and 7 inches in length, by 25 feet 4 inches in height, and contains over 1100 figures. Even the heraldic cornice of the cartouches and asps which runs round the rest of the ceiling is omitted on this side, so that the wall is literally filled with the picture from top to bottom.
Fully to describe this huge design would take many pages. It is a picture-gallery in itself. It represents not a single action, but a whole campaign. It sets before us the pomp and circumstance of war, the incidents of camp life, and the incidents of the open field. We see the enemy's city with its battlemented towers and triple moat; the besiegers' camp and the pavilion of the king; the march of the infantry; the shock of chariots; the hand-to-hand melee; the flight of the vanquished; the triumph of the Pharaoh; the bringing in of the prisoners; the counting of the hands of the slain. A great river winds through the picture from end to end, and almost surrounds the invested city. The king in his chariot pursues a crowd of fugitives along the bank. Some are crushed under his wheels; some plunge into the water and are drowned. Behind him, a moving wall of shields and spears, advances with rhythmic step the serried phalanx; while yonder, where the fight is thickest, we see chariots overturned, men dead and dying, and riderless horses making for the open. Meanwhile the besieged send out mounted scouts, and the country folk drive their cattle to the hills.
A grand frieze of chariots charging at full gallop divides the subject lengthwise, and separates the Egyptian camp from the field of battle. The camp is square, and enclosed, apparently, in a palisade of shields. It occupies less than one sixth part of the picture, and contains about a 100 figures. Within this narrow space the artist has brought together an astonishing variety of incidents. The horses feed in rows from a common manger, or wait their turn and impatiently paw the ground. Some are lying down. Two detachments of infantry, marching out to reinforce their comrades in action, are met at the entrance to the camp by the royal chariot returning from the field. Rameses drives before him some fugitives, who are trampled down, seized, and despatched upon the spot. In one corner stands a row of objects that look like joints of meat; and near them a small altar and a tripod brazier. In the middle of the camp, lies Rameses' tame lion. The scene of the campaign is laid in Syria. The river of blue and white zigzags is the Orontes; the city of the besieged is Kadesh or Kades; the enemy are the Kheta.
It is fine to see the sunrise on the front of the Great Temple; but something still finer takes place on certain mornings of the year, in the very heart of the mountain. As the sun comes up above the eastern hill-tops, one long, level beam strikes through the doorway, pierces the inner darkness like an arrow, penetrates to the inner sanctuary, and falls like fire from heaven upon the altar at the feet of the Gods. No one who has watched for the coming of that shaft of sunlight can doubt that it was a calculated effect, and that the excavation was directed at one especial angle in order to produce it. In this way Ra, to whom the temple was dedicated, may be said to have entered in daily, and by direct manifestation of his presence to have approved the sacrifices of his worshippers.
To come out from these black holes into the twilight of the Great Hall and see the landscape set, as it were, in the ebony frame of the doorway, was alone worth the journey to Abou Simbel. The sun being at such times in the west, the river, the yellow sand-island, the palms and tamarisks opposite, and the mountains of the eastern desert, were all flooded with the glory of light and colour to which no pen or pencil could possibly do justice. Thus our days passed at Abou Simbel; the workers working; the idlers idling; strangers from the outer world now and then coming and going. The heat on shore was great, especially in the sketching tents; but the north breeze blew steadily every day from about an hour after sunrise till an hour before sunset, and on board the dahabeeyah it was always cool.
Chapter XVII The Second Cataract
Volcanic mountains - Kalat Adda - Gebel esh Shems - The first crocodile - Dull scenery - Wady Halfeh - The Rock of Abusir - The second Cataract - The great view - Crocodile slaying - Excavating a tumulus - Comforts of home on the Nile
Rock of Abusir Nile crocodiles Rock of Abusir
A fresh breeze, a full sail, and the consciousness of a holiday well earned, carried us gaily along from Abou Simbel to Wady Halfeh. For some way beyond Abou Simbel, the western bank is fringed by a long line of volcanic mountains, as much alike in height, size, and shape, as a row of martello towers. They are divided from one another by a series of perfectly uniform sand-drifts. Where the chain ends,the view widens, and a host of outlying mountains are seen scattered over an immense plain reaching for miles into the western desert. On the eastern bank, Kalat Adda, a huge rambling Roman citadel, going to solitary ruin brings the opposite range to a like end, and abuts on a similar plain, also scattered with detached peaks. The scene here is desolately magnificent. A large island covered with palms divides the Nile in two branches, each of which looks as wide as the whole river. An unbounded distance opens away to the silvery horizon. On the banks there is no verdure; neither is there any sign of human toil. Nothing lives, nothing moves, save the wind and the river.
Some way beyond Kalat Adda, when the Abou Simbel range and the palm island have all but vanished in the distance, and the lonely peak, called the Mountain of the Sun (Gebel esh-Shems), has been left far behind, we come upon a new wonder, namely, upon two groups of scattered tumuli, one on the eastern, one on the western bank. Not volcanic forms these; not even accidental forms. They are of various sizes; some little, some big; all perfectly round and smooth, and covered with a rich greenish brown alluvial soil. How did they come there? Who made them? What did they contain? The Roman ruin close by - the 240,000 deserters who must have passed this way - the Egyptian and Ethiopian armies that certainly poured their thousands along these very banks, and might have fought many a battle on this open plain, suggest all kinds of possibilities, and fill one's head with visions of buried arms, and jewels, and cinerary urns. But now, the breeze freshening and the dahabeeyah tearing gallantly along, we leave the tumuli behind and enter upon a still more desolate region, where the mountains recede farther than ever, and the course of the river is interrupted by perpetual sandbanks.
The palms of Wady Halfeh, blue with distance, came into sight and by noon the 'Philae' was moored under a shore crowded with cangias, covered with bales and packing cases, and, like the shores of Mahatta and Assuan, populous with temporary huts. For here it is that traders going by water embark and disembark on their way to and fro between Dongola and the First Cataract.
There were three temples - or at all events three ancient Egyptian buildings - once upon a time on the western bank over against Wady Halfeh. Now there are a few broken pillars, a solitary fragment of brick pylon, some remains of a flight of stone steps leading down to the river, and a wall of enclosure overgrown with wild pumpkins. These ruins, together with a rambling native Khan and a noble old sycamore, form a picturesque group backed by amber and sand-cliffs, and mark the site of a lost city belonging to the early days of Usertesen 111.
The Second, or Great Cataract, begins a little way above Wady Halfeh and extends over a distance of many miles. It consists, like the First Cataract, of a succession of rocks and rapids, and is skirted for the first five miles or so by the sand-cliff ridge which, as I have said, forms a background to the ruins just opposite Wady Halfeh. This ridge terminates abruptly in the famous precipice known as the Rock of Abusir. Only adventurous travellers bound for Dongola or Khartum go beyond this point; and they, for the most part, take the shorter route across the desert from Korosko. One may go to the Rock of Abusir by land or by water.
It is hard, now that we are actually here, to realise that this is the end of our journey. The Cataract - an immense multitude of black and shining islets, among which the river, divided into hundreds of separate channels, spreads far and wide for a distance, it is said, of more than 16 miles, - foams at our feet. Foams, and frets and falls; gushing smooth and strong where its course is free; murmuring hoarsely where it is interrupted; now hurrying; now loitering; here eddying in oily circles; there lying in still pools unbroken by a ripple; everywhere full of life, full of voices; everywhere shining to the sun. Northwards, where it winds away towards Abou Simbel, we see all the fantastic mountains of yesterday in the horizon. To the east, still bounded by out-liers of the same disconnected chain, lies a rolling waste of dark and stony wilderness, trenched with innumerable valleys, through which flow streams of sand. On the western side, the continuity of the view is interrupted by the ridge which ends with Abusir. Southwards, the Libyan desert reaches away in one vast undulating plain; tawny, arid, monotonous; all sun; all sand; lit here and there with arrowy flashes of the Nile. Farthest of all, pale but distinct, on the outermost rim of the world, rise two mountain summits, one long, one dome-like. Our Nubians tell us that these are the mountains of Dongola. Comparing our position with that of the Third Cataract as it appears upon the map, we come to the conclusion that these ghost-like silhouettes are the summits of Mount Fogo and Mount Arambo.
In all this extraordinary panorama, so wild, so weird, so desolate, there is nothing really beautiful, except the colour. But the colour is transcendent. Never, even in Egypt, have I seen anything so tender, so transparent, so harmonious. I shut my eyes, and it all comes before me. I see the amber of the sands; the pink and pearly mountains; the Cataract rocks, all black and purple and polished; the dull grey palms that cluster here and there upon the larger islands; the vivid verdure of the tamarisks and pomegranates; the Nile, a greenish brown flecked with yeasty foam; over all, the blue and burning sky, permeated with light, and palpitating with sunshine.
If a traveller pressed for time asked me whether he should or should not go as far as the Second Cataract, I think I should recommend him to turn back from Abou Simbel. The trip must cost four days; and if the wind should happen to be unfavourable either way, it may cost six or seven. The forty miles of river that have to be twice traversed are the dullest on the Nile; the Cataract is but an enlarged and barren edition of the Cataract between Assuan and Philae; and the great view, as I have said, has not that kind of beauty which attracts the general tourist.It has an interest, however, beyond and apart from that of beauty. It rouses one's imagination to a sense of the greatness of the Nile. We look across a world of desert, and see the river still coming from afar. We have reached a point at which all that is habitable and familiar comes abruptly to and end.
Yet for all this, we feel as if we were at only the beginning of the mighty river. We have journeyed well-nigh a thousand miles against the stream; but what is that to the distance which still lies between us and the Great Lakes? And how far beyond the Great Lakes must we seek for the Source that is even yet undiscovered?
At times the head wind blows so hard that neither oars nor current avail; and then there is nothing for it but to lie under the bank and wait for better times. This was our sad case in going back to Abou Simbel. Having struggled with no difficulty through the first 25 miles, we came to a dead lock about half-way between Faras and Gebel-esh-Shems. Carried forward by the stream, driven back by the wind, buffeted by the waves, and bumped incessantly by the rocking to and fro of the felucca, our luckless 'Philae', after oscillating for hours within the space of a mile, was run at last into a sheltered nook, and there left in peace till the wind should change or drop. We were imprisoned here for a day and a half.
The coming back thus, after an excursion in the felucca, is one of the many pleasant things that one has to remember of the Nile. The sun has set; the afterglow has faded; the stars are coming out. Leaning back with a satisfied sense of something seen or done, one listens to the old dreamy chant of the rowers, and to the ripple under the keel. The palms, meanwhile, glide past, and are seen in bronzed relief against the sky. Presently the big boat, all glittering with lights, looms up out of the dusk. A cheery voice hails from the poop. We glide under the bows. Half a dozen smiling brown faces bid us welcome, and as many pairs of brown hands are outstretched to help us up the side. A savoury smell is wafted from the kitchen; a pleasant vision of the dining room, with table spread and lamps ready lit, flashes upon us through the open doorway. We are at home once more. Let us eat, drink, rest, and be merry; for tomorrow the hard work of sight-seeing and sketching begins again.
Chapter XVIII Discoveries at Abou Simbel
Society at Abou Simbel - The Painter discovers a rock cut chamber - Sunday employment - Reinforcement of natives - Excavation - The Sheykh - Discovery of human remains - Discovery of pylon and staircase - Decorations of Painted Chamber - Inscriptions
Ground Plan Entrance to Speos Hieratic Inscription
The day was Sunday; the date February 16th 1874, when the Painter went strolling amongst the rocks. He happened to turn his steps southwards, and, passing the front of the Great Temple, climbed to the top of a little shapeless mound of fallen cliff, and sand, and crude-brick wall, just against the corner where the mountain sloes down to the river. Immediately round this corner, looking almost due south, and approachable by only a narrow ledge of rock, are two votive tablets sculptured and painted, both of the 38th year of Rameses 11. We had seen these from the river as we came back from Wady Halfeh, and had remarked how fine the view must be from that point.. Beyond the fact that they are coloured, and that the colour upon them is still bright, there is nothing remarkable about these inscriptions. There are many such at Abou Simbel.
Turning back presently, his attention was arrested by some mutilated sculptures on the face of the rock, a few yards nearer the south buttress of the Temple. The relief was low; the execution slight; and the surface so broken away that only a few confused outlines remained. The thing that now caught the Painter's eye, however, was a long crack as might have been caused, one would say, by blasting. No mere fault in the rock would go so deep. Convinced that there was some hidden cavity in the rock, he carefully examined the surface. There were yet visible a few hieroglyphic characters and part of two cartouches, as well as some battered outlines of what had once been figures. The heads of these figures were gone, while from the waist downwards they were hidden under the sand. Only some hands and arms, in short could be made out. They were the hands and arms, apparently of four figures; two in the centre of the composition, and two at the extremities. The two centre ones, which seemed to be back to back, probably represented gods; the outer ones, worshippers. All it once, it flashed upon the Painter that he had seen this kind of group before - and generally over a doorway.
Feeling sure we were on the brink of a discovery, all that Sunday afternoon, heedless of possible sunstroke, unconscious of fatigue, we toiled upon our hands and knees, as for bare life, under the burning sun. We had all the crew up, working like tigers. And now, more than ever, we felt the need for implements. With a spade or two and a wheelbarrow, we could have done wonders; but with only one small fir-shovel, a birch broom, a couple of charcoal baskets, and about twenty five pairs of hands, we were poor indeed. What was wanted in means, however, was made up in method. By sunset the top of the doorway was laid bare, and where the crack ended in a large triangular frame, there was an aperture about a foot and a half square. I wriggled in and found myself looking down from the top of a sandslope into a small square chamber. This sand-drift, which here rose to within a foot and a half of the top of the doorway, was heaped to the ceiling in the corner behind the door, and thence sloped steeply down, completely covering the floor. There was light enough to see every detail distinctly - the painted frieze running round just under the ceiling; the bas-reliefs sculptures on the walls, gorgeous with unfaded colour; the smooth sand, pitted near the top; the great gap in the middle of the ceiling, where the rock had given way; the fallen fragments on the floor, now almost buried in sand.
After engaging the services of 50 able bodied natives from the nearest village, by noon the next day, the door was cleared down to the threshold, and the whole south and west walls were laid bare to the floor. WE now found that the debris which blocked the north wall and the centre of the floor was not, as we had at first supposed, a pile of fallen fragments, but one solid boulder which had come down bodily from above. To remove this was impossible. We had no tools to cut or break it, and it was both wider and higher than the doorway. Even to clear away the sand which rose behind to the ceiling would have taken a long time, and have caused the inevitable injury to the paintings around. Already the brilliancy of the colour was marred where the men had leaned their backs, all wet with perspiration, against the walls. Seeing, therefore, that three-fourths of the decorations were now uncovered, and that behind the fallen block there appeared to be no subject of great size and importance, we made up our minds to carry the work no further.
Having traced thus far the course of the excavations and the way in which one discovery led step be step to another, I must now return to the Speos, and, as accurately as I can, describe it, not only from my notes made on the spot, but by the light of such observations as I afterwards made among structures of the same style and period. The rock-cut chamber which I have hitherto described as a Speos, and which we first believed to be a tomb, was in fact neither the one nor the other. It was the adytum of a partly built, partly excavated monument coeval in date with the Great temple. In certain points of design the monument resembles the contemporary Speos of Bayt-el-Welly. It is evident, for instance, that the outer halls of both were originally vaulted; and the much mutilated sculptures over the doorway of the excavated chamber at Abou Simbel are almost identical in subject and treatment with those over the entrance to the excavated parts of Bayt-el Welly. As regards general conception, the Abou Simbel monument comes under the same head with the contemporary Temples of derr, Gerf Hossayn, and wady Sabooah; being in a mixed style which combines excavation with construction. The style seems to have been peculiarly in favour during the reign of Rameses 11. Situate at the south-eastern angle of the rock, a little way beyond the facade of the great Temple, this rock-cut adytum and hall of entrance face S.E. by E. and command much the same view that is commanded higher up by the Temple of Hathor.
I have now to speak of the decorations of the adytum, the walls of which, from immediately under the ceiling to within three feet of the floor, are covered with religious subjects elaborately sculptured in bas-relief, coated as usual with a thin film of stucco, and coloured with a richness for which I know no parallel, except in the tomb of set 1 at Thebes. Above the level of the drifted sand, this colour was as brilliant in tone and as fresh in surface as on the day when it was transferred to those walls from the palette of the painter. All below that level, however, was dimmed and damaged.
The ceiling is surrounded by a frieze of cartouches supported by sacred asps; each cartouche, with its supporters, being divided from the next by a small sitting figure. These figures, in other respects uniform, wear the symbolic heads of various gods - the cow-head of Hathor, the ibis-head of Thoth, the hawk-head of Horus, the jackal-head of Anubis, etc.etc. The cartouches contain the ordinary style and title of Rameses 11 ( Ra-user-ma Sotep-en-Ra Rameses Mer-Amun ), and are surmounted by a row of sun-disks. Under each sitting god is depicted the phonetic hieroglyph signifying Mer, or Beloved. By means of this device, the whole frieze assumes the character of a connected legend, and describes the king not only as beloved of Amun, but as Rameses beloved of Hathor, of Thoth, of Horus - in short, of each God depicted in the series. These Gods excepted, the frieze is almost identical in design with the frieze in the first hall of the Great Temple.
WEST WALL. The west, or principal wall, facing the entrance, is divided into two large subjects, each containing two figures the size of life. In the division to the right, Rameses 11 worships Ra; in the divsion to the left, he worships Amun-Ra; thus following the order observed in the other two temples, where the subjects relating to Amun-Ra occupy the left half, and the subjects relating to Ra occupy the right half, of each structure. An upright ensign surmounted by an exquisitely drawn and coloured head of Horus Aroeis separates the two subjects. In the subject to the right, Ramseses, wearing the red and white pschent, presents an offering of two small aryballos vases without handles. The vases are painted blue, and are probably intended to represent lapis lazuli; a substance much prized by the Ancient Egyptians, and known to them by the name of khesbet. The King's necklaces, armlets, and bracelets are also blue. Ra sits enthroned, holding in one hand the 'Ankh', or crux ansata, emblem of life, and in the other the greyhound-headed sceptre of the Gods. He is hawk-headed, and crowned with the sun-disk and asp. His flesh is painted bright Venetian red. He wears a pectoral ornament; a rich necklace of alternate vermilion and black drops; and a golden-yellow belt studded with red and black stones. The throne, which stands on a blue platform, is painted in stripes of red, blue and white. The platform is decorated with a row of gold-coloured stars and 'ankh' emblems picked out with red. At the foot of this platform, between the God and the King, stands a small altar, on which are placed the usual blue lotus with red stalk, and a spouted libation vessel.
To the left of the Horus ensign, seated back-to-back with Ra upon a similar throne, sits Amun-Ra - of all the Egyptian Gods the most terrible to look upon - with his blue-black complexion, his corselet of golden chain-armour, and his headdress of towering plumes. Here the wonderful preservation of the surface enabled one to see by what means the ancient artists were wont to produce this singular blue-black effect of colour. It was evident that the flesh of the God had first been laid in with dead black, and then coloured over with a dry, powdery cobalt-blue, through which the black remained partly visible. He carries in one hand the ankh, and in the other the greyhound-headed sceptre.
To him advances the King, his right hand uplifted, and in his left a small basket containing a votive statuette of Ma, the Goddess of Truth and Justice. Ma is, however shorn of her distinctive feather, and hols the jackal headed staff instead of the customary crux ansata. As portraiture, there is not much to be said for any of these heads of Rameses 11; but the features bear a certain resemblance to the well-known profile of the King; the action of the figure is graceful and animated; and the drawing displays in all its purity the firm and flowing line of Egyptian draughtsmanship. The dress of the King is very rich in colour; the mitre-shaped casque being of a vivid cobalt-blue, studded apparently with precious stones; the apron green and gold. Over the King's head hovers the sacred vulture, emblem of Maut, holding in her claws a kind of scutcheon upon which is depicted the ankh.
SOUTH WALL. The subjects represented on this wall are as follows :- (1) Rameses, life-size, presiding over a table of offerings. The king wears upon his head the klaft, or head-cloth, striped gold and white, and decorated with the uraeus. The table is piled in the usual way with flesh, fowl and flowers. The surface being here quite perfect, the details of these objects are seen to be rendered with surprising minuteness. Even the tiny black feather-stumps of the plucked geese are given with the fidelity of Chinese art. The loaves are shaped precisely like the so-called 'cottage loaves' of today, and have the same little depression in the top, made by the baker's finger. Lotus and papyrus blossoms in elaborate bouquet-holders crown the pile. (2) Two tripods of light and elegant, containing flowers. (3) The Bari, or sacred boat, painted gold-colour, with the usual veil half-drawn across the naos, or shrine; the prow of the boat being richly carved, decorated with the Uta or symbolic eye, and preceded by a large fan of ostrich feathers. The boat is peopled with small figures, one of which kneels at the stern; while a sphinx couchant, with black body and human head, keeps watch at the brow. The sphinx symbolises the King. On this wall, in a space between the sacred boat and the figure of Rameses, occurs an inscription, sculptured in high relief and elaborately coloured. The translation reads ' Said by Thoth, the Lord of Sesennu (residing) in Amenheri, - I give to thee an everlasting sovereignity over the Two Countries, O, Son of (my) body, Beloved, Ra-user-ma Sotep-en-Ra, acting as propitiator of the Ka. I give to thee myriads of festivals of Rameses beloved of Amun, Ra-user-ma Sotep-en-Ra, as prince of every place where the sun-disk revolves. This beautiful living God, maker of beautiful things for (his) father Thoth Lord of Sesennu (residing) in Amenheri. He made mighty and beautiful monuments for ever facing the eastern horizon of heaven.' The meaning of which is that Thoth, addressing Rameses 11, then living and reigning, promises him a long life and many anniversaries of his jubilee, in return for the works made in his (Thoth's) honour at Abou Simbel and elsewhere.
NORTH WALL. At the upper end of this wall is depicted a life-sized female figure wearing an elaborate blue head-dress surmounted by a disk and two ostrich feathers. She holds in her right hand the ankh, and in her left hand the jackal-headed sceptre. This not being the sceptre of the goddess, and the head-dress resembling that of a Queen as represented on the facade of the Temple of Hathor, I conclude we have here a portrait of Nefertari corresponding to the portrait of Rameses on the opposite wall. Near her stands a table of offerings, on which, among other objects, are placed four vases of a rich blue colour traversed by bands of yellow. They perhaps represent the kind of glass known as the false murrhine. Each of these vases contains an object like a pine, the ground colour of which is deep yellow, patterned over with scale-like subdivisions in vermilion. We took them to represent grains of maize pyramidally piled. Lastly, a pendant to that on the opposite wall, comes the sacred Bari. It is, however, turned the reverse way, with its prow towards the east; and it rests upon the altar, in the centre of which are the cartouches of Rameses 11 and a small hieroglyphic inscription signifying ; ' Beloved by Amun-Ra, King of the Gods resident in the Land of Kenus'. Beyond this point, at the end nearest the north-east corner of the chamber, the piled sand conceals whatever else the wall may contain in the way of decoration.
EAST WALL. If the east wall is decorated like the others (which may be taken for granted), its tableaux and inscriptions are hidden behind the sand which here rises to the ceiling. The doorway also occurs in this wall.One of the most interesting incidents connected with the excavation of this little adytum remains yet to be told. I have described the female figure at the upper end of the north wall, and how she holds in her right hand the ankh and in her left the jackal-headed sceptre. The hand that holds the ankh hangs by her side; the hand holds the sceptre is half raised. Close under this upraised hand, at a height of between three and four feet from the actual level of the floor, there were visible upon the uncoloured surface of the original stucco several lines of free-hand writing. This writing was laid on, apparently, with the brush, and the ink, if ever it had been black, had now become brown. Five long lines and three shorter lines were uninjured. Below these were traces of other fragmentary lines, almost obliterated by the sand. We knew at once that this quaint faint writing must be in either the hieratic or demotic hand. We could distinguish, in its vague outlines of forms already familiar to us in the hieroglyphs - abstracts, as it were, of birds and snakes and boats. There could be no doubt, at all events, that the thing was curious; and we set it down in our own minds as the writing of either the architect or decorator of the place.
There can be little doubt that a wave of earthquake passed, during the reign of Rameses 11, along the left bank of the Nile, beginning possibly above Wady Halfeh, and extending at least as far north as Gerf Hossayn. Such a shock might have wrecked the Temple at Wady Halfeh, as it dislocated the pylon of Wady Sabooah, and shook the built-out porticoes of Derr and Gerf Hossayn; which last four Temples, as they do not, I believe, show signs of having been added to by later Pharaohs, may be supposed to have been abandoned in consequence of the ruin which had befallen them. Here at all events, it shook the mountain of the great Temple, cracked one of the Osiride columns of the First Hall, shattered one of the four great Colossi, more or less injured the other three, flung down the great brick pylon, reduced the pronaos of the library to a heap of ruin, and not only brought down part of the ceiling of the excavated adytum, but rent open a vertical fissure in the rock, some 20 or 25 feet in length. With so much irreparable damage done to the Great temple, and with so much that was reparable calling for immediate attention, it is no wonder that the brick buildings were left to their fate. The priests would have rescued the sacred books from among the ruins, and then the place would have been abandoned.
Chapter XIX Back through Nubia
Temples ad infinitum - Tosko - Crocodiles - Derr and Amada again - Wady Sabooah - Haughty beauty - A nameless city - A river of sand - Undiscovered Temple - Maharrakeh - Dakkeh - Fortress of Kobban - Gerf Hossayn - Dendoor - Bayt el Welly - The Karnak of Nubia - Silco of the Ethiopians - Tafah - Dabod - A dilemma - Justice in Egypt - The last of Philae
Amada Wady Sabooah Gerf Hossayn
There are fourteen Temples between Abou Simbel and Philae; to say nothing of grottoes, tombs and other ruins. We left Abou Simbel just as the moon was rising on the evening of 18th February. Slowly but surely, however, the hard-won miles go by......Ibrim comes next; then Derr, where we pay a farewell visit to the Temple; and at Amada, arriving towards close of day, see the great view for the last time in the glory of sunset.
At Wady Sabooah, there is a solitary Temple drowned in sand. It was approached once by an avenue of sphinxes and standing colossi, now shattered and buried. The roof of the pronaos, if ever it was roofed, is gone. The inner halls and the sanctuary - all excavated in rock - are choked and impassable. Only the propylon stands clear of sand; and that, massive as it is, looks as if one touch of a battering-ram would bring it to the ground. Every huge stone in it is loose. Every block in the cornice seems tottering in its place. In all this, we fancy we recognise the work of our Abou Simbel earthquake.
To those who have a south breeze behind them, the temples must now follow in quick succession. We, however, achieved them by degrees, and rejoiced when our helpless dahabeeyah lay within rowing reach of anything worth seeing. Thus we pull down one day to Maharrakeh - in itself a dull ruin; but picturesquely desolate. The Temple - a late Roman structure - would seem to have been wrecked by earthquake before it was completed. The masonry is all in the rough - pillars as they came from the quarry; capitals blocked out, waiting for the carver. These unfinished ruins - of which ruins - of which every stone looks new, as if the work was still in progress - affect one's imagination strangely.
Dakkeh comes next in order; then Gerf Hossayn, Dendoor, and Kalabsheh. Arriving at Dakkeh soon after sunrise, we find the whole population drawn up to receive us. There is a large sand island in the way here; so we moor about a mile above the temple. We first saw the twin pylons of Dakkeh some weeks ago from the deck of the 'Philae', and then we likened them to the majestic towers of Edfu. Approaching them now by land, we are surprised to find them so small. The Temple here - begun by an Ethiopian king named Arkaman stands in a desolate open space to the north of the village, and is approached by an avenue, the walls of which are constructed with blocks from some earlier building. The whole of this avenue and all the waste ground for three or four hundred yards round about the Temple, is not merely strewn but piled with fragments of pottery, pebbles, and large smooth stones of porphyry, alabaster, basalt, and a kind of marble like verde antico. These stones are very puzzling. They look as if they might be fragments of statues that had been rolled and polished by ages of friction in the bed of a torrent. Of the Temple I will only say that, as masonry, it is better put together than any work of the XV111th or XIXth Dynasties with which I am acquainted. The sculptures are, however, are atrocious. Such mis-shapen hieroglyphs; such dumpy, smirking goddesses; such clownish kings in such preposterous head-dresses, we have never seen till now. The whole thing, in short, as regards sculptuesque style, is the Ptolemaic out-Ptolemied.
Coming at early morning to Gerf Hossayn, we make our way up to the Temple, which is excavated in the face of a limestone cliff, a couple of hundred feet perhaps, above the river. A steep path, glaring in the hot sun, leads to a terrace in the rock; the Temple being approached through the ruins of a built-out portico and an avenue of battered colossi. It is a gloomy place within - an inferior edition, so to say, of the Great Temple at Abou Simbel; and of the same date. It consists of a first hall supported by Osiride pillars, a second and smaller hall with square columns; a smoke blackened sanctuary; and two side chambers. The Osiride colossi, which stand 20 feet high without the entablature over their heads or the pedestal under their feet, are thick set, bow-legged, and mis-shapen. Their faces would seem to have been painted black originally; while those of the avenue outside have distinctly Ethiopian features. One seems to detect here, as at Derr and Wady Sabooah, the work of provincial sculptors; just as at Abou Simbel one recognises the master-style of the artists of the Theban Ramesseum.
Bordered with dwarf palms, acacias, and henna-bushes, the cliffs between Gerf Hossayn and Dendoor stand out in detached masses so like ruins that sometimes we can hardly believe they are rocks. At dendoor, when the sun is setting, and a delicious gloom is stealing up the valley, we visit a tiny Temple on the western bank. It stands out above the river surrounded by a wall of enclosure, and consists of a single pylon, a portico, two little chambers, and a sanctuary. The whole thing is like an exquisite toy, so covered with sculptures, so smooth, so new-looking, so admirably built. Seeing them half by sunset, half by dusk, it matters not that these delicately wrought bas-reliefs are of the Decadence school. The rosy half-light of an Egyptian after glow covers a multitude of sins, and steeps the whole in an atmosphere of romance.
The usual yelling crowd, with the usual beads, baskets, eggs, and pigeons, for sale, greets us on the shore at Kalabsheh. There is a magnificent Temple here, and close by, excavated in the cliff, a rock-cut Speos, the local name of which is Bayt-el-Weli. The sculptures of this famous Speos have been more frequently described and engraved than almost any sculptures in Egypt. The procession of Ethiopian tribute-bearers, the assault of the Amorite city, the triumph of Rameses, are familiar not only to every reader of Wilkinson, but to every visitor passing through the Egyptian Rooms of the British Museum. The sculptures are still beautiful and the colour in the roofless courtyard, though so perfect when Bonomi executed his admirable facsimiles, has now almost entirely peeled off; but in the portico and inner chambers it is yet brilliant. An emerald green Osiris, a crimson Anubis, and an Isis of the brightest chrome yellow, are astonishingly pure and forcible in quality. As for the flesh tones of the Anubis, this was I believe the only instance I observed of a true crimson in Egyptian pigments.
Between the Speos of Bayt-el-Welly and the neighbouring Temple of Kalabsheh there lies about half-a-mile of hilly pathway and a gulf of 1400 years. Rameses ushers us into the presence of Augustus, and we pass, as it were, from an oratory in the Great House of Pharaoh to the presence chamber of the Caesars. But if the decorative work in the presence chamber of the Caesars was anything like the decorative work in the Temple of Kalabsheh, then the taste thereof was of the vilest. Such a masquerade of deities; such striped and spotted and crossed barred robes; such outrageous head-dresses; such crude and violent colouring, we have never seen the like of. As for the goddesses, they are gaudier than the dancing damsels of Luxor; while the kings balance on their heads diadems compounded of horns, moons, birds, balls, beetles, lotus-blossoms, asps, vases, and feathers. The Temple, however, is conceived on a grand scale. It is the Karnak of Nubia.But it is a Karnak that has evidently been visited by a shock of earthquake far more severe than that which shook the mighty pillars of the Hypostyle Hall and flung down the obelisk of Hatshepsut. From the river, it looks like a huge fortress; but seen from the threshold of the main gateway, it is a wilderness of ruin. Fallen blocks, pillars ,capitals, entablatures, lie so extravagantly piled, that there is not one spot in all those halls and courtyards upon which it is possible to set one's foot on the level of the original pavement. Here, again, the earthquake seems to have come before the work was completed. There are figures outlined on the walls, but never sculptured. Others have been begun, but never finished.
At Tafah, the mason's work is of late Roman date as it follows that earthquakes were yet frequent in Nubia at a period long subsequent to the great shock of B.C. 27, mentioned by Eusebius. Travellers are too ready to ascribe everything in the way of ruin to the fury of Cambyses and the pious rage of the early Christians. Nothing, however, is easier to distinguish between the damage done to the monuments by the hand of man and the damage caused by subterraneous upheaval. Mutilation is the rule in the one case; displacement in the other. At Denderah, for example, the injury done is wholly wilful; at Abou Simbel it is wholly accidental; at Karnak, it is both wilful and accidental. As for Kalabsheh, it is clear that no such tremendous havoc could have been effected by human means.
There are two little Temples at Tafah; one in picturesque ruin, one quite perfect, and now used as a stable.There are also a number of stone foundations, separate, quadrangular, subdivided into numerous small chambers, and enclosed in boundary walls, some of which are built in concave courses. These sub-structions have long been a puzzle. Tafah is charmingly placed; and the seven miles which divide it from Kalabsheh - once no doubt the scene of a cataract - are perhaps the most picturesque on this side of Wady Halfeh. Rocky islets in the river; palm-groves, acacias, carobs, henna and castor-berry bushes, and all kinds of flowering shrubs, along the edges of the banks; fantastic precipices riven and pinnacled, here rising abruptly from the water's edge, and there from the sandy plain, make lovely sketches whichever way one turns.
Under a burning sky, we touch for an hour or two at Gertasee, and then push on for Dabod. The limestone quarries at Gertassee are full of votive sculptures and inscriptions; and the little ruin - a mere cluster of graceful columns supporting a fragment of cornice - stands high on the brink of a cliff overhanging the river. Dabod lies between two bends of the river, which here flows wide, showing no outlet and seeming to be girdled by mountains and palm-groves. The Temple is small and uninteresting; begun, like Dakkeh, by an Ethiopian king, and finished by Ptolemies and Caesars. The one curious thing about it is a secret cell, most cunningly devised. Adjoining the sanctuary is a dark side-chamber; in the floor of which is a pit, once paved over; in one corner of the pit is a man-hole opening into a narrow passage; and in this passage are steps leading up to a secret chamber constructed in the thickness of the wall. we saw other secret chambers in other Temples; but not one in which the old approaches were so perfectly preserved.
From Dabod to Philae is but ten miles; and we are bound for Torrigur, which is two miles nearer. Now Torrigur is that same village at the foot of the beautiful sand-drift, near which we moored on our way up the river; and here we are to stay two days, followed by at least a week at Philae. In the end we spent 8 enchanted days at Philae; and it so happened, when the afternoon of the eighth came round, that for the last few hours I was alone on the island. Alone that is to say, with only a sailor in attendance, which was virtually solitude; and Philae is a place to which solitude adds an inexpressible touch of pathos and remoteness.
It has been a hot day, and there is dead calm on the river. My last sketch finished, I wander slowly round from spot to spot, saying farewell to Pharaoh's Bed - to the Painted columns - to every terrace, and palm, and shrine, and familiar point of view. I peep once again into the mystic chamber of Osiris. I see the set set for the last time from the roof of the Temple of Isis. Then, when all that wondrous flush of rose and gold has died away, comes the warm afterglow. No words can paint the melancholy beauty of Philae at this hour. The surrounding mountains stand out jagged and purple against a pale amber sky. the Nile is glassy. Not a breadth, not a bubble, troubles the inverted landscape. Every palm is twofold; every stone is doubled. The big boulders in mid-stream are reflected so perfectly that it is impossible to tell where the rock ends and the water begins. The Temples, meanwhile, have turned to a subdued golden bronze; and the pylons are peopled with shapes that glow with fantastic life, and look ready to step down from their places.
The solitude is perfect, and there is a magical stillness in the air. I look; I listen; I promise myself that I will remember it all in the years to come - all the solemn hills, these silent colonnades, these deep, quiet spaces of shadow, these sleeping palms. Lingering till it is all but dark, I at last bid them farewell, fearing lest I may behold them no more.
For Chapters I to VIII see Amelia Edwards I
For Chapters IX to XV see Amelia Edwards 2
For Chapters XX to XX11 see Amelia Edwards 4
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