DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0247
EOROSKO TO ABOU SIMBKL. 229
trunk is given with elaborate truthfulness; and the
brandies, though formalized, are correct and graceful in
curvature. The tree is but an accessor}-. It may have
been introduced with reference to the date-harvests which
are the wealth of the district; but it has no kind of sacred
significance, and is noticeable only for the naturalness of
tbe treatment. Such naturalness is unusual in the art of
this period, when the conventional persea and the equally
conventional lotus are almost the only vegetable forms
which appear on the walls of the temples. I can recall,
indeed, but one similar instance in the bas-relief sculpt-
ure of the new empire—namely, the bent, broken and
waving bulrushes in the great lion-hunting scene at
Medinet Habit, which are admirably free and studied, ap-
parently, from nature.
Coming out, we looked in vain along the court-yard walls
for the battle-scene in which Champollion was yet able to
trace the famous fighting lion of Kameses II with the
legend describing him as " the servant of his majesty rend-
ing his foes in pieces." But that was forty-five years ago.
-Now it is with difficulty that one detects a few vague out-
lines of chariot-wheels and horses.
There are some rock-cut tombs in the face of the cliffs
close by. The painter explored them while the writer
sketched the interior of the temple ; but he reported of
thein as mere sepulchers, unpainted and unsculptured.
The rocks, the sands, the sky, were at a white heat when
We again turned our faces toward the river. Where there
bad so lately been a great multitude there was now not a
soul. The palms nodded; the pigeons dozed; the mud
town slept in the sun. Even the mother had gone from
her place of weeping and left her dead to the silence of
tbe desert.
We went and looked at his grave. The fresh-turned
sand was only a little darker than the rest, and, but for the
trampled foot-marks round about, we should scarcely have
been able to distinguish the new mound from the old ones.
All were alike nameless. Some, more cared for than the
rest, were bordered with large stones and filled with varie-
gated pebbles. One or two were fenced about with a mud
wall. All had a bowl of baked clay at the head. Wher-
ever we saw a burial-ground in Nubia we saw these bowls
upon the graves, The mourners, they told us, mourn
trunk is given with elaborate truthfulness; and the
brandies, though formalized, are correct and graceful in
curvature. The tree is but an accessor}-. It may have
been introduced with reference to the date-harvests which
are the wealth of the district; but it has no kind of sacred
significance, and is noticeable only for the naturalness of
tbe treatment. Such naturalness is unusual in the art of
this period, when the conventional persea and the equally
conventional lotus are almost the only vegetable forms
which appear on the walls of the temples. I can recall,
indeed, but one similar instance in the bas-relief sculpt-
ure of the new empire—namely, the bent, broken and
waving bulrushes in the great lion-hunting scene at
Medinet Habit, which are admirably free and studied, ap-
parently, from nature.
Coming out, we looked in vain along the court-yard walls
for the battle-scene in which Champollion was yet able to
trace the famous fighting lion of Kameses II with the
legend describing him as " the servant of his majesty rend-
ing his foes in pieces." But that was forty-five years ago.
-Now it is with difficulty that one detects a few vague out-
lines of chariot-wheels and horses.
There are some rock-cut tombs in the face of the cliffs
close by. The painter explored them while the writer
sketched the interior of the temple ; but he reported of
thein as mere sepulchers, unpainted and unsculptured.
The rocks, the sands, the sky, were at a white heat when
We again turned our faces toward the river. Where there
bad so lately been a great multitude there was now not a
soul. The palms nodded; the pigeons dozed; the mud
town slept in the sun. Even the mother had gone from
her place of weeping and left her dead to the silence of
tbe desert.
We went and looked at his grave. The fresh-turned
sand was only a little darker than the rest, and, but for the
trampled foot-marks round about, we should scarcely have
been able to distinguish the new mound from the old ones.
All were alike nameless. Some, more cared for than the
rest, were bordered with large stones and filled with varie-
gated pebbles. One or two were fenced about with a mud
wall. All had a bowl of baked clay at the head. Wher-
ever we saw a burial-ground in Nubia we saw these bowls
upon the graves, The mourners, they told us, mourn