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428 PICTURESQUE PALESTLNE.
of minarets, to show that, whatever it may appear, it is not merely a village like the rest,
makes an agreeable diversion. But, as a rule, brown river, brown banks, and pale brown hills
constitute the Egyptian triad in the unemotional tourist's recollection.
Thebes upsets all such generalisations. It is not in the least like the rest of the Nile
scenery. The Libyan hills, which have hitherto kept away at some distance from the river,
low and dim, and rather like the South Downs of Sussex without their grass, draw close to the
bank at Dendarah, just before Thebes is reached, and then suddenly sweep away again in a
noble curve, rising at the same time to the, in Egypt, unexampled height of twelve hundred feet.
The Arabian hills, on the eastern side, which have hugged the bank most of the way from
Cairo south, seem here to have taken the hint from their Libyan rivals ; for they too trend away
from the Nile, only to return and almost meet their antagonists as they curve round again to
the river and close in upon the view just above Thebes. Thus by corresponding curves the
mountains open out a great amphitheatre, such as a king would choose to build his capital
therein. Instead of a strip of vegetation, a broad green plain now borders the Nile on either
hand, rich with bean-fields and clover and all manner of corn ; and beyond the sandy slope
that edges the plain, there rises no longer the low undulating ridge which merely marks the
limit of the desert plateau, but a stern barrier of precipices, scored with ancient torrent beds and
honeycombed with the tombs of the mighty dead. No one who has ever seen it can forget
the first sight of this plain from the heights of the Libyan hills. Our earliest impression of
Thebes should, in prudence, be taken from here. Instead of watching the boat's gradual
approach, the appearance bit by bit of a pylon here and an obelisk there, and losing the general
effect by the slow appreciation of details, as almost all travellers are compelled to do, we
should arrive at Luxor by night, cross the river blindfold early in the morning, and never
open our eyes till we are safe in the gorge which traverses the Libyan range and nothing but
yellow rock is to be seen. After threading the " Valley of the Kings"—a bare rugged ravine
scooped in the rock by an extinct torrent, where the baked cliffs reflect the blazing noonday
sun till the gorge seems red-hot—and then clambering over the crest of the hill that divides
the valley from the plain, the view of Thebes comes upon us as a delicious shock. Below
our feet the mountains seem to overhang the plain ; their threatening cliffs girdle it like the
outspread arms of a giant; while opposite, the Arabian rampart, accepting the challenge like
a jealous rival, stretches out its answering embrace, and raises its three peaks in vain attempt
to measure itself against its towering adversary. And in the midst, the beautiful fertile plain
seems, wToman-like, to enjoy this strife for her possession, and, cool in the waters of her father
Nile, to smile serenely through the sunlight at the hot endeavours of her emulous suitors.
Nothing more lovely than this green amphitheatre, with its border of yellow sand and
rampart of cliffs, can be seen in all the land of Egypt. As we descend by the steep path that
leads to the terraced temple of Deyr El-Bahry, which Queen Hatasu, sister of Thothmes and
earliest of the great queens of history, built as an antechamber to her tomb, and look across
the plain and over the river to the lofty obelisk—tallest in Egypt—which she set up in the |
