The Nile

by Toby Wilkinson

  Even after the demise of the pharaohs, Luxor Temple continued to assert its role at the centre of national faith. Of all the individuals who ruled the Nile Valley after the last of the pharaohs, none was more taken with Egypt’s distinctive religion than Alexander the Great. For a man convinced of his own divine origins, Egypt held a special appeal; and Luxor Temple, so closely associated with kings’ god-like status, was the object of particular attention. Determined to leave his mark in this most important of sacred places, Alexander commissioned an enormous granite shrine, decorated with scenes showing him in the guise of a traditional pharaoh. At his command, the shrine was installed in the room immediately behind the communion chamber, at the very heart of the inner temple. It was as if Alexander was taking possession of the entire building, and with it, the source of the divine kingship that he so earnestly desired. A similar aspiration seems to have motivated Egypt’s later, Roman rulers. The emperor Hadrian had a small mud-brick shrine built at the north-west corner of the temple enclosure, dedicated to the composite Greek–Egyptian deity Serapis; while, inside the shrine, a statue of Isis underlined the special appeal of this goddess to the peoples of the Roman Empire.

  But the Romans, like Alexander, wanted not merely to beautify Luxor Temple but to appropriate it. At the beginning of the fourth century AD Luxor Temple was extensively remodelled to turn it into a Roman shrine. One of the columned halls behind the southern colonnade of the solar court was transformed into a chapel of the imperial cult. Amenhotep III’s elegant columns were torn down, and a central, apsidal niche was created in the back wall, blocking the doorway. The exquisite pharaonic reliefs were covered with plaster and new paintings were commissioned showing Rome’s four rulers, the tetrarchs, clad in purple robes. Inside the niche stood the cult object itself, possibly a statue of the emperor, shaded by a baldachin supported on four columns of pink granite with Corinthian capitals. The adjacent walls were plastered and decorated with scenes of Rome’s imperial might, including a procession of soldiers. A neighbouring chamber seems to have been used to store the imperial standards belonging to the legion stationed at Luxor; such emblems were, like the colours of modern regiments in the British army, not mere symbols but objects of pride and veneration.

  The painting of the tetrarchs seems to have commemorated an actual imperial visit to Luxor, by the emperor Diocletian, in AD 298. The visit was not just a tour of inspection but a deliberate act of foreign policy designed to pacify Rome’s most lucrative province. Egypt had been particularly fractious and unsettled in the final years of the third century, witnessing a Theban revolt against Roman rule, incursions by the marauding Blemmyan tribes of the Eastern Desert, and finally a bid for independence led by a Roman official. Only a visit from the emperor himself could quell such uprisings and reassert central control. An immediate result of Diocletian’s visit was the construction, in the final weeks of AD 301, of a massive military camp around Luxor Temple, to serve as the garrison for the third legion.

  The pharaonic temple now occupied the central section of a great rectangular fortress, with square towers at the corners and semi-circular bastions along the four walls. This effectively placed much of the temple off-limits to the native Egyptian clergy, although priests were still allowed access to the inner sanctum—albeit by new doorways, blasted through the masonry on the temple’s eastern side. Well-defended gates in the fort’s enclosure wall gave access to strategic locations: the town of Luxor from the eastern gate, the river quay from the north-western. The pylon of Ramesses II, with its colossal statues and obelisks, formed a suitably imposing entrance to the camp, which was filled with barracks and storerooms on either side of the temple proper. This was not, however, a mere appropriation of a pharaonic monument for imperial ends. It was a full-scale usurpation. Distinctively Roman architectural features were added to Latinise the site. Behind the eastern gate an open square was created with columns at its four corners, each topped with a statue of the emperor. A second “tetrastyle” marked the north-west corner of the camp, while a statue of the emperor Constantine stood on a pedestal in the hypostyle hall.

  To Luxor’s inhabitants of the early fourth century, it must have seemed that the cult of the ruler—once a pharaoh, then a Macedonian conqueror, now a Roman emperor—would last for ever. But the winds of change were already blowing through the empire, and a new religion from the eastern Mediterranean was winning adherents at a rapid pace. Shortly after Diocletian’s visit, Luxor itself felt the effects of this revolution. Two soldiers stationed in the camp, an infantryman named Sophron and a veteran called Chanatom, refused to carry out the rites of the imperial cult, protesting their Christian faith. Such a direct challenge to Roman rule could not be tolerated, and the two were put to death, together with Dalcina, the daughter of a local noble family. The three were instantly hailed as martyrs by their fellow Christians. Despite Diocletian’s persecutions, Christianity gained a rapid foothold. Within little more than a decade, the empire was forced to accommodate and recognise the new religion. Although the Roman garrison remained at Luxor for another three centuries, it did so as the military face of an increasingly Christian state.

  Luxor Temple had already asborbed one change of religion. Now it did so again, while retaining its essential, sacral status. In AD 313, just a year after becoming Roman emperor, Constantine (himself a Christian convert) issued the Edict of Milan which recognised the new religion and paved the way for the conversion of the entire empire. Pharaonic religion had a strong influence on early Christianity—the iconography of the Virgin and child copied the imagery of Isis and Horus, while the key tenets of the Trinity, Resurrection and Last Judgement showed extensive borrowings from Egyptian ideas. So it is perhaps not surprising that the Egyptians were ready converts to the new faith. Churches soon sprang up throughout the Nile Valley, including no less than four within the precincts of Luxor Temple. Three were built just outside the walls of the pharaonic temple, two in the western part of the enclosure and one right in front of Ramesses II’s great façade. One community of worshippers even moved into the pagan monument, building their church inside the Ramesside forecourt. They thereby commandeered a temple dedicated to Amun and his earthly incarnation, the king, for their new deity and his earthly incarnation, the Christ. The same appropriation can be seen elsewhere in Luxor Temple, where Christian symbols have been carved over hieroglyphics.

  Yet, while pharaonic religion had been observed at Luxor for eighteen centuries, Christianity lasted barely three. The Arab conquest of Egypt in AD 639–41 made the country officially Islamic, although many in the countryside, including the region around Luxor, continued to hold on to their Christian faith. The man who finally won the Thebans over to Islam was al-Sayyid Youssef Ibn Abdel-Raheem, better known as Abu el-Haggag. He was born in Baghdad around 1150, a descendant of the Caliph Ali and thus of the Prophet Muhammad. With such an illustrious pedigree, his vocation as a religious teacher was never in doubt. He went first to Mecca, then to Egypt, where he studied with various Sufi groups in Cairo before travelling to Luxor. At the time of his arrival, Luxor had declined in importance and was no more than a small village set amongst impressive ruins. Legend has it that Luxor was ruled at the time by a strong woman named Sitt Towzah, and that she was far from pleased by the arrival of a charismatic foreign preacher. According to the story, Abu el-Haggag responded to her frostiness by building a wall around the village and binding it with a single thread, thus signifying his taking spiritual possession. He went on to found a centre for prayer and teaching at Luxor and lived in the town for many years. After his death in 1243, he was adopted by the locals as their patron sheikh. The church inside Luxor Temple was converted into a mosque, to receive Abu el-Haggag’s bones, and it swiftly became a focus of pilgrimage. Even today, the sheikh continues to endow the place with baraka, divine blessing, from his resting place high above the forecourt of Ramesses II.

  For all the changes that have taken place in the rites practised within Luxor Templ
e, one element remains constant—the importance of the River Nile. The moulid (festival) of Abu el-Haggag is celebrated every year, two weeks before the start of Ramadan. Over a period of two days, the people of Luxor enjoy a host of entertainments, ranging from dance and music to horse races and martial arts. The heart of the moulid is a noisy procession of boats through the temple and streets of Luxor. In 1925, the photographer Harry Burton (in Luxor for the clearance of Tutankhamun’s tomb) recorded three full-sized feluccas being dragged around the temple. In more recent times, the number of boats has grown, and they now bear a closer resemblace to carnival floats, pulled by tractors and carrying local children. According to Islamic symbolism, the boats signify the quest for spiritual enlightenment, but they bear more than a passing resemblance to the barque shrines carried on the shoulders of priests during the annual Festival of the Sanctuary in pharaonic times. The moulid of Abu el-Haggag provides a tantalising glimpse of the religious life of ancient Thebes three thousand years ago and a powerful testament to the enduring sanctity of Luxor Temple. It has remained at the centre of Egypt’s spiritual life and sense of identity over a period of thirty-five centuries. If a civilisation can be encapsulated in its monuments, Luxor Temple represents the history of Egypt in microcosm.

  THE TEMPLE HAS ALSO PLAYED a central role in the modern engagement with ancient Egypt. Ever since the first Europeans reached the southern Nile Valley in the sixteenth century, their reports of Luxor’s fabulous monuments have stirred the Western imagination. Perhaps nobody has done more to popularise the temples of ancient Thebes, nor to anchor them as archetypes of the exotic orient, than the Scottish painter David Roberts (1796–1864). His views of Egypt, and especially of Luxor, still sell in their thousands. No artist before or since has captured so effectively the timeless beauty of the Nile as it flows past the hills and monuments of ancient Thebes. Roberts’ fame belies his humble origins. Born near Edinburgh, his father was a cobbler, his mother a washerwoman, three of his siblings died in childhood and he attended a local school only sporadically, enough to learn to write and gain a “small smattering of arithmetic.”19 But the young Roberts had a love of pictures and an innate talent for drawing. At the age of ten-and-a-half, he was apprenticed to an Edinburgh house-painter, and became skilled at decorative effects. The opportunity to work on the decoration of Scone Palace in 1815 gave him the break he needed, and he was engaged as a scene-painter to a touring pantomime company. Eventually, Roberts made his way to London to work at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and became a founding member of the Society of British Artists.

  This brought him into a circle of respected and influential fellow artists—his acquaintances included Sir Charles Barry and Ruskin, as well as Dickens and Thackeray—and he was encouraged to exhibit his paintings. His romantic style proved popular, and he was smart enough to see the potential of reproducing his work as prints, to reach a wider audience. His paintings from an extended visit to Spain in 1832–3 brought him widespread fame: he provided illustrations for the works of Sir Walter Scott, submitted designs for a new National Gallery, and was even invited to assist Barry with the decoration of the new Palace of Westminster. In 1838 Roberts was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts, signalling his full acceptance into the upper echelon of British artists. He had come a long way from the slums of outer Edinburgh.

  But behind the professional success lay a private life in tatters. In 1820, Roberts had married Margaret McLachlan, and they had been blessed a year later with the birth of a daughter. But Margaret was an alcoholic, and her increasingly wayward behaviour put huge strains on the marriage. As Roberts himself recounted,

  about twelve years after our marriage I was compelled in consequence of [my wife’s] abandoned and drunken habits and in order to save myself and my child from utter destitution to break up my Establishment at 8 Abingdon Street and after placing my wife with her friends to leave England [for Spain]. But upon her solemn promise of amendment I took her back but she however relapsed into her former habits and I after trying in vain … to wean her from them was compelled in the year 1835 finally to separate from her and again to leave England.20

  It was to prove a blessing in disguise. Ever since boyhood, Roberts had harboured an ambition to visit “the remote East.”21 Now he finally had the chance. In August 1838, he left London for Paris and made his way by land and sea to Alexandria, and thence to Cairo. At the port of Bulaq he hired a boat for 1,300 piastres (about £15) a month and, with the Union Jack flying at the mast, set sail up the Nile with a crew of eight, a rayyis and his faithful servant Ismail. As he travelled slowly the length of the Nile Valley, as far south as the Second Cataract, Roberts was saddened by the poverty of the people, but impressed by the scenery and overawed by the temples. His journal comes alive with his first-hand observations of Egyptian rural life: “The solitary ibis stalks lazily along the banks and there is a delicious calmness and beauty in the scene … We were annoyed all night with the yelping and fighting of dogs with which every town and village swarms. You need not go far to see a dead ass …”22

  Despite the hardships of the trip, Roberts painted some of the most beautiful and evocative images of Egypt ever made. He was also no mere observer, but a trenchant critic of Western “consumption” of ancient Egypt (a consumption his own pictures would fuel). At Abu Simbel he was digusted by the European graffiti disfiguring the temple and remarked that tourists “have the effrontery to smear their stupid names on the very forehead of the God.”23 His passion as an artist was matched by his dedication. At Abydos, he left one of his sketchbooks on the mountain, and it took his servant Ismail four days to go back and retrieve it. In Cairo, Roberts assumed Turkish dress, cut off his whiskers and promised not to use hog-hair brushes in order to gain admission to the mosques, but as he noted, “to be the first Artist that has made drawings of these Mosques is worth the trouble of a little inconvenience.”24 But it was at Luxor that he painted his most enduring scenes—of Luxor Temple, still half-buried in sand, and of the Nile itself with its characteristic feluccas: “To the eye of a painter nothing can exceed in beauty these craft skimming along the river with their white sails spread and shivering in the wind.”25

  On his return to England (via Palestine and Syria) in July 1839, Roberts brought with him three full sketchbooks, 272 sketches, and a panorama of Cairo: in short, enough material to “serve me for the rest of my life.”26 Over the next decade, he made a series of new drawings from his sketches and published them as 247 large lithographs in the multi-volume The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt & Nubia. It was the most comprehensive series of views of the Middle East ever presented, and won huge critical and popular acclaim. The paintings caught the imagination of the British public and made Egypt the most fashionable destination for the adventurous traveller.

  Roberts’ favourable comparison of the Nile Valley sunsets with the miserable fogs of London also struck a chord with Britain’s large population of consumptives—sufferers of tuberculosis for whom the dull, dank weather of a British winter, exacerbated by choking smog, could prove deadly. Wealthier sufferers, those from the aristocracy and landed gentry, generally followed their doctors’ advice and emigrated to warmer, foreign climes for the winter months. India and South Africa were ideal, but a long way away. Suddenly, Egypt offered a closer, and therefore cheaper, alternative. Luxor, with its ancient monuments, picturesque scenery and dry climate, suddenly became the quintessential health resort, “the ultimate goal of many who sought to escape the rigours of the Continental and English winters.”27 Staying at Luxor in 1881, one Englishman could not quite believe the improvement in his health:

  In about a week the sunshine and warm air of Luxor enabled me to sit in the garden, in another week I could mount a donkey, in a month I was able to ride to Karnak … Upon me, at all events, the effect of the climate was little short of miraculous.28

  Among the Europeans to seek respite from poor health amidst the temples of ancient Thebes, none was more remarkable than
Lucie Duff Gordon (1821–69). Eccentric, pioneer, folk heroine: her seven years living in a ramshackle house atop the roof of Luxor Temple endeared her to the local people and made her a tourist destination in her own right, adding yet further to Luxor’s allure. Unlike David Roberts, she came from a wealthy, middle-class family, and a radical one. Her parents’ friends included the philosopher Jeremy Bentham and Lucie herself became famous in London society for her beauty, wit and independent mind. She established herself as a professional translator and, with her husband, Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, a baronet of Scottish descent, she threw seven-course dinner parties for the capital’s literary elite. The couple had three children and were comfortably off. But Lucie’s life was marred by tuberculosis. In 1862, having already spent time in South Africa, she set off alone for Egypt. She was forty-one, her youngest child just three.

  From the outset, the Nile Valley captivated her—not so much its ancient monuments as its people and its contemporary culture. She settled in Luxor—as its only permanent European resident—where she attended the Abu el-Haggag mosque inside Luxor Temple. The locals came to believe she had the “lucky eye,” and asked her to visit new brides, pregnant cows, even houses under construction. Lucie returned the compliment, speaking up passionately and bravely for Egypt’s hard-pressed peasantry against the harsh rule of its Ottoman oppressors. In the West, the Egyptian ruler Ismail was hailed as progressive because he had set about modernising the country’s infrastructure. But Lucie knew at first hand the flip-side and the human cost of all this development: punitive taxes and the much-feared corvée (a draft of labour to work on government projects). In Luxor, out of a population of 1,000 men, 220 were taken away forcibly at six-month intervals. A third of those who went on corvée never returned. Those who stayed faced starvation or imprisonment as tax defaulters. Lucie lamented that “whole towns and villages were raided for able-bodied men who were taken away, often for years, to dig canals, build bridges, dams and railways, and work like slaves on the Suez Canal.”29 Her fierce opposition to Ismail’s rule, expressed forcefully in her letters home, was unstinting and highly dangerous. The Ottoman ruler sent spies to Luxor to intercept her correspondence, but she found ways of smuggling her letters out via European visitors. Then Ismail tried to bribe her boatman into drowning her, but her local popularity saved her.