My Winter on the Nile

Up this strange road were borne in solemn state, as the author of Job may have seen, “the kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves;” the journey was a fitting prelude to an entry into the depths of these frightful hills. It must have been an awful march, awful in its errand, awful in the desolation of the way: and, in the heat of summer, a mummy passing this way might have melted down in his cercueil before he could reach his cool retreat.

When we come to the end of the road, we see no tombs. There are paths winding in several directions, round projecting ridges and shoulders of powdered rock, but one might pass through here and not know he was in a cemetery. Above the rubbish here and there we see, when they are pointed out, holes in the rock. We climb one of these heaps, and behold the entrance, maybe half-filled up, of one of the great tombs. This entrance may have been laid open so as to disclose a portal cut in the face of the rock and a smoothed space in front. Originally the tomb was not only walled up and sealed, but rocks were tumbled down over it, so as to restore that spot in the hill to its natural appearance. The chief object of every tomb was to conceal the mummy from intrusion forever. All sorts of misleading devices were resorted to for this purpose.

Twenty-five tombs (of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties) have been opened in this locality, but some of them belonged to princes and other high functionaries; in a valley west of this are tombs of the eighteenth dynasty, and in still another gorge are the tombs of the queens. These tombs all differ in plan, in extent, in decoration; they are alike in not having, as many others elsewhere have, an exterior chamber where friends could assemble to mourn; you enter all these tombs by passing through an insignificant opening, by an inclined passage, directly into the heart of the mountain, and there they open into various halls chambers, and grottoes. One of them, that of Sethi I., into whose furthermost and most splendid halls Belzoni broke his way, extends horizontally four hundred and seventy feet into the hill, and descends to a depth of one hundred and eighty feet below the opening. The line of direction of the excavation is often changed, and the continuation skillfully masked, so that the explorer may be baffled. You come by several descents and passages, through grand chambers and halls, to a hall vast in size and magnificently decorated; here is a pit, here is the granite sarcophagus; here is the fitting resting-place of the royal mummy. But it never occupied this sarcophagus. Somewhere in this hall is a concealed passage. It was by breaking through a wall of solid masonry in such a room, smoothly stuccoed and elaborately painted with a continuation of the scenes on the side-walls, that Belzoni discovered the magnificent apartment beyond, and at last a chamber that was never finished, where one still sees the first draughts of the figures for sculpture on the wall, and gets an idea of the bold freedom of the old draughtsmen, in the long, graceful lines, made at a stroke by the Egyptian artists. Were these inner chambers so elaborately concealed, by walls and stucco and painting, after the royal mummy was somewhere hidden in them? Or was the mummy deposited in some obscure lateral pit, and was it the fancy of the king himself merely to make these splendid and highly decorated inner apartments private?

It is not uncommon to find rooms in the tombs unfinished. The excavation of the tomb was began when the king began to reign; it was a work of many years and might happen to be unfinished at his death. He might himself become so enamoured of his enterprise and his ideas might expand in regard to his requirements, as those of builders always do, that death would find him still excavating and decorating. I can imagine that if one thought he were building a house for eternity—or cycles beyond human computation,—he would, up to his last moment, desire to add to it new beauties and conveniences. And he must have had a certain humorous satisfaction in his architectural tricks, for putting posterity on a false scent about his remains.

It would not be in human nature to leave undisturbed tombs containing so much treasure as was buried with a rich or royal mummy. The Greeks walked through all these sepulchres; they had already been rifled by the Persians; it is not unlikely that some of them had been ransacked by Egyptians, who could appreciate jewelry and fine-work in gold as much as we do that found by M. Mariette on the cold person of Queen Aah-hotep. This dainty lady might have begun to flatter herself, having escaped through so many ages of pillage, that danger was over, but she had not counted upon there coming an age of science. It is believed that she was the mother of Amosis, who expelled the Shepherds, and the wife of Kamés, who long ago went to his elements. After a repose here at Thebes, not far from the temple of Koorneh, of about thirty-five hundred years, Science one day cried,—“Aah-hotep of Drah-Aboo-l-neggah! we want you for an Exposition of the industries of all nations at Paris; put on your best things and come forth.”

I suppose that there is no one living who would not like to be the first to break into an Egyptian tomb (and there are doubtless still some undisturbed in this valley), to look upon its glowing paintings before the air had impaired a tint, and to discover a sweet and sleeping princess, simply encrusted in gems, and cunning work in gold, of priceless value—in order that he might add something to our knowledge of ancient art!

But the government prohibits all excavations by private persons. You are permitted, indeed, to go to the common pits and carry off an armful of mummies, if you like; but there is no pleasure in the disturbance of this sort of mummy; he may perhaps be a late Roman; he has no history, no real antiquity, and probably not a scarabæus of any value about him.

When we pass out of the glare of the sun and descend the incline down which the mummy went, we feel as if we had begun his awful journey. On the walls are sculptured the ceremonies and liturgies of the dead, the grotesque monsters of the under-world, which will meet him and assail him on his pilgrimage, the deities friendly and unfriendly, the tremendous scenes of cycles of transmigration. Other sculptures there are; to be sure, and in some tombs these latter predominate, in which astronomy, agriculture, and domestic life are depicted. In one chamber are exhibited trades, in another the kitchen, in another arms, in another the gay boats and navigation of the Nile, in another all the vanities of elegant house-furniture. But all these only emphasize the fact that we are passing into another world, and one of the grimmest realities. We come at length, whatever other wonders or beauties may detain us, to the king, the royal mummy, in the presence of the deities, standing before Osiris, Athor, Phtah, Isis, Horus, Anubis, and Nofre-Atmoo.

Somewhere in this vast and dark mausoleum the mummy has been deposited; he has with him the roll of the Funeral Ritual; the sacred scarabæus is on his breast; in one chamber bread and wine are set out; his bearers withdraw, the tomb is closed, sealed, all trace of its entrance effaced. The mummy begins his pilgrimage.

The Ritual4 describes all the series of pilgrimages of the soul in the lower-world; it contains the hymns, prayers, and formula for all funeral ceremonies and the worship of the dead; it embodies the philosophy and religion of Egypt; the basis of it is the immortality of the soul, that is of the souls of the justified, but a clear notion of the soul’s personality apart from the body it does not give.

The book opens with a grand dialogue, at the moment of death, in which the deceased, invoking the god of the lower-world, asks entrance to his domain; a chorus of glorified souls interposes for him; the priest implores the divine clemency; Osiris responds, granting permission, and the soul enters Kar-Neter, the land of the dead; and then renews his invocations. Upon his entry he is dazzled by the splendor of the sun (which is Osiris) in this subterranean region, and sings to it a magnificent hymn.

The second part traces the journeys of the soul. Without knowledge, he would fail, and finally be rejected at the tribunal.

Knowledge is in Egyptian sbo, that is, “food in plenty,” knowledge and food are identified in the Ritual; “the knowledge of religious truths is the mysterious nourishment that the soul must carry with it to sustain it in its journeys and trials.” This necessary preliminary knowledge is found in the statement of the Egyptian faith in the Ritual; other information is given him from time to time on his journey. But although his body is wrapped up, and his soul instructed, he cannot move, he has not the use of his limbs; and he prays to be restored to his faculties that he may be able to walk, speak, eat, fight; the prayer granted, he holds his scarabæus over his head, as a passport, and enters Hades.

His way is at once beset by formidable obstacles; monsters, servants of Typhon, assail him; slimy reptiles, crocodiles, serpents seek to devour him; he begins a series of desperate combats, in which the hero and his enemies hurl long and insulting speeches at each other. Out of these combats he comes victorious, and sings songs of triumph; and after rest and refreshment from the Tree of Life, given him by the goddess Nu, he begins a dialogue with the personification of the divine Light, who instructs him, explaining the sublime mysteries of nature. Guided by this new Light, he advances, and enters into a series of transformations, identifying himself with the noblest divine symbols: he becomes a hawk, an angel, a lotus, the god Ptah, a heron, etc.

Up to this time the deceased has been only a shade, an eidolon, the simulacrum of the appearance of his body. He now takes his body, which is needed for the rest of the journey; it was necessary therefore that it should be perfectly preserved by the embalming process. He goes on to new trials and dangers, to new knowledge, to severer examinations of his competence: he shuns wiles and delusions; he sails down a subterranean river and comes to the Elysian Fields, in fact, to a reproduction of Egypt with its camels and its industries, when the soul engages in agriculture, sowing and reaping divine fruit for the bread of knowledge which he needs now more than ever.

At length he comes to the last and severest trial, to the judgment-hall where Osiris awaits him, seated on his throne, accompanied by the forty-two assessors of the dead. Here his knowledge is put to the test; here he must give an account of his whole life. He goes on to justify himself by declaring at first, negatively, the crimes that he has not committed. “I have not blasphemed,” he says in the Ritual; “I have not stolen; I have not smitten men privily; I have not treated any person with cruelty; I have not stirred up trouble; I have not been idle; I have not been intoxicated; I have not made unjust commandmants; I have shown no improper curiosity; I have not allowed my mouth to tell secrets; I have not wounded anyone; I have not put anyone in fear; I have not slandered anyone; I have not let envy gnaw my heart; I have spoken evil neither of the king nor of my father; I have not falsely accused anyone; I have not withheld milk from the mouths of sucklings; I have not practiced any shameful crime; I have not calumniated a slave to his master.”

The deceased then speaks of the good he has done in his lifetime; and the positive declarations rise to a higher morality than the negative; among them is this wonderful sentence:—“I have given food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, and clothes to the naked.”

The heart of the deceased, who is now called Osiris, is then weighed in the balance against “truth,” and (if he is just) is not found wanting; the forty-two assessors decide that his knowledge is sufficient, the god Osiris gives sentence of justification, Thoth (the Hermes of the Greeks, the conductor of souls, the scribe of Osiris, and also the personification of literature or letters) records it, and the soul enters into bliss.

In a chamber at Dayr el Medeeneh you may see this judgment-scene. Osiris is seated on his throne waiting the introduction of souls into Amenti; the child Harpocrates, with his finger on his lip, sits upon his crook; behind are the forty-two assessors. The deceased humbly approaches; Thoth presents his good deeds written upon papyrus; they are weighed in the balance against an ostrich-feather, the symbol of truth; on the beam sits a monkey, the emblem of Thoth.

The same conceit of weighing the soul in judgment-scenes was common to the mediaeval church; it is very quaintly represented in a fresco in the porch of the church of St. Lawrence at Rome.

Sometimes the balance tipped the wrong way; in the tomb of Rameses VI. is sculptured a wicked soul, unjustified, retiring from the presence of Osiris in the ignoble form of a pig.

The justified soul retired into bliss. What was this bliss? The third part of the Ritual is obscure. The deceased is Osiris, identified with the sun, traversing with him, and as him, the various houses of heaven; afterwards he seems to pass into an identification with all the deities of the pantheon. This is a poetical flight. The justified soul was absorbed into the intelligence from which it emanated. For the wicked, there was annihilation; they were destroyed, decapitated by the evil powers. In these tombs you will see pictures of beheadings at the block, of dismembered bodies.

It would seem that in some cases the souls of the wicked returned to the earth and entered unclean animals. We always had a suspicion, a mere idle fancy, that the chameleon, which we had on our boat, which had a knowing and wicked eye, had been somebody.

The visitor’s first astonishment here is to find such vast and rich tombs, underground temples in fact, in a region so unutterably desolate, remote from men, to be reached only by a painful pilgrimage. He is bewildered by the variety and beauty of the decorations, the grace and freedom of art, the minute finish of birds and flowers, the immortal loveliness of faces here and there; and he cannot understand that all this was not made for exhibition, that it was never intended to be seen, that it was not seen except by the workmen and the funeral attendants, and that it was then sealed away from human eyes forever. Think of the years of labor expended, the treasure lavished in all this gorgeous creation, which was not for men to see! Has human nature changed? Expensive monuments and mausoleums are built now as they have been in all the Christian era; but they are never concealed from the public view. I cannot account for these extraordinary excavations, not even for one at the Assaseef, which extends over an acre and a quarter of ground, upon an ostentation of wealth, for they were all closed from inspection, and the very entrances masked. The builders must have believed in the mysteries of the under-world, or they would not have expended so much in enduring representations of them; they must have believed also that the soul had need of such a royal abode. Did they have the thought that money lavished in this pious labor would benefit the soul, as much as now-a-days legacies bequeathed to missions and charities?

On our second visit to these tombs we noticed many details that had escaped us before. I found sculptured a cross of equal arms, three or four inches long, among other sacred symbols. We were struck by the peculiar whiteness of the light, the sort of chalkiness of the sunshine as we saw it falling across the entrance of a tomb from which we were coming, and by the lightness of the shadows. We illuminated some of the interiors, lighting up the vast sculptured and painted halls and corniced chambers, to get the tout ensemble of colors and figures. The colors came out with startling vividness on the stuccoed, white walls, and it needed no imagination, amidst these awful and bizarre images and fantastic scenes, to feel that we were in a real underworld. And all this was created for darkness!

But these chambers could neither have been cut nor decorated without light, and bright light. The effect of the rich ceiling and sides could not have been obtained without strong light. I believe that these rooms, as well as the dark and decorated chambers in the temples, must have been brilliantly illuminated on occasion; the one at the imposing funeral ceremonies, the other at the temple services. What light was used? The sculptures give us no information. But the light must have been not only a very brilliant but a pure flame, for these colors were fresh and unsullied when the tombs were opened. However these chambers were lighted, some illuminating substance was used that produced no smoke, nor formed any gas that could soil the whiteness of the painted lotus.

In one of these brilliant apartments, which is finished with a carved and painted cornice, and would serve for a drawing-room with the addition of some furniture, we almost had a feeling of comfort and domesticity—as long as the illumination lasted. When that flashed but, and we were left in that thick darkness of the grave which one can feel gathering itself in folds about him, and which the twinkling candles in our hands punctured but did not scatter, and we groped our way, able to see only a step ahead and to examine only a yard square of wall at a time, there was something terrible in this subterranean seclusion. And yet, this tomb was intended as the place of abode of the deceased owner during the long ages before soul and body, united, should be received into bliss; here were buried with him no doubt some portions of his property, at least jewels and personal ornaments of value; here were pictured his possessions and his occupations while on earth; here were his gods, visibly cut in stone; here were spread out, in various symbols and condensed writing, the precepts of profound wisdom and the liturgies of the book of the dead. If at any time he could have awakened (as no doubt he supposed he should), and got rid of his heavy granite sarcophagus (if his body ever lay in it) and removed the myrrh and pitch from his person, he would have found himself in a most spacious and gay mansion, of which the only needs were food, light, and air.

While remembering, however, the grotesque conception the Egyptians had of the next world, it seems to me that the decorators of these tombs often let their imaginations run riot, and that not every fantastic device has a deep signification. Take the elongated figures on the ceiling, stretching fifty feet across, the legs bent down one side and the head the other; or such a picture as this:—a sacred boat having a crocodile on the deck, on the back of the crocodile a human head, out of the head a long stick protruding which bears on its end the crown of lower Egypt; or this conceit:—a small boat ascending a cataract, bearing a huge beetle (scarabæus) having a ram’s head, and sitting on each side of it a bird with a human head. I think much of this work is pure fancy.

In these tombs the snake plays a great part, the snake purely, coiled or extended, carried in processions his length borne on the shoulders of scores of priests, crawling along the walls in hideous convolutions; and, again, the snake with two, three, and four heads, with two and six feet; the snake with wings; the snake coiled about the statues of the gods, about the images of the mummies, and in short everywhere. The snake is the most conspicuous figure.

The monkey is also numerous, and always pleasing; I think he is the comic element of hell, though perhaps gravely meant. He squats about the lower-world of the heathen, and gives it an almost cheerful and debonnair aspect. It is certainly refreshing to meet his self-possessed, grave, and yet friendly face amid all the serpents, crocodiles, hybrids, and chimerical monsters of the Egyptian under-world.

Conspicuous in ceremonies represented in the tombs and in the temples is the sacred boat or ark, reminding one always, in its form and use and the sacredness attached to it, of the Jewish Ark of the Covenant. The arks contain the sacred emblems, and sometimes the beetle of the sun, overshadowed by the wings of the goddess of Thmei or Truth, which suggest the cherubim of the Jews. Mr. Wilkinson notices the fact, also, that Thmei, the name of the goddess who was worshipped under the double character of Truth and Justice, is the origin of the Hebrew Thummim—a word implying “truth”; this Thummim (a symbol perfectly comprehensible now that we know its origin) which was worn only by the high priest of the Jews, was, like the Egyptian figure, which the archjudge put on when he sat at the trial of a case, studded with precious stones of various colors.

Before we left the valley we entered the tomb of Menephtah (or Merenphtah), and I broke off a bit of crumbling limestone from the inner cave as a memento of the Pharaoh of the Exodus. I used to suppose that this Pharaoh was drowned in the Red Sea; but he could not have been if he was buried here; and here certainly is his tomb. It is the opinion of scholars that Menephtah long survived the Exodus. There is nothing to conflict with this in the Biblical description of the disaster to the Egyptians. It says that all Pharaoh’s host was drowned, but it does not say that the king was drowned; if he had been, so important a fact, it is likely, would have been emphasized. Joseph came into Egypt during the reign of one of the usurping Shepherd Kings, Apepi probably. Their seat of empire was at Tanis, where their tombs have been discovered. The Israelites were settled in that part of the Delta. After some generations the Shepherds were expelled, and the ancient Egyptian race of kings was reinstated in the dominion of all Egypt. This is probably the meaning of the passage, “now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.” The narrative of the Exodus seems to require that the Pharaoh should be at Memphis. The kings of the nineteenth dynasty, to which Menephtah belonged, had the seat of their empire at Thebes; he alone of that dynasty established his court at Memphis. But it was natural that he should build his tomb at Thebes.

We went again and again to the temples on the west side and to the tombs there. I never wearied of the fresh morning ride across the green plain, saluting the battered Colossi as we passed under them, and galloping (don’t, please, remember that we were mounted on donkeys) out upon the desert. Not all the crowd of loping Arabs with glittering eyes and lying tongues, who attended us, offering their dead merchandise, could put me out of humor. Besides, there were always slender, pretty, and cheerful little girls running beside us with their water-koollehs. And may I never forget the baby Charon on the vile ferry-boat that sets us over one of the narrow streams. He is the cunningest specimen of a boy in Africa. His small brothers pole the boat, but he is steersman, and stands aft pushing about the tiller, which is level with his head. He is a mere baby as to stature, and is in fact only four years old, but he is a perfect beauty, even to the ivory teeth which his engaging smile discloses. And such self-possession and self-respect. He is a man of business, and minds his helm, “the dear little scrap,” say the ladies. When we give him some evidently unexpected coppers, his eyes and whole face beam with pleasure, and in the sweetest voice he says, Ket’ther khdyrak, keteer (“Thank you very much indeed”).

I yield myself to, but cannot account for the fascination of this vast field of desolation, this waste of crumbled limestone, gouged into ravines and hills, honeycombed with tombs and mummy-pits, strewn with the bones of ancient temples, brightened by the glow of sunshine on elegant colonnades and sculptured walls, saddened by the mud-hovels of the fellaheen. The dust is abundant, and the glare of the sun reflected from the high, white precipices behind is something unendurable.

Of the tombs of the Assaseef, we went far into none, except that of the priest Petamunoph, the one which occupies, with its many chambers and passages, an acre and a quarter of underground. It was beautifully carved and painted throughout, but the inscriptions are mostly illegible now, and so fouled by bats as to be uninteresting. Our guide said truly, “bats not too much good for ‘scriptions.” In truth, the place smells horribly of bats,—an odor that will come back to you with sickening freshness days after,—and a strong stomach is required for the exploration.