The Rape of the Nile
Page 13
The visitors gazed wonderingly at the large figures and the battle scenes, painted on the walls of the great chamber, in which Rameses conquers the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh. Belzoni made a thorough search for portable antiquities, but there was little to be found, except for “two lions with hawks’ heads, the body as large as life, a small sitting figure, and some copper work belonging to the doors.”11
The naval men sat down to make a plan of the temple on a scale of 1/25 inch to the foot (0.6 centimeters to 0.3 meters). Meanwhile, Beechey and Belzoni collected portable items and tried to record the essence of the drawings in the temple. Beechey’s drawing book was soon spoiled by perspiration, for the air in the temple was like the hottest of steam baths. But they had enough time to write lengthy descriptions of the battle scenes and the executions of prisoners. “The expression of agony and despair in their several features is admirable,” recorded Mangles, who was excited and fascinated by the costumes of some of the “perfectly black” prisoners shown in the paintings.12
After a last admiring look at the statues, and having further strengthened the barrier at the temple door, the explorers carried their finds down to the boat and loaded them on board despite more vigorous expostulations from Hassan. On August 4, 1817, they set off downstream. It was not until eighteen months later that the interior of the temple was fully recorded for the outside world. English traveler William Bankes, Beechey, and a French draftsman named Louis Linant worked for some weeks at Abu Simbel, recording the inscriptions and paintings and clearing the sand away from the most southerly statue of the facade. Future visitors were then able to appreciate Rameses II’s largest temple more fully. The monument became so famous that it was moved to higher ground by international effort in the 1960s when Lake Nasser was rising to flood it forever.
The return trip to Philae was uneventful except for another furious argument with the crew when Hassan tried to stab Belzoni and Irby cut his hand during the fracas. Sarah was waiting patiently at the temple of Isis, but the beautiful stone sculptures that Belzoni had carefully marked down the year before lay in mutilated fragments. Someone had deliberately smashed the carvings and scribbled the scornful words opération manquée (operation canceled) in charcoal on the stones. Belzoni was fu- rious and suspected Drovetti’s agents. But the damage was done, and he turned his attention to other projects.
FIGURE 7.1 William Beechey’s painting of Abu Simbel excavations in 1819. Stapleton Collection/Corbis and the National Trust.
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Back in Thebes, Belzoni found himself hampered by Drovetti’s agents at every turn. He found that two of his most hated men had moved in on Qurna during his absence, were “digging the ground in all directions,” and were finding plenty of mummies. Since one of them, the Piedmontese adventurer Giuseppe Rosignani, had already threatened to cut his throat, Belzoni decided to concentrate his efforts on the Valley of the Kings, where he had already obtained promising results a few months before.
The Valley of the Kings, separated from Qurna by a range of stony hills, had been known as the burial place of pharaohs since classical times. Belzoni knew of ancient reports that the valley contained at least eighteen royal tombs. Napoléon’s savants had recorded eleven and found a twelfth, while the Italian himself had discovered the modest tomb of the vizier and pharaoh Ay in the previous year. There were persistent rumors of more royal tombs—perhaps up to forty—lying within the confines of the valley. By this time Belzoni had developed an instinct for discovery, a “nose” for new sites based on wide field experience and that intangible instinct that leads archaeologists to contemplate an area in detail over a considerable period of time in the knowledge that persistence and experience will yield dividends. He retired by himself into the Valley of the Kings, and after considerable thought chose to work in the western part.
Belzoni set a group of twenty men to work about a hundred yards (91 meters) from the entrance to the tomb of Ay. A few meters below the surface, the men came across several large boulders, apparently the entrance of a rock-cut passage. The next day Belzoni made a crude battering ram from a palm trunk rigged on a cross-pole. “The walls resisted the blows of the Arabs for some time, as they were not Romans, nor had the pole the ram’s head of bronze at its end.” But a breach was made at last and a staircase revealed. Eight mummies in painted cases covered with a large cloth lay at the bottom of the stairs.13
He was not satisfied with this undisturbed find and was even more determined to find a royal burial. On October 6 the laborers were digging in several places at once. Three days later they came across the entrance of a huge but unfurnished tomb, with “painted figures on the wall so perfect, that they are the best adapted of any I ever saw to give a correct and clear idea of the Egyptian taste.” We now know that this was the tomb of Prince Montuherkhepeshef, the eldest son of Rameses IX. The same day, October 9, another large but unpainted tomb came to light close to the painted sepulcher. It had been robbed in antiquity and contained two completely naked female corpses with long hair that was “easily separated from the head by pulling it a little.”14
This unidentified royal tomb had just been discovered when Belzoni had to break off his research to conduct three important English visitors around the temples of Thebes. The visitors were greatly excited by the royal tombs and were lucky enough to witness Belzoni’s men discover another sepulcher in the valley, that of Rameses I.15 The burial chamber still contained a red granite sarcophagus and two mummies, neither of which was that of the pharaoh. A huge wooden figure of the king dominated the chamber, one of a pair of gold foil–covered statues that had guarded the sarcophagus. This tomb lies only 18 meters (60 feet) from that of Tutankhamun, which, fortunately, Belzoni missed.
On October 16, Belzoni was on his own again. He put his men to work at a spot where he had noticed some likely surface indications, where rainwater washed down a bare slope into the floor of the valley. He does not tell us exactly why he chose this spot; indeed, his men, experienced in the ways of ancient tomb builders, thought he was on a wild-goose chase. Just before the end of work the following day, an artificial cut in the rock appeared, and Belzoni’s suspicions were confirmed. Five and one-half meters (18 feet) below, the entrance of a tomb came to light, choked with huge stones and rainwater debris from the slope above. With difficulty, the workers dug out a small hole through the rubble. Belzoni wriggled into a half-choked passage beyond, which turned out to be more than 11 meters (36 feet) long. Magnificent paintings adorned the walls and ceiling. A staircase at the end of the passage led to another long and finely decorated corridor. Both passages had sloping floors so that rainwater could drain into a huge pit at their end, 9 meters deep and 4.2 meters wide (30 feet by 14 feet), which blocked further progress. Some fragments of wood and rope, which crumbled to dust at a touch, showed how some earlier visitors had crossed the pit to reach the plastered and decorated wall at the other side of the hole.
The next day Belzoni and Beechey returned with stout beams to bridge the pit and inspected a jagged aperture at the other side. It turned out to have been made by tomb robbers who had not been deceived by the attractive false wall. Belzoni squeezed through the tiny aperture and found himself in a magnificent hall with four beautifully decorated pillars adorned with figures of a pharaoh in the presence of the gods. Three steps led into another chamber decorated with unfinished paintings, another device to convince tomb robbers that the sepulcher was never completed. But they had tapped the walls and exposed a hidden entrance to a lower passage beyond. At the end of this corridor, again beautifully painted with even finer figures and gods, Belzoni came on an even larger hall with six richly painted pillars and a dark-blue ceiling, gleaming with fresh paint.
By the glittering light of candles, the two explorers now gazed on an unbelievable sight, a translucent alabaster sarcophagus covered with hieroglyphs more than 2.74 meters (9 feet) long, but only 5 centimeters (2 inches) thick. They placed a light inside. The magnificently decorated s
arcophagus, shaped to accommodate the body and headdress of the pharaoh, glowed softly in the darkness. Hundreds of tiny, delicately inlaid figures adorned the inside. The bare-breasted female goddess Neith lay on the bottom of the sarcophagus, waiting to receive the dead king.16 Unfortunately, the sarcophagus was empty. Ancient tomb robbers had carried off the body and the lid. Belzoni found fragments of the latter, adorned with the recumbent figure of the king, in the debris near the entrance of the tomb.
FIGURE 7.2 The alabaster sarcophagus of Seti I on display in Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, where it can still be seen.
Five chambers opened off the burial area, the largest of which contained a mummified bull and a large number of shabti figures as well as several large wooden statues “with a circular hollow inside, as if to contain a roll of papyrus, which I have no doubt they did.”17 The sarcophagus disguised the entrance of a walled-up subterranean passage, which extended 91 meters (300 feet) under the mountain in the upper part of the valley.
Belzoni had found the magnificent tomb of Seti I (1291–1278 BC), the father of Rameses II.18 Ancient robbers had gutted the sepulcher; they left few portable items for Belzoni to remove, except for many shabtis and, of course, the alabaster sarcophagus, which Belzoni claimed, with reason, merited “the most particular attention” and was unlike anything else ever removed from Egypt to Europe. Fortunately, the paintings and bas-reliefs on the walls of the tomb remained in all their pristine freshness.
In Belzoni’s time, no one could read the thousands of hieroglyphs on the walls, but they could admire the scenes of the pharaoh being embraced by the gods, the vultures hovering on the blue ceiling of the tomb, and the figures of the king and the cow goddess, Hathor, dressed in magnificent costumes. Giovanni Belzoni might lust after antiquities, but he was, at heart, a showman, a choreographer of the spectacular and unusual. He realized at once that the richly decorated tomb was his greatest discovery, the one find, with its magnificent decoration, that would bring him fame and success, if properly displayed. Weeks, if not months, of laborious copying lay ahead if he was to exhibit his remarkable find.
Meanwhile, news of Belzoni’s spectacular discovery spread rapidly. Firearms crackled in the desert air. A large party of Turks on horseback galloped into the valley. It turned out to be Hamid Aga from Qena, who had heard rumors of great treasure and leaped to his horse to claim his share, completing a two-day journey in a scant thirty-six hours. Belzoni was mildly alarmed at such a display of force, but the governor was all smiles. The aga and his soldiers barely glanced at the paintings, but they searched every corner of the chamber and passages “like hounds.” They found nothing. At length, the governor turned to Belzoni and asked where he had put the treasure, “a large golden cock, filled with diamonds and pearls.” Belzoni, barely concealing his laughter, drew the aga’s attention to the glorious paintings on the walls of the empty tomb. The frustrated official just glanced at them and remarked, “this would be a good place for a harem, as the women would have something to look at.” With that, he left in a state of what Belzoni called “much vexation.”19
The three weeks after the discovery were busy ones, for the tomb had to be secured and the extensive operations in the valley shut down. As Belzoni was busy with his preparations, three large and luxurious boats of English visitors arrived at Thebes. Henry Salt himself led the party, accompanied by a Northern Irish peer, the earl of Belmore, his wife and family, and various functionaries, including the earl’s private chaplain.20 Their goal was the Second Cataract. His lordship was out to acquire a private collection of fine antiquities on his travels. Belzoni was soon conducting the distinguished visitors around Thebes and the Valley of the Kings. Belmore, with Belzoni’s help and contacts, was able to acquire a large collection of papyri, mummies, and other objects that soon found their way to England. The travelers were entranced with the paintings. Salt was so excited by Seti I’s tomb that he abandoned the Belmore party and spent four months digging for a royal sepulcher, but without success.
The French traveler Edouard de Montulé now turned up on his way up the Nile. He had paused at Qurna, where the tomb robbers and their nefarious trade fascinated him. The scenes of destruction surprised de Montulé but did not deter him from acquiring “the mummy of a female, wound around with broad bands of linen, and enclosed in a double case, the paintings of which are pretty well preserved.” Soon the Frenchman was wandering through Seti I’s tomb, accompanied by the voluble Belzoni. The paintings were entrancing, but de Montulé’s conscience seems to have been troubled by the looting and destruction, if not by Belzoni’s rather drastic methods. “If any perfect tombs still exist,” he subsequently wrote, “I sincerely wish they may escape the research of the curious antiquary; to them the learned are become objects to be dreaded as Cambyses, for the sarcophaguses and mummies which they contained, would inevitably take the road to London or Paris.”21 He bemoaned the lack of an Egyptian national museum to house all the consular loot, a notion that was several decades ahead of its time.
Belzoni was now riding the crest of a wave. He had found no fewer than four new tombs in the Valley of the Kings in twelve days, after years of failure. Seti I’s sarcophagus was a symbol of his success, but it was doubtful whether he was getting all the credit—or financial gain—he deserved. The trouble was that his business relationship with the British consul had never been exactly clarified. He had originally undertaken to bring the Memnon to Cairo and to collect other antiquities for Salt, but had received no salary or remuneration for his latest trip beyond funds for food and excavation. Relations were soon strained, despite Salt’s promising to pay Belzoni a thousand piastres a month for his services retroactively from the day he left Alexandria ten months before. Belzoni could not understand a relationship that had him doing the work while the credit and antiquities went elsewhere.
But there was work to be done. The ever restless Italian loaded his precious cache of antiquities on his boat and arrived in Cairo with his spectacular cargo on December 21, 1817. The Belmore party fell in with Consul Drovetti on their return visit to Thebes as they journeyed downstream. They showed him Seti I’s tomb, where he “completely ran out of the small change of compliment and admiration. He was so lavish of his civilities on entering the tomb, and every thing was so superb, magnifique, superlative and astounding, that when he came to something which really called for epithets of applause and admiration, his magazine of stuff was expended, and he stood in speechless astonishment, to the great entertainment of the beholders.”22
8
“Pyramidical Brains”
A great nation like England should not miss the opportunity of
making their own a man of such superior talents. He possesses, to
an astonishing degree, the secret of conciliating the Arabs and
literally makes them do what he chooses.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL CHARLES FITZCLARENCE,
Journal of a Route Across India, Through Egypt to England,
1817–1819, on Belzoni
Always at heart a showman, Giovanni Belzoni fretted at delays in Cairo, when his heart was in the Valley of the Kings and Seti I’s tomb. He was short of money, but still managed to engage the services of a young Italian artist named Alessandro Ricci, who was “very clever at drawing” and with practice became an able copier of hieroglyphs. Belzoni sent him upstream with instructions to start copying. Soon he was alone, for Sarah had grown tired of the Nile and wanted to go to the Holy Land, where he planned to join her when the tomb work was completed. A few days after Christmas 1817, she left for Jerusalem dressed in young men’s clothes. The faithful James Curtin and the interpreter Giovanni Finati accompanied her, as well as a janissary who was going to Jerusalem to join William John Bankes in Acre.1
One piece of tragic news awaited the Belzonis in Cairo. Burckhardt had died of dysentery during their absence, leaving his mission to West Africa uncompleted. At least he had had the satisfaction of knowing that the Young Memnon was
on its way to England. Belzoni had lost a valuable and influential friend at a critical moment in his career. Casting around for funds, Belzoni realized that about his only sources of revenue were the few antiquities that Salt had allocated him. Among them were two lionheaded statues of the goddess Sekhmet, which he managed to sell to Count de Forbin, director general of the French Royal Collections, for 7,000 piastres.2
By this time, Belzoni was lodging at the British consulate and entertaining many of the European visitors who were always passing through Cairo. His collection of antiquities—or, rather, Salt’s—had become a tourist attraction in Cairo. His discoveries were being discussed, often with considerable heat, in the French and English presses. A letter from Belzoni to a friend at the Louvre was published in a French journal in 1818. His claims and discoveries were promptly castigated by the great Edmé Jomard, the talented editor of the Description de l’Égypte. He flatly disbelieved Belzoni’s description of Seti I’s sarcophagus. But Burckhardt and Salt had warmly praised Belzoni in the Quarterly Review and other influential London periodicals, both for his discoveries and for his mechanical talents, which, to quote Henry Salt, “had enabled him, with singular success, both at Thebes and other places, to discover objects of the rarest value in antiquity, that had long baffled the researches of the learned.”3 Whether the French liked it or not, Belzoni was rapidly acquiring a reputation as an archaeologist of genius.