Among the Ruins of Luxor and Karnak
Luxor, the ancient city of Upper Egypt, which may be reached by a night train ride from Cairo, is the center of the most interesting ruins on the Nile. The city itself has been built around the splendid temple of Luxor, founded by Amenophis III, but altered and extensively rebuilt by Rameses II. From the Nile the colonnade of this temple is a beautiful spectacle, as the huge columns are in perfect preservation. Big tourist hotels make up most of the other buildings. The town boasts a good water front, which is generally lined in the winter season with tourist steamers. The view across the Nile is fine, as it includes the lofty Libyan range of mountains, in whose flanks were cut the tombs of the Pharaohs. Here, in two or three days, one may study the ruins of Luxor, Karnak and Thebes – names that the historian still conjures with.
All the Egyptian temples were built on one general plan, like the mosques of North India, and Luxor does not differ from the others, except that it surpasses them all in the beauty of its colonnaded pillars. Seven double columns, about fifty-two feet high, with lotus capitals, support a massive architrave, while beyond them are double columns on three sides of a great court. This temple of Luxor was originally built by Amenophis III of the eighteenth dynasty in honor of Ammon, the greatest of Egyptian gods, his wife and their son, the moon-god Khons. The successor of this monarch erased the name of Ammon and made other changes, but Seti I restored Ammon's name, and then came Rameses II, the builder who never wearied in rearing huge temples and in carving colossal figures of himself.
Rameses added a colonnaded court in front of the temple, built an enormous pylon, with obelisks and colossal statues that celebrate his own greatness, and erased the cartouches of the original builder, substituting his own and thus claiming credit for the erection of the whole temple. Were the spirit of the great Rameses allowed to return to earth and reanimate the mummy that now forms the most interesting exhibit in the Cairo Museum, how great would be his humiliation to know that his ingenious devices to appropriate the credit of other men's work have been exposed? In nearly all the remains of Upper Egypt, Rameses figures as the sole builder, but the cunning of modern archaeologists has stripped him of this credit and has revealed him as the greatest of royal charlatans.
The general plan of the Luxor temple is repeated at Karnak and all other places in Egypt. The pylon, two towers of massive masonry, formed the entrance to the temple, the door being in the middle. The towers of the pylon resemble truncated pyramids and, as they were formed of large stones, they frequently survived when all other parts of the temple fell into ruins. The surfaces of the pylon afforded space for reliefs and inscriptions, telling of the glories of the king who reared the temple. In most cases obelisks and colossal statues of the royal builder were placed in front of the pylon. From the pylon one enters the great open court, with covered colonnades at right and left. This court was the gathering place of the people on all big festivals, and in the center stood the great altar. Back of this court, on a terrace a few feet higher, was the vestibule of the temple upheld by columns, the front row of which was balustraded. Behind this was the great hypostyle hall, extending the whole width of the building, with five aisles, the two outer ones being lower than the others. The roof of the central aisle is upheld by papyrus columns with calyx capitals, while that of the other aisles is supported by papyrus columns with bud capitals. Behind this hall is the inner sanctuary, containing the image of the god in a sacred boat. Around the sanctuary were grouped various chambers for the storage of the priests' vestments and for the use of watchmen and other attendants.
In the Luxor temple the surface of the pylon is devoted to a record of the achievements in war of Rameses II, the monarch who finally revised the temple and put his seal on it. Behind the pylon is the great court of Rameses, entirely surrounded by two rows of seventy-four columns, with papyrus bud capitals and smooth shafts. Then comes a colonnade of seven double columns, fifty-two feet high, with calyx capitals; a second court, that of Amenophis III, with double rows of columns on three sides; the vestibule of the temple, two chapels, the birth-room of Amenophis and several other chambers.
Each monarch who reared a temple to his chosen deity devoted much space to statues of himself, with grandiloquent accounts in hieroglyphs of his exploits in war and peace and of the many peoples who paid him tribute. Rameses appears to have had most of the evil traits of the arbitrary despot. With unlimited men and material he was engaged during the greater part of his long reign in erecting colossal structures which were designed to perpetuate in enduring stone the record of his achievements. But Time has dealt Rameses some staggering blows. His tomb at Thebes, which was planned to preserve his mummy throughout the ages, fell in and is the only one of the tombs of the kings that cannot be shown. The mummy of this ablest and proudest of the Pharaohs is now on exhibition at the Cairo Museum with a score of others and excites the ribald comment of the Cook's tourist, who drops his "h's" and knows nothing of Egyptology. Yet the mummy of Rameses is by far the most interesting of those shown at the museum because the head and face are so essentially modern. The other rulers of Egypt were plainly Orientals, but this man, with the high-bridged, sensitive nose, the long upper lip, the strong chin and the powerful forehead, might have stepped out of the political life of any of the great European nations during the last century.
The impressiveness of the temple of Luxor depends mainly upon the rows of columns, nearly sixty feet in height, which give one a vivid idea of the majesty of Egyptian architecture in its best estate. These columns show few traces of the destroying hand of time, although they were carved from soft limestone. Probably the escape of this temple from the ruin that befell Karnak and Thebes was due mainly to its sheltered position and also to the fact that a Coptic church and the houses of peasants were built among the columns. The refuse that aided to preserve these remains of Ancient Egyptian architecture was fully twenty feet deep when the work of excavation was begun. Hence Luxor satisfies the eye in the perfect arrangement of the columns and in the massiveness of the work. Here also on the pylon and the walls of the court may be seen some beautiful reliefs and inscriptions which depict scenes in the campaigns of Rameses II against the Hittites, sacrificial processions and hymns to the gods.
From ancient Luxor to Karnak, a distance of a mile and one-half, the way was marked in the time of the Pharaohs by a double row of small sphinxes, many of which still remain in a half-ruined condition. This avenue leads to the small temple of Khons, the moon-god, made noteworthy by a beautiful pylon. This pylon is one hundred and four feet long, thirty-three feet wide and sixty feet high and is covered with inscriptions and reliefs. This small temple serves as an introduction to the great temple of Ammon, the chief glory of Karnak, to which most of the Pharaohs contributed. This temple is difficult to describe, as it covers several acres and is a mass of gigantic masonry, full of majesty even in its ruin. What it was in the days of its builders, with its vast courts lined with beautiful designs in brilliant colors, the imagination fails to conceive. Its greatest features are the main pylon (three hundred and seventy feet wide and one hundred and forty-two and one-half feet high), the great hypostyle hall of Seti I and Rameses II, the festival temple of Thotmes III and the obelisk of Queen Hatasu. From the pylon a superb view may be gained of the ruins of Karnak.
The hypostyle hall is justly ranked among the wonders of the world, as it is no less than three hundred and thirty-eight feet in breadth by one hundred and seventy feet in depth and it is estimated that the great church of Notre Dame in Paris could be set down in this hall. Sixteen rows of columns – one hundred and thirty-four in all – support the roof. Looking down the two central rows of columns toward the sanctuary, one gets some idea of the effect of this colossal architecture when the pillars were all perfect and the fierce sunshine of ancient Egypt brought out their barbaric wealth of gold and brilliant colors.
The walls of this immense hall are covered with pictures in relief depicting the victories of Seti and Rameses over the Libyans and the people of Palestine. These designs represent the two monarchs as performing prodigies of valor on the field of battle and then bringing the trophies of war as an offering to the gods. The festal hall of Thotmes III is made noteworthy by twenty unique columns arranged in two rows. The Temple of Karnak was made beautiful by two fine obelisks of pink granite from Assuan, erected by Queen Hatasu. One is in fragments, but the other rises one hundred and one-half feet from amid a ruined colonnade. It is the loftiest obelisk known with the single exception of that in front of the Lateran in Rome, which is taller by only three and one-half feet. The inscription records that it was made in seven months.
The impression left by the ruins of Karnak is bewildering. The modern mind has great difficulty in conceiving how any monarch, no matter how great his resources, could spend years in erecting these huge structures in honor of his gods. Here are scores of colossal statues of Rameses, Seti and Amenophis, each of which required six months to carve from a single slab of red or black granite. Here are hundreds of columns of from forty to sixty feet high, covered from capital to base with richly carved hieroglyphs. Here are splendid halls, larger than anything known in our day, which were picture galleries in stone, blazing with gold, red, purple and other colors. And here are obelisks that have preserved through all these centuries the story of their dedication.
The mind is staggered by so great a mass of work, representing untold misery of thousands of wretched slaves brought from all parts of the then known world. These slaves were made to work under the terrible Egyptian sun; if they were overcome by the heat and stopped for a moment's rest their bare backs felt the cruel lash of the overseer; if they fell under the heat and the burden they were dragged out and their bodies thrown to the vultures and the jackals. So, while we stand in amazement before these relics of the enormous activity of a people who have passed away, we cannot fail to note that these huge stones were cemented with the blood and tears of the bond slave, and that if they could find a voice they would tell of unthinkable atrocities which they witnessed in those old days, before brotherly love came into the world.
Tombs of The Kings at Ancient Thebes
The Greeks and Romans who went up the Nile as far as the "hundred-gated" city of Thebes declared that the Tombs of the Kings, cut in the limestone sides of the Libyan range of mountains, were among the wonders of the world. The tourist of to-day will confirm this early impression, for in Egypt nothing gives one a more vivid idea of the enormous pains taken by the Pharaohs to preserve their dead from desecration than do these tombs. Here for several miles in the flanks of these mountains – sterile, desolate beyond any region that I have ever seen – are scattered the rock-hewn tombs of the monarchs who carried the arms of Egypt to all parts of the known world of their day. Like their temples, the Egyptians built their tombs after a uniform plan – the only variation was in the arrangement of the minor chambers and in the inscriptions which told of the history of the king whose mummy reposed in the vault.
Seven miles across the river the Pharaohs chose the site of their tombs. Imagination could not conceive a greater abomination of desolation than the rocky mountainside in which these tombs are carved; but fortunes were lavished on the construction of these resting places of the dead. Historians and travelers have told of the great city which grew up about the tombs of the Egyptian kings – the temples, the homes of priests and the huge settlements of thousands of workmen who spent years in the laborious carving and decoration of these burial places. But to-day nothing remains of these cities, and of the temples only a few columns, pillars and broken statues bear witness to their former grandeur. Yet the tombs have resisted the destroying hand of the centuries, and the walls of several of them actually retain the brilliant colors laid on by the painters over four thousand years ago. When you go down the roughly-hewn steps into the mortuary chambers, carved out of the solid rock, it is borne in upon you that here time has stood still; that during all the ages that have seen the rise of Christianity and the growth of empires greater than Thebes ever dreamed of, the mummies of these Pharaohs reposed here undisturbed. Now by the aid of skilfully arranged electric lights you may descend into most of these tombs, marvel at the beauty of the decorative inscriptions on the walls, gaze upon the massive granite sarcophagi in which the mummies were placed, and get a genuine taste of the antiquity that you have read about but never fully realized before. This is the service of the tombs of the kings – the actual turning back of the centuries so that one feels the touch of the ancient days as vividly as he feels the hot, dust-laden, oppressive air of the mausoleum.
The excursion from Luxor to the tombs of the kings and the Colossi of Memnon, not far away, is a hard day's trip. The tourist crosses the Nile in a small boat and takes a donkey or a carriage. The road leads along a large canal, passing the remains of the great temple of Seti I at Kurna, and thence winds around through two desert valleys into a gorge lined on both sides with naked, sun-baked rocks that give back the heat like the open doors of a furnace. Bare of any scrap of verdure, desolate beyond expression, these rocky walls that shut in this gorge form a fitting introduction to the tombs of the kings. The road finally turns to the left and enters a small valley, encircled by huge rocks, cut by ravines. Here one may see in the sides of the mountain wall the first of the rock-hewn tombs, which happens to be that of Rameses IV. One enters the large gateway and passes down an ancient staircase cut in the solid rock, at an angle of forty-five degrees. Three corridors and an ante-room, all carved out of rock, lead to the main chamber, which contains the mammoth granite sarcophagus of the king (ten feet long, eight feet high and seven feet wide), beautifully decorated with inscriptions. Four other rooms follow, the walls of each being covered with inscriptions. Recesses are found in the main hall for the storage of the furniture of the dead and in several of the other rooms.
The theory of the Egyptians in the arrangement of these tombs was that the dead king, guided by the great sun-god, voyaged through the underworld every night in a boat. Hence he must have careful guidance in regard to his route. This was furnished by elaborate extracts from two sacred books of the Egyptians. One was entitled The Book of Him Who Is in the Underworld and the other was the Book of the Portals.
The walls of these tombs reveal extracts from the sacred books in great variety, but all designed to serve as a guide to the dead kings. The best tombs are those of Amenophis II, Rameses III, Seti I and Thotmes III. They are all of similar design but the tomb of Seti I (discovered by the Italian savant, Belzoni) is finer than any of the others. It includes fourteen rooms, most of which are richly adorned with inscriptions and designs from the sacred books. The sculptures on the walls are executed with great skill and the decorations of the ceilings show much artistic taste. In the tenth room are many curious decorations, the ceiling, which is finely vaulted, being covered with astronomical figures and lists of stars and constellations. From this room an incline leads to the mummy shaft. The mummy of Seti I is in the Cairo Museum, while the fine alabaster sarcophagus is in the Soane Museum in London. The tomb of Amenophis II is noteworthy as the only one which contains the royal mummy. In a crypt with blue ceiling, spangled with yellow stars and with yellow walls to represent papyrus, is the great sandstone sarcophagus of the king. Under a strong electric light is shown the mummy-shaped coffin with the body of the king, its arms crossed and the funeral garlands still resting in the case. The effectiveness of this mummy makes one regret that the others have been removed to the Cairo Museum, instead of being restored to their original places in these tombs. Most of these royal mummies were removed to a shaft at Deir-el-Bahri to save them from desecration by the invading Persians, but when the mummies were found it would have been wise to replace them in these tombs rather than to group them, as was done, in the Cairo Museum. One or two mummies in that museum would have been as effective as two dozen.
Not far from these tombs is the fine temple of Queen Hatasu at Deir-el-Bahri. This queen was the sister and wife of King Thotmes III, and for a part of his reign was co-regent. The temple, which was left unfinished, was completed by Rameses II. A short ride from this temple brings one to the Ramessium, the large temple (which is badly preserved) erected by Rameses II and dedicated to the god Ammon. The pylon is ruined, but one can still decipher some of the inscriptions that tell of Rameses' campaign against the Hittites. The first court is a mass of ruined masonry, but it contains fragments of a colossal statue of Rameses, the largest ever found in Egypt. It probably measured fifty-seven and one-third feet in height, as the various parts show that it was twenty-two and one-half feet from shoulder to shoulder. The colossal head of another statue of Rameses was found near by. The great hall had many fine columns, of which eighteen are still standing. These columns are very impressive and give one some idea of the majesty of the temple when it was complete. Not far away are the tombs of the queens, including the fine mausoleum of the consort of Rameses II, part of whose name was Mi-an-Mut.
A half mile from the Ramessium brings one to the Colossi of Memnon, the two huge seated figures of stone, which were long included among the seven wonders of the world. These figures were statues of King Amenophis III and were placed in front of a great temple that he built at this place; but time has dealt hardly with the temple, as scarcely a trace of it remains. The figures with the pedestals are about sixty-five feet high and, as they are on the level plain near the banks of the Nile, they can be seen from a great distance. Though carved from hard sandstone these figures have suffered severely from the elements, so that the faces bear little trace of human features; still they are impressive from their mere size and from the fact that they have come down to us across the centuries with so little change.
The southern statue is in the best preservation, but the northern one is of greatest interest because for ages it was believed to give forth musical notes when the first rays of the rising sun fell on its lips. The Greeks called it the Statue of Memnon, and invented the fable that Memnon, who was slain at Troy by Achilles, appeared on the Nile as a stone image and every morning greeted his mother (Eos) with a song. So many good observers vouched for these musical notes at sunrise that the phenomenon must be accepted as an historical fact. The Romans invented the legend that when these sounds occurred the god was angry. Hence the emperor, Septimius Severus, apparently to propitiate the god, made some restorations in the upper portion of the statue, whereupon the mysterious musical sounds ceased. Some modern experts in physics have deduced the theory that this statue, carved from hard, resonant stone, really gave forth sounds when warmed up by the early sun after the heavy dews of night. Similar sounds have been observed elsewhere, due to the splitting off of very small particles of stone by sudden expansion. Whatever the cause of these mysterious sounds, the speaking statue has served as an inspiration to many poets.