Kitabı oku: «Eastern Life», sayfa 12

There are two groups of chambers, of three each, opening out of this large hall, and two more separate side-chambers. The six included in the two groups are very nearly (but not quite) covered with representations of offerings to the gods: very pretty, but with little variety. The offerings are of piles of cakes and fruit, lamps, vases of various and graceful shapes, and flasks. The lotus, in every stage of growth, is frequent. Sometimes it is painted yellow, veined with red.

The boat, that wonderful and favourite symbol which we meet everywhere, is incessantly repeated here, – the seated figure in the convolution at bow and stern, the pavilion in the middle, and the paddle hanging over the side. One of these boats is carried by an admirable procession of priests, as a shrine, which is borne on poles of palm-trunks lashed together. Stone deewáns run round the walls of most of these little chambers. We could find no evidence of there being any means of ventilating these side-rooms; and how they could be used without we cannot conceive, – enclosed as they are in the solid rock.

The second and smaller hall has four square pillars, sculptured, of course. Next comes the corridor, which has a bare unfinished little chamber at each end, now possessed by bats. The altar in the adytum is broken; and some barbarous wretches have cut their insignificant initials on it. Are there not rocks enough close by the entrance on which they might carve their memorials of their precious selves, if carve they must? But this profaning of the altar is not the worst. One creature has cut his name on the tip of the nose of the northernmost colossus: others on the breast and limbs of the Osirides; and others over a large extent of the sculptured walls.

One of the four god figures in the adytum is Ra, who also occupies the niche in the façade over the entrance. Ra is the Sun. He is not Amun Ra, the Unutterable,⁴⁷ – the God of gods, – the only god: but a chief, as the term Ra seems to express. Phra (Ra with the article), by us miscalled Pharaoh, means a chief or king among men: and Ra is the chief of the visible creation: and here, in this temple, he is the principal deity, the others being Khem, or Egypt, Kneph, Osiris, and Isis. As we go on we shall perhaps be able to attain some notion of the relative offices and dignities of the gods. At the outset, it is necessary to bear in mind chiefly that the leading point of belief of the Egyptians, from the earliest times known to us, was that there was One Supreme, – or, as they said, one only God, – who was to be adored in silence (as Jamblichus declares from the ancient Hermetic books), and was not to be named; that most of the other gods were deifications of his attributes; while others again, as Egypt, the Nile, the Sun, the Moon, the West, etc., were deifications of the powers or forces on which the destiny of the Egyptian nation depended. We have also to remember that we must check our tendency to suppose Allegory in every part of the Egyptian system of theology. It is difficult to check this tendency to allegorise, bringing as we do the ideas of a long subsequent age to the interpretation of a theological system eminently symbolical to its priests, though not to the people at large: but we must try to conceive of these Egyptian gods as being, to the general Egyptian mind, actual personages, inseparably connected with the facts and appearances in which they were believed to exist. If we make the mistake of supposing them merely the names of such facts and appearances, and proceed to interpret them by the method of allegorical narrative, we shall soon find ourselves perplexed, and at a loss: for our view of the facts and appearances of Nature can never be like those of the Egyptians, whose science, though unquestionably great, lay in a different direction (for the most part) from ours, and whose heavens and earth were hardly like the same that we see and inhabit.

For one instance – in their theory of the formation of the world, they believed that when the formless void of eternal matter began to part off into realms, the igneous elements ascending and becoming a firmament of fiery bodies, and the heavier portions sinking and becoming compacted into earth and sea, the earth gave out animals – beasts and reptiles; an idea evidently derived from their annual spectacle of the coming forth of myriads of living creatures from the soil of their valley, on the subsidence of the flood. When we remember that to them the Nile was the sea, and so called by them, and that they had before them the spectacle which is seen nowhere else, of the springing of the green herb after the separation of the waters from the land, we shall see how different their view of the creation must be from any which we could naturally form. In this particular case, we have adopted their traditions given to us through the mind of Moses; but where we have not the mind of Moses to interpret them to us, we must abstain from reading their meanings by any other light than that which they themselves afford us. As another instance, how should we allegorise for them about the West? What is the West to us? It is the place where the heavenly bodies disappear: and that is the only point we have in common with them. With them, the West was the unseen state. It was a dreary, unknown region beyond the dark river which the dead had to cross. The abodes of the dead were on its verge; and those solemn caves were the entrance of the Amenti, the region of judgment and retribution. Nothing was heard thence but the bark of the wild dog at night; the vigilant guardian, as they believed, of the heavenly abode which the wicked were not to approach.⁴⁸ Nothing was seen there but the descent of the sun, faithful to the goddess who was awaiting him behind the hills;⁴⁹ and who, hanging above those hills as the brightest of the stars, showed herself the Protectress of the Western Shore. Such elements as these, which they themselves give us, we may take and think over; but if we go on to mix up with them modern Greek additions about Apollo, and yet more modern metaphysical conceptions, in order to construct allegories as a key to old Egyptian theology, we cannot but diverge widely from old Egyptian ideas. And what is worse, we shall miss the perception of the indubitable earnestness of their faith. We have every possible evidence of their unsurpassed devoutness: but we shall lose the sense of it if we get into the habit of supposing them to have set up images of abstract qualities (as abstract qualities are to us) instead of dwelling in constant dependence on living divine personages. We may find symbols everywhere in the Egyptian theology; and analogies in abundance: but I do not know that any instances of complete or continuous allegory can be adduced. When we try to construct such, or think we have found them, we presently begin to complain of an intermixture of personages or of offices, such as should show us, not that the Egyptian worship was confused, but that we do not clearly understand the ideas of the worshippers, and must have mixed them with some of our own.

Kneph, known by his Ram's head, is, as I said, in the adytum with Ra; but, though a higher god than Ra, this temple is not dedicated to him, but to Ra, as is shown by the appearance of the latter on the façade. The deeds of the great Ramases, his adorer, are brought as an offering, and presented on the walls. – There appears at first something incongruous in the mingling, in these temples, of the benign serenity of the gods with the fury and cruelty of their warrior worshippers: but one soon remembers that it is an incongruity which remains to this day, and will doubtless remain till war is abolished. A custom so durable as that of consecrating warfare to God must have an idea at the bottom of it: and the idea is plain enough here. We find the same idea in the mind of this Ramases, and of Moses in his Song of deliverance, and of the Red Indian who shakes the scalps of his enemies at the end of his spear in his war-dance, and of the Crusaders in their thanksgivings for victory over the Saracens, and of our Cromwell in Ireland, and in the vindictive stanza of our National Anthem; – the idea that power to conquer is given from above, and that the results are therefore to the glory of him who gives the power. Such a method of observance, being natural in certain stages of the human mind, is right in its place; – in a temple of Ramases, for instance. The wonder is to find it in the jubilations of Christian armies, in the despatches of Cromwell,⁵⁰ and even in the Prayer-book of the English Church, in direct connexion with an acknowledgment of the Prince of Peace, whose kingdom was not of this world.

One thing which struck me as strange in this hall of giants was a dwarfish statue, without a head. It measured two or three inches less in each limb than our middle-size, and was of course very insignificant among the Osirides. What it was, and how it came there, we could not learn.

When we looked abroad from the entrance, the view was calm and sweet. A large island is in the midst of the river, and shows a sandy beach and cultivated interior. The black, peaked hills of the opposite desert close in to the south, leaving only a narrow passage for the river. – It was nearly evening before we put off from the bank below the temple. It had been an animating and delightful day; and I found myself beginning to understand the pleasure of »temple-haunting«; a pleasure which so grew upon us, that we felt real grief when it came to an end. I, for one, had suspected beforehand that this work would soon become one of mere duty or routine: but we found, even before we left Nubia, that we were hardly satisfied to sit down to breakfast without having explored a temple.

XI. Ibreem – Dirr – Subooa – Dakkeh – Garf Hoseyn

While at breakfast the next morning (January 8th) we drew to shore under the great rock on which stands Ibreem, the station of Roman and Saracenic garrisons, in times when it was necessary to overawe Nubia, and protect the passage southwards. It was an important place during the wars of Queen Candace with the Roman occupants of Egypt and Nubia. It appears that the word Candace was probably a title, and not a proper name, – it being borne by a series of Ethiopian queens; – a curious circumstance by itself. Of the queen Candace who marched against Ibreem (Prêmnis), we are told by Strabo that she was a woman of masculine courage, and had lost an eye.

We saw from our deck some grottoes in the rock, with paintings inside; and longed to get at them: but they were so difficult of access (only by a rope) that Mr. E. went alone. They are of the time of the great Ramases and three earlier sovereigns of the same Period. The painting is still vivid; representing votive offerings. There are some very small statues in high relief at the upper end.

I could not be satisfied without mounting the cliff: and from its summit I obtained a view second only to that above Asyoot. I could now understand something of the feeling which generates songs in praise of Nubia; for many charming spots were visible from this height, – recesses of verdure, – small alluvions, where the cotton shrub was covered with its yellow blossoms, and crops of grain and pulse were springing vigorously. On the Arabian side, all looked dreary; the sandy areas between its groups of black crags being sprinkled with Sheikhs' tombs, and scarcely anything else; and the only green being on a promontory here and there jutting into the river. The fertility was mainly on the Libyan shore; and there it must once have been greater than now. Patches of coarse yellow grass within the verge of the Desert, and a shade of grey over the sand in places, seemed to tell of irrigation and drainage now disused. A solitary doum palm rose out of the sand, here and there; and this was the only object in the vast yellow expanse, till the eye rested on the amethyst mountains which bounded all to the south and west. Some of these hills advanced and some receded, so as to break the line: and their forms were as strange and capricious as their disposition. Some were like embankments: some like round tumuli: some like colossal tents. The river here was broad and sinuous; and, as far as I could see, on either hand, its course was marked by the richest verdure. The freshness and vastness, and sublime tranquillity of this scene singularly impressed me.

The chief interest about the town or fortress was in the mixture of relics, – Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Saracenic, and Turkish. The winged globe, Greek borders and columns, Roman walls, mosques, and Turkish fortifications, – all these may be seen in half an hour's walk, heaped together or scattered about. The modern dwellings appear to be, for the most part, made of rough stones, instead of mud; – the stones lying ready to the hand, I suppose, and the mud having to be brought up the rock. It is a truly desolate place now.

In the afternoon, we saw the capital: – Dirr, the capital of Nubia. – On the bank, we met the governor and his suite, with whom we exchanged salutations. We were walking so slowly, and were so ready to be spoken to, that the governor might have declared his wishes to us if he had not been shy. He preferred sending a message through our Rais, whom we met presently after; and to whom he said that he was ashamed to ask us himself, but he should be much obliged to us to give him a bottle of wine. Such was the request of the Mohammedan governor of the capital of Nubia! Our dragoman could not keep his countenance when he delivered the message. We did not see his Excellency again, and he never sent for the wine: so he did not sin against his law by our means.

Dirr reminded me, more than any other place, of the African villages which Mungo Park used to set before us. It has two noble sycamores (so-called), one of which is the finest we saw in the country. It had a deewán round it, where the old people might sit and smoke, while the young sing and dance. The governor's house is partly of burnt brick, – quite a token of grandeur here. The other houses were of mud, as usual; – clean and decent. The cemetery shows signs of care, – some low walls, ornamented at the coping, surrounding some of the graves, and pebbles being neatly strewn over others. The roads were ankle-deep in dust. The palm-groves, with the evening light shining in among the stems, were a luxury to the eye. People looked clean and open-faced. Some of them were very light; and these were probably descended from Sultan Selim's Bosnians, like many of the fair-complexioned people in the neighbourhood of the Sultan's garrisons. – Many articles were offered for sale, – the people hastening to spread their mats in the dusty road, and the women holding out their necklaces and bracelets. One woman asked five piastres for her necklace; and she would have had them; but seeing this, she suddenly raised her demand to twenty. She is probably wearing that necklace at this moment. The gentlemen bought mats for our tents here, giving nine piastres (1 s. 8½ d.) apiece for them.

The temple of Dirr interested us much, from the novelty of its area and portico being in the open air, when the rest of the temple is in the rock. I may observe too that this was the only temple we saw in Nubia which stood on the eastern bank. – The area once had eight pillars, the bases only of which remain: and of its war pictures nothing is visible but faint traces. I made out only a chariot-wheel, and a few struggling combatants. We have here the same subjects, and the same deity, as at Aboo-Simbil. Ramases the Great consecrates his victories to the god Ra, whom he calls his patron, and after whom he is named Ra-mses. – The corridor or portico is faced with four Osiride pillars. Through it, we enter the rock part of the temple, and find ourselves in a hall supported by six square pillars. The walls are sculptured over in »intaglio relevato«, as it has been called; – that is, the outlines are cut in a groove, more or less deep, and the relief of the interior rises from the depth of the groove. The walls are now stained and blackened; and they have a mouldering appearance which portends speedy defacement. But the king and his captives, and his lion and his enemies, and his gods and his children, are still traceable. Over the lion, which seems a valuable auxiliary in the battles of Ramases, and which is here seizing a captive, is written an inscription which says, according to Champollion, »The lion, servant of his majesty, tearing his enemies to pieces.« – Champollion found here a valuable list of the names of the children of Ramases, placed according to their age and rank. In the small temple at Aboo-Simbil, the king has his son at his feet, and his wife has her daughters, with their names and titles inscribed. At this temple of Dirr, the list is apparently made complete, there being here seven sons and eight daughters, with declarations of their names and titles.

The adytum is small. The four figures which it once contained are gone; but their seat remains, and their marks against the wall. Two dark chambers, containing some imperfect sculptures, are on either hand; and this is all. This temple is twenty feet deeper in the whole than the small one at Aboo-Simbil, but it is inferior in workmanship.

On our return to the dahabieh, we saw a sight very rare to us now; – a cloudy sky. The sky looked angry, with its crimson flushes, and low hanging fiery clouds. We found the people angry too, – upon a subject which makes people elsewhere strangely passionate, – a currency question. The inhabitants of Dirr have only recently learned what money is, having traded by barter till within a very short time. They had this evening some notion in their heads which our dragoman and Rais thought absurd, about a change in the value of money in the next trading village: and they came down to the bank clamouring for more money for their mats and necklaces. When all explanation and remonstrance failed to quiet them, Alee snatched up a tub, and threw water over them: and then arose a din of screams and curses. We asked Alee what the curses were: they were merely the rational and safe hope that we might all die.

The crimson flushes faded away from the sky, and the angry clouds melted: but we had now no moon except before breakfast, when we were glad to see her waste daily.

There was another temple in waiting for us the next morning (January 9th) – another temple of the Great Ramases; that of Subooa. The novelty here was a very interesting one; the Dromos (Course or avenue) and its sphinxes.

The temple is about five hundred yards from the shore; and a few dwellings lie between. The sand was deep and soft, but, for once, delightfully cool to the feet, at this early morning hour. This sand has been so blown up against the sphinxes as to leave but little of them visible. There are four on each hand, as you go up to the propyla: but one is wholly covered; and five others are more or less hidden. Two are unburied; but their features are nearly gone. The head of another is almost complete, and very striking in its wise tranquillity of countenance. Two rude statues stand beside the sphinxes at the entrance of the dromos; and two colossi lie overthrown and shattered beside their pedestals at the inner end of the dromos, and before the propyla. The cement seems to have fallen out between the stones of the propyla: but over their mouldering surface are war-sculptures dimly traceable: – the conquests of Ramases again. Within the gateway is the hall where ten Osirides are ranged, five on each hand, dividing the hall into three aisles. Here I saw, for the first time, how these massive temples were roofed. The ten Osirides supported the heavy architrave, whose blocks joined, of course, over the heads of the colossi. From this architrave to the outer walls were laid massive blocks of stone, which formed the roof. We shall see hereafter that when it was desired to light the interior, the roof over the middle aisle was raised above that of the side aisles; and the space left open, except for the necessary supporting blocks, or (as at El-Karnak) a range of stone gratings.

The Osirides here are very rude; composed of stones of various shapes and sizes, cemented together. I suppose they were once covered with cement; but now they look, at the first glance, like mere fragments of pillars. A second look, however, detects the crossed arms, and the crosier and flagellum. – Of the adytum at the extremity nothing was visible but the globe and asps over its door; and the sand was so drifted into the hall that we could see over the wall at the upper end. It will be perceived that this is a rude and ruined temple, with no interest belonging to it but its antiquity and its array of sphinxes.

That evening, we had the promise of another temple for the next morning's work. We reached Dakkeh, the Pselchê of Strabo, at 10 P.M.: but we could not moor under the western bank, from the strength of the wind, and were obliged to stand across to the other shore.

The morning of the 10th was bright and cool, and we were early ashore, where we saw a good deal besides the temple. A village, small, but not so minute as usual, stands near the bank; and its inhabitants are good-looking and apparently prosperous. I saw, from the top of the propylon, a large patch of fertile land lying back on the edge of the Desert, or in it. A canal or ditch carried water from the river to this land, where there were two or more sakias to lift it. At least, I saw a belt of flourishing castor-oil plants and other shrubs extending from the river to where they met the sakias. Further in the Desert I observed more of those grey expanses which tell of cultivable soil beneath, and of former irrigation. This must have been a flourishing district once; and it is not a distressed one now.

The women were much adorned with beads, – blue, black, and white. Some would permit us to examine them: others fled and hid themselves behind huts or walls, on our merely looking in their faces: and of these none was so swift as the best-dressed woman of them all. She had looped back, with her blue necklace, the mantle she wore on her head, to leave her hands and eyes free for making her bread. Of all the scamperers she was the swiftest when our party began to look about them. A mother and daughter sat on the ground within a small enclosure, grinding millet with the antique quhern: a pretty sight, and a dexterously-managed, though slow process. Several of the women had brass nose-rings, which to my eyes look about as barbarous and ugly as ear-rings; and no more. When we come to the piercing flesh to insert ornaments, I do not see that it matters much whether the ear or nose is pierced. The insertion is surely the barbarism.

While I was on the top of the propylon of Dakkeh, I saw far off to the north-west a wide stretch of blue waters, with the reflection of shores and trees. Rather wondering how such a lake or reach of the river could be there, while the Nile seemed to be flowing northeast, and observing that these waters were bluer than those of the river, I asked myself whether this could possibly be the mirage, by which I had promised myself never to be deceived. My first thought was of mirage: but a little further study nearly convinced me that it was real water, – either a lake left by the inundation, or a reach of the river brought there by a sudden bend. I was still sufficiently uncertain to wish my friends to come up and see: though the reflection of the groves and clumps on the banks was as perfect as possible in every line. Just as I was going down to call my party, I saw a man's head and shoulders come up out of the midst of the lake: – a very large head and shoulders, – such as a man might have who was near at hand. The sensation was strange, and not very agreeable. The distant blue lake took itself off in flakes. The head and shoulders belonged to a man walking across the sand below: and the groves and clumps and well-cut banks resolved themselves into scrubby bushes, patches of coarse grass, and simple stones. This was the best mirage I have ever seen, for its beauty and the completeness of the deception. I saw many afterwards in the Desert; and a very fine one in the plain of Damascus: but my heart never beat again as it did on the top of the Dakkeh propylon. – I had a noble view of the Desert and the Nile from that height; and it was only sixty-nine steps of winding stair that I had to ascend. These propyla were the watch-towers and bulwarks of the temples in the old days when the temples of the Deities were the fortifications of the country. If the inhabitants had known early enough the advantage of citadels and garrisons, perhaps the Shepherd Race might never have possessed the country; or would at least have found their conquest of it more difficult than, according to Manetho, they did. »It came to pass,« says Manetho (as Josephus cites him), »I know not how, that God was displeased with us; and there came up from the East, in a strange manner, men of an ignoble race, who had the confidence to invade our country, and easily subdued it by their power without a battle. And when they had our rulers in their hands, they burnt our cities, and demolished the temples of the gods, and inflicted every kind of barbarity upon the inhabitants, slaying some, and reducing the wives and children of others to slavery.« It could scarcely have happened that these Shepherds, »of an ignoble race,« would have captured the country »without a battle,« and laid hands on the rulers, if there had been such citadels as the later built temples, and such watch-towers and bulwarks as these massive propyla. Whenever I went up one of them, and looked out through the loop-holes in the thick walls, I felt that these erections were for military, full as much as religious purposes. Indeed, it is clear that the ideas were scarcely separable, after war had once made havoc in the valley of the Nile. As for the non-military purposes of these propyla; – they gave admission through the portal in the centre to the visitors to the temple, whether they came in the ordinary way, or in the processions which were so imposing in the olden times. It must have been a fine sight, from the loop-holes or parapets of these great flanking towers, – the approach or departure of the procession of the day, – the banners bearing the symbol of god or hero; the boat-shrine borne by the shaven and white-robed priests, in whose hands lay most of the power, and in whose heads all the learning, of their age. To see them marching in between the sphinxes of the avenue, followed by the crowd bearing offerings; the men with oxen, cakes, and fruits, and the women with turtle-doves and incense, – all this must have been a treat to many a sacerdotal watchman at this height. – Such a one had probably charge of the flags which were hoisted on these occasions on the propyla. There are on many of these towers, wide perpendicular grooves, occupied by what look like ladders of hieroglyphic figures. These grooves held the flag-staves on festival days, when the banners, covered with symbols, were set floating in the air. – These propyla were good stations from which to give out news of the rising or sinking of the Nile: and they were probably also used for observatories. They were a great acquisition to the country when introduced or invented; and their introduction earlier might, perhaps, as I have said, have materially changed the destinies of the nation. The instances are not few in which these flanking towers have been added to a pylon of a much earlier date.

The interest of this temple is not in its antiquity. It is of various dates; and none of them older than the times of the Ptolemies. The interest lies in the traces of the different builders and occupants of this temple, and in the history (according to Diodorus) of the Ethiopian king who built the adytum, – the most sacred part of it. This king Ergamun, who lived within half a century before our era, had his doubts about the rectitude and reasonableness of the method by which the length of kings' reigns was settled in Ethiopia. Hitherto, the custom had been for the priests to send word to their brother, the king, when the gods wished him to enter their presence: and every king, thus far, had quietly destroyed himself, on receiving the intimation. Ergamun abolished the custom, – not waiting, as far as appears, or his summons, but going up to »a high place« with his troops, when he slew the priests in their temple, and reformed some of the institutions which no one had hitherto dared to touch. Sir G. Wilkinson points out the fact⁵¹ that a somewhat resembling custom still remains in a higher region of Ethiopia, where it is thought shocking that a king should die a natural death; that is, like other people. The kings of this tribe, when they believe themselves about to die, send word to their ministers, who immediately cause them to be strangled. This is reported by the expedition sent by the present ruler of Egypt to explore the sources of the White Nile.

Though Ergamun was not willing to take the word of the priests for the will of the gods, he appears to have been forward in the service of his deities, to whom he is seen presenting offerings, and whom he proudly acknowledges as his patrons, guardians, and nourishers. The old adytum, built by him, looks hoary and crumbling, more so than the more ancient temples we have seen; but the sculptures are plainly distinguishable. It is much blackened by fires; but in one corner, where the sculptures are protected by a block of stone which has fallen across, I found a very clear group, – of the king standing between Ra and Thoth, the god of intellect and the arts, concerning whom Socrates relates a curious anecdote in the Phaedrus⁵² of Plato. The two gods are holding vases aloft, from which they pour each a stream of the emblem of Life; – immortalising »the ever-living Ergamun,« as his cartouche calls him. Under the cornice are four decorative borders, on the four sides of the chamber. One gives the emblems of Ra and Thoth, – the hawk and ibis, – squatted face to face in successive pairs; another, the royal cartouches, guarded by hawks with expanded wings; a third, the emblem of duration or permanency; while on the one over the door are strips of hieroglyphics. The thrones of gods and kings have a compartment left in the lower corner of the massive seat, to be filled up with devices. Sometimes this is done – sometimes not. In this adytum the compartment is occupied by the device taken from much older monuments, and seen now on the pedestals of the Pair at Thebes, – the water-plants of the god Nilus which are bound up to support the royal throne.