All the tribes of Taka speak the same language, but only some also understand the Arabic. I presume that it is the same as that of the Bishari races. It has many words well put together, and is very euphonious, as the hard gutterals of the Arabic are wanting. On the other hand, however, it has a peculiar letter, which seems to stand betweenr,l, andd, according to its sound, a cerebrald, which, like that of the Sanskrit, is pronounced with the tongue thrown upwardly back.
The examination of the Sheikh had lasted too long to allow of a return; night would have surprised me, when it would have been impossible, especially on camel-back, to avoid the dangerous branches of the prickly trees. I therefore was content to accept the invitation to remain in the camp until moonrise; then Osman Bey was going to start in the other direction with his army. A whole sheep was roasted on the spit, which we heartily enjoyed.
From Osman Bey, who has lived sixteen years in the south, and is intimately acquainted with the land to the outermost limits of the government of Mohammed Ali, I learnt many interesting particulars of the southern provinces. In Fazoql the custom of hanging up a king who is no longer liked, is still continued, and was done upon the person of the father of a king now reigning. His relations and ministers assembled about him, and informed him that as he did not please the men and women of the country, nor the oxen, asses, hens, &c. &c. anylonger, but every one hated him, it would be better for him to die. When a king once would not submit to this treatment, his own wife and mother came to him, and made him the most urgent representations, not to load himself with more ignominy, on which he met his fate. Diodorus tells just the same story of those in Ethiopia who were to die by the condemnation of the judge, and a condemned person, who intended first to save himself by flight, yet allowed himself to be strangled by his mother, who frustrated his escape, without opposition. Osman Bey first put an end to the custom in the same province, of burying old people alive, who had grown weak. A pit was dug, and at the bottom of it a horizontal passage; the body was laid in it, tightly wrapped in cloths, like that of a dead person; beside him a saucer, with merissa, fermented durra water, a pipe, and a hoe for the cultivation of land; also one or two ounces of gold, according to the riches of the person, intended for the payment of the boatman who rows him over the great river, which flows between heaven and hell. Then the entrance is filled up. Indeed, according to Osman, the whole legend of Charon, even with a Cerberus, exists there.
This usage of burying old people alive is also found, as I have subsequently heard, among the negro races of south Kordofan. There sick people, and particularly those with an infectious disease, are put to death in the same manner. The family complains to the invalid, that on account of him no one will come to them; that after all, he is miserable, and death only a gain for him; in the other worldhe would find his relations, and would be well and happy. Every one gives him greetings to the dead, and then they bury him as in Fazoql, or standing upright in a shaft. Besides merissa, bread, hoe and pipe, he there also receives a sword and a pair of sandals; for the dead lead a similar life beyond the grave, only with greater pleasures.
The departed are interred amidst loud lamentations, in which their deeds and good qualities are celebrated. Nothing is known there of a river and boatman of the under world, but the old Mohammedan legend is there current, of the invisible angel Asrael, or as he is here called, Osraîn. He, it is said, is commissioned by God to receive the souls of the dead, and lead the good to the place of reward, the bad to the place of punishment. He lives in a tree, el ségerat mohàna (the tree of fulfilling), which has as many leaves as there are inhabitants in the world. On each leaf is a name, and when a child is born a new one grows. If any one become ill, his leaf fades, and should he be destined to die, Osraîn breaks it off.[82]Formerly he used to come visibly to those whom he was going to carry away, and thus put them in great terror. Since the Prophet’s time, however, he has been invisible; for when he came to fetch Mohammed’s soul, he told him that it was not good that by his visible appearance heshould frighten mankind. They might then easily die of terror, before praying; for he himself, although a courageous and spirited man, was somewhat perturbed at his appearance. Therefore the Prophet begged Allah to make Osraîn invisible, which prayer was granted.
Of other tribes in Fazoql, Osman Bey told me, that with them the king should hold a court of justice every day under a certain tree. If he be absent three days by illness or any other reason that makes him unfit to attend to it, he is hanged: two razors are put in the noose, which cut his throat on the rope being tightened.
The meaning of another of their customs is obscure. At a certain time of the year they have a kind of carnival, at which every one does as he likes. Four ministers then carry the king from his house to an open place on an anqareb, to one leg of which a dog is tied. The whole population assemble from every quarter. Then they throw spears and stones at the dog till it dies, after which, the king is carried back to his house.
Over these and other stories and particulars regarding those races, which were also certified by the old High Sheikh Ahmed, we finished the roasted sheep in the open air, before the tent. Night had long commenced, and the camp fires near and far, with the people busy around them, sitting still or walking to and fro among the trees, was immensely picturesque and peculiar. Gradually they went out, all except the watch fires; the poor prisoners were bound more tightly, and it grew quieter in the camp.
Osman Bey is a powerful, merry, and natural man, also a strict and esteemed officer. He promised me a specimen of the discipline and good order among his soldiers,—whose outward appearance would not inspire any very favourable prejudice,—in having the reveillé beaten at an unprepared time. I slept with a military cloak about me on an anqareb in the open tent. About three o’clock I awoke, through a slight noise; Osman, who lay beside me on the ground, rose and gave the order to beat the reveillé to the nearest drummer of the principal guard. He struck some broken and quickly silent notes on his drum. These were immediately repeated at the post of the next regiment, then at the third, fourth, fifth, and succeeding encampments; and suddenly the whole mass of 5,000 men were under arms. A soft whispering and hissing of the soldiers waking each other, and the slight crackling sound caused by the muskets, was all that could be heard. I went through the camp with Dr. Peney, who came out of the neighbouring tent, and we found there the whole army in rank and file under arms, the officers going up and down in front. When we returned and told Osman Bey of the surprising punctuality in carrying out his commands, he allowed the soldiers to disperse again, and first gave the signal for departure at four o’clock. This had a very different effect. Everything was in activity and motion; the camels raised their screaming voices and pitiful bleatings during the loading, the tents were taken down, and in less than half an hour the army marched off to the sound of fife and drum to the south.
I took my way in the contrary direction. The early morning and bright moonlight was very refreshing; the birds woke up with the grey dawn; a fresh wind arose, and we trotted lustily along through the alleys of prickly sont-trees. Soon after sunrise we met a stately procession of well-dressed men and servants with camels and donkeys. It was King Mahmûd Welled Shauish, whose father, the warlike Shauish, King of Shaiqie, is known from the history of the conquering campaigns of Ismael Pasha, to whom he succumbed at a late period, and at whose house at Hellet e’ Solimân, near Messelemieh, we had stayed some weeks before. He had gone with Ahmed Pasha Menekle to Taka, and followed the army to Halfaï, where he now resides. At half-past nine, we again came to the pyramids, after my camel, yet young and very difficult to manage, had galloped round in a circle with me, and finally stumbling over a high mound of grass, fell down on one knee, and sent me far away over his head, fortunately without doing me any damage.
After my return I employed myself continually on the pyramids and their inscriptions, had several chambers excavated, and drew out a careful description of each pyramid. Altogether I had found nearly thirty different names of Ethiopian kings and queens. I have not as yet brought them into any chronological order, but have in the comparison of the inscriptions learned much on the kind of succession and the form of government. The King of Meroë[83](which is written Meru orMerua in one of the southernmost pyramids) was at the same time High Priest of Ammon: if his wife outlived him she followed him in the government, and the male heir of the crown only occupied a second place by her; under other circumstances, it seems, the son succeeded to the crown, having already, during his father’s lifetime, borne the royal cartouche and title, and held the post of second priest of Ammon. Thus we see here the priest government of which Diodorus and Strabo speak, and the precedence of the worship of Ammon already mentioned by Herodotus.
The inscriptions on the pyramids show that at the time of their erection the hieroglyphic system of writing was no longer perfectly understood, and that the hieroglyphical signs were often put there for ornament, without any intended meaning. Even the royal names are rendered doubtful by this, and this prevented my recognizing for a long time the pyramids of the three royal personages who had built the principal temples in Naga, Ben Naga and in Wadi Temêd, and belonged, no doubt, to the most shining period of the Meroitic Empire. I am now sure, that the pyramid, with antechamber arched in the Roman style, in the wall of which Ferlini found the treasure concealed, notwithstanding the slight change in the name, belonged to the same mighty and warlike queen who appears in Naga with her rich dress and her nails almost an inch long. Ferlini’s jewellery, by the circumstance that they belonged to a known, and, it seems to me, the greatest of all Meroitic queens, who built almost all the preserved temples of the island, acquired a fargreater importance for the history of the Ethiopian art in which they now take a certain position. The purchase of that remarkable treasure is a considerable gain for our Museum. At that time an Ethiopian demotic character, resembling the Egyptian demotic in its letters, although with a very limited alphabet of twenty-five to thirty signs, was more generally employed and understood than the hieroglyphics. The writing is read from right to left as there, but always with a distinct division of the words by two strong points. I have already found twenty-six such demotic inscriptions, some on steles and libatory slabs, some in the antechambers of the pyramids over the figures in the processions (which are generally proceeding towards the deceased king with palm-branches), some outside on the smooth surfaces of the pyramids, and always plainly of the same date as the representations, and not added at a subsequent period. The decipherment of this writing will perhaps not be difficult on a narrower examination, and would then give us the first certain sounds of the Ethiopian language spoken here at that time, and decide its relation to the Egyptian; while the almost perfect identity of the Ethiopian and Egyptian hieroglyphics would till now give decidedly no sanction to any conclusion as to a similar identity between the two languages. On the contrary, it seems, and may be safely asserted for the later Meroitic period, that the Egyptian hieroglyphics were taken from Egypt as the sacred monumental writing, without change, but also without a full comprehension of their signification. The few continually recurring signs prove that the Ethiopian-demotic writing is purely alphabetic, which must very much lighten the labour of decipherment. The partition of the words is perhaps taken from the Roman writing. The analogy with the development of writing in Egypt, however, proceeded still farther; for next to this Ethiopian-demotic there occurs at a later period, an Ethiopian-Greek, which may be fairly compared with the Koptic, and indeed has borrowed several letters from it. It is found in the inscriptions of Soba and in some others on the walls of the temple ruins of Wadi e’ Sofra. We have now therefore, as in Egypt, two doubtless successive systems of writing, which contain the actual Ethiopian popular dialect. It is customary now to call the old Abyssinian-Geez language the Ethiopic, which has no right to this denomination in an ethnographical point of view, as a Semetic language brought from Arabia, but only as a local term. A Geez inscription, which I have found in the chamber of a pyramid, has evidently been added at a later period.
I hope that by the study of the native inscriptions, and the yet living languages, some important results may be obtained. The name Ethiopian with the ancients comprehended much of very various import. The ancient population of the whole Nile valley to Chartûm, and perhaps along the Blue River, as also the tribes in the desert east of the Nile, and the Abyssinians, then probably were more broadly distinguished from the negroes than at present, and belonged to the Caucasian race; the Ethiopians of Meroë (according to Herodotus, the mother state of all the Ethiopians) were reddish-brown people, likethe Egyptians, only darker, as at the present day. This is also proved by the monuments, on which I have more than once found the red skin of the kings and queens preserved.[84]In Egypt the women were always painted yellow, particularly during the Old Empire, before the Ethiopian mixture, at the time of the Hyksos; and the Egyptian women of the present day, who have grown pale in the harems, incline to the same colour.[85]After the eighteenth dynasty, however, red women appear, and so it is certain the Ethiopian women were always represented. It seems that the so-called Barâbra nation has much Ethiopian blood mixed with it, and perhaps this may be more fully shown at some time by their language.[86]It is no doubt the ancient Nubian, and has continued under that name in somewhat distant south-westerly regions; for the languages of the Nubians in and about Kordofan are, to some extent, evidently related to the Berber language. That this last, which is now only spoken fromAssuan to Dar Shaiqîeh, south of Dongola, in the Nile valley, ruled for a time in the province of Berber, and still higher up, I have found enough proof in the names of the localities.
Next to the ruins of Meroë are situated, along the river, from south to north, the villages of Marûga, Danqêleh and e’ Sûr, which are comprehended in the name Begerauîeh, so that one almost always only hears the last name. Five minutes to the north of e’ Sûr, lies the village of Qala, and ten minutes farther, el Guês, which are both included in the name Ghabîne. An hour down the stream are two villages, called Marûga, already deserted before the conquest of the country, but a little distant from each other, and still more northward, near the Omarâb mountains, running to the river from the east, is a third village, called Gebel (Mount village), only inhabited by Fukara. Cailliaud was only acquainted with the southernmost of the three Marûgas, lying by the great temple ruins. The name attracted his attention by its similarity to Meroë. The similarity is still greater when one knows that the actual name is Maru, as—gais only the general noun termination, which is added or omitted according to the grammar, and does not belong to the root. In the dialect of Kenus and Dongola this ending is—gi; in the dialect of Mahass and Sukkôt—ga. When I went through the different names of the upper countries with one of our Berber servants, I learned thatmaro, ormarôgi, in the one dialect,maru, ormarûga, in the other, signifies “ruined mound, ruined temple;” thus are the ruins of ancient Syene, or those of the island Philæ, called Marôgi. Quite different from it is another Berber word, Mérua, which is also pronounced Méraui, by which all white rocks, white stones, are distinguished; for instance, a rock near Assuan, on the east side of the Nile, by the village of el Gezîret. By this it is clear that the name Marûga has nothing to do with the name Meroë, as it is not usual to call a city “Ruin-town,” immediately on its foundation. On the other hand, the name Merua, Méraui (in English “white rock”), would be a very good name for a city, if the position of the place were favourable, as it is at Mount Barkal, although not here.
Keli, opposite Meroe.April 29, 1844.
Frankedid not return from his expedition at Ben Naga until the 23rd. He brought the altar hither in sixteen blocks, on a bark. The stones which we shall have to take hence, a wearisome journey of six or seven days through the wilderness, are a load for about twenty camels, so that our train will be considerably greater than before. Unfortunately, we have been unable to bring away anything from Naga, in the desert, on account of the difficulty of transportation, except the already mentioned Roman inscription, and another large peculiarly carved work. There are on it some particularly curious representations; among others, a sitting figure in front, a nimbus round the hair, the left arm raised in a right angle, and the first and middle fingers of the hand pointing upward, as the old Byzantine figures of Christ are represented. The right hand holds a long staff resting on the ground, like that of John the Baptist. This figure is wholly strange to the Egyptian representation, and is doubtlessly derived from another source, as also another often-represented deity, also represented in full front, with a richly curling beard, which one would be inclined to compare with a Jupiter or Serapis in posture and appearance. The mixture of religions at that evidently late era hadobtained exceedingly, and I should not be astonished if later researches were to show that the Ethiopian kings included Christ and Jupiter among their widely different classes of gods. The god with the three or four lions’ heads is probably not of ancient origin, but taken from somewhere else.
On the 24th, we crossed the Nile in our bark, in order to take our way to Gebel Barkal by the desert. Camels again seemed to be difficult to procure, but the threat that I should not call the Sheîkh, but the government to account, by virtue of my firman, if he would not manage to obtain the necessary animals, worked so fast, that we could already depart to the desert from Gôs Burri with eighty camels.
Here, at Keli, I had again opportunity to witness a funeral, this time for a deceased Fellah, at which nearly two hundred people were assembled, the men parted from the women. The men sat down opposite each other in pairs, embraced each other, laid their heads on their shoulders, raised them again, beat themselves, clapped their hands, and cried as much as they could. The women lamented, sang songs of misery, strewed themselves with ashes, went about in procession, and threw themselves on the ground, in a similar way to Wed Médineh, only their dance resembled rather the violent motions of the derwishes. The rest of the inhabitants of Keli sat around in groups, under the shadow of the trees, their heads down, sighing and complaining.
While we were obliged to wait for the camels, I crossed to Begerauîeh again, to seek some ruins, said to lie more to the north. From El Guês, I gotto the two villages of Marûga, lying not very far from one another, in three-quarters of an hour. A great number of grave mounds lie to the east of the first of these, on the low heights, looking like a group of pyramids in the distance. The elevation runs along in a crescent-like form, and is covered with these round hillocks of black desert-stones, which were fifty-six in number, on my counting them from a large one in the centre.
Five minutes farther into the desert is a second group of similar hillocks, twenty-one in number; but many others are scattered around on small single plateaux. Still lower down and nearly by the bushes, I found to the south of both groups, another, consisting of forty graves, of which some still clearly showed their original four-cornered shape. The best grave had fifteen to eighteen feet on each side; it had been, like several others, dug up in the middle, and had filled itself with pluvial earth, in which a tree was growing; at another there was still a great four-cornered circumvallation of twenty-four paces to be seen; the undermost foundations were built of little black stones; and a tumulus seems to have been erected inside the enclosure, though not in the middle. Another well-preserved stronger circumvallation had a little less extent, but seemed to have been quite filled up by a pyramid. Of an actual casing there was nothing to be seen anywhere. The hillocks went farther south into the bushes, and altogether they might be estimated at two hundred in number. Perhaps they continued to stretch along toward Meroe, at the edge of the desert, whither I shouldhave ridden, had I not sent the boat, which I had now to find in a hurry, too far down the river. It seems from this that here was the actual burial place of Meroë, and that pyramidal, or when flat sides were wanted, tumular hillocks of stone were the usual form of the graves of private persons also at that period.
Barkal.May 9, 1844.
Thedesert of Gilif, which we traversed on our way hither, in order to cut off the great eastern bend of the Nile, takes its name from the principal mountain lying in the midst of it. On the maps it is confused with the desert of Bahiûda, joining it on the south-east, and through which lies the road from Chartûm to Ambukôl and Barkal. Our direction was at first due east to a well, then north-west through the Gilif mountains to the great Wadi Abû Dôm, which then conducted us in the same direction to the westerly bend of the Nile.
The general character of the country here is not that of a desert, like that between Korusko and Abu Hammed, but rather of a sandy steppe. It is almost everywhere overgrown with gesh (reed bushes), and not unusually with low trees, mostly sont-trees. The rains, which fall here at certain seasons of the year, have washed down considerable masses of earth into the levels, that might well be cultivated, and are occasionally broken by rain-streams three to four feet deep. The earth is yellow, and formed of a clayey sand. The species of rock in the soil and all the mountains, with the exception of the high Gilif chain, is sandstone. The ground is much covered with hard black blocks of the same, the road uneven and undulating.Numerous gazelles and great white antelopes, with only one brown stripe down the spine, find a rich subsistence in these plains, which are also visited in the rainy season by herds of camels and goats.
We departed from the river on the 29th of April; yet this was only a trial of strength, as is very customary with greater caravans, like that of birds of passage, before their great migration. After two hours’ journey up to Gôs Burri, lying off from the river, the guide again permitted the uneasy swarm to settle; the camel-drivers lacked provisions, a few more animals were obtained, some changed. Thus we were not in order and full readiness until the following noon. We stayed the night at Wadi Abu Hommed, where we had Gebel Omarda on the right.
The third day we left early, passed Gebel Qermâna, and came to the well Abu Ilêh, which turned our road far to the east, and detained us several hours beyond noon. Hence we crossed a broad plain in seven hours, and encamped about ten o’clock at night near Gebel Sergên. On the 2nd of May we arrived, after four hours, at a woody district to the right of Gebel Nusf, the “Mountain of the half,” situated half-way between the wells of Abu Tlêh and Gaqedûl, which, in the desert, always form the hour of the desert clock.
The Arabs from the district of Gôs Burri, who guide us, are of the ’Auadîeh race; they are far more considerable than the Ababde, have a hasty indistinct utterance, and seem altogether to have little capacity. They have commingled much with the Fellahîn of the country, who here call themselves Qaleâb, Homerâb, and Gaalin. Shaiqîeh Arabs also exist here, probably since the Egyptian conquest; they have shields and spears like the Ababde. The rich sheikh Emîn, of Gôs Burri, had given us his brother, the Fakîr Fadl Allah, as a guide, and his own son, Fadl Allah, as overseer of the camels; but even the nobles of the people here make a poor and evanescent impression in comparison with our conductors of Korusko. The order of the day here was this, that we generally set out about six o’clock in the morning, and continued going on until ten o’clock; then the caravan rested during the noonday heat till about three, when it journeyed again until ten or eleven o’clock at night.
The whole afternoon we rode through the extensive plain, El Gôs, probably so called from the great sand-downs, so characteristic of this region, and which assume, in the southern districts, a peculiar form. They have almost all the form of a crescent, opening toward the south-west, so that one looks from the road into a number of amphitheatres, the steep sand-walls of which rise ten feet with the north wind, which blows inside, and clears away the sand, which would otherwise rapidly fill the cavity, from the inner field. How quickly these moveable sand structures change their place, is shown by the traces of the caravan road, often lost beneath high sand-hills. Toward eight in the evening we left the Gebel Barqugrês to the left, and stopped for the night at a short distance from the Gilif mountains.
On the 3rd of May we passed through the Wadi Guâh el ’âlem, much overgrown with trees, into themountains, principally porphyritical, and like all original mountains, containing more vegetation than the sandy plains, by the longer holding of the precipitated damp and scarce rains. After three hours we came into Wadi G’aqedûl, luxuriantly overrun with gesh and prickly trees of every kind—sont, somra, and serha. We here found grazing herds of camels and goats, particularly in the neighbourhood of the water, which has also attracted numerous birds, among them ravens and pigeons. In the wide, deep-lying grotto, which may be 300 feet in diameter, and is enclosed by high walls of granite, the water is said to remain three years without requiring replenishment. It was, however, so foul and bad smelling, that it was even despised by my thirsty ass. The drinkable water lies farther up the mountain, and is difficult to be obtained.
We here forsook the northerly direction, which the wells after Gebel Nusf had obliged us to take, and went westerly by the Gilif mountains, in Wadi el Mehêt, crossed the dry Chôr el Ammer, whence the way to Ambukôl branches off, and encamped at night after ten o’clock in the Wadi el Uêr, called by others the Wadi Abu Harôd. From this place the Gilif mountains retreated eastward again for some time, and only left sand-hills in the foreground, by which we travelled on the following morning. To the W.N.W. we saw another chain, no longer called Gilif; a single projecting double-pointed mountain was called Miglik. The great creek of the Gilif chain, filled with sand-rock, is two hours’ journey broad; then the way leads northward into thesemountains, which is called Gebêl el Mágeqa after the well of Mágeqa.
Before the entrance into these mountains we came to a place covered with heaps of stones, which might be taken for grave tumuli, but under which no one lies buried. When the date-merchants, whom we encountered on the following day with their large round wicker-baskets, come this way, they are here asked for money by their camel-driver. Whoever will not give them anything has such a cenotaph raised from its stones, as a memorial of his hardheartedness. We also found a similar place in the desert of Korusko. After nine o’clock we got to the well; we did not however stop, but ascended a wild valley to a considerable height, where we encamped towards noon.
The whole road was well-wooded, and thus offered a pleasant variety. The sont or gum trees were scarce here; the somra was the most frequent, which always spreads out into several strong branches on the ground, and ends in an even crown of thin twigs and little green leaves, so that it often resembles a regularly formed cone overturned, frequently attaining a height of fifteen feet. By it grows the heglik, with branches all round the trunk, and single groups of leaves and twigs like the pear-tree. The unprickly serha, on the contrary, has all its branches surrounded with very small green leaflets like moss, and the tondûb has no leaves at all, but instead of them little green branchlets, growing irregularly, almost as thick as foliage, while the sálame-bush consists of long slenderswitches, which are beset with green leaflets and long green thorns.
After four o’clock we set out, and came down very gradually from the heights. In the Wadi Kalas there are again a number of wells, twenty-five feet deep, with very good rain-water. Here we encamped for the night, although we had only arrived there shortly after sunset. The animals were watered and the skins filled. The whole plateau is rich in trees and bushes, and is inhabited by men and animals.
Our road on the following day retained the same character, as long as we journeyed between the beautiful and wildly rising walls of porphyry. After two hours we arrived at two other springs also called Kalas, with little but good water. Hence a road leads north-eastward to the well Meroë in the Wadi Abu Dôm, probably so denominated from a white rock.
Three hours farther, passing by Gebel Abrak, we entered the great Wadi Abu Dôm, which we pursued in a W.N.W. direction. This remarkable valley runs from the Nile by Mechêref along an extended mountain chain to the village of Abu Dôm, which is situated opposite Mount Barkal, in a slanting direction. If it be considered that the upper north-east mouth of this valley, crossing the whole peninsula and its mountains, is almost opposite the confluence of the Atbara, which runs into the Nile in the same direction above Mechêref, the idea may be entertained that at one time, though not in historical times, there was here a water communication which cut off the greater part of theeastern reach of the Nile, which now exists through the circumstance that the rocky plateau near Abu Hammed turns the stream southernward for a degree and a half against its general direction. The name of the valley is taken from the singledômpalms that are found scattered up and down in it. The mountain chain running north of the valley is distinctly different from the mountains which we had formerly passed. With our entrance into this valley, we lost the hard mountain soil, and the flying sand again predominated, without, however, overcoming the still not scarce vegetation.
After we had passed a side valley, Om Shebah, containing well-water, in the afternoon, on the left, we encamped at about nine o’clock for the night. Next morning we came to the deep well, Hanik. I stopped about noon at a second, called Om Sarale, after the tree of the same name.
Here I left the caravan with Jussuf, to reach Barkal by a circuit to Nuri, lying somewhat higher up the river on this shore. After an hour and a half, we came to the very considerable ruins of a great Christian convent in Wadi Gazâl; so named from the gazelles, who scrape here in theChor(valley-bed), for water in great numbers. The church was built of white unhewn sand-stone up to the windows, and, above them, of unburnt brick; the walls covered with a strong coating of gypsum, and painted inside. The vaulted apse of the tri-naved basilica, lies as usual to the eastward, the entrance behind the western transept to the north and south; all the arches of the doors, windows, and pillar niches are round. Koptic, more or less ornamented, crosses are frequently placed over the door, the simplest form of which, ✠ is easily comparable to the ancient Egyptian symbol of life. The whole is a true type of all the Koptic churches which I have seen, and I therefore add the little ground-plan, which Erbkam took of it.
The building is about eighty feet long, and exactly half as broad. The north wall is ruined. The church is surrounded by a great court, the outer walls of which, as also the numerous partly vaulted convent cells, still well preserved, are built of rude blocks. Before the western entrance of the church, separated only by a little court, lies the largest building, forty-six feet in length, probably the house of the prior, from which a particular side entrance led into the church. On the south side of the convent are two church-yards; the western one, about forty paces from the church, contained a number of graves, which were simply erected of black stones collected together. Nearer to the buildings was the eastern one, which was remarkable for a considerable number of grave-stones, partly inscribed in Greek and partly in Koptic, which will cause me to make a second visit to this remarkable convent before our departure fromBarkal. I counted more than twenty inscribed stones, of which some had of course suffered extremely, and as many slabs of baked earth, with inscriptions scratched upon them, almost all, however, broken to pieces. They contain the most southern Greek inscriptions which have yet been discovered in the Nile regions, with the exception of the inscription of Adulis and Axum in Abyssinia; and though it be not doubtful that the Greek language after the promulgation of Christianity, the traces of which we can detect in architectural remains farther than Soba, was used and understood by the natives in all the flourishing countries up to Abyssinia, at least for religious purposes; yet these epitaphs, (among which, on a cursory examination, I could find none in the Ethiopian,) seemed to point to immigrating Græco-Koptic inhabitants of the old convent.
I left my comrades here, who went direct to Abu Dôm at five o’clock, and proceeded to Nuri. Soon there gleamed towards us the blue heights of Mount Barkal, which rises alone with steep sides and a broad platform from the surrounding plain, and immediately attracts attention by its peculiar shape and situation. At six o’clock, the Nile valley lay before us in its whole and somewhat broad extent; a sight long desired, after the desert, and which excites the attention of travellers as much as the nearing coasts after a sea-voyage.
Our road turned, however, to the right, and proceeded through the mountains, which still consist of masses of porphyry. When we reached Barkal, right opposite us, I observed on our left a number of black, round, or pyramidal grave-hillocks, withwhich I had been acquainted from Meroe. Probably it was the general burying-place of Napata, still the metropolis of the Ethiopian kings in the time of Herodotus, and situated on the opposite shore; there must then have also been a considerable city on the left bank of the Nile, by which the position of the pyramids of Nuri on the same side is explained. Yet I have not been able to discover any ruined mounds answering to such a conjecture. Only behind the village of Duêm, and near Abu Dôm, I saw such, which were called Sánab, but they were not of any considerable extent. We did not come into the neighbourhood of this important group of pyramids until half-past seven, and we quartered ourselves for the night with the sheikh of the village.
Before sunrise I was already at the pyramids, of which I counted about twenty-five. They are partially statelier than those of Meroe, but built of soft sandstone, and therefore much disintegrated; a few only have any smooth casing left. The largest exhibits the same principle of structure within which I have discovered in those of Lower Egypt; a smaller inner pyramid was enlarged in all directions by a stone casing. At one part of the west side the smoothened surface of the innermost structure was distinctly visible within the eight foot thick, well-joined, outer mantle. Little is to be found here of ante-chambers, as at Meroe and the pyramids of Barkal; I believe I have only found the remains of two; the rest, if they existed, must have been quite ruined or buried in the rubbish. Some pyramids stand so close before one another,that by their position it would be impossible for an ante-chamber to exist, at least on the east side, where they were to be expected. For the rest, the pyramids are built quite massively, of free-stone; I could only find that the most eastern of all was filled up with black, unhewn stones. A pyramid with a flaw, like that of Dahhshur, is also here; but here the lower angle was probably originally intended, as there the upper one, as it is too inconsiderable for a structure in steps. Although I could, unfortunately, find no inscriptions, with the exception of one single fragment of granite, yet several things combine to assure me that this is the elder group, that of Barkal the younger.
I arrived at Abu Dôm after ten o’clock, where I found my companions. The crossing of the Nile occupied us the whole day, and we first came to Barkal at sunset.
Georgi had, to my great joy, arrived here some days ago from Dongola. His assistance is doubly welcome to us, as everything must be drawn here that is discovered. The Ethiopian residence of King Tahraka, who also reigned in Egypt, and left architectural remains behind him,—the same who went forth to Palestine in Hiskias’ time against Sanharib,—is too important for us not to becoming completely exhausted.
Mount Barkal.May 28, 1844.
I expectevery moment the transport-boats requested of Hassan Pasha, which set out eleven days ago, and are to take up our Ethiopian treasures, and bring ourselves to Dongola. The results of our researches at this place are not without importance. On the whole, it is perfectly settled that Ethiopian art is only a later branch of the Egyptian. It does not begin under native rulers until Tahraka. The little which yet remains to us of a former age belongs to the Egyptian conquerors and their artists. It is wholly confined here, at least, to one temple, which Ramses the Great erected to Amen-Ra. Certainly the name of Amenophis III. has been found on several granite rams, as upon the London lions of Lord Prudhoe;[87]but there are good grounds for suspecting that these stately colossi did not originally belong to a temple here. They were transported hither at a later period from Soleb, as it would seem, probably by the Ethiopian king whose name is found engraven on the breast of the lions above mentioned, and which has, on account of the erroneous omission of a sign, been hitherto read Amen Asru, instead of Mi Amen Asru.
But I have found these rams so remarkable, chiefly on account of their inscriptions, that I haveresolved to take the best of them with us. The fat sheep may weigh 150 cwt. Yet he had been drawn to the shore on rollers within three hot days by ninety-two fellahs, where he awaits his embarkation. Several other monuments are to accompany us hence, the weight of which we need not fear, now we have the deserts behind us. I only mention an Ethiopian altar four feet high, with the cartouches of the king erecting it; a statue of Isis, on the back pillar of which there is an Ethiopian demotic inscription in eighteen lines, and another from Méraui; as also the peculiar monument bearing the name of Amenophis III., which was copied by Cailliaud, and taken for a foot, but in reality is the underpart of the sacred sparrow-hawk. All these monuments are of black granite.[88]
The city of Napata, the name of which I have often found hieroglyphically, and already on Tahraka’s monuments, was doubtless situated somewhat lower down the river by the present place Méraui, where considerable mounds testify for such a conjecture. In the neighbourhood of the mountain the temples and pyramids only were situated. In the hieroglyphical inscriptions, this remarkable rock-mass bears the name of the “holy mountain,”[hieroglyph]. The God more especially venerated here was Ammon-Ra.
On the 18th of May we carried out our long-intended second visit to the Wadi Gazâl, took impressions of all the Greek and Koptic inscriptions ofthe burial-place, and took away with us what appeared yet legible.
We are now more sensible than before of the meaning of the summer-season in the torrid zone; the thermometer usually rises in the afternoon to 37° and 38° Reaumur; indeed, occasionally, above 40° in the shade. The glowing sand at my feet I often found to be 53°, and whatever is made of metal can only be touched with a cloth round it in the open air. All our drawings and papers are richly bedewed with pearly drops of perspiration. But the hot wind is the most annoying, which drives oven-heat in our faces, instead of coolness. The nights are scarcely more refreshing. The thermometer falls to 33° towards evening, and towards morning to 28°. Our only refreshment is continual Nile-baths, which, however, would be considered warm-baths in Europe. We have several times had storms with violent sand-filled hurricanes, and a few drops of rain. Yesterday a whirlwind beat down our tent, and at the same time our arbour of strong trunks and palm-branches fell upon us from its violence, while we were eating; the meal was scarcely eatable on account of the strong spice of sand. It would seem that violent gusts of wind are peculiar to this clime or country, for one often sees four or five high sand-pillars at the same time at different distances, dashing heavenward like mighty volcanoes. There are few serpents here; but a great number of scorpions, and ugly great spiders more feared by the natives than the scorpions. We therefore sleep onanqarebsbrought from the village, on account of these malicious vermin.
Dongola.June 15, 1844.
Beforeour departure from Barkal, I undertook an excursion up the Nile into the district of the cataracts, which we had cut off in our desert journey. I also wished to learn the character of this part of the country, the only portion of the valley of the Nile which we had not traversed with the caravan. We went by water to Kasinqar, and remained there the night. From here arise wild masses of granite, which form numerous islands in the rivers, and stop the navigation.
With much trouble we arrived the next day, before the camels were ready, at the island of Ishishi, surrounded by violent and dangerous eddies. We here found ruins of walls and buildings of brick, sometimes of stone, both hewn and unhewn, which leads us to the conclusion that they must have served as fortifications to the island at different times; yet there were no inscriptions, excepting one in a few unintelligible signs. We did not mount our camels at Kasinqar until after nine o’clock, and rode along the right hand shore, between the granite rocks, which leave but very little room for a scanty vegetation. The eye is relieved almost wholly in the numerous, and generally smaller islands, by green clumps of trees and cultivated spots multifariously intersected by the black crags. There isscarcely room for larger villages among these rocks; few, indeed, could find sustenance among them. The villages consist of single and small rows of houses stretching along at a great distance, yet, bearing the same name, however, to a certain extent. The plain of Kasinqar ended with a beautiful group of palms. Then we entered the district of Kû’eh, followed by the long tract of Hamdab, to which belongs the island of Mérui or Méroe, more than a quarter of an hour in length. Here, too, the name is explained by the situation. It is very high, sometimes forty feet above the water-level; the one now among the larger islands is wholly barren and uninhabited, and excepting the black crags periodically washed by the waters, it is completely white. This is occasioned principally by the dazzling sand-drifts which cover it; but strangely enough, the rocks jutting out of the sand are also white, either from the broad veins of quartz, in the same manner as another peculiar white rock which I had seen in the province of Robatât, lying on the way, and which was called by the camel-drivers Hager Mérui, or because the weather-beaten granite here has contracted this colour. The name of the village of Méraui, near Barkal, has, perhaps, the same origin; here the white precipices, running from Méraui to the river, and which attracted my attention on our departure, have suggested the name by their colour.
On the opposite shore the Gebel Kongêli, comes near to the river, also called Gebel Mérui; from the island as well as the rushing cataract a little above the island, which has received the name of Shellâl Mérui.
At four o’clock we arrived at the ruin Hellet el Bib, which from a distance has quite the appearance of a castle of the middle ages. It rises on low rocks, the ridge of which traverses the court and the building itself, so that a part of it appears like an upper story. The whole edifice is built of unburnt, but good and carefully-formed bricks, cemented with a small quantity of mortar, and covered with a coating of the same. Within are various large and small rooms, some with half-round niches in them and arched doorways. The walls of the west side were fifteen feet high. The outer wall of the court of unhewn stone, but carefully built up to about five to eight feet, enclosed a tolerably regular square, the side of which was about sixty-five paces long.
This small castle, but still respectable for the neighbourhood, reminds one, by its niches and arched doors, of the Christian architecture of former centuries, but it does not appear to have been destined for any religious purpose. Perhaps in its prime it belonged to the powerful and warlike tribes of the Shaiqîeh, which, according to tradition, immigrated from Arabia into this neighbourhood some centuries ago. At the time of the Egyptian conquest the country was under the dominion of three Shaiqîeh princes; probably one of them resided here. The surrounding country was also more favoured by nature, the shore flatter, beset with bushes, here and there bordered by a fertile piece of land.
After I had sketched the plan of the building, we set off at nine o’clock in the evening, by the light of a full moon, on our way back, which weshortened considerably by taking the road from the island of Saffi through the desert, where we passed the night, on an open sand plain, in the great granite field. About five o’clock, between moonshine and morning dawn, we were again on our way, and by nine o’clock we had reached our ship at Kasinqar.
Near this place I met with a tree quite new to me, in a little Wadi, which led to the river. It was called Bân, and does not grow anywhere but in this Wadi, which is called Chôr el Bân from it, and in another, near Méraui.[89]A strong white-barked stem, not unlike that of our walnut-tree, with some more stems round it, and short white branches, grew short and knotty out of the ground. The branches were now almost naked, a few only had leaves, if we can call the great bunches of switches by that name. The fruit is a long, round fluted ball, which splits into three pieces, when the five to ten black-shelled nuts (of about the size of a hazel-nut) which it contains, are ripe; the whitesweet, though rather sharp, oily kernel is not unpleasant; but it is mostly used by the inhabitants to press oil from. The bloom of the tree is yellow, and grows in bunches.
At noon the Sheikh of Nuri came to our boat, from whom I obtained some more information as to the cataract country. There are in the province of Shaiqîeh and the adjoining one of Monassir eight especial cataracts: the first, Shelâl Gerêndid, near the island Ishishi; Shelâl Terâi, near Kû’eh; Shelâl Mérui; Shelâl Dabák, near the island Uli; Shelâl el Edermîeh, e’Kabenât, e Tanarâi, and Om Derás. From hence a rocky district stretches to El Kâb, whence the stream flows to Shelâl Mogrât, in the great reach to Berber.
There is nothing now spoken in this whole neighbourhood but Arabic; but there is still a recollection of the former Nubian population, as there are yet a number of villages distinguished from the others as Nuba villages. Above the province Dongola, the following were pointed out to me as such:—Gebel Maqál and Zûma on the right shore, and near the island Massaui, which also bears the Nubian name of Abranârti; then on the left hand Belled e’ Nûba, between Debbe and Abu Dôm, Haluf or Nuri, and Bellel, opposite Gerf e’ Sheikh and Kasinqar. Then the account springs over to Chôsh e’ Gurûf, a little below the island of Mogrât, and towards Salame and Darmali, two villages between Mechêref and Dârmer; and finally, there is a Belled e’ Nûba, north of Gôs Burri, in the province Metamme.
At last, on the 4th of June, we quitted Barkal,after we had loaded the Ram and the other heavy monuments in two transport vessels.
We remained the first night in Abu Dôm on the left shore. I had heard of a Fakir, belonging to this place, who was said to possess manuscript notes on the tribe of Shaiqîeh Arabs. He was an intelligent, and for this country, a learned man, and I found him quite ready, not to give me the original of the few sheets he possessed, but to set to work immediately and copy them for me.
The next morning we landed first in Tanqássi, about the distance of an hour and a half from Abu Dôm, where we were to find ruins. The Fakir Daha, who belonged to the Korêsh, the tribe of the Prophet, accompanied us to the now inconsiderable mounds of bricks. We passed by his hereditary tomb, a little cupola building erected by his grandfather, which already had not only received him, but also his father and several other relations. From hence I espied some hills in the distance, which the Fakir declared to be natural. Nevertheless we rode up to them, and found, at about half an hour’s distance from the river, more than twenty tolerably large pyramids, now apparently formed of nothing but black mud, but originally built of Nile bricks. Single stones lay round about, and on the east side, at some distance, there were always two little heaps of stones, which appeared to have belonged to a kind of ante-chamber, and perhaps were connected with the pyramid by brick walls. Nowhere, however, were there any hewn stones or inscriptions to be found. On the opposite shore, near Kurru, we also found a field of pyramids, butvery few ruins of towns were to be discovered. The largest of the two most considerable pyramids, named Quntûr, was about thirty-five feet high, and towards the south-east were the remains of an antechamber. Around these two were grouped twenty-one smaller ones, of which four, like the largest pyramid, were built entirely of sandstone, but are now mostly in ruins; others consisted only of black basalt. Finally, westward of all the ground plan of a large apparently quite massive and consequently completely ruined pyramid was to be seen, whose foundation was in the rock. It appears also that this pyramid, which by its solid architecture was distinguished from all the surrounding ones, belonged to a royal dynasty of Napata; thus it was easier to account for the want of city ruins here than on the opposite side.
Three quarters of an hour down the stream on the right, lies the little village of Zûma. Near it, towards the mountains, rises an old fortress, with towers of defence, called Kárat Négil, the outer walls of which were ruined and destroyed about fifty or sixty years ago, when the present inhabitants of Zûma settled here. The name is derived from that of an old king of the country, called Négil, in whose time the surrounding land, which is now barren, was still reached and fertilized by the Nile.
The first discovery on the road to the fortress was another number of pyramids, of which eight were yet about twenty feet high; including the ruined ones, which seemed to have been as usual the most massive, there were altogether thirty; tothe south-west the old quarries are yet to be seen, which had furnished the materials for the pyramids.
Whilst these three pyramid fields, Tanqassi, Kurru, and Zûma, or Kárat Négil, lying so near to each other, and whose situation has been carefully paced off and marked by Erbkam, show that the neighbourhood had a numerous and flourishing population in the heathen times, we discovered in the adjoining country and more or less through the whole province of Dongala, the remains of Christian churches.
On the 7th of June we visited the three pyramids, at a little distance from each other, all on the right hand shore of the river. Two hours and a half distant from Zûma, Bachît is situated. Here the rock-wall of the desert extends to the river, and bears upon it a fortress, without doubt belonging to Christian times, with eighteen semi-circular projecting towers of defence. In the interior, under heaps of rubbish, were the ruins of a church, which appeared to have marked the centre of the fortress; it was here only sixty-three feet long, and the whole nave rested on four columns and two wall pillars, nevertheless the plan completely answered to the universal type.
The church of Magál, which is only half an hour further, must have been much larger, as we found among the ruins granite monolithic columns thirteen feet and a half high up to the divided capital of a foot and a half, and two feet in diameter; it appeared to have had five naves.
From here we arrived in an hour at Gebel Dêqa. Strong, massive walls here also surrounded a Christian fortress, which stood upon the projecting sandstone rock, and within it the ruins of several large buildings, among which was a small church with three naves, similar to that at Bachît.
This is the boundary of the province of Shaiqîeh towards Dongola, the last place to the south whose inhabitants speak Arabic. Formerly the boundary of the Nubian population and speech extended without doubt as far as the cataracts above Barkâl. This appears to have caused the numerous fortresses in this neighbourhood, and also the strong fortification of the island of Ishishi.
The Nubians, to whom already, in the sixth century, Christianity had penetrated by way of Abyssinia, were then a powerful people, till their Christian priest-kings, in the fourteenth century, turned to Islamism. At this time the building of the numerous churches, whose ruins we found scattered through the whole province northwards from Wadi Gâzâl, must have taken place.
We went the same day to Ambukôl, at the point of the western reach of the Nile, and remained there the night. The following day we reached Tifâr, and again visited the ruins of a fortress, with the remains of a church.
On the way we met Hassan Pasha’s boat, which was going to Méraui. We fired salutes, and ran alongside each other. The Pasha inquired earnestly about the treasures which he supposed would be in the pyramids of Barkal, and with the greatest complaisance promised us anything we desired in furtherance of our journey and object. After he hadimmediately returned our visit, we parted, firing fresh salutes.
On the 10th of June we reached Old Dongola, the former capital of this Christian kingdom. The immense ruins of the town show little more at present than its former great extent. Upon a mountain, near which commands a delightful prospect all round, stands a mosque. An Arabic inscription, on marble, shows that this was opened on the 20th Rabî el anel, in the year 717 (1st June, 1317), after the victory of Safeddin Abdallah e’ Nâsir over the infidels.
As we had discovered so few monumental remains since our departure from Barkal, to employ the leisure time which we had in our boat, I busied myself with making every possible research into and comparison with the present language and the Nubian. It offers very remarkable points in the science of language, but does not show the least similarity to the Egyptian. I consider that the whole race must have come at a late period out of the south-west into the valley of the Nile. We have now a servant from Derr, the capital of Lower Nubia, who speaks tolerably good Italian; he is alert and intelligent, and is of great service to me on account of his knowledge of the Mahass dialects. I have sometimes tormented him with questions for five or six hours in a day in the boat, as it is no small trouble to either of us to understand each other upon the forms and changes of grammar. He has, at any rate, acquired more respect for his own language, which everywhere here, when comparedwith the Arabic, is reckoned bad and vulgar, and people are ashamed of being obliged to speak it.
When we arrived yesterday, after three days’ journey from Old Dongola here, in New Dongola, generally called El Orde (the camp) by the Arabs, we had the great pleasure of receiving the large packet of letters, of which we had already been informed by Hassan Pasha on the road. Since then we look forward with fresh courage to the last difficult part of our journey to the south, as we must here, alas! leave our boats, and mount the far more uncomfortable ship of the desert. The cataract district, now lying before us, is only to be navigated at high water, and then not without danger. Our richly-laden stone boat we were obliged to submit to the dangerous trial, as land-carriage for the Ram and the other monuments was naturally not to be thought of.
We shall not be able to set out from here so immediately, on account of the general reform which must take place in our preparations for the journey of the next five or six weeks. From our boat with the packages we must, however, separate ourselves, as it must seize upon the right moment of the high water, which will not be for some weeks.
Dongola.June 23, 1844.
Wereturned yesterday from a four day’s trip to the next cataract, which we were able to reach with the boat. Our collection was unexpectedly rich. We have found a great number of old monuments of the time of the Pharoahs, the only ones in the whole province of Dongola, and part of them very ancient. On the island of Argo we discovered the first Egyptian sculpture of the time of the Hyksos, and near Kermân on the right hand shore, traces of an extensive city, spread wide over the plain, with an immense burying-ground adjoining, in which two large monuments were conspicuous, one of which was called Kermân (like the village), the other Defûfa. They are not pyramids, but oblong squares, the first 150 feet by 66, the second 132 feet by 66, and about 40 feet high, quite massive and strong, and built of good firm unburnt Nile bricks; each has an out-building, resembling the ante-temple of the Pyramid. Many fragments of statues lying about, (in the best ancient style, partly covered with good hieroglyphics,) point out their great antiquity; so that we may judge this to be the oldest important Egyptian settlement on Ethiopian ground, which was probably rendered necessary through the increase of Egyptian power towards Ethiopia, during the supremacy of the Hyksos in Egypt. Withoutdoubt, the enormous granite bridges which we found some hours north of Kermân at the entrance of the cataract district, opposite the island Tombos on the right hand shore, were belonging to this town. The rock inscriptions contain arms of the seventeenth dynasty, and an inscription of eighteen lines bears the date of the second year of Tuthmosis I.
Here, in Dongola, I have also begun to study the Kong’âra language of Dar Fûr. A negro soldier born in that feared and warlike land, with woolly hair and thick pouting lips, whom we brought with us during the last year from Korusko to Wadi Halfa, as orderly officer, instead of the one appointed by Ibrahim Pasha, sought us out again, and was given up to me by the Pasha to assist me in my philological studies. He began well, but in half an hour I was obliged to get the Nubian to interpret for me. The Kong’âra is quite different from the Nubian, and appears to me in some points to have a strong analogy with certain South African languages.
It gave me great pleasure to see here the fortress built by Ehrenberg in 1822, it has certainly suffered from the inundations, but still serves Hassan Pasha as a dwelling. There will also remain a building in remembrance of us, as the Pasha begged Erbkam to give him the plan of a powder-tower, and to seek out a suitable spot for its erection.