continued our way. The temperature was not more than 38° Fahrenheit
when the sun rose, and we were constrained to break into a hard
trot in order to keep warm. Two desert martins circled about us as
we went, now passing under the camels’ necks, and now whirling
overhead; while more than once we put up a few cream-coloured
coursers, who went off with a whirr into the space around. After a
couple of hours’ riding over the open, hard-surfaced desert, we
topped a low ridge and came into view of a ruined Roman station,
called in ancient times the Hydreuma, and now known as Kasr el
Benât, “the Castle of the Maidens.” The building stands in a
level plain around which the low hills rise, and to the east the
distant Hammamât mountains form a dark background. From the outside
one sees a well-made rectangular wall, and entering the doorway on
the north side one passes into an enclosure surrounded by a series
of small chambers, the roofs of which have now fallen in. In these
little rooms the weary Roman officers and the caravan masters rested
themselves as they passed to and fro between the quarries and the
Nile; and in this courtyard, when haply the nights were warm, they
sang their songs to the stars and dreamed their dreams of Rome. The
building is so little ruined that one may picture it as it then
was without any difficulty; and such is the kindness of Time that
one peoples the place with great men and good, intent on their work
and happy in their exile, rather than with that riff-raff which so
often found its way to these outlying posts.
Across the plain, opposite the entrance to the Hydreuma, there
is a large isolated rock with cliff-like sides, upon which one
finds all manner of inscriptions and rough drawings. Here there
are two Sinaitic inscriptions of rare value and several curious
signs in an unknown script, while Ababdeh marks and Arabic letters
are conspicuous.
We mounted our camels again at about eleven o’clock, and rode
towards the wall of the Medîk es-Salâm hills ahead, passing
into their shadows soon after noonday. We halted for luncheon
in the shade of a group of rocks, and our meal was enlivened by
the presence of two butterflies which seemed out of place in the
barren desert, and yet in harmony with the breezy, light-hearted
spirit of the place. Early in the afternoon we rode on, but an hour
had not passed when some obvious inscriptions on the rocks to the
left of the track, opposite a point where the road bends sharply
to the right, attracted my attention. These proved to date from
the Middle Empire, about B.C. 2000, and no doubt marked a camp of
that date. The names of various officials were given, and a prayer
or two to the gods was to be read. Rounding the corner, we had no
sooner settled ourselves to the camels’ trot than another group
of inscriptions on the rocks to the right of the path necessitated
a further halt. Here there were two very important graffiti of the
time of Akhnaton; and considerable light is thrown by one of them
upon the fascinating period of the religious revolution of that
king. One sees three cartouches, of which the first is that of
Queen Thiy, the second reads Amonhotep (IV.), and the third seems
to have given the name Akhnaton; but both this cartouche and that
of Thiy are erased. The three cartouches are placed together above
the symbols of sovereignty, and below the rays of the sun’s disk,
thus showing that Akhnaton was but a boy of tender years under his
mother’s guidance when he first came to the throne, and that the
Aton worship had already begun. It would be too long a matter to
explain the significance of this inscription here, but those who
are of an inquiring mind may turn to the article on this subject
in the October number of ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’ for 1907,
where I have described how the recently found mummy of Akhnaton
proved to be that of a very young man.
The shadows were lengthening when we once more mounted and trotted
up the valley, which presently led into more open ground; but
after half an hour’s ride a second Roman station came into sight,
and again the grumbling camels had to kneel. The building is much
ruined, and is not of great interest to those who have already
seen the Hydreuma and other stations. As we continued the journey
the sun set behind us, and in the growing moonlight the valley
looked ghostly and wonderfully beautiful. The shapes of the rocks
became indistinct, and one was hardly aware when the well known
as Bir Hammamât was at last reached. This well lies in a flat,
gravelly amphitheatre amidst the rugged hills, which press in on all
sides. It is in all about six hours’ ride—_i.e._, twenty-eight
or thirty miles—from Lagêta; but our several halts had spread
the journey over twice that length of time. The well is circular
and fairly large, and stones dropped into its pitch-dark depths
seemed a long time in striking the water. A subterranean stairway,
restored in recent years by a mining company, runs down at one side
to the water’s level; and at its doorway in the moonlight we sat
and smoked until the baggage camels came up.
The next morning we rode up a valley which was now tortuous and
narrow. This is the Wady Hammamât of the archæologist, and the
Wady Fowakhîeh of the natives. Dark, threatening hills towered
on either side, as though eager to prison for ever the deeds once
enacted at their feet. One’s voice echoed amongst the rocks,
and the wind carried the sound down the valley and round the bend,
adding to it its own quiet whispers. A ride of about half an hour’s
length brought us to some ruined huts where the ancient quarrymen
had lived in the days of the Pharaohs. From this point onwards for
perhaps a mile the rocks on either side are dotted with inscriptions,
from which a part of the history of the valley may be learnt. The
place is full of whispers. As the breeze blows round the rocks and
up the silent water-courses it is as though the voices of men long
since forgotten were drifting uncertainly by. One feels as though
the rocks were peopled with insistent entities, all muttering
the tales of long ago. Behind this great rock there is something
laughing quietly to itself; up this dry waterfall there is a sort
of whimpering; and here in this silent recess one might swear that
the word to be silent had been passed around. It is only the wind
and the effect of the contrast between the exposed and the still
places sheltered by the rocks; but, with such a history as is writ
upon its walls, one might believe the valley to be crowded with
the ghosts of those who have suffered or triumphed in it.
[Plate V:
Illustration: Under the tamarisks of the oasis of Lagêta.—Page 31.
Illustration: Bir Hammamât, looking south.—Page 36.]
Wady Fowakhîeh extends from the Bir Hammamât to the well known
as Bir Fowakhîeh, which lies in the open circus at the east end
of the valley. Although the tuff quarried here is of a blue or
olive-green colour, the surface of the rocks, except where they
are broken, is a sort of chocolate-brown. One thus obtains an
extraordinary combination of browns and blues, which with the
flush of the sunset and the dim purple of the distant hill-tops
forms a harmony as beautiful as any the world knows. The flat,
gravel bed of the valley is from fifty to a hundred yards wide,
and along this level surface run numerous camel-tracks, more or less
parallel with one another. Besides the inscriptions there are other
traces of ancient work: an unfinished shrine, and a sarcophagus,
abandoned owing to its having cracked, are to be seen where the
workmen of some five-and-twenty centuries ago left them; and here
and there a group of ruined huts is to be observed.
Amidst these relics of the old world our tents were pitched,
having been removed from Bir Hammamât as soon as breakfast had
been finished; and with camera, note-book, and sketching apparatus,
the four of us dispersed in different directions, my own objective,
of course, being the inscriptions. The history of Wady Fowakhîeh
begins when the history of Egypt begins, and one must look back into
the dim uncertainties of the archaic period for the first evidences
of the working of the quarries in this valley. Many beautifully
made bowls and other objects of this tuff are found in the graves
of Dynasty I., fifty-five centuries ago; and my friends and I,
scrambling over the rocks, were fortunate enough to find in a little
wady leading northwards from the main valley a large rock-drawing and
inscription of this date. A “vase-maker” here offers a prayer to
the sacred barque of the hawk-god Horus, which is drawn so clearly
that one may see the hawk standing upon its shrine in the boat, an
upright spear set before the door; and one may observe the bull’s
head, so often found in primitive countries, affixed to the prow;
while the barque itself is shown to be standing upon a sledge in
order that it might be dragged over the ground.
In Dynasties II. to IV. the objects in the museums show that the
quarries were extensively worked, and in Dynasty V. one has the
testimony of local inscriptions as well. An official under King
Asesa, B.C. 2675, has left his name on the rocks on the south of
the valley; and the name of another who lived in the reign of Unas,
B.C. 2650, is to be seen there. Of the reign of Pepy I., B.C. 2600,
of Dynasty VI., one has more definite information. Scanning the
rocks one reads of chief architects, master builders, assistant
artisans, scribes, treasurers, ship-captains, and their families
stationed at the quarries to procure stone for the ornamentation
of the pyramid buildings of the king, which are still to be seen
at Sakkâra, near Cairo; and these inscriptions mention a certain
Thethi, who was the “master pyramid-builder of the king,” and
therefore was probably in charge of the expedition.
In the reign of Aty, B.C. 2400, a ship’s captain named Apa came
to procure stone for his master’s pyramid; and with him were
200 soldiers and 200 workmen. King Imhotep, B.C. 2400, sent his
son Zaty with 1000 labourers, 100 quarrymen, and 1200 soldiers,
to obtain stone; and he supplied 200 donkeys and 50 oxen daily for
its transport. But the first really interesting inscription on
the rocks of the valley dates from Dynasty XI., B.C. 2050. Here
an all too brief story is told by a great official named Henu,
recording an expedition made by him to the distant land of Pount
in the eighth year of the reign of Menthuhotep III. The king had
ordered Henu to despatch a ship to Pount in order to bring fresh
myrrh from that land of spices, and he had therefore collected an
army of 3000 men. He set out from Koptos, travelled over the open
desert to the little oasis of Lagêta, and so struck the road which
we had followed. He seems to have had much consideration for his men,
for he says, “I made the road a river, and the desert a stretch of
field. I gave a leather bottle, a carrying pole, two jars of water,
and twenty loaves of bread to each one of the men every day.”
When one considers that this means 60,000 loaves of bread per day,
one’s respect for the organising powers of the ancient Egyptians
must be considerable. At Wady Fowakhîeh he seems to have organised
some quarry works for the king, and presently he pushed on towards
the Red Sea, digging wells as he went. The expedition, which will
be recorded later, is then described; and Henu states that, on his
return to Wady Fowakhîeh, he organised the transport of some five
blocks of stone which were to be used for making statues.
[Plate VI:
Illustration: Cartouches of Sety II. on the rocks between Bir
Hammamât and Wady Fowakhîeh.
Illustration: Inscriptions on the rocks between Bir Hammamât and
Wady Fowakhîeh.]
In the second year of the reign of Menthuhotep IV., B.C. 2000,—so
runs another long rock inscription,—the Vizier Amonemhat was sent
to the quarries with an expedition of 10,000 men, consisting of
miners, artificers, quarrymen, artists, draughtsmen, stone-cutters,
gold-workers, and officials. His orders were to procure “an
august block of the pure costly stone which is in this mountain,
for a sarcophagus, an eternal memorial, and for monuments in the
temples.” The presence of gold-workers indicates that the gold
mines near Bir Fowakhîeh were also opened. Ancient workings
are still to be seen near this well, and in recent times an
attempt was made to reopen them, which, however, was not very
successful. One must imagine this expedition as camping at that
well—Bir Hammamât—where we had camped on the previous night,
and as passing up the valley each day to and from the quarries. This
was a tedious walk, and a nearer water-supply must have been much
needed. One day there was a heavy fall of rain, which must have
lasted several hours, for when it had ceased the sandy plain at the
head of the valley was found to be a veritable lake of water. Rain is
not at all a common occurrence in Upper Egypt. Even now the peasants
are peculiarly alarmed at a heavy downpour; and in those far-off days
the quarrymen were ready enough to see in the phenomenon a direct act
of the great god Min, the patron of the desert. “Rain was made,”
says the inscription, “and the form of this god appeared in it;
his glory was shown to men. The highland was made a lake, the water
extending to the margin of the rocks.” The presence of the water
seems to have dislodged an accumulation of sand which had formed
over an ancient and disused well; and when the lake subsided the
astonished labourers discovered its mouth, ten cubits in length on
its every side. “Soldiers of old and kings who had lived aforetime
went out and returned by its side; yet no eye had seen it.” It was
“undefiled, and had been kept pure and clean from the gazelle,
and concealed from the Bedwin.” If this well is, as I suppose,
the Bir Fowakhîeh, it must have been a great boon to the workmen,
for it is but a few minutes’ walk from the quarries, and must
have saved them that weary tramp down to the Bir Hammamât at the
end of their hard day’s work.
When the great stone for the lid of the sarcophagus had been
prised out of the hillside, and had been toppled into the valley,
another wonder occurred. Down the track there came running “a
gazelle great with young, going towards the people before her,
while her eyes looked backward, though she did not turn back.”
The quarrymen must have ceased their work to watch her as she ran
along the hard valley, looking back with startled eyes as the
shouts of the men assailed her. At last “she arrived at this
block intended for the lid of the sarcophagus, it being still in
its place; and upon it she dropped her young, while the whole army
of the king watched her.” One can hear the quarrymen, as they
clattered into the valley, shouting, “A miracle, a miracle!”
and surrounded the incapacitated creature. The end of the tale
is told briefly. “Then they cut her throat upon the block, and
brought fire. The block descended to the Nile in safety.”
Another inscription states that this sarcophagus lid was dragged
down to the river by an army of 3000 sailors from the Delta, and
that sacrifices of cattle, goats, and incense were constantly made
in order to lighten the labour. It must have been an enormous block
to drag along; for even after it was dressed into the required shape
and size by the masons in Egypt, it was some 14 feet in length, 7
feet in width, and 3½ feet in thickness. Two other blocks brought
down from these quarries at about the same date are said to have
been 17 feet in length, while a third was about 20 feet long.
In the reign of Amonemhat I. of Dynasty XII., B.C. 2000, an officer
named Antef was sent to the quarries to procure a special kind of
stone, so rare that “there was no hunter who knew the marvel of it,
and none that sought it had found it.” “I spent eight days,”
says Antef, “searching the hills for it, but I knew not the place
wherein it might be. I prostrated myself before Min, before Mut,
before the goddess great in magic, and before all the gods of the
highlands, burning incense to them upon the fire.” At last, after
almost giving up the search in despair, he found the required block
one morning just as the sun had topped the dark hills of the valley,
and while his men were just scattering in all directions to renew the
search. Although so many centuries have passed since Antef found his
stone, one feels, when one reads this inscription upon the rocks,
that it was but yesterday; and one may picture the sunlit scene
when, as he says, “the company were in festivity and the entire
army was praising, rejoicing, and doing obeisance.”
Under other kings of this dynasty one reads, as one walks up the
valley, of works being carried on. One man quarried and carried
down to the river ten blocks which were later converted into seated
statues 8½ feet high. Another official speaks of his army of 2000
men which he had with him in this now desolate place; and a third
has left an inscription reading, “I came to these highlands with
my army in safety, by the power of Min, the Lord of the Highlands.”
So the work continued from generation to generation, and the
quarrymen, as they sat at noon to rest themselves in the shade,
could read around them the names of dead kings and forgotten
officials carved upon the rocks, and could place their own names
in the illustrious company. The troubled years of the Hyksos rule
checked the quarrying somewhat; but in Dynasty XVIII. the labours
were renewed, though unfortunately no long inscriptions have been
left to illuminate the darkness of the history of the valley. An
inscription of the time of Akhnaton is to be seen high up on the
rocks, but other figures have been cut over it by Sety I.
Various kings of Dynasties XIX. and XX. are mentioned on the rocks;
but the only important inscription dates from the second year of
the reign of Rameses IV., B.C. 1165. It seems that this king, with
a degree of energy unusual in a Pharaoh of this debased period,
made a personal visit to the quarries. “He led the way to the
place he desired; he went around the august mountain; he cut an
inscription upon this mountain engraved with the great name of the
king.” This inscription is to be seen on the rocks of the valley,
almost as fresh as when the scribes had written it. On his return
to Egypt he organised an expedition for the purpose of quarrying
the stone he had selected. A complete list of the _personnel_ of
the expedition is recorded, and, as it gives one an idea of the
usual composition of a force of this kind, I may be permitted to
give it in some detail.
[Plate VII:
Illustration:
1. Inscription at Abu Kueh.
2, 3. Foreign inscriptions at Abu Kueh.
4. Inscription at Abu Kueh.
5-12. Inscriptions and marks near Abu Kueh.
13, 14, 16. Inscriptions at Abu Kueh, reign of Akhnaton.—Page 35.
15. Aramaic inscription at Abu Kueh.
17. Archaic drawing and inscription in a valley leading from Wady
Fowakhîeh.—Page 39.]
The head of the expedition was none other than the High Priest of
Amon, and his immediate staff consisted of the king’s butlers, the
deputy of the army and his secretary, the overseer of the treasury,
two directors of the quarry service, the court charioteer, and the
clerk of the army lists. Twenty clerks of the army, or of the War
Office as we would say, and twenty inspectors of the court stables
were attached to this group. Under a military commandant there were
20 infantry officers and 5000 men, 50 charioteers, 200 sailors,
and a mixed body of 50 priests, scribes, overseers, and veterinary
inspectors. Under a chief artificer and three master quarrymen there
were 130 stone-cutters and quarrymen; while the main work was done
by 2000 crown slaves and 800 foreign captives. Two draughtsmen
and four sculptors were employed for engraving the inscriptions,
&c. A civil magistrate with 50 police kept order amongst this large
force, which altogether totalled 8362 men, not including, as the
inscription grimly states, the 900 souls who perished from fatigue,
hunger, disease, or exposure.
The supplies for this large expedition were transported in ten
carts each drawn by six yoke of oxen; and there were many porters
laden with bread, meat, and various kinds of cakes. The inscription
then tells us of the sacrifices which were continuously made to the
gods of the desert. “There were brought from Thebes the oblations
for the satisfaction of the gods of heaven and earth. Bulls were
slaughtered, calves were smitten, incense streamed to heaven,
_shedeh_ and wine was like a flood, beer flowed in this place. The
voice of the ritual-priest presented these pure offerings to all
the gods of the mountains so that their hearts were glad.”
In this remote desert how easy it is to dream oneself back in the
elder days! The valley, pressed close on either side by the rocks
around which the whispers for ever wander, echoes once again with
the ring of the chisels; and in the wind that almost ceaselessly
rushes over the ancient tracks, one can see the fluttering garments
of the quarrymen as they pass to and from their work. As we sat at
the door of our tents in the cool of the afternoon, the present day
seemed now as remote as the past had seemed before; and, when that
great moment of sunset was approached, one almost felt it fitting
to burn a pan of incense to the old gods of heaven and earth,
as the officers of Rameses IV. had done.
The names of later kings, Shabaka, Taharka, Psametik, Nekau,
Aahmes II., and others, look down at one from the rocks; and
sometimes the date is precisely given, and the names of the
officials are mentioned. During the Persian period the green
tuff was in considerable demand for the making of those lifelike
portrait statuettes so many of which are to be seen in the various
museums; and the coarser tuff, which is practically breccia, was
much used for shrines and sarcophagi. It is curious to see in this
distant valley the names of the Persian kings, Cambyses, Darius I.,
Xerxes I., and Artaxerxes I., written in Egyptian hieroglyphs in
the rock inscriptions, together with the year of their reigns in
which the quarrying was undertaken. Nectanebo I. and II., B.C. 370
and B.C. 350, have left their names in the valley; and dating from
this and the subsequent periods there are various Egyptian and
Greek inscriptions.
In the reign of Ptolemy III., B.C. 240, a little temple was
built near the Bir Fowakhîeh at the east end of the valley of the
quarries. Wandering over this amphitheatre amidst the hills we came
upon the remains of the little building, which had been constructed
of rough stones augmented by well-made basalt columns. It was
dedicated to the god Min, the patron of the Eastern Desert; but as it
was only about 12 feet by 22 in area the priests of the god could not
have commanded the devotion of more than a few of the quarrymen. Near
the temple there are three or four groups of ruined huts, nestling
on the hillsides amongst the rocks; and here the quarrymen of
the Ptolemaic and Græco-Roman ages dwelt, as the broken pottery
indicates. There are many traces of ancient gold workings near by,
and a ruined house of modern construction stands as a sad memorial
of the unsuccessful attempt to reopen them. In the inscriptions of
Dynasties XVIII.-XX. one reads of “the gold of Koptos,” which
must be the gold brought into Koptos from this neighbourhood; and at
this later period the mines appear to have been worked. A very fine
pink granite began to be quarried just to the east of this well in
Roman days, and one may still see many blocks cut from the hillside
which have lain there these two thousand years awaiting transport.
In Wady Fowakhîeh itself there are many blocks of tuff, addressed
to the Cæsars, but never dispatched to them; nor is there anything
in this time-forsaken valley which so brings the past before one as
do these blocks awaiting removal to vanished cities. There are many
Greek inscriptions to be seen, the majority being grouped together
in a recess amidst the rocks on the south side of the valley. Here
one reads of persons who worked for Tiberius, Nero, Domitian, and
other emperors; and there are their drawings of men, animals, and
boats before one, as fresh as when an hour at noon was whiled away
in their making. From these the last days of the quarrying dates a
causeway which passes up the hillside on the south of the valley,
and which was intended to ease the descent of blocks quarried higher
up. The Romans have also left watch-towers on the hill-tops, which
indicate that peace did not always reign in the desert.
[Plate VIII:
Illustration: The camp in Wadi Fowakhîeh, looking down from the
hills on the north side. The camel tracks are seen passing along
the valley.—Page 38.
Illustration: Wady Fowakhîeh, looking east. The camel tracks will
be noticed again.]
The night which closed in on us all too soon brought with it the
silence of the very grave. The wind fell, and the whisperings almost
ceased. The young moon which lit the valley seemed to turn all things
to stone under its gaze; and not a sound fell from the camelmen or
from the camels. The evening meal having been eaten and the pipes
smoked, we quietly slipped into our beds; and when the moon had set
behind the hills and absolute darkness had fallen upon the valley,
one might have believed oneself as dead and as deep in the underworld
as the kings whose names were inscribed upon the black rocks around.