Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

“ The serene faces of the great statues became as nearly godlike as any work of man can become. Their calm unmoved greeting to the sun, so different from that of us men, who must needs shade our eyes, being unable to look him in the face, had something sublime about it not convincingly to be explained away, and not to be diminished by the obvious fact that they were but masses of natural rock. I am not convinced that the mountains are dead, nor can I tell what gods of the western desert may not look out from this sacred hill through the eyes which the old men of Egypt have here made for them. ”

“ The scenes in the tomb decorations seem to cry out for very joy. The artist has imprisoned in his representations as much sheer happiness as was ever infused into cold stone. One sees there the gazelle leaping over the hills as the sun rises, the birds flapping their wings and singing, the wild duck rising from the marshes, and the butterflies flashing overhead. The fundamental joy of living—the gaiety of life which the human being may feel in common with the animals—is shown in these scenes as clearly as is the merriment in the representations of feasts and dancing. ”

“ In Egypt the death of the day is a sad business. The red despair of the sky, the untold sorrow of the hills, spreads a tone of melancholy over the mind; and here in this silent valley one’s thoughts went away, sober, and even mystical, into the haze, and there was no more whistling of comic songs for awhile.
What man living in sedate Europe, even if he can understand the pathos of sunset, can feel the old peril of nightfall? I sometimes wonder how the Egyptologist in his museum at home can hope, for example, to appreciate the words of the “heretic” Pharaoh’s Hymn to the Sun ”

“ The historian fails to see that it is not the giving out of the facts, but only their discovery, which requires ponderous study.
The men and women who walked the earth in the days of its youth are not antiquated: the up-to-date young men and the modern young women are the real old fogies, for they are the tenants of the world’s old age, the products of the most ancient phase of the human story. To the Past we must go as a relief from To-day’s harshness; for the Past is spread out before us as a children’s garden, where jolly laughter and sudden, quick-ended tears are to be experienced ”

“ The river sweeps down from the cataract to east and west; southwards one may watch it flowing around a dozen dark clumps of granite rocks, which thrust themselves as it were breathless above the water; and northwards almost without hindrance it passes between the hills and palm-trees of the mainland. Nowadays should one stand upon the mounds which mark the site of the ancient city of Elephantine, and look east and north, one would feel that modern civilisation had hidden for ever the scenes of the past, and had prevented the imagination from re-picturing the place as it was in the older days. ”

“ If one kept quite still, moved not a muscle, perhaps he would suddenly appear, seated amongst the reeds over yonder, pipes in hand. The birds which had lately twittered and chirped in the valley were now silent, and one might have supposed them listening to music which the mortal ear could not distinguish. Perhaps of a sudden one’s ears would be opened, one’s eyes would see, and the god who, more than all other gods of his day, still holds the imagination, would be made manifest beside this desert pool. ”

“ Death, as we watch it around us, is the black menace of the heavens which darkens every man’s day; Death, coming to our neighbour, puts a period to our merrymaking; Death, seen close beside us, calls a halt in our march of pleasure. But let those who would wrest her victory from the grave turn to a study of the Past, where all is dead yet still lives, and{43} they will find that the horror of life’s cessation is materially lessened. To those who are familiar with the course of history, Death seems, to some extent, but the happy solution of the dilemma of life. ”

“ Moreover, history hands down to us that most precious of human assets—our conscience. It is history that arms us individually with the sword and buckler of instinctive orderliness; and every antiquity or ancient work of art serves as a reminder to us of our responsibilities to God and man. History is the silver thread which passes from a man back to his Creator; and woe be to him who breaks that thread.
In the above remarks antiquities have been regarded simply as the relics of an earlier epoch; but{79} let us now ask ourselves what is the value of antiquities regarded as works of art. ”

“ We fought for the happiness and well-being of our children’s children; and we must hand on to them intact the good things that we receive from the past and the present: not only the things that we, in our own phase of thought, consider good but all those which the past has cherished and the future may find of value. To obliterate now anything which may be the inspiration of our descendants is against the principles for which we should strive. The Germans of the old régime deliberately destroyed the records of early ideals as worthless to their materialistic civilisation. ”

“ Excavation is only moral when it is conducted on the strictest scientific lines for the benefit of mankind. Bad excavating, that is to say, digging for antiquities and not for information, is not the less dishonest because it happens to break no law. It cheats the living men of their rightful possessions which, believe me, are of real practical value to them. It cheats the dead of their utility, and gives in very truth a sting to death and the victory to the grave. ”

“ It may be supposed that the spirit of the great man, not a little pleased with his second life, has an extreme distaste for his third. There is a dead atmosphere about it which sets him yawning as only his grave yawned before. The charm has been taken from his deeds; there is no longer any spring in them. He must feel towards the archæologist much as a young man feels towards his cold-blooded parent by whom his love affair has just been found out. ”

“ There is only one right way to examine the past years of mankind: we must look at them as, individually, we look at our own childhood, remembering the sensations and emotions of those times and contemplating life with those eyes. We cannot hope to comprehend the outlook of the Past unless we divest our minds of a large part of the world’s subsequent experience; for the Past is simply the nursery of the Present, and differs from it in just that degree in which a boy differs from a man. ”

“ An archæologist must be a historian. He must conjure up the past; he must play the Witch of Endor. His lists and indices, his catalogues and note-books, must be but the spells which he uses to invoke the dead. The spells have no potency until they are pronounced: the lists of Kings of Egypt have no more than an accidental value until they call before the curtain of the mind those monarchs themselves. It is the business of the archæologist to wake the dreaming dead: not to send the living to sleep. ”

“ We who in our individual lives realise with sorrow how very far we have travelled from the schoolroom and the nursery, need not struggle vainly to revive interest in our own forgotten games; we may hasten instead to the world’s childhood, there whole-heartedly to romp and wrestle, laugh and cry, make-believe and frolic, with the men and women of the Past. We shall not find ourselves too clumsy to play with their toys, nor too big to crawl into their houses, for their toys are real armies and kingdoms, and their houses real palaces of marble. ”

“ It would be as rash to suppose that he would find interest in an ancient sword in its rusted condition as it would be to expect the spectator at the aerodrome to find fascination in the nuts and screws. The true archæologist would hide that corroded weapon in his work-shop, where his fellow-workers alone could see it. For he recognises that it is only the sword which is as good as new that impresses the public; it is only the Present that counts. That is the real reason why he is an archæologist. He has turned to the Past because he is in love with the Present. ”

“ In this tomb there was nothing so impressive as this view across the well and through the entrance in the opposite wall. At one’s feet lay the dark pit; around one the gaudy paintings gleamed; and through the window-like aperture before one, a dim suggestion could be obtained of a white-pillared hall. The intense eagerness to know what was beyond, and, at the same time, the feeling that it was almost desecration to climb into those halls which had stood silent for thousands of years, cast a spell over the scene and made it unforgetable. ”

“ The cathedral of Rheims, though it be stocked with memories of our early struggles with France, is as beloved by every intelligent Englishman as is Westminster Abbey; and the burning of Louvain evoked in England a feeling of distress no less sincere than that which would have been aroused by the destruction of Oxford or Cambridge. Ancient masterpieces are the possession of the whole world: they are the records of the development of the whole human race, and we treasure them without regard to creed, nationality, or faction. ”

“ It is really painful to think of these words as having fallen from the lips of what is now a resin-smelling lump of bones and hardened flesh, perhaps still unearthed, perhaps lying in some museum show-case, or perhaps kicked about in fragments over the hot sand of some tourist-crowded necropolis. Mummies are the most lifeless objects one could well imagine. It is impossible even for those whose imaginations are the most powerful to infuse life into a thing so utterly dead as an embalmed body ”

“ At mid-morning we steamed through the magnificent Pass of Kalâbsheh, where towering granite cliffs drop sheer into the water and rugged piles of that splendid stone form islands in the river; and towards sunset we passed the temple of Dakkeh, whose lofty pylons can be seen for many a mile. About eight o’clock in the evening, when darkness had fallen and the sky was massed over with stars,{200} we halted near the temple of Wady Sabu’a, and by the light of a lantern made our way to it over the soft sand.
The work in this temple is poor. ”

“ A palace even more beautiful than that of his parents at Thebes was prepared for him; a splendid temple dedicated to Aton was set up amidst a garden of rare trees and brilliant flowers; villas for his nobles were erected, and streets were laid out. Queen Tiy, who seems to have continued to live at Thebes, often came down to El Amarna to visit her son; but it seems to have been at his own wish rather than at her advice that he now took the important step which set the seal of his religion upon his life. ”

“ The huge Cataract Hotel overshadows the ruined city, and stares down from its pinnacle of granite on to the tumbled stones of ancient temples. On the island itself, opposite this hotel, the elaborate and ultra-modern rest-house of the Ministry of Public Works rises amidst its terraced gardens; and farther to the north stands the imposing Savoy Hotel, surrounded by luxuriant trees and flowers unknown to the ancient Egyptians. ”

“ It is the Present that is old and hoary, not the Past. It is To-day that is burdened with the cares of advanced life; and, as compared with its heavy accountability, the bygone ages are light-hearted, irresponsible and unsubdued: for it is our own epoch, not theirs, that is encrusted with the corrosion of time.
When we essay to study history we are accustomed to take the Present as our standpoint, and, looking back to some remote period, we find it old with the years we have crossed to reach it. But the historian should rather take the Past as his natural standpoint, and should forget To-day ”

“ She knows that she will be too deeply steeped in the stupor of the Underworld to remember her husband, and unselfishly she urges him to continue to be happy after the manner of his nation. Then, in a passage which rings down the years in its terrible beauty, she tells of her utter despair, lying in the gloomy Underworld, suffocated with the mummy bandages, and craving for the light, the laughter, and the coolness of the day. ”

“ The people of Egypt went merrily through the radiant valley in which they lived, employing all that the gods had given them—not only the green palms, the thousand birds, the blue sky, the hearty wind, the river and its reflections, but also the luxuries of their civilisation—to make for themselves a frail feast of happiness. ”

“ It is as though a man were abandoned to his own resources after being held in the protection of the light; and it is only when the full darkness has fallen, and the comforting night closes around him that the mind is at peace once more.
Darkness falls rapidly in Egypt, and there was little light left by the time we reached the quarry. The hill of alabaster was outlined against the last-left glow of the western sky, but the valley in which we now stood was blurred and indistinct, and it was necessary to find quickly a sandy place amongst the boulders and gravel on which to lay our blankets. ”