Dendera

On the 22d [March, 1823] we brought-to near Dendera. This temple is in a most perfect state; has a magnificent, portico, a noble cornice, and twenty-four large Isis-headed columns, a strange sort of capital: there are four faces on each; and they are marked as those of Isis, by the ears of the cow. On the roof of this portico you fancy, and delight to fancy, that you trace the zodiac. The signs Leo, Sagittarius, and Taurus, struck me as finely and boldly executed. There is a staircase to the roof of this temple, or rather leading to apartments near it, remarkably commodious. The steps are so very low that the priests might carry up and down the weighty paraphernalia of sacrifice, and even animals might easily be led up. On either side, the wall is quite covered with figures of priests in relief, carrying banners, sacred arks, and vessels for the offerings. In one of the small dark chambers above, I remarked a sphinx, that is, in head and attitude, but having the limbs behind also human. The recumbent corpse, and the cynocephalus over it, is a common representation round this apartment, which has quite a sepulchral appearance. Here and in an ante-room, you observe on the ceiling three large human figures, one within the other, and hieroglyphic characters in the midst. The circular zodiac (or mythological tablet, or whatever it is) has been removed. We knew not this at the time and of course looked for it in vain. Much learned dust has been raised about it in Europe, and not a little here. Let the Frenchmen make the most of it. Philosophers, especially French philosophers, may “write many folios” before they disturb that humble belief in, and affectionate reverence for, the Bible, which form the English character, and which have been avowed by such men as a Jones, a Locke, and a Newton. Several lions’ heads are seen round the walls of the temple on the outside, the mouths of small ducts to let off water. The figures in relief on these walls, more particularly on that to the westward, are of great beauty. The dresses, in general, are in a superior taste and of a richer cast than those on the forms at Karnac and Luxore. Isis here is, in two or three places, represented with a dress fitting close to her shape, and of the most elegant scalework, a sort of female panoply, such as Cleopatra might have worn, when, in a famous procession at Alexandria, she personated the goddess.

This temple, however, all grand and perfect as it is, as compared to those of Thebes, is evidently modern in its dated. Here there are none of those war-scenes depicted which constitute such remarkable features in the sculptures on the propylæa, and even in the interior of those sacred edifices, and which so clearly (judging from the eye at least) refer to wars and triumphs, at a period when her monarchs were rich and secure at home, powerful and victorious abroad.

But this beautiful ruin (if ruin it may be called), the first, or nearly so, which greets the curious traveller as he ascends the Nile, and calls forth his feelings of admiration, in all their freshness, cannot have the same charm for those who visit it after a sojourn at Thebes. To one, however, who has just quitted a country where the priest still officiates, and the worshipper bows down and prostrates himself in the temples of idolatry, who is familiar with the aspect, the habits and customs, the rites and ceremonies, of the Hindoo, this temple is an object of no common interest; for here the Indian soldier fancied that he recognised the very gods he worshipped, and with sadness and indignation complained to his officers that the sanctuary of his god was neglected and profaned. He saw a square and, massive building, a colossal head on the capitals of huge columns; on the walls, the serpent; the lingam, in the priapus; the bull of Iswara, in the form of Apis; Garuda in Aruens; Hanuman, in the round-headed cynocephalus; a crown, very similar to that of Siva, on the head of Osiris; and in the swelling bosom of Isis, that of the goddess Parvati: while, on the staircase, the priests and the sacred ark must have reminded him, and strongly, of the Brahmins, and of the palanquin litter of his native country. Many, many forms he must have missed, many, too, have observed, to which he was an entire stranger; but enough he saw to awaken all the dearest and most sacred recollections of his distant land and the gods of his fathers, and, for their honour and his own soothing, to believe all that he hoped and wished was the truth.

What a moment to have told the Hindoo, – “If these are your gods, they cannot, for they could not, save. Nearly 2000 years have rolled silently away, and this temple has stood, as you now see it, forsaken, solitary; no flame of sacrifice on its shrines, no voice of worshippers within its gates: a people, renowned in their day, more ancient than you, better instructed in the arts of peace, more formidable in those of war, once bowed down their bodies in these empty courts; they have perished from off the face of the earth; a remnant, a feeble remnant, was spared; they confess, and, through nearly eighteen centuries of persecution, they have steadily confessed the true and only God. In wretchedness and in poverty, in sorrow, yet with that hope which lightens sorrow, their eyes are fixed on the cross of Christ; darkly they see, brightly shall their posterity see its glories. We know that the prophets of our God declared that the idols of Egypt should be moved, when that nation was, in its generation, wiser and mightier than yours. You see that they have been moved. Oh! forget not this: lay it to your heart; think not we scorn your faithfulness towards the Gods of your fathers. No; we venerate you for your piety; but we know your worship to be vain, and alas! we weep to think of the lasting bitterness of its fruit.”

Thus many a British officer might, and must have thought, and may, perhaps, have said. Yet there is danger, say others, in thus striving to enlighten the ignorance and shake the prejudice of the Hindoo; give him no new notions; he is a very useful creature as he is; he eats our salt, and fights our battles, and let him live and die as his fathers have done before him; he has as good a chance of going to heaven as you or I: why, the Scripture declarations concerning idolatry we know, and we know that there can be but one God, one heaven, and one way to it; but I believe¹, arid firmly, that mercy will be extended hereafter to millions in that name, which they never heard on earth, and that the awe-struck Christian, may see the slave, whom he has used and scorned in this world, enlightened, saved, and glorified, in that which is to come.

– “Doing good,
Disinterested good is not our trade!”

And yet, England, thou art the first among the nations; more have you done for the slave, and the idolater, than any other. Nor do these alone look to you; the lent and the sad, who mourn for their degraded countries, and see assembled despots forging new fetters for their children, look to you perhaps with the murmur of impatience, but always with the free acknowledgment that you are

“The hope of every other land.”

The banks of the Nile, all fertile as they are, have a very tame and naked appearance, compared to those of the Ganges; and the dull costume of the people gives an increased air of mournfulness to the landscape, when their figures group into the scene. They are, indeed, remarkably contrasted to the Indians, who have been beautifully described by an ancient English author as “a people clothed in linen garments, somewhat low descending, of a gesture and a garb maidenly, and well nigh effeminate, of a countenance shy and some what estranged, yet smiling out a glozed and bashful familiarity.”[2] But I ramble, and forget that I am in Egypt.

Girge is a town which has a tolerable appearance. Its minarets peep out above the dates, after a manner that is pleasing to the eye. We took a walk in the bazaar; it is large, covered with awnings, but little stir in it. I observed a party of well-dressed Turks, one of them was playing a guitar.

A Turk and a guitar! In a small narrow street I observed a whole row of drug-shops. The mosques are good for this part of the world. Lanterns of paper hang before many of the best-built houses. In a small square, near the governor’s, stood several horses, in their velvet housings, with their broad, clumsy, shovel stirrups, hanging short from the saddle. We ascended a little mound in the suburbs; it commanded a very richly cultivated plain, covered with a green and waving crop, which is seen to great advantage, from the absence of inclosures. There is a barrack at this place, and we found two regiments of the pasha’s new levy encamped near it. They are a strange mixture of Arabs, Nubians, and blacks, clothed in uniforms made after the Turkish fashion, armed after the European manner, and instructed by Europeans in the tactics of the French school. There was an air of regularity in the encampment, and several of the officer’s tents were green, which had a lively novel look. One of the native commanders sent his dragoman to invite us to his tent. It was open to the front, and he sat upon a divan with large crimson cushions; cushions of the same were placed for us. He was very civil, proud of his command, and evidently not less so of the little knowledge he had lately gained of European tactics. He was a Mamaluke; his horse, a white one, stood saddled, and pawing at his picket-post a few yards in front of us. We took our leave after the usual ceremony of pipes and coffee, and returned towards our boat: we were met by an invitation from the instructor of the brigade (a Frenchman), who had been himself to call on us, during our absence, and we proceeded to his house; we mounted several flights of stairs, to a large apartment, at the top of his crazy mansion; soon after our host entered, a man, about thirty, looking delighted to see us, all courteousness and vivacity, moving with a restless quickness, and talking with a natural rapidity little in character with the cumbrous folds of his Mamaluke trowsers, and the large turban that shadowed his thin animated countenance. He told us much as it was, and would have been no doubt, far more communicative, but for the visit of two Mamaluke commanders, the one whom we had seen in camp, arid another a coarse-featured, fresh, stout young man of twenty. Now caution became necessary, although he spoke French, for fear of the renegade dragoman. The contempt, it was evident to us he felt for all of them, his politeness and temper concealed; and so much so, that it appeared to me they liked him, especially one, of whom, indeed, he spoke as very superior to his companion.

There was also an Italian padre of the party, a quiet, civil, intelligent man, in a robe and turban of dark blue. We had coffee, pipes, la goutte handed round continually, of a wretched kind of aniseed, and, to conclude, a supper, à la Turque, and a very merry one. They brought water and towels; close to the divan they placed a low stool, and a circular tray on it, with wooden spoons; eatable plates or thin flat cakes of bread; and then they supplied the board with dishes one after another, – stews, vegetables, a soup rather Frenchy, and cold roast fowls, out of consideration, perhaps, to us. I wish you had been there, reader, particularly if you are a good carver, and if you should be somewhat of an epicure, liking a full-sized liver wing taken off well and delicately, – I say, I wish you had been there, to see the young Mamaluke, with large hands, not overclean, seize them by the back and breast, and giving one strong, and shape-destroying crush, proceed to tear limb from limb, and strew them on the board with a smiling and self-satisfied air, as having done the polite thing. I ate a wing with the best grace possible, and after more coffee, more pipes, and more aniseed, we left our kind young host, and returned on board.

From Scenes and Impressions in Egypt and in Italy
by Moyle Sherer, 1824

Notes

¹ In a very different spirit, however, from such an objector, – “The partial light men have,
My creed persuades me, well employ’d, may save.”
See the golden lines in Cowper’s Poem on Truth, on this most momentous of all considerations. I am not, I feel certain, taking any liberty with that passage, when I apply it to men struggling under idolatry and in slavery, who, without the high gifts of the heathen sages, have in patience possessed their souls, and shown “the work of the law in their hearts: – “A flame Celestial, though they knew not whence it came,
Derived from the same source of light and grace,
That guides the Christian in his swifter race.”

² This quotation is in a discourse of the late Sir William Jones, and taken from an author named Lord. I never read or met with the Travels.