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The Valley of the Kings
Excerpted from La Mort De Philae
by Pierre Loti, 1924
-- AN AUDIENCE OF AMENOPHIS II --
In The Valley of the Kings
King Amenophis II has resumed his receptions, which he found himself
obliged to suspend for three thousand, three hundred and some odd
years, by reason of his death. The gatherings are very well attended, court
dress is not insisted upon, and the Grand Master of Ceremonies is not
above taking a tip. The great Pharaoh holds them every morning in the winter from
eight o'clock, in the bowels of a mountain in the desert of Libya. If he rests himself during the remainder of the day it is only
because, as soon as midday sounds, they turn off the electric lights.
Happy Amenophis! Out of so many kings who tried so hard to hide for
ever their mummies in the depths of impenetrable caverns, he is the
only one who has been left in his tomb. And he makes the most of it
every time he opens his salons. (Tutankhamen also resides in his tomb down the road, unknown to the author in 1905)
It is important to arrive before midday at the dwelling of this
Pharaoh, and at eight o'clock sharp, therefore, on a clear February
morning, I set out from Luxor, where for many days my dahabiya sailboat had
slumbered against the bank of the Nile. It is necessary first of all
to cross the river, for the Theban kings
established their eternal habitations on the opposite bank. They found their final palaces far beyond
the green plains of the river shore, right away in those mountains which
bound the horizon as with a wall of intense rose color. Other
canoes, which are also crossing, glide by the side of mine on the
tranquil water. The passengers seem to belong to that variety of
Anglo-Saxons which is equipped by Thomas Cook & Sons (Egypt Ltd.), and
like me, no doubt, they are bound for the royal presence.
We land on the sand of the opposite bank, which today is almost
deserted. Formerly there stretched here a regular suburb of Thebes -
and the hall of the preparers of mummies, artists with natron and oils, which preserve the bodies
from corruption.
And it was to the
neighboring mountains that the products of so many careful wrappings
were borne for burial. That chain of living rocks
that rises before us, colored each morning with the same rose, as of
a tender flower, is literally stuffed with dead bodies.
We have to cross a wide plain before reaching the mountains, and on
our way grain fields stretch out on both sides. Behind us extends the old Nile. On the opposite bank we see Luxor, whose gigantic Pharaonic
colonnades are lengthened below by their own reflection in
the mirror of the river.
As we draw nearer to the chain of Libya, where the king awaits us, we
traverse fields still green with growing grain. Sparrows and larks
sing around us in the impetuous spring of this land of Thebes.
Memnon
Photograph by Antonio Beato, 1862
And now two menhirs become gradually distinct. Of
the same height and shape, alike indeed in every respect, they rise
side by side in the clear distance in the midst of these green plains. They wear the headgear of
the Sphinx, and are gigantic human forms seated on thrones--the
colossal statues of Memnon. We recognise them at once, for the
picture makers of succeeding ages have popularised their aspect, as in
the case of the pyramids. What is strange is that they should stand
there so simply in the midst of these fields, which
reach to their very feet. They are surrounded by these humble birds we
know so well, who sing without ceremony on their shoulders.
They do not seem to be scandalised even at seeing now, passing quite
close to them, the tracks of a playful little railway belonging to a
local industry, that is laden with sugarcane and gourds.
The chain of Libya, during the last hour, has been growing gradually
larger against the profound and excessively blue sky. And now that it
rises up quite near to us, overheated, and as it were incandescent,
under this ten o'clock Sun. We begin to see on all sides, in front of
the first rocky spurs of the mountains, the debris of palaces,
colonnades, staircases and pylons.
Headless giants, swathed like dead
Pharaohs, stand upright, with hands crossed beneath their shroud of
sandstone. They are the temples and statues for the
numberless kings and queens who
had their mummies buried hard by in the heart of the mountains, in the
deepest of their secret galleries.
Tomb of Thothmes III
Hand colored photo from Elysian Fields.
And now the fields have ceased; there is no longer any herbage--
nothing. We have crossed the desolate threshold, we are in the desert. We tread suddenly upon a disquieting soil, seemingly half sand, half
ashes, that is pitted on all sides with gaping holes. It looks like
some region that had long been undermined by burrowing beasts. But it
is men who, for centuries, have vexed this ground,
first to hide the mummies in it, and afterwards, and until our day, to
exhume them.
Each of these holes has enclosed its corpse, and if you
peer within you may see yellow-colored rags still trailing there. Some lean
Bedouins, who exercise the office of excavators and sleep hard by in
holes like jackals, advance to sell us scarabs, blue-glass trinkets
that are half fossilised, and feet or hands of the dead.
And now farewell to the fresh morning. Every minute the heat becomes
more oppressive. The pathway that is marked only by a row of stones
turns at last and leads into the depths of the mountain by a narrow
passage.
The pyramid shaped mountain standing above the Valley, known today as el Qurn,
was Meretseger, an important god in the New Kingdom.
Lithograph by Ernst Weidenbach, 1845.
We enter now into the Valley of the Kings, the
place of the last rendezvous of the most august mummies. The breaths
of air that reach us between these rocks have become suddenly burning,
the site seems to belong no longer to Earth but to some rocky
planet which had forever lost its clouds and atmosphere. This Libyan
chain, in the distance so delicately rose, is positively frightful now
that it overhangs us.
It looks what it is--an enormous and fantastic
tomb, a natural necropolis, whose vastness and horror nothing human
could equal. It is an ideal storehouse for corpses that wanted to endure for
ever. Nearly no rain falls from
the changeless sky. The limestone looks to be in one single piece from summit to
base, and betrays no crack or crevice by which anything might
penetrate into the sepulchres. The dead could sleep in the heart of these monstrous blocks as sheltered as under vaults of
lead.
And of magnificence the centuries have taken
care. The continual passage of winds has scaled and
worn away the face of the rocks, so as to leave only the denser veins
of stone. Strange architectural fantasies have appeared
such as Matter, in the beginning, might have dimly conceived.
Subsequently the Sun of Egypt has lavished on the whole its ardent
reddish patines. And now the mountains imitate in places great organ-
pipes of yellow and carmine. Outlined upon the excessive blue of the sky, the summits, illumined to
the point of dazzling, rise up in the light. They are like red cinders of a
glowing fire.
We seem to be walking in some valley of the
Apocalypse with flaming walls. All is silence and death, beneath a
transcendent clearness. It was such surroundings as these that the Egyptians chose
for their necropolis.
The Valley of the Kings, West Thebes
by David Roberts, 1839.
The pathway plunges deeper and deeper in the stifling defiles. The Sun, now nearly
meridian, grows each minute more mournful and terrible. We
expect to come upon a dread silence at
the end of this Valley of the Kings.
But what is this? At a turning at the bottom of a sinister looking
recess, what does this crowd of people, this uproar mean? Under awnings to protect them from the Sun stand
some fifty donkeys, saddled in the English fashion. In a corner an
electrical workshop, built of new bricks, shoots forth black
smoke. All about,coming
and going, making a great stir and gabbling, continuously gabbling,
are a great number of Cook's tourists of both sexes, and some even who
verily seem to have no sex at all.
They have come for the royal
audience; some on donkeys, some in jaunting cars. Some, the fine
ladies who have grown short of wind, come in chairs carried by the Bedouins.
From the four points of Europe they have assembled in this desert
ravine.
Here and there the hidden palaces reveal their dark, square
entrances, hewn in the massive rock. Over each a board indicates
the name of a Pharaoh--Ramses IV, Seti I, Thothmes III, Ramses
IX. All these Pharaohs, except Amenophis II, have
recently been removed and carried away to Lower Egypt, to people the
glass cases of the museum of Cairo. Still, their last dwellings have not
ceased to attract crowds. From each underground habitation are
emerging now a number of perspiring Cooks and Cookesses. And from that
of Amenophis, especially, they issue rapidly. Suppose that we have
come too late and that the audience is over?
The Valley of the Kings.
Tombs known in 1820.
The ceremonial entrance is at the right.
by G. Belzoni.
And to think that these entrances had been walled up, had been masked
with so much care, intended to be lost for the centuries! And of all the perseverance
that was needed to discover them, the observation, the gropings, the
soundings and random discoveries!
But now they are being closed. We loitered too long around the colossi
of Memnon and the palaces of the plain. It is nearly noon, a consuming noon, which falls perpendicularly upon the red
summits, and is burning to its deepest recesses the valley of stone.
At the door of Amenophis we cajole, beseech. By the help of a
gratuity the Bedouin Grand Master of Ceremonies allows himself to be
persuaded. We are to descend with him, but quickly, quickly, for the
electricity will soon be extinguished. It will be a short audience,
but at least it will be a private one. We shall be alone with the
king.
Excerpted from La Mort De Philae
by Pierre Loti, 1909, 1924
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