Crossing the river to Western Thebes, we arrive at the two seated colossi, one of which I have already noticed as the musical Memnon. These doubtless once guarded the entrance of some temple more ancient than any remaining, for they were raised by Amunoph the Second, a predecessor, by some generations, of the great Rameses. They were, doubtless, once seated on each side of a propylon, as at Luxor, and in all probability were flanked by obelisks. Whether the temple were destroyed for materials, for more recent structures, or whether it has sunk under the accumulations of the slimy soil, may be decided by the future excavator.
We arrive at the Memnonion. This temple was raised by Rameses the Great. In the colossal Caryatides we recognise the same genius that excavated the rocks of Ipsambul, and supported a cavern temple upon the heads of giants. From the Memnonion came the statue that is now in the British Museum. But this figure, though a fine specimen of Egyptian sculpture, sinks, so far as magnitude is concerned, into insignificance when compared with the statue of Rameses himself, which, broken off at the waist, now lies prostrate in the precincts of the sanctuary. This is probably the most huge colossus that the Egyptians ever constructed. The fragment is of red granite, and of admirable workmanship. Unfortunately the face is entirely obliterated. The statue lies upon its back, and in its fall has destroyed all the temple within reach. It measures more than sixty feet round the shoulders, the breadth of the instep is nearly seven feet, and the hieroglyphical figures engraven on the arm are large enough for a man to walk in.
Perhaps the most interesting group of ruins at Thebes is the quarter of Medcenet Habu. Most of the buildings are of the time of Rameses the Third.
The sculptured walls of the great temples, covered with battles, chariots, captives, and slaves, have been worthily described by the vivid pen of Mr. Hamilton. They celebrate the victorious campaigns of the monarch. Here also the Third Rameses raised his palace. And it is curious, among other domestic subjects, that we find represented on the walls, in a very admirable style, Rameses playing chess with his Queen. Chess is, probably, a most ancient Oriental game. Rameses the Third lived before the Trojan war, to which the Greeks, as usual, ascribe the invention of chess.
The sepulchres of Thebes still remain to be described, a theme more fertile in interest and instruction than even its palaces and temples. The arts of the Egyptians must be studied in their tombs, and to learn how this remarkable people lived, we must even go where they were buried. To cite no other instances in a sketch which is already too long, it is from a painting in a tomb near Beni-hassan that we learn how the Egyptians procured from the distant quarries of Nubia those masses of stone and granite with which they raised the columns of Karnak and the obelisks of Luxor.
But we must conclude. We have touched a virgin subject rich with delightful knowledge, and if our readers be not wearied with wandering on the banks of the Nile, we may perhaps again introduce them to the company of the Pharaohs.
SHOUBRA
ORIENTAL palaces, except perhaps in the great Indian peninsula, do not realise the dreams and glittering visions of the Arabian Nights, or indeed the authentic histories written in the flush and fullness of the success of the children of the desert, the Tartar and the Saracen. Commerce once followed in the train of the conquerors of Asia, and the vast buildings which they hastily threw up of slight and perishing materials, were filled, not only with the plunder of the East, but furnished with all the productions of art and curious luxury, which the adventurous spirit of man brought from every quarter of the globe to Samarcand and Bagdad. The site of these mighty capitals is almost erased from the map of the modern traveller; but tribute and traffic have also ceased to sustain even the dilapidated serail of the once omnipotent Stamboul, and, until very recently, all that remained of the splendour of the Caliphs of Egypt was the vast Necropolis, which still contains their palatial sepulchres.
How the bold Roumelian peasant who in our days has placed himself on the ancient throne of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies, as Napoleon on the seat of the Merovingian kings, usurping political power by military prowess, lodged and contented himself in the valley of the Nile, was not altogether an uninteresting speculation; and it was with no common curiosity that some fifteen years ago, before he had conquered Syria and scared Constantinople, I made one morning a visit to Shoubra, the palace of Mehemet Ali.
Nothing can be conceived more animated and picturesque than Cairo during the early morning or at night. It seems the most bustling and populous city in the world. The narrow streets, abounding with bazaars, present the appearance of a mob, through which troops of richly dressed cavaliers force with difficulty their prancing way, arrested often in their course by the procession of a harem returning from the bath, the women enveloped in inscrutable black garments, and veils and masks of white linen, and borne along by the prettiest donkeys in the world. The attendant eunuchs beat back the multitude; even the swaggering horsemen, with their golden and scarlet jackets, rich shawls and scarfs, and shining arms, trampling on those around, succeed in drawing aside; but all efforts are vain, for at the turning of the street appears the first still solemn visage of a long string of tall camels bearing provisions to the citadel, a Nubian astride on the neck of the leader, and beating a wild drum, to apprise the people of his approach. The streets, too, in which these scenes occur are in themselves full of variety and architectural beauty. The houses are lofty and latticed, abounding in balconies; fountains are frequent and vast and as richly adorned as Gothic shrines; sometimes the fortified palace of one of the old Mamlouks, now inhabited by a pasha, still oftener the exquisite shape of an Arabian mosque. The temples of Stamboul cannot vie with the fanes of Cairo. Their delicate domes and airy cupolas, their lofty minarets covered with tracery, and the flowing fancy of their arabesques recalled to me the glories of the Alhambra, the fantastic grace of the Alcazars and the shrines of Seville and Cordova.
At night the illuminated coffee-houses, the streaming population, each person carrying a lantern, in an atmosphere warmer and softer than our conservatories, and all the innocent amusements of an out-door life—the Nubian song, the Arabian tale, the Syrian magic—afford a different, but not less delightful scene.
It was many hours before noon, however, that I made my first visit to Shoubra, beneath a sky as cloudless as it remained during the whole six months I was in Egypt, during which time I have no recollection that we were favoured by a single drop of rain; and yet the ever-living breeze on the great river, and the excellent irrigation of the earth, produce a freshness in the sky and soil, which are missed in other Levantine regions, where there is more variety of the seasons.
Shoubra is about four or five miles from the metropolis. It rises on the banks of the Nile, and the road to it from Cairo is a broad but shady avenue, formed of sycamores, of noble growth and colour; on one side delightful glimpses of the river, with its palmy banks and sparkling villages, and on the other, after a certain tract of vivid vegetation, the golden sands of the desert, and the shifting hillocks which it forms; or, perhaps, the grey peaks of some chain of pyramids.
The palace of Shoubra is a pile of long low buildings looking to the river—moderate in its character, and modest in its appointments; but clean, orderly, and in a state of complete repair; and, if we may use such an epithet with reference to oriental life, comfortable. It possesses all the refined conveniences of European manners, of which the pasha at the time I am referring to was extremely proud. Most of these had been the recent gift of the French government, and his highness occasionally amused his guests—some sheikh from Arabia, or some emir from the Lebanon—by the exhibition of some scientific means of domestic accommodation with which use has made us familiar, but which I was assured had sensibly impressed the magnates of the desert and the mountain with the progress of modern civilisation.
The gardens of Shoubra, however, are vast, fanciful, and kept in admirable order. They appeared to me in their character also entirely oriental. You enter them by long, low, winding walks of impenetrable shade; you emerge upon an open ground sparkling with roses, arranged in beds of artificial forms, and leading to gilded pavilions and painted kiosks. Arched walks of orange trees, with the fruit and the flowers hanging over your head, lead again to fountains, or to some other garden-court, where myrtles border beds of tulips, and you wander on mosaic walks of polished pebbles. A vase flashes amid a group of dark cypresses, and you are invited to repose under a Syrian walnut tree by a couch or a summer-house.
The most striking picture, however, of this charming retreat is a lake surrounded by light cloisters of white marble, and in its centre a fountain of crocodiles, carved in the same material. That material as well as the art, however, are European. It was Carrara that gave the pure and glittering blocks, and the Tuscan chisel called them into life. It is a pity that the honourable board of directors, in their recent offering of the silver fountain to the pasha, had not been aware of the precedent thus afforded by his highness’s own creation for the introduction of living forms into Moslem sculpture and carving. They might have varied their huge present with advantage. Indeed, with the crocodile and the palm-tree, surely something more beautiful and not less characteristic than their metallic mausoleum might easily have been devised.
This marble pavilion at Shoubra, indeed, with its graceful, terraced peristyles, its chambers and divans, the bright waters beneath, with their painted boats, wherein the ladies of the harem chase the gleaming shoals of gold and silver fish, is a scene worthy of a sultan; but my attendant, a Greek employed in the garden, told me I ought to view it on some high festival, crowded by the court in their rich costumes, to appreciate all its impressive beauty. This was a scene not reserved for me, yet my first visit to Shoubra closed with an incident not immemorable.
I had quitted the marble pavilion and was about to visit the wilderness where roam, in apparent liberty, many rare animals, when I came, somewhat suddenly, on a small circular plot into which several walks emptied, cut through a thick hedge of myrtle. By a sun-dial stood a little man, robust, though aged, rather stout, and of a very cheerful countenance; his attire plain and simple, a pelisse of dark silk, and a turban white as his snowy beard; he was in merry conversation with his companion, who turned out to be his jester. In the background, against the myrtle wall, stood three or four courtiers in rich dresses—courtiers, for the little old man was their princely master—the great Pasha of Egypt.
EDEN AND LEBANON
I FOUND myself high among the mountains, and yet amid a series of green slopes. All around me sparkled with cultivation—vineyards, gardens, groves of young mulberry trees, clustering groups of the sycamore and the walnut. Falling around, the cascades glittered in the sun, until, reaching the bottom of the winding valley, they mingled with the waters of a rivulet that glided through a glade of singular vividness.
On the broad bosom of a sunny hill, behind which rose a pyramid of bare rock, was a most beautiful village—flat cottages with terraced roofs, shaded by spreading trees, and surrounded by fruit and flowers. A cerulean sky above; the breath of an infinite variety of fragrant herbs around; and a land of silk and wine; everywhere the hum of bees and the murmur of falling streams; while, on the undulating down, a band of beauteous children were frolicking with the kids.
The name of this village, the fairest spot in the region of Lebanon, is Eden, which, rendered from the Arabic into the English tongue, means a ‘Dwelling of Delight.’
I ascended the peak that overhung this village. I beheld ridges of mountains succeeding each other in proportionate pre-eminence, until the range of the eternal glaciers, with their lustrous cones, flashed in the Syrian sun. I descended into the deep and solemn valleys, skirted the edges of rocky precipices, and toiled over the savage monotony of the dreary table-land. At length, on the brow of a mountain, I observed the fragments of a gloomy forest—cedar, and pine, and cypress. The wind moaning through its ancient avenues and the hoarse roar of a cataract were the only sounds that greeted me.
In the front was a scanty group of gigantic trees, that seemed the relics of some pre-Adamite grove. Their grey and massive trunks, each of which must have been more than twelve yards in girth, were as if quite dead; while, about twenty feet from the ground, they divided into five or six huge limbs, each equal to a single tree, but all, as it were, lifeless amid their apparent power.
Bare of all foliage, save on their ancient crests—black, blasted, riven, and surrounded by deep snows—behold the trees that built the palaces of Solomon!
When I recall the scene from which I had recently parted, and contrasted it with the spectacle before me, it seemed that I had quitted the innocence and infancy of Nature to gaze on its old age—of exhausted passions and desolate neglect.
A SYRIAN SKETCH
THE sun was quivering above the horizon, when I strolled forth from Jaffa to enjoy the coming breeze amid the beautiful gardens that environ that agreeable town. Riding along the previous day, my attention had been attracted by a marble gate, the fragment of some old temple, that now served as the entrance to one of these enclosures, their secure boundary otherwise formed by a picturesque and impenetrable hedge of Indian fig.
It is not a hundred yards from the town; behind it stretches the plain of Ramie—the ancient Arimathea-broad and fertile, and, at this moment, green; for it was just after the latter rains, when Syria is most charming. The caravan track winding through it led to Jerusalem.
The air was exquisitely soft and warm, and sweet with the perfume of the orange bowers. I passed through the marble portal, adorned with some florid yet skilful sculptures, and found myself in a verdant wilderness of fruit-trees, rising in rich confusion from the turf, through which not a single path seemed to wander. There were vast groups of orange and lemon-trees, varied occasionally with the huge offspring of the citron-tree, and the glowing produce of the pomegranate; while, ever and anon, the tall banana raised its head aloft with its green or golden clusters, and sometimes the graceful and languid crest of the date-bearing palm.
While I was in doubt as to the direction I should bend my steps, my ear was caught by the wild notes of Turkish music; and, following the sounds, I emerged upon a plot of turf, clear from trees, in the middle of which was a fountain, and, by its margin, seated on a delicate Persian carpet, a venerable Turk. Some slaves were near him, one of whom, at a little distance, was playing on a rude lyre; in the master’s left hand was a volume of Arabian poetry, and he held in his right the serpentine tube of his narghileh, or Syrian pipe. When he beheld me, he saluted me with all the dignity of the Orient, pressing his hand to his heart, but not rising. I apologised for my intrusion; but he welcomed me with serene cordiality, and invited me to share his carpet and touch his pipe.
Some time elapsed in answering those questions respecting European horses and European arms, wherein the Easterns delight. At length, the solemn and sonorous voice of the muezzin, from the minarets of Jaffa, came floating on the air. The sun had set; and, immediately, my host and his companions performed their ablutions in the fountain; and kneeling towards Mecca, repeated their accustomed prayers. Then rising, the Turkish aga, for such was his rank, invited me to enjoy the evening breeze, and accompany him in a walk round his garden.
As we proceeded, my companion plucked an orange, and taking a knife from his girdle, and cutting the fruit in half, offered me one moiety, and threw the other away. More than once he repeated this ceremony, which somewhat excited my surprise. At length he inquired my opinion of his fruit. I enlarged, and with sincerity, on its admirable quality, the racy sweetness of its flavour, which I esteemed unequalled; but I could not refrain from expressing my surprise, that of fruit so exquisite he should studiously waste so considerable a portion.
‘Effendi,’ said the Turk, with a grave though gracious smile, ‘to friends we give only the sunny side.’
THE BOSPHORUS
THE stranger whose felicity it has been to float between the shores of the Bosphorus will often glance back with mingled feelings of regret and satisfaction to the memory of those magical waters. This splendid strait, stretching from the harbour of Constantinople to the mouth of the Euxine, may be about twenty miles in length, and its ordinary breadth seldom exceeds one mile. The old Greek story tells that one might hear the birds sing on the opposite shore. And thus two great continents are divided by an ocean stream narrower than many rivers that are the mere boundaries of kingdoms. Yet it is strange that the character of these two famous divisions of our earth is nowhere more marked than on the shores of the Bosphorus. The traveller turns without disappointment from the gay and glittering shores of Europe to the sublimer beauty and the dusky grandeur of Asia.
The European side, until you advance within four or five miles of the Black Sea, is almost uninterruptedly studded with fanciful and ornamental buildings: beautiful villages, and brilliant summer palaces, and bright kiosks, painted in arabesque, and often gilt. The green background to the scene is a sparkling screen of terraced gardens, rising up a chain of hills whose graceful undulations are crowned with groves of cypress and of chestnut, occasionally breaking into fair and delicate valleys, richly wooded, and crossed by a grey and antique aqueduct.
But in Asia the hills rise into mountains, and the groves swell into forests. Everything denotes a vast, rich and prolific land, but there is something classical, antique, and even mysterious in its general appearance. An air of stillness and deep repose pervades its less cultivated and less frequented shores; and the very eagles, as they linger over the lofty peak of ‘the Giant’s grave,’ seem conscious that they are haunting some heroic burial-place.
I remember that one of the most strange, and even sublime, spectacles that I ever beheld occurred to me one balmy autumnal eve as I returned home in my caique from Terapia, a beautiful village on the Bosphorus, where I had been passing the day, to Pera. I encountered an army of dolphins, who were making their way from the Ægean and the Sea of Marmora through the Strait to the Euxine. They stretched right across the water, and I should calculate that they covered, with very little interval, a space of three or four miles. It is very difficult to form an estimate of their number, but there must, of course, have been many thousands. They advanced in grand style, and produced an immense agitation: the snorting, spouting, and splashing, and the wild panting rush, I shall never forget. As it was late, no other caique was in sight, and my boatmen, apprehensive of being run down, stopped to defend themselves with their oars. I had my pistols with me, and found great sport, as, although the dolphins made every effort to avoid us, there were really crowds always in shot. Whenever one was hit, general confusion ran through the whole line. They all flounced about with increased energy, ducked their round heads under water, and turned up their arrowy tails. We remained thus stationary for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and very diverting I found the delay. At length the mighty troop of strangers passed us, and, I suppose, must have arrived at the Symplegades about the same time that I sought the elegant hospitality of the British Palace at Pera.