Some of the records of these early journeys, the first attempts to
explore the interior of Africa, may still be read, carved on the walls
of the tombs where the brave explorers sleep. One baron, called Herkhuf,
has told us of no fewer than four separate expeditions which he made
into the Soudan. On his first journey, as he was still young, he went in
company with his father, and was away for seven months. The next time he
was allowed to go alone, and brought back his caravan safely after an
absence of eight months.
On his third journey he went farther than before, and gathered so large
a quantity of ivory and gold-dust that three hundred asses were required
to bring his treasure home. So rich a caravan was a tempting prize
for the wild tribes on the way; but Herkhuf persuaded one of the
Soudanese chiefs to furnish him with a large escort, and the caravan was
so strongly guarded that the other tribes did not venture to attack it,
but were glad to help its leader with guides and gifts of cattle.
Herkhuf brought his treasures safely back to Egypt, and the King was so
pleased with his success that he sent a special messenger with a boat
full of delicacies to refresh the weary traveller.
[Illustration: PLATE 12.
A DESERT POSTMAN.]
But the most successful of all his expeditions was the fourth. The King
who had sent him on the other journeys had died, and was succeeded by a
little boy called Pepy, who was only about six years old when he came to
the throne, and who reigned for more than ninety years--the longest
reign in the world's history. In the second year of Pepy's reign, the
bold Herkhuf set out again for the Soudan, and this time, along with
other treasures, he brought back something that his boy-King valued far
more than gold or ivory.
You know how, when Stanley went in search of Emin Pasha, he discovered
in the Central African forests a strange race of dwarfs, living by
themselves, and very shy of strangers. Well, for all these thousands of
years, the forefathers of these little dwarfs must have been living in
the heart of the Dark Continent. In early days they evidently lived not
so far away from Egypt as when Stanley found them, for, on at least one
occasion, one of Pharaoh's servants had been able to capture one of the
little men, and bring him down as a present to his master, greatly to
the delight of the King and Court. Herkhuf was equally fortunate. He
managed to secure a dwarf from one of these pigmy tribes, and brought
him back with his caravan, that he might please the young King with his
quaint antics and his curious dances.
When the King heard of the present which his brave servant was bringing
back for him, he was wild with delight. The thought of this new toy was
far more to the little eight-year-old, King though he was, than all the
rest of the treasure which Herkhuf had gathered; and he caused a letter
to be written to the explorer, telling him of his delight, and giving
him all kinds of advice as to how careful he should be that the dwarf
should come to no harm on the way to Court.
The letter, through all its curious old phrases, is very much the kind
of letter that any boy might send on hearing of some new toy that was
coming to him. "My Majesty," says the little eight-year-old Pharaoh,
"wisheth to see this pigmy more than all the tribute of Punt. And if
thou comest to Court having this pigmy with thee sound and whole, My
Majesty will do for thee more than King Assa did for the Chancellor
Baurded." (This was the man who had brought back the other dwarf in
earlier days.) Little King Pepy then gives careful directions that
Herkhuf is to provide proper people to see that the precious dwarf does
not fall into the Nile on his way down the river; and these guards are
to watch behind the place where he sleeps, and look into his bed ten
times each night, that they may be sure that nothing has gone wrong.
The poor little dwarf must have had rather an uncomfortable time of it,
one fancies, if his sleep was to be broken so often. Perhaps there was
more danger of killing him with kindness and care, than if they had left
him more to himself; but Pepy's anxiety was very like a boy. However,
Herkhuf evidently succeeded in bringing his dwarf safe and sound to the
King's Court, and no doubt the quaint little savage proved a splendid
toy for the young King. One wonders what he thought of the great cities
and the magnificent Court of Egypt, and whether his heart did not weary
sometimes for the wild freedom of his lost home.
Herkhuf was so proud of the King's letter that he caused it to be
engraved, word for word, on the walls of the tomb which he hewed out for
himself at Elephantine, and there to this day the words can be read
which tell us how old is the story of African exploration, and how a boy
was always just a boy, even though he lived five thousand years ago, and
reigned over a great kingdom.
CHAPTER X
A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY
About 3,500 years ago, there reigned a great Queen in Egypt. It was not
usual for the Egyptian throne to be occupied by a woman, though great
respect was always shown to women in Egypt, and the rank of a King's
mother was considered quite as important as that of his father. But once
at least in her history Egypt had a great Queen, whose fame deserves to
be remembered, and who takes honourable rank among the great women, like
Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria, who have ruled kingdoms.
During part of her life Queen Hatshepsut was only joint sovereign along
with her husband, and in the latter part of her reign she was joint
sovereign with her half-brother or nephew, who succeeded her; but for at
least twenty years she was really the sole ruler of Egypt, and governed
the land wisely and well.
Perhaps the most interesting thing that happened in her reign was the
voyage of discovery which she caused to be made by some ships of her
fleet. Centuries before her time, when the world was young, the
Egyptians had made expeditions down the Red Sea to a land which they
sometimes called Punt, and sometimes "The Divine Land." Probably it was
part of the country that we now know as Somaliland. But for a very long
time these voyages had ceased, and people only knew by hearsay, and by
the stories of ancient days, of this wonderful country that lay away by
the Southern Sea.
One day, the Queen tells us, she was at prayers in the temple of the god
Amen at Thebes, when she felt a sudden inspiration. The god was giving
her a command to send an expedition to this almost forgotten land. "A
command was heard in the sanctuary, a behest of the god himself, that
the ways which lead to Punt should be explored, and that the roads to
the Ladders of Incense should be trodden." In obedience to this command,
the Queen at once equipped a little fleet of the quaint old galleys that
the Egyptians then used (Plate 1), and sent them out, with picked crews,
and a royal envoy in command, to sail down the Red Sea, in search of the
Divine Land. The ships were laden with all kinds of goods to barter with
the Punites, and a guard of Egyptian soldiers was placed on board.
We do not know how long it took the little squadron to reach its
destination. Sea voyages in those days were slow and dangerous. But at
last the ships safely reached the mouth of the Elephant River in
Somaliland, and went up the river with the tide till they came to the
village of the natives. They found that the Punites lived in curious
beehive-shaped houses, some of them made of wicker-work, and placed on
piles, so that they had to climb into them by ladders. The men were not
negroes, though some negroes lived among them; they were very much like
the Egyptians in appearance, wore pointed beards, and were dressed only
in loincloths, while the women wore a yellow sleeveless dress, which
reached halfway between the knee and ankle.
Nehsi, the royal envoy, landed with an officer and eight soldiers, and,
to show that he came in peace, he spread out on a table some presents
for the chief of the Punites--five bracelets, two gold necklaces, a
dagger, with belt and sheath, a battle-axe, and eleven strings of glass
beads--much such a present as a European explorer might give to-day to
an African chief. The natives came down in great excitement to see the
strangers who had brought such treasures, and were astonished at the
arrival of such a fleet. "How is it," they said, "that you have reached
this country, hitherto unknown to men? Have you come by way of the sky,
or have you sailed on the waters of the Divine Sea?" The chief, who was
called Parihu, came down with his wife Aty, and his daughter. Aty rode
down on a donkey, but dismounted to see the strangers, and, indeed, the
poor donkey must have been greatly relieved, for the chieftainess was an
exceedingly fat lady, and her daughter, though so young, showed every
intention of being as fat as her mother.
After the envoy and the chief had exchanged compliments, business began.
The Egyptians pitched a tent in which they stored their goods for
barter, and to put temptation out of the way of the natives, they drew a
guard of soldiers round the tent. For several days the market remained
open, and the country people brought down their treasures, till the
ships were laden as deeply as was safe. The cargo was a varied and
valuable one. Elephants' tusks, gold, ebony, apes, greyhounds, leopard
skins, all were crowded into the galleys, the apes sitting gravely on
the top of the bales of goods, and looking longingly at the land which
they were leaving.
But the most important part of the cargo was the incense, and the
incense-trees. Great quantities of the gum from which the incense was
made were placed on board, and also thirty-one of the incense sycamores,
their roots carefully surrounded with a large ball of earth, and
protected by baskets. Several young chiefs of the Punites accompanied
the expedition back to Thebes, to see what life was like in the strange
new world which had been revealed to them. Altogether the voyage home
must have been no easy undertaking, for the ships, with their heavy
cargoes, must have been very difficult to handle.
The arrival of the squadron at Thebes, which they must have reached by a
canal connecting the Nile with the Red Sea, was made the occasion of a
great holiday festival. Long lines of troops in gala attire came out to
meet the brave explorers, and an escort of the royal fleet accompanied
the exploring squadron up to the temple quay where the ships were to
moor. Then the Thebans feasted their eyes on the wonderful treasures
that had come from Punt, wondering at the natives, the incense, the
ivory, and, above all, at a giraffe which had been brought home. How the
poor creature was stowed away on the little Egyptian ship it is hard to
see; but there he was, with his spots and his long neck, the most
wonderful creature that the good folks of Thebes had ever seen. The
precious incense gum was stored in the temple, and the Queen herself
gave a bushel measure, made of a mixture of gold and silver, to measure
it out with.
So the voyage of discovery had ended in a great success. But Queen
Hatshepsut's purpose was only half fulfilled as yet. In a nook of the
limestone cliffs, not far from Thebes, her father before her had begun
to build a very wonderful temple, close beside the ruins of an older
sanctuary which had stood there for hundreds of years. Hatshepsut had
been gradually completing his work, and the temple was now growing into
a most beautiful building, very different from ordinary Egyptian
temples. From the desert sands in front it rose terrace above terrace,
each platform bordered with rows of beautiful limestone pillars, until
at last it reached the cliffs, and the most sacred chamber of it, the
Holy of Holies, was hewn into the solid wall of rock behind.
This temple the Queen resolved to make into what she called a Paradise
for Amen, the god who had told her to send out the ships. So she planted
on the terraces the sacred incense-trees which had been brought from
Punt; and, thanks to careful tending and watering, they flourished well
in their new home. And then, all along the walls of the temple, she
caused her artists to carve and paint the whole story of the voyage. We
do not know the names of the artists who did the work, though we know
that of the architect, Sen-mut, who planned the building. But, whoever
they were, they must have been very skilful sculptors; for the story of
the voyage is told in pictures on the walls of this wonderful temple, so
that everything can be seen just as it actually happened more than three
thousand years ago.
You can see the ships toiling along with oar and sail towards their
destination, the meeting with the natives, the palaver and the trading,
the loading of the galleys, and the long procession of Theban soldiers
going out to meet the returning explorers. Not a single detail is
missed, and, thanks to the Queen and her artists, we can go back over
all these years, and see how sailors worked, and how people lived in
savage lands in that far-off time, and realize that explorers dealt with
the natives in foreign countries in those days very much as they deal
with them now. When our explorers of to-day come back from their
journeys, they generally tell the story of their adventures in a big
book with many pictures; but no explorer ever published the account of a
voyage of discovery on such a scale as did Queen Hatshepsut, when she
carved the voyage to Punt on the walls of her great temple at
Deir-el-Bahri, and no pictures in any modern book are likely to last as
long, or to tell so much as these pictures that have come to light again
during the last few years, after being buried for centuries under the
desert sands.
[Illustration: PLATE 13.
THE BARK OF THE MOON, GUARDED BY THE DIVINE EYES.]
Queen Hatshepsut has left other memorials of her greatness besides the
temple with its story of her voyage. She has told us how one day she was
sitting in her palace, and thinking of her Creator, when the thought
came into her mind to rear two great obelisks before the Temple of Amen
at Karnak. So she gave the command, and Sen-mut, her clever architect,
went up the Nile to Aswan, and quarried two huge granite blocks, and
floated them down the river. Cleopatra's Needle, which stands on the
Thames Embankment, is 68-1/2 feet high, and it seems to us a huge stone
for men to handle. Our own engineers had trouble enough in bringing it
to this country, and setting it up. But these two great obelisks of
Queen Hatshepsut were 98-1/2 feet high, and weighed about 350 tons
apiece. Yet Sen-mut had them quarried, and set up, and carved all over
from base to summit in seven months from the time when the Queen gave
her command! One of them still stands at Karnak, the tallest obelisk in
the temple there; while the other great shaft has fallen, and lies
broken, close to its companion. They tell us their own plain story of
the wisdom and skill of those far-off days; and perhaps the great Queen
who thought of her Creator as she sat in her palace, and longed to
honour Him, found that the God whom she ignorantly worshipped was indeed
not far from His servant's heart.
CHAPTER XI
EGYPTIAN BOOKS
The Egyptians were, if not quite the earliest, at least among the
earliest of all the peoples of the world to find out how to put down
their thoughts in writing, or in other words, to make a book; and one of
their old books, full of wise advice from a father to his son, is,
perhaps, the oldest book in the world. Two words which we are constantly
using might help to remind us of how much we owe to their cleverness.
The one is "Bible," and the other is "paper." When we talk of the Bible,
which just means "the Book," we are using one of the words which the
Greeks used to describe the plant out of which the Egyptians made the
material on which they wrote; and when we talk of paper, we are using
another name, the commoner name, of the same plant. For the Egyptians
were the first people to make paper, and they used it for many centuries
before other people had learned how much handier it was than the other
things which they used.
Yet, if you saw an Egyptian book, you would think it was a very curious
and clumsy thing indeed, and very different from the handy volumes which
we use nowadays. When an Egyptian wanted to make a book, he gathered the
stems of a kind of reed called the papyrus, which grew in some parts of
Egypt in marshy ground. This plant grew to a height of from 12 to 15
feet, and had a stalk about 6 inches thick. The outer rind was peeled
off this stalk, and then the inner part of it was separated, by means
of a flat needle, into thin layers. These layers were joined to one
another on a table, and a thin gum was spread over them, and then
another layer was laid crosswise on the top of the first. The double
sheet thus made was then put into a press, squeezed together, and dried.
The sheets varied, of course, in breadth according to the purpose for
which they were needed. The broadest that we know of measure about 17
inches across, but most are much narrower than that.
When the Egyptian had got his paper, he did not make it up into a volume
with the sheets bound together at the back, as we do. He joined them end
to end, adding on sheet after sheet as he wrote, and rolling up his book
as he went along; so when the book was done it formed a big roll,
sometimes many feet long. There is one great book in the British Museum
which measures 135 feet in length. You would think it very strange and
awkward to have to handle a book like that.
But if the book seemed curious to you, the writing in it would seem
still more curious; for the Egyptian writing was certainly the
quaintest, and perhaps the prettiest, that has ever been known. It is
called "hieroglyphic," which means "sacred carving," and it is nothing
but little pictures from beginning to end. The Egyptians began by
putting down a picture of the thing which was represented by the word
they wanted to use, and, though by-and-by they formed a sort of alphabet
to spell words with, and had, besides, signs that represented the
different syllables of a word, still, these signs were all little
pictures. For instance, one of their signs for _a_ was the figure of an
eagle; their sign for _m_ was a lion, and for _u_ a little chicken; so
that when you look at an Egyptian book written in the hieroglyphic
character, you see column after column of birds and beasts and creeping
things, of men and women and boats, and all sorts of other things,
marching across the page.
When the Egyptians wanted any of their writings to last for a very long
time, they did not trust them to the frail papyrus rolls, but used
another kind of book altogether. You have heard of "sermons in stones"?
Well, a great many of the Egyptian books that tell us of the great deeds
of the Pharaohs were written on stone, carved deep and clear in the hard
granite of a great obelisk, or in the limestone of a temple wall. When
one of the Kings came back from the wars, he generally published the
account of his battles and victories by carving them on the walls of one
of the great temples, or on a pillar set up in the court of a temple,
and there they remain to this day for scholars to read.
When the hieroglyphics were cut in stone, the lines were often filled in
with pastes of different colours, so that the whole writing was a blaze
of beautiful tints, and the walls looked as if they were covered with
finely-coloured hangings. Of course, the colours have mostly faded now;
but there are still some temples and tombs where they can be seen,
almost as fresh as when they were first laid on, and from these we can
gather some idea of how wonderfully beautiful were these stone books of
ancient Egypt. The scribes and carvers knew very well how beautiful
their work was, and were careful to make it look as beautiful as
possible; so much so, that if they found that the grouping of figures to
make up a particular word or sentence was going to be ugly or clumsy,
they would even prefer to spell the word wrong, rather than spoil the
appearance of their picture-writing. Some of you, I dare say, spell
words wrong now and again; but I fancy it isn't because you think they
look prettier that way.
But now let us turn back again to our papyrus roll. Suppose that we have
got it, clean and fresh, and that our friend the scribe is going to
write upon it. How does he go about it? To begin with, he draws from his
belt a long, narrow wooden case, and lays it down beside him. This is
his palette; rather a different kind of palette from the one which
artists use. It is a piece of wood, with one long hollow in it, and two
or three shallow round ones. The long hollow holds a few pens, which are
made out of thin reeds, bruised at the ends, so that their points are
almost like little brushes. The shallow round hollows are for holding
ink--black for most of the writing, red for special words, and perhaps
one or two other colours, if the scribe is going to do a very fine piece
of work. So he squats down, cross-legged, dips a reed-pen in the ink,
and begins. As he writes he makes his little figures of men and beasts
and birds face all in the one direction, and his readers will know that
they must always read from the point towards which the characters face.
Now and then, when he comes to some specially important part, he draws,
in gay colours, a little picture of the scene which the words describe.
Now, you can understand that this picture-writing was not very easy work
to do when you had nothing but a bruised reed to draw all sorts of
animals with. Gradually the pictures grew less and less like the
creatures they stood for to begin with, and at last the old hieroglyphic
broke down into a kind of running hand, where a stroke or two might
stand for an eagle, a lion, or a man. And very many of the Egyptian
books are written in this kind of broken-down hieroglyphic, which is
called "hieratic," or priestly writing. But some of the finest and
costliest books were still written in the beautiful old style.
On their papyrus rolls the Egyptians wrote all sorts of things--books of
wise advice, stories like the fairy-tales which we have been hearing,
legends of the gods, histories, and poems; but the book that is oftenest
met with is one of their religious books. It is nearly always called the
"Book of the Dead" now, and some people call it the Egyptian Bible, but
neither of these names is the right one. Certainly, it is not in the
least like the Bible, and the Egyptians themselves never called it the
Book of the Dead. They called it "The Chapters of Coming Forth by Day,"
and the reason they gave it that name was because they believed that if
their dead friends knew all the wisdom that was written in it, they
would escape all the dangers of the other world, and would be able in
heaven to go in and out just as they had done upon earth, and to be
happy for ever.
The book is full of all kinds of magical charms against the serpents and
dragons and all the other kinds of evil things that sought to destroy
the dead person in the other world. The scribes used to write off copies
of it by the dozen, and keep them in stock, with blank places for the
names of the persons who were to use them. When anyone died, his
friends went away to a scribe, and bought a roll of the Book of the
Dead, and the scribe filled in the name of the dead person in the blank
places. Then the book was buried along with his mummy, so that when he
met the demons and serpents on the road to heaven, he would know how to
drive them away, and when he came to gates that had to be opened, or
rivers that had to be crossed, he would know the right magical words to
use.
Some of these rolls of the Book of the Dead are very beautifully
written, and illustrated with most wonderful little coloured pictures,
representing different scenes of life in the other world, and it is from
these that we have learned a great deal of what the Egyptians believed
about the judgment after death, and heaven. But the common ones are very
carelessly done. The scribes knew that the book was going to be buried
at once, and that nobody was likely ever to see it again; so they did
not care much whether they made mistakes or not, and often they missed
out parts of the book altogether. They little thought that, thousands of
years after they were dead, scholars would dig up their writings again,
and read them, and see all their blunders.
Of course, a great deal of this book is dreadful rubbish, and anything
more unlike the noble and beautiful teaching of the Bible you can
scarcely imagine. It has no more sense in it than the "Fee! fi! foh!
fum!" of our fairy-stories. Here is one little chapter from it. It is
called "The Chapter of Repulsing Serpents," and the Egyptians supposed
that when a serpent attacked you on your way to heaven, you had only to
recite this verse, and the serpent would be powerless to harm you:
"Hail, thou serpent Rerek! advance not hither. Stand still now, and thou
shalt eat the rat which is an abomination unto Ra (the Sun-God), and
thou shalt crunch the bones of a filthy cat."
It sounds very silly, doesn't it? And there are many things quite as
silly as this in the book. You can scarcely imagine how wise people like
the Egyptians could ever have believed in such drivel. But, then, side
by side with this miserable stuff, you find really wonderful and noble
thoughts, that surely came to these men of ancient days from God
Himself, telling them how every man must be judged at last for all that
he has done on earth, and how only those who have done justly, and loved
mercy, and walked humbly with God, will be accepted by Him.
CHAPTER XII
TEMPLES AND TOMBS
Anyone travelling through our own land, or through any European country,
to see the great buildings of long ago, would find that they were nearly
all either churches or castles. There are the great cathedrals, very
beautiful and wonderful; and there are the great buildings, sometimes
partly palaces and partly fortresses, where Kings and nobles lived in
bygone days. Well, if you were travelling in Egypt to see its great
buildings, you would find a difference. There are plenty of churches,
or temples, rather, and very wonderful they are; but there are no
castles or palaces left, or, at least, there are next to none. Instead
of palaces and castles, you would find tombs. Egypt, in fact, is a land
of great temples and great tombs.
[Illustration: Plate 14
GATEWAY OF THE TEMPLE OF EDFU. _Pages_ 74, 75]
Now, one can see why the Egyptians built great temples; for they were a
very religious nation, and paid great honour to their gods. But why did
they give so much attention to their tombs? The reason is, as you will
hear more fully in another chapter, that there never was a nation which
believed so firmly as did the Egyptians that the life after death was
far more important than life in this world. They built their houses, and
even their palaces, very lightly, partly of wood and partly of clay,
because they knew that they were only to live in them for a few years.
But they called their tombs "eternal dwelling-places"; and they have
made them so wonderfully that they have lasted long after all the other
buildings of the land, except the temples, have passed away.
First of all, let me try to give you an idea of what an Egyptian temple
must have been like in the days of its splendour. People come from all
parts of the world to see even the ruins of these buildings, and they
are altogether the most astonishing buildings in the world; but they are
now only the skeletons of what the temples once were, and scarcely give
you any more idea of their former glory and beauty than a human skeleton
does of the beauty of a living man or woman. Suppose, then, that we are
coming up to the gates of a great Egyptian temple in the days when it
was still the house of a god who was worshipped by hundreds of thousands
of people.
As we pass out of the narrow streets of the city to which the temple
belongs, we find ourselves standing upon a broad paved way, which
stretches before us for hundreds of yards. On either side, this way is
bordered by a row of statues, and these statues are in the form of what
we call sphinxes--that is to say, they have bodies shaped like crouching
lions, and on the lion-body there is set the head of a different
creature. Some of the sphinxes, like the Great Sphinx, have human heads;
but those which border the temple avenues have oftener either ram or
jackal heads.
As we pass along the avenue, two high towers rise before us, and between
them is a great gateway. In front of the gate-towers are two tall
obelisks, slender, tapering shafts of red granite, like Cleopatra's
Needle on the Thames Embankment. They are hewn out of single blocks of
stone, carved all over with hieroglyphic figures, polished till they
shine like mirrors, and their pointed tops are gilded so that they flash
brilliantly in the sunlight. Beside the obelisks, which may be from 70
to 100 feet high, there are huge statues, perhaps two, perhaps four, of
the King who built the temple. These statues represent the King as
sitting upon his throne, with the double crown of Egypt, red and white,
upon his head. They also are hewn out of single blocks of stone, and
when you look at the huge figures you wonder how human hands could ever
get such stones out of the quarry, sculpture them, and set them up.
Before one of the temples of Thebes still lie the broken fragments of a
statue of Ramses II. When it was whole the statue must have been about
57 feet high, and the great block of granite must have weighed about
1,000 tons--the largest single stone that was ever handled by human
beings. Plate 10 will give you some idea of what these huge statues
looked like.
Fastened to the towers are four tall flagstaves--two on either side of
the gate--and from them float gaily-coloured pennons. The walls of the
towers are covered with pictures of the wars of the King. Here you see
him charging in his chariot upon his fleeing enemies; here, again, he is
seizing a group of captives by the hair, and raising his mace or his
sword to kill them; but whatever he is doing, he is always gigantic,
while his foes are mere helpless human beings. All these carvings are
brilliantly painted, and the whole front of the building glows with
colour; it is really a kind of pictorial history of the King's reign.
Now we stand in front of the gate. Its two leaves are made of cedar-wood
brought from Lebanon; but you cannot see the wood at all, for it is
overlaid with plates of silver chased with beautiful designs. Passing
through the gateway, we find ourselves in a broad open court. All round
it runs a kind of cloister, whose roof is supported upon tall pillars,
their capitals carved to represent the curving leaves of the palm-tree.
In the middle of the court there stands a tall pillar of stone,
inscribed with the story of the great deeds of Pharaoh, and his gifts to
the god of the temple. It is inlaid with turquoise, malachite, and
lapis-lazuli, and sparkles with precious stones.
At the farther side of this court, another pair of towers and another
gateway lead you into the second court. Here we pass at once out of
brilliant sunlight into semi-darkness; for this court is entirely roofed
over, and no light enters it except from the doorway and from grated
slits in the roof. Look around you, and you will see the biggest single
chamber that was ever built by the hands of man. Down the centre run two
lines of gigantic pillars which hold up the roof, and form the nave of
the hall; and beyond these on either side are the aisles, whose roofs
are supported by a perfect forest of smaller columns.
Look up to the twelve great pillars of the nave. They soar above your
head, seventy feet into the air, their capitals bending outwards in the
shape of open flowers. On each capital a hundred men could stand safely;
and the great stone roofing beams that stretch from pillar to pillar
weigh a hundred tons apiece. How were they ever brought to the place?
And, still more, how were they ever swung up to that dizzy height, and
laid in their places? Each of the great columns is sculptured with
figures and gaily painted, and the surrounding walls of the hall are all
decorated in the same way. But when you look at the pictures, you find
that it is no longer the wars of the King that are represented. The
inside of the temple is too holy for such things. Instead, you have
pictures of the gods, and of the King making all kinds of offerings to
them; and these pictures are repeated again and again, with endless
inscriptions, telling of the great gifts which Pharaoh has given to the
temple.
Finally we pass into the Holy of Holies. Here no light of day ever
enters at all. The chamber, smaller and lower than either of the others,
is in darkness except for the dim light of the lamp carried by the
attendant priest. Here stands the shrine, a great block of granite, hewn
into a dwelling-place for the figure of the god. It is closed with cedar
doors covered with gold plates, and the doors are sealed; but if we
could persuade the priest to let us look within, we should see a small
wooden figure something like the one that we saw carried through the
streets of Thebes, dressed and painted, and surrounded by offerings of
meat, drink, and flowers. For this little figure all the glories that we
have passed through have been created: an army of priests attends upon
it day by day, dresses and paints it, spreads food before it, offers
sacrifices and sings hymns in its praise.
Behind the sanctuary lie storehouses, which hold corn and fruits and
wines enough to supply a city in time of siege. The god is a great
proprietor, holding more land than any of the nobles of the country. He
has a revenue almost as great as that of Pharaoh himself. He has troops
of his own, an army which obeys no orders but his. On the Red Sea he has
one fleet, bringing to his temple the spices and incense of the
Southland; and from the Nile mouths another fleet sails to bring home
cedar-wood from Lebanon, and costly stuffs from Tyre. His priests have
far more power than the greatest barons of the land, and Pharaoh, mighty
as he is, would think twice before offending a band of men whose hatred
could shake him on his throne. Such was an Egyptian temple 3,000 years
ago, when Egypt was the greatest power in the world.
But if the temples of ancient Egypt are wonderful, the tombs are almost
more wonderful still. Very early in their history the Egyptians began to
show their sense of the importance of the life after death by raising
huge buildings to hold the bodies of their great men. Even the earliest
Kings, who lived before there was any history at all, had great
underground chambers scooped out and furnished with all sorts of things
for their use in the after-life. But it is when we come to that King
Khufu, who figures in the fairy-stories of Zazamankh and Dedi, that we
begin to understand what a wonderful thing an Egyptian tomb might be.
Not very far from Cairo, the modern capital of Egypt, a line of strange,
pointed buildings rises against the sky on the edge of the desert. These
are the Pyramids, the tombs of the great Kings of Egypt in early days,
and if we want to know what Egyptian builders could do 4,000 years
before Christ, we must look at them. Take the largest of them, the Great
Pyramid, called the Pyramid of Cheops. Cheops is really Khufu, the King
who was so much put out by Dedi's prophecy about Rud-didet's three
babies. No such building was ever reared either before or since. It
stands, even now, 450 feet in height, and before the peak was destroyed,
it was about 30 feet higher. Each of its four sides measures over 750
feet in length, and it covers more than twelve acres of ground, the size
of a pretty large field. But you will get the best idea of how
tremendous a building it is when I tell you that if you used it as a
quarry, you could build a town, big enough to hold all the people of
Aberdeen, out of the Great Pyramid; or if you broke up the stones of
which it is built, and laid them in a line a foot broad and a foot deep,
the line would reach a good deal more than halfway round the world at
the Equator. You would have some trouble in breaking up the stones,
however; for many of the great blocks weigh from 40 to 50 tons apiece,
and they are so beautifully fitted to one another that you could not get
the edge of a sheet of paper into the joints!
Inside this great mountain of stone there are long passages leading to
two small rooms in the centre of the Pyramid; and in one of these rooms,
called "the King's Chamber," the body of the greatest builder the world
has ever seen was laid in its stone coffin. Then the passages were
closed with heavy plug-blocks of stone, so that no one should ever
disturb the sleep of King Khufu. But, in spite of all precautions,
robbers mined their way into the Pyramid ages ago, plundered the coffin,
and scattered to the winds the remains of the King, so that, as Byron
says, "Not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops."
The other pyramids are smaller, though, if the Great Pyramid had not
been built, the Second and Third would have been counted world's
wonders. Near the Second Pyramid sits the Great Sphinx. It is a huge
statue, human-headed and lion-bodied, carved out of limestone rock. Who
carved it, or whose face it bears, we do not certainly know; but there
the great figure crouches, as it has crouched for countless ages,
keeping watch and ward over the empty tombs where the Pharaohs of Egypt
once slept, its head towering seventy feet into the air, its vast limbs
and body stretching for two hundred feet along the sand, the strangest
and most wonderful monument ever hewn by the hands of man (Plate 11).
Later on in Egyptian history the Kings and great folk grew tired of
building pyramids, and the fashion changed. Instead of raising huge
structures above ground, they began to hew out caverns in the rocks in
which to lay their dead. Round about Thebes, the rocks on the western
side of the Nile are honeycombed with these strange houses of the
departed. Their walls, in many cases, are decorated with bright and
cheerful pictures, showing scenes of the life which the dead man lived
on earth. There he stands, or sits, placid and happy, with his wife
beside him, while all around him his servants go about their usual work.
They plough and hoe, sow and reap; they gather the grapes from the vines
and put them into the winepress; or they bring the first-fruits of the
earth to present them before their master (Plate 15). In other pictures
you see the great man going out to his amusements, fishing, hunting, or
fowling; or you are taken into the town, and see the tradesmen working,
and the merchants, and townsfolk buying and selling in the bazaars. In
fact, the whole of life in Ancient Egypt passes before your eyes as you
go from chamber to chamber, and it is from these old tomb-pictures that
we have learned the most of what we know of how people lived and worked
in those long-past days.
In one wild rocky glen, called the "Valley of the Kings," nearly all the
later Pharaohs were buried, and to-day their tombs are one of the sights
of Thebes. Let us look at the finest of them--the tomb of Sety I., the
father of that Ramses II. of whom we have heard so much. Entering the
dark doorway in the cliff, you descend through passage after passage and
hall after hall, until at last you reach the fourteenth chamber, "the
gold house of Osiris," 470 feet from the entrance, where the great King
was laid in his magnificent alabaster coffin. The walls and pillars of
each chamber are wonderfully carved and painted. The pillars show
pictures of the King making offerings to the gods, or being welcomed by
them, but the pictures on the walls are very strange and weird. They
represent the voyage of the sun through the realms of the
under-world, and all the dangers and difficulties which the soul of the
dead man has to encounter as he accompanies the sun-bark on its journey.
Serpents, bats, and crocodiles, spitting fire, or armed with spears,
pursue the wicked. The unfortunates who fall into their power are
tortured in all kinds of horrible ways; their hearts are torn out; their
heads are cut off; they are boiled in caldrons, or hung head downwards
over lakes of fire. Gradually the soul passes through all these dangers
into the brighter scenes of the Fields of the Blessed, where the
justified sow and reap and are happy. Finally, the King arrives,
purified, at the end of his long journey, and is welcomed by the gods
into the Abode of the Blessed, where he, too, dwells as a god in
everlasting life.
[Illustration: Plate 15
WALL-PICTURES IN A THEBAN TOMB. _Pages_ 80, 81]
The beautiful alabaster coffin in which the mummy of King Sety was laid
is now in the Soane Museum, London. When it was discovered, nearly a
century ago, it was empty, and it was not till 1872 that some modern
tomb-robbers found the body of the King, along with other royal mummies,
hidden away in a deep pit among the cliffs. Now it lies in the museum at
Cairo, and you can see the face of this great King, its fine, proud
features not so very much changed, we can well believe, from what they
were when he reigned 3,200 years ago. In the same museum you can look
upon the faces of Tahutmes III., the greatest soldier of Egypt; of
Ramses II., the oppressor of the Israelites; and, perhaps most
interesting of all, of Merenptah, the Pharaoh who hardened his heart
when Moses pled with him to let the Hebrews go, and whose picked troops
were drowned in the Red Sea as they pursued their escaping slaves.
It is very strange to think that one can see the actual features and
forms on which the heroes of our Bible story looked in life. The reason
of such a thing is that the Egyptians believed that when a man died, his
soul, which passed to the life beyond, loved to return to its old home
on earth, and find again the body in which it once dwelt; and even,
perhaps, that the soul's existence in the other world depended in some
way on the preservation of the body. So they made the bodies of their
dead friends into what we call "mummies," steeping them for many days in
pitch and spices till they were embalmed, and then wrapping them round
in fold upon fold of fine linen. So they have endured all these hundreds
of years, to be stored at last in a museum, and gazed upon by people who
live in lands which were savage wildernesses when Egypt was a great and
mighty Empire.
CHAPTER XIII
AN EGYPTIAN'S HEAVEN
In this chapter I want to tell you a little about what the Egyptians
thought of heaven--what it was, where it was, how people got there after
death, and what kind of a life they lived when they were there. They had
some very quaint and curious ideas about the heavens themselves. They
believed, for instance, that the blue sky overhead was something like a
great iron plate spread over the world, and supported at the four
corners, north, south, east, and west, by high mountains. The stars were
like little lamps, which hung down from this plate. Right round the
world ran a great celestial river, and on this river the sun sailed day
after day in his bark, giving light to the world. You could only see him
as he passed round from the east by the south to the west, for after
that the river ran behind high mountains, and the sun passed out of
sight to sail through the world of darkness.
Behind the sun, and appearing after he had vanished, came the moon,
sailing in its own bark. It was protected by two guardian eyes, which
watched always over it (Plate 13), and it needed the protection, for
every month it was attacked by a great enemy in the form of a sow. For a
fortnight the moon sailed on safely, and grew fuller and rounder; but at
the middle of the month, just when it was full, the sow attacked it,
tore it out of its place, and flung it into the celestial river, where
for another fortnight it was gradually extinguished, to be revived again
at the beginning of the next month. That was the Egyptians' curious way of accounting for the waxing and waning of the moon, and many of their other ideas were just as quaint as this. |
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