| Transcript |
PICK 'RESOl 'E PALESTINE.
pre-eminent offenders, the officers of the French army under Desaix, who pursued the Memluks
beyond the < ataract, defaced Philae, and on their return voyage tattooed the interior of Edfu
with their obscure names and regiments and their impertinent "An VIII." It is curious that
s of Edfu should be of the same nation as its uncoverer.
From the top of the pylon we look down upon a wide and beautiful stretch of country,
chiefly of desert, yet with a rich expanse of vividly green crops near the winding river, the
y mountains beyond, and almost under our feet the village of Edfu, a tangled mass of
huts with tunnel-like roofs, or flat roofs covered with durah, and little yards in front, so closely
packed and so irregular, that it is impossible to see where one little house ends and the next
ruining round, we look down upon the great court of the temple, surrounded by
colonnades, with pillars of every form of capital. This is a place of broadest sunshine, but
tho hypostyle hall beyond, which is divided from the great court by an intercolumnar screen
between the exquisite papyrus-flower pillars, is dim and shaded. A pylon and wall divide
tho hypostyle into two portions, somewhat to the detriment of the general effect, and behind is
the sanctuary, wherein still stands unbroken a granite shrine cut out of a single block, which
must originally have weighed sixty tons, in which the sacred hawk, symbol of Horus, was once
jealously concealed. A passage; runs round the sanctuary, and off this open a number of small
and very dark chambers. ( hitside these again runs a wider corridor, forming a space between
the peculiarly sacred portion of the temple and the enclosing wall, and ending in the great
court. The whole of tin; surfaces of the walls on both sides of this passage, and indeed every
column and every wall in the temple, are covered with sculptures. The general character of
these designs is conventional, the same figures are repeated again and again, until the eye
-rows weary of the sight of a uniform king offering uniform gifts to uniform gods; and the
tendency to making symmetrical counterparts of the two sides of a door or pylon is a sign of
artistic decadence. Nevertheless, the effect of the lofty walls covered with sculptures, towering
up on cither hand as one walks round the great corridor, is singularly impressive, in spite of
the mutilation which iconoclastic zeal has wrought upon the faces of the divinities. The
pictures of boats one with an exquisitely carved sail, in which the king stands, harpoon in
hand, to strike the hippopotamus (drawn relatively about the size of a guinea pig) which his
men have enmeshed in their ropes—are especially vivid and dramatic.
We find here none of those great battle scenes which delighted the soul of Rameses, no
epic poems like Centaur's, but chiefly the rites of religion and the interviews between gods and
king fhere is, however, a remarkable scientific value in the sculptures of Edfu. There are
here -more inscriptions of a miscellaneous character than in any temple of Egypt, and it is
precisely this secular information that is to us so priceless. Here are geographical lists of Nubian
and Egyptian nomes, with their principal cities, their products, and their tutelary gods ; lists of
tributary provinces and princes ; lists of temples, and of the lands pertaining thereunto ; lists of
canals, of ports, of lakes; calendars of feasts and fasts; astronomical tables; genealogies and
chronologies of the gods; lists of the priests and priestesses of both Edfu and Dendarah, with |
