Читать книгу Eastern Life - Harriet Martineau - Страница 15

The temples of Aboo-Simbil are both of the time of Ramases II. – in the earlier part of the great Third Period. Nothing more interesting than these temples is to be found beyond the limits of Thebes.

I went up to the smaller temple early in the morning. Of the six statues of the façade, the two in the centre represent Athor, whose calm and gentle face is surmounted by the usual crown, – the moon contained within the cow's horns. On entering the portal in the rock, I found myself in a hall where there was plenty to look at, though the fires lighted by the Arabs have blackened the walls in some places, and the whole is, as I need not say, very old – nearly 1400 B.C. – This entrance hall is supported by six square pillars, all of which bear the head of Athor on the front face of their capitals, the other three faces being occupied with sculptures, once gaily painted, and still showing blue, red, and yellow colours. On the walls here were the men of the old military caste in their defensive armour – a sort of cuirass of chain armour – red links on a yellow ground: and their brethren the civilians, in red frocks: and the women in tight yellow garments, with red sashes tied in front. Most of the figures are represented in the act of bringing offerings to the gods: but on either side the door the hero Ramases is holding by the hair a captive who is on one knee, and looks up; in the one instance with a complete negro face; in the other, with a face certainly neither Egyptian nor negro, and whose chin ends in a peaked beard. Here we have the conquests of the hero in upper Africa, and probably in Asia. He holds up his faulchion, as if about to strike; but the goddess behind him lifts her hand, as if in intercession, while Osiris, in front, holds forth the great knife, as if to command the slaughter. When Osiris carries, as here, the emblems of the crosier and the flagellum or whip, he is present in his function of Judge: and here, accordingly, we see him deciding the fate of the nations conquered by Ramases.

Within this outer hall is a transverse corridor, ending in two rude chambers, where I found nothing but bats. But beyond the corridor lies the sacred chamber, the shrine of the deity. There she is, in the form of the crowned head of a cow, her emblematic disc being between the horns. In another part, she stands, as a cow, in a boat surrounded by water plants, the king and queen bringing offerings to this »Lady of Aboshek, the foreign land.« We shall meet with Athor frequently as »Lady of the West«; and therefore as the morning star: as the welcomer of the Sun at the end of his course; and as the mild and transient Night, which is quite a different personage from the stern and fixed Night of Chaos. As possessor or guardian of the West, Athor was patroness of the western part of Thebes – »the Libyan suburb,« as it was called of old.⁴⁴ Plutarch says that the death of Osiris was believed to have happened in her month – the third Egyptian month: that her shrines were in that month carried about in procession; at the time when the Pleiades appear and the husbandmen began to sow their corn. The countenance of this goddess was everywhere in the temples so mild and tranquil as to accord well with the imagery of the Summer Night, the Morning Star, and the Seedtime, which are associated, in the Egyptian worship, with her name. – I found the figure in the adytum (Holiest Place) much mutilated: but the head and ears were still distinctly visible. Hieroglyphic legends on each side declare her name and titles. This temple extends, from the portal, about ninety feet into the rock. Little as I had yet learned how to look at temples, I found this full of interest. – In the course of the morning, we detected some of our own crew making a fire against the sculptures in the hall. Of course, we interfered, with grave faces: but there is no hope that Arabs will not make their fires in such convenient places, whenever they can. A cave at the top of the bank is irresistible to them, whether it be sculptured or not.

I was impatient to get to the Colossi of the large temple, which looked magnificent from our deck. So, after breakfast, I set forth alone, to see what height I could attain in the examination of the statues.

The southernmost is the only complete one. The next to it is terribly shattered: and the other two have lost the top of the helmet. They are much sanded up, though, thanks to Mr. Hay, much less than they were. The sand slopes up from the half-cleared entrance to the chin of the northernmost colossus: and this slope of sand it was my purpose to climb. It was so steep, loose, and hot to the feet, that it was no easy matter to make my way up. The beetles, which tread lightly and seemed to like having warm feet, got on very well; and they covered the sand with a network of tracks: but heavier climbers, shod in leather, are worsted in the race with them. But one cannot reach the chin of a colossus every day: and it was worth an effort. And when I had reached the chin, I made a little discovery about it which may be worth recording, and which surprised me a good deal at the time. I found that a part of the lower jaw, reaching half-way up the lower lip, was composed of the mud and straw of which crude bricks are made. There had been evidently a fault in the stone, which was supplied by this material. It was most beautifully moulded. The beauty of the curves of these great faces is surprising in the stone; – the fidelity of the rounding of the muscles, and the grace of the flowing lines of the cheek and jaw: but it was yet more wonderful in such a material as mud and straw. I cannot doubt that this chin and lip were moulded when the material was in a soft state: – a difficult task in the case of a statue seventy feet high, standing up against the face of a rock. – I called the gentlemen up, to bear witness to the fact, and it set us looking for more instances. Mr. E. soon found one. Part of the dress of the Second Osiride on the right hand, entering the temple, is composed of this same material, as smoothly curved and nicely wrought as the chin overhead. On examining closely, we found that this layer of mud and straw covered some chiselling within. The artist had been carving the folds of the dress, when he came upon a fault in the stone which stopped his work till he supplied a surface of material which he could mould.

The small figures which stand beside the colossi and between their ankles, and which look like dolls, are not, as is sometimes said, of human size. The hat of a man of five feet ten inches does not reach their chins by two inches. These small figures are, to my eye, the one blemish of this temple. They do not make the great Ramases look greater, but only look dollish themselves.

On the legs of the shattered colossus are the Greek letters, scrawled as by a Greek clown, composing the inscription of the soldiers sent by Psammitichus in pursuit of the Egyptian deserters whom I mentioned as going up the country from Elephantine, when weary of the neglect in which they were left there. We are much obliged to »Damearchon, the son of Amaebichus, and Pelephus, the son of Udamus,« for leaving, in any kind of scrawl, a record of an event so curious. One of the strangest sensations to the traveller in Egypt, is finding such traces as these of persons who were in their day modern travellers seeing the antiquities of the country, but who take their place now among the ancients, and have become subjects of Egyptian history. These rude soldiers, carving their names and errand on the legs of an ancient statue as they went by, passed the spot a century and a half before Cambyses entered the country. One wonders what they thought of Thebes, which they had just seen in all its glory.

As nearly as we could judge by the eye, and by knowing pretty well the dimensions of the colossi, the façade, from the base of the thrones to the top of the row of apes, is nearly or quite one hundred feet high. Above rises the untouched rock.

The faces of Ramases outside (precisely alike) are placid and cheerful, – full of moral grace: but the eight Osirides within (precisely alike too) are more. They are full of soul. It is a mistake to suppose that the expression of a face must be injured by its features being colossal. In Egypt it may be seen that a mouth three feet wide may be as delicate, and a nostril which spans a foot as sensitive in expression as in any marble bust of our day. It is very wonderful, but quite true. Abdallatif has left us his testimony as follows, – in speaking of the Sphinx. »A little more than a bow-shot from these Pyramids, we see a colossal head and neck appearing above ground ... Its countenance is very charming, and its mouth gives an impression of sweetness and beauty. One would say that it smiles benignly. – An able man having asked me what I admired most of all that I had seen in Egypt, I told him that it was the truth of the proportions in the head of the Sphinx ... It is very astonishing that in a countenance so colossal, the sculptor should have preserved the precise proportions of all the parts, whilst Nature has presented no model of such a colossus, nor of anything which could be compared to it.«⁴⁵ I was never tired of gazing at the Osirides, everywhere, and trying to imprint ineffaceably on my memory the characteristics of the old Egyptian face; – the handsome arched nose, with its delicate nostril; the well-opened, though long eye; the placid, innocent mouth, and the smooth-rounded, amiable chin. Innocence is the prevailing expression; and sternness is absent. Thus the stiffest figures, and the most monotonous gesture, convey still only an impression of dispassionateness and benevolence. The dignity of the gods and goddesses is beyond all description, from this union of fixity and benevolence. The difficulty to us now is, not to account for their having been once worshipped, but to help worshipping them still. I cannot doubt their being the most abstract gods that men of old ever adored. Instead of their being engaged in wars or mutual rivalries, or favouritisms, or toils, or sufferings, here they sit, each complete and undisturbed in his function, – everyone supreme, – free from all passion, but capable of all mild and serene affections. The Greek and Roman gods appear like wayward children beside them. Herodotus says that the Greek gods were children to these, in respect of age:⁴⁶ and truly they appear so in respect of wisdom and maturity. Their limitation of powers, and consequent struggles, rivalries, and transgressions, their fondness and vindictiveness, their anger, fear, and hope, are all attributes of childhood, contrasting strikingly with the majestic passive possession of power, and the dispassionate and benignant frame of these ever-young old deities of Egypt. Vigilant, serene, benign, here they sit, teaching us to inquire reverentially into the early powers and condition of that Human Mind which was capable of such conceptions of abstract qualities as are represented in their forms. I can imagine no experience more suggestive to the thoughtful traveller, anywhere from pole to pole, than that of looking with a clear eye and fresh mind on the ecclesiastical sculptures of Egypt, perceiving, as such a one must do, how abstract and how lofty were the first ideas of Deity known to exist in the world. That he should go with clear eyes and a fresh mind is needful: for if he carries a head full of notions about idolatry, obscenity, folly, and ignorance, he can no more judge of what is before his eyes, – he can no more see what is before his face, – than a proud Mohammedan can apprehend Christianity in a Catholic chapel at Venice, or an arrogant Jew can judge of Quakerism or Quietism. – If the traveller be blessed with the clear eye and fresh mind, and be also enriched by comprehensive knowledge of the workings of the human intellect in its various circumstances, he cannot but be impressed, and he may be startled, by the evidence before him of the elevation and beauty of the first conceptions formed by men of the Beings of the unseen world. And the more he traces downwards the history and philosophy of religious worship, the more astonished he will be to find to what an extent this early theology originated later systems of belief and adoration, and how long and how far it has transcended some of those which arose out of it. New suggestions will thence arise, that where in the midst of what is solemn and beautiful he meets with what appears to modern eyes puerile and grotesque, such an appearance may deceive, and there may be a meaning contained in it which is neither puerile nor grotesque. He will consider that Cambyses might be more foolish in stabbing the bull Apis, to show that it could bleed, which nobody denied, than the priests in conserving a sacred idea in the form of the bull. He will consider that the Sphinx might be to Egyptian eyes, not a hideous compound animal, as it is when carved by an English stone-mason for a park gate, but a sacred symbol of the union of the strongest physical with the highest intellectual power on earth.

The seriousness I plead for comes of itself into the mind of any thoughtful and feeling traveller at such a moment as that of entering the great temple of Aboo-Simbil. I entered it at an advantageous moment, when the morning sunshine was reflected from the sand outside so as to cast a twilight even into the adytum, – two hundred feet from the entrance. The four tall statues in the adytum, ranged behind the altar, were dimly visible: and I hastened to them, past the eight Osirides, through the next pillared hall, and across the corridor. And then I looked back, and saw beyond the dark halls and shadowy Osirides the golden sand-hill without, a corner of blue sky, and a gay group of the crew in the sunshine. It was like looking out upon life from the grave. When we left the temple, and the sun had shifted its place, we could ho longer see the shrine. It is a great advantage to enter the temple first when the sun is rather low in the east.

The eight Osirides are perfectly alike, – all bearing the crosier and flagellum, and standing up against huge square pillars, the other sides of which are sculptured, as are the walls all round. The aisles behind the Osirides are so dark that we could not make out the devices without the help of torches: and the celebrated medallion picture of the siege would have been missed by us entirely if one of the crew had not hoisted another on his shoulders to hold a light above the height of their united statures. There we saw the walled town, and the proceedings of the besieged and besiegers, as they might have happened in the middle ages. The north wall is largely occupied by a tablet, bearing the date of the first year of Ramases the Great; and on the other side of the temple, between two of the pillars, is another tablet, bearing the date of the thirty-fifth year of his reign. The battle scenes on the walls are all alive with strong warriors, flying foes, trampled victims, and whole companies of chariots. I observed that the chariot-wheels were not mere discs, as we should have expected in so early an age, but had all six spokes. Every chariot-wheel I saw in the country had six spokes, however early the date of the sculpture or painting. One figure on the south wall is admirable, – a warrior in red, who is spearing one foe, while he has his foot on the head of another.

There are two groups of chambers, of three each, opening out of this large hall, and two more separate side-chambers. The six included in the two groups are very nearly (but not quite) covered with representations of offerings to the gods: very pretty, but with little variety. The offerings are of piles of cakes and fruit, lamps, vases of various and graceful shapes, and flasks. The lotus, in every stage of growth, is frequent. Sometimes it is painted yellow, veined with red.

The boat, that wonderful and favourite symbol which we meet everywhere, is incessantly repeated here, – the seated figure in the convolution at bow and stern, the pavilion in the middle, and the paddle hanging over the side. One of these boats is carried by an admirable procession of priests, as a shrine, which is borne on poles of palm-trunks lashed together. Stone deewáns run round the walls of most of these little chambers. We could find no evidence of there being any means of ventilating these side-rooms; and how they could be used without we cannot conceive, – enclosed as they are in the solid rock.

The second and smaller hall has four square pillars, sculptured, of course. Next comes the corridor, which has a bare unfinished little chamber at each end, now possessed by bats. The altar in the adytum is broken; and some barbarous wretches have cut their insignificant initials on it. Are there not rocks enough close by the entrance on which they might carve their memorials of their precious selves, if carve they must? But this profaning of the altar is not the worst. One creature has cut his name on the tip of the nose of the northernmost colossus: others on the breast and limbs of the Osirides; and others over a large extent of the sculptured walls.

One of the four god figures in the adytum is Ra, who also occupies the niche in the façade over the entrance. Ra is the Sun. He is not Amun Ra, the Unutterable,⁴⁷ – the God of gods, – the only god: but a chief, as the term Ra seems to express. Phra (Ra with the article), by us miscalled Pharaoh, means a chief or king among men: and Ra is the chief of the visible creation: and here, in this temple, he is the principal deity, the others being Khem, or Egypt, Kneph, Osiris, and Isis. As we go on we shall perhaps be able to attain some notion of the relative offices and dignities of the gods. At the outset, it is necessary to bear in mind chiefly that the leading point of belief of the Egyptians, from the earliest times known to us, was that there was One Supreme, – or, as they said, one only God, – who was to be adored in silence (as Jamblichus declares from the ancient Hermetic books), and was not to be named; that most of the other gods were deifications of his attributes; while others again, as Egypt, the Nile, the Sun, the Moon, the West, etc., were deifications of the powers or forces on which the destiny of the Egyptian nation depended. We have also to remember that we must check our tendency to suppose Allegory in every part of the Egyptian system of theology. It is difficult to check this tendency to allegorise, bringing as we do the ideas of a long subsequent age to the interpretation of a theological system eminently symbolical to its priests, though not to the people at large: but we must try to conceive of these Egyptian gods as being, to the general Egyptian mind, actual personages, inseparably connected with the facts and appearances in which they were believed to exist. If we make the mistake of supposing them merely the names of such facts and appearances, and proceed to interpret them by the method of allegorical narrative, we shall soon find ourselves perplexed, and at a loss: for our view of the facts and appearances of Nature can never be like those of the Egyptians, whose science, though unquestionably great, lay in a different direction (for the most part) from ours, and whose heavens and earth were hardly like the same that we see and inhabit.

For one instance – in their theory of the formation of the world, they believed that when the formless void of eternal matter began to part off into realms, the igneous elements ascending and becoming a firmament of fiery bodies, and the heavier portions sinking and becoming compacted into earth and sea, the earth gave out animals – beasts and reptiles; an idea evidently derived from their annual spectacle of the coming forth of myriads of living creatures from the soil of their valley, on the subsidence of the flood. When we remember that to them the Nile was the sea, and so called by them, and that they had before them the spectacle which is seen nowhere else, of the springing of the green herb after the separation of the waters from the land, we shall see how different their view of the creation must be from any which we could naturally form. In this particular case, we have adopted their traditions given to us through the mind of Moses; but where we have not the mind of Moses to interpret them to us, we must abstain from reading their meanings by any other light than that which they themselves afford us. As another instance, how should we allegorise for them about the West? What is the West to us? It is the place where the heavenly bodies disappear: and that is the only point we have in common with them. With them, the West was the unseen state. It was a dreary, unknown region beyond the dark river which the dead had to cross. The abodes of the dead were on its verge; and those solemn caves were the entrance of the Amenti, the region of judgment and retribution. Nothing was heard thence but the bark of the wild dog at night; the vigilant guardian, as they believed, of the heavenly abode which the wicked were not to approach.⁴⁸ Nothing was seen there but the descent of the sun, faithful to the goddess who was awaiting him behind the hills;⁴⁹ and who, hanging above those hills as the brightest of the stars, showed herself the Protectress of the Western Shore. Such elements as these, which they themselves give us, we may take and think over; but if we go on to mix up with them modern Greek additions about Apollo, and yet more modern metaphysical conceptions, in order to construct allegories as a key to old Egyptian theology, we cannot but diverge widely from old Egyptian ideas. And what is worse, we shall miss the perception of the indubitable earnestness of their faith. We have every possible evidence of their unsurpassed devoutness: but we shall lose the sense of it if we get into the habit of supposing them to have set up images of abstract qualities (as abstract qualities are to us) instead of dwelling in constant dependence on living divine personages. We may find symbols everywhere in the Egyptian theology; and analogies in abundance: but I do not know that any instances of complete or continuous allegory can be adduced. When we try to construct such, or think we have found them, we presently begin to complain of an intermixture of personages or of offices, such as should show us, not that the Egyptian worship was confused, but that we do not clearly understand the ideas of the worshippers, and must have mixed them with some of our own.

Kneph, known by his Ram's head, is, as I said, in the adytum with Ra; but, though a higher god than Ra, this temple is not dedicated to him, but to Ra, as is shown by the appearance of the latter on the façade. The deeds of the great Ramases, his adorer, are brought as an offering, and presented on the walls. – There appears at first something incongruous in the mingling, in these temples, of the benign serenity of the gods with the fury and cruelty of their warrior worshippers: but one soon remembers that it is an incongruity which remains to this day, and will doubtless remain till war is abolished. A custom so durable as that of consecrating warfare to God must have an idea at the bottom of it: and the idea is plain enough here. We find the same idea in the mind of this Ramases, and of Moses in his Song of deliverance, and of the Red Indian who shakes the scalps of his enemies at the end of his spear in his war-dance, and of the Crusaders in their thanksgivings for victory over the Saracens, and of our Cromwell in Ireland, and in the vindictive stanza of our National Anthem; – the idea that power to conquer is given from above, and that the results are therefore to the glory of him who gives the power. Such a method of observance, being natural in certain stages of the human mind, is right in its place; – in a temple of Ramases, for instance. The wonder is to find it in the jubilations of Christian armies, in the despatches of Cromwell,⁵⁰ and even in the Prayer-book of the English Church, in direct connexion with an acknowledgment of the Prince of Peace, whose kingdom was not of this world.

One thing which struck me as strange in this hall of giants was a dwarfish statue, without a head. It measured two or three inches less in each limb than our middle-size, and was of course very insignificant among the Osirides. What it was, and how it came there, we could not learn.

When we looked abroad from the entrance, the view was calm and sweet. A large island is in the midst of the river, and shows a sandy beach and cultivated interior. The black, peaked hills of the opposite desert close in to the south, leaving only a narrow passage for the river. – It was nearly evening before we put off from the bank below the temple. It had been an animating and delightful day; and I found myself beginning to understand the pleasure of »temple-haunting«; a pleasure which so grew upon us, that we felt real grief when it came to an end. I, for one, had suspected beforehand that this work would soon become one of mere duty or routine: but we found, even before we left Nubia, that we were hardly satisfied to sit down to breakfast without having explored a temple.