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| Title | Picturesque Palestine, Sinai, and Egypt, Vol. 2 |
| Creator (LCNAF) |
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| Publisher | D. Appleton and Company |
| Date | 1883 |
| Description | Index: Phoenicia and Lebanon / by the Rev. H. W. Jessup -- The Phoenician plain / by the Rev. Canon Tristram -- Acre, the key of Palestine, Mount Carmel and the river Kishon, Maritime cities and plains of Palestine / by Miss M. E. Rogers -- Lydda and Ramleh, Philistia / By Lt. Col. Warren -- The south country of Judaea / by the Rev. Canon Tristram -- The southern borderland and Dead Sea / by Professor Palmer -- Mount Hor and the cliffs of Edom, The convent of St. Catherine / by Miss M. E. Rogers -- Sinai / by the Rev. C. P. Clarke -- The land of Goshen, Cairo, Memphis, Thebes, Edfu and Philae / by S. Lane-Poole. |
| Subject.Geographic (TGN) |
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| Genre (AAT) |
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| Language | English |
| Type (DCMI) |
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| Original Item Location | DS107 .W73 v.2 |
| Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b1703789~S11 |
| Digital Collection | Exotic Impressions: Views of Foreign Lands |
| Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/exotic |
| Repository | Kenneth Franzheim II Rare Books Room, William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library, University of Houston Libraries |
| Repository URL | http://info.lib.uh.edu/about/campus-libraries-collections/william-r-jenkins-architecture-art-library |
| Use and Reproduction | No Copyright - United States |
| Identifier | exotic_201304_015 |
| Title | Page 432 |
| Format (IMT) |
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| File Name | exotic_201304_015_459.jpg |
| Transcript | 432 PLCTURESQUE PALESTINE. elaborate temple of many halls and chambers, was built on the plain below. The tombs in this one valley number twenty-five (and there are hundreds in other parts of the mountains), and from Amenoph III. to the end of the Twentieth Dynasty not a single royal tomb but that of Horus is missing. The valley is a singularly impressive site for a burying-ground. Steep cliffs shut it in on every side, not a blade of grass or living thing can be seen, nothing but burning rock on the right hand and on the left. Here and there a steep slope leads down to a gloomy cavern's mouth. We enter a long tunnel-like passage, lofty and wide, but growing more intensely dark at every step. Candles show us that the walls are covered with pictures, and as we enter the larger chamber or chambers to which the passage leads, the eye grows accustomed to the partial light, and the design of the artist becomes clear. It is the progress of the soul through the underworld that we are witnessing in these pictures which line the dimly-lighted walls. " Immediately on entering the tomb the visitor finds himself transported into a new world. The almost joyous pictures of Sakkarah and Beny Hasan have altogether disappeared. The defunct is no more to be seen at home in the midst of his family ; no more making of furniture, no more building of ships; no more extensive farmyards, with cattle, oxen, antelopes, wild goats, geese, ducks, demoiselle cranes, marching in procession before the stewards. All has become, so to speak, fantastic and chimerical. Even the gods themselves assume strange forms. Long serpents glide hither and thither round the rooms or stand erect against the doorways. Some convicted malefactors are being decapitated, and others are precipitated into the flames. Well might a visitor feel a kind of horror creeping over him, if he did not realise that, after all, underneath all these strange representations lies the most consoling of all dogmas, that which vouchsafes eternal happiness to the soul after the many trials of this life. It has been said- that before according to their kings the honour of burial the Egyptians passed judgment upon them. This legend must of course be understood in an allegorical sense. The judgment of the soul after being separated from the body, and the many trials which it will be called upon to overcome by the aid only of such virtues as it has evinced while on earth, constitute the subject-matter of the almost endless representations which cover the walls of the tomb, from the entrance to the extreme end of the last chamber. The serpents standing erect over each portal, darting out venom, are the guardians of the gates of heaven ; the soul cannot pass unless justified by works of piety and benevolence. The long texts displayed over other parts of the walls are magnificent hymns to which the soul gives utterance in honour of the divinity whose glory and greatness it thus celebrates. When once the dead has been adjudged worthy of life eternal these ordeals are at an end ; he becomes part of the divine essence, and henceforward a pure spirit, he wanders over the vast regions where the stars for ever shine. The soul has no sooner left the body than we are called upon, from room to room, to witness its progress as it appears before the gods and becomes gradually purified, until at last, in the grand hall at the end of the tomb, we are present at its final admission into that life ' which a second death shall never reach/"* * Mariette, ** Monuments of Upper Egypt," English translation, pages 236—238. |