Mélaae 1 Ent D Scenes Sir Gaston Maspero Non. And … · P refatory Note At the beginning Of my...

méLaae

1‘ENT

“ D SC EN E S

S I R GA ST O N M A SP E R O

non. AND FE LLOW o r QU EEN’

S

or T H E m sr r'

run or

1. t DE FRAN CE , D I REC

CE DES ANT I QU I'

ré s, CA I RO

B! ELI Z ABETH LEE

SEVENTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON : ADELPH I TERRACE

LEI PSIC : I N SEL ST RASSE 20

1 9 10

By S I R GA ST O N M A SP E R O

H ON . H ON . AN D F ELLOW O F QU EE N ’SCO LLEG E , OXFORD ; MEM BER OF T H E I N ST I TUTE O FFRANCE , PROFESS OR AT T H E CO L LEG E D E FRA N CE , D I RECTOR - G E N ERAL OF T H E S ERV IC E D E S A N T I QU I T ES , C A I RO

TRANSLAT ED B! ELI Z ABETH LEE

WITH SEVENTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON : ADELPH I TERRACE

LE I PSIC : I N SEL ST RASSE 2 0

1 9 1 0

PREFATOR ! NOTE

A PART of my duties as Director of the Servicedes Antiquités in Egypt consists in an annualinspection of the monuments. From 1 88 1 to1 886 , the period of my first sojourn in Egypt, asteamboat, the Menclu

'

eh, was put at my disposal. She was better know n to the riversidepopulation by the name of N imro H adaclzere,

NO. 1 1 . She was a flat-bottomed brigantine, provided with an engine of a type archaic enoughto deserve a place in the Museum of Arts andCrafts. From 1 840 to 1 860 she had regularly performed the journey to and fro between Alexandriaand Cairo once a month . She was then invalidedon account of Old age , but was again put intoworking order for the visit of Prince Napoleon toEgypt in 1 863. In 1 875 she was presented toMariette, and after a long period Of inaction ,descended to me, and I made my journeys in herfor five years . My successors , however, did notpreserve her, and on my return I found a princelyOld dahabieh, the M riam, which I have used eversince.

Prefatory No te

At the beginning Of my campaign , about themiddle Of December, I tow her, without mak inga halt, to the limit of my course, to Assouanor Ouadi-Halfah. Thence I abandon myself tothe stream, the wind sometimes assisting myprogress, but more Often preventing it, SO thatday after day we are obliged to have recourseto the oars in order to advance a mile or two.

Such a method Of navigation, although no longerto the taste of the tourist, offers great advantagesto the Director of the Antiquités.” It gives himan Opportunity Of visiting less important siteswhere no one stops unless compelled, sites thathe would not himself have thought of visitinghad not the impossibili ty of proceeding againstthe wind forced him to drop anchor in theirneighbourhood. TO these unpremeditated delaysI owe not only several monuments which makeno bad figure in the Museum, but also impressions of modern Egypt that help me to abetter understanding of ancient Egypt. I noteddown these impressions from day to day withoutany Object beyond that of giving adequateexpression to what I felt or Observed, and from1 900 printed in L e Temp s every year those Of

them that seemed likely to interest Egyptologists,and at the same time to make appeal to thegeneral publi c.

6

Prefatory NOte

M . Guilmoto , the publisher of New Lighton Ancient Egypt, ” suggested that I shouldcollect these articles and issue them in volumeform. The idea found favour with me, and Iconsented. I obtained M . Hebrard’s permissionto use the articles that had appeared in L e

Temp s, and I added to them some that hadbeen printed in L a g rande Revue and in L a

Revue d’

Ori ent.

May I express the hope that readers whoknow Egypt will recogni se it in this book, andthose who do not yet know it , may be inspiredby these pages to make its acquaintance !

G . MASPERO.

BI BEE .

NOTE ON TH E SPELLING OF THE

EG! PT IAN NAMES

(Wu tien specially for the English ed zfion)

THE transcriptions of the Egyptian names in this volume differ so

materially from those in general use in England that a word of exp lanation in regard to them seems advisable. For such barbarous pronunciations as Thoutrnes,Ahmes, Ransormfi, I have substituted Thoutmosis,AhmOsis, Ousimares, a vocal isation nearer that of the ancient pronunciation. Some of the vowel sounds,‘ like those of the three names justquoted , are derived from the Greeks, or from the Egyptians of theGraeCO-Roman period ; others are deduced by analogy with Greektranscriptions from forms the exact transliteration of which has not beenpreserved for us by the ancients . The reader will easily recognise theformer in those where I have kept the Greek or Latin term inations es,

as, or us, i s, ous ; where those term inations are wanting , the form isdeduced by analogy , or determ ined in accordance with the rules of

grammar. Thus AmmOthes (Amenhotep), Khamois (Kha-em-uas), Harmakh is (Hor-em-Khou ) are pronunciations justified by the Greekrenderings ; Amenemhait (Amenemhat), Hatshopsouitou (Hatasou,Hashepsou) are grammatical deductions. Many points are still doubtfuland some Of the vowel sounds will have to be modified in the future ;but they have at least the merit of testifying to an effortl

'

towardS I thetruth , and of undece iving the public who

,on the faith of the

Egyptologists, accept as legitimate, pronunciations which would havebeen considered monstrous by the Egyptians themselves.

An error is easi ly corrected when it first arises, but if it is allowedto persist it is an exceedingly difficult matter to eradicate it. No betterproof can be given than the persistence of the form Hatasou for the

name of the great queen who shared the throne Of the Pharaohs WithThoutmOsis I I I . For the sake of uniformity, I have adopted the

orthography and vocal isation of the Greece-Roman period , in the sameway as in France we use the French forms

, Clovis, Clotaire, Thierry,for the Merovingian kings in order not to introduce very dissimi larwords into our history books. We must

,however, remember that thevocalisation and pronunciation of names do not remain unchangedduring the course of history. Not to mention dialect forms wh ich

would be too diffi cu lt to determ ine, I established a long whi le ago, partlyby means of the Assyrian transcriptions, that many names of which thetonic syllable is vocalised in 6, ou , in the Greek period , have the same

syllable vocalised in 6 under the second Theban empire, in the vernacularof the age of the Ramses : the AmenOthes, i .e., the Amenhotep of

Manethon , is Amanhatep in the inscriptions of El-Amarna. The recentdiscovery of H ittite archives confirms that fact, for they give amongothers, for the Ramses Meiamoun Ousimares of the Ptolemaic age,

a

Ouashmar‘

iya Riamasha Maiamanou which corresponds with an Egyptianpronunciation Ouasimariya Riamasa (ou) Maiamanou. But I d id not

think it advisable to introduce such variants into a book intended forthe general public.

3 They should be pronounced as in French.

8

CONTENTS

1 . FROM CAIRO To RODAH

I I . A FOG ON TH E NILE

I I I . TH E CONVENT OF TH E PULLEY AT GEEEL-AEOU-FEDA 32

N . TH E CROCODILE GROTTO AT MAABDEH

v . A CAB DRIVE IN S IOUT

v i . ON TH E NILE

V I I . KENEH AND ITs MUNICIPAL ITY

VI I I . DENDERAH

IX . THE ARRIVAL AT THEBES

x . A PARLIAMENT OF KINGS AT THE TOMB OF

AMENOTH ES I i .

x i . TH E TOMB OF AMENOTHEs i i .

x i i . TH E DEPARTURE OF TH E ROYAL MUMMIES

X I I I . KARNAK AND THE WORKS IN TH E HYPOSTYLE HALL 1 28

TH E TEMPLE OF TH E THEBAN PHTAH AT KARNAK 1 43

XV. KARNAK : LEGENDS AND SUPERSTITIONS9

XVI .

XVI I .

XVI I I .

X IX .

XX .

XX I .

XX I I .

XX I I I .

XX IV.

XXV.

XXVI .

XXVI I .

XXVI I I .

F ISHING FOR STATUES IN THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK

THE PHARAOHS BY ELECTRIC LIGHT

AN ARAB TALE

THE OPENING OF A NEW ROYAL TOMB AT THEBES

WITH SCHWEINFURTH ON A VIS IT TO THOT

Contents

A NEW PHARAOH

ESNEH

EL -KAB

THE ENGLISH EXCAVATIONS AT KOM-EL-AHMAR

EDFOU

ASSOUAN

THE CONVENT OF ST. S IMEON,NEAR ASSOUAN

PHIL/E

INDEX

10

PAGE

168

204

L I ST OF I LLUSTRAT IONS

THE RUINS OF PH I LzE F rontz’

spz'

ece

A natural colour photograph , reproduced from A Mi ethe’

s“Unter der

Sonne Ober-Agyptens ,"by permi sswn of the publi sher, H err Dietrich

Reimer, of Berlin.

A TYPICAL MIDDLE EGYPTIAN VILLAGE

AN UPPER EGYPTIAN PEASANT

TH E NILE, NEAR ASSOUAN .

DENDERAH . RELIEF ON TH E OUTS IDE WALL

ENTRANCE TO ONE OF THE ROYAL TOMBS IN THE VALLEYOF THE KINGS

THEBES . THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS

KARNAK . GENERAL VIEW OF THE RUINS NEAR THESANCTUARY

KARNAK. PTOLEMAIC GATEWAY IN FRONT OF THE TEMPLEOF KHON SOU

KARNAK. AVENUE OF SPHINXES LEADING TO THE MAINENTRANCE

THE HILLS OF THEBES WITH THE TEMPLE OF DEIR EL

BAHAR I AT THEIR FOOT

List of Illustrat ions

AN UPPER EGYPTIAN MARKET

E L-KAB . SMALL TEMPLE BUILT BY THE VICEROY OFETHIOPIA FOR RAMSES I I .

EXCAVATIONS AT KOM-EL-AHMAR

EDFOU. ENTRANCE TO THE MAIN TEMPLE

EDFOU . GENERAL VIEW

THE CONVENT OF ST . S IMEON,NEAR ASSOUAN

12

Egypt

Ancient S ites and Modern Scenes

FROM CAIRO TO BODAH

TH E sky is overcast, melancholy trails Of mist floatover the banks Of the river, and here and thereyellowish patches indicate the place where thesun ought to Shine. Can this really be Egypt !What has become of her light during the thirteenyears I have been away ! Now, it seems, weshiver on the Nile, and cannot venture on theupper deck of the boat without a warm overcoat.I left Cairo the day before yesterday, very un

certain of my impressions , and somewhat anxiousto discover if the aspect of the river and its bankshad changed as much as the climate. Not SO longago , in losing sight Of the last minarets Of the citadel,we seemed to bid farewell to the present century.

A few factory Chimneys were to be seen here and13

Egypt : Ancient Sites and Modern Scenes

there among the palm-trees , or one Of Cook’ssteamers noisily went its way with its cargo oftourists. But such accidents of civilisation quicklydisappeared on the horizon, and with the help Of

the Pyramids , along which we coasted for twodays , we felt as if we were setting out for a cornerof the antique world that had somehow lingered onin the midst of the modern world. Between Cairoand Philae we traversed an Egypt of the past, notan Egypt of any precise epoch, but a countryundefined as to age and local colour, resemblingin some places that of the Pharaohs, in othersthat of the Turks or Mamelouk s ; in fact, eachtraveller, according to the nature Of his studies ,or the turn of his imagination, could believe himself to be Visiting the land Of the Pharaoh Sesostris,or that Of the Sultans of the Arabian Nights .”

F or three days the landscapes of a former agehave been passing before my eyes. Although Irecognise their salient points, I find somethingin them which used not to be there, and whichhas modified their character. Industrial life hastaken possession Of them, and is secretly transforming them .

The change becomes apparent directly we leavethe bridge Of Kasr-en -Nil behind us. The background Of the picture is the same , the green islandof Bodah , with its clumps of trees and its Nilo

14

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times happens, a more Violent rising of the riverencroaches on it. Thanks to its stability

,land

which used to be constantly threatened with thedepredations of the Nile has been definitely gainedfor cultivation, and near Bedrechein I found afield of Indian millet on exactly the same spotwhere I had formerly sailed in about six or ninefeet Of water. On the Arabian side progress hasbeen equally great, and at first I was astoni shedto see verdure and groups of well-built houseswhere my memory told me there had been theuninterrupted yellow of the sand and a cluster Ofwretched hovels. FromAtfieh to Bibeh, for a wholeday, I ceased to Observe the Libyan bank in orderto concentrate my attention on the Arabian one.

On my first visit it remained almost exactlyas French scholars had described it at theend of the eighteenth century. Although thehills lay far towards the interior, the spaceutilised was generally restricted and unequallycultivated for lack Of sufficient water. Two

or three fragments Of canals watered it hereand there , and in the spots where a little verdurewas to be seen the chadouf or sak z

’

eh alone provided for the needs Of the peasants at the costOf incessant labour. Nearly everywhere thedesert or barren land extended to the edge of

the stream ; a few villages steeped in mud16

From Cairo to Rodah

occupied the most favoured spots ; a santon or

a dilapidated Coptic monastery might be seenat long intervals. The few attempts to revivethe perishing district made under Mehemet Ali

and Isma’il Pacha had failed, and it seemed asif Egypt on that side of the river was almostdead. Now it is recovering from its long exhaust ion , and nothing is more curious than tonote in passing the signs of re-awakening life.

At the end of the tortuous pass , where theinsufficient height Of the water forces the streamto flow to the south Of the town of Karimat ,

there used to be a half-ruined monastery, Deirel-Mémoun , around the walls of which dwelt afew dozen fellahs who with the monks werethe only human being s who persisted in remaining in the place. About twenty ill-cared forpalm-trees form ed the shelter Of their strawpallets , and their wretched plots Of beans ormillet scarcely produced a greenish film in theforeground Of the landscape . Now the monasteryhas been repaired ; stone houses are groupedround it, the palm-trees have spread and forma small wood , the fields have invaded the desert ,and the stir Of cattle and donkeys betrays thepresence of a hard-work ing and prosperous population. Six or eight hamlets have grown up inthe empty space which stretched from Deir-el

17 B


M émoun to El Marazi, and the colonists, partlyem igrants from the other bank , are graduallyconquering the desert places. The chadouf;worked by hand, still pumps up the water withits rhythmic movement, but at the same timefixed steam-pumps , or movable steam-engineswhi ch can be used when and where necessityarises, supplement and indeed tend to replacethe Old-fashioned machine. Plantations of sugarcane are increasing, then millet, corn , beans , andon the mud left by the rising Of the river thevegetables of which the native is so fond— lupins ,onions , mallows , cucumbers , and water-melonsare cultivated.

Most of the new villages are of hewn stone,and the surprising increase of the buildings hasnecessitated the opening up of numerous quarriesin all the places where the rocks are closeenough to the river to make exploitation easy.

Now and again occur the sheds and shafts ofa budding factory, then a large farm flankedwi th a rudimentary garden, then clumps Of youngdate-trees , then a number Of barges moored to

the quay awaiting their cargoes. One of themnear Deir-cl-Bayad carried a new steam-engine ,and the sailors were hurrying to erect anotherengine on the bank in front of a plantation of

full-grown canes.1 8

From Cairo to Rodah

The sun has reappeared, and Egypt is herselfagain. The softness of the air and the beautyOf the sky invite the mind and likewise thepowers of Observation to idle contemplation orsomnolent meditation ; a real effort is requiredto resume my study Of the right bank, and

to determine to note the new and surprisingchanges I see there. At first, beyond Bibeh

activity seems to slacken, and the formerlethargy to prevail. Industry has been transported to the left bank , into the domains and

factories of Da’irah Sanieh. The rugged slopesof Gebel Cheikh Embarek come down so closeto us that they exclude all possibility Of irrigationby machinery, and the narrow strips of alluviumat their foot are watered and cultivated in theOld-fashioned way. But beyond Charronah theview changes . A broad green track stretchesfor miles where I recollect a dusty plainwith sickly palms and rare cultivated patchesthinly scattered over it, bounded on the southby the inactive chimneys Of Cheikh-Fadl . The

factory, founded in the good times of Ismai lPacha, was never fini shed . Sand accumulatedat the foot of its half-built walls ; iron shaft sand portions of machinery, mere heaps Of Oldiron, lay on the ground, abandoned before everhaving been used. Now cultivated fields and

1 9

Egypt : Ancient S ites and Modern Scenes

plantations Of young trees alternate almostfrom Charronah, steam-pumps distribute thewater regularly behind the dikes, railway linesintersect the plain , and as we passed , severalsteam-engines were at work on the quay, busywith the wagons of sugar-cane. Barges asheavily loaded as the trains are placed in linealong the bank, engaged in unloading. Threesteam-tugs, with steam Up, are waiting until theyhave been emptied to tow them , a dozen at atime, to the villages where they have to takein a fresh cargo . It is done rapidly amidstthe deafening noise that accompanies all workin this country ; the sailors Shout at the porters ,who answer in still shriller tones , the chimneyssnort, the engines pant and whistle , the donkeysbray in a common harmony. The factory itselfhas become unrecogni sable ; its workshops arefinished , and as a consequence all the suitablesubordinate buildings have risen from the earth .

First of all comes a fine house that seemsto be that Of the manager. Then a sort Of

triumphal gate in Moorish style opens its

pointed arch Of horseshoe shape framed byArabic inscriptions traced in black on a redand white ground. It stands in front Of brickbuildings the use of which cannot well bedetermined from the river. Lower down a long

20

From Cairo to Rodah

building with two rows of arcades , one on topOf the other, contains shops on the groundfloor, and in the upper story room s withbalconi es for the employees ; it might be calledthe social habitation Of a co-operative society. Imade out several Shop Signs : Epicerz

'

e et cafe’

,

Tabacs, &c.—all in French. In fact, a French

engineer, M . Mahoudeau , founded this enormousfactory for the Say- Suares Company and awokethe district from its lethargy. It is no smallsatisfaction to note the part played by Frenchmen in the redemption Of the land.

Is it, however, merely a frontage behind whichthe Old poverty is as acute as ever ! What doesthe fellah gain from all thi s wealth ! BeyondCheikh-Fadl the landscape resumes its Old physiognomy, and seems scarcely touched by modernindustry. Deir-el-Bakara has whitewashed thedomes Of its chi

'

I rches and cut convenient stepsin the cliff to serve instead Of the breakneck staircases by which its destitute monks descended inorder to beg from the dahabiehs . The region Of

the ancient tombs which begins at Mini eh haslost nothing Of its primitive barbarism : only themasons and fellahs of the other bank have attackedthe hill on all sides, and destroy it even morethan they work it as a quarry. The changeis nowhere more apparent than in the places

21


where Messrs . Cook CO. assemble their touristsfor the excursion to the tombs of Beni -Hassan ;the houses there are better cared for, theinhabitants are cleaner and better clothed, anddemands for bakhshisch are universal.

22


piece of landscape, floating at hazard as itseems, is discovered, but the sun, insinuatingitself through the Opening, warms the coldwater, and so causes mists to rise which againengulf us. After about an hour there is somemovement in the fog ; it becomes less dense,is stretched out , is torn in pieces , and fli es OHin shreds, which are soon destroyed and finallyvanish in the twinkling Of an eye. The worldreappears in a chaos Of uncertain forms , which,however, become more clearly defined every second.

Five women emerge on a narrow mass Of brownearth, busy with their water-j ars. An embankment is Visible behind them , and rises steeplyin graduated terraces Of vegetation ; it endsin a dike above which the tops Of palmtrees are seen, and almost simultaneously weperceive the line Of hills, pink in colour, outlined against the background Of the Opaline Sky.

For a few minutes the remains of the fog softenthe contours, bring out the shadows , accentuatethe reliefs, and lightly touching the variousobjects , clearly mark out the sites they occupy.

As the m ist evaporates the relief is softened ,the contours become sharp and clear-cut, distances are efl

'

aced. It seems as if Objects onthe far-Off horizon are thrown forward , and thatthe foreground and the Objects on it approach

24

A Fog on the Nile

and,indeed

,almost join it, and that they are

placed one upon the other just as they appearin the pictures which decorate the walls of thetombs of Memphis or of Thebes.Indeed

,who is there who has sailed on the Nile,

even for only a couple of days, who does not cometo realise how closely the scenes drawn by theOld Egyptians on their monuments resemble thoseOf to-day, and how faithfully they interpretedthem

,even in those Of their conventions which

seem to us to depart farthest from reality !The fog having entirely lifted, the dahabiehcontinues its way. The boatmen row vigorously,keeping the strokes in time with the voice Ofthe singer

F i’r -radh ra

’

et—hebbi ’l—gamil.

(In the garden I saw—my handsome friend.)

And all repeat in chorus with a low, drawlingintonation, H ebbi

’

l gamil. Before they havefinished , the soloist attacks the high notes of

the sacramental refrain , z'

a lél (0 Heindulges in shakes, prolongs the sounds, swellsthem , stifles them , and then , Out Of breath, stopsthe last note with a single dry sound. He isalmost choked . by his runs and trills, and whilethe crew are bursting with applause I Observethe river and the two banks . Low down in a

25


line on a bank of tawny-coloured sand a numberOf big vultures are warm ing themselves in thesun ; with claws spread out, backs bent, necksdriven down into the shoulders, wings folded infront on each side Of the breast, they joyfullyreceive the flood Of sunshine which spreads overtheir feathers and penetrates them with its warmth.

It is exactly how the Old sculptors representedthe Vulture Of N ekhabit in repose, the goddessprotector Of the Pharaohs, who shelters themwith her wings. In imagination, take out thebiggest Of the group, put the pschent or thewhite cap on its head, the sceptre Of power inits talons, place it in profile on the tuft Of fullblown lotus which symbolises Upper Egypt, andyou will have the bas-relief which adorns one Ofthe sides Of the principal doors of the templeOf Khonsou , and yet under all this apparatus averitable vulture ; for the covering Of religious attributes has not suppressed the real bird. A fishingeagle comes and goes above our heads in questof his morning meal. He describes immensecircles, slowly beating the air, then suddenlylets himself drift along, leaning on his wings ,his body suspended between them, his feetstretched out , his head bent, his eyes searchingthe depths of the water. Watching him progressthus , scarcely moving at all, he resembles a hawk

26

A Fog on the Nile

Of the Theban sculptors, Horus, who hovers abovethe helmet Of the Pharaoh in battle, or who,displayed on the ceilings Of the temples , dominatesthe sweep of the central nave from the doors ofthe hypostyle to those Of the sanctuary. Whenpresently he descends and rises again with hisprey, it will be with the same gesture and bearingwith which Horus in battle manipulated hismystical fly-net and his ring symbolic Of eternity.

A troop of donkeys coming out of a hollow behindthe embankment under a load Of well-filled sacksmight be the very one that served as model tothe draughtsmen Of the tomb of Ti for the carrying III

/

Of the harvest. The m ingled flock Of sheepand goats which follows at a gentle trot standout with so exact a profile, that they seem tobe solely composed of moving silhouettes ; it isindeed a picture come down from its ancient wallto go to the neighbouring market. And as thebanks pass before me with their episodes Of contemporary life, it Seems to me that the bas-reliefsof the tombs have become alive and of naturalsize ; there are the oxen going to the fields withmeasured tread, the ploughing, the fishermenyoked to their net, the carpenters building a barge.They have installed their ladders on a sloping pieceOf Shore, and crouching in the attitudes Of monk eys,nail the timbers with blows of the hammer.

27


The creators Of Egyptian art took the Nile fortheir point Of View when they set to work to putthese isolated Objects together, and to engravethem harmoniously in the chapels of the tombs inorder to ensure their dead continuation of earthlyexistence for an indefinite period. They placedall that characterised life on the river itself oron the canals at the bottom of the wall— theconvoys of laden boats, the disputes Of the sailors ,the fishing scenes , the hunting Of water-fowl .Above came the seasons of the agricultural year— ploughing, sowing, reaping, threshing, storingin the granaries . Higher still came the pastureswith ruminating oxen, and above, almost touchingthe ceiling, the desert and the hunters on thetrack of the gazelle. The panorama widens outor is closed in according to the extent Of thesurface to be covered, and all the elements whichcompose it are not necessarily reproduced everywhere ; one part is suppressed here, or developedthere, or combined elsewhere, but what is usedfollows the invariable order from bottom to top.

The variations of the ancient theme were form ingand changing every moment under my eyes asthe day advanced. In some places the river isdeserted and its banks empty, but the plo

‘

ughsmake furrows in the plain, and the hills Showtheir cold slopes above them . A little farther

28

A Fog on the Nile

on the hills sink behind the horizon, and theplain seems a flat , empty space without vegetation or visible habitations . Three or four mileshigher up stream the Nile becomes suddenly animated and a long series of boats cross each other,and are driven back or thrust gaily forward by thenorth wind. But the surfaces on which life circulates

,instead Of falling back one behind the other,

seem to rise one above the other as in the worksOf the Old masters, who certainly both simplifiedand complicated the different subjects they choseto bring together. They almost all made ita rule not to attempt to depict the ground ,substituting for it a single straight line on whichthe persons included in the same scene movedand by which they were supported . In theupper rows they depict scenes that distance didnot permit them to perceive any more than itdoes us, despite the incredible transparency Of theair, and they attribute to them the same proportions as those of the scenes in the lower rows .These defects were imposed on them by theritual of their religion. Were not these pictures,so carefully and accurately executed , really magiccharms on the composition Of which dependedthe survival Of a human being after death ! Theslightest error m ight imperil the destiny of thedouble, and so the artists were obliged to sacrifice

29


the probabili ties of perspective to minute truthof detail.The dahabieh goes on its way, and the singer,grown tired, pauses to take breath, but his companions brutally recall him to his duty. Youare paid fifty piastres more than us to sing, andyou want to rest : go on , Open your mouth, and

9use your voice.’ He allowed himself to be im

plored for a few minutes and then began again

“ I n the garden I saw—my handsome friend ,Who was gent ly swaying— l ike the branch of

the nabeca ,

and the crew repeats

l ike the leaf of the nabeca.

Perm i t and grant—O my bel oved ,And fu lfil thy prom ises for the best .

On the bank the men on the barges at anchor,the carpenters , the donkey-boys , the women drawing water, leave Off their work and listen ; whenthe refrain is reached their delight bursts forthin enthusiastic exclamations of Ah I or OfAl lah ! Allah l— Blessed be thy mother, 0 thouman of songs I—May Our divine master guardthee ! Again, again, and again may the benediction Of the Prophet fall on you I We advance

30

THE CONVENT OF THE PULLE ! AT

GEBEL-ABOU-FEDA

A L I TTLE before Omm-el-Koucour the cliff isbroken, and through the opening appears a rowOf red and white tombs dominated by a wallOf greyish bricks supported against the rock. Itis a furtive apparition, vanishing almost as soonas perceived, but so strange that it leaves a permanent impression on the mind. Once , four yearsago , I wanted to approach it, but I arrived atnightfall, and my boatmen told me stories Ofghouls lying in wait in the mountain fastnesses ;it would be all up with our lives if we dared toland after sunset ; perhaps even we were not safeon the Nile aboard the dahabieh . I respectedtheir fears , and agreed to wait till the next day.

But the captain put Off at dawn , while I was stillasleep, and I was obliged to postpone the Visit.I have now I just accomplished it , thanks toa fresh northerly breeze which forced us to put

1 February , 1 906.

32

The Convent at Gebel-Abou - Fedéi

in here. It was half-past two in the afternoon,and porters on the bank were loading boats withrough stone. A S neither ghouls nor affi tes careto risk themselves in the sun, no one was afraidor refused to accompany me. The ouady isnot more than 100 yards wide. It extendsnorthwards for about yards, then dividesinto two branches, one running straight to thesouth parallel with the river, while the otherslants to the north-east and is lost in the desert.Twenty years ago there were ancient quarries onthe southern mpe which were visible from theshore : they have now been destroyed. Most ofthe Graeco-Roman tombs which prolonged theline of the quarries towards the interior have alsobeen destroyed ; one, however, still stands, on

which the remains Of a resurrection scene maybe distinguished, an Anubis under the mask Of ajackal, and a Nephthys on guard over a mummylying on its funeral bed. The hill stood out

sharply, and the stone lay scattered about inbroad white slabs, stained wi th black where thechambers of the mine had exploded. How manymore summers will it spread itself in the sun !

A few seasons of defective exploitation havemiserably devastated what twenty centuries hadrespected, and has spoiled, almost wantonly, oneof the most original landscapes Of Egypt.

33


At close quarters the cemetery does not preservethe picturesque aspect it had at a di stance. It hadlong been deserted when the Copts reoccupied itin the middle of the nineteenth century. At firstthey came one at a time, at long intervals ; then,fashion aiding, the notables Of the vi llages built onthe western bank of the river held it an honourto repose there, as if in ground sanctified by thebones of holy monks. The convoy arrives inseveral boats , lands noisily, and as soon as it isdi sembarked the procession is formed, the clergywith the cymbals and big drum which accompanythe cadence Of the liturgi cal prayers, the hand-biercovered with its purple pall, the family and friendsin ceremoni al garments, the women methodicallydishevelled, and ready to howl at the first signal.The tombs are arranged on the same principleas those of the Musuhnans. F or the poor, a merehole, or at best a shallow trench walled up withdry bricks, both covered with a heap Of earth orpebbles, a stone set up at the head and feet. A stephigher in the social scale, the irregular mound becomes a bank, a rectangular brick mastaba, bare orhastily covered with whitewash. F or families ineasy circumstances there are veritable concessionsin perpetuity. The tomb is placed in the midstOf a brick framework surmounted by a cylindricalvault, also of brick, the height of which is some

34

The Convent at Gebel—Abou—Fedé

times a little over 6 feet. The narrow facesremind us Of the arched stelae Of the Pharaonicage, and on one of them , most Often the westface, the mason designs in burnt bricks the Greekcross, the monogram Of Christ, a crown, a lozenge.The rich have enclosures where they are immuredin pomp when their days on earth are ended.

Neither battlements with rounded embrasures nordomed chapels, as in Musulman cemeteries, are tobe seen. They include tombs for the master, hiswife, his brothers, his children. Everything is

crowded together in disorder, and the low moundof the poor man is found side by side with thebrand-new mausoleum Of the proprietor Of ahundred feddans. The most ancient sepulchrescrowded together near the river. When there

was no longer room there, they spread quicklytowards the east ; now they very nearly touchthe bottom Of the valley.

When the monks settled there, probably at thebeginning of the sixth century, they took up theirabode in the pagan tombs on the southern slope,and they adapted one of the hollowed-out quarrieson the northern slope as a church. It compriseda part open to the sky, forming an esplanade, andtwo or three subterranean chambers supported bypillars cut out of the rock these were devotedto divine worship, and they bui lt a wall round

35


them strong enough to protect them in case of asudden attack. Repeatedly destroyed, the Deirhas always been restored, and was lately entirelyrebuilt by a rich personage whom local traditioncalls the Emir Tadrous. From without it is amass of bricks leaning up against the rock, andpierced on the south side by five dormer windowsplaced high up. The door Opens at right anglesat the southern extremity of the west face, a bayjust large enough to admit one man ; then cometwo steps in the masonry, a heavy wooden swingdoor, a steep slope enclosed by two massivebuildings. The courtyard is bordered by buildingson three sides, some Of which still stand, whileothers have been razed to the ground on thenorth Side are benches on which visitors or guardsspent the night, then vaulted chambers , Of whichone, Occupying the corner Of the rocky wall and ofthe western curtain, contains a bakery and kitchenstoves , while the others were used for storing forageand provisions. The use of the small chambersalong the southern side is uncertain ; in one of themare four water-jars , and perhaps another may haveserved as a lavatory. In the middle

,the ground

has lately been trampled ; it is sprinkled withasses’ dung. In one corner is a heap of ashesround the stones of a rustic fireplace bread hasbeen baked there, and some one has watched the

36

The Convent at Gebel-Abou—Feda

fire. Have the coastguardsmen encamped thereon one Of their rounds or quarrymen who wereprevented returning home by an unfavourablewind or some of the faithful from the oppositeshore to celebrate a festival or pray for their deadThe natives are li ttle sensible of the picturesqueinterest Of the place, and the beauty of the spotof itself would not be sufficient either to bringthem or to keep them there. And yet the viewfrom here, although perhaps not one Of themost beautiful, has an irresistible charm for aEuropean : at our feet are the tombs , of a funerealwhiteness, the ouady intersected with littlestreams, the result of the January rains, thenthe violated hypogeums, the hill with itsbrui sed and peeled surface, a glimpse of theshining Nile, the coming and going of bargeswith sails set , an embankment striped with blackand green, a line of trees , a background of rosecoloured hills, and spread over all the wonderfullight of Egypt that harmonises the most discordant tones and makes them pleasing to the eye.A brick screen bars the entrance to the quarry,up to about 2 feet 8 inches from the ceiling. Itis adorned half-way up with a lozenge and a crossin burnt bricks , the red colour standing out againstthe dull-grey of the bare earth. The little rough,low door which shelters itself under the cross is

37


entirely covered with iron and bristles with bignails. The key is probably to be found on theother bank ,

five or Six miles from here, but it isalways possible to make a compromise withOriental locks : one of the boatmen pulls to theright

,pushes to the left, gives the lower corner

two or three blows with his fist , invokes the name

of the Prophet, and there we are in the church.

The Coptic architects had not greatly altered thework of the heathens. They preserved the twopillars which supported the ceiling, and behind ,on the great axis of the building, they built arectangular enclosure pierced on the west by theritual doors it is the Izekal, the sanctuary, withthree niches in which the altar is set up and thepriest performs the Mass. It is covered withthe inevitable whitewash, to which time givesthe creamy tones of Old ivory, and it, as well as thepillars , is adorned with red crosses and interlacedornaments like those found as headings of chaptersin the elaborate evangelistaries Of the tenth andeleventh centuries. There is space enough between the hekal and the pillars and then betweenthe pillars and the facade to resemble the plan ofthe ordinary basilica, and to allow us to imagine ina sort Of way the nave and the narthex. With somecrowding a small number of the faithfIIl wouldhave been able to get in at the moment of the

38


the priest brought the necessary material withhim . The rest of the time the church was deserted ,but its bareness does not give a sense of melancholy. Daily life must be hard for the unfor

tunate men whom the religious vocation hasexiled to this corner of the desert. It is coldthere in winter, when the north wind takes up itsabode in the ouady and sweeps it in gusts ; andin summer the heat is torrid and the nightsbring no relief from the tortures of the day.

The monks, ill-clothed, worse fed , weakened bythe excessive fasting that the rule prescribes,each isolated in hi s hypogeum among the relicsand memorials Of pagan death, endure the sametorments as did the hermits of the Theban laures.The mummies whose dwellings they have seizedreturn to life, and relate the history of theirdanmation . Satyrs and monsters arise in frontof them and try to lead them away into thedesert. Unchaste fairies Offer themselves to

them in all the glory of their tempting beauty,

and sometimes while they are meditating on

the !Scriptures demons, expert in theologicalsubtleties, suddenly confront them with themost captious Objections. After these infernalstruggles the church is their harbour of refuge.The evil spirit does not dare to follow themthere, and during the respite he is forced to

40

The Convent at Gebel-Abou- Fedfi

grant them, they strengthen their minds forfuture assaults by conversing with their spiritualfathers and brothers or in communion with theLord. I am told that demoniacal temptationsare still sometimes experienced in the conventson the borders Of the Red Sea. The time forsuch things is over in our case ; but the senseof having once again found the peace that wasthe possession of the monks Of Old still persists,and so strongly, that even the passing strangeris affected by it. It steals on us without our

knowledge, penetrates us, and when, as the firstshades Of evening draw on , we quit the conventwe carry something of the back withus to the dahabieh.

41

THE CROCODILE GROTTO AT MAABDEH

THE caves which the eddies of the river havebored in the low-lying rocks of Abou-Fedasheltered the last crocodiles Of Middle Egypt.Thirty years ago we might count twentyto-day there are none. Have the inhabitants ofthe neighbouring villages killed them one byone, or have the creatures secretly emigratedsouthwards in order to join their Nubiancousins ! NO one would suspect in what numbersthey had swarmed in thi s district, if we didnot possess the proof in the thousands andthousands of mummies the remains of whichfill the hypogeum Of Maabdeh.

If we desire to vi sit it we must disembarkat Chekalk il. The embankment is so high thatit entirely shuts out any view Of the countrybeyond, and does not allow us to estimate thedistance that separates the hill from the Nile.In stepping ashore it would seem to be scarcelymore than one or two hundred yards

,but as

42

The Crocodile Grotto at Maabdeh

soon as we reach the top of the high bankwe see that we are far out in our reckoning.A broad

,deep plain is revealed, varied in aspect

and in vegetation : we see much corn, muchbarley

,helbeh, flowering beans, the sweet and

delicate scent Of which permeates the morningfreshness

,chickpeas , lupins, clover, but all

weakly and poor, for in the last two winters I

the rising of the river was insufficient, and theground does not yield its usual crops . A partof the fodder has already been cut for lack of

water for irrigation, or the cattle have beenturned on to it before it should becomeburnt up. We meet a vanguard of goats andkids straggling along, with swaying ears, ledby two little girls. Farther on , about fortytethered buffaloes and cows arethey leave ofi

' in order to study us.The herdsman , an enormous bearded fellow

who spends his leisure in Spinning wool, cannotget over

,his astonishment at seeing so many

Europeans together. Much surprised at our

sudden appearance, he greets us gravely with asalam aleikoum, as if we were Musulmans. Two

sleek asses’ foals who are gambolling round himleave him , and after smelling at us for a minutedetermine to accompany us to the village, and

1 1 902—3.

43


gallop,braying

,kick ing, and shaking their comical

ears with all the joy befitting their youth. My

guide assures me that they are own nephews of

my donkey,and in their gambols he discerns a

touching sign Of family concord.

Maabdeh has increased greatly in the lasttwenty years. It formerly consisted Of two or

three groups of wretched hovels separated bymounds of dirt and evil-smelling pools. TheMaaz eh Bedouins prowled about on the outskirts,stealing the cattle and pillaging the crops ;sometimes

,even

,if they chanced to meet a

woman or child alone, they carried them Off totheir tents and did not restore them. Thesupervision that has been exercised over themsince that time has forced them to gi ve upthese evil habits. Those who did not prefer towithdraw to the

' desert bought land, and havebecome improvised agriculturists : they meettheir former victims as friends, and instead of

plundering them, buy their sheep, or ask theirdaughters’ hands in marriage. But the memoryof their raids lingers sufficiently for the fellahsto continue to take precautions against anyreturn of their savage customs. The new housesare built of burnt bricks to a height Of about5 feet, so as to prevent sapping, and thenabove that base rises a wall of unburnt bricks

,

44

AN UPPER EG! PT IAN PEASANT.

To face 9 . 44 .


for the fathers is good enough for the sons fromgeneration to generation. The canal whichbounds the village on the east is almost everywhere empty, and the little water it contains isconcentrated in greenish spots in the hollowestparts of the bed. The flocks and herds bathein it, the children paddle in it, the women washthe clothes in it, and, if they have no time to godown to the Nile, draw water from it for drinking and cooking purposes. The donkeys refuseto touch it with the tips Of their lips, but mendrink it without flinching , to die like flies in theautumn at a period of epidemic. Beyond liesthe cemetery round its cheikh with a greyishcupola, and its two or three family . tombs withlow, slightly crenellated walls, its rows Of nameless graves scarcely marked by a fragment Ofstone at the head, and then behind the cemeterythe ascent begins .

The base of the hill is set in a sort Ofe, through which beds of bright limestone

appear more and more frequently as we ascendthey soon stand right out and form a sort of

vast staircase, the steps of which are joined byinclined planes of débris and sand. At thebottom of the ascent the quarrymen have latelybrought to light two or three vaults

,rough

,

low-ceilinged , narrow, without either inscriptions46

The Crocodile Grotto at Maabdeh.

or sculpture, furni shed with loculz'

, in which themummies formerly lay : violated at the Romanepoch, a Greek cross drawn in red on the wallat the back proves that they served for theretreat Of Christian hermits. A little higher upa bed Of limestone of finer quality than the restwas worked in ancient times, and the silhouetteof the blocks, as well as the marks of the Chiselsthat cut them out , are everywhere clearlydefined. Higher up still, a mass of rock standsout , and forms a spur surmounted by two or

three peaks Of fantastic, broken, j agged shape ,and so worn away at the base that theyare right out of the perpendicular, and weexpect to see them collapse every moment.To avoid them the path slants towards thenorth, and then ascends in zigzag the longside of the hill for about five or si x hundredyards before reaching the edge of the plateau.

The slope is steep, the heat, intensified bythe limestone wall by the side of which wewalked, envelops us and slowly bakes us ; nearthe summit at the last turn a fresh breezestrikes our faces, and an immense panorama is suddenly displayed at our feet— thegreen and yellow plain, the villages hiddenamong the palms, the Nile winding in largecurves , the water whipped into frothy waves

47


by the wind, the towns on the other bankManfalout , El-Hawatka, Kawali—white and greyround their minarets ; then in the extremedi stance the hill of Siout projects its profile,delicately tinted with pink and lilac , on to thehorizon. Innumerable sounds rise up to us : thesong of the workman manipulating his chadouf,the greeting of a couple of passers-by who meeton the canal quay, the bleating Of sheep, thelaughter of a band of women who have come todraw water, the shrill whistle Of a tug desperatelypanting with a convoy of sugar canes. Theatmosphere of Egypt, which causes every objectto stand out in sharp outline, does not allow Ofthe mingling Of sounds any more than it doesof the various parts of the landscape. It giveseach sound its full value, and if it somewhattones down the di scords, it never brings theminto the harmony that country sounds in Europeacquire in summer-time.A short gallop to the right, and in two minutesthe whole of the view Opening on to the valley isagain shut out by a screen of rock. The plateauunrolls itself before us in slow and supple rhythmical movements which melt insensibly on the eastinto the mass Of the Arabian hills. Everywherethe ground sparkles and shines as if it was crystalor salt : as a matter of fact it is only talc in small

48


pieces,the waste of a quarry formerly worked by

the Egyptians , and that they thought to be exhausted, but where modern industry would perhapsstill find large supplies. The path Slants across thi scarpet Of luminous dust, winding over the slope atits own sweet will without seeming to bring us anynearer to our goaL But at last, after half an hour,our guide shows us a cleft, the Shape of which isdefined on the rock as a triangle. It is from 9

to 1 2 feet long, and almost half-closed up by ablock of stone thrown across it on the Side of thebase. Ignorant of the real entrance, that is theway to get into the Crocodile Grotto. Mosttourists just glance at the opening and departonly archaeologists persist, although even for themthe interest Of the visit scarcely compensates forthe fatigue it engenders. We catch on to the

rough places , placing a foot here and a foot there,for a depth of 1 2 to 1 5 feet, and at first encounterthe sickening Odour of damp mummy that hasslowly fermented . At the back, towards the left,under the transverse block there is a smoky venthOle into which the guide had already thrownhimself, candle in hand. It is a veritable fox-holewhich widens out and narrows again at everyturn, sometimes scarcely 3 feet high, sometimesSO narrow that stout travellers can only just slipthrough with a somewhat severe rubbing. ! ou

49 D


have to make your way as best you can : on yourknees

, or your side, or your back, or your stomach ,crawling, twisting, sliding to right and left. Thebad smell increases ; the air is rarefied and seemssticky

, so impregnated is it with dust of pitchor bitumen ; the heat is insufferable : it takes fiveminutes

,and they seem interminable, to reach

the first gallery of the hypogeum.

It is neither spacious nor sweet-smelling, but wecan at least stand upright and move without knocking our heads against the ceiling. It adjoins othergalleries, the windings and entwinings of whichform as tangled a maze as that of the CatacombsofRome. The Arabs tell fearsome tales o touristswho, venturing in alone, were never able to regainthe entrance, and died Of thirst or exhaustion.

They believe the grotto to be haunted by ghoulsor afrites, for whom the flesh and blood of aEuropean are an unparalleled feast, and theyfirmly believe that the lost travellers were eatenalive by that cursed brood of God and His Prophet.It would be interesting to get them to describe thecreatures on the actual scene of their exploits

,but

if we ventured to approach the subject our guideswould be capable of running away on the spot andleaving us to Shift for ourselves. Once inside thelabyrinth, the ghouls prowl round us, seeking whomto devour. and merely to utter their name would

50

The CrOcodile Grotto at Maabdeh

be to incite them to attack us. We proceed thenin silence, examining the place as well as the dimlight of our candles allows. On my first visit

,

twenty years ago,I crocodile mummies abounded,

not only the giant crocodiles that are to be seen inthe necropolises of the Fayoum or Of Kom-Ombo

,

but young crocodiles who died a few days or a fewhours after their birth. They were buried singlyor in bundles , and then piled up so as entirely tofill the secondary corridors. Indeed, the gravediggers scarcely preserved a track in the principalgalleries , in order to make it possible to inspectthe condition of the mummies . Now and againwe came upon a few human mummies, those of

the priests Of the god Sovkou and Of the faithfulwho had specially consecrated themselves to him .

They had to pay dear for the privilege of lyingfor ever among the incarnations of their mysticpatron. What gave them all, men or beasts , aspecial value, is that they were Often covered withpapyri, notarial acts, private letters , receipts , discharges, circulars , admini strative circulars, andalso torn or Odd volumes of the Greek classicalwriters . Mr. Harris owed to them, sixty yearsago , fragments Of Homer, and leaves of a manuscript containing the lost orations Of H yperides,the Athenian. Is there not a chance of finding

1 This was wri tten in 1 903.51


more important works still, those of Sappho or

Alcman ! About 1 890, Arab excavators, en

couraged by the European scholars, surreptitiouslymade their way into the grotto and damaged whathad escaped the injury of centuries. They rippedup the large mummies and crushed the small ones.One day, in the midst Of their operations, two of

them upset one of the wretched petroleum lampsthey are accustomed to use to light themselvesover the débris. We can imagine with whatswiftness the fire would spread in that heap Ofrags and organi c matter saturated with natron andpitch. Legend has it that a long while ago anEnglishman and his dragoman perished in theflames caused by his carelessness, and the menaccompanying me declare that two Bedouins meta similar fate. Whether the tale be true or not,there are lying about everywhere fragments of

linen scorched , or reduced to tinder, carboni sedmummies, calcined bones . The ceiling and theside walls are covered with a kind of greasy sootwhich sometimes falls and shrivels up in the flameof our candles. The guide assures us that heknows the whereabouts of the real door

,the door

through which the Egyptians took the corpses,

but the debris that has been heaped up against itforms so thick a covering that it would cost a mintof money to remove it, more money certainly than

52


fold excuses for the rheumatism which preventedhim from coming himself. It consisted Of six

ghafirs in blue shirts, black caps with red bands,and carrying percussion guns. Salutations, prescutation of arms, and we are forced to make adignified descent into the plain, not like simpletravellers free in their movements, but like distinguished persons hemmed in by the most rigorousetiquette. The omdeh awaited us at his house tooffer us the traditional coffee, and to refuse hi sinvitation would wound him. He lives in thelargest Of the new houses we had admired inpassing in the morning. The doorway, hidden inthe south-west corner of the outer wall, took usinto a corridor running between two blind walls ;at the end towards the left a bay was cut in it,through which we reached the court of honour.The house itselfhas a verandah in front, the steps upto it being framed between two bronze candelabra.It is arranged on the usual plan with a vestibulelighted by stained-glass windows, a drawing-roomfurnished with divans, and behind, a reception-roomfurnished in the European fashion. Before retuming to his native village our host had lived forsome years in Cairo, where he filled a small postin a Government Office. He brought back courteous manners and a flowery language, which con

trast with the rusticity of his surroundings. He54


possesses I do not know how many feddans ofgood land between Maabdeh and Abnoub, andalthough not as profitable as he could wish, he isnot on the whole dissatisfied. While we drink hiscoffee , smacking our lips out Of politeness, heinforms us that despite the poorness of the inundation the year has not been altogether a bad one.

His cows and ewes were fruitful, his daughters-inlaw presented him with three fine boys a fewweeks back, and no member of the family hasfallen a victim to cholera. His house is warm inwinter, cool in summer, and now that we havehonoured him with our visit misfortune will notdare to touch it and dwell therefor all time.

55

A CAB DRIVE IN SIOUT

F ORME RL ! to reach Siout you landed at the hamletof El Hamra. There was nothing to di stinguishEl Hamra from all the numerous villages hithertoencountered : the port was merely the dike , moreor less worn down by the coming and going of

the crowd, but bigger craft than almost anywhereelse were moored there, pleasure dahabiehs awaiting their hirers for the season, two or threesteamers, coal barges , the post boats, and working alone in its corner was the indefatigabledredging machine of the Ibrahimieh Canal. Theriver had its caprices, sometimes hugging thebanks , sometimes throwing up heaps of sand attheir base, and so separating the banks from theb'

oatmen. From 1 883 to 1 885 this improvisedshore was two or three hundred yards wide, butthe inundation Of 1 885 swept it away at one strokeand brought back the traffic to the bank. A goodroad , shady and winding, led the traveller first tothe post-Otfice, then to the railway station, and

56

A Cab Drive in SiOut

thence to the town. It ended with a bridge overthe winding canal which surrounded Siout , and

those who know the Egypt of those days by meansof photographs will have admired the prettypicture it offered : its houses and gardens reflectedin the still waters of the canal, the bridge with itsunequal arches, the group Of thi ck sycamores whichshaded the gateway of the Moudi rieh, the Mou

dirieh itself with its Oblong courtyard planted withtrees, the clerks running from Office to Office, papersin hand and pen behind the ear, and the motley crowd which went its way unmindful of theadministrative work. But all that is Of the past.The enlargement of the Ibrahimieh Canal, thebuilding of the dike, and the displacement Of themud that has resulted, have all been fatal to theOld port ; small boats still use it, but the vesselsof the navigation companies, the coal barges, thepost boats, the dahabiehs— all that made the lifeOf El Hamra—have been transported to the otherextremity of the roadstead , to the south-east pointalmost opposite El Ouastah.

I

The first thing we notice in getting alongsideare the cabs prowling about round the landing

The above was wri tten in 1 899. But since the comp letion of the barrage in 1 902 the traffic has gone back towardsthe north and is now at nearly the same poin t as i t was

57


places. They are the little Parisian victorias withmovable hood, leathem apron, and flap-seat at theback, two lean horses, and a numbered driver ;the price Of the drive is 3 francs 75 centimes , if weare satisfied to keep to the town ; 5 francs if weventure among the hills to visit the tombs.Donkey-boys still abound, pushing and shouting,but they no longer assume the haughty insolenceof a former day ; they feel that their reign is ending, and they are humble in the hOpe Of carrying Offa customer despite the competition. But usuallynothing comes of their efforts at civility. A cabis called, four people crowd into it, holding on asbest they can, and the equipage sets out by thegrace Of God. At first you drive by the riveralong the towing-path between the edge of a fieldof ragged dourah and the sloping embankment .There is a prospect Of a fall of 6 or 9 feet atevery jerk made by the horses, and for ten minutesthe carriage rolls, pitches , jumps over the irrigationposts and trenches, has a narrow escape of losing aback wheel, heels over, is about to upset, when bythe grace of the unknown saint who presides overthe safety Of cabs in Egypt, it escapes for thattime. After five or six minutes Of this preliminaryexercise we turn to the left and proceed towardsthe town at a trot through the boatmen

’

s quarter,

a row of houses in process of building, two or three

58

A Cab Drive in Siout

bacals piled up with preserves , petroleum, andcotton goods, a Sudanese bar dripping with rakiand adulterated spirits, painted, unveiled womenin loud-coloured garments, an open-air cookshopwhere stews of doubtful appearance simmer with aseasoning of dust. Next comes an empty space, thehaunt of wanderingdogs and hens, then a wealthysuburb with blue, pink, apple-green, or yellowvillas inhabited chiefly by Copts , gardens , cafés ,restaurants, hotels with French, Greek, or Italiannames, and at last the railway. Two goods trainsare manoeuvring on a siding by a caravan of camelsloaded with sugar-canes, and the train forMinieh whistles loudly as it departs.Beyond there are more villas , more restaurants ,more hotels, and Of a sudden we come on theentry to Old Siout , disfigured by European embellishments. One side of the canal is dry, thegateway Of the Moudirieh has been pulled downto make way for the traffic, but the courtyardremains as before , and the town has changed verylittle. The sloping street that fits on, as it were,to the back Of the Moudirieh is exactly as Iknew it in 1 88 1 , and if the alleys to the leftin the direction Of the hill have been widened ,the new buildings are in the usual Arab style anddo not clash with the Old ones. The carriagescarcely lessens its pace when driving through

59


them,but the crowd , as distrustful as that of

we are in the market-place, still crowded with menand beasts

,and then the curved jetty by which the

tombs are approached,the bridge partly built on

the piles of the Mamelouk Bridge, known to thesoldiers of Desaix and the scholars of the Commission ; there ou the right beyond the canal thepalm-tree and cupolas Of the Musulman cemetery,and here— but what has happened to the hill Asort of grey and white factory is fastened to ithalf-way up, the slope is dotted with rubbish, abig iron pipe, partly hidden by the débris , climbsit, quarry holes are to be seen almost everywhere,and lime-kilns smoke at the base on the road toD ronk ah. The Water Company has taken possession of it and has formed its reservoirs there. Theslaughter-house has been installed below againstthe first modern tombs. The ancient tombs havebeen saved from the contractors , but not withoutdifficulty ; each has its iron railing, its number, itsdoor, and a Bedouin, also numbered, keeps thekeys for the use of tourists.The day draws to a close. The last visitors tothe cemetery wend their way back to the town,and with them the bands of chained convictswho are working in the quarries under the sur

60


getting rid of him by so extravagant a discount ;he would end by taking you at your wordand would gain more than half the object’sreal value. An other offers fly-flaps of ivory or

ebony incrusted with gold or silver and touchedup with vermilion. Yet another draws your attention to the beauty of the vases he makes, thepretty vases varnished red and black, most of

which are servile copies of a French or Viennesemodel in metal. Still the carriage manages topush its way along, leaving a space of scarcely1 foot 8 inches between the wheel and the stalls,along which the crowd of foot-passengers maketheir way with difficulty. Now and again a manhemmed in in his booth becomes quietly impatient,and asks them in a low voice to get out of theway, or a lounger pinned by the axle kicks outand curses, according to the Arab formula, thefather of the tiresome person who is crushing him .

But such impatience is rare, and the crowd, ao

commodating itself as well as it can to suchhindrances, takes an interest in the discussions ofits fellow-citizens with their chance customers .Think of some idle tourist blocking one of thebusiness thoroughfares of London or Paris for halfan hour, and then imagine, if you can, the temperof the tradesmen who inhabit it.

62

ON THE N ILE

TH E Nile goes and comes and Winds in immensecurves through the plain, and the current, rebounding from one side to the other, leaves bare a sandyshore on the bank from which it recedes and pitilessly eats its way into the bank on which itencroaches. The bank thus continually eatenaway is perpetually crumbling under the strainwhole fields disappear with their crops, and thevillages themselves gradually descend to the river.The palm-trees defend them at first, and keep theearth back by their bearded roots ; then they capsizeand fall on the slope. They may be seen hangingtheir heads in the water for some time, the clod ofearth in the air, until the eddies detach them andthey drift away. The fellahs, who have donenothing to save the trees , are as little carefulto protect their houses. They may attempt toshore them up with a few stones after the earthhas already fallen away under them. Then asthe work of destruction progresses they flee from

63


room to room as long as any space remains whichcan shelter them and their families. When atlast they are forced to leave, their recent ex perience does not teach them wisdom, and they choosea new encampment almost as exposed as the formerone. The land is granted them by the community,and building materials cost little or nothing.

Interwoven twigs or dried bricks covered withmud for the walls, veins of the palm-leaf or stemsof dourah coated with mud for the roof

,

one or two low rooms, an airless courtyard inhabited by poultry and cattle, a fireplace of flatstones , straw mats, one of two wooden chests

,

water-jars, some coarse pottery, are all they need.A family of fellahs can move house once or twicea year at a cost of little more than ten days’ work

,

and in thus dispossessing them every season theNile causes them little material damage. Increaseof wealth, however, is beginning to awaken themfrom their hereditary apathy, and as soon as theyhave earned enough money to obtain a suitablehouse, like those they would have in the towns,they try to combat the fantasies of the river

,and

occasionally succeed in repressing them for a briefspace, but without entirely disarming them. Sofar as we observed, the river ended by bafflingtheir attempts , and in spite of the embankingthe spot chosen succumbs sooner or later.

64

On the N ile

Abnoub is a large town of the Arabian plain inthe bend of one of the seven turns made by theNile between Gebel-Abou—Feda and Siout . Itformerly consisted of a number of cabins groupedround two or three whi te ill-kept houses

,and like

many villages of the Said concealed its wealthunder a dilapidated and poor exterior. Five or sixyears ago a few Copts and Europeans built lessrudimentary habitations. The natives, instigatedby their example, demolished their cabins , andreplaced them by dwellings more in keeping withtheir fortunes. The Abnoub of to-day may berecognised in the distance , towards the north, by adozen villas built along the bank , the aspect andcolour of which recall the Pharaonic villas represented in the paintings of the Theban tombs ;we might say that one of them had been copiedstraight on to a celebrated fresco in the tombof Anna, with its cubical shape , flat roof, facadepierced by a single narrow door on the groundfloor and two small windows on the first floor,its long wall, broken by three doors painted red,the top bristling with a row of branches, and itsgarden of palms , doums, and acacias. Beyond isa sort of irregular square shaded by nabecas andsycamores, then the bulk of the buildings , somejust begun, others nearly finished , and dominatingall three Turkish pavilions, the first dark red , the

65


second grey, the thi rd in two tones of blue, thewalls framed in red moucharabiehs, and a glassroof to light the drawing-room. At their foot,cone-shaped heaps of débris are spread over thebank at the spot where the Nile encroaches. Thewater has not only undermined the ordinarybuildings in clay or dried bricks : it has attackededifices of burnt bricks and ashlar, the deepfoundations of which seemed to defy its power,and has dismantled the greater part of them.

Some portions of the wall have subsided whole,and only partly emerge from the water, or

partly hang over it. A fragment of a solitaryalley may be recognised in passing through thebay of a door, whi ch is all that remains of thebuilding to which it belonged. A di sembowelledhotel shows its inner court bordered by two semicircular rows of arcades. Chickens peck about theruins, long, lean pigs explore them with theirsnouts in quest of problematical food the childrenmake a playground of them, and the neighbouringinhabitants meet there to look at the passing boat,or to discuss the quality of the foreigners aboard it.And everywhere, on the right as on the left ,

from Siout to Keneh, there is scarcely a town or

a riverside hamlet that has not suffered more or

less from the rapacity of the stream. It hasswallowed up the portico of the temple of

66


most venerated sanctuary, hasten, by their imprudence

,the moment of its complete destruction.

They supply the whole province with sebakh fromit ; when passing Heou you invariably see a dozenbarges loaded or in process of loading.

Is there less life on the Nile than formerly ! I

In Middle Egypt, between Cairo and Siout , thesugar refineries keep up a considerable stream of

navigation. At intervals we meet the longstrings of boats which lend the Nile so

picturesque an aspect, boats with two or threemasts sailing proudly on their way with theirlateen sails ; smaller boats that swaggeringlycarry their one sail horizontally across the mast ;barges with grain or forage, barges with cut strawwhich look from the distance like floating millstones, barges with reddish jars or porous vases ,the z i

'

r and the goulleh which will filter andkeep fresh the water of the inhabitants of Cairo.Tugs go up and down in the vicini ty of thefactories with their interminable chain of ladenor empty barges , and at least in the sugar-caneseason there is a perpetual noise of steam whistlesand paddle-wheels.South of Siout the noise subsides. The post boats

break the silence for about an hour at fixed times,

and in winter so do Cook’s steamers or those of

Th is was written in 1 899.

68

On the N ile

rival companies . But once they have gone roundthe next bend solitude reigns again for wholedays, scarcely di sturbed by the passage of a fewisolated boats or by the evolutions of localhaulers and fishermen. Much merchandi se thatwas formerly transported by water is now sent toCairo by train, and the greater number of touristsprefer to take the railway to L ou x or and theCataracts. They do not abound ; the plague atAlexandr ia and the war have frightened off a goodmany, and those who decided to go, did so witha certain amount of anxiety on account of therapid fall of the river. But to tell the truth,when they first saw the breadth and strength of

its current, they could not help thinking thatpeople were mak ing fun of them in telling themthat the rise of the Nile was slight this year.The water spreads before their eyes from 800 to

yards in width , more like a lake than ariver. How is it possible to imagine that it isnot sufficient to allow of navigation !The experience of a day or two soon showsthem the truth of things. Long ridges of sandstretch everywhere across the immense bed, somestill hidden, but betraying their existence by aslight trembling on the surface of the water ;others emerge only to the extent of a few inches,others are already several ‘ feet in height, and form

69


an archipelago of little islands, curiously indented,where all the water-fowl of the Nile seem to havecongregated. Cormorants, plovers , blue and ash

coloured herons, cranes, pelicans , storks, ducks ofvariegated plumage , are at work fishing, or arrangethemselves in long rows on the sandy shore meditating, and digesting their food. If some tiresomecreature disturbs them, they fly off at one sweep

,

by the order of their leader, to take up theirposition somewhere else and continue their meditations. The stream winds capriciously betweenthe vi sible and invisible sandbanks, in places so

narrow and following such sudden turns that amedium- sized boat can only manoeuvre withprecaution, and so shallow that to get through itthe vessel should not draw more than about 3 feetof water. The pilot is in front, his eye ready toseize the least sign—a change of colour, a rippling,a wrinkle imperceptible to all but him— and, hislong staff, the medrek, in his hand, he goes on

taking soundings every moment. He transmitshis orders to the steersman by word and gesture

,

and it is only the complete accord of the two menthat prevents accidents in the most dangerousplaces. The first time of running aground seldomannoys the tourist ; indeed, he nearly always findsthe novelty of the situation and the confusionattendant on the extrication amusing. At the

70

On the Nile

first shock the crew seize the medrehs andplant the iron points firmly in the gravel,and with the other end against their shoulders ,put forth all their strength. As no one in

Egypt works in silence, and the boatmen lessthan others , invocations burst forth to God ,to the Prophet, to local and general saints,“ Allah ! Houa ! Ia Mohammad ! Ia Ahmad !Ia Embahi ! Ia Abbasi and, interspersed wi ththe everlasting H ele, flak ,

” keep time to theirmovements. If the effort comes to nothing, thefelucca stands off, the anchor is dropped, they pullupon it, and in so pulling drag big steamers overthe gravel or mud for a hundred yards or more.When the operation only lasts an hour or twointerest does not flag, and the tourist sets out

again, delighted to have taken part in one of theaccidents of life on the Nile. But sometimes,if recourse is not had to the strongest measures,a boat may be aground for six hours , or ten or

twelve or twenty-four hours , or even for wholemonths, until the inundation of the river. Thecaptain lands and goes to the nearest village toask the notables , the omdeh or the cheikh-elbeled, to supply him with reinforcements. It is acompulsory service which is occasionally paid for,but more often taken gratuitously. All thefellahs available throw themselves into the river,

71


pulling at the rope, stiffening their arms, bendingdouble, and raise the boat, move it, lead it intodeep water. ! ou soon grow tired of runningaground

,and when the accident occurs the Arab

vocabulary does not contain enough bad languagein which to curse the pilot’s and helmsman’s lack ofskill, and then, as there are no more oaths available,

you grow tired of your own wrath and determinephilosophically to get what profit you can fromthe accident. It is not so bad after all if ithappens at a fine spot, and I have only to bethankful for the accident that grounded me severaltimes at the foot of Gebel-Abou-Feda. If, on

the other hand, the only consolation is the viewof a sandy shore and a horizon bounded by dikesenlivened with telegraph poles, it is a goodmoment for dealing with arrears of correspon

dence and urgent business, the settlement of

whi ch had been deferred through the attractiveness of the river banks .But what is merely an annoyance for the traveller threatens to become a calamity for thenative. The Nile is as low this year

I at the endof December as in ordinary years at the end of

April, and the fall, far from lessening as wemight hope, goes regularly on , or even at momentsincreases ; a few weeks more and the river will

This was wri tten in 1 899.

72

On the Nile

be fordable in more than one place. The newsfrom the interior is very bad. There has beenless snow and rain in Abyssinia and the regionof the Equator, and the reservoirs that feed theriver were not sufii ciently filled last year. TheBlue Nile is at the end of its resources , the WhiteNile is falling more and more, and the vast basinof the Victoria Nyanza is 3 feet below itscustomary level. Two-thi rds of the Said havenot been irrigated , and will produce nothing beforethe return of the inundation. Near Akhmim theFrench engine has procured the watering of thefields situated round the town , but in spite of theincessant action of the chadozgf the rest of thedistrict is fallow. What ought to be immensetracts of young corn or bean s in flower are onlydry mounds. Between Bellianeh and Abydos the

plain,which usually resembles that of Normandy inits fertili ty and its rich crops, is now languishingand promises only a meagre harvest in those placeswhere it is not wholly barren. Beyond Belli anehthe banks to right and left are covered with vegetation, but as soon as they are left behind it ceases,and as far as the beginning of the desert onlythe bare ground, dusty in the sun , is to be seen.

Persons in high places grow anxious , and activelyseek means of obviating the consequences of thedrought. Engineers are busy storing up water,

73


financiers are trying to reduce taxation for

the worst sufferers , without compromising theBudget

,and the exemption from taxation of

land that has had to remain uncultivated isunder discussion. The fellahs alone, althoughmost concerned, do not seem to trouble muchabout the future. When questioned, they agreethat the year is bad , that poverty threatens,that perhaps they will not know where to getbread till the harvest of next year, but thepossibili ty of a reduction of the taxes overwhelmsthem with joy, and outweighs the certainty of

future trouble. Those who, by selling antiquitiesor hiring out donkeys, are comfortably off, takeno care to save their profits for a bad season, butspend them day by day according to their fancyand leave the care of getting them out of the messwhen the crisis comes to the Government. If theGovernment fails, then God will provide.

74


Twenty years ago Keneh was famous for itsmanufacture of porous goullelzs for keeping thewater fresh, and for its colony of somewhat elderlyalmehs, the last of a company of them exiled byAbbas Pacha in 1 853. Keneh was then separatedfrom the river by a barren plain bounded on thewest by a canal that was dry in winter Itsappearance was most commonplace, with its publicbuildings in front, moudirieh, barracks , powdermagazine, the houses of the Coptic consuls withthe arms of France and Germany, groups of clayhovels separated by muddy, stagnant alleys, an illprovided bazaar, all the poverty and dirt of UpperEgypt. At the present time Keneh continues tomanufacture g oullehs, but the last almehs dieda dozen years ago, full of days and rich enough tohave deserved universal esteem. It possessesinstead a new institution, of which it seems tobe very proud, a municipal commission, almost amunicipality, recruited among the most notable inhabitants. The town is connected with the Nile byan avenue of fine lebakhs. The municipality plantedthem and tends them. In the middle of the roadway a large iron roller drawn by an ox crushes thepebbles and so renders the road smooth. The municipality have brought it from Cai ro. On one sidesquads of workmen dig a trench and lay pipes in it.The municipality have decided to bring water from

76

Keneh and its Municipality

the Nile and are making the conduits. The roadwinds through a well-cultivated country wherepatches of green corn alternate with squares ofbeans or lupins and with strips of many-colouredpoppies. Keneh makes large quantities of

Theban extract, and for several centuries has beenthe principal opium market in Egypt. A damfurni shed with sluice-gates bars and regulates thecanal , always by virtue of the municipality, and thebank is no longer bordered with large bui ldings.It has been invaded by a mass of new houses ,whi ch hides them and shuts out for them the viewof the plain. At the end of the dike the municipali ty have laid out a public garden, two or threegravelled walks and beds of flowers, not over full ,but whi ch brighten the entrance. We turn tothe right and at once recognise the beneficentaction of the municipality. The ground is no

longer, as before, a bed of dust, soft , uneven, illsmelling , soiled with all kinds of unnameablerubbish and dirt. It is firm under the feet, cleanand freshly watered, but not too wet, so that thedonkeys may not slip. A busy crowd circulates,carts loaded with cases, or barrows pass and meetin good order, itinerant tradesmen cry their goodsunder the vigilant eye of the police, and now andagain a numbered ' cab drives discreetly along.

Keneh is decidedly a civilised town and a large town.

77


The bazaar looks well under its worm-eatenwooden roof ; although not as good as that of

Siout , its variety is pleasing to the eye. Theshops are well provided and attract manycustomers

,but you must not expect Oriental

colour. With the exception of the babouches,everything comes from Europe and Cairo, wherestuffs , pottery, glassware, furniture, preservedcomestibles, are all made after European models.One of the principal okelles used to be reservedfor merchants from H edjaz , who brought barbariccamel-hair carpets, but of a quite good design ;the largest were worth from two to three guineas,and with some chicanery were sold in Paris asantique carpets . The okelle is there, but it ischanged into a café, and merchants do not stopat Keneh any more ; they take their carpets toSuez, to Port Said, or to Cairo, whence the brokerssend them to Europe. The vegetable and poultrymarket is properly an extension of the bazaar, andthere astonishing progress is to be seen. Twentyyears ago only indigenous vegetables were sold,pumpkins, cucumbers , bamiahs,meloukhiahs, lupins ,beans ; now there are nearly all the Europeanvegetables, carrots, turnips, cauliflowers, cabbages,beetroots, peas , beans , red and yellow potatoes ,without mentioning salads such as lettuce andchicory. To tell the truth, they are not as good

78


as ours , and for this reason. The good people ofthe Said especially value size and solidity in whatthey eat ; they lik e, as French peasants say, something that fills the stomach. Our new potatoesand young peas and beans , our small carrots andturnips would seem very poor food to them , sinceit does not after eating sufficiently stifle the emptyfeeling ; they like woody turnips and carrots, hardpeas as big as balls , overgrown cabbages andcauliflowers run to seed ; they prefer theexaggeration of our vegetables to our vegetablesthemselves, but the exaggeration as seen on avegetable stall or in baskets as the visitor ridesthrough the town on his donkey is very pleasingto the eye. Doubtless , local colour loses throughthis invasion of a new order, but even in Egyptwe cannot feed on local colour for long, and thosetourists who are most hostile to the changes thatspoil the physiognomy of the country wouldgrumble at the hotelkeepers of L ou x or if theygave them the former native vegetables instead of

French early ones.Behind the poultry market the high street windstowards the railway station with all the sights andsounds of a populous suburban street in a Frenchprovincial town. Sometimes the shops cease andyield place to the bare facade of a middle-classhouse or a cheikh’s tomb. The windows of the

79


tomb are barred, but have neither glass panes norshutters, and through the opening the interior isvisible. The coflin rests on trestles or on alow platform and is concealed by an amplemortuary cloth, the pieces of which are arrangedaccording to a curious pattern. From a distancethey remind us of the geometrical patterns thatdecorate the doors of mosques, and the coloursare combined in a harsh and careless manner, lightchestnut with dazzling yellows and greens ; theseams are hidden under a braid of tarni shed tinsel,which helps somewhat to tone down the discords.The turban is laid on the cloth at the level of thehead, rags and various obj ects are hung above thecoffin, offerings of sick persons who have beencured, or of the faithful saved by the interventionof the saint. A man crouching at the head recitesa chapter of the Koran in a low voice, distractedneither by the noises of the street nor the gaze ofthe curious.Near the railway station, on the right of theroadway against the wall, a sarcophagus of theGraeco-Roman epoch may be seen, very muchdamaged and three parts buried in the ground.

Tradition has it that this was the place ofembarkation used by Sidi Abderrahim el Kenaoui ,

one of the greatest saints of the district, when hecrossed the Nile in going from his farms at

80


Denderah to his house at Keneh. He is buriednot far from there on the other side of the railwayline, at the entrance of the cemetery itself, andthree tall lebakhs distingui sh his tomb, the oldestcertainly of all the trees of the kind I have seen inEgypt , \as the size of the trunks and the thicknessof the branches testify. The last of them is hollow,

and its twisted roots form a sort of niche or

rather corridor at the level of the ground whichdivides it into parts. A beggar-woman has installed her kitchen there, and while we passed wasoccupied in blowing up her fire with great energy.

The flame rose high up and licked the bark. Itis evident that some day it will catch the drytrunk, and there will be a fine blaze which willprobably extend to the neighbouring trees. A fewsteps from ~ there a fourth lebakh, still young,shades a fountain in beaten clay that the mortmainof the saint fills each day with the water of theNile for the use of passers-by. It was in its shadethat Sidi Abderrahim crouched when he came tothe cemetery to pray. A wooden dahabieh issuspended from the principal branches instead of

the stone sarcophagus, which would have been tooheavy, and near it the usual rags testify to an incredible number of prayers granted or cures aecomplished . The tomb itself is quite close, a new or a

restored chapel, adorned outsidewi th very primitive81 r


drawings, into which a most amiable cheikh '

invites us to enter. It has nothing striking to

show ; as in any ordinary mosque, you pass throughthe whitewashed halls of ablution and prayerand then a small courtyard before reaching thevaulted chapel in which the coffin rests, coveredwith a variegated cloth, renewed every year. Aragged beggar sleeps in a corner on the thresholdan effendi in a light-coloured jacket and a hightarbouche murmurs a prayer great

82


We have already left them far behind when westill hear the women’s laugh and the shrill tonesof the children. The ground soon rises, and thesebakh diggers have dug into it so terribly, thatit is necessary to be very careful not to fallinto some hole. Rows of ruined walls show thepositions of the ancient streets and mark on theground the grouping of the buildings : here theruins of a vaulted house, there a half-overturnedbasilica, its pillars of grey stone, its architravesbroken , its mortar in black basalt, the wholesubmerged in incredible masses of broken glassand reddish potsherds. On the top of theeminence is a thick, heavy gate, the sides cutabout and covered with mediocre hieroglyphicsin praise of the Emperor Domitian and of theAntonines. We enter, and suddenly at the endof a kind of dusty avenue see a dozen yards aboveus in the air an army of large, calm, smiling facessheltered by a stiff, hard corni ce. It is as if thetemple was starting from the ground to go to

meet the vi sitor.Mariette and his successors tried to disengageit completely, but they only succeeded in emptyingthe interior, and the exterior remained buried halfway up. The descent was made by a modernstaircase, instead of entering on the flat throughthe ancient gateway. The bani sters and the steps

84

Denderah

were worn away ; it seemed as if we were goingdown into a cellar. But for some years now therubbish which di sgraced the facade has beencleared away, and entrance is gained just underthe portico. Six rows of enormous columns, risingabout fifteen yards above the ground, support aroof of gigantic flat stones. Slender figures, stiffand formal , turn in rows round the shaft withsacerdotal gestures. Four women’s faces withcow’s ears , with a sort of rectangular case likethe music-box of certain timbrels for headdress,formed a capital of elegant strangeness. Thetimbrel was H athor

’

s favourite instrument, theemblem into which she preferred to put a littleof herself, so that the archi tect conceived thecolumns as so many huge timbrels out of reverencefor her. The light flows between the columns ,and striking the surfaces unequally, brings out

some of the pictures that adorn them, while othersare scarcely seen in the half-light. From theground-line to the rise of the roof there is notan inch of stone on the panels that connect thecolumns, on the walls at the back, on the doorposts or the lintels, on the corni ces, on the architraves, that does not contain a carved or paintedfigure or inscription. They represent the ordinaryceremonials of the religious services, and principallythose observed at the building or dedication of

85


temples . The king strides over the site he haschosen in order to settle the boundaries ; he marksthe line of the walls with a cord, he hoes out thefoundations

,he spreads the sand on which the

first course of stones or bricks is to be laid, hefashions the brick for the outer enclosure. Theexecution sometimes shows Greek influence , butthe subjects are those usual in the earlier periods.Thoutmosis III. or Ramses II if they returnedto earth, would recognise at the first glance theritual they celebrated in their lifetime. It wouldbe as well, however, that after xhaving examinedthe whole they should not de51re to di scover thenames of the kings who founded the temple, forthe reading of the cartouches would afford themunwelcome surprises. The sovereigns who attitudinise so proudly before the native gods, withtheir short petticoats and varied headdresses, theirlions’ or jackals’ tails, their censers, are not

Egyptians, but Emperors of Rome—Tiberius,Caligula, Claudius , Nero—whom the sculptor hasdressed as Egyptians. The priest of Hathor, on

whom the misfortunes of the times had inflictedthese Romans for masters, could not resign himself to believe that they were entirely alien to hisrace ; he felt that they were exiled compatriotswhom the gods had caused to be born inbarbarous lands far from the banks of the Nile.

86

DENDERAH . RELI EF ON THE OUTSIDE WALL .

To face p . 86.

Denderah

Tiberius, Caligula, Nero were themselves deceivedby appearances and proclaimed themselvesRomans, and they were Romans for those of

their subjects who were condemned to live out

side Egypt. In Egypt only was it guessed thatthey were of the flesh of Ra, the authenticdescendants of the national dynasties. They weredressed in the ancient fashion of the country, thelanguage and the ideas of a bygone day were putinto their mouths, and when duly disguised as

Pharaohs little was wanting for them to imaginethat, so equipped , they reigned over the immensity of the universe.The portico was always accessible to all. Thetownspeople o ffered their sacrifices and theirprayers there ; their devotions ended , they withdrew, and the greater number of them neverpenetrated beyond : they only frequented theforecourt of the sacred house. F ree access to theinterior was the privilege of those alone whomwealth, rank, birth , and education lifted abovethe common herd. According to the Egyptianreligion, a man could not pass directly from theclouded brightness of this world to the puresplendour of the gods ; before actually confrontingsuch radiance men’s eyes must be weaned fromterrestrial light. The halls immediately beyondthe portico, then, were plunged in perpetual twi

87


light, and the darkness increased as the dwellingof the divinity was approached, and in theHoly of Holies it was almost entirely dark. Thetwilight which begins within the portico prevailsin the central nave as far as the threshold of

the sanctuary. But the aisles are enveloped indarkness, the decorations of the walls look vagueand blurred as they did in the old days when thereligion of Hathor flourished in its vigour. TheChapel of the New Year alone welcomes us brightand luminous , a miniature temple placed in thevery centre of the large temple. We find a narrowcourtyard enclosed by high walls, between whicha scrap of sky shines, a flight of jagged steps, apierced facade, the gate of which is framed bytwo columns with H athor

’

s head, a single chamberwhere about the dog-days the rising of Siriusand the beginning of the year was celebrated,the whole making a very strange effect, and worthexamining at leisure if we had the time. Butour guide informs us that it grows late, and thatwe must hasten if we would terminate our visitbefore night closes in. What he does not dareto confess, and what I have known for a longtime, is that the chapel is haunted and thathe is afraid. Hathor lives there, and continuesto watch over the treasure that the Pharaohsentrusted to her. She only comes out at rare

88


from outside. The priest and the ladies of thetown assembled there every year to celebrate thepassion and resurrection of Osiris. They established themselves in the two chapels that terminated it on the north, and represented thetomb of the god. There they made an image of

wood and stone and precious metals, with whichthey imitated the rites of mummification and thelaying of the mummy in the coffin. For twodays they watched and wept over this pretendedcorpse, while the priests and women chargedwith representing the principal personages of thelegend- Isis and Nephthys, Anubis and Horusperformed the operations which were to bringhim to life. At length the magic of the wordsand gestures worked : Osiris moved on his

funeral couch, lifted his head, and sat up. Thesongs of lamentation changed into songs of joy,whi ch, heard by the crowd gathered outside,announced the consummation of the sacredmystery. A loud shout of joy sounded acrossthe plain, carrying the good news afar. To-daythe mason wasps have taken possession of thechapels in which the Osirian drama was played,and their clay nests cover the inscriptions. Justat present the winter keeps them torpid, butin spring and summer raging swarms of themhave to be confronted in climbing from terrace

90

Denderah

to terrace up to the platform of the pronaos.The old staircase is destroyed , and the sort of

iron ladder that replaces it is disquietingly fragile ,but the view is one of the most extensive inEgypt. In the distance the grand yet simple linesof the hills extend in somewhat monotonousfashion. The Nile, its shining surface dotted wi thwhite sails , flows among the trees. The countrystretches green and pleasant, with tuft s of acaciasand palms scattered about it. Here and there avillage on a hi ll stands out grey amid the greenness. The evening mists begi n to be visible abovethe houses. The wind brings in gusts the scent offlowering beans

,and so penetrating a sweetness

breathes from everything that we can do nothingbut look vaguely at what is before us in a sort ofvoluptuous languor. The sun has just gonedown ; at the edge of the horizon a ripple offlame and liquid gold marks its course and lendscolour to the gron twilight. The tones changeand follow each other unceasingly, become lighter,melt into each other, graduate from flaming redto purple amethyst, golden yellow, soft pink,faded green, pale blue. For three-quarters of anhour there is a play of colour of inexhaustiblestrength and richness ; then as darkness gains on

the world the tints grow confused and meltaway, the reflections vanish, the air thickens, the

91


sky becomes a uniform dark blue. We mustbreak the charm and go down.

The temple is undoubtedly beautiful in thedaytime when the sun shines on it and brings outall the details. But to see it as it used to be, andto recapture something of the emotions it rousedin the souls of the faithful, it should be visited atnight. The guards have lighted their lantern, butits feeble glimmer by contrast rather emphasisesthan dissipates the darkness in which we move.It seems as if the air has hardened and refusesto take the light. The building seems to havedisappeared. Here and there a door-post, theshaft or the base of a column, a panel of a wallwith its decoration of figures only half visible,rises and floats before our eyes for a moment,then suddenly fades away and is reabsorbed inthe darkness. A flight of bats envelops us in acircle of short, rapid cries, the pattering of swiftclaws resounds at our approach, the echoes awakewith a hollow noise which does not seem to

coincide with our footsteps. A kind of vaguepresence seems to hover in the gloom, and topursue us from chamber to chamber. Should webe really greatly astoni shed if at the turn of acorridor we met a priest come back to his postafter centuries of absence, or if the sound of

di stant timbrels which announced the theophanies92

THE ARRIVAL AT THEBES

As I rushed on to the platform with the unhappyexpression of a man who has just missed his train ,the station-master with a reassuring gesture showedme the inscription chalked on the traditionalblackboard : I might have spared myself the lossof breath, for the Cairo express is fifty-threeminutes late. I could have imagined myself inEurope, and the general aspect of the place aidedthe impression ; and had it not been for the palmtrees in the di stance and the employees’ tarbouches, I might have been in a railway stationin Provence or the Bordelais. Everything wasthere : the neat verandah, the little garden, thehens pecking on the lines, the puzzled dog whoseemed to be asking in which direction he waspresently to depart . A pile of luggage waswai ting at the end of the platform, rows of

carriages were at rest on the sidings , an enginewith steam up was puffing impatiently in itscorner, while the men were at work making up

94

The Arrival at Thebes

the train. It is now only fourteen hours fromCairo to L ou x or, and the nine Pharaohs who dwellthere in the tomb of Amenothes II. could get fromthe royal sepulchre to the comfortable glass casesprepared for them in the Museum in one day. Aftera night of shaking, cold and dust, you are assailedon your arrival by a crowd of importunate hoteltouts and dragomans, each shouting the name of

his hotel—Hotel de L ou x or, Hotel de Kam ak,Hotel Tewfikieh ; the omnibuses are at the door,and about ten cabs. The traveller manages asbest he can, and a drive of five or six minutesthrough narrow streets deposits him all confusedat the hotel of hi s choice ; no sight of themonuments permits him to imagine that he isin the capital of Ramses , and not in somevillage of modern Egypt.But it is in approaching Thebes by the Nilethat the imperial beauty of the site on which ithas been enthroned for centuries is best realised.

Several hours before it is reached , while passingby El Khiz am and Gamoleh, a large headlandof precipitous cliffs rises on the horizon, dominatedon the right by a pyramidal summit ; whilelower down, towards the left, three pointed peaksu se bent back at the top, like trees bowed bythe wind . These testify to the Theban plain,the boundaries between which it stretches, and

95


which arrest its expansion. At the fatal periodsof history when the hordes of invaders from thebanks of the Tigris or the tablelands of Ethiopiasaw those landmarks, they knew that the endof their fatigues was at hand, and prepared fora final onset to gain the long coveted prey.

The three peaks soon vani sh, for the channelfaithfully follows the windings of the right bank,and the high embankment cut out of the earthas if by a knife, wooded with acacias, tamarisks,nabecas, date-palms , almost shuts out the View on

that side, but the landscape of the left bank canbe clearly seen, and changes every moment.The cliff is smoother at the foot and joined byridges between which are gorges, the last of

whi ch , standing out very dark against the yellowbackground, marks the entrance to the ravinesthat lead to the Valley of the Kings. At theturn of the first bend a second row of heightsis revealed, which fall back ladder-wise to the

extreme south, and are lost near E rment amongthe di stant purple hills. But almost immediatelya strange vision seems to rise out of the riveritself ; standing out clearly against a screen of

trees we see the crenellated towers and the narrowgateway of a little Saracen fortress striped red andwhite, built by a Dutchman, M. Insinger, on a

promontory beyond L ou x or. From that moment96


lands ; the hotel porters fight for him under thewatchful eye of two policemen ; two steps off

is the L ou x or hotel, its hospitable door decoratedwith pseudo-Egyptian ornaments by a nativepainter.The temple looks very grand now that it isentirely dug out , and in the evening, after thenoisy throng of tourists has departed , we can easilyimagine it as it was in the time of its splendour.The oncoming darkness hides its breaches, veilsthe damage done by the Copts, clothes the povertyof the columns, and repairs the injuries of the hasreliefs. The cry of the Muezzin, coming suddenlyfrom the mosque of Abou

’

l-Haggag, resoundsthrough the ruins like the call to prayer of somepriest of Amon, king of the gods, forgotten at hispost, and we almost expect to hear a choir of voicesand a faint sound of harps answering him from thesanctuary with a melancholyhymn to the setting sun.

Soon, in the imagination, the rows of figures onthe walls descend to earth, and with banners raisedaloft and smoking censers march in solemn procession, the sacred boat in which sleeps the imageof the god on the shoulders of its bearers , throughthe airless corridors , the columned halls, the courtyards, through the triumphal doors, the avenueof sphinxes or colossal rams , the remainder of

which go towards Karnak amid the silent plains.

98


But there is always risk of encountering someodd procession like that I met yesterday almostat the level of the square of the obelisk, a collection of very shabby Louis XIII. musketeers

,

bravely blowing their trumpets and beating the bigdrum with great force, two children in fair wigsand pink tunics riding astride a long-haired pony

,

then side by side a most correct amazon and aHercules of the fair in white vest and red-spangledtights, then a string of Empire postilions mountedon whi te asses, and so grave that at first sight youwould have thought them a company of learnedmen, but it was actually an itinerant circus parading before a gala performance. From time totime the orchestra was silent, the Hercules madehis mountebank’s speech in Ar abic adjuring theinhabitants not to be sparing of their piastres, thenthe music redoubled its strength, and the cavalcadewent prancing on its way.

Heaven knows what their takings would be, andif they would have enough to provide the poordevils with a dirmer. The L ou x or of twenty yearsago was satisfied with the traditional almehs, butthe dances and the mournful chants of thesinging-girls of yester-year no longer suffice theL ou x or of to-day. Year in, year out, at leasttwo thousand tourists visit it, and they have transformed it. Americans and English form

,the

99


largest number, Germans and French aren ot rare,and the other countries of Europe, from gay Portugal to Holy Russia, furnish their contingent. Oncertain days of the week Cook’s boats and those ofother companies deposit their troops of travellers

,

who invade everything, set everything to work, soto speak, purchase or bargain for all the antiquities,real or faked, that they find offered for sale, thendepart as hurriedly as they came— the touristanxious to see everything properly pell-mell withthe good people for whom the expedition to Egyptis a donkey-ride spoiled by the monuments.L ou x or is now a winter place coloni sed fromDecember to the beginn ing of April by scholars ,idle folk, and invalids. They chatter, intrigue,exchange cards , invite each other from hotel tohotel, or from boat to boat, as may be ; they playtennis and bridge , plan picnics in the Valley of theKings or the ruins of Karnak, organise athleticsports and mock races in which the native donkey-boys compete for the magnificent prize of

three shillings ; sometimes, even, a party is madeup for the circus or the theatre. A chancecompany was playing in a tent every eveningtragedies or comedies in Arabic , and its repertoryincluded a Joseph sold by his brethren, a Telemachus imitated from that of Fenelon, a miser whodimly recalled ‘Moliere’s Harpagon, and dramas

100


sort of life, is now nearly always deserted ; thelittle bazaar which gave it animation, and thathad to be traversed to reach Karnak , has closedits shops, and the tradesnien have migrated tothe new quarter of the town. In the norththe large irregu lar square in which the marketwas held every Tuesday has vanished. A hotelbounds it on one side, the police station shutsin the farther side, and the Catholic conventprojects the shadow of its Latin cross overthe site of the wretched hovels where thealmehs used to dance . A picturesque pond ofstagnant water, the last relic of the sacredlake on which the priest of Amon on certaindays set afloat the mystic boat of their god ,lay formerly on the north side, and the womenused to draw water from it morning andevening for household use. Buffaloes bathed init at midday in summer-time, only the snoutand the backbone showing above the surface.Now it is filled up, and a new town hasarisen on its site between the old street of thebazaar and the railway station. Building goeson unceasingly, gardens are being planted , andthe native population is contaminated byEuropean elements now established there

,Greek

hakals, Maltese tavern-keepers , subordinate railway employees, l talian photographers. On thesouth the canal which formerly bordered the

102


gardens of the Hotel Pagnon has lately beenfilled up , and the land thus recovered sold.

An enterprising landlord has built an esplanadethere with frontage on the Nile, with a rowof shops all resembling each other. It formsthe outskirts of L ou x or, and its vu lgarity andugliness is increased by the contrast it offersto the pure lines and severe beauty of theneighbouring temple. In one of the housesdwells a photographer, in another a chemist anddruggist, in a third wily, insinuating Indi ansoffer tourists trashy stuffs and exotic knickknacks at 200 per cent. above their value. Two

stuffed gazelles flank the door of a seller of

antiquities , drinking-booths with vulgar sign s tryto attract customers with the promise of incom

parable whisky. However, at the foot of thesewretched booths the old Nile spreads his broad,pearly waters , and the undulating movement oftheir flow makes them glitter in the sun . Thesandbank of Ourouz ieh li fts its yellow back stillwet from the waters that have scarcely retired,and far behind it the western plain of Thebesrecedes with its verdure to the lowest s10pes ofthe Libyan mountains . The mountains are of aluminous delicate pink, while an almost imperceptible blue colours the edge of the horizonhigh up towards the west a few milky cloudsfloat slowly in the calm whiteness of the sky.

103

A PARLIAMENT or KINGS AT THE TOMBor AMENOTHES 11 .

THE eleven sovereigns discovered by M. Loret atBiban-cl-Molouk in the hypogeum of Amenothes

II. have been awaiting the verdict concerningtheir fate for eighteen months. They modestly fillthe ante-chamber, packed, labelled, numbered, putin ill-polished white wooden cases, like so manypackages ready to start for a distant destination.

We can scarcely imagine the anxiety that thedefunct Pharaohs caused their successor the dayafter the burial. As it was incumbent that thesplendour of their funeral equipment shouldequal or at least approach that of their terrestriallife, they were allotted not only quantities offurniture, stuffs, painted and decorated platesand dishes , but masses of jewels and royalorders , necklaces, bracelets, rings , amulets,weapons of war and of the chase, mostly in goldor silver, inlaid with enamel and precious stones.And these valuables were not delivered to them

104

Kings at the Tomb of Amenfithes II .

at night or furtively : the pieces of jewellery thatwere not appli ed to the corpse during thewrapping of the mummy cloths round it weredi splayed in full daylight to the sight of thecrowd who assisted at the funeral ceremony, so

that every one in the land knew their value andnumber. So much wealth would certainly attractthe robbers who exploited the Theban buryingplaces, and they would soon have carried themoff, had not effi cient measures been taken to

guard against their enterprises . Each tomb hadits guards, who were relieved night and day andnever lost sight of the entrance. Sentryposts were placed all along the valley andenclosed it with an impenetrable barrier for allwho did not know the password, while policemade continuous rounds in the outskirts and

relentlessly challenged any one who ventured toonear.At irregular intervals distinguished persons,appointed by the High Priest of Amon or bythe King, descended on the places unexpectedly.They visited the hall, Opened the sarcophagus,examined the mummy, clothed it with a newshroud or wrapping, if they found the old onesin bad condition, and usually before leavingwrote an account of their proceedings on thewooden cover of the coffin or on the shroud

105

Egypt : Ancient Sites and Modern Sc'

enes

itself. Even if these precautions checked theviolation of the tombs , they did not succeedin entirely preventing it , and the sacrilege thatprofessional robbers did not dare to risk wasoften accomplished by the guards themselves.They were underpaid, ill-fed, and ill- lodged, andonly performed their duty from fear of punishment,and so, as soon as they saw an opportuni ty of

plundering the Pharaohs entrusted to their care,they profited by it either alone or in partnershipwith persons outside. It is not unusual to-dayfor a professional excavator, making an incursioninto forbidden ground, to furnish himself withfood, water, and means of artificial light forseveral days, then to shut himself up in a tomband not to stir until he has finished despoiling it.The predatory spirits of former days did not dodifferently. Once shut up with the dead, theystayed as long as was necessary to rob him of allhe possessed. They unwrapped the mummy atleisure , tore off its necklaces, bracelets, rings,jewels, and at need bared the breast in the hopeof finding some valuable amulet. Sometimesthey left it half-naked and bruised on the ground ;sometimes, to save the guards, their accomplices,from punishment, they put everything tidy again,and left it, outwardly at least, as if it had not

106


Pharaoh in the tomb where his sons laid him !

The sight of the royal mummies of Gizeh rousesin the visitors a curious feeling, partly of attraetion, partly of repulsion. The heroes of classictimes , those of Greece and of Rome, have castoff for ever their mortal coil, but the actors inthe old Egyptian drama, their elders by so manycenturies, are shown to us with all the substanceof the body they inhabited, flesh and bone,figure, hair, the shape of the head, the featuresof the face. That slender, short personage isThoutmosis III. , the conqueror of Syria, andthe most formidable of the Theban Pharaohs ,almost a dwarf in stature. The slim hands thatRamses II . peacefully crosses on his breast, strungthe bow and manipulated the lance for a wholeSpring day under the walls of Qodshou ,

untilhis determined effort brought back victory to

the Egyptian banners. Setoui I . possesses theserene countenance of a priest, a fact that didnot prevent him from fighting boldly when thecall came. Ramses III . , on the other hand,appears like a stout, heavy rustic. History

,

certainly, gains a singular reality when writtenin the very presence of those who made it

,and

yet the advantages for many are more than out

weighed by the horror with which this funerealparade fills them. It is, they say, a want of

108

Kings at the Tomb of Amenfithes II .

respect, not to a royalty so long departed, butto humanity itself, to exhibit these emaciatedbodi es, wrinkled and blackened skins, grimacmg

faces , torn shrouds , and mummy cloths reducedto parcels of rags by the indi scretion of thearchaeologist. They deplore the stroke of fortunethat has opened to us thi s charnel-house of kings,and beg that they may be spared the evilcuriosity of the loafer. It would be a piousaction of the man in command to send thesePharaohs back to the darkness that has so longprotected them, and since the mystery of theirTheban hiding-place is divulged, to assure thema retreat in one of the most solid of the Memphian pyramids. At first the idea seems somewhat attractive, but when we recall to mindthat the pyramids when they were intact werenot able to preserve their masters from desecra

tion, we ask ourselves whether those samepyramids now they are in ruins would offerbetter protection to their precious inmates. Anauthentic king in the antiqui ty market has anincalculable value, and all the excavators in theland would soon enter on a campaign, each totry and unearth his piece of the dynasty. Itwould be necessary to recommence the old sentryrounds and inspections , only to arrive at a similarresult after more or less delay. Ramses II. and

109


Setoui I . would vanish one fine day, to reappearafter a while in some eccentric collection atSydney or San Francisco. Now that we holdthe Pharaohs, they hold us in their turn, and wehave no right to turn them away from our hallsat the risk of losing them, but at the same timewe ought not to exhibit them in a way thatwould wound any one. In the Museum beingbuilt for us is a hall reserved for Mariette’s tombthere as in a sort of chapel they ought to be

placed, by the side and under the protection of

the great scholar who did so much to revive theirnames and spread abroad their memory.Most of the mummies imprisoned in the tomb

of AmenOthes II. are only there by accident ;they will go to Gizeh, near the kings of Deir elBahari. But AmenOthes II. will not depart : hewill remain in his hypogeum, provisionally, and as

a trial, in company with four mutilated and nakedcorpses that are thought to be those of humanvictims sacrificed on the day of his burial. So

that we have two series of di stinct Operations tocarry out . First the hypogeum must be restoredas far as possible to the condition in which itwas at the time of its discovery. Then wemust remove the Pharaohs designed for exile,and convey them across the plain of Thebes tothe banks of the Nile, where they will embark.

1 10


M. Loret entered it wooden statuettes andthe remains of Offerings lay scattered over theground, and on these had fallen four largeboats, between two and three yards long,formerly despoiled by thieves ; a mummy laycrosswise on one Of them, naked and bruised. All

the small Objects have been for some time inthe Museum, but eleven cases remam 1n distressin the right nave, whi ch contains the bodi esof the Pharaohs. The left nave is almostentirely filled by the staircase which leads toa last corridor, formerly strewn with a li tter ofdébris, but empty now. The funeral hall , largeand high , is supported in the middle by tworows of three pillars each. The ceiling is darkblue dotted with yellow stars in close rows. Thejourney of the sun in the region of the hoursof the night is developed in all its wanderingson the walls in three superimposed rows ; inthe middle is the celestial Nile, on which thesacred boat floats without either oars or sails

,

struggling with the monsters of the darkness ;above and below are the banks Of the riverand the mysterious retreats in which the godsof the dead and their Egyptian subjects vegetate.The figures are boldly but summarily drawn, thehieroglyphi cs are hurriedly engraved ; it is likean enormous papyrus stuck on the wall for the

1 12

The Tomb of AmenOthes I I .

guidance of the sovereign, and in fact it is a copyon a large scale of the Book of that which isin the Under World, that served as a guide tothe souls during their peregrinations beyond thetomb. There they may see the faithful re

presentation Of the good or evil creaturesthey have to meet in the domain, theymay become familiar with the characters andattributes as well as the names of the genii , theymay read the formulas which, learnt by heart,will ensure a free passage to those who canrepeat them without error, and can thus be certainOf never being in danger, either on earth or inheaven, and of being able to enjoy the privilegesgranted to properly instructed souls wherevertheir destiny may take them. The ground isdug out at the western extremity , and a fewsteps set closely in between the two last pillarslead to an alcove lower than the rest of the hall.The sarcophagus fills the centre, a fine basin of

sandstone, covered with a red plaster, imitatingthe granite of Syene ; the cover wasby robbers in ancient times

,and pieces of it are

scattered here and there. It still contained itswooden coffin with the mummy, and everywherearound in its near vicini ty li ttle figures of

blackened wood,fragments of glass or stone

vases , dried wreaths and factitious weapons were1 13 H


heaped together in confusion The four cellswhich flank the vault were equally crowded withfurniture and despoiled corpses. In the two on

the left were earthen jars for water, wine, beer,oil, perfumes, mummified joints of meat or

mummified poultry, a quantity of fruit or

cereals, in fact, everything that the Egyptiansoul required for its nourishment. The first ofthe cells on the right offers a strik ing spectacle,three mummies lying side by side among thestatuettes : a young man, a child of twelve tofourteen years Old, a woman still adorned withlong, silky hair, but all with the head or chestsplit Open, like servants sacrificed in order toprovide an escort for the sovereign to the otherworld. The second cell was walled up. It contained the nine kings that the high priests broughtto the tomb when they gave up the attemptto preserve the neighbouring tombs from pillage.The mummies were taken out , but the wallwas rebuilt stone by stone by the order of

M. Loret, and the hieratic legends, written inblack ink by one of the scribes who watchedthe operation about the tenth century B.C., can

easily be seen.

It might almost be said that the OldEgyptian architect foresaw our project, andwished to render its accomplishment easy. Three

1 14

Egypt : Anc ient Sites and Modern Scenes

the visitors , kept at a distance by the railing,would see nothing. It was necessary to raise itso that its cover might be level with the edgeof the sarcophagus. To keep it in that position asupport of suitable height must be placed underit. While waiting for the carpenters to makethe requisite trestles, Mr. Carter piled up someof the blocks whi ch barred the door before theirruption of the ancient thieves into thesarcophagus, and put the coffin on the improvisedsupport. Three hours had been spent in re

instating the sovereign in his dwelling, threeunforgettable hours for those who took part inthe work. The air was thick, warm ,

motionless,heavy with fine dust, and impregnated with an imperceptible Odour of musty aromatics ; a graduallyincreasing sensation Of oppression in breathingand heaviness of head was felt, there was an overwhelming silence, and at the same time that sortof almost religious awe which makes us dislikespeaking, or, if speech is necessary, makes ustalk in whispers. A few pieces of candle placedin a corner vaguely lighted the ante-chamberwhile the workmen were taking the Pharaoh out

of his modern case. With their bare feet andlegs , the upper part of the body naked

,a soft

linen cloth round their loins, the head boxed intheir tawny takieh, like the figures whose

1 16

The Tomb of AmenOthes II .

silhouettes adorn the walls of the Theban tombs,

the Egyptians of to-day seem to be theEgyptians of long ago, resuscitated in order torecommence their funereal duties. The royalcoffin, lifted without a sound, passed into theirhands, and moved Off

’ in the darkness of thestaircase ; it slowly traversed the vault, descendedthe steps, slipped into the sarcophagus, fittedinto it with a dry cracking sound, and for aninstant I thought that time had suddenly gonebackwards, and that at one swoop I had

travelled back thi rty-four centuries to be presentat the burial of AmenOthes.

1 17

THE DEPARTURE OF THE RO! AL MUMMIES

TH E removal of the mummies ought to be doneall at once, in a single day. Some of the coffins ,made of thick planks of close-grained wood, attaina considerable weight and are difficult to handle,requiring eight men at least. As the road to betraversed between the tomb and the river bankis over five miles in length, it will be wise toprovide relays several times during the march.

Then add to the ordinary workmen the chiefs ofthe squads, the guards, a few carpenters in case ofaccident, some water- carriers , and there will be abouta hundred lusty fellows to send into the funerealvalley. There might perhaps have been difficultyin finding them if the workshops of Karnak had notjust then been filled with men accustomed to dealwith blocks of sandstone heavier than the heaviestof our kings. M . L egrain kindly put them atour disposal, and on January 12th, at nine O

’clockin the morning, the picked men of his troopcame to Biban-el-Molouk furnished with the

1 18

The Departure of the Royal Mummies

ropes , levers , rollers , hand-barrows, and all theapparatus required for the work. The barrowsstand in single file along the pathway in readinessfor their load , and form an almost uninterruptedline from the tomb of Ramses VI. to that ofour AmenOthes II. The men, for whom anexpedi tion of this kind, so different from theirordinary employment, is a sort of holiday excursion, remain in groups near the barrows. Someare eating or drinking, others are sleeping in thesun as a provision against the fatigue to come,others, again, hum a tune or tell each other tales,some reckon up the value of the Pharaohs, andcannot imagine guineas enough to arrive at it ;bursts of quarrelling and of laughter, immediatelysuppressed by the overseers , sometimes escape fromtheir ranks. A few hawks, astonished at thenoise, hover above the crowd, uttering shrill cries.A company of tourists, whose evil star has

brought them to the tombs that day, cannotbeli eve either their eyes or their ears, and witha stupefied air contemplate the spectacle of suchunusual activity.

Now, at the orders of Baskharoun , two selectedgangs glide under ground. F or twenty-five yearsBaskharoun has been one of the most usefulservants of the Museum. He is a Copt of purebreed , and his rough features remind us of those

1 19

Egypt : Ancient”

Sites and Modern Scenes

of certain of our Pharaoni c statues. Take off

his blue shirt, his turban , his full trousers , andhis red babouches, and dress him in the stripedwaist-cloth, the close-fitt ing cap, the rush sandals ,and you will Obtain an Egyptian of the bestperiod, one of those, if you like, who helped toseal up AmenOthes in his vault. Although thereis no appearance of it, he is of immense strength,knocking down his man with a blow of the fist,and easily moving the most unlikely weights.Once at Boulaq , when one of the gigantic statuesof Ramses II . while being moved from one roomin the Museum to the other lost its balance on

its rollers, he held it for a whole minute, longenough for the others to come to his assistanceand set it right again. Here it is less bruteforce that is required of him than skill in workingin a confined space, and in moving fragile Objects,as these thousand-years-Old coffins must be, without knocking them against the walls or damagingany of their contents. Mr. Carter points out tohim the mummy that is to go first. With thetips of his fingers, almost without seeming to

touch it, Baskharoun and his companions moveit and lift it above the shaft , carry it along thestaircases and rough-hewn corridors. It is theinverse of its former journey, from darkness tolight, from the gloomy Amentit to the land of

120


each gang of men shouldering their king, thecolumn got into line with Baskharoun at the head,M. L egrain, M. Chauvin, M. Insinger, and the fewEuropeans who had been present bringing up therear to the right and left on donkey-back and horseback. At the second signal it began to move,at first slowly and in silence , then faster as themen, in order to give a rhythm to their march ,intoned the traditional invocation, Sallé an-nabz

'

,

sallé ! Pray to the Prophet, pray Theadvance guard reach the gorge which passes outof the valley into the Ouadién , and march into itto the sound of the singing. It seems as if one of

the most striking pictures of the tombs has takenbodily form and descended from the walls intomodern life. It is the picture that representsthe funeral procession, and more particularly thatpart of the procession containing the furnitureand equipment of the dead man. There werethe variegated chests carried on barrows just likethe cases of our royal mummies. They con

tained the linen, cloths, j ewels, wigs, sacre doils ,and the numberwas in proportion to the wealthof the personage whose funeral they followed.A sort of vague track marks the whole length

of the Ouadi én . It was made by the Egyptiansof the Theban epoch in order to facilitate theapproach of the funeral processions of the

122


Pharaohs to the tombs. Since the burials therehave ceased it has been eff'aced ; and althoughthe Service des Antiquités cleared it of the mostencumbering Obstacles six or seven years ago inpreparing for a probable visit of the Khedive, it isstill covered with chips Of stone and pebblessharp enough to make it painful for those whowalk over it barefoot. Our men, rendered awkward and heavy-footed by the burden they carried

,

stumbled every minute against a sharp piece of

rock or groaned when a splinter Of flint cut intothe skin. The sun burnt their eyes , the woodof the litter rubbed their

"

shoulders , and althoughrelays succeeded each other every five minutes,fatigue and depression soon laid hold of them.

At the end of the first three-quarters of a milethey mutinied , encouraging each other to dropthe litters, and there would have been a generalstampede had not the all-powerful Baskharoun byshouts and gestures, and also by the rod, reducedhis men to obedi ence. He seemed to be everywhere at once, lending his shoulder to the weakwhen the road was rough, giving the malcontentsa shake and forcing them to hum a march tune.Although a Christian, his knowledge of theMusulman saints is astounding. He is the firstto invoke them, and as soon as one had no moreweight with the workmen, he immediately invoked

123


another, perhaps a local saint like the CheikhAbou

’

l-Haggag of L ou x or, or general saints of theMoghrebins, Arabs , Syrians, the beatified of Irakand of Persia. At each fresh name even themost fatigued of the men pulled themselvestogether, stiffened their backs, and walked steadilyon , but after three or four minutes their energyfailed. The voices died away one after the otherand the grumbling was redoubled, and there wereslight attempts at revolt. A little man , hisfigure hidden by the long, variegated cloak Of aSoudanese dervish, was di stingui shed for hi s lazinessand his seditious spirit. If one of us had notbeen continually at his side to watch him , hewould soon have deserted his post and causedhi s companions to become disaffected. Perspiring,panting, groaning, shouting in some way or other,the procession got through the second threequarters of a mile, then the third. At the lastbend the trees came in sight, and knowing, therefore, that the plain was near at hand, the courageand spirits of the men revived. The refrainssounded with greater volume, backs werestraightened, and a wag chaff

‘ed the grumblers :Well , what have you got to complain of

Aren’t you carrying your fathers , the Pharaohs !They have gold with them, much gold, andyou’ll have some of it, God willing. And as

124


our men, and almost immediately the firstof them can be seen above the undulation of

the sand ; Observed from the di stance , throughclouds of dust that half conceal the details, our

band resembles more and more the cortege of anEgyptian funeral. Thus shouting and running, itreached the banks of the Nile, in order to j ointhe baris who carried death toward the west,to its eternal abode. There was the same mixture of joy and woe, the same sounds, the sameinvocations to saints or gods, the same lack of

order, the same jostling. Every moment absurdaccidents disturbed the gravity of the ceremony :a porter would let his load fall, a boat in turningwould strike against another smaller boat and illtreat it. I call to mind the episode in the tombof H armhabi, in whi ch figures the captain of alaunch upset, with the Offerings he was takingon board, by a stroke of the rudder of the funeralcange, and suddenly one of our men slips andfalls just as he is getting into the launch. Thecase, the corner of which he was holding, fallswith him , upsets bearers and rowers , but fortunately stops before falling into the water, andfor a moment, between laughter and oaths, it isthe exact scene that the ancient artist had drawnthree thousand years before. An hour to arrangethe nine mummies on the deck, speeches of thanks ,

126


and, what our heroes appreciate more, a Splendidtip of a piastre , a whole piastre each, and thenthe dahabieh lifts anchor, moves away slowly,and tugged by its feluccas towards the temple ofL ou x or, reaches its accustomed anchorage with its

127

KARNAK AND THE WORKS IN THE H! POST! LE

SLABS Of earth arranged in stories in order to getblocks of stone 60 feet up, derricks like thoseused under the XIXth Dynasty, blocks undertransportation on acacia runn ers and pulling atthe ropes, files Of vigorous fellahs, the bluegalabieh on their backs or the white drawers ontheir loins, the brown tak ieh on their heads : ifRamses II. returned to inspect the works goingon just then at Karnak, he would imagine at firstthat nothing had changed in Egypt Most of

our workmen are wearing nearly the same costume as hi s, and the methods employed by usfor moving the columns upset At the time of thecatastrophe of October 3, 1 899 , are very nearly thesame as those employed by him when buildingthem. He must not, however, look too closelynor try to regulate the work. His orders issuedin excellent Egyptian, at least I like to think so,

would not be understood by our overseers, and128

Karnak and Works in the Hypostyle Hall

M. L egrain, who in grey jacket and mushroomshaped hat was directing the work, would in noway remind him of the late High Priest of

Amonra, Baouk ouni -khonsou , King of the Gods,who presided in his reign over the building atThebes. The derricks are furni shed wi th differential pulleys, of the play of which he wouldunderstand nothing. The ease wi th whi ch thebig architraves are moved on the Decauvilletrucks would appear to him to be magic, and Ido not know how we could explain to him themechani sm of the hydraulic cranes. We hadresolutely excluded costly apparatus and the perfected machinery, the action of which would havebeen too rough for the venerable stones withwhich we had to deal, from our workshops. Butalthough in principle we adopted the ancientmethods , we were not forbidden to combine withthem those modern engines which enabled us towork quick ly and cheaply.

After the first feeling of stupefaction had

passed away and we could regard the di sastercoolly, it was recogni sed that three series of

operations would be necessary to remedy it.First Of all, the five columns which threatenedto fall must be taken down, then the débris of

the eleven columns that had already fallen mustbe removed and put away very carefully so as

129 I


not to confuse the parts. That done, there wouldbe a large empty space in the north aisle of theHypostyle Hall, which would have to be testedyard by yard to ascertain the condition of the

sub-structure, and to decide what was needed tostrengthen it before beginning the restorations.A committee, composed Of archmologists, architeets, and engineers, would be sent to the spotand would conduct the inqui ry at their leisure.When it had sent in its report, the Service desAntiquités would carry out the Operations recommended, and proceed to put up again all thatwas possible of the fallen columns. The Caissede la Dette, on the demand of the EgyptianGovernment, granted a liberal sum of money, andM . L egrain , sent to Karnak in December, 1 899 ,energetically set to work. The aspect of theruins was not encouraging ; the disjointed tambours filled up the north nave, and five shaftsemerged from the irregular heaps, but so bentand out of the perpendicular, that it seemed thatthey too must fall every moment. It was necessary to sink them in order to set up the derricksat the height of the capitals, and M . L egrain

hastened to begin the work. By the end of

December, 1 899 , the abacus of the most dangerous column, a square slab weighing ten tons, hadbeen brought down and sent to the store. The

130


the beginning of April, when everything wasready, M. E hrlich, a German engineer, borrowedfrom the barrage work at Assouan , came andhelped us with his experience. F or a monthand a half there were two independent gangsOf men in the Hypostyle Hall, that of M .

L egrain at the columns, that of M. Ehrlich atthe pylon. When they were dismissed on May 23,1 900, the threatening columns had gone torest in peace in the place reserved for them in

the store, and the pylon, boarded up the wholeof its height, no longer inspired fear.SO many disturbances of the ground and res

torations did not tend to make Karnak beautiful.Those who visited it previously will remember theadmirable view which spread before them when

,

arriving by the river, they approached the templeby the triumphal entry of the west. First camethe avenue of Setoui II . with its rams crowdedone against the other, the huge pylon of thePtolemies, the court of the Ethiopians and its

gigantic column, the half-fallen pylon of theRamessides, and framed between its two towersthe central aisle of the Hypostyle Hall, then themagnificent chaos of granite and sandstone blockswhence the two Obelisks of ThoutmOsis and theQueen H atshopsouitou stood out : no othermonument in the world gives as vivid an impression of strength and immensity.

132


TO-day, the view is cut in the centre by M .

Ehrlich’s scaffolding, four stories of beams thrownacross the central bay. A Decauville railway linewinds under this disconcerting apparatus andpenetrates into the Hall. If we follow it we comeon the left against the shore of dry pebbles toppedwith sacks of sand which completes the efficacyof the woodwork, then we confront the moundof earth heaped up by M . L egrain. Tourists,knowing little about the accident, have assuredme wi th conviction that the Hall was more beautiful formerly and that it would have been betternot to touch it. We console them by telling themthat all this mess is only transitory, and that if theywi ll come back in four or five years we shall havefinished the restorations to their satisfaction. Theydepart in bad humour

,and I cannot help sympath

ising with their annoyance. It is always a pity totouch a monument

,even when necessity compels,

but could we have acted differently I have oftentold tourists that if they knew the precarious stateof the walls underneath which they stood forhours in admiration

,they would not dare to enter

the temple.The foundations have given way without showing any appearance of such a state of things , theblocks of stone are only kept in place by a miracleof equilibrium

,the architraves, which are broken in

133


two or three places, are literally suspended at30 to 60 feet above the earth. If a sparrowalights on them we fear they will not bear theweight, and will end by falling. Slight occurrencesprove every moment how incapable the apparentlymost solid of the buildings and tombs are of resistance. A month ago one of the pillars of theante-chamber in the tomb of Setoui I . suddenlybroke. A fortnight after one of the sandstonebeams which cover the right lateral sanctuary of

the Temple of Khonsou literally melted away afterthirty-six hours’ rain, and a week later a portionof the ceiling Of the Hypostyle Hall of Edfou fellwith a great crash. At the moment there was noone underneath, and a panel reduced to powderwas all the damage ; two hours earlier or later,tourists would have been visiting the place, and itis impossible to say what disasters we should havehad to deplore. It is therefore high time to takethe Egyptian temples in hand one after the other,and wi thout doing anything that might alter theircharacter, to undertake works that may preservethem for some centuries to the admiration of theworld.

A s soon as we approach the door, the ear isstruck by a loud noise ; the tunes to whi ch Egyptianworkmen adapt their slightest movements are soonrecognised. First there is a slow bass , the chant of

134


carry away the rubbish. Each group is like a freelance in the regular companies of our royal armies .The navvy fills the basket with two or three strokesof his pickaxe, and as soon as a squad has its loadcomplete, it goes, runn ing and singing, to emptyit into a Decauville wagon in waiting outside.Meanwhile the second squad is loaded in its turn,and while it is running to the wagon it meets theother returning. This to-and-fro movement, oncebegun, is only interrupted at noon for an hour, justtime to eat and to take a brief rest, and then itbegins again and continues till sunset. Twentyyears ago girls were found in these squads, but nowthey remain at home and we have only boys.They range in age from eleven to five, but all areequally skilful and strong, all dowered with a shrillsoprano voice and a throat that never suffers fromhoarseness. The refrains they bawl out are generally unremarkable, but whenever a distinguishedvisitor or some high Official presents himself, oneof them improvises a new couplet for the occasion,and the rest repeat it in chorus. On my first visitto Egypt the boys who were working at L ou x or,and who saw me arrive at the workshop always ina jacket with big pockets and under a large greenumbrella, composed a couplet in my honour whichthey rattled out without fatigue for two mortalhours “B ucket-nu, taht cch-chamsiek

” Our pacha is136

Karnak andWorks in the Hypostyle Hall

under the umbrella B ucket-72a abou g abei’

n

(“Our pacha is the father with two Thosechildren are now men, but the tradition remains ,and whenever I appear at Karnak the childrenof to-day intone the chant of former years.Looking at the disproportion between thebaskets, which hold at most 6 lbs. or 8 lbs. of earth,and the mound whi ch has to be cleared away, weare tempted to pity our fate and to think we shallnever be finished . But when we come back dayafter day and see the results , we are astonished atthe rapidity with which the clearing away has pro

gressed. It is a veritable ant-hill , the accomplishment of a colossal work by the infinitely little. Infive m inutes two wagons are full, and depart in allspeed in the direction of the Oriental door, wherewe are filling up the breaches made by the peasantsin the girdle wall of the ancient city. Before theyhave time to get back others are setting out torejoin them there is all day a perpetual rolling of

wagons. The toy baskets of the children spreadcubic yards of earth in the Hypostyle

Hall during the campaign of 1 900. They will haveremoved the same quantity when the campaign of1 901 is ended .

The second gang consists only of men, aboutten porters brought from Cairo, and about thirtystrong fellows recruited at L ou x or and Karnak.

137


It works under the orders of Baskharoun Awad,who helped us so admirably last year to removethe kings from the tomb of AmenOthes, I and whohas moved more stones than any one in theMuseum. Each of the columns consists Of thirteentambours divided in two segments of equaldimensions, viz. , twenty-six segments of 5 tons , plusan abacus of 1 0 tons , the whole column weighing1 40 tons ; the intact architraves weighing from 35

to 40 tons. Reckoning that we have sixteenwhole columns and eight fragments of columnsto raise before our work is done, it is easy tounderstand that if we wished to give up theground in time to be of use to the Commissionentrusted to examine the state of the foundations,we could not afford to lose a minute. Here againchance visitors imagine that the effort does notcorrespond with the magni tude of the task. Theysee about twenty men stirring around a very heavyblock. Some are slightly liftn it with woodenlevers , others place runn ers beneath it, and whenthey have slipped in the number required

,they

yoke themselves to the ropes and pull it along incadence. The mass advances a few inches

,knocks

up against a neighbouring fragment,nearly falls ;

the men immediately put it right, and begin to

1 Cf. Chap ter XI I .138


anything,and get through all dangers without

serious accident. Two or three grazed hands, twoor three sprained feet make up all the casualties ina '

six months’ campaign. Much of the skill acquiredby their ancestors in the service of the Pharaohshas remained in their blood.

It was necessary to store the pieces withoutdanger of confusing them, and M . L egrain

admirably succeeded in so doing . To the northof the Hypostyle Hall , between the wall of

Setoui I. and the temple of Phtah, was a flatspace, and it was there that he made his depOt .The position Of each column was indicated inlength on the ground, and the position of eachtambour for each column. A number of circles ofsmall stones were made in advance and representedthe courses of masonry. As soon as a piece wasdetached it was marked with the number of thecolumn and with that of the course of masonry ofwhich it formed a part in that column, then it wasenclosed in the corresponding circle of stones. Aplan continually filled in showed the progressmade from day to day. Only two or three wholecolumns were found, and they were left on thespot to await the moment of being set up again.

The others were so terribly destroyed by their fallthat the pieces are mingled in inextricable confusion. The workmen attack the stones as they

140


come, and take them out ; then M. L egrain has todecide to which column they belong and to fasteneach in its respective place. Where they areintact or only slightly injured, there is but littlehesitation and the difficulty is soon overcome.Unfortunately many of them, those that hadalready suffered from age or weather, were brokenin falling, some even had crumbled into smallpieces and only shapeless chips and lumpsremained. Still it was possible to define the placethat most of the débris held, at least those thatpossessed any fragment of painting or of

hieroglyphics. We had to discuss the best meansto take, whether to readjust them and join themsufficiently safely with cement to form a solid masscapable of supporting the upper courses withoutbeing crushed by the weight, or if it would benecessary to substitute blocks of new stone for thedamaged ones. Sufficient for the day is the evilthereof, and when the business of setting up thecolumns has to be taken in hand , we shall try toact in each particular case in the best possible waythat circumstances permit. At the moment it wasnecessary to get rid of the mass of ruins that filledthe Hypostyle Hall, to classify and cO-ordinate thefragments

, to piece together the dislocated units ina safe spot, and to arrange them so that we mighteasily be able to lay our hands on them when

141


required . This is more than half accomplished,and I hOpe that in ten weeks from now I M.

L egrain will be able to give over the ground quitecleared to the examination of the Commission.

1 Written in January, 1901 .

142


for about 1 50 feet along a street which , startingfrom the postem gate, went to join obliquely thenorth-east corner of the Hypostyle Hall. Thegateway was of Gebelein sandstone ; it stood upstraight, surmounted by a bent gorgerin, and thesculptured and painted uprights stood out stronglyon the whitewash with whi ch the brick wall wascovered. It led through a series of similar gateways and small courts to a portal supported byfour columns with highly decorated capitals,behind whi ch stood the pylon, a miniature pylon,hardly 24 or 27 feet high, with a rectangularopening and two towers . Beyond the pylon wasa very small open-air court, then a pronaos withtwo columns, a Hypostyle Hall, and lastly thesanctuary flank ed by two chapels for the membersof the local triad it is, in fact, a complete temple.All the parts are covered with sacred pictures andinscriptions, many of which still preserve theirbrightness of colour. The exterior of the aisleshad received no official decoration, but the piety ofthe inhabitants had sketched sacred scenes or

engraved pious formulas on it.There

,besides Phtah, his wife, Sokhit , the

goddess with the head of a lioness, was worshipped

,and their son Imouthes, the patron

of scholars, as well as an old Theban scribe of

the XVI I I th Dynasty, AmenOthes, son of

144

Temple of the Theban Phtah at Karnak

Pahapi, whom the people almost canoni sed forhis fame in magic.

I After accomplishing theirduties in the temple, the most fervent of thefaithful

,those at least who had obtained some

Special favour by the power of Phtah or by theintercession of his companions, either themselvesengraved or paid some one to engrave for thema has-relief on the outer walls of the sanctuary,which showed them in prayer before one or otherof the divinities. Some of these cw voto are inquite good style and do honour to the sculptorsof the Graeco-Roman period . The greater number,however, make no claim to be art and are the workof the dedi cator himself, figures of gods out of theperpendicular, sgraffite in awkward hieroglyphics,portraits of worshippers who resemble in a mostunfortunate way the figures chalked by street boysOn old walls in European cities . Doubtless Phtahand Imouthes would forgive the poverty of ex ecu

tion in cons ideration for the feeling which promptedit, and, in fact, faith was strong among the poorfolk who inhabited the ruined Thebes during theimperial epoch. Amonra certainly still monopolisedmost of their veneration, and he remained themaster-god of their city. But his temple had beenhalf destroyed by the mercenaries of Ptolemy

1 The strange history of this personage is briefly relatedin New L igh t on Ancien t Egyp t ,” chap. xxv.

145


Lathyrus at the beginning of the first century B.C.,

during the revolt of Upper Egypt in which Thebesdefini tely succumbed, and was not in a condition toserve for regular worship. Its courts, its hypostyles,its limestone and granite chambers, its corridors,werealmost as much encumbered with dirt and rubbishas they are now. The secondary temples sufli cedfor the needs of the moment, and they alone werefrequented by what remained of the population.Phtah seems to have been one Of those thatprospered under the first Emperors , but he wassoon after abandoned. The roofs ofhis temple fellin, its portal and monumental gateways gave way,sand and bricks fallen from the neighbouring wallfilled up its courts . At the moment when paganismended it was in such a bad state that the Christiansdisdained to establish themselves there and transform it into a church.

To that circumstance we owe the possession of itshas-reliefs and inscriptions almost intact. Certainlyhere and there the personages lack limbs, and theinscriptions are mere fragments of lines, but thereis no absolute defacement of the inscriptions norsystematic destruction of the figures, and thehistory of the building can still be read on thewalls. The kings of the K I th andXI I th Dynastiesare actually the most ancient of the Pharaohs ofwhom we have records, but they did not found it ;

146


a century, and then persecution raged againstAmon. The fanatic Khouniatonou pursued himeven unto the house of Phtah, erased his nameand his emblems wherever he found them , andthere, as elsewhere, did so much damage that thehalls remained as though dishonoured. When theheresy disappeared, Setoui I . touched up thedamaged pictures and inscriptions aft er a fashion,Phtah took up again the routine Of his

monotonous life, and continued it for eight or ninecenturies without any notable occurrences. Buthis good fortune decreased with that of Thebes,his property was seized during the civil wars or theAssyrian and Persian invasions, his revenues werereduced to nothing, his walls fell into decay, and hewas at the last extremity when the Ptolemies tookupon themselves the charge of settling the destiniesof Egypt. Their rule was favourable to him, forthey rebuilt his pylon, his portal, his monumentalgateways, the brick rampart which formed theboundary of his domain. They certainly had aright to inscribe their titles on what they restored,but by a strange derogation from Egyptiancustom they only partly profited by it. If weexamine the pictures which are introduced on theexterior of the bay of the pylon, we read theprotocol of ThoutmOsis III . and that of Setouithe first would have built the monument, the

148


second would have restored it—and at the sametime easily recogni se in these works of a so-calledPharaonic epoch the well-characterised peculiaritiesofPtolemaic art. We see the soft round prominence

,

the slightly flabby muscling, the thick contours,and the neutral and Often stupid expression of theface, the loose appearance of the body whi ch isusual from the beginning of the Said renaissance

,

and the hieroglyphics themselves , carefully as theyare cut, in no way resemble those of the XVI I I thor XIXth Dynasty. Only an artist living underthe Ptolemies could have executed those sculptures, and yet he attributes them to sovereignsmuch more ancient. What reason had those whocommissioned his labour so greatly to contravenetraditional etiquette and to make the pylon theywere setting up pass for the work of a Pharaoh ofthe XV I I I th Dynasty !

From the day of his accession the first Ptolemyset his mind on winning the affection of his peopleby his profound respect for the native religions,and his successors continued to imitate him.

Wherever the Persians had caused ruins theyrepaired them to the best of their ability , and totheir political piety the cities of the Said Owe thepossession of their magnificent temples, Denderah,Edfou, Ombos, Philae. Thebes naturally attractedtheir attention, and not only such buildings as

149


L ou x or or Karnak Offered ; their solicitude didnot neglect the chapels scattered through thetown, and that of Phtah profited like the others.The sacerdotal colleges, encouraged by theirliberality, at the same time as they repaired thewalls attempted to restore the ancient fortune ofthe gods, but there they met with serious difficulties.Not only had the sacred property been seizedby kings or private individuals, but the acts ofdonation and the title-deeds whi ch would have madeit possible to claim restitution were destroyed or

lost. The clergy set to work above all to reconstitute their archives. They collected whereverthey could documents which seemed to them to

commemorate some gift Of a Pharaoh, and whenauthentic documents were not forthcoming theydid not hesitate to manufacture apocryphal ones.Criticism Of inscriptions was not then highlydeveloped, and the people accepted with entirecredulity all the fables told them. We see hereand there forged archaic inscriptions, in whichPharaohs of the most diverse Dynasties , those evenof the I st or fi nd, related how they had assignedsuch or such lands, such or such revenues, yearlypensions of bread and perfumes, oxen, stuffs , wine,precious metals to such or such a local god whohad saved the whole country from famine or

plague, who had put an end to a dangerous war by150


worked for the greatest glory of Phtah , the uprights of the gateway exhibited their portrait fromthe very threshold and proved that they spoke thetruth. It is most probable that the clergy inventednothing on that head. They had only to restorea decoration that had really dated from theTheban age, but which was now destroyed, orwhich had at least become too indistinct to proveanything with certainty. The forgery here does notconsist in entirely fabricating a document, but inreplacing the primitive work by a copy with theidea of giving it the appearance of the originalitself.In clearing out the chamber which Opens on

the right of the sanctuary, there were picked out

from the heaps of sand fragments of black granite,evidently the remains of two or three idolsdestroyed by the early Christians a lioness’s headstill intact proved that there had once been therea grim Sokhit , Phtah

’

s beloved, the one of hi swives whom he most Often associated with himselfin hi s worship. M . L egrain patiently sorted thefragments, and succeeded in piecing togethera complete image of the goddess. She reallylooks most attractive ; and although no king

’s nameis to be found on her, she doubtless belongs tothe XV I I I th Dynasty, and goes back to theAmenfithes III. who dedicated several hundred

1 52


statues to Sokhi t in the sanctuary Of Maout alone.Replaced in her old position at the back of thehall, she produces a deep impression on visitors,who, entering the doorway without suspecting herpresence, suddenly fall under t he place of

her face, according to the phrase usual in suchcases in the religious inscriptions. The nativeshave a terror of her whi ch daily increases. Theydeclare that she stares at them from the emptysockets of her eyes when they enter her chamberand when they leave it : she notes their dress,their gait, their features, their voice, in order torecognise them later at need. They will soondeclare that she does not remam m her placeduring the night, but secretly leaves it and prowlsabout the ruins seeking some one to devour.Until now all the monuments , statues, naos,stelae, sarcophagi, mummies, unearthed in thecourse of the excavations , have been sent to theMuseum without delay, provided that their weightor dimensions did not fix them immovable to thespot. The people Of Karnak impatiently await thehour when we shall rid them of this di squietingperson, but I fear that hour will not strike for themas soon as they wish. Indeed, I believe that it istime to drop the custom, and I hope we shall beable to leave on the spot, if not all the objectsfound , at least those which can be saved from the

1 53


rapacity of the natives or from the covetousnessof foreign collectors. AmenOthes II. furni shed anexample last year I when we refused to move himfrom Biban-el-Molouk . Sokhit shall not leave thechapel assigned to her in the harem of her divinehusband, and if my attempt succeeds, Khonsouwill not desert Thebes for Gizeh. The templeswill be gradually repopulated, and will becomewhat they were formerly, the house in which thegods dwelt, visible to mortal eyes in all theirmany and various forms.2

1 Cf. ChaptersX. , XI ., and XI I .

I was not ab le to carry out my inten t ions. The nextyear (1902) men of the Cheikh Abd-el-Gournah got into thetomb of AmenOthes II . , robbed the royal mummy, stolethe boat mentioned in Chapters XI . and XI I . , and althoughthe men were known , they were not punished. BothAmenOthes II . and the Sokhit remained in their places, butall fresh monuments not sufficiently protected by their siz eand weight were, in accordance with the old custom,

henceforward dispatched to theMuseum.

154


consists in reciting by heart a few chapters of theKoran, and in praying every day at the appointedtimes with the gestures belongmg to the ritual.He is charitable towards those poorer than himselfand very hospitable. The better we come to knowhim , the more we realise that he belongs to a goodrace, and the more pleasure we have in talkingto him, but he is very reserved with strangers ,especially with Europeans. He fears that theEuropean will laugh at his ideas or will use againsthim words he may have let fall when of hi s guard,and I must confess that his mistrust is only toooften justified. But we tame him when we Spenddays in his company, occupied in directing hiswork, and persuade him that we have no evilintentions towards him . Once he begins to talk

,

his tongue runs away with him, and there is notale that he will not tell you as long as you willlisten to his chatter.All the:ancient sites are more or less bewitched,but Karnak with its magnificent monuments ispre-eminently the enchanted land— cl—ardh mar.s'oud. A tradition, transmitted from father toson through two changes of religion, keeps aliveamong them the memory of the treasures containedin the sanctuary Of Amon at the period of Theban

greatness and even later. Gold shone on the woodof the doors, on the bronze of the ornaments and

156

Karnak : Legends and Superst itions

statues, on the limestone of the walls or on thegranite of the Obelisks , without mentioning thegold ingots and vases kept in the sacristies.The inscription engraved on the pedestal of theObelisk set up by the Queen H atshopsouitou

assures us that it was gilded from top to bottom,

and describes new generations asking howsufficient metal could ever have been procuredfor the purpose : “ I do not know, I do not knowby what means it was possible to do this thing , amountain of gold, the summit of which reaches toheaven.

” The gilding has long since been rubbedoff, and no trace of it is to be distinguished, butthe fellah continues to believe that it is there. Ifany one does not see it, it is because the old

magicians, those incomparable men of learning,have cast a charm on it which hides it from alleyes. Any one clever enough to exorcise the spellwould suddenly see the Obelisk sparkle in the sunas at the time of its first freshness. And it is notthe only one of the monuments of Karnak whichthus deceives the vi sitor. Most of the blocks ofgranite, alabaster, or even of limestone scatteredover the ground, are also under a spell. More thanone guard has taken m e mysteriously to one of

them lying half-buried in an isolated pit, and aftermaking sure that no one was spying on us, has

knocked it with his stick and told me to notice the1 57


metallic sound that followed : the magician hasveiled the brightness of the gold, but was notclever enough to di sgui se the sound. If the stonewas broken to the recital of an appropriate spell,the gold would immediately reappear. Not ayear passes but a Moghrebin , a man from Tunis orAlgiers or Morocco, comes to try his luck. Hearrives on the day and at the hour prescribed by thebooks of magic, draws the circle, burns the in cense,mutters the invocations. The fellahs declare thatmany fail , but that those who succeed enrichthemselves for the rest of their life. Geniinaturally watch over these treasures, and sometimes defend them or distribute them to individualswhom their caprice delights to honour. One of

them, who is a negro of the name of Morgani,inhabits the northern doorway of the temple of

Montou , which for that reason we call B ab-cl—abd,

the Door of the Slave. About twenty years agothe captain of a boat laden wi th lentils and beanswas obliged through stress

i

of weather to castanchor Opposite Karnak. As he lay alongside abeggar came up and asked first for an ardebl of

lentils, then for half the quantity, then for aquarter ; he was allowed at last to take away asmuch as he could hold in the hollow of his hands.The beggar thanked the captain and gave him a

Abou t 330 lbs.158

Karnak : Legends and Superstitions

written paper, advising him to go by night to theDoor of the Slave. If he knocked three timeswith his finger on a certain stone, a negro wouldcome out , to whom he was to say : Oh, Morgani,look at this paper,

” and he was to wait. The nightbefore his departure the captain repaired to theDoor of the Slave, knocked three times, andshowed the paper. The negro immediately ledhim into an inner chamber, gave him gold inthe same quantity as he had given the beggarlentils , and then added : If you had given anardeb you would have received an ardeb departyour ways and profit by the lesson, and henceforth be more generous.”

All the genii are not equally amiable. The monumental doorway of the south, that which closes theavenue of Rams and precedes the Temple of Khonsou , serves as dwelling -place for a Zak/Lia , that is, adwarf with a big head and crooked legs , adorned.

with a formidable beard. He walks abroad in themists of the evemng, and takes the air in the surrounding places. I f a passing stranger laughs athis grotesque appearance, he jumps at his throat andstrangles him. The banks of the crescent-shapedpond that has taken the place of the old sacred lakeof the Temple of Maout have a very bad reputation, and the natives do not like to venture thereafter sunset. They would run the risk of meeting

159


an enormous cat who walk s there on moonlessnights and whose eyes shine in the darkness lik etwo balls Of fire. She fascinates those on whomshe fix es her eyes , and drags them into the waterand they are drowned. The cat ceases herprowling at full moon, and a woman, scantilyclothed in a short clinging white tunic, takes herplace. She is very beautiful, it is said, and solicitsyoung men with her sweet voice, but as soon asshe has seduced one of them she smothers him.

There is no mystery about the origin of thesesupernatural beings. The ldklu

'

a of the Temple ofKhonsou is the Bisou of the old Egyptians, thedwarf who came from the Pouani t , and who waslaughed at by all on account of hi s enormoushead, hairy cheeks, crooked legs, and headdress of feathers. The cat and the white lady aretwo different forms of Maout, one animal, theother purely human. Here, as in many otherlands, the gods are neither dead nor in exile ; theyare still in their hereditary domains , but they havechanged their nature and have become demons.Sometimes they celebrate the ancient rites with thepomp of a former day. More than one fellah keptout late has seen a mysterious cortege passing bynight from Karnak to L ou x or. A troop of horsemen heads the procession, then comes a Sultanmounted on a white horse and surrounded by foot

160


dare enter it, but seeing the stake to which therope was tied, and by the side of the stake themallet used to knock it into the ground , he seizedthem and ran home as fast as his legs could carryhim . Once there he declared that the two Objectswere Of fine gold ; he sold them, and that was theorigin of hi s fortune. The story is well knownand was evidently in spired by the remembrance ofthe ancient Theban fetes. The nocturnal tour isthe solemn procession of Amon. The king led thegod in triumph from his temple Of Karnak to histemple of L ou x or, and then brought him back.

The golden dahabieh is the ark of Amon, thepicture of which appears on the walls a hundredtimes , with its cabin , furniture, pilot, and crew ofdivini ties. On certain days and nights it was senton to the lake to perform mysteries. It turnedabout for some hours before the eyes of the faithful, then was lifted on to the shoulders of thepriests , and returned to the depths Of thesanctuary.

The stories of the Arabian Nights havemade us familiar with dj z

'

nns, and they swarmat Karnak and in its environs. From time totime a light appears on the summit of the pylonof the Ptolemies, and then , after becomingso brilliant that the eye cannot endure it, itis suddenly extinguished : it is the dj z

'

nns mani162

Karnak : Legends and Superst itions

festing them selves . It is unwise to speak of

them even in the daytime, for you never knowif they are not invisible near the talkers andmay be offended by the conversation. They fallin love with pretty girls , and pursue them intocorners , while the the female dj z

'

nns, fallin love with handsome , vigorous young men.

When a young man who is both well off and ingood health does not marry , he is accused of havinga dj inm

'

a/L for wife, and all sorts of evil rumoursabout him are spread abroad. I was told of

one of the most notable inhabitants of L ou x or

who long lived with a q’

j z'

nniah. She gave himrecipes for fattening and taking care of the cattle,she indicated the hiding-places of antiquities or

treasure, she gave him such good counsel in hisbusiness affairs that he quickly grew very wealthy.

When he was just touching his fortieth year hetired of this illegitimate union and sought tomarry, but all the girls whom he courted fell illand died one after the other. At length hemanaged to get engaged to a girl of a Cairo family,and the prevented by di stance, did notsucceed in hindering the marriage. She revengedherself, nevertheless ; for no sooner did the youngwife arrive at L ou x or than she was attacked bydiseases that robbed her of her good looks, and herthree children were born weak and sickly. The

163


male dj mns are less ferocious and more easilypardon infidelit ies. They are sometimes confu sedwith spirits of an inferior sort, the affi tes, whodelight in playing all sorts of tricks like ourgoblins, but who are generally not at all terrible.They unceremoniously enter European dwellings

,

and a house belonging to the Service des Antiquites is one Of their favourite resorts. It is truethat it was built on the site of a disused burialground, and that some of the afm

‘

tes who assemblethere are merely ghosts of the departed . In thedaytime nothing unusual happens. Once onlyM . Chauvin’s native cook—M . Chauvin is theemployee Of the Service who lives there— heard anoise like the rattling of Old iron in his kitchen

,

and ran away in a great fri ght, exclaiming that adevil had got among his saucepans. At night it isunwise to walk about the house without a light ;there is risk of knocking up against a phantomtaking a stroll and of receiving a hard blow. LastJanuary M . Chauvin, wishing to rise early in orderto start at dawn on a hunting expedition, told hisservant Kama! not to go back to Karnak, but tosleep in a room next his Office. Kamal, fearing tobe alone

,invited a friend to keep him company,

and the precaution was not unnecessary. Scarcelywere they in bed when a little dog entered theroom

,they could not tell how, and after smelling

164


roof of one of the lateral halls of the sanctuaryfell from a height of 30 feet to 36 feet.Three Of them were killed on the spot ; thefourth jumped up again , unhurt, and ran Off

as fast as his legs could carry him to hisvillage of Bayadiyeh, at the south Of L ou x or.

The next day one of the Copts who lived in anadjoining house told me that hi s wife had beenawakened in the middle of the night by criesthat had no human sound. She opened herwindow a little

,and by the light of the moon

saw the three men who had been k illed the daybefore walking in the ruins, shouting andwaving their arms. I had the curiosity to

inquire about them this year, and learned thatthey were still occasionally seen or heard. Iwas even shown yellowish stains in the hallwhere they were killed , said to be the marks of

their blood , but I could not discover if theywere dangerous

, or if any misdeeds were laid tothem other than disturbing the rest of the riverside dwellers on moonlight nights. Afrz

‘

tes of

that sort abound everywhere , and some of themhave a European origin. About half-way be

tween L ou x or and Karnak, you skirt on theleft three enclosures, scantily planted with trees.They are three cemeteries— Protestant, Catholic,and Coptic— placed by the roadside in order to

166

Karnak : Legends and Superst ltlons

remind tourists that men die even in Egypt,

and that a journey Of pleasure may suddenlyend in a grave in a foreign land.

One of the first guests of the Protestantcemetery was, it is said, an Engli sh soldier

,

who, coming down from Ouady-Halfah, where

he was in garrison , bathed in the river atL ou x or and was drowned. It is his customto wander among the tombs in the enclosure

,

but he confin es him self to darting fiery glancesat the living persons who traverse the road.

Sometimes, however, he comes out and walksbehind them, and accompanies them to thefirst houses Of Karnak or to the little bridgenear Karnak . Another English soldier

,who

perished in climbing the Great Pyram id about1 882, haunts the plain of Gizeh at sunset, andI myself heard a French mechanic spoken of

at Rodah in 1 884 who, caught in somemachin ery ten or twelve years before, returnedat intervals to see if all was going well at thefactory. Foreign spectres have not yet invadedKarnak, but the supernatural beings known toour workmen there are of very ancient nativeorigin. The Thebans of the XXth Dynastymust have been frightened by tales resemblingthose that their descendants have told me, and thusthe beliefs of Pharaonic Egypt are for the most partperpetuated in the superstitions of modern Egypt.

167

FISHING FOR STATUES IN THE TEMPLEOF KARNAK

F OR a year and eight months we have beenfishing for statues in the Temple of Karnak.

We began about the end of‘

November, 1 903,

and have continued uninterruptedly until now,I

except for the usual holiday seasons and thepauses needed by the workmen. Seven hundredstone monuments have already come out ofthe water, and we are not yet at the end.

Twice luck seemed to desert us , and twice,after days of di stress , it smiled on us again.

Statues whole and in fragments , busts , mutilatedtrunks, headless bodies , bodiless heads , vases onwhich there were only broken feet, Pharaohsenthroned , queens standing upright, priests OfAmon and individuals holding naos, or imagesof gods, in front of them, crouching, kneeling,sitting, found in all the attitudes Of their

1 February, 1 905.

168

Fishing for Statues in Karnak

profession or rank, in limestone, in black or pinkgranite, in yellow or red sandstone, in greenbrecc1a, m schist, in alabaster— indeed, a wholepopulation returns to the upper air and demandsshelter in the galleries of the Museum .

During the four years that the Service desAntiquités has devoted to work at Karnak, Imade it a law to myself never to abandon anypart until it had been thoroughly exploredwalls , flooring, subs tructures— and until all theremains of earlier monuments that could befound there were brought out. It is due to thisstrictness of mine that M . L egrain discoveredseveral masterpieces , the statue Of the godKhonsou , the group of ThoutmOsis IV. and ofhis mother, Tia , the colossus of a SanouosritIV. who flourished under the X I I I th Dynasty,the triumphal has-reliefs of AmenOthes II. on

his return from Syria,after the raids of his

first expedition. We are now carrying onour campaign in the avenue that extends tothe south of the Hypostyle Hall on thetwo sides of the seventh pylon, where boringsformerly taken revealed to me the presenceof a number of stelae and statues. It produced during the last months of 1 902 aboutfifteen colossi, which formerly stood right andleft along the southern facade of the pylon ,

1 69

Egyp t : Ancient Sites and Modern Scenes

and then lay dismembered under the rubbish.

Now they have been pieced together again,and stand almost in their ancient places. Lateron, during the winter of 1 902—3, we discovereda large number of limestone blocks, ornamentedwith marvellous has-reliefs, some coming froma chapel of Sanouosrit I but the greaternumber from an edifice built by AmenOthes I .about the beginn ing of the XVI I I th Dynasty.

ThoutmOsis III . had used them as waste materialto bank up the pavement of the court whileerecting on so vast a scale the propylzea

of the temple of Amon. The débris of

Sanouosrit I . are still very scanty and we shallprobably have to treat them as fragments forthe Museum, and send them to Cairo. Thoseof AmenOthes I . are so many that I decidedto reconstruct the building to which theybelonged. M . L egrain discovered the plan andbrought together the scattered elements underthe happy inspiration of a German architect,M. Wefels, who had come to Egypt for hishealth, but we have not yet chosen the site.When we have selected it, it will be an affairof only a few months

,and Vi sitors to Karnak

will be able to admire in the light ofday a monument buried by Thou tmOsis III .immediately after his first Victories , and which

170

Egypt : Ancient S ites and Modern Scenes

but some stood out as of no ordinary makea group Of a prince and his wife seatedside by side with their daughter standing againsttheir legs ; two large heads in pink granite of

Sanouosrit I . , of haughty mien and vigorousstyle ; a sovereign pontiff of Amon in speckledblack and white granite, crouching lumpishly,his arms crossed, his thighs up to his ears ; astatuette in a white stone tinted with pale green ,that the natives immediately called emerald root.About the end of December there were fortyintact statues in the house of the Service, thefragments of about twenty were awaiting in theworkshop a stroke Of fortune that might restorethe portions they lacked, and the extractionof them went on without any notable pause .Stone predominated, but oxidised bronze beganto abound , uraei incrusted with variegatedenamels, heads or points of sceptres, the mountsof gigantic eyes fallen from some colossus , bladesOf tools, little figures of Osiris-mummy, severalOf them of admirable finish. The farther wewent the more evident it became that it wasnot chance alone that had brought so manydissimilar objects to this place. They musthave been accumulated there on purpose, andserved perhaps to conceal a more valuabledeposit

,sacred plates and cups or gold and

172


silver statues buried by the Theban priests introublous times . It was natural that M . L egrain

should have the idea that there was treasure,

the treasure of Amon , buried there under thestone and in the mud, and although I couldnot agree with him, his opinion sustained himthrough the heavy fatigues of his long campaign

,

and still possesses his mind.

Meanwhile the rumour spread that we weredoing wonders at Karnak, and , assisted by theOriental imagination , the monuments were notemerging by tens or even by hundreds , but bythousands, and they were of a colossal size ; thevillagers had even weighed them and reckoned thevalue in current coin Of the masses of gold of

which M . L egrain predicted the imminent arrival .Tourists , who are numerous at L ou x or in thewinter months, came in crowds every day to theenvirons of the pylon , and if they were quiet andorderly were willingly admitted to the spectacle.Fishing for statues actually went on under theireyes. The trench dug in the north-west corner ofthe courtyard against the wall of the HypostyleHall was dry in parts , and in others scattered overwith pools . The workshop was set up in thelargest of them , which was the last on the southside. Every morning twenty men, using Old

petroleum cans for pails, drew Off the 3 or 4

173


feet Of muddy water which filled it and stored it ina reservoir situated a little above, and separatedfrom the large pool by a thin partition of earth.

When only mud of a certain consistency was left,they attacked it with the pickaxe, stopping nowand then to feel gently with their feet till resistanceunder their heel seemed to point to the existenceof a block. Then they dropped the pickaxe andused their hands, for fear that an awkward blow of

the instrument might cause irreparable damage.When the contour and dimensions of the objectwere in some degree defined, they raised it as wellas they could by means of wooden levers , and triedto drag it to the edge by a series Of slow jOlts. Ifthis had no effect, or the weight was/too great,they wound a rope several times round it, andharnessing themselves to its end, three or four ofthem pulled with caution. That was the particularmoment of the operation that tourists, warned bytheir dragomans, impatiently awaited. The mudwas tenacious

,the rope tended to slip and escape,

the bottom Of the pool offered insufficient support.But most Often after a long inertia the piecesuddenly and most unexpectedly detached itselffrom the mud, and the workmen, losing theirbalance

,fell one over the other, splashing the

people standing round. The tourists burst intolaughter

,and most of them ran away. A few,

174


by which they might derive some small ad

vantage from this miraculous draught. Even ifthey had corrupted our workmen or overseers

,a

circumstance neither impracticable nor difficult, itwould have availed them nothing : the valuablepieces were too few and too heavy for any one torisk taking them Off by day while work was in progress , and the deep water made it impossible towork by stealth at night. Most of them renouncedtheir plans on account Of these obstacles, but somewould not confess themselves defeated , andchanged their tactics , concentrating their efforts onthe stores in which the statues were kept beforetheir despatch to Cairo. They were closed in bythick walls , touching the house occupied by M .

L egrain and his family, and watched day and nightby two of our men. For greater safety M.

L egrain shut up the smaller pieces in his ofli ce,and requisitioned two vigorous men from theomdeh of Karnak, whom he associated with our

guards. It was this very precaution that did themischief. One Of the notables of the districtarranged to pass off on us two professional thieveshe did not hope to steal everything from us, butone Object had excited his covetousness —thestatuette said to be of emerald root, and thatpopular credulity valued at Egyptianpounds— that is , about sterling. The chief

1 76


personages of L ou x or liked to look at it Often, andone day, about the middle of January, one of themsaid to M. L egrain in a slightly forced humorousmanner, Hide it well, or I shall have it stolen.

”

M . L egrain laughed heartily, but as soon as hewas alone, locked it up in another place, andreplaced it by two statuettes of little value. Itwas well that he did so. That very night personswell informed of the lay of the land scaled theouter wall, pierced the wall of the store itself, andwithout making any noise carried Off the twounderstudies . Inquiry proved that the raid hadbeen carried out by the two extra guards ; theywere caught, but firmly denied their guilt. Webegan to despair of ever discovering anyt hing whenan anonymous denunciation revealed the namesof the receivers and of the village they inhabited.

The instigator of the theft remained unpunished,his accomplices refusing to name him , but werecovered possession of the monuments so craftilytaken away, and the thieves were punished.

Things will now be quiet for a time.The excavations went forward without, itseemed , exhausting or impoverishing the site. Sodeep into the earth did the men penetrate thatthey reached the level Of the constant infiltrat ionsof the river. To fight the water we had to set uptwo hand-pumps and chadouf s at the side Of the

177 M


cavity, and those means soon proving insufficient,we set up a steam-pump. The pit became widerand longer the more it was dug out, and surveillancebecame more difficult. But it did not absorbM. L egrain so much that he could not draw upa catalogue of our wealth. The historical valueequals , if it does not surpass , the artistic value.The greater part transports us to one of the mostObscure epochs of Egyptian hi story, that which,extending from the XIXth Dynasty to thePersian Conquest, saw the military empire of

Thebes transformed into a theocratic principality.The high priests of Amon of the epoch of theRamses began it, then those who were contemporaries of the Bubastes, such as H orsié sis,

whose name even we do not know, but who waspontiff and king about the middle of the eighthcentury. When the male line failed and womenalone survived to rule Southern Egypt , newdocuments furni sh details of their lives. We readhow the Pharaohs, reconciling respect for traditionwith the necessities Of their sovereign authority,sent their daughters one after the other to reignover the domain of Amon. What a series of

ini tiations they had to undergo before legallyentering into the pontifical family ! They wereintroduced to the god with great ceremony, andif they conciliated his favour, were immediately

178


valuable things in one place to be accounted for !

M . L egrain persists in believing in the treasure,and would not be in the least astoni shed ifstatues in precious metal followed statues instone. Others have no such rich hope, butimagine that at some time of danger thepriests of Amon desired to protect the best ofthe monuments consecrated by their ancestorsfrom the enemy, and for that reason made thehiding-place we are emptying. These hypothesespresent no great improbability. The Thebanpriesthood was Often obliged to bury its treasureduring the wars or revolutions that devastated thecity, but I doubt if a spot as easy Of access as Ourcourtyard would have seemed to them sufficientlysecret in such a case. Besides, gold and silver sohidden does not ordinarily remain long underground. When they escape the enemy and dangeris over, the priests hasten to take them out againand to restore them to their accustomed places.If ever the pit at Karnak held gold and silverstatues , they stayed there but a very short time,and we have no chance of finding any there unlesssome got lost in the mud. The stone statues , nomatter the value we give them , had very littleinterest for the Egyptians of the Ptolemaic age.The question of art did not exist for them, andin the works so valuable to us they saw only

180


ere-veto offered long ago by persons famous intheir generation, but whose names were for themost part forgotten . They used some to repairthe flooring of the temple, why then should theyhave been anxious to preserve the others ! No onewould have been greatly grieved if the enemy hadbroken them or carried them Off as trophies. TheEgyptian would only have cared if it had been aquestion of divine images ; it grieved him exceedingly if the foreigner carried off those, and herejoiced exceedingly when a victorious Pharaoh

,

even though he was a Greek, repatriated them.

F or myself, I see a simpler solution of theproblem wi th which we are confronted . Theburying of these pieces took place during the firsthalf of the Macedonian rule ; the style of someof the statues is a proof, as is the presenceof large copper coins with the L agidian eagle.Ptolemy I . and hi s successors worked much atThebes ; they rebuilt the sanctuary, restored thecolumns of the Hypostyle Hall , repaired the templeof Phtah and some of the buildings which surroundthe Sacred Lake. All that had suffered, and inaddition the ew-voto accumulated during centuriesfilled up the corridors and courtyards. Therestorations fini shed , they would not have thrownaway Objects which were the personal propertyof the god as refuse, nor have sold or destroyed

1 81


them. They treated them in the way customaryon such occasions with the barbarians as wi th theGreeks. They dug a pit for them in the Court ofthe Seventh Pylon, afavissa into whi ch they werethrown with due ceremonies. It is certainly notthe only one. As for the royal mummi es, thequantity was so great that a single hiding-placewould never have sufficed to contain them. Ihave every hope that our future excavations willreveal the pits in ear-vote of more ancienttimes were buried.

182


imagine that a well- intentioned sorcerer had madehim a present of a similar conjuring hook, and hewould return fervent thanks to the gods. Thewhole Academy of Sciences would waste theirtime in trying to persuade him that it was not so.

Ever since my return to Egypt I had beenstruck with the lamentable condition into whi chthe tombs of the Theban kings had fallen duringmy absence ; everywhere the colours had faded,the has-reliefs had been soiled, and it seemed as ifa blackish gauze veil had been placed betweenthem and the spectator. The fault was solely dueto the means of lighting employed by the vi sitors,and which the Service des Antiquités was obligedto allow. In former times when travellers wererare, and when there were only two or threehundred at most each winter, it did no greatharm to allow them to use candles or eventorches there was not enough smoke eachtime for it to he destructive. But to-day visitorsthrong in crowds of two or three hundred, andtheir total number during the season exceedsfour thousand. SO it was no longer a few candles ,but hundreds of candles , that were taken throughthe galleries and chambers , leaving trails of sootin their track, and in addition there was thedragoman who lighted up the most celebratedpictures with magnesium wire. That was for

1 84

The Pharaohs by Electric Light

hidden, and the guardians of the Service receivedorders to stop it, but two or three piastres ofbakhshisch cleverly distributed closed theguardians’ eyes. For several hours the tombswould remain infected by smoke which madethe atmosphere unbearable, and which, settlingdown on the ceilings and walls, soiled them moreand more every day. A few years hence, and thetomb of Setoui I . , of Ramses III . , V . , and IX. ,

themost frequented of all , would look like a successionof blackened cavities where you would no longer beable to distinguish even the faded outline of formerpaintings . The only way to prevent thi s evil fromcausing total destruction was to install the electriclight as soon as possible. On one hand it harmsthe Objects very little, and on the other the lightwhich it gives is strong enough to prevent tourists regretting their pieces of magnesium wire.Numberless difficulties , however, opposed its use .The Valley Of the Kings is some miles from thenearest wells where could the necessary water beprocured Would it be possible to construct theworks in so concealed a spot that the building shouldnot spoil the admirable site chosen by the Egyptians for the tombs of their kings ! Could the smellof petrol, the noise of the piston, and the rumblingof the flywheel be suppressed ormerely moderatedLast, though not least, where could we Obtain the

1 85


six or eight hundred pounds which the undertaking required ! How the Service des Antiquitésmanaged to provide the sum required is acomplicated and tiresome story which would haveno in terest for the public. The money found, theDepartment of Public Works gave us full permission to do what we liked , and the rest went Ofitself. A li ttle to the east of the hypogeum of

Setoui I . there was a tomb almost entirely fallento ruin, that of Ramses XI the entrance of whi chwas used as a dining-room. The dragomans setup tables there, and the tourists lunched under theprotection of the king. It was selected forthe place in whi ch to install the dynamos, and wasdelivered over to the electricians. They soonfixed up their engines under the direction OfM . Z immermann, an engineer whose services theproprietors Of the L ou x or Hotel agreed to lendus. An inhabitant of the village of Gournah

undertook for a fee to send us daily on donkeyhack the necessary amount of water. Thein stallation, begun at the end of December, 1 901 ,was finished in March, 1 902, and the trials wereimmediately declared to be satisfactory. Thesystem has since been worked during the wholeof the winter 1 902—1 903, to the advantage of themonuments and the delight of their visitors.At first it seems as if nothing is changed in the

1 86


solid, squat, rugged, as is necessary in a part of

the world so distant from engineering workshopswhere repairs can be made. The reservoirs andthe table of distribution are relegated to the sides,and at the end through a half-open door may beseen the little room in which the electrician livesfor six months in the year. Nothing is moresignificant than this association between theancient building and modern machinery , theSolar disk, the outlines of which may be seenabove the Pharaonic bay, and the engines of steeland copper which move and work almost noiselesslywith that air of easy and conscientious applicationwhich characterises our most compli cated inventions. TOO often the modern world destroys theancient in order to take its place : in this case themodern world respects the ancient and helps it tocarry on what life it still possesses. The worksactually distribute the light to six tombs, but weonly use it for three at a time, and most Often wearrange to have visitors only in two of themat once. Thanks to the care and skill Of M.

Z immermann, there has been no accident so far.We have provided for the case of sudden failureor interruption of the current, and have storedlanterns and candles in each tomb, but have nothad occasion to use them .

The six tombs selected for the first trial were188


those of AmenOthes II Ramses I Setoui IRam ses III . , Ramses V. , and Ramses IX. , tombswhi ch have always attracted the attention oftravellers . Having descended the worn andslippery staircase whi ch leads to Setoui I . ,

aline of lamps is seen on the ceiling Of the slopinggallery which seem s to penetrate far into the earth

,

and as daylight is left behind we are struck bythe clearness with which the smallest details of thepaintings on the wall stand out . In the placeswhere the sculptor, stopped in his work by thedeath of the sovereign, has left whole panels ofinscriptions and figures , some merely sketched inred chalk , others half rai sed from the stone, all thetechn ique of the design and Of the execution wasclearly perceived : the sketches of the workman ,the corrections of the designer- in-chief, the attackof the graving tool on the surface, the restraint andmodelling of the figures and the hieroglyphi cs, allthe details of interest to the artist or to the historian of art stand out clearly in the new light.And as it is more and more used, gods andmonsters who were almost invisible in the dimlight of candles or the smoky coruscations ofmagnesium wire, present a firmness of outlineand intensity of life that quite transforms them.

Every moment there stand out faces of kings ,

profiles of animals, masks of wild genii, silhouettes189


of goddesses of which until now no one has beenable to admire the delicate and graceful charm. Itis especially in the Hall of the Sarcophagus, the onecalled by the Egyptians the Hall of Gold, that theadvantages of the electric light appear. With itslarge dimensions, the height of the vaulted roof,the thickness of the pillars, who could boast of everhaving seen the whole of it ! The most favouredsaw a few portions, half-blinded by the light of themagnesium wire, and by the kind of twilight thatfollowed when the light was exhausted. They hadto be content with imagining what it would be likeif it was shown them with sufficient light, but evenso, they could scarcely form any adequate idea of it.Now the lamps are so distributed and their lightso graduated that there is an even brilliance everywhere, from the ground to the vaulted roof. It isno more necessary to make a lengthy examinationof each picture, nor to make a great effort to keepthe hues and tonality in one’s eye, and then by astill greater effort of memory, Of which few are

capable, to co-ordinate isolated impressions, and todeduce from them an impression of the whole.The impression of the whole is now there fromthe very first, and it is a great delight to seizeat once the richness, the colours, and the perfectequilibrium of the composition. NO sooner isthe light switched on than the decoration starts

190


who helped him to defeat those enemies , theincantations he must recite in order to cometriumphant out of his trial. For the modem s asfor the ancients , a descent into the ill-lighted tombof Setoui was a dim image Of a journey in theregions of the dead. Does not the introduction oflight then destroy the effect calculated by theEgyptians ! The tourists who are acquainted withthe destiny of the Pharaohs will perhaps miss thesensation of religious awe they expected , but howfew of those come each year ! The crowd whosechief desire is to see the things of which they haveheard, and not merely to guess at them, has no suchscruples. The visit is mad e easier by the use ofelectricity, and they are delighted. Besides, thingsare so arranged that each, if he so wishes , caninstantly be brought back into the ancient condit ions. In the tomb Of AmenOthes II . , forinstance, where the mummy is still in its place inthe sarcophagus, one of the funeral ceremonies isrehearsed. At a given signal the lights areswitched Off except one above the head of thesovereign. It is what the priests called theI llumination of the F ace they threw the flame oftheir lamps on to the face of the mummy to assurehim of the enjoyment of eternal light. After afew minutes the guide switches on the other lightsall at once, or one after the other, as may be

1 92


preferred. Thus the effect may be varied, and thetomb shown under its former aspect before seeingit under the new conditions. The six tombs areall similarly arranged , and our system has at leastthe advantage of contenting everybody. Thosewho desire to know the decoration in detail and tosee it clearly, can command floods Of light withoutrisk or damage to the monument. Subtler mindscan command semi-obscurity, and enjoy theillusion of a visit to the gods of the EgyptianHades.

1 93

XVIII

AN ARAB TALE

WHEN Ramses had fought for sixteen yearsagainst the Hittites and had concluded a treatyof peace and friendship with them, which at lastleft him lord of Canaan, he felt so proud andhappy that he engraved the text in large hiero

glyphics on the monuments, wherever he found ablank wall. The first specimen of this is at Karnak in the large sanctuary on the right bank, anda second on one of the pylons of the Ramesseum

on the left bank. While freeing the pedestal ofthe gigantic colossus whi ch encumbered theadjoining court with its débris, I had the good fortune a few days ago to discover a third one. It is,indeed, a very mutilated inscription, of which onlyfour or five lines at most are legible ; but inarchaeology nothing should be neglected, and Isettled down to copy it. Three fat lizards and asmall adder, which were basking in the sun , gaveplace to me, hissing incessantly and furious atbeing disturbed ; with the remains of the wall

194


bread dry and praised God, for he was very piousand possessed all the virtues. One winter afternoon

,

on returning hom e when his work was done toOffer up a prayer, he noticed that his fig-tree hadsuddenly put forth ten of the most beautiful figsin the world ; one of them was round, large, red,and on the verge of falling if it was not gathered

,

and the others were of various degrees of ripeness.His first act was to thank God who had performedthis miracle for him ; but instead of gathering andfeasting on the ripe fig, he went at once to consulthis neighbour the rammdl, who read the future insand. The rammdl took his box of sand, tracedsome lines therein, jotted down some calculations,muttered a rune, and read the oracle Everyday for ten days you must take one of your figsto the Sultan. On the tenth day your destiny willbe fulfilled, and the good and the wicked will eachfind t heir proper place.”

The Sultan of L ou x or, lik e all self-respectingSultans, used to give audience every morning,starting at sunrise. He sat outside the first court,between two Obelisks, and patiently listened to thegrievances or petitions of his subjects. The interview sometimes ended with a gi ft, sometimes witha benevolent thrashing admini stered by the officersOf the army with elegance and speed. At a quarterto twelve the good prince broke up the sitting and

196

An Arab Tale

returned to the palace, convinced that he had notwasted his morning. The merchant had waitedsince dawn in the court, with his beautiful figlying on a china plate between two embroiderednapkins. When his turn came he prostratedhimself at the foot of the throne, and presented theplate to the sovereign, saying that God hadfavoured him by sending him out of season tenmagnificent figs, of such wonderful size andperfume that they were evidently not intended foran ordinary subject ; he had ventured to bring thefirst, and if the Sultan consented he would comeevery morning to Offer him one or other as theyripened. The Sultan highly approved of thesentiment of propriety revealed by this proceeding.

He even deigned to eat the fig, and, having foundit to his taste, commanded his vizier, who stoodbehind, to give the man a cloak of honour anda hundred English guineas. The poor man wenthome in the highest of spiri ts ; he immediatelybought himself a rifle, a watch, and a whitedonkey, and invited his neighbours to a splendidfeast, where twenty dishes of stew, forty plates ofsweets, and—numberless iced drinks were served up.

And wine, too ! ” asked the donkey-boy.

Yes ; wine like that on Cook’s ships—whitewine which froths and makes a noise when thebottle is uncorked.

1 97


Allah ! Allah ! responded the three guards inchorus. H ow fortunate is he who can have suchdrinks !The next day the second fig arrived, and thethi rd fig on the day following, until only threewere left on the tree. Each time the gift wasmore valuable— slaves, camels, lands, gold andsilver coins— so that the vizier grew jealous. GreatGod ! he said to himself ; if I don’t take care theSultan may cast me Off and install thi s plotter inmy place.” So he went secretly by night and paidthe poor man a visit. After the customarycompliments he said, The Sultan talks of youunceasingly, and he even think s of giving you hisdaughter in marriage, but one thing disturbs himand holds him back . You evidently eat a quantityof garlic, and be greatly dislikes the smell. ! ou

would do well, therefore, to appear at theaudience with a piece of white linen over yourmouth ; he will be pleased with the attention, and

you will be rewarded for it as you deserve.” So

the poor man presented himself all muffled inmuslin. When he was going away the Sultanasked the vizier what this masquerade meant. Ido not know,

” replied the latter ; but if it pleaseyour Majesty I will find out .” He hastened away,and returning with a very long face, could not beinduced to speak for quite a long time. However,

1 98


He wrote a note, sealed it, and gave it with hisown seal to the man, telling him to go to theTreasury very early next morning. He was todeliver the note and seal to the chief treasurer,and would certainly not regret his trouble. Whenthe audience closed, the vizier joined the man andcongratulated him, but, he added, His Majestyis so pleased with you that he wishes to spare

you the slightest trouble. This note is a com

mand to give a thousand pounds to the bearerof the seal. Here are the thousand poundscorrectly counted out ; give me the seal andthe letter, which are useless to you.

” As soonas he had them in his hand the vizier neverdoubted that his fortune was made. He scarcelyslept that night, so great was his impatience, anddawn found him at the door of the Treasury.

The treasurer read the note, kissed the sealreverently, and raised one finger ; two soldiersof the guard seized the vizier and cut off his

head before he had time to realise what hadhappened to him.

However, the audience began, and the manwith the figs was standing in his usual place, theplate in his hand and the cloth round his mouth.

The Sultan, who could not believe his eyes , rubbedthem vigorously, but the man was still there.He turned round to point him out to the vizier,

200

An Arab Tale

but the vizier was not there. The same minutethe treasurer entered with a leather bag in hishand. On seeing him the Sultan said, Whydid you not behead the man I sent to you !

”

Pardon me, your Majesty, I put him to deathas you commanded. Besides , here is the head.

And he placed the vizier’s head in front of thethrone. What, cried the Sultan, have youkilled my mini ster ! ” Sire,” replied the treasurer,did not your Majesty command me to behead

on the spot the person who brought me the noteand the royal seal ! ” Doubtless, but it wasnot the vizier who was to bring them. Allthe same, it was he who brought them.

”

As this in no way enlightened the Sultan,he decided to send for the poor man, andcommanded him on pain Of death to relate allthat had happened. Then the latter explainedhow the vizier had advised him to tie up hismouth and for what reason, and how he hadpocketed the thousand guineas in exchange forthe note and the seal. In his astonishment atthe adventure, the Sultan praised God. Thisvizier, said he, was a wicked man, but all

’swell that ends well. He stole your place and paidfor it with his own head take his place in yourturn and be my vizier. The merchant bowedhis head to the dust, and prostrating himself

201


repeated, The ramma‘

l was right, blessed be therammc

’

il ! “And what had the m md to dowith this affair ! Sire, when I consulted him,

did he not announce to me that on the tenthday the good and the wicked would each findhis proper place ! And now tod ay is the tenthday : the vizier is dead, and I am in the vizier’splace !One story follows another, and the narratorhad already made a fresh start when some one

called me. I had to answer and betray myhiding -place. My fellahs, in consternation atlearning I was so close, fled noiselessly, and Iwent on with the study of the tail of my bird.

The Egyptians dislike showing themselves toEuropeans as they really are, and we might liveamong them for years without realising thatwith a little dexterity we might succeed indrawing from them matter for a whole newvolume of the Arabian Nights. A littledonkey driver from Gournah, to whom I tolda well-arranged version of the Peau d’

Ane

between the temple of Setoui and the Bab-elMolouk , gratified me in return with a half adozen stories, partly satirical, partly sentimental,which left a charming impression on me. Wouldthey please others as well as myself ! I threadedmy way through the flowering beans at the gentle

202

THE OPENING OF A NEW RO! AL TOMBAT THEBES

MR. THE ODORE DAVIS, an American who spendshis winters in Egypt, provided the money ; theService des Antiquités helped to conduct theexcavations, and thus aiding each other, discovered one of the rare royal hypogeums whichremain to be found at Biban el-Molouk in thevalley where the Theban Pharaohs formerlyreposed. The quest was neither long norfatiguing. On the 1 8th of January last year, I

after carefully examining the ground with Mr.Carter, the inspector-in-chief of the Said, it hadseemed to me that the steep ravine in whichM . Loret found in 1 899 the intact hypogeumof a prince Maiharpiriou , ought to contain someother tomb. A workshop was set up there, andattacking it from the bottom we went slowly upthe slope, exploring everything on the way. Mr.

This was written in February, 1 903.

204

Opening of a Royal Tomb at Thebes

Carter first found objects that had belongedto Maiharpiriou , fragments of variegated glass,clippings of cut cornelian, pieces of a chest withthe name AmenOthes III . , and last, in a woodenbox , two corselets in cut leather in astoni shingpreservation. A little higher up the name of

ThoutmOsis IV. began to come out of the earth,and a piece of limestone was picked up on whichthe portrait of the Pharaoh was sketched in blackink, as well as pieces of an alabaster vase inwhich his cartouches could be discerned. Wecould no longer doubt that he was buried nearthere in some cavity of the ground. But the massof rubbish was so enormous that when Mr. Davis,leaving L ou x or in March, asked that operationsmight be suspended, we had not reached theentrance. It was only on the 1 7th of Januarylast that the reis Mohammed, having come to thebeginning of the ravine , saw the door in the rockat the foot of the cliff. Mr. Carter immediatelycame and climbed into the chamber of the sar

cophagus amid the rubbish . The mummy hadbeen in the Museum for three years , but theequipment with which it was provided on theday of the funeral was scattered over the groundin the same places where the thi eves had thrownit after despoiling the mummy. Mr. Carterrapidly surveyed the condition of the place , then

205


barricaded the door afresh, and we telegraphed toMr. Davi s to come back from Assouan, whichhe was visiting at the moment.On February 3rd, in the morning, all those whohad a right to be present at the opening wereassembled at Biban el-Molouk , Mr. Davis andhis family, Mr. Carter, M. L egrain , and M . Baraize ,of the Service des An tiquités, a few Egyptologistsvisiting Thebes , MruN ewberry, Mr. Tytus, M. deBissing, and M . de Lacau. ThoutmOsis IV. hadset up his House of Eternity in one of the wildestrecesses of the valley. It was a projection Of therock

,forming a cornice half-way up the side; and

hardly accessible through a s10pe of rubbish. Hehad smoothed it by the use of the pickaxe, and hadformed an irregular platform on which fifty personscould easily move about. Free on the north andwest, at the east and south it is fixed to theresisting rock, which rises almost perpendicularlyto a height of 60 feet. A trench dug out in theground towards the south descends in a rapidincline, and penetrates under a doorway barredwith rubbish. Beyond, the corridor is lost in thedarkness

,and the figures of the workmen are con

fused. They have been labouring since dawn toclear the approaches to the first chamber. Thebaskets of sand pass swiftly from hand to hand andare emptied outside, while the electricians of the

206


followed their example. A footbridge constructeda few days before took us safely to the other side.Yellow stars on dark-blue ground were scatteredover the ceiling ; near the top of the walls werescenes of adoration which deserved careful study,but we scarcely looked at them, so eager were weto reach the centre of the place, and it was almostin a run that we entered the first chamber.It fits into the right corner of the prolongation

of the corridor, and runs from east to west. It isas if crushed down under a low ceiling supportedby two squat pillars retained in the mass on thegreat axis , and the walls have remained rough.

The tomb is in this palace of the dead king, theequivalent of the Hall of Columns in the Palace ofThebes where the living king gave audience to hissubjects. In the north-east corner a badly quarriedstaircase is cut in the rock, and comes out at theend of about twenty yards in a room longer thanit is broad , which serves as a sort of ante-chamberto the funeral vault. It is covered with very finepaintings as far as can be judged from the interstices left by the heaps of sand or pebbles that leanup against the walls and partly hide them. A hastyglance Shows the usual scenes : the dead man worshipping before the gods Of the West and presenting his offerings with his prayers, or clasped in thearms of goddesses , drinking at their breasts the

208


milk that was to infuse life into his veins. Aglance

'

at the hieroglyphics and we are certain ithas to do with ThoutmOsis IV. The cartouchestraced by the side Of him would bear witness tothat fact if confirmation were needed. But is therenot to be found among the commonplaces ofmortuary imagery some inscription that will giveus information regarding his history ! And, indeed ,there on the right wall are two fine hieratic inscriptions : two sgraffiti written in black ink in theempty space between two figures. It was acustom of the Pharaohs to instruct certain highfunctionaries to inspect the royal tombs at intervalsto verify the state of the place and the condi tion Ofthe mummies , to see if the linen wrappings weredamaged or if the fimerary equipment had sufferedfrom men or from time. It often happened thatthese Officers had to report sad di scoveries. Thebrigands did not respect these dead royalties.Sometimes, with the complicity of their Officialguards, they had pulled them from their coffins , torntheir wrappings , stolen their jewels, their royalinsignia , their amulets, their valuable arm s . Itwas then necessary reverently to pick up the dishonoured corpses , to robe them afresh, put themback in their sarcophagus, and replace the portions of their equipment that had been destroyed.

The work accomplished, the functionan eswithdrew,

209 o


but not before recording somewhere on a coffinlid a circumstantial account of the proceedings .All such inscriptions that we have belong to theperiod of the later Ramses or the high priests ofAmon, and here the new inscriptions are conceived in the most correct hieratic of the XVI I I thDynasty. Would the robbery of the hypogeumhave begun almost directly after the burial ! Theprincipal sgraffite tells us in its eight lines thatin the year VIII. Of this A 'rmais, who was the lastPharaoh Of the XVI I I th Dynasty or the first ofthe XIXth, “the fourth month Of Shait, his divineMajesty ordered that Maiya, son of Wai and hislady Ouérit , the fan-bearer on the right of theking, a royal scribe, superintendent of thetreasure, head of the works of the necropohs,

leader of the festival of Theban Amon-ra, be commissioned to repair the mummy of the kingThoutmOsis IV. in his august dwelling which is onthe West of Thebes. The shortest sgraffite haspreserved the name of “hi s secretary, the governorof the town and lord ThoutmOsis, son of H atai

and of his lady Souhak ,” he who with his own

hand traced on the wall the brief account of thevisit. It is therefore certain that a little less thana century after the burial it was necessary torestore the mummy of ThoutmOsis IV.

Had it already been violated and despoiled of210


a sort of rectangular alcove, reached by a staircase Of five or six steps between the two lastpillars . It is flanked by four cabinets , two on

the right and two on the left. They represent theprivate apartments of the dead personage, theretreat in which he hid hismortal remains , and thathis divine soul inhabited or left according to hisdesire during the ample leisure of life beyondthe grave. The alcove being reserved for thesarcophagus and the mummy, the rest of thecentral apartment contained the most importantportion of the funerary equipment and larder.The side rooms served as a store-house forthe remaining furniture and provisions or forvaults for the princes Of the family who diedyoung. It is probable that the little mummyplaced in one Of them is that of a prince,Amenemhait , son of ThoutmOSis IV to whom,

had he lived, the crown would have revertedby right. The Objects consecrated to the use

of the dead during the funeral were neatlyarranged on tables, or piled up on the bareground against the walls or the pillars , as they hadbeen formerly in the store-houses of the palace.The richness and elegance of most of them presented from the first a striking contrast to therough and desolate aspect of the place that gavethem Shelter. ThoutmOsis IV. having in fact been

212


gathered to his fathers before his tomb was

finished , the works had been immediately sus

pended. There was no inscription, no painting,no sketch, even no whitewash, in the mortuarychamber or its dependencies, and the last workmanin departing had not swept up the filth whichsoiled the ground. The valuable stuffs , the furniture, arms, and provisions were mingled withfragments Of stone broken off the ceiling and withpieces of broken tools. The thieves took awaythose things that had a value for them,

gold,

silver, jewels, fine plate. They turned everythingelse upside down, and reduced almost to powderwhat they did not care to carry Off.

All this confu sed and disorderly débris formed sothick a litter that it was not possible to ventureinto it without running the risk of crushing thethings by the dozen. Mr. Carter therefore madea path of planks on trestles about 8 inchesabove it, and which reached to the sarcophagus.That at least was intact. Like the sarcophagi ofAmenOthes II . and Of ThoutmOsis III., it is of whitelimestone but painted dark red to simulate thestatuary sandstone. The exterior is adorned wi ththe usual scenes, the two mystic eyes, the kingworshipping before the funerary di vinities, andthe children of Horus. The lid has not beenshattered by blows of the hammer nor roughly

213


thrown to the ground. It was carefully removedat the time Of the theft, placed upside down infront of the basin, and the two ends propped upwith two heifers’ heads in painted wood to preventthe polished face from touching the rough ground.

A heap of undistinguishable Objects lie at the side,

among which we vaguely perceive splinteredstatues of double, and figures of gods or animalsin cedar-wood smeared with tar. In a corner onan unbum t brick stood a statuette, and theinscription on it informed us that it was entrustedwith the protection of the mummy against thedemons whi ch haunt the tombs. If you attackit, I shall attack you, and you will have to dealwith me was the substance of its remarks. Itwas placed there in accordance with the rules ofthe funeral ritual, and we wanted to searchimmediately for three similar ones which werehidden under the rubbish. Fragments of vases incoloured glass or painted pottery were scatteredabout in hundreds, and wherever the light fellthere started out of the darkness an amulet, aRespondent in enamelled porcelain, an armful ofdried leaves, a rag of fine linen, alabaster dishesand phials, necklaces of threaded pearls. In themidst of the disorder the eye was attracted by ablackish mass of unusual aspect, it was the body ofa chariot that by some unknown happy chance

214


world when, amid the acclamations of the p0pulace, he repaired to the Temple of Amon, so hedesired to enter the other world and to appearthere as a conqueror in the midst of his fathers

,the

gods of the West.The presence of so much wealth stirs our

emotions, and, the instincts of our vocation awaking, we are anxious to remove these débris without delay, to hold them in our hands and to examinethem one by one to decipher the inscriptions, andsolve the problems they offer. But we must resistthe temptation. As soon as we depart, Mr. Carterwill enter on the work, and will not rest until hehas emptied the tomb. He will then draw theobjects and send them to the Museum , where weshall try to match the pieces, and then to restorethe objects. When that work is finished Mr.Davis, who provided the money for the excavation, will also provide the money for publication,and before long all will be able to study what thetomb contained at their ease. For the momentwe have only to enjoy the wonderful sight beforeour eyes. The electric light does not penetratethe dusty, heavy air very well, and from the cornerwhere I stood my companions looked lik e vaguesilhouettes . The dread of the tomb , so lately shutup, and whence the visits of tourists has notbanished the impression of death, has invaded them

216


without their knowledge. They speak in whispers ,moderate their gestures, walk or rather glide alongas noiselessly as possible. Occasionally they stoopto pick up an object, or group themselves round apillar, remaining motionless for a moment, thenthey resume their silent rounds , cross each other,join each other, and then separate again . Veryrarely does some abrupt movement of one of thembreak the rhythm of their evolutions , or do they letfall some brief remark that sounds like a trumpetabove their discreet whispers. The persons employed in the funeral and the priests must have somoved and spoken the evening of the ceremonywhen, the mummy sealed up in its sarcophagus ,they hastened to the last rites bywhi ch the Pharaoh was shut into his mysteriouschamber.

217

WITH SCHWEINFURTH ON A VISIT TO THOT

I N the outskirts of Thebes there are ruins of whichtourists know nothing. And yet they would findthose ruins attractive if they were not in a districtso rich in more celebrated and better preservedmonuments. Those which Schweinfurth dis

covered on the north of the Valley of the Kingsmay be reckoned among the most unknown. Onthe top of the cliff which dominates the village ofGamoleh is a group of small buildings in earth andunhewn stone. Was it a chapel or a popularoracle ! or a rendezvous for sportsmen ! or a policewatch-house or station ! The fragments of

inscriptions found there are too mutilated to

inform us. The style seems to be that of the Saidepoch and to place them between the seventh andthe sixth centuries B .C. However, there are otherfragments which will perhaps afford information ifwe take the trouble to piece them together. Wemust have courage , and as Schweinfurth consentsto act as guide, attempt the adventure. So

218

With Schweinfurth on a Visit to Thot

we set out on January 30th I through the sandbanks which separate the broad arm of the Nilefrom the western embankment, through the hamletof Eyoub

-Bey, where the smoke still rises from themorning fires, galloping along the dike of the Fadilieh canal side by side with a train of sugar- canes,among flocks of sheep making much dust on theirway to market, through the fresh , smiling plainwhere the larks sing loudly, intoxicated with theperfume of the beans, by the Temple of Gournah,by the low sandhill again st which it leans, by theshallows of the ouadién , as if we were ridingtowards the Valley of the Kings. But instead oftaking the usual road we bear to the right andreach the north by a path of gravel and sharpstones. To the left are quarries with the nameApries among the rocks, outlines of ancient hovelsshowing di rty grey against the yellow of thedesert , trenches dug in the sand, and banks of

pebbles left there by the waters of a past age,ridges of disintegrated rocks, rounded blocks,holes , indeed, all the effects of the work of

torrents. A first declivity brings us out of thi sconfusion, then a gently sloping terrace leads us tothe foot of the cliff. We regretfully dismountand stable our donkeys in the shade of a rockwhere we shall find them on our descent.

1 1 905.

219


The path was made, God knows in what di stantepoch, by the footsteps of the few faithful whovisited the god at long intervals. It follows anarrow ridge between two steep slopes , but isneither dangerous nor difficult. Two or threetimes only it suddenly becomes very steep forabout twenty yards, and invites us to a sort ofescalade. But if there is nothing about it to meritthe attention of an Alpine Club, it is full ofinterest for geologists . The surface of the hill,through the erosive action of the sun , is exfoliated,laying bare in places quantities of fossils, amongothers enormous lucinw in admirable preservationand cardium of the species to which Schweinfurthhas given his name. Lumps of flin t are togetherwith the fossils, and among them flint implementsof the most primitive type, many of which are asintact as when they came from the factory, whileothers have been used and repaired at different times.Long before our Egypt was born, beings livedthere that Schweinfurth scarcely dares to call men.

Stone provided them with exactly what redeemedthem from the inferiority to which Nature condemned them in their relation to the big animals.The flint ring assisted somewhat the weakness oftheir arms in a hand-to-hand fight with the enemy.

They tore off or spli t the skins of animals withtheir knives and scrapers, that their nails and teeth

220


what remains of it is scarcely more than 9 feetin height. The central building, also of brick, isentirely isolated. It is divided into four compartments, a sort of vestibule that. occupies the wholewidth and three chambers , or rather threecontiguous niches, which open only into thevestibule. The plan does away with all doubt as tothe signification of the whole. It is the same asthat to be seen at Deir el-Medineh, for instance, onecommon to most of the secondary temples of theMemphian age. The god inhabited the centralniche, and left the others to the two divinitiesassociated with him. To tell the truth, he was apoor god without any pretensions to the luxuriesnor even to the ordinary comforts of life. Thewalls of his house were whitewashed like thoseof a fellah’s dwelling, and neither paintings norinscriptions were to be seen. It was then to befeared that we should never discover who he was.However, the bricks of one of the doors had beenframed with limestone posts , and the pieces seento be scattered among the bricks would perhapscompensate us for the silence of the walls. 1 set

the four men I had brought with me to workamong the rubbish, and leaving them under thesurveillance of the inspector of Gournah, I set outto examine the plateau. About forty yardstowards the north-west foundations of burnt

222

With Schweinfurth on a Visit to Thot

bricks mark the place of a building now destroyed.

The arrangement of the levellings shows that itcould not have been a chapel, but a dwelling-houseor a mere warehouse. Two or three Europeanswould have felt terribly crowded in the space

,but

it might easily have sheltered ten natives. Theguardians of the god would have dwelt there withtheir family, and an oblong pit hollowed out nearby was perhaps the tank where they stored thewater they brought up from the plain for household needs and for those of the religious ceremonies.From the tank the plateau slopes to the westand north, at first gently and then more steeply.

It is strewn with rough flints, among which may bedistinguished cut flints of a kind similar to thoseon the other slope, but very few in number. Ithas not been inhabited since the beginnings of

history. The officiating priests of the temple mayhave installed themselves there while the worshiplasted ; now scarcely a few sportsmen or smugglersvisit it at rare intervals . The slope, after hesitating for an instant what direction to take,suddenly turns obliquely to the east, and soonruns against the flank of the neighbouring cliff.At the angle where they met there unexpectedlyappeared a corner of the valley, a patch of verdure,a piece of river glittering in the sun , a village, aportion of the Arabian desert, a spur of hill

223


outlined in pink against the liquid gold of thehorizon. It looked as if we need only go comfortably ou to reach the plain, but as I went forwardSchweinfurth caught hold of my arm. I waswithout suspect ing it on the edge of a precipice ;the ground slipped away almost under my feet,and from here to the bottom it would be a fall ofat least 1 00 yards. Two or three times a year aviolent storm precipitates the cataracts of heavenupon the plateau. The water, rolling down inraging sheets, leaps into the empty space. For anhour or two a foaming, turbid cataract boundsover the lower projections of the hill, gushesout with a great noise, and is lost in the morainebefore reaching the borders of the cultivatedregions. As soon as the downpour ceases thestream dimini shes and is reduced to a merethread of water, which soon dries up. F or two or

three days a little dampness remains on the surfaceand tufts of verdure spring forth at hazard, butthey soon wither and with them the last tracesof the storm are effaced. In the season at whi ch Ivisited it only the vegetation usual in the desertwas to be seen there, patches thinly sown wi threddish plants with fibrous stalks and brittlebearded roots. Agile beetles rush off as weapproach. Here and there a big tawny lizard,di sturbed by the sound of our footsteps, lift s its

224


are mutilated , but the final sign of the second isstill legible ; it is that which ends the name ofN echao ,

the son of Psammet ichus I . , the mostpowerful of the Said sovereigns . The conclusions that I had drawn from the few fragmentscollected by Schweinfurth seemed to be confirmed ,and to be accurate . The temple was built or restored in the last years of the seventh or in the firstyears of the sixth century B.c. ,

I but who was thegod There he is himself, or rather there are thepieces of two of his statues— feet, hands , a thigh,portions of limbs still more decisive : he was Thot,the master of magic and letters, the god who wasthe scribe and the magi cian of the gods in the guiseof a baboon crouching sanctimoniously, head up,hands on knees. To judge by the hands, thelargest of the statues cannot have been more than2 feet in height, and the other would have beena fourth less . According to custom they stood on

a rectangular pedestal , bevelled in front andprovided with a staircase which reached the feet of

I M. Sethe p laces the bu i lding of the temp le in the

XI I th Dynasty, and thinks that the king was

Am enemhait IV . Mr . Petrie, on the con trary, at tribu tes

it to the k ing Sank haraMontouhotpou of the K I th Dynasty.

The resemb lance in style between the m onumen ts of the

first Theban epoch and those of the Said is so great that i tis easy to be m istaken .

226

With Schweinfii rth on a Visit to Thot

the idol. Wreckage from the sacred equipmentst ood out among the relics , the lid of an alabastervase, jars of red and grey pottery, fragments ofdishes and vessels in blackish earth, even the bodyof one of those hawks in painted wood whichsurmount caskets for oils and perfumes. The nameof a certain Kamosis is scratched in big runninghand on a fragment of limestone it is the souvenirof some pilg rim who came to consult the oracle.An inscription in an undecipherable writing fills acorner of a yellowish block that lies in front ofthe door. I order it to be detached and sent toCairo ; perhaps some scholar passing throughwill succeed in reading it and will inform us ofthe contents .Possibly by scraping and turning over the brickswe might di scover more documents ; they woulddoubtless add little to those we have gathered. Thetemple was too far from the beaten track to attractmany worshippers . It would only have beenfrequented by the inhabitants of the neighbouringvillages, and I am inclined to think it had no residentclergy. The priests went up on the eve offestivals tocelebrate the sacrifice , and for the rest of the time

it was left to the care of two or three sacristans.The day was drawing in, the descent was fatiguingfor a man who soon gets out of breath, the way islong, so I order the excavations to stop, and before

227


departing pause for a moment at the entrance ofthe enclosure to enjoy the view spread out beforeour eyes. To the south extends the Theban cliffwith its terraces upheld by walls of rock , thebottom of which rests in heaps of rubbish. It is cutinto capricious valleys , and the last, that which isdominated by a pyramidal summit, is the Valley ofthe Kings. Two or three patches which stand outin black on the warm paleness of the whole markthe entrance to the tombs. The line of dark pointsmoving above, almost on the crest, is a caravan of

tourists going to Deir el-Bahari . Before us, as faras we could see, spread the pale green fields of

Egypt, its winding Nile, its villages with the smokeof the evening fires, and the three Theban peaks, lilacand pink in colour, retire in gradation towards thesouth. Other summits farther off shine betweenthem in line, one behind the other. It is the usuallandscape with its charm of wealth and melancholysweetness ; but what gives it to-day a strangecharacter is the Dutch sky which hovers over it.Immense white clouds, edged with black andscarlet, drag heavily along and make strongshadows on the ground. A stiff north breezesweeps the slope and brings us a vague odour ofvegetation and warm earth from below.


chimneys of the factory, form a neat frontage alongthe river, behind which a little Arab village iseasily concealed. Just at first it is merely theusual scene of Egyptian life— a dozen brick buildings , the courtyard walls of mud , heaps of filthand rubbish , an undefined yard where hens peckand children play but beyond that there suddenlyappeared in a space of verdure a piece of analmost French landscape, a little grass, a bit ofmeadow, newly mown fields covered with stubble,tuft s of sonts and lebakhs joined by screens of

thorny shrubs , and flowing beneath their branchesa full stream , as on the borders of someFrench wood. It flows swiftly on the left withthe pleasant sound of running water, so rare inEgypt and which European ears so greatly miss.It plunges into the thickets, reappears , thenplunges again into the shade

,and is always heard

chattering and babbling, raising its voice if itmeets an obstacle, or lowering it till it is no

more than a slight murmur. It must not be toocuriously observed, nor should we ask whence itcomes, for we should then discover that its bedwas of cement and that it took its rise in thecylinders of the steam-pump that pants below.

It is an irrigating canal that poses as acapricious nymph in order to console itself forprosaically watering the cultivated lands, but

230

A N ew Pharaoh

which is filled and emptied at fixed hoursaccording to the pleasure of the engineer. The

impression of Europe lasts for scarcely a hundredyards. When we have crossed the stream the

thickets open out, and the country resumes itsAfrican aspect. The road , or rather the railwayline that does duty for a road , runs first betweensugar-cane or cotton plantations that have justbeen cut, then between patches of corn where thestalks spring up thick and strong. A line of

acacias and tamarisks, frequently broken , edges theembankment of a canal, and above their tops aridge of hills is visible , black and yellow againstthe horizon .

Asfoun is perhaps the di rtiest village that Ihave seen in Upper Egypt. It lies on the otherside of the canal , perched on a hill of rubbish thatthe sebakh hunters have devastated in every sense .An untidy cemetery renders the approach dismal ;the tombs are roughly indicated by a heap ofstones or by piles of broken bricks , and are

crowded round two or three half-demolishedk oubbehs, and almost touch the first houses of theliving. We find dark winding alleys, mud walls ,much rubbed by the passers -by, one-storied buildings with frowning doors and no outside windows,infected dung-heaps in every corner, streams of

liquid manure and filth in which our donkeys walk231


knee-deep . Poverty should be at its height here ,judging solely by the dirt, but the population doesnot seem to be of the poorest. Turkeys, chickens,and pigeons abound , goats wander about in questof stray straw, a few buffaloes ruminate comfortably across the roadway, and a flock of geese,disturbed in their promenade by our approach ,scatter before us , uttering shrill cries. At thenoise chi ldren appear from every corner, but theyhave not been spoiled by contact with tourists, andmerely give us an astoni shed glance withoutasking for bakhshisch.

The spot where the new king awaits us is almostin the centre of the village, in a small, irregular,slanting square on the southern slope of the hill.The principal mosque occupies the south-eastcorner. The walls have been lately repairedand preserve nothing of their primitive decoration,if indeed they ever were decorated, but theminaret is of good style, despite the restorations ithas undergone. A cylinder topped by a polygonshaped lantern and its cupola stands upon a rectangular tower finished off by a cornice in theold Egyptian style. The whole building is ofpoor bricks, with transverse wooden beams atintervals to bind together and regulate themasonry. I asked an old man if there was anycommemorative inscription, and he remembered

232

Egypt : Ancien t Sites and Modern Scenes

our operations. There were about two hundredmen and women of all ages , either crouching orstanding round us in three or four rows

,silent

,and

attentively observing our slightest movements.Ideas about treasure pass through their heads

,and

they firmly believe that the place we areexcavating is enchanted ground , and marsoud.

If I cared to pronounce the magic words, theblocks would change into ingots of gold, or theslabs of the flooring would split open and revealheaps of diamonds and rubies. They would laughin our faces if we explained to them that we weretaking all this trouble to clear up an historical fact.The stones , however, belonged to the back wall ofa chapel similar to those that the priestesses ofAmon built at Thebes. If the side walls stillexist, we ought to look for them in a southerlydirection in the centre of the square. The mosquewas probably built on the ruins of the principaltemple. If we made excavations we shoulddoubtless find something that would give usinformation about the founder of the chapel.None of the three Psammetichus of the XXV I thDynasty added Manakhpré , the royal praenomenof Thoutmosis III . , to their family name. Weshould then have here a fourth Psammetichus,

perhaps the one who flourished in 400 B .C. andtook advantage of the revolt of the younger Cyrus

234

A N ew Pharaoh

to make himself independent of the Persians .But many details in the technique of thesculptures and the inscription prevent us fromaccepting that interpretation. First, the style isnot that of the Said schools. The cutting of thehieroglyphics is awkward, the contour of thefigures is stiff, the relief lacks delicacy. A studyof the detail shows us all the characteristics of thePtolemaic age and of the last rather than ofthe first Ptolemies. We shall then have disinterred here one of the ephemeral Pharaohs whoarise in the Theba’id in troublous times , and whoattempt to oppose the rule of the foreigner with anative Dynasty.

We are, of course, free to imagine this ; but thecomposition of the royal protocol suggests a verydifferent hypothesis to me. Our personage is notnamedPsammetichou -si-Neith— Psammetichus, son

of Neith— as I have hitherto stated. By the placehe occupies , as well as by the title that precedeshim, P sammat ik ou - si-Neith is a praznomen and

Manakhpré the real name. Now if Manakhpré ,

the praenomen of Thoutmosis III . , could becomethe name of a high priest of the XX I st Dynastywithout shocking Egyptian customs, there isnothing in the name P sammat ikou , a word ofLibyan origin borne by several members of theXXV I th Dynasty, that fits it for regularly

235


serving as a praenomen. A Pharaoh with the pmnomen Psammet ichus is a monster, and its presencealone in inscriptions is enough to cast suspicion onthem. To speak the truth , he never existed , butwas the invention of an ignorant scribe. Whenthe Ptolemies restored the ancient monumentsthey often attempted to set them up again as theywere originally. They repainted the primitivepictures in the name of the kings of the past, andthose parts of the Theban temples on which thenames of Thoutmosis or of Amenothes III . areto be read really date from the second or thirdcentury B .C.

I The priests who rebuilt the chapelat Asfoun found some mention of a P sammetichus

and a Manakhpré , most probably the Manakhpré

of the XXI st Dynasty, among the scenes whichornamented the old walls, and in such a state thatboth cartouches seemed to belong to the samesovereign . They united them without misgiving,and of the two personages separated by timeformed one single personage to whom theyattributed the foundation of the building. Hadthey been clever enough to classify the namesaccording to the usual rules , and to manufacture aManakhpré Psammet ichus instead of a Psam

metichus Manakhpré , we should have had no1 This app l ies, among o thers, to the Temp le of Theban

Phtah described in Chap ter IV.

236

XXII

E S N E H

ESNE H is pre-eminently the town of wind , andthe wind, no matter from what quarter itcomes, is always a stormy wind. The northwind which came down on us this morningacross Asfoun freshened so considerably towardsnine o’clock, that navigation became almostimpossible. The Nile changed in a few moments,and was covered with big waves whi ch tossed our

vessel in the most disagreeable fashion. Thedahabieh lay on its side with such persistencethat we sometimes wondered if she would everright herself again. We were enveloped in acloud of dust, and pursued our way withoutknowing where we were going, in perpetualfear of a collision. A sailing vessel ladenwith hay ran against us obliquely on the left,and scarcely had we got out of its waywhen a big Cook’s steamer came up on theright. Ten yards nearer and it would havepierced the middle of our boat and sunk us.

238

Esneh

It would be prudent to put in, but the embankment is steep and full of pointed stones androcks , almost invisible in this disturbed stateof the elements. The captain feared to be drivenby the current during the manoeuvre and to bedashed in pieces . About eleven o’clock, however, the sky cleared and the silhouette of atown rose vaguely in front of us. An outpostof gardens, an irregular line of houses, a slenderminaret that seemed to bend under the blast

,

a mast above a consul’s office on which anItalian flag twisted and flapped in desperation, andthere was Esneh turning a surly- looking front andone difficult of access to the river. The captain ,

however, discovered a sort of creek near an oldwall that seemed to be safe, and resolutely tookus into it. A s we reached it a last gust seizedus and shook us , and the whole frameworkcreaked and seemed to be torn asunder.Modern Esneh crowns a hill , in some placesfrom 25 to 30 yards high , formed of the debrisof towns that have succeeded one another on

the site from the beginning of history. For along time the Nile flowed round it withouttouching it, but about 1 820 it succeeded in makinga breach, probably after an imprudent seizure ofsebakh, and split it lengthways from south-east tonorth-east. A number of Mamelouk hotels and

239


gardens fell into the water, and the rest ofthe town would soon have been carried awayif the Bey who was ruling at the time forMehemet Ali had not intervened with unusualalacrity. Much stone is needed to shore upan embankment which is giving way, and itwould have cost a very great deal had notGod , who provides for the needs of His faithful,inspired the pagans with the idea of buildingimmense temples in sandstone or granite. EveryPharaonic site possesses some which form quarriesinstituted by Providence for the benefit of ad

ministrators. Esneh was not less well providedthan her rivals : she had three of reasonablesize : one in the midst of her houses and almostunder them , then two at a short di stance off,

the first on the north-west in the open country,the other on the east, beyond the river, near thevillage of Helleh. The temple in the town wouldhave been preferable ; for could it have beenused expenses of transport would have beenavoided, but the Minister of the Interior hadtaken possession of the chambers and arrangedthem as choune/zs, stores for the taxes paid inkind for the whole of the province. The Pachawould have been very angry if a ruin he wasusing had been demolished , and so they had tobe content with the temple ruins in the out

240


while at Siout , Keneh, and L ou x or, in townswhere trade is brisk, the European is stopped and

disputed for at every turn. But here his questionsare scarcely heeded or the objects he wishes tobuy shown to him. We arrived on marketday ; the large square swarmed with buyers andsellers, for, according to custom , all the fellahsof the province had come in . It is a uniqu eoccasion for us to make acquaintance with theproducts of the land. It is a very poor show, afew miserable vegetables, cabbages run to seed,overgrown salads , beans, stunted radishes , hereand there some sugar- canes , a little wool, a littlerope , half a dozen buffaloes , some camels , somehairless donkeys. Two or three women havespread out some variegated baskets and trays ina corner, things that the agents offer Cook

’stourists, who pay very dear for them. The shapesare old , and the colours and design of the

decoration go back to the Pharaonic age, butthe methods of manufacture have sadly degencrated with the course of time. There is noresemblance to the workmanship and lightnessof the baskets found in the tombs, or to thebright, warm tonality of the Soudanese basketwork. Traffic is going on briskly as we pass, andbargaining is proceeding all over the square. Veryoften it is only a matter of one or two centimes ,

242


still preserve a certain refinement of manner andlanguage whi ch savour of the metropolis ; butthe others, through contact with their provincialclientele, have lost the tradition of elegance , and arenothing better than low-class gba rcaz is, impudent,unhealthy, wi th none of the mysteriou s charm whi chcompensated somewhat for their grandmothers

’

shame. Turning to the right to avoid theirsolicita tions, we plunge into a labyrinth of dark,narrow streets, of blind alleys, of open squares,and then suddenly come up against a stone walladorned with hieroglyphics and crowned by ahigh cylindrical moulding . The temple in whichthe an cient inhabitants of Esneh worshipped aHathor in the shape of a fish is entirely buried ,and the pronaos alone is accessible to tourists.

! ou descend by a brick staircase of recent construction. The plan is the same as that of Edfouand Denderah and all the large building s of thePtolemaic age. Four rows of enormous columnssupport the roof ; on the east 3 sandstone screen,extending between the columns of the first row,

separates the portico from the courtyard , andon the west is the facade of the sanctuarypierced by its three doors. The lines are strongand harmonious : you feel that the architects ofthe Roman epoch understood their business as

well as those of the Pharaonic age. But the244

Esneh

Roman sculptors were much inferior. Themodelling of the bas- reliefs is uncertain, thearrangement of the ritual scenes is that of anunskilled practitioner rather than of an artist,the hieroglyphics have an awkward outline andare crowded together in disorderly fashion. Itis the style of the Antonines and Severus in allits ugliness, and yet, in spite of these imperfections of detail, the whole has a masterly stamp ,and the religious impression is as strong as inthe Theban temples . Tourists invade it two or

three times a week. Their conversation or theirlaughter awakes the echoes for a few minutes , justas the hymns of the priests did formerly ; theechoes rise to the vaulted roof, and then sleep againtill the next visit. They scarcely respond to thesound of our footsteps , but a family of sparrows ,disconcerted by our visit out of the due season,fly from the back wall to the architrave , chirpingand crying uneasily. A pigeon perched on one

of the capitals stretches its neck and examinesus curiously. A little of the peace of the oldgods seems to have remained in the hall and tosurround us.The rubbish and earth which press on thewalls are slowly but surely destroying them , and

would overturn them if not soon removed. Wehave taken possession of some of the neighbouring

245


masonry, but the chief of them , a half-ru inedok elle, still resists us. It is a wakf , and wakfsrequire interm inable negotiation . We shall,however, conquer in the end, and in two or threeyears the pronaos wi ll be cleared. But howwill it be with the rest of the temple Andwhat now remains of it ! If, turning your backon the visible portions , you walk westward ,through the town , you notice that the ground ,after preserving the same level for a hundred ora hundred and twenty yards, suddenly slopesdown, and descends almost to the level of theneighbouring plain. These deviations of theground really show a plan of the temple underthe network of streets. It is quite probablethat if we suppressed the houses and dug downbeneath them, we should soon come uponhypostyle halls, and then on the sanctuary,which, if not in tact, would at least be partlypreserved as at Kom -Ombo. It is a matter ofmoney, and operations could be carried tosuccess without a very large amount of troubleif it was done briskly with sufficient resourcesto indemnify all the landlords at once.When finished the aspect of the monumentwould be very strange. Imagine a sort of vastamphitheatre, the circumference of which wasadorned by houses, and in the middle a temple

246

XXIII

E L KA B

TH E unburnt Egyptian brick is less perishablethan stone. The walls of E l-Kab, which arebuilt of it, are in fairly good condition. Itstemples of sandstone and granite have fallen tothe ground and in places the foundations themselves no longer exist, nor the artificial bases bywhich they were supported. When the inhabitants of the neighbouring village want some hewnor unhewn stone to repair their houses , theycome and help themselves as from a quarry, and ,thank s to the distraction and complacency of

our guards, they slyly break o ff with theirhammers as many blocks as they need for thetime being. They prefer to attack the inscriptions and has-reliefs ; for why should the Pharaohshave taken the trouble to draw those mysteriouspictures if not to indicate to those who couldunderstand them the spots where treasure washidden under the protection of talismans ! Theyalways think that their blows will break the

248


shore. Her sacred lake, on which sailed thesacred boat containing her statue, had been formedat the east of the temple. It is now an ovalshaped pond , set deeply between the embankments, and the water remains in it from thebeginning of August to the end of January. Afew flocks of sheep, the property of the familiesliving in the neighbourhood, come down to drinkand to bathe as soon as the water rises ; whenthe river subsides, the water quickly evaporates andbecomes so brackish that the animals refuse todr ink it. The town extends to the west andnorth-west, and until these last years some partsof it, especially those close to the girdle wall,had suffered little. There might be found thehouses of the poor with their little courtyardsand their two or three tiny rooms . Archedalleys wound among them , or rather irregularzigzag passages like those of Arab villages whichtwist among the mud huts in capricious windings,and which three times out of four end abruptlyin a cul-de-sac. They are paved with fragmentsof pottery of no very remote date, and littleresearch is needed to see that they come fromthe Christian town which did not survive the Arabinvasion.

The Roman town, the Greek town, the Saidtown , all the towns that had followed one

250

E l- Kab

another on the site from the beginning ofhistory, lay one above the other in superimposed beds of unequal thickness. Directlythe pickaxe is used, pieces of varni shed fa

'

iencecome forth, variegated glass , bronze or coppervases

,blue or green enamel beads, and hun

dreds of those round stones which our workmen without the least misgiving declared to bethe bullets of Pharaoh’s artillery. In 1 883 twohours of digging very little below the surfacegave me the top of a stela of Pioupi II . , thebase of a nameless royal statue, a fine scarabof Thoutmosis III . , and a handful of brasscoins with the name of the Emperor Aurelian .

The harvest would be less rich at the presenttime if I cared to try my luck again. Thepeasants, encourag ed to industry by the orderprevailing in their country , have more thandoubled the extent of the cultivated land,and have upset the site in order to obtainsebakh, the nitrous earth that serves them inplace of manure The dealers in antiquitieshave followed, and for several years have foundthe wherewithal to fill the shops of L ou x or.

The archaeologists, as usual the last to arriveon the scene, methodically consummated thedestruction . Neither houses, nor streets, noropen squares are any longer to be distinguished,

251


but only fragments of shaky walls , heaps ofbricks or rubbish left on the edge of anexcavated hole , a confusion in which the brica-brac of all ages is m ingled. Tons of therubbish must be gone over and sifted beforediscovering even one of the delightful objectsearli er so easily found. Only the ramparts areintact.Formerly they made a parallelogram , the longsides of which measured about yards , but theNile, with its capricious changes of direction, haseaten away the western corner and threatensbefore long to continue its ravages. A smallerbreach has been made by the hand of man towardsthe north-west corner, probably during the lastattack. The fellahs try to bring their irrigatingtrenches through it, and thus to gain the vaguelands of the interior for cultivation. Except atthose two points the wall preserves a uniformheight of from 1 0 to 1 2 yards , and is only brokenby the empty space where the ancient gatewaysused to be , one on the north front, the other onthe east front. It is built of enormous bricks ,arranged in undulating layers from one end to theother of the west and north faces. On the eastand south it presents an alternation of panels, thebeds of whi ch run horizontally, wi th other panelswhich are concave and form an open reversed arch ,

252


and immobili se it for a few weeks, E l-Kab was thebulwark of the entire district. As soon as thelook-out men posted on the rocks of E l-Kalaa I

signalled the approach of a barbarian fleet, or thesentinels , set at intervals on the crest of the chainof the Arabian hills , observed any movementamong the tribes of the desert, the inhabitants ofthe villages sought refuge in the town with theirflocks and what property they could easily transport there. They encamped within the walls untilthe crisis was over. What could men who knewno other engines of war than the scaling-ladder orthe battering-ram do against so impenetrable acuiras s ! After two or three ineffectual attemptsat scaling the walls , they usually departed. Timeand fam ine could alone reduce the place.A thin line of vegetation runs beside the windings of the river. It does not equal the breadth ofthe town, and its eastern half is in the open desert.Archaic burying-grounds fill the north-east corner,cemeteries of the poor whose tombs contain only

1 El-Kalaa, the fortress, is the name given by the inhabitan ts to the ru ins of a fort of the Byz an t ine epoch , si tuatedabou t a do z en m i les to the sou th of Edfou on a project ion ofGebel Serag . Some excavat ing in that p lace abou t 1884 ledme to bel ieve that the Byz an t ine for t had fo l l owed a for t ofthe Pharaon ic age which marked the fron t ier of the baronyof El-Kab on the sou th.

254

El—Kab

rough pottery and the poorest decoration, necklaces of variegated pebbles or of enamelled fa'ience .The early aristocrats of E l-Kab were poor wretcheswho were buried as they lived , among the commonpeople and without more ceremony. They werenot di stingu ished from the vulgar herd. Aboutthe middle of the XI I I th or X IVth Dynasty someof them determ ined to emigrate to a sort of lowrock that stretches from east to west, a fewhundred yards to the north-east. It is a mass ofworn sandstone through which veins of greeni shclay, impregnated with ni trates , filter in everydirection. From olden times it was known to beso little solid that the venture of digging the deeptombs that were the fashion in Southern Egyptcould not be made. The oldest of those that weknow there is situated half-way up in a sort ofspur that commands the plain, and it has only onesmall chamber, at the end of which the prince engraved a stela in his own honour. His age wasnot merciful to him ; famine devastated the province, but his wise administration prevented thevillages that depended on him being reduced toextremities. Other members of his family wereplaced under him or beside him in a poorerfashion still. Their chapel was a mere holescooped out in the rock without paintings or

sculptures, without any of the pictures that en

255


sured an honourable after- life to the soul of themaster. A stela, awkwardly cut on a little stoneplaque, commemorated the name and the affiliation,but, badly fixed to the wall , it soon became un

fastened and we do not now know who restedthere. The successors of these unknown menplayed a glorious part in the wars of the earlyPharaohs of the XV I I I th Dynasty, Kamosis andAhmosis, against the Shepherd Kings . They ao

quired notable booty, and immediately acting likeall of their period who became rich, they commissioned tombs worthy of their new fortune fromskilful artists. Those tombs are reached from thetown in a quarter of an hour across a plain formedpartly of sandy quartz and partly of dry vegetablemould, to which a little moisture would easilyrestore its fertility. Sometimes after the stormsthat arise in the hills in spring or autumn ,torrents rush down and inundate the place for fiveor six hours . Wherever the water has touchedvegetation bursts forth. It blooms for several dayswith singular vigour, and then directly the waterhas evaporated dies as suddenly as it was born .

The Assouan railway cuts the track which joinsthe town to the tombs almost in its centre. Itfollows the natural undulations of the ground so

closely that we should not know where it was ifthe line of telegraph poles did not indicate the

256


persist, softened and blended like those of an oldtapestry, and their relief is of an almost uniquequality for that period. Traces of a provincialawkwardness are to be observed in them whichputs them below what is to be seen in the fineTheban tombs ; but if the artist

’s chiselling wassomewhat stiff and betrayed inexperience, he possessed the gift of life, and his personages are to beadm ired for a naturalness and vivacity of expression often lacking in work of a more skilfultechnique.On the right-hand wall Pahiri assists at hisown funeral, and contemplates the animation ofthe guests while they eat with a kindly expression. A t that time funeral feasts had the privilegeof throwing those who attended them into apeculiar state of mind. At the beginning a sortof jovial sadness prevailed, which the firm resolveto celebrate the dead man worthily soon changedinto excessive excitement lacking all decorum. Thewomen themselves came with so good a will thatwe wonder where the legi timate expression of theirgrief ended. One of them says to the slave whois handing the wine, Give me eighteen jars, forI want to get very drunk,

” and she adds philosophically, with a presentiment of possible couse

quences, The place where we are is well providedwith straw,

” in which to sleep themselves sober258

El- Kab

again. On the opposite wall, the left -hand one,they are not so merry : it shows the transportationof the mummy, the arrival of the human victim ,

the sacrifice of whom was simulated at the doorof the tomb , the dances of the buffoons in frontof the procession, the lamentations of the weepingwomen. Pahiri watches the operations which areto assure him wealth in the other world , andleaving the city in a chariot, sets out for thefields. The chariot is yoked with two horses , andthose two horses are the first of their kind thatwe see pictured. The horse was introduced intoEgypt by the Shepherd Kings, and was perhaps ararity at E l-Kab when Pahi ri ruled . The twobrave beasts, tightly reined, gnaw their bits and

neigh while awaiting their master’s return. He,meanwhile, does not hurry himself, and standingon the borders of hi s fields , sees with one glanceall the labour of the year. In one place they are

ploughing or sowing ; farther off, they are harvesting, grinding the grain , threshing it, carryingit to the granaries. It will eventually be hisbread. Elsewhere the grapes are being gathered,pressed, left to ferm ent, and the wine pouredinto jars . Hunting, fishing, fish curing, pottingof geese, are being actively carried on, as well asthe care of flocks , and boating. There is such aquantity of everything, and it is all so good in

259


kind , that Pahiri ought not to want for anythingeven to this day.

The Egyptians possessed a feeling for naturewhich caused them to place their Houses of Eternityin spots where a wide Vi ew opened over the valley.

Pahiri , when, as the Osirian dogma would exhorthim to do , he came out of his tomb duringthe day, would see at one glance the shining landover which he had ruled. There was displayedbefore him Rl-Kab with its crenellated silhouettewhence the fires lighted at sunset sent up their slowsmoke in to the evening sky. The thinly woodedhills of Kom-el-Ahmar bounded his horizon onthe extreme west, the Nile flowed betweenwith its convoys of boats , and at his feet thefellahs carried on indefatigably according to theseason the labours pictured on the walls. Fewplaces have remained more Pharaonic in characterthan this. The peasants at work wear the linendrawers and soft, close-fitt ing cap of their ancestors .Their hoes might be placed in the museumsalongside of the ancient ones , and their swingploughs are a legacy of the antique world. I n

looking at them we feel as if Pahiri’s farmershave become alive in their pictures and, shouldering their implements, urging their beasts, havedescended on to the land to resume the task interrupted by thirty-five centuries of sleep. And

260

XXIV

THE ENGLISH EXCAVATIONS ATKOM-EL-AHMAR

KOM -EL -AHM AR— the Red Em inence— is situatedon the left bank of the Nile, exactly oppositeE l-Kab , and to reach the ruins means a donkeyride of three-quarters of an hour from the embankment to the desert. A well-marked path , a rarething in Egypt, runs from the bank to theneighbouring village of El-Mouissat, crosses anirrigating canal and plunges among the houses.The land it traverses looks prosperous, small onearched bridges cross the canal at intervals

,and

E l-Mouissat, if not wholly clean, makes an efforttowards cleanliness which is not without merit inthis retired province of the Said. The houses arearranged in groups of three or four along thewater, each with its little garden in which plantsof the most varied species flourish at hazard, castoroil plants and cotton plants , napecas, sonts, doums ,beds of onions and leeks , square patches of garlicand bamiah. An ill-made deep road circulates

262


really ought not to disturb them when we couldso easily get out of their way ! The birds hereare not wild : as man does not hunt them, theyhave not learnt to be afraid of him, and live amicably in neighbourly fashion with him .

The canal is not entirely dry, and pools are to beseen here and there, but vegetation has invaded it,a little com , a little lucerne, lupins , vetch. Twoboats stranded at the bottom await the rising of

the water in the m idst of a field of lentils. Cultiy ated land begins again beyond, but becomes moreand more meagre and languishing, and suddenlyceases at the exact point where infiltration andirrigation no longer reach it. The Pharaonic townstood on the borders of the desert about 300 yardsfrom the canal. The hamlet of Kom-el-Ahmarcovers a small corner of it, and the greater part ofthe ancient buildings were formerly buried undera shroud of sand brought by the wind. Mr. Quibellcleared out the ruins of the temple in which theHorus of the locality was worshipped. He extracted wonderful things— the gold falcon’s headand the two copper statues of the PharaohP ioupi I . which are in the Cairo Museum— but hewas obliged to abandon the site before he hadexhausted it. This winter two other Englishmen ,

Mr. Garstang and Mr. Jones , undertook to finish thetask. In the six weeks duringwhich they have been

264

English E x cavat ions at Kom - cl- Ahmar

at work the accumulated rubbish forms a sort of wallround the excavations and hides them from View

,

so that we could approach them without beingseen. The workmen did not suspect our presenceuntil we were in the midst of them . We foundthem alone for the moment under the surveillanceof a native overseer, and the work suffers fromthe absence of the European chief. The men restbetween each stroke of the pickaxe, and thechildren squabble round their baskets. But directlythey saw us the scene changed and all was activity.

A boy of eight or nine years old intones a topicalverse, his comrades forming a chorus— “E nna/zar -de,

fi safl yeh (To-day there is good cheer) —and thepickaxes hurry on , the baskets are filled andemptied, the pit grows bigger, the overseer runs tothe head of his troop ready to seize the first objectthat shall come forth, and all to the quick rhythm ofthe song. It is almost waste of trouble, on thisside at least, and Mr. Jones has not much to hopefor. Mr. Quibell has only left him rubbish, piecesof stelae and of bas-reliefs , fragments of statues,common amulets, lost among m illions of potsherds ,all the broken pottery amassed by a hundred suc

cessive generations of careless housekeepers. Buthe goes on conscientiously, making his way fromhouse to house, in no way discouraged by thepoverty of his booty. At rare intervals a curious

265


object rewards his perseverance. The day beforeyesterday he found a tiny man’s head in lapislazuli under a heap of rubbish in the angle of twowalls . The modelling is delicate and the expressionof great charm , but what gives it extraordinaryvalue is that it fits a statuette of the same materialthat Mr. Quibell found not far from there sevenyears ago, and which is in the OxfordThe town was never very important. Itpossessed a temple of medium size and withoutarchitectural pretensions, two or three State warehouses in heavy masonry, a few thousand inhabitants crowded into clay huts like those with whichthe Egyptians are still contented , but little trade,no industries , and for food the narrow tongue ofland that the people of E l-Mouissat are strugglingto reclaim. And yet, situated as it was on theoldest frontier of the country, its position gave itimportance in primitive times, and its princesplayed a great part under the Thinite Pharaohsor their predecessors. Al lied with the rulers ofE l-Kab and Edfou , they defended the borders ofthe South against the tribes of the Soudan, andmore than one Nubian or Berber invasion cameto nothing under the walls of their fortress. Thefortress has not perished and stands almost intactabout a hundred yards from the town. It was not,as at E l-Kab opposite , an immense intrenchment

266


with hi s troops and made a long resistance. Abreach in the south front seem s to prove that thefortress was carried by assault in the last siege itunderwent , but it was seldom that so well-fort ifieda place succumbed to a direct attack. As atE l-Kab, the enemy usually waited in patience untilhunger or thirst overcame resistance.

I

The ground is broken up round about, and heapsof bricks and pulverulent human bones mark theplaces which Mr. Quibell excavated. The oldestcemeteries were placed at intervals on the sandyplain, at the north and west, but tombs ofrecent epochs are mingled with the prim itivesepulchres , and modern hands have so effectuallyupset everything, that it is .often difficult to dist inguish one from the other. The equipment isvery poor, coarse pottery, mats, rotten stuffs, necklaces and bracelets of pebbles or variegated glass,here and there jewels in precious metals, or amulets.

The people were as poor in death as in life. Theprinces and their families must have been morerichly buried somewhere in the hill, but most oftheir tombs are unknown to us. About a m ile or twofrom the fortress, however, half-way down the hillside

,entrances to hypogeum s are to be seen, those

which M . Bouriant and I studied nearly thirty yearsago. They are miserable tombs, hastily hewn out ,

1 Cf. Chap ter XXII I .268

English E x cavat ions at Kom - el—Ahmar

and almost without decoration. Rare inscriptionstell us that they sheltered the mummies of princesand high priests contemporary with the firstThoutmosis, but one of them, in better conditionthan the others , was appropriated and repaintedunder RamsesXII . Mr. Jones set up his camp there.H e stored his provisions in one, slept in another,made a kitchen on the platform opposite the thi rd,whi ch served as a dining-room, and stored theobj ects that he obtained in the course of hisexcavations in a fourth. A large ouady openedout at his feet and offered him wide views overthe desert to the south. Before him the wholevalley was displayed , shining as if with gold , andbordered with yellowish sand. He saw the oldfortress grey in the m idday sun , the eminence ofKom-el-Ahmar whence rose the dust of theexcavations, the green of the trees and the grain , thereflections in the Nile , and bounding the horizonthe hills of E l-Kab , with their barren tops , theirslopes down which the light seem s to flow as in aslow stream , and the bluish shadows in the hollows .

269

XXV

E D F O U

I F I was asked whi ch among the towns of modernEgypt had best preserved the physiognomy andinternal arrangements of an ancient city, I shouldreply without hesitation, Edfou. It is heraldedin the distance by its temple

,and the traveller

proceeding up the Nile in his dahabieh sees thetwo towers long before reaching it , as did thepilgrim ofold when devoutly wending his way thereto worship the falcon of Horus . An hour afterleaving E l-Kab the towers may be faintly descriedabove the trees, then almost immediately they areagain hidden by the trees, to reappear after a fewminutes a little higher. At each turn , when wecatch a fresh glimpse of them, they seem to join tothem a little more of their surroundings, the m inaretof one of the mosques, square pigeon-houses, two orthree panels ofwhitewashed walls , an irregular groupof yellow and grey houses , an embankment cutalmost straight in the black alluvium , two or threeboats, a salm

'

eh which sends its grating music out270

Edfou

into the breeze night and day, a belt of green cornand vegetation, a noisy suburb sprung up out ofthe ground twenty years ago, a canal, a bridge ofbricks and wood, and at last the village properly socalled with its low huts and almost deserted alleys .Dogs , too lazy to bark at strangers , sleep languidlyin the shade. We meet two or three womenshapeless in their long veils. A door is noisilyopened behind us, and the muffled sound of conversation is heard behind the walls . Two towers tothe right, one tower to the left , a kouttab hummingwith the sound of reading aloud , a sudden bend ,and there before us, above us , all around us,stands the huge temple. It was formerly buriedat the bottom of a pit, where Mariette, havingcleared it out, suddenly left it. The Service desAntiquités has just spent eight years in disengaging it more completely.

In order to do that, about forty houses hadto be bought and pulled down , and in someplaces twenty or thirty yards of debris had tobe cleared away, and the task is not yet fini shed .

But the court is freed and the site of the sacredlake, and a little in front of the pylon, on the left,a scarcely perceptible chapel, that to whichthe goddess of Edfou retreated in the spring inorder to give birth to the Divine Son of the localtriad. The monumental doorway by which the

271


pilgrims entered the temenos was freed fromrubbish three years ago I and although the excavat ions have not been pushed far enough on

that side, they enable tourists to stand sufficientlyfar back to View the facade in all its extent. Thestriking and barbarous ornamentation with whi chthe architects formerly adorned it can now be seen,the four gigantic masts from which variegatedbanners floated in the breeze, the veneering of rawcolours whi ch set off the triumphal bas- reliefs ofthe Ptolemaic kings, the shining gilded wingsof its colossal door. The masts have beenburnt, the cornices have fallen down, the rainhas washed out the colours

,and the noonday

sun , strik ing the grey surface, seems to devourthe sculptures ; the outline of the figures canscarcely be distinguished by the thin line of

shade that runs along their contours . The impression of assured strength, which formerlygained much of its vivacity from the Violentcolouring and rich decoration, results now solelyfrom the immensity of the proportions, and is not ,perhaps , less powerful for that. Nowhere in

Egypt, not even at Karnak, is what the Pharaohsmeant, when they boasted of having foundedeverlasting stone monuments in honour of the gods ,better to be understood. We cannot imagine that

1 This was wri t ten in January, 1 906.

272


put in a condition of perfect stability. In afew weeks the scaffoldings will be removed andthe building will have resumed its ordinary aspect.The works are carried on with a discreet activity

,

without useless display of strength, without insultsfrom the overseers or hostile grumbling from theworkmen, and the few tourists who watch theoperations would never suspect how dangerousthey often are. The entire portico had deviatedfrom west to east, and eleven of its columns wereonly held in position by the architraves whichjoined them , and by the ceiling, the slabs of whichweighed on them. No attempt could be made toset them straight before shoring up the whole mass

,

and the least awkwardness committed during thepreliminary Operation risked the fall of the wholeon the workmen. M . Barsanti propped up theceiling, timbered the wall , equipped and buttressedthe columns with immense pitch-pine beams .Directly the safety of the whole was assured, hetook down the blocks that formed the cornices

,

then applying screwjack s to the ceiling he liftedthe slabs a foot above the top of the walls andfixed them in the air for ten months on frames oftimber-work.

Next he attacked the architraves, but instead of

taking them down , a proceeding that would haverequired double the time and expense, he placed

274

Edfou

them on cradles of beams prepared on their eastside. He was on the point of ordering thecolumns to be pulled down, when an incidenthappened which nearly prevented success . Themaster mason and his assistants were terrified byso many stones suspended above their heads

,and

declared that unless they were brought downto the ground they would leave the spot.M. Barsanti installed himself beside them underthe mass to prove the needlessness of their fears .Seeing him so resolute, their confidence wassomewhat restored, but the first few hours werevery uncomfortable. If a piece of wood creaked

,

or a rope vibrated as it was tightened , the menfled in every direction, and it was not an easymatter to gather them together again . Nevertheless the corner column was taken to pieces andstored away without accident in a day of tenhours . The second column only took eight hours .and the workmen becom ing hardened , thebusiness was finished sooner than we could havehoped . In less than two months the elevenleaning columns were taken down and set upagain in the perpendicular, the architraves re

turned to the places they had left , the ceilingdescended on to the architraves , and the porticowas more robust than it had been for thirty yearsbefore its misadventure . In the course of the

275


manipulations nothing suffered, neither inscriptions nor pictures, and when the apparatus wasremoved no trace of the work that had beenaccomplished would have remained if we had notbeen obliged to fill up the points of the coursesof masonry with cement, the dull colour of whichwill contrast for a few months with the warmertonality of the antique stone. The Pharaohswould have been immensely proud of so wellexecuted an enterprise ; they would haverecorded it in big hieroglyphi cs on a stela withmuch emphasis and prolixity, extravagant inpraise of themselves and prayers to the gods.Such panegyrics on stone are out of fashion.

M . Alexandre Barsanti will think himself fortunateif the four years of hard work and anxiety whichEdfou cost him obtain a couple of lines in thenext edition of some tourists’ Guide to Egypt.At off times he had worked at the slight re

touchings in the interior rendered necessary by itscondition. The good folk of the village had notinhabited the halls for fourteen centuries withtheir poultry and their cattle without doing somedamage. In one place they had hammered the

portraits of the pagan divinities which decoratedthe walls , in order to kill the demons thatanimated them. Elsewhere their wives hadscraped or scooped out the stone in order to obtain

276


there was the large granite naos , consecrated byNectanebo before the building of the actualedifice, and in which was enclosed the image of thegod , a gigantic falcon in gilded wood. Then infront of the naos on a block of stone came thesacred boat that was carried in procession throughthe streets and fields on festival days. It isrepresented in its natural size, with its litter, itsfigures on poop and prow, its tabernacle half veiledwith some white stuff, its oar- rudders , and on eachside , to the right and left , the altars , the ledgesladen with bread and cakes, the libation vases, themats , the dishes of offerings. A skilful joinercould soon have faithfully copied the furniture,and with the assistance of the half-light thatprevails in such places, visitors suddenly confronted with the mystic apparatus would have amomentary vision of the past.They could even, if they so desired, procure itnow by standing on one of the towers of the pylonat sunset. The staircase winds through the mass sogently, that the 240 steps are climbed almost withoutfatigue Narrow air-holes cut in the south walllet in a scanty amount of light, and a side doorOpen on each of the landings leads to the priests’

chambers. Two or three of them served as guardroom s for the little French garrison which held thecountry during Napoleon’s expedition. At the

278


evening meal are lighted , and , as in the melancholylines of Virgil , the roofs of the houses smoke.The falcons hover round us , describing largecircles before regaining their eyries, and m ingledwith their cries uncertain sounds of voices floatup now and again to the tower top. The womencall to one another from the terraces , the men,seated or standing on the threshold of their doors ,engage in serious conversation across the street,and pointing to us , seem uneasy about what weare doing up there at so late an hour. Is it reallyEdfou of to-day that is sinking to rest before oureyes ! The few signs of modern life, the m inaretof the mosque , the telegraph poles , the iron pipesof the steam-pump , are effaced in the soft lightof the dying day. Modernity is concealed in theuncertain pallor of twilight, and the call of themuezzin sounds in our ears like a feeble echo ofthe chants with which the priests of Horusgreeted the daily death of their god.

280

XXVI

A S S O UAN

TH E north wind strikes sharply in our faces , greyclouds chase each other across the sky, the sun

shines yet without warmth , one of those dry, clearsuns that are frequent in France in the month ofMarch, days when spring, not yet sure of itself,makes an attempt to come forth , and yet , in spiteof the wind and the cold, we are on the very frontiers of Upper Egypt. To right and left are theworn sandstone hills and golden sands whichherald Nubia. Here are groups of date-palm s and

doum-palms, of acacias and tamarisks , which forma thin screen behind the blackish banks ; here aredusty patches of castor-oil plants and clover, hutsof twigs and mud, chadoufs, sak z

’

e/zs : and then inthe background the stained cupola of the tomb ofthe saint who presides over Assouan . The town issuddenly revealed at the turn of a last wooded promontory between the shore of E l-Qoz and thesouthern point of Elephantine ; there are the villashalf-hidden in trees , barracks , church, gardens,

28 1


then a straight front of white houses , above whichthe heap of old buildings of the colour of theground rises pyramidally. A large sandbank haslately risen across the channel and does not permitaccess to all. Light boats can go up withoutmuch trouble, at least in winter-time, and pushingstraight between islets of brown grani te roundwhich the water foams , make land at last beyondthe broken piles of a Roman jetty. The otherspass to the west, and double Elephantine to reachthe port of the southern side , as if they werecoming from the Cataract .Where is the Assouan of twenty years ago,

I

the half-Nubian village, its originality as yet unspoilt by a European admixture ! No railwaydisgorged every evening carriage-loads of dustytourists ; four or five dahabiehs at most rode atanchor far apart in the height of the season. Thepost-boat brought up a few dozen touristsin the week, and twice a month Cook’s partiesarrived in a big steamer. Then for two or threedays there was going and coming of small boatsbetween Elephantine and the mainland , donkeysgalloping along the road to Philae, warlike reviewsof Barabras at ten francs a dance , ballets of almehs,endless bargainings for Nubian swords andweapons, ostrich feathers , raw ivory, Soudanese

I This was wri t ten in 1 902.

282


coarse Indian silver-work. At the southern endtwo or three cabs of the most correct patternawait custom with resignation, at the head of arank Of numbered donkeys , and then the railwaystation with its level entrance marks the end ofthe esplanade.Here, then, the quay ends , and the shore re

appears , capricious, scattered over with all kindsof breakneck objects, bristling with heaps ofbroken stones, piles of wood, of barrels or ofsacks, but also with booths and tents that betray afair in which toys and popular cakes are offered forsale, where there is cooking in the open air, andeven an itinerant circus under the French flag,whence a freshly shorn ass’s foal and a superb whitecamel come forth to the tune of a polk a to drinkat the river. It is time to turn aside if we wish toescape these suburban attractions , and we strikeinto a silent street which, turning its back to thetown , seems to plunge south into a desert ofgranite and sand. The site has the wretchedaspect of the outskirts of cities , houses in ruins ,unproductive gardens, vague plots of ground disfigured by filth, through which the road winds andclimbs. A portion of a mosque totters on theright

,a trench is hollowed where the road sinks

down, and suddenly, as in Perrault’

s fairy tale,the ground half opens and a courtyard appears

284

Assouan

at the bottom framed on two sides by long, newbuildings. A troop of young people on donkeyscome out of the gateway and strike into thecountry. Groups of people walking about stoptheir chatting to watch them , and then begin totalk again faster than ever. Two dragomans dispute in a corner and mutually curse their father.A cook, dressed in whi te, his cap on one side andhis knife in his waistband , chases a boy who hasstolen a pigeon from his kitchen. It is the Cataract Hotel, which is the beginning beyondAssouan of a second A ssouan , more Europeanthan the first. Exactly opposite, the EnglishChurch rears its cupola , fini shed last year, and alittle to the south the reservoir, fin ished this year,stands on the height.If the town has done its best to receive itsvisitors according to their taste , the visitors fortheir part have not been ungrateful. Doubtlesspassing tourists form the great majority of them ,

but from year to year the number of invalids or ofsun- lovers increases , who come to bask in the sun ,and to leave wi th regret at the begirming of spring.

During the winter the temperature is equable, thesky clear, the population, except the beggars ,amiable and easy to get on with , and the hotelsoffer those who are not afraid of the expense moreintelligent luxury than is to be found in the best

285


hotels in Italy. Many people do not now stay atL ou x or, as was the custom only three or four yearsago , but travel straight through from Cairo toAssouan. In the first days of their sojourn mostof them are consumed with an intense archaeological ardour, and rush incontinently to the antiquities. They traverse the spot where the Temple ofElephantine was, the quay built of blocks tornfrom the old buildings of the island , the Nilometerrestored by Mahmoud Pacha, and buy Christianlamps or fragments of papyrus from the Berbers .They attack the hundred steps of the staircasewhich leads to the tomb of the old princes , andmarvel at the barbarism of the hieroglyphics or

figures with which they are decorated Theyhasten to Deir Amba Simaan to study the vestigesof Coptic painting, and are nothing daunted bythe five miles that separate them from Philae. I s

not the railway of Chellal there to help them tocover the distance in forty minutes ! With somezeal increases in proportion as the stay is prolonged

,and is exercised in the interests of science.

It led the Princess Royal of Sweden fifteen yearsago to undertake most successful excavations.More often it cools at the first signs of fatigue ,and less exacting distractions take its place. Elective affinities soon show themselves between thesepersons of such differing nationalities , and groups

286


the camp of the Barabras , and if nothing moreinteresting Offers, there is the bazaar, where acouple of hours of the afternoon can easily bekilled .

The bazaar is not very large, but it is one of

those that have best preserved an aspect of Easterntradition. The hilly street which runs through itand the streets branching off from it are roofedwith planks as in olden times, and the shade thusspread over the stalls does no harm to the greaterpart of the objects to be seen there. Occasionallyunexpected discoveries are made. Nearly twentyyears ago I acquired as an antiquity a white claypipe

,the head of which was a portrait of

Robespierre,as the words traced in enamelled

letters round the hatband testified. It had been theproperty of one of the French soldiers left behindafter the retreat of the army ; but how had sofragile a thing remained unbroken among thoseBerber hands ! This year I found no revolutionarypipe

,but m etal buttons seemed to me to abound

buttons of the Republican army, buttons of the firstRegulars of Colonel Selves , buttons of the time ofIbrahim the Victorious or of Said Pacha, buttonsof contemporary English soldiers— a whole courseof history in military buttons. The rest of thethings consist of the ordinary objects in the bazaarsof Upper Egypt— Russian or Persian enamels ,

288

Assouan

Indian filigree work, inlaid work, and the redearthenware of Siout , jewels of the Soudan or of theHedjaz, ostrich feathers eaten away by vermin, anincoherent mass of African weapons, z agaies, boarspears, rhinoceros leather shields or such like

,

lances , knives, swords with cross-shaped guardson their flat sheaths— all handled in confusion byyoung women in bright toilettes who bargainedwithout ever buying anything, or by hurriedtourists who buy without ever bargaining

,by

dragomans interested in the sale, by insinuatingParsee agents expert in fleecing their customers.Farther on, the European crowd is less, but business is more serious— in the bazaar of cotton stuffs,of shoes, of ironmongery, of provisions— and it is apleasure to see a curly-headed, rosy-cheeked grocerin the classical uniform of the trade serve a half

piastreworth of moist sugar to dark-sk inned fellahwomen or dishevelled Ababdehs. But the shopsgrow fewer, the bazaar gradually and almostimperceptibly melts into the ordinary street, andbefore we know it old Assouan reappears , solitaryand dusty. We are in dark alleys , tunnels en

closed between the two walls of shaky houses ; wesee the door of a mosque through which comes theundefined murmur of a monotonous voice ; chil~

dren are playing in the dust without enthusiasm ;

one or two veiled women pass close to the wall,289 T


then at the outlet of a square a corner of the desertbecomes visible, the silhouette of two or threeunsteady Santons , pieces of bricks set edgewi se,tombs freshly whitewashed, the cemetery wherethe town has buried its dead from generation togeneration, from the time of the Musulmanconquest.There sleep in the peace of Allah the descendants of the Mecca and Medina colony led by Amrben el-As in 640, the A shab en -N abz

'

, friends ofthe Prophet. An old devotee who is pursuing hismeditations crouching against a door lifts his headon hearing their names, and offers to show us theprincipal tombs. They no longer preserve theform of a monument ; the walls have burst open,time has cut the corni ces into irregular festoons,cupolas are spli t open, and the sanctuaries are laidbare to the gaze of the Gentile as to that of thetrue believer. The funerary stelae, many of whichwere in beautiful writing, were all taken awayseveral years ago and transported to Cairo, wherethey fill up the Arab Museum, but our guideknows who were the owners of each ruin, anddrones out their history. They were all verygreat saints, and innumerable miracles are relatedof them, miracles which even still continue to

work. The Cheikh Ali Abi-Yousef Abou-Thalebcures rheumatism and gout. The sick person

290


people come from everywhere— from Roum,India

,

China, the land of Ouak ouak , the country of thenegroes— to the relics of these saints. Such apilgrim will sell his property and sail or ride formonths before reaching Assouan. He prays overthe glorious sepulchres, comforts himself with apinch of the sacred dust, and then straightwaydeparts, entirely happy to have purchased evenat the price of his whole fortune the privilege ofvisiting the spot where repose the most veneratedof the friends of the Prophet. And we whoaccompany him have come on a day blessed aboveall others. By a strange coincidence it happens thatthe 27th of Ramadan falls this year on a Friday ;and is not the night of the 27th of Ramadan thecelebrated night of dignity, L elet el-lendr , duringwhich the Koran was delivered to Mahomet ! Theday declines , soon the gates of the firmament willopen, and angels will descend to bring the benefitsof Heaven to the creatures of earth. Until dawnall prayers will ascend without hindrance to theears of God, and none will be refused so long as itcontains no desire contrary to the law. I hadsome scruple in only offering a couple of piastresby way of a tip to a guide so learned in the thingsof heaven and earth, but it must be believed thatin giving us his services his sole thought was not ofmaterial gain, for he heaped blessings on us.

292

Assouan

The setting sun had shed its last light, and thestars were coming out one after the other, whenwe decided to depart . The bazaar was not yetclosed, and sounds of merry voices together with asmell of cooking announced the beginning of oneof those feastings which make up each evening forthe strict fasting of the days of the month of

Ramadan. Everywhere the streets were empty,the doors closed, the houses silent, while the magicdarkness of night in the East spread over thebuildings of modern Assouan, modifying its vulgarity. Suddenly the chant of the muezzin burstover our heads. It was the melody that FelicienDavid noted , and that his Desert made popularin France, but here was the air intoned by ayoung, fresh , clear, resonant voice, triumphant withfaith and trust in a merciful and victorious God.

The quay was deserted , the river silent, E lephantine bounded the horizon with its uncertain out

line. Instead of the confusion and noise of thedaytime there reigned everywhere the reposefuldelight in living that no one can ever boasthe has completely felt if he has never been inEgypt.

293

XXVII

THE CONVENT or ST. SIMEON NEAR ASSOUAN

ASSOUAN was ardently Christian before becomingardently Musulman, and for centuries possessedat least as many churches as it counts mosquesto-day. But now its Christianity has vani shedwithout leaving any traces, except the ruins of

several considerable convents to be found in theoutskirts . There are some to the south, amongthe rocks that dominate the Cataract Hotel,among the tombs built for the friends of theProphet. There are some to the east, on theborders of the Libyan Desert, but dismantled andso covered up by sand that their traces are scarcelyvisible. There are some again on the other sideof the Nile, against the cliff where the princesof the VI th and XI I th Dynasties dug out theirtombs. Only one, that of St. Simeon ,

I hasremained intact and deserves a visit.

I I have kep t this name here, wh ich is that used in theTourists’ Guides, I do not kn ow on what au thori ty. The

peop le of the district cal l i t Deir Amba H edere, and i t is in294


away by the breeze that blows from the Cataract.Pagnon

’

s Hotel is in sight for a few minutes , thenit vanishes in its turn, and we might think our

selves far from modern Egypt if below on a heightEnglish redoubt did not ostentatiously display

its newly whitened walls.Across on the right Elephantine slowly defiles,its shore scattered over with blocks half buried inthe sand, its Tell dug out and ‘undermined by thesebakh diggers , with its dark-coloured embankmentthat is being continually destroyed and restored bythe current, with its quincunxes of palm-trees ofunequal heights. The water murmurs and flowsswi ftly round us, in front of us, behind us, dividedinto a hundred foaming channels by the graniteblocks, chiefly of a dull red colour, the sides of ashining black where the inundation has polishedthem. Here and there several are joined togetherby banks of gravel or strips of compact slime, soas to form islets bristling with“ weeds and brambles run wild. A few acacias have by somechance sprung up on the largest and pretend togive shade. A family of Berbers have installedthemselves in a low hut made of mud and twigs,and in the win ter manage to cultivate a fewpoor vegetables. It is the very borderland of thesavage life : two or three hens scuttle away whenthey see us, a tethered goat cries out in distress ,

296

The Convent of St . Simeon

and the dog, awakened by the noise, barks at usas long as we remain in sight.The creek where we disembark must often havebeen crowded and noisy in the days of the convent’s prosperity. Everything brought to themonks from outside must perforce have landedthere : convoys of provisions and cattle, troopsof pilgrims, soldiers told off to police the desert,merchants, farmers , tax-collectors, the servants ,vassals and serfs that the active monasteries of theSaid then attracted to themselves . Now it is onlyfrequented by tourists from Assouan during thefour months of the season, but the natives ofElephantine have appropriated to themselves thestrip of alluvium that borders it by right ofseizure, and there cultivate a few castor-oil plants,a little bersim , lupins, beans , and barley, andthus there is along the waterside a velvety bordering of young springe verdure. It is onlyfifteen yards at its widest, and in Europe the gamewould not be worth the candle , but cultivableland is so rare in Egypt that nothing is despised.

The labourers wi ll obtain for a few weeks morefood than they could glean elsewhere, and willthus be able to reach the end of the year withouthaving to endure famine. Beyond , stretches a beltof withered, dishevelled alfas, and then behind thealfas comes the bare, sterile desert. The ouady

297


goes its way in a gentle slope between two hillsthe soil of which is becoming exhausted, andopposite us at the culminating point the monastery stands out against the sky, with the grimprofile of its walls. The rock shows in places,black and grey, but a golden sand fills in thehollows, a fluid sand that is made by the decomposition of the sandstone in the sun . The sand of

the third ravine, to the left in leaving the river, isthe object of singular veneration to the riversidepopulation. They imagine that it will cure themof fever and all serious maladies. They scale thecliffs at one effort , and when the top is reached,recite a short prayer— the Musuhn ans, thefritz

'

lsha ,I

the Christians, Our F ather ; then they lie downon their right side and roll down the slope. Ifthey get to the bottom at one attempt, withoutstopping, the cure is immediate. If there is anypause on the way they may try twiceagain, butif the third time they are still unsuccessful , it iswell to think of mak ing their will , for they arecondemned without hope of remedy. Like manycustoms of the same sort, this one has its origin inantiquity. The charm first worked by the powerofKhnoumou , lord of the Cataract, then Khnoumou

transmitted it to St. H edere, and now a Musul1 The fdtikha is the first soura te of the Koran , that

which Opens the Holy Book.298

THE CONVENT OF ST. S IMEON , NEAR ASSOUAN .

To face p.


man Cheikh, whose name no one would tell me,

has stepped into the inheritance of St. B edereand of Khnoumou . So it is throughout Egypt.The people in changing their religion have notchanged their nature, and those whom they continue to pray to under new names are thephysician-gods worshipped by their ancestors.Perhaps they in their turn had borrowed the cultfrom one of the forgotten tribes who dwelt on

the banks of the Nile in prehistoric times.The convent occupies a very strong position.

It is partly built in stories on the slope of thehill, partly on the edge of the rocky promontorythat commands the last turn of the ouady. Itis in the form of an irregular trapezium, thebroader axis of which is in the direction fromsouth to north. Like all the monasteries ofEgypt, it was besides an asylum of prayer afortress capable of resisting the most violentattacks for weeks. The outer wall is in a straightline , almost without towers or bastions, and stillmeasures in places seven or eight yards in height.The lower courses are of big unhewn stones so asbetter to resist underm ining ; the upper coursesare of brick, and all in such good condition thatwith a few cursory repairs the building would beable to withstand an attack. At one point onlyis the damage considerable, at the south-west

299


corner, at the place of disembarkation whencoming from the river. A portion has fallendown for a length of about four yards

,and the

rubble spread along the base on the ground onlyhalf fills up the breach.

A broken vault and masses of scattered masonrycan be seen in the interior, over which the windhas laid a thin covering of sand, then a corridorwhich leads to some dark chamber. It was theway by which the enemy entered in that lastattack, and it has remained the same ever since.The entrance proper was sixty yards beyond, inan almost square projecting portion, standing outin the middle of the east front, and it was defended according to the rules of the art. In theangle formed by the projection and the wall wasa low postern, which could not be approachedwithout exposing to the defenders the side thatthe shield did not protect. When they hadbeaten in the wings of the door, Heaven knowsat what cost, they found themselves in a darkchamber, in the left wall of which was anotherdoor, at least as solid as the first. Having passedthrough that

,a third door, situated at the end

of a corridor enclosed by two walls, had to beforced . It was the last, but even after gainingpossession of that it must not be thought thatthe place was taken. Each of the two levels on

300


same system prevailed above the central nave , butthe domes there were necessarily higher. It wasplann ed , as is still the case in the greater number ofthe convents in Upper Egypt, to accentuate veryclearly outside the disposition of the cross , whichwas not clearly enough shown in the interior. Allthe surfaces were whitewashed, and at most theymight have painted the big knots, the outlines ofwhich are vaguely to be seen on the remain s of thewhi tewash, in three colours, black , yellow, and red.

There was only real decoration in the choir, or, togive it its Arab name, in the hehal round the altar.It comprised three niches surmounted by a vaultedroof formed of a semi-dome open towards the con

gregat ion . We can just manage to see the marksof several layers of paintings superimposed one on

the other, pieces of drapery and figures superior instyle to that of the pictures that overlay them.

They can scarcely go back beyond the eleventhcentury, and are probably the work of one of themonk s of St. H edere. In the curve of the apsethe Christ is seated , a big, melancholy Christ,motionless in the midst of an oval glory. He wearsa green tunic over which floats a purple cloak. Heholds the Gospel resting on His knees with the lefthand and lifts the right one in order to bless theworld. Two angels and two saints frame Himsymmetrically on the right and left, fairly well

302

The Convent of St . Simeon ,

preserved angels with their yellow wings,aureole

,

purple cloak and white dress. It is the traditionalcomposition which repeats itself all over the world

,

in Italy as in Egypt, but the workmanship here isespecially poor. Assouan was situated on theborders of Christian civili sation, and the arts sufferedcruelly from the neighbourhood of barbarism.

Nothing proves it better than the miserable procession the remains of which may be seen underthe Christ on the vertical walls of the apse. Thereare twenty-four venerable personages , the old menof the Apocalypse, to whom the Egyptians assignedthe names of the twenty-four letters of the alphabet.They stand side by side and face the spectators.They are tall, thin , unnatural, without consistencyin their priestly garments, with long beards, ex

pressionless features , enormous foreheads, big,deep-set eyes, unintelligent. The Coptic paintersproduced nothing more ugly.

It was all decaying when I first saw it twentytwo years ago, and it has become much worsesince : a few more bad seasons and nothing willbe left of it. Sgraffiti drawn with a knife orwith red and black ink, in the two cells next thehehal, show the feelings of piety that the contem

plat ion of these astounding works of art awoke inthe soul of the religious. The formula scarcelyever varies. One , Archelaus, a native brother,

303


asks the Lord to pardon him his sins . One, Am

monios, who confesses himself the worst of monks,implores the divine mercy. Others implore thesaints to remember them or not to forget a relative who entered into everlasting rest the 1 3th of

Cho'iak of the sixth indiction. The greater partof the early ones are in Coptic. Some who nolonger knew Coptic employ Arabic, and as thecenturies advance Ar abic more and more predominates . It is almost solely used in the inscriptionsafter the devastation of the convent, and appearseverywhere in the chambers behind the apse, in theaisles , in the corridors, and in the chapels. Therocky wall against which the church leans had beenworked as a quarry about the end of the Greekepoch, and the stonecutters had dug out excavationswhich sheltered hermits when Egypt was convertedto Christianity. One of the last doubtless acquireda reputation for holiness in the neighbouring villages, for his retreat was changed in to an oratoryat the foundation of the convent and decoratedwith pictures. Here, as In the church, the paintingwas several times renewed in the course of centuries : the present one is nearly as extraordinary asthe paintings in the apse. Two shining rows of

sad hierarchical personages fill three of the sides , andamong those whose names are legible may bedistinguished some of the most illustrious saints of

304


than a dungeon, the crenellated surfaces of whi choverhung the rock from east to north, and onwest and south overlooked a large empty courtyard. The monks were completely isolated, andwhen the rest of the building had succumbed couldhold out there for days or even weeks longer. Theentrance was guarded by a tower, the guard-roomof which was destroyed during the last attack whichthe place underwent. It is now approached over aheap of disaggregated bricks , and you find yourselfin a sort of two- storied barrack, divided from southto north in five longitudinal divisions. The one

into which we penetrated traversed the wholelength of the building. It is vaulted from endto end , and is closed at the northern end by aclerestory of six superimposed openings, three, thentwo

,then one, the three lowest cut in rectangular

Ioopholes , the three above finished lancet fashion.

Here and there portions of the walls or pieces ofthe roof have fallen down, and the ground iscovered with the debris. The whitewash has peeledoff, leaving the beaten earth exposed with which thebeds of brick were plastered. Where it has lasted,it is covered with pious formulas and proper names ,some in Coptic, but the greater number in Arabic.There are some of the twelfth century, but manyare no more than ten or twelve years old : thedragomans of the dahabiehs have not omitted to

306


record in big letters in the most conspicuous placesthe day and month of their visit. Red crosses arespread among these writings , and in the centre ofthe gallery there are two pictures facing each otheron the two walls. That on the east is entirelyeffaced, but enough of the other remains to allowus to perceive the subject. Christ is seatedunder a portico, in the position of a ByzantineEmperor. Two winged archangels mount guardsymmetrically on His right and left, and then comesix apostles standing in single file. The artist towhom we owe this piece was industrious, but hisbrush has betrayed him in a miserable fashion.

Yet if he had succeeded, his brothers would nothave attached more value to his work. When theyprostrated themselves before it in their prayers itwas not the picture they saw but the Christ Himself, His angels, His di sciples , and the imperfectionsof the painting did not in the least disturb thebeauty of their visions. They dwelt to the rightand left in dark cells that could hold two, three,four, even six inmates . Benches of unburnt bricksmarked the spot where they placed their coarsestraw mats for their nightly repose, and niches inthe wall held the lamp or the jar of fresh waterfrom whi ch they quenched their thirst. Therethey spent their hours of sleep, interrupted byinterminable prayers , and scarcely left their cells

307


except to go down into the church or to the refectory. They took their meals in a gallery parallelto the first, to the west of their cells, and neighbouring halls represent perhaps the places of thechapter-house or the library.

The whitewash of the doors and walls is smoothand worn , soiled by contact with thousands ofdamp hands and monks’ cloaks that rubbed againstit in passing. A blackened lamp lies forgottenin one of the niches , water-jars almost intact leanhere and there against a bench ; at moments wehave the impression that the ruins are of yesterday,and the monks are in hiding near at hand, onlywaiting for the retreat of the Gentiles to reinhabittheir cells .Their life pursued the even tenour of its way,empty, miserable. The storm of religious passionand the stress of theological ardour that sweptover Egypt in the centuries preceding the Arabconquest had long abated when these monks tookthe vows that bound them . Some among themstill nourished the faith of which martyrs aremade, and courageously faced torture when aSultan let persecution loose among them. Theylacked the knowledge which had made theirspiritual ancestors of Scete or A tripe famous , andwhich had put the heads of the Church of Alexandria in the first rank of the defenders of

308


with their learning. The supreme authority of theabbot maintained an appearance of harmony amongthem , but they were secretly torn by hatreds thatinvariably develop among persons forced cont inually to meet each other in a too restrictedSpace. Intrigues arose around each dignitary, andmutinies sometimes occurred in support of theseintrigues. And then the Musulmans overwhelmedthem with insults and annoyances. The armies ofthe King of Nubia, Christians as they were, cameat intervals to pillage their farms and encamp attheir gates, and they had either to repel theirco-religioni sts by force or buy them off withmoney. The more distant Nubians, the troops ofthe Sultan, Ar abs, negroes, Dilemites, L owatas, rosein their turn and claimed ransom then the monk shad to make fresh sacrifices and disburse for theMusulmans at least as much

f

as they had paid theChristians. The monks held firm for three or fourhundred years , but at length, poor, hungry,diminished in numbers , in no condi tion to recruittheir ranks or repair their walls, they threw up thegame and took refuge in the Coptic communitiesof Edfou and of Esneh. About the middle of thethirteenth century the monastery of St. H edere

was deserted.

The staircase of the tower is no longer in acondition of solidity. Steps are wanting, and

310

The‘

Convent of St . Simeon

those still there hold together only by a miracle,

for they are worn , dented , unsteady, full of holesand cracks in to whi ch the feet go as in a trap.

Half-way up, on a dangerous landing, a doorgives access to the first floor of the convent. Thearrangement is similar to that on the ground-floor,long vaulted galleries with sgraffiti and picturesof saints in bad condition, cells , assembly halls,stores. The terminal platform is not very safe,but, looking down, there is a view from it of apanorama of unexpected extent and beauty. Firstcomes the monastery itself, crowded on its rockysaddle, the whole of its buildings , its open basilicaexposed to all the winds, its courtyards filled withsand , its fallen walls. On three sides lies thedesert, solitary and gloomy in the light of thesetting sun. On the east the Nile glitters amongits rocks , Elephantine displays its masses of foliage,Assouan stands out like a flat silhouette again sta background of granite and sandstone, andbeyond , in the far distance, a country inset withvaporous summits begins to be tinted with thepinks and violets of the evening light.

XXV I I I

PH I LZE

WE must take half an hour’s journey by train,

first through one of the native suburbs of Assouan,then in sight of a horde of Bicharis encamped onthe outskirts of the suburb so as to give thetourists an impression of life in the desert

,and

lastly along a monotonous slope of rocks andreddish sand. The train is a real Paris suburbantrain , with its carriages too old for the service ofthe long-distance lines, with an old-fashionedlocomotive , a great boiler stuck on wheels, whi chwill resolutely do its fifteen miles an hour if thedriver will let it. It goes painfully panting overthe slope until at last straight in front of it, abovethe line of sandstone that just now bounded thehorizon, there slowly come into view mounds ofblackish granite and a blue-grey plain flooded withlight in which the currents thread their way andcross each other. ‘Groups of dying palms orwithered acacias are set in the water in front of theembankment itself, marking the outline of the

312


portions of buildings grouped in front or on thesides of the naos, and the corridors that form com

munications between them. At least the Nile onlywets them exceptionally when the north wind

,

stirring the water, raises waves whi ch flow throughthe halls. But if the water only seldom flows overthe pavements, its presence is felt everywhere inthe veinings and under the outer layer of the stone.Without possibility of preventing its progress, ithas silently filtered through from bottom to top ,by rills as fine as hairs, and between two inundations has impregnated the entire fabric. The wallslook damp to the eye and are damp to the fingersif they are touched. The sandstone has shed thegrey granulated covering the dryness of whichhad clothed it for centuries, and it slowly resumesthe yellowish colour it had in the quarry. Thefaded and dirty colours which here and thereclothe the figures of the gods or the architecturalornaments are strengthened and revived by thedamp. Even the celebrated capitals of the pronaoshave less dry and inharmonious tones than formerly. The reds, blues, yellows, and greens haveinsensibly run into each other at the edges underthe persistent influence of the dampness actingbehind them in the stone ; and while thi s interiorwork softens and shades them, the reflections ofthe ever-moving water which fight them from

314

Phila

below through the bay of the pylon make thecolours vibrate delightfully.

Their beauty should be enjoyed while it re

mains entire, for work is still going on at the barrage on that side. The granite causeway is beingenlarged, since it no longer offers a sufficientlyfirm base for new courses of masonry, and therocks of the Cataract, blasted every day, providethe material whi ch will allow the engineers toraise the present plan of the reservoir six orseven yards. And in five or six years nearly allthat was spared in 1 902 will be delivered up to theflood.

I It will flow over the threshold of thedoors , it will invade without hindrance the partsprovisionally guarded from it, it will deliberatelyattack the walls , and will not desist until it hasreached the prescribed level. The figures ofdivinities and kings who meet or pursue one

another from the plinth to the frieze, presentingand accepting the offering, prostrated, bowed,

In ceremonious rows , will be graduallydrowned— the feet one day, then the knees, theloins , the bust, the head— so that nothing of themmore will be seen , and the mystery of the worshipof Isis will be for ever hidden. A sort of rectangular balustrade will mark the site of the kioskof Trajan . The roof of the sanctuary and the

I This was writ ten in 1908 .

315


terraces of the pronaos will float above like raft sof stone anchored one behind the other, and onlythe four towers of the pylons waist high willdominate the waters.It needs a veritable effort of memory to recallat all accurately what the platform looked likescarcely eight years ago. Philae, still intact, in

genuously exhibited the reli cs of her past, templessurrounded by parasitic buildings , porticoes, paganchapels, churches built out of the débris of thetemples , Greek, Arab, Coptic houses crowdedtogether along the alleys and the borders of theopen squares. The first shapeless layer of rubbishhaving been removed and thrown into the river,the skeleton of the ruins was laid bare the touristlooked into the interior of the houses just ashappened to the adventurous Z ambullo when theDevil on two sticks removed the roofs of Madridfor his benefit. And if our tourist could nolonger see pictures of actual life, there was nothingto prevent him from reconstructing the generalaspect of the city by the aid of his imagination.

Our Philae is a creation of man, or at least inthe beginning there was nothing in the place itoccupies except a little granite archipelago, suchas there are many from one end of the Cataractto the other. The chances of the inundation leavesandy shores or banks of blackish mud between

316


farther to the south. The legend did not, however, die at once, it only adopted a new version.

The Nile did not fall from the sky, it came up outof the ground, and two bottomless gulfs wereshown in front of Sehel whence it violently gushedforth to flow in two opposite di rections, towardsEgypt in the north, towards Ethiopia in the south.

The two nations implicitly believed in the existence of these contrary currents , 1 and Isis andOsiris , the gods of the land where the miracleoccurred, seemed to them worthy of all veneration,but foreign saints invariably exercise a strongerattraction than native ones.The Ethiopians were doubtless the first tohonour the island and its goddess with a specialdevotion, and very soon were imitated by theEgyptians. After a very few years the fame of

1 Herodo tus II . xxvi ii . L ike many legends, this rests ona natural fact , i l l understood. Before the Assouan barrageexisted the impact of the Cataract on the mass of the wa terin the cen tre of the river caused a somewhat strong backcurrent at Begeh and H esseh , which , fl owing al ong the leftbank, made its effect fel t as far as Bab-Kalabcheh . The

reis of the Berber boats kn ow i t wel l , and u t i l ise i t foran easy ascen t of the r iver in the summer m on ths when the

slu ice-gates of the dam are Open . I t is certain ly the existence of th is back curren t that suggested to the river-sidepopu lat ion the idea of two N i les fl owing in opposi te direct ions, one to the north to Egypt , the other to the sou thto E thiopia.

318

Philae

the goddess passed beyond the frontiers,and

pilgrims crowded from Europe and Asia aswell as from the Soudan.

In order to prevent the destruction of theground by the action of the Same forces that hadcreated it, some Pharaoh whom we cannot specifyhad protected the south front by strong quays.It is the side facing Nubia that receives thefull force of the current. But the most ancientsanctuary was neither large nor splendid enoughto suffice for the multitude of the faithful. ThePtolemies built our temple, and the RomanEmperors , continuing their work, grouped aroundit subsidiary buildings which allowed the clergy toarrange the rites and ceremonies on a large scale.The nature of the buildings and the reasons forthem are clearly seen when viewed from the topof the pylon. On festival days the pilgrims approached from the south ; a staircase contrived inthe thickness of the masonry, between the kioskof Nectanebo and the chapel of Arihosnofir, led tothe entrance of the temple. There they formed inprocession with their offerings and the sacrificialvictims

,and

,headed by the priests, made their way

to the first pylon between the porticoes. Beforethe construction of the barrage the building wasalmost intact, and the descriptions of classicalwriters

,added to the subjects of the bas-reliefs,

319


easily furnish sufficient material for reconstructing it.The people, garbed in white and carrying palmbranches, waited under the porticoes, and as soon asthe first visitors set foot on the ground, shoutsburst forth. Nothing could have been morevaried than thi s multitude. It was made upof elements that came from every part of theworld, not only of Egyptians or Greeks, but of

people from great Rome, of Spaniards and Gauls ,even of the barbarians of Scythia or Persia, each inhis national costume and with his national characteristics. The religion of Isis was joyous andgentle , as was proper with a goddess who taughthuman beings the use of wheat and cereals, sanctified marriage, organised the family, and promul

gated social laws. Choristers , accompanied by thevarious kinds of harps and flutes sculptured on thecolumns of the small temple of Hathor, hastenedor retarded the march. The music was heard longafter the end of the procession had disappearedwithin the great door. As no one would havedared to present himself empty-handed , the treasureand mortmain of Isis compared favourably withthe fortune of the most richly endowed gods in theworld. Kings and Emperors gave farms , vineyards , cattle and slaves, whole territories indeed.

Private individuals left her gold, jewels , precious320


took possession of Nubia in the middle of

the third century A .D . , they did not escape it,and later, when the Emperor Theodosius orderedthe temples to be closed, the reverence they excited gave effective protection. The Christians ofPhilae, encouraged by the bishops of Syene, wouldhave liked nothing better than to carry out theprescriptions of the Imperial edict, but had they '

touched the goddess or her priests they wouldhave provoked an attack of the BlemmyesThey took care not to do so ; and while everywhere else the idols succumbed to the attacksof the monks, Isis remained firm in the veryface of Christ triumphant. Even in 451 , underMarcian , a regular treaty changed the equivocaltoleration by which she had benefited into anational obligation for the Romans. F or a bundred years from the day on which it was signed,the Blemmyes would have the right to come

and prostrate themselves before her altars. And

such was the weakness of the Empire and the

fear of the barbarians , that, in spite of the impatience of the devout, the regulation was respectedto the end . It was only towards the end of thereign of Justinian that, the Nubians havingdestroyed the Blemmyes, Theodore, bishop of

Syene , pulled down the altars and turned the

temple into a church .

We can imagine what would have been the

322

Philae

condition of the unfortunate priests during thatlast century. The greater number of their fellowcitizens were converts to the dominant religion

,

and only those who belonged to some old sacerdotal family remained faithful to the old religion

.

We can imagine them shut up in the sacredenclosure, and leading there a precarious existenceunder the perpetual menace of popular fanaticism .

They had still their hours of joy, however, whenan embassy sent by the king of the Blemmyesdisembarked with ceremony, bringing the officialofferings. They put on their ceremonial robes

,

took the statue from her tabernacle, opened bothwings of the doors , and awaited their guests nearthe kiosk of Nectanebo. They advanced in procession as of old , and the expression of their faithwas so strong that the worshippers might easily havebelieved themselves to be carried back several generations to the time when Isis was really mistress ofthe world. The illusion lasted for the few weeksthey stayed in the town, then , the ceremoniesperformed and the time of their sojourn expired ,they had to regain their native land.

About two miles to the south of Philae theNile suddenly turns and is lost in a bend, andthe eye, seeing the granite cliff that hides Nubia,perceives nothing beyond. How often must thesepoor followers of Isis whose names, Smet orSmé tkhém or Pakhoum ios, are preserved in the

323


inscriptions, have gathered on one of the towersOf the great south pylon to assist at the departure ! Might it not be the last visit of thesedeparting friends The fury of the Christianswas continually growing, and the cries againstthe goddess rose more persistently to the heavens .If it pleased the bishops to stir up the inhabitantsOf the neighbouring convents and let them loosein the island , where could the followers of Isishope for safety, and what could the Blemmyesdo except avenge their murder in the bloodof their murderers ! However, the boats , waftedby the north wind , went on their way to thesound of hymns. One after another they saluted,d oubled the point, disappeared , and the last hadlong vanished while the priests still sought to see it.What did it not cost them to tear themselvesaway from the contemplation of the Nile, onceagain become solitary, and to descend again intothe heavy atmosphere of religious hatred that the

j oy of their ephemeral security had momentarilylightened ! Every year since my return to EgyptI make a pilgrimage to the platform whichwitnessed their grief, and standing before thepanorama whi ch has changed so little since theird ay, I see , just as they did , the flotilla of Nubianboats vanish in the south , and thinking of theirwretched existence, I feel in my own heart therebound of their anguish.

324

Index

Bedrechein,1 5, 16

Begeh, 31 8 nBellianeh, 73Beni-Hassan , tombs of, 22Berbers, the, 286Biban-el-Molouk , 1 1 8, 1 54,206, 2 1 1

Bibeh, 1 6, 1 9B icharis, 31 2

Bisou, 160Rissing, M . de, 206

B lemmyes, 32 1 , 322 , 323, 324Bordelais, the, 94Boulaq , 1 20

Bouriant, M .,268

Bubastes, the, 1 78

Bubastis, 247

C

C airo,I 3: 1 4: 15) 60 ;

61 : 68: 69 : 76:

78, 95, 1 0 1 , 107, 1 75, 1 76, 243,

290 : 295Caligula, 86, 87Carter, Mr.,1 1 5, 1 1 6, 1 20, 204, 205,

Charronah, 1 9, 20Chauvin ,M ., 1 22 , 1 64,

Cheikh-Fad ! , 1 9 , 2 1Chekalhil, 42

Chellal , railway of, 286Chenoude, 309

China, 292C laudius, 86Cows, the. 34.98. 1 66. 243Crocodile Grotto, the, 42 -55Cyrus

,the younger, 234

D

Dairah Sanieh, factories of , 1 9D avid , Felicien,

293

Davis , Mr. Theodore, 204, 205,F

206, 2 1 6 Fad i lieh Canal , 1 25, 2 19Decauville railway line, 1 33 Fayoum,

necropol ises of , 51D ecauv ille trucks, 1 29 , 136 Fenelon ,

1 00

Deir Amba H edere, 294 n

Deir Amba Sinaan, 286Deir-el-Bahari

, 97, 1 07, 1 1 0 , 228

Deir-el-Bakara, 2 1Deir-el-bayad

, 1 8

Deir-el-Medineh, 97, 222Deir-Mémoun ,

1 7Denderah

,8 1

, 83-93, 149 , 244Desaix, 60 , 313Dilemites, 31 0D iospolis Parva, 67Dj inniahs, 1 63Dj inns, 1 62 , 1 63, 1 64Domi tian , 84Drah-abou’

l-t eggah, 97Dronkah

,60

E

Edfou,1 49 , 244 , 254 n,

266, 270-80

Edfou, Hypostyle Hall of, 1 34Ehrlich, M., 1 32 , 1 33

E lephantine, 28 1 , 282 , 293, 296,297, 31 1 , 31 7

E lephantine , Temple of , 286E l Hamra

, hamlet of, 56, 57Rl-H awatha

, 48

Rl-Kab, 248-6 1 , 262, 266, 268, 269,

270

El-Kalaa,the fortress, 254, 254 n

E 1 Khiz zi m, 95

E l-Maraz i , 1 8E l-Mouissat, 262, 266E l Ouastah, 57E l-QOz , 28 1E sneh, 238-47, 279E thiopia, 96, 31 8E thiop ians, 32 1Eyoub

-Bey, 2 1 9

G

G amoleh, 95, 2 1 8

fGaou-el-Kebir, 67Garstang, Mr., 264Gebel-Abou-Feda, 65, 72Gebel-Abou-Feda, Convent of thePu lley at

, 32-4 1

Gebe l Cheikh Embarek, 1 9

Gebel Scrag, 254 nG irgeh, 67G iz eh, 1 08, 1 1 0, 1 54, 1 67Gournah

,1 65, 1 86, 202 , 222

Gournah, Temple of, 1 25

HH adrian, propylaea of, 31 3H armhabi

, tomb of, 1 26H arris

,Mr. , 51Hathor. 85, 86, 88, 313.

32 1

Hatshopsouitou , Queen , 1 32 , 1 57,2 1 1

Hedjaz , 78, 289Helleh,240He louan,1 5Heou

,Tel l of

,67, 68Herodotus

,247 , 31 8 71

H esseh, 31 8 n

Homer, 51

H orsié sis, 1 78

Horus,27, 90 , 2 1 3, 264, 270, 280

Hyperides, lost orations of , 51I

I brahim the Victorious,288

I brahimieh Canal, 56, 57

Imouthes,1 44 , 1 45

Ind ia,292

I nsinger, M 96, 1 22

Irak,1 24

Isis, 90, 31 7, 31 8, 320 , 32 1 ,

323, 324I smai l Pacha, 1 7, 1 9

J

Jerusalem, 32 1

Jones, Mr., 264, 265, 267

Justinian, 322

M

Maabdeh, 44 ) 45) 53a 55Maabdeh

,hypogeum of, 42

KKamosxs, 227, 256

Karimat, 1 7Karnak, 97, 98, 1 00, 1 02 , 1 1 8, 1 28

42 , 1 43-82

,272Kasr-en-Nil

, bridge of, 1 4Kawali, 48Keneh, 66, 75-82. 1 75, 242. 243Khnoumou , 298, 299 , 317Khonsou, 1 54, 1 59Khonsou, Temp le of, 26, 134, 1 59,1 60

Khouniatonou, 148, 151

Kom-el-Ahmar, 249 , 253, 260 , 262

69. 279Kom-Ombo, 246Kom-Ombo, necropolises of, 51Koran

,the, 80, 1 56, 292 , 298 n

L

Lacau ,M . dc, 206

Legrain , M.,1 1 8, 1 22

, 1 29 , 1 30,1 31 , 1 32 , 1 33, 1 40, 1 4 1 , 142 , 1 43,

1 51 , 1 69 , 1 7 1 , 1 73, 1 76, 1 77, 1 78,

1 80, 206

Libyan Desert, the; 294Libyan mountains, 1 03Loret , M.,

1 1 2,1 1 4, 1 1 5, 204

Lourdes, 320Loux or, 69, 79. 95, 96. 99 , t oo, 1 03.

1 36, 150, 1 55, 1 60 , 1 63, 1 66, 167,

Loux or, Temp le of, 1 26, 1 62 , 165,

I 9SLowatas, 310

Index

Maaz eh Bedouins, 44Madagascar, Queens of, 1 79Mahmoud Pacha, 286

Mahomet, 292Mahoudeau, M., 2 1

Maiharpiriou, Prince, 204, 205Maiya,2 1 0, 2 1 1

Mamelouk Bridge, the, 60Manakhpré , 234, 235, 336Manescalco-Bey, 131Manfalout, 48Maout

,1 47, 1 51 , 1 53, 1 60Maout, Temple of , 1 59Marcian, 322Mariette, 84, 1 1 0 , 1 43, 1 61 , 271

Mataanah, 229Medinet-Habou, 97Mehemet Ali, 1 7, 240Mellaoui , 1 75Memphis, 1 47, 249Memphis, site of, 1 5Memphis, tomb of, 25Menes, 45Mercoure, the Apa, 305Meroe, kingdom of, 31 7, 32 1Minieh, 2 1 , 59Moghrebins, the, 1 24Mohammed ibn-Abou-Thaled , the

Cheikh, 29 1Mokattam,

1 79Moliere’s Harpagon, 1 00Montou, Temple of, 1 58N

N ag-Hammadi, sugar refineries of ,

83N apoleon , 278

N echao, 226

N ectanebo,278

N ectanebo, Kiosk of, 31 9, 323N ectanebo, obelisk of, 313N ekhab i t, the goddess, 249N ekhabit, culture of , 26N ephthys

, 33, 90

Nero, 86, 87Newberry, Mr., 206

N ice, 283Nile, the, 1 3, 1 6, 25, 28, 29, 32. 37.42. 46.47. 63-74. 76, 77. 8 1 . 86.

9 1 , 95, 1 03, 1 1 0,2 1 9 , 228, 229.

238, 239 : 241 : 249 » 252 , 253’ z a »

262,269 , 270, 279 ) 299 : 31 1 ) 31 40

Nile, the Blue, 73N ile, theWhite. 73Nubia, 253, 28 1 , 31 0 , 319 , 322 . 323

0

Old Cairo , buildings of, 1 5Ombos, 1 49Omm-el-Koucour, 32

Osiris, 90, 1 9 1 , 31 8Ouady

-Halfah, 1 67

Ouakouak , land of, 292Ourouz ieh, sandbank of, 1 03

PPahiri

,257, 258, 259, 260, 26 1

Pakhoumios, 323Peau d ’

Ane, 202

Persia,1 24, 320

Petrie, Mr., 226 n

Phibammon , the Apa, 305Philae,1 4 , 1 49 , 282 , 286, 31 2-24Phtah

,236 n

Phtah, Temple of, 1 40, 143-54 , 1 8 1

Pioupi I ., 264Pioupi I I ., 251Pisend i , 309Pnoup, the Apa, 304Poimén, the Apa, 305Port Said

, 78

Pouanit, the, 1 60

Provence, 94Psammetichus I .

,226

Psammetichus, son of Neith, 229,203, 235

Index

Thoutmosis I ., 1 1 1 V

Thoutmé sis I I I ., 86, 108 , 1 1 1 , 1 47, Valley of the kings, 90, 1 00, 1148, 1 $ 1 3

170, 2 1 3, 234, 249, 25I 2 1 8, 228ThoutmOSlS I V .,

1 69 : 205, 206» 207: Victoria Nyanz a, 73

2 10) 2 1 1 : 2 1 2 Vll'

gll 280Ti, tomb of, 27T ia, 1 69T iberius, 86, 87, 313Tigris, 96 Wefels

,M., 1 70

Tiles, Mosq ue of, 67T rajan, 313T rajan , Kiosk of, 31 5 Z ambullo , 31 6Tytus, Mr., 206 Z immermann, M.,

1 86, 1 88

W

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