Produced by David Widger
A ROMANCE OF ANCIENT EGYPT
FROM THE HISTORICAL ROMANCES OF GEORG EBERS
By Georg Ebers
Translated from the German by Clara Bell
DEDICATION.
Thou knowest well from what this book arose. When suffering seized and held me in its clasp Thy fostering hand released me from its grasp, And from amid the thorns there bloomed a rose. Air, dew, and sunshine were bestowed by Thee, And Thine it is; without these lines from me.
PREFACE.
In the winter of 1873 I spent some weeks in one of the tombs of theNecropolis of Thebes in order to study the monuments of that solemn cityof the dead; and during my long rides in the silent desert the germ wasdeveloped whence this book has since grown. The leisure of mind and bodyrequired to write it was given me through a long but not disabling illness.
In the first instance I intended to elucidate this story--like my"Egyptian Princess"--with numerous and extensive notes placed at theend; but I was led to give up this plan from finding that it would leadme to the repetition of much that I had written in the notes to thatearlier work.
The numerous notes to the former novel had a threefold purpose. In thefirst place they served to explain the text; in the second they werea guarantee of the care with which I had striven to depict thearchaeological details in all their individuality from the records ofthe monuments and of Classic Authors; and thirdly I hoped to supply thereader who desired further knowledge of the period with some guide tohis studies.
In the present work I shall venture to content myself with the simplestatement that I have introduced nothing as proper to Egypt and to theperiod of Rameses that cannot be proved by some authority; the numerousmonuments which have descended to us from the time of the Rameses,in fact enable the enquirer to understand much of the aspect andarrangement of Egyptian life, and to follow it step try step throughthe details of religious, public, and private life, even of particularindividuals. The same remark cannot be made in regard to their mentallife, and here many an anachronism will slip in, many things will appearmodern, and show the coloring of the Christian mode of thought.
Every part of this book is intelligible without the aid of notes; but,for the reader who seeks for further enlightenment, I have added somefoot-notes, and have not neglected to mention such works as afford moredetailed information on the subjects mentioned in the narrative.
The reader who wishes to follow the mind of the author in this workshould not trouble himself with the notes as he reads, but merely atthe beginning of each chapter read over the notes which belong to theforegoing one. Every glance at the foot-notes must necessarily disturband injure the development of the tale as a work of art. The storystands here as it flowed from one fount, and was supplied with notesonly after its completion.
A narrative of Herodotus combined with the Epos of Pentaur, of whichso many copies have been handed down to us, forms the foundation of thestory.
The treason of the Regent related by the Father of history is referableperhaps to the reign of the third and not of the second Rameses. But itis by no means certain that the Halicarnassian writer was in this casemisinformed; and in this fiction no history will be inculcated, onlyas a background shall I offer a sketch of the time of Sesostris, froma picturesque point of view, but with the nearest possible approach totruth. It is true that to this end nothing has been neglected that couldbe learnt from the monuments or the papyri; still the book is only aromance, a poetic fiction, in which I wish all the facts derived fromhistory and all the costume drawn from the monuments to be regarded asincidental, and the emotions of the actors in the story as what I attachimportance to.
But I must be allowed to make one observation. From studying theconventional mode of execution of ancient Egyptian art--which wasstrictly subject to the hieratic laws of type and proportion--we haveaccustomed ourselves to imagine the inhabitants of the Nile-valley inthe time of the Pharaohs as tall and haggard men with little distinctionof individual physiognomy, and recently a great painter has sought torepresent them under this aspect in a modern picture. This is an error;the Egyptians, in spite of their aversion to foreigners and their strongattachment to their native soil, were one of the most intellectual andactive people of antiquity; and he who would represent them as theylived, and to that end copies the forms which remain painted on thewalls of the temples and sepulchres, is the accomplice of those priestlycorrupters of art who compelled the painters and sculptors of thePharaonic era to abandon truth to nature in favor of their sacred lawsof proportion.
He who desires to paint the ancient Egyptians with truth and fidelity,must regard it in some sort as an act of enfranchisement; that is tosay, he must release the conventional forms from those fetters whichwere peculiar to their art and altogether foreign to their real life.Indeed, works of sculpture remain to us of the time of the firstpyramid, which represent men with the truth of nature, unfettered by thesacred canon. We can recall the so-called "Village Judge" of Bulaq, the"Scribe" now in Paris, and a few figures in bronze in different museums,as well as the noble and characteristic busts of all epochs, which amplyprove how great the variety of individual physiognomy, and, with that,of individual character was among the Egyptians. Alma Tadelna inLondon and Gustav Richter in Berlin have, as painters, treated Egyptiansubjects in a manner which the poet recognizes and accepts with delight.
Many earlier witnesses than the late writer Flavius Vopiscus might bereferred to who show us the Egyptians as an industrious and peacefulpeople, passionately devoted it is true to all that pertains to theother world, but also enjoying the gifts of life to the fullest extent,nay sometimes to excess.
Real men, such as we see around us in actual life, not silhouettesconstructed to the old priestly scale such as the monuments showus--real living men dwelt by the old Nile-stream; and the poet who wouldrepresent them must courageously seize on types out of the daily lifeof modern men that surround him, without fear of deviating too far fromreality, and, placing them in their own long past time, color them onlyand clothe them to correspond with it.
I have discussed the authorities for the conception of love which I haveascribed to the ancients in the preface to the second edition of "AnEgyptian Princess."
With these lines I send Uarda into the world; and in them I add mythanks to those dear friends in whose beautiful home, embowered ingreen, bird-haunted woods, I have so often refreshed my spirit andrecovered my strength, where I now write the last words of this book.
Rheinbollerhutte, September 22, 1876. GEORG EBERS.