ery When the in Central America is older than New York. temple is all dug out we shall find it to have been a stupendous affair; but there are other temples, too, in better condition, and what interests us at Abydos is the city. Here, according to tradition—a tradition which Plutarch partly confirms-was buried the god Ostris. The discovof that tomb will be an event as important in Egyptology as even the discovery of America by Columbus in his day. In the earliest times it was believed Osiris was buried here. To the ancient Egyptians the burial place of that god was as sacred as Mecca is to the Moslems or the Holy Sepulchre to the Medieval Christians. The government has, therefore, been digging in all directions, and we started after Brugsch to see the work. Mrs. Grant rode along on her donkey, and the rest of us went in different directions on foot. There had been troubles in the neighborhood-riots arising out of the bad Nile and taxes. So we had a guide who hovered around us-one soldier, whom we called, in obedience to the law of physical coincidences, Boss Tweed-keeping watch over the General. He was a fat and ragged fellow, with a jolly face. It was quite a walk to the ruins, and the walk was over hills and ridges of burning sand. So the Marquis went to the village to see if the camels had come bearing the luncheon-a subject that was of more value to his practical mind than the tomb of a dethroned deity. It was an interesting walk, to us especially, as it was our first real glimpse of the desert and of an ancient city. The General and the writer found themselves together climbing the highest of the mounds. It was rather an effort to keep our footing on the slippery sand. one excavation forty or fifty feet deep. remnants of an old house or old tomb; millions of fragments of broken pottery all around. You could see the Beneath us was You could see the strata that age after age had heaped upon the buried city. The desert had slowly been creeping over it, and in some of the strata were marks of the Nile. For years, for thousands of years, this mass, which the workmen had torn with their spades, had been gathering. The city was really a city of tombs. In the ancient days the devout Egyptian craved burial near the tomb of Osiris, and so, for centuries, I suppose, their remains were brought to Abydos from all parts of Egypt. This fact gives special value to the excavations, as it gave a special solemnity to our view. As we stood on the elevation, talking about Egypt and the impressions made upon us by our journey, the scene was very striking. There was the ruined temple; here were the gaping excavations filled with bricks and pottery. Here were our party, some gathering beads and skulls and stones; others having a lark with Sami Bey; others following Mrs. Grant as a body guard, as her donkey plodded his way along the slopes. Beyond, just beyond, were rolling plains of shining sand-shining, burning sand-and as the shrinking eye followed the plain and searched the hills, there was no sign of life; nothing except, perhaps, some careering hawk hurrying to the river. It was the apotheosis of death and ruin, a fit mantle for the sepulchred city below. I have seen no scene in Egypt more striking than this view from the mounds of Abydos. The sun was beating with continued fierceness, and we kept our way to the cluster of trees and the village. The Marquis, with illuminated eyes, informed us that the camels had come and the luncheon was ready. We sat around our modest table and feasted-feasted in the temple sacred to the memory of Osiris, and built by the pious munificence of Sethi, the king who rests with God. The walk had given us an appetite and put us all in high spirits, an we lunched in merry mood. There were toasts to the Khedive, to Sami Bey, to the General, and the invariable toast which comes from gracious womanly lips-to friends and dear ones at home. Then Brugsch told us of Salib, an Arabian who had been for twenty years working at the excavation. He worked with so much diligence that he had become entirely blind, and it was now his only comfort to wander about the ruins, direct the workmen, and perhaps trace with his finger many a loved inscription that his zeal had brought to light. Salib lived near the ruins, on a pension allowed by the Khedive, and after luncheon we called on him and took our coffee in his house. The coffee was served on the roof, while some of us, weary with the sun, lay under the shadow of the wall and the date trees, and others sat about the courtyard, smoking, and Brugsch, who never misses his chance, improved the shining hour to copy a hieroglyphic inscription. After an hour's rest, we went back again, very much as we came. But the journey was long, the road was dusty, and when we saw the flag flying from our boat, we were, some of us at least, a weary, very weary, party. We had ridden fifteen miles on donkeys and walked two or three on the sand, and the shelter and repose of the cabin was grateful when at last it came. LUXOR-ON THE WAY TO KARNAK-ITS ANTIQUITY Our imaginations, as might have been expected, had been dwelling all these days on Thebes. We read it up and talked about it, and said, "When we see Thebes, we shall see one of the wonders of the world." We learned that Thebes was once a city that covered both banks of the Nile; that it was known to Homer as the city of the Hundred Gates; that it must have had 300,000 inhabitants, and that it sent out 20,000 armed chariots. It was famed for its riches and splendor until it was besieged. There was a temple of Memnon and the colossal statue which used to sing its oracles when the sun rose. Here was to be found the palace temple of the great Rameses, the only ruin in Egypt known to have been the home of a king. Here we would see the columns of Luxor, the twin obelisk to the one now in Paris, the stupendous ruins of Karnak and the tombs of the kings. Thebes alone would repay us for our long journeyings; and we talked about Sesostris and the Pharaohs in a familiar manner, as though they knew we were coming, and would be at home. And when we became a little hazy on our history and could not get our kings exactly straight, and were not sure whether Sesostris was in the nineteenth or the twenty-ninth dynasty, we always fell back on Brugsch, who knew all the dynasties and was an ever-running spring of information, and always as gentle and willing as he was learned. By the time we approached Thebes we were well out of that stage and were well up in our Rameses, and knew all about Thebes, the mighty, the magnificent Thebes, the city of a world's renown, of which we had been reading and dreaming all these years. And as Brugsch, leaning over the rail, talked about Thebes, we listened and watched through the clear air for the first sign of its glory. There were the mountains beyond, the very mountains of which we had read, and there was the plain. But where was Thebes? We looked through our glasses and saw at first only the brown caverned hills, the parched fields and the shining sand. We looked again, and there, sure enough, were the colossal statues of Memnon, two broken pillars so they seemed, with a clump of trees near them. Only the field, the sand and the hills beyond, only the same cluster of hovels on on the shore and the two distant columns. This was all that remained of the glory of the city that was the glory of the ancient world. |