Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/1165

 THEBAE AEGYPTI. cf the kings,"— whose sculptures so copiously illus- trate the history, the arts, and the social life of Aejrypt. On this side there are also the remains of temples, palaces, and halls of assemhly or judi- cature, with their vast enclosure of walls and their long avenues of sphinxes. Eut the westein quarter t>f Thebes was reserved principally for the dead, and for the service of religion and the state, while the mass of the population was contained in the eastern. Yet the numbers who inhabited the western side of the city must liave been considerable, since each temple had its own establishment of priests, and each palace or public edifice its proper officers and servants. Still we shall probably be correct in describing the eastern quarter as the civil, and the western as the royal and ecclesiastical, portion of Tiiebcs. At present no obelisks have been discovered in the western quarter, but, with this exception, the niiinuments of Goiirneh and Medinet-Aboo yield little in grandeur, beauty, or interest to those of iM-xor and Karnak, and in one respect indeed are the more important of the two, since they afford the best existing specimens of Aegyptian colossal or portrait statues. Beginning then with the western quarter, — the Jlemnoneia of the Ptolemaic times,— we find at the northern limit of the plain, about three quarters of a mile from the river, the remains of a building to which Champollion has given the name of Meneph- theion, because the name of Setei-Menephthah is in- scribed upon its walls. It appears to have been both a temple and a palace, and was approached by a dromos of 128 feet in length. Its pillars belong to the oldest style of Aegyptian architecture, and its bas-reliefs are singularly tine. The next remarkable ruin is the Jlemnoneium of Strabo (xvii. p. 728), the tomb of Osymandyas of Diodorus, now commonly called the liameseion on the authority of its sculptures. The situation, the extent, and the beauty of this relic of Thebes are all equally striking. It occupies the first base of the hills, as they rise from the plain; and before the alluvial soil had encroached on the lower ground, it niust have been even a more conspicuous object from t he city than it now appears. The inequalities of the ground on which it was erected were overcome by flii;hts of steps from one court to another, and the Rameselnn actually stood on a succession of na- tural terraces iniproved by art. The main entrance from the city is flanked by two jiyramidal towers: the first court is open to the sky, surrounded by a double colonnade, and 140 feet in length and 18 in breadth. On the left of the staircase that ascends to the second court still stands the jicdestal of the statue of liameses, the largest, ac- cording to Diodorus (i. 49), of the colossi of Aegypt. From the dimensions of its foot, parts of which still remain, it is calculated that this statue was 54 feet in height and 22 feet 4 inches in breadth across the shoulders. The court is strewn with its frag- ments. How it was erected, or how overthrown in a land not liable to earthquakes, are alike subjects of wonder; since, without mechanical aids wholly beyond the reach of barbarians, it must have been almost as difficult to cast it down from its pedestal as to transport it originally from the quarries. The walls of the second court are covered with sculptures representing the wars of Rameses III., a continuation and comjilement of the historical groups vipon the interior walls of the jiylon. Diodorus (i. 47) speaks of " monolithal ligures, 16 cubits THKBAE AEGYl'TI. 111! liigh, supi.lying the place of cohnnns," and tboM; are probably the jallars of this second court. He also mentions the attack of a city surrounded by a river; and this group of sculpture, still extant, iden- tities the Memnoneium with the monument of Osy- mandyas. A third flight of st;iirs conducts from the court to a hall, which, according to Champollion was used for public assemblies. A sitting statue of Rameses Hanked each side of the steps, and tl.e head of one of them, now called the young Jlemndu adorns the British Museum. The columns and walls of the court are covered with sculptures partly of a religious, partly of a civil character, representing the homage of the 23 sons of Itameses to their parent and his offerings to the gods. Nine smaller apart- ments succeed to the hall. One of these was doubt- less the library or " Dispensary of the Slind ' (j^vxv^ larpetov) of which Diodorus (i. 49) spc;il;s, since in it are found sculptures of Thotli, the inven- tor of letters, and his companion Saf, the " lady of letters " and " President of the Hall of Books." This chamber had also at one time an astronomical ceil- ing adorned with the figures or symbols of the Aegyptian months; but it was earned off by the Persians, and the Greek travellers, Diodorus, Hecataeus &c., .knew of it only from hearsay. Of the nine original chambers, two only remain, the one just described, and a second, in which Rameses is depicted sacrificing to various divinities of the Theban Pantheon. Beneath the upper portion of the Memnoneium rock-sepulchres and brick graves have been discovered, both coeval with the Ramc- seian dynasty (Lepsius, liev. Arch. Jan. 1845). The entne area of the Memnoneium was enclosed by a brick wall, in the double arches of which are occa- sionally imbedded fragments of still more ancient structures, the remains probably of the Thebes which the 18th dynasty of the Pharaohs enlarged and adorned. A dromos NW. of the Memnoneium, formed of not less than 200 sphinxes, and at least 1600 feet in length, led to a very ancient temple in a recess of the Libyan bills. This was probably a place of strength before the lowlands on each side of the Kile were artificially converted by drainage and masonry into the solid area upon which Thebes was built. The next object which meets the traveller's eye is a mound of rubbish, the fragments of a building once occupying the ground. It is called by the Arabs Koum-el-IIattam, or mountain of sandstone, and is composed of the ruins of the Amenopheion, the palace or temple of Amunoph HI. — the ilemnon of the Greeks. About a quarter of a mile distant from the Amenopheion, and nearer to the Kile, are the two colossal statues called Tama and Cliama by tlm natives, standing isolated on the jilain and eminent above it. The most northerly of these statues is the celebrated vocal Menmou. Their present isolation, however, is probably accidental, and arises from the subsidence or destruction of an intermediate dromos, of which they formed the portals, and which led to the Amenopheion. These statues iiave already been described in the J)ictkincmj vf Biugrtiphu, s. v. Mi;.m- NON [Vol. II. p. 1028.] It may be added iiere that the jtresent height of these colossal figures, inclu- sive of the pedestal, is 60 feet. The alluvial soil, however, rises to nearly one half of the I'edcstal, and as there is an inscription of the age of Antoniuus Piu.s, A. 1). 139, foil., i. e. about 1720 years old, we obtain some measure of the amount of dei-ositinn in so many centuries. The blocks from which 4 u 3