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Hieroglyphs
By the time Upper and Lower Egypt were united in
300 B.C., ancient Egyptians had an answer to their
need for an alphabet: 24 simple-to-use pictorial
letters. But temple priests and scribes soon turned
this easy answer into a complex problem when they
filled the hieroglyphic alphabet with some 700 signs
and arcance symbols which only they could understand.
The use of hieroglyphs died out at the end of the 4th
century A.D., though the ancient Egyptian languages
continued to be spoken by Copts.
The
art of reading hieroglyphic inscriptions remained a
mystery for centuries until Napoleon's soldiers found
the three-language Rosetta stone in 1799. With the
help of the stone, Jean-Francois Champollion, a French
scholar, cracked the hieroglyphs code and discovered
that hieroghlyphs can be written right-to-left,
left-to-right, or up-and-down. You can easily tell
which way, because the animals always stare toward the
beginning of the sentence. Kings and queens enclosed
their names in "cartouches". Here are two famous royal
monograms you may see in temples and tombs.
Valley of the Kings:
The Western bank of the Nile, closer to where the sun began its
nightly course through the nether world, was always
the preferred place for tombs. Pharaohs of the 18th,
19th and 20th Dynasties chose
this forbidding rock valley for their eternal
resting-place. Undisturbed by the annual rising of the
Nile waters and hidden away in rock-hewn sepulchers
with secret, sealed entrances, they were well fitted
out for their underworld journey. Furnishings and
costumes, mummiform statues or carved figures to act
as servants and concubines, as well as food and a
variety of drinks were all care-fully included in each
tomb. The royal voyagers even had a detailed guidebook
to the dangers of the celestial journey a copy of the
Book of the dead was standard tomb equipment. At the
end of the trip they would meet the divine Osiris who
would enlist the aid of Anubis and Thoth, gods of
funeral rights and the wisdom, in judging the new
arrivals: a pharaoh's heart would be weighed in a
balance against a feather, and if it was not heavy
with sin, the pharaoh would be admitted to a pleasant
life in the Land of Osiris. In the Kingdom of Egypt
which he has just left, he would take on an aura of
deity like a lesser Osiris, and his family and loyal
subjects would worship him in his funerary temple.
A king
began work on his elaborate tomb and funeral equipment
as soon as he came to power. Despite this admirable
lack of procrastination, many monarchs had the
misfortune to die before all was ready. They were
immediately sealed up in their imperfect tombs as all
country's best artisans and craftsmen marched off to
begin work on the New King's tomb. Though tombs might
be guarded for centuries, and the hidden entrances
lost to living memory, the ingenuity of grave-robbers
increased along with the richness of the spoils. In
the thousands of years since the New Kingdom, thieves
succeeded in finding and breaking into every tomb
except one. As you walk up the churching gravel path
to the Rest-House, the Tomb of Tutankhamon,
No.62, will be right before you. Though the tomb is
very modest the king died unexpectedly and was buried
in a hurry it is the only Pharaonic tomb ever
discovered intact. The dazzling wealth of these single
lesser kings makes it almost impossible to imagine the
total extent of riches once secreted in this
forbidding valley.
Sacred
apes glower from the walls of Tutankhamon's small,
simple tomb, and four shapely maidens are carved into
his sarcophagus to protect him. The solid-gold inner
coffin has been removed to the Egyptian Museum in
Cairo, along with the other treasures from the tomb.
Perhapes
the most splendid tomb in the Valley of the kings is
the Tomb of Seti 1, No. 17, south of the
Rest-House. The murals in the descending rooms and
corridors are still of striking beauty and freshness
though they are over 3,000 years old. The lowest room
once held the King's massive alabaster sarcophagus: it
is now in the Soane Museum in London. The
semi-cylindrical vault over the sarcophagus spot is
painted as a blue sky with gods, goddesses and animals
among the starry constellations. Seti's great tomb was
unfinished when he died, as you can see from the wall
paintings and excavation work in the lowest chambers.
Back down the path from Seti's tomb, keep to the left
to reach the Tomb of Ramesis 111, N0.11. A fine
yellow-gold solar disc over the doorway leads to a
corridor with many small side-chambers bearing
interesting and unusual illustrations of daily crafts
and labours. In one picture, two harpists sing the
praises of Ramesis 111 before the gods, adding music
to this frenzy of terrestrial and celestial activity.
The tomb of Horemheb, No. 57, is only a few steps west
of No.11. The paintings here are particularly unusual,
done on a dark background to achieve a heightened
dramatic effect. In the last room, the artists had
hardly even completed the preliminary sketches in red,
when Horemheb was ready to start his trip to the land
of Osiris.
Follow the
western (right-hand) path from Horemhob's tomb to get
to No.35, the Tomb of Amenophis 11, which is at
the end f it. The paintings in the tomb are plain and
of subdued colour, but very finely done. The king's
richly decorated sandstone sarcophagus is still in
place. You must do some climbing and scrambling to get
to the Tomb of Thutmose 111, No. 34. it is the
farthest south from the Rest-House, along a narrow
path and up a steel stairway, then down another
stairway and through a tiny entrance. Its decoration
is very plain, with colour used quite sparingly,
though the result is attractive. Sixty-two royal tombs
had been uncovered so far in the Valley of the Kings,
of which thirteen are usually open to the public.
Repair and preservation work continues, and you should
not be surprised if one or more tombs are closed
temporarily.
After the
hot and dusty tramp around the tombs, the cool, breezy
terrace of the Rest-House beckons. Prices for coffee,
tea or cold drinks are higher than need be, but after
the thrill of exploring the Valley's artistic riches,
a few minutes' relaxation are essential to absorb the
wealth of impressions.
From Luxor to Aswan
On the way up-river, at Esna, 60 kilometers
south of Luxor, you'll find a temple dedicated to
Khnum, the god who created men and animals by moulding
them from Nile clay. Centuries of daily life on this
spot have raised the level of the ground so that the
temple now lies well below street level. Because the
temple was filled with sand and rubble for centuries,
it was protected to a certain extent.
Excavations
revealed the hypo-style hall of a temple first built
in the 18th Dynasty, and completely
reconstructed in the time of the Ptolemies and of the
Romans, when Egyptian decorative art was in deep
decline. Farther along the river, mid-way between
Luxor and Aswan, the large town of Edfu holds
Egypt's best-preserved temple. Dedicated to Hours, the
multiform god of the sun and planets, the hawk (symbol
of the god) is prominent in its decoration. One reason
the temple is so well preserved is that it was
finished very late, only a few decades before Antony
and Cleopatra held sway over Egypt. Take a horse-drawn
carriage from the Nile's bank, and in five minutes it
will bring you, bones still rattling, to the temple
grounds.
The Temple of
Horus has a huge pylon, almost as big as Karnak's.
Thirty-eight columns surrounded the court, and a very
fine granite statue of Horus stands guard over the
entry to the first hypostyle hall. Every available
surface is carved with hieroglyphs describing
offerings to the god. In the very centre of the holy
of holies is a great block of granite hollowed out as
a sanctuary, with another block standing in front of
it to bear the sacred barque. A modern copy of the
barque itself is on view in the room directly behind
the god's sanctuary. Other small chambers, lit only by
tiny windows in the stone, preserve the sombre gloom.
This is rarely seen in another temples which are often
roof-less, letting the brilliant sun-light.
A modest
restaurant near the entrance to the temple grounds
provides refreshments and a cool place to sit. The
parade of shoeshine boys, souvenir vendors and
bright-eyed children passing by your table will
provide more amusement than you'll ever need.
Continuing
along the Nile, your first view of the temple at Kom
Ombo will fill you with excitement. It stands right on
the Nile's eastern bank, looking just like a Nile-side
temple should look. Unique in all Egypt, Kom Ombo
Temple is shared equally by two gods: Sobek, the
crocodile god of Nile fertility, and Haroeris, the
great winged solar disc. The first temple rose during
the time of the 18th Dynasty, but virtually
all you see was built much later under the Ptolemies
in the three centuries before the birth of Christ.
Everything
here is in Paris: double doorways lead into the great
court and through the two hypostyle halls to a double
sanctuary. To make the temple come alive, try to
imagine the doorways fitted with their massive wooden
doors, and the walls, columns and arches glowing with
rich colours in the semi-darkness of the roofed
interior.
To the
right of the temple entrance is a small chapel
dedicated to Hathor, now containing an unusual legacy:
some mummified crocodiles sacred to Sobek. North of
the temple court a stone staircase descends in a
spiral to the local Nilometre at the bottom of a
circular well.
Aswan
The town of Aswan (pop. 200,000) awakened in the
1960s to a flood of foreign engineers who had come to
plan construction of an immense dam across the Nile.
The Aswan High Dam (Sad el-Aali) was built by teams of
engineers from the Soviet Union who directed a crew of
35,000 Egyptians in the work. The electricity and
flood control facilities that it provided brought
profound changes to the economy and agriculture of the
country.
While not
all of the results of its construction had been
foresee, as ecological experts are now beginning to
fear, most agree that the benefits of the project
outweigh the disadvantages. When the enormous dam was
completed in 1972, the town changed character
completely. Once a smaller version of Luxor, a town of
farmers, holiday-makers and archaeologists, Aswan
became an industrial centre with factories for iron
and steel, fertilizer chemicals, and sugar. Today
despite the changes all around it, the centre of the
town retains the same pleasant quality the once made
it a favoured wintering spot for the late Aga Khan and
other wealthy visitors. White-sailed feluccas, like
great one-winged water birds, slip rapidly up and down
the Nile, dodging among the islands. Horse carts stand
at the entrances of hotels, waiting for tourists to
climb in for a clip-clop ride among the eucalyptus,
citrus and palm trees. The gold and grey of the desert
hills is best at dawn, when the twitter of birds and
braying of donkeys signal the beginning of yet another
perfectly sunny day.
While
you're here, go by taxi to the High Dam (about
10 kilometers from town). In the Lotus0shaped monument
to Soviet-Egyptian cooperation you can take a lift to
the top for a fine view of the Dam and Lake Nasser.
The Lake extends over 500 Kilometers south, past the
Egyptian frontier and into the Sudan.
Industry
of a different sort brought wealth to Aswan in
Pharaonic times. The beautiful red granite from which
obelisks were cut is native to the town, and a few
minutes ride by taxi from the centre will bring you to
the quarries. A mammoth unfinished obelisk,
fractured during cutting and abandoned, shows how
these magnificent monuments were painstakingly knew by
hand and polished to a glassy smoothness.
Aswan
is a good place to hire a felucca for a tour of the
islands and the western bank of the Nile.
Elephantine Island,
the largest, holds the
ruined Temple of Khnum, the work of many pharaohs down
to the ptolemies and even the Romans. The Aswan
Museum, housed in an early-20th-century
villa, is right next to the ruins. The set of stairs
cut in the rock below the villa descends to Aswan's
Nilometre, where you'll see the elegant marble
water-level makers still in place. Kitchener's
Island (or island of flowers) was a gift to the
influential Consul-General of Great Britain in Egypt,
and now serves as a botanical garden. It's one of
Aswan's most pleasant places for a stroll. At the
island southern tip is a duck research station just
follow the sound of the quacky cacophony. As you might
imagine, this is a favourite destination for Aswan's
children. On the hills above the western bank of the
Nile stands the Mausoleum of the Aga Khan, whose full
title was Sultan Muhammed Shah Al-Huseini, Aga Khan
111, 48th Imam of the Shia Imami Ismailis,
which is a Moslem sect whose adherents live chiefly in
Iran and Pakistain. The Aga Khan (1877-1957) built a
villa in Aswan just below the mausoleum. Fell in love
with the spot, and decided to stay for ever. From the
mausoleum, a path winds across the desert sand to the
ruined 7th-century.
Monastery of St. Simeon.
North along the Nile's west bank lies a typical
Nubian village where life moves at an easy pace much
as it did in centuries past. Ducks, donkeys and goats
amble in the streets, young girls fetch buckets of
water from a Nile Canal, and groups of boys devote
themselves to a hectic game of football. Remember that
if you plan to photograph or film villagers, you must
always ask their permission in advance.
Local
potentates known as the lords of elephantine Island
are carved in the rock. Some interesting traces of
decoration survive, as do pigeons and bats in
disconcerting abundance. A few tombs contain stone
blocks on which offerings were sacrificed, and one
tomb, the 12th Dynasty tomb of saram-bot 1
(or Sirenput), is complete with the mummy of Mrs.
Sarambot who welcomes you in, "starting" with eyeless
sockets in the shadowy light. With a few actors and a
camera crew, these tombs would yield a very convincing
horror film in no time at all. But they are among the
oldest in Egypt, and a visit to the hillside ledge
affords a fine view of Aswan and the Nile.
Aswan has
its share of great Pharaonic temples. When many were
threatened by the rising waters of Lake Nasser during
construction of the High Dam, the most important ones
were moved to the higher ground. The famous Temple
of Philae is a case in point. Before the first
Aswan Dam was built, around 1900, the temples formed
on Philae Island one of Egypt's most impressive
sights; they were then partially submerged until the
High Dam operations threatened them with total
disappearance. In a vast international rescue effort
coordinated by UNESCO, they were reassembled in all
their glory on the Island of Agilkia, some 300 yards
to the north. The great Temple of Isis flourished at
about the time of Christ, and is the largest and most
distinctive of the island temples. Unfortunately, the
secret stairway inside the great pylon can no longer
be viewed-or climbed.
Another
taxi-ride to a different dock and then a rental boat,
will get you to temples from Kalabsha, which were once
located on the banks of the Nile some 50 kilometres
to the south. The temples were moved here closer to A
swan and to its appreciative tourists with the
financial help of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Largest in the temple Mandoulis, a classic Egyptian
temple built in Roman times. To the left the entrance
to Mandoulis is the pretty little Temple of Kertassi,
with capitals bearing the half-human, half-bovine face
of Hathor. Behined the temple of Mandouils is Beti El-Wali,
moved with American aid from its former site. The
temple's murals show the military campaigns of Ramesis
11 in wars against various unattractive and easily
defeated foreign enemies.
Abu Simbel
Of the many thrills which await visitors to Egypt,
from that first glimpse of the pyramids to a quiet
moment in Karnak's great hypostyle hall, few are more
moving than when one stands face-to-face with the four
colossal statues of Ramesis 11 at Abu Simbel. If
possible, stay over-night at the small hotel here and
rise early to see the sun illuminate the temple Façade
and penetrate to the depth of its inner sanctum.
Here at
the limits of Upper Egypt, Ramesis 11 built his temple
in honour of Harmakhis (Guardian of the Gates to the
Nether World), Amon-ra (Solar God), path (God of
Creativity), and in honour of himself, Ramesis 11. The
four colossal figures, 60 feet high and directly
facing the rising sun, are all of pharaoh himself,
with his queen and daughters at his feet. Above the
entryway is the high-relief figure of Amon-Ra. A row
of baboons, symbols of wisdom, sit hunched along the
upper border of the tall façade. More tremendous
statues surrounded you as you enter the temple, these
being of Ramesis 11in the guise of Osiris. Bas-reliefs
on all sides tell of the monarch's generous offerings
to the god's, of his triumphant military campaigns,
and his merciless treatment of captives. In the very
depths of the temple Ramesis 11 sits in state with the
gods to whom the construction is dedicated. The
perfection of Ramesis' accomplishment is echoed in the
restoration work planned by a Swedish firm and carried
out in 1968-72 by UNESCO. A doorway to the right of
the façade leads to the interior of the artificial
mountain made to receive the temple. Charts and
diagrams tell the story (in English) of the Temple's
move from a spot now inundated by Lake Nasser to its
new, air-conditioned man-made site.
The
caretaker, bearing the giant ankh (life symbol) which
is a temple key, will let you into the smaller Temple
of Hathor. Four of the statues on the façade are of
Ramesis 11, while the other two show his queen,
Nefertari dressed as the goddess Hathor. Interior
decoration is heavily in favour of the feminine side
of the Egyptian pantheon although, predictably,
Ramesis 11 is here as well. The benevolent cow in the
depths of the temple is Hathor in her animal guise.
Photographers
should visit Abu Simbel as early as possible, for the
statues throw heavy shadows as the day wears on.
Everyone who arrives at his spellbinding place, over
600 miles from the noise and bustle of Cairo, will
want to take a few peaceful moments to gaze at Lake
Nasser, a tranquil sea in the midst of the timeless
desert. |
