Ruins of Ancient Cities (Vol. 2 of 2)

The gateway is filled with remarkable sculptures, which represent the triumph of some ancient monarch of Egypt over an Asiatic enemy; and which we find repeated both on other monuments of Thebes, and partly, also, on some of the monuments of Nubia. This event appears to have formed an epoch in Egyptian history, and to have furnished materials both for the historian and the sculptor, like the war of Troy to the Grecian poet. The whole length of this temple is about eight hundred feet.

In speaking of the gate of this temple, which is now become that of the village of Luxor, Denon remarks: – “Nothing can be more grand, and, at the same time, more simple, than the small number of objects of which this entrance is composed. No city whatever makes so proud a display at its appearance as this wretched village; the population of which consists of two or three thousand souls, who have taken up their abode on the roofs and beneath the galleries of this temple, which has, nevertheless, the air of being in a manner uninhabited.”

The following observations, in regard to the sculptures at Luxor, are from the Saturday Magazine: —

“On the front of the great propyla, which form the principal entrance at Luxor, are a series of sculptures which have excited the wonder of all who have ever seen them. They are spoken of as being entitled to rank very high among works of ancient art; as Mr. Hamilton remarks in his admirable description of them, they far surpass all the ideas which till they were examined had been formed of the state of the arts in Egypt at the era to which they must be attributed. They are cut in a peculiar kind of relief, and are apparently intended to commemorate some victory gained by an ancient monarch of Egypt over a foreign enemy. The moment of the battle chosen, is when the hostile troops are driven back in their fortress, and the Egyptians are evidently to be soon masters of the citadel.

“The conqueror, behind whom is borne aloft the royal standard, in the shape of the Doum, or Theban palm-leaf, is of colossal size: that is, far larger than all the other warriors, standing up in a car drawn by two horses. His helmet is adorned with a globe with a serpent on each side. He is in the act of shooting an arrow from a bow which is full stretched; around him are quivers, and at his feet is a lion in the act of rushing forward. There is a great deal of life and spirit in the form and attitude of the horses, which are in full gallop, feathers waving over their heads, and the reins lashed round the body of the conqueror. Under the wheels of the car, and under the horses’ hoofs and bellies, are crowds of the slain; some stretched on the ground, others falling. On the enemy’s side, horses in full speed with empty cars, – others heedless of the rein, and all at last rushing headlong down a precipice into a broad and deep river which washes the walls of the town. The expression is exceedingly good; and nowhere has the artist shown more skill than in two groups, in one of which the horses having arrived at the edge of the precipice, instantly fall down; and the driver clinging with one hand to the car, the reins and whip falling from the other, – his body, trembling with despair, is about to be hurled over the backs of the horses. In the other, the horses still find a footing on the side of the hill, and are hurrying forward their drivers to inevitable destruction; these throw themselves back upon the car in vain. Some that are yet unwounded pray for mercy on their knees, and others in their flight cast behind a look of anxious entreaty; their limbs, their eyes, and their hands, sufficiently declare their fears. The breathless horses are admirable, – whether fainting from loss of blood, or rearing up and plunging in the excess of torture. Immediately in front of the conqueror are several cars in full speed for the walls of the town; but even in these the charioteers and men-of-war are not safe from the arrows shot from his unerring bow, and when wounded they look back on their pursuer as they fall. Further on, more fortunate fugitives are passing the river; in which are mingled horses, chariots, arms, and men, expressed in the most faithful manner, floating or sunk. Some have already reached the opposite bank where their friends, who are drawn up in order of battle, but venture not to go out to the fight, drag them to the shore. Others, having escaped by another road, are entering the gates of the town amid the shrieks and lamentation of those within. Towers, ramparts, and battlements, are crowded with inhabitants, who are chiefly bearded old men and women. A party of the former are seen sallying forth, headed by a youth whose different dress, and high turban, mark him out as some distinguished chieftain. On each side of the town are large bodies of infantry, and a great force of chariots issuing out of the gates, and advancing seemingly by different routes to attack the besiegers.

“The impetuosity, with which the hero of the picture has moved, has already carried him far beyond the main body of his own army, and he is there alone amid the dying and the slain – victims of his valour and prowess. Behind this scene, the two lines of the enemy join their forces, and attack in a body the army of the invaders, which advances to meet them in a regular line. ‘Besides the peculiarities of the incidents recorded in this interesting piece of sculpture,’ says Mr. Hamilton, ‘we evidently traced a distinction between the short dresses of the Egyptians and the long robes of their Oriental enemies; whether Indians, Persians, or Bactrians; the uncovered and the covered heads; the different forms of the cars, of which the Egyptian contains two, and the others three warriors; and above all, the difference of the arms.’

“At one extremity of the west wing of the gateway, the beginning of this engagement appears to be represented; the same monarch being seen at the head of his troops, advancing against the double line of the enemy, and first breaking their ranks. At the other extremity of the same wing the conqueror is seated on his throne after the victory, holding a sceptre in his left hand, and enjoying the cruel spectacle of eleven of the principal chieftains among his captives lashed together in a row, with a rope about their necks: the foremost stretches out his arms for pity, and in vain implores a reprieve from the fate of his companions: close to him is the twelfth, on his knees, just going to be put to death by the hands of two executioners. Above them is the captive sovereign, tied with his hands behind him to a car, to which two horses are harnessed; these are checked from rushing onward by the attendant, till the monarch shall mount and drag behind him the unfortunate victim of his triumphs. Behind the throne different captives are suffering death in various ways; some held by the executioner by the hair of their head; others dragged by chariots or slain by the arrow or the scimitar. There is then the conqueror’s camp, round which are placed his treasures, and where the servants prepare a feast to celebrate his victory.

“We have described these sculptures at length, because they are undoubtedly one of the greatest of the many wonders of Thebes, and because in no other manner could we convey to our readers a proper notion of their merits.”

The following observations are by Lord Lindsay: —

“We visited the Temples of Luxor and Carnac. The former is a most magnificent pile, architecturally considered, but otherwise the least interesting of the four great temples of Thebes. You originally entered between four gigantic statues of Rameses the Great, and two superb obelisks, of which one only remains; – the French have carried off his brother, and every lover of antiquity must regret their separation. The obelisks, statues, and pyramidal towers, were additions by Rameses to the original edifice, founded by Amunoph the Third. From the propyla and obelisks of this temple an avenue, guarded by sphinxes, facing each other, extended northwards, to the great temple of Jupiter Ammon at Carnac; meeting it at right angles, the latter extending from west to east. The road we followed lay nearer the river, and led us through a comparatively small temple of Isis, that would have detained us longer in a less attractive neighbourhood, into the great court of Jupiter Ammon’s temple, the noblest ruin at Thebes. A stupendous colonnade, of which one pillar only remains erect, once extended across this court, connecting the western propylon or gate of entrance, built by Sesostris, with that at its eastern extremity, leading to the grand hall of Osirei, and the sanctuary. We ascended the former; – the avenue of sphinxes, through which the god returned, in solemn procession, to his shrine at Carnac, after his annual visit to the Libyan suburb, ascends to it from the river, – the same avenue traversed age after age by the conqueror, the poet, the historian, the lawgiver, the philosopher, – Sesostris, Cambyses, Homer, Herodotus, Thales, Anaxagoras, Solon, Pythagoras, Plato, – and now the melancholy song of an Arab boy was the only sound that broke the silence; but that poor boy was the representative of an older and a nobler race than that of the Pharaohs. Long did we gaze on the scene around and below us – utter, awful desolation! Truly, indeed, has NO been ‘rent asunder!’ The towers of the second or eastern propylon are mere heaps of stones, ‘poured down’ – as prophecy and modern travellers describe the foundations of Samaria – into the court on one side, and the great hall on the other; – giant columns have been swept away like reeds before the mighty avalanche, and one hardly misses them. And that hall, who could describe it? Its dimensions, one hundred and seventy feet by three hundred and twenty-nine, – the height of the central avenue of columns sixty-six feet, exclusive of their pedestals, – the total number of columns that supported its roof one hundred and thirty-four. These particulars may give you some idea of its extent; but of its grandeur and beauty – none. Every column is sculptured, and all have been richly painted. The exterior walls, too, are a sculptured history of the wars of Osirei and Rameses. Except those at Beit Wellee I have seen nothing in Egypt that would interest so much. In one corner, of especial interest, are represented the Jews captured by Shishak, and their king Rehoboam, with the hieroglyphical inscription ‘Jehouda Melek,’ the king of the Jews. This is the only reference to the Israelites found in Egyptian sculpture. Many have wondered at finding no allusions to their residence in Egypt; but I think without cause; for, except the pyramids, the tombs in their vicinity, those of Beni Hassan, and a few other remains, of but little interest, I do not believe that any monuments exist, coeval with Moses and the Exodus.”

The remains of this temple are thus described by Denon: —

“Of the hundred columns of the portico alone, the smallest are seven feet and a half in diameter, and the largest twelve; the space occupied by the circumvallation of the temple contains lakes and mountains. In short, to be enabled to form a competent idea of so much magnificence, the reader ought to fancy what is before him to be a dream; as he who views the objects themselves rubs his eyes to know whether he is awake. The avenue leading from Karnac to Luxor, a space nearly half a league in extent, contains a constant succession of sphinxes and other chimerical figures to the right and left, together with fragments of stone walls, of small columns, and of statues.”

“The most ancient remains,” says Mr. Wilkinson, “now existing at Thebes, are unquestionably in the great temple of Karnac, the largest and most splendid ruin273 of which, perhaps, either ancient or modern times can boast; being the work of a number of successive monarchs, each anxious to surpass his predecessor, by increasing the dimensions and proportions of the part he added.

“It is this fact which enables us to account for the diminutive size of the older parts of this extensive building; and their comparatively limited scale offering greater facility, as their vicinity to the sanctuary greater temptation, to an invading army to destroy them, added to their remote antiquity, are to be attributed their dilapidated state; as well as the total disappearance of the sculptures executed during the reigns of the Pharaohs, who preceded Osirtesen I., the cotemporary of Joseph, and the earliest monarch whose name exists on the monuments of Thebes274.”

Speaking of this magnificent edifice, and of the vast sphinxes and other figures, Belzoni says: – “I had seen the temple of Tentyra, and I still acknowledge that nothing can exceed that edifice in point of preservation, and the beauty of its workmanship and sculpture. But here I was lost in a mass of colossal objects, every one of which was more than sufficient of itself to attract my whole attention. How can I describe my sensations at that moment? I seemed alone in the midst of all that is most sacred in the world; a forest of enormous columns from top to bottom; the graceful shape of the lotus, which forms their capitals, and is so well proportioned to the columns; the gates, the walls, the pedestals, the architraves, also adorned in every part with symbolical figures in low-relief, representing battles, processions, triumphs, feasts, and sacrifices, all relating to the ancient history of the country; the sanctuary wholly formed of fine red granite; the high portals, seen at a distance from the openings, of ruins of the other temples, within sight; – these altogether had such an effect upon my soul, as to separate me, in imagination, from the rest of mortals, exalt me on high above all, and cause me to forget entirely the trifles and follies of life. I was happy for a whole day, which escaped like a flash of lightning.”

Here stood, and does now stand, a fragment of the famous vocal statue of Memnon, which, many writers attest, sent forth harmonious sounds, when first touched of a morning by the rays of the sun. The circumstance being attested by Strabo, Pliny, Juvenal, Pausanias, Tacitus, and Philostratus, it is assuredly not to be doubted. The first injury this statue received was from Cambyses; who ordered it to be sawed in two, in order to get at the secret. It was afterwards thrown down by an earthquake.

Some have supposed, that the sounds alluded to were produced by the mechanical impulse of the sun’s light. Others that, being hollow, the air was driven out by the rarefaction of the morning, which occasioned the elicitation of a murmuring sound. But some assert, that it saluted the morning and evening sun differently; – the former with animating sounds; the latter with melancholy ones. Darwin, in the true spirit of poetry, describes this statue as sending forth murmurs of indignation at the ravages of Cambyses: —

Prophetic whispers breathed from sphinx’s tongue;And Memnon’s lyre with hollow murmurs rung.

In another passage, equally poetical, he makes it view with delight the waters of the Nile, rushing from the cataracts of Ethiopia: —

Gigantic sphinx the circling waves admire;And Memnon bending o’er his broken lyre.

In many parts of the East the custom still remains of proclaiming the sun by the sounding of instruments. That similar signals were given in Egypt is not to be doubted, since the custom is almost as old as solar adoration itself. That the sun was worshipped in that country, is equally established: both being rendered the more certain by the ceremony of sounding harps, at sunrise, having been introduced into Italy by Pythagoras, who had long sojourned with the Egyptian magi. The sounding of Memnon’s statue, then, might have been an artifice of the priesthood; to effect which many methods might have been adopted. Either the head of Memnon contained wires, like the strings of an Æolian harp; or the sounds might have been produced by the touching of a stone275.

The real cause of the sound has lately been discovered by Mr. Wilkinson: – “In the lap of the statue is a stone, which, on being struck, elicits a metallic sound, that might still be made use of to deceive a visitor, who was predisposed to believe its powers; and from its position, and the squared space cut in the block behind, as if to admit a person, who might thus lie concealed from the most scrutinous observer in the plain below, it seems to have been used after the restoration of the statue; and another similar recess exists beneath the present site of the stone, which might have been intended for the same purpose, when the statue was in its mutilated state.”

This statue has frequently been mistaken for the statue of Osymandyas. Strabo says, that it was named Ismandes. These words were derived from Os-Smandi, to give out a sound; a property possessed, it was said, by this statue at the dawn of day and at sunset. Its true name was Amenophis. It was visited by Germanicus. On its legs are to be seen Greek and Roman inscriptions, attesting the prodigy of the harmonious sounds emitted by this colossus.

After the temples at Karnac and Luxor, the next grand building at Thebes was the Memnonium; that is, the tomb or palace of one of the Pharaohs, whom the Greeks suppose to be the same as Memnon. In the middle of the first court was the largest figure ever raised by the Egyptians, – the statue of the monarch, seventy-five feet high.

“The name Memnonium276 is used by Strabo to designate some part of ancient Thebes lying on the western side of the river. Some modern travellers have applied it to a mass of ruins at a little distance to the north of Medeenet-Habou, which are by others identified with the palace and tomb of Osymandyas, described by Diodorus. The dimensions of the building are about five hundred and thirty feet in length, and two hundred in width: it is chiefly remarkable for the magnificent colossal statues which have been discovered within it. The ‘Memnon’s head,’ which forms so valuable an object in the collection of Egyptian antiquities contained in the British Museum, formerly belonged to one of these statues. It is generally supposed that the French, during their celebrated expedition, separated the bust from the rest of the figure by the aid of gunpowder, with the view of rendering its transport more easy. They were compelled, however, from some cause or other, to leave it behind, and it was brought away by Belzoni.

“Close to the spot where the Memnon’s head was found, lie the fragments of another statue, which has been called the largest in Egypt. It was placed in a sitting posture, and measures sixty-two or sixty-three feet round the shoulders; six feet ten inches over the foot. The length of the nail of the second toe is about one foot, and the length of the toe to the insertion of the nail is one foot eleven inches. This enormous statue, formed of red granite, has been broken off at the waist, and the upper part is now laid prostrate on the back: the face is entirely obliterated, and next to the wonder excited at the boldness of the sculptor who made it, as Mr. Hamilton remarks, and the extraordinary powers of those who erected it, the labour and exertions that must have been used for its destruction are most astonishing.

“The mutilation of this statue must have been a work of extreme difficulty: Hamilton says that it could only have been brought about with the help of military engines, and must then have been the work of a length of time; in its fall it has carried along with it the whole of the wall of the temple which stood within its reach.

“We have remarked that this edifice, called the Memnonium, is by many travellers identified with that described by Diodorus, under the name of the monument of Osymandyas; his description is the only detailed account which we have in the ancient writers of any great Egyptian building. There is no one now at Thebes to which it may be applied in all its parts, or with which it so far agrees, as to leave no doubt concerning the edifice to which it was intended to apply by its author; and Mr. Hamilton expresses his decided opinion that Diodorus, in penning this description of the tomb of Osymandyas, either listened with too easy credulity to the fanciful relations of the Greek travellers, to whom he refers; or that, astonished with the immensity of the monuments he must have read and heard of as contained within the walls of the capital of Egypt, and equally unwilling to enter into a minute detail of them all, as to omit all mention of them whatever, he set himself down to compose an imaginary building, to which he could give a popular name. In this he might collect, in some kind of order, all the most remarkable features of Theban monuments, statues, columns, obelisks, sculptures, &c. to form one entire whole that might astonish his reader without tiring him by prolixity or repetition, and which at the same time gave him a just notion of the magnificent and splendid works which had immortalised the monarchs of the Thebaid. It is evident that there is no one monument in Thebes which answers in all its parts to the description of Diodorus; yet it is urged that there is scarcely any one circumstance that he mentions that may not be referred to one or other of the temples of Luxor, Karnak, Goorno, Medeenet-Habou, or the tombs of the kings among the mountains. Others think that Diodorus used his best endeavours to describe a real place; and the chief agreements with that now called the Memnonium are in the position of the building and its colossal statues, which are supposed to outweigh the exaggerations of dimension; these being set down as faults of memory or observation. On the colossal statue mentioned by Diodorus as the largest in Egypt, was placed, as he tells us, this inscription: – ‘I am Osymandyas, king of kings: if you wish to know how great I am, and where I lie, surpass my works!’ He speaks also of certain sculptures representing battle scenes; and of the famous sacred library, which was inscribed with the words, ‘Place of cure for the soul!’ Yet from this conclusion we learn that he has been describing what the tomb of Osymandyas was, ‘which not only in the expense of the structure, but also in the skill of the workmanship, must have surpassed by far all other buildings.’”

The following observations and history are taken from an exceedingly learned and agreeable work, “Egyptian Antiquities:”

“Those who visit the British Museum cannot fail to have observed, in the room of Egyptian antiquities, a colossal statue of which only the head and breast remain. It is numbered 66 in the catalogue and on the stone. Though this statue is commonly called the ‘Younger Memnon,’ a name to which for convenience we shall adhere, there is no reason in the world for calling it so, but a mistake of Norden, a Danish traveller, who visited Egypt in 1737. He then saw this statue in its entire state, seated on a chair, in precisely the same attitude as the black breccia figure, No. 38, but lying with its face on the ground; to which accident, indeed, the preservation of the features is no doubt mainly due. Several ancient writers, and among them the Greek geographer Strabo, speak of a large temple at Thebes on the west side of the Nile, to which they gave the name of the Memnonium, or Memnon’s temple. Norden fancied that the building, amidst whose ruins he saw this statue, was the ancient Memnonium: though he supposed, that another statue of much larger dimensions than this in the Museum, and now lying in numerous fragments in the same place, was the great Memnon statue, of which some ancient writers relate the following fact: – That at sunrise, when the rays first struck the statue, it sent forth a sound something like that of the snapping of the string of a lute.

“It is now generally admitted, that the real statue of Memnon is neither the large one still lying at Thebes in fragments, nor this statue in the Museum, which came out of the same temple – but another statue still seated in its original position on the plain of Thebes, and showing by numerous Greek and Latin inscriptions on the legs, that it was the statue of which Strabo, Pausanias, and other ancient writers speak. The entire black statue, No. 38, is also a Memnon statue, for it resembles in all respects the great colossus with the inscriptions on its legs, and it has also the name of Memnon written on it, and enclosed in an oblong ring, on each side of the front part of the seat, and also on the back. If this colossus in the Museum (No. 66) was entire in 1737, it may be asked how came it to be broken? We cannot say further than the following statement: – Belzoni went to Egypt in 1815, intending to propose to the Pasha some improved mechanical contrivances for raising water from the river in order to irrigate the fields. Owing to various obstacles, this scheme did not succeed, and Belzoni determined to pay a visit to Upper Egypt to see the wonderful remains of its temples. Mr. Salt, then British Consul in Egypt, and Lewis Burckhardt, commissioned Belzoni to bring this colossal head from Thebes. Belzoni went up the river, and, landing at Thebes, found the statue exactly in the place where the Consul’s instructions described it to be.277 It was lying ‘near the remains of its body and chair, with its face upwards, and apparently smiling on me at the thought of being taken to England. I must say, that my expectations were exceeded by its beauty, but not by its size. I observed that it must have been absolutely the same statue as is mentioned by Norden, lying in his time with the face downwards, which must have been the cause of its preservation. I will not venture to assert who separated the bust from the rest of the body by an explosion, or by whom the bust has been turned face upwards.’ It will be observed that the left shoulder of this figure is shattered, and that there is a large hole drilled in the right shoulder. We believe both are the work of the French who visited Thebes during the occupation of Egypt by the French army in 1800; and there is no doubt that Belzoni, in the above extract, means to attribute to them the separation of the head and shoulders from the rest of the body. In the magnificent work on Egyptian Antiquities, which has been published at Paris, there is a drawing of this head, which is pretty correct, except that the hole and the whole right shoulder are wanting. It seems that they drew the colossal bust in that form which it would have assumed, had they blown off the right shoulder. From what cause it happened we do not know, but they left the colossus behind them; and Belzoni, alone and unaided, accomplished what the French had unsuccessfully attempted.