Paine Albert Bigelow
The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy Cruise

There is still a quantity of débris to be removed. One end of the Temple is full of it, and may remain so a good while. On top of this mass, some five hundred years ago, a Mohammedan mosque was built by the descendants of a saint named Abu Haggag, and sufficient of his family are left to this day to hold that mosque intact against all would-be excavators. However, the mosque itself begins to look pretty old. If the diggers keep encroaching, it may slide off into the Temple some day, saints and all.

Luxor, as a whole, is better preserved than Karnak. I suppose the heaped-up débris kept the columns in position during the last ten or a dozen centuries. I wish it had been there when the early Christian came along. Cambyses of Persia, who burned everything that would burn in Egypt, about 527 b. c., blackened the walls of this temple with fire, the marks of which show to this day, but he was nothing to the followers of Queen Helena. Even the guide-book, which is likely to be conservative in any comment that may touch upon the faith of its readers, says concerning the followers of Helena: "Not content with turning certain sections of it into churches, the more fanatical among them smashed statues, and disfigured bas-reliefs and wrecked shrines with characteristic savage and ignorant zeal."⁷

There ought to be a painting or a marble group somewhere entitled "Early Christian at Work" – a lean-faced, stringy-haired maniac with sledge, murdering a symbolized figure of Defenceless Art in the Far East. The early Christian is said to have destroyed forty-five thousand statues in Thebes in one day.

Still, those statues may not matter so much – they were probably all of Rameses the Great, and there are enough of him left. The Luxor Temple had them in all sizes, and of all materials, from granite to alabaster. Also some of "Mrs. Rameses," as Gaddis called her – no particular Mrs. Rameses – there having been several of her; just a sort of generic type of connubial happiness, I suppose. Mrs. Rameses, by the way, does not cut much figure in the statuary. She usually comes only about to the knee of the King, though she is life-size even then, for his own statues are colossal, ranging anywhere from fifteen to fifty feet high. That was to represent their difference in importance, of course, an idea which the women members of our party seemed to disapprove.⁸

One of the statues of Rameses was found in a curious manner. A guide only a little while ago was lecturing to a party of tourists, while a young lady not far away was sketching a corner of the ruin. The sketcher stopped to listen to the guide's talk, and when he had finished said to the boy who was keeping the flies from her:

"Go up on that heap of rubbish and see what that stone is."

It was the rubbish that slopes down from the old mosque. The boy climbed up, pulled away the trash, and uncovered the head of one of the most perfect Rameseses yet discovered.

Originally the Temple of Luxor was five hundred feet long, one hundred and eighty feet wide, and, as before mentioned, was connected with Karnak by a double row of ram-headed sphinxes. Amenophis III. built it about 1500 b. c., and it was regarded as the most beautiful of Egyptian temples. Then came his son, Amenophis IV., who, being a sun-worshipper after the manner of his Mesopotamian mother, cut away the name of the Egyptian god Amen and set up a new worship here. It was a brief innovation. The priests made it too hot for the Heretic King. He gave up the struggle after a time, went into the desert farther down the Nile, and built there a city and temples of his own. Then this temple was sacred to the old religion again. It remained so until Alexander came, cut his name here and there, and probably worshipped his own assortment of gods. Later came the Roman and the early Christian; still later the Mohammedan established ceremonies and reconstructed shrines.

We had all the old sacrifices and processions and gods and victories over again in Luxor, including the picture story of the birth of Amenophis III., which depicts an immaculate conception; an annunciation; a visitation of wise men with gifts, executed about 1500 b. c.

After which we returned to the hotel; but when the sun was low in the west beyond the Nile and the air was getting balmy, I slipped back and sat in the old Temple in the quiet, and thought of a number of things. Then as the sun slipped below the verge, a figure stepped out on the minaret just over my head and began that weird thrilling chant which once heard will remain forever unforgotten, the cry of the East – "Allah il Allah," the Muezzin's call to prayer.

So it is still a place of worship. The voice of faith has reached down thirty-four centuries, and whatever the form, or the prophet, or the priest, it is all embodied there at evening and at morning in the cry, "There is no God but God."

XLI
THE STILL VALLEY OF THE KINGS

It was early next morning when we crossed the Nile to the rhythm of a weird chorus which the boatmen sang to the beat of the oars. It is probably older than these temples, and the boatmen themselves do not know the meaning of the words, Gaddis said. One intones and the others answer, and it is in minor keys with a dying fall at the end, except now and then when a curious lifting note drops in, like a flash of light on the oars. Bound for the Valley of the Kings, the House of Hatasu, and the Colossi of Memnon, it seemed a fitting overture.

The donkeys were waiting on the other bank – the same we had used yesterday, fat and fresh as ever, and the same boys were there calling and gesticulating to their special charges of the day before. There are always a few more donkey-boys than is necessary, it seems, all of them wildly eager for the privilege of racing all day in the perishing sun, urging the donkeys and yelling for baksheesh at every jump – not that they expect to get it until the end of the day, but as a traditional part of the performance. The donkey-boy gets nothing, we are told, but what one is pleased to give him – the donkey hire going to the Sheik, who owns the donkeys and lets the boys get what they can. I would write a good deal about those half-naked, half-savage, tireless donkey-boys if permitted. They and their brothers, and their cousins even to the fourth remove, who come in like a charging army in the wild baksheesh skirmish at the end, interest me.

Mounted, we led away in the usual stampede along canals and by lush green fields, across the fertile strip that borders the Nile. The green is rather wide here – as much as a mile, I should think, and it was pleasant going through the still morning if one kept well forward in the procession – in front of the dust that rose mightily behind us. Every little way where we slackened speed, detachments of sellers would charge from the roadside with trinkets, imitation scarabs, and images, but more notably with fragments (and these were genuine enough) of what long ago – as much as three or four thousand years, perhaps – had been human beings like ourselves. Remnants of mummies they were, quarried out of the barren hills where lie not only the kings but the millions who in the glory of Egypt lived and died in Thebes. The hills are full of them, Gaddis said, and unearthing them has become an industry.

It was rather grewsome at first to be offered such things – to have a head, or a hand, or a foot thrust up under your eyes, and with it an outstretched palm for payment. The prices demanded were not very high, and the owners, the present owners, would take less – a good deal less than the first quotation. A physician in our party bought a head – hard and black as old mahogany, with some bits of gold-leaf still sticking to it – for five francs, and I was offered a baby's hand (it had been soft and dimpled once – it was dark and withered now) for a shilling.

We crossed the line which "divides the desert from the sown" – a sharp, perfectly distinguishable line in Egypt – and were in the sand, the sun getting high and blazing down, fairly drenching us with its flame. We thought it would be better when we entered the hills, but that was a mistake. It was worse, for there was not a particle of growing shade, not a blade of any green thing, and there seemed no breath of life in that stirless air.

Remember it never rains here; these hills have never known water since the Flood, but have been baking in this vast kiln for a million years. You will realize that it must be hot, then, but you will never know how hot until you go there. Here and there a rock leaned over a little and made a skimpy blue shadow, which we sidled into as we passed for a blessed instant of relief. We understood now the fuller meaning of that Bible phrase, "As the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." This was a weary land with shadows far between. Now and then those astonishing donkeys broke into a gallop and stirred up a little scorching wind, the unflagging boys capering and shouting behind.

It seemed an endless way, up into these calcined hills to the Burial-place of Kings, but by-and-by there were traces of ruins and excavation, and we heard the throb of a dynamo on the quivering air. We dismounted then, and Gaddis led us up a burning little steep to what at first seemed a great tunnel into the mountain-side. How deep and cool and inviting it looked up there; we would go in, certainly. Was it really a tomb? No wonder those old kings looked forward to such a place.

It was merely an entrance to a tomb – a tunnel, truly, and of such size that I believe two railway trains could enter it side by side and two more on top of them! I think most of us had the idea – I know I did – that we would go down ladders into these tombs, and that they would be earthy, cheerless places, more interesting than attractive.

They are the most beautiful places I ever saw. The entrances – vast, as I have stated – go directly in from the hillside; the rock floors are dry and clean, while the side-walls and the ceilings are simply a mass of such carving and color as the world nowhere else contains. An electric dynamo set up in a tomb that was never finished (that of Rameses XII., I believe) supplies illumination for these homes of the kingly dead, and as you follow deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountain your wonder grows at the inconceivable artistic effort and constructive labor that have been expended on those walls. Deeper, and still deeper, along a gradual decline that seems a veritable passage to the underworld. Here and there, at the side, are antechambers or avenues that lead away – we wonder whither.

Now and again Gaddis paused to explain the marvellous story of the walls – the progress of the King to the underworld – his reception there, his triumphs, his life in general in that long valley of spirits which ran parallel with Egypt and was neither above nor below the level of the earth. It was this form and idea of the underworld that the shape of these tombs was intended to express, while their walls illustrate the happy future life of the King. Chapters from the "Book of the Underworld" (a sort of descriptive geography of the country) and from the "Book of the Dead" (a manual of general instruction as to customs and deportment in the new life) cover vast spaces. Here and there a design was not entirely worked out, but the sketch was traced in outline, which would indicate that perhaps the King died before his tomb (always a life-work) was complete.

Now, realize: This gorgeous passage was nearly five hundred feet long, cut into the living rock, and opened into a vast pillared and vaulted chamber fully sixty feet long by forty wide and thirty high – the whole covered with splendid decorations that the dry air and protection have preserved as fresh and beautiful as the day they were finished so many centuries ago. This was the royal chamber, empty now, where in silent state King Seti I. once lay. We are a frivolous crowd, but we were awed into low-voiced wonder at the magnitude of this work, the mightiness of a people who could provide so overwhelmingly for their dead.

I do not remember how many such tombs we visited, but they were a good many, including those of Rameses I. and II., the father and the mighty son of Seti I., all three of whom now sleep in the Cairo Museum. Also the tomb of Rameses IX., one of the finest of the lot.

In some of the tombs the sarcophagi were still in place, but all are empty of occupants except one. This was the splendid tomb of Amenophis II., of the Eighteenth Dynasty, who lived in the glory of Egypt, 1600 b. c., a warrior who slew seven Syrian chiefs with his own hand. Gaddis had not told us what to expect in that tomb, and when we had followed through the long declining way to the royal chamber and beheld there, not an empty sarcophagus but a king asleep, we were struck to silence with that three thousand five hundred years of visible rest.

The top of the sarcophagus is removed, and is replaced by heavy plate glass. Just over the sleeper's face there is a tiny electric globe, and I believe one could never tire of standing there and looking at that quiet visage, darkened by age, but beautiful in its dignity; unmoved, undisturbed by the storm and stress of the fretful years.

How long he has been asleep! The Israelites were still in bondage when he fell into that quiet doze, and for their exodus, a century or two later, he did not care. Hector and Achilles and Paris and the rest had not battled on the Plains of Troy; the gods still assembled on Mt. Olympus; Rome was not yet dreamed. He had been asleep nigh a thousand years when Romulus quit nursing the she-wolf to build the walls of a city which would one day rule the world. The rise, the conquest, the decline of that vast empire he never knew. When her armies swept the nations of the East and landed upon his own shores he did not stir in his sleep. The glory of Egypt ebbed away, but he did not care. Old religions perished; new gods and new prophets replaced the gods and prophets he had known – it mattered not to him, here in this quiet underworld. Through every change he lay here in peace, just as he lies to-day, so still, so fine in his kingly majesty – upon his face that soft electric glow which seems in no wise out of place, because it has come as all things come at last to him who waits.

In a sort of anteroom near the royal chamber lie the mummies of three adherents of the King, each with a large hole in the skull and a large gash in the breast – royal slaves, no doubt, sent to bear their liege company. I remember one of them as having very long thick curly hair – a handsome fellow, I suppose; a favorite who could not, or would not, be left behind.

A number of other royal mummies were found in the Tomb of Amenophis II., so that at some period of upheaval it must have been used as a hiding-place for the regal dead, as was a cave across the mountains at Der al-Bahari. Perhaps those who secreted them here thought that a king who in life had slain seven chiefs with his own hand would make a potent guard. They were not mistaken. Through all the centuries the guests of that still house lay undisturbed.

We paused, though briefly – for it was fairly roasting outside – at the excavations of our countryman, Mr. Theodore M. Davis, who has brought to light so many priceless relics in this place; after which we bought an entire stock of oranges from an Arab who suddenly appeared from nowhere, sucked them ravenously, and set out, leading our donkeys up a broiling precipitous path over the mountains, for the house of Queen Hatasu, which lies at the base of the cliffs on the other side.

It was not very far, I suppose, but it was strenuous and seemed miles. We were rewarded, however, when we reached the plateau of the mountain top. From the brink of the great cliff we could look out over the whole plain of Thebes, its villages and its ruins, its green cultivation and its blazing sands. Once it was a vast city – "the city of a hundred gates and twenty thousand chariots of war." Through its centre flowed the Nile, a very fountain of life, its one outlet to the world. To the east and the west lay Nature's surest fortifications, the dead hills and the encompassing sands. It is estimated that the city of Paris could stand on this level sweep and that Thebes overspread it all. As at Ephesus, we tried to re-create that vanished city, but we did not try long, for the mid-day sun was too frying hot.

So we descended to the rest-house of Der al-Bahari, where we created a famine in everything resembling refreshments, liquid or otherwise, in that wayside shelter. Then out on the piazza we swung our fly-brushes, beat off the sellers of things, and tried to assimilate our half-baked knowledge.

We were in a mixed state of temples and tombs and dynasties and localities – of sacrificial processions, and gods of the "Underworld." The sun had got into our heads, too, and some of the refreshments had been of strange color and curious brands. It is no wonder that we drifted into deliriums of verse. I have forgotten who had the first seizure, but from internal evidence it was probably Fosdick – Fosdick of Ohio. This is it:

 
Queen Hatasu, of Timbuctoo,
She lived a busy life;
She fell in love with King Khufu,
And she became his wife.
She put him in a pyramid —
He put her in another,
And now four thousand years have gone
You can't tell one from tother.
 

I do remember how we tried to reason with the author; how we explained to him carefully that Hatasu, who was also called Hatshepset and certain other names, did not hail from Timbuctoo; also that King Khufu, alias Cheops, had been in his pyramid at least two thousand years, with fourteen dynasties on top of him, when that lady of the Nile was born. It was no use; he turned a glazed eye on us and said all periods looked alike to him, that art was long and life fleeting, that a trifle of two thousand years was as a few grains on the Egyptian sands of time. We saw, then, he was hopeless, but later he improved and seemed sorry. It did not matter; another member of the party had been taken with the poetic madness, and we gave room for his attack. It was of milder form, and mercifully short:

 
King Rameses, he strove to please,
And put his foes to flight;
To celebrate his victories
He toiled both day and night.
He filled full threescore temples with
His statues vast and grim,
And some of Mrs. Rameses
Who wa'n't knee-high to him.
 

I don't know why a malady of this sort should fall upon our party. Such things never happened on the ship, but then Egypt is different, as I have said. There was one more outbreak before we got the germ destroyed:

 
Behold the halls of Seti I.,
And also Seti II.;
Likewise of old Amenhetep
And haughty Hatasu.
They lived in state, their days were great
And glided gayly by;
Sometimes they used to rail at fate,
The same as you and I.
Oh, Seti I., your race is run,
And also Seti II.,
And lizards sleep where ages creep
In the house of Hatasu.
 

It was time to check the tendency; it was getting serious.

We went up to the "House of Hatasu" – all that is left of it – a beautiful fragment of what was built by the great Queen as her Holy of Holies. It is unlike other temples we have seen, with its square columns; its beautiful open portico; its fine ceiling, still perfect in workmanship and coloring. Queen Hatasu had ideas of her own about building; also, her own architect. His name was Senmut, and his tomb, a mile from the temple, commands a view of it to this day.

Hatasu once made a notable expedition to the lower east coast of Africa – to Punt, as it was called then, and she has recorded it on these walls. It shows the natives bringing valuable presents – woods, spices, gold, and the like – in exchange for glass beads and tin whistles, after the customary manner of such barter. A part of the relief shows the Prince of Punt and "Mrs. Punt," whose figure was certainly remarkable, followed by their family, all with hands raised in deference to the Egyptian Queen.

It was near here, in 1881, that the cave or pit was found containing the mummies of many kings, including Seti I., Rameses II., and others who had been stored here for safety. Arabs had been selling royal scarabs for some time, and the archæologists finally discovered the secret of their supply. It was a priceless find, and with the treasures of the tomb of Amenophis II., made the museum of Cairo the richest archæological depository in the world.

We put in the afternoon visiting temples, mostly of Rameses the Great, and looking at statues which he had caused to be erected of himself wherever there was room. I remember one colossal granite figure of that self-sufficient king, lying prostrate on the sand now, estimated to weigh a thousand tons – which is to say two million pounds. That statue was sixty feet high when it stood upright, and it is cut like a gem. It was brought down from Assuan in one piece, by barge, as was the enormous granite base, which is thirty feet long, sixteen feet wide, and eight feet thick.

I remember, too, some sun-dried brick – brick made by the Israelites, maybe – with the imprint of Rameses still on them, uneffaced after thirty-three centuries. The sun bakes hard in Egypt; no other kiln is needed. I remember a temple of Rameses III. and a pictorial record of one of his victories. His soldiers had reported a killing of twelve thousand of the enemy; he said:

"Go bring the evidence. If you have those dead men anywhere you can bring something to prove it."

So the army returned and got the right hands of their victims. The story is all cut there on the walls, and the hands are there too.

Rameses III. knew the custom inaugurated by his ancestor "The Great," of eliminating old names with new ones, and he took measures accordingly by cutting his own inscriptions deep. Some of them sink ten inches into the walls and will stay there a good while.

I had noticed one curious thing along the outer walls of all these old temples, to wit: row after row of smooth egg-shaped holes, ranging irregularly, one above the other, from the base upward – sometimes to the very top. It was as if they had been dug out by some animal or insect. I asked Gaddis, at last, what they were, and he told me this curious thing.

The childless Arab woman, he said, for ages had believed that some magic in these walls could make them fruitful, so had come and rubbed patiently with their fingers until they worked a few grains of the sandstone into a cup of water, which they drank with a prayer of hope. They had begun, he said, in that far-off time when the temples stood as clear of rubbish as they do to-day; and, as the years heaped up the débris, these anxious women had rubbed higher and higher up the walls until, with the drift of the ages, they had reached the very top. So there the record stands to-day, and when one realizes how little of that stone can be rubbed away with the finger-end; how comparatively few must have been the childless mothers, and then sees how innumerable and deep those holes are, he gets a sudden and comprehensive grasp of the vast stretch of time these walls stood tenantless, vanishing, and unregarded, save by those generations of barren women.

We raced away for the Colossi of Memnon, where, I fear, we did not linger as long as was proper. It was growing late – we were very tired and were overfull of undigested story and tangled chronology. Also the scarab men and flies were especially bad just there. We were willing to take a bare look at that majestic pair who have watched the sun rise morning after morning while a great city vanished away from around them, and then go steaming away across the sands for the Nile and the cool rest of the hotel.

Such a time as we had settling with those donkey-boys – the old white-turbaned sheik, owner of the donkeys, squatting and smoking indifferently while the storm raged about him. But it was over at last, and the boatmen sang again – a quiet afterlude of that extraordinary day – and collected baksheesh on the farther shore.