Chapter XX                     Silsilis and Edfu
Shooting the Cataract - Kom Ombo - Quarries of Silsilis - Edfu the most perfect of Egyptian Temples - View from the pylons - Sand columns

                                                
                        Kom Ombo              Temple of Kom Ombo                Kom Ombo

              At Assuan we bade farewell to Nubia and found ourselves once more traversing the Nile of Egypt. If instead of five miles of Cataract we had crossed 500 miles of sea or desert, the change could not have been more complete. We left behind us a dreamy river, a silent shore, an ever-present desert. Returning we plunged back at once into the midst of a fertile and populous region. All day long, now, we see boats on the river; villages on the banks; birds on the wing; husbandmen on the land; men and women, horses, camels and asses, passing perpetually to and fro on the towing-path.
          Kom Ombo is a magnificent torso. It was as large once as Denderah - perhaps larger; for, being on the same grand scale, it was a double Temple and dedicated to two Gods, Horus and sebek; the Hawk and the Crocodile. Now there remain only a few giant columns buried to within 8 or 10 feet of their gorgeous capitals; a superb fragment of architrave; one broken wave of sculptured cornice, and some fallen blocks graven with the names of Ptolemies and Cleopatras.
          A great double doorway, a hall of columns, and a double sanctuary, are said to be yet perfect, though no longer accessible. The roofing blocks of three halls, one behind the other, and a few capitals, are yet visible behind the portico. What more may lie buried below the surface, none can tell. We only know that an ancient city and a mediaeval hamlet have been slowly engulfed; and that an early Temple, contemporary with the Temple of Amada, once stood within the sacred enclosure. The sand here has been accumulating for 2000 years. It lies forty feet deep, and has never been excavated.
           At Silsisilis, one looks in vain for traces of that great barrier which once blocked the Nile at this point. The stream is narrow here and the sandstone cliffs come down on both sides to the water's edge. The cliffs of the western bank are rich in memorial niches, votive shrines, tombs, historical stelae, and inscriptions. These last date from the VIth to the XX11nd Dynasties. Some of the tombs and alcoves are very curious. Ranged side by side in a long row close above the river, and revealing glimpses of seated figures and gaudy decorations within, they look like private boxes with their occupants. In most of these we found mutilated triads of Gods, sculptured and painted; and in one larger than the rest were three niches, each containing three deities.
           The great Speos of Horemheb, the last Pharaoh of the XV111th Dynasty, lies farthest north, and the memorial shrines of the Rameses family lie farthest south of the series. The first is a long gallery, like a cloister supported on four square columns; and is excavated parallel with the river. The walls inside and out are covered with delicately executed sculptures in low relief, some of which yet retain traces of colour. The triumph of Horemheb returning from conquest in the land of Kush, and the famous subject on the south wall have been too often engraved to need description. The votive shrines of the Rameses family are grouped all together in a picturesque nook green with bushes to the water's edge. There are three, the work of Set 1, Rameses 11, and Meneptah - lofty alcoves, each like a little proscenium, with painted cornices and side pillars, and groups of Kings and Gods still bright with colour. In most of the votive sculptures of Silsilis there figure two deities nut rarely seen elsewhere; namely Sebek, the Crocodile god, and Hapi-mu, the lotus crowned God of the Nile. This was the tutelary deity of the spot, and was worshipped at Silsilis with special rites. Hymns in his honour are found carved here and there upon the rocks. Most curious of all, however, is a Goddess named Ta-ur-t, represented in one of the side subjects of the shrine of Rameses 11. this charming person, who has the body of a hippopotamus and the face of a woman, wears a tie-wig and a robe of state with five capes. Behind her stand Thoth and Nut; all three receiving the homage of Queen Nefertari, who advances with an offering of two sistrums. The interest of the western bank centres in its sculptures and inscriptions; the interest of the eastern bank, in its quarries. The Temples of Karnak and Luxor, of Gournah, of Medinet Habu, of Esneh and Edfu and Hermonthis, all came from here.      

                                                   
                            Edfu                                   Edfu                                 Edfu    
       
              Ten years ago, at Edfu, nothing was visible of the Great Temple, save the tops of the pylons.The rest of the building was as much lost to sight as if the earth had opened and swallowed it. Its courtyards were choked with foul debris. Its sculptured chambers were buried under forty feet of soil. Its terraced roof was a maze of closely packed huts, swarming with human beings, poultry, dogs, asses, and vermin. The encroaching mound has been cut clean away all round the building, now standing free in an open space. In the midst of this pit, like a risen God issuing from the grave, the huge building stands before us in the sunshine,erect and perfect. The effect at first sight is overwhelming.
              Through the great doorway, fifty feet in height, we catch glimpses of a grand courtyard, and of a vista of doorways, one behind another. Going slowly down, we see farther into those dark and distant halls at every step. At the same time the pylons, covered with gigantic sculptures, tower higher and higher, and seem to shut out the sky. Who enters the gate crosses the threshold of the past, and leaves 2000 years behind him. In these vast courts and storied halls all is unchanged. Every pavement, every coloumn, every stair, is in its place. The roof, but for a few roofing-stones missing just over the sanctuary, is not only uninjured, but in good repair. The hieroglyphic inscriptions are as sharp and legible as they day they were cut. If here and there a capital, or the face of a human-headed deity, has been mutilated, these are blemishes which at first one scarcely observes, and which in no way mar the wonderful effect of the whole. We cross that great courtyard in the full blaze of the morning sunlight. In the colonnades on either side there is shade, and in the pillared portico beyond, a darkness as of night; save where a patch of deep blue sky burns through a square opening in the roof, and is matched by a corresponding patch of blinding light on the pavement below. Hence we pass on through a hall of columns, two transverse corridors, a side chapel, a series of pitch-dark side chambers, and a sanctuary. Outside all these, surrounding the actual Temple on three sides, runs an external corridor open to the sky, and bounded by a superb wall full forty feet high.   Of the harmony of the proportions , of the amazing size and strength of the individual parts, of the perfect workmanship, of the fine grain and creamy amber of the stone, no description can do more than suggest an indefinite notion.
                  Edfu and Denderah may almost be called twin temples. They belong to the same period. They are built very nearly after the same plan. They are even allied in a religious sense; for the myths of Horus and Hathor are interdependent; the one being the complement of the other. Thus in the inscriptions of Edfu we find perpetual allusion to the cultus of Denderah, and vice versa. Both temples are rich in inscriptions; but as the extent of wall space is greater at Edfu, so is the literary wealth of this Temple greater than the literary wealth of Denderah. One inscription records exactly in what month, and on what day and at what hour, Isis gave birth to Horus. Another tells us all about the sacred boats. we know that Edfu possessed at least two; and that one was called or-Hat, or The First Horus, and the other Aa-Mafek, or Great Turquoise. These boats, it would appear, were not merely for carrying in procession, but for actual use in the water. Another text - one of the most curious - informs us that Hathor of Denderah paid an annual visit to Horus (or Hor-Hat) of edfu, and spent some days with him in his Temple. The whole ceremonial of this fantastic trip is given in detail. The Goddess travelled in her boat Neb-Mer-t, or Lady of the Lake. Horus, like a polite host, went out in his boat Hor- Hat, to meet her. The two deities with their attendants then formed one procession, and so came to edfu, where the Goddess was entertained with a succession of festivals.
               There were 224 steps to the top of each tower of the propylon. The chambers in the pylons are of a grand scale, with wide-bevelled windows , placed at regular intervals all the way up. through these windows the great flagstaffs and pennons were regulated from within. The two pylons communicate by a terrace over the central doorway. The parapet of this terrace and the parapets of the pylons above, are plentifully scrawled with names, many of which were left there by the French in 1799. The cornices of these two magnificent towers are unfortunately gone.
              The Temple lies far below our feet, the courtyard with its almost perfect pavement; the flat roof compact of gigantic monoliths; the wall of circuit with its panoramic sculptures; the portico, with its screen and pillars distinct in brilliant light against inner depths of dark; each pillar a shaft of ivory, each square of dark a block of ebony. So perfect, so solid, so splendid is the whole structure; so simple in unity of plan; so complex in ornament; so majestic in completeness, that one feels as if it solved the whole problem of religious architecture.
              Take it for what it is - a Ptolemaic structure preserved in all its integrity of strength and finish - it is certainly the finest extant temple in Egypt. It brings before us, with even more completeness than denderah, the purposes of its various parts, and the kind of ceremonial for which it was designed. Every corridor and chamber tells its own story. Even the names of the different chambers are graven upon them in such ways that nothing would be easier than to reconstruct the ground plan of the whole building in hieroglyphic nomenclature. That neither the Ptolemaic building nor the Ptolemaic myths can be accepted as strictly representative of either pure Egyptian art or pure Egyptian thought, must of course be conceded. Both are modified by Greek influences, and have so far departed from the Pharaonic model.But then we have no equally perfect specimen of the Pharaonic model. The Ramesseum is but a grand fragment . Karnak and Medinet Habu are aggregates of many Temples and many styles. Abydus is still half-buried. Amid so much that is fragmentary, amid so much that is ruined, the one absolutely perfect structure - Ptolemaic though it may be - is of incalculable interest, and equally incalculable value.    

Chapter  XXI                           Thebes
Luxor again - Imitation 'Anteekahs' - Digging for Mummies - Tombs of Thebes - The Ramesseum - The granite Colossus - Medinet Habu - The Pavilion of Ramses 111 - The Great Chronicle - An Arab story teller - Gournah - Bab el Moluk - The shadowless Valley of death - The Tombs of the Kings - Stolen goods - The French House - An Arab dinner and fantasia - The Coptic Church at Luxor - A Coptic service - A Coptic Bishop

                                                  
                         Ramesseum              Digging for Mummies              Medinet Habu  

              We had so long been the sport of destiny, that we hardly knew what to make of our good fortune when two days of sweet south wind carried us from Edfu to Luxor. We came back to find the old mooring-place alive with dahabeeyahs and our arrival brought all the dealers of Luxor to the surface.
              The Boulak authorities keep a small gang of trained excavators always at work in the Necropolis at Thebes. These men are superintended by the governor, and every mummy case discovered is forwarded to Boulak unopened. Thanks to the courtesy of the Governor, we had the good fortune to be present one morning at the opening of a tomb, a few hundred yards in the rear of the Ramesseum. The diggers were in the pit; the governor and a few Arabs were looking on. The vault was lined with brickwork above, and cut square in the living rock below. we were just in time; for already, through the sand and rubble with which the grave had been filled in, there appeared an outline of something buried. The men, throwing spades and picks aside, now began scraping up the dust with their hands, and a mummy-case came gradually to light. It was shaped to represent a body lying at length with the hands crossed upon the breast. Both hands and face were carved in high relief. The ground colour of the sarcophagus was white; the surface covered with hieroglyphed legends and coarsely painted figures of the four lesser Gods of the Dead. The face, like the hands, was coloured a brownish yellow and highly varnished. But for a little dimness of the gaudy hues, and a little flaking off of the surface here and there, the thing was as perfect as when it was placed in the ground. A small wooden box roughly put together lay at the feet of the mummy. this was taken out first, and handed to the Governor, who put it aside without opening it. The mummy-case was then raised, hoisted to the brink of the pit, and laid upon the ground.
                  We went away, meanwhile for a few hours, and saw some of the famous painted tombs in that part of the mountain side just above, which goes by the name of Sheykh Abd-el-Koorneh. Some of the tombs here are excavated in terraces, and look from a distance like rows of pigeon holes; others are pierced in solitary ledges of rock; many are difficult to access; all are intolerably hot and oppressive. They were numbered half a century ago by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, and the numbers are still there. As a child I had read 'The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians' over and over again. I knew every one of the 600 illustrations by heart. Now I suddenly found myself in the midst of old half-forgotten friends. Every subject on these wonderful  walls was already familiar to me. Only the framework, only the colouring, only the sand underfoot, only the mountain slope outside, were new and strange. It seemed to me that I had met all these kindly people years and years ago - perhaps in some previous stage of existence; that I had walked with them in their gardens; listened to the music of their lutes and tambourines; pledged them at their feasts.
                 From the tombs above, we went back to the excavations below. The bricked up opening had led, as the diggers expected into a second vault; and another mummy-case, half crushed by a fall of debris, had just been taken out. A third was found later in the afternoon. Curiously enough, they were all three mummies of women.

                                           
                       Temple of Seti 1           Karnak, Khons Temple           Ramesseum 
                   
                 We had luncheon that morning in the second hall of the Ramesseum. Of all Theban ruins, the Ramesseum is the most cheerful. drenched in sunshine, the warm limestone of which it is built seems to have mellowed and turned golden with time. No walls enclose it. No towering pylons overshadow it. It stands high, and the air circulates freely among those simple and beautiful columns. There are not many Egyptian ruins in which one can talk and be merry; but in the Ramesseum one may thoroughly enjoy the passing hour.
                  Diodorus's account of the Ramesseum is a marvel of exactness. He describes a building approached by two vast courtyards; a hall of pillars opening by way of three entrances from the second courtyard; a succession of chambers, including a sacred library; ceilings of azure 'bespangled with stars'; walls covered with sculptures representing the deeds and triumphs of the king he calls Osymandias; finally against the entrance to the second courtyard, three statues of the King, one of which, being of Syenite granite and made 'in a sitting posture' is stated to be not only 'the greatest in all Egypt', but admirable above all others 'for its workmanship, and the excellence of the stone'.
                  Bearing in mind that what is left of the Ramesseum is, as it were, only the backbone  of the entire structure, one can still walk from end to end of the building, and still recognise every feature of the above description. we turn our backs on the wrecked towers of the first propylon; crossing what was once the first courtyard, we leave to the left the fallen colossus; we enter the second courtyard, and see before us the three entrances to the hall of pillars, and the remains of two other statues; we walk up the central avenue of the great hall, and see above our heads architraves studded with yellow stars upon a ground colour so luminously blue that it almost matches the sky; thence passing through a chamber lined with sculptures, we come to the library, upon the door jambs of which Champollion found the figures of Thoth and Saf, the Lord of Letters and the Lady of the Sacred Books; finally, among such fragments of sculptured decoration as yet remain, we find the King making offerings to a hieroglyphed list of Gods as well as to his deified ancestors. We discover an immense battle-piece, which is in fact a replica of the famous battle-piece at Abou Simbel. This subject, like its Nubian prototype, yet preserves some of its colour. The fragments of wall and shattered pylon that yet remain standing at the Rameseum face N.W. and S.W. Hence it follows that some of the most interesting of the surface sculpture (being cut in very low relief) is so placed with regard to the light as to be actually invisible after midday. The wall sculptures of the second hall are on a bolder scale, and can be seen at any hour.

                                             
                          Medinet Habu               Medinet Habu                    Medinet Habu

                 Next in importance to Karnak, and second in interest to none of the Theban ruins, is the vast group of buildings known by the collective name of Medinet Habu. To attempt to describe these would be to undertake a task as hopeless as the description of Karnak. I will note only a few points of special interest. The ruins of Medinet Habu consist of a smaller Temple founded by Queen Hatshepsut of the XV111th Dynasty, and an extremely curious and interesting building, part palace, part fortress, which is popularly known as the Pavilion. The walls of this pavilion, the walls of the great forecourt leading to the smaller Temple, and a corner of the original wall of circuit are crowned in the Egyptian style with shield shaped battlements, precisely as the Khetan and Amorite fortresses are battlemented  in the sculptured tableaux at Abou Simbel and elsewhere.
                  The central, or gateway-tower, is substantially perfect. I got as high as the first chamber; the ceiling of which is painted in a rich and intricate pattern, as in imitation of mosaic. The top room is difficult of access; but can be reached by a good climber.The external decorations of the two lodges are of especial interest. The lower subjects are historical. Those upon the upper storeys are domestic or symbolical, and are amon the most celebrated of Egyptian bas-reliefs. They have long been supposed to represent Rameses 111 in his harem, entertained and waited upon by female slaves. These tableaux are supposed to illustrate the home-life of Rameses 111, and to confirm the domestic character of the pavilion.Below these 'harem' groups come colossal bas-reliefs of a religious and military character. The King, as usual, smites his prisoners in the presence of the Gods. A slender and spirited figure in act to slay, the fiery hero strides across the wall. His limbs are endued with the force of victory. With his right hand he seizes the multitudes; his left reaches like an arrow after those who fly before him.
             Below these great groups run friezes sculptured with kneeling figures of vanquished chiefs, among whom are Libyan, Sicilian, Sardinian, and Etruscan leaders. Every head in these friezes is a portrait. Other European nations are depicted elsewhere in these Medinet habu sculptures. Pelasgians from the Greek isles, Oscans perhaps from Pompeii, Daunians from the districts between Tarentum and Brundusium, figure here, each in their national costume. Of these, the Pelasgian alone resembles the modern European. On the left wall of the pavilion gateway, going up towards the Temple, there is a bas-relief of Rameses 111 leading a string of captives into the presence of Amen-Ra. Among these, the sculptures being in a high state of preservation, there are a number of Pelasgians, some of whom have features of the classical Greek type. The Pelasgic headdress resembles our old infantry shako; and some of the men wear disk-shaped amulets pierced with a hole in the centre, through which is passed the chain that suspends it round the neck.
              Leaving to the left a fine sitting statue of Khons in green basalt, and to the right his prostrate fellow, we pass under the gateway, cross a space of desolate crude-brick mounds, and see before us the ruins of the first pylon of the Great Temple of Khem. Once past the threshold of this pylon, we enter upon a succession of magnificent courtyards. The hieroglyphs here are on a colossal scale, and are cut deeper than any others in Egypt. They are also coloured with a more subtle eye to effect. Struck by the unusual splendour of some of the blues, and by a peculiar look of scintillation which they assumed in certain lights, I examined them particularly, and found that the effect had been produced by very subtle shades of gradation in what appeared at first sight to be simple flat tints.
            The inner walls of this great courtyard, and the outer face of the north-east wall, are covered with sculptures outlined, so to say, in intaglio, and relieved in the hollow, so that the forms, though rounded, remain level with the general surface.In these tableaux the old world lives again. Rameses 111, his sons and nobles, his armies, his foes, play once more the brief drama of life and death. Great battles are fought; great victories are won; the slain are counted; the captured drag their chains behind the victor's chariot; the king triumphs, is crowned, and sacrifices to the Gods. Elsewhere more wars. There is revolt in Libya; there are raids on the Asiatic border; there are invaders coming in ships from the islands of the Great Sea. The royal standard is raised; troops assemble, arms are distributed. Again the king goes forth in his might, followed by the flower of Egyptian chivalry.
            Linked to each by a running commentary of text, are the illustrations; the story is written elsewhere. Elaborately hieroglyphed in upwards of 70 closely packed columns, it covers the whole eastern face of the great north tower of the second propylon. The propylon divides the Osiride and Hypaethral courts, so that the inscription faces those entering the Temple and precedes the tableaux.
            Mariette was of the opinion that the Temple of Medinet Habu, erected as it is on the side of the great Theban necropolis, is, like the Ramesseum, a funerary monument erected by Rameses 111 in his own lifetime to his own memory. These battered colossi represent the king in the character of Osiris, and are in fact on a huge scale precisely what the ordinary funerary statuettes are upon a small scale.They would not be out of place in any but a monumental edifice; and they alone suffice to determine the character of the building.
            And such, no doubt, was the character of the Amenophium; of the little Temple called Dayr el Medinet; of the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, known as Dayr el Bahari; of the Temple of Gournah; of almost every important structure erected upon this side of the river. Of the Amenophium there remain only a few sculptured blocks, a few confused foundations, and - last representatives of an avenue of statues of various sizes - the famous Colossi of the Plain.

                                                                                                                       
                          Dayr-el-Bahri                    The Hathor Cow                 Hatshepsut  

           The Temple of Dayr el Bahari - built in terraces up the mountain side, and approached once upon a time by a magnificent avenue of sphinxes, the course of which is yet visible - would probably be, if less ruined, the most interesting temple on the western side of the river. The monumental intention of this building is shown by its dedication to Hathor, the Lady of Amenti; and by the fact that the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut was identified by Rhind some 25 years ago as one of the excavated sepulchres in the cliff-side, close to where the temple ends by abutting against the rock.
          As for the Temple of Gournah, it is, at least in part, as distinctly a memorial edifice as the Medici Chapel in Florence or the Superga at Turin. It was begun by Seti 1 in memory of his father Rameses 1, the founder of the XIXth Dynasty. Seti, however died before the work was completed. Hereupon Rameses 11, his son and successor, extended the general plan, finished the part dedicated to his grandfather, and added sculptures to the memory of Seti 1. Later still, Menephtah, the son and successor of Rameses 11 left his cartouches upon one of the doorways. The whole building, in short, is a family monument, and contains a family portrait gallery. Here all the personages whose names figure in the shrines of the Ramessides at Silsilis are depicted in their proper persons.
          Adjoining what may be called the monumental part of the building, we find a number of halls and chambers, the uses of which are unknown. Most writers assume they were the private apartments of the King. Some go as far as to give the name of Temple-Palaces to all these great funerary structures. It is, however, far more probable that these Western Temples were erected in connection, though not in direct communication, with the royal tombs in the adjacent valley of Bab-el-Moluk.
          The wall sculptures at Gournah are extremely beautiful, especially those erected by Seti 1. Where it has been accidentally preserved, the surface is as smooth, the execution as brilliant, as the finest mediaeval ivory carving. The Temple - northenmost of the Theban group - stands at the mouth of that famous valley called by the Arabs Bab-el-Moluk, and by travellers, the Valley of the Kings. This valley may be described as a bifurcated ravine, ending in two cul-de-sacs, and hemmed in on all sides by limestone precipices. It winds round behind the cliffs which face Luxor and Karnak, and runs almost parallel with the Nile. The range of cliffs is perforated on all both sides with tombs. The priest and nobles of many dynasties were buried terrace above terrace on the side next the river. Back to back with them, in the silent and secret valley beyond, slept the kings in their everlasting sepulchres.
          When we have gone a long way, always tracking up the bed of the torrent, we come to a place where our donkeys turn off the main course and make for what is evidently a forced passage cut clean through a wall of solid limestone. The place was once a mere recess in the cliffs; but on the farther side, masked by a natural barrier of rock, there lay another valley leading to a secluded amphitheatre among the mountains. The first Pharaoh who chose his place of burial among those hidden ways, must have been he who cut the pass and levelled the road by which we now travel. The cutting is Bab-el-Moluk - the Gate of the King - a name which doubtless perpetuates that which the place is known to the old Egyptians. Once through the Gate, a grand mountain rises into view. Egypt is a land of strange mountains; and here is one which reproduces on a giant scale every feature of the pryamid of Quenephes at Sakkarah. It is square; it rises stage above stage in ranges of columnar cliffs with slopes of debris between; and it terminates in a blunt four-sided peak nearly 1800 feet above the level of the plain.                    
               From the moment when it first came in to sight, I had made certain that in that pyramidal mountain we should find the Tombs of the Kings - so certain, that I can scarcely believe our guide when he assures us that the cellars are the places we have come to see, and that the mountain contains not a single tomb. We alight, however; climb a steep slope; and find ourselves on the threshold of No 17. "Belzoni-tomb", says our guide; and Belzoni's tomb, as we know is the tomb of Seti 1.

                                 
                         Ramses 1               Prince             Ramses 1          Horemhab
           
               The tombs in the Valley of Bab-el-Moluk are as unlike the tombs in the cliffs opposite Luxor as if the Theban kings and the Theban nobles were of different races and creeds. Those sacred scribes and dignitaries, with their wives and families and their numerous friends and dependants, were a joyous set.They loved the things of this life, and would fain have carried their pursuits and pleasures with them into the land beyond the grace. So they decorated their tombs with pictures of the way in which their lives were spent, and hoped perhaps that the mummy, dreaming away its long term of solitary waiting, might take comfort in those shadowy reminiscences. The kings, on the contrary, covered every foot of their last palaces with scenes from  the life to come. The wanderings of the soul after its separation from the body, the dangers that beset it, the accusers to whom it must answer, the transformations it must undergo, afforded subjects for endless illustration.Of the fishing and fowling and feasting and junketing that we saw the other day in those terraces behind the Ramesseum, we discover no trace in the tombs of Bab-el-Moluk. In place of singing and lute-playing, we find here prayers and invocations; for the pleasant Nile boat, and the water parties, and the chase of the gazelle and the ibex, we now have the bark of Charon. The contrast is sharp and strange.
               To go down into one of these great sepulchres is to descend one's-self into the Lower world, and to tread the path of the shades.The passage slopes before our feet; the daylight fades behind us. At the end of the passage comes a flight of steps, and from the bottom of that flight of steps we see another corridor slanting down into depths of utter darkness. The walls on both sides are covered with close-cut columns of hieroglyphic text, interspersed with ominous shapes, half-deity, half demon.. Huge serpents writhe beside us along the walls. Guardian spirits of threatening aspect advance, brandishing swords of flame. A strange heaven opens overhead - a heaven where the stars travel in boats across the seas of space; and the Sun, escorted by the hours, the months, and the signs of the zodiac, issues from the East, sets in the West, and traverses the hemisphere of everlasting Night. Another flight of steps leads now to a succession of passages and halls, some smaller, some larger, some vaulted some supported on pillars. Here yawns a great pit half full of debris. Yonder opens a suite of unfinished chambers abandoned by the workmen. The farther we go, the more weird become our surroundings. serpents, and bats, and crocodiles, some with human heads and legs, some vomiting fire, some armed with spears and darts pursue and torture the wicked. Beheld by the dim and shifting light of a few candles, these painted horrors assume an aspect of ghastly reality. They start into life as we pass, then drop behind us into darkness. That darkness alone is awful. The atmosphere is suffocating. The place is ghostly and peopled with nightmares.
               Elsewhere we come upon scenes less painful. The sun emerges from the lower hemisphere. The justified dead sow and reap in the Elysian fields, gather celestial fruits, and bathe in the waters of truth. The royal mummy reposes in its shrine. Funerary statues of the king are worshipped with incense, and offerings of meat, and libations of wine. Finally the king arrives, purified and justified, at the last stage of his spiritual journey. He is welcomed by the Gods, ushered into the presence of Osiris, and received into the Abode of the Blest.
              These tombs in a general way are very much alike. Some are longer than others; some loftier. In some the descent is gradual; in others it is steep and sudden. Certain leading features are common to all. The great serpent, the scarab, the bat, the crocodile, are always conspicuous on the walls. The judgement-scene, and the well-known typical picture of the four races of mankind, are continually reproduced. Some tombs, however, vary both in plan and decoration. That of Rameses 111, though not nearly so beautiful as the tomb of Seti 1, is perhaps the most curious of all. The paintings here are for the most part designed on an unsculptured surface coated with white stucco. The drawing is often indifferent, and the colouring is uniformly coarse and gaudy. Yellow abounds with crude reds and blues. It is difficult to understand, indeed , how the builder of Medinet Habu, with the best Egyptian art of the day at his command, should have been content with such wall paintings as these.
            Still Rameses 111 seems to have had a grand idea of going to the next world, with his retainers around him. In a series of small antechambers opening off from the first corridor, we see depicted all the household furniture, all the plate, the weapons, the wealth and treasure of the King. Upon the walls of one, the cooks and bakers are seen preparing the royal dinner. In the others are depicted magnificent thrones; gilded galleys with part-coloured sails; gold and silver vases; rich store of arms and armour; piles of precious woods, of panther skins, of fruits, of birds, and curious baskets, and all such articles of personal luxury as a palace building Pharaoh might delight in. Here also are the two famous harpers; cruelly defaced, but still sweeping the strings with the old powerful touch that erewhile soothed the King in his hours of melancholy. These two spirited figures - which are undoubtedly portraits - almost redeem the poverty of the rest of the paintings.
           In many tombs, the empty sarcophagus yet occupies its ancient place. we saw one in No. 2 (Rameses IV), and another in No. 9 (Rameses VI); the first, a grand monolith of dark granite, overturned and but little injured; the second, shattered by early treasure-seekers. Most of the tombs at Bab-el-Moluk were open in Ptolemaic times. Being then, as now, among the stock sights and wonders of Thebes, they were visited by crowds of early travellers, who have as usual left their neatly-scribbled graffiti on the walls. When and by whom the sepulchres were originally violated is of course unknown. Not even in the days of the Ramessides, though a special service of guards was told off for duty in the 'Great Valley', were the kings safe in their tombs. During the reign of Rameses IX - whose tomb is here, and known as No. 6 - there seems to have been an organised band, not only of robbers, but of receivers, who lived by depredations of the kind. A contemporary papyrus tells how in one instance the royal mummies were found lying in their dust, their gold and silver ornaments, and the treasures of their tombs, all stolen. In another instance, a King and Queen were carried away bodily, to be unrolled and rifled at leisure. This curious information is all recorded in the form of a report, drawn up by the Commandant of Western Thebes, who, with certain other officers and magistrates, officially inspected the tombs of the 'Royal Ancestors' during the reign of Rameses IX.
               No royal tomb has been found absolutely intact in the valley of Bab-el-Moluk. Even that of Seti the First had been secretly entered ages before ever Belzoni discovered it. He found in it statues of wood and porcelain, and the mummy of a bull; but nothing of value save the sarcophagus, which was empty. There can be no doubt that the priesthood were largely implicated in these contemporary sacrileges. Of 39 persons accused by name in the papyrus just quoted, 7 are priests, and 8 are sacred scribes. To rob the dead was always a lucrative trade at Thebes; and we may be certain that the splendid Pharaohs who slept in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, went to their dark palaces magnificently equipped for the life to come. When, indeed, one thinks of the jewels, furniture, vases, ointments, clothing, arms, and precious documents which were as certainly buried in those tombs as the royal mummies for whom they were excavated, it seems far more wonderful that the parure of one Queen should have escaped, rather than that all the rest of these dead and gone royalties should have fallen among thieves.
               Of all tombs in the Valley of Bab-el-Moluk, one would rather, I think, have discovered that of Rameses 111. As he was one of the richest Pharaohs and an undoubted virtuoso in his tastes, so we may be sure that his tomb was furnished with all kinds of beautiful and precious things. What would we not give now to find some of these elaborate gold and silver vases, those cushioned thrones and sofas, those bows and quivers and shirts of mail so carefully catalogued on the walls of the side-chambers in the first corridor! I do not doubt that specimens of all these things were buried with the King and left ready for his use. He died, believing that his Ka would enjoy and make use of these treasures, and that his soul would come back after long cycles of probation, and make its home once more in the mummified body. He thought he should rise as from sleep; cast off his bandages; eat and be refreshed, and put on  sandals and scented vestments, and take his staff in his hand, and go forth again into the light of everlasting day.
               Life at Thebes is made up of incongruities. A morning among temples is followed by an afternoon of antiquity hunting; and a day of meditation among tombs winds up with a dinner-party on board some friend's dahabeeyah, or a fantasia at the British Consulate.
               There were whispers about this time of a tomb that had been discovered on the western side - a wonderful tomb, rich in all kinds of treasures. No one, of course, had seen these things. No one knew who had found them. No one knew where they were hidden. But there was a solemn secrecy about certain of the Arabs, and a conscious look about some of the visitors, and an air of awakened vigilance about the government officials, which savoured of mystery. These rumours by and by assumed more definite proportions. Dark hints were dropped of a possible papyrus, there was talk of mummies.  Beguiled into one den after another, we were shown all the stolen goods in Thebes. Some of the things were very curious and interesting. In one house we were offered two bronze vases, each with a band of delicately-engraved hieroglyphs running round the lip; also a square stand of basket work in two colours, precisely like that engraved in Sir G. Wilkinson's first volume, after the original in the Berlin Museum. Pieces of mummy-case and wall-sculpture and sepulchral tablets abounded; and on one occasion we were introduced into the presence of a mummy!                  
            All these houses were tombs, and in this one the mummy was stowed away in a kind of recess at the end of a long rock-cut passage; probably the very place once occupied by the original tenant. It was a mummy of the same period as that we saw disentombed under the auspices of the Governor, and was enclosed in the same kind of cartonnage, patterned in many colours on a white ground.I shall never forget that curious scene - the dark and dusty vault; the Arabs with their lanterns; the mummy in its gaudy cerements lying on an old mat at our feet.
             Meanwhile we tried in vain to get sight of the coveted papyrus. A grave Arab dropped in once or twice after nightfall, and talked it over vaguely with the dragoman; but never came to the point. He offered it first, with a mummy, for £100. Finding, however, that we would neither buy his papyrus unseen nor his mummy at any price, he haggled and hesitated for a day or two, evidently trying to play us off  against some rival or rivals unknown, and then finally disappeared.
             Other purchasers are possibly less sensitive. We heard, at all events, of 15 mummies successfully insinuated through the Alexandrian Custom house by a single agent that winter. There is, in fact, a growing passion for mummies among Nile travellers. Unfortunately, the prices rise with demand; and although the mine is practically inexhaustible, a mummy nowadays becomes not only a prohibited, but a costly luxury.

                                                                                                            
                    Karnak,Amon-Ra               Luxor,Ramses 11               Wife of Ramses 11   
                     
             At Luxor, the British, American, and French Consuls are Arabs. The Prussian Consul is a Copt. The Austrian Consul is, or was, an American. The French Consul showed us over the old tumble-down building called 'The French House', which, though but a rude structure of palm-timbers and sundried clay, built partly against and partly over the Temple of Luxor, has its place in history. For here, in 1829, Champollion and Rosellini lived and worked together, during part of their sojourn at Thebes. Rosellini tells how they used to sit up at night, dividing the fruits of the day's labour; Champollion copying whatever might be useful for his Egyptian grammar, and Rosellini, the new words that furnished material for his dictionary. there, too, lodged the naval officers sent out by the French in 1831 to remove the obelisk which now stands in the Place de la Concorde.
             We were shocked at the dreariness of the place - till we went to the window. That window, which commanded the Nile and the western plain of Thebes, furnished the room and made its poverty splendid. The sun was near setting. we could distinguish the mounds and pylons of Medinet Habu and the site of the Ramesseum. The terraced cliffs, overtopped by the pyramidal mountain of Bab-el-Moluk, burned crimson against a sky of stainless blue. The footpath leading to the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings showed like a hot white scar winding along the face of the rocks. The river gave back the sapphire tones of the sky. I thought I could be well content to spend many a winter in no matter how comfortless a lodging, if only I had that wonderful view, with its infinite beauty of light and colour and space, and its history, and its mystery, always before my windows.
            Another historical house is that built by Sir G. Wilkinson, among the tombs of Sheykh Abd-el-Koorneh. Here he lived while amassing the materials for his 'Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians'; and here Lepsius and his company of artists put up while at work on the western bank. Science makes little impression on the native mind. No one remembers Champollion, or Rosellini, or Sir G. Wilkinson.
           The French House was built over the roof of the sanctuary, at the southern end of the Temple. At the northern end, built up between the enormous sandstone columns of the Great Colonnade, was the house of Mustapha Aga, most hospitable and kindly of British Consuls. Mustapha Aga had travelled in Europe, and spoke fluent Italian, English, and French. His eldest son was Governor of Luxor. In the round of gaiety that goes on at Luxor the British Consulate played the leading part. Mustapha Aga entertained all the English dahabeeyahs, and all the English dahabeeyahs entertained Mustapha Aga. We were invited to several fantasias at the Consulate, and dined with Mustapha Aga at his suburban house the evening before we left Luxor.
                            
              While at Luxor, we went one Sunday morning to the Coptic Church - a large building at the northern extremity of the village. Church, schools, and Bishop's house, are here grouped under one roof and enclosed in a courtyard; for Luxor is the centre of one of the 12 sees into which Coptic Egypt is divided. The church, which has been rebuilt of late years, is constructed of sun-dried brick, having a small apse towards the east, and at the lower or western end a screened atrium for the women. The centre aisle is perhaps 30 feet in width; the side aisles they can be called, being thickly planted with stone pillars supporting round arches. These pillars came from Karnak, and were the gift of the Khedive. They have lotus-bud columns, and measure about 15 feet high in the shaft. At the upper end of the nave, some 18 or 20 feet in advance of the apse, there stands a very beautiful screen inlaid in the old Coptic style with cedar, ebony, rosewood, ivory, and mother of pearl. This screen is the pride of the church. Through the opening in the centre, one looks straight into the little wagon-roofed apse, which contains a small table and a suspended lamp, and is as dark as the sanctuary of an Egyptian temple.  The reading desk, like a rickety office stool, faces the congregation; and just inside the screen stands the Bishop's chair. Upon this plan, which closely resembles the plan of the first cathedral of St Peter at Rome, most Coptic churches are built. They vary chiefly in the number of apses, some having as many as five. The atrium generally contains a large tank, called the Epiphany tank, into which, in memory of the baptism of our Lord, the men plunge at their festival of El Ghitas.
              A day or two after this we dropped down to Karnak,where we remained till the end of the week, and on the following Sunday we resumed our downward voyage. If the universe of literature was unconditioned, and the present book was independent of time and space, I would write another chapter here about Karnak. But Karnak, to be fairly dealt by, would ask, not a chapter, but a volume. So having already told something of the impression first made upon us by that wilderness of wonders, I will say no more. 

Chapter XXII                       Abydus and Cairo
Last weeks on the Nile - Spring in Egypt - Ninety nine in the shade - Samata - Unbroken donkeys - The Plain of Abydus - Harvest time - A Biblical idyll - Arabat the Buried - Mena - of the Egyptian People - Temple of Seti - New Tablet of Abydus - Abydus and Teni - Kom es Sultan - Visit to a native Aga - The Hareem - Condition of women in Egypt - Back at Cairo - 'In the name of the Prophet, Cakes!' - The Molid en Nebee - A human causeway - The Boulak Museum - Prince Rahotep and Princess Nefert - Early drive to Ghizeh - Ascent of the Great Pyramid - The Sphinx - The view from the Top - The end.

                                                                                
                       Trip to Pyramids                Climbing Pyramids               The Sphinx 

               Our last weeks on the Nile went by like one long, lazy summer's day. Events now were few. We had outstayed all our fellow travellers. Of the great sights of the river, we had only Abydus and Beni Hassan left to see; while for minor excursions, daily walks, and explorations by the way, we had little energy left. For the thermometer was rising higher and and the Nile was falling lower every day; and we should have been more than mortal, if we had not felt the languid influences of the glowing Egyptian Spring.
               The whole face of the country, and even of the Nile, is wonderfully changed since we first passed passed this way. The land, then newly squared off like a gigantic chess-board and intersected by thousands of little channels, is now one sea of yellowing grain. The river is become a labyrinth of sand-banks, some large, some small, some just beginning to thrust their heads above water; others so long that they divide the river for a mile or more at a stretch. The banks, too, are twice as steep as they were when we went up.The lentil patches, which then blossomed on the slope next the water's edge, now lie far back on the top of a steep brown ridge, at the foot of which stretches a moist flat planted with water-melons. Each melon-plant is protected from the sun by a tiny gable-roof of palm-thatch.
             Our progress all the time is of the slowest. The men cannot row by day; and at night the sandbanks so hedge us in with dangers, that the only possible way by which we can make a few miles between sunset and sunrise is by sheer hard punting. Now and then we come to a clear channel, and sometimes we get an hour or two of sweet south breeze; but these flashes of good luck are few and far between.
              In such wise, and in such a temperature, we found ourselves becalmed one morning within six miles of Denderah. I took my sketching tent and paid a last visit to the Temple; which seen amid the ripening splendour of miles of barley, looked gloomier, and grander, and more solitary than ever. Two or three days later, we came within reach of Abydus. Our proper course would have been to push on to Bellianeh, which is one of the recognised starting points for Abydus. But an unlucky sandbank barred the way; so we moored instead at Samata, a village about two miles nearer to the southward. Here our dragoman requisitioned the inhabitants for donkeys. In this exciting fashion, we somehow or another accomplished the seven miles that separate Samata from Abydus.
             Skirting some palm-groves and crossing the dry bed of a canal, we came out upon a vast plain, level as a lake, islanded here and there with villages, and presenting one undulating surface of bearded corn. This plain - the plain of ancient Thinis - runs parallel with the Nile, like the plain of Thebes, and is bounded to the westward by a range of flat-topped mountains. The distance between the river and the mountains, however, is here much greater than at Thebes, being full six miles; while to the north and south the view ends only with the horizon.
              As the plain lengthens behind us and the distance grows less between ourselves and the mountains, we see a line of huge irregular mounds reaching for apparently a couple of miles or more along the foot of the cliffs. From afar off, the mounds look as if crowned by majestic ruins; but as we draw nearer, these outlines resolve themselves into the village of Arabat-el-Madfuneh, which stands upon part of the mounds of Abydus. And now we come to the end of the cultivated plain - that strange line of demarcation where the inundation stops and the desert begins. Of actual desert, however, there is here but a narrow strip, forming a first step, as it were, above the alluvial plain. Next comes the artificial platform, about a quarter of a mile in depth, on which stands the modern village; and next again, towering up sheer and steep, the great wall of limestone precipice. The village is extensive, and the houses, built in a rustic Arabesque, tell of a well-to-do population. Arched gateways ornamented with black, white, and red bricks, windows of turned lattice-work, and pigeon-towers in courses of pots and bricks, give a singular picturesqueness to the place; while the slope down to the desert is covered with shrubberies and palms. Below theses hanging gardens, on the edge of the desert , lies the cut corn in piles of sheaves.Here the camels are lying down to be unladen.
               Now our path turns aside and we thread our way among the houses, noticing here a sculptured block built into a mud wall - yonder, beside a dried up well, a broken alabaster sarcophagus - farther on, a granite column still erect, in the midst of a palm-garden. And now, the village being left behind, we find ourselves at the foot of a great hill of newly excavated rubbish, from the top of which we presently look down into a kind of crater, and see the Great Temple of Abydus at our feet.
              Buried as it is, Abydus, even under its mounds, is a place of profound historical interest. At a time so remote that it precedes all written record of Egyptian story, there existed a little way to the northward of this site a city called Teni. We know not to what aboriginal community of prehistoric egypt this city belonged; but here, presumably, the men of Kem built their first Temple, evolved their first notions of art, and groped their way to an alphabet which in its origins was probably a mere picture-writing. Hence too, came a man called Mena, whose cartouche from immemorial time has stood first in the long list of Egyptian Pharaohs. Of Mena, a shadowy figure hovering on the border-land of history and tradition, we know only that he was the first primitive chieftain who took the title of King of upper and Lower Egypt, and that he went northward and founded Memphis. Not, however, till after some centuries was the seat of government removed to this new city. Teni - the supposed burial-place of Osiris - then lost its political importance; but continued to be for long ages the Holy City of Egypt.
              In the meanwhile, Abydus had sprung up close to Teni. Abydus, however, though an important city, was never the capital of Egypt. The seat of power shifted strangely with different dynasties, being established now in the Delta, now at Thebes, now at Elephantine; but having once departed from the site which, by reason of its central position and the unbounded fertility of its neighbourhood, was above all others best fitted to play this great part in the history of the country, it never again returned to the point from which it started. That point, however, was unquestionably the centre  from which the great Egyptian people departed  upon its wonderful career. here was the nursery of its strength.
              Abydus and Teni, planted on the same platform of desert, were probably united at one time by a straggling suburb inhabited by the embalmers and other tradesfolk concerned in the business of death and burial.A chain of mounds, excavated only where the Temples were situated, now stands to us for the famous city of Abydus. An ancient crude-brick enclosure and an artificial tumulus mark the site of Teni. The Temples and the tumulus, divided by the now exhausted necropolis, are about as distant from one another as Medinet Habu and the Ramesseum.

                                                                                                   
                                            The beautiful sculptured decorations at Abydus
             
             There must have been many older Temples at Abydus than these which we now see, one of which was built by Seti 1, and the other by Rameses 11. Or possibly, as in so many instances, the more ancient buildings were pulled down and rebuilt. Be this as it may be, the Temple of Seti, as regards its sculptured decorations, is one of the most beautiful of Egyptian ruins; and as regards its plan, is one of the most singular. A row of square limestone piers, which must once have supported an architrave, are now all that remains of the facade. Immediately behind these comes a portico of 24 columns leading by 7 entrances to a hall of 36 columns. This hall again opens into 7 parallel sanctuaries, behind which lie another hall of columns and a number of small chambers. So much of the building seems to be homogeneous. Adjoining this block, however, and leading from it by doorways at the southern end of the great hall, come several more halls and chambers connected by corridors, and conducting apparently to more chambers not yet excavated. All these piers, columns, halls, passages, and all 7 sanctuaries, are most delicately sculptured and brilliantly coloured.
              There is so far a family resemblance between Temples of the same style and period, that after a little experience one can generally guess before crossing the threshold of a fresh building, what one is likely to see in the way of sculptures within. But almost every subject in the Temple of set at abydus is new and strange. All the Gods of the Egyptian pantheon seem to have been worshipped here, and to have had each his separate shrine. The walls are covered with paintings of these shrines and their occupants; while before each the King is represented performing some act of adoration. A huge blue frog, a greyhound, a double-headed goose, a human bodied creature with a Nilometer for its head, and many more than I can now remember, are thus depicted. The royal offerings, too, though incense and necklaces and pectoral ornaments abound, are for the most part of a kind that we have not seen before. In one place the king presents to Isis a column with four capitals, having on the top capital a globe and two asps surmounted by a pair of ostrich feathers.
             The centre sanctuary of the 7 appears to be dedicated to Khem, who seems to be here, as in the great temple of seti at Karnak, the presiding divinity. In this principal sanctuary, which is resplendent with colour and in marvellous preservation, we especially observed a portrait of Rameses 11 in the act of opening the door of a shrine by means of a golden key formed like a human hand and arm. The lock seems to consist of a number of bolts of unequal length, each of which is pushed back in turn by means of the forefinger of the little hand. This, doubtless, gives a correct representation of the kind of locks in use at that time.
             It was in a corridor opening out from the great hall in this Temple that Mariette discovered that precious sculpture known as the New Tablet of Abydus. In this tableau, Set 1 and Rameses 11 are seen, the one offering incense, the other reciting a hymn of praise, to the manes of 76 Pharaohs, beginning with Mena, and ending with Seti himself. To our great disappointment - though one cannot acquiesce in the necessity for precaution - we found the entrance to this corridor closed and mounded up. A ragged old Arab who haunts the Temple in the character of custode, told us that the tablet could now only be seen by special permission.          
             Beyond the palms that fringed the edge of the desert - beyond a dark streak that marked the site of Teni - rose, purple in shadow against the twilight, a steep and solitary hill. This hill, called by the natives Kom-es-Sultan, or the Mound of the King, was the tumulus we had desired to see. Viewed from a distance and by so uncertain a light, it looked exactly like a volcanic cone of perhaps a couple of hundred feet in height. It is, however wholly artificial, and consists of a mass of graves heaped one above another in historic strata; each layer, as it were, the record of an era; the whole, a kind of human coral reef built up from age to age with the ashes of generations.
             For some years past, the Egyptian Government had been gradually excavating this extraordinary mound. The lower it was opened, the more ancient were its contents. So steadily retrogressive, indeed, were the interments, that it seemed as if the spade of the digger might possibly strike tombs of the First Dynasty, and so restore to light relics of men who lived in the age of Mena. 'According to Plutarch' wrote Mariette, 'wealthy Egyptians came from all parts of Egypt to be buried at Abydus, in order that their bones might rest near Osiris'. Very probably the tombs of Kom-es-Sultan belong to those personages mentioned by Plutarch. Nor is this the only interest attaching to the mound of Kom-es-Sultan. The famous tomb of Osiris cannot be far distant; and certain indications lead us to think that is excavated in precisely that foundation of rock which serves as the nucleus of this mound. Thus the persons buried in Kom-es-Sultan lay as near as possible to the divine tomb. The works now in progress at this point have therefore a twofold interest. They may yield tombs yet more and more ancient - tombs even of the First Dynasty; and some day or another they may discover to us the hitherto unknown and hidden entrance to the tomb of the God.
           Next morning early we once again passed Girgeh, with its ruined mosque and still unfallen column; and about noonday moored at a place called Ayserat, where we paid a visit to a native gentleman, one Ahmed Abu Ratab Aga, to whom we carried letters of introduction. His residence consists of a cluster of 3 or 4 large houses, a score or so of pigeon-towers, an extensive garden, stabling, exercising-ground, and a large courtyard; the whole enclosed by a wall of circuit, and entered by a fine Arabesque gateway.
           When we left Ayserat, there still lay 335 miles between us and Cairo. From this time, the navigation of the Nile became every day more difficult. The dahabeeyah, too, got heated through and through, so that not even sluicing and swabbing availed to keep down the temperature. At night when we went to our sleeping cabins, the timbers alongside our berths were as hot to the hand as a screen in front of a great fire. Our crew, though to the mannerborn, suffered even more than ourselves. One by one, we passed the places we had seen on our way up - Siut, Manfalut, Gebel Abufayda, Roda, Minieh. After all, we did not see Beni Hassan. The day we reached that part of the river, a furious sandstorm was raging; such a storm that even I was daunted. Three days later, we took the rail at Bibbeh and went on to Cairo, leaving the 'Philae' to follow as fast as wind and weather might permit.
        We were so wedded by this time to dahabeeyah life that we felt lost at first in the big rooms at Shepheard's hotel, and altogether bewildered in the crowded streets. Yet here was Cairo, more picturesque, more beautiful as ever. Here were the same merchants squatting on the same carpets and smoking the same pipes, in the Tunis bazaar; here was the same old cake-sellar still ensconced in the same doorway in the Muski; here were the same jewellers selling bracelets in the Khan-Khali; the same money-changers sittinf behind their little tables at the corners of the street; the same veiled ladies riding on donkeys and driving on carriages; the same hurrying funerals, and noisy weddings, the same old cries, and motley costumes, and unaccustomed trades. Nothing was changed. We soon dropped back into the old life of sight-seeing and shopping - buying rugs and silks and silver ornaments, and old embroideries, and Turkish slippers, and all sorts of antique and pretty trifles; going from Mohammedan mosques to rare old Coptic churches; dropping in for an hour or two most afternoons at the Boulak Museum; and generally ending the day's work with a drive on the Shubra road, or a stroll round the Esbekyeh Gardens.
                It is difficult to say but a few inadequate words of a place about which an instructive volume might be written; yet to pass the Boulak Museum in silence is impossible. This famous collection is due, in the first instance, to the liberality of the late Khedive and the labours of Mariette. With the exception of Mehemet Ali, who excavated the temple of Denderah, no previous Viceroy of Egypt had ever interested himself in the archaeology of the country. Those who cared for such rubbish as encumbered the soil or lay hidden beneath the sands of the desert, were free to take it; and no favour was more frequently asked, or more readily granted, than permission to dig for 'anteekahs' Hence the Egyptian wealth in our museums. Hence the numerous private collections dispersed throughout Europe. Ishmail Pasha, however, put an end to that whoesale pillage; and, for the first time since ever 'mummy was sold for balsam' or for bric-a-brac, it became illegal to export antiquities. Thus, for the first time, Egypt began to possess a national collection.
                Youngest of great museums, the Boulak collection is the wealthiest in the world in portrait-statues of private individuals, in funerary tablets, in amulets, and in personal relics as fill the great galleries of the British Museum, the Turin Museum, and the Louvre. These, being above ground and comparatively few in number, were for the most part seized upon long since, and transported to Europe. The Boulak statues are the product of the tombs. The famous wooden 'Sheykh' about which so much has been written, the magnificent diorite statue of Khafra (Chephren), the builder of the Second Pyramid, the two marvellous sitting statues of prince Ra-hotep and Princess Nefer-t, are all portraits; and , like their tombs, were executed during the lifetime of the persons represented. Crossing the threshold of the Great Vestibule, one is surrounded by a host of these extraordinary figures, erect, coloured, clothed, all but in motion. It is like entering the crowded anteroom of a royal palace in the time of the Ancient Empire.
            The greater number of the Boulak portrait-statues are sculptured in what is called the hieratic attitude; that is, with the left arm down and pressed close to the body, the left hand holding a roll of papyrus, the right leg advanced, and the right hand raised, as grasping the walking staff. It occurred to me that there might be a deeper significance than at first sight appears in this conventional attitude, and that it perhaps suggests the moment of resurrection, when the deceased, holding fast by his copy of the Book of the Dead, walks forth from his tomb into the light of the eternal.
            Of all the statues here - one may say, indeed, of all known Egyptian statues - those of Prince Ra-hotep and Princess Nefer-t are the most beautiful.                                          

                                                                                                             
                                          Prince Ra-hotep  and  Princess Nefer-t  

They are probably the oldest portrait-statues in the world. They come from a tomb of the 111rd Dynasty, and are contemporary with Snefru, a King who reigned before the time of Khufu and Khafra. That is to say, these people who sit before us side by side, coloured to the life, fresh and glowing as the day when they gave the artist his last sitting, lived at a time when the great pyramids of Ghizeh were not yet built, and at a date which is variously calculated as from 6300 to 4000 years before the present day.The Princess wears her hair precisely as it is still worn in Nubia, and her necklace of cabochon drops is of a pattern much favoured by the modern Ghawazi. The eyes of both statues are inserted. The eyeball, which is set in an eyelid of bronze, is made of opaque white quartz, with an iris of rock-crystal enclosing a pupil of some kind of brilliant metal. This treatment - of which there are one or two instances extant - gives to the eyes a look of intelligence that is almost appalling. There is a play of light within the orb, and apparently a living moisture upon the surface, which has never been approached by the most skilfully made glass eyes of modern manufacture.
             Of the jewels of Queen Aah-hotep, of the superb series of engraved scarabaei, of the rings, amulets, and toilette ornaments, of the vases in bronze, silver, alabaster, and porcelain, of the libation-tables, the woven stuffs, the terra-cottas, the artist's models, the lamps, the silver boats, the weapons, the papyri, the thousand-and-one curious personal relics and articles of domestic use which are brought together within these walls, I have no space to tell. It is not too much to say that if these dead and mummified people could come back to earth, the priest would find here all the Gods of his Pantheon; the King his sceptre; the Queen her crown jewels; the scribe his palette; the soldier his arms; the workman his tools; the barber his razors; the husbandsman his hoe; the housewife her broom; the child his toys; the beauty her combs and kohl bottles and mirrors. The furniture of the house is here, as well as the furniture of the tomb. Here, too, is the broken sistrum buried with the dead in token of the grief of the living.Waiting the construction of a more suitable edifice, the present building gives temporary shelter to the collection. In the meanwhile, if there was nothing else to tempt the traveller to Cairo, the Boulak Museum would alone be worth the journey from Europe.                The first excursion one makes on returning to Cairo, the last one before leaving, is to Ghizeh. It is impossible to get tired of the Pyramids. We left Cairo early, and met all the market folk coming in from the country - donkeys and carts laden with green stuff, and veiled women with towers of baskets on their heads. The Khedive's new palace was swarming already with masons, and files of camels were bringing limestone blocks for the builders. Next comes the open corn-plain, part yellow, part green - the long straight road bordered with acacias - beyond all, the desert platform, and the Pyramids, half in light, half in greenish-grey shadow, against the horizon. I never could understand why it is that the Second Pyramid, though it is smaller and farther off, looks from this point of view bigger than the First. Farther on, the brown Fellahin, knee-deep in purple blossom, are cutting the clover. The camels carry it away. The goats and buffaloes feed in the clearings. Then comes the half-way tomb nestled in greenery, where men and horses stay to drink; and soon we are skirting a great backwater which reflects the Pyramids like a mirror. Villages, shadufs, herds and flocks, tracts of palms, corn-flats, and spaces of rich, dark fallow, now succeed each other; and then once more comes the sandy slope, and the cavernous ridge of ancient yellow rock, and the Great Pyramid with its shadow-side towards us, darkening the light of day.    
              I did not go inside the Great Pyramid, but others reported of the place so stifling within, so foul underfoot, and so fatiguing, that, somehow, we each time put it off, and ended by missing it. The ascent is extremely easy. Rugged and huge as are the blocks, there is scarcely one upon which it is not possible to find a half-way rest for the toe of one's boot, so as to divide the distance. With the help of three Arabs, nothing can be well be less fatiguing. As for the men, they are helpful and courteous, and as clever as possible; and coax one on from from block to block in all the languages of Europe.   The space on the top of the Great Pyramid is said to be 30 feet square. It is not, as I had expected, a level platform. Some blocks of the next tier remain, and two or three of the next tier above that; so making pleasant seats and shady corners. What struck us most on reaching the top, was the startling nearness, to all appearance, of the Second Pyramid. It seemed to rise up beside us like a mountain; yet so close, that I fancied I could almost touch it by putting out my hand. Every detail of the surface, every crack and parti-coloured stain in the shining stucco that yet clings about the apex, was distinctly visible.

                                             
                      Morning Prayer             Sphinx and Pyramids          Cheops Pyramid   
                
              The view from this place is immense. The country is so flat, the atmosphere so clear, the standpoint so isolated , that one really sees more and sees further than from many a mountain summit of ten or twelve thousand feet. The ground lies, as it were, immediately under one; and the great Necropolis is seen as in a ground-plan. The effect must, I imagine, be exactly like the effect of a landscape from a balloon. Without ascending the Pyramid, it is certainly not possible to form a clear notion of the way in which this great burial-field is laid out. We see from this point how each royal pryamid is surrounded by its quadrangle of lesser tombs, some in the form of small pyramids, others partly rock-cut, partly built of massive slabs, like roofing-stones of the Temples.
           We see how Khufu and Khafra and Menkara lay, each under his mountain of stone, with his family and his nobles around him. We see the great causeways which moved Herodotus to such wonder, and along which the giant stones were brought. Recognising how clearly the placeis a great cemetery, one marvels at the ingenious theories which turn the Pyramids into astronomical observatories, and abstruse standards of measurement. They are the grandest graves in all the world - and they are nothing more.
           A little way to the southward, from the midst of a sandy hollow, rises the head of the Sphinx. Older than the Pyramids, older than history, the monster lies couchant like a watch-dog, looking ever to the east, as if for some dawn that has not yet risen. A depression in the sand close by marks the site of that strange monument miscalled the Temple of the Sphinx. Farther away to the west on the highest slope of this part of the desert platform, stands the Pyramid of Menkara (Mycerinus). It has lost but five feet of its original height, and from this distance it looks quite perfect.
            Such - set in a waste of desert - are the main objects, and the nearest objects, on which our eyes first rest. As a whole, the view is more long than wide, being bounded to the westward by the Libyan range, and to the eastward by the Mokattam hills. At the foot of those yellow hills, divided from us by the cultivated plain across which we have just driven, lies Cairo, all glittering domes half seen through a sunlit haze. Overlooking the fairy city stands the Mosque of the Citadel, its mast-like minarets piercing the clearer atmosphere. Far to the northward, traversing reach after reach of shadowy palm-groves, the eye loses itself in the dim and fertile distances of the Delta. To the west and south, all is desert. It begins here at our feet - a rolling wilderness of valleys and slopes and rivers and seas of sand, broken here and there by abrupt ridges of rock, and mounds of ruined masonry, and open graves. A silver line skirts the edge of this dead world, and vanishes southward in the sun-mist that shimmers on the farthest horizon. To the left of that silver line we see the quarried cliffs of Turra, marble-white; opposite Turra, the plumy palms of Memphis. On the desert platform above, clear though faint, the Pyramids of Abusir and Sakkarah, and Dahshur. Every stage of the Pyramid of Quenephes, banded in light and shade, is plain to see. So is the dome-like summit of the great Pyramid of Dahshur. Even the brick ruin beside it which we took for a black rock as we went up the river, and which looks like a black rock still, is perfectly visible. Farthest of them all, showing pale and sharp amid the palpitating blaze of noon, stands, like an unfinished tower of Babel, the Pyramid of Meydum. It is this direction that our eyes turn oftenest - to the measureless desert in its mystery of light and silence; to the Nile where it gleams out again and again, till it melts at last into that faint far distance beyond which lie Thebes, and Philae, and Abou Simbel. THE END.                                                                           

                                      For Chapters     I to VIII        see    Amelia Edwards I
                                       For Chapters    IX to XV       see     Amelia Edwards 2
                                       For Chapters    XVI to XIX    see    Amelia Edwards 3

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