Volume I Part 24 (1/2)
Next in point of age to the building of Queen Hatasu is that which is called the _Ramesseuypte_ have clearly proved, than the so-called _Toth by Diodorus[244]
Erroneous though it be, this latter designation is by no means without interest, as it proves that, at the tiin to the edifice The whole tereat conqueror seemed to live and breathe on every stone; hereand terrible, with his threatening hand raised over the heads of his conquered eneht, was raised in the courtyard; to-day it lies broken upon the ground Battle scenes are to be distinguished upon the reainst the Khetas reat i and his coht upon the bank of the Orontes, in which Rameses, when surrounded by the enemy, won safety for himself by his own personal valour and presence of mind His proas celebrated by Pentaour, a contemporary poet, in an epic canto which has survived to our day Rameses is there made to ascribe his safety and all the honour of his victory to his father A himself into the _melee_, snatched him from the very hands of his enemies
[244] DIODORUS, i ---- 47-49
Medinet-Abou, which ht be called _The Second Ramesseum_, is to Rameses III what the pretended tomb of Osymandias is to Rameses II
His presence pervades both the te pavilion Its bas-reliefs represent one of the greatest events in Egyptian, we ht almost say, in ancient, history, namely, the victory won by Rameses over a confederation of the nations of the north and west, of those ere called the mariti ards certain peoples ere destined, in reat part in the politics of the Mediterranean
Each of the buildings which we have just noticed had but a single proprietor They were each dedicated to theto prevent the association in a single te ties of blood, and this course was taken in the temple of Gournah, situated in the same district of Thebes It was commenced by Rameses I, the founder of the nineteenth dynasty, continued by his son, Seti I, and finished by his grandson, Raure in it with the attributes of Osiris The inscriptions enu, in each nome, for the service of the annual sacrificial celebrations; and thus the building reveals itself as a temple to the perpetual honour of the two first princes of a race which did so ypt
The famous colossi of Amenophis III, known to the ancients as the _Statues of Me
18 and Pl vi) The temple built by this prince near the site of the Raht traces which still exist cover a vast space, and suggest that the building nificence[245]
[245] This must have been the structure which STRABO calls the _Memnonium_, and near to which he seems to place the two colossi (xvii p 816) The true naht easily be confused with that of the ination persisted in discovering everywhere in Egypt, and the similarity of soundall the foreign travellers who visited the country A curious passage in PAUSANIAS (_Attica_, 42) shows us, however, that the Egyptian scholars of his time kne properly to convey the naners: ”I was less struck by thatof soara, ”than by a colossal statue which I saw beyond the Nile in Egypt, not far from the _pipes_ This colossus is a statue of the sun, or of Me to the common tradition It is said that Meypt, and that he penetrated as far as Susa
But the Thebans themselves deny that it is Memnon They declare that it represents Phamenoph (F?e??f), as born in their own country” The story told by PHILOSTRATUS (_Life of Apollonius_, l vi p 232) of the visit of the sorcerer to Memnon, shows that in his ti but ruins, such as broken columentary walls and shattered statues Even then the monumental completeness of the ”Amenophium” had vanished
Only one of those Theban temples which rise upon the left bank of the river is free from all trace of a funerary or commemorative purpose, namely, the temple at Medinet-Abou which bears the ovals of Thoth been frequently enlarged and added to, so been made as recently as in the time of the Roman Emperors In this respect it resereat teht bank of the river Like theradual and impersonal matter Every century added its stone, and each successive king engraved his name upon its walls How to account for its exceptional situation we do not know It is possible that those funerary teinal invention of the successors of Thothmes; perhaps that constructed by Hatasu at Dayr-el-Bahari was the first of the series
However this may have been, the new type became a success as soon as it was invented; all the other temples in the district reat deities of Egypt, and otten in them They contain numerous representations of the princes in whose honour they were erected perfor acts of worshi+p before Amen-Ra, the Theban God _par excellence_, who is often accompanied by Mout and Khons, the other two members of the Theban triad These temples were therefore consecrated, like als of Thebes, to those local deities which, after the establishment of that city as the capital of the whole country, became the supreme national Gods Those Gods were asas in their own peculiar sanctuaries on the right bank of the river In both places they received the sae and sacrifices, but in the funerary temples of the left bank they found themselves associated, _paredral_ as the Greeks would say, with the princes to whose memory the temples were raised These princes were represented with the attributes of Osiris, both in the statues which were placed against the piers in the courtyard and in the bas-reliefs upon the long flat surfaces of the walls By these attributes they becareat deity as the couarantor of their future resurrection In this capacity the deceased prince orshi+pped as a God by his own family Thus, in the temple of Gournah, we find Rarandson, Ra Amen-Ra, Khons, and Rameses I at one and the sa, as represented in the chambers of these temples, recalls the scene which is carved upon alreater variety and more detail, in the bas-reliefs on the internal walls of theto establish between the western temples at Thebes and the funerary charaphical nature of the pictures which fores presented to our gaze by the chamber walls of the mastaba are not, indeed, so personal and anecdotical as those of the temples, but they contain an epitomized representation of the every-day life, of the pleasures and the yptian It is easy to understand hoith the progress of civilization, the more historic incidents in the life of an individual, and especially when that individual was a king, caeneral in their application To embellish the tomb of a conqueror with pictures of his battles and victories was to surround his which made his happiness or his honour while alive Pictures of soive joy to the _double_ of him who had performed them, and would help to relieve the _ennui_ of the monotonous life after death Hence the tendency which is so marked in the bas-reliefs of the first Theban Empire, especially in those at Beni-Hassan The constant and universal theyptian monarchy were not abandoned; scenes similar to those of the mastabas, are, indeed, frequently met with in the Theban toht out for reproduction which would have a more particular application; there is an evident desire to hand down to future generations concrete presentht appear worthy of reraphy thus came in time to play an is or other royal personages were concerned
Similar pictures are to be met with here and there in teured upon the opposite page (Fig 174), but in such cases they are invariably on the outer walls At Luxor, for instance, the caainst the peoples of Syria are thus displayed; and at Karnak it is upon the external walls of the hypostyle hall that the victories of Seti I and Rameses II are sculptured In the interiors of all these courts and halls we hardly find any subjects treated but those which are purely religious; such as fe hi him from their breasts, a the 175); or one God presenting the king to another (Fig 33); or the king paying hoe to sos 14 and 176) We find such religious motives as these continually repeated, upon wall and colus to the epoch of the Ptoleht bank of the river pictures of a ious character are universal; on the left bank those with an historical aim are more frequent
It will be seen that the difference between the two kinds of temple, between that of the necropolis and that of the city, is not so striking and conspicuous as to be readily perceived by the first comer who crosses from the one bank of the river to the other; but the variations are quite sufficiently marked to justify the distinction propounded by Mariette According to him the temples in the necropolis are funerary chapels which owe their increased size and the richness of their decoration to the general hly developed taste of the century in which they were built But it is enough for our present purpose to have indicated the places which they occupied in the vast architectural compositions which formed the tombs of a Seti or a Rameses They had each a double function to fulfil
They were foundations , chapels in which his fete-day could be kept and the memory of his achievements renewed; but they were at the same time temples in which the national Gods orshi+pped by himself and his descendants, in which those Gods were perpetually adored for the services which they had done hiht still do his have a right to be considered temples, and we shall defer the consideration of their architectural arrangements, which differ only in details fros, until we coypt
[Illustration: FIG 174--Rameses II in battle; Luxor (Champollion, pl 331)]
[Illustration: FIG 175--Painting in a royal tomb at Gournah
Amenophis II upon the lap of a Goddess (Champollion, pl 160)]
We shall here content ourselves with re that the separation of the tomb and the funerary chapel by soypt The different parts of the royal tomb were closely connected under the Meement yptian notions as to a second life
[Illustration: FIG 176--A to Amen Decoration of a pier at Thebes; fro within reach of his hand
Without trouble to himself he could make use of all of the matters which had been provided for the support of his precarious existence: the corpse in the mummy pit, the statues in the _serdab_, the portraits in bas-relief upon the walls of the public chah the chinks between the pieces of stone by which the as filled up, and through the conduits contrived in the thickness of the walls, the rateful scent of the incense, and of the burnt fat of the victiht thus into juxtaposition one with another, the elements of the tomb were mutually helpful They lent themselves to that intermittent act of condensation, so to speak, which froave renewed substance and consistency to the phantom upon which the future life of the deceased depended This concentration of all the acts and objects, which had for their aim the preservation of the deceased for a second term of life, was obviously destroyed as soon as the division of the tomb into two parts took place The mummy, hidden away in the depths of those horizontal wells in the flank of the Western Range of which we have spoken, would see the benefit of the services held in its honour upon the Theban plain At such a distance it would neither hear the prayers nor catch the scent of the offerings And the _double_? Is it to be supposed that he oscillated between the colossi in the temple where the funerary sites were celebrated, and the chamber in which the corpse reposed?
[Illustration: FIG 177--Flaying the funerary victim From a tomb of the 5th dynasty at Sakkarah (Boulak)]
Before they could have accepted this division of the toyptians must have arrived at some less childish conception of the future life than that of their early civilization That primitive conception was not entirely banished from their minds; evidence of its persistency is, indeed plentiful, but a radually superi which was the representative of the deceased after death becaradually less material and more spiritual; in time it escaped from its enforced sojourn in the tomb and approached more nearly to that which we call the soul This soul, like the nocturnal sun, passed a period of probation and purgation in the under world, and, thanks to the protection of Osiris and the other deities of the shades, was at last enabled to return to earth and rejoin the body which it had formerly inhabited The problem of death and a future life was resolved in much the same way by the Greeks and by all other races who drew yptians They all looked upon the corpse as still alive when they expressed their hopes that the earth upon which they poured out wine and htly upon it
After a time they added Tartarus and the Elysian Fields to their beliefs, they introduced the heroic fathers of their race into the councils of the Gods, and they described and figured the joys which awaited the just upon the Happy Islands