[250] Belzoni, Narrative of Operations, &c., pp. 233 et seq.

[251] This beautiful sarcophagus is now in the Soane Museum.—Ed.

[252] Belzoni believed that this passage led again into the open air; that it was, in fact, another entrance to the tomb. "I have," he says, "reasons to think so;" but he does not give his reasons.

[253] The tomb of Seti having been so often reproduced, we have thought it better to give the plan and section of that of Rameses II., which is less generally known. The general arrangements are pretty much the same as those of Seti's tomb, but the plan is a little more complicated.

[254] Panorama de l'Égypte et de la Nubie, folio.

[255] This belief in the appearance of the dead before Osiris and his assessors gave rise to one of the most curious errors made by the Greeks in speaking of Egypt. The scene in question is figured upon many of the tombs visited by the Greek travellers, and in many of the illustrated papyri which were unrolled for their gratification. In the fragments of some funerary inscription or of some of these manuscripts, hastily translated for them by the accompanying priests, they found frequent allusions to this act of trial and judgment. They were greatly struck by the importance attached by the Egyptians to the sentence of this tribunal, but, always in a hurry, and sometimes not especially intelligent, they do not seem to have always understood what the dragoman, without whom they could not stir from the frontier, told them as to this matter. They believed that the judges in question were living men, and their tribunal an earthly one, and that they were charged to decide whether sepulture should be granted to the dead or not. One of the early travellers, we do not know which, gave currency to this belief, and we know how it has served as the foundation for much fine writing, from the time of Diodorus to that of Bossuet. We can find nothing either in the figured monuments or in the written texts which hints at the existence of such a custom. Ever since the key to the hieroglyphics was found, egyptologists have been agreed upon this point. Every Egyptian was placed in a sepulchre befitting his station and fortune; his relations and friends had to ask no permission before they placed him in it; it was in the other world that he was brought up for judgment, and had to fear the sentence of an august tribunal.

[256] Maspero gives a translation of it into French in his Histoire Ancienne, pp. 44 and 45.

[257] This weighing of the actions of the deceased was represented in the illustrated specimens of the Ritual of the Dead and upon the walls of the tombs, and perhaps upon those monuments decorated with Egyptian motives which were sprinkled by the Phœnicians over the whole basin of the Mediterranean. Coming under the eyes of the Greeks, it was modified by their lively imaginations into that ψυχοστασία, or weighing of souls, which we find in the Iliad (xxii. 208-212), where success in a combat between two heroes depends upon the result of that operation. (See Alfred Maury, Revue archéologique, 1844, pp. 235-249, 291-307; 1845, pp. 707-717, and De Witte, ibidem, 1844, pp. 647-656.)

[258] Recueil de Travaux, vol. i. pp. 155-159.

[259] One was found in a Theban tomb opened by Rhind (Thebes, &c., pp. 94 and 95). In the tomb of Ti easily recognized traces of a door were found (Bædeker, Unter-Ægypten, p. 405); nothing but a new door was required to put the opening in its ancient state.

[260] See one of the great inscriptions at Beni-Hassan, interpreted by M. Maspero (Recueil, etc. vol. i. p. 168).

[261] Description de l'Égypte, (Antiquités, vol. iii. p. 35).

[262] A. Rhoné, l'Égypt à petites journées, p. 104.

[263] Passalacqua describes a tomb of this kind in detail in his Catalogue raisonné et historique des Antiquités découvertes en Égypte (8vo., 1826). This tomb had been visited and pillaged at some unknown epoch. One of the two chambers had been opened and stripped, but the second, which opened lower down the well, and on the other side, escaped the notice of the violators (pp. 118-120). In the tomb opened by Rhind (Thebes, its Tombs, etc. pl. 5, v.), the well gave access to four chambers of different sizes arranged round it like the arms of a cross.

[264] Description de l'Égypte, (Antiquités,) plates, vol. ii. p. 78.

[265] Rhind describes one of the most curious of these substitutions in his chapter IV. In that case an usurper of the time of Ptolemy established himself and all his family in the mummy chambers at the foot of the well, after relegating the statues and mummies of the rightful owner and his people to the room above.

[266] Athenæum Français, 1855, p. 55 (Renseignements sur les soixante quatre Apis trouvés dans le Sérapeum de Memphis).

[267] This view is obtained by a series of horizontal and vertical sections in the rock to the right of the galleries. By this operation we are enabled to show the subterranean parts of the tomb.

[268] Rhind, Thebes, etc. p. 43.

[269] Rhind, Thebes, etc. pp. 56, 57.

[270] Rhind, Thebes, etc. p. 55.

[271] Maspero, Recueil de Travaux, vol. ii. p. 105. The formula which is generally found upon the funerary steles of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties hints at this: "That I may walk daily upon the border of my fountain; that my soul may rest upon the branches of the funerary garden which has been made for me, that each day I may be out under my sycamore!" These desires may be taken literally, as is proved by two steles in the museums of Turin and Boulak, which bear representations of tombs upon their lower portions. The latter, which we reproduce, comes from the Theban necropolis.

[272] Most of these statues were of calcareous stone, but in the Description de l'Égypte (Antiquités, vol. iii. p. 34) two granite ones are mentioned.

[273] In the tomb of Amenemheb, for instance, discovered by Professor Ebers. See also Description de l'Égypte, vol. iii. p. 41.

[274] Description de l'Égypte (Antiquités, vol. iii. p. 34).

[275] It is no part of our plan to describe this discovery, which did so much honour both to the perspicacity and the energy of Mariette. We refer all those who are interested in the matter to the article contributed by M. E. Desjardins to the Revue des Deux-Mondes of March 15, 1874, under the title: Les Découvertes de l'Égyptologie française, les Missions et les Travaux de M. Mariette. Many precious details will also be found, some of them almost dictated by Mariette, in the L'Égypte à petites Journeés of M. Arthur Rhoné (pp. 212-263). This work includes two plans, a general plan and a detailed plan of the subterranean galleries, which were supplied by the illustrious author of the excavations himself; views of the galleries are also given, and reproductions of various objects found in the course of the exploration. We may also mention the Choix des Monuments du Sérapéum, a collection of ten engraved plates published by Mariette, and the great work, unfortunately incomplete, which he commenced under the title: Le Sérapéum de Memphis (folio, Paris, Gide, 1858). In the second volume of Fouilles et Découvertes (Didier, 8vo., 1873, 2 vols.) Beulé has given a very good description of the bold but fortunate campaign which, begun in the month of October, 1850, brought fame to a young man who had, until then, both open enmity and secret intrigue to contend against.

[276] Herodotus, ii. 169. "The Egyptians strangled Apries, but, having done so, they buried him in the sepulchre of his fathers. This tomb is in the temple of Athenè (Neith), very near the sanctuary, on the left hand as one enters. The natives of Sais buried all the kings which belonged to their nome within this temple, and, in fact, it also contains the tomb of Amasis, as well as that of Apries and his family, but the former is not so close to the sanctuary as the former, but still it is within the buildings of the temple, in a large chamber constructed of stone, with columns in the shape of the trunks of palm-trees, and richly decorated besides, which incloses a kind of niche or shrine with folding doors, in which the mummy is placed." This is one of the most difficult passages in Herodotus, and has given much trouble to translators and commentators. See Larcher's note (ii. 565), and the passage in Stobæus (serm. xli. p. 251), which he cites in justification for the sense which is here given to the word θυρώματα. Strabo is content with but a line on this subject: "Sais," he says, "especially worships Athenè (Neith). The tomb of Psammitichos is in the very temple of that goddess" (xvii. 18).

[277] Herodotus affirms (ii. 129-132) that Mycerinus caused the body of his daughter to be inclosed in the flank of a wooden cow, richly gilt, and he says that "the cow in question was never placed in the earth." In his time it was exposed to the view of all comers in a magnificently decorated saloon of the royal palace of Sais. We may be allowed to suggest that Herodotus was mistaken in the name of the prince; Mycerinus is not likely to have so far abandoned all the funerary traditions of his time, or to have entombed the body of his daughter in a spot so distant from his own pyramid at Gizeh. There is one hypothesis, however, which may save us from the necessity of once again accusing the Greek historian of misunderstanding what was said to him; in their desire to weld together the present with the past, and to collect into their capital such national monuments as might appeal to the imaginations of their subjects, the Sait princes may have transported such a curiously shaped sarcophagus either from the pyramid of Mycerinus or from some small pyramid in its neighbourhood.

[278] Herodotus, iii. 16. Upon this subject see an interesting article by M. Eugène Revillout, entitled: Le Roi Amasis et les mercenaires Grecs, selon les Donnés d'Hérodote et les Renseignements de la Chronique Démotique de Paris. (Revue Égyptologique, first year; p. 50 et seq.)

[279] There are two passages in Herodotus (ii. 91, and 138) from which we may infer that the Egyptians were fond of planting trees about their temples.

[280] Lettres Écrites d'Égypte et de Nubie, 2nd edition, 1868, p. 41.

[281] Similar structures exist in lower Chaldæa, and have furnished many inscriptions of great interest and value to assyriologists.

[282] Rhind, Thebes, etc. p. 51. Belzoni, Narrative of the Operations, etc. p. 167.

[283] Rhind, p. 52. Among the mummified animals found at Thebes, Wilkinson also mentions monkeys, sheep, cows, cats, crocodiles, etc. See Belzoni, Narrative, p. 187.

[284] When Mariette discovered the tomb of the Apis which had died in the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Rameses II., the fingers of the Egyptian mason who laid the last stone of the wall built across the entrance to the tomb were found marked upon the cement, and "when I entered the sarcophagus-chamber I found upon the thin layer of dust which covered the floor the marks made by the naked feet of the workmen who had placed the god in his last resting place 3,200 years before." (Quoted by Rhôné in L'Égypte à Petites Journées, p. 239.)

[285] We may take a few of those in the Boulak Museum at random: Ra-Hotep (No. 590), Hathor-En-Khéou (588), Ra-Nefer (23), Ra-Our (25), Sokar-Kha-Ca-u (993), Noum-Hotep (26), Hathor-Nefer (41), Ptah-Asses (500), Ptah-Hotep, &c. The names of several deities are to be found in the inscription upon the wooden coffin or mummy-case of Mycerinus, now in the British Museum. (Maspero, Histoire Ancienne, p. 75). A priest of Apis is mentioned upon a tomb of the fourth dynasty; Osiris is invoked in the steles of the sixth dynasty. (Boulak Catalogue, No. 41.)

Amen, or Ammon, is never mentioned on the monuments of the Ancient Empire; his first appearance is contemporary with the twelfth dynasty. (Grébault, Hymne à Ammon-Ra, Introduction, part iii. p. 136.) This is natural enough. Amen was a Theban god, and Thebes does not seem to have existed in the time of the Ancient Empire.

[286] Notice des principaux Monuments exposés dans les Galeries provisoires du Musée d' ntiquités Égyptiennes à Boulak. (Edition of 1876, No. 582.)

[287] The total height of the Sphinx is 66 feet; the ear is 6 feet 4 inches high; the nose is 6 feet, the mouth 7 feet 9 inches, wide. The greatest width of the face across the cheeks is 14 feet 2 inches. If cleared entirely of sand the Sphinx would thus be higher than a five-storied house. For the history of the Sphinx, the different restorations which it has undergone, and the aspect which it has presented at different epochs, see Mariette, Questions relatives aux nouvelles Fouilles. Our plan (Fig. 204) shows the wide flight of steps which was constructed in the time of Trajan to give access to a landing constructed immediately in front of the fore-paws. Between these paws a little temple was contrived, where the steles consecrated by several of the Theban kings in honour of the Sphinx were arranged. Caviglia was the first to bring all these matters to light, in 1817, but the ensemble, as it now exists, only dates back to the Roman epoch. It is curious that neither Herodotus, nor Diodorus, nor Strabo, mention the Sphinx. Pliny speaks of it (N. H. xxxvi. 17); some of the information which he obtained was valuable and authentic, but it was mixed with errors; it was said to be, he tells us, the tomb of the king Armais, but he knows that the whole figure was painted red. The Denkmæler of Lepsius (vol. i. pl. 30) gives three sections and a plan of the little temple between the paws. The same work (vol. v. pl. 68) contains a reproduction of the great stele of Thothmes relative to the restoration of the Sphinx.

[288] Champollion, Lettres d'Égypte et de Nubie, pp. 125, 143, and 166. Under both the temples at Ombos, Champollion discovered remains of a building of the time of Thothmes III. The same thing occurred at Edfou and at Esneh. We except Philæ, because there is good reason to believe that in the time of the Ancient Empire that island did not exist, and that the cataract was then at Silsilis.

[289] Strabo, xvii. 128: Οὐδὲν ἔχει χαρίεν ὀυδὲ γραφικόν, etc.

[290] Lucian, § 3: Ἀξοάνοι νηοί, etc.

[291] The piers are not quite equidistant; their spacing varies by some centimetres. Exact symmetry has been sacrificed in consequence of the different lengths of the stones which formed the architrave.

[292] Mariette, Questions relatives aux nouvelles Fouilles à faire en Égypte. (Académie des Inscriptions, Comptes Rendus des Séances de l'Année, 1877, pp. 427-473.)

[293] Itinéraire des Invités du Vice-roi, p. 99.

[294] Bædeker, Guide to Lower Egypt, p. 350.

[295] The actual distance is about 670 yards.

[296] Mariette, Questions relatives aux nouvelles Fouilles, etc.

[297] Description de l'Égypte, Ant., vol. v. p. 654.

[298] Belzoni, Narrative of the Operations, etc. pp. 261-2.

[299] The little that now remains of the columns and foundations of the ancient temple is marked in the plan which forms plate 6 of Mariette's Karnak, Fig. a. In plate 8 the remains of all statues and inscriptions which date from the same period are figured. See also pages 36, 37, and 41-45 of the text.

[300] Mariette, Karnak, p. 4.

[301] We may infer from what Mariette says that they were separated from one another by a distance of 12 feet 4 inches.

[302] Mariette, Karnak, p. 5. We find, however, that sphinxes were sometimes placed in the interior of a temple. The two fine sphinxes in rose granite which form the chief ornaments of the principal court of the Boulak museum, were found in one of the inner halls of the temple at Karnak. They date, probably, from the time of Thothmes III., to whom this part of the building owes its existence.

[303] Description, etc.; Description générale de Thèbes, section viii. § 1.

[304] The wall of the principal inclosure at Denderah, that on the north, is not less than 33 feet high, and between 30 and 40 thick at the base. Its surface is perfectly smooth and naked, without ornament of any kind, or even rough-cast. (Mariette, Denderah, p. 27.) At Karnak the bounding walls are in a much worse state of preservation; they are ten or twelve centuries older than those of Denderah, and those centuries have had their effect upon the masses of crude brick. Our only means of estimating their original height is by comparing, in the representations furnished to us by certain bas-reliefs, the height of walls with that of the pylons on which they abut.

[305] Mariette, Karnak, pp. 5, 6.

[306] The word πυλών strictly means the place before the door (like θυρών), or rather great door (upon the augmentative force of the suffix ών, ῶνος, see Ad. Regnier, Traité de la Formation des Mots dans la Langue Grecque, § 184). Several passages in Polybius (Thesaurus, s. v.) show that in the military language of his time the term was employed to signify a fortified doorway with its flanking towers and other defences. We may therefore understand why Diodorus (i. 47) made use of it in his description of the so-called tomb of Osymandias. Strabo (xvii. 1, 28) preferred to use the word πρόπυλων. Modern usage has restricted the word propylœum to Greek buildings, and pylon to the great doorways which form one of the most striking features of Egyptian architecture.

[307] We learn the part played by these masts and banners in Egyptian decoration entirely from the representations in the bas-reliefs. The façade of the temple of Khons is illustrated in one of the bas-reliefs upon the same building. That relief was reproduced in the Description de l'Égypte (vol. iii. pl. 57, Fig. 9), and is so well known that we refrained from giving it in these pages. It shows the masts and banners in all their details. Another representation of the same kind will be found in Cailliaud, Voyage à Méroé, plates, vol. ii. pl. 64, Fig. 1. See in the text, vol. iii. p. 298. It is taken from a rock-cut tomb between Dayr-el-Medinet and Medinet-Abou.

[308] This plate (v.) is not a picturesque restoration; it is merely a map in relief. Only those buildings are marked upon it which have left easily traceable remains. No attempt has been made to reconstruct by conjecture any of those edifices which are at present nothing but confused heaps of débris.

[309] The obelisk of Ousourtesen at Heliopolis is 20·27 metres, or 67 feet 6 inches, high; the Luxor obelisk at Paris, 22·80 metres, or 76 feet; that in the piazza before St. Peter's in Rome, 83 feet 9 inches; that of San Giovanni Laterano, the tallest in Europe, is 107 feet 2 inches; and that of Queen Hatasu, still standing amid the ruins at Karnak, 32·20 metres, or 107 feet 4 inches. This is the highest obelisk known. [The Cleopatra's Needle on the Victoria Embankment is only 68 feet 2 inches high.—Ed.]

[310] At Thebes, still existing inscriptions prove this to be the case, and at Memphis the same custom obtained, as we know from the statements of the Greek travellers. The temple of Ptah—the site of which seems to be determined by the colossal statue of Rameses which still lies there upon its face—must have rivalled Karnak in extent and in the number of its successive additions. According to Diodorus (i. 50) it was Mœris (Amenemhat III.) who built the southern propylons of this temple, which, according to the same authority, surpassed all their rivals in magnificence. At a much later period, Sesostris (a Rameses) erected several colossal monoliths, from 20 to 30 cubits high, in front of the same temple (Diodorus, cap. lvii.; Herodotus, ii. 140); at the same time he must have raised obelisks and constructed courts and pylons. Herodotus attributes to two other kings, whom he names Rhampsinite and Asychis, the construction of two more pylons on the eastern and western sides of the temple (ii. 121 and 136). Finally Psemethek I. built the southern propylons and the pavilion where the Apis was nursed after his first discovery. (Herodotus, ii. 153.)

[311] Strabo, xvii, 1, 28.

[312] This is the temple which the members of the Egyptian institute call the Great Southern Temple. In the background of our illustration (Fig. 208) the hypostyle hall and the southern pylons of the Great Temple are seen.

[313] Τοῦ δὲ προνάου παρ' ἑκάτερον πρόκειται τὰ λεγόμενα πτερά· ἔστι δὲ ταῦτα ἰσοΰψη τῷ ναῷ τείχη δύο, κατ' ἀρχὰς μὲν ἀφεστῶτα ἀπ' ἀλλήλων μικρὸν πλέον, ἢ τὸ πλάτος ἐστὶ τῆς κρηπῖδος τοῦ νεώ, ἔπειτ' εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν προϊόντι κατ' ἐπινευούσας γραμμὰς μέχρι πηχῶν πεντήκοντα ἢ ἑξήκοντα.—Strabo, xvii, 1, 28.

[314] Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités, vol. i. pl. 5.

[315] Description de l'Égypte, vol. iii. 55.

[316] According to Gau, there was, in 1817, a well preserved tabernacle in the sanctuary of the temple at Debout, in Nubia. (Antiquités de la Nubie, 1821, pl. v. Figs. A and B.)

[317] De Rougé, Notice des Monuments, etc. (Upon the ground floor and the staircase.) Monuments Divers, No. 29. The term naos has generally been applied to these monuments, but it seems to us to lack precision. The Greeks used the word ναός or νεώς to signify the temple as a whole. Abd-el-Latif describes with great admiration a monolithic tabernacle which existed in his time among the ruins of Memphis, and was called by the Egyptians the Green Chamber. Makrizi tells us that it was broken up in 1349. (Description de l'Égypte, Ant., vol. v. pp. 572, 573.)

[318] Herodotus, ii. 175.

[319] Translated by Maspero, Histoire Ancienne, p. 385. The whole inscription has been translated into English by the Rev. T. C. Cook, and published in vol. ii. of Records of the Past.—Ed.

[320] As M. Maspero has remarked (Annuaire de l'Association des Études Grecques, 1877, p. 135), these secret passages remind us of the movable stone which, according to Herodotus (ii. 121), the architect of Rhampsinit contrived in the wall of the royal treasure-house which he was commissioned to build. Herodotus's story was at least founded upon fact, as the arrangement in question was a favourite one with Egyptian constructors.

[321] Ἀναγλυφὰς δ' ἔχουσιν οἱ τοῖχοι οὗτοι μεγάλων εἰδώλων (Strabo, xvii, 1, 28).

[322] Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités, vol. i. p. 219. The authors of the Description générale de Thèbes noticed recesses sunk in the external face of one of the pylons at Karnak, which they believed to be intended to receive the leaves of the great door when it was open (p. 234); they also noticed traces of bronze pivots upon which the doors swung (p. 248), and they actually found a pivot of sycamore wood.

[323] These measurements are taken from Mariette, Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, vol. ii. p. 7.

[324] We have not given a general map. In order to do so we should either have had to overpass the limits of our page, or we should have had to give it upon too small a scale. Our fourth plate will give a sufficiently accurate idea of its arrangement. The plan in Lepsius's Denkmæler (part i. pl. 74-76) occupies three entire pages.

[325] Diodorus, i. 46.

[326] These are the figures given by Mariette (Itinéraire de la Haute-Égypte, p. 135). Other authorities give 340 feet by 177. Diodorus ascribed to the temple of which he spoke a height of 45 cubits (or 69 feet 3 inches). This is slightly below the true height. We may here quote the terms in which Champollion describes the impression which a first sight of these ruins made upon him: "Finally I went to the palace, or rather to the town of palaces, at Karnak. There all the magnificence of the Pharaohs is collected; there the greatest artistic conceptions formed and realised by mankind are to be seen. All that I had seen at Thebes, all that I had enthusiastically admired on the left bank of the river, sunk into insignificance before the gigantic structures among which I found myself. I shall not attempt to describe what I saw. If my expressions were to convey but a thousandth part of what I felt, a thousandth part of all that might with truth be said of such objects, if I succeeded in tracing but a faint sketch, in the dimmest colours, of the marvels of Karnak, I should be taken, at least for an enthusiast, perhaps for a madman. I shall content myself with saying that no people, either ancient or modern, have had a national architecture at once so sublime in scale, so grand in expression, and so free from littleness as that of the ancient Egyptians." (Lettres d'Égypte, pp. 79, 80.)

[327] Including a postern of comparatively small dimensions, there are five doorways to the hypostyle hall.—Ed.

[328] A plan of the successive accretions is given in plates 6 and 7 of Mariette's work. The different periods and their work are shown by changes of tint. The same information is given in another form in pages 36 and 37 of the text. The complete title of the work is as follows: Karnak, Étude topographique et archéologique, avec un Appendice comprenant les principaux Textes hiéroglyphigues. Plates in folio; text in a 4to. of 88 pages (1875).

[329] In presence of this double range of superb columns one is tempted to look upon them as the beginning of a hypostyle hall which was never finished, to suppose that a great central nave was constructed, and that, by force of circumstances unknown, the aisles were never begun, and that the builders contented themselves by inclosing and preserving their work as far as it had gone.

[330] Diodorus, i. 47-49.

[331] Strabo, xvii. i. 42. In another passage (xvii. i. 46) he seems to place the Memnonium close to the two famous colossi. He would, therefore, seem rather to have had in view an "Amenophium," the remains of which have been discovered in the immediate neighbourhood of the two colossi. The French savants suspected this to be the case, but they often defer to the opinions of their immediate predecessors among Egyptian travellers. (Description générale de Thèbes, section iii.)

[332] This pylon stands in the foreground of our view (Fig. 220). The face which is here shown was formerly covered—as we may judge from the parts which remain—with pictures of battles; and that we might not have to actually invent scenes of combat for our restoration, we have borrowed the ornamentation of the first pylon of the Temple of Khons. The scale of our cut is too small, however, to show any details.

[333] Lepsius, Denkmæler, part i. plates 88 and 89. The engineers of the Institut d'Égypte fell into an error in speaking of this hall. They failed to notice that it was smaller than the second court, and they accordingly gave it sixty columns. (Description générale de Thebes, vol. i. p. 132.)