Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) by S. Spooner (pdf to ebook reader .TXT) 📕

broke off at the waist, and the upper part lies prostrate on the back;

it measures six feet ten inches over the front of the head, and

sixty-two feet round the shoulders. At the entrance of the gate which

leads from the second court to the palace, is the famous colossal

sounding statue, which, according to Herodotus, Strabo, and Pausanias,

uttered a joyful sound when the sun rose, and a mournful one when it

set. It is also related that it shed tears, and gave out oracular

responses in seven verses, and that these sounds were heard till the

fourth century after Christ. These phenomena, attested by many ancient

and modern writers, are variously accounted for by the learned, as

priestcraft, peculiar construction, escape of rarified air, &c. This

statue is in excellent preservation. The head is of rose-colored

granite, and the rest of a kind of black stone. Two other colossal

statues, about fifty feet high, are seated on the plain.

HELIOPOLIS.

The name of Heliopolis, or City of the Sun, was given by the Greeks to

the Egyptian _City of On_. It was situated a little to the north of

Memphis, was one of the largest cities of Egypt during the reign of the

Pharaohs, and so adorned with statues as to be esteemed one of the first

sacred cities in the kingdom. The temple dedicated to Re, was a

magnificent building, having in front an avenue of sphynxes, celebrated

in history, and adorned with several obelisks, raised by Sethosis

Rameses, B.C. 1900. By means of lakes and canals, the town, though built

on an artificial eminence, communicated with the Nile, and during the

flourishing ages of the Egyptian monarchy, the priests and scholars

acquired and taught the elements of learning within the precincts of its

temples. At the time of Strabo who visited this town about A. D. 45,

the apartments were still shown in which, four centuries before, Eudoxus

and Plato had labored to learn the philosophy of Egypt. Here Joseph and

Mary are said to have rested with our Saviour. A miserable village,

called _Metarea_, now stands on the site of this once magnificent city.

Near the village is the _Pillar of On_, a famous obelisk, supposed to be

the oldest monument of the kind existing. Its height is 67½ feet, and

its breadth at the base 6 feet. It is one single shaft of reddish

granite (Sienite), and hieroglyphical characters are rudely sculptured

upon it.

MEMPHIS.

The very situation of this famous ancient city of Egypt had long been a

subject of learned dispute, till it was accurately ascertained by the

French expedition to Egypt. Numerous heaps of rubbish, of blocks of

granite covered with hieroglyphics and sculptures, of colossal

fragments, scattered over a space three or four leagues in

circumference, marks its site, a few miles south of Metarea or

Heliopolis, at a village called Moniet-Rahinet. According to Herodotus,

the foundation of Memphis was ascribed to Menes, the first king of

Egypt. It was a large, rich, and splendid city, and the second capital

of Egypt. Among its buildings were several magnificent temples, as those

of Phtha, Osiris, Serapis, etc.; its palaces were also remarkable. In

Strabo's time, it was next to Alexandria in size and population.

Edrisi, who visited Memphis in the 12th century, thus describes its

remains then existing: "Notwithstanding the vast extent of this city,

the remote period at which it was built, the attempts made by various

nations to destroy it and to obliterate every trace of it, by removing

the materials of which it was constructed, combined with the decay of

4,000 years, there are yet in it works so wonderful as to confound the

reflecting, and such as the most eloquent could not adequately

describe." Among the works specified by him, are a monolithic temple of

granite, thirteen and a half feet high, twelve long, and seven broad,

entirely covered, within and without, with inscriptions; and colossal

statues of great beauty, one of which was forty-five feet high, carved

out of a single block of red granite. These ruins then extended about

nine miles in every direction.

LAKE MOERIS.

This famous lake, according to Herodotus, with whose account Diodorus

Siculus and Mela agree, was entirely an artificial excavation, made by

king Moeris, to carry off the overflowing waters of the Nile, and

reserve them for the purposes of irrigation. It was, in the time of

Herodotus, 3,600 stadia or 450 miles in circumference, and 300 feet

deep, with innumerable canals and reservoirs. Denon, Belzoni, and other

modern travelers, describe it at the present time as a natural basin,

thirty or forty miles long, and six broad. The works, therefore, which

Herodotus attributes to King Moeris, must have been the mounds, dams,

canals, and sluices which rendered it subservient to the purposes of

irrigation. These, also, would give it the appearance of being entirely

the product of human industry.

THE COLOSSAL SPHINX.

The Egyptian Sphinx is represented by a human head on the body of a

lion; it is always in a recumbent position with the fore paws stretched

forward, and a head dress resembling an old-fashioned wig. The features

are like those of the ancient Egyptians, as represented on their

monuments. The colossal Sphinx, near the group of pyramids at Jizeh,

which lay half buried in the sand, was uncovered and measured by

Caviglia. It is about 150 feet long, and 63 feet high. The body is made

out of a single stone; but the paws, which are thrown out about fifty

feet in front, are constructed of masonry. The Sphinx of Sais, formed of

a block of red granite, twenty-two feet long, is now in the Egyptian

Museum in the Louvre. There has been much speculation among the learned,

concerning the signification of these figures. Winckelmann observes that

they have the head of a female, and the body of a male, which has led to

the conjecture that they are intended as emblems of the generative

powers of nature, which the old mythologies are accustomed to indicate

by the mystical union of the two sexes in one individual; they were

doubtless of a sacred character, as they guarded the entrance of

temples, and often formed long avenues leading up to them.

THE LABYRINTH OF EGYPT

A labyrinth, with the ancients, was a building containing a great number

of chambers and galleries, running into one another in such a manner as

to make it very difficult to find the way through the edifice. The most

famous was the Egyptian labyrinth, situated in Central Egypt, above Lake

Moeris, not far from Crocodilopolis, in the country now called _Fejoom_.

Herodotus, who visited and examined this edifice with great attention,

affirms that it far surpassed everything he had conceived of it. It is

very uncertain when, by whom, and for what purpose it was built, though

in all probability it was for a royal sepulchre. The building, half

above and half below the ground, was one of the finest in the world, and

is said to have contained 3,000 apartments. The arrangements of the work

and the distribution of the parts were remarkable. It was divided into

sixteen principal regions, each containing a number of spacious

buildings, which taken together, might be defined an assemblage of

palaces. There were also as many temples as there were gods in Egypt,

the number of which was prodigious, besides various other sacred

edifices, and four lofty pyramids at the angles of the walls. The

entrance was by vast halls, followed by saloons, which conducted to

grand porticos, the ascent to which was by a flight of ninety steps. The

interior was decorated with columns of porphyry and colossal statues of

Egyptian gods. The whole was surrounded by a wall, but the passages were

so intricate that no stranger could find the way without a guide. The

substructions of this famous labyrinth still exist, and Milizia says,

"as they were not arched, it is wonderful that they should have been so

long preserved, with so many stupendous edifices above them." The Cretan

labyrinth was built by Dædalus on the model of the Egyptian, but it was

only a hundredth part the size; yet, according to Diodorus Siculus, it

was a spacious and magnificent edifice, divided into a great number of

apartments, and surrounded entirely by a wall. What would the ancients

say, could they see our modern imitations of their labyrinths?

THE CATACOMBS OF EGYPT.

There are numerous catacombs in Egypt, the principal of which are at

Alexandria; at Sakkara, near Cairo; at Siut, near the ancient Lycopolis

or City of the Wolf; at Gebel Silsilis, on the banks of the Nile between

Etfu and Ombos, the site of one of the principal quarries of ancient

Egypt; and at Thebes. Many of these are of vast extent, and were

doubtless formed by quarrying the rocks and mountains for building

materials. They consist of grottos, galleries, and chambers, penetrating

often to a considerable distance, the superincumbent mass being

supported by huge pillars of rock; or the galleries running parallel,

with masses of solid rock intervening for supports. Many of these

chambers and grottos contained multitudes of mummies, probably the

bodies of the less wealthy; many were evidently private family tombs of

wealthy individuals, some of which are of great magnificence, adorned

with sculptures, paintings, and hieroglyphics. The Arabs for centuries

have been plundering these abodes of the dead, and great numbers of the

mummies have been destroyed for fuel, and for the linen, rosin, and

asphaltum they contain, which is sold to advantage at Cairo. An immense

number of them have been found in the plain of Sakkara, near Memphis,

consisting not only of human bodies, but of various sacred animals, as

bulls, crocodiles, apes, ibises, fish, &c.; hence it is called _The

Plain of the Mummies_. Numerous caves or grottos, with contents of the

same kind, are found in the two mountainous ridges which run nearly

parallel with the Nile, from Cairo to Syene. Many of these tombs and

mummies are two or three thousand years old, and some of them perhaps

older.

Among all the wonderful subterranean monuments of Egypt, the Catacombs

of Thebes are the most extraordinary and magnificent. These consist of

the Necropolis, or city of the dead, on the west bank of the Nile (which

was the common burial-place of the people), and the Tombs of the Kings.

The latter lie to the northwest of the city, at some distance in the

Desert. Having passed the Necropolis, the traveler enters a narrow and

rugged valley, flanked with perpendicular rocks, and ascending a narrow,

steep passage about ten feet high, which seems to have been broken down

through the rock, the ancient passage being from the Memnonium under the

hills, he comes to a kind of amphitheatre about 100 yards wide, which is

called Bab-il-Meluke--that is, the gate or court of the kings--being the

sepulchres of the kings of Thebes. In this court there are signs of

about eighteen excavations; but only nine can be entered. The hills on

each side are high, steep rocks, and the whole plain is covered with

rough stones that seem to have rolled down from them.

The grottos present externally no other ornaments than a door in a

simple square frame, with an oval in the centre of the upper part, on

which are inscribed the hieroglyphical figures of a beetle, a man with a

hawk's head, and beyond the circle two figures on their knees, in the

act of adoration. Having passed the first gate, long arched galleries

are discovered, about twelve feet wide and twenty feet high, cased with

stucco, sculptured and painted; the vaults, of an elegant elliptical

figure, are covered with innumerable hieroglyphics, disposed with so

much taste, that notwithstanding the singular grotesqueness of the

forms, and the total absence of demi-tint or aërial perspective, the

ceilings make an agreeable whole, a rich and harmonious association of

colors. Four of five of these galleries, one within the other, generally

lead to a spacious room, containing the sarcophagus of the king,

composed of a single block of granite, about twelve feet long by eight

in breadth, ornamented with hieroglyphics, both within and without; they

are square at one end, and rounded at the other, like the splendid

sarcophagus deposited in the British Museum, and supposed by Dr. Clarke

to have contained the body of Alexander. They are covered with a lid of

the same material, and of enormous thickness, shutting with a groove;

but neither this precaution, nor these vast blocks of stone, brought

from such a distance with immense labor, have been able to preserve the

relics of the sovereigns from the attempts of avarice; all these tombs

have been violated. The figure of the king appears to have been

sculptured and painted at full length on the lid of each sarcophagus.

The paintings found in these sepulchres are among the most curious and

interesting remains of Egyptian art; and they are in wonderful

preservation, the colors being as fresh as when first executed. Some of

these figures were copied by Bruce; and Denon,