Travel
Diary of Mrs. R.P. Eaton:
Europe,
Egypt, and Palestine, ca. 1857
to convey an idea of the vast magnitude. If this kingly ruin, or of
its imposing majesty, when it stood in the temple and represented
the monarch sitting on his throne, his “Hands resting on his knees,
indicative of the tranquility – which he had returned to enjoy in
Egypt after the fatigues of victory.” The weight of this statue
is estimated at more than eight hundred and eighty-seven
tons. Its width across the chest is at least twenty-five feet,
and the foot is six feet in breadth. It was no easy matter
to climb upon this huge, but finely chiseled and polished
Goliath of statuary, prone and broken as it is. If one marvels,
as will the may, at the human power that made, transported,
and set up such stupendous monuments, it is scarcely less a matter
of wonder how these early invaders could so thoroughly shatter them.
Beyond the objects last described, along a story and sandy vale, amid
bold and bleak hills that seem a kind of barrier to the great Lybian
desert, are those ancient and splendid mausoleums, the tombs of
the kings. They are excavations in the lime-stone hills, and
were originally closed, and their entrance concealed. But the curiosity
and cupidly of adventures from time to time found access to them,
and disturbed the royal dust and treasures that had reposed for
ages in these magnificent chambers one of these tombs was opened
in the time of the Ptolemys, two thousand years ago, it was them,
hundreds of years old. Others have been recently discovered. We first
entered that opened by Belgone, who took from it a beautiful
alabaster sarcophagus, which is now in the British Museum in
London. We descended into this through an entrance about eight
feet square, and perhaps fifty-feet long then we descended sev-
eral flights of stairs, and entered various large halls and smaller
chambers of the right and left, the entire length must have from
three hundred feet. The whole is cut out of solid though not very
hard rock, and the walls and ceiling of the entrance, halls and
chambers are all covered with elaborate sculpture and hieroglyphics.
There are thousands of images, large and small, of human kings, of animals,
kinds, reptiles, objects worshiped, Nile boots processions and
utensils. Some of the figures are painting, and the colors seem still
fresh as they are bright. The other tombs we entered were similar
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