Egypt -- Description and travel; Egypt -- History -- 19th century; Nile River -- Description and travel
On the façade of this tomb, which must originally have looked like a
little temple, only two large pillars remain. Next comes a square
court-yard, surrounded by a roofless colonnade, from one corner of which
a covered passage leads to two chambers. In the center of the
court-yard yawns an open pit some twenty-five feet in depth, with a
shattered sarcophagus just visible in the gloom of the vault below. All
here is limestone--walls, pillars, pavements, even the excavated débris
with which the pit had been filled in when the vault was closed forever.
The quality of this limestone is close and fine like marble, and so
white that, although the walls and columns of the court-yard are covered
with sculptures of most exquisite execution and of the greatest
interest, the reflected light is so intolerable that we find it
impossible to examine them with the interest they deserve. In the
passage, however, where there is shade, and in the large chamber, where
it is so dark that we can see only by the help of lighted candles, we
find a succession of bas-reliefs so numerous and so closely packed that
it would take half a day to see them properly. Ranged in horizontal
parallel lines about a foot and a half in depth, these extraordinary
pictures, row above row, cover every inch of wall-space from floor to
ceiling. The relief is singularly low. I should doubt if it anywhere
exceeds a quarter of an inch. The surface, which is covered with a thin
film of very fine cement, has a quality and polish like ivory. The
figures measure an average height of about twelve inches, and all are
colored.
Here, as in an open book, we have the biography of Ti. His whole life,
his pleasures, his business, his domestic relations, are brought before
us with just that faithful simplicity which makes the charm of Montaigne
and Pepys. A child might read the pictured chronicles which illuminate
these walls and take as keen a pleasure in them as the wisest of
archæologists.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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