Luxor

“ A slight bend of the river, and Luxor with its obelisks, and columns, and statues of gods, and ruined temples, bursts upon the view. To the right are seen the Vocal Memnon, the palace and temples of the Pharaohs; while on every side, for miles and miles, stretches the broad plain that enshrines the dust of Thebes. We leave our Nile boat, and under the escort of an army of donkey-boys, pay a hurried visit to the Temple of Luxor. Time has cruelly played the vandal with it. Of all the grandeur of the once glorious edifice only a few pillars and scarred walls remain. ”

“ There was not a cloud in the tender blue sky against which the reddish obelisk of Luxor looked like a column of jet; the fountains were playing in the Place de la Concorde, and in the Tuileries gardens beyond the breeze dreamily stirred the foliage which hid from Lynde's view the gray facade of the gutted palace, still standing there, calcined and cracked by the fires of the Commune. ”

“ Farther on, when I have taken the road to Luxor, it is not long before I meet, under the palm-trees and on the sands, the crowd, the main body of the arrivals—some in carriages, some on horseback, some on donkeys. There is a noise of voices speaking all sorts of non-Egyptian languages. One is tempted to ask: “What is happening? A ball, a holiday, a grand marriage?” No. The moon is full to-night at Thebes, upon the ruins. ”

“ The men, all smiles, strike up their liveliest chorus, and so, with barbaric music and well-filled sails, and flags flying, and green boughs waving overhead, we make our triumphal entry into Luxor.
The top of another pylon; the slender peak of an obelisk; a colonnade of giant pillars half-buried in the soil; the white houses of the English, American and Prussian consuls, each with its flagstaff and ensign; a steep slope of sandy shore; a background of mud walls and pigeon-towers ”

“ The temple of Luxor," he adds, "presents to the traveler at once one of the most splendid groups of Egyptian grandeur. The extensive propylæon, with the two obelisks, and colossal statues in the front; the thick groups of enormous columns, the variety of apartments, and the sanctuary it contains. The beautiful ornaments which adorn every part of the walls and columns, cause in the astonished traveler an oblivion of all that he has seen before." ”

“ Goodness knows I am not going to attempt any detailed description of the stupendous ruins which make Luxor the most interesting spot in Egypt. Anyone who is going to describe Luxor needs a new box of adjectives every few minutes, and, besides, to repeat over and over again that the columns and cavernous sanctuaries at Karnak are "gigantic," and "colossal," and "huge," and so on, cannot bring the reader to any actual conception of the barbaric massiveness of these ancient structures. ”

“ But to certain others, few indeed in number, but almost fanatically convinced of their own orthodoxy, the charm of Luxor, like some sleeping beauty, only wakes when these things cease, when the hotel has grown empty and the billiard-marker “has gone for a long rest” to Cairo, when the decimated quail and the decimating tourist have fled northwards, and the Theban plain, Danæ to a tropical sun, is a gridiron across which no man would willingly make a journey by day, not even if Queen Hatasoo herself should signify that she would give him audience on the terraces of Deir-el-Bahari. ”

“ The tourists, whom the carriages and donkeys are at this moment taking back to the hotels of Luxor, will not return till very late, when the full moon will have risen and be shedding its clear light upon the ruins. ”

“ Luxor, and Carnac, which is a mile and a quarter below it, are by far the largest and most magnificent scenes of ruins in Egypt, much more extensive and stupendous than those of Thebes and Dendera put together.
There are two obelisks here of great beauty, and in good preservation, they are less than those at Rome, but not at all mutilated. The pavement, which is made to receive the shadow, is to this day so horizontal, that it might still be used in observation. ”

“ The Christians built churches within the temple. The greater part of the old village of Luxor lay inside the courts: it was known also as Abu ’l Haggag from a Moslem saint of the 7th century, whose tomb-mosque, mentioned by Ibn Batuta, stands on a high heap of débris in the court of Rameses. This is the last of the buildings and rubbish which encumbered the temple before the expropriation and clearances by the Service des Antiquités began in 1885. The principal street of Luxor follows the line of the ancient avenue. ”

“ I had arranged to take our people first round Luxor, making them acquainted with the temple which had already introduced its reflection to us. As for the town, they were capable of making themselves acquainted with that, its hotels and curiosity-shops, when there was nothing more important on hand. Next was to come Karnak, the "father of temples," once connected with the younger temple at Luxor as if by a long jewelled necklace of ram-headed sphinxes. And for those whose brains and legs were intact, by evening I thought of a visit to the thrilling temple of Mût. ”

“ The visit to this temple ended our traveler’s survey of the western division of Thebes, “two long days of such experience,” he remarks, “as the contemplation of a lifetime can not exhaust;” and at sunset they crossed over the Nile, to
LUXOR AND ITS TEMPLE. The temple of Luxor is imbedded in the modern village, and only the front of the pylon, facing toward Karnak, and part of the grand central colonnade, are free from its hovels and their accessories. For this reason, though of much grander proportions than the Memnonium, its effect is less agreeable and impressive. ”

“ Grand are the ruins of Luxor, noble is the line of columns that boldly fronts the Nile, but Time has given them naked to the air and to the sun, to children and to animals. Instead of bats, the pigeons fly about them. There is no dreadful darkness in their sanctuaries. ”

“ Dr. Richardson considered the workmanship of the embankment to be entirely Roman; and he suggests that the temple at Luxor was probably built on the banks of the Nile for the convenience of sailors and wayfaring men; where, without much loss of time they might stop, say their prayers, present their offerings, and bribe the priests for promises of future success.
“The entrance,” says Denon, “of the village of Luxor affords a striking instance of beggary and magnificence. What a gradation of ages in Egypt is offered by this single scene! ”

“ I think that Luxor, from its situation, usually first attracts the notice of the traveller. It is close on the river, and is built on a lofty platform. Its enormous columns are the first specimens of that colossal genius of the Pharaohs, which the Ptolemies never attempted to rival. The entrance to this temple is through a magnificent propylon;-that is, a portal flanked by massy pyramidal moles. It is two hundred feet in breadth, and rises nearly sixty feet above the soil. This gate is entirely covered with sculpture, commemorating the triumph of a conquering monarch. ”

“ He and Hilda had made excursions together of many varieties. Into the desert, mounted on big white donkeys. To Memphis, the Pyramids of Sakkárah and the Serapeum, the tomb of Beni Hassan. By the luxuriously-appointed steamer, with its double decks and cool verandas, to Luxor, with its palatial modern hotels, contrasting strangely with the ancient ruins, temples, and monuments of a long-forgotten civilisation. Here was ideal ground for love-making among the whispering palm groves, with a turquoise sky above. Each scene so different from the Western ideal, yet so picturesque. ”

“ Luxor, the ancient city of Upper Egypt, which may be reached by a night train ride from Cairo, is the center of the most interesting ruins on the Nile. The city itself has been built around the splendid temple of Luxor, founded by Amenophis III, but altered and extensively rebuilt by Rameses II. From the Nile the colonnade of this temple is a beautiful spectacle, as the huge columns are in perfect preservation. Big tourist hotels make up most of the other buildings. The town boasts a good water front, which is generally lined in the winter season with tourist steamers. ”

“ As you approach the temple you enter an avenue of ramheaded sphinxes (huge fellows carved in stone) , on opposite sides of the avenue. Formerly this street extended all the way to Luxor—six thousand feet away. What a splendid promenade it must have been! Only a few of the sphinxes are here now, and of those every one has been more or less mutilated. Passing the avenue you reach a pronaos, or pylon,—a gateway with two enormous towers large enough of themselves to make a temple. ”

“ Life on the dahabeëh is much as usual; in fact, we are only waiting a favorable wind to pursue our voyage, expecting to see Thebes satisfactorily on our return. Of the inhabitants and social life of Luxor, we shall have more to say by and by. We have daily a levee of idlers on the bank, who spend twilight hours in watching the boat; we are visited by sharp-eyed dealers in antiquities, who pull out strings of scarabæi from their bosoms, or cautiously produce from under their gowns a sculptured tablet, or a stone image, or some articles from a mummy-case—antiques really as good as new. ”

“ By and by came the governor, the Kadî of Luxor, the Prussian consul and his son and some three or four grave-looking merchants in rich silk robes and ample turbans. Meanwhile the band—two fiddles, a tambourine and a darabukkeh—played at intervals at the lower end of the hall; pipes, coffee and lemonade went continually round; and the entertainment wound up, as native entertainments{413} always do wind up at Luxor, with a performance of Ghawâzi. ”

“ He was always ready to accompany me. There was an understanding between us that when a drove of tourists came to Luxor he might leave me for the day to pick up what he could then from the natural prey; but I found him not always keen to be off duty to me. Though he could get more from the occasional visitor than from me, he was above the ravenous appetite for backsheesh which consumed his fellows.
He who has much to do with the native Egyptian will have discovered that there are in him a fund of kindliness and a treasure of good qualities. ”

“ Hence the stupendous temples of Luxor and Carnac, with their huge ornamented propylæ, and far-stretching avenues of pillars and sphinxes—and the countless other sacred structures of Egypt, whose very ruins have all but perished: hence, too, the rock-temples of Ellora and Elephanta, where the labour of the worshippers has hollowed out of the mountain rock a mansion for their deity, and has sculptured its sides with groups from Hindoo mythology. ”

“ The view across the Nile is fine, as it includes the lofty Libyan range of mountains, in whose flanks were cut the tombs of the Pharaohs. Here, in two or three days, one may study the ruins of Luxor, Karnak and Thebes—names that the historian still conjures with.
All the Egyptian temples were built on one general plan, like the mosques of North India, and Luxor does not differ from the others, except that it surpasses them all in the beauty of its colonnaded pillars. ”

“ Perhaps some of the respect for trees was due to the difficulty of keeping them alive. Egypt is not a land of forests, and trees do not flourish here except with much care and attention."
During this conversation about Egyptian temples the steamer steadily made her way toward Karnak and Luxor; she passed the ruins of Karnak, and soon drew up to the landing at the modern town. Luxor is a wretched place of about four thousand inhabitants, and if it were not for the reputation of the spot, and the number of strangers visiting it every winter, the town would soon cease to exist. ”

“ Taylor had often looked in the Place de la Concorde in Paris, when as a boy he dreamed of distant Egypt. For seven miles around the Temple of Luxor are the ruins of ancient Thebes, within which were once the temples of Karnak, Luxor, Goorneh, Memnonium, and hundreds more, which now cumber the otherwise fertile plains. ”

“ No sight is prettier than a dahabeëh strung along its decks and along its masts and yards with many colored lanterns. The people of Luxor respond with illuminations in the houses, to which they add barbarous music and the kicking and posturing of the Ghawazees. In this consists the gaiety of the Luxor season.
Perhaps we reached the high-water mark of this gaiety in an entertainment given us by Ali Moorad Effendi, the American consular agent, in return for a dinner on the dahabeëh. Ali is of good Bedawee blood ”

“ In speaking of the gate of this temple, which is now become that of the village of Luxor, Denon remarks:—“Nothing can be more grand, and, at the same time, more simple, than the small number of objects of which this entrance is composed. No city whatever makes so proud a display at its appearance [Pg 426] as this wretched village; the population of which consists of two or three thousand souls, who have taken up their abode on the roofs and beneath the galleries of this temple, which has, nevertheless, the air of being in a manner uninhabited.” ”

“ A week would barely suffice to get more than a cursory glance of all the195 sights which are crowded into this one long day. The following day is usually devoted to ‘doing’ the Luxor temple, and being rushed through the ruins of Karnak. These people who do their sights at such a giddy speed usually take part in a tour up the Nile organised by some travelling agency. A few well-advised ones remain at Luxor till the steam dahabieh, which has taken them so far, picks them up on its return trip from Assuan. ”