Biban-el-Moluk, the Royal Tombs of Thebes—The Roman Catacombs—Their Extent—Their Mode of Excavation—Touching Sepulchral Inscriptions—Antony Bosio, the Columbus of the Catacombs—The Cavaliere di Rossi—The Catacombs of Naples and Syracuse—The Catacombs of Paris.

The remoteness of caves and grottoes from the busy haunts of life, their eternal silence and their nightly gloom, have ever pointed them out as fit resting-places for the dead. From the earliest times they have been used as sepulchral vaults, and where nature neglected to hollow out the rock, it has often been excavated for this purpose by the hand of man.

Thus the Pharaohs of Egypt rested not in temples and mausoleums reared in the heart of cities, but they chose the desert-ravine for their sepulchre, and hid their tombs in deep excavations in the earth.

A more impressive scene can hardly be imagined than that which is afforded by these splendid memorials. Of all such monuments which still mark the site of ancient Thebes, perhaps none are more striking to the traveller than the royal tombs—Biban-el-Moluk—which the pride of monarchs, whose very name is now a mystery, excavated four thousand years ago in the bosom of the Libyan mountains.

‘The next morning at daybreak,’ says Warburton,^[29] ‘we started for the Tombs of the Kings. I was mounted on a fine horse, belonging to the sheikh of the village, and the cool air of the morning, the rich prospect before us, and the cloudless sky, all conspired to impart life and pleasure to my relaxed and languid frame. I had been for a month almost confined to my pallet by illness, and now, mounted on a gallant barb, sweeping across the desert, with the mountain breezes breathing round me, I felt a glow of spirits and exhilaration of mind and body to which I had been long a stranger. For a couple of hours we continued along the plain, which was partially covered with wavy corn, but flecked widely here and there with desert tracts. Then we entered the gloomy mountain gorges, through which the Theban monarchs passed to their tombs. Our path lay through a narrow defile, between precipitous cliffs of rubble and calcareous strata, and some large boulders of coarse conglomerate lay strewn along this desolate valley, in which no living thing of earth or air ever met our view. The plains below may have been, perhaps, once swarming with life and covered with palaces; but the gloomy defile we were now traversing must have ever been as they now are, lonely, lifeless, desolate—a fit avenue to the tombs for which we were bound.

‘After five or six miles’ travel, our guide stopped at the base of one of the precipices, and, laying his long spear against the rock, proceeded to light his torches. There was no entrance apparent at the distance of a few yards, nor was this great tomb betrayed to the outer world by any visible aperture, until discovered by Belzoni. This extraordinary man seems to have been one of the few who have hit off in life the lot for which Nature destined them. His sepulchral instincts might have been matter of envy to the ghouls; with such unerring certainty did he guess at the place containing the embalmed corpses most worthy of his body-snatching energies.

‘We descended by a steep path into this tomb, through a doorway covered with hieroglyphics, and entered a corridor that ran some hundred yards into the mountain. It was about twenty feet square, and painted throughout most elaborately in the manner of Raphael’s Loggia at the Vatican, with little inferiority of skill or colouring. The doorways were richly ornamented with figures of a larger size, and over each was the winged globe or a huge scarabÆus. In allusion, probably, to the wanderings of the freed spirit, almost all the larger emblems on these walls wore wings, however incompatible with their usual vocations; boats, globes, fishes, and suns, all were winged. On one of the corridors there is an allegory of the progress of the sun through the hours, painted with great detail; the god of day sits in a boat (in compliment to the Nile he lays aside his chariot here), and steers through the hours of the day and night, each of the latter being distinguished by a star. The Nile in this, as in all other circumstances of Egyptian life, figures as the most important element; even the blessed souls for its sake assume the form of fishes, and swim about with angelic fins in this River of Life. One gorgeous passage makes way into another more gorgeous still, until you arrive at a steep descent. At the base of this, perhaps 400 feet from daylight, a doorway opens into a vaulted hall of noble proportions, whose gloom considerably increases its apparent size. Here the body of Osirei, father of Rameses the Second, was laid about 3,200 years ago, in the beautiful alabaster sarcophagus which Belzoni drew from hence, the reward of his enterprise. Its poor occupant, who had taken such pains to hide himself, was “undone” for the amusement of a London conversazione.

‘There are numerous other tombs, all full of interest; but as the reader who is interested in such things will consult higher authorities than mine, I shall only add that the whole circumstance of ancient Egyptian life, with all its vicissitudes, may be read in pictures out of these extraordinary tombs, from the birth, through all the joys and sorrows of life, to the death, the lamentations over the corpse, the embalmer’s operations, and finally the judgment and the immortality of the soul. In one instance the Judge is measuring all men’s good actions in a balance against a feather from an angel’s wing; in another, a great serpent is being bound head and foot, and cast into a pit; and there are many other proofs, equally convincing, of the knowledge that this mysterious people possessed of a future life and judgment.’

But not the kings alone; the illustrious, the wealthy, the whole nation reposed in rock-tombs magnificently sculptured or rudely excavated, according to the means of the defunct. Behind the ruins of the stately temples of ancient Thebes, which extend from Gourna to Medinet Abou, and fill the narrow strip of desert between the inundated fields and the foot of the mountains, lies an interminable necropolis, whose graves, like the cells of a bee-hive, one close to the other, are hewn in the rocky ground of the plain, or in the slopes of the neighbouring hills.

These grottoes, originally destined for sarcophagi and mummies, are now occupied by fellahs and their herds, as they were in the fifth and sixth century by pious anchorites; and, being roomy and situated at a considerable height above the plain, may be considered as the most healthy dwellings of the country.

The oldest graves are hewn in the mountains; and at a later period, when the rocky plain at their foot alone gave room for these excavations, it gradually became invaded by the dead. In the more splendid of these mausoleums, high gates and walls inclosed deep courtyards, scooped out of the rock, and from these long corridors led to subterranean halls, profusely decorated with sculptures and paintings.

Similar cities of the dead were found in Upper Egypt, near the cities of the living, wherever the adjoining rocks allowed them to be excavated. Those of Syout—the ancient Lycopolis, where along an extent of several miles the whole declivity of the Libyan mountains is perforated with graves rising in terraces to their very summit—of El Kab (Eileithyia), of Assuan (Syene), of Madfuneh (Abydos), of Kan (AntÆopolis), and of a hundred other places, would in any other country excite the wonder of the traveller; here, where along the Nile one gigantic necropolis follows upon another, they hardly attract any attention.

But the ancient Egyptians not only embalmed human bodies and preserved them in rock-tombs, they also converted into mummies the various animals to which they paid divine homage, and deposited them in subterranean cavities. This honour was paid to Apis, the ox-god, to the sacred Ibis, to dogs, cats, and even to the repulsive crocodile.

Besides the Rome of the CÆsars and the Rome of the Popes, there is a third Rome, scarcely less remarkable than the other two. The two former, gilded by the warm sunbeam, proudly rise above the banks of the Tiber with their ruins, palaces, and churches, while the latter lies hidden beneath the earth.

From the cupola of St. Peter’s, the most favourable station for a panoramic view of all the monuments and buildings of the Eternal City, the eye is also best able to embrace at one glance the general topography of the catacombs or of subterranean Rome. Fifteen great consular roads, over which the victorious legions once marched out to subjugate the world, radiate from the centre of the town, and furrow the arid Campagna, until they are finally lost in the hazy distance. To the right and left of these causeways the catacombs have been hollowed out in the depths of the earth, and, though separated by the Tiber into two distinct regions, yet their various subdivisions trace a vast circle, the size of which may be measured by the circumference of the town itself. To form some idea of their extent, we must fancy an intricate wilderness of galleries and arched alcoves with their layers of sarcophagi, one above another; their lucernaria, for light or ventilation; their stairs, straight or winding; and all this, not on one level only, but floor beneath floor—one, two, three, four, five—hewn out on a labyrinthine, yet harmonious and economic plan. Network is perhaps a feeble description of these vast and intricate mazes; a spider’s web seen through the glass of a naturalist, or rather four or five spiders’ webs, one within the other, would seem a more fitting illustration.

Such is the immensity of this city of the dead that, according to the opinion of those who have made themselves best acquainted with all its subdivisions, their galleries, supposing them ranged in a line, would form a street 900 miles long, and lined by no less than six millions of tombs!

So vast a necropolis would command attention in any country, or as the memorial of any age, or of any part of the human race; but to us the catacombs of Rome are doubly interesting, as the mysterious crypts which served the first confessors of our faith for the purposes of sepulture and sometimes of concealment. Their extent at once precludes the idea of their having been excavated in a clandestine manner, as was at one time erroneously believed; and, moreover, history tells us that, apart from some passing storms of persecution, the Christians had as little reason as the Jews, their religious ancestors, for making a secret of their faith, or of their places of interment. From the times of the Apostles their community constantly grew and multiplied throughout the Roman world—in Rome especially, the centre of that world—and there can be little doubt that from Nerva to the middle of the reign of Marcus Aurelius (from 96 to about 166) and so onward to the great persecution under Decius (A.D. 249–256), the Christians, if exposed here and there and at times to local persecutions, were growing in unchecked and still expanding numbers. But as the living community increased, so also must the number of its dead, a reverence for whom was, among the survivors, not only a solemn duty but a deep-rooted passion. The Christians not only inherited from the Jews the ancient usage of interment, but this respect for the dead was strengthened by the belief that Christ had risen bodily from the grave, and that a bodily resurrection was to be their own glorious privilege. Hence the burning of the dead, customary among the wealthier pagans, was to them a profanation; and as the body of the slave was as holy as that of his master, it claimed the same right of decent burial.

But where was room for the spacious burial-places required for so vast a community?

Within the walls of the city interment was very properly forbidden by the law, and at a convenient distance beyond its crowded precincts, large plots of ground could hardly be obtained; but the formation of subterranean cemeteries on a vast scale was greatly facilitated by the geological formation of the land. Three different kinds of stone compose the groundwork of the Roman campagna: the tufa litoide, as hard and durable as granite, which furnished the materials for the palaces and temples of the CÆsarian city; the tufa granolare, which, though consistent enough to retain the form given it by the excavators, cannot be hewn or extracted in blocks, and the loose tufa friabile, or pozzuolana, which has been extensively used from the earliest ages for mortar or Roman cement. It is evident that neither the hard lithoid nor the loose tuff were suitable for the excavation of the catacombs, while this purpose could be admirably attained in the courses of the granular tuff, which, though not too hard to be worked, is yet solid enough to make walls for long and intricate passages, to be hewn into arches vaulting over deep recesses for the reception of coffins, and to support floor below floor down to the utmost depth to which the formation reaches.

Neither in the stone quarries nor in the sand-pits of ancient Rome is there the slightest sign that they were ever used for the purposes of sepulture, while in the granular tuff not a yard seems to have been excavated except for the making of tombs, which line the walls throughout their prodigious length, as close to one another as the berths in the sides of a ship. Though the most ancient catacombs were excavated by the Jews, yet these excavations are of a very limited extent when compared with those of Christian origin, where, instead of the seven-branched candlestick and other sacred emblems of the Jewish persuasion, every ornament or inscription marked or painted upon the walls bears witness to the faith of those who were deposited—to use the peculiar and appropriate expression—within these narrow cells. Everywhere we see Christian symbols only—the horse, emblematic of strength in the faith; the hunted hare, of persecution; the dove and the cock, of the Christian virtues of vigilance and meekness; the peacock and the phoenix, of resurrection; the anchor, of hope in immortality; the palm-leaf, of the martyr’s triumph over death, and many others.

The sepulchral inscriptions are short and simple, but often extremely tender and touching, recalling to memory, in a few brief words, the innocence and purity of life, the beauty and the wisdom, or the amiable, peace-loving character, of the deceased. The pompous or desponding tone of the heathen mortuary inscriptions disappears; the Christian ‘sleeps and sleeps in peace.’ There is no sign of affectation or hypocrisy in these simple epitaphs, and the ennobling influence of the new creed upon the spirit of man is, perhaps, nowhere more conspicuous than in the unostentatious inscriptions traced upon the tombs of its first confessors.

The use of the catacombs for the various purposes of interment, assembly, or concealment began, no doubt, with the first persecution under Nero. Most of the inscriptions however, bear the date of the fourth or fifth century, and some are evidently of a much later period. When this custom may have ceased is uncertain, but in the Middle Ages the catacombs were entirely forgotten, and remained blocked up, until towards the end of the sixteenth century, when they were reopened and explored by the indefatigable and courageous Antony Bosio, who devoted thirty-three years of his life to this labour. During his frequent wanderings through the Roman Campagna, this zealous archÆologist once found, to the left of the Appian Way, near to the church of Sancta Maria in Palmis, a brick vault in a field covered with rubbish. He immediately presumed it to be the entrance of a catacomb, and descended through the narrow opening. Fired with scientific ardour, he penetrated further and further into recesses untrodden for centuries by the foot of man. The passage soon became so narrow and low as to oblige him to creep, but neither the difficulty of the exploration, nor the fear of being crushed to death by the crumbling stones, could restrain him; and thus, day after day, he continued his perilous search, until, finally, a complete subterranean city revealed itself, although he could not ascertain its limits, for, however far he might probe its intricacies, new passages were still branching out on every side, and the maze descended in several successive stories deeper and deeper into the earth. After Bosio, other archÆologists have continued his researches, and in our days the Cavaliere de Rossi—to whose indefatigable zeal is due, amongst others, the discovery of the Catacomb of Callistus, where many of the early popes have been entombed—has all but completed the topography of subterranean Rome.

Besides the ancient metropolis of the world, several other old Italian towns possess remarkable catacombs or subterranean burial-places. Those of Naples, historically far less interesting than those of Rome, are executed on a far more spacious plan. They are situated not beneath the town itself, but in a neighbouring mountain, where they have been excavated to a distance of more than two miles. Large galleries, eighteen feet broad, and fourteen or fifteen high, branch out into a number of smaller passages, while the walls on both sides are pierced, like those in Rome, with horizontal sepulchral cavities, six, or even seven, one above the other.

The Catacombs of Syracuse, under the site of the ancient Achradina, are the largest and best preserved known. They are all excavated in the solid rock, and form lofty vaults, very different from the narrow and dangerous burrows of subterranean Rome. A broad gallery runs through the whole of the labyrinth, and from this many other passages of an inferior width branch out, leading to large circular vaults with openings at the top for the admission of light. Many of these have been closed, as they were equally dangerous for the people in their neighbourhood and their cattle, so that torches are necessary for visiting them. Along the walls are a number of niches, which served as sepulchres, so that these excavations, which originally were quarries, and during the flourishing times of the city were used by its vast population for various household purposes, were ultimately converted into a city of the dead.

The Catacombs of Paris, though ancient as quarries, are of a very modern date as places of sepulture. Until the end of the reign of Louis XVI. the principal burying-ground of Paris had been the Cemetery of the Innocents, near the church of the same name. Originally situated beyond the walls of the town, it had in course of time been so surrounded by the growing metropolis as to occupy its centre. Here, during nearly ten centuries, numberless bodies had been deposited, so that, from the malaria it engendered, it became a constant source of danger to the living. At length the cemetery became so intolerable a nuisance that its suppression and conversion into a public market-place was decreed in 1785.

The question now arose where the bones to be displaced should be deposited, and, from their proximity to the town and their extent, the ancient quarries were chosen as the most favourable spot for a vast subterranean necropolis. But these immense excavations, which, having been abandoned for several centuries, had in many places fallen in, needed a full year for repairs before they could be safely used for their new purpose. At length, on April 7, 1787, they were solemnly consecrated, and the same day the workmen began to remove the bones from the Cemetery of the Innocents—an operation which needed more than fifteen months for its completion. Gradually many others of the ancient cemeteries of Paris were in like manner removed to the catacombs, so that they are said to contain the bones of more than three millions of bodies. All these bones are symmetrically piled up along the sides of the galleries; the apophyses of the large thigh and arm bones are disposed in front, so as to make a nearly uniform surface, interrupted from space to space by a row of skulls. Some of the crypts or sepulchral chambers are rather lugubriously decorated with festoons or pyramids of skulls and cross-bones, and many of the stone pillars which support the vaults have likewise received ornaments of the same sexton taste. Sixty-three staircases lead from different parts of the town into the catacombs, and are used by the workmen and agents appointed to take care of the subterranean necropolis; but visitors are admitted only every three months by the entrance at the BarriÈre du Maine. A descent of ninety steps brings them to a narrow gallery, which conducts them, after several windings to the more roomy vaults where the bones are deposited; and after wandering for some time among these gloomy memorials which are piled up on either side, they finally emerge into daylight through another gallery, similar to the first. No doubt Paris affords many a more pleasant ramble, but hardly one more interesting, or capable of making a deeper impression on the mind.