“Pray come immediately—I have found the entrance to a tomb. Please send some sandwiches. A. M’C——.”
“Pray come immediately—I have found the entrance to a tomb. Please send some sandwiches. A. M’C——.”
To follow the messenger at once to the scene of action was the general impulse. In less than ten minutes we were there, asking breathless questions, peeping in through the fast-widening aperture and helping to clear away the sand.
All that Sunday afternoon, heedless of possible sunstroke, unconscious of fatigue, we toiled upon our hands and knees, as for bare life, under the burning sun. We had all the crew up, working like tigers. Every one helped; even the dragoman and the two maids. More than once, when we paused for a moment’s breathing-space, we said to each other: “If those at home could see us what would they say?”
And now, more than ever, we felt the need of implements. With a spade or two and a wheelbarrow we could have done wonders; but with only one small fire-shovel, a birch broom, a couple of charcoal baskets, and about twenty pairs of hands, we were poor indeed. What was wanted in means, however, was made up in method. Some scraped away the sand; some gathered it into baskets; some carried the baskets to the edge of the cliff and emptied them into the river. The idle man distinguished himself by scooping out a channel where the slope was steepest; which greatly facilitated the work. Emptied down this chute and kept continually going, the sand poured off in a steady stream like water.
Meanwhile the opening grew rapidly larger. When we first came up—that is, when the painter and the two sailors had been working on it for about an hour—we found a hole scarcely as large as one’s hand, through which it was just possible to catch a dim glimpse of painted walls within. By sunset the top of the doorway was laid bare, and where the crack ended in a large triangular fracture there was an aperture about a foot and a half square, into which Mehemet Ali was the first to squeeze his way. We passed him in a candle and a box of matches; but he came out again directly, saying that it was a most beautifulbirbeh, and quite light within.
The writer wriggled in next. She found herself looking down from the top of a sand-slope into a small square chamber. This sand-drift, which here rose to within a foot and a half of the top of the doorway, was heaped to the ceiling in the corner behind the door, and thence sloped steeply down, completely covering the floor. There was light enough to see every detail distinctly—the painted frieze running round just under the ceiling; the bas-relief sculptures on the walls, gorgeous with unfaded color; the smooth sand, pitted near the top, where Mehemet Ali had trodden, but undisturbed elsewhere by human foot; the great gap in the middle of the ceiling, where the rock had given way; the fallen fragments on the floor, now almost buried in sand.
Satisfied that the place was absolutely fresh and untouched, the writer crawled out, and the others, one by by one, crawled in. When each had seen it in turn the opening was barricaded for the night; the sailors being forbidden to enter it lest they should injure the decorations.
That evening was held a solemn council, whereat it was decided that Talhamy and Reïs Hassan should go to-morrow to the nearest village, there to engage the services of fifty able-bodied natives. With such help, we calculated that the place might easily be cleared in two days. If it was a tomb we hoped to discover the entrance to the mummy pit below; if but a small chapel, or speos, like those at Ibrim, we should at least have the satisfaction ofseeing all that it contained in the way of sculptures and inscriptions.
This was accordingly done; but we worked again next morning just the same, till midday. Our native contingent, numbering about forty men, then made their appearance in a rickety old boat, the bottom of which was half-full of water.
They had been told to bring implements; and they did bring such as they had—two broken oars to dig with, some baskets, and a number of little slips of planking which, being tied between two pieces of rope and drawn along the surface, acted as scrapers and were useful as far as they went. Squatting in double file from the entrance of the speos to the edge of the cliff, and to the burden of a rude chant propelling these improvised scrapers, the men began by clearing a path to the doorway. This gave them work enough for the afternoon. At sunset, when they dispersed, the path was scooped out to a depth of four feet, like a miniature railway cutting between embankments of sand.
Next morning came the sheik in person with his two sons and a following of a hundred men. This was so many more than we had bargained for that we at once foresaw a scheme to extort money. The sheik, however, proved to be that same Rashwan Ebn Hassan el Kashef, by whom the happy couple had been so hospitably entertained about a fortnight before; we therefore received him with honor, invited him to luncheon, and, hoping to get the work done quickly, set the men on in gangs under the superintendence of Reïs Hassan and the head sailor.
By noon the door was cleared down to the threshold, and the whole south and west walls were laid bare to the floor.
We now found that the débris which blocked the north wall and the center of the floor was not, as we had at first supposed, a pile of fallen fragments, but one solid bowlder which had come down bodily from above. To remove this was impossible. We had no tools to cut or break it and it was both wider and higher than the doorway. Even to clear away the sand which rose behind it to the ceiling would have taken a long time and have caused inevitable injury to the paintings around. Already the brilliancy of the color was marred where the men had leaned their backs, all wet with perspiration, against the walls.
Seeing, therefore, that three-fourths of the decorations were now uncovered, and that behind the fallen block there appeared to be no subject of great size or importance, we made up our minds to carry the work no further.
Meanwhile, we had great fun at luncheon with our Nubian sheik—a tall, well-featured man with much natural dignity of manner. He was well dressed, too, and wore a white turban most symmetrically folded; a white vest buttoned to the throat; a long, loose robe of black serge; an outer robe of fine black cloth with hanging sleeves and a hood; and on his feet, white stockings and scarlet morocco shoes. When brought face to face with a knife and fork his embarrassment was great. He was, it seemed, too grand a personage to feed himself. He must have a “feeder;” as the great men of the middle ages had a “taster.” Talhamy accordingly, being promoted to this office, picked out choice bits of mutton and chicken with his fingers, dipped pieces of bread in gravy and put every morsel into our guest’s august mouth, as if the said guest were a baby.
The sweets being served, the little lady, L—— and the writer took him in hand and fed him with all kinds of jams and preserved fruits. Enchanted with these attentions, the poor man eat till he could eat no longer; then laid his hand pathetically over the region next his heart and cried for mercy. After luncheon he smoked his chibouque and coffee was served. Our coffee did not please him. He tasted it, but immediately returned the cup, telling the waiter with a grimace, that the berries were burned and the coffee weak. When, however, we apologized for it, he protested with oriental insincerity that it was excellent.
To amuse him was easy, for he was interested in everything; in L——’s field-glass, in the painter’s accordion, in the piano, and the lever corkscrew. With some eau-de-cologne he was also greatly charmed, rubbing it on his beard and inhaling it with closed eyes, in a kind of rapture. To make talk was, as usual, the great difficulty. When he had told us that his eldest son was Governor of Derr; that his youngest was five years of age; that the dates of Derr were better than the dates of Wady Halfeh;and that the Nubian people were very poor, he was at the end of his topics. Finally, he requested us to convey a letter from him to Lord D——, who had entertained him on board his dahabeeyah the year before. Being asked if he had brought his letter with him, he shook his head, saying: “Your dragoman shall write it.”
So paper and a reed pen were produced and Talhamy wrote to dictation as follows:
“God have care of you. I hope you are well. I am sorry not to have had a letter from you since you were here. Your brother and friend,“Rashwan Ebn Hassan El Kashef.”
“God have care of you. I hope you are well. I am sorry not to have had a letter from you since you were here. Your brother and friend,
“Rashwan Ebn Hassan El Kashef.”
A model letter this; brief and to the point.
Our urbane and gentlemanly sheik was, however, not quite so charming when it came to settling time. We had sent at first for fifty men, and the price agreed upon was five piasters, or about a shilling English, for each man per day. In answer to this call, there first came forty men for half a day; then a hundred men for a whole day, or what was called a whole day; so making a total of six pounds due for wages. But the descendants of the Kashefs would hear of nothing so commonplace as the simple fulfillment of a straightforward contract. he demanded full pay for a hundred men for two whole days, a gun for himself, and a liberal backshîsh in cash. Finding he had asked more than he had any chance of getting, he conceded the question of wages, but stood out for a game-bag and a pair of pistols. Finally, he was obliged to be content with the six pounds for his men, and for himself two pots of jam, two boxes of sardines, a bottle of eau-de-cologne, a box of pills, and half a sovereign.
By four o’clock he and his followers were gone, and we once more had the place to ourselves. So long as they were there it was impossible to do anything, but now, for the first time, we fairly entered into possession of our newly found treasure.
All the rest of that day, and all the next day, we spent at work in and about the speos. L—— and the little lady took their books and knitting there, and made a little drawing-room of it. The writer copied paintings and inscriptions. The idle man and the painter took measurements and surveyed the ground round about, especially endeavoring to make out the plan of certain fragments of wall, the foundations of which were yet traceable.
A careful examination of these ruins, and a little clearing of the sand here and there, led to further discoveries. They found that the speos had been approached by a large outer hall built of sun-dried brick, with one principal entrance facing the Nile, and two side entrances facing northward. The floor was buried deep in sand and débris, but enough of the walls remained above the surface to show that the ceiling had been vaulted and the side entrances arched.
The southern boundary wall of this hall, when the surface sand was removed, appeared to be no less than twenty feet in thickness. This was not in itself so wonderful, there being instances of ancient Egyptian crude-brick walls which measure eighty feet in thickness;[127]but it was astounding as compared with the north, east, and west walls, which measured only three feet. Deeming it impossible that this mass could be solid throughout, the idle man set to work with a couple of sailors to probe the center part of it, and it soon became evident that there was a hollow space about three feet in width running due east and west down not quite exactly the middle of the structure.
All at once the idle man thrust his fingers into a skull!
This was such an amazing and unexpected incident that for the moment he said nothing, but went on quietly displacing the sand and feeling his way under the surface. The next instant his hand came in contact with the edge of a clay bowl, which he carefully withdrew. It measured about four inches in diameter, was hand-molded, and full of caked sand. He now proclaimed his discoveries and all ran to help in the work. Soon a second and smaller skull was turned up, then another bowl, and then, just under the place from which the bowls were taken, the bones of two skeletons, all detached, perfectly desiccated, and apparently complete. The remains were those of a child and a small grown person—probably a woman. The teeth were sound; the bones wonderfully delicate and brittle. As forthe little skull (which had fallen apart at the sutures), it was pure and fragile in texture as the cup of a water-lily.
We laid the bones aside as we found them, examining every handful of sand, in the hope of discovering something that might throw light upon the burial. But in vain. We found not a shred of clothing, not a bead, not a coin, not the smallest vestige of anything that might help one to judge whether the interment had taken place a hundred years ago or a thousand.
We now called up all the crew, and went on excavating downward into what seemed to be a long and narrow vault measuring some fifteen feet by three.
After-reflection convinced us that we had stumbled upon a chance Nubian grave, and that the bowls (which at first we absurdly dignified with the name of cinerary urns) were but the usual water-bowls placed at the heads of the dead. But we were in no mood for reflection at the time. We made sure that the speos was a mortuary chapel; that the vault was a vertical pit leading to a sepulchral chamber; and that at the bottom of it we should find—who could tell what? Mummies, perhaps, and sarcophagi, and funerary statuettes, and jewels, and papyri and wonders without end! That these uncared-for bones should be laid in the mouth of such a pit, scarcely occurred to us as an incongruity. Supposing them to be Nubian remains, what then? If a modern Nubian at the top, why not an ancient Egyptian at the bottom?
As the work of excavation went on, however, the vault was found to be entered by a steep inclined plane. Then the inclined plane turned out to be a flight of much worn and very shallow stairs. These led down to a small square landing, some twelve feet below the surface, from which landing an arched doorway[128]and passage opened into the fore-court of the speos. Our sailors had great difficulty in excavating this part, in consequence of the weight of superincumbent sand and débris on the side next the speos. By shoring up the ground, however, they wereenabled completely to clear the landing, which was curiously paved with cones of rude pottery like the bottoms of amphoræ. These cones, of which we took out some twenty eight or thirty, were not in the least like the celebrated funerary cones found so abundantly at Thebes. They bore no stamp, and were much shorter and more lumpy in shape. Finally, the cones being all removed, we came to a compact and solid floor of baked clay.
The painter, meanwhile, had also been at work. Having traced the circuit and drawn out a ground-plan, he came to the conclusion that the whole mass adjoining the southern wall of the speos was in fact composed of the ruins of a pylon, the walls of which were seven feet in thickness, built in regular string-courses of molded brick, and finished at the angles with the usualtorus, or round molding. The superstructure, with its chambers, passages, and top cornice, was gone; and this part with which we were now concerned was merely the basement, and included the bottom of the staircase.
The painter’s ground-plan demolished all our hopes at one fell swoop. The vault was a vault no longer. The staircase led to no sepulchral chamber. The brick floor had no secret entrance. Our mummies melted into thin air, and we were left with no excuse for carrying on the excavations. We were mortally disappointed. In vain we told ourselves that the discovery of a large brick pylon, the existence of which had been unsuspected by preceding travelers, was an event of greater importance than the finding of a tomb. We had set our hearts on the tomb; and I am afraid we cared less than we ought for the pylon.
Having traced thus far the course of the excavations and the way in which one discovery led step by step to another, I must now return to the speos, and, as accurately as I can, describe it, not only from my notes made on the spot, but by the light of such observations as I afterward made among structures of the same style and period. I must, however, premise that, not being able to go inside while the excavators were in occupation, and remaining but one whole day at Abou Simbel after the work was ended, I had but a short time at my disposal. I would gladly have made colored copies of all the wall-paintings; but this was impossible. I therefore was obliged to be content with transcribing the inscriptions and sketching a few of the more important subjects.
The rock-cut chamber which I have hitherto described as a speos, and which we at first believed to be a tomb, was in fact neither the one or the other. It was the adytum of a partly built, partly excavated monument coeval in date with the great temple. In certain points of design this monument resembles the contemporary speos of Bayt-el-Welly. It is evident, for instance, that the outer halls of both were originally vaulted; and the much mutilated sculptures over the doorway of the excavated chamber at Abou Simbel are almost identical in subject and treatment with those over the entrance to the excavated parts of Bayt-el-Welly. As regards general conception, the Abou Simbel monument comes under the same head with the contemporary Temples of Derr, Gerf Hossayn, and Wady Sabooah; being in a mixed style which combines excavation with construction. This style seems to have been peculiarly in favor during the reign of Rameses II.
Situated at the southeastern angle of the rock, a little way beyond the façade of the great temple, this rock-cut adytum and hall of entrance face southeast by east, and command much the same view that is commanded higher up by the Temple of Hathor. The adytum, or excavated speos, measures twenty-one feet two and one-half inches in breadth by fourteen feet eight inches in length. The height from floor to ceiling is about twelve feet. The doorway measures four feet three and one-half inches in width; and the outer recess for the door-frame, five feet. Two large circle holes, one in the threshold and the other in the lintel, mark the place of the pivot on which the door once swung.
It is not very easy to measure the outer hall in its present ruined and encumbered state; but as nearly as we could judge, its dimensions are as follows: Length, twenty-five feet; width, twenty-two and one-half feet; width of principal entrance facing the Nile, six feet; width of two side entrances, four feet and six feet respectively; thickness of crude-brick walls, three feet. Engaged in the brickwork on either side of the principal entrance to this hall are two stone door-jambs; and some six or eight feet in front of these there originally stood two stone hawks on hieroglyphed pedestals. One of these hawks we foundin situ, the other lay some little distance off, and the painter (suspecting nothing of these after-revelations) had used it as apost to which to tie one of the main ropes of his sketching-tent. A large hieroglyphed slab, which I take to have formed part of the door, lay overturned against the side of the pylon some few yards nearer the river.
1.Wall of pylon.2.Square landing.3.Arched doorway and passage leading to vaulted hall.4.Walls of outer hall or pronaos.5.Door-jambs.6.Stone hawks on pedestals.7.Torus of pylon.8.Arched entrances in north wall of pronaos.
1.Wall of pylon.2.Square landing.3.Arched doorway and passage leading to vaulted hall.4.Walls of outer hall or pronaos.5.Door-jambs.6.Stone hawks on pedestals.7.Torus of pylon.8.Arched entrances in north wall of pronaos.
As far as the adytum and outer hall are concerned, the accompanying ground-plan—which is in part founded on my own measurements, and in part borrowed from the ground-plan drawn out by the painter—may be accepted as tolerably correct. But with regard to the pylon, I can only say with certainty that the central staircase is three feet in width, and that the walls on each side of it are seven feet in thickness. So buried is it in débris and sand, that even to indicate where the building ends and the rubbish begins at the end next the Nile, is impossible. This part is, therefore, left indefinite in the ground-plan.
PATTERN OF CORNICE.
PATTERN OF CORNICE.
PATTERN OF CORNICE.
So far as we could see, there was no stone revêtement upon the inner side of the walls of the pronaos. If anything of the kind ever existed, some remains of it would probably be found by thoroughly clearing the area; an interesting enterprise for any who may have leisure to undertake it.
I have now to speak of the decorations of the adytum, the walls of which, from immediately under the ceiling to within three feet of the floor, are covered with religious subjects elaborately sculptured in bas-relief, coated as usual with a thin film of stucco and colored with a richness for which I know no parallel, except in the tomb of Seti I[129]at Thebes. Above the level of the drifted sand this color was as brilliant in tone and as fresh in surface as on the day when it was transferred to those walls from the palette of the painter. All below that level, however, was dimmed and deranged.
The ceiling is surrounded by a frieze of cartouches supported by sacred asps; each cartouche, with its supporters,being divided from the next by a small sitting figure. These figures, in other respects uniform, wear the symbolic heads of various gods—the cow-head of Hathor, the ibis-head of Thoth, the hawk-head of Horus, the jackal-head of Anubis, etc. The cartouches contain the ordinary style and title of Rameses II (Ra-user-ma Sotep-en-Ra Rameses Mer-Amen), and are surmounted by a row of sundisks. Under each sitting god is depicted the phonetic hieroglyph signifyingMer, or beloved. By means of this device, the whole frieze assumes the character of a connected legend and describes the king not only as beloved of Amen, but as Rameses beloved of Hathor, of Thoth, of Horus—in short, of each god depicted in the series.
These gods excepted, the frieze is almost identical in design with the frieze in the first hall of the great temple.
STANDARD OF HORUSAROERIS.
STANDARD OF HORUSAROERIS.
STANDARD OF HORUS
AROERIS.
The west, or principal wall, facing the entrance, is divided into two large subjects, each containing two figures the size of life. In the division to the right, Rameses II worships Ra; in the division to the left, he worships Amen-Ra; thus following the order observed in the other two temples, where the subjects relating to Amen-Ra occupy the left half and the subjects relating to Ra occupy the right half of each structure. An upright ensign surmounted by an exquisitely drawn and colored head of Horus Aroëris separates these two subjects.[131]Inthe subject to the right, Rameses, wearing the red and white pschent, presents an offering of two small aryballos vases without handles. The vases are painted blue and are probably intended to represent lapis lazuli; a substance much prized by the ancient Egyptians and known to them by the name ofkhesbet. The king’s necklace, armlets and bracelets are also blue. Ra sits enthroned, holding in one hand the “ankh,” or crux ansata, emblem of life, and in the other the greyhound-headed[132]scepter of the☥gods. He is hawk-headed and crowned with the sun-disk and asp. His flesh is painted bright Venetian red. He wears a pectoral ornament; a rich necklace of alternate vermilion and black drops; and a golden-yellow belt studded with red and black stones. The throne, which stands on a blue platform, is painted in stripes of red, blue and white. The platform is decorated with a row of gold-colored stars and “ankh” emblems picked out with red. At the foot of this platform, between the god and the king, stands a small altar, on which are placed the usual blue lotus with red stalk and a spouted libation vessel.
To the left of the Horus ensign, seated back to back with Ra upon a similar throne, sits Amen-Ra—of all Egyptian gods the most terrible to look upon—with his blue-black complexion, his corselet of golden chain-armor, and his head-dress of towering plumes.[133]Here the wonderful preservation of the surface enabled one to see by what means the ancient artists were wont to produce this singular blue-black effect of color. It was evident that the flesh of the god had first been laid in with dead black, and then colored over with a dry, powdery cobalt-blue, through which the black remained partially visible. He carries in one hand the ankh, and in the other the greyhound-headed scepter. To him advances the king, his right hand uplifted, and in his left a small basket containing a votive statuette of Ma, the goddess of truth and justice. Ma is, however, shorn of her distinctive feather, and holds the jackal-headed staff instead of the customary crux ansata.
As portraiture, there is not much to be said for any of these heads of Rameses II; but the features bear a certain resemblance to the well-known profile of the king; the action of the figure is graceful and animated; and the drawing displays in all its purity the firm and flowing line of Egyptian draughtsmanship.
RAMESES II OF SPEOS.RAMESES II OF SPEOS.
RAMESES II OF SPEOS.RAMESES II OF SPEOS.
RAMESES II OF SPEOS.
RAMESES II OF SPEOS.
The dress of the king is very rich in color; the mitershaped casque being of avivid cobalt-blue[134]picked out with gold color; the belt, necklace, armlets, and bracelets, of gold, studded apparently with precious stones; the apron, green and gold. Over the king’s head hovers the sacred vulture, emblem of Maut, holding in her claws a kind of scutcheon upon which is depicted the crux ansata.
The subjects represented on this wall are as follows:
1. Rameses, life-size, presiding over a table of offerings. The king wears upon his head theklaft, or head-cloth, striped gold and white and decorated with the uræus. The table is piled in the usual way with flesh, fowl and flowers. The surface being here quite perfect, the details of these objects are seen to be rendered with surprising minuteness. Even the tiny black feather-stumps of the plucked geese are given with the fidelity of Chinese art; while a red gash in the breast of each shows in what way it was slain for the sacrifice. The loaves are shaped precisely like the so-called “cottage loaves” of to-day and have the same little depression in the top, made by the baker’s finger. Lotusand papyrus blossoms in elaborate bouquet-holders crown the pile.
2. Two tripods of light and elegant design, containing flowers.
3. The bari, or sacred boat, painted gold-color, with the usual veil half-drawn across the naos, or shrine; the prow of the boat being richly carved, decorated with the uta[135]or symbolic eye and preceded by a large fan of ostrich feathers. The boat is peopled with small black figures, one of which kneels at the stern; while a sphinx couchant, with black body and human head, keeps watch at the prow. The sphinx symbolizes the king.
On this wall, in a space between the sacred boat and the figure of Rameses occurs the following inscription, sculptured in high relief and elaborately colored:
Note.—This inscription reads according to the numbering of the columns, beginning at 1 and reading to the right; then resuming at 7 and reading to the left. The spaces lettered A B in the lowest figure of column 5 are filled in with the two cartouches of Rameses II.
Said by Thoth, the Lord of Sesennu,[137][residing] in Amenheri:[138]“I give to thee an everlasting sovereignty over the two countries, O son of [my] body, beloved, Ra-user-ma Sotep-en-Ra, acting as propitiator of thyKa. I give to thee myriads of festivals of Rameses, beloved of Amen, Ra-user-ma Sotep-en-Ra, as prince of every place where the sun-disk revolves. The beautiful living god, maker of beautiful things for [his] father Thoth, Lord of Sesennu [residing] in Amenheri. He made mighty and beautiful monuments forever facing the eastern horizon of heaven.”
The meaning of which is that Thoth, addressing Rameses II, then living and reigning, promises him a long life and many anniversaries of his jubilee,[139]in return for the works made in his (Thoth’s) honor at Abou Simbel and elsewhere.
At the upper end of this wall is depicted a life-size female figure wearing an elaborate blue head-dress surmounted by a disk and two ostrich feathers. She holds in her right hand the ankh, and in her left the jackal-headed scepter. This not being the scepter of a goddess and the head-dress resembling that of the queen as represented on the façade of the Temple of Hathor, I conclude we havehere a portrait of Nefertari corresponding to the portrait of Rameses on the opposite wall. Near her stands a table of offerings, on which, among other objects, are placed four vases of a rich blue color traversed by bands of yellow. They perhaps represent the kind of glass known as the false murrhine.[140]Each of these vases contains an object like a pine, the ground-color of which is deep yellow, patterned over with scale-like subdivisions in vermilion. We took them to represent grains of maize pyramidially piled.
Lastly, a pendant to that on the opposite wall, comes the sacred bari. It is, however, turned the reverse way, with its prow toward the east; and it rests upon an altar, in the center of which are the cartouches of Rameses II and a small hieroglyphic inscription signifying: “Beloved by Amen-Ra, king of the gods, resident in the land of Kenus.”[141]
Beyond this point, at the end nearest the northeast corner of the chamber, the piled sand conceals whatever else the wall may contain in the way of decoration.
If the east wall is decorated like the others (which may be taken for granted), its tableaux and inscriptions are hidden behind the sand which here rises to the ceiling. The doorway also occurs in this wall, occupying a space four feet three and one-half inches in width on the inner side.
One of the most interesting incidents connected with the excavation of this little adytum remains yet to be told.
I have described the female figure at the upper end of the north wall and how she holds in her right hand the ankh and in her left hand the jackal-headed scepter. The hand that holds the ankh hangs by her side; the hand that holds the scepter is half-raised. Close under this upraised hand, at a height of between three and four feet from the actual level of the floor, there were visible upon the un-colored surface of the original stucco several lines of free-hand writing. This writing was laid on, apparently, with the brush, and the ink, if ever it had been black, had now become brown. Five long lines and three shorter lines were uninjured. Below these were traces of other fragmentary lines, almost obliterated by the sand.
We knew at once that this quaint faint writing must be in either the hieratic or demotic hand. We could distinguish, or thought we could distinguish, in its vague outlines of forms already familiar to us in the hieroglyphs—abstracts, as it were, of birds and snakes and boats. There could be no doubt, at all events, that the thing was curious; and we set it down in our own minds as the writing of either the architect or decorator of the place.
Anxious to make, if possible, an exact fac-simile of this inscription, the writer copied it three times. The last and best of these copies is here reproduced in photolithography, with a translation from the pen of the late Dr. Birch. (See p. 317.) We all know how difficult it is to copy correctly in a language of which one is ignorant; and the tiniest curve or dot omitted is fatal to the sense of these ancient characters. In the present instance, notwithstanding the care with which the transcript was made, there must still have been errors; for it has been found undecipherable in places; and in these places there occur inevitable lacunæ.
Enough, however, remains to show that the lines were written, not as we had supposed by the artist, but by a distinguished visitor, whose name unfortunately is illegible. This visitor was a son of the Prince of Kush, or as it is literally written, the Royal Son of Kush; that being the official title of the Governor of Ethiopia.[142]As there were certainly eight governors of Ethiopia during the reign of Rameses II (and perhaps more, whose names have not reached us), it is impossible even to hazard a guess at theparentage of our visitor. We gather, however, that he was sent hither to construct a road; also that he built transport boats; and that he exercised priestly functions in that part of the temple which was inaccessible to all but dignitaries of the sacerdotal order.
HIERATIC INSCRIPTION,NORTH WALL OF SPEOS.Translated by S. Birch, Esq., LL.D., etc.
... thy son having ... thou hast conquered the worlds at once Ammon Ra-Harmachis,[143]the god at the first time,[144]who gives life, health, and a time of many praises to the groom ... of the Khen,[145]son of the Royal son of Cush,[146]Opener of the road, Maker oftransport boats, Giver of instructions to his lord ... Amenshaa....
Site, inscriptions, and decorations taken into account, there yet remains this question to be answered:
What was the nature and character of the monument just described?
It adjoined a pylon, and, as we have seen, consisted of a vaulted pronaos in crude brick, and an adytum excavated in the rock. On the walls of this adytum are depicted various gods with their attributes, votive offerings, and portraits of the king performing acts of adoration. The bari, or ark, is also represented upon the north and south walls of the adytum. These are unquestionably the ordinary features of a temple, or chapel.
On the other hand, there must be noted certain objections to these premises. It seemed to us that the pylon was built first and that the south boundary wall of the pronaos, being a subsequent erection, was supported against the slope of the pylon as far as where the spring of the vaulting began. Besides which, the pylon would have been a disproportionately large adjunct to a little monument, the entire length of which, from the doorway of the pronaos to the west wall of the adytum, was less than forty-seven feet. We therefore concluded that the pylon belonged to the large temple and was erected at the side instead of in front of the façade, on account of the very narrow space between the mountain and the river.[147]
The pylon at Korn Ombo is, probably for the same reason, placed at the side of the temple and on a lower level. To those who might object that a brick pylon would hardly be attached to a temple of the first class, I would observe that the remains of a similar pylon are still to be seen at the top of what was once the landing-place leading to the great temple at Wady Halfeh. It may, therefore, be assumed that this little monument, although connected with the pylon by means of a doorway and staircase, was an excrescence of later date.
Being an excrescence, however, was it, in the strict sense of the word, a temple?
Even this seems to be doubtful. In the adytum there isno trace of any altar—no fragment of stone dais or sculptured image—no granite shrine, as at Philæ—no sacred recess, as at Denderah. The standard of Horus Aroëris, engraved on page 311, occupies the center place upon the wall facing the entrance, and occupies it, not as a tutelary divinity, but as a decorative device to separate the two large subjects already described. Again, the gods represented in these subjects are Ra and Amen-Ra, the tutelary gods of the great temple; but if we turn to the dedicatory inscription on page 313 we find that Thoth, whose image never occurs at all upon the walls[148](unless as one of the little gods in the cornice), is really the presiding deity of the place. It is he who welcomes Rameses and his offerings; who acknowledges the “glory” given to him by his beloved son; and who, in return for the great and good monuments erected in his honor, promises the king that he shall be given “an everlasting sovereignty over the two countries.”
Now Thoth was,par excellence, the God of Letters. He is styled the Lord of Divine Words; the Lord of the Sacred Writings; the Spouse of Truth. He personifies the Divine Intelligence. He is the patron of art and science; and he is credited with the invention of the alphabet. In one of the most interesting of Champollion’s letters from Thebes,[149]he relates how, in the fragmentary ruins of the western extremity of the Ramesseum, he found a doorway adorned with the figures of Thoth and Safek; Thoth as the God of Literature, and Safek inscribed with the title of Lady President of the Hall of Books. At Denderah there is a chamber especially set apart for the sacred writings, and its walls are sculptured all over with a catalogue raisonnée of the manuscript treasures of the temple. At Edfu, a kind of closet built up between two of the pillars of the hall of assembly was reserved for the same purpose. Every temple, in short, had its library; and as the Egyptian books—being written on papyrus or leather, rolled up, and stored in coffers—occupied but little space, the rooms appropriated to this purpose were generally small.
It was Dr. Birch’s opinion that our little monumentmay have been the library of the Great Temple of Abou Simbel. This being the case, the absence of an altar, and the presence of Ra and Amen-Ra in the two principal tableaux, are sufficiently accounted for. The tutelary deity of the great temple and the patron deity of Rameses II would naturally occupy, in this subsidiary structure, the same places that they occupy in the principal one; while the library, though in one sense the domain of Thoth, is still under the protection of the gods of the temple to which it is an adjunct.
I do not believe we once asked ourselves how it came to pass that the place had remained hidden all these ages long; yet its very freshness proved how early it must have been abandoned. If it had been open in the time of the successors of Rameses II, they would probably, as elsewhere, have interpolated inscriptions and cartouches, or have substituted their own cartouches for those of the founder. If it had been open in the time of the Ptolemies and Cæsars, traveling Greeks and learned Romans and strangers from Byzantium and the cities of Asia Minor would have cut their names on the door-jambs and scribbled ex-votos on the walls. If it had been open in the days of Nubian Christianity, the sculptures would have been coated with mud and washed with lime and daubed with pious caricatures of St. George and the holy family. But we found it intact—as perfectly preserved as a tomb that had lain hidden under the rocky bed of the desert. For these reasons I am inclined to think that it became inaccessible shortly after it was completed. There can be little doubt that a wave of earthquake passed, during the reign of Rameses II, along the left bank of the Nile, beginning possibly above Wady Halfeh, and extending at least as far north as Gerf Hossayn. Such a shock might have wrecked the temple at Wady Halfeh, as it dislocated the pylon of Wady Sabooah, and shook the built-out porticoes of Derr and Gerf Hossayn; which last four temples, as they do not, I believe, show signs of having been added to by later Pharaohs, may be supposed to have been abandoned in consequence of the ruin which had befallen them. Here, at all events, it shook the mountain of the great temple, cracked one of the Osiride columns of the first hall,[150]shattered one of the four great colossi, more orless injured the other three, flung down the great brick pylon, reduced the pronaos of the library to a heap of ruin, and not only brought down part of the ceiling of the excavated adytum, but rent open a vertical fissure in the rock some twenty or twenty-five feet in length.
With so much irreparable damage done to the great temple, and with so much that was reparable calling for immediate attention, it is no wonder that these brick buildings were left to their fate. The priests would have rescued the sacred books from among the ruins, and then the place would have been abandoned.
So much by way of conjecture. As hypothesis, a sufficient reason is perhaps suggested for the wonderful state of preservation in which the little chamber had been handed down to the present time. A rational explanation is also offered for the absence of later cartouches, of Greek and Latin ex-votos, of Christian emblems, and of subsequent mutilation of every kind. For, save that one contemporary visitor—the son of the Royal Son of Kush—the place contained, when we opened it, no record of any passing traveler, no defacing autograph of tourist, archæologist, or scientific explorer. Neither Belzoni nor Champollion had found it out. Even Lepsius had passed it by.
It happens sometimes that hidden things, which in themselves are easy to find, escape detection because no one thinks of looking for them. But such was not the case in this present instance. Search had been made here again and again; and even quite recently.
It seems that when the khedive[151]entertains distinguished guests and sends them in gorgeous dahabeeyahs up the Nile, he grants them a virgin mound, or so many square feet of a famous necropolis; lets them dig as deep as they please; and allows them to keep whatever they may find. Sometimes he sends out scouts to beat the ground; and then a tomb is found and left unopened, and the illustrious visitor is allowed to discover it. When the scouts are unlucky, it may even sometimes happen that an old tomb is re-stocked; carefully closed up; and then, with all the charm of unpremeditation, re-opened a day or two after.
Now Sheik Rashwan Ebn Hassan el Kashef told us that in 1869, when the empress of the French was at Abou Simbel, and again when the Prince and Princess of Wales came up in 1872, after the prince’s illness, he received strict orders to find some hitherto undiscovered tomb,[152]in order that the khedive’s guests might have the satisfaction of opening it. But, he added, although he left no likely place untried among the rocks and valleys on both sides of the river, he could find nothing. To have unearthed such a birbeh as this would have done him good service with the government, and have insured him a splendid backshîsh from prince or empress. As it was, he was reprimanded for want of diligence, and he believed himself to have been out of favor ever since.
I may here mention—in order to have done with this subject—that besides being buried outside to a depth of about eight feet, the adytum had been partially filled inside by a gradual infiltration of sand from above. This can only have accumulated at the time when the old sand-drift was at its highest. That drift, sweeping in one unbroken line across the front of the great temple, must at one time have risen here to a height of twenty feet above the present level. From thence the sand had found its way down the perpendicular fissure already mentioned. In the corner behind the door, the sand-pile rose to the ceiling, in shape just like the deposit at the bottom of an hour-glass. I am informed by the painter that when the top of thedoorway was found and an opening first effected, the sand poured outfrom within, like water escaping from an opened sluice.
Here, then, is positive proof (if proof were needed) that we were first to enter the place, at all events since the time when the great sand-drift rose as high as the top of the fissure.
The painter wrote his name and ours, with the date (February 10, 1874), on a space of blank wall over the inside of the doorway; and this was the only occasion upon which any of us left our names upon an Egyptian monument. On arriving at Korosko, where there is a postoffice, he also dispatched a letter to the “Times,” briefly recording the facts here related. That letter, which appeared on the 18th of March following, is reprinted in the appendix at the end of this book.
I am told that our names are partially effaced and that the wall-paintings which we had the happiness of admiring in all their beauty and freshness are already much injured. Such is the fate of every Egyptian monument, great or small. The tourist carves it all over with names and dates and in some instances with caricatures. The student of Egyptology, by taking wet-paper “squeezes,” sponges away every vestige of the original color. The “collector” buys and carries off everything of value that he can get; and the Arab steals for him. The work of destruction, meanwhile, goes on apace. There is no one to prevent it; there is no one to discourage it. Every day, more inscriptions are mutilated—more tombs are rifled—more paintings and sculptures are defaced. The Louvre contains a full-length portrait of Seti I, cut out bodily from the walls of his sepulcher in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. The museums of Berlin, of Turin, of Florence, are rich in spoils which tell their own lamentable tale. When science leads the way, is it wonderful that ignorance should follow?
Thereare fourteen temples between Abou Simbel and Philæ; to say nothing of grottoes, tombs and other ruins. As a rule, people begin to get tired of temples about this time and vote them too plentiful. Meek travelers go through them as a duty; but the greater number rebel. Our happy couple, I grieve to say, went over to the majority. Dead to shame, they openly proclaimed themselves bored. They even skipped several temples.
For myself, I was never bored by them. Though they had been twice as many, I should not have wished them fewer. Miss Martineau tells how, in this part of the river, she was scarcely satisfied to sit down to breakfast without having first explored a temple; but I could have breakfasted, dined, supped on temples. My appetite for them was insatiable and grew with what it fed upon. I went over them all. I took notes of them all. I sketched them every one.
I may as well say at once that I shall reproduce but few of those notes and only some of those sketches in the present volume. If, surrounded by their local associations, these ruins fail to interest many who travel far to see them, it is not to be supposed that they would interest readers at home. Here and there, perhaps, might be one who would care to pore with me over every broken sculpture; to spell out every half-legible cartouche; to trace through Greek and Roman influences (which are nowhere more conspicuous than in these Nubian buildings) the slow deterioration of the Egyptian style. But the world for the most part reserves itself, and rightly, for the great epochs and the great names of the past; and because it has not yet had too much of Karnak, of Abou Simbel, of the pyramids, it sets slight store by those minor monuments which record the periods of foreign rule and the decline of native art. For thesereasons, therefore, I propose to dismiss very briefly many places upon which I bestowed hours of delightful labor.
We left Abou Simbel just as the moon was rising on the evening of the 18th of February, and dropped down with the current for three or four miles before mooring for the night. At six next morning the men began rowing; and at half-past eight the heads of the colossi were still looking placidly after us across a ridge of intervening hills. They were then more than five miles distant in a direct line; but every feature was still distinct in the early daylight. One went up again and again, as long as they remained in sight, and bade good-by to them at last with that same heartache which comes of a farewell view of the Alps.
When I say that we were seventeen days getting from Abou Simbel to Philæ, and that we had the wind against us from sunrise till sunset almost every day, it will be seen that our progress was of the slowest. To those who were tired of temples, and to the crew who were running short of bread, these long days of lying up under the bank, or of rocking to and fro in the middle of the river, were dreary enough.
Slowly but surely, however, the hard-won miles go by. Sometimes the barren desert hems us in to right and left, with never a blade of green between the rock and the river. Sometimes, as at Tosko,[153]we come upon an open tract, where there are palms and castor-berry plantations and corn-fields alive with quail. The idle man goes ashore at Tosko with his gun, while the little lady and the writer climb a solitary rock about two hundred feet above the river. The bank shelves here, and a crescent-like wave of inundation, about three miles in length, overflows it every season. From this height one sees exactly how far the wave goes, and how it must make a little bay when it is there. Now it is a bay of barley, full to the brim, and rippling to the breeze. Beyond the green comes the desert; the one defined against the other as sharply as water against land. The desert looks wonderfully old beside the young green of the corn, and the Nile flows wide among sand-banks, like a tidal river near the sea. The village, squaredoff in parallelograms like a cattle market, lies mapped out below. A field-glass shows that the houses are simply cloistered court-yards roofed with palm-thatch; the sheik’s house being larger than the rest, with the usual open space and spreading sycamore in front. There are women moving to and fro in the court-yards, and husbandmen in the castor-berry patches. A funeral with a train of wailers goes out presently toward the burial-ground on the edge of the desert. The idle man, a slight figure with a veil twisted round his hat, wades, half-hidden, through the barley, signaling his whereabouts every now and then by a puff of white smoke. A cargo-boat, stripped and shorn, comes floating down the river, making no visible progress. A native felucca, carrying one tattered brown sail, goes swiftly up with the wind at a pace that will bring her to Abou Simbel before nightfall. Already she is past the village; and those black specks yonder, which we had never dreamed were crocodiles, have slipped off into the water at her approach. And now she is far in the distance—that glowing, illimitable distance—traversed by long silvery reaches of river, and ending in a vast flat, so blue and aerial that, but for some three or four notches of purple peaks on the horizon, one could scarcely discern the point at which land and sky melt into each other. Ibrim comes next; then Derr; then Wady Sabooyah. At Ibrim, as at Derr, there are “fair” families, whose hideous light hair and blue eyes (grafted on brown-black skins) date back to Bosnian forefathers of three hundred and sixty years ago. These people give themselves airs, and are thehaute noblesseof the place. The men are lazy and quarrelsome. The women trail longer robes, wear more beads and rings, and are altogether more unattractive and castor-oily than any we have seen elsewhere. They keep slaves, too. We saw these unfortunates trotting at the heels of their mistresses, like dogs. Knowing slavery to be officially illegal in the dominions of the khedive, the M. B.’s applied to a dealer, who offered them an Abyssinian girl for ten pounds. This useful article—warranted a bargain—was to sweep, wash, milk, and churn; but was not equal to cooking. The M. B.’s, it is needless to add, having verified the facts, retired from the transaction.
At Derr we pay a farewell visit to the temple; and at Amada, arriving toward close of day, see the great view for the last time in the glory of sunset.
And now, though the north wind blows persistently, it gets hotter every day. The crocodiles like it, and come out to bask in the sunshine. Called up one morning in the middle of breakfast we see two—a little one and a big one—on a sand-bank near by. The men rest upon their oars. The boat goes with the stream. No one speaks; no one moves. Breathlessly and in dead silence, we drift on till we are close beside them. The big one is rough and black, like the trunk of a London elm, and measures full eighteen feet in length. The little one is pale and greenish and glistens like glass. All at once the old one starts, doubles itself up for a spring, and disappears with a tremendous splash. But the little one, apparently unconscious of danger, lifts its tortoise-like head and eyes us sidewise. Presently some one whispers; and that whisper breaks the spell. Our little crocodile flings up its tail, plunges clown the bank, and is gone in a moment.
The crew could not understand how the idle man, after lying in wait for crocodiles at Abou Simbel, should let this rare chance pass without a shot. But we had heard since then of so much indiscriminate slaughter at the second cataract, that he was resolved to bear no part in the extermination of those old historic reptiles. That a sportsman should wish for a single trophy is not unreasonable; but that scores of crack shots should go up every winter killing and wounding these wretched brutes at an average rate of from twelve to eighteen per gun, is mere butchery and cannot be too strongly reprehended. Year by year, the creatures become shyer and fewer; and the day is probably not far distant when a crocodile will be as rarely seen below Semneh as it is now rarely seen below Assûan.
The thermometer stands at 85° in the saloon of the Philæ, when we come one afternoon to Wady Sabooah, where there is a solitary temple drowned in sand. It was approached once by an avenue of sphinxes and standing colossi, now shattered and buried. The roof of the pronaos, if ever it was roofed, is gone. The inner halls and the sanctuary—all excavated in the rock—are choked and impassable. Only the propylon stands clear of sand; and that, massive as it is, looks as if one touch of a battering-ram would bring it to the ground. Every huge stone in it is loose, Every block in the cornice seemstottering in its place. In all this we fancy we recognize the work of our Abou Simbel earthquake.[154]
At Wady Sabooah we see a fat native. The fact claims record, because it is so uncommon. A stalwart, middle-aged man, dressed in a tattered kilt and carrying a palm-staff in his hand, he stands before us the living double of the famous wooden statue at Boulak. He is followed by his two wives and three or four children, all bent upon trade. The women have trinkets, the boys a live chameleon and a small stuffed crocodile for sale. While the painter is bargaining for the crocodile and L—— for a nose-ring, the writer makes acquaintance with a pair of self-important hoopoes, who live in the pylon and evidently regard it as a big nest of their own building. They sit observing me curiously while I sketch, nodding their crested polls and chattering disparagingly, like a couple of critics. By and by comes a small black bird with a white breast and sings deliciously. It is like no little bird that I have ever seen before; but the song that it pours so lavishly from its tiny throat is as sweet and brilliant as a canary’s.
Powerless against the wind, the dahabeeyah lies idle day after day in the sun. Sometimes, when we chance to be near a village, the natives squat on the bank and stare at us for hours together. The moment any one appears on deck they burst into a chorus of “Backshîsh!” There is but one way to get rid of them, and that is to sketch them. The effect is instantaneous. With a good-sized block and a pencil, a whole village may be put to flight at a moment’s notice. If, on the other hand, one wishes for a model, the difficulty is insuperable. The painter tried in vain to get some of the women and girls (not a few of whom were really pretty) to sit for their portraits. I well rememberone haughty beauty, shaped and draped like a Juno, who stood on the bank one morning, scornfully watching all that was done on deck. She carried a flat basket back-handed; and her arms were covered with bracelets and her fingers with rings. Her little girl, in a Madame Nubia fringe, clung to her skirts, half-wondering, half-frightened. The painter sent out an ambassador plenipotentiary to offer her anything from a sixpence to half a sovereign if she would only stand like that for half an hour. The manner of her refusal was grand. She drew her shawl over her face, took her child’s hand, and stalked away like an offended goddess. The writer, meanwhile, hidden behind a curtain, had snatched a tiny sketch from the cabin-window.
On the western bank, somewhere between Wady Sabooah and Maharrakeh, in a spot quite bare of vegetation, stand the ruins of a fortified town which is neither mentioned by Murray nor entered in the maps. It is built on a base of reddish rock and commands the river and the desert. The painter and writer, explored it one afternoon, in the course of a long ramble. Climbing first a steep slope strewn with masonry, we came to the remains of a stone gateway. Finding this impassable, we made our way through a breach in the battlemented wall, and thence up a narrow road down which had been poured a cataract of débris. Skirting a ruined postern at the top of this road, we found ourselves in a close labyrinth of vaulted arcades built of crude brick and lit at short intervals by openings in the roof. These strange streets—for they were streets—were lined on either side by small dwellings built of crude brick on stone foundations. We went into some of the houses—mere ruined courts and roofless chambers, in which were no indications of hearths or staircases. In one lay a fragment of stone column about fourteen inches in diameter. The air in these ancient streets was foul and stagnant and the ground was everywhere heaped with fragments of black, red and yellowish pottery, like the shards of Elephantine and Philæ. A more desolate place in a more desolate situation I never saw. It looked as if it had been besieged, sacked and abandoned, a thousand years ago; which is probably under the mark, for the character of the pottery would seem to point to the period of Roman occupation. Noting how the brick super-structures were reared on apparently earlier masonry, we concluded that the beginnings of this place were probablyEgyptian and the later work Roman. The marvel was that any town should have been built in so barren a spot, there being not so much as an inch-wide border of lentils for a mile or more between the river and the desert.
Having traversed the place from end to end, we came out through another breach on the westward side, and, thinking to find a sketchable point of view inland, struck down toward the plain. In order to reach this, one first must skirt a deep ravine which divides the rock of the citadel from the desert. Following the brink of this ravine to the point at which it falls into the level, we found to our great surprise that we were treading the banks of an extinct river.
It was full of sand now; but beyond all question it had once been full of water. It came, evidently, from the mountains over toward the northwest. We could trace its windings for a long way across the plain, thence through the ravine and on southward in a line parallel with the Nile. Here, beneath our feet, were the water-worn rocks through which it had fretted its way; and yonder, half-buried in sand, were the bowlders it had rounded and polished and borne along in its course. I doubt, however, if when it was a river of water this stream was half as beautiful as now, when it is a river of sand. It was turbid then, no doubt, and charged with sediment. Now it is more golden than Pactolus and covered with ripples more playful and undulating than were ever modeled by Canaletti’s pencil.
Supposing yonder town to have been founded in the days when the river was a river and the plain fertile and well watered, the mystery of its position is explained. It was protected in front by the Nile and in the rear by the ravine and the river. But how long ago was this? Here, apparently, was an independent stream, taking its rise among the Libyan mountains. It dated back, consequently, to a time when those barren hills collected and distributed water—that is to say, to a time when it used to rain in Nubia. And that time must have been before the rocky barrier broke down at Silsilis, in the old days when the land of Kush flowed with milk and honey.[155]
It would rain even now in Nubia, if it could. That same evening, when the sun was setting, we saw a fan-like drift of dappled cloud miles high above our heads, melting, as it seemed, in fringes of iridescent vapor. We could distinctly see those fringes forming, wavering and evaporating; unable to descend as rain, because dispersed at a high altitude by radiated heat from the desert. This, with one exception, was the only occasion on which I saw clouds in Nubia.
Coming back, we met a solitary native, with a string of beads in his hand and a knife up his sleeve. He followed us for a long way, volunteering a but half-intelligible story about some unknown birbeh[156]in the desert. We asked where it was and he pointed up the course of our unknown river.
“You have seen it?” said the painter.
“Marrat ketîr” (“many times”).
“How far is it?”
“One day’s march in the hagar” (“desert”).
“And have no Ingleezeh ever been to look for it?”
He shook his head at first, not understanding the question; then looked grave and held up one finger.
Our stock of Arabic was so small and his so interlarded with Kensee, that we had great difficulty in making out what he said next. We gathered, however, that some howadji, traveling alone and on foot, had once gone in search of this birbeh and never come back. Was he lost? Was he killed? Who could say?
“It was a long time ago,” said the man with the beads. “It was a long time ago and he took no guide with him.”
We would have given much to trace the river to its source and search for this unknown temple in the desert. But it is one of the misfortunes of this kind of traveling that one cannot easily turn aside from the beaten track. The hot season is approaching; the river is running low; the daily cost of the dahabeeyah is exorbitant; and, in Nubia, where little or nothing can be bought in the way of food, the dilatory traveler risks starvation. It was something, however, to have seen with one’s own eyes that theNile, instead of flowing for a distance of twelve hundred miles unfed by any affluent, had here received the waters of a tributary.[157]
To those who have a south breeze behind them the temples must now follow in quick succession. We, however, achieved them by degrees and rejoiced when our helpless dahabeeyah lay within rowing reach of anything worth seeing. Thus we pull down one day to Maharrakeh—in itself a dull ruin but picturesquely desolate. Seen as one comes up the bank on landing, two parallel rows of columns stand boldly up against the sky, supporting a ruined entablature. In the foreground a few stunted Dôm palms starve in an arid soil. The barren desert closes in the distance.
We are beset here by an insolent crowd of savage-looking men and boys and impudent girls with long frizzy hair and Nubian fringes, who pester us with beads and pebbles; dance, shout, slap their legs and clap their hands in our faces; and pelt us when we go away. One ragged warrior brandishes an antique brass-mounted firelock full six feet long in the barrel; and some of the others carry slender spears.
The temple—a late Roman structure—would seem to have been wrecked by an earthquake before it was completed. The masonry is all in the rough—pillars as they came from the quarry; capitals blocked out, waiting for the carver. These unfinished ruins—of which every stone looks new, as if the work was still in progress—affect one’s imagination strangely. On a fallen wall south of the portico[158]the idle man detected some remains of a Greek inscription; but for hieroglyphic characters or cartouches, by which to date the building, we looked in vain.[159]
Dakkeh comes next in order; then Gerf Hossayn, Dendoor and Kalebsheh. Arriving at Dakkeh soon after sunrise we find the whole population—screaming, pushing, chattering, laden with eggs, pigeons and gourds for sale—drawn up to receive us. There is a large sand island in the way here, so we moor about a mile above the temple.
We first saw the twin pylons of Dakkeh some weeks ago from the deck of the Philæ and we then likened them to the majestic towers of Edfu. Approaching them now by land, we are surprised to find them so small. It is a brilliant, hot morning; and our way lies by the river, between the lentil-slope and the castor-berry patches. There are flocks of pigeons flying low overhead; barking dogs and crowing cocks in the village close by; and all over the path hundreds of beetles—real live scarabs, black as coal and busy as ants—rolling their clay pellets up from the water’s edge to the desert. If we were to examine a score or so of these pellets we should here and there find one that contained no eggs; for it is a curious fact that the scarab-beetle makes and rolls her pellets, whether she has an egg to deposit or not. The female beetle, though assisted by the male, is said to do the heavier share of the pellet-rolling; and if evening comes on before her pellet is safely stowed away, she will sleep, holding it with her feet all night, and resume her labor in the morning.[160]