Desert, their charm and interest never palls; and, more than any
other ancient buildings, they bring back the lost ages and recall
the forgotten activities of the old world. These ruins, too, are
always picturesque, and gather to themselves at dawn and at sunset
the hues, the lights, and the shadows of the fairest fancy. At dawn,
at noon, at sunset—all day long—this fortress in the Wady Abâd
is beautiful; and for those who love the desert there is here and
in its surroundings always some new thing to charm. The walls of
the enclosure, and beyond them the pillared portico of the temple
sheltering under the rugged brown cliffs, form as delightful a
picture as may be found in Egypt. As one sits in the blue shadow
one may watch the black-and-white stone-chats fluttering from rock
to rock, and overhead there circles a vulture, as vividly coloured
as those which form the ceiling decoration in the temple. The wide
flat plain, shut in by the distant hills on all sides, entices one
from the fortress on to its sparkling surface, though the tumbled
rocks near the temple soon call one back to their breezy humps and
shady nooks. The hundred surrounding hill-tops vie with one another
in the advertisement of their merits, and one attains a summit but to
covet a further prospect. Or, attracted by the two or three trees and
the few bushes which grow in the plain over against the fortress,
one walks to their welcoming shade; and there one may listen to
the song of the sand-martins and to the strange, long-drawn note
of the finches.
“A book of verses underneath the bough. . . .”
One knows now what the old philosopher desired to express; for
the wilderness is indeed Paradise, and here one may find the true
happiness.
The day slips past in a half-dream of pleasure, and to the student
of archæology, who finds so much for his pencil to record and
his mind to consider, the hours race by at an absurd speed. The
two days which we spent here passed like an afternoon’s dream,
and the memories which remain in the mind are almost too slight
to record. Writing here in the study one reconstructs the rugged
scene, and searches for the incidents which gave gentle colour to
it. There was a flight of cranes, which sailed overhead, moving
from south-east to north-west, on their way to spend the summer in
Europe. Why should one’s memory recall so charmedly the passage
of a hundred birds? There was a hyæna which, in the red dusk,
stood upon a hill-top to watch us, and presently disappeared. There
were three vultures which rose from the bones of a dead camel,
soared into the sky, and alighted again when we had passed. There
came a flock of goats and sheep at noonday to the well, with much
bleating and with the gentle patter of many hoofs. The shepherd in
his picturesque rags eyed us curiously as his charges drank, and,
still watching us, passed down the wady towards the west when they
had quenched their thirst. And so one’s memory wanders over the
two days, recalling the trivialities, and passing over the more
precise details of camp life and of work, until presently one sees
the tent struck and the baggage bumping down the valley once more
on the backs of the grunting camels. The return journey to Edfu
was soon accomplished, and the accumulated mail of five or six
days which was in waiting at the end of the ride quickly brought
one back to the business of life, and relegated the Wady Abâd to
the store-chamber of happy recollections.
[Plate XXXI:
Illustration: Greek inscription relating to an elephant hunt,
on a rock to the east of the Temple of Wady Abâd.—Page 163.
Illustration: Sketch-plan of the Temple of Wady Abâd.]
VII.
A NUBIAN HIGHWAY.
Opposite the town of Aswân, a short distance below the First
Cataract of the Nile, there rises an island known to travellers
by its Greek name of Elephantine. The river sweeps down from the
cataract to east and west; southwards one may watch it flowing around
a dozen dark clumps of granite rocks, which thrust themselves,
as it were, breathless above the water; and northwards almost
without hindrance it passes between the hills and palm-trees of the
mainland. Nowadays should one stand upon the mounds which mark the
site of the ancient city of Elephantine, and look east and north, one
would feel that modern civilisation had hidden for ever the scenes
of the past, and had prevented the imagination from re-picturing
the place as it was in the elder days. The huge Cataract Hotel
overshadows the ruined city, and stares down from its pinnacle
of granite on to the tumbled stones of ancient temples. On the
island itself, opposite this hotel, the elaborate and ultramodern
rest-house of the Ministry of Public Works rises amidst its terraced
gardens; and farther to the north stands the imposing Savoy Hotel,
surrounded by luxuriant trees and flowers unknown to the ancient
Egyptians. Eastwards the long, neat promenade of Aswân edges the
river, backed by the Grand Hotel, the Government offices, and other
large buildings; and at one end the noisy railway station tells the
insistent tale of the Present. During the winter one may watch the
busy launches and small craft plying to and fro, and may see the
quality and fashion of Europe amusing itself at either end of the
passage; while at night the brilliant lights blaze into the waters
of the Nile from a thousand electric lamps, and the sounds of the
latest valse drift out through open windows. The place is modern:
one sips one’s whisky-and-soda above the crushed-down remains
of Pharaonic splendours, plays tennis in a garden laid out above
the libraries of the Ptolemies, and reads ‘The Times’ where,
maybe, melancholy Juvenal wrote his Fifteenth Satire.
But should one turn now to the west and south a different impression
might be obtained. On the island still stands the imposing gateway of
the rich temple destroyed for the sake of its building-stone in the
days of Muhammed Ali; and near it, only recently, an archæologist
uncovered the intact burial vault of the sacred rams of the Nile-god
Khnum. The rocky hills of the western mainland tower above the
island, great drifts of golden sand carrying the eye from the summit
to the water’s edge; and here, cut into the rocks, are the tombs
of the ancient princes of Elephantine. In this direction there is
almost nothing that is more modern than the ruined monastery of
St Simeon, built at the head of a sandy valley in the early days
of Christianity, and destroyed by the fierce brother of Saladin
in 1173 A.D. With one’s back to the hotels, and one’s face to
these changeless hills, the history of the old city is able to be
traced with something of the feeling of reality to aid the thoughts.
One period of that history stands out clearly and distinctly amidst
the dim course of far-off events. From being a stronghold of a savage
tribe the south end of the island had become covered by the houses
and streets of a fine city, named _Abu_ or “Elephant-City”
(and hence Elephantine), no doubt after the elephant symbol
of its chieftain. The feudal tendencies of the Vth and VIth
Dynasties—about B.C. 2750 to 2475—had brought power and wealth
to the local princes in many parts of Egypt; and here the family
of the chieftains of the island had begun to rise to a degree of
some importance. This was largely due to the fact that to them was
intrusted the office of “Keeper of the Door of the South,” and
the protecting of the Egyptian frontier at the First Cataract from
invasion by the negro tribes beyond.
The city rose amidst its trees and rocks at the foot of the cataract,
at a point where in those days the river still ran swift, and where
the distant roar of waters continuously drummed upon the ears. On
the eastern mainland opposite the island stood the huts and hovels
of the great _’Swanu_, or market, which gave its name to the
latter town of Aswân; and here the negroes, coming from the upper
reaches of the river by the valley road which avoids the rocks of the
cataract, met and traded with the inhabitants of Elephantine. At
the far end of this road the barren islands of Philæ, Bigeh,
and others were regarded as neutral ground, and the rocks of the
mainland were not yet forbidden territory to the Egyptians for
some miles up-stream. But beyond this the country was little known,
and those who penetrated into it took their lives in their hands.
First there came the land of the Kau tribes; and then, farther to
the south, the Wawat on the east bank and the Sethu on the west
dwelt in barbaric independence. Still farther to the south lived the
warlike Mazoi, who might sometimes be seen at the market, ostrich
feathers in their hair and bows and clubs in their hands. The land
of Arthet lay to the south again; and lastly, not much below the
Second Cataract and the modern Wady Hâlfa, there lived the almost
unknown people of Aam.
Who dwelt to the south of this the Egyptians did not know. That
territory was “The Land of the Ghosts”: the perilous borders of
the world, and the misty ocean into which no man had penetrated,
were there to be encountered. To the inhabitants of the brilliant
little metropolis the peoples of the upper river appeared to be a
hazy folk; and the farther south their land the more mysterious were
their surroundings and the ghostlier their ways. The negroes who
came to the market no doubt told stories then, as they did in later
times, of the great stature and the marvellous longevity of those
distant races; and though but a couple of hundred miles of winding
river separated the Egyptian frontier from that of the land of Aam,
that distance sufficed to twist the thoughts of the market-gossiper
from the mortal to the immortal.
In archaic times an unknown Egyptian king had penetrated some
sixty miles up the river, and had left a record on one of the
rocks;[1] and King Sneferu of the IIIrd Dynasty had devastated a
part of the country. But from that time until the beginning of
the Vth Dynasty the land and its people, left unmolested, had
drifted once more into the pale regions of mystery. As the nobles
of Elephantine grew in wealth and power, however, their attention
began to be turned with some degree of fixidity towards the south;
and when the energetic King Sahura came to the throne, it was felt
that the time had arrived for the probing of the mystery.
The roads which led to the south along the eastern bank of the river,
and which were used by the negroes near the frontier when coming
to the market, were not practicable for caravans bound for distant
goals; and the Egyptians turned their eyes, therefore, to the western
hills, behind which the sorrowful lands of the Dead were somewhere
situated. Almost exactly opposite the city lay a sand-covered valley,
in which now stands the ruined monastery mentioned above. From
the island a boat carried one across to the little reedy bay, from
whence a trudge of half a mile or so over the soft sand brought one
on to the upper levels of the desert. Looking towards the north,
the road which led eventually to Lower Egypt was to be seen; to
the west the eye wandered over the undulating wilderness to the far
horizon, made awful by the presence of the Dead; and to the south
the sand-drifts and the rocky hillocks hid the untravelled paths
to Aam and the Land of the Ghosts. Keeping the river on the left
hand, it seemed to the Egyptians that they might here pass over
the upper desert as far as the gods permitted men to penetrate;
and a descent to the Nile at any convenient point would bring them,
like a bolt from heaven, upon the tribes there settled.
[Plate XXXII:
Illustration: The Inscribed Rock, from the north-west.—Pages
181-183.
Illustration: The Inscribed Rock, from the south-west.]
The army of Sahura—perhaps a thousand men with numerous
baggage-donkeys—set out along this road, and after a march of
a few days as nearly straight ahead as possible, struck the river
(which bends towards the west) at a point in the land of Arthet,
now known as Tomâs. A tribute was no doubt collected from the
rich fields which there border the Nile; an inscription recording
the name of one of the captains was cut upon a convenient face of
rock; and the army returned to Egypt to publish its heroism in the
streets of Elephantine. Another expedition in the reign of King
Asesa followed after a few years, the event being again recorded
on the rocks. Farther than Arthet, however, these armed forces did
not venture to go; nor was this Nubian highroad used with great
frequency during the following years.
About the year 2500 B.C. a prince of Elephantine named Herkhuf made
up his mind to penetrate farther towards the mysterious lands of
the south. It is forty-four centuries since he set out over the
desert, with the wind whistling past his ears and the powerful
sun warming his bones and his heart within him; yet the story of
his adventures may still be read, the path by which he travelled
may still be discerned, and the names of his captains may still be
seen on the rocks of the land of Arthet. Herkhuf, having obtained
the necessary order from the Pharaoh, set out with his father Ara,
“in order,” as he says, “to explore a road to the country
of Aam.” The road which he explored and opened up was probably a
continuation of the route from Elephantine to Arthet, passing not far
back from the river, and descending to the water between Abu Simbel
and Wady Hâlfa in the heart of the land of Aam. The expedition was
entirely successful, and Herkhuf states that he was “very greatly
praised for it.” Emboldened by the fame which his enterprise had
brought him, he made a second expedition to Aam, and was gone from
Egypt eight months. A third excursion was more adventurous. Herkhuf
set out upon the “Oasis-road,” which runs from a point north
of Aswân to Kurkur Oasis, and thence branches to Tomâs or Arthet
and to the Oasis of Khârgeh which lies westward, and which in those
days was inhabited by Libyan tribes. At the Kurkur junction Herkhuf
met with an army, under the leadership of the Prince of Aam, which
was on its way to chastise these Libyans; but how the wily Egyptian
contrived to use it instead as an escort to his own men back to Aam,
and how he returned to Egypt through the hostile territory of Sethu,
Arthet, and Wawat, with three hundred asses laden with the presents
of his host, are tales too long to narrate here.
One story only may be recorded in this chapter. During a fourth
expedition to Aam, Herkhuf had managed to obtain one of the dwarfs
or pigmies who inhabited a region of the Land of the Ghosts. He
at once informed the king, now the boy Pepy II.; and in reply he
received the following letter, which is, perhaps, the earliest
example in the world’s history of a private communication:—
“I have noted,” writes the King, “the matter of your
letter which you have sent to me, in order that I might know that
you have returned in safety from Aam, with the army which was with
you. . . . You say in your letter that you have brought a dancing
pigmy of the god from the Land of the Ghosts, like the pigmy which
the Treasurer Baurded brought from the Land of Pount in the time of
Asesa. You say to my majesty, ‘Never before has one like him been
brought by any one who has visited Aam.’ . . . Come northward,
therefore, to the court immediately, and bring this pigmy with you,
which you must bring living, prosperous, and healthy, from the Land
of the Ghosts, to dance for the King and to rejoice and gladden
the heart of the King. When he goes down with you into the vessel,
appoint trustworthy people to be beside him at either side of the
vessel: take care that he does not fall into the water. When he
sleeps at night, appoint trustworthy people who shall sleep beside
him in his cabin; and make an inspection ten times each night. My
majesty desires to see this pigmy more than the gifts of Sinai and
of Pount. If you arrive at court, the pigmy being with you, alive,
prosperous, and healthy, my majesty will do for you a greater
thing than that which was done for the Treasurer Baurded in the
time of Asesa, according to the heart’s desire of my majesty to
see this pigmy. Orders have been sent to the chief of the New Towns
to arrange that food shall be taken from every store-city and every
temple (on the road) without stinting.”
How easy it is to picture the excited boy awaiting the arrival
of this wonder from the south, or to watch in the imagination the
long caravan as it winds its way over the western hills from Aam to
Elephantine, where Herkhuf and his prize will take ship to Memphis.
Later in the reign of Pepy II. the tribes of Arthet and Wawat
revolted, and the Nubian highroad echoed with the songs of Egyptian
soldiers. The commander of the expedition, named Pepynakht, slew a
large number of the unfortunate negroes, took many prisoners, and
collected a great quantity of plunder. It was perhaps during this
disturbance that a certain prince of Elephantine, named Mekhu, was
murdered in Arthet. News of his death was brought to his son Sabna
by a ship’s captain who had himself escaped. Sabna immediately
collected a few soldiers and a hundred baggage-donkeys, bearing
presents of honey, oil, ointment, and fine linen, and set out upon
the same highroad towards Arthet. By the judicious use of his oil
and honey he was able to discover the body of his father; and,
loading it upon a donkey, he commenced the return journey. Before
he was clear of Arthet, however, he found it necessary to avert an
attack by presenting a sullen negro chieftain with an elephant’s
tusk three cubits in length, at the same time hinting that his
best tusk was six cubits in length. But how the expedition arrived
safely at Elephantine, and how Sabna buried his father there in
the western hills behind the modern Savoy Hotel, and how he was
rewarded by the king for his really plucky undertaking, cannot be
here related at length.
There was now no more mystery about the country on this side of
the Second Cataract, and by the perseverance of these princes of
Elephantine the way was made ready for the conquest of the Sudân,
which the Egyptians commenced in the XIIth Dynasty and completed in
the XVIIIth. We of the present day cannot, perhaps, appreciate how
much pluck and obstinacy these nobles required in the undertaking
of these expeditions. Not only were they penetrating into lands
which were inhabited by the most savage tribes, but they believed
these tribes to be endowed with superhuman powers. From childhood
they had heard stories of their magical power; while in pushing
their way into the distant land of Aam they assuredly expected to
encounter those ghosts who hovered at the edge of the world. Their
caravan routes over the western hills ran dangerously near the
terrible territory of the Dead; and, to their superstitious minds,
their daily marches and their nightly camps were beset by monsters
and by bogies compared to which the fierce Mazoi were as nought.
The reader who finds interest in the picture of Herkhuf exploring
the roads of Aam, and of Sabna searching for his father’s body
in hostile Arthet, will ask whether any definite traces of the
highroad still remain. One would have thought that after four
thousand four hundred years it would have utterly disappeared;
but this is not the case. Let the visitor to Aswân step out some
afternoon from the hall of his hotel, where the string band throbs
in his ears and the latest Parisian gowns shimmer before his eyes,
and let him take boat to the little western bay behind the ruins of
Elephantine. Here in the late afternoon the long blue shadows fall,
and he may walk in coolness over the sand towards the monastery
which stands on the higher ground before him. At the top of the
hills to his left he will presently see, some distance away, a
large isolated boulder near the tomb of some old Mussleman saint;
and making his way up the hillside towards this boulder, he will
suddenly come upon a paved causeway[2] which sweeps up over the sand
to the rocky summit. Rough flat blocks of sandstone form the paving,
and these are only here and there overwhelmed by the drifting sand,
though it is evident that the road has been entirely buried at the
point where it approaches the water.
Mounting to the hill-top, the causeway is seen to pass within
a few yards of the great boulder which one now finds to have
been surrounded by a rough wall, as though to form a kind of
sanctuary or chapel. On the sides of the rock there are several
inscriptions recording the coming of various officials of the
Empire—tax-collectors, superintendents of the Nubian gold mines,
and so on. It is evident from this that the road was used for many
a long year after Herkhuf and Sabna had done with it; though now
it possessed for the travellers no terrors, nor did it lead any
more to the Land of the Ghosts.
At the point where the causeway passes the boulder the hard surface
of the upper desert literally bristles with countless little heaps
of stones, each consisting of a small, upright slab of rock, held
in place by two or three others. Fragments of pottery indicate
that a bowl, perhaps containing water, had been placed beside each
pile. Here, then, are the memorials of the travellers who set out
for distant Arthet from the fair city on the island, which may from
here be seen floating in the blue waters of the Nile below. These
stones are the prayers of those who asked a prosperous journey from
the gods of their city: from the old ram-headed Khnum who lived in
the dark caverns below the Nile; from Satet, the horned goddess whose
bow and arrows were the terror of her enemies; and from Anuket with
the crown of lofty feathers. For a short distance one may follow
the paved road now, as it passes southwards and westwards amidst
the blackened rocks and golden sand-drifts of this lifeless land;
but presently it tops a deeply shadowed ridge of rock and sand, and
so descends into, and is lost amidst, the wide, undulating desert,
ablaze with the light of the setting sun.
There are not many persons who will find themselves able to
follow the road by camel, as I did, or to take ship up the Nile,
to Arthet, in order to see the terminus of the first part of the
highway. The road descends to the river behind the rich fields of
the straggling village of Tomâs, near Derr, the present capital of
Lower Nubia. The scenery here is beautiful in the extreme. A short
distance down-stream a bluff of rock, projecting to the water’s
edge, and half-covered with drift-sand, marks the probable boundary
between Arthet and Sethu. One might slide here from the top of the
bluff down the golden slopes to the verdant thornbushes which dip
towards the river, and from either side of the track one’s figure
would be seen sharply against the deep blue of the sky. Sliding,
one would see on the left the rocks and the sand of Sethu, and
distantly the superb array of the mountains of Wawat; while on the
right the green bay into which the road descended would lie spread
as a feast to the eye. Farther up-stream a wooded island lies in the
Nile, whither the inhabitants must often have fled at the approach
of the Egyptians from the desert.
On the low cliffs which form the backing of this bay many a captain
of an expedition or master of a caravan has written his name,
and sometimes a date has been added. “The Superintendent of all
the caravan-conductors of the Land of the South: Sabna”; “the
Captain of the Soldiers: Akab”; “the Captain of the ships of
Asesa: Khnumhotep”; “the sixth year: written by the Captain
of the soldiers . . .”; these are examples of the inscriptions
which were here cut into the surface of the rock, and which to the
archæologist are of the first importance. A caravan-conductor named
Ara, who is probably to be identified with the father of Herkhuf, has
left his name here; and more than one Sabna occurs. But perhaps the
most interesting of these records are three short inscriptions which
tell of an expedition to Arthet under the almost unknown Pharaoh
Hornefersa, who probably reigned about B.C. 2400. It is in one of
these inscriptions that the name of this country—Arthet—is given,
thereby making it possible definitely to locate the territory of
these people, and to identify this highway without any further
question with the “Elephantine road” referred to in the
inscriptions as leading from Elephantine to Arthet.
[Plate XXXIII:
Illustration: The Elephantine Road, looking along it towards
Aswân.—Page 182.