Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/800

776 EGYPT [DEN DAKAR. of Abydos as a reputed burial-place of Osiris rendered this a favourite necropolis of the ancient Egyptians from very early times, particularly under Dynasty XII. At a distance of more than 40 miles from Abydos, but in nearly the same latitude, is the village of Dendarah, on the left, here the southern, bank of the Nile. Before reaching it we pass the small town of Farshoot at the mouth of the great canal called the Bahr-Yoosuf, and the large village of Hoo, marking the site of Diospolis Parva. Opposite the latter place are some sepulchral grottoes in the eastern chain, called those of Kasr-es-Seiyad, which is believed to occupy the position of Chenoboscion. They contain names of kings of Dynasty VI., but the representations which occupy their walls are not of unusual interest. At Dendarah is the first well-preserved and unencumbered temple that is seen in a voyage up the Nile, that of Athor, the Egyptian Venus, who presided over the town of Tentyra, or Tentyris, the capital of the Tentyrite nome. It stands on the mounds of the town about a mile and a half from the Nile. From it we gain a good idea of Egyptian religious architecture under the Greek and Roman dominions. The temple is surrounded by a great wall of crude brick, entered by a stone portal adorned with sculptures represent ing the emperors Domitian and Trajan, engaged in acts of worship before several divinities. The portico to which it leads is about 135 feet in width, and is one of the richest and most beautiful structures of the kind. It is supported by twenty-four columns, four deep, nearly 50 feet in height, and having a diameter of somewhat more than 7 feet at the thickest part. The capitals have a full face of Athor sculptured on each of their four sides, and above these a kind of shrine. The three columns on each side of the entrance are connected by an intercolumniation. The portico, like the rest of the temple, is of higher merit as regards its architecture than its sculpture, for the latter art had declined under the Greek and Roman rule to a much greater degree than the former. The sculptures are of the same kind as on the portal, representing offerings made by some of the earlier Caesars ; and on the ceiling are various mystical subjects, probably of an astronomical import, and the famous Zodiac from which an extravagant idea of the antiquity of the temple was deduced before hieroglyphics were interpreted. The greater part of the back wall of the portico was the front of the temple before this portion was added. This inner part consists of three considerable chambers, an isolated sanctuary, and numerous small apart ments. The first of these is a hall, supported by a double row of columns, three on each side, of a rather heavy form, for they have, beneath the capital formed of the block with the faces of Athor and the shrine, another capital of a cup shape. This hall is entered by a doorway in the middle of the back wall of the portico, and passing through it we reach a second and third chamber of the same breadth but shorter, and then the sanctuary. This chamber is much narrower, and is isolated by a passage running round it. On each side of the chambers and passage are many small apartments, two passages to the exterior, and two staircases ; and there are singular inclined passages in the walls, two of which are entered from the sides of the portico. The whole interior is covered with sculptures and inscriptions of a religious character, stating in a systematic manner the use of each chamber in the temple-worship. The royal names have not always been filled in, the rings remaining vacant ; but when they have been sculptured, they are generally those of the last Cleopatra, and Ptolemy Caesar, her son by Julius Csesar. On the roof of the temple to which the staircases lead, there are a sort of chapel and some small chambers, one of which is very interesting, because its sculptures relate to the myth of Osiris. The exterior of the temple is as completely covered with sculptures as the interior. Among the figures repre sented here are those of Cleopatra and Ptolemy Caesar ; but they cannot be supposed to convey any resemblance, since they belong not alone to a conventional art, but almost to its lowest period. There are two smaller temples near the great temple of Athor, one of Isis, and the other of the kind called a Typhonium. Both are of the Roman time. See admirable account of the temple in Mariette s Monuments of Upper Egypt, 125 seqq. On the opposite side of the Nile, a little above Dendarah, is the town of Kine, between which and Arabia some traffic is carried on by the route through the desert to El- Kuseyr on the Red Sea. The best of the porous water bottles which are used throughout Egypt are manufactured here; and the great water-jars, called " bellasee," which the women carry, are made at the large village of Bellas, a few miles higher on the western bank. Opposite to Bellas is the village called Kuft or Kift, marking the site of the important town of Coptos, which was the emporium on the Nile of the Arabian and Indian trade under the Ptolemies; and, somewhat to the south, is the inconsiderable town of Koos, the ancient Apolliuopolis Parva, which succeeded to the trade of Coptos, under the Muslims, until Kine supplanted it. On the western bank, a little higher, is the small town of Nakadeh, which the people call Nagadeh, where are Roman Catholic and Coptic convents. A short distance beyond Nakadeh are the northernmost of the remains of Thebes. The monuments of Thebes do not present from afar the imposing appearance of the Pyramids of Memphis. Placed for the most part at a distance from the Nile, as well as from one another, and having on the western side the picturesque form of a much higher mountain than any near Memphis rising behind them, they do not strike those who see them from the river. Most of them are not indeed visible from the Nile except when it is at its height. The stately colonnade of the temple of El-Uksur, incor rectly called Luxor, on the very bank, is, however, not unworthy the magnificence of Thebes, and when one approaches the other monuments his utmost expectations are exceeded by the grandeur of El-Karnak, the beauty of the temple of Ramses II., and the mystery of the Tombs of the Kings. Nowhere else are the mythology, the history, the very life and manners of the Egyptians of old times so vividly brought before the eye as in the sculp tured and inscribed monuments of the capital of the Empire. Thebes, or Diospolis Magna, is called in the hieroglyphic inscriptions Ap-t, or, with the article prefixed, T-ap, whence Thebes, and Nu-Ainen, the city of Amen, the No-Amou or No of the Bible. The date of its foundation is unknown, but there are remains of the time of Dynasty XI., the first of Diospolite kings. Under the sovereigns of Dynasty XII. it must have become a place of importance, but it probably declined during the troubles of the Shepherd period. With Dynasty XVIII. it attained its highest prosperity, and maintained it during Dynasties XIX. and XX. To this period its greatest monuments belong. Then its decline evidently commenced; but from the manner in which Homer mentions it (II. ix. 381-4), Thebes must have been still a great city in his days. After this it suffered severely from the violence of the Assyrians and Persians, and lastly of Ptolemy Lathy rus; so that in Strabo s time the Thebans inhabited villages as now, and there was no longer a city (Ceogr., xvii. 1). The monuments of Thebes, exclusive of its sepulchral grottoes, occupy a space on both sides of the river, of which the extreme length from north to south is about two miles,

and the extreme breadth from east to west about four. The