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On the way to the tombs of the kings I went to the temple of Kurna, that lonely cenotaph, with its sand-colored massive facade, its heaps of fallen stone, its wide and ruined doorway, its thick, almost rough, columns recalling Medinet-Abu.
Beyond them is the very heart of this "land of sand and ruins and gold"; Medinet-Abu, the Ramesseum, Deir-el Medinet, Kurna, Deir-el-Bahari, the tombs of the kings, the tombs of the queens and of the princes. In the strip of bare land at the foot of those hard, and yet poetic mountains, have been dug up treasures the fame of which has gone to the ends of the world.
If hieroglyphs are to be trusted, various Egyptian kings of ancient times seem to have had some vague suspicion of their own value, and the walls of Medinet-Abu are, to speak sincerely, one mighty boast. In his later years the king lived in peace and luxury, surrounded by a vicious and intriguing Court, haunted by magicians, hags, and mystery-mongers.
At last I found one, but it howled so dismally when I asked Ibrahim Ayyad to take possession of it for experimental purposes, that I weakly gave up the project, and left the magician clamoring for his hundred and ninety-five piastres. Its warlike aspect gives a special personality to Medinet-Abu.
I could never be fond of Medinet-Abu, as I am fond of Luxor, of parts of Karnak, of the whole of delicious, poetical Philae.
The native craft pass by with their enormous sails outspread to catch the wind, bearing serried mobs of men, and black-robed women, and laughing, singing children. The boatmen of the hotels sing monotonously as they lounge in the big, white boats waiting for travellers to Medinet-Abu, to the Ramesseum, to Kurna, and the tombs.
One knows that on this strip of land Naville dug out at Deir-el-Bahari the temple of Mentu-hotep, and discovered later, in her shrine, Hathor, the cow-goddess, with the lotus-plants streaming from her sacred forehead to her feet; that long before him Mariette here brought to the light at Drah-abu'l-Neggah the treasures of kings of the twelfth and thirteenth dynasties; that at the foot of those tiger-colored precipices Theodore M. Davis the American found the sepulcher of Queen Hatshepsu, the Queen Elizabeth of the old Egyptian world, and, later, the tomb of Yuaa and Thuaa, the parents of Queen Thiy, containing mummy-cases covered with gold, jars of oil and wine, gold, silver, and alabaster boxes, a bed decorated with gilded ivory a chair with gilded plaster reliefs, chairs of state, and a chariot; that here Maspero, Victor Loret, Brugsch Bey, and other patient workers gave to the world tombs that had been hidden and unknown for centuries; that there to the north is the temple of Kurna, and over there the Ramesseum; that those rows of little pillars close under the mountain, and looking strangely modern, are the pillars of Hatshepsu's temple, which bears upon its walls the pictures of the expedition to the historic land of Punt; that the kings were buried there, and there the queens and the princes of the vanished dynasties; that beyond to the west is the temple of Deir-el-Medinet with its judgment of the dead; that here by the native village is Medinet-Abu.
Among these personalities Medinet-Abu is the warrior, standing like Mentu, with the solar disk, and the two plumes erect above his head of a hawk, firmly planted at the foot of the Theban mountains, ready to repel all enemies, to beat back all assaults, strong and determined, powerful and brutally serene. "This, my lord, is the thinking-place of Rameses the Great."
He was one of the greatest of the Egyptian kings, and has been called the "last of the great sovereigns of Egypt." He ruled for thirty-one years, and when, after a first visit to Medinet-Abu, I looked into his records, I was interested to find that his conquests and his wars had "a character essentially defensive." This defensive spirit is incarnated in the stones of these ruins.
Whereas the temple of Luxor seems to open its arms to life, and the great fascination of the Ramesseum comes partly from its invasion by every traveling air and happy sun-ray, its openness and freedom, Medinet-Abu impresses by its colossal air of secrecy, by its fortress-like seclusion.
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