Of the jewels of Queen Aah-hotep, of the superb series of engraved scarabæi, of the rings, amulets, and toilette ornaments, of the vases in bronze, silver, alabaster, and porcelain, of the libation-tables, the woven stuffs, the terra-cottas, the artists’ models, the lamps, the silver boats, the weapons, the papyri, the thousand-and-one curious personal relics and articles of domestic use which are brought together within these walls, I have no space to tell. Except the collection of Pompeiian relics in Naples, there is nothing elsewhere to compare with the collection at Boulak; and the villas of Pompeii have yielded no such gems and jewels as the tombs of ancient Egypt. It is not too much to say that if these dead and mummied people could come back to earth, the priest would here find all the gods of his Pantheon; the king his scepter; the queen her crown-jewels; the scribe his palette; the soldier his arms; the workman his tools; the barber his razor; the husbandman his hoe; the housewife her broom; the child his toys; the beauty her combs and kohl bottles and mirrors. The furniture of the house is here, as well as the furniture of the tomb. Here, too, is the broken sistrum buried with the dead in token of the grief of the living.

Waiting the construction of a more suitable edifice, the present building gives temporary shelter to the collection. In the meanwhile, if there was nothing else to tempt the traveler to Cairo, the Boulak museum would alone be worth the journey from Europe.

The first excursion one makes on returning to Cairo, the last one makes before leaving, is to Ghîzeh. It is impossible to get tired of the pyramids. Here L—— and the writer spent their last day with the happy couple.

We left Cairo early, and met all the market-folk coming in from the country—donkeys and carts laden with green stuff, and veiled women with towers of baskets on their heads. The khedive’s new palace was swarming already with masons, and files of camels were bringing limestone blocks for the builders. Next comes the open corn-plain, part yellow, part green—the long straight road bordered with acacias—beyond all, the desert-platform, and the pyramids, half in light, half in greenish-gray shadow, against the horizon. I never could understand why it is that the second pyramid, though it is smaller and farther off, looks from this point of view bigger than the first. Farther on, the brown fellahîn, knee-deep in purple blossom, are cutting the clover. The camels carry it away. The goats and buffaloes feed in the clearings. Then comes the half-way tomb nestled in greenery, where men and horses stay to drink; and soon we are skirting a great backwater which reflects the pyramids like a mirror. Villages, shâdûfs, herds and flocks, tracts of palms, corn-flats, and spaces of rich, dark fallow, now succeed each other; and then once more comes the sandy slope, and the cavernous ridge of ancient yellow rock, and the great pyramid with its shadow-side toward us, darkening the light of day.

Neither L—— nor the writer went inside the great pyramid. The idle man did so this day, and L——’s maid on another occasion; and both reported of the place as so stifling within, so foul underfoot, and so fatiguing, that, somehow, we each time put it off, and ended by missing it. The ascent is extremely easy. Rugged and huge as are the blocks, there is scarcely one upon which it is not possible to find a half-way rest for the toe of one’s boot, so as to divide the distance. With the help of three Arabs, nothing can well be less fatiguing. As for the men, they are helpful and courteous, and as clever as possible; and coax one on from block to block in all the languages of Europe.

“Pazienza, signora! Allez doucement—all serene! We half-way now—dem halben-weg, fräulein. Ne vous pressez pas, mademoiselle. Chi va sano, va lontano. Six step more, and ecco la cima!”

“You should add the other half of the proverb, amici,” said I. “Chi va forte, va alla morte.”

My Arabs had never heard this before, and were delighted with it. They repeated it again and again, and committed it to memory with great satisfaction. I asked them why they did not cut steps in the blocks, so as to make the ascent easier for ladies. The answer was ready and honest.

“No, no, mademoiselle! Arab very stupid to do that. If Arab makes steps, howadji goes up alone. No more want Arab man to help him up, and Arab man earn no more dollars!”

They offered to sing “Yankee Doodle” when we reached the top; then, finding we were English, shouted “God save the queen!” and told us that the Prince of Wales had given £40 to the pyramid Arabs when he came here with the princess two years before; which, however, we took the liberty to doubt.

The space on the top of the great pyramid is said to be thirty feet square. It is not, as I had expected, a level platform. Some blocks of the next tier remain, and two or three of the tier next above that; so making pleasant seats and shady corners. What struck us most on reaching the top was the startling nearness, to all appearance, of the second pyramid. It seemed to rise up beside us like a mountain; yet so close, that I fancied I could almost touch it by putting out my hand. Every detail of the surface, every crack and party-colored stain in the shining stucco that yet clings about the apex, was distinctly visible.

The view from this place is immense. The country is so flat, the atmosphere so clear, the standpoint so isolated, that one really sees more and sees farther than from many a mountain summit of ten or twelve thousand feet. The ground lies, as it were, immediately under one; and the great Necropolis is seen as in a ground-plan. The effect must, I imagine, be exactly like the effect of a landscape seen from a balloon. Without ascending the pyramid, it is certainly not possible to form a clear notion of the way in which this great burial-field is laid out. We see from this point how each royal pyramid is surrounded by its quadrangle of lesser tombs, some in the form of small pyramids, others partly rock-cut, partly built of massive slabs, like the roofing-stones of the temples. We see how Khufu and Khafra and Menkara lay, each under his mountain of stone, with his family and his nobles around him. We see the great causeways which moved Herodotus to such wonder, and along which the giant stones were brought. Recognizing how clearly the place is a great cemetery, one marvels at the ingenious theories which turn the pyramids into astronomical observatories, and abstruse standards of measurement. They are the grandest graves[267] in all the world—and they are nothing more.

The little way to the southward, from the midst of a sandy hollow, rises the head of the sphinx. Older than the pyramids, older than history, the monster lies couchant like a watch-dog, looking ever to the east, as if for some dawn that has not yet risen.[268] A depression in the sand close by marks the site of that strange monument miscalled the Temple of the Sphinx.[269] Farther away to the west on the highest slope of this part of the desert platform, stands the Pyramid of Menkara (Mycerinus). It has lost but five feet of its original height, and from this distance it looks quite perfect.

Such—set in a waste of desert—are the main objects, and the nearest objects, on which our eyes first rest. As a whole, the view is more long than wide, being bounded to the westward by the Libyan range, and to the eastward by the Mokattam hills. At the foot of those yellow hills, divided from us by the cultivated plain across which we have just driven, lies Cairo, all glittering domes half seen through a sunlit haze. Overlooking the fairy city stands the mosque of the citadel, its mast-like minarets piercing the clearer atmosphere. Far to the northward, traversing reach after reach of shadowy palm-groves, the eye loses itself in the dim and fertile distances of the delta. To the west and south all is desert. It begins here at our feet—a rolling wilderness of valleys and slopes and rivers and seas of sand, broken here and there by abrupt ridges of rock and mounds of ruined masonry and open graves. A silver line skirts the edge of this dead world, and vanishes southward in the sun-mist that shimmers on the farthest horizon. To the left of that silver line we see the quarried cliffs of Turra, marble-white; opposite Turra, the plumy palms of Memphis. On the desert platform above, clear, though faint, the pyramids of Abusîr and Sakkârah, and Dahshûr. Every stage of the Pyramid of Ouenephes, banded in light and shade, is plain to see. So is the dome-like summit of the great pyramid of Dahshûr. Even the brick ruin beside it which we took for a black rock as we went up the river, and which looks like a black rock still, is perfectly visible. Farthest of them all, showing pale and sharp amid the palpitating blaze of noon, stands, like an unfinished tower of Babel, the pyramid of Meydûm. It is in this direction that our eyes turn oftenest—to the measureless desert in its mystery of light and silence; to the Nile where it gleams out again and again, till it melts at last into that faint, far distance beyond which lie Thebes and Philæ and Abou Simbel.

APPENDIX I.

A. M’CALLUM, ESQ., TO THE EDITOR OF “THE TIMES.”[270]

Sir:—It may interest your readers to learn that at the south side of the great Temple of Abou Simbel, I found the entrance to a painted chamber rock-cut, and measuring twenty-one feet two and one-half inches by fourteen feet eight inches, and twelve feet high to the spring of the arch, elaborately sculptured and painted in the best style of the best period of Égyptian art, bearing the portraits of Rameses the Great and his cartouches, and in a state of the highest preservation. This chamber is preceded by the ruins of a vaulted atrium, in sundried brickwork, and adjoins the remains of what would appear to be a massive wall or pylon, which contains a staircase terminating in an arched doorway leading to the vaulted atrium before mentioned.

The doorway of the painted chamber, the staircase and the arch, were all buried in sand and débris. The chamber appears to have been covered and lost sight of since a very early period, being wholly free from mutilation, and from the scribbling of travelers, ancient and modern.

The staircase was not opened until the 18th, and the bones of a woman and child, with two small cinerary urns, were there discovered by a gentleman of our party, buried in the sand. This was doubtless a subsequent interment. Whether this painted chamber is the inner sanctuary of a small temple, or part of a tomb, or only a speos, like the well-known grottos at Ibrim, is a question for future excavators to determine. I have the honor to be, sir, yours, etc.,

Andrew McCallum.

Korosko, Nubia, Feb. 16, 1874.

APPENDIX II.

THE EGYPTIAN PANTHEON.

“The deities of ancient Egypt consist of celestial, terrestrial and infernal gods, and of many inferior personages, either representatives of the greater gods or else attendants upon them. Most of the gods were connected with the sun, and represented that luminary in its passage through the upper hemisphere or Heaven and the lower hemisphere or Hades. To the deities of the solar cycle belonged the great gods of Thebes and Heliopolis. In the local worship of Egypt the deities were arranged in local triads; thus, at Memphis, Ptah, his wife Merienptah, and their son Nefer Atum, formed a triad, to which was sometimes added the goddess Bast or Bubastis. At Abydus the local triad was Osiris, Isis and Horus, with Nephthys; at Thebes, Amen-Ra or Ammon, Mut and Chons, with Neith; at Elephantine, Kneph, Anuka, Seti and Hak. In most instances the names of the gods are Egyptian; thus, Ptah meant ‘the opener;’ Amen, ‘the concealed;’ Ra, ‘the sun’ or ‘day;’ Athor, ‘the house of Horus;’ but some few, especially of later times, were introduced from Semitic sources, as Bal or Baal, Astaruta or Astarte, Khen or Kium, Respu or Reseph. Besides the principal gods, several or parhedral gods, sometimes personifications of the faculties, senses, and other objects, are introduced into the religious system, and genii, spirits, or personified souls of deities formed part of the same. At a period subsequent to their first introduction the gods were divided into three orders. The first or highest comprised eight deities, who were different in the Memphian and Theban systems. They were supposed to have reigned over Egypt before the time of mortals. The eight gods of the first order at Memphis were: 1, Ptah; 2, Shu; 3, Tefnu; 4, Seb; 5, Nut; 6, Osiris; 7, Isis and Horus; 8, Athor. Those of Thebes were: 1, Amen-Ra; 2, Mentu; 3, Atum; 4, Shu and Tefnu; 5, Seb; 6, Osiris; 7, Set and Nephthys; 8, Horus and Athor. The gods of the second order were twelve in number, but the name of one only, an Egyptian Hercules, has been preserved. The third order is stated to have comprised Osiris, who, it will be seen, belonged to the first order.”—“Guide to the First and Second Egyptian Rooms; Brit. Musæ.” S. Birch, 1874.

The gods most commonly represented upon the monuments are Phtah, Knum, Ra, Amen-Ra, Khem, Osiris, Nefer Atum or Tum, Thoth, Seb, Set, Khons, Horus, Maut, Neith, Isis, Nut, Hathor and Bast. They are distinguished by the following attributes:

Phtah or Ptah—In form a mummy, holding the emblem called by some the Nilometer, by others the emblem of stability. Called “the Father of the Beginning, the Creator of the Egg of the Sun and Moon.” Chief deity of Memphis.

Kneph, Knum or Knouphis—Ram-headed. Called the maker of gods and men; the soul of the gods. Chief deity of Elephantine and the cataracts.

Ra—Hawk-headed, and crowned with the sun-disk encircled by an asp. The divine disposer and organizer of the world. Adored throughout Egypt.

Amen-Ra—Of human form, crowned with a flat-topped cap and two long straight plumes; clothed in the schenti; his flesh sometimes painted blue. There are various forms of this god (see foot note p. 310), but he is most generally described as King of the Gods. Chief deity of Thebes.

Khem—Of human form, mummified; wears head-dress of Amen-Ra; his right hand uplifted, holding the flail. The god of productiveness and generation. Chief deity of Khemmis, or Ekhmeen. Is identified in later times with Amen, and called Amen-Khem.

Osiris—Of human form, mummified, crowned with a miter, and holding the flail and crook. Called the Good Being; the Lord above all; the One Lord. Was the god of the lower world; judge of the dead; and representative of the sun below the horizon. Adored throughout Egypt. Local deity of Abydus.

Nefer Atum—Human-headed, and crowned with the pschent. This god represented the setting sun, or the sun descending to light the lower world. Local deity of Heliopolis.

Thoth—In form a man, ibis-headed, generally depicted with the pen and palette of a scribe. Was the god of the moon, and of letters. Local deity of Sesoon, or Hermopolis.

Seb—The “Father of the Gods,” and deity of terrestrial vegetation. In form a man with a goose upon his head.

Set—Represented by a symbolic animal, with a muzzle and ears like a jackal, the body of an ass, and an upright tail, like the tail of a lion. Was originally a warlike god, and became in later times the symbol of evil and the enemy of Osiris.

Khons—Hawk-headed, crowned with the sun disk and horns. Is represented sometimes as a youth with the side-lock, standing on a crocodile.

Horus—Horus appears variously as Horus, Horus Aroëris, and Horus Harpakhrat (Harpocrates), or Horus the child. Is represented under the first two forms as a man, hawk headed, wearing the double crown of Egypt; in the latter as a child with the side-lock. Local deity of Edfu (Apollinopolis Magna).

Maut—A woman draped and crowned with the pschent; generally with a cap below the pschent representing a vulture. Adored at Thebes.

Neith—A woman draped, holding sometimes a bow and arrows, crowned with the crown of Lower Egypt. She presided over war and the loom. Worshiped at Thebes.

Isis—A woman crowned with the sun-disk surmounted by a throne, and sometimes inclosed between horns. Adored at Abydus and Philæ. Her soul resided in Sothis, or the Dog-star.

Nut—A woman curved so as to touch the ground with her fingers. She represents the vault of Heaven, and is the mother of the gods.

Hathor—Cow-headed, and crowned with the disk and plumes. Deity of Amenti, or the Egyptian Hades. Worshiped at Denderah.

Bast and Sekhet—Bast and Sekhet appear to be two forms of the same goddess. As Sekhet she is represented as a woman, lion-headed, with the disk and uræus; as Bast, she is cat-headed, and holds a sistrum. Adored at Bubastis.

APPENDIX III.

THE RELIGIOUS BELIEF OF THE EGYPTIANS.

“This god of the Egyptians was unique, perfect, endued with knowledge and intelligence, and so far incomprehensible that one can scarcely say in what respects he is incomprehensible. He is the one who exists by essence; the one sole life of all substance; the one single generator in heaven and earth who is not himself engendered; the father of fathers; the mother of mothers; always the same, immutable in immutable perfection; existing equally in the past, the present and the future. He fills the universe in such wise that no earthly image can give the feeblest notion of his immensity. He is felt everywhere; he is tangible nowhere.”—G. Maspero. Translated from “Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient.” Paris, 1876, chap, i, p. 26.

“Unfortunately, the more we study the religion of ancient Egypt the more our doubts accumulate with regard to the character which must finally be attributed to it. The excavations carried on of late at Denderah and Edfu have opened up to us an extraordinary fertile source of material. These temples are covered with texts, and present precisely the appearance of two books which authoritatively treat not only of the gods to which these two temples are dedicated, but of the religion under its more general aspects. But neither in these temples, nor in those which have been long known to us, appears the one god of Jamblichus. If Ammon is ‘The First of the First’ at Thebes, if Phtah is at Memphis ‘The Father of all Beings, without Beginning or End,’ so also is every other Egyptian god separately endowed with these attributes of the Divine Being. In other words, we everywhere find gods who are uncreate and immortal; but nowhere that unique, invisible deity, without name and without form, who was supposed to hover above the highest summit of the Egyptian pantheon. The Temple of Denderah, now explored to the end of its most hidden inscriptions, of a certainty furnishes no trace of this deity. The one result which above all others seems to be educed from the study of this temple, is that (according to the Egyptians) the universe was god himself, and that Pantheism formed the foundation of their religion.”—A. Mariette Bey. Translated from “Itinéraire de la Haute Égypte.” Alexandria, 1872, p. 54.

“The sun is the most ancient object of Egyptian worship found upon the monuments. His birth each day when he springs from the bosom of the nocturnal Heaven is the natural emblem of the eternal generation of the divinity. Hence the celestial space became identified with the divine mother. It was particularly the nocturnal Heaven which was represented by this personage. The rays of the sun, as they awakened all nature, seemed to give life to animated beings. Hence that which doubtless was originally a symbol became the foundation of the religion. It is the sun himself whom we find habitually invoked as the supreme being. The addition of his Egyptian name, Ra, to the names of certain local divinities, would seem to show that this identification constituted a second epoch in the history of the religions of the Valley of the Nile.”—Viscount E. de Rougé. Translated from “Notice Sommaire des Monuments Égyptiens du Louvre.” Paris, 1873, p. 120.

That the religion, whether based on a solar myth or upon a genuine belief in a spiritual god, became grossly material in its later developments, is apparent to every student of the monuments. M. Maspero has the following remarks on the degeneration of the old faith:

“In the course of ages, the sense of the religion became obscured. In the texts of Greek and Roman date, that lofty conception of the divinity which had been cherished by the early theologians of Egypt still peeps out here and there. Fragmentary phrases and epithets yet prove that the fundamental principles of the religion are not quite forgotten. For the most part, however, we find that we no longer have to do with the infinite and intangible god of ancient days; but rather with a god of flesh and blood who lives upon earth, and has so abased himself as to be no more than a human king. It is no longer this god of whom no man knew either the form or the substance—it is Kneph at Esneh; Hathor at Denderah; Horus, king of the divine dynasty at Edfu. This king has a court, ministers, an army, a fleet. His eldest son, Horhat, Prince of Cush and heir presumptive to the throne, commands the troops. His first minister, Thoth, the inventor of letters, has geography and rhetoric at his fingers’ ends; is historiographer-royal; and is entrusted with the duty of recording the victories of the king and of celebrating them in high-sounding phraseology. When this god makes war upon his neighbor Typhon he makes no use of the divine weapons of which we should take it for granted that he could dispose at will. He calls out his archers and his chariots; descends the Nile in his galley, as might the last new Pharaoh; directs marches and counter-marches; fights planned battles; carries cities by storm, and brings all Egypt in submission to his feet. We see here that the Egyptians of Ptolemaic times had substituted for the one god of their ancestors a line of god-kings, and had embroidered these modern legends with a host of fantastic details.”—G. Maspero. Translated from “Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient.” Paris, 1876, chap, i, pp. 50-51.

APPENDIX IV.

EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY.

“The chronology of Egypt has been a disputed point for centuries. The Egyptians had no cycle, and only dated in the regnal years of their monarchs. The principal Greek sources have been the canon of Ptolemy, drawn up in the second century A.D., and the lists of the dynasties extracted from the historical work of Manetho, an Egyptian priest, who lived in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, B.C. 285-247. The discrepancies between these lists and the monuments have given rise to many schemes and rectifications of the chronology. The principal chronological points of information obtained from the monument are the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses, B.C. 527, the commencement of the reign of Psammetichus I, B.C. 665, the reign of Tirhaka, about B.C. 693, and that of Bocchoris, about B.C. 720, the synchronism of the reign of Shishak I with the capture of Jerusalem, about B.C. 970. The principal monuments throwing light on other parts of the chronology are the recorded heliacal risings of Sothis, or the Dog-star, in the reigns of Thothmes III and Rameses II, III, VI, IX, the date of four hundred years from the time of Rameses II to the shepherd kings, the dated sepulchral tablets of the bull Apis at the serapeum, the lists of kings at Sakkarah, Thebes and Abydus, the chronological canon of the Turin papyrus, and other incidental notices. But of the anterior dynasties no certain chronological dates are afforded by the monuments, those hitherto proposed not having stood the test of historical or philological criticism.”—S. Birch, LL.D.: “Guide to the First and Second Egyptian Rooms at the Brit. Museum.” 1874, p. 10.

As some indication of the wide divergence of opinion upon this subject, it is enough to point out that the German Egyptologists alone differ as to the date of Menes or Mena (the first authentic king of the ancient empire), to the following extent:

Mariette, though recognizing the need for extreme caution in the acceptance or rejection of any of these calculations, inclined on the whole to abide by the lists of Manetho; according to which the thirty-four recorded dynasties would stand as follows:

To this chronology may be opposed the brief table of dates compiled by M. Chabas. This table represents what may be called the medium school of Egyptian chronology, and is offered by M. Chabas, “not as an attempt to reconcile systems,” but as an aid to the classification of certain broadly indicated epochs.

APPENDIX V.

CONTEMPORARY CHRONOLOGY OF EGYPT, MESOPOTAMIA, AND BABYLON.