Goodness knows I am not going to attempt any detailed description of the stupendous ruins which make Luxor the most interesting spot in Egypt. Anyone who is going to describe Luxor needs a new box of adjectives every few minutes, and, besides, to repeat over and over again that the columns and cavernous sanctuaries at Karnak are "gigantic," and "colossal," and "huge," and so on, cannot bring the reader to any actual conception of the barbaric ma.s.siveness of these ancient structures.
The rulers who built the main temple of Karnak, a section at a time, thought they were not doing themselves credit unless they piled up columns about the size of the redwood trees in California and guarded each entrance with statues as big as the G.o.ddess of Liberty in New York Harbour, and when they made a wall to enclose a courtyard, they put up something to resemble a mountain range. The ordinary 150 pound mortal edging his way through the corridors and under the vast shadows of these overwhelming uplifts of masonry feels about as large and as important as a gnat.
Everywhere about these temples there are uniformed guards whose duty it is to protect the remains against the vandal and the relic hunter. The guard follows a few feet behind you as you roam through the many acres of toppling ruin. He is afraid that you will steal something.
Inasmuch as the smallest fragment of one of these huge statues, or obelisks, would weigh probably six hundred pounds, we felt that he was not justified in suspecting us. But he followed along and then, when we were leaving, he calmly came forward and indicated that he was ready to take a money insult. This move on his part was most characteristic of the Egyptian att.i.tude toward visitors in general. Every native expects to get something out of a traveller for the simple reason that he needs the money. Suppose that a suspicious character should arrive in an American city and the chief of police sent out a detective to shadow him and see that he did not blow open any safes or crawl into any second stories. The detective, having followed the suspect all day, approaches him at nightfall and says, "Look here; you have put me to a lot of trouble. I have been on my feet all day watching you for fear that you were going to commit a burglary, and I think it is only right that you should pay me something."
Every time we visited an antiquity these guards tagged at our heels, watching us like hawks, and invariably they tried to hold us up for a piece of silver before we departed. There is a Masonic understanding among the natives that the tourist is to be fleeced. For instance, although the copper coins are in common use among the natives, and in the cheaper shops the prices are usually reckoned in milliemes, it is almost impossible for a traveller to get any of these copper coins because the natives want him to bestow his gratuities in piastres. A millieme is worth one-half cent, and then the millieme is further subdivided into fractional coins, some of which are about the size of the mustard seed and worth about as much as a share of mining stock.
Egyptian money is very easily understood by Americans. The piastre is the same as our five-cent piece or nickel. The silver five piastre piece resembles our quarter and has the same value. The ten piastre piece is the same as our half-dollar. The 100 piastre bill is worth five dollars. Inasmuch as many of the prices sound large and important when quoted in piastres, the dealers have learned to demand English pounds sterling or American dollars. That is, they name their first prices in sovereigns and dollars and then gradually work down to piastres. I saw a native trying to sell a scarab to a tourist. His first price was 7, equivalent to $35. After a half-hour of haggling he had cut it to 7 piastres, or 35 cents, and the deal was consummated.
The old city of Thebes was a huge and hustling metropolis, surrounded by a high wall of a hundred gates, with countless regiments of soldiers marching out to conquer distant lands and bring back slaves in little batches of 80,000 or so. This was along about 2000 B.C. The city began to lose some of its importance a few centuries before the Christian era and dwindled in size until twenty years ago it was a mere village of huts nestling in the shade of the great temples. Then the tourist travel set in very heavily, and to-day Luxor is a hustling city with large hotels and fancy shops and a general air of prosperity. The magnificent temple of Luxor is in the very heart of the new city. The rambling temple of Karnak is a short donkey ride to the north, and across the river, some three miles to the west, there are more temples and shattered statues and the wonderful tombs of the kings. In olden days there was a broad avenue leading north to Karnak and thence west to the valley in the desert, where the kings were buried, and this boulevard was guarded on either side, for the entire distance, by huge rec.u.mbent Sphinxes carved out of granite. Can you imagine a double row of gigantic figures crouched on each side of the street and about twenty feet apart all the way up Broadway to Central Park and then through the Park to Riverside Drive and up the drive to the distant suburbs? If so, you will understand to what an extent these old rulers "went in" for sphinxes. Labour cost nothing and time did not count for anything and if a king wished to build an avenue of sphinxes leading to his private temple or tomb all he had to do was to give the word.
As soon as a king mounted the throne he began making his funeral preparations, and ordered the entire staff of stone cutters to chisel out hieroglyphs explaining that he was great and good and just, and that he never took off his hat to anyone except the G.o.ds, and then not ordinary picayune G.o.ds, but only those of the very first magnitude.
According to the hieroglyphs, every king that ruled in Egypt was as wise as Solomon, as brilliant in military strategy as Napoleon, and as hard on the evildoer as our own beloved T.R.
This unanimous outpouring of eulogy is largely explained by the fact that every memorial in honour of a ruler was erected and supervised by that ruler himself. It"s a fact! Of all the countless temples and obelisks and G.o.dlike granite figures and festal tomb chambers remaining in Egypt to testify to the majesty and splendour of the ancient dynasties, every one was built under the personal supervision of the man who gets all of the glory out of the inscriptions. The succeeding generation never got up subscription lists to build monuments to statesmen or military commanders. The dutiful and loving son never ordered a memorial in honour of his ill.u.s.trious father. He was too busy carving his own biography on the sandstone and depicting himself as pursuing the enemy or taking afternoon tea with haughty three-headed G.o.ds.
In old Egypt every king was his own press agent. These rulers could have written some great "personal recollections" for the magazines, because they remembered all the incidents that brought them to the centre of the stage with the calcium turned on, and wisely forgot all details calculated to injure their standing with posterity.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _In old Egypt every king was his own press agent_]
You take Rameses the Great. He is regarded as perhaps the king pin of all the rulers during Egypt"s long period of national splendour. Have you ever heard anyone say a word in criticism of Rameses" fiscal policy, his treatment of the rebate system, management of the Senate, or his social relations with the dark emissaries that came up from Nubia? No! Everyone has a good word for Rameses. The writers of ancient history extol him, and the guide books print his name in big black letters, and the travellers to Egypt gather about his gla.s.s-covered coffin in the Ghizeh Museum at Cairo and try to trace n.o.ble lineaments in the shrunken features. They sigh over his departure and look down at him mournfully, with their hats in their hands, as if they had lost him this spring, instead of 3164 years ago this spring. They say:--"Well, he certainly was a grand character and it"s too bad we haven"t got some rulers of his calibre nowadays."
[Ill.u.s.tration: _They look down at him mournfully_]
It is not my desire to attack Rameses, but I feel it my duty to submit to students of history and archaeologists a very interesting papyrus, which came into my possession at Luxor. If this doc.u.ment is accepted as authentic and the statements are believed, then it would appear that Rameses was the champion advertiser of ancient times. If Rameses were alive to-day he would own all the billboards in America. He would take a full page in every Sunday paper and have his picture on free calendars. He would give Lawson cards and spades.
In all accepted records discovered up to this time Rameses has received nothing but praise. Why? Because all the records were doctored by Rameses himself. He was the great builder of Egypt and all over the walls of every building that he erected he had his picture and tales of his mighty achievements blazoned forth in bright colors like the row of banners in front of a side show. Wherever in Egypt he could find a large smooth-faced rock he would engage a member of the Royal Academy to sculp something about Rameses, and he would always stand and look over the sculptor"s shoulder to make sure that the king didn"t get the worst of it. If the army of Rameses suffered a defeat at the hands of the Hitt.i.tes, did any mention of the fact find its way into the inscriptions? Most a.s.suredly not. Rameses had the hieroglyphs report that he made a masterly manoeuvre in order to develop the strength of the enemy and then retired to a new and more strategic position.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _To make sure the King didn"t get the worst of it_]
We cannot discover from the old inscriptions that any Egyptian army ever suffered defeat, and yet it has been learned from other sources that now and then an invading army had the whole native population running foot races up and down the Nile. However, it was not considered good form for historians to mention these painful incidents.
The rate of mortality among those who criticised the administration was exactly 100 per cent. It is because all of the familiar records are known to have been under censorship that the papyrus discovered by me at Luxor possesses a most startling interest.
As a cold matter of fact, I discovered this ma.n.u.script by proxy. That is, I bought it from the man who said he had found it concealed in the funeral vestments of a mummy uprooted near Thebes in the month of February. I cannot give the name of this Egyptian for the reason that all valuable antiquities discovered in Egypt are supposed to belong to the government, and anyone concealing an art treasure or some doc.u.ment of rare value may be severely punished. I can say this much, however--the native from whom I bought the papyrus a.s.sured me that he was an honourable and truthful guide, and he gave me his personal guarantee that he had removed the doc.u.ment from the mummy"s undergarment with his own hands and had been waiting an opportunity to offer it to a traveller who was really a _connoisseur_ of antiquities and a reverent student of ancient languages. All this he told me while we were out on the desert together, and after looking apprehensively in all directions to make sure that no human being was within three miles of us, he pulled a tin cylinder from under his robe and carefully removed from it the time-stained but still intact roll of papyrus. I must say that I never saw a more convincing doc.u.ment. The hieroglyphs looked as Egyptian as anything could be, and as soon as I saw them I had a burning curiosity to know what message to future generations this poor mummy had been hugging in his bosom through all these centuries.
I asked regarding the mummy on which the papyrus had been found and learned that the inscription on his outer coffin indicated that he had been an officer a.s.signed to the royal palace of Rameses II., the type of courtier who must bend the supple knee and wear the smiling face, at all times concealing his real opinion of things in general.
The guarantee which accompanied the papyrus was so heartfelt and altogether emphatic that I made the purchase. The price was large, but I felt justified in paying it, for the native a.s.sured me that I could sell it to the British Museum at any time for twice as much. I promised faithfully that I would never mention his name in connection with the deal, and this promise was easily kept, because he had a name that no one could have remembered for two minutes.
For obvious reasons I did not show the doc.u.ment to my travelling companions. I knew that if people heard of my discovery and got to talking about it I might not be permitted to take it out of the country. When we arrived at Cairo I went to Mr. Ralph Blanchard, an American who is noted as an antiquarian, Egyptologist, and mummy collector, and after a few cautious preliminaries told him that I had a doc.u.ment in hieroglyphics of which I desired a translation. I begged him not to inquire where or how I had obtained the papyrus. All I wanted him to do was to tell me what the fool thing meant.
Blanchard was startled as soon as he looked at the doc.u.ment. I could see that. He said he had deciphered a good many acres of hieroglyphics, but this record was unique and the most interesting that had ever come under his observation. He spent two days on the translation, so as to be absolutely accurate regarding every fine point and get not only the cold words but also the literary style and the real spirit of the original communication.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _The original papyrus_]
Let the translation speak for itself. I must confess that when it was completed I was overwhelmed. Not only had a flood of light been let in upon a most important epoch, but there were also surprising revelations as to the origin of valued words and phrases. Here is the translation:--
_Rameses Second is a Smooth Citizen. His Foxy Scheme is to bunko Posterity. His Soldiers go out and put up a hard Sc.r.a.p and do up the enemy and he hires a Stonecutter to give an Account of it on a Granite Rock and hand all the Bouquets to Rameses. He is building many Temples. The Architects draw the Plans. The Labourers do the Work.
The Public foots the Bill. Rameses and the Local Deities are the only ones who b.u.t.t into the Inscriptions. He has the future doped out as follows:--Three thousand years from now, when Cook"s Tourists see my Pictures all over the Shop, they will conclude that I must have been the real Works and they will call me Rameses the Great._
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Translation of the Rameses papyrus_]
This revelation in regard to the self-advertising proclivities of the great monarch, coming, as it did, from one who had been intimately a.s.sociated with him, was so vastly important that Mr. Blanchard thought it better to verify the translation. He took a copy of the doc.u.ment to several eminent Egyptologists, and they agreed with him on every point.
They said there was no getting away from "sc.r.a.ps" and "b.u.t.t in" and "dope out" and other characters which seemed to me to have somewhat of a modern flavour.
After a man has been universally respected for nearly three thousand two hundred years it does seem a low down trick to show him up. And, possibly, the anonymous writer was prejudiced because he had failed to secure an appointment. Did the papyrus really come from the bosom of the mummy? Who knows? Sometimes it is the duty of the traveller to record facts as they come under his observation and not to draw hasty conclusions.
The doc.u.mentary evidence is submitted herewith--first a copy of the original papyrus and then the translation, word for word and phrase by phrase. The testimony should convince any who are disposed to be sceptical. My only hope is that it will not entirely blast the reputation of Rameses.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ORDINARY HUMAN FAILINGS OF THE ANCIENT MOGULS
Taken by themselves, as mere mouldering chunks of antiquity that have been preserved to us because they happened to be dropped down in a dry climate, the fragmentary remains of old Egypt are not very inspiring.
They were big, but seldom beautiful. As records proving that humanity--old-fashioned, unreliable humanity, with its fears, jealousies, hatreds, and aching ambitions--is just about the same as it was five thousand years ago, the temples and the decorated tombs seem to bring us direct and heartfelt messages from our brethren of the long ago.
For instance, from the beginning of time probably the most maddening and unbearable persecution that can be visited upon a sensitive human being is to have some other human being always held up before him as a shining moral example.
Do you recall, O male reader, how you writhed in humiliation and laid plans for a.s.sault and battery when the good little Rollo of your native town was constantly dangled before your depraved soul as the paragon of juvenile virtues? "Rollo never smokes corn silk." "Rollo never puts tick-tacks on teacher"s bedroom window." "Rollo never carries craw dabbers in his Sunday clothes." "Rollo never runs away to go swimming and then comes back with his ears full of gravel."
[Ill.u.s.tration: _The paragon of juvenile virtues_]
No, indeed, Rollo never showed any of the traits that have been the essence of boyhood since Adam and Eve started the original brood. And do you remember how bright and sunshiny that day seemed when Rollo, having grown to pale and sidewhiskered manhood, was arrested for stealing money from the Building and Loan a.s.sociation?
Take the story of Queen Hatasoo. She was the Victoria of the eighteenth dynasty, and was on the throne just about 1500 B.C. The lineal male descendant of that period had a blot on the "scutcheon or a bar sinister across his pedigree or something wrong with his registry certificate--anyway, he could not qualify as king, and so his sister Hatasoo was made ruler and he was permitted to hang around the palace as a kind of shawl holder and cab opener. He led the cotillons and attended public dinners and wore decorations, but Hatasoo ran Egypt and Thutmes Second was merely a trailer. When he dropped off there did not seem to be any considerable vacancy in court circles. Queen Hatasoo continued as chief monarch, although her step-nephew, Thutmes Third, carried the honourary t.i.tle of co-regent. Hatasoo was energetic and ambitious. She put nephew into a remote back seat and ran things to suit herself, waging wars, building temples, and organising expeditions to far distant lands. Also, according to ancient custom, she had her portrait and the record of her accomplishments carved on the obelisks and painted all over the walls of her private temple, which is still standing, about three miles west of the present city of Luxor.
She reigned for thirty-five years, and then Thutmes Third, gray bearded and worn with much waiting, emerged from the nursery and took up the reins of government. According to the judgment of later historians, his reign was about the most glorious in the whole history of Egypt.
He was possessed of military genius, and under his direction Syria was recaptured, and the influence of Egypt was firmly established in Western Asia. But no matter how many battles he won or how many captives he brought back to Thebes to exhibit in the courthouse square, the old-timers around the court wagged their heads and said, "Yes, he"s doing fairly well for a beginner, but he"ll never come up to the mark set by his Aunt Hattie." Hatasoo was her full name, but those who had known her for a long time called her "Hattie," and to a few of her intimates she was known as "Hat."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "_He"ll never come up to the mark set by his aunt Hattie._"]
Thutmes was merely human. For years his domineering aunt had kept him out of the running, and now that he was on the throne the glory of her achievements was constantly being dinged into him. Every time he rode out in his chariot, standing up and sawing away at four horses, just as they do in Ringling"s circus at the present time, he saw her name and picture on all the public buildings, and, of course, two or three years after her departure, everybody bragged about her a good deal harder than they had while she was alive. Even the English newspapers speak in kindly terms of an American statesman who is safely deceased.
Thutmes stood it as long as he could, and then he broke over. He ordered the stonecutters to go forth and gouge out all the inscriptions relating to his superior aunt. The temple which she had built as a special memorial he appropriated to himself, and put his name over the main entrance. It may have been pretty spiteful, but the whole proceeding somehow seems to establish a sympathetic link between those remote heathen days and the unselfish Utopian civilisation that we now enjoy in Chicago, Omaha, West Superior, and other centres of brotherly love.
After Thutmes had put in years erasing and chiselling out all complimentary references to Hatasoo, he pa.s.sed away and was carried to a winding subterranean tomb in the valley to the west. For two hundred years the great monuments which he had erected in his own honour, or quietly borrowed from his aunt, remained intact. Then along came Rameses Second, to whom we have already referred as the best little advertiser of ancient times. He had the name of Thutmes removed from all the temples, obelisks, and public buildings, and put his own glaring label on everything in sight. In the language of Mr. Peasley, the Kings seemed to spend most of their time in "knocking their predecessors" and "boosting" themselves.
Nearly every ancient structure has been defaced or altered to gratify a private jealousy or some prejudice founded on religious belief. The Romans tried to obliterate the old Egyptian deities. The early Christians hacked away at anything that failed to strike them as being orthodox. Then the Turks capped the climax by coming in and burning everything non-Mohammedan that was at all combustible. A few ancient records remain because they are carved in huge characters on very hard stone. The theologians wanted to batter them down, but it would have meant a lot of hard work and they had been leading sedentary lives. So they merely criss-crossed them and wrote the equivalent for "Rats"
underneath, and let it go at that.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Egyptian temple paintings]
Even the modern circus bill is not more exuberant and given to joyful hyperbole than the inscriptions and paintings of the Egyptian temples.
A few of them are reproduced herewith. Take No. 1, for example. This represents our old friend Rameses the Great in the act of overcoming his enemies. It was designed by Rameses himself. Now we know where Kaiser Wilhelm got all of his tips.