 A THOUSAND MILES UP THE NIL, SECTION 58. GOING IT COST US FOUR DAYS TO STRUGGLE UP FROM ASWAN TO MAHADA. HANDING WE SLID DOWN, THANKS TO OUR OLD FRIEND, THE SHAKE OF THE CATERACT, IN ONE SHORT, SENSATIONAL HALF HOUR. He came, flat-faced, fishy-eyed, fatuous as ever, with his head tied up in the same old yellow handkerchief, and with the same chabook in his mouth. He brought with him a following of fifty stalwart shellelies, and under his arm he carried a tattered red flag, this flag on which were embroidered the crescent and star. He hoisted with much solemnity at the prowl. Consigned thus to the protection of the Prophet, windows and tambushy shuttered, doors closed, breakables removed to a place of safety, and everything made snug as if for a storm at sea, we put off from Mahada at seven a.m. on a lovely morning in the middle of March. The filet, instead of threading her way back through the old channels, strikes across to the Libyan side, making straight for the big bab, that formidable rapid which as yet we have not seen. All last night we heard its voice in the distance, now, at every stroke of the oars, that rushing sound draws nearer. The shake of the cataract is our captain, and his men are our sailors today, Rais Hassan and the crew having only to sit still and look on. The shellillies, meanwhile, row swiftly and steadily. Already the river seems to be running faster than usual. Already the current feels stronger under our keel. And now suddenly there is sparkle and foam on the surface yonder. There are rocks ahead. Rocks to the right and left, eddies everywhere. The shake lays down his pipe, kicks off his shoes, and goes himself to the prowl. His second-in-command is stationed at the top of the stairs leading to the upper deck. Six men take the tiller. The rowers are reinforced, and sit, too, to each side. In the midst of these preparations, when everybody looks grave, and even the Arabs are silent, we all at once find ourselves at the mouth of a long and narrow strait, a kind of ravine between two walls of rock, through which, at a steep incline, there rushes a roaring mass of waters. The whole nile, in fact, seems to be thundering in wild waves down that terrible channel. It seems, at first sight, impossible that any Dahabia should venture that way and not be dashed to pieces. The shake, however, gives the word. His second echoes it. The men at the helm obey. They put the Dahabia straight at that monster mill-race. For one breathless second we seem to tremble on the edge of the fall. Then the filet plunges in, headlong. We see the whole boat slope down bodily under our feet. We feel the leap, the dead fall, the staggering rush forward. Instantly the waves are foaming and boiling up on deck with spray. The men ship their oars, leaving all to helm and current, and despite the horse tumult, we distinctly hear those oars scrape the rocks on either side. Now the shake, looking for the moment quite majestic, stands motionless with uplifted arm. For at the end of this pass there is a sharp turn to the right, as sharp as a street corner in a narrow London thoroughfare. Can the filet, measuring one hundred feet from stem to stern, ever round that angle in safety? Suddenly the uplifted arm is waved. The shake thunders, da-fit, helm. The men steady and prompt put the helm about. The boat, answering splendidly to the word of command, begins to turn before we are out of the rocks. Then shooting round the corner at exactly the right moment comes out safe and sound with only an oar broken. Great is the rejoicing. Rais Hassan, in the joy of his heart, runs to shake hands all around. The Arabs burst into a chorus of tibes, and sulemies, and Ptolemy, coming up all smiles, is set upon by half a dozen playful shellelies who snatch his kafia from his head and carry it off as a trophy. The only one unmoved is the shake of the cataract. His momentary flash of energy over, he slouches back with the old stolid face, slips on his shoes, drops on his heels, lights his pipe, and looks more like an owl than ever. We advanced till now that the cataract Arabs for their own profit and travelers for their own glory had grossly exaggerated the dangers of the big bab. But such is not the case. The big bab is in truth a serious undertaking, so serious that I doubt whether any English boatman would venture to take such a boat down such a rapid, and between such rocks as the shellily Arabs took the filet that day. All Dahabias, however, are not so lucky. Of thirty-four that shot the fall this season, several had been slightly damaged, and one was so disabled that she had to lie up at Aswan for a fortnight to be mended. Of actual shipwreck, or injury to life and limb, I do not suppose there is any real danger. The shellilies are wonderfully cool and skillful, and have abundant practice. Our painter, it is true, preferred rolling up his canvases and carrying them round on dry land by way of the desert. But this was a precaution that neither he nor any of us would have dreamed of taking on account of our own personal safety. There is, in fact, little, if anything, to fear, and the traveller who forgoes the descent of the cataract forgoes a very curious sight and a very exciting adventure. At Aswan we bade farewell to Nubia and the blameless Ethiopians and found ourselves once more traversing the Nile of Egypt. If instead of five miles of cataract we had crossed five hundred miles of sea or desert, the change could not have been more complete. We left behind us a dreamy river, a silent shore, an ever-present desert. Returning we plunged back at once into the midst of a fertile and populous region. All day long now we see boats on the river, villages on the banks, birds on the wing, husbandmen on the land, men and women, horses, camels, and asses passing perpetually to and fro on the towing path. There is always something moving, something doing. The Nile is running low, and the Shadoofs, three deep now, are in full swing from morning till night. Again the smoke goes up from clusters of unseen huts at close of day. Again we hear the dogs barking from hamlet to hamlet in the still hours of the night. Again towards sunset we see troops of girls coming down to the riverside with their water jars on their heads. These Arab maidens, when they stand with garments tightly tucked up and just their feet in the water, dripping the gula at arm's length in the fresher gush of the current, almost tempt one's pencil into the forbidden paths of caricature. Com Ambo is a magnificent torso. It was once as large as Dendera, perhaps larger, for being on the same grand scale. It was a double temple and dedicated to two gods, Horus and Sebeck, the hawk and the crocodile. Now there remain only a few giant columns buried to within eight or ten feet of their gorgeous capitals, a superb fragment of architrave, one broken wave of sculptured cornice, and some fallen blocks graven with the names of Ptolemies and Cleopatras. A great double doorway, a hall of columns, and a double sanctuary are said to be yet perfect, though no longer accessible. The roofing blocks of three halls, one behind the other, and a few capitals are yet visible behind the portico. What more may lie buried below the surface none can tell. We only know that an ancient city and a medieval hamlet have been slowly engulfed, and that an early temple, contemporary with the temple of Amada, once stood within the sacred enclosure. The sand here has been accumulating for two thousand years. It lies forty feet deep and has never been excavated. It will never be excavated now, for the Nile is gradually sapping the bank and carrying away piece mail from below what the desert has buried from above. Half of one noble pylon, a cataract of sculptured blocks, strews the steep slope from top to bottom. The other half hangs suspended on the brink of the precipice. It cannot hang so much longer. A day must soon come when it will collapse with a crash and thunder down like its fellow. Between Comombo and Silcilis we lost our painter. Not that he either straight or was stolen, but that having accomplished the main object of his journey he was glad to seize the first opportunity of getting back quickly to Cairo. That opportunity, represented by a noble duke, honey-mooning with a steam-tug, happened halfway between Comombo and Silcilis. Here in Duke, being acquaintances of old, the matter was soon settled. In less than a quarter of an hour the big picture and all the paraphernalia of the studio were transported from the stern cabin of the filet to the stern cabin of the steam-tug, and our painter, fitted out with an ex-tempore canteen, a cook-boy, a waiter, and his fair share of the necessities of life, was soon disappearing gaily in the distance at the rate of twenty miles an hour. With the happy couple so weary of wind-heads, associated with temples, followed that vanishing steam-tug with eyes of melancholy longing, the writer at least asked nothing better than to drift on with a filet. Still, the Nile is long and life is short, and the tale told by our log-book was certainly not encouraging. When we reached Silcilis on the morning of the seventeenth of March the north wind had been blowing with only one day's intermission since the first of February. At Silcilis one looks in vain for traces of that great barrier which once blocked the Nile at this point. The stream is narrow here and the sandstone cliffs come down on both sides to the water's edge. In some places there is space for a footpath, in others none. There are also some sunken rocks in the bed of the river, upon one of which, by the way, a cook's steamer had struck two days before. But of such a mass as could have damned the Nile, and by its disruption not only have caused the river to desert its bed at filet, but have changed the whole physical and climatic conditions of lower Nubia, there is no sign whatever. The Arabs here show a rock fantastically quarried in the shape of a gigantic umbrella, to which they pretend some king of old attached one end of a chain with which he barred the Nile. It may be that in this apocryphal legend there survived some memory of the ancient barrier. The cliffs of the western bank are rich in memorial niches, votive shrines, tombs, historical stela, and inscriptions. These last eight from the sixth to the twenty-second dynasties. Some of the tombs and alcoves are very curious, ranged side by side in a long row close above the river, and revealing glimpses of seeded figures and gaudy decorations within they look like private boxes with their occupants. In many of these we found mutilated triads of gods, sculptured and painted, and in one larger than the rest were three niches, each containing three deities. End of section fifty-eight A thousand miles up the Nile, section fifty-nine. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A thousand miles up the Nile by Amelia B. Edwards. Chapter twenty. Silcilis and Edfu, part two. The great Spios of Horemheb, the last pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty, lies farthest north, and the memorial shrines of the Ramesses family lie farthest south of the series. The first is a long gallery, like a cloister supported on four square columns, and is excavated parallel with the river. The walls inside and out are covered with delicately executed sculptures in low relief, some of which yet retain traces of color. The triumph of Horemheb returning from conquest in the land of Kush, and the famous subject on the south wall described by Mariette as one of the few really lovely things in Egyptian art, have been too often engraved to need description. The votive shrines of the Ramesses family are grouped all together in a picturesque nook, green with bushes to the water's edge. There are three, the work of Setti I, Ramesses II, and Maniptha, lovely alcoves, each like a little proscenium, with painted cornices and side pillars, and groups of kings and gods still bright with color. In most of the votive sculptures of Silsilis there figure two deities but rarely seen elsewhere, namely Sebek, the Crocodile God, and Hapimu, the Lotus-crowned God of the Nile. This last was the tutelary deity of the spot, and was worshiped at Silsilis with special rites. Hymes and his honor are found carved here and there upon the rocks. Most curious of all, however, is a goddess named Ta-Arit, represented in one of the side subjects of the Shrine of Ramesses II. This charming person, who has the body of a hippopotamus and the face of a woman, wears a tie-wig and a robe of state with five capes, and looks like a cross between a lord-chancellor and a coachman. Behind her stand Thoth and Nut, all three receiving the homage of Queen Nefertari, who advances with an offering of two systems. As a hippopotamus crowned with the disc in plumes we had met with this goddess before. She is not uncommon as an amulet, and the writer had already sketched her at Filet, where she occupies a prominent place in the façade of the Mamisi. But the grotesque elegance of her attire at Silsilis is, I imagine, quite unique. The interest of the Western Bank centers in its sculptures and inscriptions, the interest of the Eastern Bank in its quarries. We rode over to a point nearly opposite the shrines of the Ramesses, and climbing a steep verge of debris came to the mouth of a narrow cutting between walls of solid rock from forty to fifty feet in height. These walls are smooth, clean cut, and faultlessly perpendicular. The color of the sandstone is rich amber. The passage is about ten feet in width and perhaps four hundred feet in length. Seen at a little after midday, with one side in shadow, the other in sunlight, and a narrow ribbon of blue sky overhead, it is like nothing else in the world, unless perhaps the entrance to Petra. Following this passage we came presently to an immense area, at least as large as Belgrave Square, beyond which, separated by a thin partition of rock, opened a second and somewhat smaller area. On the walls of these huge amphitheaters the chisel marks and wedge holes were as fresh as if the last blocks had been taken hence but yesterday, yet it is some two thousand years since the place last rang to the blows of the mallet, and echoed back the voices of the workmen. From the days of the Theban pharaohs to the days of the Ptolemies and Caesars, those echoes can never have been silent. The temples of Karnak and Luxor, of Gerna, of Mininit Habu, of Ezna and Edfu and Hermontis all came from here, and from the quarries on the opposite side of the river. Returning we climbed long hills of chips, looked down into valleys of debris, and came at last to the riverside by way of an ancient inclined plain, along which the blocks were slid down to the transport boats below. But the most wonderful thing about Silcilis is the way in which the quarrying has been done. In all these halls and passages and amphitheaters the sandstone has been sliced out smooth and straight, like hay from a hay-rich. Everywhere the blocks have been taken out square, and everywhere the best of the stone has been extracted and the worst left. When it was fine and grain and even in color it has been cut out with the nicest economy. Whether it was whitish or brownish or traversed by veins of violet, it has been left standing. Here and there we saw places where the lower part had been removed and the upper part left projecting, like the overhanging stories of our old medieval timber-houses. Compared with this poussin and perfect quarrying our rough and ready blasting looks like the work of savages. Struggling hard against the wind we left Silcilis that same afternoon. Direct steamer was now more than half under water. She had broken her back and begun filling immediately, with all cook's party on board. Being rowed ashore with what necessaries they could gather together these unfortunates had been obliged to encamp intense borrowed from the mutter of the district. Luckily for them a couple of homeward-bound Dahabias came by next morning and took off as many as they could accommodate. The Duke's steam-tug received the rest. The tents were still there and a gang of natives under the superintendents of the mutter were busy getting off all that could be saved from the wreck. As evening drew on our headwind became a hurricane and that hurricane lasted day and night for thirty-six hours. All this time the Nile was driving up against the current in great rollers, like rollers on the Cornish coast when the tide and wind set together from the west. To hear them roaring past in the darkness of the night, to feel the filet rocking, shivering, straining at her mooring-ropes, and bumping perpetually against the bank was far from pleasant. By day the scene was extraordinary. There were no clouds but the air was thick with sand, through which the sun glimmered feebly. Some palms looking gray and ghost-like on the bank above bent as if they must break before the blast. The Nile was yeasty and flecked with brown foam, large lumps of which came swirling every now and then against our cabin windows. The opposite bank was simply nowhere. Judging only by what was visible from the deck, one would have vowed that the Dahabia was moored against an open coast, with an angry sea coming in. The wind fell about five a.m. the second day when the men at once took to their oars and by breakfast time brought us to ed-fu. Nothing now could be more delicious than the weather. It was a cool, silvery, misty morning, such a morning as one never knows in Nubia where the sun is no sooner up than one is plunged at once into the full blaze and stress of the day. There were donkeys waiting for us on the bank and our way lay for about a mile through barley flats and cotton plantations. The country looked rich, the people smiling and well conditioned. We met a troop of them going down to the Dahabia with sheep, pigeons, poultry, and a young ox for sale. Crossing a backwater bridged by a few rickety palm trunks we now approached the village, which is perched, as usual, on the mounds of the ancient city. Meanwhile the great pylons, seeming to grow larger every moment, rose creamy in light against a soft blue sky. Riding through lanes of huts we came presently to an open space and a long flight of roughly built steps in front of the temple. At the top of these steps we were standing on the level of the modern village. At the bottom we saw the massive pavement that marked the level of the ancient city. From that level rose the pylons, which even from a far off had looked so large. We now found that those stupendous towers not only soared to a height of about seventy-five feet above our heads, but plunged down to a depth of at least forty more beneath our feet. Ten years ago nothing was visible of the great temple of Edfoo saved the tops of these pylons. The rest of the building was as much lost to sight as if the earth had opened up and swallowed it. Its courtyards were choked with foul debris. Its sculptured chambers were buried under forty feet of soil. Its terraced roof was a maze of closely packed huts, swarming with human beings, poultry, dogs, kind, asses, and vermin. Next to the indefatagable energy of Mariette. These Ajean stables were cleansed some thirty years ago. Writing himself of this tremendous task he says, I caused to be demolished the sixty-four houses which encumbered the roof, as well as twenty-eight more which approached too near the outer wall of the temple. When the hull shall be isolated from its present surroundings by a massive wall, the work of restoration at Edfoo will be accomplished. That wall has not yet been built, but the encroaching mound has been cut clean away all around the building, now standing free in a deep open space, the sides of which are in some places as perpendicular as the quarried cliffs of Silcilis. In the midst of this pit like a risen god issuing from the grave, the huge building stands before us in the sunshine erect and perfect. The effect at first sight is overwhelming. Through the great doorway fifty feet in height we catch glimpses of a grand courtyard and of a vista of doorways one behind another. Going slowly down we see farther into those dark and distant halls at every step. At the same time the pylons covered with gigantic sculptures tower higher and higher and seem to shut out the sky. The custode, a pygmy of six foot two, in semi-European dress looks up grinning expectant of Bakshish. For there is actually a custode here, and which is more to the purpose a good strong gate, through which neither pilfering visitors nor pilfering Arabs can pass unnoticed. Who enters that gate crosses the threshold of the past and leaves two thousand years behind him. In these vast courts and storied halls all is unchanged. Every pavement, every column, every stair is in its place. The roof, but for a few roofing-stones missing just over the sanctuary, is not only uninjured but in good repair. The hieroglyphic inscriptions are as sharp and legible as the day they were cut. If here and there a capital, or the face of a human-headed deity, has been mutilated, these are blemishes which at first one scarcely observes, and which in no wise mar the wonderful effect of the whole. We cross that great courtyard in the full blaze of the morning sunlight. In the colonnades on either side there is shade, and in the pillared portico beyond, a darkness as of night, save where a patch of deep blue sky burns through a square opening in the roof, and is matched by a corresponding patch of blinding light on the pavement below. Hence we pass on through a hall of columns, two transverse corridors, a side chapel, a series of pitch-dark side chambers, and a sanctuary. Inside all these surrounding the actual temple on three sides runs an external corridor open to the sky, and bounded by a superb wall full forty feet in height. When I have said that the entrance front, with its twin pylons and central doorway, measures two hundred and fifty feet in width by one hundred and twenty-five feet in height, that the first courtyard measures more than one hundred and sixty feet in length by one hundred and forty in width, that the entire length of the building is four hundred and fifty feet, and that it covers an area of eighty thousand square feet, I have stated facts of a kind which convey no more than a general idea of largeness to the ordinary reader, of the harmony of the proportions of the amazing size and strength of the individual parts, of the perfect workmanship, of the fine grain and creamy amber of the stone, no description can do more than suggest an indefinite notion. End of section fifty-nine. A thousand miles up the Nile, section sixty. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A thousand miles up the Nile by Amelia B. Edwards. Chapter twenty. Silcilus and Edfu. Part three. Edfu and Dendera may almost be called twin temples. They belong to the same period. They are built very nearly after the same plan. They are even allied in a religious sense, for the myths of Horus and Hathar are interdependent, the one being the complement of the other. Thus in the inscriptions of Edfu we find perpetual allusion to the cultists of Dendera and vice versa. Both Edfu and Dendera are rich in descriptions, but as the scent of wall space is greater at Edfu, so is the literary wealth of this temple greater than the literary wealth of Dendera. Every wall, every ceiling, every pillar, every architrave, every passage and side chamber, however dark, every staircase, every doorway, the outer wall of the temple, the inner side of the Great Wall of Circuit, the huge pylons from top to bottom are not only covered but crowded with figures and hieroglyphs. Among these we find no enormous battle subjects as a Dabu symbol, no heroic recitals like the poem of Pentar. Those went out with the Pharaohs and were succeeded by tableaus of religious rites and dialogues of gods and kings. Such are the stock subjects of Ptolemaic edifices. They abound at Dendera and Ezna as well as at Edfu. But at Edfu there are more inscriptions of a miscellaneous character than in any temple of Egypt, and it is precisely this secular information which is so priceless. Here are geographical lists of Nubian and Egyptian gnomes with their principal cities, their products, and their tutelary gods, lists of tributary provinces and princes, lists of temples and of the lands pertaining thereunto, lists of canals, of ports, of lakes, calendars of feasts and fasts, astronomical tables, genealogies and chronicles of the gods, lists of the priests and priestesses of both Edfu and Dendera with their names, lists also of singers and assistant functionaries, lists of offerings, hymns, invocations, and such a profusion of religious legends as make the walls of Edfu alone a complete textbook of Egyptian mythology. No great collection of these inscriptions like the Dendera of Mariette has yet been published. But every now and then some enterprising Egyptologist such as Mr. Naveel or Mr. Jacques de Ruget plunges for a while into the depths of the Edfu mine and brings back as much precious ore as he can carry. Some most singular and interesting details have thus been brought to light. One inscription, for instance, records exactly in what month and on what day and at what hour Isis gave birth to Horus. Another tells us about the sacred boats. We know that Edfu possessed at least two and that one was called Horhat or the first Horus and the other Ahmafek or Great of Turquoise. These boats, it would appear, were not merely for carrying in procession but for actual use upon the water. Another text, one of the most curious, informs us that Hathor of Dendera paid an annual visit to Horus or Horhat of Edfu and spent some days with him in his temple. The whole ceremonial of this fantastic trip is given in detail. The goddess traveled in her boat called Neb Mirtet or Lady of the Lake. Horus, like a polite host, went out in his boat Horhat to meet her. The two deities with their attendance then formed one procession and so came to Edfu, where the goddess was entertained with a succession of festivals. One would like to know whether Horus duly returned all these visits and if the gods, like modern emperors, had a gay time among themselves. Other questions inevitably suggest themselves, sometimes painfully, sometimes ludicrously, as one paces chamber after chamber, corridor after corridor, sculptured all over with strange forms and stranger legends. What about these gods whose genealogies are so intricate, whose mutual relations are so complicated, who wedded and became parents, who exchanged visits and who even traveled at times to distant countries? What about those who served them in the temples, who robed and unrobed them, who celebrated their birthdays and paraded them in stately processions, and consumed the lives of millions in erecting these mountains of masonry and sculpture to their honor? We know now with what elaborate rites the gods were adored, what jewels they wore, what hymns were sung in their praise. We know from what a subtle and philosophical core of solar myths their curious personal adventures were evolved. We may also be quite sure that the hidden meaning of these legends was almost wholly lost side of in the later days of the religion, and that the gods were accepted for what they seemed to be and not for what they symbolized. What then of their worshippers? Did they really believe all these things or were there any among them tormented with doubts of gods? Were there skeptics in those days who wondered how two hierogrammates could look each other in the face without laughing? The custode told us that there were two hundred and forty-two steps to the top of each tower of the propylon. We counted two hundred and twenty-four and dispensed willingly with the remainder. It was a long pull, but had the steps been four times as many the sight from the top would have been worth the climb. The chambers in the pylons are on a grand scale with wide beveled windows like the mouths of monster letterboxes, placed at regular intervals all the way up. Through these windows the great flagstaffs and penins were regulated from within. The two pylons communicate by a terrace over the central doorway. The parapet of this terrace and the parapets of the pylons above are plentifully scrawled with names, many of which were left by the French soldiers of seventeen ninety-nine. The cornices of these two magnificent towers are unfortunately gone, but the total height without them is one hundred and twenty-five feet. From the top, as from the minaret of the great mosque at Damascus, one looks down into the heart of the town. Hundreds of mud huts, thatched with palm leaves, hundreds of little courtyards lie mapped out beneath one's feet, and as the fellow lives in his yard by day, using his hut merely as a sleeping-place at night, one looks down like the diablo boiteau upon the domestic doings of a ruthless world. We see people moving to and fro, unconscious of strange eyes watching them from above, men lounging, smoking, sleeping in shady corners, children playing, infants crawling on all fours, women cooking at clay ovens in the open air, cows and sheep feeding, poultry scratching and pecking, dogs basking in the sun. The huts look more like the lairs of prairie dogs than the dwellings of human beings. The little mosque, with its one dome and stunted minaret, so small, so far below, looks like a clay toy. Beyond the village, which reaches far and wide, lie barley fields and cotton patches and palm groves, bounded on one side by the river and on the other by the desert. A broad road, dotted over with moving specks of men and cattle, cleaves its way straight through the cultivated land and out across the sandy plain beyond. We can trace its course for miles where it is only a trodden track in the desert. It goes, they tell us, direct to Cairo. On the opposite bank, there's a hideous white sugar factory, and, bowered in greenery, a leaf. The broad Nile flows between. The sweet Theban Hills gleam through a pearly haze on the horizon. All at once a fitful breeze springs up, blowing in little gusts and swirling the dust in circles round our feet. At the same moment, like a beautiful specter, there rises from the desert close by an undulating, semi-transparent stock of yellow sand, which grows higher every moment and begins moving northward across the plain. Almost at the same instant, another appears a long way off towards the south, and the third comes gliding mysteriously along the opposite bank. While we are watching the third, the first begins throwing off a wonderful kind of plume, which follows it, waving and melting in the air. And now the stranger from the south comes up at a smooth, tremendous pace, towering at least five hundred feet above the desert till, meeting some cross-current, it is snapped suddenly in twain. The lower half instantly collapses, the upper after hanging suspended for a moment spreads and floats slowly like a cloud. In the meanwhile, other and smaller columns form here and there, stalk a little way, waiver, disperse, form again and again drop away in dust. Then the breeze falls and puts an abrupt end to this extraordinary spectacle. In less than two minutes there is not a sand column left. As they came, they vanish, suddenly. Such is the landscape that frames the temple, and the temple, after all, is the site that one comes up here to see. There it lies, far below our feet, the courtyard with its almost perfect pavement, the flat roof compact of gigantic monoliths, the wall of circuit with its panoramic sculptures, the portico with its screens and pillars distinct in bright light against inner depths of dark, each pillar a shaft of ivory, each square of dark a block of ebony, so perfect, so solid, so splendid as the whole structure, so simple in unity of plan, so complex in ornament, so majestic in completeness that one feels as if it solved the whole problem of religious architecture. Take it for what it is, a Ptolemaic structure preserved in all its integrity of strength and finish, it is certainly the finest extant temple in Egypt. It brings before us with even more completeness than Dendera the purposes of its various parts, and the kind of ceremonial for which it was designed. Every corridor and chamber tells its own story. Even the names of the different chambers are graven upon them in such wise that nothing would be easier than to reconstruct the ground and the whole building in hieroglyphic nomenclature. That neither the Ptolemaic building nor the Ptolemaic mythus can be accepted as strictly representative of either pure Egyptian art or pure Egyptian thought must, of course, be conceded. Both are modified by Greek influences and have so far departed from the pharaonic model. But then we have no equally perfect specimen of the pharaonic model. The Ramaceum is a brand fragment. Karnak and Medinit Habu are aggregates of many temples and many styles. Abidos is still half-buried. Amid so much that is fragmentary, amid so much that is ruined, the one absolutely perfect structure Ptolemaic, though it be, is of incalculable interest and equally incalculable value. While we are dreaming over these things, trying to fancy how it all looked flotilla came sweeping up the river yonder and the procession of whore-hat issued forth to meet the goddess-guest, while we are half-expecting to see the whole brilliant concourse pour out, priests in their robes of panther-skin, priestesses with the tinkling system, singers and harpists and bearers of gifts and emblems, and high-functionaries rearing aloft the sacred boat of the god. In this moment a turbined man is out upon the rickety wooden gallery of the little minaret below and intones the call to midday prayer. That plaintive cry has hardly died away before we see men here and there amongst the huts turning towards the east and assuming the first postures of devotion. The women go on cooking and nursing their babies. I have seen Muslim women at prayer in the moths of Constantinople but never in Egypt. Meanwhile some children catch sight of us and not withstanding that we are one hundred and twenty-five feet above their heads burst into a frantic chorus of Bakshish. And now with a last long look at the temple and the wide landscape beyond we come down again and go to see a dismal little Mamisi three parts buried among a wilderness of mounds close by. These mounds which consist almost entirely of crude brick debris with embedded fragments of stone and pottery are built up like coral reefs and represent the dwellings of some 60 generations. When they are cut straight through as here round about the great temple the substance of them looks like rich plum cake. End of Section 60 A thousand miles up the Nile, Section 61 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org A thousand miles up the Nile by Amelia B. Edwards Chapter 21 Thebes, Part 1 We had so long been the sport of destiny that we hardly knew what to make of our good fortune when two days of sweet south wind carried us from Ed food to Luxor. We came back to find the old mooring place alive with Dahabiyas and gay with English and American colors. These two flags well nigh divide the river. In every twenty five boats one may fairly calculate upon an average of twelve English, nine American, two German, one Belgian and one French. Of all of these our American cousins ever helpful, ever cordial are pleasantest to meet. Their flag stands to me for a host of brave and generous and kindly associations. It brings back memories of many lands and many faces. It calls up echoes of friendly voices, some far distant, some alas, silent. Wherefore, be it on the Nile or the Thames or the High seas or among Syrian camping grounds or drooping listlessly from the balconies of gloomy diplomatic cons in continental cities, my heart warms to the stars and stripes whenever I see them. Our arrival brought all the dealers of Luxor to the surface. They way-laid and followed us wherever we went while some of the better sort, grave men in long black robes and ample turbans, installed themselves on our lower deck and lived there for a fortnight. Go upstairs when one would, whether before breakfast in the morning or after dinner in the evening. There we always found them, patient, imperturbable, ready to rise up and salam and produce from some hidden pocket a purse full of scarabs or a bundle of funiary statuettes. Some of these gentlemen were Arabs. Some cops. All polite, plausible and mendacious. Where copped and Arab drive the same doubtful trade it is not easy to define the shades of difference in their dealings. As workmen the cops are perhaps the more artistic. As salesmen the Arabs are perhaps the less dishonest. Both sell more forgeries than genuine antiquities. Be the demand what it may they are prepared to meet it. They are not too heavy nor Cleopatra too light for them. Their carvings and old sycamore wood, their porcelain statuettes, their hieroglyph limestone tablets are executed with a skill that almost defies detection. As for genuine scarabs of the highest antiquity they are turned out by the gross every season. Engraved, glazed and administered to the turkeys in the form of balooses, they acquire by the simple process of digesting a degree of venerableness and charming. Side by side with the work of production goes on the work of excavation. The professed diggers colonize the western bank. They live rent-free among the tombs, drive donkeys or workshedoves by the day and spend their nights searching for treasure. Some hundreds of families live in this grim way spoiling the dead and gone Egyptians for a livelihood. Forgers, diggers and dealers play meanwhile into one another's hands to drive a roaring trade. Your dahabia, as I have just shown, is beset from the moment you moor till the moment you pull off again from shore. The boy who drives your donkey, the guide who pilots you among the tombs, the half-naked fella who flings down his hoe as you pass and runs beside you for a mile across the plain, have one and all and antica to dispose of. The turban official who comes attended by his secretary and pipe-bearer to pay you a visit of ceremony warns you against imposition and hints at genuine treasures to which he alone possesses the key. The gentlemanly native who sits next to you at dinner has a wonderful scarab in his pocket. In short, every man, woman, and child about the place is bent on selling a bargain and the bargain, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, is valuable in so far as it represents the industry of Luxor, but no farther. A good thing, of course, is to be had occasionally, but the good thing never comes to the surface as long as a market can be found for the bad one. It is only when the dealer finds he has to do with an inexperienced customer that he produces the best he has. Flourishing as it is, the trade of Luxor labors, however, under some uncomfortable restrictions. Private excavation being prohibited, the digger lives in dread of being found out by the governor. The forger who has nothing to fear from the governor lives in dread of being found out by the tourist. As for the dealer, whether he sells an antique or an imitation, he is equally liable to punishment. In the one case he commits an offense against the state, and in the other he obtains money under false presences. Meanwhile the governor deals out such even-handed justice as he can and does his best to enforce the law on both sides of the river. By a curious accident, L. and the writer once actually penetrated into a forger's workshop. Not knowing that it had been abolished we went to a certain house in which a certain consulate had once upon a time been located and there knocked for admission. An old deaf fella opened the door and after some hesitation showed us into a large, unfurnished room with three windows. In each window there stood a workman's bench strewn with scarabs, amulets, and funerary statuettes in every stage of progress. We examined these specimens with no little curiosity. Some were of wood, some were of limestone, some were partly colored. The colors and brushes were there to say nothing of files, gravers, and little pointed tools like gimlets. A magnifying glass of the kind used by engravers lay in one of the window recesses. We also observed a small grindstone screwed to one of the benches and worked by a treadle while a massive fragment of mummy case in a corner behind the door showed whence came the old sycamore wood for the wooden specimens. That three skilled workman furnished with European tools had been busy in this room shortly before we were shown into it was perfectly clear. We concluded that they had just gone away to breakfast. Meanwhile we waited, expecting to be ushered in the presence of the consul. In about ten minutes, however, breathless with hurrying, arrived a well-dressed Arab whom we had never seen before. Distracted between his oriental politeness and his desire to get rid of us, he bowed us out precipitately, explaining that the house had changed owners and that the power and question had ceased to be represented at Luxor. We heard him raiding the old woman savagely as soon as the door had closed behind us. I met that well-dressed Arab a day or two later near the Governor's house, and he immediately vanished round the nearest corner. The Bulak authorities keep a small gang of trained excavators always at work in the necropolis of Thebes. These men are superintended by the Governor, and every mummy case discovered is forwarded to Bulak unopened. Thanks to the courtesy of the Governor we had the good fortune to be present one morning at the opening of a tomb. He sent to summon us just as we were going to breakfast. With what alacrity we manned the falooka and how we ate our bread and butter half in the boat and half on donkey-back may easily be imagined. How well I remember that early morning ride across the western plain of Thebes, the young barley rippling for miles in the sun, the little water-channel running beside the path, the white butterflies circling in couples, the wayside grave with its tiny dolmen prayer-mat, its well and broken color, inviting the passer-by to drink and pray, the wild vine that trailed along the wall, the vivid violet of the vetches that blossomed unbidden in the barley. We had the mounds and pylons of Madenit Habu to the left, the ruins of the Ramaceum to the right, the Colossae of the plain and the rosy western mountains before us all the way. How the great statues glistened in the morning light, how they towered up against the soft blue sky, battered and featureless they sat in the old patient attitude looking as if they mourned the vanished springs. We found the new tomb a few hundred yards in the rear of the Ramaceum. The diggers were in the pit, the governor and a few Arabs were looking on. The vault was lined with brickwork above and cut square in the living-runt below. We were just in time, for already, through the sand and rubble with which the grave had been filled in, there appeared an outline of something buried. The men, throwing spades and picks aside, now began scraping up the dust with their hands and a mummy case gradually came to light. It was shaped to represent a body lying at length with the hands crossed upon the breast. Both hands and face were carved in high relief. The ground color of the sarcophagus was white, the surface covered with hieroglyph legends and somewhat coarsely painted figures of the four lesser gods of the dead. The face, like the hands, was colored a brownish-yellow and highly varnished. But for a little dimness of the gaudy hues and a little flaking off of the surface here and there, the thing was as perfect as when it was placed in the ground. A small wooden box, roughly put together, lay at the feet of the mummy. This was taken out first and handed to the governor who put it aside without opening it. The mummy case was then raised upright, hoisted to the brink of the pit, and laid upon the ground. It gave one a kind of shock to see it, first of all, lying just as it had been left by the mourners, then hauled out by rude hands to be searched, unrolled, perhaps broken up as unworthy to occupy a corner in the bullock collection. Once they are lodged and catalogued in a museum, one comes to look upon these things as specimens and forgets that they were once living beings like ourselves. But this poor mummy looks startlingly human and pathetic lying at the bottom of its grave in the morning sunlight. After the sarcophagus had been lifted out, a small blue porcelain cup, a ball of the same material, and another little object shaped like a cherry were found in the debris. The last was hollow and contained something that rattled when shaken. The mummy, the wooden box, and these porcelain toys were then removed to a stable close by, and the excavators, having laid bare what looked like the mouth of a bricked-up tunnel in the side of the tomb, fell to work again immediately. A second vault, perhaps a chain of vaults, it was thought would now be discovered. We went away, meanwhile, for a few hours, and saw some of the famous painted tombs in that part of the mountainside just above, which goes by the name of Sheikh Abid El-Kurna. It was a hot climb, the sun blazing overhead, the cliffs reflecting light and heat, the white debris glaring underfoot. Some of the tombs here are excavated in terraces and look from a distance like rows of pigeonholes. Others are pierced in solitary ledges of rock. Many are difficult of access. All are intolerably hot and oppressive. They were numbered half a century ago by the late Sir Gardner Wilkinson, and the numbers are still there. We went that morning into 14, 16, 17, and 35. As a child, the manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians had shared my affections with the Arabian knights. I had read every line of the old six-volume edition over and over again. I knew every one of the six hundred illustrations by heart. Now I suddenly found myself in the midst of old and half-forgotten friends. Every subject on these wonderful walls was already familiar to me. Only the framework, only the coloring, only the sand underfoot, only the mountain slope outside were new and strange. It seemed to me that I had met all these kindly brown people years and years ago, perhaps in some previous stage of existence, that I had walked with them in their gardens, listened at the music of their loots and tambourines, pledged them at their feasts. Here is the funeral procession that I know so well and the trial scene after death, where the mummy stands upright in the presence of Osiris and sees his heart weighed in the balance. Here is that well-remembered old fowler crouching in the rushes with his basket of decoys. One withered hand is lifted to his mouth, his lips frame the call, his thin hair blows in the breeze. I see now that he has placed himself to the liberate of the game, but that subtlety escaped me in the reading-days of my youth. Yonder I recognize a sculptor's studio into which I frequently peeped at that time. His men are at work as actively as ever, but I marvel that they have not yet finished polishing the surface of that red granite colossus. This patient angler still waiting for a bite is another old acquaintance, and Yonder I declare as that evening-party at which I was so often an imaginary guest. Is the feast not yet over? Has that late-comer whom we saw hurrying along just now in a neighboring corridor not yet arrived? Will the musicians never play to the end of their concerto? Are those ladies still so deeply interested in the patterns of one another's earrings? It seems to me that the world has been standing still in here for these last five and thirty years. Did I say five and thirty? Ha, me! I think we must multiply it by ten, and then by ten again, ere we come to the right figure. These people lived in the time of the tetmas and the amenhoteps, a time upon which Romances the Great looked back as we look back to the days of shooters and stewards. From the tombs above we went back to the excavations below. The bricked-up opening had led, as the diggers expected, into a second vault and another mummy-case, half crushed by a fall of debris, had just been taken out. A third was found later in the afternoon. Curiously enough, they were all three mummies of women. The Governor was taking his luncheon with the first mummy in the recesses of the stable, which had been a fine tomb once, but reeked now with manure. He sat on a rug, crossed-legged with a bowl of sour milk before him in a tray of most uninviting little cakes. He invited me to a seat on his rug, handed me his own spoon, and did the honors of the stable as pleasantly as if it had been a palace. I asked him why the excavators, instead of working among these second-class graves, were not set to search for the tombs of the kings of the eighteenth dynasty, supposed to be waiting discovery in a certain valley called the Valley of the West. He shook his head. The way to the Valley of the West, he said, was long and difficult. Men working there must encamp upon the spot, and merely to supply them with water would be no easy matter. He was allowed, in fact, only a sum sufficient for the wages of fifty excavators, and to attack the Valley of the West with less than two hundred would be useless. End of Section 61 A Thousand Miles Up the Nile Section 62 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Thousand Miles Up the Nile by Amelia B. Edwards Chapter 21 Thebes Part 2 We had lunch in that morning, I remember, with the M.B.'s in the second hall of the Ramiseum. It was but one occasion among many, for the rider was constantly at work on that side of the river, and we had luncheon in one or another of the western temples every day. Yet that particular meeting stands out in my memory apart from the rest. I see the joyous party gathered together in the shade of the great columns, the Persian rugs spread on the uneven ground, the dregoman in his picturesque dress going to and fro, the brown and tattered Arabs squatting a little way up, silent and hungry-eyed, each with his string of forged scarabs, his imitation gods, or his bits of mummy-case and painted cartonage for sale. The glowing peeps of landscape, framed here and there through vistas of columns, the emblazoned architraves laid along from capital to capital overhead, each block sculptured with enormous cartouches, yet brilliant with vermilion and ultramarine. The patient donkeys munching altogether at a little heap of vests in one corner, the intense depths of cloudless blue above. Of all the Theban ruins, the ramiseum is the most cheerful. Drenched in sunshine, the warm limestone of which it is built seems to have mellowed and turned golden with time. No walls enclose it, no towering pylons overshadow it. It stands high, and the air circulates freely among these simple and beautiful columns. There are not many Egyptian ruins in which one can talk and be merry, but in the ramiseum one may thoroughly enjoy the passing hour. Whether Ramizee's The Great was ever actually buried in this place is a problem which future discoveries may possibly solve. But that the ramiseum and the tomb of Ocemandias, where one in the same building is a point on which I never entertained a moment's doubt. Spending day after day among these ruins, sketching now here, now there, going over the ground bit by bit, and comparing every detail, I came at last to wonder how an identity so obvious could ever have been doubted. Diodorus was, of course, inaccurate, but then one as little looks for accuracy in Diodorus as in Homer. Compared with some of his topographical descriptions, the account he gives of the ramiseum is a marvel of exactness. He describes a building approached by two vast courtyards, a hall of pillars opening by way of three entrances from the second courtyard, a succession of chambers including a sacred library, ceilings of azure bespangled with stars, walls covered with sculptures representing the deeds and triumphs of the king whom he calls Ocemandias, among which are particularly noticed the assault of a fortress environed by a river, a procession of captives without hands, and a series of all the gods of Egypt to whom the king was represented in the act of making offerings. Finally, against the entrance to the second courtyard, three statues of the king, one of which, being of cyanite granite and made in a sitting posture, is stated to be not only the greatest in all Egypt, but admirable above all others for its workmanship and the excellence of the stone. Bearing in mind that what is left of the Ramasiyam is, as it were, only the backbone of the entire structure, one can still walk from end to end of the building and still recognize every feature of this description. We turn our backs on the wrecked towers of the first propylon, crossing what was once the first courtyard, we leave to the left the fallen Colossus. We enter the second courtyard and see before us the three entrances to the Hall of Pillars and the remains of two other statues. We walk up the central avenue of the Great Hall and see above our heads architraves studded with yellow stars upon a ground color so luminously blue that it almost matches the sky. Thence, passing through a chamber lined with sculptures, we come to the library, upon the drawer-jams of which Shampoleon found the figures of Thoth and Sav, the Lord of Letters and the Lady of the Sacred Books. Finally, among such fragments of sculpture decoration as yet remain, we find the king making offerings to a higher-aglypt list of gods as well as to his deified ancestors. We see the train of captives and the piles of severed hands and we discover an immense battle-piece which is in fact a replica of the famous battle-piece at Abu-Simbal. This subject, like its Nubian prototype, yet preserved some of its color. The enemy are shown to be fair-skinned and light-haired and wear the same Syrian robes and the river, more green than at Abu-Simbal, is painted in zigzags in the same manner. The king, alone in his chariot, sends arrow after arrow against the flying foe. They leap into the river and swim for their lives. Some are drowned, some cross in safety, and are helped out by their friends in the opposite bank. A red-haired chief, thus rescued, is suspended head downwards by his soldiers in order to let the water that he has swallowed run out of his mouth. The river is once more the Orantis, the city is once more Qadesh, the king is once more Ramesses II, and the incidents are again the incidents of the poem of Pentar. The one holy, unmistakable point in the narrative is, however, the colossal statue of Sinait, the largest in Egypt. The siege and the river, the troops of captives are to be found elsewhere, but nowhere save here a colossus which answers to that description. This statue was even larger than the twin Colossae of the plain. They measure eighteen feet and three inches across the shoulders. This measures twenty-two feet and four inches. They sit about fifty feet high without their pedestals. This one must have lifted his head some ten feet higher still. The measure of his foot, says Deodorus, exceeded seven cubits. The Greek cubit being a little over eighteen inches in length. The foot of the fallen Ramesses measures nearly eleven feet in length by four feet ten inches in breadth. This also is the only very large Theban Colossae sculptured in the Red Sinait of Aswan. Ruined almost beyond recognition as it is, one never doubts for a moment that this statue was one of the wonders of Egyptian workmanship. It most probably repeated in every detail the Colossae of Abu Simbel, but it surpassed them as much in finish of carving as in perfection of material. The stone is even more beautiful in color than that of the famous obelisk of Karnak, and is so close and hard ingrained that the scarab cutters of Luxor are said to use splinters of it as our engravers use diamonds for the points of their engraving tools. The solid contents of the hole when entire are calculated at eight hundred and eighty seven tons. How this astonishing mass was transported from Aswan, how it was raised, how it was overthrown are problems upon which a great deal of ingenious conjecture has been wasted. One traveler affirms that the wedge marks of the destroyer are distinctly visible. Another, having carefully examined the fractured edges, declares that the keenest eye can detect neither wedge marks nor any other evidences of violence. We looked for none of these signs and tokens. We never asked ourselves how or when the ruin had been done. It was enough that the mighty had fallen. In as much as one can clamor upon and measure these stupendous fragments, the fallen Colossus is more astonishing, perhaps, as a wreck than it would have been as a hole. Here snapped across at the waist and flung helplessly back lie a huge head and shoulders to climb which is like climbing a rock. Yonder amid piles of unintelligible debris we see a great foot and nearer the head part of an enormous trunk where with the upper halves of two huge thighs clothed in the usual shenty or striped tunic. The cleft or headdress is also striped and these stripes, in both instances, retain the delicate yellow color with which they were originally filled in. To judge from the way in which this color was applied, one would say that the statue was tinted rather than painted. The surface work, wherever it remains, is as smooth and highly finished as the painting of the finest gem. Even the ground of the superb cartouche, on the upper half of the arm, is elaborately polished. Finally, in the pit which it plowed out in falling lies the great pedestal, hieroglyphed with the usual pompous titles of Ramesses Meramen. Diodorus, knowing nothing of Ramesses or his style, interprets the inscriptions after his own fanciful fashion. I am Osimandus, King of Kings. If any would know how great I am and where I lie, let him excel me in any of my works. The fragments of wall and shattered pylon that yet remain standing at the Ramessium face northwest and southwest. Hence it follows that some of the most interesting of the surface sculpture, being cut in very low relief, is so placed with regard to the light as to be actually invisible after mid-day. It was not till the occasion of my last visit when I came early in the morning to make a certain sketch by a certain light that I succeeded in distinguishing a single figure of that celebrated tableau on the south wall of the great hall in which the Egyptians are seen to be making use of the Testudo and scaling ladder to assault a Syrian fortress. The wall sculptures of the second hall are on a bolder scale and can be seen at any hour. Here Thoth writes the name of Ramesses on the egg-shaped fruit of the Persia tree, and processions of shaven priests carry on their shoulders the sacred boats of various gods. In the center of each boat is a shrine supported by winged genie or cherubim. The veils over these shrines, the rings through which the bearing poles were passed, and all the appointments and ornaments of the berry are distinctly shown. One seems here indeed to be admitted to a glimpse of those original shrines upon which Moses learned it in the sacred lore of the Egyptians, modeled, but with little alteration, his Ark of the Covenant. Next in importance to Karnak, and second in interest to none of the Theban ruins, is the vast group of buildings known by the collective name of Medinit Habu. To attempt to describe these would be to undertake a task as hopeless as the description of Karnak. Such an attempt lies at all events beyond the compass of these pages, so many of which have already been given to similar subjects. For it is of temples as of mountains. No two are alike, yet all sound so much alike when described that it is scarcely possible to write about them without becoming monotonous. In the present instance, therefore, I will note only a few points of special interest, referring those who wish for fuller particulars to the elaborate account of Medinit Habu in Murray's Handbook of Egypt. In the second name of Medinit Habu, Medinit being the common Arabic for city, and Habu, Abu, or Tabu, being variously spelled, there survives almost beyond doubt the ancient name of that famous city which the Greeks called Thebes. It is a name for which many derivations have been suggested, but upon which the learned are not yet agreed. The ruins of Medinit Habu consist of a smaller temple founded by Queen Hadohepsu of the 18th dynasty, a large and magnificent temple entirely built by Ramesses III of the 20th dynasty, and an extremely curious and interesting building, part palace, part fortress, which is popularly known as the pavilion. The walls of this pavilion, the walls of the great forecourt leading to the smaller temple, and a corner of the original wall of circuit are crowned in the Egyptian style with shield-shaped battlements. Precisely as the ketten and amorite fortresses are battlemented in the sculptured tableaus at Abu Symbol and elsewhere. From whichever side one approaches Medinit Habu, these stone shields strike the eye as a new and interesting feature. They are, moreover, as far as I know, the only specimens of Egyptian battlementing which have survived destruction. Those of the wall of circuit are the time of Ramesses V, those of the pavilion of the time of Ramesses III, and the latest, which are those of the forecourt, are of the period of Roman occupation. As biographical material, the temple and pavilion at Medinit Habu and the great Harris Papyrus are to the life of Ramesses III precisely what Abu Symbol, the Ramaseum, and the poem of Pentar are to the life of Ramesses II. Great wars, great victories, magnificent praises of the prowess of the king, pompous lists of enemies slain and captured, inventories of booty and of precious gifts offered by the victor to the gods of Egypt, in both instances cover the sculptured walls and fill the written pages. A comparison of the two masses of evidence, due allowance being made for ways of oriental fervor of diction, shows that in Ramesses III we have to do with the king as brilliant. As valorous and as successful as Ramesses II. It may be that before the time of this pharaoh certain temples were used also as royal residences. It is possible to believe this of temples such as Guernah and Abidas, the plan of which includes, besides the usual halls, side chambers, and sanctuary, a number of other apartments, the uses of which are unknown. It may also be that former kings dwelt in the houses of brick-and-carved woodwork, such as we see represented in the wall paintings of various tombs. It is, at all events, a fact that the only building which we can assume to have been a royal palace, and of which any vestiges have come down to the present day, was erected by Ramesses III, namely this little pavilion at Madinat Habu. It may not have been a palace. It may have been only a fortified gate, but though the chambers are small, they are well-lighted, and the plan of the whole is certainly domestic in character. It consists, as we now see it, of two lodges connected by zigzag wings with a central tower. The lodges and towers stand to each other as the three points of an acute angle. These structures enclose an oblong courtyard leading by a passage under the central tower to the sacred enclosure beyond. So far as its present condition enables us to judge, this building contained only eight rooms, namely three one above the other in each of the lodges and two over the gateway. These towers communicate by means of devious passages in the connecting wings. Two of the windows in the wings are adorned with balconies supported on brackets, each bracket representing the head and shoulders of a crouching captive, in the attitude of a gargoyle. The heads and dresses of these captives conceived as they are in a vein of Gothic barbarism are still bright with color. The central or gateway tower is substantially perfect. The rider with help got as high as the first chamber, the ceiling of which is painted in a rich and intricate pattern, as an imitation of mosaic. The top room is difficult of access, but can be reached by a good climber. Our friend FWS, who made his way up there a year or two before, found upon the walls some interesting sculptures of cups and vases, apparently part of an illustrated inventory of domestic utensils. Three of these, unlike any engraved in the works of Wilkinson or Rossellini, are here reproduced from his sketch made upon the spot. The lid of the smaller vase it will be observed opens by means of a lever spooned out for the thumb to rest in, just like the lid of a German beer mug of the present day. End of Section 62 A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, Section 63 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Thousand Miles Up the Nile by Amelia B. Edwards Chapter 21 Thebes, Part 3 The external decorations of the two lodges are of a special interest. The lower subjects are historical. Those upon the upper stories are domestic or symbolical and are among the most celebrated of Egyptian bar reliefs. They have long been supposed to represent Ramesses III in his harem, entertained and weighted upon by female slaves. In one group the king, distinguished always by his cartouches, sits at ease in a kind of folding chair, his helmet on his head, his sandaled feet upon a footstool, as one returned and resting after battle. In his left hand he holds a round object like a fruit. With the right he chucks under the chin an ear-ringed and necklace damsel who presents a lotus blossom at his nose. In another much mutilated subject they are represented playing a game at drops. This famous subject, which can only be seen when the light strikes sideways, would scarcely be intelligible save for the help one derives from the cuts in Wilkinson and the plates in Rosalini. It is not that the sculptures are effaced, but that the great blocks which bore them are gone from their places, having probably been hurled down bodily upon the heads of the enemy during a certain siege of which the ruins bear evident traces. Of the lady there remains little beside one arm and the hand that holds the pawn. The table has disappeared. The king has lost his legs. It happens, however, though the table is missing, that the block next above it contains the pawns, which can still be discerned from below by the help of a glass. Rosalini mentions three or four more subjects of a similar character, including a second group of draft players all visible in his time. The writer, however, looked for them in vain. These tableaus are supposed to illustrate the home life of Ramesses III and to confirm the domestic character of the pavilion. Even the scarabs selling Arabs that haunt the ruins, even the donkey boys of Luxor call it the harem of the Sultan. Modern science, however, threatens to dispel one at least of these pleasant fantasies. The king, it seems, under the name of Romsonitis is the hero of a very ancient legend related by Herodotus. While he yet lived, runs the story, he descended into Hades and there played a game at Drafts with the goddess Demeter, from whom he won a golden napkin, in memory of which adventure and of his return to earth, the Egyptians, says Herodotus, instituted a festival which they celebrated in my day. In another version, as told by Plutarch, Isis is substituted for Demeter. Viewing these tales by the light of a certain passage of the ritual in which the happy dead is promised power to transform himself at will, to play at Drafts, to repose in the pavilion, Dr. Birch has suggested that the whole of this scene may be of a memorial character and represent an incident in the land of Shades. Below these harem groups come colossal baw reliefs of a religious and military character. The king, as usual, smites his prisoners in presence of the gods. A slender and spirited figure in act to slay, the fiery hero strides across the wall, like ball descended from the heights of heaven. His limbs are endued with the force of victory. With his right hand he seizes the multitudes. His left reaches like an arrow after those who fly before him. His sword is sharp as that of his father meant to. Below these great groups run freezes sculptured with kneeling figures of vanquished chiefs, among whom are Libyan, Sicilian, Sardinian, and Etruscan leaders. Every head in these freezes is a portrait. The Libyan is beardless, his lips are thin, his nose is hooked, his forehead retreats. He wears a close-fitting cap with a pendant hanging in front of the ear. The features of the Sardinian chief are dramatic. He wears the usual Sardinian helmet surmounted by a ball and two spikes. The profile of the Sicilian closely resembles that of the Sardinian. He wears a headdress like the modern Persian cap. As ethnological types these heads are extremely valuable. Colonists not long since departed from the western coast of Asia Minor, these early European settlers are seen with the Asiatic stamp of features, a stamp which now has entirely disappeared. Other European nations are depicted elsewhere in these Medenet Habu sculptures. Pulaskians from the Greek Isles, Oskans perhaps from Pompeii, Donians from the districts between Tarentum and Brindusium, figure here each in their national costume. Of these, the Pulaskian alone resembles the modern European. On the left wall of the Pavilion Gateway, going up towards the temple, there is a large bar relief of romances the third leading a string of captives into the presence of Amenra. Among these, the sculptures being in a high state of preservation, there are a number of Pulaskians, some of whom have features of the classical Greek type and are strikingly handsome. The Pulaski headdress resembles our old infantry Shaco some of the men where disc shaped amulets pierced with a hole in the center through which is past the chain that suspends it round the neck. Leaving to the left a fine sitting statue of cons in green basalt and to the right his prostrate fellow we pass under the gateway across a space of desolate crude brick mounds and see before us the ruins of the first pylon of the great temple of Chem. Once past the threshold of this pylon we reach upon a succession of magnificent courtyards. The hieroglyphs here are on a colossal scale and are cut deeper than any others in Egypt. They are also colored with a more subtle eye to effect. Struck by the unusual splendor of some of the blues and by a peculiar look of scintillation which they assumed in certain lights I examined them particularly and found that the effect had been produced by very subtle shades of gradation in what appeared at first sight to be simple flat tints. In some of the reeds for instance the ground color begins at the top of the leaf in pure cobalt and passes imperceptibly down to a tint that is almost emerald green at the bottom. The inner walls of this great courtyard and the outer face of the northeast wall are covered with sculptures outlined so to say in intaglio and relieved in the hollow so that the forms though rounded remain level with the general surface. In these tableaus the old world lives again. Ramesses III his sons and nobles, his armies his foes play once more the brief drama of life and death. Great battles are fought great victories are won the slain are counted the capture drag their chains behind the victor's chariot the king triumphs is crowned and sacrifices to the gods elsewhere more wars more slaughter. There is revolt in Libya there are raids on the asiatic border there are invaders coming in ships from the islands of the great sea. The royal standard is raised troops assemble arms are distributed again the king goes forth in his might followed by the flower of egyptian chivalry his horsemen are heroes his foot soldiers are as lions that roar in the mountains the king himself flames like mentu in his hour of wrath he falls upon the foe with the swiftness of a meteor here crowded in rude bullock trucks they seek safety in flight yonder their galleys are sunk their warriors are slain drowned captured scathed as it were in a devouring fire never again will they so seed or reap harvest on the fair face of the earth behold says the pharaoh behold I have taken their frontiers for my frontiers I have devastated their towns burned their crops trampled their people under foot rejoice oh egypt exalt thy voice to the heavens for behold I reign over all the lands of the barbarians I king of upper and lower egypt romances the third such linked to each by a running commentary of text are the illustrations the story is written elsewhere elaborately hieroglyphed in upwards of seventy closely packed columns it covers the whole eastern front of the great north tower of the second propylene this propylene divides the osai ride and hypo-thrall courts so that the inscription faces those entering the temple and proceeds the tableaus not even the poem of pentar is more picturesque not even the psalms of david this great chronicle the writer pitched her tent in the doorway of the first propylene and then sketched the northwest corner of the courtyard including the tower with the inscription and the osai ride the accompanying illustration faithfully reproduces that sketch the roof of the colonnade to the right is cumbered with crude brick ruins of medieval date the hieroglyphs sculptured along the architrave on the sides of the pillars are still bright with color the colossi are all the worse for three thousand years of ill usage through the sculpture doorway opposite one looks across the hypo-thrall court and catches a glimpse of the ruin tall of pillars beyond while the writer was at work in the shade of the first pylon an arab storyteller took possession of that opposite doorway and entertained the donkey boys well-paid with a little tobacco and a few copper piastras he went on for hours his shrill chant rising every now and then to a quavering scream he was a wizened, grizzled old fellow miserably poor and tattered but he had the arabian knights and hundreds of other tales by heart Mariette was of the opinion that the temple of Medinat Habu erected as it is on the side of the great Theban Necropolis is, like the Ramosium monument erected by Ramosius III in his own lifetime to his own memory these battered colossi represent the king in the character of Osiris and are in fact on a huge scale precisely what the ordinary funiary statuettes are upon a small scale they would be out of place in any but a monumental edifice and they alone suffice to determine the character of the building and such no doubt was the character of the Amenophium of the little temple called Der El Medinat of the temple of Queen Hatshepsu known as Der El-Bahari of the temple of Guernah of almost every important structure erected upon this side of the river of the Amenophium there remain only a few sculptured blocks a few confused foundations and last representatives of an avenue of statues of various sizes the famous Colossae of the Plain the temple of Der El-Bahari built in terraces up the mountain side and approached once upon a time by a magnificent avenue of sphinxes the course of which is yet visible would probably be if less ruined the most interesting temple on the western side of the river the monumental intention of this building is shown by its dedication to Hathor the Lady of Amenti and by the fact that the tune of Queen Hatshepsu was identified by Rhine some twenty-five years ago as one of the excavated sepulchres in the cliff side close to where the temple ends by abutting against the rock as for the temple of Guernah it is at least in part as distinctly a memorial edifice as the Medici chapel at Florence or the super-gah at Turin it was begun by Seti I in memory of his father Rameses I the founder of the 19th dynasty Seti however died before the work was completed here upon Rameses II his son and successor extended the general plan finished the part dedicated to his grandfather and added sculptures to the memory of Seti I later still, Maneptha the son and successor of Rameses II left his cartouches upon one of the doorways the whole building in short is a family monument which means a family portrait gallery here all the personages whose names figure in the shrines of the Rameses at Silsilis are depicted in their proper persons in one tableau Rameses I defunct, deified swathed and shrined and crowned like Osiris is worshiped by Seti I behind Seti stands his queen Tua the mother of Rameses II elsewhere Seti I being now dead is deified and worshiped by Rameses II who pours a libation to his father's statue through all these handsome heads there runs a striking family likeness all more or less partake of that Dante-esque type which characterizes the portraits of Rameses II in his youth the features of Rameses I and Seti I are somewhat pinched and stern like the Dante of Elder Days the delicate profile of Queen Tua which is curiously like some portraits of Queen Elizabeth is perhaps too angular to be altogether pleasing but in the well-known face of Rameses II these harsher details vanish and the beauty of the race culminates the artists of Egyptian Renaissance always great in profile portraiture are nowhere seen to better advantage than in this interesting series adjoining what may be called the monumental part of the building to find a number of halls and chambers the uses of which are unknown most writers assume that they were the private apartments of the king some go so far as to give the name of temple palaces to all these great funerary structures it is however far more probable that these western temples were erected in conjunction though not in direct communication with the royal tombs in the adjacent valley of Bab El-Malek now every Egyptian tomb of importance has its outer chamber of votive oratory the walls of which are covered with paintings descriptive in some instances of the occupations of the deceased upon earth and in others of the adventures of his soul after death here at stated seasons the survivors repaired with offerings no priest it would seem of necessity officiated at these little services a whole family would come bringing the first fruits of their garden the best of their poultry cakes of homemade bread bouquets of lotus blossoms with their own hands they piled the altar and the eldest son as representative of the rest burned the incense and poured the libations it is a scene constantly reproduced upon monuments of every epic these votive oratories however are wholly absent in the valley of Bab El-Malek the royal tombs consist of only tunneled passages and sepulcher vaults the entrances to which were closed forever as soon as the sarcophagus was occupied hence it may be concluded that each memorial temple played to the tomb of its tutelary saint and sovereign that part which is played by the external oratory attached to the tomb of a private individual nor must it be forgotten that as early as the time of the pyramid kings there was a votive chapel attached to every pyramid the remains of which are traceable in almost every instance on the east side there were also priests of the pyramids as we learn from innumerable funerary inscriptions an oratory on so grand a scale would imply an elaborate ceremonial a dead and deified king would doubtless have his train of priests his daily liturgies his processions and sacrifices all this again implies an exceptional accommodation and accounts I venture to think for any number of extra halls and chambers such sculptures as yet remain on the walls of these ruined departments are, in fact holy funerial and sacrificial in character it is also to be remembered that we have here a temple dedicated to two kings and served most likely by a two-fold college of priests the wall sculptures at Guernar are extremely beautiful especially those erected by Seti I where it has been accidentally preserved the surface is as smooth the execution as brilliant as the finest medieval ivory carving behind a broken column for instance that leans against the south wall west of the sanctuary one may see, by peeping this way and that, the ram's head prow of a sacred boat quite unharmed and of surpassing delicacy the modeling of the ram's head is simply faultless it would indeed be scarcely too much to say that this one fragment, if all the rest had perished, would alone place the decorative sculpture of ancient Egypt in a rank second only to that of Greece the temple of Guernar northernmost of the Theban group stands at the mouth of that famous valley called by the Arabs Bab El-Mulik and by travelers the valley of the tombs of the kings this valley may be described as a sophisticated ravine ending in two cul-de-sacs and hemmed in on all sides by limestone precipices it winds round behind the cliffs which face Luxor and Karnak and runs almost parallel with the Nile this range of cliffs is perforated on both sides with tombs the priests and nobles of many dynasties were buried terrace above terrace on the side next the river back to back with them in the silent valley beyond slept the kings in their everlasting sepulchres end of section 63 a thousand miles up the Nile section 64 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org a thousand miles up the Nile by Amelia B. Edwards Chapter 21 Thebes Part 4 Most travelers moor for a day or two at Karnak and thence make their excursion to Bab El-Mulik By doing so they lose one of the most interesting rides in the neighborhood of Thebes El and the rider started from Luxor one morning about an hour after daybreak crossing the river at the usual point and thence riding northwards along the bank with the Nile on the one hand and the corn lands on the other in the course of such rides one discovers the almost incredible fertility of the Thebed every inch of arable ground is turned to account all that grows grows lustily the barley ripples in one uninterrupted sweep from Madinat Habu to a point half way between the Ramaceum and Gorna next come plantations of tobacco, cotton hemp, linseed maize and lentils so closely set, so rich and promised that the country looks as if it were laid out in allotment grounds for miles together where the rice crop has been gathered clusters of temporary huts have sprung up in the clearings for the fellow heen come out from their crowded villages in the sweet of the year and live in the midst of the crops which they now guard and which presently they will reap the walls of these summer huts are mere waddled in the palaces of Indian corn straw with bundles of the same laid lightly across the top by way of roofing this pastoral world is everywhere up and doing here are men plying the Shadoof by the river's brink women spinning in the sun children playing, dogs barking larks soaring and singing overhead against the foot of the cliffs yonder where the vegetation ends and the tombs begin over-edged with palms a few months ago we should have been deceived by that fairy water we know now that it is the mirage striking off by and by towards the left we make for a point where the mountains recede and run low and a wedge-like spit of sandy desert encroaches upon the plain on the verge of this spit stands a clump of sycamores and palms a row of old yellow columns supporting a sculptured architrave gleams through the boughs a little village nestles close by and on the desert slope beyond in the midst of a desolate Arab burial-ground we see a tiny mosque with one small cupola dazzling white in the sunshine this is Gourna there is a spring here and some girls are drawing water from the well near the temple our donkeys slake their thirst from the cattle-trough a broken sarcophagus that may once have held the mummy of a king a creaking saquilla is at work yonder turned by a couple of red cows with mild half-thor-like faces the old man who drives them sits in the middle of the cogwheel and goes slowly round as if he was being roasted we now leave behind us the well and the trees and the old Greek-looking temple and turn our faces westward bound for an opening yonder among cliffs pitted with the mouths of empty tombs it is plain to see that we are now entering upon what was once a torrent-bed rushing down from the hills the pent-up waters have here spread fan-like over the slope of the desert screwing the ground with boulders and plowing it into hundreds of torturous channels up that torrent-bed lies our road today the weird rocks stand like sentinels to right and left as one enters the mouth of the valley and take strange shapes as of obelisks and sphinxes some, worn at the base and towering like ruined pyramids above, remind us of tombs on the Appian way as the ravine narrows the limestone walls rise higher the chalky track glares underfoot piles of shivered ships sparkle and scintillate at the foot of the rocks burned at a white heat the atmosphere palpitates like gaseous vapor the sun blazes overhead not a breath stirs neither is there a finger's breath of shade on either side it is like riding into the mouth of a furnace meanwhile one looks in vain for any sign of life no blade of green has grown here since the world began no breathing creature makes these rocks its home desolation such desolation is one dreams of in a world scathed by fire from heaven when we have gone a long way always tracking up the bed of the torrent we came to a place where our donkeys turn off from the main course and make for what is evidently a forest passage cut clean through a wall of solid limestone the place was once a mere recess in the cliffs but on the farther side masked by a natural barrier of rock there lay another valley into a secluded amphitheater among the mountains the first Pharaoh who chose his place of burial among those hidden ways must have been he who cut the pass and leveled the road by which we now travel this cutting is Bab el-Malik the gate of the king a name which doubtless perpetuates that by which the place was known to the old Egyptians once through the gate a grand mountain rises into view Egypt is the land of strange mountains and here is one which reproduces on a giant scale every feature of the pyramid of Onephus at Sakara it is square it rises stage above stage in ranges of columnar cliffs with slopes of debris between and it terminates in a blunt four-sided peak nearly 1800 feet above the level of the plain keeping this mountain always before us we now follow the windings of the second valley which is even more narrow parched and glaring than the first perhaps the intense heat makes the road appear longer than it really is but it seems to us like several miles at length the uniformity of the way is broken two small ravines branch off one to the right one to the left and in both at the foot of the rocks there are here and there to be seen square openings like cellar doors half sunk below the surface and seeming to shoot downwards into the bowels of the earth in another moment or so our road ends suddenly in a wild tumbled waste like an exhausted quarry shut in all round by impending precipices at the base of which more rock-cut portals peep out at different points from the moment when it first came into sight I had made certain that in that pyramidal mountain we should find the tombs of the kings so certain that I can scarcely believe our guide when he assures us that these cellars are the places we have come to see and that the mountain contains not a single tomb we alight however climb a steep slope and find ourselves on the threshold of number seventeen Belzoni tomb says our guide and Belzoni's tomb as we know is the tomb of Seti I I am almost ashamed to remember now that we took our luncheon in the shade of that solemn vestibule and rested and made merry before going down to the great gloomy supple-cur whose staircases and corridors plunged away into the darkness below as if they led straight to the land of Amenti the tombs in the valley of Bab Al-Malik are as unlike the tombs in the cliffs opposite Luxor as if the Theban kings and the Theban nobles were of different races and creeds those sacred scribes and dignitaries with their wives and families and their numerous friends and dependents were a joyous set they loved the things of this life and would fain if carried their pursuits and pleasures with them into the land beyond the grave so they decorated the walls of their tombs with pictures of the way in which their lives were spent and hoped perhaps the mummy, dreaming away its long term of solitary waiting might take comfort in those shadowy reminiscences the kings on the contrary covered every foot of their last palaces with scenes from the life to come the wanderings of the soul after its separation from the body the terrors and dangers that beset it during its journey through Hades the demons it must fight the accusers to whom it must answer the transformations it must undergo afforded subjects for endless illustration of the fishing and fouling and feasting and junketing that we saw the other day in those terraces behind the Remiseum we discover no trace in the tombs of Bab Al-Malik in place of singing and loop playing we find here prayers and invocations for the pleasant Nile boat and the water parties and the chase of the gazelle and the ibics we now have the bark of Charon and the basin of purgatorial fire and the strife with the infertile deities the contrast is sharp and strange it is as if an Epicurean aristocracy had been ruled by a line of Puritan kings the tombs of the subjects are anachronics the tombs of their sovereigns are as pentennial Psalms to go down into one of these great sepulchres is to descend oneself into the lower world and to tread the path of the shades crossing the threshold we look up half expecting to read those terrible words in which all who enter are warned to leave hope behind them the passage slopes before our feet the daylight fades behind us at the end of the passage comes a flight of steps and from the bottom of that flight of steps we see another corridor slanting down into the depths of utter darkness the walls on both sides are covered with closed cut columns of hieroglyphic text interspersed with ominous shapes half deity half demon huge serpents writhe beside us along the walls guardian spirits of threatening aspect advance brandishing swords of flame a strange heaven opens overhead a heaven where the stars travel in boats across the seas of space and the sun escorted by the hours, the months and the signs of the zodiac issues from the east sets in the west and traverses the hemisphere of everlasting night we go on and the last gleam of daylight vanishes in the distance another flight of steps leads now to a secession of passages and halls some smaller some larger some vaulted some supported on pillars here yawns a great pit half full of debris yonder opens a suite of unfinished chambers abandoned by the workmen the farther we go the more weird become our surroundings the walls swarm with ugly and evil things serpents and bats and crocodiles some with human heads and legs some vomiting fire some armed with spears and darts pursue and torture the wicked these unfortunate have their hearts torn out our boiled and cauldrons are suspended head downwards overseas of flame our speared decapitated and driven in headless gangs to scenes of further torment beheld by the dim and shifting light of a few candles these painted horrors assume an aspect of ghastly reality they start into life as we pass then drop behind us into darkness that darkness alone is awful the atmosphere is suffocating the place is ghostly and peopled with nightmares elsewhere we come upon scenes less painful the sun emerges from the lower hemisphere the justified dead sow and reap in the Elysian fields gather celestial fruits bathed in the waters of truth the royal mummy reposes in its shrine funerary statues of the king are worshipped with incense and offerings of meat and libations of wine finally the king arrives purified and justified at the last stage of his spiritual journey he is welcomed by the gods ushered into the presence of Osiris and received into the abode of the blessed coming out for a moment into blinding daylight we drink a long draft of pure air cross a few yards of uneven ground arrive at the mouth of another excavation and plunge again into the underground darkness a third and fourth time we repeat this strange experience it is like a feverish sleep troubled by gruesome dreams and broken by momentary wakeings these tombs in a general way are very much alike some are longer than others some loftier in some the descent is gradual in others it is steep and sudden certain leading features are common to all the great serpent, the scarab, the bat, the crocodile are always conspicuous on the walls the judgment scene and the well-known typical picture of the four races of mankind are continually reproduced some tombs however vary both in plan and decoration that of Ramesses III though not nearly so beautiful as the tomb of Seti I is perhaps the most curious of all the paintings here are for the most part designed on an unsculptured surface coated with white stucco the drawing is often indifferent and the coloring is uniformly coarse and gaudy yellows abound and crude reds and blues remind us of the colored picture books of our childhood it is difficult to understand indeed how the builder of Madinat Habu with the best Egyptian art of the day at his command should have been content with such wall paintings as these still Ramesses III seems to have had a grand idea of going in state to the next world with his retainers around him in a series of small antechambers opening off from the first corridor we see depicted all the household furniture all the plate, the weapons, the wealth and treasure of the king upon the walls of one the cooks and bakers are seen preparing the royal dinner in the others are depicted magnificent thrones gilded galleys with party colored sails gold and silver vases rich store of arms and armor piles of precious woods of panther skins of fruits and birds and curious baskets and all such articles of personal luxury as a palace building pharaoh might delight in here also are the two famous harpers cruelly defaced but still sweeping the strings with the old powerful touch that Erweil soothed the king in his hours of melancholy these two spirited figures which are undoubtedly portraits almost redeem the poverty of the rest of the paintings in many tombs the empty sarcophagus yet occupies its ancient place we saw one in number two, Ramesses IV and another in number nine, Ramesses VI the first a grand monolith of dark granite overturned and but little injured the second shattered by early treasure seekers most of the tombs at Bob Almolec were open in Ptolemaic times being then as now among the stock sites and wonders of Thebes they were visited by crowds of early travelers who have as usual left their neatly scribbled graffiti on the walls when and by whom the sepulchres were originally violated is of course unknown some doubtless were sacked by the Persians others were plundered by the Egyptians themselves long enough before Canvases not even in the days of the Ramesses though a special service of guards was told off for duty in the great valley where the kings safe in their tombs during the reign of Ramesses IX whose tomb is here and known as number six there seems to have been an organized band not only of robbers but of receivers who lived by depredations of the kind a contemporary papyrus tells how in one instance the royal mummies were found lying in the dust their gold and silver ornaments and the treasures of their tombs all stolen in another instance a king and his queen were carried away bodily to be unrolled at rifled at leisure this curious information is all recorded in the form of a report drawn up by the commandant of western Thebes who with certain other officers and magistrates officially inspected the tombs of the royal ancestors during the reign of Ramesses IX no royal tomb has been found absolutely intact in the valley of Babel Malik even that of Seti I had been secretly entered ages before Belzoni discovered it statues of wooden porcelain and the mummy of a bull but nothing of value saved the sarcophagus which was empty there can be no doubt that the priesthood were largely implicated in these contemporary sacrileges of 39 persons accused by name in the papyrus just quoted seven are priests and eight are sacred scribes end of section 64