HISTORIC EGYPT

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3311, 6 April 1926, Page 5

HISTORIC EGYPT

NEW KNOWTVKDG E. ITS ANCIENT TEMPLES. REPAIRS TO THE SPHINX. . The chief change in Egypt that one notices after a lapse of some years since his last visit .though that was “p.oslt helium,” is the omnipresence of the motor-car (writes Df. R. H. Kail, keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities at the British Museum, in The Times). The Opera Spuare, Cairo, is a perpetual pandemonium of car-hooting, but your modern Egyptian’s car is by no means confined to Cairo. It strikes one as very odd to be able to go in a car rrom one’s hotel to Sakkarah, but one can do more than that. It is possmie now to go to Luxor by car it one wants to. Ways of course will be rough here and there, and only negotiable by a Ford, or something of that sort, but it can be done. It would be a rather monotonous journey, along interminable canal-dykes, in flying dust and scorching glare.

A sufficient foretaste can be obtained on the journey to Sakkarah. It is here that the Egyptian Government excavations are taking- place, which I want to talk about first. They need not be considered from the charitable point of view, for the Egyptian Government is quite rich enough to' help, and more. But they are extras ordinarily interesting, because ' they have revealed a now and hitherto unexpected phase of early Egyptian art. The later Egyptians worshipped a dioty named Yenihatpe, later calfed Imhatep or Imhothphe, a name Greecized as Imouthes, who was tne patron of architecture and of learning and of the reasoned arts generally. Now Imouthes was a deified man. Ho, was originally the prime minister of an early king named Zoser of the Third .Dynasty (c. 3100 8.C.), wno built the Step Pyramid at Sakkarah, and was recorded to have ere'eted the earliest stone temple. The Deified Builder, Imouthes or rather Yemhatpe, the real man, was apparently the designer and erector of these earliest stone buildings. He was a great innovator and creator in the arts, and as such was venerated as the father of knowledge, till finally he became an actual god, as we see him in his images, seated, and bending over the Halt unrolled papyrus-scroll which be holds across his lap, and is reading. Now Mr. C. M. Firth, of the "uervice des Antiquites.” has discovered these buildings of Yewhatpe’s, and very startling they are. For, jfJ-Jiough it is certain that they are /of, the epoch of the Third Dynasty, antt although in the serdab of one of tnem, his funeral temple, has been found the contemporary statue of King Zoser himself, of a crude style that is obviously before the time of [cue ■great Pyramid-builders of the Fourth Dynasty—yet the architecture or these buildings is so fine, so certain, so well carried out, that one would say f halt it was of the Twelfth.. Dynasty at least. Oho would say that tnere must have been much before tins; that a long period of development must have gone before. Yet there is no room In tlie lils'[tory, of the time of any such long period of development. Barely two centuries, before the Egyptians were in th e archaic period of the First Dynasty, when we know nothing or fine stone buildings and even tne provision of a stone floor for a, rbyat tomb was a novelty (to be recorded in the annals of ,the advance of culture. There seems no escape from the conclusion —which alter all is most interesting—that the legend of Imouthes was true, and ithat Yemhatpe was as a matter of fact, a genius who built the first stone temple buildings on the model of wooden prototypes; thajt in fact he and his king Zoser gave that impetus that resulted in the extraordinary development, which led to the creation of (the Great Pyramid, the Spnmx and the other colossal works of tne next dynasty. , Repairs to the Sphinx. The Sphinx, by the way, is being 'cleared and repaved by M. Baraize He (the Egyptian Sphinx was not a sne, but a very masculine person indeed) is now for the first |time since Ptolemaic days being disencumbered of the mass of sand that oppresses him, and now for the first time we can sue him from stem to stern, ?rom the extremities of his forepaws (to the curve of his tail, which last no. man nas seen for 20 centuries. The successive reparations of Thutmase IV. unaer the Eighteenth Dynasty (B.C. 1415) and under the Ptolemies are very interesting to observe. One important restoration has to be undertaken now, and that is tne replacement of the head-dress fanen from the back of (the neck. The rock of the Sphinx weathers not too well, and ii} the unprotected neck is not now taken care of, one of these nno days it would wear through, and the head of the Sphinx crash down upon |the sand. It is true that the wellknown scraggy or plucked-chicken look of the Sphinx to which we are so used will now disappear, but perhaps that will be no loss. Temple Photography.

At Gizeh the supposed or so-called Tomb oE Sneferu still awaits Dr. Uoisner’s spade; later on we shall hear what he finds therein. That the golden coffin of Tultankhamen has already been removed from Thebes, to Cairo we liavo heard. OE other work at Thebes, as of the French at Medamot or Deir-el-Medinch, nothing has as yet transpired; the Americans are not excavating this year. At Medinet Habu Dr. Nelson, for Chicago, is superintending the detailed photography of every scene and hieroglyph in the temple, afterwards to be reproduced. by a partly mechanical process in line, which should be of more use to the philologists than to the appreciation of Egyptian art. science, o 1 course, relief sculpture loses heavily when translated thus . Away goes an the character of ithc sculpture, which collotype reproduces so faithfully. But the expense of complete repro-

duotion in collotype Is a serious consideration.

Similar work has been undertaken by the Egypt Exploration Society a\t Abydos, where the two temples or Seti I and Ramesos II are being reproduced in the same way by 'Mr. Felton as photographer, while as engineer he is ( under the direction oi Mr. Henry Frankfort, clearing the Osireion of Ithe enormous blocks or alone that have fallen from Its ruined roof into its area. Mr. Frankfort is in charge of the excavations of tne society at Abydos and el-i'Lmarna. He has already» made interesting discoveries in 'the necropolis of Abyaos, which still yields antiquities to tne seeker, though It must be well mgn exhausted, on© would Ihink. And lie has come to important conclusions with regard jto the date of the constructor of the Osireion, which It will be for him to announce in the press. An Amazing Building. The Osireion is a most amazing building . It quite puts the famous temple of the Sphinx ajt Glzeh into 'the shade so far as the size of its. pillars and its architraves are concerned. Its wall blocks remind us or Cuzco and TiahuanacO. And its purpose still remains mysterious, thougn one may hazard the guess (that it was connected with the worship of Osins in the Underworld. It was a suokerranean, building, which can only I have been lit by the glare of torenes., 'Round .a central island, which bore the great square granite piers that upheld the roof, coursed a narrow canal, a few feet wide, by the side oi which was an either hand a leage narrow enough for a man to ger round the piers on the island, and on the other side to pass from one jto me other of the small cells, made in tne thickness of the outer walls, which are placed at regular intervals an round the building. One can only suppose that this mysterious building was used for the celebration or Osiride mysteries and that the Nishemet, or sacred bark of Osins, was navigated along this subterranean waterway, as the boat of the dead Sun was supposed to traverse the Underworld at night from west to east between his setting and his rising. ,

The later King Meneptah (tried to ■decorate this building, previously without relief or hieroglyph, like the Temple of the Sphinx, which equally was a subterranean building, thougn without any canal. The Temple or 'the Sphinx was demonstrably a funor ary (tempi© of King Khafra ,the creator of the Sphinx. Its only decoration was the series of seated statues of King Khafra, now in the Cairo Museum, discovered by Marietta many years ago. The emplacements of these statues in the Temple of tne Sphinx have been brought again to light by M. Baraize this year. in the Osireion no statues or fragments of them are yet apparent, but it is not impossible that antiquities may be found in the bed of the '"canal.” which is about to be pumped out in order that search may be made. The “Impenetrable” Chamber.

Meneptah no doubt it was who broke through one of the cells of the Osireion in order to penetrate into the most mysterious chamber or all at Abydos, the cenotaph of King Seti I, which lies between the Osireion and the Great Temple—a long, low chamber of fine limestone, with ocautiful funerary sculptures on its roof, unfinished, of typical work of Seti’s time; a chamber originally without door or window, sealed up, impenetrable. The way into it was forced la|ter. and Meneptah must have done this.

Various archaeological questions connected with the Osireion remain to be cleared up by Mr. Frankfort, to whom we wish all success in his mission.