for the stone to be transported by ship to Suez. The barren coast
here was harbourless, except for the port of Myos Hormos, which was
too far away to be practicable; and the stone would have had to be
unloaded at Suez, and dragged across the desert to the neighbourhood
of the modern Port Said. Every block of porphyry had therefore to
be carried across the desert to Keneh, the old Kainepolis, on the
Nile, and thence shipped by river-barge to the sea. Here it had to
be transhipped to the great Mediterranean galleys, and thus conveyed
across the treacherous sea to the port of Rome.
Probably the blocks were dragged by oxen or men upon rough waggons,
for the roads are not bad, except at certain places. To ride from
Keneh to Wady Bileh, at the quiet five-miles-an-hour trot of the
camel, took us altogether twenty-two and a half hours; that is to
say, the total distance is about 112 miles or so. The winding path
from Wady Bileh up the valley to the quarries brings this total
to about 140 miles; and the caravans could not have covered this
in less than eight days. On the first night after leaving Keneh
the camp was probably pitched in the open. On the second night the
station of El Ghaiteh was reached, and here there were provisions,
water, and a small garrison. The third night was spent at Es
Sargieh, where water was to be obtained. On the fourth night the
houses of El Atrash sheltered the travellers, water and provisions
being here obtainable. On the fifth night Wady Gatâr was reached,
where again there was a well. The sixth night was passed at Wady
Bileh, from whence express messengers could pass over the hill to
the quarries. The seventh night was spent in the open, and on the
following day the settlement was reached.
The long road was rendered dangerous by the incursions of the desert
peoples, and many of the hills between the fortified stations are
crowned with ruined watch-towers. Roman troops must have patrolled
the road from end to end, and the upkeep of these garrisons must have
been a considerable expense. The numerous stone-cutters and quarrymen
had to be fed and provided for; and for this purpose an endless
train of supplies had to be brought from the Nile valley. Oxen or
donkeys for this purpose, and for the transporting of the porphyry,
had to be kept constantly on the move. At Keneh a service of barges
had to be organised, and at the seaport the galleys had to be in
readiness to brave the seas with their heavy loads.
It is of all this—of the activity, the energy, the bravery, the
power of organisation, the persistency, the determination—that
an object executed in Imperial Porphyry tells the story.
The quarries were worked until about the fifth century A.D., for the
Byzantine Emperors derived from their Roman predecessors an affection
for this fine purple stone. There is a Greek inscription on the
path leading up to one of the workings, which reads, “Katholeke
Ekklesia,” and which is perhaps the latest example of old-world
activity in the Eastern Desert. There is no other place in the world
where this porphyry is to be found, and when the quarries at last
ceased to be worked, some time previous to the seventh century,
the use of that stone had to cease also, nor has it ever again
been procurable.
One wonders whether there will come a time when some millionaire,
fresh from the museums of Italy, will express a wish to pave his
bathroom with the purple stone of the Emperors; and whether the
Hills of Smoke will again ring with the sound of the hammer and
chisel, in response to the demands of a new fashion.
It may be that some day the tourist will awake to the advantages
and attractions of the Eastern Desert as a motoring country, will
rush through the wadys, will visit the ancient centres of activity,
will see these quarries, and will desire the porphyry. With a
little preparation the road from Keneh to Gebel Dukhân could be
made practicable for automobiles; and when once the land ceases
to be but the territory of the explorer and the prospector, one
may expect its mineral products to be seen, to be talked of, and
finally to be exploited.
In the late afternoon we left the valley, and climbed slowly up the
Roman road to the summit of the pass, halting here to drink deeply
from our water-bottles. The descent down the dry watercourse was
accomplished in a long series of jumps from boulder to boulder, at
imminent peril of a sprained ankle. The grey rocks were smooth and
slippery, and between them there grew a yellow-flowered weed which,
when trodden upon, was as orange-peel. The rapid rush down the
hillside, the setting sun, and the bracing wind, caused our return
to camp to take its place amongst the most delightful memories of
the whole expedition. Once we halted, and borrowing the carbines of
the native police, we shot a match of half a dozen rounds apiece,
with a spur of stone as target. The noise echoed amongst the rocks;
and a thousand feet below we saw the ant-like figures of our
retainers anxiously hurrying into the open to ascertain the cause
of the disturbance.
As we neared the bottom of the hill the sun set, and once more this
wonderful valley was lit with the crimson afterglow, and once more
the mountains of Sinai stood out for a moment from the gathering
mists above the vivid line of the Red Sea. Darkness had fallen when
at last, footsore and weary, we reached the camp; and one was almost
too tired to enjoy the sponge-down in the half-basin of water which
is all that can be allowed in this waterless region, and the meal
of tinned food which followed. As one fell to sleep that night,
one’s dreams were all of strenuous labours: of straining oxen
and sweating men; of weary marches and unsuspected ambushes; of
the sand-banks of the Nile and the tempests of the sea. But ever
in the far distance one seemed to be conscious of thoughtless,
implacable men, dipping their bejewelled fingers into the basins
of purple porphyry as they reclined in the halls of Imperial Rome.
On the following morning our party divided, Mr Wells and the greater
part of the caravan going north-east to the petroleum wells of Gebel
Zeit on the sea-coast, and I to Um Etgal, the Mons Claudianus of
the ancients, where the white granite, also so much admired by the
Romans, was quarried from the hillside.
[Plate XIX:
Illustration: The ruins of the town of Gebel Dukhân. The upright
pillars of granite supported a roof.—Page 106.
Illustration: The Roman town of Mons Claudianus, looking south from
the causeway leading to the main quarry. The round piles of stone
in the foreground are built at intervals along the causeway.—Page
124.]
V.
THE QUARRIES OF MONS CLAUDIANUS.
In the previous chapter an account was given of a journey made to
the Imperial porphyry quarries of Gebel Dukhân in the month of
March 1907. These quarries are to be found about a score or so of
miles from the Red Sea at a point in the Eastern Desert opposite
the southern end of the Peninsula of Sinai. From Gebel Dukhân I
returned to the Nile by way of the white granite quarries of Um
Etgal, the ancient Mons Claudianus, and thence past the old gold
workings of Fatireh to Keneh.
My caravan was composed of a riding party consisting of myself,
my native assistant, my servant, and a guide; and the baggage-train
of a dozen camels and men, and a couple of guards. The guide was a
picturesque, ragged old man, whose face was wizen and wrinkled by
the glare of the desert. His camel was decked with swinging tassels
of black and yellow, and across his saddle there was slung a gun at
least seven feet long, while at his side there hung a broad-bladed
sword in an old red-leather case. In his belt there were two knives,
and in his hand he carried a stout bludgeon, something in the form of
a hockey-stick. This latter is the weapon most generally carried by
the Ababdeh and other desert peoples, and its antiquity is evidenced
by the fact that the earliest hieroglyph for “a soldier” in
the script of ancient Egypt represents a figure holding just such
a stick.
The old guide was followed by three lean, yellow dogs, who seemed to
be much bored by the journey and dejected by the sterility around. He
was a man of some dignity, and took considerable pride in riding
at the head of the little procession in order to show the way,
although, except at the cross-roads, the tracks were perfectly plain
and the ancient beacons were generally to be seen. Once or twice I
made an attempt to pass him so that I might have an uninterrupted
view of the scenery; for the sight of a ragged, huddled back and
the hindquarters of a betasseled camel is inclined to pall after
a while. But these efforts ended in a short, hard race, in which I
was generally the loser; nor had I the heart to order the old man
to the rear thereafter.
We set out from the camp at Wady Bileh, the nearest point to Gebel
Dukhân on the main road, soon after daybreak, and passed along the
wonderful valley leading back to the Roman station of Wady Gatâr,
which I have already described, our route branching off towards the
south just before reaching that place. The road then led along a
fine valley, up which a blustering north wind went whistling, and
it was only by donning an overcoat and by trotting at a smart pace
that one could pretend to feel comfortably warm. Soon after noon
I halted near some thorn-trees, in the shelter of which luncheon
was presently spread. A vulture circling overhead watched our
party anxiously, in the vain hope that somebody would drop dead,
but on seeing us mount again to continue the journey it sailed away
disgustedly over the windy hill-top.
It was still cold and stormy when, after trotting altogether for
five hours from Wady Bileh, we arrived at the well of Um Disi,
where the camp was pitched in order that the camels might drink
and graze. The well is the merest puddle in the sand amidst the
smooth boulders of a dry watercourse, hidden under the overhanging
cliffs of granite. It lies in the corner of a wide amphitheatre of
gravel and sand, completely shut in by the mountains. Bushes of
different kinds grow in great profusion over this amphitheatre,
and from the tent door, when the eye was tired of wandering upon
the many-coloured hills, one might stare in a lazy dream at a very
garden of vegetation, around which the grey wagtails flitted and
the dragon-flies slowly moved. It is an ideal place for a camp,
and one but wished that more than a night could have been spent
there; for one would have liked to have explored the surrounding
hills and valleys, and to have stalked the gazelle which had left
their footprints near the well.
The nights up here in this locality, which must be some 1500 or more
feet above the sea, were bitterly cold, in spite of the approaching
summer. There is perhaps no place where one more keenly feels a low
temperature than in the desert; and here at Um Disi, where the air
is that of the mountains, a colder night was passed than it has
ever been my lot to endure—with the exception, perhaps, of one
occasion some years ago when, with another student of archæology,
I spent the night upon the flint-covered hill-tops of the Western
Desert. Our baggage and bedding had then failed to reach us, and
we were obliged to sleep in our clothes and overcoats, dividing a
newspaper to act as a cover for the neck and ears. By midnight we
were so cold that we were forced to dance a kind of hornpipe in order
to set the circulation going again in the veins; and my friend was
light-hearted enough to accompany this war-dance with a breathless
rendering of the hymn, “We are but little children meek,”
which had been dinned into his head, he told me, while staying at
a mission school in another part of Egypt. Memory recalls the scene
of the dark figure shuffling and swaying in the clear starlight, the
biting wind whistling around the rocks in rhythmless accompaniment;
and yet it does not seem that so much discomfort was then felt as
was experienced in the flapping tent at Um Disi.
The journey was continued early next morning, the road leading out
from the amphitheatre through a gauge on the eastern side. There
was now some difficulty about the method of travelling, for only
the guide knew the way; and as he rode with us, there was danger
of our losing the slowly moving baggage camels, which always
followed behind, catching us up at our halts for luncheon and other
refreshment. I therefore took with me some bags of torn paper, and
at every turning of the path, or at the cross-tracks, I threw down
a few handfuls in the manner of a paper-chase; and thus, though the
path here wound from one valley to another in the most perplexing
manner, the caravan reached its destination almost as soon as we.
It was disappointing to find that our camelmen, born and bred in
the desert, were unwilling to take the responsibility of following
safely in our tracks. One would have thought that the footprints
of our camels would have been as easy for them to trace on an
unfrequented path as torn paper is to us. The guide, on the other
hand, showed a really wonderful knowledge of the intricate paths;
for it is not reasonable to suppose that he had travelled between
Gebel Dukhân and Um Etgal more than two or three times in his life,
this being off the main routes through the desert. He did not once
hesitate or look around, although when questioned he declared that
many years had passed since last he had been here.
In these valleys we met, for the first time for some days, one or
two Bedwin. A ragged figure, carrying a battle-axe and a mediæval
sword, sprang up from the rocks, where he was tending a flock of
goats, and hurried across to shake hands with our guide. The two
entered into earnest conversation in low tones; and the old guide,
after pointing with his lean finger to his bag of food, which
was every day diminishing in size, and then to the hungry dogs,
dismounted from his camel, tied up one of the dogs, and handed it
over to his wild friend. A few hours later another ragged figure,
this time a Bishari, carrying a long gun, ran forward to greet us,
and to him the guide delivered over his second dog, after a similar
discussion with regard to his food-bag. For over a mile from this
point, after the dog and his new master had diminished to mere specks
on the rocks, the wind brought down to us the melancholy howls of
the former and the unconcerned song of the latter to his goats.
[Plate XX:
Illustration: Mons Claudianus. The town.—Page 124.
Illustration: Mons Claudianus. Chambers on the west side of the
forecourt of the Temple. The threshold and base of a column of the
granite portico are seen on the right.—Page 126.]
Our way led up the wide Wady Ghrosar, which ends in a pass, from
the top of which a magnificent view is obtained. This point was
reached in a trot of about three and three-quarter hours from Bir
Um Disi. One looks down upon a great lake of sand, amidst which the
groups of dark granite hills rise like a thousand islands, while
dim ranges enclose the scene on all sides. From this huge basin a
hundred valleys seem to radiate, and it would be an easy matter to
head for the wrong peak and to lose oneself upon the undulating
sands. Descending a smooth slope, we rested for luncheon in the
shade of a group of rocks; and presently mounting our camels again,
we crossed the basin and entered a series of intricate valleys,
which became more and more narrow and enclosed as the day wore on,
giving us good reason to doubt whether our baggage camels would
manage to follow. At last, in the late afternoon, after a ride of
rather under four hours from the top of Wady Ghrosar, a turn in
the path brought the town of Mons Claudianus suddenly into view;
and in a moment the camels were forgotten, and the wonderfully
preserved remains had carried one back to the days of the Emperors
Trajan and Hadrian.
The hills of Um Etgal supplied Rome with a fine white granite
speckled with black, which was deservedly popular for building
purposes during the Imperial age. The stone was not employed by the
ancient Egyptians, and it was left to a Roman prospector to discover
its existence and to open quarries. The settlement which was founded
here was known generally as Mons Claudianus, but in honour of the
Emperor Trajan the well which supplied it with water was called Fons
Trajanus, and this name was sometimes applied to the town. The stone
was transported from here to the Nile on waggons drawn by oxen or
men, and was placed upon barges at Keneh. It was then floated down
the stream to the sea, where it was transhipped to the galleys which
bore it across the Mediterranean to the port of Rome. The distance
from here to the Nile must be about ninety-five miles, since it took
us nearly nineteen hours of five-miles-an-hour trotting to cover
the distance; and, as will be seen, the blocks which were dispatched
from the quarries were of enormous size. It must have been an easier
matter to transport the Imperial Porphyry from Gebel Dukhân to the
river; for the objects executed in that stone were not usually of
a size to require particularly large blocks. But the great pillars
which were cut from the white granite were often of dimensions which
one would have regarded as prohibitive to transportation. In order
to reduce the weight to the minimum the columns were dressed on the
spot to within an inch or so of their final surface, whereas the
porphyry blocks were light enough to be sent down in the rough. This
is the explanation of the fact that at Gebel Dukhân there was
but a small town, whereas here at Um Etgal the settlement was far
more elaborate and extensive. Skilled masons had to live at Mons
Claudianus as well as quarrymen, engineers as well as labourers;
and the architects themselves may have had to visit the quarries
on certain occasions. If one has admired the enterprise which is
displayed in the works at Gebel Dukhân, an even greater call on
one’s admiration will be made at Um Etgal; and those who would
fully realise the power of the Roman Empire should make their
slow way to these distant quarries, should realise the enormous
difficulties of their working, and should think for a moment that
all this activity was set in motion by the mere whim of an Emperor.
The town, enclosed by a buttressed and fortified wall, stands in
a valley between the rocky hills from which the white granite was
quarried. A broad road leads up to the main entrance. On the left
side of this stand various ruined houses, and on the right there is
a large enclosure in which the transport animals were stabled. Over
half this enclosure there was a roof, supported by numerous pillars;
but the other half stands open, and still contains line upon line of
perfectly preserved stalls, at which some 300 oxen or donkeys could
be stabled. Farther up the road, on the opposite side, just before
reaching the entrance to the town, there stands the bath-house. One
first enters a good-sized hall in which three small granite tanks
stand. Here the bathers no doubt washed themselves before entering
the baths proper. From this silent hall two doorways open. The first
of these leads into a series of three small rooms which were heated
by furnaces in the manner of a Turkish bath. These chambers seem to
have been heated to different degrees, for under the floor of the
innermost there is a large cavity or cellar for the hot air, whereas
in the other rooms there are only pottery flues, which pass down the
walls behind the plaster. In one chamber there is an arched recess,
which seems to have been made for ornamental purposes. The second
doorway from the hall leads into a fine vaulted room, at the far end
of which a plunge-bath, some nine feet long and four or five feet
deep, is constructed of bricks and cement. Steps lead down into it
from the floor level, and in the walls around there are ornamental
niches in which statuettes or vases may have stood. In this tank
the Roman officer was able to lie splashing after his hot-air bath,
and there is an appearance of luxury about the place which suggests
that he could here almost believe himself in his own country.
[Plate XXI:
Illustration: Mons Claudianus. East end of the Temple.—Page 126.
Illustration: Mons Claudianus, looking over the town to the Temple
on the hillside.—Page 126.]
The enclosed town consists of a crowded mass of small houses,
intersected by a main street from which several lanes branch to
right and left. The walls are all built of broken stones, and the
doorways are generally constructed of granite. Some of the roofing
is still intact, and is formed of thin slabs of granite supported
by rough pillars. One wanders from street to street, picking a way
here and there over fallen walls; now entering the dark chambers of
some almost perfectly preserved house, now pausing to look through
a street doorway into the open court beyond. Large quantities of
broken pottery and blue glazed ware lie about, but there did not
seem to be many other antiquities on the surface.
The temple lies outside the town on the hillside to the north. A
flight of ruined steps, some 25 feet in breadth between the
balustrades, leads up to a terrace, on which stands the broken
altar, inscribed as follows: “In the twelfth year of the Emperor
Nerva Trajan Cæsar Augustus Germanicus Dacicus; by Sulpicius
Simius, Prefect of Egypt, this altar was made.” At the north
end of the terrace there is a granite portico, of which the
two elegant columns are now overthrown. Through this one passes
into a large four-pillared hall, where there is another altar,
upon which is written: “Annius Rufus; Legate of the XVth Legion
‘Appolinaris,’ superintending the marble works of Mons Claudianus
by the favour of the Emperor Trajan.” From this hall the sanctuary
and other important rooms lead. The walls in the various parts
of the building now only appear as orderly piles of rough stones,
but when they were neatly covered with the salmon-coloured plaster,
which may be seen in the bath-house and elsewhere, they must have
been most imposing. Built into one of the outer walls of the temple
there is a block of stone decorated with the well-known Egyptian
symbol of the disk and serpents; and this seems to be the only
indication of Egyptian influence in the place.
To the north-east of the town a great causeway leads up to the
main quarries, and half-way along it lies a huge block of granite,
abandoned for some reason before it had been dragged down to the
depository below. Here at the foot of the causeway lie several
huge columns already trimmed, and many smaller blocks left in the
rough. Most of these are numbered or otherwise marked, and on one
enormous block, hewn into the form of a capital, there is written:
“The property of Cæsar Nerva Trajan.”
The well from which the inhabitants of Mons Claudianus drew their
water lies in a valley nearly a mile from the town. It is enclosed
within a courtyard, and near it stands a round tower some 25 feet in
height. From this tower to a point about a quarter of a mile from the
town there runs an aqueduct along which the water was evidently sent,
the drop of 25 feet giving it the necessary impetus. At the town end
of the aqueduct there is a building which contains a large tank and
a series of rooms something in the nature of a small barrack. Here,
no doubt, lived the persons who had charge of the water-supply,
and it was probably their duty to see that the tank was always
full. Outside the building there is a trough from which the animals
could drink. One imagines the quarrymen or their wives coming each
day to the tank to fill their amphoræ with water, and the stablemen
leading down the mules or donkeys to the trough. Here, as in the
animal lines at the town, one is struck with the disciplined system
shown in the arrangements, and it seems clear that the settlement
was under the immediate eyes of true Romans, uninfluenced by the
slovenliness of the Orient.