streets of the town I made my way in the silence of nightfall. No
words can record the strangeness of wandering thus through
doorways unbarred since the days of Imperial Rome, and through
houses uninhabited for so many hundreds of years. It is difficult
to describe the sensations which a scene of this kind arouses. At
first the mind is filled with sheer amazement both at the freshness,
the newness of the buildings, and at their similarity to those in
use at the present day. One cannot bring oneself to believe that
so many centuries have passed since human eyes looked daily upon
them or hands touched them. But presently a door seems to open in
the brain, a screen slides back, and clearly one sees Time in its
true relation. A thousand years, two thousand years, have the value
of the merest drop of water in an ocean. One’s hands may reach
out and touch the hands which built these houses, fashioned these
doorways, and planned these streets. This town is not a relic of
an age of miracles, when the old gods walked the earth or sent
their thunderbolts from an unremote heaven; but stone by stone
it was constructed by men in every way identical with ourselves,
whose brains have only known the sights and sounds which we know,
altered in but a few details.
[Plate XXII:
Illustration: Mons Claudianus. Doorway leading from the hall of the
Bath-house into the room in which was the plunge-bath. Originally
the walls were plastered.—Page 125.
Illustration: Mons Claudianus. Pedestal of the altar in the
forecourt of the Temple. The altar itself is seen broken in the
foreground.—Page 126.]
The fact that those far-off days are so identical with those we
live in does not, however, speak to the mind of the changelessness
of things, of the constancy of human customs. That is a minor
thought. It tells rather of our misconception of the nature of Time;
it shows how difficult it is to judge the ages by the standard of
human experience. In looking at these almost unharmed relics of a
life which ceased before our remotest English history had begun,
one sees that their modern appearance is not so much due to the
persistence of custom as it is to the shortness of time since
the town was built. Two thousand years is not a period which we
have the right to call long: it is but an hour in the duration of
man’s existence upon earth. “A thousand ages in thy sight are
like an evening gone,” runs the old hymn; and one feels that the
ages since this town was built must indeed be but an evening to One
whose laws of Decay and Change have not found time in them to show
more than a few signs of their working. As one entered the temple in
the twilight, and aroused unaccustomed echoes in the silence of its
halls, the thought was that one had come rudely to awaken the Past;
and, as the degenerate son of a race that had outlived its miracles,
to bring the tidings that the gods were dead. But when the newness,
the freshness of parts of the buildings, had opened the doors of
the mind, the thought was only that the gods were still living and
mighty who could think so lightly of twenty long centuries.
On the following morning I busied myself in taking notes and
photographs amongst the ruins; and somewhat before noon the camp
was struck. The road, now leading westwards towards Keneh, passed
for the main part of the ride along a wide valley of great beauty;
and after trotting for about three and a half hours we passed a
small ancient quarry of fine, small-grained, grey granite, near
which a few huts were grouped. Towards sunset we crossed the brow
of a hill, and so descended into the Wady Fatîreh, where we camped
near the well of that name. Here there is a Roman station differing
very slightly from those already described. It lies about five and
a half hours’ trot from Mons Claudianus, and was thus the first
night’s halting-place for express caravans on the road from that
town to Keneh.
As darkness fell I was sitting in the fortress questioning the
guide as to the road, when we were both startled by the sound of
falling stones, and looking up we saw a large dog-like creature
disappearing over the wall. Examining the footprints afterwards,
one saw them to be the heavy marks of a hyæna; but no more was
heard of him. Hyænas are by no means rare in the desert, though
it is not usual to find them so far back from the Nile as this. In
sleeping out in the desert travellers warn one to be careful,
for a hyæna, they say, might snap at a foot protruding from the
blankets, just as a man might take a biscuit from the sideboard;
but I do not recollect hearing of anybody who has ever been attacked.
The ancient Egyptians used to eat hyænas, and the scenes in the
early tombs show them being fattened up in the farms. Men are seen
flinging the unfortunate creatures on their backs, their legs being
tied, while others force goose-flesh down their throats. Probably the
archaic hunter in the desert ate hyæna-flesh for want of other meat,
and the custom took hold amongst the sporting families of dynastic
times; for with proper feeding there is no reason to suppose that the
meat would be objectionable. The old guide told me, as we sat in the
darkness, that there are several trappers who make their living by
snaring hyænas, and there is no part of the animal which has not a
marketable value. The skin has its obvious uses; the skull is sold as
a charm, and brings luck to any house under the threshold of which
it is buried; the fat is roasted and eaten as a great delicacy;
and the flesh is also used for eating, and for medical purposes,
certain parts being stewed down and swallowed by women who desire
to produce a family in spite of Nature’s unwillingness.
[Plate XXIII:
Illustration: Mons Claudianus. The first heated room of the
Bath-house. The doorway on the left leads into the warmer room. The
perpendicular cut in the left wall near the corner is one of the
recesses in which the hot-air pipes were fixed. Page 125.
Illustration: Mons Claudianus. The same doorway—nearer view.]
In the neighbourhood of Fatîreh we noticed several rough workings in
the rocks, near which there were often a few ruined huts. These are
the remains of ancient gold mines, worked by the Egyptians and the
Romans. There are said to be many old mines in this neighbourhood,
and an attempt has been made in recent years to reopen some of
them, though without much success. In an inscription of Dynasty
XVIII. (B.C. 1580-1350) one reads of “the gold of the desert
behind Koptos,” which city was situated on the Nile a few miles
south of Keneh; and, although most of the Koptos metal was obtained
from the region of Wady Fowakhîeh, of which the reader will have
heard in a previous chapter, some of the gold may have been mined
in the Fatîreh neighbourhood at that date, as it certainly was
in Roman times. The subject is one of such interest that I may be
permitted to mention here something of the methods of working the
gold employed by the ancient.
A full account is given by Diodorus, who obtained his information
from Agatharcides, of the mines which are situated in the
Eastern Desert farther to the south; and, as the methods were no
doubt similar in both districts, the information enables one to
reconstruct the scenes which these hills of Fatîreh looked down
upon two thousand years ago.
The persons who worked the mines were mainly criminals and prisoners
of war; but with these there were many unjustly accused men of
good breeding, and those who had by some political action earned
the Pharaoh’s or the Emperor’s wrath. Frequently this class of
prisoner was banished to the mines, together with all the members of
his family, and these also were obliged to labour for the king’s
profit. No distinctions were made at the mines between the classes,
but all suffered together, and all were weighed down with fetters
by night and by day. There was little or no chance of escape, for
sentries were posted on every hill-top, and the soldiers were ready
to give chase through the waterless desert should a man elude the
watchman. These soldiers were all of foreign extraction, and the
chances were heavy against their understanding the speech of the
prisoners; and thus they were seldom able to be bribed or introduced
into a scheme of escape.
The work was carried on day after day without cessation, and always
the labourers were under the eye of a merciless overseer, who
showered blows upon them at the slightest provocation. In order to
keep down the expenses, no clothes were provided for the prisoners,
and often they possessed not a rag to hide their nakedness. Nor
were they allowed to give a moment’s time to the bathing or care
of their bodies. In good or in bad health they were forced to work;
and neither the weakness of extreme age, nor the fever of sickness,
nor the infirmities of women, were regarded as proper cause for
the idleness even of an hour. All alike were obliged to labour, and
were urged thereto by many blows. Thus the end of a man who had been
banished to these mines was always the same: fettered and unwashed,
covered with bruises and disfigured by pestilence, he dropped dead
in his chains under the lash of the relentless whip. The sufferings
of life were such that death was hailed with joy, and it was the
dying alone who possessed a single thought of happiness.
Those who have seen the old workings on the exposed face of the
rocks, and have known the coldness of the winter nights and the
intense heat of the summer days, will alone realise what tortures
these poor wretches must have suffered. One might well think that
the wind which went moaning down the valley as we rode along the path
to the Nile still carried the groans of the sufferers, and that the
whispering rocks still echoed the cries of utter despair. Looking at
the huts where these people lived and the mines where they laboured,
one could not regard the record of their woe, which Diodorus makes
known to us, as a tale of long ago. Two thousand years, one may
repeat, is not really a period which we should regard as long;
and while walls stand upright and mines gape open, the sound of
lamentation will not be hushed in these valleys.
The rock from which the gold was obtained, says Diodorus, was
very hard; but the miners softened it by lighting fires under it,
after which it could almost be broken with the hands. When it was
thus prepared, thousands of prisoners were set to breaking it with
iron tools, while the overseer directed their labours towards the
veins of gold. To the strongest of the men iron picks were given,
and with these, though wielded unskilfully and with great labour,
they were made to attack the hillside. The galleries, following
the veins, twisted and turned, so that at the depth of a few feet
there was no glimmer of daylight; and for this reason the miners
each carried a small lamp bound to their forehead. As the blocks
of quartz were broken by the picks they were carried to the surface
by the children of the captives, who formed constant procession up
and down the dark galleries. These fragments were then gathered up
by youths and placed in stone mortars, in which they were pounded
with iron pestles until the ore was broken into pieces of the size
of peas. The ore was then handed over to women and old men, who
placed it in hand-mills, and thus ground it to powder. This powder
was then placed upon a sloping surface, and a stream of water was
poured over it which carried away the particles of stone but left
the gold in position. This process of washing was repeated several
times, until all foreign matter was eliminated and the gold dust
became pure and bright. Other workmen then took the dust, and,
after measuring it carefully, they poured it into an earthenware
crucible; and having added a small quantity of lead, tin, salt, and
bran, they closed the vessel with a tight-fitting lid, and placed
it in a furnace for the space of five days. At the end of this time
the crucible was set aside to cool, and on removing the lid it was
found to contain pure gold ready to be dispatched to the Treasury.
To bear witness to the accuracy of this account one sometimes
finds mortars and hand-mills lying amidst the ruins of the old
mining settlements. At the mines of Um Garriat there are said to be
thousands of these mills, and here at Fatîreh not a few are to be
found. Sluices for washing the crushed ore have been observed in
some of the old workings; and of the smelting crucibles remnants
exist at Um Garriat and elsewhere.
Practically nothing is known of the methods employed by the Egyptians
in earlier days, but they cannot have differed very greatly from
those of the Roman period. There seems reason to suppose that less
cruelty existed in dynastic times than in the days of the callous
Romans; and in the following chapter an account will be given of
a temple, a well, and a town built by King Sety I. for the benefit
of the persons who were engaged in gold-mining.
The night spent at Fatîreh was again bitterly cold, and a violent
wind necessitated a tussle with tent-ropes and pegs: a form of
exercise as annoying in the daytime as any that exists, and in the
shivering night-time unspeakable. A couple of hours’ riding next
day brought us to the end of the mountainous country and into the
open desert. For the first time for several days the sun streamed
down from a cloudless sky, but the strong north wind continued to
blow in full force; and as we trotted over the level plains we were
half-blinded by the stinging sand. The peaked hills behind us rose
from a sea of tearing sand, and before us in the distance rose low,
undulating clay mounds, beyond which one could catch a glimpse of
the limestone cliffs so typical of the Nile valley. In the afternoon
we crossed these mounds and descended into a very maze of hillocks,
amidst which we camped. Amongst these mounds we met a couple of
Bedwin, the purpose of whose presence was entirely obscure. Our
guide exchanged the usual greetings with them, and then in a low
voice began to talk of the miserable dog which trotted dejectedly
behind his camel. Again he pointed to his almost empty bag of food,
and at last dismounted, fastened a rope to the creature’s neck, and
handed it to the Bedwin. The usual howls floated to us on the wind
as we rode onwards, but the high spirits of the guide at his freedom
from any further responsibility was a real pleasure to witness.
[Plate XXIV:
Illustration: Mons Claudianus. A large granite column lying to the
north-east of the town. The back wall of the town is seen behind
the column, above which the Temple buildings are seen at the foot
of the granite hills.—Page 127.
Illustration: Mons Claudianus. Large granite columns lying at the
foot of a quarry west of the town.—Page 127.]
Early in the following morning I visited the Roman station of
Greiyeh, which lies some seven hours’ trot from Fatîreh, and
about six hours, or rather more, from Keneh, and was thus the first
night’s halting-place out from the Nile, or the second from Mons
Claudianus. The station is, as usual, a rectangular enclosure, in
which several rooms are constructed. Particularly well preserved
are the animal lines, which lie to the west of the station. They
consist of a courtyard in which fourteen rows of stalls are built,
while down either side there has been a shed with a roof supported
by a row of pillars. Not far away is the ancient well, enclosed in
a small compound.
This is the last of the Roman stations, and having passed it,
the ancient world seemed to slip back out of one’s reach. The
camels were set at a hard trot over the now flat and burning sand,
and by noon the distant palms of Keneh were in sight floating above
the mirage. As the houses of the town grew more and more distinct
in the dazzling sunlight, the practical concerns of one’s work
came hurrying to mind; and in times and trains, baggage and bustle,
the quiet desert, with its ghosts of Rome, faded away as fades some
wonderful dream when the sleeper wakes.
VI.
THE TEMPLE OF WADY ABÂD.
The small shrine in the Eastern Desert, which I have here called
the Temple of Wady Abâd, is known to Egyptologists as the Temple
of Redesiyeh, although it is thirty-seven miles or more from
the village on the Nile, five miles above Edfu, which bears that
name. Redesiyeh seems to have been the point from which Lepsius, the
German archæologist, and other early travellers set out to visit the
desert shrine; and hence the name of this wholly unimportant village
was given to the ruin, and nobody has bothered to find one more
suitable. By the natives the building is called _El Kaneis_, “the
Chapel”; and since it is situated in the well-known Wady Abâd, it
would seem most natural to call it the “Chapel, or Temple, of Wady
Abâd.” Modern prospectors and mining engineers have been puzzled
to know what Redesiyeh has to do with the place; and the fact that
an old German antiquarian half a century ago collected his camels at
that village being wholly without significance to them, they have
regarded the word Redesiyeh as a probable corruption of Rhodesia,
and have spoken, to the amazement and confusion of the uninitiate,
of the Temple of Rhodesia in the hills of the Upper Egyptian Desert.
The shrine was built by King Sety I. (B.C. 1300), the father of
Rameses the Great, for the benefit of the miners passing to and
from the various gold mines near the Red Sea; and the story one
hears from the modern engineers, which vaguely relates that the
temple was erected by King Ptolemy as a memorial to his son, who
died at this spot on his return from the mines, does not require
consideration. During the brilliant reign of Sety I. the gold mines
were energetically worked, and the produce of those upon the road
to which this shrine was built was intended especially for the
upkeep and ornamentation of the king’s great temple at Abydos,
about 180 miles by river north of the Wady Abâd. There are so many
old gold workings between the river and the Red Sea that one cannot
say definitely where Sety’s miners were bound for who stopped to
offer a prayer to the gods at this wayside shrine, but one may say
certainly that Edfu, the old Apollinopolis Magna, and El Kab, the
old Eileithyiaspolis, were the cities from which they set out. It
will, perhaps, be best to state that Edfu stands on the Nile about
half-way between Aswan and Luxor—_i.e._, about 520 miles above
Cairo—and that El Kab is situated some 10 miles down-stream from
Edfu. The Wady Abâd enters the desert exactly opposite Edfu;
the shrine stands about 35 miles east of that town; and the Red
Sea coast is about 100 miles farther east as the crow flies.
[Plate XXV:
Illustration: The Roman station of Abu Gehâd. Some of the rooms
as seen from the court, looking west.—Page 152.
Illustration: Front view of the Temple of Wady Abâd.—Page 155]
Towards the end of March 1908, when the hot south winds were driving
the tourists towards the sea, and the trains from Luxor to Cairo were
full to overflowing, the writer and his wife set out in the opposite
direction, travelling southwards in an empty train as far as the
little wayside station of Mahamîd, the nearest stopping-place to the
ruins of El Kab. The camels which were to carry us and our camp to
Sety’s temple in the desert were awaiting us upon the platform,
surrounded by an admiring throng of native loafers. The caravan,
according to orders which were ultimately carried out, was to consist
of ten baggage and four riding camels, and an assortment of camelmen
under the leadership of a Shêkh; but more than double that number
of camels lay grunting in the sunlight as the hot train panted into
the station. This was due to the fact that a rival and more wealthy
camel proprietor, who had not been invited to do business on this
occasion, had sent a few camels to the rendezvous on the chance of
their being required, and this move the chosen proprietor met by the
doubling of the number of his camels. The disappointed owner was
himself at the station, and eloquently dilated upon the danger of
trusting oneself to a Shêkh of inferior standing. In the infallible
‘Baedeker’ one reads that for this journey it is necessary
“to secure the protection of the Shêkh of the Ababdeh tribes”;
and though the edition in which these ominous words appear is a
few years out of date, one realised in what a dilemma a traveller
who did not know the country might have found himself. The Shêkh,
it appeared, had even telegraphed his warning to me at the last
moment; but this having been really the last of a short series of
cards which it seems that he had played, it did not require many
words to soothe matters into the normal condition of hullabaloo
which everywhere prevails in Egypt at the departure of a caravan.
The baggage at last being dispatched southwards, we set out
towards the ruins of El Kab, which could be seen shimmering in
the heat-haze a few miles away. It was our purpose to ride to
Edfu, thence into the desert, and thence back to Edfu and on to
Aswan. The first night was to be spent under the ruined walls of
the ancient city of Eileithyiaspolis, and it did not take long to
trot to the camping-ground by the river-side. Here, in explanation
of the route which we followed, I must be permitted to enter into
some archæological details in connection with El Kab and Edfu.
In archaic days, when the great Hawk-chieftains who glimmer,
like pale stars, at the dawn of history were consolidating their
power in Upper Egypt before conquering the whole Nile valley,
there stood a city on the west bank of the river, opposite El Kab,
which in later times was know as Hieraconpolis, “the city of the
Hawks.” This was the earliest capital of Upper Egypt, and here
it is probable that the great king Mena, “the Fighter,” the
first Pharaoh of a united Egypt, was born and bred. This king and
his father conquered the whole of Egypt, and for that conquest a
certain amount of wealth was necessary, even in those days when
might was as good as money. For this purpose, and for the reason
that the arts of civilisation were already in practice, the gold
mines of the Eastern Desert began to be worked. This industry led
to the establishment of a station on the east bank of the river
opposite the capital, where the miners might foregather, and where
the caravans and their escort of soldiers might be collected.
As larger deeds and wider actions became the order of the Pharaoh’s
day, so the mines were extended and the number of workmen increased;
and it was not long before the station at El Kab grew into a city
almost as large as the metropolis. In Dynasty XII. (B.C. 2000)
a wall was built around it, which stands to this day, in order to
protect it from incursions from the desert. Gradually great temples
were erected here, and the city, now known as Nekheb and later as
Eileithyiaspolis, was one of the busiest centres in the world.
The ruins of the old caravanserai are of wonderful interest. One
may pass through the narrow doorway of the fortified enclosure,
and in the silent area where once the soldiers and miners camped,
and where now a few goats graze, one feels completely shut off
from the world of the present day. The dark walls rise around one
almost to their full height, and one may still ascend and descend
the sloping ramps where the sentries paced in the olden days. Here
there are the ruins of the temple where the vulture-goddess was
worshipped; and yonder one sees the mounds of potsherds, bricks,
corn-grinders, and all the _débris_ of a forsaken town. In the
side of a hill which overlooks the great ramparts one observes the
long row of tombs in which the princes of the district were buried;
and here in the biographical inscriptions on the walls one reads
of many a feat of arms and many a brave adventure.
[Plate XXVI:
Illustration: The Temple of Wady Abâd. The east end of the
Portico. The square pillar was built in Græco-Roman times to
support the broken architrave.—Page 155.
Illustration: The Temple of Wady Abâd. The east wall of the
Portico. The king is seen smiting a group of negroes.—Page 156.]
The hills of the desert recede in a kind of bay here, and if one
walks eastwards from the town one presently sees that there is,
at the back of the bay, an outlet through the range, five miles or
so from the river and the enclosure. It was through this natural
gateway, which the ancient Egyptians called “the Mouth of the
Wilderness,” that the caravans passed in early days into the great
desert; and once through this doorway they were immediately shut off
from the green Nile valley and all its busy life. There is a great
isolated rock which stands in the bay; and in its shadow the miners
and soldiers were wont to offer their last prayers to the gods of
Egypt, often inscribing their names upon the smooth surface of the
stone. Here one reads of priests, scribes, caravan-conductors,
soldiers, superintendents of the gold mines, and all manner of
officials, who were making the desert journey, or who had come to
see its starting-point.