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Voyage in Lower and Upper Egypt, during the Campaigns of General Bonaparte. Vivant Denon | | | | |
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Chapter 48 part 2: Kom Ombos. - Silsilis. - Chnubis [El Kab]. (p.227)
As
soon as I embarked, I experienced all the inconveniences of this way of
traveling; the wind, the impossibility of making the locals maneuver,
the vain cries of our Provençals, everything combined for our torture.
Embarking on the 25th (February 1799), we did not arrive until the 27th
at Kom-Ombos [1], at the moment when the wind became favorable to go
beyond: we were in too much of a hurry to take advantage of it for me
to dare propose putting an hour on land; I only had time to observe for
a moment, and quickly make a sketch of the site and the advantageous
position of the monuments.
Plate 41-2: Panoramic view of Kom Ombos (Denon 1802 vol.3, plate 41).
"No.
2.—View of the ruins of Ombos, capital of the nome of that name, built
in a theatrical situation, dominating the Nile and all this region of
the valley; the remains of its monuments still emerge sumptuously from
the bricks and sherds of its particular buildings: we see on the right
the wall of its circumvallation, with a door which is still included
therein; the only time I encountered this conservation; the two moles,
which undoubtedly served as an entrance to the enclosure of the large
temple that we see behind, built on shifting or attached ground, had
foundations which descended to the level of the river; the temple, very
advantageously located, must have produced the most imposing effect
when surrounded by all its accessories; the ruin is still admirable. I
only saw it to have to regret not being able to make a view of it which
could give the idea of its splendor. On the left, on a mound of red
bricks, which are the remains of the ancient city, we see some
structures, which are the dwellings of Arab pastoralists, who live
miserably on the sumptuous ruins of ancient dwellings. I regretted not
being able to look within its enclosure to see if there were any
remains of some pools where the crocodiles that were adored in Ombos
would have been fed." (Comments by Vivant Denon in vol.2, Explanations of Plates.)
The ancient Ombos,
where the crocodile was revered, is still called Kom-Ombos (mountain of
Ombos); it is actually placed on an eminenec which dominates the
country, and extends to the edge of the river. If all the fragments
that can still be seen there belonged, as it appears, to a single
building, it was immense. In the center, is a large portico in columns
with flared capitals, of the greatest proportion: in the southern part,
a door is (p.228) preserved in its entirety; it is attached to a
circumvallation wall which is destroyed: to the west and on the edge of
the Nile, rose an enormous mole, now ruined in its upper part; the
overflowing of the river uncovered foundations forty feet deep, they
were built with the same solidity and the same magnificence as what
served as decoration.
The next day I was happier; we engraved opposite the
large sandstone quarries [2], cut into the mountains which lead to the Nile
on both sides of this river; this place is called Gebel Silsilis, it is
located between Etfu and Ombos: the sandstone of these quarries being
of an equal grain and of a whole mass, we could cut the quarters of the
size which we needed them to be; it is undoubtedly to the beauty and
equality of this material that we owe the grandeur and conservation of
the monuments which after so many centuries are the object of our
admiration. From the immense excavations and the quantity of debris
that we still see in these (p.229) quarries we can judge that the work
was carried out for thousands of years, and that they were able to
provide the materials used to the majority of the monuments of Egypt:
the distance should not actually bring any obstacle to the exploitation
of these quarries, since the Nile in its growths came quite naturally
to lift and lead to their destination the cofferdams loaded in the
another season of masses to transport.
The monumental mania of
the Egyptians is manifested on all sides in these quarries; after
having provided for the erection of temples, they were themselves
consecrated by monuments: the very quarries were decorated by temples.
On the bank of the Nile, we find porticos with columns, entablatures,
and cornices covered with hieroglyphics cut and taken from the mass,
and a large number of tombs [3] also dug into the rock; these tombs are
still very curious, although all excavated and badly disfigured.
"No.
2.—Tomb in the quarries of Silsilis, the largest and best preserved of
all those dug there; the facade is 55 feet 8 inches long by about 15
feet high, with an entablature; five doors, including the middle one
decorated with a doorframe covered with hieroglyphs, two square niches,
with figures inside; behind this a gallery 50 feet long and 10 feet
wide, in the middle of which is a door opening into a chamber, at the
end of which are seven standing figures; on each side of this interior
door, a niche, with a figure also standing; and at the back of the
gallery, to the right as you enter, another group of three figures, a
small one also with a face, and two smaller still and which are empty,
all carved out of the same, the statues too; the rest of the rock is
preserved in its primitive form. What we see on the right are openings
to smaller tombs, with figures inside." (Comments by Vivant Denon in vol.2, Explanations of Plates.)
In
this tomb and in many smaller ones nearby we find, in small private
rooms, large seated figures; these rooms are decorated with hieroglyphs
traced on the rock, and finished in colored stucco, always representing
offerings of bread, fruit, liqueurs, poultry, etc. The ceilings, also
in stucco, are decorated with painted scrolls and exquisite taste; the
ground is cut with several tombs of just the right size, and of the
same shape as the mummy boxes, and in the same number as the sculpted
figures: those representing men have small square beards, with
hairstyles hanging behind the shoulders; those of the women have the
same hairstyles, but hanging forward over their bare throats.
The latter usually
have one arm passed under that of the figure which is near them, in the
other they hold a lotus flower, plant of Acheron, (p.230) Acheron,
emblem of the dead. The tombs where there is only one figure are
apparently those of men who died single; those where there are three
were perhaps husbands who had two wives at the same time, or one after
the other; perhaps also when two brothers, both married, had only one
tomb prepared for them, they were represented together. The always
broken opening of these tombs did not allow me to observe how these
monuments opened or closed; what I was able to distinguish in the
remaining parts is that the doors are all decorated with a jamb,
covered with hieroglyphs, surmounted by a grooved crown forming a
cornice, and an entablature on which is always carved a winged globe.
"No.
1.—Tombs in the quarries of Silsilis: these quarries, extended into the
mass of the sandstone rock, preserved on the shore a kind of facade
pierced with doors, which serve as openings to pass the materials taken
from the interior to embark them on the Nile; this type of facade was
decorated with small porticos taken directly from the mass and carved
with care, without otherwise smoothing out the rocks in which they were
taken, as can be seen on the right of the print; in the middle, where
the four figures with pikes are, is the entrance to one of the streets
of these quarries; on the left an inscription decorated with a
coronation covered with sacred emblems; and what is strange about this
monument is that the parallel lines between them are not perpendicular;
the species of mushroom on the left undoubtedly served as a witness to
help calculate the exploitation of the quarry, as we keep today for
clearing land or leveling soil: the error that the imagination gives
birth, and that the love of the marvelous propagates, would most often
be destroyed, if we wanted in good faith to observe and realize the
physicality of things, and not ascribe to them a way of being that they have not."
"Travelers have always seen this piece of rock as one of
the columns which served to attach a chain, which is believed to have
closed the Nile at this point, where this river is restricted by the
mountains; however, this chain would have had to have been either of
rope or of iron: if it had been of iron, its weight would have carried
a column twelve times larger than this one; if it had been made of
hemp, we would still see the marks of the place where it would have
been attached; moreover, it would have quickly degraded a soft stone by
friction; and then, what would have been the machine that could have
stretched a rope that would have crossed this great river? The best
proof that this was not the column of the chain is that a chain could
not be attached to this column, and that, if the chain existed, it was
by other means that she was tied and stretched." (Comments by Vivant Denon in vol.2, Explanations of Plates.)
On
the side of the doors I encountered several times the figure of a woman
in the attitude of pain; it was perhaps that of a widow who had
survived her husband: I drew one. The choice of this site to place
tombs proves that throughout time, in Egypt, the silence of the desert
has been the asylum of death, since even today, to find perpetually dry
and conservative soil, the Egyptians carry their dead in the desert, up
to three leagues from their homes, and yet go every week to say prayers
at their graves. I had barely sketched what was most interesting in
these quarries when the wind called us back on board.
Plate 43-2-4: View of figures in the tombs, in front of the
quarries of Gebel Silsilis.
"Nos. 2, 3, and 4.—These figures, of natural size, sculpted directly
from the mass of the rock, were most often barely sketched: each room
of these tombs, 7 by 10, and 8 by 11 feet, is constantly covered in
stucco with paintings , and contains one, two, three, or four figures." (Comments by Vivant Denon in vol.2, Explanations of Plates.)
As
we got closer to Esnê we found crocodiles: we do not see any in Syene,
and they reappear above the cataracts; it seems that they
preferentially affect certain areas, and particularly from Tintyra to
Ombos, and that the place where they are most abundant is near
Hermontis. We saw three here, one of which, much larger than the other
two, was at least twenty-five feet long; they were all three asleep: we
approached within twenty paces of them; we had (p.231) plenty of time
to distinguish their sad appearance; they looked like cannons on their
mounts. I shot the biggest one with a charge and an ammunition rifle;
the ball struck and slipped on the scales; he made a jump ten feet
long, and was lost in the Nile.
Four
leagues before Esnê (p.216) I saw a paved quay, on the bank of the Nile; a
hundred toises [4] away, a very destroyed pyramidal door, and six columns
of the portico and gallery of a temple, which must be that of Chnubis [5].
We had good luck: asking for half an hour would have been a crime of
military service; I had to take a little picturesque view in passing,
which I have since repeated in a slightly less inconvenient manner.
Fig.3: A: Plate 42-1: View of the ruins of Chnubis [El Kab]. (Denon 1802 vol.1, plate 42.) B: Detail of temple on platform from plate 42-1. C: View of temple on platform at El Kab from plate 66, fig.3 in Description de l'Egypte, vol.1, 1809, drawn by the French artist Dutertre.
(Comments on Plate 42-1 by Vivant Denon in vol.2, Explanations of Plates:)
"No.
1.—View of the ruins of Chnubis [5], one of the cities whose remains,
although numerous, give the least idea of its plan and the arrangement
of its buildings; it will undoubtedly have been built or rebuilt at
various times: we see very small monuments there very close to the
large ones, and equally careful in their details. I have seen Chnubis
twice, and both in the most inconvenient way. (See the Journal, page
231.) The ruins on the right are small in shape, and could only have
belonged to very small monuments; what ends them is a group of two
granite figures joined together and reversed: the place where the two
isolated figures are is a parapet which surrounds a pool around which
was a gallery in columns. There is still water in the area where we see
a hunter firing a gun at one of the birds that was in the marsh. The
monument next to the men on horseback is a gallery of two types of
columns erected at two times, united however by the same floral band:
could these be the remains of a temple to which additions would have
been made? Nearby are two parallel doors, of smaller dimensions, and
having belonged to another monument, all magnificently covered with
numerous hieroglyphs; but what is most particular in the ruins of this
city is the great wall of unfired bricks with which its monuments are
still surrounded; we see on the far left an opening, which was
undoubtedly a door, the line of which we can follow all along the
second plane; behind is the Libyan chain; in front of the landscape
passes the Nile, in front of which there was a quay, of which some
ruins remain."
(Comments on plate 66, fig.3 of El Kab in Description de l'Egypte,
vol. 1, p.xx, by M. Jomard:) "Figure 3: View of the remains of
the main buildings of Elethyla. The row of stones [in
foreground] belongs to a demolished foundation; which
demonstrates that this section of wall is not a base, and that the wall
rises higher. We see in the background of the image the brick wall and
the desert."
Plate 41-1: View of temple near Chnubis [5] (Denon 1802 vol. 3, plate 41).
"No.
1.—Ruins of a temple near Chnubis, seven or eight hundred toises [4] from
the walls of this town: this small monument situated, like a hermitage,
on the edge of the desert, has a very imposing character; a sanctuary
of the greatest antiquity was later surrounded by a rotating gallery,
which was terminated by two porticos which are destroyed. I would have
liked to take several views of it, because all its aspects were equally
noble and picturesque; the bareness of the ground around this monument
leaves no doubt about the isolation in which it has always been; and
should not lead us to look for the existence of a city lost in the
mists of time." (Comments by Vivant Denon in vol.2, Explanations of Plates.)
Footnotes:
1.
[Editor's note:] The main temple at Kom Ombos dates from the Ptolemaic Dynasty at 180 -
47 BC, when it was rebuilt on the site of an earlier temple built by
Thutmosis III (1479-1425 BC) of the 18th dynasty. The temple was
dedicated to two deities: the local crocodile-headed god Sobek, and the
falcon-headed god Horus the Elder (also called Haroeris).The crocodile
was worshipped by the people of Ombos, with crocodile mummies found in
adjacent catacombs. A smaller temple to the northwest was sacred to
Isis.
2. [Editor's note:] The quarries at Gebel Silsilis became active in the
18th dynasty when sandstone replaced limestone as a primary building
material.
3. [Editor's note:] Tombs close to the Nile at Gebel Silsilis date
mainly from the 18th dynasty reigns of Hatshepsut and Thutmosis III.
Included are tombs of high ranking officials.
4.
[Editor's note:] A toise was about 3.799 square metres, used as a measure for land
and masonry area in France before 10 December 1799, when the metric
system was introduced.
5.
[Editor's note:] Chnubis, or Kneph, was the name of the ram-headed
Egyptian god, to whom
a major temple was dedicated at Latopolis. The site described by Denon
as "Chnubis" is El Kab, on the east
bank of the Nile about 20 miles southeast of Latopolis
(Esneh). The ancient Roman name of the site was Elethyla. See fig.3, where a comparison of the temple structures shown for El Kab in the
image of Plate 66, fig.3 in Description de l/Egypte,
vol 1, with that by
Denon for "Chnubis" in plate 42-1 shows they are identical. The
foundations of the temple show associations with Amenhotep II and
Ramesses II of the 18th and 19th dynasties. The temple was later
rebuilt by Nectanebo II, last king of the 30th dynasty.
For information on archaeological findings at El Kab, see the
report by John E. Quibell, 1898, El Kab, published by the Egyptian Research Account, Publication 3.
.
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